The Sea House: A Novel (18 page)

I was slow, too slow in extricating myself, but after a polite pause, I gently returned her arm to its original place, placing her hand on her own knee, and giving a firm but forgiving small pat to the back of her hand. She looked all around her, laughed, and in the briefest trice, she kissed my cheek.

*   *   *

Lord Marstone was not at all as I had anticipated. I had modelled my expectations according to the refined men of quality in the city of Edinburgh, in their modern frock coats and spats, polished top hats and elegant cloaks. Lord Marstone was a man of considerable corpulence and wore the kilt. He favoured a tweed jacket, which showed the front of a shirt stained with gravy from previous meals. His large red face and heavy, bloodshot jowls appeared to be supported directly by his shoulders, and his hair, shiny with applied grease, was gathered back and tied like a nest of rodent tails. Most disconcerting were his eyes. During my entire stay in the castle, never once did he address me without looking either sideways or into the far distance, as if continually distracted by some unvoiced thought. He seemed, almost, to be spying around himself for a possible means of escape.

But it is an acknowledged truth that the truly great, isolated as they are by their position, often develop habits and characteristics which may not be construed as polite in more moderate society, so I was quite disposed to see such personal habits as mere quirks and to not take offence. I therefore set to entertaining His Lordship with an account of the morning’s sermon, as we took a fortified beverage in the drawing room before the open fire. Above the fireplace, the head of a large stag with splendid antlers looked down in static judgement with glassy eyes.

His Lordship was rocking in front of the fire, and he had drawn his daughter to his side under one of his massive arms. As I was reaching my second point, he gave a grimace as if affected by some kind of toothache.

‘So, missy here likes coming along to hear your sermonising. Tried to get her to stay and save herself, but it seems she prefers to gallivant about in the wind and rain, ruining her health, because she must hear the Reverend. It’s a flighty little thing, isn’t it?’ He looked down at his daughter with something that might have been mistaken for disdain.

I opened my mouth to speak, but before I could think how I should reply, he downed the rest of his whisky and wheeled round with a swirl of his heavy kilt to lead his daughter away towards the aroma of roast dinner. I left my tumbler of whisky unfinished, and made to follow them.

CHAPTER 18

Moira

I watched Alexander go through the tall oak doors of the castle and stood there next to the carriage wondering what I should do. It was a beautiful little place His Lordship had picked for himself, with a clear burn making a waterfall into a sea loch, the water sparkling, and the hills all snug around the little castle with their pink granite shoulders soft in the sunlight. The only thing that spoiled the place, to my mind, was the sour block of dark brick pretending to be a castle, its new windows and sharp corners betraying that it had been all bought and paid for by a man who was no more from here than I am from the moon.

The driver was leading the horse out of the shafts and he gave me a sideways nod to say that I should go. So I made my way round the building, where the windows start up above your head to make sure no one can look in at the greatness of the Marstones, and I came to the back buildings, squashed in hard as they were against the mountain flank that rises steep above the castle back. I saw a maid throwing out a bucket of slops, and chickens running over and squabbling to get at the peelings scattered on the flagstones. She looked at me with suspicion.

‘What’s it you want?’ she said, in a broad accent from Glasgow.

‘I am the Reverend’s maid.’

‘Well, it’s no good coming to look for work here if he’s thrown you out. We don’t want your sloppy ways. His Lordship never takes island girls; too dirty and heathen they are.’

I made myself as tall as I could, and even though she was stood up on the steps above me, I showed her that I was looking down on her.

‘My master is dining with His Lordship, and Miss Katriona, to whom I am teaching the Gaelic, has requested that I be given Sunday lunch in your kitchens.’

I had made up the last bit, but I was terrible hungry, and felt sure that they did mean me to eat.

The maid was not so sure, but the calling up of her mistress’s name had her, I could see. She looked worried for herself then and said, ‘Well, it’s as broad as it’s lang for me if yers comes in.’

