The Skylark's Secret(90)
Once Mr Clelland had gone through the legalities of Lady Helen’s bequest with me, he’d then shuffled through his pile of papers and turned his attention to Mum’s will. She’d left Keeper’s Cottage to me, of course. But what I didn’t know was that she’d put almost all of her monthly allowance from the trust into her post office savings account, preferring to live simply and quietly as her parents had done before her on the little croft. She’d sent me a small allowance when I was studying in London, and I imagine she might have used her savings to pay the fees for me to attend stage school if I hadn’t won a full scholarship. But she’d always preferred to let me stand on my own two feet, proving to myself and to the world that I could make my own success, and all the while the money she’d saved had been accumulating quietly in the background.
I smile at Davy as he joins the other musicians on the stage, picking up his guitar. He has a new part-time job here now as one of the teachers when he’s not out on the boat. Elspeth and I will work together running the administrative side of the centre, sharing the job and our childcare. She has little Katie now, Jack’s sister, and Daisy loves spending her days with them.
I caress the gentle swell of my own belly as Davy begins to play ‘The Eriskay Love Lilt’. It’s still our secret, but I’ve no doubt that before too many more weeks have passed it will be general knowledge about these parts that Daisy Gordon is going to have her own wee brother or sister by the time the heather turns the hills purple again in the summer. My money’s on Bridie Macdonald being the first to know.
As he sings the verse, he searches for me in the audience and looks straight into my eyes.
‘Thou art the music of my heart,
Harp of joy, o cruit mo chruid,
Moon of guidance by night,
Strength and light thou art to me.’
He’s the one who helped me come up with the idea for the centre. We’ve taken out a long lease on the house so that instead of it being shut up most of the year and only used for the occasional shooting party, it’s become a focal point of the community, open to all. There’ll be concerts and festivals and residential retreats on offer. And there’ll be music lessons for local children, as well as the toddler’s music and movement group that Elspeth and I will continue to run. We have plans to install a recording studio, too, so that the traditional songs can be preserved for posterity.
Tonight, the windows of Ardtuath House no longer look like blank, dead eyes staring out at the loch, and the oppressive atmosphere of sadness and fear that used to linger in these rooms has been exorcised. Light spills on to the lawn, pushing back the shadows, and music floats on the air, bringing the night to life. Davy once said that Keeper’s Cottage had always been filled with song and good cheer, and that’s another way that Flora’s spirit has finally been allowed to inhabit the house where she’d once dreamed of living as Alec’s wife. Although that dream was destined never to come true, perhaps Fate has a funny way of making sure things work out in the end.
Once the evening is over and the new centre has been well and truly launched, I walk from room to room, switching off lights as I go. I linger in the library and trace my fingers along the edge of the mantelpiece above the fireplace.
While I’m standing there, Davy comes into the room. ‘There you are,’ he says, wrapping his arms around me. ‘What are you thinking about? You look so far away.’
‘I’m thinking of Flora and Alec spending an evening here together, and I wish that life had been different for us all,’ I reply. ‘I wish that he’d survived the war and that they’d been able to marry. I wish I’d known my dad. I wish that Mum had had him by her side instead of living her life alone for so many years. I wish your mum and Stuart were alive. And I wish they could all be here now to see this and share it with us.’
He nods and kisses my hair. ‘But you know, Lexie, in your way, you’ve made sure they live on by filling this place with the music that was the soundtrack to their world. You’ve taken all that loss and turned it into something that’s going to benefit so many more people. If things had been different, you might never have found your own song to sing. That, above all, was what Flora wanted for you.’
I smile and turn to kiss him. ‘We’ll keep her songs alive and pass them on from generation to generation. We’ll keep all their songs alive.’ I’m thankful that he and I have had the luxury of time to sort out ourselves and our relationship, a luxury that Alec and Flora never had. I’m thankful to have found him. And I’m thankful that we have each other and the music in our souls.
I turn off the last of the lights and then we leave, closing the heavy front door behind us and turning the key in the lock before we make our way back along the path beneath the pines to Keeper’s Cottage. I glance back over my shoulder at the house just before its face is obscured by the trees. And, even though the windows are darkened again, it seems to me that Ardtuath House has awakened from its long sleep and is ready to live and breathe once more.
The next day, I settle Daisy into her carrier and hoist it on to my back. Then we climb the hill to the lochan where the white lilies grow, singing as we go. As we cross the slope above Ardtuath House, the strains of a fiddle float from an open window, wafted towards us by the breeze from the loch. The notes meld naturally with the sighing of the wind in the pine branches, while the fluting calls of the larks on the hill add their own harmony over the melody.