Bird of Passage (14 page)

Kirsty was overjoyed to see him, but puzzled to the point of irritation by his acquiescence. She couldn’t understand it at all. Why did he have to go where he was sent? If it was a job, why wasn’t he being paid? Nobody worked without pay unless it was for the family. What was the matter with him?  

‘It’s not what I would have chosen for myself,’ he told her. ‘I hate the place!’

‘Then why don’t you just get up and leave? I don’t understand you. What’s wrong with you? Go and find yourself another job. Go somewhere else!’

‘I don’t think I can do that.’

‘Why not?’

‘They found me the place. I have to stay there. The guards will come and get me.’

‘Guards?’ she asked, puzzled by the word.

‘The
Gardai.
The Irish police.’

‘Why? What have you done? You’re not a criminal, are you?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t know what I did. But if I try to get away, they will come and get me, and God knows what will become of me then.’

How do you know they will?’

‘Because that’s what they told me. And they’re always right.’

‘But there must be some way out!’

‘Well...’  He hesitated.

‘Go on!’

‘I was wondering... do you think your grandfather would have me here?  All the time, I mean.’

 ‘You mean to
live
here?’  .

‘I mean to live and work here. I’m almost seventeen. And you’re right. I don’t know
why
I can’t do what I want. There’s nothing for me in Ireland. Well, there’s my mother, but I don’t know where she is. I can’t find her, can I? Can’t help her. Maybe later. Maybe if I get a job. Get some money together.’

‘Did she go away, Finn? Maybe she came over to Scotland.’

He shook his head. ‘No. I don’t think she did that.’

She would never have left him. There were few certainties in his mind. His memories of his life before the school slid and collided, an avalanche of disjointed images. But he knew that his mother would never willingly have left him. He could close his eyes and he was back there, lying in bed, listening to the noises in the street, below. He could feel his mother’s arms, tight around him. Safe.

‘Go to sleep now, my lamb!’ She would push the hair gently back from his face. ‘Go to sleep now, my little soldier.’

‘But I’m afraid,’ he told Kirsty. He didn’t want to tell her about his mother. ‘And I’m so bloody ignorant. They tell me I have to stay put, with the farmer, but I don’t even know if that’s the truth. Your grandad seems to think it’s all nonsense.’

‘Have you talked to him about this?’

‘Only last year. He asked me what I was planning to do.  I didn’t know. Didn’t have any plans. Now I just stay on that farm because I have nowhere else to go. But I would like it if I could be here.’

‘Oh Finn, I’d like it too’ she said. ‘I’d love it!’

‘Would you?’ He looked at her doubtfully. ‘I had it in my mind that your grandad might be able to give me a job here.’

‘Well, he could certainly do with the help. He’s always saying the farm’s getting too much for him. I don’t know if he could pay you very much.’

‘It would be more than I’m getting now!’

‘It would be that, alright.’

‘But your mother doesn’t like me.’

‘My grandad does what he pleases where the farm’s concerned. But you’ll have to ask him yourself, you know, Finn. ’

‘I will so. But I thought if you…’

‘If I mention it first, he might be more ready to agree. Yes. I’ll talk to him about it tonight.’

Kirsty spoke to her grandfather, and at the end of that summer, Finn stayed on. Alasdair was delighted to have him. He barely consulted Kirsty’s mother about it, and when she complained about his thoughtlessness – ‘inviting a stranger into our lives!’ -  he told her in no uncertain terms that he couldn’t go on working at this pace for the rest of his life. Did she want him to drop dead of a heart attack?  Besides, she knew fine that he had no son to help out.  Finn was no stranger, came cheap, was trustworthy, seemed likely to become a good stockman in time, and was familiar with the farm. What could she possibly have to complain about? Isabel had plenty to complain about, but there was no point in arguing with her father-in-law about this. She knew she would never win. So Finn stayed.

Micky Terrans wasn’t best pleased about it, declaring that he would be blamed, back in Ireland, but admitting that he had seen it coming. Alasdair invited him into the house, opened a bottle of malt and threw the top into the hearth. By the end of the evening, Micky had mellowed.

