Beneath the Water

by Sarah Painter

  Of course, the out-of-character urge was probably prompted by the claustrophobic atmosphere of Munro House. The forbidden doorways, the shrouded furniture and the sense that she was spinning her wheels.

  Stella trailed back to her office, determined to make headway with her assigned job. Within a few weeks of every temp job she’d ever held, she had been called ‘the best assistant I’ve ever had’, and she had no intention of breaking her streak. Jamie Munro might be a bit more unusual than the corporate-types she was used to handling, but she liked a challenge. Jamie’s door was shut and all was quiet, and Stella sat in her own office, in front of her space-age computer.

  A notification pinged. Update. Now. Nathan Schwartz was, thankfully, not on the telephone, but he was using his second-favourite method of communication: the instant messaging on Skype.

  Working, Stella typed.

  On what?

  Stella looked at the white space and the flashing cursor for a few moments. She knew from past experience that he wouldn’t stop asking and, if dissatisfied with the answer, would call and shout. I will check for you, she typed and stood up, stretching her arms above her head.

  Jamie was in his office at his standing desk. A heavy volume was open, the pages filled with brightly coloured slips of paper and a yellow legal pad next to it.

  ‘Sorry to interrupt,’ Stella said.

  Jamie smiled when he looked up. ‘No problem. What do you need?’

  ‘Nathan wants an update.’

  ‘Deflect him,’ Jamie said and looked back at the page. She was dismissed.

  Back in her own small room, Stella looked at the beautiful wallpaper to centre herself, grateful it was a calming colour, and went back to the blinking cursor. After a moment she typed Research and clicked to close the conversation.

  Later that afternoon, she knocked on the door to his office and went in, ready to offer coffee and to make Jamie answer the string of urgent questions she had collated from his messages. Jamie was surrounded by open archive boxes and piles of books, and he was staring with his trademark intensity at an unfolded paper map.

  ‘Nathan wants me to stop you doing this,’ Stella said. She tapped the top of one of the archive boxes. ‘He says you’ve gotten obsessed with things in the past and that I must remind you of your more pressing business concerns.’

  Jamie looked up from the map. ‘Did you know it used to take three hours to travel from Arisaig to Fort William by coach? We could be in Barcelona in that time.’

  ‘Did you hear me?’ Stella was channelling cheerful and efficient with all her might. She had no idea what was going on in her head but she knew she wanted to keep this job. And Nathan had made it clear that he would do everything in his power to get rid of her if she didn’t get some results.

  ‘Nathan’s worried. I heard.’

  ‘What shall I tell him?’

  Jamie waved a hand. ‘Anything you like. Tell him I’m working on the book.’

  ‘You’re the boss,’ Stella said, keeping her tone neutral. It was a balancing act. She didn’t know how much influence Nathan had over Jamie, and everything she had heard about the Munro family suggested that Jamie wouldn’t think twice about sacking her if she annoyed him.

  Jamie glanced up. ‘You think I’m obsessing?’

  Stella couldn’t stop a smile from escaping as she looked at the avalanche of history books, maps and papers. ‘I think you can spend your time however you choose.’

  ‘Genetics are important. The more we understand about our health, the more we discover is encoded from birth. Passed down through the generations.’

  ‘Makes it difficult to fight against, though,’ Stella said, thinking of Jamie’s book. It’s All Genetic So You’re Fucked didn’t seem like a very motivational title.

  ‘Not at all.’ Jamie stood up and began pacing the room, stretching his arms above his head and doing weird little knee bends every so often. ‘We know there are certain genes which switch on certain conditions, but then there are ones which just indicate an increased likelihood. Like, I’ve been mapped and I’ve got the Parkinson’s gene. Knowing that means I can make better choices about certain therapies and lifestyle changes. The more detailed and individual the information, the more specific and tailored our healthcare can be.’

  ‘I suppose,’ Stella said. ‘Don’t you think it might be nicer not to know, though? If you’ve got an increased risk of something horrible.’ She kept her face carefully averted, to make sure he couldn’t read anything in it.

  ‘If I’m going to discover something really useful about extending a healthy life, then I need to look to the past.’

