One Swallow

Afterwards, they said:

Kitty, you should get away. A change of scene will do you good. Try to put some weight back on.

A quick hug on the doorstep; then they drove away, skirting the pothole in the drive that Jack always meant to fix. That annoying peep on the horn when passing out of the gate. I put on an apron, to save my cherry-red dress and start on the dishes, then chopped up leftover sausage rolls for the birds.

Rachel had been vexed that I didn’t wear black.

“It would have been more appropriate, Mum,” she’d said.

“Your father liked me in this,” I’d replied. “Surely that’s what matters? Anyway, I thought you didn’t like me being too conventional.”

I sat down with the pile of unopened mail. A Saga brochure: cruise ships, fiords, well-groomed white-of-tooth sixty-somethings arranged along the ship’s rail; couples, always couples, grasping the obligatory glass of piss-yellow Chardonnay. Flyers for outdoor gear, gadgets you thought you’d never need (you don’t), ads for stairlifts, and six different plant catalogues. I’ll need to clear out the greenhouse, all those moldy seed trays.

A card from Jack’s work. Inside, a chaotic array of messages from people I never met. Useless.

Rachel’s right, of course, best not to be in the house alone. Not just yet. And, yes, I get that she’s short of space, especially with a baby brother for Ellie on the way. It would probably suit everyone if I just disappeared for a bit. They’ve spent more than enough emotional energy on me in the last fortnight; in the last two years. I must be well over my quota.

So, I had a look online: somewhere self-catering. I had always fancied Scotland. In Jack’s last months, at the hospital, to pass the time I’d re-read Sir Walter Scott. A throwback to Eng. Lit I at Uni. Origins of the Historical Novel: the class where Jack and I first met. Anyway, Rob Roy started me thinking about a trip to the Trossachs.

“What’s a Trossach?” Rachel asked on the video call.

I ignored that. “You and Ellie can come with me for a day or two, it won’t be me landing on you. It looks lovely: Romantic lochs and brooding crags. I’ve found a little cottage beside the river Endrick. It’s called Honeyholm. The name says it all, doesn’t it? Only an hour north of Glasgow. Remember that lovely time we all had at Harlech one spring—the daffodils down by the river, and the lambs? Ellie would love the lambs.”

“Mum, it rained solid in Wales for a week. I was fourteen, and way past anthropomorphizing lambs which were about to be torn from their mothers, then, quick as you like, carted off to have their throats slit.”

“I don’t think they actually sli…Do they?”

“Mum, I just don’t have the time. You go. Enjoy yourself. A new beginning. It’ll do you good.”

So here I am. Solo. Nursing a lukewarm coffee at a dismal factory outlet in Gretna, peering out through the rain-streaked café window. “Rough winds” and all that. A stop at an Asda somewhere in Lanarkshire. Litter everywhere. I buy groceries for a week, and then straight to Honeyholm.

From the outside, the cottage, thank God, is as pretty as I had hoped. It sits in a tiny hamlet—just a handful of houses, and a church. Services only twice a month, the sign says. Interest in the eternal is ebbing away, it seems. The cottage walls are whitewashed, with a rustic terrace and a tree-pear or perhaps an apple beside the front door. Or is it a crab apple?

A grassy bank, too steep to call a lawn (how they cut the grass I’ll never know), slopes down to the Endrick Water. The river trickles thinly over a rocky bed. Downstream, where the shallow arc of an old weir stems the flow, it deepens into a dark pool. Swallows snap insects inches above the swirling peaty water. Their beaks make a rhythmic click, click, click, as they swoop and pirouette.

The date, 1746, is carved onto the lintel above the front door. That’s also the code for the key safe. Clever. But, then again, perhaps not. Inside, the cottage is damp and airless. I can’t figure out how the TV works, and the fan in the bathroom, stuck on, drones morosely all night. Sleep eludes me—a familiar pattern. I try to read, but my mind wanders; tea, and more tea; then, eventually, a creeping, half-hearted dawn.

I doze most of the morning, and since there’s no let-up in the weather, I drive into the next village for milk. The shop smells of firelighters and fabric softener. The shopkeeper glances up from her Take a Break but offers no greeting. I bring a carton of milk to the counter, then grab a cottage pie at random from the cool cabinet. I don’t want the woman to think I came in just for something to do.

