watching Archie.
She saw Archie looking at her hands. ‘You must excuse us, Mr Buchanan. We were working in the garden when my daughter saw the Betsey.’
‘Not at all.’ Everything she said somehow put Archie at a disadvantage. He pulled himself together. ‘I’m very sorry if our presence on the island inconveniences you at all, ma’am. We’re here to do the preliminary survey for the new lighthouse on Ellan Bride. We’ll be staying for a couple of days. I believe the letter from the Commissioners asked you if you would be so kind as to accommodate us during our stay?’
‘We’ve brought our own provisions,’ put in Ben suddenly. He smiled at the lightkeeper’s widow. Trust Young Archibald to get on his high horse, just when you could see the poor woman, and her bairn too, were simply terrified. They weren’t exactly the sort of people he’d been expecting, but that probably made it worse for them. Foreigners – that was obvious. He wondered how on earth they got to be here – how the hell had the Ellan Bride lightkeeeper managed to pick up anything this exotic? But that was of no consequence just now. Brown-skinned Mrs Geddes might be, but she’d turn men’s heads in the Canongate. The effect in this remote place, and with the child clinging like a little elf at her side, was quite unnerving. But Ben felt sorry for her more than anything. ‘We’ll try not to get in your way too much, missus. We’ll be out all day. But a roof over our heads at night – that’s all we’ll be needing, and I hope we’ll no be a trouble to you.’
The big, ugly man was much the nicer, thought Mally. She sneaked a look up at Ben, who caught her eye and winked. Mally looked down, shrinking back against her mother’s skirts.
And yet Ben had seen the wee lass jumping up and down, squealing with delight at the boatman when he offloaded the pigs. Ben grinned at Mally and said, ‘Should we no be letting the grice – the pigs – out of that box, don’t you think? They’ve been cooped up in there a long time.’
Mally glanced at the crate, and looked wide-eyed up at Ben.
‘If you tell me where to take them, I can carry them up for you.’
Mally looked at Mam. Mam said, ‘You show him, Mally.’
It was too hard to speak to a person Mally had never seen before in her life. He wasn’t like anyone she knew. But Billy had freckles too, in the summer, and when the man smiled it seemed to remind her just a bit of another smiling face she’d once known well, but couldn’t quite remember. Mally, still holding Mam’s hand, but not so hard now, pointed dumbly towards the house. Ben followed her pointing finger. You couldn’t see the house from here; it was hidden behind the Tullachan, a low green knoll between the jetty and the garden. Mally would have liked to explain that to Ben, but it would have meant speaking to him, and that she couldn’t quite do. Not yet.
‘Come up to the house, gentlemen,’ said Diya. ‘You’ll be hungry, and there’s broth on the fire. You won’t have had any dinner. Mally, show the kind man where the piglings are to go.’
‘Ben,’ said Ben, introducing himself. ‘Benjamin Groat, missus. And what’s your name, young lady?’
Mally opened her mouth to whisper, but the obstinate words wouldn’t come out.
‘This is my daughter Mary,’ Diya said. ‘We call her Mally. You must forgive her, Mr Groat. We don’t usually see strangers here.’
Diya gave Mally a little push, and watched her silently lead Ben away. She turned to pick up one of the sacks.
‘Will I take that for you?’
‘I can manage it, thank you.’ Diya swung the sack of oatmeal onto her shoulder. ‘Perhaps you should bring that case of yours; you don’t want your papers to get wet.’
How did she know the black leather case held his drawing materials? And where did she get the strength to heave a sack like that, apparently without any effort at all? Archie, temporarily as bereft of speech as Mally, picked up his drawing-case and portmanteau, and let Diya lead the way. He noticed as he followed her that her feet were bare, and begrimed with garden soil, as was the hem of her old print gown. The path wound between rushes and cotton grass. She left her bare footprints firmly imprinted in the mud as she walked. Archie trod over them in his heavy boots; the path was narrow and there was no avoiding them.
They skirted the green knoll, and there was the gable-end of a low stone cottage right in front of them. At the front, the slate roof hung down over two small windows and a central door, so the house looked like a face with beetling eyebrows frowning out to sea. The door stood wide open, and a couple of chickens were pecking at invisible scraps on the threshold. A cockerel and some more chickens – and a motley flock they were – foraged on the green turf outside the door. The pigpen, re-fashioned from ship’s timbers, had been built up against the garden wall. Ben was leaning over the fence and Mally was jumping around inside the pen, clutching a pan of scraps. Either the child or the piglets – it was impossible to tell which – were squealing wildly. Of the other girl – the one who’d run away as soon as they’d landed – there was no sign at all.
Diya stopped in front of the door, and motioned Archie to go in. ‘If you please to come in, sir.’
‘After you, ma’am.’
He had to duck under the lintel. A stuffy warmth met him, and the smell of broth. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust. Diya dumped the sack of oatmeal by the door. ‘If you’d like to sit down, Mr Buchanan, the lightkeeper will be here shortly.’
But the lightkeeper’s been dead five years! Stupid thought – the lightkeeper now was the dead man’s sister – hard to think of a lightkeeper as a woman though. Archie didn’t really want to sit down; he wanted to look about and get on with the job, but somehow the woman’s civil clarity was impossible to withstand. In short, she made him nervous, and that irritated him. It was hard to take his eyes off her. She was not what Archie had expected at all. He sat down gingerly at the end of a bench.
Diya unfastened her gardening pinafore and hung it on the back of the door. Then she took an earthenware jug from a shelf, poured water into a bowl, and washed her grimy hands with soap. She dried them carefully on a bleach-white towel. Only then did she add more water to the broth pot, and begin to stir it briskly. She was dressed like a peasant, but no peasant Archie knew – and he knew many, none better – poured water and stirred broth as if every gesture were part of an invisible dance. Graceful – that was the word that came to mind – she moved with grace. He felt instinctively that she lived her whole life with grace. But her eyes were so sorrowful. Was that for the death of the lightkeeper, or was it because he, Archie, had arrived on the island? And was silence natural to her, or was it occasioned by his unwanted presence? He swallowed, and spoke to her.
‘This is kind of you. The lightkeeper isn’t here just now?’ Silly question: there was only half a mile of land altogether, so the lightkeeper could hardly have gone far.
‘She has to sleep, of course.’
Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.
Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».
Прочитайте эту книгу целиком,
