The Stormy Petrel

  ‘We had a rough night. Ruth, please, how was he hurt? What has happened?’

  ‘He was in that train, the one that crashed last night, the derailment south of Kendal. He was on it, the sleeper for Glasgow. I thought you’d have heard about the accident. Didn’t you get it on the radio?’

  ‘No radio. Go on. About Crispin.’

  ‘He’s all right, really. He phoned me himself. It wasn’t a bad accident. There was a coach dragged off the line, but it didn’t overturn, apparently, till everyone had been got out. Nobody killed, but a few people hurt. Cris tried to help, of course, but as soon as the ambulances came they sent him off to the local hospital, and that’s where he is now. I did wonder why you hadn’t called sooner—’

  ‘Yes, well . . . Have you got the Kendal number handy?’

  ‘Yes, but he’s leaving there today. I told you they want to do another X-ray, and they’re sending him to Carlisle for that, the Cumberland Infirmary.’

  ‘To Carlisle? But you said he wasn’t much hurt.’

  ‘No, he’s not, don’t worry. He sounded quite normal when he phoned, just annoyed about the holiday. He said he’d call again as soon as he heard the result of the new X-ray, but not to worry about it, it’s just the extra fuss they make when there’s a doctor involved. You know how it is. So we’ll just have to wait and see. He won’t be able to do much walking, of course, but he still wants to come.’

  She finished on such a note of surprise that in spite of myself I laughed. ‘He sounds all right, anyway. Try not to worry, Ruth. I’ll ring off now in case he’s trying to get through to you. But I’ll come up here to the post office this evening, and call you again.’

  ‘Fine. I’ll get his number for you and you can call him yourself. What about you, though, Rose? Are you all right there, on your own? I don’t see how he can make it before Monday, and that’ll be a whole week.’

  I was surprised, and touched. ‘I’ll be fine, thank you. The cottage is rather cosy, and I’m busy on a new story, so I’ll have plenty to do even if the weather’s bad. And when it’s fine, well, it’s a lovely little island, and I can have some bird-walks of my own. Give Crispin my love, Ruth, and I’ll ring tonight and see how things are.’

  ‘I’ll tell him. Goodbye, Rose.’

  ‘Goodbye.’

  Mrs McDougall was still busy when I went back into the shop. I collected what I needed, and when I got to the counter I found that she and her neighbours were discussing the train accident. Mrs McDougall, with a quick, concerned look at me, took my basket from me and dumped it on the counter.

  ‘I hope it was not bad news, Miss Fenemore? Did you not think that your brother might be coming north soon? And from London, so it would be on the line where they had the accident, would it not?’

  ‘Yes. And he was on that train, I’m afraid. No, no, thank you very much, it’s all right, he isn’t badly hurt, a sprained ankle, and they say it isn’t serious, but it does mean he can’t come north yet . . .’

  They exclaimed and condoled, with – once I had assured them that nothing serious had happened to my brother – a rather charming mixture of sympathy for me and pleasure in the excitement of the news. I gave them their full due, repeating all that my sister-in-law had said, and told them that I would hear from my brother himself that evening, then paid for my groceries and made my escape.

  I was halfway home before I realised that, with all the worry and talk about the accident, I had forgotten to ask Mrs McDougall about Ewen Mackay. Or, indeed, about John Parsons.

  Not that it mattered, as I would probably not see either of them again, but the scene last night had been strange, and my curiosity was aroused.

  Take Parsons first. He was, I was sure, an imposter. I refused to believe that he chanced to have the same name as the previous tenants of the cottage – unless he himself was the previous tenant, and had for some reason returned to Moila without wanting to be known? I remembered that, according to Archie McLaren, the family had used a boat, and done all their shopping in Tobermory, avoiding the islanders. An echo of Parsons’ geological jargon last night sounded in my head. I had heard the word ‘garnet’. Perhaps he really was a geologist. Perhaps he had discovered a seam – did you have a seam of garnet? – and had come back secretly to exploit it, and . . .

