On the seas of hope

Thrown together in the lockdown, a gran and grandson find a little common ground

The last of the breeze died away completely as she climbed – such a rare thing on the island in spring, especially there on the cliff path overlooking the little harbour – and so she heard the drone before seeing it. At first she mistook its soft whirr for some natural sound, a moor bird taking flight or settling to roost in the heather behind her, maybe. But when she turned, there it was in all its alien strangeness, hanging in space just a stone’s throw away, like a giant spider on a ceiling thread.

“Good God,” she said, frozen with surprise. Then her fright turned to irritation and she raised her lightweight metal hiking stick. “Get away,” she called out.“go on – shoo!”

For a long moment it held its station, six small propellers humming in the cool stillness; then, like magic, it obeyed, purring smoothly away back down the line of the footpath towards the grey cluster of streets and houses and harbour sheds below.

A little shaken, she made for a nearby wooden bench and sat for a while to compose herself. The colourless sun was low over the sea, just a few milky spills of cloud dulling its rays, and she closed her eyes against the big Atlantic glare. She should see the funny side of it, she told herself. Tucked away in one of the car parks near the moorings, a couple of bobbies must be pulling all kinds of faces at each other right now, fiddling with joysticks like kids over a video game, wondering what to make of that fierce auld biddy who’d wanted to clobber their precious bit of kit. Ha! If they were island boys she’d probably taught them in primary not so many years ago, told them a hundred times to blow their snotty noses in the days when all anyone had to worry about was sniffles and colds. She smiled at the thought of them recognising her. Jeezo, Sarge – it’s Mrs Pirie! Retreat!

Well, she supposed it wasn’t their fault if they had to spy for teenagers sneaking out to drink and canoodle on the cliffs, or daft holidaymakers, if there were any of those left. It wasn’t as if they’d have much else to do these days. Even the regular hellraisers – Billy Torrance and the like – would be keeping quiet for once with the pubs locked up.

Despite the stillness and the sun on her face, now that she’d stopped walking the cold was already creeping up from the bench and into her bones. With a shiver she opened her eyes again, then pushed stiffly to her feet with the help of her hiking stick. Gulls were mewing somewhere out of sight below the cliff edge, and if she listened hard she could just hear the tide scraping the shingle beyond the harbour wall. No more whirring blades though: the drone was long gone.

Back at the bungalow, David was stretched out on the living room couch, his long legs overhanging its arm. An open book lay face down on his chest. He opened his eyes a crack but said nothing as she passed through the room to the kitchen.

“You don’t look very comfortable there,” she said over her shoulder. “you’re much too big for that little old couch.”

He grunted.

“Cup of tea?”

She heard him groan as he levered himself into a sitting position, the book slipping to the floor with a rustle of pages. When she glanced through he was gathering it back up and marking the page with a slip of paper.

“I was reading and fell asleep.”

He yawned noisily.

“A cup of tea will bring you round.” She went back into the kitchen.

“Did you clear the cobwebs, gran?” he called through to her.

That had been her excuse for going out – “clearing the cobwebs” – though really she had just found herself having one of those moments, more frequent recently, where David’s presence in the small bungalow was just too much, with his long, awkward limbs spilling over every bit of furniture he lighted on, and the equally sprawling burden of his gloominess. It was the kind of misery that only young men seemed capable of generating, she caught herself thinking irritably to herself: more ponderous

and morose than a girl’s, more simplistically self-centered, as if all that crude male bulk generated some kind of force of gravity that sucked your own emotions into its orbit. For three years now she’d got used to living alone with just her own joys and sorrows, and Lord, this unexpected change was oppressive. And her annoyance made her guilty, too, because after all his girlfriend had dumped him by email as soon as she’d arrived back home in America from the student flat they’d shared in Aberdeen, and he’d had to give up the flat because he couldn’t afford it on his own and nobody was moving digs in the lockdown. His mother – her only daughter, Margaret – hadn’t been able to help because she’d caught the virus herself at the Edinburgh guest house she ran, though she was getting over it now, thank God. And so here he was, her big sad bear of a grandson, a reluctant refugee in her too-small bungalow on a too-small island, one of the last bits of land before the shores of that other distant country he spent each day brooding over.

“Not one little bit,” she called back through the doorway, forcing a spry note into her voice. “Not a breath of wind up there for once. Very strange.”

She took her time making the tea, bringing the two mugs through on a tray when she was ready and setting them on the low table in front of the couch. He was sitting more or less normally now, his elbow on the arm rest, his endless legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles. Half way to America, she thought, then scolded herself silently. She settled herself against the other arm of the couch. “You’ll never guess what I saw though,” she said.

“Donald Trump, hiding out with his ancestors to escape the plague.”

She smiled, pleased that he was making an effort at least.“wrong island.”

“No surprise there then.” “Anyway,” she said.“even better. One of those drone things. Right in front of my face.”

“You’re kidding,” he laughed.

She shook her head and blew a puff of steam from her tea.“large as life. The police, I think, looking out for kids going up there to drink and carry on. Gave me a bit of a turn. The cheek of it! I gave it what for, though.”

