Chapter 32
Chapter 32
T hey look so cute,” said Morag, watching the kids disappear behind, the island itself getting smaller and smaller as they moved away.
“It’s fun to do things like this with the we’ans,” said Ranald.
Morag nodded.
“I’m so glad you came back,” he added.
Morag sensed something was coming and waited for him to speak.
“It’s so wonderful you came home again. I love having you near... It’s just lovely when everyone is getting on... nobody’s falling out...”
Morag gave him a look.
“Are you talking about Peigi? I didn’t fall out with her! She’s just horrible to me all the time!”
“That’s just her way.”
“Being horrible is her way?”
“Ach, her marriage wasn’t easy, you know.”
Morag didn’t say anything to that, because that was sad. In fact it all seemed a little sad.
“I’m fine you’ve moved out. I just... I just miss you coming over, that’s all.”
“Doesn’t she have any other family she could go to?”
“She’s got a sister down in Peebles. They don’t really speak.”
Morag frowned. “So what you’re saying is, she’s been so horrible to absolutely everyone her entire life so now you just have to put up with being poisoned on the daily?”
“She’s not poisoning me.”
“She is,” said Morag. “Just really really slowly.”
Ranald tapped the altimeter; not that there was anything wrong with this one, it was an immaculately managed aircraft. It was not his original twin otter, but a replacement, whilst the old otter was being kept in the hangar partly for tinkering rights; possibly, someone had mooted, also as a museum piece.
“Isn’t there anyone else?” said Morag, quietly. “I mean, of everyone in the whole world, I know nobody can be Gran... but does it really have to be her?”
And at that, strangely, Ranald went quiet.
Later, Morag went home and found herself very much looking forward to learning how to cast on and sharing a slightly bashed box of Maltesers that the staff at the ScotNorth kept slipping Gertie, only to learn that Gertie had got a sudden call to go and sleep over with Elspeth. Jean had been asked out somewhere at short notice and very much wanted to go.
G ERTIE DIDN’T KNOW what woke her. Her tiny bedroom in her old house was freezing, absolutely perishing cold, but that wasn’t unusual. She stared straight up at the roof, then turned her head.
Instantly she realized what was wrong. She crept to the window. It was snowing. Not a little flurry but a proper white-out, huge flakes of snow. It was late in the season but not at all unheard of; you could still ski down in the Cairngorms. It had been a harsh winter, and the weather was getting less predictable all the time.
Gertie shivered and thought immediately of the children.
They wouldn’t be out in this, of course. They’d be down in the bothies near the airstrip, totally warm and cozy and safe. Of course they would. Nothing to worry about.
She glanced at her phone: 4 a.m. Should she call Morag? And what would they do anyway, in this? White-outs might be all right for jumbo jets, but could small planes fly in it? Gertie had absolutely no idea.
No, she was sure everything was fine. Gertie was just new to this type of work; that was all. She was more used to being comfortable in the supermarket. This kind of stuff was in the hands of people who knew exactly what to do about it.
She realized belatedly she had absolutely no chance of getting back to sleep.
“Gertie?” came a querulous voice. “Is that you?”
She went into Elspeth’s room. The only KC that never annoyed her, not even a tiny bit.
“You’re not asleep?”
Elspeth tutted. “I never sleep, lassie. Sleeping is for young busy folk. Have you seen that weather though?”
Gertie nodded. “Can I get you some hot milk?”
Elspeth nodded.
“That’d be nice,” she said. “Will you come and chat to me whilst I drink it?”
Jean had drunk rather more than her fair share of Lambrusco the night before and could be heard snoring cheerfully in the big room, so she wasn’t much to worry about.
“Of course,” said Gertie. But when she went downstairs and saw out of the sitting room window, that faced toward the north, she forgot her promise. Because there, in the distant airport tin hut—invisible through the swirling snow except for one tiny point—there was a light on.
G ERTIE RESCUED THE milk just in time.
“I can’t chat,” she said, regretfully. “I think something’s up. Although...”
Suddenly she could hear Jean’s voice in her head: “Why would they need the check-in girl?”
Elspeth sipped her milk carefully. “Well,” she said. “If something bad is happening they’ll need all the hands they can get. And of course they’ll need you. You’ll be wonderful. Look how good you are at looking after me.”
Gertie blinked.
“I’m not sure I say that enough,” said Elspeth.
Gertie kissed her soft cheek, then wiped off some of the milk.
“I’ll let you know,” she said. “I’m sure it’s nothing. I’m sure they have people on this.”
Elspeth looked out of the window at the swirling flakes.
“I’m not sure about that,” she said. “In 1968, wee Willie Piper on Larbh just froze to death right there in his hut.”
“Yes, but it was a shepherd’s hut,” argued Gertie, who had heard this story before. “In January. They didn’t have, like, super arctic sleeping bags and stuff back then.”
“Left behind three fatherless mites...”
