Summer at the Highland Coral Beach (The Port Willow Bay series Port Willow Bay)

by Kiley Dunbar

  Beatrice’s words seemed to catch in her throat but they made their way out. ‘I’ll stay. Of course I’ll stay.’ She let her own eyes close and leaned into the solidity of his shoulder, their lips only inches from meeting. Already her breath was hitching and her nerves jolting, sending hot tingling electricity racing to the nape of her neck and the base of her spine. She knew this was a kiss she would feel all the way down.

  ‘Uncle Atholl! Echo’s up to his oxters in mud! Uncle Atholl!’

  ‘For the love of God!’ Atholl let his lips brush past hers with a frustrated cry and for the briefest second he pressed his face onto her shoulder, a scrape of lip and tooth grazing her neck as he did so and sending every cell in her body haywire, but he was withdrawing already and watching the children descend upon their hideout behind the rock, screaming in delight as a dripping, muddy Echo caught up to them, wagging his tail at the sight of his master before proceeding to shake mud from his shaggy coat and sending filthy splashes over everything around him. The children screeched once more before running away to wash off in the pools.

  Atholl, his face spotted with mud, reached out a hand towards the shell-shocked Beatrice’s hair and attempted to pick away the splashes of grime.

  ‘Don’t…’ Beatrice began, making Atholl step back again instantly.

  He opened his mouth to speak, eyes wide with guilt, but she didn’t let him talk.

  ‘I was going to say, don’t you dare apologise again.’ Beatrice reached her pinched fingers to the tip of her tongue and removed a drop of muck with a grimace. ‘Pfft! Yuck! And I was going to say, I’m having a perfect day, even if I have been bitten half to death by midges, grilled by your mum and caked in mud by your dog, and I’ll have the shakes for a week after that tablet sugar high.’

  Atholl laughed with relief. ‘I’ll have you write that in the inn’s visitors’ book before you leave us. Come on, Sheila’ll have some baby wipes can take care of this mud.’

  With that he led her back to the little party, walking a pace ahead and leaving Beatrice’s nerves buzzing like the swooning bees drunk on nectar from the blushing purple clovers at the pool sides.

  The rest of their afternoon passed in a blur of gathering wild flowers – delicate ling heather, forget-me-nots and white campion – or searching for pretty rocks in the pools with the children. They all ate bannocks and oatcakes with cheese and Mrs Fergusson’s greenhouse tomatoes. Someone produced a bottle of Highland mead that tasted of honey and summer which they swigged with handfuls of mellow raspberries. The children filled Kilner jars with brown bearded fish from the burn that they caught with their cupped hands, a trick uncle Eugene showed them.

  On a few fleeting occasions throughout the afternoon Beatrice was struck by just how much she was being treated as though she was part of something very special: a family. Everyone made sure to fill her in on the decades old in-jokes that circulated amongst them, and she was beginning to think she’d heard the name of every islander and member of the Fergusson clan and had discovered all their ailments, love stories, recipes and secrets.

  Mrs Fergusson reminisced about her late husband and how she’d fallen in love with him on a Harvest Home dance floor oh so many summers ago, and how he’d been a dead ringer for Gene Kelly, only with red hair and freckles and at least two feet taller, but in all other regards they were near-identical, and Atholl had smiled and peeled apples for the children never letting on he’d heard this story a hundred times before.

  By five o’clock there was a chill in the air and a dampness settling upon the ground that told them the party was almost over. Mrs Fergusson, rocking baby Archibald, saw Atholl and Beatrice gathering their things ready to leave and remarked innocently that Beatrice hadn’t yet held the baby and that if Kitty Wake had managed it earlier without running for the hills then so could Beatrice.

  Perhaps everyone mistook Beatrice’s reluctance as nerves and unfamiliarity with babies. She had, after all, held Clara in her arms, rocked and danced her on more occasions than she could count, but the prospect of cradling the newborn boy, still curled like the new fronds of a fern and so small in his white sleepsuit, cotton hat and powder blue woollen blanket, was a different matter entirely.

