Air Ambulance (8 page)

Once or twice she found herself laughing aloud at the antics of the puffins, and when a great skua sailed slowly overhead she suddenly remembered the disabled Heron stranded behind her on the beach beneath Garrisdale and made up her mind to return at once. It had been selfish of her to come out here for her own pleasure while she still knew next to nothing about Ronald Gowrie’s condition—whether he would live or die.

When she rose to her feet she found that she was not alone.

There had been no indication of Fergus Blair’s presence on the headland behind her, not even from the birds, who had made such a commotion at her own approach. He had come up over the heather, and she had no idea how long he had been standing there watching her unobserved.

Because of the fact, she felt the colour stealing into her cheeks, and wondered if she had spoken her delight in her surroundings aloud, as she often did.

“How did you know about the birds?” he asked.

“I saw them from the lodge window, but since I’ve been sitting here watching them I’ve remembered what Mrs.
MacIver
said that day at the inn. It’s a wonderful sanctuary,” she added. “What made you think of the idea?”

“My brother and I used to come out here when we were very young,” he explained briefly. “We hated to see the birds robbed of their eggs and shot at, and we were determined to protect them on our own property. Of course, there’s a protection law, but it’s difficult to enforce in these out-of-the-way places. Gradually,” he added, “the whole thing grew, and we became an island of birds.”

“Do you know them all by name?” she asked. “All the different species?”

“Yes. It’s a wonderful pastime. And occasionally one gets a rare visitor, or a little fellow who’s been hurt.”

She felt surprised and vaguely ashamed of her former condemnation.

“It must be a wonderful place for your children,” she observed.

It was Blair’s turn to look surprised.

“Who told you about the children?” he asked.

“Mrs. Cameron. And you mentioned them yourself when you told me about seeing the plane. You said they would be asleep when we crashed.”

He smiled.

“Some of them were awake, apparently, even at that unearthly hour! They heard the Heron’s engines, and I had quite a lot of explaining to do. Twenty boys and girls can be something of a handful when they all want to tear down to the beach at the one time!”

She gazed at him in complete astonishment.

“Twenty?” she echoed incredulously.

“Yes. Didn’t Mrs. Cameron tell you about our ‘colony’? Or hasn’t she had time to get round to all that yet?”

His smile was amused, and suddenly Alison began to laugh. “I thought they were
your
children!” she confessed. “Somehow I didn’t envisage twenty, though! Are they from Glasgow?”

He nodded, his face serious again.

“They’re mostly spastics,” he explained. “I have a feeling that a great deal more can be done for them in a place like this, under the right guidance. It eliminates any feeling of inferiority, for one thing, when they live and work and play with people as handicapped as themselves and don’t see normal children quite so often. Then,” he added, his fine, sensitive voice quickening to his subject, “there’s all the hundred and one things they can do on Heimra and the things they can learn to do. The bird sanctuary, for instance, is a tremendous help to them and a never-failing source of delight. It’s surprising how much they know about the various species before they have been here for any length of time, and how much more they want to know. In fact,” he added smiling, “I don’t have a great deal of work to do on Heimra. I get most of it done for me, and one voluntary labourer, as we used to say in the hospital, is worth a dozen pressed men!”

“But this is magnificent work!” Alison declared, her eyes shining, her lips parted as she looked down towards the rocks where the birds swarmed in their thousands, squabbling perpetually. “This must be ample compensation to you for the loss of your career.”

Blair glanced at her quizzically.

“How did you guess that?” he asked.

“Anyone could imagine what your career must have meant to you,” she told him. “I—when you left the Victoria we all expected to hear about you again.”

“And so I have disappointed you in some ways?” he queried. “It’s quite often a fact, you know, that the brilliant student fails to get there in the end.” He paused, staring down into the sea. “But enough of me,” he declared at last. “I really came up here after I found that you had disobeyed orders to see what you were doing and to tell you about your friend Captain Gowrie.”

“How selfish of me coming out like this before I knew!” Alison turned to him, her face suddenly pale in the bright morning sunshine. “Don’t try to spare me anything,” she begged. “I’m a nurse.”

