‘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.
Below us, in the little graveyard, a new bench has been placed alongside the memorial to the Mackenzie-Grant family. On it is carved a dedication to Lady Helen and the words I chose from my favourite Gaelic blessing: Deep peace of the shining stars to you. At last her name is remembered there, beside her beloved son’s, even if neither of them lie beneath the nodding heads of the cotton grass.
Out on the water, Davy will be setting off in the Bonnie Stuart to check his creels. If we’re lucky there’ll be squatties for our supper tonight.
We reach the old bothy and I set Daisy down thankfully, out of breath with the effort of the climb. As I release her from the carrier I say, ‘Soon you’ll be too big for this. You’ll have to walk on your own two feet because your baby will be in the carrier.’
‘My baby,’ she says, pointing a stubby finger at my stomach. Then she potters off to pick some wildflowers from among the stones of the fallen walls.
I lift my face to the sunshine and watch as a skylark rises from the gorse above us, soaring into the blue. Its song makes me think of Davy Laverock, who kept his secret for all those years. A secret within a secret, protecting my mum. It was his way of repaying her kindness to him and Stuart, part of the natural cycle of give and take that makes up life within a tight-knit community.
A wind-scudded cloud crosses the face of the sun, obscuring it for a few seconds. And there it is again, that trick of the light that brings the ghost ships out on the loch. I picture Alec Mackenzie-Grant, and Ruaridh Gordon, and Hal Gustavsen, and Johnny, Matthew and Jamie Carmichael, and the many other young men who gave their lives to the war. I’m glad that they all knew this place, the hidden lochan covered in white lilies in the hills above Loch Ewe.