Saskia's Journey

by Theresa Breslin

‘Did you see how the houses face in to each other? They were built like that to protect them against the elements, but of course it also draws a community closer together.’

  ‘Fitdee . . .’ said Saskia. ‘Is it called that because we are beside the river Dee? Foot of the Dee?’

  ‘Well done!’ said Ben. ‘We’ll have you speaking the language yet.’

  ‘I guess that’s why this city is named Aberdeen,’ said Saskia.

  ‘Gosh, you’re a good student!’ Ben laughed. ‘“Aber” is old British for river mouth, so yes, Aberdeen is the mouth of the river Dee.’

  Saskia felt ridiculously pleased by his praise.

  ‘What brings you into the big city today?’ He looked at her closely. ‘Everything OK?’ he asked.

  ‘Not totally,’ said Saskia. And as they walked together along the sea front she told him of the accident and then of Alessandra’s anxiety at being in hospital.

  ‘Even though she is your great-aunt she is only in middle age,’ said Ben. ‘She’s not a really old lady, so she’ll have a bit more resilience. You’re not too worried about her, are you?’

  ‘Not so much now,’ said Saskia. ‘The nurses have calmed her down quite a lot. She’s had terrible tragedy in her life, and she gets a bit fraught from time to time.’

  ‘I was aware that she was quite sensitive the first time we met,’ said Ben. ‘The day you found the seal on the beach she seemed more than a little upset.’

  And you were so considerate and kind, thought Saskia. She glanced at Ben. His face showed concern. It occurred to her that kindness was an important element in a relationship.

  ‘Let me run you home,’ said Ben. ‘I can make an excuse to go up to Fhindhaven and it means you won’t have to take the bus.’

  ‘I’ll need to do some shopping first,’ said Saskia. ‘I want to get Alessandra a few magazines to read.’

  ‘Fine,’ said Ben. ‘And if your great-aunt has to stay in hospital for a few days then you might have to put off beginning work for a bit – I can fix that for you, so don’t worry about it. And, worse, we might have to cancel our date for the cinema this weekend, so why don’t we buy some food and I’ll make a barbecue on your beach?’

  ‘A barbecue?’ said Saskia. She had buttoned up her jacket as they were walking. ‘I know it is quite a pleasant day, but isn’t it a bit cold for a barbecue?’

  ‘Not at all,’ said Ben. ‘If you are going to spend any more time than just a few weeks’ holiday up here then you’d better get used to dealing with the weather. Come on, let’s go.’ He grabbed her hand and began to run, pulling Saskia with him. ‘You can have a barbecue on the beach at any time as long as it’s not actually blowing a blizzard.’ He laughed. ‘And even then . . .’

  ‘You’re joking!’ cried Saskia, trying to keep up with him. ‘You don’t have barbecues in snow.’

  ‘Have done,’ said Ben. ‘We only give in when it gets to storm-force gales.’

  In Saskia’s opinion, it practically was a storm-force gale. Ben had made a makeshift windbreak in the shelter at the foot of the stairs that led onto the beach at Cliff House, but halfway through the preparations Saskia went inside to find a warmer jacket and some gloves.

  On her return she paused for a few minutes at the top of the beach steps and watched him building the fire. He was so assured in what he did and said. He’d found his place in life, had fixed on a purpose that would both extend and fulfil him, while she . . . she seemed to be directed by circumstance and the whim of others. If she had not come to visit her great-aunt she might now be working for her father and preparing for a university course that did not suit her.

  Ben glanced up and waved. Saskia waved back, but she took her time as she went down the stairs to join him. He was very attractive and she enjoyed his company, but this time, she decided, she was not going to rush into things. It was easy to be flattered by the attention of someone. She recalled a quote from some novelist whose work she had studied in English literature. ‘Love is complete attention,’ this writer had said. That wasn’t the whole truth, thought Saskia. You could be deceived by attention, seduced, so that your own will became suppliant under the force of another’s. If a relationship developed between her and Ben, it would be because she wanted it to, as much as he might.

  ‘Sorry to be a wimp,’ she said as rejoined him on the beach,‘but I was freezing.’

