Saskia's Journey

by Theresa Breslin

  ‘No!’ said Saskia. ‘It was an accident.’

  ‘It is well known that I rebelled against him. If there is no evidence, sometimes people think the worst.’

  ‘That’s why you have this fear of being taken away!’

  ‘The fear is real. My father fell to his death in nineteen fifty-one and in nineteen fifty-two a woman was hung for murder in England.’

  Saskia put her hand to her throat.

  ‘I live with the fear,’ said Alessandra. ‘And the guilt.’

  ‘It is not your fault.’ Saskia said in a low voice. ‘He slipped and fell to his death.’

  ‘I pushed him away from me.’

  Saskia shook her head. ‘You were defending yourself.’

  ‘When he tried to take me home, I should not have resisted,’ said Alessandra. ‘I was brought up to believe that a child owed obedience to a parent.’

  Surely not if the parent is abusing their child, Saskia thought. But she looked at Alessandra’s face and didn’t say anything.

  ‘I waited for Darach,’ said Alessandra. ‘I thought, Darach will come, and I will see everything more clearly. Every morning and evening I went to the top room and looked out to sea and imagined I could see the boat that was bringing him home to me. But then word came that his ship had foundered and all the crew were drowned. Another whaling ship picked up the bodies floating in the sea and took them to the nearest port.

  ‘He is buried on an island somewhere in the South Seas.’

  Saskia’s eyes were full of tears.

  Alessandra said, ‘I don’t mean to upset you.’

  ‘What about you?’ asked Saskia. ‘You must stop if telling me all this is too distressing for you.’

  ‘There are days when sadness overwhelms me,’ said Alessandra, ‘but it is not such a turbulent grief as it was once.’ She looked out of the window. ‘I am glad that he is on an island. I like to think of him sleeping there, wrapped in the gansey that I knitted.’

  Saskia too looked out of the window. The mottled face of a grey moon rode low in the sky. To the southwest, yellow licks of sky and violet cloud trails showed an early summer sunset.

  ‘I used to wake some mornings and think I dreamed all of it,’ said Alessandra.

  ‘And there was no one at all you could talk to?’ asked Saskia.

  ‘I did not want to put my burden onto anyone else and there was a great stigma about mental illness in those days,’ Alessandra went on. ‘The village already gossiped about me. How cruel I had been to tell Esther to leave. I also heard them saying that I’d sent Darach away because I wanted a man with more money than he had. I was very isolated. Chris and May married fishermen from other parts and left Fhindhaven. Chris was in the Orkneys, May lived in South Shields. There was no one to confide in. Neil was only a boy.’

  ‘Is that when you became ill?’

  ‘Yes. After my father’s funeral I started to confuse the days of the week, and then the distinction between sunrise and sunset began to blur. I had no thought of what I did or ate or wore. I dressed in clothes of wild colours that did not match. Although some people did try to help me, I became the strange woman of the village. Children called names after me.

  ‘Then my mind slipped into a place I did not know. I would wake and be on the beach by the rocks or the stairs to the attic, anywhere, but not in the house. In my dreams I saw their faces – Rob, my father, Darach. In the night they walked beside me. I ranged between hysteria and despair. I stood on the cliff and thought of casting myself off.

  ‘I thought I must tell someone, anyone, that I had murdered my father. I went to the police station in Peterhead. I stood outside in the street. I thought about what they might do to me if I confessed to murder. I stood there so long that when nightfall came I did not know my name.

  ‘I turned round and walked back to Cliff House.

  ‘The next day when I woke up I knew that I did not want to hang. And the day I knew that I did not want to hang was the day I knew that I wanted to live. I saw that I needed help. I took the bus to Aberdeen and went to a hospital and asked to be taken in.’

  ‘How brave you were to do that,’ said Saskia. ‘I cannot imagine what it was like.’

  ‘It was not the most cheerful place to be,’ said Alessandra. ‘Treatment of mental illness at that time could be very harsh. Yet individual nurses were kind, and one doctor was very practical. After a space of time he told me I must go home. I did not want to. The routine and order supported me. It meant I needed to think less. I see now that he believed I was becoming institutionalized, but it was very difficult for me to adjust to the world again. Even now I struggle to be at ease in company.

  ‘So I came back to Cliff House. I had to be careful, how I ate, how I spoke, and with my choice of clothes. I had to re-learn how to behave.

  ‘I found that if I wore black or grey I made fewer mistakes. This also made it much easier to dress each day. It didn’t matter what you chose – it would never clash or look wrong.’

  Saskia thought of the silk dresses, the colourful jackets in Alessandra’s wardrobe.

  ‘I still see a psychiatrist every few months. And I take pills when the doctor tells me to. The tablets help sedate me, but mostly they have the effect of slowing my physical reactions. How do you switch off emotion? I feel things here’ – Alessandra put her hand to heart – ‘too deeply. That first day when you arrived and you said my name, Alessandra, it struck at my heart. You called me “Aunt Alessandra”. No one in our family had said my name for many years. Then you walked down my path and spoke my name . . . Alessandra.