  Kitty, who had been leaning dreamily against Gene and humming a soft tune, was suddenly looking at Beatrice with pinched, quizzical eyes. Mrs Fergusson asked if she’d never held a baby before as she threw a wink at Atholl that made Beatrice’s insides churn and her fists clench in her trouser pockets.

  There was nothing else for it but to sit down again and let the soft, warm and surprisingly heavy bundle that was the sleeping Archibald mould himself onto her lap. She spread her fingers out around his small, rounded body with her arms crossed under him for support.

  No thoughts whatsoever articulated themselves as Beatrice absorbed the baby boy’s weight. She was no longer aware of the people smiling at her or of Atholl occasionally glancing at her, expressionless, as he packed away the picnic basket. She stared hard at the delicate pattern on his blue blanket, then at the fleshy pink sweetness of his moving mouth as he dreamt of drinking his mother’s milk.

  ‘Was there ever a finer wee boy in all the world?’ Mrs Fergusson was saying, and Beatrice heard her thoughts churning in reply.

  There was. There was…

  She wasn’t sure which had started first, Kitty’s soft singing or her own instinctive, slow rocking of the slumbering child, but after a few moments she became highly aware of both.

  Kitty’s sweet voice lifted and she smiled as she sang the beautiful melody.

  Had we never lov’d sae kindly,

  Had we never lov’d sae blindly,

  Never met – or never parted,

  We had ne’er been broken-hearted.

  Fare-thee-weel, thou first and fairest!

  Fare-thee-weel, thou best and dearest!

  Thine be ilka joy and treasure,

  Peace, Enjoyment, Love and Pleasure.

  Ae fond kiss, and then we sever!

  Ae fareweel alas, for ever!

  Deep in heart-wrung tears I’ll pledge thee,

  Warring sighs and groans I’ll wage thee.

  The sound was drowned out by another, louder commotion in Beatrice’s ears. It took her a moment to realise it was her own heartbeat resounding and her escalating breathing rushing in and out. Her hands shook beneath the bundle in her arms and the edges of her vison seemed to dim away into blurry darkness shot through with sudden starbursts of light which she tried to blink away but only grew more vivid.

  Somehow, Beatrice wasn’t sure how, Sheila had baby Archibald in her arms again and the first whines of his crying were ringing out between the valleys. Beatrice knew she was apologising repeatedly to anyone who would listen as the hills distorted into swirls of green and purple. She couldn’t think and she could hardly breathe but she was aware of her feet pounding on the ground as she ran and the awful, exaggerated echoing sound of their impact hurting her deep inside her brain.

  She knew what was happening even though she couldn’t articulate it at that moment. It had happened before, after the first time she’d seen her mum hooked up to the dripping red chemo bag with the cannula in her arm. It hadn’t happened right there in the ward but days later beneath the harsh strip lights of the supermarket aisle, and then again many times after that in quiet queues at the bank and the library and again waiting for Rich to get home one night when all the trains were cancelled because of summer flooding on the line, and each time the panic attack had taken her by surprise, stolen her breath, and always managed to convince her she wasn’t going to survive it this time.

  And yet she was still running, her hand clasped to her stomach, hardly seeing where she was going, all the way back up the brae towards the river, hoping she was heading in the right direction to meet Atholl’s makeshift bridge over the water, barely able to ask herself what she was meant to do when she reached the road.

  The fall, when it happened, sent her tumbling headlong int
o the heathers and damp earth, her fingertips sinking into mud up to her knuckles as her ankle stung and smarted. The jolt helped her focus and she gasped some deep breaths. Running away, again, was the only thing she could think of doing.

  ‘I have to get away from this place,’ she told herself in a panting, wild-eyed whisper. ‘Go where people won’t know I’m broken, and I won’t be tested and questioned…’

  She glanced back angrily at the offending rock that had tripped her only to see Atholl tearing up the brae towards her.

  When he reached her, he instantly threw his jacket over her shoulders and spread his hands out across her back, drawing her close to him.

  ‘Beatrice, what on earth’s the matter? Can you no’ tell me? Please, say the words and let go o’ the burden that’s hurtin’ ye.’

  The long breath caught as she filled her lungs with air, thinking it would act as a stopper. Instead it burst from her chest again and with it came all the trapped words spilling out along with violent, unrelenting tears coming in contracting waves that cramped her stomach.