  This was Hugh Templar taking over. Nonsense. Forget fantasy and look at fact. Take Parsons again. He had – possibly – lied about his name. He had certainly lied about seeing the cottage light. If he had been chasing his flying tent up from the machair on the west of the island, he might have got up as far as the bogland near the lochan, but surely the light from my cottage would not be visible until he had followed the road downhill past the curve and almost into Otters’ Bay. Hence, his excuse for coming to the cottage was also a fake.

  Now take Ewen Mackay. Maybe he had not lied, and in any case what he had said about the cottage being his home could easily be checked. He had known where the coal was kept, and the Calor gas poker, and he had had a key – which, now that I thought about it, I should certainly have asked him to hand over to me . . . But there was that unmistakable and disquieting reaction to the knocking on the door, and then the pointless deception which followed; pointless, because he must have known he could not get away with it. Had it merely been a quick try at getting rid of the intruder? But why? Then there was the rather sharp bout of questioning, which had had, on both sides, a sort of wariness about it.

  And finally, the note this morning, with its suggestion of a truce between the two men.

  I stopped in mid-stride, so suddenly that an oystercatcher, which had been guddling among the reeds at the edge of the lochan, took off seawards with a screamed complaint.

  Supposing, just supposing, that Mackay and Parsons had arranged to meet at the cottage. The storm had been fortuitous, and extra. Mackay, key in hand (where had he really got it from?), had made his way to Otters’ Bay, and had walked straight in, assuming the cottage to be empty. I found it hard to believe that, even if he had been out of the country, his family could have moved away without his knowing. Unless, of course, they had not wanted him to know, and had seen to it that he had no address for them.

  Which would say certain things about Ewen Mackay.

  So, for some reason impossible to guess at, he and Parsons had arranged to meet. It was I, the unexpected tenant of the empty cottage, who was the joker in the pack. I had made them welcome, accepted their nonsensical stories because it didn’t matter one way or the other, and then gone obligingly off to bed and left them to their meeting . . .

  Something moved on the farther side of the lochan, something bulky and dirty white, caught in the bog myrtle, where it shifted and billowed in the breeze. John Parson’s tent? Could there have been that much truth in what he had said?

  I dumped the carrier with my groceries down beside the road, and set off across the moor. Not that it mattered (I told myself again) one way or the other, but now that my brother’s arrival was postponed at least until Monday, it would be good to have something of the story checked. And of course, if the object did happen to be the flyaway tent, its owner would need it back.

  It was not a tent, nor indeed any sort of camping equipment. It was an old plastic sack, probably used by a farmer and left outside to blow away. And it could have blown a good distance in last night’s gale. I regarded it with distaste, decided that the rain would have washed it reasonably clean, then dragged it clear of the bog myrtle and looked around me for somewhere to dump it out of sight.

  A fox’s earth, long abandoned, and not taken over by birds or rabbits, provided the dumping-ground. I stuffed the sack down out of sight, and straightened, to see that my search had brought me above a cleft in the moorland through which a glimpse of the western machair could be seen.

  It was a lovely stretch of shore, white sand and sheep-grazed turf backed by a stretch of flat, flowery meadowland. Even from where I stood I could see the white and yellow of dog-daisies and hawkear blowing in
the sea-breeze like coloured veils over the green.

  No sign of a tent, but over to the left, just showing, was a clump of trees thickly planted and apparently sheltered from the worst of the weather, and, standing up from among them, the chimneys of a house.

  The Hamilton house, presumably. Taigh na Tuir. A big house, with no smoke rising from the chimneys. And – I walked another few yards and craned my neck to see – no sign of life in the little bay beyond, with its boathouse and jetty.

  Across from the bay, beyond a narrow stretch of water, was a small island, an islet, rather. It was long and low, humped at the northern end and tapering to the south into flat rocks washed by the sea. Just below the hump I could make out – I have good eyes – the dark outline of what must be the ruined broch, and beside that, in its shelter, was a speck of bright, alien orange. A tent. He had found his tent and had already moved to the broch island.

