The Sea House: A Novel (22 page)

I ran like something was chasing me, and sometimes I stumbled because the wind made my eyes stream and I could not see. When I got back to the kitchen my chest was hurting and raw, and I saw I could not be in that house any more, so I told Maggie I was sick. She looked at my face and said nothing when I went back to the cottage that we share. I climbed into the box bed and pulled the curtain across the front and went to sleep and hoped I would never have to wake up again.

*   *   *

The next day, I decided that I would go away to the other side of the island. I had heard my cousin was now there. She had been cleared off the old island with us and gone to Uist, but now she had been cleared off that land also and sent on to the rocky coves over at Finsbay. I thought, I shall go and see her: if His Reverend Lordship can take a holiday, then so can I.

So he sat at his desk and said, ‘Of course you must see your only family. Take two weeks,’ he told me grandly. ‘I am sure I can manage with Maggie well enough for the time being.’

I did not tell him I was thinking that I would never come back, and as he talked, I thought how I would soon be hearing of his engagement to that little witch. Yet as I looked upon the evenness of his brow, his graceful straight nose and his kind, beautiful eyes, my heart would not stop loving that face.

The thing that broke my heart was that the Reverend was still so young, and although he was the Reverend, he wasn’t so very much older than me, with the face and the blush and the smooth cheek of a boy. And it was this that made my heart ache for him the most, for I knew that no other could love him as well or as earnestly, or care for him as I did.

I did not trust that Miss, but I saw that there was nothing I could say to warn him, since my voice would sound like nothing more than the scratching of a mouse or the flapping of washing in the wind. I did not count in the ways of the gentry. Everything was laid out for the taking for the likes of the Marstones, and it was she who could speak the language that counts in the ears of the Reverend, the hard English of the gentry.

I had a fierce longing then to be with my own people, to sit in a black house, where all are equal friends in a circle on the low stools, the hearth in the middle of a hard earth floor; where you can tap a foot to the beat of a song and where the supper may be only a wooden trencher of boiled potatoes, but each man is known and valued and has weight in this world.

At first light, I put on my heavy woollen skirts and my shawl around my old, rough blouse. I folded up my blue dress and my green dress that the Reverend had gotten the cloth for and left them on my bed. I put the tea and the sugar and the red jam that the Reverend did give me for my cousin Annie in a bag, and fastened it to my back like a creel. I set off for the pass to the other side of the island.

Setting out along the coast track, I was glad to get a lift on Callum the post’s letter cart all the way to the bottom of the pass. He told me how things were bad where I was headed, due to the crowding, since more people had arrived after being cleared from Sollas, and so I might not be as welcome as I hoped.

The way through to the bays is along the coffin road. I was soon at the top of the climb, where the long track begins. The rocks of the bays are too hard to bury a body, so the people must carry their dead home to the soft machair of the west along this track. I stopped to get my breath and look back on the empty bay of Losgaintir all spread out under the pink of the early morning sun, the ribbons of the water streaming their bright turquoise over the fair sand. I was leaving the good lands and the great green pastures that were all the factor’s now for his big sheep, and heading back to where those that had been cleared from their homes was now perched on the rocks of the Minch side, growing their bucketfuls of potatoes in the patches of soil gained from the runs of sour bogs between the rocks.

By noonday, I had crossed the island and walked the miles along the sea track. When I headed down the hill into Finsbay village, I saw for myself what a bad situation the people had come to now.

CHAPTER 23

Ruth

It was officially summer, but out of nowhere, a storm blew in off the Atlantic and the temperature dropped. We woke to see the hills in the distance white, every crevice delineated by blue shadows. The sheep had thin blankets of snow on their backs, melting away into the bedraggled wool as the sun warmed them. Huge clouds were speeding away: the culprits leaving the scene.

Snow is rare in the islands, and coming so unseasonably late, it would disappear quickly. Michael and I scrambled into our clothes like a couple of kids.

Outside, the air was still cold, the details of the houses in the distance sharp. We walked along the sand. The water of the sea was as brilliant as molten gemstones – turquoise, cobalt and purple.

