The Sea House: A Novel (8 page)

After the service, she spoke with the Reverend at the back of the church, he laughing and with a great deal to say to her, and then he asked us to come and all greet her. ‘I’d like you to meet the workers on the glebe farm,’ he told her. ‘And you must report to your father that they are the most admirable workers, trustworthy and diligent and very clean.’

Maggie Kintail stepped forward and gave her a deep curtsy. ‘Honoured,Your Ladyship,’ she said in English. Then I saw it was expected that I step forward and curtsy to her also and my heart began to pound and I thought I might faint away on the spot.

How could I not have understood? She was the very daughter of him. She was a Marstone. And now the Reverend was wanting me to curtsy and shake her little gloved hand. It was Lord Marstone as was the owner of the Reverend’s church, and His lands the church was built on; the glebe farm that put bread on Reverend Alexander’s table was in His gift. I had not chose to think upon it, but the truth of my situation was that it was himself, the Lord Marstone, I was working for and beholden to.

I don’t recall how it went, but I was leaving the church and I must have shaken that besom’s hand and done my curtsy because next thing I knew I was walking back down the path past the gravestones. Maggie Kintail was going on about did you see the feather in her hat, but my dress was soaked through under the arms, and I was chilled and shaking and I badly wanted to lie down in the box bed and draw the curtain in front of me in the smoky little house I live in now with Maggie, because nothing and no one can get away from being owned by the Marstones, and God lets it all happen, even in his church.

But I had the Sunday lunch to get served up, and so I went and did that. But by the end I had got into such a sweat and lather with the shock of it all that even Maggie did tell me that I stank and I had to wash my clothes and put on my old worn dress while my good one dried.

*   *   *

I was sad for the next few days because that day did recall to me all that I had lost in the twelve months since we were put from the island. I saw myself, running out as the mists poured off the hills and the sky was coming through blue, picking grass to feed Bessie before I milked her, and taking the pail home for breakfast where my father led the prayers and we all bowed our heads.

Then I did see my dear ones, my mother and father and my brothers and sister, lying sick in their beds in that hovel they moved us to, where the rain washed into the mud of the wall and then the stones collapsed. How I tried to get food from nothing, and how I did never change my clothes for six weeks but got wet through in the rain then let them dry on me, again and again, till they chaffed my skin sore. One by one, I found their bodies, cold in the bed, and must watch the men come to carry them on the long walk to the graveyard. I got more and more chill, till they was all gone and I was there, up on the hill, watching Marstone’s men fire the thatch of our house – them no doubt thinking that I was inside.

So it was for several days after that Sunday that I was too tired to speak a word, and the Reverend said, ‘Moira, why do we not hear you prattling on as you do usually?’ And then, but sadly now, ‘Moira, we must as Christians learn to forgive the past.’

One morning, after the breakfast was cleared away, I was called back in to be spoken to, in the Reverend’s study where he writes his sermons. I was ready for my scolding, since I knew I had been distracted of late, and my cooking not as good as it usually was, but I found him looking most cheerful and pleased with himself.

Callum the post had brought a big parcel for the Reverend early that morning, and the brown paper was all over the floor. The Reverend said that he had sent off for something from Glasgow, and there were some items for me. So I went over to his desk, and there was some blue cloth and some green flowered cloth all folded neatly and smelling new, like cotton freshly ironed. He said I could make myself two new dresses, since time had worn the old ones, and perhaps the green would make a Sunday frock.

It was a shock to me, that he should have thought of that, and tears welled up in my eyes, which I rubbed away, and he said, ‘Oh, don’t you like them, Moira?’ and I told him it was just his kindness that was making me weep.

So then he said, all gruff and cross, ‘Come, come now. Let’s have none of that. We have much work to do.’ And he showed me a primer for the ABC, and some books such as children read in school, and he did say that they were for me. I was not sure how to teach myself to read them, but he said, ‘We shall have a lesson every day, until you know all your letters, and then on the day that you can read, I promise you that I will let you borrow any book you wish from my own library. I would particularly recommend those devotional books written by my mentor in the theology faculty, although the fiction of Miss Austen can be very amusing.’

