And so it was that I found myself listening when he began another story – one, he said, from long ago, when he was just a boy.
Perhaps one hundred years then, I thought to myself smiling, if Duncan’s stories were to be believed. To stop myself from laughing, I looked out of the nearby window and up into the sky. It had grown somewhat darker and was beginning to twinkle with stars. The witching hour. And I smiled to myself again.
This story, the old man said, took place nearby, one scorching day in summer. A young man had taken out a fishing boat, without permission. And he hadn’t taken it to fish. He had taken it to go swimming. The old man chuckled then, recounting what his father had said about the young man. Nothing but a blaggard and a rogue, a lazy rascal. The old man chuckled some more, took a mouthful of ale and continued.
The boy rowed and rowed, far out into the ocean, away from the village and everything that he knew. Eventually, he moored off some rocks and plunged into the water. So cool, so refreshing in the soaring heat of the day. When he had finished his swim he climbed up onto the rocks and lay in the sun, idling. After a time he dozed off but awakened, or thought he awakened, to hear the sweetest sound of singing. A more beautiful sound than he had ever heard. For a long while the boy lay there, unable to imagine where the sound was coming from. After all, this boy was far from shore, alone in the middle of the ocean. Perhaps he was still dreaming, but he remembered the daylight, the sun beating down, felt the tingle of saltwater on his skin. And the sound of the singing made him shiver even more in the heat, made his throat feel tight and parched.
Well, this boy stood and clambered over the rocks but could see no one. Neither could he see any boat upon the waves nearby. But as he continued to look, his eye caught upon something below the surface of the sea. He thought it was a beautiful maiden swimming there, her long flowing hair gliding upwards in the current. Like liquid gold. The boy watched the maiden beneath the waves, saw her skin, also like gold, glisten in the sunlight, heard her haunting, mysterious voice all around him. For it was her voice that he heard, he was sure of it. And the boy couldn’t stop watching her. She was mesmerising, the sound of her song hypnotic. Then, as if she realised someone had seen her, had stolen a glance of her perhaps, she turned from beneath the water and looked up at him. Her face was so beautiful the boy gasped, felt almost as if he was drowning. But he wasn’t even in the water. For a long, long moment the boy stared at the woman – at her piercing blue eyes, her pink lips, her glistening, beautiful golden hair and skin. Then it was as if the sea and the sky darkened and her face distorted from beauty into a ferocious terror; her lips snarled, her hair spread out in fiery points. In the next instant she was gone.
The boy waited until nightfall before he dared row back to shore, more afraid of the sea and what lurked within it than the beating he would get when he returned home.
And he never sailed upon the ocean again, knowing in his heart that if the maiden found him once more she would lure him to his death. He knew that it had been both a blessing and a curse to see her, to hear her song, and that he had been lucky – without a token to give to her in exchange for his life – to have escaped.
At this point I could not help but look directly at the old man, so intrigued was I by his dark tale. But as I peered at him, more brazenly no doubt than I ought, he turned and looked at me. For a moment I feared my eavesdropping was discovered. But then, to my relief, I saw that his eyes were pale and cloudy and I realised that he was blind. I breathed more easily. But as I continued to look, the old man’s unseeing eyes upon me, I felt a chill to my core and the sensation that, no matter how ridiculous it sounds, he saw deep inside me. That he could see into my soul and its secrets.
The little girl asked the old man over and over if the story was true. To my relief she drew the eyes of her grandfather away from me. I waited for him to say that it was a fable, just a tale. After all, not all stories are to be believed. But instead the old man smiled, stroked her hair and nodded his head. Just because a strange thing happens, he said, it doesn’t mean it cannot be true. Strange things happen every day, peculiar things, odd coincidences, events that come to pass that perhaps we have dreamt about. We have more difficulty accepting these things as real. But it does not mean they are not so, that they have strayed from history into myth.
Then the youngest boy asked him if he was the boy in the tale. The old man chuckled. That, he said, is a secret. But I have to admit, Josie, that I had wondered the same thing.
