The Sea House: A Novel (17 page)

It had been a point of pride for Michael that I had such quick reactions, ever since I’d reached out on a Tube train platform and pulled back a man who’d been going to jump; a flicker of movement in my peripheral vision, the limbic system kicked in and I grabbed him. I only realised what I’d done after I felt his weight swing round towards the platform like a dance partner, and understood then that I’d interrupted his trajectory towards the rails. Michael liked to tell the story of how I’d saved a man’s life. But I always felt uneasy looking back on it. What if it hadn’t been something good that I’d done that day?

I went over to the shelf where I kept the reference books and began to look up the limbic system, malfunctions of.

I still couldn’t believe what I was piecing together. I definitely didn’t like what I was seeing. With a feeling of mounting horror, I began to understand Mum’s legacy, my history imprinted on my body like a personal mutation. Mum had been wrong. I wasn’t part seal. I was the lizard girl, the girl with the claws and the panics and the stupid rages – a mess, a mess.

I sat down heavily on the bed, the book open on my knees.

Perhaps Michael was right. Couldn’t you go and see a head doctor about this sort of thing, get help from a counsellor or therapist? A professional. The counsellor I’d seen on the list at the Tarbert practice, perhaps – Dr Montgomery.

I thought then of my social worker, how she used to turn up at whichever foster home, because once again, I’d caused mayhem. I’d have to get into the back of her car and we’d drive away.

And then my breath constricted. I pictured a social worker leaving the Sea House, in her arms a small bundle of blankets. She was stooping down, getting into the back of a car.

There was no way I could go and talk to people who wrote everything down in files: those blank, attentive faces, the rising panic I’d get in my chest as I tried to explain myself, palms wet with perspiration against the chair. Once you let them in, you never knew where it would end.

No, I couldn’t do that. This was something I was going to have to work out by myself.

You left me.

You left me alone.

CHAPTER 16

Ruth

Mrs MacKay wasn’t giving up on trying to get me to go and see Christine, the genealogist in Northton who traced family trees for American tourists. Mrs MacKay turned up one morning, just passing by, she said, and she happened to have Christine with her. I was stirring porridge at the stove.

‘I already had my breakfast a couple of hours ago,’ said Mrs MacKay when I offered her some porridge, ‘but if you have some tea.’

They settled at the table. Christine was in her sixties but looked much younger with her boyish haircut and big roll-neck sweater, her eyes creased with concern and kindness. She accepted a bowl of porridge.

Leaf came in, the sleeves of her jumper down over her hands as it was still chilly.

‘Look, five more this morning,’ she said, showing us a clutch of chicken’s eggs cradled in her wool-covered palms. There were wisps of down stuck to the polished brown shells.

Leaf had fallen in love with Angus John’s chickens. She knew the name of each one, and exactly who was laying and who was broody. He had let her have six of her own to look after and she’d taken to getting up early each morning to go and feed them. Jamie was building a shed with a roost so that we could house the hens down by the house.

Leaf got out a pan and insisted that we all try some scrambled egg. It was yellow and buttery, on perfectly toasted home-made bread.

Before Christine left, I reluctantly handed over my birth certificate details and my handful of photos of Mum.

‘But really, I don’t think it’s worth your time. I’ve sort of got used to having a blank when it comes to my relations.’

‘They’re there somewhere, Ruth, and I’m going to see what I can do for you,’ said Christine.

After they went, Leaf gave my shoulders a hug. ‘She’ll find something, Ruth. I’ve got a good feeling about this.’

I shrugged. ‘Thanks anyway.’

Of course, I began to get ridiculously excited about what Christine might find out. A week went by, two more weeks. Finally, she rang. ‘When you’re passing, pop by, any time this week.’

‘I’m coming down that way today, if that suits.’

In fact, I had no plans to go down to Northton at all, but a tight feeling in the pit of my stomach meant I wasn’t going to be able to rest until I’d found out what she had.

*   *   *

Christine’s kitchen had a huge map covering its far wall. A starburst of black threads led out from Harris to little black flags pinned across the world, clustering heavily in America, Canada and Australia.

