hem of my skirt over my knees. The interviewer apologized for misplacing my details. There had been problems with the administration. Might I be able to send a fresh copy early next week?
‘Of course, of course. Pas de problème.’
He asked about my experience and my training, nodding as I mentioned the University of Edinburgh.
‘That is one of the reasons why we are here. The best programme in Europe, it is. We’re lucky to be able to scoop up girls like you.’
‘Are there no appropriate Canadian nurses?’
‘Yes, yes, of course. Still, the Edinburgh degree programme is cutting edge, and there’s a greater chance of real bilingualism here than, say, in Edmonton. Your French is good, I assume?’
‘Bien sûr.’
‘The proximity to France, no doubt. And the Auld Alliance, too, I should think. Now then, Church of Scotland?’
‘Yes. Does that matter?’
‘No, it isn’t crucial. For the teachers, yes, with board regulations, but in the hospital, it can still help. Montreal is a city of Presbyterian expats, at least on the anglophone side.’
‘Quite.’
‘So, not the north? No grand polar adventure for you? Is it Montreal you want?’
‘Yes. Yes, I suppose it is.’
His assistant spoke out in a clear, crisp voice.
‘You will do nicely.’
‘Thank you,’ I said, but she kept her face set and slid an envelope across the table towards me.
‘Here is a packet of information from the agency. In it, you will find a copy of the contract, details about immigration, and about Montreal as an international city. And, naturally, about the agency’s involvement with your career. There are forms to finalize as well. You will find it all quite self-explanatory. If you have any questions, there are telephone numbers for our representatives in London.’ She wrote a note next to my name, glanced at her watch, and looked past me towards the doors. All settled.
‘Thank you,’ I said again. The interviewer stood to shake my hand.
‘You’re welcome. Enjoy Canada.’
Outside, the rain had stopped, and the afternoon was brash with daylight. I stepped away from the shadow of the hotel and onto the still-wet pavement. Pigeons, hundreds of pigeons clattered up before me, a broad arc of flight over the gardens and, above the castle, the sky was slashed open into gold, bright gold. All those wings and gold, too. My breath felt sharp and new, and, away to the west, the pavements shone.
No one, it seems, is born just once.
MY MUM TOLD STORIES WHENEVER WE TRAVELLED. We’d be hitchhiking out from the camp in the cab of some truck, headed to Ottawa, or Montreal, and I’d sit up on Felicity’s blue-jeaned knees, her long hair tickling my face as I leaned back into her skinny chest and all the way she’d make the driver laugh with her tall tales and stories, her toothy laughing smile. Sandy Gibb the Glass Man, astronauts at Expo and swimming pregnant in a moonlit lake. She could make a story of anything. Maybe I should have told her about this trip. I told the gallery that I needed time away to sort through my grandmother’s things. They filed that under ‘personal reasons’ and then reasonably told me to take as much time as I needed. I told Mateo that I would need to organize the details of her estate, and he said that he understood. I told myself I’d be cleaning the bungalow. Before I left Ottawa, I’d imagined lots of cleaning. All those large windows and the wooden floors, too. Linoleum tiles in the kitchen. Then the bath to scour, old pots to scrub, and Persian carpets to shake out in the sunshine. It seemed like therapeutic work. Cleansing. Solitary.
Mateo said once that it was my aloneness that first caught him. I wondered if he meant loneliness, if he was mistranslating, but he said no, he meant aloneness. He said it was intriguing.
Maybe it was living at the camp with Felicity. There was lots of time then to be alone. In the night when she was at the birthing house. Or in the afternoon, when she opened her books and settled down to work at the small table in our cabin and she liked to have the space to herself, so she sent me outside. In the summer, there were always lots of children to play with, but as soon as the nights got too cold for tents, the field would empty and I’d be alone again.
When I was a little older, around nine or ten, Felicity started to take me with her to births, particularly when there were small children. She had me tell them stories and invent games to keep them entertained and distracted. Rika thought it best for children to keep away from a birth, but she never made rules, only suggestions. I’d heard Rika talking about this with Felicity one afternoon, and because they were talking about children, I listened.
‘What about when a mum wants them there?’ Felicity asked. ‘Should we come up with some pretence to get them outside anyway?’
‘No. Always only tell the truth. She needs to go so far into herself to open for the baby, and lies aren’t going to help that.’
‘And neither are kids in the room?’
Rika laughed. ‘You got it, babe. It can be hard to open for one baby when you are listening to another one prattle.’
I lay above them on the top bunk with my National Geographic. They probably forgot I was there, but it didn’t matter. They never kept anything from me. I’d heard everything, all the complications and contradictions. I learned how things can be difficult when babies come and how sometimes they don’t. How it’s possible to hope for two things at once. Release. Safety. Or time and space. I looked up from my magazine and let my eyes trace the lines on the river maps pinned to the wall. Blue ink meant water, and in this neck of the woods, the names were beautiful. The Ottawa, the Picanoc, the Gatineau, La Pêche.
‘If she really wants them close, then make space by all means. But often she only thinks she wants them so that she can keep an eye on them. So, we give the kids a safe, cared-for space away from her, and likely she’ll choose to be quiet and alone.’ Rika was always teaching like this and Felicity wanted to learn. She’d come to the camp pregnant, and after I was born, she decided to stay and help out.
I tried to explain all this – the work, the help, the study, and Rika – to Mateo in our early days, but he was more interested in my stories of long days spent alone in the woods, of climbing trees and swimming naked and summer nights and winter afternoons spent in snowshoes out on the ice. I told him how I lay down flat on my back on the snowy lake and imagined the cold depth of the water hidden beneath me, the hollow sky above me. I told him that lying there alone, I felt contained like a coin in my own pocket and perfectly happy.
On my own, the travel felt long. I arrived in Edinburgh late in the evening and found the hotel, just as Mateo had suggested. In the morning, the streets were wet, and through the window in the hotel’s breakfast room, I watched tourists with umbrellas, golf bags and suitcases pass by on their way to the trains. Pigeons huddled on the damp rooftops, and I drank strong tea, thinking about the house.
It sits away from the village and you can see the sea from the house, but not the sands. For the sands, you need to cross a footbridge and walk out past the flat lands, the marshlands and scrub trees. You pass through places where the way is lined by barbed-wire fencing, keeping the sheep in and the dogs out, and then places where the path is only a trace through open landscape. It is a bit of a walk to get to the beach, but a good walk.
Closer to the house, the shore is thick with black silt washed down from farmland nearby. A small stream cuts through the mud, a snaking path for the running tide. The bay is wide, open like a bowl, but the sea here is narrow, a silver