truth was that they both had to do what Lucy and Diya said, but Breesha didn’t bother to say so, which was kind of her. Billy opened the door of the coal shed cautiously because there were rock pipits nesting under the roof inside. A bright eye watched over the edge of the nest as he shovelled the coal. The birds were used to the noise. Billy stopped and listened for a moment, but it was still too early in the season for any sound of cheeping.
Diya was stirring the porridge when he got back to the hearth. The porridge smelt good, and Billy hung around.
‘You could put the bowls out.’
It would have been better to skulk in the yard. Billy laid out five wooden bowls, and five horn spoons.
‘Milk, Billy.’
He took the cloth off the earthenware milk jug and reached it down from the stone shelf, holding it carefully in both hands. It was yesterday’s milk, with thick lines of cream round the inside of the jug where it had stood at various stages since yesterday morning. Billy wiped away the top line of cream and licked his finger.
‘Mally, you watch the porridge till Breesha comes back. Don’t just stir the top. Scrape it off the bottom as well. Don’t tip the pot or you’ll burn yourself.’ Diya took some corn and the milking pail, and followed the path where Billy’s bare footprints showed clearly in the mud. She passed the well and the keeill, and trod carefully between the puffin burrows over spongy grass and mayweed. The puffins watched her through black-lined eyes, retreating a yard or so when she came close and flapping their wings in case they had to fly. The puffins in the burrows below protested with low guttural sounds like so many creaking gates. Diya stepped over a puffin’s carcass – two wings and the desiccated outline of a body torn open by a blackbacked gull – and climbed up to the white cairn above Baie yn Geinnagh Veg. In a hollow just below the rock there was a wooden yoke. She scanned the green patches between the rocks, and rattled the corn in the bucket.
Hooves clattered on pebbles, and two goats came scrambling up from the bay. Turk still had a length of seaweed hanging from her mouth. Mappy was slower getting up the rocks because of her bulging stomach. Diya pushed Turk aside and let Mappy have first turn at the corn. Any day now Mappy would appear with a kid at her side; it was almost five months since she’d been put to the billy over at Meayll. Diya whisked the pail from under Mappy’s nose and held it so that Turk stuck her head through the yoke. Diya put the bar across, and while Turk licked the pail clean she squatted beside her and began to milk. Turk was less docile than Mappy, and twice Diya had to shove her hind legs out of the way. Two jets of gleaming milk frothed into the bucket. Diya milked until both udders were empty, then released Turk, who went skittering away.
The children were scraping their porridge bowls when Diya got back. Diya dipped a jug into the milk pail, and gave each child half a mug of fresh warm milk.
Billy drained his mug noisily and wiped his mouth. ‘PleasemayIleavethetable?’
‘Whose turn is it to do the light?’ asked Diya.
‘Breesha’s!’
‘Mine,’ said Breesha.
Diya glanced at Lucy, who shrugged. ‘Off you go then. But Billy … Billy! … let me finish. Bring in some driftwood. And don’t be too long.’
Billy grabbed the telescope, swung himself round the doorpost, and ran.
It was one of the clearest days they’d had this year. Standing on Dreeym Lang, Billy focused the telescope on the Chickens Rock to the north-east, gradually emerging as the tide ebbed. Beyond it he could see the Calf lighthouses quite plainly, the high light on the left, and the low light on the right. The lights lined up exactly on the Chickens, so ships knew that when one light was right above the other they were in danger. Billy scanned the broken south coast of the Calf. Away east beyond the Burroo lay the low-lying coast of the Island. You couldn’t see Castletown from Ellan Bride, but you could see the tower of Castle Rushen rising over the low land in between. Today Billy could even make out, when he got it right in focus, the Governor’s flag flying over the keep. Mam said no one ever looked at Ellan Bride from the top of Castle Rushen because the castle was a prison, and you weren’t allowed to go in. If you wanted to look at Ellan Bride from Castletown, Mam said, you had to walk out to Scarlett Point, and on a very clear day, there it would be, a tiny blue hump on the horizon.
At this time of year the west side of Ellan Bride belonged to the birds. All day long their cries echoed across the whole island, and as Billy got close to the cliffs the noise grew deafening. The birds had their own lives, but with the telescope Billy was able to see a lot that would otherwise have been secret. He trained the telescope on a place he knew at the top of Giau yn Ooig, and twisted it into focus.
The eider duck was still sitting plumply on her eggs. It was rare to find an eiders’ nest on the island. She looked like another clump of moss amidst the hummocks of sea campion, sheltered in a little gully at the top of the cliff. Or, surrounded by the white flowers, she could have been one of the bare patches outside the puffin burrows, brown and mottled. Through the telescope her feathers were glossy, light brown and blackish on her back, and more delicately dappled on her neck. Her beady black eye seemed to look straight at Billy, but because of the telescope that was of course impossible. Her beak was grey, pale at the tip, and quietly tucked in. She paid no attention to the ooo-ooo, ooo-ooo of the raft of other eiders that floated below her. They might be the ones that were too young to nest this year. Eiders were allowed to ignore their relations, barring their own chicks. People had to go on knowing each other for ever. It must be very warm if you were an egg underneath that duck.
There was a flicker of movement beside him. Billy lowered his telescope as two razorbills skimmed the cliff top just a yard away. He’d been so still they’d stopped noticing him. Billy sat up, blinking. The puffins were still circling round and round the island; he could hear the whirring of their wings as they sped past. Even Mam didn’t know why they circled and circled like that. There were always more of them doing it in the evening, but they were doing it now, and it was – he glanced up at the sun – nowhere near the middle of the morning. He still hadn’t got the kindling. He’d climb into Giau yn Stackey before he went home and fetch an armful all at once. Diya thought you could only get wood from Giau yn Stackey by boat, but she was wrong: it was easy to climb down if you knew the right footholds. He’d stay out long enough to have walked over the slabs looking for little bits of wood that had drifted in during the last day or two. That would give him a bit more time to himself.
Billy sat turning the precious telescope round and round in his hands. Its leather case was scratched and battered, but the brass was polished until it shone. He wished it were really his own. It had been Uncle Jim’s, and no one ever talked about which of them it belonged to now. Of course it was needed at the light, but even Mam just used it because it was there. She didn’t care about the telescope itself. If Uncle Jim were still alive Billy wouldn’t be allowed to take the telescope away from the light to look at other things. But he missed Uncle Jim. It would be better if Uncle Jim were alive and Billy didn’t have the telescope.
Perhaps Uncle Jim was still alive somewhere. No one had ever found a body. Perhaps he’d been picked up by a passing ship and carried off to a far away country. Perhaps he was in India. The reason why he’d never written to say where he’d gone in five whole years was that perhaps he’d been shipwrecked on an uninhabited island, or somewhere where they were all cannibals and didn’t write letters. No, not cannibals. Uncle Jim wouldn’t have been eaten. Just normal savages. And one day a ship would land there to get water, and they’d find Uncle Jim, and then he’d come home again.
But Mam had said that wouldn’t happen, and so Billy had never mentioned it again. Mam and Diya believed that the children didn’t even think
