Ruby
My preparations for dinner with Donald Kilgour don’t take long.
I wash my hair and scrub the dirt from beneath my fingernails, then try to smooth some of the creases out of my one and only dress.
Carrying a bottle of wine I’d bought on my last trip to the supermarket in Lerwick, I set off along the coast path.
It’s past seven o’clock, but the sun is still high in the sky and the western sea sparkles, dazzling my eyes with diamond pinpoints of light.
I feel lighthearted for once, my preoccupations temporarily forgotten as I anticipate the evening ahead.
I hadn’t known how lonely the move here would make me feel, and although I’ve been here for nearly two months now, I still feel a complete outsider.
It will make a nice change, being in the company of someone friendly who seems to want to get to know me.
Greystane House is impossible to miss. It sits on top of a rise, dominating the surrounding land, its windows facing seaward.
I smooth my hair a little nervously as I approach the imposing front door and knock.
There’s silence for a few moments, and I panic, thinking perhaps I’ve got the wrong night or he’s forgotten his invitation, but then I hear footsteps approaching, and the door swings open.
Yet, somehow, it feels a little empty. It’s an interior carefully arranged for show rather than a space to live in.
For a split second, I find myself missing the clutter of Hanna’s kitchen, with its haphazard collection of flotsam and jetsam, but I push the thought aside and concentrate on the glass of wine—poured from a bottle vastly superior to my modest offering—that Donald is handing me.
He’s charming and handsome, and it’s a welcome change to be spending an evening in such civilized surroundings.
“I thought you might like to look at some of these,” he says, as he gestures me to a seat.
Several art books have been set out on a low table before us, and I leaf through them politely.
They appear to be brand-new and largely unopened.
Perhaps, like the room, they too are just for show.
When I set them aside and pick up my glass again, he’s watching me closely.
His gaze unnerves me, and I smile a little nervously.
We make small talk about the exhibitions we’ve seen in galleries in Edinburgh and London—where, he tells me, he has another home—and he asks me about the landscapes I’ve been sketching.
“I love the contrast between the harshness of these islands and the fragile beauty they contain. I think that’s what I’ve been trying to capture.”
“Harsh is right,” he says. “Shetland’s not for everyone.”
“Have you always lived here?” I ask.
He laughs. “No, I’m a city boy, born and bred.
I inherited Greystane from an uncle ten years ago.
He was a confirmed bachelor, farmed this place all his life.
I would have sold it straightaway, but there was talk of a new pipeline development.
Bringing it ashore here was a possibility.
Unfortunately, though, some people about these parts didn’t have the foresight to see the potential gains we’d all have made.
There was quite a campaign against the plans, and in the end, the powers-that-be decided to site it elsewhere.
” He shakes his head. “Such a lost chance to make some serious cash out of the place.”
His words are jarring. “Surely they’d never seriously have considered putting it here, though?
The environmental impact would have been devastating.
” I picture the flower-filled hay meadow being churned to a quagmire by heavy machinery, the corncrake and the storm petrels disappearing as their habitat was destroyed.
“Oh, they’d have considered it, all right.
I had the support of a few local councillors, and I personally forked out good money on a consultant who put together a proper site analysis and planning report.
We could have mitigated some of the environmental impact.
But certain people just don’t have the sense to know a good thing when they see it. ”
He smiles as he tops up my glass, smoothing over the moment of awkward silence, his tone nonchalant.
“You’ve not been here long enough to understand, Ruby.
Wait until you’ve experienced a Shetland winter, and then you’ll see how tough life here can be.
You have to take what you can when the chance presents itself. ”
I decide it’s better not to voice my disagreement. After all, the plans were rejected, so what’s the point in arguing with my host? But the evening, having promised to be so pleasant, feels tarnished now.
He steers the conversation back to safer topics, asking me whether I’ve had time to explore much.
“Not yet. But when things are less busy on the croft, I’d like to get out to see some of the smaller isles.”
“We must plan a trip sometime soon, then. I’d be happy to show you.”
Once we’ve drained our glasses, he shows me through to the dining room. A whole poached salmon and some dishes of salad are set out at one end of a polished mahogany dining table that could easily seat a dozen people.
“So, tell me, how are you surviving over at Igdrasil?” Donald’s voice echoes slightly in the cavernous room as he serves me a helping of salmon, the fish’s eye staring glassily among its bed of neatly sliced cucumber.
“You certainly must be game for a challenge to have moved all the way up here to the back of beyond.”
“It’s a big change, but I’m beginning to enjoy it.
Of course, it’s easy to say that in the summer.
I’m well aware it’ll get a lot harder in a few months’ time, but I think I’m beginning to understand the place a little better.