  ‘Is that what the new book is about?’ Stella said, trying to get him back on track.

  ‘Living Well Forever,’ Jamie said. ‘That’s the working title.’

  Stella thought she was doing a good job of keeping a neutral expression, but she must have been mistaken, as Jamie laughed. ‘Don’t look like that, Miss Sceptical. You’re supposed to be on my team.’

  ‘I am,’ Stella said, smiling supportively for all she was worth. ‘It’s a very catchy title.’

  His face clouded. ‘It’s not a gimmick. People said the last book was a gimmick—’

  ‘So, is it actually possible to extend our lifespan?’ Stella asked quickly.

  ‘They did studies in the 1930s with rats, which showed that severely limiting their calorie intake resulted in the rats living for forty per cent longer.’

  ‘Forty per cent is a lot.’

  ‘The research wasn’t really followed at the time, probably halted by the war like so many other things, but it’s been taken up again recently.’

  ‘Is that why you’ve been fasting?’

  ‘Yeah, partly. But there could be answers in our genetics, too,’ Jamie said. ‘It’s not about finding out what illnesses might come along, it’s about how to optimise the system we’ve inherited.’

  ‘And that’s what you’re doing here?’ Stella waved a hand to encompass the papers, maps and photographs. ‘Investigating your genetics.’

  He smiled ruefully. ‘Not really. I started out that way, but now I’m just fascinated. I mean, I never wanted to be anything like my father, but it turns out his father was a scientist. That’s cool. And now I think his dad, my great-grandfather, might have had similar interests. It makes me think about genetic memory. What if my family is just programmed to experiment? Isn’t that interesting?’

  ‘I prefer to think I have free will,’ Stella said. ‘The word “programmed” makes me feel squeamish.’

  He stopped pacing for a moment. ‘That’s a good point. How much free will do we have if so much is written in our code?’ He darted to the desk and scribbled in his notebook. ‘I don’t want to see behaviour that way, either. But I do like the feeling that I’m carrying on a tradition. Maybe I could even finish some research that one of my ancestors began. I want to do something meaningful with my life, not just exist. And this’ – he swept an arm out over the laden table – ‘feels like a signpost.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ Stella said, although she wasn’t sure she meant it. It seemed as if he was picking the bits from the theory that he liked the sound of and ignoring the rest. She had never expected to do anything meaningful with her life. She had hoped to have children and to be a good mother and for that to be her legacy. Other than that, she hoped to be good. Not to worry her parents or friends too much. To love and be loved. And to enjoy the time she had as much as possible. That wasn’t always easy, though. Life was too complicated for enjoyment a great deal of the time.

  ‘I just want to get this out of the way. I feel like I have to, I don’t know—’ He broke off for a moment and then took a deep breath. ‘I feel like I need to do something really important, really good. I’ve got so much to make up for. I know what people say about my family . . .’

  Stella kept her expression neutral.

  ‘I can’t do anything about my dad, but if my ancestors advanced medical science, then that�
��s something to be proud of. I just feel like I need the boost, and then I’ll be able to concentrate on the final draft of the book.’

  ‘It’s written, then,’ Stella said, latching on to the one part of Jamie’s garbled speech which had anything to do with her task as his assistant. If there was a readable draft, perhaps Jamie would let her send that to Nathan and the man could stop phoning her every day and shouting.

  ‘Oh, yeah,’ Jamie said, his gaze back on the map. He reached for one of the journals.

  ‘Can I send it to Nathan? Give him something to read so that he knows the final is really on its way?’

  ‘Hmm?’

  ‘The first draft,’ Stella tried again. ‘Can I send it to Nathan?’

  Jamie shook his head. ‘It’s not ready.’ He got up. ‘Time for my bath, though. Are you free?’

  ‘Sure,’ Stella said. She liked the way he phrased that, as if she weren’t just a lackey. He might be difficult, but the man had class.

  Esmé walked into the kitchen just as Stella was feeding Tabitha a piece of cold chicken from her sandwich. Rather than look guilty or apologise, Stella decided that Esmé’s grumpiness would be best met by strength. She forced herself to meet the older woman’s laser-like gaze. ‘Isn’t she a darling?’

  To her surprise, and relief, Esmé laughed.

