It was at the left bend in the road, following the sharp turn of the Lussa River, that the rain began. Fat drops fell heavily from the blackening sky, spattering onto the windscreen. She slowed down and looked out over Glen More. With the downpour, its desolation was complete. She looked across the barren landscape, the undulating scrub that even the sheep now seemed to have abandoned. She knew her father hoped that encountering such isolation once again would push her to turn around. He had said as much. That this place would make her long for home. But as Freya looked at the dark clouds scudding low over the Glen, glancing over the surface of the three lochs, obscuring the mountains beyond, she felt something else entirely. Comfort in the solitude; solace in the emptiness and singular beauty around her. There was much more of home about this place. And she had missed it. As she followed the turns and bends in the road, she thought that perhaps this might have been the right decision after all.
The road appeared on her right, illuminated in the first crack of lightning. For a moment, Freya considered taking the turning and visiting Torin, her old friend, waiting out the storm with him and only then setting off. As she deliberated, the turning came and went, the rain-spattered tarmac disappearing untaken. No. She wasn’t ready to see him yet. She needed a little time to settle herself and then she would make the journey.
Freya tried to focus on the road, clinging to the southern shore of Loch Scridain, partly veiled by the deluge of rain and low cloud. On a clear day, she knew that the loch was a brilliant blue. But today its waters were dull, slate grey. Another lightning bolt fractured the sullen sky. It’s Thor and he’s angry, Jack would always say if they were caught driving in a thunderstorm. He’s wielding his hammer, isn’t he, Sam? But Sam, staring out of the window into the raging darkness would never answer. He was always deep in thought, his lips partly open, his mind thinking perhaps about gods and strength and power.
As the road began to forge inland, the strength suddenly went out of the rain. The pinnacle of the storm was past, she knew, and it was waning. Thor’s anger was abating.
Freya sat silently for a moment, behind the wheel of the car, looking down towards the harbour. The sky was brightening and the sea looked still, waves lapping softly against the sides of the moored vessels. Her eyes moved over them one by one and she doubted for a second if she would recognise her own boat. But it didn’t take her long to pick it out – old, blue and white, battered by wind, rain and saltwater. The Valkyrie. It sat perky and oblivious, bobbing upon the water, its paintwork flaking a little, lifebuoys roped onto its sides. Freya stared at the wooden boat, at its mast with the incurable bend three-quarters of the way up and then shook her head, incredulously. It looked flimsy, like a toy. Not a craft sturdy enough to navigate these sometimes-treacherous waters. Beside it was a space normally occupied by her husband’s boat, Noor. But it was, of course, absent. It was a small gap, no doubt about it, between her boat and the next one along, but it seemed to her in that moment incomprehensibly large. She closed her eyes, suddenly dizzy, and a strange sound burst from her throat, unbidden. The grief erupted unexpectedly, swiftly, stripping her of breath. As if she too were drowning. She felt lightheaded, about to pass out, and then moments later the opposite – weighty, sinking, her stomach sick and churning. It was often this way. But she had grown used to the feelings now and she knew what to do. She opened her eyes, breathed deeply, and waited for them to pass.
A knock on the driver’s window startled her. She turned to see a man’s face on the other side of the glass, staring at her. His eyes were soft, a pale grey, and he wore a striped black-and-white woollen hat pulled down low over his forehead. His face was lined from years of being exposed to the elements at sea – wind, rain, hail and sun, making him look older than his forty years. Yet it was still handsome: a Roman nose, defined cheekbones, a strong jawline, thick lips with laughter lines etched into their corners. But he wasn’t smiling now. For a few moments Freya simply stared at him. Then slowly, she wound down the window.
‘Hello, Callum.’
The man nodded. ‘Freya.’
Then neither of them spoke; they simply looked at each other. Freya wasn’t sure she trusted herself to say anything more. Her voice had sounded flat, empty. As if the life had been sucked out of it. But then she supposed that wasn’t surprising. She tried to distract herself, to think of something to say to Callum, a man she had known for more than fifteen years, but couldn’t. The mere act of thinking exhausted her.
