The Darkness Within

by Alanna Knight

  Apart from shouted comments, with conversation impossible as the motor car had noised its way over the hazardous uneven cliff road, Rose’s thoughts drifted back to Emily’s urgent summons, the sickening news of Erland’s unexpected death, the frantic haste of their sailing from Edinburgh to Orkney in time for the funeral. She took her sister’s hand exchanging a sad smile, for Emily had resolutely decided that grief must be set aside and that she must find consolation and comfort in the joy of this unexpected family meeting, especially of seeing her father again.

  Nearing Hopescarth was already reviving Rose’s memories of that visit ten years ago, especially the village of Skailholm, perched so perilously above the shore. Her bicycle had a puncture and she had been given a lift in a motor car. A more settled day than this, the sky blue to the horizon occupied by a few lazy drifting cumulus clouds, that the schoolteacher in Kirkwall reading Bible stories solemnly would tell the children who asked about where heaven was, that these were angels’ pillows.

  Jack stopped after a particularly sharp bend, stepping down briefly to look at the engine, and in that short silence she heard the skylarks, tiny dots soaring into the blue. And that brought another childhood memory.

  Touching Magnus sitting opposite, she pointed and said: ‘Skylarks.’

  He grinned. ‘We all call them Our Lady’s hens.’

  Rose laughed as the motor car restarted. ‘So did we!’

  ‘Almost there!’ Jack’s shout as they approached the stone bridge to Yesnaby House brought another flood of memories. Her last visit, the archaeologists at work, the mystery of the peat bog burial and its dire solution. Then there was Erland’s amazing garden, so lush and fertile in this otherwise barren wilderness with all its secrets.

  As Jack helped his passengers to alight, it was a relief for Rose. Travelling by motor car was novel, much speedier than any bicycle, but she still preferred the exhilaration of fresh air and the feeling of well-being rather than sitting still in the back of noisy machines with cramped muscles after a few miles.

  The door opened and Meg rushed out, straight into her father’s arms, as if they had been parted for years rather than hours, Rose thought wryly, remembering how much Meg had wanted to come on the car journey, disappointed and cross that there wasn’t room in the motor car for her to meet her new grandfather off the ferry. That wasn’t the only reason. She had a bad head cold and had been off school for a few days in Edinburgh. As she was just recovering, her father had insisted that sitting in the back of an open motor car with the more than likely probability of rain would be bad for her.

  Now settled firmly back again on the ground by Jack, Meg shyly turned to Magnus, smiling as he introduced her to Faro: ‘This is our grandfather, Meg.’

  With handshakes and hugs exchanged, Mary Faro bustled towards the kitchen while Rose and Emily went upstairs to remove their black veils.

  Faro was surprised to discover that, viewed from outside, this was a very ordinary house built in the traditional Orkney style, but once inside it was much larger, much grander. Through the front door, he walked across a marble tiled floor and ignoring the grand oak staircase sweeping upwards, he followed his mother down a corridor that emerged into a large kitchen, the domain of Mary Faro, which could have accommodated the whole of her tiny Kirkwall cottage where he had grown up. Indeed, this was a house with authority, stated and confirmed by the portraits of Erland’s ancestors staring sternly down from the walls, while outside, far below, were the remains of mysterious crumbling stone walls that went nowhere, hinting that this was not the first habitation to stand on top of the hill, a watchtower to the sea on the ready for invaders.

  Upstairs, this was the first chance for Rose to talk about Faro with the sister who had seen him even less frequently in Orkney than she had in Edinburgh.

  ‘He has always looked young for his age,’ said Emily, ‘and don’t you remember we dreaded what it would be like if he married someone else?’ They had both been children then, when their mother died in childbirth, with a late baby, the son she had longed to give to Faro but who went into the grave with her.

  Rose laughed. ‘Too many wicked stepmothers in fairy tales.’ Older, they hoped that he would marry again, and had suspicions that such a handsome man must have had many fleeting romances over the years.

  ‘Do you ever hear anything of Inga?’ Rose asked. Orkney recalled memories of a visit long ago when there had obviously been something between her father and Inga St Ola.

