Veronica
LOCKET ISLAND
Dear Mrs. McCreedy,
It’s very great to see the pictures of you on those blogs. You look well and very stylish and not too cold. I hope your corns are OK and the penguins are well.
I saw some penguin biscuits in Kilmarnock stores yesterday and thought of you. I didn’t buy any, though. I haven’t got through the lovely marshmallow chocolate biscuits you left yet. I’m trying not to eat too many at once. Doug (my husband) says it won’t do my figure any favors. I know he’s right, but I do like sweet things so much.
We have been learning a new song in the church choir, lots of Lord Lord Lords and an Amen that goes on for two and a half pages. It’s very hard to keep track of.
The weather has been quite sunny here, recently, but frosty every morning with bits of snow. I call in on The Ballahays every day just to water the houseplants and check up on things like you told me to. On my way out yesterday, I saw Mr. Perkins with a wheelbarrow full of compost and said to him how it feels strange and empty without you, and he said yes, Eileen, it does, doesn’t it.
I hope you are eating well.
Yours,
Eileen
I cannot think why she bothers to send these e-mails when she has nothing of any interest to say. However, as Terry has gone to the trouble of printing it out for me, I read through the message briefly before tossing it into the wastepaper basket.
The evening is quiet and still. Mike is absent at the moment, analyzing blood, bones or feces in the lab, no doubt. Dietrich is seated at the table, shading in one of his drawings with a pencil: two penguins dancing a tango, he has informed me.
Terry has returned to the computer room. She spends longer in there than anyone, typing penguin information into databases and working on her blog. I wonder if Patrick will have read it and if he is interested in the slightest. I wonder if he has looked at the diaries.
Dietrich pushes his pens to one side and stands up with an air of purpose.
“Have you finished your drawing?” I inquire politely.
“No, not yet. But it’s my turn to cook tonight.”
He grabs a few tins from the shelf and looks at them with a doleful expression. He disappears out to the “larder” then comes back with a nondescript hunk of meat that might have been any body part from any animal.
“Should be defrosted by now,” he mutters.
“Can I be of any assistance?” I ask. Terry is the only one I have helped with domestic tasks so far.
“Well, that would be nice,” he replies, startled and pleased at my offer. We proceed to the kitchen. Standing next to him by the worktop I notice that, in addition to facial whiskers, he has many hairs sprouting all over his neck. It is rather like standing next to a bear.
“Perhaps if you could stir this for me?” He upends the greenish contents of a tin into a pan and hands me a wooden spoon.
I dutifully stir.
“Tell me, Mrs. McCreedy: Do you think Terry’s OK?” he asks out of the blue.
I am taken aback. It never occurred to me she could be otherwise. “Of course she is. I suppose you feel responsible for her happiness in some way, do you?”
“Being in my position I can’t seem to help it,” he replies.
“You’re fond of her, aren’t you?”
“Oh yes. Very much. Her and Mike, both.”
A smallish growl escapes from my throat. How could anyone possibly be fond of the ungallant Mike?
“They are a great team,” Dietrich continues, laying into the meat with a cleaver in a slightly desperate fashion. “It’s important that they’re coping all right. Eight months is a long time to be in a place like this with so little human interaction. When it all ends I am lucky that I have my wife and children to go back to. Mike has his girlfriend. But Terry? She doesn’t have that special person. And her family doesn’t really get her. She’s all about the penguins.”
“I believe you’re right. Terry would go to any lengths to ensure the future of the species. Seldom have I observed such passion and such commitment.”
Dietrich beams. “That is exactly what I think. She’s always doing extra work behind the scenes. And she’s so great with people, too—even Mike and me. There’s not many who could put up with us two for so long.” He adds: “It’s great that she’s got you for company for a while.”
“You flatter me.”
“No, I mean it.”
He pauses, cleaver in midair. “You and I are older than the others, Mrs. McCreedy, and we can see all this from a different perspective.”
A dry laugh rattles in my throat. “You’re hardly a decade older than them. Whereas I am five or six decades their senior.”
“You have the edge on me, yes,” he admits. “But I expect, like me, you find that aging brings at least one advantage, Mrs. McCreedy. Don’t you find that, as the years pass, you become less obsessed with yourself—and you care about other people more? As you get older it’s as if your capacity for love grows.”
I am silent. I have not found this to be the case at all. Quite the reverse.