Callum looked out to sea and studied it for a while before turning back to meet Freya’s eye. ‘So you’re going to take the boat out?’
She blinked. ‘Yes.’
‘There was a big sea running not long ago, but it’s settling now. You should be fine.’
Freya nodded. Callum knew what he was talking about. For years he had been a fisherman before he began running boat trips to Staffa, the Treshnish Isles and beyond. He knew as much about the rocks that lay beneath the surface of the water in these parts as he did about the ones above it. She remembered that he had taken Sam fishing and lobster potting the last time they were here, and the thought made her smile.
‘You changed your hair colour.’ Callum’s words sounded bizarre, unconnected with any kind of reality. Slowly the smile vanished from her lips.
‘What?’
‘Your hair.’ And he gestured somewhat awkwardly towards his woollen hat.
‘Oh, right,’ said Freya, recollection dawning. She had forgotten that she had taken off her hat in the car and cursed herself now for not thinking about it. ‘I didn’t exactly change it,’ she muttered. ‘It changed itself. The shock, they say.’ Her words petered out and she looked to the horizon to avoid looking at Callum. But she could still feel his eyes upon her. Was he taking in the white hair on her head, comparing it to the lustrous black it had been the last time he had seen her? She turned back to face him, suddenly filled with anger and defiance. But there was nothing but kindness in his eyes.
‘I was very sorry to hear the news. Very sorry indeed.’
The rage went out of her as quickly as it had come. She nodded, looking away, again not trusting herself to speak.
‘Will you be all right to take the boat?’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘Will you be all right to take it?’ he said again.
‘What do you mean?’ she said turning to face him. Freya was an accomplished sailor, so she didn’t understand what he was driving at. But as her eyes met his again, she took a deep breath and paused. ‘Yes, I’ll be all right.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘I’m sure.’ Then, as if to reassure him, ‘I promise I won’t do anything reckless.’
Finally, he nodded, as if satisfied with her answer. ‘Give it half an hour before you set off.’ He looked at her one last time then raised his hand in parting and strode away.
Freya wound up the window and sat very still for a few moments. By the time she had unloaded the car, packed the boat, checked the engine and fuel and set off, thirty minutes would have passed. She thought of Callum, his unsmiling face, his dour concern. She would be careful for him. Luckily she too knew what lay beneath these waters. Almost as well as he did. She could sail to the island in the dark, in a storm – blindfolded, perhaps. It would pose only a slightly bigger threat to her safety. But she had promised him she would not be reckless. Her father too.
It wouldn’t be long now before the sun disappeared below the horizon. Freya imagined journeying through the dark, the blackness of the sea closing in around her, until suddenly she would see it, the beacon flashing, drawing the boat homewards, guiding her. Finally, she was going home.
3
AS FREYA APPROACHED the island’s jetty, she thrust the boat’s engine into reverse. Seconds later, she killed it altogether. For a moment she was surrounded by a silent darkness. Then the lighthouse beam swept over the bay. It moved for three seconds over the sea before it disappeared for a further seven. Then it emerged and vanished a
gain in the same revolution. As Freya watched, a long-forgotten memory emerged from the deep.
She was young and newly in love, on her way to the island for the first time with Jack to meet his parents. She would have followed him to the ends of the earth, and she told him so.
‘Well, Frey, where we’re going isn’t all that far from there.’
His blue eyes had twinkled as he said it, his light hair flurried by the breeze, sitting beside her on the fishing boat driven by Callum.
She had laughed as she looked at Jack, then turned her attention once more to the ocean and the darkening evening light that fell upon it. In that instant, in the gloaming, the lighthouse lamp had come alive. It was the beginning of its nightly vigil. As light danced over the bay, the beauty of it took Freya by surprise. She watched again and again, the expansive sweep across the ocean, captivated by the thought of its endless repetition, until Jack pulled her face back towards his. For a moment he simply stared at her. Then he had kissed her and she had forgotten about the lighthouse entirely.