“I thought this might be nice for lunch,” I say. “I see it’s made locally…artisan.”

“Never tried them myself. Folk buy them, mind. That’ll be three eighty.”

“Speaking of cottages…”

She stared at me blankly.

“The pie…” I say with a nervous giggle, then: “I’m staying down at Honeyholm. It’s lovely.”

“I guessed as much,” she says. No smile. “Only place renting at this time of year.”

“Oh well, I’d best be off and heat up my pie. Bye.”

She turned back to her Sudoku.

The next day, a knock at the door; a neighbor wanting a chat, perhaps.

A young man in a mud-splattered navy-blue boiler suit, about the same age as Rachel, I’d say. High, sharp cheekbones, a blue bird tattoo below one ear, his hair styled with the sides shaved with a mop on top. Haircuts that remind me of Nazis. Sinister. Behind him, his large green tractor, engine running.

He mumbles something incomprehensible; his accent, or a speech difficulty, I’m not sure.

“Pardon?”

He speaks again, pointing down the lane past my car. I hear “parked,” “tractor” and “doon the brae.”

“Oh, sorry, am I in the way? I’m so sorry.”

“Aye,” he says, retreating and remounting the tractor.

I run out in my slippers. My foot slips off the clutch. The car stalls. Disdainful, perched in the tractor’s driving seat, he squints at his phone, his fingers drumming on the steering wheel. I restart and reverse out of his way. He roars past without even a glance in my direction.

Back inside, I lean against the lobby wall, fighting tears. A framed antique print hangs facing me: a map that shows a corn mill a bit downriver. I imagine the little community that perhaps once thrived here: industrious, cooperative, ordered. As I indulge my daydream, a watery sunlight flits across the hall floor.

Before heading out for a walk I open the bedroom window, and I leave the front door ajar to air the house. A faint trace of a path leads to a meadow bounded by a curve of beech trees. Primroses cluster around the wall at the end of the weir. I spot the millrace on the far side, dry and overgrown, that once channeled the water to power the wheel. The converted mill is reflected in the glassy surface of the mill pool: now a comfortable home, with neat lawns, a perfect golden-gravel drive, a paddock and a horse box out the back. A sharp gust of wind sweeps down from the hills, disturbing the pool’s surface and erasing the image. I return to the cottage to get warmed up. I’ve packed all the wrong clothes.

The boiled kettle clicks off, and the silence that seeps into the house is disturbed by a faint knocking coming from the bedroom. I think of surly tractor boy. Don’t be ridiculous! He was rude—definitely. But he wouldn’t mean any harm, surely? I lift the rolling pin from the work top—just as a kind of prop, really. As I approach the bedroom, the noise continues: beat, beat, beat, followed by a scrabbling.

A sickle-shaped shadow flickers in the window. Sandwiched between the glass panes of the casement: a swallow. Its wings twitch uselessly within the narrow space. It senses my presence and redoubles its efforts to escape.

I have to act, or it will die. I lay the rolling pin on the windowsill, with a pang of shame for thinking ill of the young farmer. He probably hasn’t given me a second thought.

By standing on tiptoe, I can get just enough height to insert my wrist between the gap (oh, how skinny I’ve become!) and reach the tip of one wing. With the stiff feathers held gently between crossed fingers, I ease the bird out.

The soft warmth of the tiny body glows in my fist. It fixes me with its button-black eye. I feel its heart beating in my palm. That tiny heart, no bigger than a grain of rice: how many million pulses to speed it six thousand miles or more? Cape Town to Honeyholm. I take her (I’m sure she’s a her) to the front door and set her free. She skims low over the river.

I look up and see the tractor swing round the corner and bounce up the rutted lane. The young man waves. Was there, perhaps, a smile?

Next morning the sun blazes from a pure blue sky. I take my coffee out to the carved wooden bench set against the cottage wall, beside the tree. Yes, it is a crab apple; bitter fruit for sure, but in the spring, this spring, it will bring forth its brief beauty. The tree’s limbs thrust skyward, spurred and budded; ruby blossoms primed to unfold.

 I rest my back against the wall’s warm stones. I receive, with gratitude, the sun’s stored comfort.

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