I wondered briefly why Maisie’s mum hadn’t been mentioned, but not wanting to pry, simply said, ‘Will do. It’ll be nice to see our old school again. We’ll be a couple of hours but if you’re not home yet, I can take her to Peggy’s house for dinner.’
‘Thanks but I think I’ll be home. I’ll make it an early day. My house is up past the school, up St Colman’s Way, near my dad’s workshop. Well, my workshop. The white cottage with the blue doors. You’ll see the sign on the garden stone wall, it says “McAnena”. Very imaginative, I know.’
I laughed. ‘A flight of fancy! Great. I’ll see you then.’
Maisie was beaming.
‘Say thank you to Eilidh.’
‘Thank you!’ she said, with another few jumps. I was beginning to think she couldn’t speak without jumping or skipping, as if she was on springs. Sheer life force, flowing through her like lymph through a plant.
‘See you next week then,’ said Jamie, holding Maisie’s hand.
‘See you. Bye, Maisie.’
As I was walking home, I thought of her and the way her face lit up when I mentioned horse riding. I felt a strange, un familiar warmth fill my belly, a tenderness I didn’t know any more. It was the nearest thing to joy I had felt for a long time.
Again, I wondered where Maisie’s mum was, if she was living in the village, how often she saw her daughter. I thought she was so lucky, so lucky, and somehow, I was absolutely sure that she didn’t know she was. I don’t know why.
The last time I’d seen Jamie, I told him I was going. We were both eleven and had just finished primary school. The summer was starting and we thought we had six long weeks ahead of us to play, chat and roam the fields around Glen Avich.
Then, unexpectedly, it was all turned upside down and I was going back to Southport, leaving Flora and Peggy, and my friends, and everything I knew. I had spent six years in Glen Avich and loved it. It was my home.
My parents were getting back together. My dad had come up to Scotland every single holiday – every Christmas, every summer– to spend time with us. Every single time he and my mum had fought like cat and dog. But he came anyway and she’d let him stay. My dad is not a bad person, he never mistreated my mum, let alone us – it’s just that they don’t get on, that’s all. They still don’t, after forty years of marriage and a six-year-long separation.
I was distraught, unlike Katrina, who had never taken to Glen Avich and was dying to go back to the city.
When I told Jamie, he didn’t say anything. He said he had to go, he was meeting his friend John, they were going fishing. He avoided me for the next two weeks. The day before we were due to leave, I saw him standing across the road with his hands in his pockets. I wanted to go to him but my mum needed help with the packing. I waved from the window and he waved back.
That was the last I had seen of him, before today. I wondered what memory of me he has had all this time, if any.
My memory of Jamie was that he was talented, quiet, stubborn, kind and single-minded in everything he did. That was the wee boy I knew, that is my memory of him.
A BASKET OF APPLES
I’m finding it hard to concentrate on my work today. It just doesn’t seem to be flowing like it normally does.
Work usually takes care of itself – I go to the workshop, put on the gear and away I go, job after job, until I’m finished. End of. Sometimes I give myself time to sit with a sandwich, outside on the bench if it’s good weather, inside at the small table in the corner, looking out of the window, if it’s raining. The view from the workshop is amazing, which is something that always delighted my father. He loved his work for the same reasons I do: we use our hands, we don’t sit all day and we don’t need to speak to anyone. I know, it makes me sound like a real misery guts, which I’m not. I love having people around, I just couldn’t chat all day.
I come from a long line of quiet men. My father and my grandfather were both blacksmiths and both legendarily silent, even by Scottish standards. My mum used to always tell me how restful she found this quality of his, the way they would sit in peaceful silence, and how every time my father spoke, the whole family would listen because we all knew he had something important to say. They both smiled when, one year at school, my teacher wrote in the final report: ‘Jamie doesn’t speak much but when he does, he always says something worthwhile.’ I’ve inherited their love of silence and also their gift: my greatgrandfather was a stable lad and a horse whisperer. His voice could calm and soothe the horses, when he spoke softly in their ears. I seem to be able to do the same but with people.
