by Sarah Maine
He offered her tea. “Or coffee?”
“Tea, please,” she said, just as the phone rang.
“Half a mo, but I need to get this.” He gestured her into the living area and, juggling a diary and a pen, the phone clamped under his chin, he began to discuss ferries and delivery dates.
She continued her assessment of the cottage, now intrigued by the man. The walls were covered with photographs, arranged at all heights, large frames and small, a mixture of nineteenth-century sepia prints and more recent modern landscapes, many monochrome and of very high quality. And she recognised views of the island, of the strand, and of Muirlan House itself, taken from where she had stood a moment earlier. “Your work?” she asked, when his call was finished, and he came across carrying two mugs, placing hers in the hearth where a peat fire smouldered in a bed of ash. “They’re very good.”
“You can’t go wrong up here. With this light.” She continued to move round the room, studying the pictures. Landscapes and seascapes, sunsets and storm clouds, all cleverly captured and sympathetically framed.
And then she came to two small pencil sketches tucked into an alcove. One depicted a young girl lying on her back in the sand, dark hair spread fan-like, mingling with the seaweed, one arm stretched voluptuously above her head, apparently asleep—but she wasn’t. A little smile played around her parted lips, and beneath half-closed lids one imagined her eyes were dancing. The pencil had stroked the swell of her breasts beneath a light blouse, and her skirts were rumpled, offering a shadowed glimpse of a dimpled knee. In the other, the same girl was standing on the edge of the dunes with her clothes framing her form as she leant into the force of the wind.
“These are brilliant . . .”
He came and stood behind her. “Aye. But the talent’s in your genes, not mine.” She looked round at him, then took his meaning and turned back, peering closer, searching in vain for a signature. “Others in the sketch-book were signed,” he added.
“Others?”
He went over to a small desk in the corner and came back with a worn sketch-book, which he handed to her. Reverently she turned the pages, seeing half-finished sketches, studies, exercises in tone and shading and, on one page, several attempts to produce a flourishing signature: Theodore Blake, and on another, a date: 1889.
“They came out of this?” She looked up at James in astonishment, and he nodded. “But . . . but should you have taken them out? This must be worth a fortune.” He shrugged, his eyes unreadable. “Where did it come from?”
“It’d been kicking around the old farmhouse for years, and no one had given it a thought. Aonghas gave it to me to scribble on when I was a kid.” He grinned at her expression, then turned to the back of the book and showed her childish drawings of aeroplanes and rocket ships. “That’s my contribution—I suppose the book came from the big house when they cleared it out. I found it again when we moved Aonghas out of the farmhouse and realised then what it was. I liked those two particularly.” She turned back to study the drawings, and even as the thought struck her, he spoke again. “It’s the same girl as in The Rock Pool.”
“Who is she?”
“Not sure.” He shrugged and gestured to her mug in the hearth.
“Could it be his wife?” She reached for it and noticed that the file on the floor lay open at the illustration of the cracked wall of Muirlan House.
“No. He married late. He was only nineteen in 1889, and the clothing suggests an island girl. Painters often used local people in their compositions.”
“But there’s more, surely. There’s a familiarity . . .” she said, looking more closely.
“—with the form beneath the clothing?” His eyes gleamed a moment. “I know what you mean.” Then he nodded towards the kitchen area, changing the subject. “That phone call was from a supplier on Skye. Apparently the ferry’s had to turn back with engine trouble, so if the police team were on board, they’ll not be here until tomorrow.”
But she was still looking at the girl stretched out on the sand. “I wonder if they’ll be able to find out who it was.”
He shrugged again. “Who knows.”
The peat settled in the fireplace as he sat down opposite her, placing his mug in the hearth. Neither spoke for a moment, then she gestured to the open report on the floor. “Were you having a rethink?”
“’Fraid not. The facts remain.”
Was it just the facts? She sipped at her tea, looking at him over the rim. Or something else. Something hidden.
She hesitated, then decided to probe a little. “You don’t approve of my plans, do you?”
He looked taken aback and picked up his mug again, taking a moment to reply. “Doing anything with the old place would cost you a fortune.”
“Yes. You said.”
He smiled, swirling the tea around in his mug and staring into it. “Nothing’s going to change that, you know. No amount of dreaming or planning. It’s a wreck.”
She picked up the report from the floor and flipped through the pages, piqued by his manner. “Perhaps I should get a second opinion.”
“By all means.”
She turned his illustration of the cracked wall on its side, pretending to study it again. “There’s something you don’t like about the project, though, I can tell. And I bet you have an idea who the bones are,” she added, flicking a glance at him.
“If I knew—”
“I didn’t say know, I said have an idea. Or can guess? Or maybe Ruairidh can.”
He sat back, nursing his mug against his chest, considering her. “Like we said, there’s no island lore about someone disappearing, unaccounted for.”
She glanced again at the sketches, then added, “But identifying the bones is only one question, isn’t it?”
“Meaning?”
“Someone else did the killing, and the burying. Maybe you have an idea about that?”
