Face The Wind And Fly Read online

  Say her name. You never stop thinking of her anyway.

  —supporting Lynn and his baby daughter, Violet, meant buckling down to ‘a proper job’.

  Ibsen parked his battered old van in front of Helena Banks’s gate and turned off the wipers. The drizzle had almost stopped. The Banks’s house was on the outskirts of Hailesbank, on the eastern side, high on a hill. At the back there were spectacular panoramas of the sea, but further down the garden a high wall provided shelter from the prevailing winds and stole the views.

  ‘Come on, boy.’ His chocolate Labrador, Wellington, jumped onto the pavement, tail wagging, tongue lolling, delighted to be freed from his prison. ‘Let’s see what she’s got planned for us, eh?’

  He grabbed his tools from the back of the van and pushed open the gate. He’d been planning to give the grass its first cut of the year, but yesterday’s snow had set that back. The snow had taken everyone by surprise. It shouldn’t have been snowing – earlier in the week it had been unseasonably warm. Between jobs, he’d nipped into the garden centre outside Hailesbank to purchase a new pair of secateurs. Mistaking him in his overalls for an assistant, someone had asked him for petunias.

  ‘It’s April,’ he’d said shortly, ‘and we’re in Scotland.’ He’d left them staring at him, open-mouthed, then apologised to the girl on the till. ‘I can’t stand idiotic questions,’ he admitted, vexed at his own rudeness, ‘that’s why I squirrel myself away in people’s gardens.’

  Rain had washed away the scant snow. Cutting the grass was out, but there was a lot of tidying to do.

  ‘Morning Ibsen,’ read the note on the nail in the shed, ‘I’m out this morning. Please can you build a new compost heap today? The old one really needs to be cleared out. Maybe see you later. Thank you. Helena Banks.’

  He smiled, liking her directness. ‘That’s Mrs B for you, eh Wellington?’ The instruction scuppered his plans for tidying, but she was right – the compost did need attention. There were some planks of wood in the corner of the shed, and he found a ball of string and strolled out, whistling. He was going to enjoy his morning.

  Wellington, picking up the smell of a rabbit – or maybe a hedgehog – followed it, nose down, into the undergrowth and disappeared.

  They were both happy.

  ‘Ibsen? Ah, you’re still here.’

  Ibsen straightened up. ‘Morning, Mrs Banks. What’s the time?’

  ‘Almost one.’

  ‘Is it really? I lost track.’

  A strong breeze whipped Helena Banks’s dark auburn hair across her face and she pushed it back with slim fingers and laughed. ‘So you were enjoying yourself.’

  Ibsen thrust his spade into the ground and grinned. ‘Guess I must have been.’

  ‘Nearly finished?’

  ‘Just about to tidy up. Want to see?’

  She peered round him. ‘Looks very neat. Sorry about the lawn, maybe it’ll be drier by next week. Time for a coffee?’

  ‘Thanks. Maybe a quick one.’

  Ten minutes later, Ibsen had kicked off his boots and washed his hands, and was seated at the large scrubbed pine table in Helena Banks’s homely kitchen.

  ‘That smells terrific.’

  ‘There’s some soup, if you prefer?’

  ‘Coffee will do me fine, honestly.’

  Helena filled two mugs, pulled out a chair and sat down to join him. ‘Have a biscuit at least. Alice baked yesterday.’

  ‘I never could resist your daughter’s baking.’ Ibsen picked up a macademia and white chocolate cookie the size of his fist and bit into it with relish.

  ‘What do you think of this wind farm, then? We’re a little worried we’ll see the turbines.’

  ‘Wind farm? What wind farm?’

  ‘Oh, hadn’t you heard? The planning application was in the paper a few days ago. They’re building it on top of Summerfield Law.’

  Ibsen stopped chewing. His hyacinth-blue eyes shaded to ink as they narrowed into slits. ‘What?’

  ‘It’s far enough away, of course, and anyway, David and I are firm supporters of renewable energy, but—’

  Ibsen laid down the cookie and pushed back his chair. ‘I’d better go.’

  ‘Ibsen? You’ve hardly touched your coffee. And what about Alice’s—?’

  ‘I’ll be back on Monday as usual. Thanks Mrs B.’

