by Adam Thorpe
‘Pretty rare.’
‘It was taken on St Kilda,’ she said. ‘St Kilda has no roads. It’s just incredible.’ She consulted her catalogue. ‘Bar-tailed godwit. Are they rare?’
‘Depends. On the weather.’
‘Oh. And isn’t this one’s reflection amazing? I remember Kier taking it on Harris. Knot in winter plumage.’
‘No.’
‘What?’
‘That’s summer plumage.’
‘It says it’s winter, here.’
She showed him. A knot was evidently a bird.
‘Dead right. I’m no good with knots.’
She laughed. She found his jokes funny: Olivia hadn’t done so for years.
‘I’d best be off, Marcie,’ he said.
He nearly fell over Astra, circling on his tricycle outside. Astra blew him a raspberry filled with genuine dislike. The local primary stood opposite, with brightly coloured railings and a giraffe mural, the apparent clone of the twins’ first school in Worcestershire. He passed a plump lad of about thirteen, who held up a liquorice whirl to a friend’s mouth full of dental appliance and shouted, ‘These are no like your pubes, cos you’ve fucking got none!’ And they both howled with laughter, in case the passing beard hadn’t understood. Olivia had finally left crewing after being similarly insulted by a drunken male passenger, who then threw up on touchdown so violently it caught in her eyebrows.
‘I’ve had it up to here,’ she’d said to her soon-to-be-husband, down the phone from the airport. ‘He didn’t even use a sick bag.’
She was also pregnant, it turned out. And then Pan Am folded. Just like that. The world’s most got-at airline.
Where his bedroom’s sloping pinewood ceiling went vertical, leaving a space behind, he removed three planks from their nails and cobbled together a tight frame for the wood to sit in. From the outside, nothing had changed, except for a subtle finger hold either end that allowed him to remove it in seconds. A man could vanish in his own home. He left the copy of his logbook and diary in there, plus the wad of cash. He threw in a couple of cushions and a bottle of water as an afterthought. Protect and Survive.
He hush-kitted the wooden ladder with felt and bought some thick lined curtains on Lewis; he also came back with country-style kitchen chairs, a corduroy beanbag, a couple of rugs, a wooden loo seat and a Harris tweed jacket. Olivia would have pulled a face. That night he stood in the agitated grass outside with the curtains closed and the lamps lit: there was hardly any seepage.
It was the best he could do. There was no power for an alarm system. If they wanted to train a gun on him, they just had to wait for him to emerge. No place better: cover nil, remote. He stood by the thorn bush and panned his eye over the lumpy, treeless peninsula. Villains in frogmen outfits crouched behind every silhouetted outcrop. He would not even hear the shot.
It was shower-and-tea day at the MacLeans. He hadn’t yet mentioned the selkie.
He noticed, among the bric-a-brac on their window’s deep sill, a framed photo of Carol MacLean with her parents in front of the house. He picked it up. She was dressed in a calf-length brown coat and her dark red hair was swept back and voluminous. Her smile was a beauty queen’s, she was all youth next to her dowdy-looking parents.
‘What date was this?’
‘Oh, I’d just been to see Blondie in Glasgow. Around 1980, I suppose. Feels like last week.’
‘A festival?’
She grinned. ‘It was at the Apollo. I did a lot of screaming. Good times. Single girl.’
‘She hadnae met the punk rocker,’ Angus grunted, pointing at himself.
Bob raised his eyebrows in unfeigned surprise. He’d imagined them somehow frozen as themselves, or emerging from crofter shawls. This was how Al had seen her, but he couldn’t ask if she remembered young Hugh McAllister.
‘What about you?’ asked Carol.
He blinked his shampoo-reddened eyes. What would Kit Webb have been like? ‘Oh, going around without socks,’ he said, ‘dreaming of the revolution.’
‘I can imagine that,’ said Carol, gazing at him. ‘Even now I’ve cut the hair.’
‘Oh dear. The ex-hippy. I’ll be seeing selkies soon.’
They looked puzzled. ‘What do you mean?’ said Carol.
‘Y’ know,’ he floundered, ‘having visions, seeing things, tripping.’
Carol shook her head.