  Emily shook her head. ‘No. According to Gran, she left Kirkwall years ago for a job on the mainland.’ She didn’t add that Mary Faro was thankful to see the back of this woman who she had never liked, fearing that she would ensnare her beloved Jeremy into marrying her. Inga had been his first love, but her name was never mentioned.

  ‘Any news of Imogen?’ Emily added.

  Rose laughed. ‘We all had great hopes there, didn’t we? Ten years or more, and Imogen Crowe, the famous lady writer from Ireland as our stepmother!’

  ‘Yes, we were thrilled at the prospect, but no, the impediment to their wedding, I gather, is that Imogen is a dedicated suffragette who doesn’t believe in marriage.’ Emily leant across the table and nodded. ‘Perhaps their relationship is everything except being churched, if you get my meaning.’

  ‘A Scots’ marriage by habit and repute, we call it.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Emily. ‘Sounds so simple – just grab a couple of witnesses and say you are man and wife. Then if you get fed up in a year or two, no binding vows, you just say goodbye and go your own ways.’ A deep sigh remembered what she had just lost. She shook her head and Rose stretched out a hand, held Emily’s firmly as she went on: ‘Would never have done for me, Rose. I wanted it all legal, with a home and children – and so did Erland,’ she ended sadly.

  Rose put an arm about her shoulders as she went on: ‘I still can’t believe that I will never be with him again, never have his head on the pillow beside me when I wake in the mornings. Oh Rose, he was my husband and like a father too. Now a light has gone out for ever.’

  ‘At least you have Magnus, something of Erland’s.’

  ‘Thank God for our dear lad. Poor Erland, we thought we were to be childless and then Magnus came along.’ She sighed. ‘We wanted more but it never happened. Strange, isn’t it, the way the Faro women seem to be doomed to one child only.’

  ‘I didn’t even get to keep my wee boy.’

  ‘Oh, Rose, I’m so sorry – I didn’t mean—’

  Rose squeezed her hand. ‘Of course you didn’t.’ And Emily remembered the letter she had when Rose returned to Edinburgh after Danny disappeared and the baby he never saw died of a fever in the Indian reservation, and how Rose, sick almost to dying herself, dug his grave in the Arizona desert.

  Rose was silent too, remembering, and Emily said: ‘Do you think it’s the St Ringan curse put upon us for some long-forgotten misdemeanour?’

  ‘That’s what superstitious Orcadians still believe. I hope it’s just a coincidence – at least that is what Pa would insist.’

  Their solemn moment was interrupted by sounds of childish mirth from the next room.

  Emily smiled. ‘At least you have Meg now.’

  ‘And she’s like the daughter I never had.’

  ‘You have Jack, and he is so good, I do like him – he’s solid and reliable. Such a good husband, just like Erland.’

  Rose thought for a moment before asking: ‘What will you do now, Em?’

  Her sister shrugged. ‘I haven’t had time yet for it to sink in properly. It was all so sudden, so unexpected. We never made plans for the future for ourselves.’ Her voice broke and she dabbed her eyes, then straightening her shoulders again, she went on. ‘I love this house and living in Hopescarth but I don’t think Magnus and I can stay here without him. Magnus is a clever lad, doing so well, and the school in Stromness is reportedly very good, but Erland always intended that he should go to university and that meant Edinburgh, as he did himself.
Travelling back and forth to the mainland would have been nothing to Erland. He was always on the move, across to Bergen or to the Continent, mostly taking Sven with him. I don’t know what will become of Sven now …’

  ‘Tell me about Sven,’ Rose said. The tall, fair young man with outstanding good looks she had first seen as a pall-bearer at Erland’s funeral was part of the Yesnaby household.

  Emily shrugged. ‘What do we know about him? Only what we were told. Erland always had close business connections with Norway, trading links and so forth – I was never sure exactly what – but when he met up with Sven, a couple of years ago, he brought him back and proceeded to treat him like one of the family, as he had none of his own in Bergen. He had been adopted. Said having him around was a great business asset, especially as Erland, bless him, who was so good at everything, was hopeless at speaking any other language.’