  He pulled on his boots, picked up his tools, and strode round the house to his van.

  A wind farm? On Summerfield Law?

  Not if I can stop it.

  The climb to the top of Summerfield Law was not a long one, but it was steep. The track was muddy and uneven, and the grassy verges turned to bracken and heather as it rose to more than a thousand feet. Ibsen started briskly, then instead of slowing as he gained height, took the steepest part of the climb almost at a run, pushing himself to go faster and faster so that he arrived at the summit breathless but invigorated. Wellington bounded ahead, covering twice as much ground as he ran a hundred yards forward, then doubled back to check that his master was still on course for the top.

  The last few hundred yards wound through a Sitka plantation, a dark, ugly wood that had been planted in the Sixties for commercial timber. If the wind farm went ahead, these trees would probably be felled, which would be one good outcome at least. Ibsen abhorred the stiff, close-planted trees, for all the world like serried ranks of foreign soldiers. This wasn’t wildlife, it was nature on an industrial scale. The path here became narrower and very steep but a wooden stile across a dry stone wall marked the end of the plantation and the beginning of the rough moorland at the top of the Law. Stone and earth made way for moss and heather, and where small songbirds had flitted shyly in the branches, the clear expanse of land became a hunting ground for kestrels and buzzards and sparrowhawks.

  At the top, Ibsen sank onto a flat boulder. Summerfield Law was the highest point in this part of the county and the climb was worth the effort. The Firth of Forth made a dark blue slash across the canvas of grass and moor and hill spread out in front of him. He could just glimpse the tiny white triangular sails of a flotilla of yachts, scudding in the wind way out on the deep waters. His stomach knotted. They can’t build a wind farm here. It would be utter sacrilege.

  A figure emerged from the woods into a puddle of sunshine. A woman. A walker, by the looks of her – properly clad. She looked tiny, a couple of hundred feet beneath him, a pinprick in the landscape.

  As she neared him, he saw that it wasn’t just an illusion, she actually was small, and she was attacking the hill with energy and a step so light she was almost dancing. Nice.

  He called, ‘There’s room for two on this rock,’ and patted the space beside him invitingly.

  The woman stopped a few feet below him and looked up, frowning. Her eyes were like sloes, dark and shiny, and her hair was cropped so short that it barely ruffled in the wind.

  ‘I don’t bite. Neither does Wellington, I promise you.’ Ibsen’s hair was fanning out behind him, the stiff breeze tugging at the rubber band that held his ponytail in place. ‘I’ve got coffee, by the way.’ He patted his shoulder bag, which still had his flask in it, untouched.

  The woman’s smile transformed her face. The small frown – concentration? irritation? – vanished and she looked eighteen, though the spray of fine lines that trailed from the corners of her eyes marked her as older.

  ‘Is that a bribe?’

  ‘It’s an offer.’

  She clambered the last few yards and sat down beside him. ‘Hi.’

  ‘I don’t have milk. Sorry.’ He filled the top of his vacuum flask with steaming coffee and handed it to her. ‘But there again, I don’t have germs either.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  He shrugged. ‘I’m fit as a fiddle, always have been.’

  She accepted the cup. ‘Well in that case, Mr Germinator, your tee shirt is lying.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  She laughed and looked down. The bottle-green tee shirt he’d pulled on
that morning bore the legend The Germinator! accompanied by a child’s drawing of a cheerful plant in a pot.

  ‘Aha. Not germs. Germination. I’m a gardener. Ibsen Brown, nice to meet you.’

  ‘Unusual.’

  He was conscious of the warmth of her thigh, pressed close against his as they perched together on the small rock. He groaned. ‘No wisecracks, please. I’ve had a lifetime of ribbing. My father is self educated, and passionate about reading. And if you think Ibsen is an odd name, spare a thought for my sister.’

  ‘Hedda?’

  ‘Good guess. Most people have no idea who Ibsen was – but no, she’s called Cassiopeia.’

  ‘Beautiful but arrogant?’

  ‘You are well educated. Actually, she was named after the star constellation, not the Greek goddess.’ Wellington put an insistent nose in his lap and he fondled the dog’s silky ears. ‘We call her Cassie.’