He seemed amused by the interrogation. “Tricky one, that, not knowing who the victim is. Next question?”
She hesitated. “Alright. Tell me what island lore says about Theo Blake. I’d like to know.”
“Would you?” He got to his feet and brought the teapot over, refilling both mugs, then he reached up to one of the photographs hanging on the wall and passed it to her. “Recognise this?”
She took it, a faded sepia image of a collection of low houses, clustered together like the encampment of a primitive race, with smoke rising from thatched roofs. At one side, only half in shot, was the wall of a larger stone building. She shook her head.
“Then try this.” He handed her another photograph. No mystery there. It was Muirlan House, newly completed, raw and pristine, the encircling wall intact, the gravel on the drive raked smooth. And to one side was the wall of the same stone building. The factor’s house. “Got it?”
She nodded slowly.
“That’s what island lore remembers. Theo Blake’s father, who flattened their forebears’ houses to build Muirlan House, giving them the choice of poor land elsewhere, or emigration. And they remember his son, who came to paint or fish or shoot, and entertain wealthy guests. A man who demanded rents and had the power of God over them.” He nodded towards the sketches of the girl. “And maybe even seduced their daughters. Who knows.”
She handed the photographs back and he rehung them on the wall. Was that it? “And so you don’t want to see his house restored. Is this some sort of delayed revenge served, in this case, very cold indeed?”
He gave her a straight look back and answered quietly, “You asked for island lore, not my views.”
“But you—” The phone rang again and he went to get it. Saved by the bell, she thought, as she looked again at the two photographs. There was something appalling about them, seen together like that, a depiction of unbridled power and wealth descending like a giant boot to obliterate the simple dwellings. But for goodness’ sake, it wasn’t even Theo Blake’s doing; it was his father’s, and well over a century ago. Surely—
/> “Aye.” James came back into the living area, the phone clamped to his ear. “I know exactly where she is,” he said, looking across at her. “I found her outside here, trespassing.” He raised a mocking eyebrow. “Hang on.” He lowered the receiver. “Ruairidh wants to know how long you’re staying.”
“Until the weekend, at least,” she told him, and he relayed the message.
“Aye. Right.” He hung up. “The forensic team was on the ferry, and by the time they got back to Skye something else had cropped up. It’ll be a day or two before they get back here.”
Later that afternoon, as soon as the tide allowed her, she walked back across the strand to the island, wrestling with this new angle on the past, unsettled by the thought of the cluster of low dwellings in the photograph, the homely drift of peat smoke. A vanished community.
She had glimpsed other ruins on the island the day before, and when she reached the other side she set off along the shoreline away from Muirlan House to find them. But there was little enough to see when she got there: tumbled walls and empty doorways, cobbled thresholds and fallen lintels, and a light snowfall of daisies tracing the outline of old lazy beds amongst the clover. The choice of poor land elsewhere, James had said, or emigration. Had these places been abandoned at the same time, or later, as the population on the island declined?
Down by the shore she saw low mounds marking ancient graves, a cross covered with moss and yellow lichen fallen in the corner of another ruin, which was eroding onto the beach. Some graves were more recent and a few had headstones. She studied them, seeing the same family names repeated over and over, generation succeeding generation, marking the passing of time. Amongst childbed deaths, losses at sea, and fallen soldiers, there were others whose lives had spanned eight or nine decades and seen the world change around them. Some had been scraped clear of mosses, and she traced an almost unbroken sequence of MacPhails, the earliest stone bearing a date of 1698 carved in irregular letters. Those graves had been kept trim, still venerated—the bond was strong.
But Theo Blake’s grave was not to be found here, amongst the islanders. Ruairidh had told her that he lay with his parents in the family plot behind Muirlan House, as removed in death as he had been in life from the people his work had immortalised.
She sat a moment, resting against the wall of the old chapel, feeling the warmth of it, and listened to the jangling of the skylarks high above. She closed her eyes. It all came back to that question of belonging. Perhaps her own sense of connection with this place was no more real than Blake’s had been, just wish fulfilment, spawned by a need to belong. For it was that, she realised, which had brought her here. She had come here with a view to making a new start but also with the half-formed belief that she could honour Blake’s memory by preserving his erstwhile home. Giles had encouraged the idea. “It’s part of our heritage, darling, as well as your own past, and these places are important, like Dove Cottage or Brantwood.”
But Theo Blake had been no Wordsworth or Ruskin, and here, according to James Cameron, he was remembered rather differently, as an idle despot who demanded rents from the islanders, and had the power of God over them.
Chapter 11
1910, Beatrice
Beatrice came across the mourners without warning. They were clustered around a new grave beside the chapel ruins, and the soft sound of committal prayers drifted towards her. Men stood, hands clutching doffed caps, the wind whipping at their dark clothing, lifting the hair on their bowed heads. She halted abruptly, recognising the factor and his sons among them, and one or two of the tenants. The rest were strangers.