  Ben put his arm around her and pulled her nearer. ‘Don’t apologize,’ he laughed. ‘It means we have to huddle together for warmth.’ He bent and kissed the top of her head. ‘Such beautiful hair,’ he murmured.

  Saskia tilted her head back and met his gaze. Her pulse and heartbeat had moved up a pace, but she didn’t lean towards him, only put her head on one side and smiled at him. Ben cupped her face in his hands and they kissed lightly.

  ‘That was long overdue,’ he said.

  Saskia stepped back. She punched him playfully on the arm. ‘Oh yeah?’

  ‘For my part,’ said Ben, ‘I felt like kissing you the first day I saw you, when you so gallantly agreed to help me carry half a hundredweight of sick seal along the beach.’

  ‘That’s not a very romantic reason,’ said Saskia.

  He looked at her keenly. ‘Would you have appreciated romance at that moment?’

  ‘Probably not,’ Saskia agreed.

  ‘I wanted you to stay on for the summer so that I could get to know you better,’ he went on, ‘but the day we went to the fish market at Peterhead I sensed that you were beginning to make your own decisions about what you would and wouldn’t do.’

  Saskia smiled at Ben more happily now. It seemed that he understood without her having to spell it out.

  When the food had been eaten and the fire was falling into a red glow they went down to the water and walked along the shore. On the skyline a solitary trawler headed home.

  ‘I’ve been told the local fishermen used Cliff House to locate their fishing grounds,’ said Saskia. ‘They called it “finding the mark”. I’d never heard that expression before.’

  ‘It’s a bit like dead reckoning,’ said Ben,‘where you can estimate where you are by where you’ve been. It’s an old form of navigation, but still effective.’

  ‘Do you think the regulations that are in place now will protect the fishing grounds for the future?’ Saskia asked Ben.

  ‘Truthfully, no,’ he replied. ‘Not unless something is done to curb industrial fishing. I think the biggest problem is the destruction of the nursery areas and the species at the beginning of the food chain. And as some of those catches are destined to be turned into fish meal for fertilizer or to feed pigs and cattle it seems to be a tremendously wasteful use of resources.’

  ‘Doesn’t it get you down?’ asked Saskia.

  Ben grinned. ‘I try to find ways to take my mind off it.’

  He stopped walking and took both her hands in his. This time Saskia did not move away from him. He placed her arms around his own neck and bent his head and kissed her again.

  Saskia leaned her head on his chest. She said, ‘I loved your poster – the one above your desk.’

  ‘I got it in California,’ said Ben. ‘I spent some time there on a whale watch. If only we were able to coordinate marine programmes around the world we could make changes that really matter.’ He paused and then said fiercely, ‘We must do it.’

  Saskia looked up and saw passion and conviction on his face. She tightened her arms around him and held him close.

  Saskia waited until Ben had left and then phoned her parents. It was her father who answered.

  ‘Transferred to a hospital in Aberdeen? Why? Is there something else wrong with Alessandra? Does she know who you are?’

  ‘Of course she knows who I am,’ said Saskia impatiently. ‘She’s broken her ankle, not had a stroke or anything.’

  ‘When old people get a shock like that it can sometimes push them over the edge.’

  Saskia recoiled from the implication in his voice.

  ‘
Perhaps I should come up? It may be that the time has come for her to leave Cliff House. Better to do it now while she’s in hospital. You’d need a hand to sort out her things.’

  Saskia thought of her father going through Alessandra’s clothes, her books, her papers, rummaging around the house. On behalf of her aunt she felt affronted and had a strong desire to protect Alessandra. But she knew she would need to be careful how she spoke to her father. It might suit him to fly up and take over. She mustn’t provoke him by yelling or going into a huff. She would be as devious as he.

  ‘Ah,’ she said, giving herself time to think. ‘Let me talk to her doctor and ask her how long they intend keeping her there and I’ll call you back.’

  ‘Good girl, Saskia. My best girl. I knew I could rely on you.’

  Rely on her to do what? Why did he himself not speak directly to her great-aunt? It came to Saskia’s mind that a lot of the negative stories about Alessandra had come from her father.

  ‘Dad, why don’t you like your aunt Alessandra?’ she asked him. ‘Is it because I was sick after staying here when I was younger? It wasn’t her fault that I was ill, you know. It was months after we came home from our holiday here that I got meningitis.’