  ‘That’s a relief. Ibsen’s good, though. I like Ibsen.’

  He fumbled in his pocket and pulled out an old tennis ball. ‘Here boy, fetch!’ His arm arced back and he threw the ball as far as he could across the moor. Wellington shot off, a blur of gleaming brown fur. ‘Do you have a name?’

  ‘I guess so.’

  Ibsen looked down at her. Was she being funny?

  She was smiling. ‘Kate. Kate Courtenay.’

  ‘Nice to meet you, Kate.’ He held out his hand. After a second she transferred the coffee to her left hand and took his. She was small-boned, like a bird. A rush of sweetness filled him, taking him by surprise.

  She withdrew her hand and returned the empty cup. ‘Great coffee. Thanks.’

  ‘You’re welcome.’

  They sat for a few minutes in a companionable silence. Ibsen broke it first. ‘Spectacular, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes. Yes it is.’

  ‘Did you know they’re planning to put a wind farm up here?’

  There was a few seconds’ silence, then she said, ‘Really?’

  ‘Nowhere’s sacred any more, is it?’

  ‘Sacred? You mean—’

  He gestured at the panorama. ‘People like to come here, walk their dogs, enjoy the peace and quiet.’

  ‘I don’t think wind turbines are particularly noisy these days.’

  ‘They’re hardly likely to blend into the landscape though, are they?’

  ‘I think they’re only planning a few.’ Kate stood up abruptly. ‘Thanks for the coffee. I’d better get going.’

  She started to pick her way down the stony path.

  Was it something he said?

  ‘Bye, Kate Courtenay,’ he called at the retreating back, the odd feeling of contentment replaced by something more forlorn.

  She turned to look at him. The sloe eyes seemed to have lost their sparkle. Or was it just a trick of the light? ‘Goodbye, Ibsen Brown.’

  She turned her back and raised one arm in farewell. In a minute she was tinier than ever, just a dark speck on the heather.

  Chapter Four

  When Kate was just nine she entered a competition to design and build a bridge from a set of specified objects – pipe cleaners, wooden skewers, string, paper clips, no more than four biro pens and a maximum of four bulldog clips. The bridge was to be judged for the size of its span, the weight it could bear without collapsing and its aesthetic appeal (‘how nice it looks’, the competition blurb said). The competition, part of a local Science Festival, was to take place in a big hall in Exeter and competitors had an hour to complete their bridge. Kate spent a month practising. Every morning when she woke up, she would draw another design, every afternoon when she got home from school, she tried to build it. She was obsessed, and utterly determined to win. On the day, she was the only girl to take part, which only increased her doggedness.

  Her bridge was good. It was very good. In her own eyes it was certainly the best – but a boy won.

  ‘Mine was loads better!’ she wailed to her father, who’d only been able to look on helplessly as she came an honourable second.

  ‘His was a little bigger, darling.’

  ‘But it looked rubbish.’

  ‘Sadly, the judges didn’t think so. Come on love, let’s go and get an ice cream and celebrate. You did come second!’

  Later, she wondered if the judges had assumed that her father had designed the bridge and penalised her for it. He was a professor of engineering and she found everything he did beautiful. That bridge had been all her own work, though, and the unfairness of the decision had been devastating. She was upset and bitter for months, but the episode taught her two things: first, that as a girl in a male-dominated field, you need to try not just harder, but ten times harder than the boys in order to succeed – and second, that she did not like losing. These lessons had stayed with her over the years and coloured her entire career.

  Now, looking at the chart Jack Bailey was spreading out in front of her, she knew she had to call on those lessons yet again.

  ‘We need to put the access road up to the wind farm here.’ Jack pointed at a line he’d drawn.

  Jack had been in charge of the Summerfield project and now he was her assistant. If he harboured resentment, then he might challenge her authority. Besides, he didn’t know the area as she did. One glance at the map was enough to tell Kate his proposed route wouldn’t work. ‘We can’t, Jack.’

  ‘Can’t? It’s the obvious place.’

  ‘I know. But that will drive right through a small patch of ancient oak wood and the locals won’t stand for it.’

  ‘Then we need to do some PR work with the locals and get it sorted.’