“Okay, okay I have to go,” said Gertie. “I think. At least, just to see.”
She glanced around and, on impulse, stuffed a load of socks and whatever came to hand in a rucksack. Just in case. She pulled on her own socks and waterproof trousers and a huge puffa jacket which meant that regardless of how everyone else was doing, she would be more or less impermeable to the weather. Then she set off out into the snow.
S HE HAD BEEN right: Morag and Pete were indeed sitting up, looking at the radar forecast. Gertie slipped into the tin shed—Morag hadn’t locked the door behind her—and up into the glass lookout tower.
“Where the hell?” Morag was saying. The radio was open; Gregor was sitting on the end of it. He, of course, had an entire bad-tempered wedding party who were supposed to have been picked up by the ferry at 11 p.m. They had, it transpired, not been, and were now all crowded into his house. Gregor wasn’t terribly keen on company at the best of times, and now he had to deal with a bunch of drunk wedding guests including a hysterical woman who had always wanted to be a May bride and instead was being treated for possible pre-hypothermia.
Pete was frowning. “It wasn’t on any of the official forecasts. Well, it is now.”
Morag sighed. “Yeah. Can we raise them at Archland?”
They clicked the radio again, trying to get through to Skellan and Denise.
“They’ll be asleep,” said Morag. “Anyway. Everything will be completely fine. It’s just a blizzard. That’s what being in a tent is for. Cozy and fun in a snowstorm.”
Gertie thought of Struan’s thin sleeping bag, meant for summer festivals, and some of the children’s, which had unicorns on them, and wondered about that.
Morag looked outside. Pete looked at her.
“You would go out in that?”
Morag frowned. “You could land her on Everest, Pete.”
“Yes, but would you? Let the helo guys take this one.”
“We don’t know there’s anything wrong,” said Morag. “We haven’t heard a peep from the coast guard.”
“There’s an AAS,” said Pete, meaning an Attention All Shipping warning from the Met Office. “The ferry won’t be out tomorrow at this rate.”
“How long is it going to last?”
“It’s a huge front. And it doesn’t seem to be shifting.”
Morag frowned. “Okay. Keep me up to date.”
She suddenly realized Gertie was there, and startled.
“God!” she said. “I thought you were a ghost in the window!” Then she looked at her watch. “Why are you here?”
“I saw the light,” said Gertie. “I wondered if anything was up.”
“And you came down? Through this?”
Gertie shrugged. “I have a good jacket. And I brought...”
Gertie pulled out a flask from the rucksack.
“Oh my God is that coffee?” said Morag. “I can’t drink the filthy shack stuff anymore.”
“Oy,” said Pete.
“Oh come on, you know what I mean.”
“You mean we have disgusting coffee.”
“Yes! Because you do! Everyone knows that!”
Morag cradled her hands around a mug of Gertie’s coffee. The tin shed was not warm at the best of times, never mind 4:30 a.m. in a snowstorm.
“Are they going to be okay?” said Gertie, as they peered out into the wild, flurrying white, so far away from the gentle spring weather of the ceilidh, which seemed such a long time ago now.
“I am... I am totally sure they are,” said Morag sardonically. “That’s why I’m down here at four o’clock in the morning. We’ll probably have to pick up the wedding people, if they can hang on till daylight. I mean, we could go in on instruments, but I’d rather not if nobody’s in danger. You can’t tell which way is up in these storms.”
“Really?” said Gertie. “You could fly upside down and not know?”
“Not a clue,” said Morag briskly. “Till it was too late.”
“I wish I didn’t know that,” murmured Gertie but Morag had already picked up the radio.
“Can you handle them until the morning, Gregs?”
The radio crackled.
“I can technically,” he said, drily. “But I might have to kill them all myself. Is that okay?”
From behind him they could hear the sounds of people shouting.
“It’s only been snowing for forty minutes,” said Morag. “Have they resorted to cannibalism already?”
“I remember someone who didn’t like being stranded here by bad weather,” said Gregor, alluding to the forced landing that had brought them together the previous year.
“Well, I didn’t make a big fuss about it.” Morag smiled to herself.
“You made a huge fuss!” Gregor laughed.
“Well, I grew to like it.”
“I don’t think I have time to make them that much toast.”
“I didn’t learn to like it through toast... alone,” said Morag.
“Uhm, if you two want to stop flirting, we can probably patch through the radio to Archland,” said Pete, rolling his eyes.
Morag bit her lip and returned to the matter at hand. Gertie inched closer.
The connection was very crackly, and you could hear the high sounds of the wind swirling in the background, and what sounded like a tent flapping.
“Hello? Hello?”
“Hello, Archland, this is Carso Control. Over.”
“Yes, hi, Carso Control. This is Archland.”
“Hi, Skellan. Everything okay? Over.”
“So, yes, it’s pretty wild out there...”
There was sudden silence in the control room. The connection was lost.