The Sea House: A Novel (21 page)

This made my heart skip a beat, for my own mother’s family name, McOdrum, was indeed the same. I clasped Matthew affectionately. It meant a great deal to me that my faithful friend still held with me in my ill-omened quest.

‘And keep to your theology of fish-men if you believe it to be true,’ he said.

I left behind two of the dearest people that I know, my affection and admiration for them only increased by each renewal of friendship, and it was my heartfelt vow that on returning to my parish, I would prove myself as worthy a curator of the souls in my care as I knew Matthew to be of his.

*   *   *

On the morning that I returned home, I gave the letter directly into the hands of Callum the post, with instructions that it was to be handed to Katriona alone, or at the very least to her maid. I felt gratified to know that Katriona would receive the letter so promptly.

It was only much later, and far too late, that I discovered that the letter never did reach Katriona.

CHAPTER 21

Alexander

Over the following days the sea showed how mighty it could be. The waves resembled dark mountains from which streams of white spray levitated in the gale. Anything not fastened down was taken up by the wind and thrown around like a toy. The house trembled each time a blast hit the gable wall like a mighty fist.

When the storm finally abated and our ears were becoming accustomed to the return of less strident winds, Moira arrived with news that the gales had clawed away a vast part of the dunes and deposited the sand further inland towards the machair pastures. I put on my cap, buttoned up my stoutest jacket and walked out to see the changes to our shoreline.

The sky was filled with enormous canopies of dark cloud hurrying across to the west. Miles out beyond the headland, dark fingers of gigantic waterspouts reached down from the ragged clouds towards the sea. The wind was still forceful, and I had the strange sensation of having the air sucked from my chest even as I breathed in. The entire beach was covered by streams of sand levitated an inch or so above the ground, flowing towards a point on the horizon where a cold sun was a mere disc of brightness behind muted clouds. The veil of moving grains uncovered beneath it a history of fragmented shells, of broken sheep bone and dried claws of seaweed, embedded into the hard sand beneath.

Further down the beach, I could see where the wind had excavated the dunes. A small figure was bent over, examining the area. As I approached I saw that the man was investigating a pattern of rocks and boulders, newly uncovered by the wind.

It was Alan Carmichael, the schoolmaster from Finsbay. A small, grey-haired man in tweed jacket and plus fours, he was given to the independent opinions common among the people of the isolated fishing villages of the east coast, accessible as they are only by sea or by the rocky footpaths. He was an avid antiquarian and over a delicious meal in his homely schoolhouse, I had consulted him on more than one occasion while trying to better understand the history of the island.

We shook hands and shouted our greetings above the relentless booming of the wind.

As soon as he had heard reports that strange rocks had been uncovered by the wind, he had walked the eight miles across the island. He was quite sure now that we were looking at the remains of an Iron Age dwelling, constructed by people who had lived some three thousand years ago. He showed me a circle of blackened stones that had once served as their hearth, and a vast midden of bone-white limpet and cockle shells that protruded in layers from a mound of compacted sand – the accumulated remains of many meals eaten some thousands of years ago.

By now my hands had gone numb with the cold. I persuaded him to come back to the house for refreshment.

Out of the wind, and in front of a good fire in my study, I asked Moira to bring through hot water and the bottle of single malt from the dining room, since we were sorely in need of something to warm us through. I should really have trained Moira better: after she returned, she was soon leaning up against my desk with her arms folded and a cloth over her arm, joining in with our discussion on who these seashore dwellers might have been, and how they had come to the islands.

‘Maggie Kintail always did say that there were fairies under those hillocks by the sea,’ she said. I saw that Carmichael was more than a little impressed by how well Moira kept her part in our conversation, and I could not resist telling him that not only did she speak English fluently now, but she could also read it.