Freya pushed the memory down, jumped out of the boat and tethered it to the jetty. Then she grabbed her bags and began the steep climb up to the lighthouse. With each sweep of the lamp she could see the dark tower briefly illuminated, and from time to time, as she ascended the path, the squat outline of the cottage around its base. Before long, she reached the gate in the wall of the lighthouse enclosure and, moving through it, crossed the garden. At the cottage door, Freya searched in her pockets for her keys. By now her heart was pounding, and not just from the climb.
She unlocked the door and pushed it open. The peculiar mustiness of an abandoned space greeted her. She peered into the darkness of the interior for a moment and then stepped over the threshold into the kitchen. Ignoring the pile of letters scattered over the doormat, unopened and unanswered for the last year, she put down her bags and moved to the wall lights. She flicked them on and turned to look at the kitchen once more.
Under the hard yellow light, everything seemed smaller, emptier, more colourless than she remembered; the ceiling low, the table bleached and bare, the kitchen worktops narrow and naked. It was all so devoid of life. Beyond the kitchen stretched the hallway. She could just make out the locked door to the lighthouse tower on the left and beyond it, she knew, although she couldn’t see, were the bedrooms – the guests’ furthest away, then hers, Sam’s closest. As she thought of her son’s room, reeking with the same cold, forsaken smell now hanging in her nostrils, Freya’s stomach lurched and she struggled to catch her breath. Maybe this had been a mistake after all.
She turned and switched off the overhead lights and rested her forehead against the wall. Its coolness soothed her and eventually her breathing slowed. Looking into the darkness, the deeper smudges at its edges, she crossed the kitchen into the sitting room and lay down on the sofa. In front of her was the large picture window built into the western wall, with its magnificent view out over the sea. She caught the sweep of the lamp and watched it over and over until a small feeling of comfort balled inside her. She would stay here for a while. She would stay here, quietly watching the light, until she was ready to go to bed.
4
SHE FELT HIS hands upon her, bringing her out of the depths of sleep, those unmistakeable hands that she would know anywhere, simply by touch, in pitch darkness. He never spoke, never whispered her name, but she felt his breath hot against her ear, at the back of her neck, teasing her awake. As she rose quietly back into this world, she groaned softly, feeling his fingers sliding down her back, across her skin, over her hips. She turned towards him and opened her eyes. But she couldn’t see him, couldn’t find his face.
‘Jack. What are you doing?’ She always said this, even though she knew exactly what he was doing. The rote phrase was always followed by a smile. ‘What are you doing?’ she gasped, as his fingers slid between her legs.
She closed her eyes again and surrendered to his touch, feeling the gradual rise of pleasure deep within her, growing, until it burst, shattering the comfort of sleep once and for all.
Freya opened her eyes. She was wide awake but it took a moment for her to place the strange familiarity of the room, the pale blue walls, the whitewashed floorboards, a wooden dresser covered in rocks and seashells which stood opposite the end of the bed. Sunlight was streaming through the windows, there was the raucous call of seabirds close by and, faintly, in the background, the sound of waves breaking upon the shore. The next instant it fell upon her – the shattering remembrance. For a second, as ever, she tried to delay the flood of knowledge, the spill of darkness and death. She closed her eyes and turned onto her side. But the knowledge bubbled upwards, per-meating every nook, every space inside her, moving through her veins like swift, slick poison. She opened her eyes again and looked at the cold, empty side of the bed. She thought of Jack, of the dream, always so vivid, so real and intoxi-cating, memory alive with desire. She thought of her son, of the empty bedroom next to the one in which she lay. And she remembered, as the tears began to fall, that they were both gone, both taken from her.
