Bird of Passage Read Online Free Page B

bright. He wondered why his mother had told him never to come down here when they were so beautiful. He had never known there was such magic down here, the glowing coals of a comfortable fire, soft rugs and springy couches. Although he had left her in bed, in the way of dreams, his mother was waiting for him, her legs tucked up beneath her on one of the couches. She held out her arms to him and said, ‘Come here, my Finny, and give your mammy a kiss.’ He clambered up beside her, snuggling in, and saw that his mother’s friend, Phissie, was sitting at a table. Her name was Phyllis, really, but he couldn’t say it properly. He called her Phissie, and she didn’t seem to mind. He could see that she was doing a  jigsaw puzzle. Phissie was fond of jigsaws and, whenever they went to visit her, Finn liked to help her, although he wasn’t very good at it, his fingers too clumsy to arrange the fiddly pieces. He liked the big, round puzzle of scenes from Alice in Wonderland best of all, although it was hard to do. She would do the edge first, to start him off, and hand him pieces to fill in, telling him where to put them, correcting him gently when he tried to force something into the wrong space.
    ‘Come here to me, Finny, and give us a hand,’ said Phissie. ‘You have to finish the puzzle, you know.’
    Suddenly, he was beside her, staring down at the scattered pieces on the polished table. But she hadn’t done the edges for him, and he was confused by the miscellany of shapes and colours.
    ‘I don’t think I can,’ he said.
    He looked behind him for his mammy, hoping she would help, but he couldn’t see her. She wasn’t curled up on the couch any more and he didn’t know where she was, and then, just as he felt the panic rising inside him, like steam inside a kettle, he woke up. For a moment, he didn’t know where he was.  
    Outside, there came the rasping call of some night bird flying over the farm.   He felt the tension leave his body. Just the dream. The same old dream. He settled down again. He was aware of Francie’s quiet presence beside him. He was warm and comfortable, with a full belly. He had a sudden, piercing sense of something else. What could it be?
    Safety.
    He felt safe here. He sighed, pulled the scratchy blanket up close under his chin, and drifted back to sleep.
     

 
    CHAPTER TWO
     
    All day long, Finn and Francis had been labouring in the sandy fields, working on the early crop. They had been well warned that these delicate earlies could easily be damaged. Mostly, the two lads would have to follow the plough along the drills, gathering up the potatoes into baskets, but with the earlies Finn wielded the graip or fork, digging carefully to make sure that all the tubers were lifted, one by one. Kirsty Galbreath had overheard her grandfather saying, ‘he works like a grown man, that one.’ She was nine years old and an only child, living with her widowed mother and her grandfather on this ancient farm, perched high up on the windy spine of the island with its fields sweeping down to the sea.
    She had come running up the hill from school in her red summer sandals with her leather satchel on her back, and had seen her grandfather, leaning on the field gate, staring down at the workers with a frown on his  face. She distracted him by running to him, and he swung her up in the air, her pigtails flying. She loved to feel his big hands birling her round and round. Fields and sky blurred around her, and then she was on her feet, holding onto his legs to steady herself. It frustrated her that there were no other children on the farm and only a handful in the village. There was so much to tell and so few people to listen.
    ‘Kirsty, my darling!’ he said. ‘Did you have a good day?’ He lifted his  cap and replaced it more comfortably on his head, a habitual gesture.
    It was almost holiday time, but they never went away. There was too much to do about the farm at this time of year, and her