As they stood and gathered themselves, the eldest boy asked if they could return the following day and hear more stories.
The old man’s answer surprised me. It will depend when the storm arrives, he said. All the children then asked in unison how he knew a storm was coming.
The smell and sound of the sea, the old man replied. The feel of it upon my skin. Changes in the light and air. I do not need to be able to see it. I sense it. I have not been out on the ocean for over eighty years, and yet I understand its rhythms perfectly. And they are changing.
He glanced swiftly at me then, nothing more than a passing look, but in that moment I knew it for certain. He was the boy from the tale – the one who had never ventured onto the water again after he caught sight of the mermaid, for fear of retribution and death. And yet precisely because of its curse, he understood the sea as well as any seafaring man. A storm was coming.
As he and his grandchildren passed by me and disappeared into the crowd, I heard him whisper beneath his breath. Now more than ever is not a time to be at sea. And then he was gone.
I did not even know the old man’s name and yet for some reason his words filled me with dread. I did not want to be caught in this wild place of possibilities when truly inclement weather struck. For something told me that we would not survive it. I rose then from my seat and headed for the door, coldness in my heart. I told myself it was nothing, that it was nonsense. That I was becoming as superstitious as these simple folk I had been thrown among. But I could not shake the feeling, the grip of fear deep inside me, until I had returned to the ship, taken a tankard of beer and written this letter to you.
Forgive me, dearest Josie, for my lack of words the last time we were together, the lack of comfort I gave you. You bring me happiness beyond measure. God speed my journey home to you and our babe from this desolate land.
Until then
I am your
Edward
27
FREYA STOOD ON the deck of her boat, the rise and fall of the waves echoing in the pit of her stomach. She felt both sad and sick. She had dropped Marta at the ferry terminal on Mull, then taken the boat straight out again. It wasn’t the best day to be on the sea, but if she wasn’t mistaken the weather wouldn’t turn truly bad. The worst she could expect was a downpour and a growing swell.
She stared west, over the restless grey of the sea. Coll and Tiree were close now, flat and windswept, and she thought she could perhaps just make out Barra or maybe the Uists, through the gap between the two islands, rimy sea-stained blurs on the horizon. But perhaps it was simply the sky reflecting the dull water beneath it.
Freya turned and looked over the craggy landscape of Lunga. It rose behind her, ancient and rocky, cloaked in greenery. There was something special about it, about its wild, remote beauty. Birds were already nesting on the stack and seals were also in evidence, their lithe grey bodies twisting and turning in the shallow waters, dancing around the contours of the boat. Freya stared captivated and the movement triggered a thought of Edward, and the letter that she had read the night before. It was incredible, unbelievable. And yet, as she watched, she half expected one of the creatures to spin around below the surface, more woman than fish, and fix her with a fiery stare.
Freya blinked hard and looked up. The rocking of the boat was nauseating in spite of her good sea legs. But then she had drunk glass after glass of wine the night before and was paying for it now. She thought again of her sister, plagued by a nagging doubt that Marta
was going because of her. Because of her hurtful words. No, it wasn’t that, she told herself sternly. She was tired and irrational. But she had slept fitfully after all, and at the edges of her sleep had heard the haunting call of mermaids.
Freya was roused by the sound of an engine and voices upon the air. She turned to see Callum’s boat approaching, bringing a party of tourists to the isles. As he drew closer, he waved at her, a black woollen hat pulled down low over his brow. She waved back, pleased to see him. He made a circular gesture with his hand which meant, she supposed, that he was going to drop off his passengers and then make his way back to her. She nodded and waited.
‘Now you’re the last person I was expecting to see here,’ Callum shouted over the noise of his boat as he drew alongside the Valkyrie. Wafts of diesel fumes rose towards Freya, intensifying her nausea.
A moment later Callum cut the engine; the silence that flowed back in its wake was a relief. ‘Yes, I haven’t been out here for ages,’ she said, watching him deftly tether the two boats, the rope moving easily in his hands.