I took off my bonnet – Maggie had loaned me her straw bonnet, which, though a little bent, has a fine bunch of cherries – and I sat down at the end of a long wooden table that was being set for lunch, although the dirty bowls and vegetable scrapings from the meal’s preparation were still strewn around on it. I looked around me and saw that His Lordship did not run a good kitchen and that the staff he had were slovenly and dirty. I could not understand how in such a great house the maids were joking and swearing at the sink and sloppily stirring pots of stew, and seeming to not care a bit about His Lordship’s dinner. I had a plate slid across the table to me and then they all came in and began to eat. A tall woman dished out lumps of mutton and a dollop of turnip mash and potato. They each crouched over their plates like beasts afeared of someone stealing their meat.

I sat up very straight and cut dainty bits with my knife and fork and ate very neatly, dabbing my mouth with the back of my hand. I noticed a rack of knives above the draining boards by the sink – six of them in descending size.

The stable boys and the very young maids from Glasgow either sneered or looked ill and homesick. It must be a hard place here for a girl missing her home, I thought. So in the confusion of that kitchen, as stable boys sat with their muddy boots on the chairs and got slapped round the head, and while the smallest girl was left to scrub the pans and the older ones to smoke pipes by the back door, I slipped away to see if I could arrange myself a wee tour of the castle.

I made my way up the servants’ back stairs and came out onto a long corridor with many doors. The carpet was thick, so no one heard me as I tried each heavy oak door and looked inside. It was a dark place with red carpets that snuffed out the noise, dark green silk on the walls, big furniture all varnished dark and very fancy. It wasn’t a place that seemed anyone’s home, but was very big and ugly, I thought.

When I got to the fifth door along on the seaward side and opened it, I saw a room that I knew must belong to His Lordship. There was no mirror but large paintings of himself in fancy kilts and military garb, looking much more slim and young than the old brute that I had seen taking Alexander in through his door. I noted the long drapes at the window and stood behind one to see if I was covered, and I measured how many paces to the bed. And then I did see if I could raise my arm high enough to get enough purchase, given that the bed was such a big and high old thing. I would need to stand on a stool, so I looked all around but saw nothing of the kind. I was beginning to feel a bit peculiar, with my heart going so very fast all the time, and a dread came down on me that I had been there too long. But then I saw a door half open leading off his bed chamber. So I went through to see what I might find in there.

Well, I was quite took aback. There was a great big white tub, longer than any man, with a big brass contraption at one end for where the water was to come out, and all round the walls were green tiles, like green seawater, with fish and hippopotamuses swimming under the glaze. And I thought, this is where His Lordship must thrash around in his bath like some old blubbery seal. And it was then that I heard the bed chamber door open, footsteps coming across the floor. I looked around me quickly, but there was nowhere for me to hide. Then all of a sudden the door was pushed open and a girl came in.

I don’t know who was more frighted, her or me, but she screamed and dropped the pile of white towels she was carrying, and so I hurried to help her pick them up. It was this that made her take me for some new maid, because she began scolding me about how undermaids were not allowed up in the good bedrooms. She was only a little thing, but she acted very knowing about how everything was done. And she shooed me out of the bed chamber and marched me along the corridor to the back stairwell. But then she stopped and took me hard on the shoulder with her hand, pinched it really hard, I thought, and she stared at me. ‘Don’t come up here again. Don’t. And if it ends up that you do have to, then don’t let him trick you. If he calls for something, you never go in that bathroom place while he’s in there. D’you hear me?’

So I promised solemnly that I would never go in there, and she left me to make my way back down.

I got on my bonnet and waited outside, sitting on the little wall that runs in front of the sea loch, letting the afternoon sun warm my bones, which felt very chilled from the cold inside that house, even though it was early summer.

After a long time, I saw them coming out. And when I was sat on the backboard ready to go home with the Reverend, I looked up to what must be Marstone’s room and saw the little maid looking down from an upstairs window. When she saw me there and realised that I was but a visitor, she drew back from the window swiftly.

CHAPTER 19

Ruth

‘It was ever the way with London men,’ said Angus John when we told him about our visit to the castle. ‘They come to catch the fish, drink the whisky and run over the sheep. Don’t care who lives here.’