She had begun backing away, not wishing to intrude upon private grief, when one of the men at the graveside raised his head. He scowled across at her, an expression of such dark malevolence that it seemed to leap across the open ground to strike her, and she recoiled. One or two others lifted their heads, and she felt a wave of more muted hostility. A flock of choughs rose like dark spirits to fly between them, and Cameron Forbes looked up, his face solemn as befitted the occasion. He nodded slightly to her before dropping his chin again, but even he managed to convey the message that she should not be there. She withdrew quickly, pulling at her skirt which snagged on a clump of thistles.
Later she stood at the drawing room window and watched a group of men leaving the factor’s house, casting long shadows as they set out across the wet sand. Theo appeared at the door, and she called him over. “I saw them at a burial down by the ruined chapel. Such a lot of people.”
He came and stood beside her, watched them for a moment, and then turned away. “Anndra MacPhail was buried today”—his face was expressionless—“and John must have provided the mourners with a cup of tea.”
She waited for more. “Was he a tenant?” she prompted, her eyes following the retreating figures.
“Years ago. In my father’s time.”
“But he wanted to be buried here?”
“So they told me,” replied Theo, sitting down and opening his book. His face had that shuttered look which she had begun to recognise, signalling that the subject was closed.
But the incident stayed with her, and next time she encountered Cameron Forbes alone in the study she decided to ask him instead. “Mr. MacPhail must have been a well-regarded man,” she ventured.
Cameron was sorting through old leather-bound ledgers, and he hesitated, his face impassive, hard to read. “He was very well-known on the island, madam.”
“Mr. Blake said he used to live here?” Her finger idly traced the delicate curl of a lapwing’s crest.
“Aye. He did,” he replied, then lifted his head and smiled at her. “You’re becoming quite a walker, madam. I see you all over the island.”
She had been deflected again. “I enjoy the exercise,” she said coolly, and withdrew. There were things, it seemed, that would not be explained to her.
It was later the same day, as she crossed the hall, that she again overheard Theo’s raised voice coming from the study.
“This is not your concern, Cameron. Nor is it an estate matter.”
“But if you saw how they were living, sir. Crammed into two damp rooms.”
She paused, making a play of arranging ornaments on the mantelpiece above the hall fire, and listened.
“I’m sorry for that, but if I provide land for them, I’ll have others demanding—”
“Surely they have some claim,” Cameron cut across him. “MacPhails have worked this land for generations.”
“No!” Theo spoke sharply. “Duncan MacPhail has no claim on me whatsoever. His father was only a child when the family left. Almost fifty years ago. Before you were born. Before I was born, for God’s sake.” She drew closer to the study door. “What would you have me do? Tear down the house and let them retrace the old run rigs?— For God’s sake, Cameron, accept that things move on.” He paused. “I knew that burial would stir up ill feeling. The MacPhails leave a legacy of ill will.” This was followed by a silence, and when Cameron spoke again it was in a low, conciliatory tone, and she had to strain to hear his words.
“Duncan doesn’t care whereabouts the land is, sir, and he’s prepared—”
“Enough, Cameron.”
“And Aonghas MacPhail gives you no trouble.”
“Aonghas’s croft came to him through his wife; he’d no more claim on me than his brother. If Duncan wishes to stay, and if Aonghas will house him, he can take what seasonal work there is, though I doubt it’ll be enough to support a family.”
There was a short silence. “I told him in Glasgow that I’d speak for him. He came up for the funeral hoping that—”
“Cameron.”
“Sir?”
“I said no. If you raised his expectations, you should not have done so. And that’s an end to it.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure.” Cameron’s voice had taken on a different tone. “As far as the Land League’s concerned, there won’t be an end until—”
She heard the scr
ape of a chair on the wooden floor. “Damn it, Cameron! Do you imagine you help Duncan MacPhail’s case with veiled threats? The League is not concerned, and I mean it to stay that way, so be off with you.” Beatrice withdrew hastily to the morning room as Cameron left the study.
I’m planning a garden . . . The letter to Emily was still unfinished . . . though Theo says I’m mad and that the first gales will destroy it. Are the storms really so fierce? I can’t imagine . . . She was finding much was unfamiliar in this new world, different rules applied. Theo says this settled spell won’t hold much longer, so perhaps I’ll see for myself . . . Even the physical boundaries were ill-defined, the separation between sea, sky, and land hidden beneath clouds, and the long hours of daylight merged into darkness, a soft lingering twilight alive with birdsong. And the sea set its own rules, marooning and releasing the island twice a day, following its own irregular rhythm. I try and imagine the childhood you described, and I want my children to grow here too, where they can run wild . . .
Until she came here, the sea had been something to be admired from Portobello pier or promenade, unchallenging and tamed, but here the sea was master, governing the daily round, dictating when cattle could be taken across the strand, when cockles could be gathered or fishing lines set out in the sea pools, determining whether they reached church on Sunday in the trap or by boat. I love walking along the shore watching the sea creep over the sand, listening to the sound of it hissing, deepening as the tide rises, especially on rough days when the waves boom into the rocks, sending spray high into the air . . .
