The Woman Who Walked Into the Sea (2 page)

The next thing she knew she was outside, on the gravel path, short of breath, her heart racing, both it and her legs going faster than was advisable for a woman of seventy seven. In her eagerness to distance herself from her mortification, she stumbled and fell. She pitched the prayer book into the grass at the verge. The pebbles of the path dug into her knees. She cried out, a sound which no-one apart from her heard. The singing from the church drowned it out. ‘Land of Hope and Glory’: Mr William’s favourite. She remained collapsed and broken on the path until the singing stopped. Picking herself up, she looked in bemusement at the pin-pricks of blood oozing through the shreds of her tights and at the fluttering pages of the prayer book in the grass. All she could hear was Matt’s venomous whisper, ‘Diana felt obliged to put up with you for all these years . . .’

Felt obliged. . . .

She let out another little cry of pain and made her way unsteadily past Mr William’s grave, averting her face to conceal her tears. She opened and closed the wooden gate in the graveyard wall and followed the path across the moor; the quickest route to her cottage. It took her 20 minutes, longer t
han normal because of her frequent pauses to wipe her eyes. She was still sobbing when she entered her porch and fell back against her door.

She had never been treated so shamefully, she thought as she removed her gloves and placed them on the hall shelf.

To put up with
you for all these years

She had always disliked Matt, disrespected him too, as in general she did all men who described themselves ‘dealers’ or ‘agents’ – in Matt’s case, property dealer. Now her feelings for him bordered on loathing. And for
Miss
Alexandra.

Still distracted, she picked up a letter which had been pushed through the flap while she’d been out. She recognised the style of envelope: it was the sort Brae used for estate business. She carried it to the sitting room – where the light was brighter – and began to read. A soft mewling sound escaped from her and the letter fluttered from her shaking hands on to an occasional table, a gift for her 60th birthday from Diana. Mrs Anderson stared around the room, at all the photographs there, as though she didn’t know these people who were staring back at her, as if she was in the company of complete strangers. Nine matching wooden frames, scenes of her with the family:
her
family she liked to think of them. These photographs which had sustained her for so many years – the proof of her indispensability, of her easy familiarity, even intimacy – now seemed to mock her. Her head turned in an arc as she examined each one, in dazed shock at such betrayal.

Over there, on the chest of drawers, Christmas 2002, the year before Mr William’s death: the family and Mrs Anderson assembled for tea in the drawing room. That was the Christmas Diana had given Mrs Anderson a silk scarf, a pretty butterfly pattern of pale yellows and greys, by Hermès. And there, on a Pembroke table behind the door, three more photographs: her ‘Easter parade’ she liked to call them whenever she showed them off to visitors. She remembered the years, 1998, 1999 and 2001; the family and Mrs Anderson by the front door before the start of the Easter egg hunt, Alexandra’s children holding empty paper bags in which to put their finds. Wasn’t 1999 the year Sophia ate so many she had to go to bed? Wasn’t 2000, the missing year, the Easter Alexandra and the family went skiing and Mr William and Diana took the opportunity to escape to Paris for the weekend? On the mantelpiece, in pride of place, were two other photographs: one taken at Alexandra’s wedding; the other at Mr William’s 70th birthday party: happy occasions she thought at the time. She turned to examine the group of three photographs on the bookshelves to the right of the fireplace and noticed something to which she had been utterly blind until that moment. For many years now she had regarded her position in every group as unspoken acknowledgement of her importance to the family. Hadn’t she been placed on the outside because Mr William stood or sat on the opposite side from her, the two of them like strong supporting pillars? Take one or other away and the edifice would collapse. Now her eyes darted from photograph to photograph and she considered the manner in which Alexandra, Matt and the children held themselves; even Mr William. It was in every one, the turn of a shoulder, the swing of a hip, the slant of a head; away, away, always away from her. She hadn’t realised it before and now she could not bear to see it. There was a sign, even then, of what would happen, of what had happened. Why had she been blind to it?

Diana
felt obliged to put up with you for all these
years . . .

