Red Bones

Chapter Two

‘Anna Clouston had her baby last night,’ Mima said. ‘A difficult birth apparently. She was in labour for twenty hours. They’re going to keep her in for a few days to keep an eye on her. It was a boy. Another man to take on the Cassandra.’ She shot a conspiratorial look at Hattie. It seemed to amuse Mima that Anna had had a difficult labour. Mima liked chaos, disorder, other people’s misfortune. It gave her something to gossip about and kept her alive. That was what she said, at least, when she sat in her kitchen cackling into her tea or whisky, filling Hattie in on island events.

Hattie didn’t know what to say about Anna Clouston’s child – she’d never seen the appeal of babies and didn’t understand them. A baby would just be another complication. They were standing at Setter, in the field at the back of the house. A wash of spring sunshine lit the makeshift windbreak of blue plastic, the wheelbarrows, the trenches marked with tape. Seeing it as if for the first time, Hattie thought what a mess they’d made of this end of the croft. Before her team from the university had turned up, Mima had looked out over sloping low meadow to the loch. Now, even at the beginning of the season the place was muddy as a building site and Mima’s view was interrupted by the spoil heap. The wheelbarrow run had scored ruts in the grass.

Hattie looked beyond the disturbance to the horizon. It was the most exposed archaeological site she’d ever worked. Shetland was all sky and wind. There were no trees here to provide shelter.

I love this place, she thought suddenly. I love it more than anywhere else in the world. I want to spend the rest of my life here.

Mima had been pinning towels on to the washing line, surprisingly supple despite her age. She was so small that she had to stretch to reach the line. Hattie thought she looked like a child, prancing on tiptoes. The laundry basket was empty. ‘Come away in and have some breakfast,’ Mima said. ‘If you don’t put on a bit of weight you’ll blow away.’

‘Pots and kettles,’ Hattie said as she followed Mima across the grass to the house. And she thought Mima, trotting ahead of her, did look so frail and insubstantial that she might be swept up in a storm and carried out to sea. She’d still be talking and laughing as she went, as the wind twisted her body like a kite-tail until it disappeared.

In the kitchen a bowl of hyacinths was in bloom on the windowsill and the smell of them filled the room. They were pale blue, streaked with white.

‘They’re pretty.’ Hattie sat at the table, pushing the cat off the chair so she could sit down. ‘Spring-like.’

‘I can’t really see the point of them.’ Mima reached up to lift a pan from the shelf. ‘They’re an ugly kind of flower and they stink. Evelyn gave them to me and expected me to be grateful. But I’ll kill them soon. I’ve never kept a houseplant alive yet.’

Evelyn was Mima’s daughter-in-law and the subject of much complaint.

All the crockery and cutlery in Mima’s house was slightly dirty, yet Hattie, usually so fastidious, so fickle in her appetite, always ate whatever Mima cooked for her. To day Mima was scrambling eggs. ‘The hens are laying well again,’ she said. ‘You’ll have to take some with you back to the Bod.’ The eggs were covered in muck and straw, but Mima cracked them straight into a bowl and began whisking them with a fork. Translucent white and deep yellow yolk splashed on to the oilskin tablecloth. Using the same fork she scooped a lump of butter from a wrapped packet and shook it into the pan on the Rayburn. The butter sizzled and she tipped in the eggs. She threw a couple of slices of bread directly on to the hotplate and there was a smell of burning.

‘Where’s Sophie this morning?’ Mima asked when they’d both started eating. Her mouth was full and her false teeth didn’t quite fit, so it took Hattie a moment to understand what she was saying.

Sophie was Hattie’s assistant on the dig. Usually Hattie did the planning and the preparation. It was her PhD after all, her project. She was obsessive about getting things right. But this morning she’d been eager to get on to the site as soon as possible. It was good to get away from Sophie sometimes, and as much as anything she was glad of a chance to chat to Mima on her own.

Mima liked Sophie. The season before the girls had been invited to a dance at the community hall and Sophie had been the life and soul of the party, so the men had been queuing up to swing her around in the eightsome reel. She’d flirted with them all, even the married ones. Hattie had watched, disapproving and anxious, but jealous too. Mima had come up behind Hattie and yelled in her ear above the noise of the music: ‘That lass reminds me of myself at that age. I had the men flocking around me too. It’s all just a bit of fun to her. It means nothing. You should lighten up a bit yourself.’

How I’ve missed Whalsay over the winter! Hattie thought. How I’ve missed Mima!

‘Sophie’s working in the Bod for a while,’ she said. ‘Paperwork. You know. She’ll be along soon.’

‘Well?’ Mima demanded, bird-like eyes bright over the rim of the mug. ‘Did you find yourself a man while you were out? A good-looking academic maybe? Someone to keep you warm in bed in those long winter nights?’

‘Don’t tease, Mima.’ Hattie cut a corner from the toast, but left it uneaten. She no longer felt hungry.

‘Maybe you should find yourself an island man. Sandy’s still not found himself a wife. You could do worse. He’s got more life about him than his mother, at least.’

‘Evelyn’s all right,’ Hattie said. ‘She’s been good to us. Not everyone on the island supported the dig and she’s always stood up for us.’

But Mima wasn’t ready yet to let go of the subject of Hattie’s love life. ‘You watch yourself, girl. You find yourself the right one. You don’t want to get hurt. I know all about that. My Jerry wasn’t the saint everyone made him out to be.’ Then, lapsing into dialect. ‘Dee can live without a man, dee ken. I’ve lived without a man for nearly sixty years.’

And she winked, making Hattie think that though Mima might not have had a husband for sixty years, she’d probably had men enough in her life. Hattie wondered what else the old woman was trying to say.

Immediately after the plates were washed, Hattie went back on to the site. Mima stayed inside. It was Thursday, the day she entertained Cedric, her gentleman caller. Thoughts of this place had been with Hattie all winter, warming her like a lover. Her obsession with the archaeology, the island and its people had become one in her mind: Whalsay, a single project and a single ambition. For the first time in years she felt a bubbling excitement. Really, she thought, I have no reason to think like this. What is the matter with me? She found herself grinning. I’ll have to watch myself. People will think I’m mad and lock me away again. But that only made her smile some more.

When Sophie arrived, Hattie set her to preparing a practice trench. ‘If Evelyn wants to be a volunteer we should train her to do it properly. Let’s clear an area away from the main excavation.’

‘Shit, Hat! Do we really have to have her on site? I mean, she’s kind enough but she’s a real bore.’ Sophie was tall and fit with long tawny hair. She’d been working as a chalet maid in the Alps over the winter, helping out a friend, and her skin was bronzed and glowing. Sophie was easy and relaxed and took everything in her stride. She made Hattie feel like a neurotic drone.

‘It’s a condition of our work in Shetland that we encourage community involvement,’ Hattie said. ‘You know that.’ Oh God, she thought, now I sound like a middle-aged schoolteacher. So pompous!

Sophie didn’t answer. She shrugged and went on with the work.

Later, Hattie said she’d go to Utra to talk to Evelyn about training to work on the dig. It was an excuse. She hadn’t had the chance to revisit her favourite places in Lindby. The sun was still shining and she wanted to make the most of the good weather. As she walked past the house, Cedric was just driving away in his car. Mima was at the kitchen window waving him off. When she saw Hattie she came to the open door.

‘Will you come in and have a cup of tea?’

But Hattie thought Mima just wanted to prise more information from her and to give her more advice. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I’ve no time today. But Sophie’s due a break if you want to give her a shout.’

And she walked on down the track with the sun on her face, feeling like a child playing truant from school.