You, Me & the Sea

by Elizabeth Haynes

  ‘He’s hurting. You’re hurting. Isn’t that true? Isn’t it time you did something about it?’

  ‘Ah, give over. Talking isn’t going to bring Maggie back, is it?’

  ‘Nothing is going to bring Maggie back.’

  That’s the bald truth of it, right there.

  ‘Fraser?’

  He drags his gaze up from her delicate fingers to her face, finally meets her eyes.

  ‘It wasn’t your fault,’ she says. ‘And it wasn’t his, either. You can’t keep living through all this blame. It’s just making everything worse.’

  ‘How d’you figure that out?’ he says dully.

  ‘You’re not taking responsibility for yourself. You’re so busy blaming yourself for not being there when Maggie went out that night, blaming Lefty for being off his face and crashing the car. Blaming Maggie for, I don’t know, for not being able to get herself clean. And it’s horrible, but it’s nobody’s fault, is it? It just happened.’

  He waits for several moments, not sure of the right words.

  ‘You make it sound so simple,’ he says.

  ‘It’s not simple. But you’ve been complicating things for years. It’s not easy to fix. But it’s not impossible, either.’

  ‘Feels impossible right now,’ he says. ‘I don’t know where to start.’

  ‘By talking,’ she says. ‘Maybe just by getting it out there?’

  ‘Maybe,’ he says. ‘Maybe.’

  Rachel

  At about eight in the evening the wind drops a little. They have been sitting in the living room in front of the woodburner, the radio still on in the background.

  Fraser has been talking. They both have. There have been moments of depth, but mostly he is paddling round in the shallows, talking about Maggie as a baby, Maggie at school, their mother. How things were when he was younger.

  Now Rachel goes to the porch and opens the door. It’s still windy outside but it looks brighter; on the horizon the clouds are very black. Behind them the sky has patches of broken cloud and blue sky, the evening sun throwing shafts of light on to the stormy black sea.

  ‘It’s not so bad,’ she says. ‘If we’re going back, we probably need to do it now.’ Tempting as it is, she has no real desire to spend the night in the bird observatory, even with Fraser. Besides anything else, the linen is all clean and on the beds ready for the next lot of visitors; she doesn’t want to be stripping beds and doing laundry if she doesn’t have to.

  The ride back to the lighthouse is bumpy and blustery, the quad splashing through deep puddles. Fraser drives round to the workshop and she opens the double doors so he can drive it inside. The chickens have already been tucked away for the night. Inside the hallway, the sound of Lefty’s television is blaring from his open door. Rachel goes to see him.

  ‘Thought you two had blown off the cliff,’ he says cheer fully.

  ‘We were waiting it out at the bird obs,’ she says. ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘Aye,’ he says. ‘Tell Fraser the coastguard have been calling him.’

  But Fraser is already in the living room, calling the coastguard on the radio. Eventually he comes through to the kitchen. Rachel feeds Bess, although she has a strong feeling that the dog has already had something to eat, given that there is a bit of gherkin and a crust of ketchup-smeared burger bun remaining as evidence in her bowl.

  ‘Everything okay?’ she asks.

  ‘Aye, so far. Lots of boats struggling out there.’

  ‘Anything we need to do?’

  ‘No. We’re on alert.’

  He stands in the kitchen, watching her. He is stone-cold sober and there is something going on with him, she thinks, something major. She remembers what Lefty said, yesterday, about Fraser being depressed. Is that true? Has she made things worse, by pushing him?

  ‘You said something once,’ he says. ‘I’ve been thinking about it a lot.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘You said you thought I don’t know what a relationship is.’

  She nods. Where is this going?

  ‘What is it, then? What’s your definition?’

  Deep breath in, Rachel. ‘I think it’s about allowing yourself to be happy, and wanting to make someone else happy.’

  ‘So happiness is your definition? What if you’re perfectly happy on your own?’

  ‘Are you?’