Was it a silent or spoken conspiracy? Had they discussed it before her arrival for lunch, tea, whatever the gathering? She imagined the family laughing at her too: the disdain of duty to a servant, allowing her to think she was one of them when she was nothing of the kind. What a fool she had been? Had there ever been an occasion when she had been invited into the middle of the group? If there had, she could not remember it. ‘Pride before a fall’, she muttered to herself before going round the room collecting up the photographs, stacking them face downwards so she didn’t have to look at them again. She took them to the kitchen and dropped them into the rubbish bin. One slid away and crashed to the floor, splintering the glass. She left it there and returned to the sitting room, stopping by the occasional table. She regarded the letter lying on it as if caught in two minds: should she dispose of it too? She picked it up and read it silently. Her hands wavered at the offence it contained.

Dear Mrs Anderson,

After reviewing the farm accounts following Mrs Ritchie’s death, it has come to our notice that you have been occupying Gardener’s Cottage on terms enjoyed by no other tenant on the Brae Estate. I have to inform you that it will no longer be possible for your utility bills or council tax to be met by the estate as was the case when Mrs Ritchie was alive. Also, you will be expected to pay rent at the market rate of £575 a month, all with immediate effect.

Yours sincerely

Matthew Hamilton.

Mrs Ritchie. Not Diana. Matthew. Not Matt. Not even a handwritten signature.

After folding the letter, she put it back on the table. She continued to hover beside it only because she wasn’t sure whether she could move without falling. Her hand reached for the back of an arm chair. She had little grip in her fingers so she pushed her bent knuckles against the loose cover for support. Her mouth hung open as her breathing became faster, each exhalation accompanied by a moan. Slowly, she looked around her sitting room, now stripped of the memories which once gave her comfort as well as companionship, and she wondered whether she could afford to go on living there.

Hurt heaped upon hurt.

Her pension was small, the house larger than she could afford on her own. A stab of anxiety went through her, a spasm of pain. Her garden, her hydrangeas – she realised they too might be lost to her. She swayed but managed to stop herself from falling by pressing hard against the chair back.

Hurt upon hurt.

She shook her head. Why had this happened to her? Hadn’t she been the most loyal of friends to Diana? What would have become of her without Mrs Anderson?

Put up with you . . .

So Diana only put up with Mrs Anderson because she had to. Because of what Mrs Anderson knew. Because of what Mrs Anderson had done when Diana needed her most.

Diana had always been a pleaser, even with Mrs Anderson it seemed.

Mrs Anderson took a step, and another, finally having the confidence to let go of the chair. She went from her sitting room across the hall to the kitchen where she sat at the square oak table. In the middle of it was an earthenware jar with pens, pencils and scissors. Around about the jar were tidy piles of everyday and useful objects – shopping catalogues, her diary, a pad of paper, envelopes, stamps and the phone book. She reached for a pen and the writing paper. She wrote quickly, two sentences in printed capitals. She read them once before folding the sheet and tucking it into an envelope, the flap of which she had to lick a few times with her dry tongue before it was wet enough to seal. She slid the phone book towards her and found the address she wanted. After copying it, she stamped the envelope and went to the front door, removing her car keys from the hook under the shelf. As soon as she was outside, her ears filled with the sound of sniggering and laughter coming from Poltown, a kilometre away. Whether it was real or imagined she couldn’t tell, so she set her face in an expression of indifference, the one she always wore when she went to the post box by the shop.

Going down the drive to the road, she talked to herself about her loyalty to the Ritchies, how she had kept their secrets, how Diana owed her still. Hadn’t Mrs Anderson rescued her, getting blood on her hands as a consequence? How the family shouldn’t have let her come so close if they planned to abandon her, how they didn’t know what they’d done. How they’d pay. Oh, how they’d pay.

Some days there was nothing, others it was like this, the beach at South Bay littered with all kinds of detritus. Duncan Boyd gazed at the sweep of sand with the excitement of a collector at the door of a junk shop. Who knew what he might discover in the next few minutes? Only last week he’d found an old brown bottle buried in seaweed. He realised what it was as soon as he had it in his hands. The lead seal was intact, the documents inside just as they were when Guinness dropped 150,000 like it into the Atlantic in 1959 for a bi-centenary marketing exercise. Thousands floated on to the east coasts of America and Canada, as Guinness intended; others eventually found land in South America, the Arctic, even Europe; and others continued to come ashore, more than half a century and countless thousands of miles at sea later. One of the documents Duncan teased from the bottle, the King Neptune Scroll, was now framed and hanging from a beam in the barn where he did his sorting. He had read the colourful document so often during the past few days he could recite the first long sentence off by heart, and did so then in the voice he considered appropriate for the occasion: deep bass as if emerging from ocean depths.