  Rose found that strange, considering his beautiful voice, as Emily went on: ‘So having Sven as a fluent speaker with Norwegian his native tongue, was invaluable.’ But the way she said it and her frown suggested to Rose that her sister had not always approved of this newcomer.

  ‘Erland had many contacts over there and even took Sven to see the royal coronation at Trondheim earlier this summer.’

  ‘How exciting. Didn’t you want to go with them?’

  Emily shook her head. ‘Not really. It would have been quite a voyage and I didn’t want to leave Magnus. He couldn’t have come with us,’ she added and Rose suspected that she hadn’t been happy at being left behind. She said, ‘I’m a terrible sailor. So that’s where our said selkie connection falls short.’

  Rose looked at her. ‘Possibly,’ she said. ‘But as you know, Sibella couldn’t swim and hated the water. Strange as it seems, if the story was true, maybe she was scared, going into the water, that the sea would reclaim her, take her back to … to that previous life, before she was old and tired and ready to go.’

  ‘Anyway,’ said Emily, ‘about the coronation. As I expect you know, Queen Maud is the youngest daughter of our king, so there were quite a number of British people there and by all accounts, some very elegant receptions.’

  ‘I wonder how you could have resisted it.’

  Emily shook her head, said again, ‘No, Rose. I’m a home bird, never like leaving the nest. I’d have had to dress up, buy travelling clothes, a wildly expensive wardrobe that I would never have occasion to wear again.’ She groaned. ‘And all that corseting! Being tightly laced up every day like an hourglass is an absurd fashion. I’m glad I never have to bother about such things here, I can just wear whatever I like.’

  That was something they had in common. Rose had never followed fashion and refused the ‘S’ shape of bosom and bustle considered de rigueur among Edinburgh ladies.

  ‘And there’s always been Gran – she relied on me,’ Emily continued and Rose said: ‘Now, that’s just an excuse, Em. She had a perfectly good life in Kirkwall; a strong healthy woman, she would never have wanted you to waste your life looking after her. For goodness’ sake, her ambition was that we should get married, and practically as soon as we left school she was constantly on the lookout for suitable husbands.’

  ‘That may be so, but she was horrified, I can tell you now, when you went off to America to marry Danny McQuinn.’

  ‘I think that was more concern about going to the ends of the earth, as she would call it, to live among savages than an unsuitable husband.’ Rose paused. ‘How did you persuade her to move to Yesnaby when you married Erland?’

  ‘Oh, he did that. He thought after our early years – you know, the miscarriages before Magnus – that I was a bit frail and that she should come to us, especially when he was away so much, and that I needed help with a baby to look after.’

  They were seated by the big window overlooking the sunken garden with its ancient wall, all that remained of the original medieval tower, and Emily looked down at Sven, who was also the gardener, busy, head down, trowel in hand. ‘Sven has been such a treasure and I am glad he is happy with us. Not married, he has no other responsibilities, although I did wonder when he enjoyed the coronation experience so much that he might have decided it was time to go back home.’ She smiled wryly. ‘Especially as Erland said the girls in Norway fell over themselves to meet him.’

  ‘He’s quite a stunner,’ Rose said. ‘I should think he has lots of chances here too. Seems odd to me that he’s managed to escape the matrimonial net.’

  Emily nodded. ‘He’s young enough still, of course, but thirty is considered quite old up here. Most men his age have young families by now. But all he seems to want is the garden here by day and the lobster fishing. He takes the boat out every night and collects the creels, takes them into Stromness and puts them on the motor bus to be delivered to a dealer from Kirkwall to sell. In a good season it makes a reasonable income for him, and Erland always let him keep the proceeds. There was a limit to the lobster we could eat and I hated the business of cooking them.’ She thought for a moment. ‘He never intrudes on us, you know; when his day’s work is done he goes back home to his cottage, rarely ever stays for a meal.’

  ‘Does he cook for himself, then?’

  Emily shrugged. ‘I imagine so. I gather he has a woman from Hopescarth looks in to clean and do his laundry. Erland gave him the cottage rent-free and a few pounds each month. He has asked me if that arrangement can continue and said that he didn’t need much money as he is a man of simple taste.’

