Chapter 25
fichead ’s a còig / twenty-five
Isla had her baby three weeks later. In the days leading up to the birth, Anna-Marie altered her rounds so that she was close to Falabay.
The nurse had come when called and helped deliver a healthy baby boy.
With his shock of dandelion-white hair he was unmistakable for a Macdonald.
With his pink chubby face, he reminded everyone of Doll.
People were conflicted. It was a rare blessing and they were delighted that mother and son were well, but it felt wrong to celebrate life after such a terrible loss. They didn’t know how to act when they saw Donnie on the road, whether to congratulate him or to look the other way.
Since Doll’s funeral, Sarah only slipped further from herself.
The women devised a rota and they took it in turns to help feed and care for the family.
Ella postponed her move to Pàrras and on Mondays and Thursdays, Cal helped her bring casseroles and pots of broth to the Macdonald croft.
While the women gathered around Sarah, he sat at the kitchen table and supported the youngest girls with their homework and Bible study.
During each visit, he found a moment to excuse himself and he went upstairs to where Isla and the baby were sleeping.
He liked to worm his fingers under the sleeping baby.
He was surprised at how heavy he was. The soft nubby cotton of the hand-me-downs was like the coiled fleece of a newborn lamb.
When the baby was a few weeks old, he was upstairs as usual, watching over him. He laid his long hand on his chest and could feel the swell of his breath, his strong, stubborn heartbeat. He took him up into his arms and kissed his hot cheek.
He hadn’t heard Isla come upstairs. She was leaning in the doorway and he had no idea how long she had been there. “Ella’s making cheese on toast,” she said. “Do you want some?”
“Yes, please,” he said. “Can I have onions on mine? She knows how I like it.”
There was a fleck of dried milk on the baby’s cheek. Isla licked her thumb and rubbed it clean. The baby made a face as though someone had said something interesting, suckled a moment, and then fell back asleep.
They went downstairs and had lunch with the other children.
Then afterwards, as they were washing the dishes, Isla asked him to invite her out for a walk, saying that if he invited her, she felt certain Beady could not refuse.
He did as she asked, but when her sisters heard that she was getting to leave the house, they all cried that they wanted to come too, which pleased her aunt.
Isla took the girls upstairs to look for their jumpers but when she came downstairs, she came alone.
She said her sisters had changed their minds and wished to read.
Cal hid his smirk, wondering if she had threatened to kick them.
The Macdonald pram squeaked like an excited rat.
It was an old-fashioned Silver Cross that reminded Cal of the horror movies Doll had loved as a boy.
It had been hire-purchased by Sarah’s father sometime in the fifties and had been seen as a vain extravagance.
Yet it had dutifully carried Sarah and her siblings, then her children, and now her grandchildren in turn.
That afternoon, when they were out of view of the church, Isla let go of the handle.
She gave a little gasp as the Silver Cross rolled away.
She was watching Cal out of the corner of her eye and it was as though they were testing each other, seeing who would chicken out and chase after it.
As the pram accelerated it began to wobble and then it veered unexpectedly, threatening to pitch the baby into the gulley.
Cal bolted down the hill and grabbed the handle.
When he looked back at Isla, she was expressionless, as if in a daze.
The only thing that fit her was her father’s overcoat.
She was worried about her baby weight so they walked for hours, sometimes in sunlight, sometimes in soft spitting rain.
She stopped every so often to relieve herself.
There were no bushes or trees to conceal her and so Cal opened his coat and stood over her like a flasher.
He peeked at her from time to time. He never had much curiosity about women and their bodies and there was nothing about her softness that appealed to him now.
She splashed on herself, which made her curse, which made him laugh, which caused her to laugh, which only made her pee go everywhere. Their laughter echoed off the hillside.
They chewed their lips and fell into a guilty silence.
There were no leaves to blot with, so when she was done, she shook her tail like a duckling before pulling her underwear back up. He closed his coat and stepped away. There were little spots of piss on the broguing of his shoes.
“A year ago I couldn’t even hug you in public,” he said. “And now look at us . . .”
