Outside the hospital, the afternoon was hazy, and the road filled with fast cars and buses. When my hospital contract came for the agency, I thought the road name completely romantic. Côte-des-Neiges. The side of snows. It had been the name of a long-ago village, sitting halfway up the hillside, looking down on Montreal. It must have been where the winter snows piled thickest, I thought, finding it on a map. There was a cemetery, too, called Notre Dame des Neiges, which made my heart almost break with a cold kind of loneliness. Now, walking the road every day to the bus stop after my shift, it was the width that held my eye. So very Canadian. So much space for anyone that wanted it. If I could pick up Aberlady with my fingers, all her crow-stepped roofs and whitewashed houses, the little kirk and the ancient trees, if I could carry her here and lay her down in this wide-open road, how much room would she take up? How little. With my back to the hospital and the mountain behind, there was no horizon here and so much space.
But Aberlady was moon-far away, remote and removed. Or rather, I was. I was the one who had done the leaving, after all. Gave my notice in an insufficient letter to Dr Ballater, and shuffled off. Sold my car, bought a ticket and packed my trunk full of nursing textbooks and uniforms, too – though of course they were the wrong ones. Matron soon set me straight and ensured I had the correct hem-length.
A bus pulled up to the stop and I ran down towards it, waving to catch the driver’s attention. He waited and laughed when I stepped up into the bus.
‘Every day, I get a running nurse or two,’ he said. ‘All the pretty nurses. It’s a good route.’
I forced a half-smile and found a seat towards the back. The windows were open and, as the bus pulled away from the kerb, the air felt surprisingly cool. It was often crowded in the late afternoon, but that day there weren’t many folk on the bus. Summer holidays, perhaps. Everyone away at cottages, spending time by the lakes. Some of the nurses had been talking about cottage weekends, which sounded delightful. Canoes and campfires and hikes in the woods. Everything I might have imagined, but not yet found. Early days, I thought. There would be plenty of time.
When I’d told my parents about my Canadian job, Dad had asked if that meant I was turning down Dr Ballater.
‘Of course, she is, Stanley, and it’s no bad thing,’ Mum said. ‘He hasn’t tried anything with you, has he? Has he been pestering you?’
‘No, nothing like that. He’s been a gentleman. He’s just not … It’s not … It’s hard to explain.’
Dad cleared his throat. ‘You want an adventure,’ he said, softly.
‘I don’t know. Maybe. Yes.’
Mum didn’t return to the question after that, nor did she try to talk me out of anything. Instead, she helped me make lists of things I would need, even things I would like: novels, toffees, nylons, a pair of white sunglasses. We went into Edinburgh to go shopping and she didn’t ask me how I’d made my decision or what I was hoping to find. She bought me a book about North American wild flowers and, walking out of Woolworths, tucked her arm through mine and grinned. She even suggested we go to a café for a spot of lunch, somewhere young, she said, and modern. But I knew she’d also brought along sandwiches in her handbag and I said we should eat them in Princes Street Gardens. Walking past the gardener’s cottage, she told me about the air raid shelters erected there early in the war.
‘It’s strange to think about all that now,’ she said. ‘How dangerous everything felt and how every effort was made to make safe places for everyone.’ She squeezed my arm again, and we found a bench where we ate our lunch. I hoped that she wouldn’t speak again about Dr Ballater or ask any more questions. I didn’t want to defend him, but I couldn’t explain, either. I’d been shocked by the whole episode. Knocked for six. I decided then I wouldn’t tell anyone else about Dr Ballater. About George. I would give him that much. No more stories or questions or hypotheses. I would let him be. Like my mother, I’d keep mum.
She’d always been good at that. A cultivated quiet with no need to talk everything through. It really wasn’t necessary, was it? It was enough to be still together. Without words. Without shouting or slammed doors. All that unnecessary bluster.
I’d been good at bluster when I was twelve. Slammed the door and stepped into the rain. I only had my cardi on and that didn’t matter then. I didn’t even care. I just needed out. I’d hop on a bus and go somewhere, right? Only it was Sunday and I had no money, so no. Hitchhike, then? But I never had and, likely as not, I’d know the driver – or worse, he’d know Mum. Then it would be over. I’d be right back at that kitchen table and she still wouldn’t be saying anything. I could tell when something was up. I wasn’t stupid. And the way they were keeping the radio off and not letting me see the newspaper. It had to be about the Bomb. I knew it was. Ever since I’d read that article about Nevada and Las Vegas and Miss Atomic Bomb. And the mushroom clouds like opening umbrellas and the costumes they made girls wear in the clubs and the Dawn Bomb parties and Atomic cocktails and I got so angry and I couldn’t sleep. I tried to talk to my parents about it, but they wouldn’t listen. They didn’t want to hear. Maybe they were just as scared as me. Or more scared? They acted guilty, as if they were to blame. As if all this fear was something they made and silence was a way of keeping it down. That door-slammed afternoon, the radio had been on and Mum suddenly – fiercely – shut it off and looked at Dad with something like excitement, something like fear, and I asked if it was the Bomb or another war or what, but she wouldn’t talk. She bloody wouldn’t talk and I stormed out and slammed the door.
I crossed the road and then the bridge and headed out to the sands. The tide was far out so there would be a good walk, and I didn’t care how far I went. Wondered if I could live out there, even just for the night. Would that be possible? Not in this rain. It was easing off, but even a drizzle would make for a miserable night. It might be different if it were dry. I could stretch out under the sky and sleep on the sand. I’d see the stars, and the moon, if I was lucky, and then the larks would wake me up. They were rising now before me as I walked. Flying straight up out of the wet grass. Strange joy, as Dad would say. He always said that whenever there were larks. That’s when I heard him on the path behind me; his paced footsteps, his whistled tune.
‘Mind if I chum you to the shore?’
I didn’t say anything.
‘It’s fine,’ he said. ‘Silence is good. And this is a good place to be silent.’
But he kept whistling and quickened his pace to keep up with me. A hare leapt out and for a moment, it sat frozen on the path and I saw the yellow of its eye, the quick black circle taking in the world as it crouched with long ears, black-tipped, flattened, and then it erupted and ran. A lolloping stride escaping into the grass. In the quiet after it was gone, Dad picked up his tune, humming this time.
I didn’t mind. Really, I didn’t. It was fine that he was there. That he thought to follow me. It was fine.
Oh June, like the mountains I’m blue –
Like the pine, I am lonesome for you …
At least he wasn’t asking questions. Or being silent. I kept walking out towards the sands and he kept on with his tune. It was an old Laurel and Hardy number. Probably predated them, too, but it was their song as far as Dad was concerned. Sometimes he swapped Jane for June if he was singing when Mum was around.
… in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia
On the trail of the lonesome pine.
I hoped he just kept with the song and didn’t start with the slapstick to get a laugh. I wasn’t in a laughing mood. The wet sand was hard under my feet and the rain stopped as we walked towards the sea. Dad quickened his pace now and it felt like he was the one leading the way, which was just fine by me. I didn’t mind.
‘Thought we could go and