‘All that selkie business is a load of balls for the tourists,’ Angus said.
‘Exactly,’ said Bob.
‘The real selkies only surface at night,’ Angus went on, ‘and they look like they’ve been eaten by crabs and they stink o’ rottenness. I’ve had one as close as that. From the boat.’ His hand slapped the table a foot from his distorted face. Distorted by the memory of some indescribable terror.
‘That’s right,’ said Carol. ‘And if you turn y’ head from their beautiful eyes, they howl.’
‘Ululate,’ Angus corrected her. ‘To be scientifically accurate.’
3
HE HAD CHALKED up one birdstrike in his career – out of JFK. A single Canadian goose, about the heaviest; a flock would have brought them down into Jamaica Bay. He told the maintenance bods who were cleaning out the intake area to save him some for Christmas.
Each time the weather improved, he headed for the beach with binos and bird book. He began to learn a lot more about birds: they never stopped moving, the background – sea, grass, sand, clouds – kept changing as they flew, they vanished into wheeling flocks or flickered out like flames into sky. The stiff well-behaved birds in his book were not a great help.
He didn’t want to know more about selkies, not the real ones; his tourist version suited him fine.
One day he was crossing dried kelp and foam scum when he heard a mewing sound and looked up: a high-altitude bird of prey with a jumbo wingspan.
He lifted the binos: the usual teasing silhouette, but it had a white translucent fan on its tail. Sea eagle, fairly rare, recently reintroduced; a couple of pairs on Scourlay. It turned its head, catching the sun on its top wing-surface, then swayed off out of sight beyond the nearest hill. He wondered what went on in its front office. No chit-chat. No jokes. It could dive at some terrifying speed and come out of it with a vole in its claws. His reading had also told him that it was an antique bird: one of the oldest. Hardly a molecule modified for millions of years. A slight livery change, no doubt, but otherwise the veteran raptor of natural aviation.
Today the strip was as deserted as ever. He stared out to sea. He’d been feeling like an obsolescent aircraft left out in all weathers, loneliness getting into some expensive areas. But what if he was still flying? What if all this was simply a fresh leg to some destination not yet up on the board? After half a year max, he’d be back seeing the kids, find a woman to fill the heart-shaped hole, work the training schools or troubleshoot for ad hoc charters as much as suited, or do something quite different. Open a model aircraft shop. Try his sleepy pub idea, spinning yarns behind the bar.
The ocean couldn’t care less, whatever. Next parish, New York. After 6,000 miles of swell it simply swept up to him and hissed back again and repeated the exercise over and over. It turned his bare feet crimson in seconds. The selkie must be hardy, he thought.
A few days before he’d got very excited: the same prints near the high-water mark. This was why he hadn’t given up hope. He’d come earlier today, positioning himself in the dunes dangerously near. The showery clouds blew away and the sun began to burn. The harsh grass stems rustled around him, turning silvery further off, stirring like newly washed hair all the way to the headland. He spied on seals, waders, ran the binos over the cliffs and stacks and tried to catch those endless sparks of impact as the gannets plummeted beyond the breakers. Then he saw them: gulls with smudgy heads and crimson beaks and legs. His black-headed gulls, surely, if a touch early.
He moved onto his stomach and took the binos’ weight on his elbows. Some of his gulls began to fuss aroun
d a couple of tidal pools, stamping their feet in the water. He was well trained to keep awake for ages without much going on, and here quite a bit was going on. Sweeping over huge numbers of guillemots making a racket on the cliff face, then following the sleeked head of a seal beyond the surf, he caught a puzzling flash from the water, pinkish. There again. And again. In the seal’s sparkly jet-trail there was a white rump, clearing the water like a sandbar.
His binos trembled. He lost her. Marram stems flickered across, blurring his aim. He picked her up again as she was turning to swim back. Her emergence point was on a vector dangerously close to his. She squeezed out her hair in front of her as she trotted through the surf. Young and slender, maybe in her twenties. He kept flat on his belly in the warm dune-sand, sighted her again and tightened the focus as she picked up her towel. She shook her hair so that it fell back behind, and revealed her face.
It was cold-pinched. It was turned in his direction with large all-seeing eyes and a frown: as if taking bearings.