  ‘I know. I know. I was getting mixed up when I said that.’

  ‘There is another reason, isn’t there?’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’

  ‘Daddy, I’d like to know. Why do you hate her?’

  ‘I don’t hate her.’

  ‘What is it then?’

  ‘I don’t know . . . she unsettles me.’

  ‘Why?’ said Saskia. ‘She’s been ill, but she’s not a violent person.’

  ‘I didn’t think she was violent,’ said her father. ‘I wouldn’t have let you visit her if I thought she was dangerous in any way.’

  A sudden thought passed through Saskia’s mind. ‘Was that why we didn’t come back after I was six years old? Did you think she had done something to me, frightened me in some way?’

  ‘No, not at all. She was very fond of you.’

  ‘Neil Buchan says that she sold furniture over the years in order to live.’

  There was a silence.

  Saskia spoke again. ‘Did you hear me, Dad? The furniture and the lamps that you thought Alessandra destroyed, she sold them. She needed the money.’

  Saskia’s father spoke slowly. ‘No, no, that can’t be right.’ Then he added,‘One year I found the family baby cradle in bits in the cellar, and when other pieces of furniture disappeared I made an assumption. I shouldn’t have done that. It’s taken me a long time to overcome my dislike of her.’

  ‘But why did you dislike her, Dad?’

  ‘Because of what she did to me and my mother, but especially my mother.’

  ‘Was this when you were very small?’

  ‘Yes, but I remember it so clearly.’

  ‘What do you remember?’

  ‘I heard . . . I heard her say—’ Her father’s voice broke off.

  With shock, Saskia realized that her father was genuinely distressed.

  ‘Please tell me, Daddy.’

  ‘I don’t remember anything about the time I spent there as a baby,’ said Saskia’s father, ‘except that my mother always said she was happy in that house. But she said we weren’t there for very long. My mother said Alessandra suddenly told her to get out and take me with her, so we had to go and live in Yarmouth. We were with my mother’s relations there for years and years, until I was nearly thirteen and my mother married again. It was awful, so overcrowded.

  ‘Later, when she thought about it, my mother wondered if Alessandra was upset that she’d never had a child. I think my mother was right. Alessandra was jealous that her sister-in-law had a baby and she didn’t. That’s why the cot was smashed up in the cellar, why she sent us away. She could not bear to see us so happy together. She was in love with a young man, a whaler, and he was supposed to come back and marry her, but he never did. My mother said there were lots of rumours that he had come back for her and Alessandra turned him down, sent him away, but I think he jilted her. He came back, saw what she was like, and chickened out of marrying her. Who can blame him? By all accounts he was a nice boy, one of those gentle folk that you find in the Western Isles. Anyway, I think, to save her face, he let it be said that she turned him down, but it couldn’t have been that. She was waiting for him. Almost desperate, my mother said. He’d sent her presents and letters, but I think she destroyed all of them.’

  No, she didn’t, Saskia thought. I have seen them. In Alessandra’s wardrobe. She’d kept them. For all those years. She must have loved him.

  ‘Anyway,’ her father went on, ‘at some point, Alessandra went completely loopy, didn’t eat for days and eventually they carted her off. She was right out of it for a bit but then she quietened down. She was lucky. She got a good doctor; he said she needed to be home. They gave her day care and a home visitor. The district nurse called in from time to time, said she’d to re-learn everything, how to dress herself even. Lots of things she couldn’t remember, but with Alessandra you never know if it was the treatment or whether it’s what she chooses not to remember.

  ‘We didn’t hear a thing about this when it was happening. My mother hadn’t a clue. Didn’t even know the old man, my grandfather, had died until much later. He was dead and buried and Alessandra hadn’t let us know. When I was about four or five we travelled north to visit Alessandra. My mother thought if we surprised her that Alessandra would welcome us in. My mother was so excited, telling me of her happy times in the big house, and how it was going to be again. The games we’d play in and out of all the rooms. I’d have a beach of my very own. We would make sandcastles together and I would sail on the sea in my own little boat. When we got there, Alessandra slammed the door in our faces. She told my mother never to come to Cliff House again.’