  ‘There’s tea in the pot,’ Stella said.

  ‘Thank you.’ Esmé moved around her, patting Tabitha on the head as she passed.

  When they both had fresh mugs of tea and Stella had finished her sandwich, she pushed her plate away and caught Esmé watching her, her expression unreadable. ‘What?’

  ‘What brought you to Arisaig?’

  Stella thought about lying or being evasive but there was something about Esmé which demanded directness.

  ‘I had my heart broken and I realised I had to make a change. I sort of ran away from my life.’

  Esmé nodded as if this were perfectly reasonable. ‘Why here, though?’

  ‘Old friends. I came to visit them and then wanted to stay.’ Tabitha’s heavy head was lying on her leg, her eyes rolled up to gaze at her with adoration, or possibly a silent request for more chicken.

  ‘You’ve done this before?’

  ‘Running away? Never.’ Stella wondered if that was why Esmé seemed so mistrustful, some sense of flightiness. ‘I’m very reliable. Usually. I’ve been temping for years and I was in between contracts. It was a good time to make an escape, as it turns out.’

  ‘Down!’ Esmé turned and shouted, making Stella jump. A sheepish-looking Angus dropped to the floor. Tabitha sighed. A moment later, a noxious smell wafted around the table.

  ‘Oh, Tabitha,’ Esmé said. ‘Sorry about that. She always does that when I shout.’

  Stella resisted the urge to say that Tabitha must be permanently walking around in a fart-tastic miasma.

  A moment later, Esmé said, ‘Temping, eh?’

  ‘Personal assistant, office manager, that kind of thing,’ Stella said.

  ‘I don’t like the sound of that,’ Esmé said, pursing her lips.

  Stella was about to ask what she could possibly have against secretarial work, when Esmé added, ‘Changing jobs, moving around. I wouldn’t like that at all.’

  ‘I get bored easily,’ Stella said. ‘Once I’ve sorted out systems so that things run smoothly, it’s not enough of a challenge.’ She didn’t add that she had also hoped to be at home with a baby in the near future.

  ‘So what will you do when you get bored with Jamie?’

  ‘I can’t imagine that happening.’ Stella spoke without thinking first, and then wanted to pull the words back.

  Esmé just nodded, though. ‘He’s a live wire.’ She drained her mug and stood up. ‘Well, I can’t sit around here blethering all morning.’ At the door, she whistled and Tabitha raced to her side, leaving a cold patch on Stella’s leg where her head had been and a damp circle of drool.

  ‘Who are your old friends?’ Esmé said, turning back for a moment.

  ‘Rob and Caitlin Baird.’

  Esmé froze, her hand above Tabitha’s head mid-pat. Then she nodded and said, ‘I ken Rob Baird all right,’ in a perfectly even tone.

  As another Friday night rolled around, Stella decided to go into the village for an early drink. She had started work at five in the morning for a Skype session with Jamie’s marketing manager in Japan, so she shut down her computer at four and walked into Arisaig.

  It was good to get off the estate. Stella would never have believed that a place so big could feel cramped, but it was nice to see different faces and to sit on a slightly sticky chair in the bar and watch the world go by. Unfortunately, the wind was blowing rain horizontally and there weren’t many folk out strolling, but there were plenty of people in the pub, and sooner or later Stella guessed one of them would speak to her. It was like that around here. Whereas you could sit in a pub in London and cry into your beer and no one would so much as offer you a handkerchief.

  After a couple of quick chats about the weather with people passing her table to find their own seats, a man with a red nose, and a pint of beer in one hand and a whisky in the other, shuffled across the bar and took the seat opposite. ‘All right, hen?’

  Stella nodded and smiled. Of course it had to be the local drunk.

  ‘I ken yer up at the big hoose,’ he said, slurring more than a little. Up-close, the man was younger than she’d expected. Maybe only in his forties, although it was hard to tell.

  ‘That’s right,’ Stella said. She wasn’t surprised. A few weeks had taught her there were no secrets in Arisaig. Probably no secrets in all of Scotland.

  ‘Nice lassie like you,’ he said, shaking his head sorrowfully. It was theatrically done and Stella had the impression that he was enjoying himself, putting on a show for the gullible incomer.