Each day is so varied, from managing the sheep up on the scattald to working the kailyard down here by the hay meadow.
It’s very satisfying learning how to coax a living from the land.
” I think of the mackerel Jamie brought us, fresh from the sea, and the carefully tended vegetable patch where I’ve begun to harvest the produce we’ve managed to grow—herbs and sweet lettuce leaves, leeks, courgettes, chard and new potatoes, as well as long stems of rhubarb and the first early raspberries.
He gives a snort of laughter. “Sounds as if you’ve been brainwashed by your boss.
People like Mrs. Williamson are a dying breed.
I have to admire her pig-headedness, but crofting is just a hippie hobby, and it’s on the way out.
Farming on that small scale is simply not economically viable these days.
Not that she’ll ever see reason and sell up, though.
You’d have to burn the place down to get her to move. ”
I pick up my fork and eat a mouthful. The meal looks sumptuous, but all at once the food seems strangely flavorless. I swallow, and say, “Surely there’s still room for the traditional ways that work with the land, rather than against it?”
He smiles again, but I get the impression it’s merely a veneer of warmth, barely covering the coldness I just glimpsed beneath it.
Suddenly the uncomfortable realization dawns on me that this evening may be a setup.
Is he using me to get to Hanna? I’m starting to see why she dislikes him so intensely.
“Those ways are rapidly becoming obsolete,” he replies, filling my glass again, even though it’s still half full.
“There’s no need for them nowadays. It’s a question of scale.
To make a unit pay its way, you need to maximize the area and intensify the grazing.
More and more, people are selling off their crofts now they can get better-paid jobs in the oil industry.
That’s how I’ve managed to build the farm into what it is today.
Since we can’t have the pipeline, I’ve had to find other ways to make it pay. ”
I know from some of the forms I’ve been helping Hanna fill in that there are subsidies paid per head of sheep, so there’s money to be made in this for Donald.
I picture the peat moor and the scars in the landscape beyond the fence line, and I hear Hanna’s disapproval of the overgrazing there.
Disrespect the land, and you’ll live to regret it.
I struggle to swallow the mouthful of food I’ve just taken, as he continues.
The wine seems to have loosened his tongue, and although he’s deliberately keeping his tone light, it can’t disguise the venom in his words, proving I’ve guessed his motivation for inviting me here tonight correctly.
“Perhaps you can let your employer know that my offer to assume responsibility for the croft still stands. Whenever she’s ready to leave, I’ll take it off her hands.
It’s not as if anyone else would be prepared to take on all that hard work for next to no return.
But I’m a patient man, and a good neighbor.
She’ll come to realize that in the end.”
I force myself to sit through the rest of the meal, trying to remain polite. Now I understand why Hanna was so annoyed when he appeared at her door the other day. And in coming here, I’ve betrayed what little of her trust I’d managed to gain.
I stopped drinking my wine some time ago, although my host doesn’t seem to notice as he refills his own glass several times. As soon as I can, I place my napkin beside my plate and get up from the table.
“Well, it’s been a nice evening.” My words sound as insincere as I mean them to. “And now I think I should be getting back.”
I’m thankful he doesn’t offer to walk me home, and he’s clearly well past the point of being able to drive. I set off along the path leading back to Igdrasil, relieved to put Greystane House and Donald Kilgour behind me.
When I round the headland and the island comes into view, I stand there and watch for a while.
It’s late, but the sun will barely set tonight, and in the soft light I can make out the darting flutter of wings as the storm petrels return to their roost, fragile yet resilient.
Perhaps some of them have spent the day feeding away out at sea, halfway to Norway.
And now they’ve made the same journey Hanna did, all those years ago, to reach their home in Shetland.
At last I turn away and continue along the path back to the croft.
As I lift the latch on the door of the byre, a flicker of movement in one of the upstairs windows of the farmhouse catches my eye.
I raise a hand, letting Hanna know I’ve seen her.
The pane of glass remains stubbornly blank.
All I can see in it is a reflection of the pearlescent sky.
I pull closed the curtains in my bedroom, trying to shut out the light so I can sleep.
But the simmer dim and the events of this evening seem to have infused my mind with a strange restlessness.
The sight of the island has reminded me of something else, too.
When we’d sat in the sheltering walls of the broch last night, surrounded by the churring of the birds, Jamie said something to Hanna about avoidance.
I’d sensed it was another in-joke between them, although if he’d known better, he might have been referring to me.
Because I’ve been continuing very successfully to avoid thinking about the decision that lies ahead of me.
I know the time is coming, though, when I’ll have to face up to it.
I’m not sure where my conscious thoughts end and my troubled dreams begin as I toss and turn for more long hours, all through the twilit night.