Page 19 of Beautiful Ugly
“Who do you think it is? What other eejit would be traipsing through the woods in the dark to knock on your door? It’s Sandy! We said seven o’clock, and it’s already five past. If we’re late and the dinner is ruined I’ll never hear the end of it.”
I completely forgot. I’ve been forgetting a lot of things lately, and brain fog is becoming a permanent weather warning in my daily forecast. I’m just so tired all of the time I can’t seem to function at full speed.
“Sorry,” I say, unbolting the wooden door. “I lost track of the—”
“Time? Yes, this island will do that to you,” she replies, looking over my shoulder and peering into the cabin. “I haven’t clapped eyes on the inside of this place for a wee while, nice to see it restored to its former glory. You’ve done a grand job cleaning it up.”
“I didn’t—”
“Did you not hear me? We’re late. Are you ready?”
I grab my jacket. “As I’ll ever be. Sorry, I should have checked, is it okay to bring my dog? I feel strange leaving him in an unfamiliar place so soon.”
“Of course, the more the merrier! We love dogs. Anything you can’t stomach you can feed him under the table. You’ll understand once you’ve tasted my sister’s cooking.”
We step out of the cabin and everything is black. The tall trees, the night sky, the forest floor. It all looks the same to me in every direction, but Sandy has a torch and clearly knows the way. We walk in silence and I try to think of something to say. It’s so quiet.Tooquiet.
“I never hear birds in the forest.”
“You won’t hear birds anywhere on the island. There aren’t any,” she replies.
“What? Is that true?”
“It would be an uncanny thing for me to lie about.”
“But... why? How is that even possible?”
“I’m no bird expert, and it all happened long before my time, but birds were banned to protect the trees.”
“How can youbanbirds? Surely they just fly back.”
“In 1888 there was a terrible famine on the island. Almost all of the crops failed, not unlike the potato famine in Ireland a few years earlier. Nobody could understand what caused it, but then the islanders noticed that the redwoods were dying too. The bark on these giant trees was peeling away and huge branches snapped off like broken twigs. Trees talk to each other, did you know that? Through their roots they can send messages or warnings, and the islanders thought that something terrible happening to the trees had somehow caused the crops to fail.
“They noticed something in the redwoods they hadn’t seen before: woodpeckers native to the Scottish Hebrides. Hundredsof them had made their nests in the branches and holes in the trunks. Those holes left the trees vulnerable to disease, and some redwoods started dying. The islanders were hungry and frightened, so the men on the island did what men always do when they are afraid, and started killing the things that scared them. Not everyone knows the difference between a woodpecker and other birds, and I doubt everyone had twenty-twenty vision back in the 1880s. Soon all birds were getting shot, regardless of what they were, but, when they were all dead, the trees recovered and the crops started to grow again. Problem solved. The next season new birds came to the island and they were killed too. Mother nature has a way of warning her children, and somehow the birds learned not to come back. There hasn’t been a famine since.”
“Or any birds?”
She shakes her head. “I’ve lived on Amberly all my life, for over sixty years, and I’ve never seen so much as a sparrow. Seagulls sometimes follow the ferry when it leaves the mainland, but they always turn back before it gets to Amberly. I don’t know how they know, but they know. So we don’t have any birds but we do havethousandsof these precious, beautiful, life-giving trees.”
“I can’t get my head around it—an island with no birds.”
“The trees take care of us and we take care of them,” Sandy says.
“But—”
“But nothing. It is what it is. Besides, I think birds might be smarter than people. They’re certainly more loyal. Did you know that ninety percent of bird species have the same partner for life? Not like humans. And, unlike people, birds know when they’re not welcome and when to stay away.”
SMALL CROWD
Island life is stranger than I imagined. So are the people I’ve met so far. But maybe this level of isolation does that to a person? There are no phones, no internet, no social media, no news apps, no cinemas, no museums, no art galleries... being this cut off from society and culture must have an impact. Either way, at least they seem friendly enough. Sort of. I can’t think of many people who would invite a stranger to dinner in this day and age; it was a kind thing for Sandy to do. Maybe I can learn to live without birds.
Sandy tells me to “hop in the back” of the truck just like earlier, so I do, with Columbo sitting by my side. I stare out of the window as we head off, but it’s too dark to see anything except the ghostly silhouettes of trees whizzing past. There are no streetlights, or signs, only the same narrow winding road dimly illuminated by the truck’s headlamps. Sandy grips the steering wheel and I notice that she is wearing a very distinctive ring on her right hand. The intricate design incorporates a silver thistle, and I’ve never seen anything like it before. I look back at the road and start to feel a little carsick when we take another bend at breakneck speed, so it’s a relief when Sandy hits the brakes.
“Here we are, the House on the Hill,” she says, sounding cheerful again. “I was born in this house and my family were the sort of folk filled with kindness but lacking in imagination. The house is on a hill, so that’s what they called it.”
I climb out of the truck and am surprised by what I see. The “house” with its gray stone walls covered in ivy is enormous, by far the biggest I’ve seen on the island. It should have been called the Big House on the Hill. And it’s more than just a house. There are stone turrets on either side of the double-fronted facade, making it look like a mini castle. With neat, formal flower beds lining a path to the entrance it’s a little intimidating.
“Not what you were expecting?” Sandy asks with a smile.