“What did you do?”

“Tried to clobber it with my walking stick.”

He barked out another laugh and she realised it was the first real smile she’d seen from him since he’d arrived four weeks ago.

“I did!” she protested.

“I believe you.” He was still chuckling.

“I was like William Wallace.” Grinning, he looked her small frame up and down where she sat.“hm,” he said, squinting and puckering his lips.

She nearly cried out in pained surprise. That comical look – it was the precise expression his mother used to pull when being cheeky as a child, sometimes in this very room. Extraordinary to see it on David’s much more rugged, stubbled face now, like something breaking the surface, something bright out of the deep.

“What’s the matter, gran?” he said, the expression vanishing as quickly as it had come.

“Oh, nothing, nothing!” She almost blurted out the truth, almost asked him to make the face again, but knew it would be worse than silly – would just embarrass him, maybe drive him back into his shell. “Heartburn,” she said, and tapped her chest.

Usually they ate supper together, listening to the news on the radio, but spent the time afterwards alone – David in the back room she’d made up for him, trying without much success to catch the faint wifi signal that came and went from the hotel further up the hill, and she finishing off a crossword or playing a few hands of Patience at the kitchen table. Tonight, though, he sprawled on the couch after helping with the washing up and opened the book he’d been reading earlier, frowning over it and jotting occasional notes on the scrap of paper he used as a bookmark.

She sat opposite him in her favourite armchair, pleased but also puzzled that he wanted her company for once, and leafed through the daily paper, hoping the rustle of pages wouldn’t drive him away. She’d taken a peek when he was out of the room and saw that the book was an anthology of short stories. Something for university, she guessed. He was studying politics but she knew he’d taken an English course too as part of his first year options – the subject she’d taken herself before training as a primary teacher. She supposed she ought to let him know that he needn’t feel obliged to be sociable though. There was half a century between them after all.

“Are you not going to try for the internet again tonight? It might be better now that there’s no wind.”

“Nah, not bothered,” he said.

She wondered at that. The first few days he’d been there he’d insisted on making room in the potting shed for a folding table and chair: the end of the garden was just that little bit nearer the hotel and he’d been desperate to pick up a better signal. “Can I clear out some of grandad’s old stuff to make room?” he’d asked, and she’d been wounded by it but said nothing. She hadn’t had the heart even to unlock it for these last three years and his blunt, abrupt request was somehow shocking.“i don’t know,” she’d said awkwardly at last.“let me think about it.”

But by the next morning she’d given herself a good talking to and agreed, watching from the kitchen window as he made a neat pile (neat, at least!) of potting trays and toolboxes. Even her old watercolour easel and battered tin box of brushes and paints. She’d forgotten all about those. He covered everything over with a polythene sheet and promised to move it all back in again before he left.

Later, while he was napping, she’d crept outside in the smir and peered through the plastic shroud. It was less painful than she’d feared, but her heart caught at a tray of seedlings, withered to faint traces though not rotted completely away, the limp brown threads and first leaves still clinging fossil-like to the rims of their clay pots.

David had rescued something, too – a home-made weather-vane, the last little project his grandfather must have been tinkering with. Just a silly, comical thing really – a poorly cut gull he’d clipped out of a sheet of tin and mounted to swivel on a steel rod.“look at this,” David announced with a curious smile.“i’ll clean the rust off and give it some oil.” He left it just inside the door with his boots, where it had stayed ever since. Soon enough she’d stopped noticing it.

“Gran, did you ever read a Russian story called The Student?” he asked abruptly, startling her.“by someone called Chekhov?”

“Oh, Chekhov,”she said.“i’ve read some of his stories, but not that one, no. Why? Is that what you’re reading?”

He nodded glumly.“i’ve got to write an essay about it and I don’t know what he’s trying to say. What are his other stories like?”

She grinned.“how do you mean?” “Well, is he sort of pessimistic or optimistic? It’s such a simple wee story but I can’t tell. It could be either. It’s driving me nuts and I don’t want to cheat and look it up on the internet. Even if I could get the bloody internet,” he added sourly.

“What kind of question is that? Optimistic or pessimistic, as if there was nothing in between?”

I gave it what for, though. Tried to clobber it with my walking stick

After your grandad died, I didn’t cry at all for months. But then for nearly a year I cried every morning...

He seemed to give this some thought but shrugged anyway in the end. “don’t blame me, blame my stupid lecturer. He’s the one asking.”

She cackled. “don’t you go calling your teachers stupid. I was a teacher, remember.”

“Ah, but you’re the one saying it’s a daft question!”

“True,” she said. “And it bloody well is.” They sniggered together conspiratorially. “why don’t you let me read it? Go and make some tea in the samovar and I’ll tell you what I think. I have the wisdom of great age.”

“Good idea,” he said. “very wise, ancient ancestor.” He stood up languidly, stretched so high that the book brushed the ceiling, and handed it over.