  ‘Sorry. No. I did look at that early on. That’s why I drew the access the other way, round the back of Summerfield Boggs.’

  ‘But it’ll almost double the cost,’ Jack protested.

  He didn’t like having to answer to her, she could see that. She’d have to be tactful, but it was important to stamp her authority on this. She understood now why Mark wanted her to head up the job – making the right choices now would be much easier and more cost-effective in the long run, and local knowledge would certainly help. She held firm. ‘I know. But trust me, Jack, it’s going to be the only way. Once we go into the consultation stage we’ll need to keep the community on side as much as possible, it’s going to be hard enough to win some of them round as it is.’

  She refrained from saying, That’s why I’m project-managing and you’re not, but she knew from Jack’s ill-concealed scowl that he wasn’t happy. She moved the discussion on. ‘How are the land lease negotiations coming on?’

  ‘The two farmers whose land we need for the turbines are happy. They’re going to make shedloads of money, so they should be. The Forgie House Trust might be a stumbling block though. The access road will need to pass the House whichever route we take further up.’

  ‘Keep at it, Jack, you’re doing a great job.’ Kate doubted that the praise would mollify him, but cumulative compliments might help over the long haul. ‘Have you got any meetings set up yet? We’ll need to start with the Community Council, of course, and the heritage and environment bodies. Plus, we’ll have to put some real thought into how we tackle things locally if we’re going to avoid confrontation.’

  Jack consulted his notes. ‘There’s a meeting with Forgie and Summerfield Community Council in the diary. I’ve heard that someone’s already organising a petition against the project, but there’s not much we can do about that.’

  ‘No. All we can do is give the positive arguments for this wind farm and be prepared to answer questions as honestly as we can. And Jack—’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Leave out the direct access route on the plans, will you?’

  Kate was so immersed in Summerfield that she got home late.

  ‘Did you remember my burgers?’ Ninian demanded as soon as she got through the door.

  She dropped her bulging briefcase on the kitchen floor, tired. The start of a project was the most demanding stage – all builds had disa
sters and needed firefighting, but thinking the task through properly at the beginning made life much easier. ‘I forgot to go to the supermarket,’ she confessed.

  ‘Mu-um!’

  ‘It’s no big deal, Ninian, there’s enough food in the house for a month.’

  ‘I was looking forward to my burgers,’ Ninian said, glowering.

  ‘Really Ninian! There’s pasta and rice and plenty of basics like cheese and eggs. And the freezer’s well enough stocked to see us through a siege.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘And stop sounding like a five-year-old. We can manage for one night.’ She filled a saucepan with water and stuck it on the stove. ‘Where’s your father?’

  Ninian shrugged. ‘I dunno.’

  Kate glanced over at the kitchen clock. It was seven thirty. ‘Is he out?’

  ‘I dunno.’

  The wall calendar in the kitchen doubled as the family engagement diary. Kate studied it. ‘There’s nothing in for tonight. Did he go out after you came home from school?’

  ‘I dunno, Mum, I told you.’ Ninian jerked open the fridge door angrily and muttered, ‘He’s been acting weirdly recently.’

  ‘What? Stop mumbling, Ninian. What did you say?’ What was wrong with him?

  Ninian slammed the fridge door shut. ‘There’s no bloody cheese. I said he’s been acting weirdly. Hadn’t you noticed?’

  ‘Don’t swear. And no, I hadn’t noticed. What do you mean, weirdly?’

  The water was bubbling. She opened the spaghetti jar and shoved a couple of handfuls into the saucepan. She’d no real idea of how much to cook, hopefully she’d got it about right.

  There was a slam of a door and Andrew called, ‘Hi! I’m home! Sorry I’m so late.’

  ‘We’re in here.’

  Andrew appeared at the kitchen door, casual in rust-coloured chinos and a soft white shirt, open at the neck.

  ‘Where’ve you been?’

  ‘In Edinburgh. I had a meeting with my agent, he’s up from London. Didn’t I tell you?’

  ‘No, you didn’t. Or Ninian. The poor boy’s been wondering where you were.’

  He was unruffled. ‘Sorry. I thought I’d said. Anyway, I brought you some flowers to make up for it.’