‘To the finder of this document greetings and let it be known to all men (and women) that I, Neptune, Monarch of the Sea . . .’ Duncan paused, stuck out his chin and surveyed his imaginary realm with narrowed eyes. Then he began again. ‘. . . that I, Neptune, Monarch of the Sea, have permitted the House of Guinness to cast in, and/or, upon my Domain the bottle carrying this document – but in precise particular, the Atlantic Ocean – and allow same free passage, without let or hindrance, to convey to you the story of Guinness Stout, as also to further the fascinating hobby of Labology (the collecting of bottles.)’

Immediately the widest grin of sheer delight spread across his face, making his weather-beaten skin a relief of crevasses. He laughed, rubbed his hand across the grey grizzle of his unshaven chin and took the rocky path from the headland to the beach below. Half way down, where the trail descended steeply between perpendicular slabs of rock, he stopped and shouted out, ‘I, Neptune, Monarch of the Sea’ and cocked his head to one side. When he heard the reverberation, he smiled. ‘This,’ he said as he negotiated the loose stones, ‘is going to be a good day, Duncan.’ He smacked his lips in anticipation.

Almost as soon as he stepped on to sand, his prophecy seemed vindicated. A blue mooring buoy was stranded there, a type he hadn’t seen before. He turned it over, looking for a manufacturer’s name, but couldn’t find one. Before lifting it and lugging it across the beach, he checked he was alone. He wasn’t expecting anyone. After all, it was late August. The tourists had all but gone and he’d taken his usual precaution of scanning the Poltown road for walkers with his binoculars before venturing out. All he’d seen were cars, lots of them, going to the church for Diana Ritchie’s memorial service.

He frowned and pushed out his bottom lip to mark her passing before grinning again at finding he had the place to himself. ‘My kingdom,’ he announced, trying for a monarch’s resonance. The result amused him: more Darth Vader than Roman god of water and sea. He gathered up the buoy and lugged it to the turning circle at the road-end where he’d parked his empty trailer the night before. For a moment he wondered what to do with his find. Should it go with all the other blue buoys in his collection – his general if loose practice was to grade buoys by size and colour – or should it be on its own since he didn’t have any others exactly like it? No sooner had the question formulated in his head than he became bored by it and gave the buoy a shove, rolling it to the back of the trailer. His eyes swivelled back to the beach, like a child about to embark on a treasure hunt. What other finds were waiting for him?

Usually, it took a few days for him to collect enough to fill his trailer, but today would be different. If he wasn’t disturbed there was a load and more on the beach: the wind and high tides of the last few days had produced a bounty. He liked that word.
Bounty
. He said it again as he decided what to gather next.
Bounty
. A swirl of greens and blues suddenly distracted him. He pounced and exclaimed in pleasure at the rubber ball he produced from its hiding place in the sand. He’d keep it for Pepe, the little dog belonging to the new GP, Dr Bell. Sometimes she walked him at South Bay after her surgery at Poltown.

For the next hour and more, he went backwards and forwards across the sand dragging a net as well as two lobster pots, four lengths of black plastic piping, an assortment of soft-wood planks and other driftwood, a blue fish box, two more buoys (white and orange), broken pieces of polystyrene, an empty oil drum and what appeared to be the blade of an oar. After piling them on the trailer, he stopped to roll a cigarette with the last of his tobacco. He licked the paper, lit it and tried to remember what day of the week it was. If Thursday, his weekly delivery box from the general store would be at the farm gate with another 25g packet of rolling tobacco in it. But he thought it was Wednesday so he limited himself to two puffs before putting out the cigarette by pressing the smouldering end between his thumb and forefinger. He stored the butt away in the breast pocket of his denim shirt and was about to go back to work when it occurred to him he hadn’t checked the beach road for a while. After all, he didn’t want anyone surprising him.