  ‘I like it,’ Stella said. ‘It’s beautiful around here,’ she added, hoping to get him onside. The terminally drunk could turn in a moment; that was a common truth wherever you lived.

  As if on cue, he leaned forwards, an intense look in his eye. ‘I’m no messing with you, gurlie. There are things you wouldn’t believe.’

  A spray of spittle accompanied his words and Stella leaned back a little.

  ‘He’ll make you help with his experiments.’ He put clumsy air quotes around the word ‘experiments’. ‘The last one is deid.’

  ‘The last one?’

  ‘Girl from Mallaig. She fell on the rocks and hit her head.’

  ‘How awful,’ Stella said, feeling her stomach swoop in sympathy.

  ‘At least, that’s what he said. That’s what he tol the polis.’

  ‘Why don’t you think it’s the truth?’

  ‘He’s just like his father,’ he said, trailing off. ‘Jus like him.’ He shook his head. ‘I was there, ye ken. I saw him.’

  ‘You saw Jamie do what?’

  ‘Naw. Not the bairn. His da. I saw him back in the day. He had his hand up her skirt and I don’t think she was too pleased about it, like.’

  Stella sensed a darkness opening up and she was both intrigued and disgusted. And a bit disappointed in her own interest. Another couple of weeks here and she’d be a gossip, too. She tried to bring the conversation back to focus on the present day. ‘The police would’ve investigated. If a girl died.’

  ‘Jamie’s da would bang anything that moved,’ he said, clearly unwilling to leave his pet subject. ‘Naebody wanted their daughters working up at the hoose. Not unless they knew karate or something.’

  ‘That’s a very serious accusation.’

  He sat back, eyes twinkling with inappropriate amusement. ‘Oh, aye. And who is gonnae sue me? He’s deid, hen. You can’t slander a dead man.’

  ‘Can’t you?’

  ‘Not unless their relatives get funny about it. Then it gets iffy.’ He held a hand out and waggled it. ‘Twenty years on The Post.’

  ‘The Post?’

  ‘Newspaper. You remember those,�
�� he said, suddenly sounding sober. ‘Before we had the wonders of the Internet.’

  ‘You were a journalist?’

  ‘I didn’t get in this state from being a choirboy.’ He gestured to himself, taking in the grubby clothes, sweat stains spreading on his shirt, and the patchily shaved jaw. ‘I was going to get a good story on him, but it never came together. Couldn’t get the sources. Naebody would speak ill of him.’

  ‘That hasn’t been my experience,’ Stella said.

  ‘Aye,’ he nodded, acknowledging the truth of this. ‘But naebody would speak on the record, like.’

  ‘Didn’t you think that might be a sign?’

  ‘Of what?’

  ‘His innocence.’

  He laughed for so long and with so much wheezing and coughing that Stella began to worry he was going to make himself sick. Finally, wiping his eyes, he managed to say, ‘You’d never use that word if you’d met him.’

  ‘Nobody seems to like Mr Munro, I get that, but why is everyone so hard on Jamie? He hardly saw his parents, as far as I can tell.’

  ‘Boarding school.’ He nodded. ‘Still. Like faither like son.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ Stella said. ‘He’s a perfectly nice man and he’s done nothing wrong.’

  Okay, so ‘nice’ wasn’t really the word, but still.

  ‘Oh, dearie me,’ the man said. ‘It’s like that, is it? You want to watch yourself. And ask him about Ellie MacDonald.’

  Stella pushed the words aside. She didn’t believe the drunk, journalist or not. Who knew how competent he’d been at his job? And as for his accusation of Jamie’s father, who knew how reliable his memory was for things which had happened when he was a teenager? Perhaps he’d been an alcoholic even then; maybe he’d been out of his head the whole time.

  She couldn’t stop herself from googling the name Ellie MacDonald when she got home, though. Sure enough, a tragic accident had occurred on the shore by Munro House a few months earlier. A nineteen-year-old girl had slipped on the rocks and fallen badly, cracking her head and dying later in hospital. Stella felt a chill in her stomach. The byline for the story was for a Shona McQueen. Not her friend from the pub, then.