Angus John had appeared in the kitchen that evening and looked set to stay. He produced a whisky bottle – this time not filled with milk – and poured us all a dram. He tipped a slug into his own mug, saying he only took it in tea now and then to help his old bones, and settled back in the chair.

‘See now, in the old days,’ he began, ‘it was our house that was the ceilidh house. It was none of your jigging around in the hall in An t’Obbe and having to pay for the pleasure. No, someone would tell a story and someone would pick up the fiddle or start a song, and the whisky was passed round.’ He looked moved, his eyes glistening. He sniffed elaborately.

‘We could do that now,’ said Leaf. ‘We could do a ceilidh here. She settled herself cross-legged on the old sofa and sang an old Cat Stevens song about moon shadows. There was a huskiness to her voice from the cigarettes that she and Jamie sometimes liked to smoke. The summer sun had brought out a faint rust of freckles across her face. Her second song was a folk song from America, a lullaby. ‘For your baby,’ she said, grinning at me and reaching over to pat the bump.

Jamie and Michael gave us a song by Bruce Springsteen, Jamie slapping his knee, their eyes shut and heads nodding in the groovy bits as if in pain. They did an encore.

‘Ruth?’ said Angus.

I wanted to. I had a memory of Mum singing something in Gaelic in her soft, slow voice. For a moment it was so clear that I felt some genetic memory might produce the words. Almost opened my mouth.

I shook my head, but it was no problem: Angus John was waiting for his turn so that the evening could start properly. He leaned forward and asked if we would like a story.

‘A ghost story,’ said Leaf.

‘This,’ he said sternly, ‘is the true story of the haunted spoons, that happened to someone living not so far from here. And yes, it might be a ghost story or it might not, but you’ll have to decide that. This is a story about a woman who was driven mad by twelve silver spoons.’

He nodded towards Leaf knowingly. ‘The thing about the world of spirits,’ he said, lifting his arm and letting it fall with an emphatic thump on the chair, ‘is that you can’t deny them. If you don’t take into account the world of spirits, they’ll come back and get you anyhow.

‘Have you noticed how ordinary things around your own house can be haunted, how they will disappear, and then they’ll appear again where they shouldn’t be, trip you up even. A letter or a set of keys, say. And that’s not the end of it. Beds will not let you get out of them when you need to, and then they’ll throw you out in the early morning just when you are desperate for sleep. Cups will smash from your hand or sometimes they will fly across the room, when you had no intention of throwing them.

‘I heard of one boy who was deafened by his own clock, but only when it spoke a certain time. Certain words can become unbearable to the mind. Ordinary words that people use every day, they can become so loud to some people that they can drive them mad for days on end.

‘A lot of quarrels have been started by the spirits that settle in everyday objects, spirits that worm down into a silver candlestick, or slip inside an ugly teapot, or even slide themselves into a set of old spoons – ah yes, the spirits of quarrels that are not laid to rest for years. Sometimes these haunted things get hidden away in a cupboard, or the back of a drawer, but they can still have the power to cause disruption long after the person who put them there has died.

‘That’s how it was with the silver spoons, and this was a set of a dozen dessert spoons with fancy handles, the wedding dowry that Effie Macleod in Rodel brought to her husband Norman MacIver.

‘Well, Effie has four bonny girls who grow up very handsome, and in time Effie gets old and she passes away. So the question is, who is to get these beautiful solid silver spoons, the like of which no one else on the island has? So while the sisters quarrel and quarrel, the youngest and quickest has a think. And before they can decide to do the sensible thing and keep three spoons each, she goes into the house while the wake is still on for her mother, takes the spoons and hides them away in the back of her bedroom drawer.

‘And that was the last time that Effie’s youngest daughter slept a whole night. Morag was woken night after night by the sound of rattling, though her husband swore he could hear nothing. On it went, every night, like the jangling of a hundred horses’ bridles. Jangle rattle, rattle jangle till by the next month she was white as a sheet and thin as a stick.