Stone Diaries, The - Carol Shields [114]
In this way, joined together by the dolorous stretched arms of Victoria Flett, the three of them exchanged one continent for another. They may have slept a few winks during the night. Each of them believed they lived on a fragile planet. Not one of them knew what the world was coming to.
The Orkney Islands are low-lying, green, cultivated, covered with winding roads and with sheep who picturesquely graze on sloping meadows, forming a tableau that could have been painted by a watercolorist two hundred years ago, three hundred years ago. Behind and beneath this pastoral scenery lie prehistoric ruins—villages, forts, cairns, burial chambers, and standing stones which might, or might not, be astronomical observatories. There are Iron Age remains, too, another layer. And the Norse monuments, ninth century. Also the medieval, the feudal, the monastic.
And other more contemporary additions—for superimposed upon the ancient and the bucolic are today’s small humming Orcadian factories modestly producing such specialties as Orkney cakes (delicious) or Orkney cheeses; then there are the craft enterprises, knitting for the most part (but this is sadly in decline), the tourist thrust (booming), and the always present background buzz of daily commerce and professional necessity—grocers, stationers, lawyers, clergymen, what have you.
None of this is what Victoria’s Great-aunt Daisy had expected.
Moorland, bog, heather was more what she’d had in mind. The Orkney houses lay strewn about in a dozen straggling villages or in the two main towns, Kirkwall and Stromness. Even Victoria was surprised to see the hundreds of townish houses, so solidly built, so plain. She looked at the unrevealing facades of these houses and imagined women inside, standing in front of mirrors, considering themselves, or men pulling sweaters over their heads, flattening down their hair. Hardly anyone seemed to be out and about. Of course it was early in the day. Of course there was a fierce wind blowing off the sea. Rain pelted down. Despite this, Victoria and her aunt and Lewis Roy were standing in the churchyard at Stromness reading tombstones. It was Victoria, shouting, who discovered:
A holy lyf a hapie end
The Soul to Christ doth send
Where its best To be at rest
Magnus Flett, born 1584, died 1616
For some reason this inscription made all three of them double over with laughter; it seemed Flett was a common Orkney name; Fletts came popping up everywhere, not only Magnus but Thomas Flett, Cecil Flett, Jamesina Flett, Donaldina Flett; the Flett family were the undisputed kings and queens of the cemetery.
The rain showed no sign of abating, and after a minute Lew took the two women by the arm and led them across the street to a tea shop where they sat out the storm, keenly aware of each other.
"What kind of man was your father-in-law, Mrs. Flett?" Lewis posed this question in a social voice, while spreading butter on a floury scone.
"Well, I’m not quite sure."
"But you must have some kind of impression."
"An unhappy man. Aggrieved. His wife left him, you see."
"Aha!" Teasing. "One of those old-fashioned happy families."
"His three sons took their mother’s part. They refused to see their father. They would have nothing to do with him."
"And this made him bitter?"
"It drove him back here." She swept a hand toward the window, taking in the drenched dark street, the black rain clouds. "When he was sixty-five years old. I can only think he must have been bitter."
"But you don’t know for sure."
"Actually—"
"Yes?"
"Actually, I never met my father-in-law."
"I see." Clearly he was taken aback.
"We never met, no. And I’ve always felt sorry about that. That we never met in his lifetime. I’ve always thought, well—"
"What?"
"That we might have things"—she paused—"to say to each other."
"Not many women feel that way about their fathers-in-law."
"No, I suppose not."
"Magnus Flett was my great-grandfather," Victoria put in, wanting