  ‘I’m fine, thanks very much. I just don’t think I could make someone else happy. I think I could make someone else very unhappy, without meaning to. And anyway, if you’re happy you’re just waiting for the next disaster to come along and ruin things. It’s better to stay where you are. It’s easier to stay … balanced.’

  ‘The absence of happiness isn’t balance, though, is it? It’s misery. That’s what you’re feeling, all the time. It’s been so long since you’ve been happy you’ve forgotten what it feels like. You’re scared of it.’

  Fraser

  He has no energy left, no concentration whatsoever. His brain cells are pickled and yet his body is still wide awake.

  Maybe he needed to get drunk last night to see it, to see what a complete arse he’s been. He has ruined everything, he thinks, ruined his one chance at escape, his chance at happiness.

  Rachel went to bed ten minutes ago. He lets Bess out, although the door nearly flies off its hinges and she casts a glance up at him as if he’s insane. She is out less than fifteen seconds and then back inside, shaking the rain off her coat and then huddling next to the range.

  He knows he should wait until she’s asleep. He knows he should leave her in peace. He knows he wants more than anything to spend the night with her warm soft body pressed up against him. He wants to spend as much of the night as possible between her thighs. He wants to make her come, as many times as she can before she falls asleep. He wants to do this every night for the rest of his fucking life. Would she say yes, if he just came out with it and asked?

  Fuck it, he thinks. She should be in bed by now.

  But when he climbs the stairs she is just coming out of the bathroom and he can’t help himself – he looks. Black pyjamas with wee stars on, her pretty little feet, the hair loose over one shoulder, and he’s turned on by her as he always is. Can’t help himself. She could just say a quick goodnight; she could go into her room and shut the door and that would be that. But she stands there on the landing, as if she’s caught. Her eyes flicker down his body and back up to his mouth.

  His self-imposed abstinence has lasted a day. What he’s feeling is some kind of serious withdrawal.

  He takes a deliberate step towards her. She doesn’t move. His hand slides around her cheek to her neck, fingers stroking into her hair. He has to stop this, he thinks, vaguely. And then he kisses her.

  Her hand comes up, falters, grips his bicep. His hand around her waist, pulling her up against him. She makes a sound and he lets her go.

  ‘You said—’ she says, breathing hard.

  ‘I know what I said,’ he admits, and into her mouth he says it again, for good measure. ‘I know.’

  ‘You need to go to bed,’ she says, softly.

  ‘Come with me,’ he says. It sounds like begging, even to him. He can hear the desperation in his voice as keenly as he feels it.

  ‘No,’ she says. ‘This isn’t what you want.’

  ‘Fuck that,’ he says, his voice harsh, ‘I’ve never wanted anyone more in my whole life.’

  There is a moment where he thinks she’s going to give in. And then he feels her pushing him away.

  She can’t quite meet his eyes. ‘It’s okay. It’ll be okay. Just go to bed,’ she says.

  The weather is wild outside. He can hear the wind and the rain against the windows, the noise of a rising storm.

  It’s not the sex, he thinks, lying in bed and staring at the ceiling. It’s not even what he wants, particularly, although obviously he wants that if she does; obviously he would give anything to have her here with him right now. It should be just about that, but it isn
’t.

  She’s leaving in less than two weeks. What’s he going to do when she’s gone? How is he going to carry on?

  For years he has survived on his anger. It’s the only thing he has let himself feel. Now alongside the anger suddenly there is desperation, desire, the fear of Rachel leaving, all of it rising up, sour and choking and terrible.

  Something is going to happen. Something has to happen, or he’ll explode.

  11

  Death wish

  Fraser

  At four-thirty, as it’s beginning to get light, Fraser gets out of bed, dresses, and goes downstairs.

  He has barely slept, and has the gritty eyes and dry mouth of someone who has lain awake for hours, brain belting out scenarios and suggestions without ever managing to rest. He has spent the last two hours with Lefty’s knife in his hand, the one he had hidden under the bed – not really a very effective hiding place, but he couldn’t seem to manage to get rid of it entirely. And now he’s glad he didn’t.