 ‘After all,’ he said, ‘What the hell can they do, eh? Not a thing!’ Which was true, as far as he was concerned.

Finn, however, was not going to be allowed to get off so lightly. At first, they tried intimidation. The farmer from Donegal wrote a threatening letter, because he had lost a good, unpaid hand, but Alasdair sent a brief reply. Nobody knew what he said, because he wouldn’t show any of them the letter, but nothing more was heard from that quarter. Finn assumed that a replacement had  been supplied from the school. After all, there was no shortage of boys. Sooner or later, most of them reached the milestone of sixteen and had to be sent away from the school, sent to do whatever work the Brothers might find for them. For a while, Finn fully expected the Irish police to come off every ferry, arrest him, and drag him back to Donegal, but when nobody arrived, he relaxed and started to enjoy working for Alasdair, a capable and willing hand.

 ‘They have no hold over you!’ Alasdair told him, when he confided some of his fears. ‘And if you hear anything, if there is sight or sound of them on this island, you let me deal with it, son. Do you hear me now? Don’t worry your head about it. You just let me deal with it!’  

One Saturday morning, a smart, black-clad priest disembarked from the ferry, got into his green Morris Minor which had been winched ashore and – having asked for directions in the village - drove up the rutted track to Dunshee. Kirsty and her mother were in the kitchen when he knocked on their door, and Isabel, taken aback by the unexpected visitation, invited him in and offered him tea and biscuits. 

He accepted these offerings very graciously and sat at their kitchen table, passing the time of day with them, chatting easily about Finn, wondering how the boy was, was he working hard now, because there had been no high hopes of him in the past.

Alasdair had been in the barn, working on the tractor, and might not even have known about the unexpected visitor, but for the fact that an elderly friend and conspirator, called Angus McNeill, cycled furiously up from the village, in the wake of the green car, and stopped, panting and sweating, in the doorway.

‘Jesus, I’m too old for this. That person you thought might come, Alasdair. I think you’ll find he’s in your house
right now
. Well, it’s one of them, for sure. Black suit and hat and a white collar. Shoes you could see your face in!’

‘Bugger!’ said Alasdair, wiping his hands on an oily rag. ‘Bugger me. They don’t give up, do they? Where’s the lad? I had him working in the bottom field, clearing out a ditch down there.’

‘Aye, I caught a glimpse of him on the way up. I think he saw the car and made himself scarce. He was right down in the ditch.’

‘He’ll be bloody terrified. Damn them to hell. Just when he was settling down and giving me a grand day’s work as well. Do me a favour, Angus. Will you go back down the hill, when you’ve got your breath back, and see if you can find him? Tell him to keep out of the way, while I sort this. Tell him to go into the old dairy and not to venture out till I send Kirsty for him.’

‘D’you need any help, Alasdair?’

‘I don’t think so. This is one thing I want to handle on my own. In fact, I’ve been looking forward to it.’

The priest was a handsome man, with a great deal of wavy grey hair. He was well upholstered and smooth shaven, with black shoes. Afterwards, Kirsty particularly remembered his shoes, because they were so very much more shiny than any shoes she had ever seen before, especially on the island, where almost all footwear, even Sunday best, tended to be quickly covered in a fine film of mud in winter, dust in summer. The priest introduced himself as Father Connolly. He shook hands genially enough with Alasdair, and sat down again at the table where Isabel was just pouring  him a second cup of tea. Using the best china, Alasdair noticed.

Kirsty, home for the weekend and sitting with her book, by the fire, watched him covertly. She had already decided that she didn’t like him much. Quite apart from the shiny shoes, she didn’t like the way he grinned, showing a great many teeth, nor the way the grin didn’t seem to stretch to his eyes at all. There was something of the shark about it. Or the crocodile with gently smiling jaws. And besides, she was well aware that he had been damning Finn with every remark, hinting that the boy was not to be trusted. That they had done what they could with him, but with boys like this, boys who, as he put it, had been ‘committed’ , there was no telling what they might get up to in the future. And wasn’t it good – or a trifle foolhardy - of people like Isabel and Alasdair, to take such a boy into their midst, take him on trust, especially when – here he glanced across at Kirsty herself – there was a
child
in the house?

