The Woman Who Walked Into the Sea (11 page)

In memory of
William Ritchie, QC, beloved husband to Diana and darling stepfather
to Alexandra 1925-2003.

The brevity of it kept her rooted to the spot. More should have been written down: another woman and another child to acknowledge. She looked away at the wrought iron gate in the wall beside the headstone. Through its bars Violet spied the sheltering woods around Brae, and it occurred to her that William Ritchie QC had chosen his burial plot with care. Wasn’t he interred to provide him with an everlasting view of God’s as well as his own house? The headstone was another reminder of the inequality between Mister William Ritchie QC and Megan Bates: he was buried, she was not. He had a headstone; she did not. He had recognition; she did not.

For all her worry about having an emotional reaction to his grave, Violet was at her most composed since arriving in Poltown. Striding alongside the grave to reach the gate, she decided to show it the same cold disregard it displayed for her mother. She was almost past when a flutter of paper caught her eye. She glanced down and saw a book, its torn pages turning in the wind. She bent to pick it up and at that moment the grave and its inscription were as close as an arm’s stretch away. She turned her head away, stood and walked from the churchyard. Only when she was beyond the stone wall did she examine what was in her hands.

It was a Scottish Prayer Book, its maroon covers soggy from the wet. As she turned its pages, an idea took hold of her. She flicked past ‘Morning Prayer’, ‘Evening Prayer’, ‘A Catechism’ and ‘The Order of Confirmation’ not quite sure what she was looking for. Prayers and religion had not been part of her life. She was hurrying now, turning the pages fast, past ‘The Visitation of the Sick’ and ‘The Communion of the Sick’ until she came across ‘At the Burial of the Dead.’ She read snippets of text, tasting them for suitability, liking the sound of ‘We commend into thy hands, most merciful Father, the soul of this our
brother
departed, and we commit
his
body to the ground, earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust . . .’ The italics encouraged her to think she could change brother to sister, and his to her. She looked at the two footnotes below the prayer and the second of them concerned the alterations that should be made for a burial at sea. Violet gave a little yelp of triumph.

She stood with her back to the stone wall, her father’s grave on the other side, and directed her reading of the prayer towards the sea. ‘We commend into thy hands, most merciful Father, the soul of this our sister departed, and we commit her body . . .’ she checked the note and substituted ‘to the deep’ for ‘to the ground’ and went on: ‘. . . in sure and certain hope of the general resurrection in the last day and the life of the world to come; through our Lord Jesus Christ, who shall fashion anew the body of our low estate that it may be like unto his glorious body, according to the mighty working whereby he is able to subdue all things unto himself.’

She closed the book.

Later, walking the road into Poltown, she told Hilary about her day and her discoveries: her father had been seventy-eight when he died, so he must have been fifty-nine when Violet was born. The gap between him and Megan had been twenty-six years. ‘He was married,’ Hilary said wearily, adding without waiting for Violet to reply, ‘of course.’

‘Yes, to a woman called Diana.’

‘Children?’

‘A step-daughter,’ Violet said. Alexandra Hamilton, the woman who had rented her Orasaigh Cottage. ‘Darling stepfather to Alexandra’ was on her father’s headstone.

‘The bitch who told you that Megan Bates made her mother’s life a hell?’

Violet ignored the question. She had other more important news. ‘She loved me, Hilary. My mother loved me.’ She told Hilary about Duncan Boyd, how he’d fallen for Megan, how he’d offered to look after her and the baby. Her mother had said he was sweet. She had told him she loved the baby.

‘When?’

‘Just before she died,’ Violet replied.

‘So why would she kill herself?’

‘I don’t
know,’ Violet sighed, ‘except there was the letter.’

‘Saying what she planned to do?’

‘According to the police, it was a suicide letter.’

‘I wish I was there with you.’

‘It’s ok.’

‘Well, at least you’ve now got God on your side.’

They laughed. Violet had told her about the prayer and how emotional it had made her. She’d be fine, she told Hilary, once she had something to eat. She was on her way to the shop in Poltown to buy some food, bread and milk, anything she could find really. Then, she’d wait at the causeway for low tide or perhaps she’d go to the public meeting in the community hall.

In the event, the decision was taken out of her hands by the first spatter of rain and by an elderly woman with white hair stopping her car and asking Violet whether she was on her way to the meeting. If so, would she care for a lift? ‘It’s about to pour.’ No sooner had Violet closed the door and put her carrier bag of shopping at her feet than the rain beat against the windscreen and bounced off the road.

‘Wow, I’d have been completely soaked.’ Violet laughed at the narrow escape she’d had. ‘Look at that . . .’