  ‘I’ve made a mistake. I can’t do this… any of it.’ She shook her head frantically.

  Atholl didn’t let her go, but loosened his grip so she had room to breathe in great gulping gasps between words.

  ‘It doesn’t matter how remote I am, how far from my own life, I can’t seem to recover. I’m lost, Atholl. I don’t know who I am or what I’m doing. I’ve no job, and no home, and I don’t even have my mum to tell all this to anymore, and… and I keep looking everywhere for something I just can’t get back… and I…’ These last words were forced from her with a pained cry that ended in deep convulsing sobs.

  Atholl’s eyes flooded but he didn’t speak.

  ‘… and I can’t fill the great, gaping hole in my heart for my baby.’

  Clasping her chest, she howled her heartache out. The wild flowers she’d gathered earlier, and which Atholl had been holding for her as they made ready to leave the picnic and which he’d carried during his sprint across the hill in pursuit of her, tumbled to the ground at their feet.

  In an instant Atholl’s arms were tight around her again as he sat on the rough ground, pulling her onto his lap. Letting her weight sink onto him, Atholl rocked her as she screamed into the crook of his arm, bent double with pain until eventually it passed and her tears stopped and the sky turned pink in the sun’s slow descent towards the horizon. All the while Atholl stroked her hair, cradling her like his own child, letting his silent tears fall and dry upon his face.

  Without speaking he supported her all the way back to the car where she sat stupefied into silence even as they passed back down the steep winding roads in the fading light.

  He handed her into the boat and she sat shivering under his jacket in the prow as Atholl rowed her back into the calm haven of Port Willow. On her lap she clasped the posy of wild flowers that Atholl had once again gathered up and returned to her.

  As they rounded the rocky promontory of the harbour and saw the semi-circle of gleaming lights of Port Willow along the bay she found herself speaking quietly over the soft dip of the oars in the water. Atholl strained to pick up her words.

  ‘I didn’t get any documentation or anything. You know you should get something to keep… sometimes I wonder if it’s even recorded in my medical notes, but someone was alive and then they died, so their life should have been marked somehow.’

  The moonlight glittered in the gentle waves as they cut through the water and Atholl listened intently. Beatrice’s eyes glazed as she thought back to the spring and saw herself. The memory made her wince.

  ‘I was just sitting for days on end in a pastel-coloured spare bedroom with a baby blanket and a few scraps of unworn baby clothes and nothing else to show for their little life.’

  ‘I understand. You wish there was something special you could do to remember your child,’ Atholl said at last, making her eyes snap to his.

  ‘That’s it exactly. But what? What are you supposed to do?’

  ‘There must be something.’

  ‘There’s nothing.’ Beatrice let her eyes fall from his face. She knew what she’d see there; pity and sadness, yes, but awkwardness and discomfort too. Nobody likes talking about these things, she’d learned, and so she hadn’t talked about them.

  ‘I’d better get you home. You’re exhausted.’ Atholl fell into silence.

  Beatrice shifted her gaze to the lapping waves over the boat’s low hull, hugging her arms around her body to stave off the evening chill. She didn’t speak again.

  * * *

  At the door of the inn, Atholl took her hand. ‘Gene will be back by now if Kitty took him by the Skye Bridge in her car. Tell him to make you a hot toddy.’

  ‘You’re not coming in?’

  ‘Not yet.’ Atholl shook his head, his skin pale as ice in the moonlight and he left her to find her own way inside.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Atholl’s Gift

  ‘Angela? You there? Pick up? I know it’s late. You must be putting Clara to bed. Listen, I’ve had a hot toddy or two – God, whisky’s disgusting, isn’t it? – I thought you’d want to know that I told someone about the baby. Not just someone. Atholl.

  ‘He’s the landlord here, well, he isn’t really the landlord as such; his brother is. Anyway. I said it all out loud. Mum. The house. My job. Everything. Come to think of it, I’m not sure I mentioned Rich? It’s all a bit blurry to be honest. At any rate, it hurt. And now I feel like it’s all happened all over again, except I’m in a B&B in the Scottish Highlands and I can’t stop crying and I’ve nothing but a Drambuie coffee for comfort. God, I miss you and Clara, and Vic too.