“Are you wondering why the old widow and her daughter are crying?” she said later when the tea was finished and she’d set the book aside. “or are you wondering if Chekhov’s being serious at the end, when the student thinks he’s understood the great truth about life? That everyone’s connected by the same emotions, all the way back through time, two thousand years?”

“Both,” he said simply. He’d grown silent and broody again whilst she’d been reading, sipping his tea and staring into the small blue flames of the gas fire.

She nodded. “he forgets all about the poor women, doesn’t he, once he has his grand thought. But they must still be there, crying in the dark, shivering around the fire. It’s like he doesn’t really care, now that their suffering has given him his big clever idea.”

David cleared his throat. “He’s making fun of him, isn’t he, the student, when he says he was only 22.”

“I think so.”

“I’m not even that old.”

She looked across the dimly lit room at him, surprised by the feeling in his voice. They said nothing for a while. She wondered if she should offer to make more tea, but something told her not to break the stillness between them. “when your grandad died,” she said softly at last, “i didn’t cry at all for months.”

She was conscious of him looking up at her, but didn’t meet his eyes. “but then for nearly a year I cried every morning, even though by then I could hardly tell why. And I never let anybody see me doing it. I just shut myself away and cried. And if anyone came to the door, like Mrs Mcleod, or if your mother phoned, I stopped and was fine with them. And as soon as I was left to myself again I went straight back to crying. About nothing, really.”

From the corner of her eye she saw him nodding. She could hear the gas whispering under the flames.

“Would you still do that? If I wasn’t here I mean? Do I get in the way of you crying?”

“Oh David, don’t say that.” She forced a smile.“not at all,” she said. “That’s all in the past now.”

He let out a heavy sigh. Had she made him embarrassed? She’d been foolish and ought to make some tea.

“When dad left I did the same,” he said, before she could move. “Everyone thinks I hate him because I never let anyone see, and I’ve never told anyone, but it was the same. For years. After a while I never really knew what I was crying for either. But it was worse for you because grandad was dead.”

“Not worse, just different,” she murmured. “maybe not even so different.”

“Did grandad make lots of things?”

“You mean like that terrible tin seagull?”

“It’s not that bad! But aye, the beak’s a bit like a carrot.”

“Well. He was more practical than artistic. If he’d lived to see all this toilet paper nonsense he’d have made a bidet out of a bucket and the old garden hose.” They both chuckled.

“I wish you’d been able to spend more time with him. Especially after –”

“I know.”

He’d been stretching his legs deep into the room again, but now he folded them and leaned forward to cup his chin in his hands. “mrs Mcleod doesn’t like me being here, does she?”

She couldn’t help laughing. “What on Earth does that have to do with anything?”

He shrugged.

“She likes you fine enough now that you fetch all the old biddies’ messages from the shop. They’ve stopped gossiping that you’re Typhoid Mary.”

“H’m.”

“If you’re not careful she’ll be giving you the glad eye soon.” “Well, it’s spring and all that.” “It is. So, what are you going to say about the story?”

“I’m not sure if anyone will even want my essay, now,” he said. “They’ve cancelled all the exams.” “Things will go back to normal.” “Maybe too late for this.” He pushed the book away from him along the cushions. “i liked that we talked about it though. Thanks, gran.”

“I liked that too,” she said.

The wind freshened all through the next day and by evening she felt restless, not to escape David this time, but just to see the sky and sea again.

“Watch out for drones,” he said, puffing a cigarette at the back door, and she waved her hiking stick at him.

“Fully armed,” she said.

As she rounded the path that cut uphill behind the bungalow she heard a faint cheeping sound. It was coming from her own garden and seemed to rise and fall with each gust of wind. A nest in the wall, maybe?

She peered back towards the house and when her eye lit on the potting shed she understood: David had fixed the weather vane to its roof. With each gust the little gull turned its daft beak one way and then the other, the metal spindle squeaking away like a hungry chick beneath it. She had a sudden, cheerful impulse to share the moment with David, to wave and call to him, but the back door was shut – he must have finished his cigarette and vanished indoors again. Never mind; they’d laugh about it later, together.

At the cliff edge the wind was strong enough to flap her heavy tweed skirt about her legs and make her nervous, but she was glad she’d come. There was more colour in the sun this evening, wings of amber and rose. A change in the weather, just as it always changed, out here on the edge of things. All her day-to-day life, the bungalow, Mrs Mcleod and the village, and David now for a short time, all of it behind her across the moor. The wind was sharp and clean, as if it took its keenness straight from the million blades of light flashing on the empty sea.

Strange to think of the same glitter and freshness far beyond the limits of her weak eyes, far enough out where there was nobody to see and enjoy it. She would bring David with her the next time, she thought, and smiled at the thought of him striding ahead of her, up the cliff path, on those long legs of his. Yes – she’d ask him to watch it with her, the last of the day’s light, as if that was striding too, all the way over the curve of the Earth, always clean and new.

Wayne Price is a Senior Lecturer in English Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Aberdeen and has won a string of awards for fiction and poetry. His short story collection Furnace (Freight Books, 2012) was longlisted for the Frank O’connor Prize and nominated for the Saltire Scottish First Book of the Year