Is that a glint in the dunes? A movement in the marram?
Keeping his head down, crab-scuttling to the other side of the dunes where the machair frayed into bare sand, soaking his knees in a slack, he made it home without once looking back. His heartbeat took ages to settle: one crocodile two crocodile three crocodile … Her eyes were not filmed over.
His knees dried in front of the Raeburn and he brushed the sand off, made himself a double-egg-and-bacon fry-up. He was an idiot. He would look up flights to Honolulu and spot sharks instead.
The decent weather held the next day; he jogged to Bargrennan for supplies. The several sheep standing about in the narrow road – copying the locals, it seemed – barely noticed his presence. His lungs were fiery, but the ground hit his feet in that rubbery way that gives lift; there was nothing around him but grass, hills, strips of water and sky. He hoped it would stay that way, having decided not to carry the Makarov today: it was uncomfortable jogging with the gun against the waist.
He called in for sundries at the shop. At the till Kathleen said, in her light sing-song way, ‘How are the birds?’
‘As fascinating as ever.’
Did Kathleen give him a look?
The door swung open. A bulky youngish man in a neat grey suit and wraparound sunglasses.
The man approached them, not raising his shades. Bob watched the hands like a hawk: one plucked a cigarette lighter from the stand, the other hovered at the waist, holding coins. He seemed in a hurry.
‘Is that all you’re wanting, sir?’ asked Kathleen.
‘I believe it is, yeah.’
Accent: estuary English or lightly foreign, hard to tell. Bob gestured at him to go ahead and pay, stepping back, tensed to lunge because he was now close enough. Good in an emergency, better in a cockpit. The man nodded his thanks and paid and said, ‘Decompress time,’ waving the lighter. And left.
‘Are you all right, Kit?’
‘I’m fine. Strange man.’
‘Carol MacLean mentioned she’d got a couple of suits staying at the Tinker’s Arms,’ she said. ‘That must be one of them. Six pound fifty-three, please. I get a load stranger than that, I can tell you,’ she added, eyeing Bob just a moment too long.
His hands were trembling, so of course he spilt the coins, which rolled into awkward and sticky places.
A couple of suits. Not good. Two angles of attack.
Outside the stores stood an old Land Rover splattered with bog water. It had a green-and-blue sticker on the rear window, showing the earth held by a pair of hands. Ominous, but not dangerous. A faded, peat-spattered logo on the side, circled by words: THE GAIR CENTRE FOR ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH. No sign of the smoking suit.
A sniper with a telescopic sight would have an easy job of it on the lonely road to Scourlay: but hit men like to do it close, to verify the result. The guy hadn’t given him a second glance. After all, only Al and the twins knew his assumed name, and only Al could identify his precise location (for the twins, he was simply ‘somewhere in Scotland’). He was far from being the sole Englishman on the isles.
Nevertheless, he would make enquiries of Carol MacLean, just in case.
He was well on the road, supplies jiggling in his little backpack, slightly unnerved by the occasional sun-flash off the strips of visible water, when he heard a vehicle behind him and shifted onto the right-hand verge, sprinkled with yellow springtime flowers.
The Land Rover.
As it stopped alongside, so did he, tensed to duck. A woman leaned out, holding a one-pound coin. She looked familiar: black-haired, somewhere in her thirties, a dark-eyed glance running over his face.
‘Mr Webb, I presume?’
‘Er, yes.’
‘Every wee bit tots up,’ she said, holding out the coin.
‘Oh, thank you.’
‘My pleasure.’
She drove off as if faintly annoyed: the vehicle had a resident clatter which he reckoned was a loose gasket. He pounded round a bend and found the Land Rover stopped again some way ahead, a large flock wobbling towards it from the other direction. He reluctantly slowed down. The young shepherd – thick neck, cropped head – stopped by the four-wheel drive to chat. By the time Bob came up alongside, he was just leaving.
‘Fuck’s sake,’ he murmured: the last ewe was finding Bob scary. The shepherd let out a painful whistle. Bob ushered the straggler past him like a comic traffic policeman. ‘Watch the rozzer,’ joked the shepherd. The woman was staring at these antics through the driver’s window.
‘Didn’t think I was that scary,’ Bob panted.