“He has a very nasty fracture at the base of the skull, I would say, and some injury to his left arm. Luckily, I had Sir James Corrington at Garrisdale as my guest when you crashed, and I was able to call on him for expert advice. We’ve done everything we can for Gowrie, and only quiet and a considerable period of rest will put him on his feet again. That’s why,” he added slowly, “Sir James didn’t think it wise to have him ferried back to Glasgow on the next ambulance plane. I keep a good deal of equipment here in case of injury to the children when they are playing around on the rocks, so that we’ve done quite a good patching job of Gowrie. The main thing now is rest, and for all practical purposes he could not be in a more convenient place than Garrisdale.”

This time she did not protest that they were possibly infringing on his privacy. The isolation he desired was not for any selfish reason, she had learned, but because of the work to which he had dedicated his future among his little “colony” of handicapped children. She felt utterly ashamed of her former resentment, wondering, in an agony of self-reproach, what he had thought of her when she had denounced him so openly. Her remarks, viewed in the light of this new knowledge of him, seemed childish and petulant in the extreme.

“I’ve got to apologize,” she confessed. “I thought at first that you had shut yourself away on Heimra for some selfish reason—that you wanted the island for yourself alone. Now that you know,” she added, “I expect you despise me. You have every reason to.”

“Why should I?” he asked. “A good many people on Heimra Mhor believe that I have an entirely selfish reason for keeping Heimra Beag and Garrisdale House out of bounds to them. Some of them used to come out here in search of gulls’ eggs and take pot-shots at the other birds, ‘for the fun of it’. That didn’t appeal to me,” he added grimly, “and when I brought my first half-dozen children to the island it wasn’t entirely safe, either. I intended that they should have the freedom of the whole of Heimra Beag, not just the enclosed policies of the estate. After a while,” he added slowly, “there were—more personal reasons for seeking complete privacy.”

His voice had grown taut and a little hard, the firm, well-formed mouth a little tighter, and the grey eyes, leaving the distant reaches of the sea where he had been watching the powerful flight of a fulmar, were suddenly as cold as steel.

Alison knew that she was not likely to hear about these personal reasons of his for seeking his own particular privacy. Their confidences had come to an abrupt end. He had told her about the children and his work because he thought she would be interested in that, but his personal problems were not to be shared with a stranger.

She thought that it might be something which he could not share with anyone, a reason locked into his heart forever that no key had the power to free.

Looking at the tense, squared jaw, she knew that he was a determined man. He had made up his mind about Heimra Beag and Garrisdale, and nothing would induce him to change it. He would run the gauntlet of criticism and unpopularity for himself, if need be, once he had decided what was best for his project.

And in the same manner he would stand by any personal decision he might have made, right to the bitter end.

“Do most of the birds migrate in the winter months?” she asked, unwilling, suddenly, to leave this lovely sunlit headland where the beat of wings held its own peculiar magic and she had come near to knowing a man who she had thought might be impossible to know.

“Some of them are visitors,” he told her. “The great Arctic skua goes north in the summer, but most of the others are Heimra natives. They have made the island their home. They know that they are safe—especially the puffins, who seem quite willing to perform for one at any time, like clowns they are!”

Alison, watching the comical little puffins, laughed delightedly.

“How the children must love them!” she said. “I’ve always
thought people were like birds in a good many ways,” she confessed. “You know-all the hundreds and hundreds of ordinary sparrows, and the starlings in the city with their chattering and their drab coats, with here and there a gayer bird—a robin in his red waistcoat or a chaffinch or a wren in a suburban garden, maybe, to stand out among them. The gayer, brighter birds! And then, out where it’s free and lovely under a vast sky, the birds that soar highest—the gull and the hawk and the eagle!”

“What about the heron?” he asked with a quick smile. “I didn’t think you would leave him out.”

“Because of the plane?” Her eyes were serious again. “When can I see Captain Gowrie?” she asked. “Is he able to have a visitor?”

“A special visitor,” he agreed. “He has been asking for you.”