As Moira was holding out Carmichael’s coat for him to leave, he said, ‘By the way, we’ve yet more people moved into Finsbay – far too many for that barren piece of land to support. It can’t go on. But aren’t you a Gillies, now, Moira? We’ve an Anne Gillies moved in with her children. You’re no related are ye?’

‘Are they come from Pabbay Island?’

‘Aye, it could be so.’

‘Then it is my cousin and her bairns. I thought they were gone to Canada on the ship. Will you wait, Mr Carmichael, while I write a wee letter?’

This meant that Carmichael and I should take another small whisky by the fire and I insisted that Moira sit at my desk and take a sheet of paper and a pen to write her note. She blotted it, folded it and handed it to Carmichael with her good copperplate on the front: ‘To my cousin Anne Gillies’.

‘Moira,’ he told her, ‘if the Reverend here ever becomes too strict a master, then you can always come over to Finsbay and help me teach in the school.’

‘But I should be quite lost without Moira to run the house,’ I said.

And though she pretended not to mind me, I saw how pleased Moira was by this.

I sat up reading, until the candlelight made my eyes tired, following the journey of the Reverend Brand around the islands some fifty years before. I noted with great interest his reports on various sightings by islanders of mermaids, seal men and Finnmen. I was puzzled about this new mention of the Finnmen from Norway and wondered if this might have some significance to my research, but the only other reference I could find described the Finnmen as merely men dressed like Eskimos and so I discounted them.

*   *   *

Some days later, Katriona came for her lesson. Her attendance had been rather irregular of late. I had also had to cancel lessons during my visit to Edinburgh, and she seemed to have lost the small facility for Gaelic that she had previously gained; words that we had mastered some weeks ago had slipped away and she was very discouraged when I had to point out once again her small mistakes. She appeared deeply fatigued, and the more she tried, the less she was able to remember. As she struggled to recall simple household items in Gaelic, she pushed the reader from her lap and I saw tears begin to run down her cheeks.

‘There surely can be no more stupid pupil than the one you see before you,’ she said, so utterly dejected that I was unsure how best to help her.

I insisted that it was entirely my fault for having abandoned her lessons for two weeks.

‘You are too exacting of yourself. Gaelic is the most difficult language on the earth for someone to master from its beginnings, and you have made excellent progress.’ I attempted to distract her from her discouragement by telling her the news of the fairy house found beneath the sand hill.

‘It must be,’ I told her, ‘that the islanders have kept some memory of a people who lived here long ago, before the great dunes crept over their ancient dwelling place, and their fireside tales have preserved the memory as a fairy story.’

She was very taken by this idea and so I proposed that we walk down to see the site, sure that a brisk turn in the open air would restore her spirits. It was not my habit to suggest such an outing with an unaccompanied young lady, but in the embarrassment of seeing her so distressed, I had thought only to make things better.

The fierce gales had died away but left behind turbulent winds that continued to put all the landscape in motion, the clouds speeding their shadows across the grasslands; the long marram grass shimmering and luxuriant, undulating across the dunes like a girl’s hair blowing in the sun.

I let Miss Marstone lead the way along the sheep tracks, not an easy task, since those rough partings in the marram grass are apt to disappear of a sudden, leaving one to scramble up and down the sandy slopes. We arrived at the site and found that Carmichael must have returned at some point, for he had roped round the area with wooden posts and twine to denote the boundaries of the house. Miss Marstone was delighted with the fireplace of stones, and the smooth boulders arranged as seats. I showed her the prodigious layers of bone-white limpet shells that had been half uncovered by the storm, and explained how this was the midden of the household, and how one could clearly see their seasonal diet of shellfish, sea birds and the occasional mammal. Katriona must sit on the small boulders and try to imagine the family, and she was so animated and so like a child that I was in good spirits to see how my little expedition had done the trick.

I think she would have stayed there much longer, but taking her hand to help her up, I realised how very cold she had become, and so we made our way back through the dunes. As we went, we both called out above the wind our speculations about the people who had once walked these same beaches, fished in these seas, and gathered limpets from these very rocks, some thousands of years before us.