‘What a prick,’ she said.
‘Sorry?’
She glanced back at the dwindling flock. ‘Oh, island politics. B for boring.’
Bob pulled a sweaty face. Her sharp chin creased in a way that he liked. Her eyes settled on him, clearly suspicious.
‘You’ve got the croft before Ardcorry, out on the peninsula?’
‘Yes, how did you know?’
‘Kathleen at the shop. The local megaphone. From the age before wireless.’
A lone car was coming from the Scourlay direction.
‘I’m renting it for a few months.’
‘Birds, isn’t it?’
‘Well, more enthusiasm than expertise.’
‘So I’ve heard,’ she said, with a smile that seemed to stretch right across and then vanish.
‘Have you? Right.’
The car had pulled into the passing place a few yards ahead. It tooted. The Land Rover moved off without another word from its driver.
He raised a farewell hand, taking off again with a bit more zip, playing the fit young athlete instead of the middle-aged guy keeping decrepitude at bay – although nobody, least of all the lovely contents of that vehicle, would be fooled for a minute.
Then it struck him – with a shock that made his heart miss a beat.
He leaned on his thighs and coughed, spat over the barbed wire onto the grazing. She was annoyed. Because she recognised him? Perish the thought. Surely not given the distance, that covert of marram, and with her own eyes full of salt!
But her suspicious look bothered him. Her long-nosed, sharp-chinned face was not classically beautiful like Olivia’s, but when she had smiled, even though the smile was unkind (mischievous, at the very least), it was transformed.
Recognition. Simple recognition. He had known it on the beach, even. From that first and far-off glimpse of her. He had spent fifty-one years waiting for a face.
He jogged on at a gentler pace, heading towards the causeway. When things started to go sour a few years back, Olivia would accuse him – accuse him – of being a romantic. These days she said the opposite: that he had no heart. He had heart, all right. Someone had just pierced it.
And then there was the Land Rover again, like a mirage.
It was waiting for a massive earth mover which was inching over the causeway in their direction. He didn’t fancy squeezing past the machine, an extra-wide vehicl
e with nasty teeth and dodgy steering, so he stopped by the concreted rocks denoting the water’s edge, hands on hips and catching his breath. The water made slurping noises below: the half-mile strait must have been a lark to cross, given its currents.
She was now out of the four-wheel drive, chatting on her mobile. When she was finished, Bob ambled towards her. She was leaning against the vehicle with folded arms. Her waxed jacket was old and scuffed, her boots muddied.
‘So,’ she said, without preamble, ‘you’ve no problems with Colin then, on your croft?’
‘Colin?’
‘The shepherd.’
‘Is he the one who’s the local DJ?’
‘And drug dealer,’ she said. Her wide mouth retracted to a pout, the dimples deepened. ‘But keep that to yourself.’ Bob expressed amazement, wondering if the MacLeans – Colin’s aunt and uncle – knew.
‘Of course. Everyone knows. He has plenty of customers on the isles. Why are you here, Mr Webb?’
A direct gaze. Eyes dark as damsons. Scottish accent, but she wasn’t fair of hair or skin.
‘I’m renting. The house and a few acres. The rest is still croft.’
‘Without electricity.’
What did she not know?
‘I manage surprisingly well. Large Raeburn, occasional showers at the neighbours, wood fire. Hot-water bottles. But it’s dead cold in the morning.’
She smiled again; the space above her upper lip creased and almost disappeared. What was it about that smile? Her eyes caught the light, broken into glitter like small waves. ‘Fairly ironic, don’t you think?’
‘Oh?’
‘We’ve always managed, up to very recently. The human race. But now we’re dependent. Electricity junkies. Hooked on fridges and immersion heaters and power showers.’
‘Yup, gives me a rush just thinking about them. You work here, then?’ He nodded towards the vehicle’s discreet livery. Tiny lines under her eyes. Mid-thirties, yes.
‘As you know.’
He frowned. ‘Do I?’
‘Mr Webb, the game’s up.’
His hand went instinctively to where the Makarov would have been: heart pounding, with a dim memory of a film in which the professional assassin was a lovely woman, he had no idea what to do short of throwing himself at her.