  ‘Alessandra.

  ‘Darach’s way of saying my name was quite beautiful.’

  “Alessandra, my Alessandra

  I dream of you tonight

  Across the dark sky the stars speak to me

  The wind is in the trees, the leaves whisper your name.

  I awaken and I call out

  Alessandra.”’

  Alessandra began to weep quietly and Saskia again felt tears on her own cheeks. She stood up. ‘I’ll make some tea,’ she said.

  Alessandra stretched out her hand. ‘No, no, sit down. I will finish.’

  ‘I’m worried that it is taking too much out of you,’ said Saskia. ‘You should rest.’

  ‘The story is nearly finished and as it ends with you then you should hear it.’

  Saskia sat back down upon the bed.

  ‘For many years I was in and out of hospital but slowly I began to heal. Esther brought you here as a newborn baby, and then I think, before she died, she made your father promise to bring you to visit me. When your father came the first time to see me he told me he wanted to start his own business. In exchange for all my father’s money he signed the house to me legally. He would probably have had some claim on it through Rob, so I was glad to have the security, and he was glad to have the independence that the money gave him. When the lawyer telephoned to say the house was totally mine I sat in the big room all day until the light left the sky, and land and sea became one. Then I switched on the lamps. I always remember Rob saying that he looked to the house as his boat made for port at the end of the season. That night I took down all the curtains. I have never replaced them.

  ‘For five or six years you visited in the summer, and you were so young and innocent that you saw nothing strange in my manner. I could talk quite naturally to you. From when you were very small you would ask me to take you to the village for sweets or ice cream and I could not refuse you. You chattered to everyone you met, so it made it easier for me to talk to others.’

  ‘It must have been an awful disappointment when we stopped coming,’ said Saskia with a sense of discomfort.

  ‘It was. Yet the good you had done stayed with me. I would not have been able to do work for the Heritage Centre had I not renewed my contact with people and the village.’

  Saskia was reluctant to tell Alessandra of her father’s joke that had led to her trauma and the reason she had never r
eturned to Cliff House as a child. To do so would only make it harder for her father and Alessandra to resume their relationship. ‘The other night I remembered something that happened on the train on the way home from our last visit here as a family,’ she began awkwardly. ‘I got a fright . . . and then it was mixed up with me being ill. I think that was why I said I didn’t want to visit you again. I’m so sorry that happened.’

  Alessandra reached out and took Saskia’s hand. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said softly. ‘Dinna fret, little quine.’

  From the clifftop path Saskia could see Alessandra walking on the beach.

  Supported with two sticks, her great-aunt was doing the daily exercise routine suggested by the hospital. Neil Buchan was walking with her. Patient Neil. Saying little, but knowing much. Had he guessed the truth about the death of Alessandra’s father? Alessandra had run to his house for help on that dreadful night. He must have seen that her clothes were torn. He would have said nothing for fear of shaming her, but had remained faithful over the years, supporting her when she needed it. Waiting for her to love him.

  Saskia was pleased with her own scheme to foster this romance. She had persuaded Alessandra to allow Neil to help her down to, and up from, the beach each morning. She had threatened not to begin the summer job at the Research Station today unless Alessandra agreed. Alessandra was dressed, as always, in dark trousers and cardigan. But she was wearing a scarf that Saskia had given her. A bright blue scarf.

  Saskia turned away and began to walk towards Fhindhaven. Ben had warned her about how boring she might find the research work, but she’d already lost some time by nursing Alessandra after her accident and was now eager to begin. Only by doing the work would she find out if her interest in the sea extended to making a career for herself in some marine-related subject. And if she did, then it would not just be because she had met Ben.

  Saskia found that she was smiling when she thought of Ben. The more time she spent with him and got to know him, the more she liked him. Which was certainly a change for her. The opposite usually happened with any boy she fell for. Alan, who had been a major feature in her last year at school, had come with her on the trip to Nepal. Close contact over the ensuing weeks had soured that relationship very quickly. With Ben it was different. Each new aspect of his character was appealing, like his way of listening quietly when someone else was speaking, his particular attention to her great-aunt. It was not just that Ben took the trouble to visit Alessandra, it was the manner of his attention. He seldom brought presents like flowers or sweets. His kindness took the form of time, talking with Alessandra, discussing fishing and the sea. And he was also fun to be with, thought Saskia. It would be interesting to see what her parents, her father, would make of him.

