He went out into the gale with Father Heslop and strolled home with him. Or rather they beat up against the wind together, staggering a few steps forward at a time, and shouting remarks to each other above the noise of their flapping garments. Grant had the advantage of his companion in that he wore no hat, but Father Heslop was not only lower on the ground but had a figure ideally streamlined for life in a gale. He had no angles anywhere.
It was good to go in from the blast to a warm turf fire and silence.
‘Morag!’ called Father Heslop, into the further end of the house, ‘Some tea for me and my friend here. And a scone maybe, like a good girl.’
But Morag had not baked, any more than Katie-Ann had. They were given Marie biscuits, a little soft in the island dampness. But the tea was wonderful.
Because he knew that he was an object of curiosity to Father Heslop, as he was to everyone on the island, he said that he had been fishing with relations in Scotland, but had to stop owing to a bad shoulder. And because he had been bitten with the idea of the Islands, and more especially with the Singing Sands on Cladda, he had taken the chance of coming to see them; a chance he might never have presented to him again. He supposed that Father Heslop was well acquainted with the sands?
Oh, yes, of course Father Heslop knew the sands. He had been fifteen years on the island. They were on the west side of the island, facing the Atlantic. It was no distance across the island. Grant could walk there this afternoon.
‘I would rather wait for fine weather. It would be better to see them in sunlight, wouldn’t it?’
‘At this time of year you might wait for weeks before you’d see them in sunlight.’
‘I thought spring came early to the Islands?’
‘Oh, I think, myself, that’s just an idea of the people who write books about them. This is my sixteenth spring on Cladda, and I have yet to catch one here before its time. The spring’s an Islander too,’ he added with a little smile.