White Nights Read Online Free PDF Page A

all the next day so she didn’t feel on top of things at the centre. He was glad when the days got shorter and she returned to her old self.
    Kenny liked the half-hour they had together over breakfast before she left. By the time he was washed and dressed, she had the tea made and there was the smell of toasted bread. Edith was in the shower; he could hear the water tank refilling.
    She was the manager of a care centre for old anddisabled people. He still found that hard to believe – his Edith, in charge of staff and a budget, going to meetings in Lerwick, smartly dressed with her hair tied up. She trained all the care staff in Shetland in manual handling, showing them how to move the people in their care safely. He marvelled at her strength and determination. Taxis and a bus brought old folks from all over this part of Shetland to the centre. Sometimes she talked about her clients by name and it shocked him to realize the men and women he’d known in childhood as strong, rather frightening characters were now frail, confused, incontinent. He thought, Will I come to that? Will I end my days playing bingo in the day centre? Once he had mentioned something of the sort to Edith and she’d answered tartly, ‘You will if you’re lucky! With the oil revenue fallen to nothing and the cutbacks, the centre might not be there when we need it.’ He never mentioned his fears again. His only comfort was that he expected to die before her. Women always lived longer than men. He couldn’t imagine what it must be like to live alone.
    He poured tea and put butter on the toast and she came in, dressed, her hair still wet but tied into a knot.
    ‘What are your plans for today?’ she asked.
    ‘Singling neeps,’ he said.
    She pulled a face in sympathy, understanding what boring, back-breaking work that was, hoeing out the unwanted seedlings to leave space for the turnips to grow.
    ‘Oh well,’ she said. ‘It’s a nice day for it.’
    But since yesterday evening he’d been thinking that he might get out in the boat today after all. Hedidn’t say anything to Edith. She worked so hard and he felt like a boy considering playing truant from school.
    She finished the toast on her plate, then she was away into the little bedroom, which had once been Ingirid’s room and which Edith now used as an office, to gather up her papers into her bag. He walked outside with her and kissed her before watching her drive off.
    He’d intended to do a couple of hours with the neeps before getting out the boat, but found himself making the short walk down to the beach, to the hut where he kept the outboard and his lines and pots. There was a little breeze. Easterly. He wondered for a moment if he wanted company after all, and started thinking who might be free to go out with him. Martin Williamson was a pleasant young man, but most days he put in an hour in the shop before he started working in the café at the Herring House. He stopped for a moment and in the silence heard the puffins on the headland beyond the pier. There were fewer than there’d been when he was a boy, but still enough for him to hear them chattering as he approached.
    He walked across the shingle that separated the sand from the road. It was a bit of a short-cut, but he made sure he watched his feet as he went. Once he’d ricked his ankle here and it had been painful for days. He stopped when the Herring House threw its shadow on to his path, just to see if anyone was about, but it looked empty. The gallery café opened for coffee, but not until later, and there were no cars parked outside.
    The hut stood by the side of the road, just where it joined the jetty, a couple of hundred yards furtheron. He and Lawrence had put it up and it was solid enough, though some of the corrugated-iron panels on the roof would need replacing in the next year or so. They never bothered locking it – it was used by all the Biddista men who kept a boat – and nobody much else strayed to the