It was all that I could do to stop myself from throwing my arms round that good man, but instead I gave a stiff curtsy, and thanked him very politely for all his kindness, and then took myself back to the cottage and wept like a fool until my eyes were big and swollen and no doubt red. I had to bathe them in cold stream water and pretend that I had caught a cold while I finished my work.

*   *   *

Her Ladyship was not at church that next Sunday. The Reverend had a message saying she was indisposed with a chill, no doubt, I thought, from riding everywhere in all weathers on that horse of hers. And I thought, she is a Marstone after all: it is not likely we shall be seeing her in the church again. This thought made me feel almost happy.

And then the Thursday afternoon, when I went in for my reading lesson, after helping rake in the hay from the upper field, I heard voices in the drawing room and knocked, wondering who the Reverend had visiting with him in there, since he usually would say, so I would know to set a tray and boil water. And when I walked in to ask if he wanted tea, there she was, sat in her slim blue dress with the hems all spread round her feet, smiling like a cat. And he said to me, ‘Oh, Moira, please could you fetch us tea, and if you have it, some of your delicious cloutie cake?’

So I closed the door on what I had just seen, herself sitting in there in the drawing room, and went off to the kitchen where I crashed about and set a tray, doing as much damage to the crockery as I could without breaking anything. I got the big polished wood tray and set it with a lace cloth and two cups and saucers and two little plates. On each one I put a slice of cloutie dumpling, one thick for him and one dainty slice for her. And then I leaned over the dainty slice and spat on it. Not so much that you would notice, but still it was a terrible thing to do. I watched myself spread the butter on top and boil the water for the tea and pour it in the silver teapot and set it on the tray, and then I picked it up.

It was a bad thing I was doing, but it soothed the raging in my breast and I felt a great calm, of something assuaged, as I carried the tray in and set it down on the little table. I poured out the tea slowly and then handed them each their slice and watched as she put it to her mouth.

‘Moira,’ said the Reverend, making me jump, ‘Katriona wishes to learn Gaelic, and she has asked me to be her teacher. Would you recommend me now?’ He turned to her. ‘You see, I am teaching my maid to read,’ he said, without a thought for how I might feel about her knowing how I was too ignorant to read.

I mumbled something in Gaelic, that I knew even the Reverend would not comprehend, and they both stared at me. Then she laughed.

‘Oh, but I shall soon understand what everyone is saying here,’ she trilled. ‘You see, Alexander, that is why I must learn to speak the native tongue. All the people say to me when I address them is, “No English, lady; no English, lady.” It is most vexing. I thought more people here would know English.’

The Reverend said nothing, but he knew as well as I did that everyone has at least some English, and the young ones who have been to the new board school have very good English. It is simply that the people here do not want to speak to anyone from the house of Marstone.

I went back to my kitchen exhausted, repentant already of the thing I had just done, but also glad of it: a little way towards our settling of accounts. And I thought of all I had vowed to do, and all the miles between here and the castle of Lord Marstone, and with me with no pony and trap, but must get there in my pinching boots or bare feet. Then there were the reasons I must give so they would let me in, and so much to be planned before I could go in and settle my accounts with himself.

At Avenbuidhe Castle, they only use maids from Glasgow, who come for a year or so, and then go away from the homesickness. Girls from the islands are never taken on, being too reeking of peat smoke and lisping with Gaelic. How could I then get myself a place there to work and find my opportunity? Must I go by night and creep in a window? And as for the knife, which one would I take? It would leave Alexander a knife short for the cooking. And then who was to care for him after I was gone?

I was so very tired, so very empty and exhausted. I went back in to collect the tea things in a stupor, and when she told me my cake was very good, I felt nothing, even with all my plans going around my mind.

‘So,’ she was saying to the Reverend, ‘will you write down your lovely seal story for me? It sounds so intriguing. How I wish we had such a lovely legend in my family. I would love to be descended from a Selkie.’