The sun was shining, the sky cloudless, but the air was cold. It was spring, after all, and summer was still some way off. But when the weather was like this, bright and clear, the sand glowed white and the sea was vivid blue and brilliant green. Freya walked along the beach at the southwest tip of the island, close to the water’s edge, breathing in the salty air, meandering amidst the driftwood and seaweed. From time to time she bent down, her eye catching upon something in the sand, but mostly she gazed towards the horizon, across the sea. From this point on the island, if you sailed directly west, you would not meet land again until America. The thought of such remoteness, such splendid isolation, was both thrilling and terrifying. When it became too much, the other side of the island afforded a more reassuring view. Mull could be glimpsed to the northeast and a spattering of land beyond and to the south. Today, however, Freya was content to stare out into the wildness of the Atlantic.
At this moment, it did not look as savage as she knew it could, neither dangerous nor threatening. She ambled along the beach, her pace unhurried, familiarising herself with the land and its watery borders, hazy, forgotten. She bent down and tested the water, but it was cold, too cold still for swimming. As she reached the giant stack of rock at the southern end, she paused momentarily. Then she began to scale it. She was tall, five feet nine inches, and svelte, thinner than when she had last been here. Yet it still took her twenty strenuous minutes to get to the top. From there you could survey the island in its entirety, in all its diminutive glory. It was roughly half a mile from here to the northern tip, a quarter of a mile from east to west at the broadest point. But Freya did not want to study it all, the shingle beaches, the wild machair, the glistening burns catching the sunlight as they drained into the sea. For now she was content to see just one thing. It had been dark the previous day by the time she arrived. So she hadn’t seen it properly. As she reached the summit of the rock, stood and turned inland, there it was, towering before her, majestic on the northern cliffs. The lighthouse.
It had been built over the course of two years in the mid-1800s from rose-coloured granite quarried on the Isle of Mull. Its beauty wasn’t confined simply to its colour and texture, but to the grace and symmetry of its outline – it was over 150 feet in height, soaring into the sky, from a base width of around 40 feet to just over 15 feet at the top of the tower. Even now, having seen it so many times before, Freya was humbled as she looked upon it again.
‘It was designed and engineered by Alan Stevenson.’ Freya remembered Pol’s words as clearly as if he’d uttered them yesterday. But it was more than two years since she’d watched him clambering up the internal staircase of the tower. ‘He was the uncle of Robert Louis Stevenson. I expect you know him better?’
Sam nodded, almost overwrought with excitement, following closely like a dog at Pol’s heels. ‘Yes, Mum’s read Treasure Island to me a few times, and Kidnapped,’ he mana
ged, somewhat breathlessly, trying to balance his elation with the exertion of the stairs.
Anthony Tipol, or Pol for short, had once worked as a keeper at the lighthouse. After it had been automated, he had continued to be employed by the Northern Lighthouse Board, the body responsible for the upkeep of all lighthouses in Scotland, to check that everything was well maintained and ran smoothly. Pol visited every three or four months. But this particular visit had been a special one. It was the first time that Pol had allowed Sam to accompany him on an inspection. And the last time that Freya had seen Pol.
‘Aye. That’d be about right. But Robert wasn’t keen on spending his life in the family business. Did you know the Stevensons built most of the lighthouses in Scotland?’
Sam nodded but Pol didn’t turn to look at him. The question, Freya realised, was rhetorical. Pol was simply talking to himself on the subject closest to his heart. Following slowly behind the two of them, she was there ostensibly for the tour, but more to keep an eye on Sam.
‘And for a rock lighthouse, like this one,’ Pol continued, ‘they had to ship all the granite out to the island already dressed and shaped, the slabs ready to fit one on top of another and then be anchored together.’
As they climbed upwards, Pol would shout out periodically what the rooms on each level of the tower had been used for – rope, lifebelts and a rubber dinghy in one, detonators and chargers for the fog gun in another. ‘And this was where the tanks of paraffin for the light were kept. When they abandoned oil in favour of electrical power for the lamp, they built an engine shed down below, Sam, next to the keepers’ cottage that you now live in. It generates electricity for the light, and for the machinery which makes it revolve, and for your home.’
Beyond the Sea Page 2
