East Fortune (32 page)

Happy feet happy feet happy feet,
they sang,
happy feet happy feet happy feet.

He had watched the way the water filled their footprints, washing away the memory of dancing. He thought how he had never really known how to tell them that he loved them or discover what more he could do to make them happy.

After Tarbert he was off on to windier, more dangerous stretches of road with single tracks, passing-places, and steeper hills climbing to their peaks.

The little light that was left in the day darkened as the snow thickened. Jack was nothing more than a man travelling, following the road, negotiating each corner, concentrating on the darkness ahead.

It was all he could think to do; to drive on, no longer questioning the purpose or the duration of the journey. It filled his mind, the driving and the oncoming snow, separating him from the world.

A song came on the radio. It had been one of Krystyna's favourites. ‘Mr Brightside'. She had played it loudly whenever she had thought Jack was out of the house.

On the Corran Ferry he asked for directions from a man whose car sticker read,
Caution: driver asleep.
He had the same song going.

Jack drove on through the darkness, following the edge of another loch. The miles always felt longer in the countryside. Signs warned of ice and narrow bends and of deer that could appear at any minute. He bumped and skittered over cattle grids. Sheep stumbled in the darkness ahead and in the distance. He flashed his lights and sounded his horn but sometimes the animals forced him to stop, making him wait.

It had taken him five hours to reach the edge of the Morven Peninsula; five hours before he recognised that he was running out of road.

He stopped at a pub to ask directions. Jack expected it to be quiet, occupied only by seasoned drinkers, but it was quiz night. A man with a handlebar moustache was asking for the year of Archie Gemmill's World Cup goal. Each question was repeated three times; which Pope had excommunicated Elizabeth I, how many of James VI's tutors were murdered, which part of Scotland was still at war with Russia, and could the teams name the members of the band Wet Wet Wet (one point for each).

The locals sat round wooden tables, the men with beer and whisky chasers, the women with lagers and shorts.

As he left the quizmaster was asking how to spell ‘ptarmigan', who lived in the pink house at Balamory, and what was the average length of the human intestine.

Jack returned to his car. The roads were heavy with a snow that showed no sign of relenting. He passed a disused quarry. Then he turned off down a rutted track that led to a series of small cottages. He stopped at a distance, uncertain which house was Krystyna's, and parked the car in a recess, noticing how it dropped sharply away into a ditch.

Jack got out of the car, put on his coat, and slammed the car door shut. A dog began barking in a house up to the right of him.

He looked through the first of the lit windows. Inside a boy in a Rangers shirt was jumping up and down on his bed. Next door, an elderly couple were making their tea in the kitchen.

There were sheep brushing against garden fences, bleating against the weather.

A modern bungalow revealed a man being nursed by a female companion. She was giving him soup, spoonful by spoonful. It reminded Jack of his father.

The snow increased in intensity. He knew he should ring a doorbell, any bell, and ask which house was hers. But he wasn't sure if he was ready, despite the length of the journey.

A Land-Rover passed him on the road and the driver stopped to ask if he was lost. Perhaps his car was stuck in the drifts.

‘A fearful night,' the man said. ‘You don't want to be out in this for long.'

‘I won't.'

Jack could see lights in the harbour, the pier stretching away, fishing boats and ferries berthed for the night. In the morning he could go anywhere, out to the islands or on to the North Atlantic.

Then he saw Krystyna come out of the doorway of a croft in the distance, just before the track curved away into darkness. He could see her in the light of a porch, brushing back her hair and looking out to sea before turning and closing the door.

The light in the porch went out.

Jack hoped she would come into sight again, through the lit windows, but she was already drawing the curtains. She stopped for a moment, distracted, and looked down.

He moved closer to the house, turning his body sideways against the wind and the snow. He could feel the cold and the damp in his feet. His hair was wet against his face.

For a time he could not see her. She had stooped away from his view but then she rose again, gathering a curtain with one hand, and Jack could now see briefly, but clearly, that she was holding a child.

Adam.

He walked up to the croft. There was a string with a small bell attached. Perhaps she would not hear it for the wind and the night. He pulled the string and waited. Then he knocked; his cold hand against hard damp wood. He expected the curtains to move, that she would check to see who it was, but the light in the porch came on once more. He was surprised by its brightness.

Krystyna opened the door. She was paler than he had remembered. Perhaps it was the winter.

‘Oh,' she said. ‘You are here. I was not sure…'

‘I wasn't sure either.' His voice sounded weaker than he had intended.

She stepped aside.

‘You must come in.'

Jack stamped the snow off his shoes. He thought he should have brought something; wine or flowers.

Krystyna closed the door.

‘Let me help you with your coat,' she said. ‘You look like you have walked all the way.'

‘No,' he said, ‘I drove.'

‘I was making a joke. I'm sorry. I am nervous.
Kto ucieka, winnym sie staje.'

‘What is that?'

‘Running away makes you guilty.'

The croft had one room with a kitchen off to the side and a ladder up to a raised sleeping platform. Instructions and memos were pinned to the wall.
There is no extra charge for peat, but please keep a note of the amount of coal that is used on the fire.

Jack looked over to the cot.

‘Would you like to see him?' Krystyna asked.

‘Yes.'

The boy was pinker than Jack had anticipated with thick hair and dark eyelashes. He stooped over the edge of the cot to look, recalling the births of his own children, Annie and Kirsty: the long-forgotten smell of baby.

‘You got my letter?'

‘He's beautiful.'

‘He is my brave boy,' said Krystyna and then stopped. ‘I am sorry…'

‘I could have helped you.'

‘I had destroyed one life already. I did not want to ruin yours.'

Jack had not expected to speak so intensely so soon.

‘You would not have ruined it.'

‘I did not want to take that chance.'

‘It would have been fine.'

