Page 89 of Little Wing
Flora Buchanan
2ndJune 1952–29thMay 1971
Mother to Neilina
Loved by all
Nell leant by the grave, put her hand tenderly to the headstone and traced each letter, each number.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Heartfelt and silent, Nell spun her gratitude back in time and hoped, how she hoped, that Flora would receive it.
She stayed as she was, deep in her connection, until Dougie touched her shoulder. As she stood and came back into the day, sunlight spun through the cloud and blessed her face and the wind amplified the grasses whispering that it was OK, it was OK, Flora was OK and it was OK, now, to let go and finally to cry.
Dougie wasn’t sure what to do so he wrapped her in his arms and tucked her head under his chin while she wept against his chest. He had his own tears to understand. Some were for his mother. Some were for Flora. Some were for Nell. Some were for Gordon. Some, still, after all these years, were for Daisy. But some were also for himself because his tears could only mean that he could feel again and this was finally something to celebrate as much as it was something to also fear.
‘We’re a long time dead,’ Nell said, her nose snotty and her face blotched. ‘But look – look where we are. There is no better place for Flora to be.’
Dougie faltered.
‘You need to make peace with the beach, Nell.’
She looked from the car key she was holding to Dougie’s outstretched hand and turned her face to the sun. She was flooded with warmth; from the weather, from finally finding Flora, from this man who’d offered her his hat and his hand.
‘Here,’ she said, giving him back his beanie and squeezing his hand quickly.
‘Keep it,’ he said and he walked on. ‘It suits you,’ he added, over his shoulder.
They walked away from the graves and toward the dunes, walking through narrow twists between sandy knolls fringed with marram which led down steeply to the beach.
There was calm. At the shoreline the waves, which had started 3,000 miles away, had run out of steam today and were lapping benignly. The lagoons and rivulets, which plotted and pierced the sands of the wide tidal plain between Luskentyre and Seilebost, were still. Nell, though exhausted, felt at ease and Dougie found he was happy to mooch and meander over the beach that up until now he’d only ever sprinted across.
‘What’ll you do next, Nell?’
‘I’m going to buy this cushion cover I saw on my first day – as a keepsake,’ she said. Then she laughed at herself. ‘To brighten up my flat, to add a little warmth.’ He looked at her quizzically. ‘When you’ve grown up in a house tumbling with chaos and crammed with stuff – you set yourself up in a sort of monastic environment.’
‘Tell me?’
Nell stopped, stooped at the water’s edge, dipped her hand and then took her fingertips to her mouth.
‘Salty,’ she said.
‘You don’t say,’ he said. It made her laugh.
She went quiet for a while. She didn’t usually talk about this. She shrugged at Dougie.
‘My childhood home was at best colourful and eccentric – at worse frantic and chaotic. On some days there was a crazy vibrancy to it all. When my Mum was “up” it was a place full of colour and song and the mass of knick-knacks and paintings were like cast members in a play. The furniture and the wafts of shawls and scarves and throws and random pieces of fabric draped over the doors became the stage set on which she danced through the day.’
Dougie liked the way Nell talked, he liked the way her eyes narrowed but glinted on her route back through memories.
Nell opened and closed her hand; the seawater had dried and the salty tightness felt nice.
‘But when my mum was “down”,’ she said, ‘then the air at home was drenched in a claustrophobic silence.’ Nell looked at him. ‘I’d go looking for her but all that stuff would be in the way. Everything seemed threatening. Horrible carved wooden tortoises and leering china figurines and cackling Venetian masks and scarily decorated rain-sticks and dark, oily paintings of people we didn’t even know – they were all menacing. And the scarves and the throws and the drapey things – strangulating. Anyway. Anyway.’ Nell stopped. ‘You don’t want to hear all this. Why am I telling you all this? Sorry.’
‘Actually, I want to know,’ said Dougie.