They walked on. The sun came out as they passed the old Bedford and Isla said she wanted to stop a while. She left him holding the pram as she clambered across the rocks towards the van. She sat on a boulder and hugged her coat to herself as she stared at the wreck.
There had been a time when seeing the wreck would fill him with excitement.
Now, it filled him with a scalding that made him want to flee, a shame that itched the roots of his hair.
It was a monument to his impiety and it would sit there and rust for years to come.
He couldn’t burn it. He couldn’t roll it into the sea.
He left Isla to rest and he walked on, pretending he was trying to soothe the baby.
When he rounded the next bend he stopped and sank his face into his hands.
He would pass this van every time he left the house.
He would pass the Macdonald croft and the MacInnes house.
That was the cruelty of the ribbon road.
After a while, Isla came along the road and they started walking again.
“Did you love him?” she asked.
“A little,” he said. “But he didn’t love me. It wasn’t like that.”
They walked a little further and he was wondering if he had misspoke, if he had confused didn’t with couldn’t, when Isla sniffed and asked, “Did you love me?”
He thought about lying, but what was the use. “I don’t know,” he said. “I wanted to.”
When they reached the end of the road, they sat in the cruciform shelter for a while.
Each time the wind changed direction, they moved around the shelter to the leeward side.
Isla took the baby from the pram and tucked him inside her coat.
She lifted her jumper and fed him. Cal had brought a can of Coke from the house and they shared it, drinking it so slowly all the bubbles went flat.
“I’m leaving,” she said eventually. “The week after next.”
“But uni doesn’t start for months yet.”
“I know. But there’s so much to be sorted. And I worry if I stay much longer I’ll settle. I can feel myself giving in.”
He thought of the supply boat and all the boats that had sailed since.
“What will your folks say?”
“My mother isn’t talking. My father will tell me that I can’t. My aunts will be sent for, and they will try to guilt me into staying. But it was only last month that they all thought the best thing was to take my baby from me and hide me away on Uist, so . . .”
“So, you won’t tell them?”
“No,” she said. “I won’t.” The wind blew her hair across her face and a strand stuck to her lip. Her hands were busy with the baby, so he reached out and unpicked the hair for her. “I’m telling you for when they come to your door.”
“What should I say?”
“Say you know nothing,” she said. “I’ll write to you when I’m settled.”
On one hand, he was shocked by her coolness, by her decision to leave while her family were still grieving, and on the other, he envied that determination.
The baby was done feeding. Isla had years of experience and so she burped him and swaddled him and returned him to the pram almost without thinking.
She straightened her clothes and sat down again.
They stared out over the hills and the little white houses dotted in the distance.
She took his wounded hand in hers and tidied a few loose threads from the old bandage.
He was unsure of how to feel. He would be glad when she was gone and he could stop worrying about what she knew. Then again, he would miss her.
“You’ve been really kind to me,” he said. “Thank you.”
The old island charabanc appeared at the bottom of the hill, groaning, struggling along in low gear. It slowed to pick them up, but they waved it on and watched it pass.
“It’s for the best,” she said. “Two less mouths for my father to feed.”
He finished the last of the flat Coke. “Our Ella’s moving in with my mam. Will you come for lunch and wish her luck?”
The day began to dim and so they headed back the way they came.
The morning arrived when Ella was moving in with Grace.
Her bedroom in the new house would be three times the size of the pantry so she insisted on taking all the things she kept in the whitehouse and the former life she had been forced to store in the blackhouse.
It would take at least two trips to move her belongings.
They spent the morning loading Innes’s sheep van so that Ella and Innes could drive it to Pàrras, where Grace and a handful of neighbours would help her unpack.
Innes was always at John’s side and so Cal could never get him alone.
He helped the men for an hour or so, and then, knowing he would not get his chance, he used his hand as an excuse to give up and let his father and Innes do the rest of the heavy lifting.
He went into the pantry and flopped on Ella’s bed, watching as his grandmother wrapped some ornaments in newspaper.
“What’s going on with you and Innes? You had words?”
“No. Nothing.”
“And Isla?”