In the distance, a curtain of filmy white was moving in off the Atlantic, huge veils of streaming snowflakes sweeping towards us. Within minutes we were surrounded by crystals that melted on our eyelashes, passed over us and away. We watched them trailing across the sand, gliding out to Toe Head, a veiled mirage leaving us.

‘Beautiful,’ we kept saying.

We were holding on to each other, crowding together for warmth. Michael said, ‘Emily.’

We were having trouble settling on a girl’s name. Somehow, I could never picture a girl. A little knot of anxiety each time.

‘Emily.’ I nodded. ‘Could be. If it’s a girl, then she should be Michaela, after you.’

‘I knew a Michaela once. Not Michaela.’

‘That bad?’

‘That bad.’

We walked on for a few steps.

‘Wonder what I’d have been called, if she’d named me after him, my father.’

‘I can’t believe she didn’t tell you. Your mum never told you his name?’

‘Well, not that I remember.’

‘Perhaps you’ll find out one day. Maybe Christine will find something?’

‘I’m not that bothered.’ I looked back at the house. ‘Do you think she had a name, the child we found in there?’

He hugged my head against his chin. ‘Yes. I think someone loved her.’

I reached up and kissed the side of his face. Drips fell from his hair as it curled down in dark fronds like the seaweed on the rocks.

*   *   *

The kitchen was warm, delicious with the aroma of brewing coffee and Jamie’s freshly baked bread rolls. The clean, white walls and the new white dresser had transformed the room.

‘Has somebody called by already?’ There were three cups on the table, a plate of digestives.

‘It was Christine,’ said Jamie. ‘She came by to talk to you, but she couldn’t stay. Says she’s still looking into your family tree and she might have a lead. She wants you to phone her, soon as you can.’

‘Sure,’ I said.

But I had no intention of calling Christine, not just to be disappointed all over again. And the incident on the boat, coming as it did so soon after thinking about Mum and all that sort of thing, had convinced me that dragging the past out into the open did nothing but raise up things that should stay in their own time, giving them a fresh energy to racket around and cause damage all over again.

I placed my hand on the dense half globe of my stomach. I was startled by an immediate responding movement, the hard tip of a tiny elbow, perhaps, or a heel, sliding smoothly under my hand.

We had enough real problems to concentrate on; so much to do still on the house before this little one arrived.

Michael took his coffee upstairs to start painting the small room next to ours. He had cut out a stencil of ducks and geese from thick card, to stipple a border round the walls. His mother had sent us an old rocking chair, with low arms that wouldn’t bang against a baby’s head when you were holding it. She said it was a nursing chair.

I went to follow him upstairs, to finish painting the chair. Taking the newel post in my hand, out of nowhere, I felt a sudden and unpleasant twinge of apprehension. I stopped, looked around the empty space, but then shook my head – ridiculous. I carried on up.

As I applied the final coat to the nursing chair, my thoughts turned to Ferguson again, as they did with increasing frequency. I wondered if the librarian in Stornoway might have finally come up with something. It had been a while since I’d asked her if she could look for anything that might help pin down the identity of the baby. She’d warned me that it would take some time, since they were halfway through putting the archives onto microfiche. If she found anything, she was going to send it down with the mobile library. The van was due to come by in the next few days. Maybe this time they’d have some news, and hopefully, something substantial

The few scraps of information we had seemed to have done nothing but let indistinct shapes loose in the house, free to whisper their secrets round corners and behind doors; half-heard murmurs that left me more confused and frustrated than ever.

I’d also asked her if she had any books on the Selkie myth. That odd little fable that linked me to Mum and took me back to when she would sit on the side of the bed and begin the story that changed a little with every telling.

CHAPTER 24

Alexander

Early in the morning, Maggie brought one of the MacAllister boys through to the study with a message from his mother. He had the red, wind-chafed cheeks of a child that spends the summer out of doors, and a wide pair of shorts thriftily cropped down from a man’s trousers. He stood on the Turkey rug shedding sand from his bare feet.

‘Please, sir, we was picking up the seaware to burn, and there’s a beast down there they says you will want to see.’

