The funeral was set for Wednesday at the cemetery at Dalmore Beach, the irony of which was not lost on any of them. Two more days, and all that was left of Ruairidh would be dispatched to the earth for good.
Inside, Mrs Macfarlane had said, ‘The coffin should be available at the house for mourners to pay their last respects.’ And Mr Macrae had promised to deliver it to the croft at Balanish by that evening.
Now, as they stood outside in the rain, she said, ‘I’ll arrange things with the minister.’ And although Niamh had wanted to keep control of the process, she was almost relieved to pass on the baton. It had been a long and painful journey, and she was not at all sure she had the strength to see it through to the end.
By late afternoon the wind had blown the rain away, and gathered in strength. From the clifftops at Cellar Head, Niamh felt buffeted by it. Far out across the Minch she saw the rain still falling, like a mist obliterating the swell of the sea and the mainland beyond. The ocean thrashed white against black rocks two hundred feet below, and she wondered how it might feel simply to step off into the void, spreading her arms like a bird and falling to oblivion. No more pain, no more grief, no more missing Ruairidh, or contemplating the life that lay ahead without him. But she did not have the courage for that.
Half a mile further along the coast, she could see the house they had made together standing proud and defiant on the promontory, and beyond it the ruined house and church built by Iain Fiosaich. A hundred years from now, she wondered, what would remain of their home? Would it vanish without trace like Ruairidh and Niamh themselves? Would anyone remember them, as folk today still remembered Iain Fiosaich and his wealthy wife from New York?
In the gully below, on a rocky shelf cut by nature into the face of the cliff, Fiosaich had built his first home, balanced somewhere between life and death, a precarious if spectacular place to live. But he had abandoned it soon enough, and when Ruairidh and Niamh arrived to build their own home, all that remained of it were the scattered stones of the walls and foundations. Over time, and on countless sabbaths beyond the disapproving glare of the Church, they had built a tiny stone bothy in its place, a refuge for the walkers and hikers who made the pilgrimage out to see the house that Fiosaich had built.
From where she stood Niamh could just see it, with its roof of stone slabs in overlapping layers set upon the wooden structure below, walls of stone hewn from the cliffs, like camouflage, making it difficult to spot if you didn’t know it was there.
It was here that she and Ruairidh had opened the urn containing Róisín’s ashes, to let the wind take them where it would. Nearly eight years ago now.
When she had fallen pregnant, Ranish was in its first flush of success, and her initial thoughts had turned to abortion. How, she had wondered, could a baby possibly fit into the lives they were making for themselves? Working ten or twelve hours a day. Frequent trips abroad or to the mainland. Ruairidh would have carried on as before. Seonag, and no doubt Ruairidh’s mother, would have taken greater control of the company. Leaving Niamh with a primary role as mother and babysitter, and a back seat in the forward progress of Ranish Tweed.
Ruairidh had been opposed to the very idea of termination. Not for any religious or philosophical reasons, but because he wanted a child. And when his mother got wind of Niamh’s thinking she had accused her of trying to murder her grandchild.
It had been a fraught time, filled with argument and aggravation. Ironically it was Seonag who had finally settled Niamh’s mind on the matter. A throwaway conversation, even before she knew that Niamh was pregnant. Already with two children of her own, Seonag had said simply that they were the greatest gift that God had given her. It had crossed her mind, she said, when first pregnant, that she was too young for children and that abortion would have allowed for future planning. Niamh remembered how her childhood friend had gazed off into the middle distance, and with a slight shake of her head said, ‘I’m so glad I didn’t do that. Knowing what I know now, I don’t think I could ever have forgiven myself.’
Niamh knew she could never have lived with that kind of regret, and so she took the bold decision to let her pregnancy run its course, determined that their baby would have to fit in with their lives, rather than the other way around.
She had relaxed into her decision, then, and begun to relish the prospect of becoming a mother. A scan had revealed that their child was a girl, and she and Ruairidh had chosen the Irish Gaelic name of Róisín for their daughter.
But then two months before the baby was due, Niamh had begun to bleed. Unaccountably. She’d been rushed to hospital in Stornoway, then airlifted to Inverness, where the baby was stillborn. As if it had not been devastating enough to lose their child, the doctors told Niamh that due to internal damage she was unlikely to have more children.
Ruairidh had been stoic and supportive, despite his disappointment. But his mother, though never saying it in so many words, had implied that somehow it was Niamh herself who had contrived the miscarriage. That dark cloud of suspicion and mistrust had cast a shadow on their relationship ever since.
Róisín had been cremated in Inverness. A ceremony attended by just Niamh and Ruairidh. They had returned to release her ashes here on the cliffs, as if releasing her spirit to rest with her parents in this place for eternity.
Niamh had regretted it immediately. With Róisín’s ashes dispersed instantly by the wind, it was as if she had lost her all over again. Vanished without trace. And in all the years since, she had lamented not burying her child. A grave to visit, a place for flowers. A piece of this earth forever Róisín’s.
Niamh sat on a cluster of stones and gazed at the rock face below. A complex pattern of molten rock which had cooled in layers to form these cliffs untold millions of years before. If only she could be absorbed by them, subsumed to become a part of the whole. Instead of remaining this wretched speck in the universe, this tiny repository of grief and sorrow, so filled with regret at the loss of her man, and her child.
Never in her life had she felt so small and alone.
Chapter Twenty
The flight north from Glasgow was a bumpy one, in and out of cloud with only occasional glimpses of the ground below. Lochs and green valleys, and now mountain ranges that seemed unnaturally close.
Braque had read that the ferry crossing from Ullapool to Stornoway took three hours on a good day, but the flight across the Minch took only a matter of minutes. It was difficult to tell when the plane was over water, because it was the same colour as the cloud. Dull, grey, featureless.
Only now, as she saw fingers of white-ringed black rock reach out into pewtery water, did the island announce itself to her, appearing slowly out of the haze like some lost, mythical land.
As the plane dipped beneath the cloud, she saw peat-scarred purple bog stretching off into a misted distance, tiny clusters of houses clinging to the very edges of the island itself. And her heart sank at the prospect of the days that lay ahead of her, alone in this strange and foreign place.
Detective Sergeant George Gunn was waiting for her by the luggage carousel. She knew at once who he was. He looked like a policeman. Big feet in shiny black leather shoes, sharply pressed dark grey trousers, a quilted black anorak, and a face shaven to within an inch of its life. Pink and shiny and crowned by oiled black hair that divided his forehead in a widow’s peak.
It seemed he knew her, too. Perhaps police officers everywhere recognized fellow travellers of the same species. He stepped forward to shake her hand as she put out her own, and said hesitantly, ‘Bonjour madame. Detective Sergeant George Gunn. Je suis enchanté. C’est quelle, votre valise?’ He blushed and smiled and said, ‘School French.’