  The oystercatcher had come back, and was wheeling noisily over the lochan. ‘So what?’ I said to it. So what indeed. Whatever the facts, both men had gone about their affairs, and would presumably not trouble me again. Forget it; get back to something more reasonable in the way of fantasy fiction. Another chapter today would see me nicely into the second half of my story, and this evening I would talk to Crispin and get things sorted out with him. And tonight . . . Well, I had noticed that on both front and back doors of the cottage there were stout and serviceable bolts.

  As I squelched my way back round the lochan’s edge towards the road, I saw the diver. Unmistakable, even though I had never seen one before; a big bird, brown and grey with a red throat, low in the water, where the wind-rippled surface managed to camouflage it in the most extraordinary way. When I had passed the lochan earlier, there had been no sign of it. It must be nesting, and now my near approach had driven it off the nest.

  The thought had hardly occurred to me before the diver, with a weird-sounding cry, left the water in a noisy take-off, and flew seawards in alarm. And there, two paces in front of my feet, was the nest.

  Two huge eggs, greenish-brown like the sedge, with a matt surface mottled like moss, lay in a shallow depression on the very edge of the loch, with a distinct sloping runway leading to the water, so that when alarmed the bird could slide invisibly off the eggs into a deep dive, to surface many yards away from its well-camouflaged home.

  I glanced around me, quickly. No one in sight; of course there wasn’t. No one to see my interest in this spot on the lochan’s edge. I stooped quickly and laid the back of a gentle finger against one of the eggs. It was warm. She must just have got off, and she was probably watching me from somewhere high above the distant sea. I turned my back on the lochan and walked a dozen paces away from the edge before heading back towards the road.

  A sound from overhead made me look up. The diver went over, high. I reached the road, picked up my groceries, and left her in peace.

  I did not see Mrs McDougall that evening. There was a girl in charge of the place, a child of perhaps twelve, who told me that her name was Morag, and that her auntie had stepped out on a visit, but had said the young lady from Camus na Dobhrain might be there to use the telephone, and please to go through.

  For what it was worth I asked her if she knew of a Ewen Mackay who might once have lived at Otters’ Bay, but she shook her head.

  ‘No.’ She spoke with an accent so soft that it sounded as if an h was attached to each consonant. ‘Not at all. There was a Mr and Mrs Mackay living there, yes, but they moved away, right to the mainland. My auntie would know. Alastair he was called, though, Alastair Mackay, that was gardener to old Mrs Hamilton at the big house.’

  ‘Did they have any children?’

  She hesitated, then nodded, but doubtfully. There had been – yes, she was sure there had been a boy, a long time ago, that would be. She had heard tell of him, but it was when she was very small, and she did not remember him. He would be a grown man now. She did not remember his name. Ewen? It might have been Ewen. Her auntie would know . . .

  I supposed that it did endorse part of Ewen Mackay’s story. Not, of course, that it mattered . . . I would ask Mrs McDougall next time I was here.

  On which fine piece of mental self-deceit I thanked Morag and went to the telephone.

  I got straight through to my brother at the number Ruth gave me, of the hospital in Carlisle.

  ‘What’s this about another X-ray?’ I asked him. ‘Have you had the result? Is it really only a sprain?’

  ‘That’s all, but it was – still is – badly swollen, and they insisted, quite rightly, on sending me here to have another look taken at it. The first X-ray showed what might have been a crack. But it’s all clear. No crack. They’ve given me an elbow crutch, and I can make the journey perfectly well now, if I thought the blasted train would stay on the lines, but there’s not much I could do once I got to Moila, is there, if I can’t walk? What’s it like?’

  ‘I think it’s lovely. The cottage is tiny, but it’s got all we need, and there’s just enough island to explore without transport. I’m afraid there’s none of that – transport, I mean – except Archie McLaren’s Land Rover, the one that carries you from the harbour. You’d be a bit stuck. But would it matter? You’d be away from the job and the telephone, and you’d be resting. Unless – do you have to go back to a hospital with it, or anything?’

  ‘No, no. There’s nothing I can’t deal with myself.’