She put her fingertip on a pennant in Manitoba. ‘My cousins, twice removed. They were among the last people to be cleared from this island, from the village over in Finsbay. My great-great-aunt, she went completely mad when she got there. Never recovered from having to commit two of her children to the sea after the smallpox went through the boat.’

‘Oh. I’m so sorry.’

‘It was a terrible time for the people then. There are more Scots in Canada now than there are in Scotland.’

The kettle whistled and she went to make the tea. Through the picture window, a vast plane of water, filled with sharp clouds and a deep blue sky. Between the houses and the sea, the land was a maze of bright green islets like a jigsaw puzzle.

Christine brought the mugs over to the table and cleared a space among her papers. ‘I’m so sorry. I’m afraid I didn’t have much luck, Ruth. I did trace your birth certificate back to where it was issued in Bethnal Green, but after that, nothing. And um…’ She looked embarrassed. ‘Of course, it’s more difficult when there’s no father registered.’

‘Of course.’

‘The main problem was, I couldn’t find a woman called Macleod who matched your mother’s details in any other records. It’s very unusual. Ruth, do you think she gave her real name on your birth certificate? I’m so sorry to have nothing for you, dear.’

‘Really,’ I told her, ‘don’t worry about it. I’m used to my mystery family.’

Riding home on the bus from Northton, I wished I hadn’t raked the whole thing up again. It was disturbing to no longer even be sure that my surname was correct. It made me wonder if Mum had been telling me the truth about coming from the islands. She’d never really told me anything useful about them.

I recalled watching the TV with her once, back in our flat in London. The weather came on and she got up and traced her finger over a scattering of islands at the top of the map of Britain.

‘That’s where we come from,’ she said.

I wanted to see more, but the weatherman’s head was in the way. Then the screen changed to adverts.

The next day, I got an atlas out of the school library. I opened it on the kitchen table while she was drying the dishes.

‘Do we come from Skye?’ I asked her.

‘No, further out,’ she said, putting the plates away in the cupboard.

I read out the names from a chain of islands that seemed to be floating away into the Atlantic: Lewis, Harris, Uist, Benbecula, Vatersay, Eriskay.

She said them back to me in a sing-song accent, the proper way.

‘But which one do we come from?’ I asked her.

‘All of them and none of them. We come from the sea.’ And that was all she would tell me. She’d lit a cigarette and stood looking out of the window over the jumble of city buildings for a long time, lost in her own thoughts.

Sometimes, I felt that if Mum were to walk through the door one day, I’d slap her, and not stop till she understood what it felt like, how little she’d left me with.

I couldn’t bear to think that the islands weren’t in some way my home now. I looked at the faint reflection in the bus window, a white face sliding over the hills – just the kind of face that you saw all around the islands, the straight black hair, the blue eyes. Surely Mum had been telling me something of the truth with her seal people stories: this was where we came from.

*   *   *

‘Best view in the islands,’ Angus John told us. ‘Up behind the castle. Used to go up that way often, come home with a nice big salmon from the Avenbuidhe loch when I was a boy.’

So one Sunday afternoon, we set out to do a walk along the path marked on the Ordnance Survey map that led up behind Avenbuidhe Castle and into the mountains.

I’d managed to find out quite a lot about the castle’s history. ‘It was built by Lord Marstone in 1830,’ I said, raising my voice against the Bedford’s old engine. ‘The one who made his money from opium.’

Jamie whistled. ‘The Reverend Ferguson was in with the local drug lords, then.’

‘Well, by that time, it was the second Lord Marstone living in the castle. He had married someone very wealthy from London, a Lady Erquart. But she wasn’t too impressed with young Marstone and his castle. So she took herself and their daughter home to her father’s mansion in London, and it must be that same daughter who was the Katriona mentioned in the Reverend Alexander’s book. She returned to live at the castle after her mother’s death, when she was about sixteen.’

‘So the Reverend would have come visiting here, sweet-talking the lovely Katriona with his mermaid stories,’ said Jamie. ‘Wonder what Lord Marstone would have had to say about that.’