He climbed on to the trailer and slowly straightened his legs. At first all he saw was the high ridge of hills behind Poltown. Then, as he extended his back and finally his neck, the woods around Brae House came into view followed by the church on its emerald knoll midway between the house and the village. He registered that the cars had gone: the memorial service for Diana Ritchie over. ‘God bless her soul,’ he said with a sombre expression, before smirking at realising he was a god of sorts so had no need to invoke another deity. By now he was almost upright and most of the beach road was visible. He saw his farm gates, the twin stone pillars, the field which was dotted with old machinery, and further to the right, sheltering below the headland, his house and steading. Just as he stretched to his full height, all six feet, he noticed someone coming out of the open double doors to his barn, and then he saw the bonnet of a vehicle. It was parked inside the steading. Complaining at another intrusion, he ducked down. Whoever it was hadn’t seen him. But who was it? His earlier exuberance and excitement at having the beach to himself drained away. Crouching on the trailer he began muttering about it being his land, how he’d never sell, no matter what inducement he was offered or whatever promises they made. He’d never leave. In the few seconds that elapsed since first seeing the stranger, Duncan’s features put on a fast evolving display of emotions – panic, worry, love. Love of his house. Love of his field. Love of this beach. His jaw set. His eyes narrowed. His breathing slowed. Finally, defiance: no, he’d never leave.

A plan popped into his head and he smiled at its simplicity. Why hadn’t it occurred to him before? He’d paint ‘This farm and land is NOT for sale. Turn round here’ on the old Ferguson tractor and tow it to the stone pillars at the start of the track to the farm.

Emboldened by this notion, Duncan dared to raise himself up again. He elongated his neck until his barn came into view. A red pickup was moving along the rutted track which went from the steading across the field to the stone pillars. His visitor was going away. Duncan’s expression changed again; defiance made way for bemusement. The vehicle looked old and battered and a dent was even visible in the passenger door. The others who had come to talk to him had driven sleek black sports utility vehicles, BMWs and the like. The pickup headed away along the beach road and Duncan waited until it had disappeared over the rise before clambering off the trailer. He loped towards the farmhouse, taking the short-cut through the dunes and climbing the broken-down fence into the field. He paused for breath beside the skeleton of an old horse-drawn cart. His exertion brought back some of his previous exuberance.

‘I, Neptune,’ he proclaimed in a suitably triumphal voice, as if a great and bloody battle had taken place, a battle of the gods, from which he had emerged victorious, his enemies in headlong flight. Fired by his conquest, Duncan strode towards home. Only when he was standing between the open doors of his barn did he hesitate. On the packed mud floor was a sheet of paper weighted down by a stone. Its edges fluttered in the draught. Duncan regarded it with alarm and pressed his hands against his ears. Once the pressure subsided, he bent uncertainly to read it.

Dear Mr Boyd,

A friend told me about your discovery of a 1959 Guinness bottle. Like you, I’m a beachcomber and have a large collection of artefacts (though having seen your farm I don’t think I’m quite in your league). In my case, beachcombing is part of my research into how and where currents and winds carry objects across the oceans. My areas of interest are the eastern and northern Atlantic, including the Scottish coast. Because of the length of time you’ve been beachcombing I’d like to pick your brains (and see your Guinness bottle). Could I visit? I’ve got to go to Edinburgh this afternoon but I’ll be back in a few days. My email address is [email protected]. Look forward to meeting you soon, Cal McGill.

His phone number was added as a postscript.

Duncan guffawed at how a piece of flapping paper had made him scared, one moment a fearless sea god, the next a tremulous mouse.

* * *

The house was Victorian, semi-detached and built of stone. Cal rang the bell and set off a tumble of descending chimes. As they stopped a pigeon-chested man in his 60s opened the door. ‘Hello, Cal. How are you?’ Harry Richards was wearing a yellow jersey and an over-solicitous expression. By the look of him, he wanted this to be over as quickly as Cal, and without any bad feeling. ‘Good journey?’ he inquired when he could have complained about Cal being 40 minutes late. ‘Took me six hours the last time I was that far north.’