  Her parents . . . She tried to think of them objectively. Why did they both cling to her when they seldom listened to her, or talked about her interests? She supposed that their self-centredness was one of their faults and she had to accept, as a grown-up, that her parents had faults. She could, did, still love them, although at the moment she was finding it difficult. She now believed that they wanted her to remain close to home so that she could be a reason for them to stay together. And in the past she always fell in with her father’s wishes because she liked to please him, and the emotional fall-out from not doing so was too much for her to cope with. But she was finished with that. She would no longer be Daddy’s ‘best girl’ and automatically take the university course that he had chosen for her. She’d ask Ailsa at the Fhindhaven Marine Research Station for career information. She might apply to Aberdeen or St Andrews University and do marine biology. Ben’s conviction was that human ingenuity would be our undoing if we allowed it to destroy the natural cycles of the planet. The waters round Britain, which had been the breeding grounds of a thousand species for a million years, were being ransacked. The next twenty years or so would see the results of the European regulations. Ben and his colleagues, and the fisherfolk, needed help and support to protect the fish if there were going to be fish left by the time of the new century.

  Her parents would have to deal with their life without her. More than likely her father wouldn’t support her if she moved away, and it came to Saskia why her mother stayed with her father. It was for the same underlying reason that she herself had caved in over her career choice. It had been the easiest thing to do. If you made decisions for yourself then you had to take full responsibility for them, and that was a more challenging path to follow. But there would be cafés or pubs in Aberdeen or St Andrews where she could get work and earn some money. She’d grind out her own lens through which she viewed the world. She loved both her parents but she could no longer tailor her life to suit their aspirations. It would be difficult to disentangle herself. Like shipwrecked Gulliver, tied down by each individual hair, she must loosen herself strand by strand.

  Saskia remembered a puzzle her class had been given in maths. They were shown a diagram – a box containing a series of lines at different angles. The exercise had been to extend the lines and connect them in order to make as many triangles as possible. They had all failed to achieve the maximum number. ‘You’ve all got blinkers on,’ the maths teacher had laughed as she had drawn the solution on the board, extending the lines through the frame of the box. ‘You are bound by regulation and inert thought. I didn’t say that you couldn’t extend a line beyond the box. Think outside the frame,’ she urged. ‘One day you may have to.’

  Now Saskia’s frame was going to be removed, and she was the one who was going to do it. But she would be by the sea.

  Where she belonged.

  Their cycle complete, the shoals prepare to move on. Guided by the ocean itself they start to make their way out to deeper water, leaving the spawning grounds rich with new life . . .

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  During the writing of Saskia’s Journey the future of the European fisheries reached a new level of crisis. Confronted with insensitive legislation coastal communities face annihilation, while aggressive and industrial fishing threatens the balance of life on our planet.

  In this novel the sea has a voice – we should listen.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  THERESA BRESLIN is a librarian and writer who lives in a village in Central Scotland. Nearby are lots of castles, ancient burial grounds and the Roman Wall, all of which helped fuel an active imagination as a child, further developed by a real love of reading. Her writing combines a powerful sense of drama with memorable characters and superb storytelling.

  Her first book, Simon’s Challenge, won the Young Book Trust’s Fidler Award for new writers and, since then, her books have appeared regularly on many children’s book award shortlists. She was awarded the Carnegie Medal for Whispers in the Graveyard. Her work has also been filmed for television and dramatised on radio, and she was recently awarded lifelong Honorary Membership of the Scottish Library Association for distinguished services to Children’s Literature and Librarianship.

  Also by Theresa Breslin:

  REMEMBRANCE

  For junior readers:

  THE DREAM MASTER

  DREAM MASTER: NIGHTMARE!

  DREAM MASTER: GLADIATOR

  DREAM MASTER: ARABIAN NIGHTS

  www.theresabreslin.co.uk

  Praise for SASKIA’S JOURNEY:

  ‘Themes of loss and forgiveness are at the heart of this haunting tale of self-discovery by an author at the height of her powers . . . Breslin’s mesmerising descriptions of the sea and the people who depend upon it captures all the atmospheric beauty of north-east Scotland. A truly memorable story’

  The Bookseller

  ‘Packs an emotional punch whilst highlighting the contemporary concerns of fishing communities under threat of economic extinction’

  Lindsey Fraser, Guardian

  ‘The profounder human issues, of family secrets and their ensuing legacy, of personal responsibility and of a child’s shifting relationship with its parents are perfectly interwoven and d
ramatically explored’

  Glasgow Herald

  ‘Very thought-provoking’

  The School Librarian

  ‘A sensitive, finely structured novel which unfolds as delicately as a “creamy purl of foam at the water’s edge”’

  Books for Keeps

  ‘Delicately balanced narrative’

  Scottish Sunday Herald

  SASKIA’S JOURNEY

  AN RHCP DIGITAL EBOOK 978 1 446 45203 5

  Published in Great Britain by RHCP Digital,

  an imprint of Random House Children’s Publishers UK

  A Penguin Random House Company

  This ebook edition published 2011

  Copyright © Theresa Breslin, 2004

  First Published in Great Britain

  Corgi 9780552548650

  The right of Theresa Breslin to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.