Air Ambulance by Jean S. Macleod Read Free Book Online

confer with the captain, and after several minutes Ronald Gowrie came down from the plane. He did not look up as Blair walked towards him.
    “Can I do anything to help?” Blair asked.
    “We can manage, thanks all the same.”
    The reply was just short of being surly, but Alison felt that she could excuse Ronald. This unexpected contact with Blair of Heimra, which he had been trying so assiduously to avoid, must have brought him close to the tragedy of his former love with all its attendant heartache, and she wondered if Blair knew.
    Then, as Andrew came up with the red-bearded man in tow, she suddenly realized that the child could be Margot’s son.
    The small, limping figure dragging his foot behind him blurred before her eyes for an instant. Was it possible? Ronald Gowrie had said that Margot and Gavin had only been married for three short months, but the child could have been born after his father’s death. And there had been an accident. Gavin Blair had died as the result of an accident.
    “Will she no’ go?” the red-bearded man asked when Ronald appeared at the cabin door for a second time. “I never did think much o’ puttin’ a lump o’ metal into the sky an’ expectin’ it to stay up,” he reflected, sucking at his pipe as he surveyed the stationary Heron from a safe distance. “You’d be far better with a boat and a sail, I’m thinking.” He peered shortsightedly at Ronald as the Heron’s exasperated Captain turned to look at him. “But I know you!” he exclaimed. “You’re Margot Gowrie’s son. Her second son. What brings you back to Heimra in a contraption like this?” He nodded towards the Heron.
    “An emergency,” Ronald said. “Nothing more. It won’t take long to sort this out,” he added, turning to Alison. “If you’ll give me half an hour, Sandy,” he promised his critic, “I’ll let you see it fly.”
    “So you know what’s wrong with it?” the old sailor mused. “Ay, we’re li vin’ in great times, they say! Flyin’ boats an’ atom bombs an’ all the rest o’ it but men aren’t a lot different when you get down to the bottom o’ it all. They still kill and destroy, an’ hate an’ love, I’m thinking—just as they always did an’ always will do! Ye can’t change human nature, even if you think you’ve changed the world!”
    Andrew tugged at Fergus Blair’s hand.
    “Please, if the plane won’t go, could we take Alison to Heimra Beag?” he asked.
    Blair made a brief gesture of dissent.
    “There wouldn’t be time, Andy,” he pointed out. “The plane is going off again in half an hour. But we could ask her to have a cup of coffee with us at the inn, seeing that we can’t do very much to help with the Heron.”
    Alison supposed that it would be the kindest thing for her to accept. Ronald Gowrie would not join them. He would work on the plane as swiftly as he could, hoping that he and Ginger could put right the small defect as quickly as possible, and he would work best without them there.
    “Is it far to the inn?” she asked.
    “Only across the mackar .”
    She saw Blair glance at the state of the tide as they walked away.
    “You’ll no’ be too long?” Sandy asked uneasily. “It’ll be slack water in half an hour.”
    “I won’t keep you waiting, Sandy,” Blair promised.
    “If you’d rather get away at once,” Alison offered, “I shall understand. I know the tides are difficult between the islands.”
    Fergus Blair raised questioning eyebrows.
    “You’ve been on Heimra before—apart from the ambulance run?” he asked.
    “No.” She shook her head. “The pilot told me about Coirestruan.”
    “I remember him vaguely,” Blair said. “He’s changed a lot. There were two Gowrie boys. My brother knew them better than I did. He was, by right, Blair of Heimra. The name is only a courtesy as far as I am concerned. Andrew is his son.”
    Then she had been right, Alison thought. Poor, crippled little Andrew was the real Blair of