‘Well, you could have picked a better day for it,’ said Callum, grimacing at the sky. ‘It’s going to rain for sure later. Let’s hope I get this lot back in time before the heavens open.’
Freya let out a small, fleeting laugh. He was always so obsessed with the weather. Her eyes filled with sudden tears at the thought of it.
‘Are you okay?’ Callum’s look of concern dissolved the last remnants of Freya’s resolve and the hot heavy drops spilled from her eyes.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, quickly wiping them away.
For a few moments they stood in silence while Freya tried to gather herself. She began to apologise once more, but Callum simply brushed her words away. When she had composed herself, he spoke again.
‘You look tired, Freya. Everything all right?’
She nodded. ‘I always have trouble sleeping,’ she said, seeing herself suddenly as if from the outside. Her skin pale, with an unhealthy tinge, the bags under her eyes dark with lack of sleep. ‘And I’m missing Marta already. She had to go back to London.’
‘Ah, that’s a shame. But she’ll be back before you know it.’ Callum smiled, then looked out over the watery landscape. ‘So what brings you out here?’
‘I found a diary of Sam’s,’ she said, after a moment. ‘It had an entry from when he came here with you last Easter.’ Her eyes filled with tears again.
‘Ah, I see.’ Callum looked at her for a moment before shifting his gaze to the island. ‘Aye, we came here. A lot of noise from the birds and seals as I remember. We climbed the mountain, ate a picnic, had a great day.’ Callum paused as he thought back. ‘He picked you flowers, I think.’
Freya nodded and smiled. ‘Yes. I found them in the diary.’ She thought of the yellow, pink and purple of the tormentil and thrift sandwiched between the white pages. They still looked so colourful, so vibrant and alive. ‘And I still have the photo in my phone that you took of Sam with the puffin.’ She stifled another sob. ‘I’m sorry, Callum.’
‘Don’t be silly, Freya.’ His grey eyes looked at her kindly, steadily.
She took a deep breath and, to change the subject, pointed to the beach on Lunga. ‘I read that you found a mermaid blade here.’
Callum’s face broke into a reminiscent smile. ‘Aye, that’s right, now that you mention it. We did.’
‘Although I’m not sure that Sam bought that it was anything other than a blade carved out of basalt.’
‘No. A sceptic, that one. Even when I recited my failsafe history of mermaid sightings. The one I reel out for the tourists.’ And he leaned in towards her conspiratorially with a nod of his head towards the party he had seemingly abandoned on Lunga. ‘I told him Columbus had spotted three back in 1493 and documented it. And do you know what he said to that?’
Freya shook her head.
‘He insisted that it was more likely he had seen manatees.’
Freya heard the rational voice of her father-in-law at work on her son. Alister always doused everything in a splash of fine, cold rationality, consigning the miraculous to the unbelievable.
‘So then I tried the encounter of the schoolteacher from Thurso in 1797. He was so sure, as he ambled along the beach one day, that he had seen a mermaid out on a rock in the Pentland Firth, that he risked ridicule and infamy by writing to The Times about it.’
Freya nodded. She knew this tale.
‘And even though the rock was cut off from land and surrounded by a deep gully of pounding surf, hard for any human to swim out to, Sam remained unconvinced. He said that the man was looking from a distance, didn’t see the tail clearly and was largely reluctant to believe it to be just a woman because the rock upon which she sat seemed to him difficult to get to. But that was no reason why, if she was a good swimmer, she couldn’t have reached there. He mentioned you as proof of this.’
Callum chuckled, obviously entertained by what he remembered.
‘Then I tried a further sighting by an old Scottish fisherman in 1947. Now he was my great-great-grandfather, teetotal and a Presbyterian. He claims he saw a mermaid in the waters off the Isle of Muck, twenty yards from shore, sitting on a floating lobster box, combing her hair. When she caught sight of him watching she disappeared under the water. Now he was eighty years old at the time, but he still had his eyesight and all his marbles. Not to mention that by all accounts he was the most reliable and honest man you could ever hope to meet.’
