He called to Vaila, his dog, and turned back towards his house. He could see it on a slight rise in the land just in from the water, with the Herring House much taller beyond. Further along the shore was the graveyard. In the old days before the roads were built they’d carried the corpses for burial by boat. That was why in Shetland the graveyards were always close to the water. He thought he’d quite like his body to be carried to its grave in his own boat, but he supposed there’d be some reason why it couldn’t happen like that now.
His attention was caught by movement on the road. His eyes weren’t as good as they had been, but he thought he saw someone leaving the gallery. He watched. He pretended not to be interested in Bella’s doings but he couldn’t help being curious. Usually her parties didn’t finish this soon and this guest didn’t get into a car and drive back down the length of the voe to the big road towards Lerwick. Instead the person turned up the road the other way, past the post office and the three houses on the shore towards the jetty. After that it only led to the old manse where Bella lived, and to Kenny and Edith’s house. Beyond Skoles the track petered away into a footpath across the hill to the next valley. The only people to use that were Kenny, when he was checking on his sheep, and holidaymakers walking.
Kenny stood and watched the figure until it disappeared out of sight where the road fell into a dip. He was running, a strange loping run, leaning forward so it looked as if he was going to tip over. Kenny thought that was typical of the people Bella knocked around with. Artists. They couldn’t even run like other folk. She’d always attracted strange people to her. The summers when they were all younger the Manse had been full of outsiders, drifting in and out with their odd clothes, weird music coming through the open windows, and always the sound of their talking. Yet now she was quite alone, apart from that nephew of hers. She should have stayed with Lawrence.
He carried on up to the hill, making a rough count of the sheep in his head. Later in the week he’d have to round them up and bring them down for clipping. There were a couple of chaps from Unst who were coming to help him, and Martin Williamson had said that he’d give a hand too.
When he got to the house it was gone eleven o’clock, but Edith was still in the garden. She was hoeing between a row of beans, pushing away the weeds with short aggressive jabs. She must have been stuck on the computer for most of the evening though, because she hadn’t done so much. When she heard him coming she looked up. He thought she looked very tired. She’d had a meeting in Lerwick all day and that always wore her out.
‘Come away inside,’ he said. ‘The mosquitoes will bite us both to death.’
‘Just let me finish this row.’ He stood watching her bending over the work and he thought how stubborn she was and how strong.
‘Did you see that man?’ he asked, when she straightened at last and rested the hoe against the wall of the house.
‘What man?’ She looked up, pushed a stray hair from her face. He thought she was prettier now than she had been when she was young. When she’d been young her face had been a bit pinched and there’d been no flesh at all on her. What he’d felt for her then, it hadn’t been love. Not the sort of love they showed on films, at least. The sort of love Lawrence had felt for Bella. It hadn’t been that way for him or for Edith. But they’d got on and he’d known it would work out. They wouldn’t irritate each other unduly. Now that she’d reached fifty, sometimes he looked at her with wonder. Her face was hardly lined, her eyes so blue. There was a passion between them that they’d never had the energy for when the children had been young.
‘What man?’ she repeated. Not annoyed that she’d had to repeat herself, but half smiling as if she could tell what he was thinking.
‘A man running away from the Herring House. He must have come past here.’
‘I didn’t see,’ she said.
She stood up, linked her arm into his and led him inside.
Edith got up early every morning. Even when they were on holiday or away visiting the children she was usually up before him. He heard her in the kitchen, moving the kettle on to the hot plate, then the door opening. He knew what she would be doing – pulling on her boots over her pyjamas to go outside and let out the hens. She didn’t start work until nine and they’d have breakfast together before she set out. He didn’t find it so easy to leave his bed, but at this time of year Edith had trouble sleeping at all. Often when he woke in the night to go to the bathroom he could tell she was awake, lying very still beside him. She’d put thick curtains at the window, but something about the white nights threw her body clock out. It took some people that way. When he didn’t sleep he became tense and frazzled and the thoughts raced around his head. Edith became pale, though she never complained of being tired and she never missed work. Once, he’d persuaded her to go to the doctor to get some sleeping tablets, but she’d said they made her feel slow and heavy all the next day so she didn’t feel on top of things at the centre. He was glad when the days got shorter and she returned to her old self.
Kenny liked the half-hour they had together over breakfast before she left. By the time he was washed and dressed, she had the tea made and there was the smell of toasted bread. Edith was in the shower; he could hear the water tank refilling.
She was the manager of a care centre for old and disabled people. He still found that hard to believe – his Edith, in charge of staff and a budget, going to meetings in Lerwick, smartly dressed with her hair tied up. She trained all the care staff in Shetland in manual handling, showing them how to move the people in their care safely. He marvelled at her strength and determination. Taxis and a bus brought old folks from all over this part of Shetland to the centre. Sometimes she talked about her clients by name and it shocked him to realize the men and women he’d known in childhood as strong, rather frightening characters were now frail, confused, incontinent. He thought, Will I come to that? Will I end my days playing bingo in the day centre? Once he had mentioned something of the sort to Edith and she’d answered tartly, ‘You will if you’re lucky! With the oil revenue fallen to nothing and the cutbacks, the centre might not be there when we need it.’ He never mentioned his fears again. His only comfort was that he expected to die before her. Women always lived longer than men. He couldn’t imagine what it must be like to live alone.
He poured tea and put butter on the toast and she came in, dressed, her hair still wet but tied into a knot.
‘What are your plans for today?’ she asked.
‘Singling neeps,’ he said.
She pulled a face in sympathy, understanding what boring, back-breaking work that was, hoeing out the unwanted seedlings to leave space for the turnips to grow.
‘Oh well,’ she said. ‘It’s a nice day for it.’
But since yesterday evening he’d been thinking that he might get out in the boat today after all. He didn’t say anything to Edith. She worked so hard and he felt like a boy considering playing truant from school.
She finished the toast on her plate, then she was away into the little bedroom, which had once been Ingirid’s room and which Edith now used as an office, to gather up her papers into her bag. He walked outside with her and kissed her before watching her drive off.
He’d intended to do a couple of hours with the neeps before getting out the boat, but found himself making the short walk down to the beach, to the hut where he kept the outboard and his lines and pots. There was a little breeze. Easterly. He wondered for a moment if he wanted company after all, and started thinking who might be free to go out with him. Martin Williamson was a pleasant young man, but most days he put in an hour in the shop before he started working in the café at the Herring House. He stopped for a moment and in the silence heard the puffins on the headland beyond the pier. There were fewer than there’d been when he was a boy, but still enough for him to hear them chattering as he approached.