  ‘Well, Archie has a boat, and he says he can take us out to the bird islands, and I’m sure we could get him to take you somewhere in the Land Rover where you can fish. Of course, if it’s really painful, forget it. I’ll be fine, and I’m writing, and if it gets a bit unlively I could perhaps find somewhere else—’

  ‘No, why should you? I was only doubtful because of spoiling your holiday. I can manage perfectly well, and I’d hate to miss Moila.’

  ‘It would spoil my holiday far more if you didn’t come,’ I said. ‘So risk the train, will you? And do you want me to ring the Oban hotel and tell them what’s happened and change the booking? You have? That’s great . . . It really is lovely here, and – well, I didn’t want to over-persuade you, but I found a red-throated diver’s nest today, perfectly lovely, two eggs, and I didn’t bring a camera. Didn’t think we’d need two, and mine’s not nearly as good as yours, even if I could take half as good a picture.’

  ‘And you don’t call that over-persuading? I’ll be there,’ said my brother. ‘Expect me on Monday’s ferry, then. If I know anything about it, I’ll be well and truly mobile by then.’

  ‘Physician, heal thyself,’ I said, laughing, and rang off, with a lightened heart.

  8

  Next morning was fair and sunny, with a breeze, but I journeyed duly into outer space, to tackle the problems of my party on Terra Secunda. Their difficulties were rapidly threatening to become too much for them, and consequently for me, too. In those circumstances I have always found it wise to abandon effort and leave the subconscious mind to sort things out while the conscious mind does something quite different. Goes for a walk, for example, and takes a look at the Hamilton house and that delectable stretch of milk-white sand bordering the machair.

  I followed the cliff path which led steeply up out of Otters’ Bay and then westward over the headland for something less than half a mile, to bring me in sight of the bay I had seen yesterday. Just inland from this, against its background of sheltering trees, stood the house.

  A high dry-stone wall enclosed the land round it for some four or five acres, and inside this enclosure were more trees, oak and fir and beech above the massed colours of rhododendrons in flower, with one big horse-chestnut in full bloom holding its creamy candelabra out across the wall. A stone archway in the seaward wall spanned a tall ironwork gate.

  Straight across from the house lay the broch islet. Now, with the tide low, the causeway connecting the islet with Moila’s mainland was high and dry, running across at the narrowest point of the channel. It consisted of natura
l slabs of flattish stone which at some time in the past had been levelled by wedges, and ‘helped’ in places by concrete, to form a crossing-place. But time and tide and neglect had eaten away at the structure so that even at low tide, with the slabs fully exposed, crossing would be tricky.

  To either side of this causeway was a tumble of half-exposed rocks, glossy with black seaweed, where the water rose and fell, barely stirring the weed. Apart from this crossing-point the channel seemed, even at this stage of the tide, to be fairly deep. Deep enough, at any rate, for a boat to get in to the boathouse which was tucked in under the cliff at the southern end of the bay, below the path where I stood. Beside the boathouse a jetty thrust out into the water, and from this a weedy, once-gravelled path led along above the beach to the stone archway which was the garden gate of Taigh na Tuir.

  I made my way down into the bay. That alone would have been worth the scramble round the cliff path. I had never seen anything like it before, a crescent of dazzling white, where a million pearly shells had been pounded and smashed by the Atlantic swells into fine sand, marked only by the tides, and above the tide-marks by the myriad criss-crossing prints of seabirds.

  It was not to be resisted. I sat down and took off my shoes and socks – I was wearing slacks and trainers – and then walked across the bay, luxuriating in the feel of the fine warm sand under my bare feet. I went right down to the sea’s edge, but the water was too cold for pleasure, so I retreated to the dry level and sat down to brush the sand off my feet and put on my shoes again.

  This done, I stood for a moment looking across at the broch islet. Directly across the channel was another, bigger bay, a long curving stretch of lovely white sand, with above it a sweep of green turf and bracken rising as far as the dark circle of the broch. The whole place was alive with the wings and calls of seabirds. It was very tempting, but it would be stupid to go across now, until I knew more about the tides. I wondered where John Parsons was; looking for his garnet-studded ‘intrusion’, whatever that was, on the other side of the island? I could see the tent from here, pitched in a hollow not far from the broch wall. The entrance flaps were shut.