I’m deeply, deeply rooted in this place. Nobody was surprised when, after doing my Masters, I came back to live in Glen Avich. Well, nobody who knew me. I’d been offered a scholar ship to do my PhD in London. I was all set to go, as if I couldn’t help just walking on the path I seemed to have taken by accident – I hadn’t expected to do so well – when it occurred to me that I desperately, desperately didn’t want to go to London.
I was on holiday at home in between terms and I just walked over to my father’s workshop and told him I wasn’t going, that I wanted to stay in Glen Avich. That I wanted to help him in his job and eventually take over.
He said, ‘Oh aye? Great.’
That was it. But I knew he was delighted.
My mum tried to talk me into finding some kind of academic post in Aberdeen or Edinburgh, or at least teaching. But I had decided I wanted to do what my father did, that every time I raised my head from what I was making, I wanted to see the pinewoods and the hills silhouetted against the sky, the clouds’ shadows moving across the heather.
It turned out I had a talent. I’d always enjoyed it but when it became my full-time job I realised that I was quite good at it, that things took shape easily in my hands and they were beautiful. When my father got ill and couldn’t work anymore, I took over completely and by word of mouth I became quite a hit with the tourists and hillwalkers coming up in the summer. I make ornaments, small objects and jewellery, all inspired by Scottish history and landscape, and they seem to be quite popular. Before I knew it, I was doing exhibitions in Edinburgh and down south, and orders were coming in from as far as America. From ‘local blacksmith’ I became ‘a promising young artist’, quoting from the
Guardian
, no less.
I bought my lovely home on the hill, up the winding road that leads to St Colman’s Well, hoping to fill it with a family one day.
My work thrived but the right person didn’t come along. All my childhood friends seemed to settle down, marry and have children, some happily, some less happily. I didn’t. I had had a few girlfriends when I was a student, nothing serious, but by that time I was ready to settle down. I wanted to find the love of my life.
There just didn’t seem to be the right woman around. Suitable ones, yes – ones that should have been perfect, the perfect choice for both our families. But I always found myself wanting more. I wanted to fall in love, and truly, truly feel that the person you love is the one who’s meant for you. I believed you fall in love once and that’s it – that there’s only one person out there, one person that we can call ‘soulmate’, that when you meet her, you just can’t be away from her ever again.
Then Janet came. Then Janet went away.
And now I ask myself, do we really only fall in love once? Because I did, and now that she’s gone, I wonder if I’ll be alone forever. I hope I’m wrong, that you can love more than once, that there is more than one person out there for us.
And now there’s Gail.
I truly don’t know what to do. Last night, after we came back from the play park, she came in for a while. We were having dinner and I pulled up a chair for her. It was … nice.
Yes, it was really nice. She chatted with Maisie and we all watched
Charlie and Lola
together, then the time came to put Maisie to bed and she said she’d wait for me downstairs, make me a cup of tea.
I said I had some paperwork to do, some orders had come in and I had to look them over. Which was nearly true but not quite. She looked hurt, disappointed. I felt so guilty.
I am going to speak to her on Friday night, no more delay. I can’t have Sunday lunch with her family and Shona. By Sunday, I want it to be sorted.
I met Eilidh Lawson at the play park the other day. I can’t believe she’s back. I never thought she would return. Probably she’s just here temporarily, until she gets things sorted in her life, and then she’ll go back south.
Funny, when I saw her, this memory came into my head: opening the door of my family home and her standing there with a basket of red apples for my mum. Flora had sent her to bring apples in exchange for eggs. I remember her wavy hair falling around her face like a halo and those startling blue eyes. I had gone to school with her for years but it was like I’d seen her for the first time. When she told me she was moving down south with her family, I was gutted. I went fishing every day for two weeks so I could be on my own and not talk to anyone.