‘Sorry about the delay,’ Cal mumbled, not wanting to have his usual discussion with Harry, about routes, roads and short-cuts. It was an odd feeling, being back at the house. The bell had thrown him. He’d expected a monotone ring, not chimes. His face must have betrayed his thoughts because Harry remarked, ‘I hope you don’t mind. Annabel wanted something more cheerful.’ The way he said it hinted at disagreement between husband and wife but, under the circumstances, it was possible Harry was just being diplomatic.

Cal shrugged.
You’ve bought the house – do what you
want with it.

‘Here we are then.’ Harry pushed back the door to show Cal his mother’s law books, eight roped stacks on the brown and white tiled floor of the porch. ‘Everything’s ready for you.’ He offered to help Cal carry them to the pickup with a warning to be careful in case the ropes cut into his hand. The job itself they did in silence. When the last stack was on its side on the back seat, Harry said, ‘I’m sorry about this.’

‘Don’t be. It’s not your fault. It’s nobody’s fault.’

‘If you’re passing and you want to see round the place . . .’ Harry placed an avuncular hand on Cal’s shoulder. ‘Just ring the bell. Annabel will be pleased to see you.’

They looked at each other. On the few occasions Cal had been to the house since Harry and Annabel Richards had become his father’s tenants, Harry had always been welcoming; his wife frozen and hostile. Cal had the impression she regarded his unannounced visits as proprietorial or even territorial, the equivalent of scent-marking.

The silence made Harry earnest. ‘We’ll take care of the place. I promise you that.’ His pledge was directed at the house, rather than at Cal.

‘I’m sure you will . . .’ Cal dangled his spare keys. ‘You’d better have these.’

Harry organised his benign features into an expression appropriate for receiving an over-generous present. ‘Oh, thanks very much,’ he said followed quickly by ‘that just leaves the furniture. It’s in the garage. I’ll give you a hand getting it aboard.’

Afterwards, driving away from the street in Edinburgh’s south side, seeing the laburnum tree in whose bark the rope of his childhood swing was still embedded, Cal had the oddest sensation of dislocation. ‘I’m twenty-nine years old, for God’s sake!’ How had he progressed that far into adulthood only to be pole-axed by the sale of a house he’d visited once in the past year, in which he hadn’t slept since he was eighteen or nineteen?

Later, he brooded on it in his office, a brick box on an industrial estate three kilometres to the north-east, in Leith. He’d moved there more than a year ago from a studio flat in a converted whisky bond further along Edinburgh’s coastline. The box had a monthly rent attached but required little else from Cal, a feature of the place which appealed to him. What had been intended as a temporary move was becoming permanent. Leaning against a shelf, drinking coffee from a red mug, he observed his surroundings, such as they were: the long table cluttered with the paraphernalia of oceanography – dozens of maps, files and books as well as two computers – and at the walls which were papered with charts of ocean currents and newspaper cuttings. There were stories about unidentified bodies washing up on Britain’s beaches as well as magazine and newspaper articles about Cal. Many of the headlines had a similar theme: ‘Sea detective finds clue in severed head murder hunt’; ‘Trawler families make appeal to ocean expert: track down our missing men’; ‘Oil tanker implicated in vanishing yachtsman mystery’; ‘Sea detective becomes a doctor’ and so on. The last of these was about his PhD which he had completed three months ago.

He crossed the office to the kitchenette, walking round the folding camp bed he kept for the nights he spent in town. He topped up his black coffee with water from the kettle until it was brown, before going to the store-room next door, where he’d unloaded the books and furniture from his family home. His fingers passed from one object to the next, from one texture to another: from the corrugations of his mother’s roll-top desk to the polished back of the reproduction Chippendale arm-chair with its leather seat on which she used to place her coat and bag after coming in from the solicitors’ office where she worked. Now he ran the heel of his hand along the pine chest of drawers from his childhood bedroom, the scars of his wakeful night-time scribblings still visible under an overcoat of white paint. Everything he touched aroused a dormant memory so that in a few seconds of reflection his office store-room became an ante-chamber to a much larger and featureless repository, the one in Cal’s head where he filed regrets and hurts.