Father Connolly sipped at his tea and smiled across at Alasdair. ‘I thought I would come in person. I had business in Scotland this week, so I thought we could settle this, man to man, amicably.’

‘Did you?’

Alasdair  took his china mug of tea from Isabel, his own pint pot, set it on the table, spooned sweetened, condensed milk into it and stirred it, vigorously, but his gaze never left the priest’s face. ‘And how will we do that do you think?’

‘The boy, ah the boy.’ Father Connolly sat back in his chair and steepled his fingers together, as though in prayer. ‘It’s very kind of you to take him in like this. Very kind indeed. But he can’t work for you. Not possibly. He already has a job in Donegal. It’s a good Catholic home, a farm, and he’s contracted to work there for the next five years at least. So you see, he has to come back with me. That’s the law. And I’ve come to fetch him. So if you would be so good as to get him for me, I’ll take him off your hands.’

Kirsty, glancing from her mother to her grandfather, saw how Isabel looked frightened, but her grandfather was smiling. Much like Father Connolly, the smile did not extend to his eyes. Kirsty knew that look and was wary of it, although it had never once been directed at herself. People thought of her grandfather as a good natured, easygoing soul, and most of the time, he was. But you didn’t cross him. Kirsty had heard people saying as much. People who had taken a bit too much to drink, maybe. And she knew what they meant. You wouldn’t cross Ally Galbreath, they said. Not if  you knew what was good for you. Even when she was a little girl, she had known that. He indulged her in every possible way, but when he said ‘enough’ he meant it. She looked at the priest and saw, young as she was, that the man was very much mistaken in her grandfather. He had thought the older man a soft touch, a simple islandman, easily intimidated.  But Alasdair was going to say ‘enough’. And what would happen then?

 ‘Contracted, is he?’ Alasdair took his time, drinking his tea before replying. ‘Well, leaving aside the fact that this is hardly a den of paganism, I’m not aware that Finn signed anything, and neither is he. We’ve had a little chat about it, you see. Why would a young lad like that tie himself into such a position for five years? It would be madness. He’s not in the army!’

‘Well, maybe there was no formal contract.’ The priest looked faintly flustered. He was clearly a man used to getting his way. He laid down the law and people capitulated.  That was how it always was. Still, he mustered his forces. ‘But the Brothers found him a place at the school out of the goodness of their hearts, you know. I can show you the official documents.’

He drew out a sheet of paper, yellow with age, and scanned it, reading aloud. ‘
Whereas the court is satisfied that it is expedient to deal with the said child by sending him to a certified industrial school..
. He was a charity case. And a reformatory boy, I might add, committed there by the courts, no less. A young criminal.’

Kirsty saw Isabel blench at this. She would have to say something, tell her mother that it wasn’t true, couldn’t possibly be true. She made a convulsive movement and her book slid to the floor with a thump. Momentarily distracted, her grandfather caught her eye and frowned at her, shaking his head.

‘It’s alright, lass,’ he said. ‘Nothing to worry about.’

Feeling that the interruption had gained him an advantage, Father Connolly continued, directing his remarks towards Isabel. ‘Not the kind of lad – with all due respect – that you would want to take into your home. A regular cuckoo in the nest. A big strong lad, with criminal tendencies. These boys have to be carefully controlled.’

Alasdair was holding out his hand. ‘May I?’ He nodded at the document. Reluctantly, the priest handed it over. Alasdair took his time, finding his glasses, reading it closely and with obvious interest. It was partly printed and partly annotated in a thin scrawl.

  He threw the priest’s own words back at him, with a tinge of irony. ‘With all due respect to you, this says nothing about criminal tendencies. It says only that Finn has been
found having a guardian who does not exercise proper guardianship
, whatever that means. And given that Finn must have been no more than seven years old when this was signed, I can’t see that he can ever have been a reformatory boy.’