Katriona chose a longer route back as she wished to see where the wind had newly deposited the sand. It is a feature of these coasts that the gales can form dunes of great heights, some taller than a house, and I went on ahead as the landscape became less familiar. Descending a slope into a hollow, each step became a slide through cool sand and I gave her my hand to guide her. But without warning, the slope began to move under our feet and I was able to save Katriona from a fall of considerable height only by catching her and holding her steady.

We made our careful way to the bottom and rested out of the wind in a hollow of sudden stillness and silence. I brushed quantities of sand from my jacket and my boots. Katriona, however, was standing motionless, and did nothing to sweep the damp patches of sand from her blue dress.

I felt rather than saw her move. She was suddenly hard against me, her face pressed to my face. I could feel the clink of her teeth against mine own. Taken completely off guard, a hot mood of surrendering poured over me, and I embraced her in a long kiss. I had no feeling of time, but the intensity seemed to last long minutes. Then, as I came back to myself and felt her limp and so easily led in my arms, I began to feel the wrongness of what I was doing, and my terrible abdication of responsibility. I pushed her away and turned from her, so bereft of any words to explain myself that I could not look at her.

But apologise I must. I turned back to speak, but saw that she had unbuttoned the front of her gown and had pushed it from her shoulders. She regarded me with an intent and bold look that shocked me to my core – an expression that could easily have been mistaken for knowing seduction by a woman of much experience. I was sure that she could have no real idea of what she was doing, or the effect she was provoking.

I moved towards her and hastily began to pull the material back up over her shoulders to cover her. As I did so, I noticed a long yellow bruise along her collarbone, but it was at this point that she took my hand and placed it on the cold softness of her breast, and then I felt my insides melt of all resolve.

CHAPTER 22

Moira

I do not know what got it into my head that I must follow the Reverend and the Miss on their little walk to see the fairy house.

It was Maggie Kintail who let the Miss into the house when she came for her lesson that day. The Reverend had said Maggie could help in the kitchen since I have so much to do to keep the house spick and span and his shirts clean and ironed, so I was out at the back seeing if the hens had laid when the Miss arrived.

When I came into the house with four eggs in my hands, Maggie looked very serious and frowning as she worked at making the bread. She said she thought the Miss looked ill, thin in the face, with dark shadows round her eyes, though when I went in to see if they wanted tea served, I thought she was pretty as ever in her blue, her cheeks very pink, and her hair gold and pinned up so elegant.

So I looked and looked and, yes, she did look tired and less in bloom maybe, but I could not see what Maggie had seen. And though I tried to get Maggie to tell me what was the sickness she had seen upon the Miss, she would not say. But I did know that Maggie had seen something bad, and that it was bad enough to not speak it to me.

The Miss looked very perky and well indeed as she put her bonnet back on to take a walk with the Reverend so as they could go and get some fresh air. And they was gone a long time, I thought. So, I did happen to take a little walk myself that way, since I needed some fresh air too, though I kept well back so they did not see me.

I knew they was going over to look at the fairy house that Maggie Kintail had always said was there under the hill. I walked out that way, but did not catch sight of them, and then I saw them walking back along the ridge of the high dunes, so I happened to take myself that way too.

I was cautious now, since I did not want to suddenly meet with them as if I was following them all along, and I lost them altogether. But something in my feet made me know the way, and as I came carefully to the ridge of a dune and looked over the top into the hollow below, I saw what I never did in my whole life expect to see.

There was the Miss, with her pretty gown pushed down around her shoulders and her breast as white and naked as a swan, and there was the Reverend with his hand resting upon her pale chest.

I fell down away from the ridge so they could not see me. Though I think I would have fallen down anyway – so great was the shock that my legs and my knees seemed to stop working. I lay panting in the grass and watched the clouds rolling across the sky, too heavy and thick and grey, and then I got up.