And after that, I have to confess, I did smash a china cup in the kitchen. And it did happen to be the one she had been drinking from. That she should waltz into the house, and in five minutes get my Reverend to give up his great secret, that he has trusted only me to keep for him. And that she should get to read the story before I have even heard it. And I did promise myself that I would learn to read by the end of the week so that I could find the Selkie story on his desk and read it before she ever got to set her eyes on it.

After she left, I solemnly told the Reverend I would pay for a new cup from my wages, but he said, ‘Oh no matter, no matter,’ and he went off to his study no doubt to write his grandmother’s tale out for her, and he quite forgot about my reading lesson, which was a pity since I had planned to surprise him greatly by how far I had come in the reader about the doings of a hen and a rat and in how fast I could now string the letters together into words.

*   *   *

It was some few weeks later, and after I had found all there was to know of that hen and that rat, that I went in early to set the fire and I found a paper on his desk, neatly written out, a note to Dear Miss Marstone. I took the lion paperweight off it as it was in need of a little polish, and that’s when I noticed the title on the paper: ‘The Story of Ishbel and the Seal Man’. Well, the beady eyes of the little brass lion were watching me, but I placed him back on the desk and picked up the paper. I sat down in the Reverend’s big chair and then I began to read, although much of it took me more than one try before I got the sense of the words.

I was glad I had worked so very hard at my letters then, for I read it all, and I saw them before me, that woman and her seal man. I saw how she lived in a place so very like my own home. I knew as I read it that I could know her life better than Miss Marstone ever could, and better even than the Reverend, my Alexander, who is, it is true, even the descendant of a Selkie.

CHAPTER 8

Alexander

Dear Miss Marstone,

I offer below my attempts to transcribe the story of the Selkie, as told to me by my late grandmother. I cannot say, in all honesty, if some details are precisely as she recounted them to me. It may be that the intervening years have allowed elements of my own imaginings to creep in. Likewise, in the retelling, I suspect that over generations, the clarity of the story may owe as much to dramatic invention as to the recalling of facts. I offer it therefore as a curio that may amuse, and not as an historical account that should be taken with any seriousness.

I remain your humble servant,

Reverend Alexander Ferguson

The Story of Ishbel and the Seal Man

Ishbel McOdrum was a plain girl but strong. She had a long beak of a nose and above her lip, a faint line of hair was visible, suggesting in thirty years’ time a notable moustache. She had long, capable hands and her feet were as big as a man’s.

Since she was covered from wrist to ankle in brown woollen skirts and shawls, no one knew that Ishbel McOdrum was in possession of a tiny waist, and since her hair was habitually covered by a red scarf, tied securely round her shoulders to keep out the weather, no one was aware of the long chestnut tresses that flowed down her back.

Everyone on the island knew that Ishbel was as strong as any crofter. She could lift a creel of sea kelp heavy as a wet sheep and carry it from the glistening rocks to the croft without faltering once. If you were to look down upon the green sweep of the hillside, there you would see Ishbel, carrying over the baskets of seaweed from the shore to build up the sandy machair soil, or moving up and down the long rigs of potato beds, breaking her back with the heavy work of the digging.

Ishbel’s father was a widower and frail. Both her sisters were married and gone so he was glad to have her remain with him as the seasons went by. In winter when the gales blew in from hundreds of miles across the Atlantic, gathering strength as they came, to beat upon the squat stone house, Ishbel would sing under the booming wind, carding wool or working the distaff to spin woollen thread.

With the return of the sun came the white terns from the Arctic and Ishbel and her father would resume once more the arduous summer struggle to lay down enough food for the following winter.

Several summers and several winters went by in this way. Ishbel’s father died and was buried in the little cemetery by the sea. A further two years went by but still no husband was found for Ishbel; no husband came sailing into the cove in a small fishing boat; no husband jumped over its side and ran towards her as she stood in front of a sapphire sea and watched the gannets diving out of the sky, leaving nothing but plumes of spray.