  Bess is surprised to see him. She sleeps downstairs in the kitchen when she can’t decide whose room to guard. He doesn’t blame her, he thinks, as she eyes him reproachfully. He’s a bad man, and, worse than that, he’s a fool. Dogs may be faithful but Bess can see right through him.

  He pulls on his jacket and his boots and Bess scampers to the door. ‘Not now,’ he says to the dog. ‘You stay here.’

  She lets out a long whine. This is not usual. She knows some thing’s wrong.

  In the end he relents and takes her with him.

  The wind is violent and there are thick clouds scudding overhead, promising more rain. He walks to the cliffs, Bess a black ghost shadowing him, overtaking him and looping round, while the birds wheel and soar like angels overhead.

  The bird observatory is in darkness and he skirts past it, heading for the north shore. It’s only after a while that he realises he can no longer see Bess, and he stands and turns in a slow circle, taking in the roiling white waves, the grey-green turf, the leaden sky and the black stones, rain-soaked, of the ruined abbey. Something about the stones looks odd, unfamiliar, and he detours to the ruins, picking his way carefully between the burrows.

  It starts to rain, a determined, soaking drizzle which develops into a downpour, heavy rain blasting into him horizontally, the wind making it hard to keep to a straight path, buffeting him off his feet.

  From the ruins comes a strange sound, a moaning, a wailing; at first he thinks it’s Bess and he hurries, tripping on a tussock of grass and catching himself just in time, his ankle twisting painfully.

  The Victorian lighthouse-keepers had believed this place haunted, and this was why: the wind blowing from a particular direction whistled in a certain way through cracks and fissures in the stones, sounding like a child crying, sounding like a woman screaming. It’s a horrible sound, calling to mind unbearable misery and desolation.

  He finds Bess eventually, cowering under the altar stone, barely visible in the driving rain. He crouches down with her, the wind momentarily abating as he reaches the shelter, reaches his hand to her head. She licks his cold hand with a hot, dry tongue. If she’s whining, he’d never hear it.

  People came here for solace, he thinks, shocked by the thought as if he’s just realised it. Once there was a building – the only building, the first building, before the lighthouse and before the cottages and before the bird observatory. Older than time, this place. And it was a place of sanctuary, a place of healing, a place of peace.

  The emotion he’s been holding back all this time rises in him and he gasps at it, gasps for breath against the buffeting wind. He thinks he’s going to vomit and he pitches forwards on to his hands and knees, saliva running. His stomach lurches, and is still.

  Gulping, he sits back on his haunches, feels something soft behind him. Bess pushes back against him and he hears a whine, another soft lick on his cheek. He wraps his arms around her, buries his face in her neck, the black fur wet and cold on his skin, warmer as he threads his fingers through to the drier, denser fur beneath the surface. The unmistakable stink of wet dog. It feels like something inescapably real, something he can hold on to to stop the madness of the storm, the madness that’s raging even more fiercely inside his head.

  ‘Make it stop,’ he cries, not sure if he’s talking about the madness or the wind or the wailing or the storm … but it doesn’t matter. There’s nobody to hear.

  He feels the weight of the knife bumping against his chest. Thinks about it. He could die here, without too much trouble. He could use the knife. Or even take off his jacket, move out to the middle of the ruins where the wind and the rain are so fierce he can see nothing but swirling grey – he’d be dead within a few hours. Long before Rachel wakes up. She and Lefty probably won’t even go outside today; why would they? She would think he was still asleep, in his room. She probably wouldn’t even check till late morning, maybe even lunchtime.

  And it would be peaceful, he thinks, despite the raging storm, because he’s already tired, exhausted even, and he’s not even feeling the cold any more. It’s just the island, his island. He’s seen fiercer weather than this, and the weather will continue and get worse and get better the way it always does, on and on, for the centuries to come. Long after the lighthouse has gone, the birds will still be here and the storms will come, and the island will stay, a granite rock upon the sea, the place where the pilgrims came and the sick got better, the place where Fraser Sutherland lay down and gave up.

  He thinks, I don’t deserve to live.