‘I didn’t know that.’ Freya was taken aback and, secretly, not a little delighted.
‘Aye, that’s what he said he saw. And he maintained it was the truth until his death.’ Callum nodded pensively. ‘But still Sam would not be swayed from what he thought was a fiction. Even my favourite story was met with resistance.’
‘Benbecula?’
‘Aye. You know it?’
‘Of course. Everyone around here does.’ Freya had told it to Sam and she couldn’t help smiling at his likely reaction if Callum had tried to tell it as truth.
‘Well, I said the mermaid’s body washed up on the shore of the island after a great storm in 1830 – the long, dark hair, the soft white skin of the upper body, the lower part like a salmon. I told him of the villagers burying it in a coffin.’ Callum paused and shook his head. ‘And Sam said to me that if the body was truly as the villagers claimed, surely they would have exhumed it later for it to be examined properly and scientifically. Never have I encountered such a young dissenter.’ Freya laughed. ‘I suggested that perhaps the clergy would not allow for the removal of the body after burial – that it was the church rather than the villagers. But he was having none of that.’ Callum nodded soberly. ‘The only time Sam even wavered was when I told him how fishermen out in deep, open ocean, miles from here, have caught fish in their nets with blades, like the one we found, already piercing their bodies. Finally, he looked a little less sure of himself.’ Callum smiled, obviously pleased to have unsettled the doubter.
Freya frowned. ‘Is that true?’
‘Aye, it’s true. Fishermen from these parts have come across it. Not often, but it has happened. They’ve photographed it even, as it was such a strange thing to see.’
Freya was surprised. ‘I’ve never seen those pictures. Never even heard of them.’ Over the years, she had come across many tales of mermaids from these parts and beyond to Norway and Greenland. But never this.
Callum shrugged. ‘Well I don’t know what it means. But I know what the fishermen think it means.’
Freya was silent for a moment. Just as she imagined her son had been. Stumped, perhaps, that he couldn’t immediately think of an explanation for such a thing. Jack would have called it superstitious nonsense. They’ll have been sure to have doctored the photographs. Who’s to say such things were ever found in the body of fish? She remembered how his upper lip would curl slightly in derision, and even now something about it made her angry. She was glad that her son had spent the day with Callum, with s
omeone for whom the inexplicable wasn’t simply laughable. Suddenly she found herself telling him about Edward, his letters; the one about the old man and the mermaid.
‘Well, that just goes to show the miraculous does happen around here. And I don’t mean simply the recovery of those letters.’ Callum winked. ‘I’d like to see those sometime.’
‘You’re welcome whenever. You know that, I hope.’ Freya smiled as she looked at Callum, and then her eyes moved beyond him to the increasingly darkening sky. She needed to be heading back soon.
‘I heard that you and Marta helped out Daniel Jefferies the other day,’ said Callum, changing the direction of the conversation.
Freya looked at him blankly.
‘During the storm, I mean.’
‘Oh. Of course.’ Freya hadn’t remembered Daniel’s surname. ‘We only did what anyone would have done.’
‘I doubt that,’ said Callum, smiling. ‘I heard he was in big trouble. Hard to imagine how he got himself into that situation.’ He shook his head. ‘Could have been another tragedy for his family.’
‘What?’ said Freya. She was only half listening, but she didn’t understand.
Callum looked at her. ‘I mean with his wife and everything.’
Freya raised an eyebrow questioningly. Daniel had told her that he didn’t have a wife.
‘Ah. I assumed that he would have said, with … you know … you helping him and …’ Callum’s awkwardness was immediate and obvious.
Slowly it began to dawn on her. She remembered Daniel’s eyes – their haunted quality, their hollowness. She had always wondered what it was that hid behind them. Now she thought she began to understand.
Beyond the Sea Page 13