She hasn’t changed much, the same brown hair, now down to her shoulders, the same beautiful eyes. But she’s so thin and she looks like she’s been crying a lot. I know she lost a baby and that she’d been in hospital. My mum told me years ago that she was having a hard time, that she was struggling to have children and that her marriage wasn’t so good. It seems impossible, that Eilidh couldn’t have children, because I can’t remember her wanting anything else. It even came up in school once. We were asked to write a short piece on ‘What I want to be when I grow up’. She wrote that she wanted to have three children and to work in a nursery. I wrote that I wanted to be a fisherman – John and I were going through a stage where we went fishing all the time.
Maisie took to her immediately – she kept talking about Eilidh on the way home and how Eilidh would take her riding. Eilidh and her sister used to go riding a lot, up at the Ramsay estate, because the owners are cousins of theirs.
Anyway, can’t think about all that now. I have to decide what to say to Gail.
But Eilidh was a natural with Maisie, anybody could see that she’s been working with nursery children. I hope I haven’t embarrassed her by asking too many questions, I hope I haven’t put her on the spot. I wonder if she and Peggy will go to the pub for lunch on Sunday. I’ll probably see them there. Eilidh will want to catch up a bit and Shona will be there, so she can see her as well.
To go back to Gail, I must talk to her in person. A letter just won’t do. Oh, look, it started raining. I hope Eilidh is not out on her bike. She used to love cycling, we’d been everywhere on our bikes when she lived here.
I just burnt my hand.
Gail is sick with the flu. She didn’t go to work. I can hardly go round to her house and speak to her now. It’ll have to wait until Sunday, if she’s well enough.
‘Jamie!’ Shona shouted from across the road, waving her hand. She was getting out of the car with Fraser and the girls. We walked up to the church, Alison, her eldest, holding Maisie’s hand, all four of them looking so pretty in their Sunday clothes.
Shona slipped her arm under mine.
‘How’s things?’
‘Aye, aye, ok.’
‘… Yes?’
I laughed. ‘What do you want to know?’
‘You know fine well …’ she said with a smile.
‘I am going to finish with her.’
‘Good.’
‘Good? I thought you liked her!’
‘I do, very much. She’s lovely, and Helena is a good friend of mine, and her mum and dad were good friends with our mum and dad, and blah blah blah. I can see the way you look at her.’
‘How do I look at her?’
‘Like you look at me.’
Unbelievable. Shona is so perceptive and she knows me like the back of her hand.
‘Hi!’ I felt a hand on my shoulder. Gail. She stood on her toes to kiss me on the cheek, elegant in a white trouser suit and full make up on. I could smell her perfume – she always wore a lot of it.
‘Hi Shona, and where are the girls? Here they are, hello! Hi Maisie!’ she chirped, as bubbly as ever.
Shona and I looked at each other. I felt positively sick. I hate, absolutely hate, making people upset. No, really. It’s just awful.
We sat beside each other in church. I had a nice chat with her mum and dad, her mum touching my arm affectionately. I could feel my resolve dissolving.
After the service, we all walked to the pub for lunch and sat on the red couches beside the fire. Myself and Gail, Gail’s mum and dad, Shona and Fraser and the four wee girls. I went up to get drinks for everybody.
As I was standing at the counter, I could smell something lovely, something fresh and sweet. I turned and she was behind me.
She smelled of clean, she smelled of shampoo and of apples. Well, maybe the apple bit was just my imagination. She smelled of Eilidh.
‘Hello.’ My heart was in my throat and I was mad at myself for it.
‘Hi Jamie. Is Shona here? Oh, Shona! It’s been so long!’ She went over to hug my sister. ‘And look at your girls, all grown up! Gail, hello, I saw your sister the other day, it’s great to see you again.’ A flutter of greetings followed. Eilidh looked so fresh and simple, in her jeans and a black top that showed her shoulders, her hair shiny, her skin not quite as white as the girls up here but not dark – sort of buttery, somehow. Creamy.