  After all this, he recognises it for what it is. He’s not angry at Lefty, he doesn’t blame him. Not any more.

  It’s what Rachel said: the utter, bald truth of it. It’s nobody’s fault. So what’s left, then, to explain it? It’s not anger. It’s something worse, something filthy, degrading, unforgivable: the shame of it. He’s ashamed of Maggie. He was ashamed of her addiction, of her inability to fight, of the easy way she slipped from one phase of self-destruction to the next. How she went from weed to MDMA to cocaine to heroin and crack with barely a pause. How she said she was trying, and yet she never quite managed. And he’d loved her so much despite it all; it was easier to look for somewhere else to focus all of that emotion. Make it anger. Make it blame. Anything but the shame of having a drug addict for a sister; the shame of failing to protect her. The shame of failing to look out for his ma. The shame of failing to take his revenge for Maggie’s death, when the opportunity had literally walked up to his door and waved in his face.

  How do you ever recover from that? You don’t, he thinks. You can’t. He has spent the last six years ignoring it, pushing the guilt and the self-loathing down, using Lefty to explain the fury that keeps rising, and rising, and won’t go away.

  It took Rachel to make him see it. And now he’s losing her, too.

  His life, my life, he thinks. It’s right. I should have done this years ago.

  Beside him, Bess shivers and growls and then whines. He feels the muscles of her shoulder and her back tense, and then she springs out of his grasp. He looks up, looks for her, but, with a single bark that sounds as if it’s come from a long, long way away, she is gone.

  And then there’s an inexplicable slow warmth, as if the sun’s come out; but it’s coming from inside, spreading outwards. He feels it flooding through him, emptying him, draining away and leaving nothing behind but exhaustion.

  This is it, he thinks, his hand on the knife in his pocket. This is it.

  He looks out into the swirling gloom, and waits.

  Rachel

  Rachel sits at the kitchen table. Outside, the storm is raging, howling against the lighthouse. The building should be solid as anything, but she is sure she can feel it moving, buffeted by the wind. It’s been here for two hundred years, she thinks. Surely, if it was going to fall down, it would have done it by now.

  Bess and Fraser are out there, somewhere. She tried to open the door but the pressure of the wind from the other side was too st
rong. She went the back way, through the back hall, and through the passage into the workshop. It was empty, the chickens still in their coop. She considered letting them out, at least into the workshop, but the wooden doors were rattling and the rainwater was coming in under the door. If the door went, the chickens would be blown away. So she left them where they were.

  This morning when she got up there had been no coffee, no porridge, no sign that Fraser has had breakfast. She had gone upstairs and knocked, lightly, on his door, and when there was no answer she’d opened it a crack, and it was empty. She considers the possibilities, her hands cradling a mug of tea. Perhaps he went out early and the storm got worse suddenly, and he had to take shelter in the bird observatory? That must be it. Except, he wouldn’t have taken Bess out in this weather, surely? She’d be at risk of flying off the cliff.

  An hour passes. She fires up her laptop but there is no internet connection – the signal booster on the side of the lighthouse must have blown over. Lefty emerges after a while, stops in the doorway when he sees she is alone.

  ‘All right?’ she asks.

  ‘Aye. Blowin’ out there.’

  ‘I don’t suppose you know where Fraser’s gone?’

  He shakes his head. ‘Taken Bess?’

  ‘I’m worried.’ Now she’s said it out loud it has become true. It has become a thing.

  ‘Ach, he’ll be fine.’

  ‘In this weather?’

  ‘You should try it in winter.’

  ‘But the wind—’

  Lefty pushes some bread into the toaster.

  Something’s wrong, she thinks. Last night, wide awake, rattled by the kiss on the landing, her decision to say no, Rachel had lain listening to the storm for a long time before she fell asleep. Fraser has come back from the mainland different somehow, and not just because he’s been smartened up. Something happened to him; it’s as if he’s broken, as if the depression that Lefty had named has come back. She has seen the effort of keeping himself together, the tension he holds in himself the whole time, has seen it seeping from him as if she’d pulled out a plug somewhere.