The main road to Hushinish went straight through the castle grounds, so we drove through the black iron gates and rattled over the cattle grid towards the turreted building and the little track up into the mountains. Amid the mineral blues of rock and water, Avenbuidhe Castle, with its red sandstone walls and bright green lawns, seemed to have been imported from somewhere else. We turned off along the small track behind the castle. The van had to pull hard up the steep incline. We rounded a bend and caught sight of the silent loch hidden away in a dip in the mountains, but at the same moment, we heard the swift crunch of another vehicle coming up behind us. A horn sounded several times.

Jamie slowed to a halt, pulled on the handbrake. A dark green Land Rover had parked its nose against a bank of moss. A man got out, and two dogs with sleek, polished coats spilled from the car. They hung close to his legs, their pink tongues the colour of cured ham, steaming in the cool air.

Leaf got out first, stretching her arms, the wind billowing out her dress. She knelt down to hug one of the dogs.

‘I wouldn’t do that, my dear.’

He was a broad man, wearing a boxy, bright mustard tweed jacket with a leather collar and a checked tweed cap. He had a very English accent and the authoritative bluster of a man used to being in charge.

‘Sorry there, not a public road this way. You’ll have to turn back.’

I felt something prickle in Michael. When he answered, he sounded ultra public school.

‘Thing is, old chap, the right of way’s marked on the map. We actually live on the island. Thought we’d go for a walk on the moor.’

‘You can certainly walk up there if you’d like to hire the place for a few thousand, otherwise this land belongs to a consortium in the City. Not really safe for people to cross the moor when the shooting’s on. Sorry, but you are trespassing.’

‘Are you sure we can’t take a very quick wander up to see the view?’ Leaf said, her hair dancing in the wind like a hillside sprite’s.

‘Have to disappoint you, young lady. This is private land.’

We got back into the van, did a tight reverse, headed back down the hill and exited through the second set of iron gates. We decided to drive on towards Hushinish, a wild and lonely bay at the end of the island that felt like the edge of the world, where Ishbel had first seen her Selkie. We all agreed that Hushinish would be a much nicer walk but a feeling somewhere between disappointment and shame pervaded the quietly humming interior of the Bedford – which, now we thought about it, did seem awfully shabby compared to the solid new Land Rover. I thought of the way its dogs hung their heads from the windows, their eyes trained on us, watching us leave.

CHAPTER 17

Alexander

When I saw that Miss Marstone had returned homewards without coming to the manse to pay a visit, I was, I must say, rather surprised. But also somewhat relieved that I would be able to continue with my books for the rest of the day.

However, Miss Marstone had left a note with the maid saying I was enjoined by Lord Marstone to attend a late luncheon at the castle on Sunday. Miss Marstone would be at the morning service and I could thus travel back to the castle in her carriage. I mentioned the outing to Moira, and requested that she also accompany us, as to my mind it were best that Miss Marstone should be seen to be chaperoned. In one’s role as spiritual counsellor, it is all too easy to reach misunderstandings with unmarried members of the fair sex. One cannot be too careful.

The following Sunday, I concluded the morning service and having installed Moira comfortably on the backboard of the carriage, Miss Marstone and I took our places inside.

His Lordship had sent a larger vehicle than the little governess carriage in which Miss Marstone usually liked to skip across the tracks. Our progress was therefore necessarily slow, but this was no hardship since it was a day of unparalleled brilliance, with the blue sea banded in turquoise and sapphire over the white sand of the vast beaches. The sky was open and equally startling in its blueness. The islands across the water and mountains of the north island were a vivid indigo. The air smelled pure as salt, clean and new as if it were the first day on earth. I pointed out and named the different birds as we rode along companionably, the curlews and plovers piping their nostalgic notes from the shoreline.

I was aware that this summons by Lord Marstone was something of an inspection, since I had taken the appointment without ever meeting the great man. It must have been this nervousness that made me more talkative and expansive than usual as I chatted on vainly, and I think this must have been why I was slow to undo the damage when Katriona slid her small hand under my arm and leaned in close against my side to better see the orchid flowers that I was describing to her.