  And a bit of an enigma, thought Rose, who would have liked to take the top off that handsome head and look inside. What was he really like? she wondered. His hermit-like existence seemed all wrong somehow for this good-looking Norwegian living alone in that cottage on the estate, isolated from the community at Hopescarth and people of his own age.

  There was a pause and Rose felt her sister had more to say about Sven but her concern was what was to happen in the immediate future.

  ‘If Magnus and I can’t manage here, perhaps it would be best if we moved to Edinburgh. The idea appeals as it would be quite a novelty after living here most of my life. Ever since Mama died all those years ago and Gran took us on, I’ve hardly ever set foot on the mainland for years—’

  ‘You could come and live with us in Solomon’s Tower, there is plenty of room, Em,’ Rose replied eagerly, delighted at the prospect.

  ‘I must stay here for Gran, although I sometimes have a feeling that she misses Kirkwall and would be happy to go back to her cottage. She must be past ninety, although she’ll never tell any of us her age. And she’s getting frail, too frail to manage a house as big as this with all its stairs and corridors and empty rooms. She wouldn’t give in until she had a nasty fall and hurt her leg. Erland insisted then that we should have a younger housekeeper.’ She gave a wry smile. ‘You could have heard her indignant protests in Stromness.’

  Rose said, ‘Well, I know one thing. She wouldn’t be happy coming to Edinburgh. It has never been her favourite place. She’s hated it since all those years ago our policeman grandpa, the one your Magnus is named after, was killed in a traffic accident when Pa was just a wee lad. And now, she doesn’t even have the lure of Pa living there. He has always meant more to her than either of us.’

  Emily looked at her. ‘Do Imogen and he have any permanent home these days?’

  ‘They have a house in Dublin, more convenient for ships and the like than Carasheen tucked away in Kerry.’

  ‘What about London or Edinburgh?’

  Rose shook her head ‘Alas, no. You know Imogen was regarded as an Irish terrorist in the United Kingdom police records until fairly recently, when the King granted her a Royal pardon for a miscarriage of justice in his mother’s reign.’

  ‘I remember. She was just fifteen when her uncle brought her to London and planned to assassinate the Queen. When he died they kept her in prison, didn’t they?’

  Rose nodded, ‘They couldn’t prove anything against her and she was sent home to Ireland. This was th
irty years ago, but police records have long memories. There is always trouble in Ireland and it wasn’t helped that Imogen never made a secret of being known to the British government as a dangerous Irish nationalist.’

  ‘Nor do they look kindly on suffragettes.’

  Rose laughed. ‘As are so many women of our generation, myself included. Anyway, Imo is no longer an exile threatened with prison every time she sets foot on British soil.’

  ‘That must be such a relief, especially to Pa, knowing they can both visit us. Whatever folks say about Bertie’s morals, I think we have a good king.’

  ‘And I for one am prepared to forgive him everything for clearing Imogen’s name.’ She was about to tell Emily that she had met him briefly in Edinburgh with their stepbrother, Vince, then junior physician to the Royal household and again on holiday in Balmoral last year, but their conversation was brought to an abrupt end.

  Mary Faro bustled in and stood over them. ‘I’m needing help with setting the table downstairs if we are ever going to get something to eat. Your husband, Rose, is in need of a good meal, and we have beds to prepare since that Millie didn’t come in this morning. Fine housekeeper she is, I must say.’

  ‘What is it this time?’ Emily asked.

  ‘Just problems with that daft lad of hers. Goes missing from time to time.’

  ‘Is it serious?’ Rose asked.

  Mary shrugged. ‘I’m just saying he isn’t all there, wanders off and sees things. Dr Randall says he has the “doonfa” sickness.’ She paused and added darkly, ‘There was that business with Sibella.’

  ‘Sibella? What was that?’

  Rose was intrigued at the hint of a mystery. But she would have to wait for an answer as Jack came in, wearing an expression she recognised. It meant something vital and urgent.

  CHAPTER THREE