The car moved off slowly and the woman asked, ‘Are you staying locally, in Poltown?’

‘Just outside,’ Violet replied, a smile of gratitude replacing her wonder at the violence of the storm. ‘The cottage on Orasaigh . . . do you know it?’

‘Ah, yes. Well at least you’ll have a good roof over your head.’

Violet turned back to look at the rain.

‘On account of my age,’ the woman said after a pause, ‘people seem to think my name is Mrs Anderson or Mrs A, anything but Mary. You may choose which you call me.’ There was a prompting tone to her voice and Violet realised her omission.

‘Oh, I’m sorry. I’m Violet. Violet Wells.’

‘Violet,’ replied Mrs Anderson, ‘I haven’t come across that for a while, but what a pretty name.’

Mrs Anderson parked close to the community hall and suggested to Violet they stayed put.

‘There’s no point in us getting soaked until we have to.’

While they waited for a break in the rain, Violet ate crisps and a bread roll because she was ‘so hungry’ and Mrs Anderson reminisced about her childhood, about a game she used to play with her mother whenever it rained, ‘and it rained a fair bit’. Most languages had different names for the different varieties of rain, she said. For example, English had shower, drizzle, downpour, and deluge (Violet suggested ‘torrent’) but Mrs Anderson’s mother had only ever used sound and volume to differentiate between types of rain. So drizzle was ‘rain’ said in a whisper. A shower was ‘rain’ said in an ordinary speaking voice. Prolonged precipitation was ‘rain’ said like an extended yawn. A sudden brief deluge or thunderstorm was ‘rain’ spoken abruptly and loudly like a dog barking, but this was ‘RAIN’. She attempted a shout and immediately apologised for her croakiness. Whenever it rained like this, she carried on, she and her mother would scream ‘RAIN’ over and over, and the house would reverberate with their voices and with the water drumming on the slates until they became hysterical with laughing. Her father would come in from the fields complaining about a racket that could be heard from ‘here to Ullapool’. Mrs Anderson’s chortle trailed away into a sigh of sadness at the silent, embittered woman her mother had become. Violet said she’d tell the story to her daughter. ‘She doesn’t like rain very much but she does like shouting a lot.’

‘Oh, you have a daughter . . .’ Mrs Anderson sounded wistful. ‘Not having children is the thing I regret most; and not having grandchildren. Tell your mother she’s very fortunate.’

Violet didn’t know what to say. Mrs Anderson peered short-sightedly through the windscreen and remarked on bleary groups of people running to the door of the community hall, coats over their heads. ‘I suppose we’d better brave it, or there won’t be any seats left near the front and I won’t be able to hear.’ Violet should leave her bag of shopping in the car because there was no point in it getting soaked too. ‘Would you be kind enough to reach into the back seat for my umbrella?’

After retrieving it, Violet pulled up the hood of her anorak. ‘Wait there a minute,’ she said, letting in a blast of wind. She ran round the front of the car, opened the driver’s door and held the umbrella low over Mrs Anderson as she got out. ‘Oh my goodness,’ Mrs Anderson said as the storm buffeted at her and the umbrella blew inside out. ‘Hold on to me, Violet dear, or else I will be blown away.’

Violet gripped the older woman’s arm and guided her across the tarmac to the awning by the entrance to the community hall. Others were hurrying to the same destination from all over the car park. Two teenage girls screamed as they splashed through the puddles. A man overtook Violet and Mrs Anderson arriving at the door ahead of them. He held it open while he wiped the rain from his face.

‘Oh, hi,’ he said, ‘the statue from the beach.’

Violet looked up. ‘I’m sorry?’

‘I’m Cal. We met the other day at South Bay. You asked me about the tides.’

‘Yes, I remember.’ She gave him a puzzled look. ‘Why statue . . . ?’

‘Just that when I first saw you, you were standing by the sea and you were so still you reminded me of one of the Gormley statues on the beach near Liverpool.’

Before she could reply Violet found herself being carried along into the foyer by others pressing behind her. ‘
They’re
all men,’ she shouted back at Cal who was wedged against the door by the newcomers. He signalled he couldn’t hear above the noise of the wind and Violet went to join Mrs Anderson. She was talking to the man who had delivered Duncan Boyd’s box of groceries.

Jim Carmichael nodded at Violet. ‘Hello again.’

‘Of course, you two have met,’ Mrs Anderson said. ‘Jim had a cup of tea with me yesterday and told me you were worried about poor Duncan. He’d run off or something, hadn’t he Jim?’

