He pours water in my glass. ‘Sorry, Lexie. Maybe you’ve got a point, too. Perhaps I do have a tendency to try and rescue people.’
I raise my water glass to his. ‘Here’s to both our guilty consciences then.’
He clinks his glass against mine and sings the line of a song.
‘When all is guid an’ fresh an’ pure –
Nae guilt the heart to sting.’
I raise my eyebrows enquiringly.
‘An old, old nursery rhyme,’ he explains.
‘Part of your repertoire on a Saturday night?’
He laughs. ‘Not usually. We aim to create a slightly cheerier atmosphere. We don’t want to have our audience walk out on us in a gloom.’
I pass him the dish and he piles another handful of squatties on to his plate.
‘So when are you going to come along and listen?’
I shrug. ‘Not sure. I’ll need to try and find someone to mind Daisy.’
‘Bridie’s already offered,’ he responds, grinning as I automatically bristle slightly at the fact that they’ve been discussing my hypothetical social life and putting plans in place to make it a reality. ‘Och, would you get over yerself, Lexie Gordon. Let your friends help you every now and then. It’ll not kill you.’
I laugh, holding my hands up in defeat. I know I’ll enjoy having an evening in the bar listening to music, and I know Bridie and Daisy will have a fine old time of it themselves here at the cottage.
‘That’s settled then,’ he says. ‘This Saturday it is.’
‘How do you know I don’t already have something else on this weekend?’ I ask, in one last futile attempt to regain control of the conversation.
‘Just a hunch,’ he says.
‘Based, I suppose, on the common knowledge that I haven’t had anything on any weekend since I got here?’
‘Something like that,’ he says, and refills my wine glass. ‘Now, tell me about all those grand theatres you’ve sung in down there in London. What was the biggest one?’
Somehow the next time I glance at the kitchen clock it’s nearly midnight and we’ve talked for hours. Davy drains the cup of coffee that I made ages ago and pushes his chair back from the table.
‘Thank you for a lovely evening, Lexie. It’s been grand sitting at Flora’s kitchen table again, hearing her daughter laugh a bit. This house was always filled with song and good cheer.’
When he leaves, the cottage seems too empty. I’ve enjoyed his company and now I’ve been able to place him, I remember that Mum used to mention his name every now and then. As I clear the cups into the sink, his words echo in the empty kitchen. The range ticks softly to itself as it cools for the night and from the hill behind the cottage comes the ratcheting call of a corncrake. I wander through to the sitting room and pick up Mum’s picture from the mantelpiece. ‘I think it’s time this house was filled with song and good cheer again,’ I tell her.
And she smiles her approval back at me as I resettle the picture in its place and turn out the light.
Flora, 1940
On the Sunday evening, the day after she’d cooked for the fishing party at Ardtuath House, Flora sat on the bench in front of the cottage letting the sun bathe her in its light, its rays setting the red-gold tints in her hair afire as it traced a languid path across the western sky. She had her mending basket beside her and was sewing a button on to one of her father’s shirts. Securing it with a few quick stitches, she snipped the thread and folded the shirt neatly, setting it to one side. Before reaching into the basket for the next item, she relaxed for a moment, leaning her head against the cottage wall behind her, closing her eyes and lifting her face to the warmth.
Despite the peace of the day’s end, thoughts buzzed in her head like flies, irritating and persistent. The news on the wireless that morning had been deeply unsettling: only last week thousands of troops had been evacuated from Dunkirk in the face of the German advance, the Netherlands having fallen and Belgium having surrendered a few days earlier; a British aircraft carrier had been sunk off Norway by German battleships; Paris had been bombed, and Italy was issuing increasingly belligerent declarations. It had been a relief when the news bulletins had come to an end and the music programme had begun. But even singing along to the familiar tunes had failed to lift Flora’s spirits much. And then, as a reminder that the war affected those closer to home, too, she’d bumped into Bridie on a walk after lunch, who’d told her that a family at Poolewe had just received a telegram to say their son’s plane had been shot down over the Channel and he was missing, presumed dead. Bridie said, too, that while the evacuation from Dunkirk had saved many lives, news was filtering through that the 51st Highland Division had been trapped inland and many of the men taken prisoner. The threat of the war, which at first had seemed to lie far off beyond the wall of hills, had begun to insinuate itself into the little white croft houses along the lochside now, casting an ever-present shadow of fear even on days when the sunlight sparkled across the water.