  Saskia heard the break in her father’s voice. After a moment or two she said gently, ‘I’m really sorry if this is making you sad, Daddy, but please tell me the rest.’

  Saskia’s father coughed. Then he said grudgingly,‘I see now that she was probably mentally ill but it is one of my most awful childhood memories. Alessandra would not even let us into Cliff House. My mother stood outside, sobbing her heart out, begging. “Alessandra! Alessandra!” she called out. Even now I can see my mother’s face, hear her voice. It frightened me so much. On the train she cried all the way home. I had to sit and watch her.’

  Saskia’s heart contracted. Pity for her father was such an unfamiliar emotion that she scarcely recognized it.

  ‘When I was thirteen,’ her father continued, ‘my mother remarried. My stepfather was in the army and being posted all over the world, so we didn’t know what was happening in Fhindhaven, though my mother always tried to keep in touch. Every time we moved she would write, in case Alessandra had lost her address. But Alessandra never replied. Eventually Neil Buchan sent a note and explained a few things. I got married, and when you arrived my mother made me promise that I would visit Alessandra and heal the rift between us. By that time my mother was dying. I couldn’t refuse her.

  ‘“She will love her brother’s grandchild,” my mother said. “I promise you. She will love Saskia.”’

  Surface sea water, cooled by the massive ice caps at the North and South Poles, sinks down in the Arctic and Antarctic Oceans. Lighter warmer waters flow in from the Tropics to replace it. Currents move through the very deepest parts of the ocean . . .

  The next morning Saskia’s head was achy. She had not slept at all well, waking every so often with a start, imagining strange sounds in the attic above her head, dreaming of harpoons tipped in blood, and monstrous sea creatures washed up on strange-shaped rocks. She drew back the curtains at her bedroom window and stood looking out. For the first time since she had been at Cliff House, she felt the presence of the cliff as oppressive, the cries of the sea birds disturbing. She pulled on some clothes and went out to walk on the beach.
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  Crumpled near the far rocks she found the blanket with which she had covered the seal. The changing tides must have brought it back. Now Saskia knew why Alessandra was anxious about these rocks. It was where her own father’s boat had been caught and crushed. Saskia looked further round at where the cliff overhung the headland. No wonder Alessandra feared this place and did not want anyone walking near to it.

  Just as Saskia returned to the house Neil Buchan phoned and Saskia brought him up to date on Alessandra’s condition. ‘She is more settled than she was before. I think she appreciates that if she doesn’t let them fix her ankle she might have problems walking and cycling so she has resigned herself to it.’

  ‘Are you visiting today?’ he asked her.

  ‘Of course,’ said Saskia.

  ‘I’ll take you there if you like. I’m going that way anyway.’

  Saskia smiled and said she’d wait for him at the end of the path.

  In the car on the way to Aberdeen, Saskia told Neil about her conversation with her father the previous evening. ‘You said Darach Keal came back for Alessandra. My father thinks that he came back to tell her he didn’t want to marry her, that it was Darach who broke off their engagement. Did he? Or did he come back, but she sent him away?’

  ‘Who knows?’ Neil shrugged. ‘By that time both of my sisters had married and were living elsewhere, and they were the only ones Alessandra would have told. But later when we talked about it together they couldn’t believe that Alessandra sent Darach away, she loved him too much. But the gossips said that Darach had not enough money, and that as Alessandra would have her father’s wealth she didn’t need him. Darach wrote at least one more letter though, because I took it to her myself.’

  ‘My grandmother Esther was still living in Cliff House with my father at the time?’

  ‘Yes. But it was not long after Darach left that Alessandra told Esther that she didn’t want her or her baby, your father, at Cliff House any more. Alessandra is supposed to have been so nasty to them both that Esther was forced to leave. That was strange. Esther was her brother Rob’s wife, her own sister-in-law, but Alessandra sent them away, told them to leave the house and never come back. In the village they said that Alessandra wanted to be sure that she would have all the money to herself when her father died, although Esther was entitled to the house. If not all, then half of it at least.’ Neil shook his head. ‘I’ve not thought on it for a long time, but even now it does not seem a thing that Alessandra would do.’