‘Sit down,' said Krystyna. ‘I will make you some tea. You must be cold.'

The snow came again, changing direction as it fell. It began to sound like rain, taunting in the roofs and in the gutters, caught in the low repeating wind. Jack watched Krystyna, leaning over the child, hushing him gently, unconcerned by the presence of another, singing almost under her breath.
Aaa, Kotki dwa, szare, bure obydwa…

He listened to the wind in the silences between them; the wood on the fire; the child sighing in his sleep.

‘I suppose if Sandy had known it would have been different,' Jack said. He still did not like saying the name – Sandy – aloud.

‘What do you mean?'

‘If he had waited.'

‘But he did not wait. And then it happened and then we met and then there was fate.'

Jack could hardly remember what his life had been like before all this had happened; before the drive through the night, the face in the darkness, the bright lights of the police station and the stark presence of Krystyna before him at the funeral.

She adjusted the bedding around the child. The croft was warm for such a cold night. Jack realised that he was hungry. He wanted to ask if Krystyna had any soup.

‘I should have known,' he said instead. ‘I should have guessed.'

‘I should have told you.'

She knelt down and put more coal on the fire, picking out individual pieces with her fingers so as not to disturb the child with the noise of the scuttle. She placed peat on the surface and watched it spit and smoulder. Then she rinsed her hands.

Jack watched the child. He remembered how he had first felt as a father; the fierceness and the fear in his love.

Krystyna realised that she had forgotten to make the tea.

‘It's all right,' said Jack.

‘I will do it now.'

‘Had you always decided to keep the child?'

‘I think it began in your parents' house. It was the day of the play. It was when the little girl fell into the swimming pool. No one had noticed. It was very slow when it happened, when I was watching, and then it was all so fast. I was there, and then I was in the water with the little girl and she lived when she could have died.'

‘Tessa told me.'

‘I gave back a life by accident. It was crazy but it was enough to make me stop: a piece of fortune to make up for the luck that had gone before. And then, having brought back a life by chance, I could not ignore what was inside me.'

‘And then?'

‘Then I don't know or I cannot remember. Sometimes I think I did not know what I was doing or thinking. Feelings I thought I did not have arrived without warning; emotions I did not understand.'

‘New extremes.'

‘Do you think that is normal?'

‘I do not know.'

Krystyna handed Jack a mug of tea.

‘But tell me your news,' she said. ‘You can see what has happened to me. What about you?'

‘Oh, I don't know.'

‘Tell me…'

Jack began to talk about his father. He could have kept to the facts, making the story as simple as possible, but he found that he needed to talk at greater length. Perhaps it was a way of avoiding talking about Sandy or the child that lay beside them.

He told Krystyna how he could not stop dreaming about his father; fragments from the past kept recurring but they seemed altered and uncertain, as if he had either misremembered them all or they had never happened.

‘I am sorry. He was a good man.'

Jack told her how he could still see his father in his floppy white hat, tending his bees, pruning the roses, and looking up to greet him from the end of the garden. He could still hear his voice:
Good to see you, son.

He missed him. He missed Krystyna.

‘What would he think about this?' she asked.

‘He would want you to be happy. He was very fond of you.'

‘I am glad.'

‘And how do you live?' Jack wished he had not spoken so much about himself.

‘I have a little money. People are kind. What I do is simple. And I do it as well as I can. I look after Adam. I make a big goulash that can last almost a week.'

‘And how long will you stay here?' he asked.

‘I do not know if I am ready to do anything different. Were you worried when you had your girls? Of bad things happening?'

‘All the time.'

‘I am frightened of making a mistake, of not loving him enough, of neglecting him or putting him in danger. I do not want to sound neurotic. Is that the word? I cannot have more disasters in my life.'

‘Sometimes children are more resilient than we think.'

‘I cannot take that chance.'

Jack could hear a car starting up in the distance, a farmer probably, beginning another day. He had lost all sense of time.

‘Shall I make a bed?' Krystyna asked. ‘There is a sleeping platform. I do not know if it is comfortable.'

‘It's all right,' Jack said. ‘I should go.'

‘You have come all this way…'

All he had wanted to do was to make things better; to atone for what had happened.

‘Perhaps it wouldn't be right to stay.'

‘No, you must.'

‘I just wanted to see you. I liked it: how we were in the summer.'

‘But it could not go on. Not with a child.'

‘I don't know,'Jack said. ‘Perhaps it could.'

He surprised himself with his words. He had not expected to make such an offer.

‘I am too young. You have your daughters…'

‘I'm not sure I do any more.'

‘You will always have them.'

‘They don't seem to be particularly keen on me.'

‘They will come back. Everything comes back in the end.'

Jack tried to smile. It seemed a lot to ask.

‘I am sure they love you,' Krystyna said.

Jack remembered sitting on the edge of the bed and reading to his daughters when they were small, kissing their foreheads and tucking them in. He used to look in on them when they were sleeping, listen to their slow, even breaths, and imagine what they were dreaming.

‘Please,' Krystyna was saying. ‘You must stay. Let me make up the bed.'

Jack could hear the sharpness of the wind circling the croft. He listened to the sea returning with the tide.

For a moment he thought that he could be a man at any time in any history, sheltering from the storm with a girl and her child.

How many people had stood in this same croft before them? How many had been born or bereaved in this very place, or had their lives changed so that when the wind abated and the snow melted they would leave knowing that nothing could ever be the same?

They talked through the night.

Jack lay on the sleeping platform. It had been cut into the rafters and there was a small window to one side. They spoke without seeing each other in the darkness. Sometimes they would drift into a half-sleep, sometimes the child would need to be fed or comforted.

Jack remembered his daughters when they were young, coming into the bed with their cold feet, warming them on their mother's back, sleeping between them.