‘Um, I’ve never thought about it,’ said Lorna.
‘What do they teach in schools these days?’ said Flora, grinning. ‘The unicorn. On the union flag. The lion and the unicorn. Three lions on the chest for England. A unicorn for Scotland, described in ancient texts. Of course that’s not what they saw.’
‘That’s the thing I just saw?’ said Lorna.
‘That’s the thing you just saw. Incredibly, incredibly rare.’
‘Is it lucky?’
Flora paused. ‘The myths say … well. Opinion is divided. Could be either.’
‘I don’t believe in luck,’ said Lorna.
‘I’m not sure if it matters whether you believe in it or not,’ said Flora. ‘But we’d probably better alert the coastguard and Whale Rescue anyway. A narwhal is a very special thing.’
‘Yeah, all right, fish-whisperer.’
And they refilled their glasses, put a film on and finished the leek twists, and felt, for two girls in by themselves on a Saturday night, pretty contented with their lot.
Chapter Eight
Saif normally welcomed the distraction of work after his empty weekends, but today he was having a particularly trying morning. Old Mrs Kennedy was in with her bunions. The waiting list on the mainland was over eighteen months but she could have got it done privately in a week. She owned a croft and four holiday cottages. He couldn’t explain to her that, in terms of her remaining lifespan, eighteen months represented probably quite a large percentage of it, and she really ought to spend the money.
‘Aye, och no, I don’t want to be a bother,’ she’d said.
‘But wouldn’t you be less bothering if you could walk properly, Mrs Kennedy?’
Lorna had once told him, to his considerable surprise, that his normal timbre of speaking voice could sound aggressive to the locals, particularly the older ones, who’d watched too many American films where anyone who sounded Middle-Eastern was automatically a terrorist. Even though he found this profoundly annoying, he had tried to soften his voice and follow the gentle sing-song pattern characteristic of the island speakers. His English now, in fact, was both strange and very beautiful, a wonderful mix of both accents, with a music all of its own. Lorna loved to listen to it. When he was frustrated, however, it tended to sharpen up again.
‘Aye, but you never know when that money might be needed!’
Saif blinked. What Mrs Kennedy did with her own money was, of course, absolutely none of his business. But the difference between being able to walk and not …
He shook his head and wrote her out another prescription for painkillers. She was putting weight on too which meant she’d need cholesterol checks and could possibly develop gout … Still. Next!
Straight after was Gertie James, an incomer from Surrey who’d given up a high-pressure dual-income lifestyle to come and do weaving and fire her own pottery and grow her own vegetables. Her husband had lasted about fifteen minutes, then given up and decided to rejoin the rat race. Now she was raising three completely assimilated and semi-feral island children, who were happy as clams running around muddy streams all day, knowing every single person on the island, building their own kites, speaking a mix of two tongues and eating tablet. They were no more likely to take to living back in a small Guildford semi with an au pair and after-school Mandarin, lacrosse and Kumon maths lessons than they were to fly to the moon.
‘I just feel … I just feel so …’
Saif had learned over the last few months that, in the West, going to the doctor and saying you were ‘feeling …’ and just kind of letting the sentence run out was considered a totally acceptable and viable reason for accessing health-care. This was new to him. Even before Syria had turned into a warzone, going to the doctor cost too much money for you not to be very clear that there was a distinctly pressing reason for you being there.
He didn’t deny for a second that mental health issues were real and overt and almost certainly underdiagnosed in his home countries. He had been born in Syria and raised in Beirut; the irony of his moving back to Syria after medical school for a brighter future had never once been lost on him.
But he found trying to guess the subtleties of people’s malaise a little tricky still. He was not an unempathetic doctor – not at all. There wasn’t a child who arrived scared and anxious who didn’t leave with a lollipop, a jolly plaster and the sense of being taken seriously. But in some areas, he was less tested than others, and the ‘I’ve just been feeling a bit …’ symptoms he did find tricky.
He looked up at Gertie, who, in common with more than a few of the single or divorced women on Mure, found the plight of the tall, handsome, lightly bearded doctor terribly romantic. Alas, despite the lasagnes that regularly turned up on his doorstep (he had, truly, no idea why people did this) and invitations to the town’s many social activities, he remained separate – a little distant, entirely focused on the old phone that was never far from his side. This only made him more attractive in many people’s minds. Gertie sighed.
‘I just … I just feel I’ve lost my sparkle.’
‘I do not know if the NHS does sparkle,’ said Saif. This was a joke on his part, but like many people Gertie was unclear when he was joking and when he wasn’t, and simply looked concerned.
‘I mean,’ he said, trying to look professional, ‘are you sure it isn’t just the time of year?’
This was undeniably true. The very end of March was difficult for everyone; the winter had been long and dark, but Christmas had been wonderful. There was something cosy about the depths of winter. Now the evenings were meant to be getting longer; the equinox had been and gone; surely spring should be on its way? But lambs were being born into fierce storms and wet grass, into a world that still felt cruel, when it should start to feel welcoming and new. There were daffodils, yes, and crocuses, and the hardy little snowdrops; and green was beginning to wreathe its way across the land – but when you still had to scrape the ice off your car in the morning, when you still had to run across the road in howling gales and lashing rain, when it felt as if you were holding your breath, waiting for the year to begin, even as days of your life passed you by …
Yes. He understood what the half-sentence meant. He did. It was hard.
He looked up at Gertie. ‘Spring will come,’ he said. ‘Things will get better.’
‘Do you think?’ said Gertie, her voice a little quavery. ‘The winter is just so long.’
‘The spring makes it worth it. Now, I could put you on the strong drugs, I suppose, but you have children, yes?’
Gertie nodded. Everyone knew Gertie’s children. Lorna up at the school had wanted to tell Gertie this was actually a functioning modern island, not an Iron Age settlement, but she was slightly worried that Gertie would immediately withdraw them and attempt to home-school which, as well as making for a dangerous outlook for Mure’s cats, would lower the school roll yet again. It was a constant balancing act to keep the island’s only school open, but without it the island would die, and that was that, so Lorna was going to protect it to her dying breath.
‘You want to be present for them, yes? Feel their joys and sadnesses? Because it is not like that for everyone, but for some people … these drugs, they take away the lows but they can take away the highs too. They can isolate you from the world, you know? Wrap you in cotton wool … remove you a little. For people whose pain is unendurable, of course. But can you wait, maybe for …?’
Gertie looked out of the window. That day, for what felt like the first time in so long, the sun was out again. It felt as if the world was coming alive. ‘Do you think?’
‘I do think,’ said Saif. ‘I am old-fashioned doctor. If I could prescribe, I would say get dog. Take walk every day.’