  ‘Gene looked at me like I was a ghost haunting his inn when I walked back in tonight. Oh, Gene’s Atholl’s brother. He barely said a word, other than offering to get his girlfriend up and send her in to see me, but I couldn’t do that, not after the show I made of myself with his family today. Without doubt they’ll all think I’m crazy too. Ugh! Angela, I was out of control. I talked about it, though. But it didn’t help, and this feeling, this empty ache, isn’t going anywhere, and I’m all out of options now.

  ‘Run? Don’t run? Go home? Find a new home? They’re all the same. It hurts regardless.

  ‘And now Atholl’s run off into the night. I saw him sprinting along the seafront, going God knows where, desperate to get away from the lunatic English woman who was rude to his poor mother, cried all over his shirt and frightened the living daylights out of little baby Archibald.

  ‘I know none of this makes sense. I’ll have to fill you in on the embarrassing details when I get back, but ugh, clan Fergusson think I’m a baby-crazed lunatic, just like Rich did.

  ‘Oh, whatever! I’m annoying myself now. What does it all matter? I’m downing this dreadful drink and climbing up to bed… but I can’t see myself getting to sleep. I’ve got the old restlessness creeping in again.

  ‘I knew talking about it wouldn’t help. I could kick myself!

  ‘Angela? Angela, are you there? Is this thing even recording? Look, don’t worry about me. I’ll see you tomorrow. I’m sorry I’m venting at you. I’m fine. Honestly. I’m fine.’

  * * *

  ‘Beatrice, are you asleep?’ Atholl whispered at the door.

  He held his breath, listening to the sound of the ladder creaking as she climbed down then bare feet padding across the floor and finally the key turning in the lock.

  He was met by the sight of Beatrice wrapping her dressing gown around herself and knotting it, then reaching into a pocket for a tissue.

  ‘Atholl. Listen, I’m sorry I scared you off, I know it’s a lot…’

  ‘Shh shh, it’s all right,’ he hushed her gently. ‘What you said about not being able to say goodbye properly, of having nothing special to do to mark your baby’s wee life. You set me thinking. I’ve been up at the But n’ Ben…’

  He produced a parcel from under his arm and unwrapped the brown paper tied with str
ing that protected it. ‘I thought maybe, if you want, you could make use of this wee thing?’ He handed her the intricately weaved hollow bassinette shaped curiously like a Russian doll or an ancient Egyptian sarcophagus with a round hole where the face would be.

  ‘I made it myself of the spring’s youngest willow back in March when it was still green with life.’

  ‘It’s lovely. What is it?’

  ‘It was for a talk Seth was giving about old Highland customs. It’s a swaddling basket. You’d wrap the baby in cloths and bands, tucking them up tight so they could sleep, and then they’d be placed inside the basket and worn over the parent’s back while they worked in the fields or at the fishes.’

  ‘It’s beautiful. It’s tiny, though. Too small for a newborn.’

  ‘It was only a model, to show what the real thing would be like.’

  She turned it over in her hands, her eyes misting, and she looked up at him, hesitatingly, still unsure of what he intended her to do with the pretty object.

  ‘There’s another Highland custom, an ancient one, going back to the earliest folk on the land,’ he said softly.

  Beatrice listened.

  ‘When a loved one passed they would say their goodbyes and swaddle them too like a bairn and they’d place them in the water, letting the tides carry them home.’

  Beatrice took his meaning and she bobbed her head as the silent tears came again.

  After a long moment he spoke. ‘Do you want to do it now? There’s a braw moon lighting the harbour.’

  ‘All right.’

  Those were the last words they said to each other that night as Beatrice, the mother of a loved son, threaded the Highland posy of forget-me-nots, heather and white campion into the loose basket work, weaving each flower in amongst the shoots from the sappy willows as Atholl watched on.

  When her work was done she left the inn, crossing the dark road and leaning over the sea wall. Atholl stayed by the inn porch, close enough to see her kiss the little bundle before lowering the empty bassinette onto the surface of the gentle waters. He couldn’t hear the prayer on her lips but he whispered a solemn ‘Amen’.