“Oh...”
She did not know what to say to that, but it was natural, perhaps, that Ronald should have asked for her. “I would like to see him as soon as I can. Has he seen Mr. MacLean yet?”

He nodded.

“For a couple of minutes yesterday, before Ginger went back with the second ambulance plane. They sent one out immediately, of course, to pick up the patient you were going for. It’s wonderful service,” he added. “Absolutely essential for the Isles.”

“Everything runs so efficiently,” Alison observed. “We are alerted at the hospital immediately a call comes through to Renfrew, and by the time we get there pilots and engineers and crash crews and air traffic control are all at their posts. They are pulled out of bed if it’s a night call, and the various reactions can be quite amusing! The point is, though, that the Heron can be converted in fifteen minutes—seats taken out and the ambulance equipment installed—and it’s all done with the best will in the world, even on a Saturday night!”

“You’re keen on the work?” he suggested.

“Who wouldn’t be?” She looked down at her bandaged arm and a small, sickening fear rose in her heart. “I hope this won’t make any difference,” she said. “I know I shall be out of action for as long as it takes to mend, but I want to go back as soon as possible. I suppose the hospital knows?” she added.

“I sent all the details back with Ginger.” He smile
d
. “I think he was more than glad to go. I’ve never seen a man so scared of peace and quiet. He informed me that he would go slowly mad in a place like this.”

“He loves the city and the sound of a plane’s engines in his ears,” Alison smiled, thinking of Ginger with a new warmth. “That’s what he asks from life, and, after all, he’s doing a good job of work. It’s not just the bright lights he covets. He says he likes to feel the pulse of life which, for him, is the heart beat of a big city like Glasgow or London.”

“And for you?” he asked unexpectedly.

Alison flushed sensitively.

“I’ve heard it in the hospital,” she confessed. “Sometimes
standing at the gates, when I’ve been alone.”

“Yes, I understand that,” he said, but almost immediately he turned towards the road, as if this also might be the end of a confession.

“How long have you known Gowrie?” he asked as they walked slowly back towards the lodge.

“Not very long.” Alison was thinking of her first meeting with Ronald Gowrie and the kind of person she had been warned to expect. “I think one has to fly with the people on the ambulance to get to know them properly,” she added. “Ronald pretends to be the most hard-boiled of cynics, but he’s really kind and generous underneath it all. He’d go out with the ambulance if he were dying. It’s a sort of sacred trust with him.”

“I wondered what it had to do with Heimra,” he mused.

“With Heimra? What do you mean?”

“I think his ambulance work is all wrapped up with—shall we say his love for the Islands in general and Heimra in particular?” He hesitated, as if debating whether or not he should tell her all he knew, and then he said quite simply, “He talked quite a lot last night—in a delirium, of course, but it revealed the man. I knew, of course, that he had been born on Heimra Mhor, but it
is
over six years since he left the island to live in Glasgow.”

Alison turned to look at him, conjuring up the picture of Ronald Gowrie during her first flight over the Minch, hearing his voice quite plainly as he said:

“
There’s a saying that once you have landed on one of these Hebridean islands it
will
claim you forever. You
will
always come back
.”

“I suppose it’s a question of belonging,” she said, her throat suddenly tight. “I know I don’t belong—not really, because our family connection is two generations away—but even I have felt it. Just now, for instance, up there on the headland watching the
puffins...”

Her voice faltered because that was not what she had meant to tell him. It was all too personal, too much as if she wanted to stay.

“Do you think that a missing generation or two makes a difference?” Fergus Blair asked.
“ ‘
And still the blood is strong, the heart is Highland. And we in dreams behold the Hebrides!’ A Canadian wrote that, and he had never been to Scotland. He was, as you put it, two generations away.”

Something rose in Alison’s throat which choked back speech, and her eyes were suddenly misted by tears.

“I think you’re right about Captain Gowrie,” she told him after a while. “He doesn’t know it, but he has wanted to come back—to belong.”

“I wonder what he will do when he gives up flying,” Blair mused. “That’s why I offered him the job on Heimra Mhor. He would be a local man, even after six or seven years. The islanders have long memories.”