‘Thank you, Robert. I will be with you directly. Why don’t you run and ask Maggie if she has something for you in the kitchen?’

I hurriedly packed my notebooks along with several cases for specimens and went outside to where the child was waiting, a fold of Maggie’s bread and bacon in his hand.

My young companion set off with alacrity on a zigzag route across the dunes. I followed, trying to keep him in my sights as he disappeared and reappeared among the undulating slopes of grass. I saw him skirting the very place where I had so recently caught Katriona. The memories of all that had transpired between us that day made my stomach lurch with regret.

As the boy reached the final rise of sand, I finally re-joined him. He was pointing to the far end of the beach where a stream flowed down from the mountain, its waters stained a reddish purple, changing to viridian as fresh water joined with salt. Beyond the stream, a group of figures were gathered around a prostrate creature that I estimated to be the size of a large dolphin or a small whale.

The boy plunged swiftly down the steep slope and I did likewise, though with more caution.

On arriving at the beast’s side I consulted my reference volume. Noting the animal’s long beak, the white skin, the sharp and almost wolfish jaw line, I was able to confirm that the creature was indeed from the cetacean family, but of a rare genus:
Lagenorhynchus albirostris,
a breed of Arctic dolphin seldom seen this far south and noted for its ability to conserve its breath below the freezing surfaces of the Arctic Ocean for several days.

Among the party gathering kelp was the venerable Mr MacAllister. A sailor for over fifty years, he was now of an age too great to endure the rigours of life at sea, and was lately returned to live with his granddaughter on the glebe farm. I found him stood very close to my elbow, and most interested in the facts and diagrams contained within my book. It soon became clear to me that any information that might be missing from that volume, old Mr MacAllister would be happy and willing to supply. Leaning on his stick, he began a lecture drawn from his own wisdom and travels. He spoke a fair English, but with the slow, almost Nordic intonation of the long Gaelic vowels, whistling over the sibilants. He shifted his position on the sand when I moved so that he might stand closer to me again.

‘So have you ever seen such a beast before, Your Reverend? Have they got it there in your book?’

‘Indeed they have, but it is so rare that only two specimens have been discovered, both along the coasts of Norway, and never before this far south of its Arctic home.’

‘Aye, well you see, Reverend, there’s always been a good sea road between here and the coasts of Norway. It’s the currents and the winds; they bring down all manner of things from up where it’s too cold for Christian men and beasts. We think the Norway peoples as all churchgoing, but there’s many things go on up there past all Christian understanding – little savage men, who never heard of the Bible and who eat raw meat for breakfast. I was anchored at Bergen one time, and the Eskimo witches came on board to sell us winds, and forgive me, Reverend, but I bought one. When my ship was becalmed off the shores of Canada, I did remember that string in my top pocket and true as I am standing here, when I loosened the knot, a wind sprang straight up off the sea from nowhere. True as I am standing here.’

The truth was, I rather wished that the old seaman might stand elsewhere, since I was trying to pace out the length of the dolphin, and found the old fellow to be impeding my passage.

Then, without warning, MacAllister raised his stick and began to chant, ‘Huishival, Cleisheval, Bleaval, Chaipaval,’ pointing in turn to each of the tallest mountains around us. ‘
Val,
you see! Every one of them! The Viking’s word for mountain! ’Twas the Vikings named these peaks when they used them to navigate down the sea road. Oh aye, a lot of people from hereabouts have a Viking ancestor or two. Take this nose now, Reverend…’ He turned in profile so that I might gain a sideways view of the noble prominence. ‘A Viking nose.’

I congratulated him on the appendage, but I had to excuse myself from further conversation. The incoming tide was now rapidly approaching and I had precious little opportunity left to record the dolphin in the detail I required. I was sure the specimen would be of interest to Carfax for his collection at the museum, so I resolved upon a plan whereby I would ask the crofters to dig a long, sandy pit at the top of the headland while I arranged to have the beast dragged up there and buried. The bones would then be cleaned by nature’s work and leave a skeletal specimen ready for exhumation and removal to Edinburgh.