Jim appeared ill-at-ease at Mrs Anderson relaying his gossip. ‘Duncan and Mrs Anderson here are first cousins,’ he explained anxiously to Violet, the implication being it hadn’t been loose talk on his part, more a case of keeping it in the family. ‘Mrs Anderson grew up at Boyd’s Farm.’ He reinforced the point.

‘Poor Duncan,’ Mrs Anderson sighed in a wandering way, still oblivious to Jim’s difficulty. Her attention had turned to the hall and the speed with which it was filling up. They should claim their seats or else there wouldn’t be any left, she said to Violet, deliberately excluding Jim by turning her shoulder. Mrs Anderson led Violet away and Jim remained where he was, looking uncomfortable. Violet managed a reassuring smile.

The incident reminded her of school, of the competition to befriend a popular girl, and once she had been won the snubs that had to be delivered to keep rivals away. Violet puzzled at why Mrs Anderson should treat her as some kind of playground conquest. All she could think was that old people often became selfish, and a jealous nature was one of the signs. Another possible explanation came soon after when Mrs Anderson asked Violet if she smelt whisky off Jim because she thought she had. ‘I do hope he hasn’t started drinking again.’

The hall was bright, busy and noisy with the storm providing conversation for the gathering crowd as well as a background rumble, like a growling predator. Mrs Anderson found two seats by the central aisle and while she settled herself Violet said, ‘So you were brought up on Mr Boyd’s farm?’

‘A long time ago, when it was a proper farm with livestock, sheep and cows,’ she replied tartly. Mrs Anderson’s tight mouth and pinched white cheeks discouraged further inquiry. Instead, Violet mentioned Brae House, how impressed she had been with the building when she’d visited it to book Orasaigh Cottage. Mrs Anderson asked if she’d noticed the walled garden to the right of the drive because she lived on the far side of it, in what used to be the gardener’s cottage. ‘Indeed, it still has that name.’ Violet said she thought she’d seen chimney pots. ‘It must be a nice place to live,’ she added politely, and Mrs Anderson said, ‘It is or rather it
was
.’

Again, Mrs Anderson’s sharpness put Violet off from prying further so she inquired about Brae House in the hope of finding out something about her dead father. ‘I met the owners when I collected the cottage keys . . . Matt and Alexandra Hamilton.’

Mrs Anderson rolled her eyes. ‘Some people deserve good fortune, and others certainly do not.’ Clearly, Mrs Anderson believed the Hamiltons belonged in the latter category. ‘People,’ she said after a pause, ‘with little instinct for their responsibilities’. She was clipped and disapproving.

‘Did Mr Hamilton buy the property?’ Violet asked, pretending to ignorance.

‘He did not,’ Mrs Anderson replied abruptly. Brae, she went on to explain, had been passed down from Mrs Hamilton’s step-father, a lawyer ‘and a gentleman, though sometimes a difficult one’ called William Ritchie. She had got to know him well because she had been his housekeeper for many years.

‘He was your employer?’

‘He was and for the most part he was a good one too.’

Violet mentioned seeing a grave with the surname Ritchie when she’d been wandering around the churchyard. ‘Would that have been him?’

‘It would,’ Mrs Anderson shook her head in sadness. ‘A child was the only gift missing from Mr William’s life . . .’ She glanced at Violet.

‘On the gravestone,’ Violet continued quickly, ‘it says husband to Diana. So she was Alexandra Hamilton’s mother?’

‘Yes.’

There was a stir behind them. ‘Talk of the devil,’ Mrs Anderson said.

Violet turned as Alexandra appeared in the hall, followed by Matt. She also noticed the man who’d likened her to a Gormley statue. He was sitting at the other side of the hall, a little further back than Violet and Mrs Anderson, by a pillar. He acknowledged Violet with a tilt of his head and Mrs Anderson spotted the exchange. ‘Who is that?’ she said, as if she should know him.

‘I don’t really know, except his name is Cal,’ she answered. ‘I’ve only met him twice, once at South Bay on the day I arrived and just now.’

Violet considered him quickly as he stood to let two women into his row. Short dark hair, black or dark brown: hard to tell which since it was still wet; deep set eyes; his mouth almost smiling; his nose slightly skewed to the right. She looked away before he caught her. An interesting face rather than a handsome one, she decided on second acquaintance.

By now, the Hamiltons were going past. Violet felt
the swish of their clothes; the rustle of prosperity. Mrs
Anderson sensed it too because she tutted and sniffed at
fortune ‘always favouring the unworthy’. The land which had been
earmarked by BRC for extending Poltown – industrial units, the site
for the new store, the school and housing – belonged
to Brae. Without the prospect of development it was worthless
bog. With it, according to gossip in the village, the
Hamiltons would be £1.75m richer.