“It would be beneficial to you,” Alison agreed, “but I don’t think he would come. I don’t think he could come.”

She was remembering his brother and the former laird’s marriage to the girl Ronald Gowrie had loved; remembering, too, how violently he had disowned that love, vowing that he would never forgive Margot Blair for what she had done to him—never as long as he lived.

“I’d like him to change his mind,” Fergus said, “especially now that he won’t be piloting a plane for some considerable time. B.E.A. are very particular about the physical fitness of all their pilots. They demand a hundred percent. At the present moment the injury to Gowrie’s head makes it extremely difficult for me to forecast whether or not he will ever fly again.”

“Oh, no!
”
Alison gasped. “It’s his life. The one thing he lives for. He’s like Ginger in that respect,” she rushed on, almost as if she were making some personal appeal to him on Ronald’s behalf. “It’s only when he’s at the controls that he is really happy. The rest, the cynicism and worldliness, are all a sham, a sort of useful mask which he wears to safeguard himself.”

She hesitated, realizing that he was looking at her intently, wondering, no doubt, what her defence of Ronald Gowrie really meant in terms of personal attachment, but all he said was: “You know him better than I do, of course, and in any case, there’s plenty of time for a hard-and-fast decision about the future. He will be here for many weeks.”

She walked on a little way without speaking, envying Ronald as she felt the cool, soft breath of Heimra caressing her cheek, and aware of a sadness and a longing such as she had never known before. It was something born of the island from which she could never break away and from which, in this moment of near-
ecstasy
, she had no wish to escape.

If she could have halted time itself, if she could have put her hand into Fergus Blair’s and remained with him in that enchanted spot forever, her life would have been complete.

Shaken by the knowledge, by its suddenness and utter unexpectedness, she could not talk of banal things. They walked in silence along the narrow, twisting island road, between the fields starred with spring’s first gift of flowers and the lonely
machar,
until they reached the lodge with its white muslin curtains blowing in the wind from the sea.

“I hope you will be comfortable here,” Fergus said. “If there is anything you want please ask Mrs. Cameron for it. She is invariably kind and interested in all we do here.”

He had not invited her to Garrisdale House. Perhaps she should not have expected the invitation, but they had talked about his work and she felt disappointed. She supposed that she had even hoped that he might find something for her to do there while she remained on the island.

Yet did he mean her to remain on Heimra for any length of time? He had not sent her back with the Air Ambulance, but that was because she had not been real
l
y fit enough to go. Now, perhaps, it would be different. He had said that Mrs. Cameron would look after her, telling her pointedly, perhaps, that she must remain at the lodge.

He had also said that she could visit Ronald Gowrie, however, and Ronald was at Garrisdale. Then, too, there was Andrew. He could not possibly object to her meeting Andrew again.

“I’ll tell Captain Gowrie that you’re coming to see him,” he said when they reached the lodge gates. “It will give him something to hang on to.”

“When can I come?” she asked, flushing at his suggestion of a deeper link between her and Ronald than actually existed. “I know he has been badly hurt and should have absolute rest, and I know all this must be extra work for you,” she added swiftly. “I’d do anything to help where I could,” she offered.

He hesitated, as if he were half inclined to take her at her word, and then he said abruptly:

“You’ve been badly shaken up. You ought to have a period of rest yourself, and your arm isn’t going to be a great deal of use to you for several days at least. You’ll begin to feel the effect of the bruising quite soon,” he warned. “I don’t think I could let you attempt to nurse anyone yet—not even Captain Gowrie,” he added dryly.

“I feel quite useless,” Alison declared, wishing that she could have helped with the children, but unable, somehow, to ask that of him in the present circumstances. “I really can get about quite well.”

“You’re bound to feel hampered by that ‘strait jacket’ I’ve inflicted on you,” he reminded her with a smile as he turned away. “I’ll send down word when you can see Captain Gowrie. Andrew will be only too pleased to bring you a message!”

Alison stood in the lodge doorway until his tall figure had passed out of sight round a bend in the moss-grown drive with the words of an old Highland melody which her mother used to sing echoing in her ears.