The Hamiltons’ progress to the front of the hall was also being monitored by a woman in a floral print dress, who emerged from the group of people standing in front of the speakers’ table. She left the stage, all bonhomie and bustling efficiency, and greeted the new arrivals by touching their forearms and with a broadening smile on her face. ‘Gwen Dixon,’ Mrs Anderson said. ‘At least she’s got a good heart . . . which is more than can be said for those two.’

As Violet was discovering, a compliment from Mrs Anderson wasn’t always what it seemed. In Gwen Dixon’s case, it turned out to be more a plea of mitigation to set against her crimes. ‘One of those interfering women who sits on committees and thinks she knows what’s best for other people,’ Mrs Anderson said before drawing Violet’s attention to a side door at the front right of the hall. Coming through it was a man in his mid-forties with cropped hair and wearing black jeans with a white shirt which stretched and strained as he moved giving an impression of a muscled chest and arms. He pushed a wheelchair in which sat an elderly man, his head hanging, his face haggard and lined, left side drooping. Mrs Anderson and Violet weren’t the only ones watching their slow entrance. Others in the hall were beginning to stare too, the volume of chattering voices suddenly reducing. It was as if an open coffin, the corpse decaying, was being brought into the room. ‘That’s Alec Turnbull,’ Mrs Anderson whispered. ‘Not many people have seen him since he had his stroke . . .’ As an afterthought she said, ‘If ever a man deserved to lose his looks it’s him.’

‘Who’s that pushing him?’

‘His son, Ross,’ Mrs Anderson replied without affection. ‘He runs Poltown just as his father did before him.’ There was no choosing between them in her opinion. ‘One as bad as the other . . .’ She warned Violet of ‘the charade’ she was about to witness: ‘Ross Turnbull pretending he’s interested in jobs for Poltown when everybody knows he supports the windfarm and the expansion of the village because of the concessions he hopes he can get from the developers.’

Violet said she had taken a taxi which had Turnbull’s name on the side. Was it his? Yes, Mrs Anderson replied, and there were holiday caravans and ice-cream vans during the summer season. But most of their money came from drugs and money-lending. The father’s rackets were being run by the son, whatever he might pretend to the contrary. ‘Inheritance is a way of life around here,’ Mrs Anderson said. ‘The land-owners pass on their acres, the Turnbulls their scams.’

As Ross Turnbull settled his father at the end of the front row of seats, the babble of conversation started up again. Mrs Anderson drew Violet’s attention to a group of thuggish-looking men standing at the back of the hall. ‘Turnbull’s I wouldn’t wonder,’ she said. The speakers began to take their seats and the atmosphere in the hall changed. There were competing jeers for one side of the argument and the other. Someone shouted, ‘Poltown scum’ and suddenly it was tribal and menacing: the dispossessed against the propertied.

Gwen Dixon scowled in disapproval at the uproar as Ross Turnbull took his seat on the platform. He was the last to do so: with him was a city type in a blue suit, a crop-haired woman in shirt, skirt and sandals and a middle-aged man in a yellow jersey and pink corduroys.

Gwen Dixon called the meeting to order with a voice made for filling halls. Like a thunderclap, it silenced the hecklers. She was ‘merely the umpire’, she insisted. Her role was to ensure courtesy was shown to all the speakers, whatever their views. She glowered meaningfully at the back of the hall where a woman dared to comment loudly, ‘Ooh, courtesy is it?’

‘This,’ she said, ‘is a most important decision for the community of Poltown and beyond, a chance to make our feelings known.’ She looked round the audience. ‘I don’t need to tell you that BRC has a policy of only putting its footprint in communities where it is welcomed.’

She suggested
ground rules in a tone which discouraged discussion. The main
contributors would be limited to five minutes each, the invited
floor speakers to two and each member of the audience
to one question or point of order as time allowed.
A murmur of agreement rose from the hall. ‘In that
case,’ Gwen Dixon said, ‘we’ll start with BRC, followed
by Ted Russell for the Stop campaign, Ross Turnbull for
the Poltown Action Group and finally Johnnie West, representing environmental
charities. First,’ she paused, glancing sideways at the woman, ‘Joanna
Dilmott for BRC . . .’

Violet smiled at the crop-haired woman in sandals turning out to be the corporate player and the city type in a suit being the environmentalist. Ms Dilmott’s hand-knitted look wasn’t the only surprise. After thanking the chair, she descended from the stage to the floor of the hall, talking as she went.

Who liked being spoken down to? She didn’t, and she didn’t imagine the people of Poltown liked it any more than she did.