The Sea-wreck Stranger

by Anna Mackenzie

  ‘If you’d been coming to the barn to see me, Ness, you’d not have been coming from the other direction,’ he says.

  That tells me Jed doesn’t know where I’ve been and I relax just a little. ‘Nor was I coming to see you, Jed,’ I say tartly. ‘I’m just saying Marn and Tilda might think it, and that wouldn’t be good for either of us.’

  Jed scowls. ‘There’s plenty who’d assume that someone who sneaks about at night is up to something.’

  ‘So what are you doing here in our barn so late?’ I ask.

  Jed has thought of this already. ‘There was a noise that must have woken me,’ he says. ‘I came out to check everything was all right. It seemed the least I could do.’ His explanation sounds well rehearsed. My throat grows dry as I wonder again if Jed has been following me.

  ‘Well, you scared me near to death, jumping on me like that,’ I tell him.

  ‘You shouldn’t skulk around at night if you don’t want to be caught out,’ he says smugly. ‘And you should choose your friends more carefully,’ he adds darkly.

  ‘My friends?’ I repeat.

  ‘I’ve seen you with Merryn,’ Jed announces, as if this proves some point he’s been making.

  ‘I don’t see what –’ I start but Jed interrupts.

  ‘You’re young, Ness, and easily led.’ The words sound as if they’ve come from someone else – as I don’t doubt they have. ‘You needn’t carry the blame for her. I can make sure you don’t,’ he adds, as I gape open-mouthed. ‘If you tell me what errand she sent you on, I could forget that I saw you,’ he explains.

  ‘You’re talking nonsense!’ I burst out, then lower my voice, alarmed at its volume. ‘Merryn is a neighbour and a friend, that’s all, and the only errand I was on was looking for a spade I left out.’ Jed is scowling at my outburst. I’ll not win his trust by telling him he’s talking nonsense I realise. ‘I don’t know why you’d think Merryn has anything to do with it,’ I say, more calmly. ‘When I woke up and remembered I’d forgotten the spade, I went to fetch it in, that’s all.’ Jed doesn’t believe me, I can tell. I force my face into friendliness. ‘Tilda gets awful cross about things like that. You’ve no idea what she’s like when she’s mad,’ I tell him earnestly. ‘You won’t tell her will you, Jed? I couldn’t find it, but if I look again first thing it might still be all right.’

  I’ve gone too far. I need him to believe my tale but he looks altogether too pleased with himself. I draw myself a little further away, my fingers rubbing the bruises he’s left on my arm.

  ‘Maybe I will and maybe I won’t,’ he says with a smirk. ‘It all depends on you, Ness. Maybe you should try being a little friendlier towards me.’

  I feel sick. I fold my arms across my chest and look away around the barn. I know what he’s meaning and I’d as soon find a pitchfork, and use it, and face the consequences later. There’s no weapon that I can see, but my mind’s still searching for an escape. The only one it can find is Marn. Jed’s weakness, I think, is that he’s less secure with Marn than he’d like – but then so am I, and if Jed should ever learn that, I’m lost.

  I look back at him and nod. ‘You’re right,’ I agree. Jed’s face slips into a smile, or such as might count for one with him. I hold off a shudder. ‘Marn wants us to be friends,’ I add.

  ‘Marn’s nothing to do with it,’ Jed snaps.

  ‘He is,’ I say. ‘He told me that it would suit him fine if we were friends, or even more one day. I can tell him, if you want, that we’ve spoken about it.’ Jed is starting to look doubtful. ‘I was talking to Marn about it only last week,’ I add, hoping to unsettle him more.

  ‘Ty says Marn scarcely talks at all, except about farming,’ Jed replies, and I could kick my brother for his unhelpful tongue.

  ‘Not to Ty, maybe. He’s too young.’

  There’s silence for a moment, then Jed grins. ‘Not like you, Ness,’ he says. ‘You’re growing up nicely.’

  Quick as I can, I scramble up. Jed’s anticipated it and he’s on his feet too, and between me and the door. He steps right up to me so that I smell his stale breath.

  ‘I have to go in, Jed,’ I say. ‘I’ll need to be up early to find Tilda’s spade.’

  Jed reaches a hand to my waist and tries to pull me close to him. ‘A little longer won’t hurt,’ he says. His fingers are sharp. I pull away from his grasp. ‘Seeing as we’re friends,’ he adds, reaching again.

  I slap his hands away and try to slip sideways but he blocks my path. ‘Leave me be,’ I say. ‘Marn wouldn’t take it kindly if he knew that you were pestering me, nor Ton and Elsie either.’

  Jed hesitates. I take my chance and dodge past him. ‘You wouldn’t want to spoil the plans that Marn and Ton have made,’ I tell him. The open barn door is behind me. Trying not to seem hurried I back towards it.

  Already I can see suspicion start to build in Jed’s eyes. ‘You’d best not spoil them either, Ness. And you’d better be telling the truth about that spade,’ he adds.

  ‘What lie could I tell?’ I ask, all innocence, smoothing down my clothes. ‘And anyway, why would I? Goodnight Jed,’ I finish, and I’m out the barn door and across the yard as fast as I can run.

  I don’t look back. The latch on the kitchen door rattles under my hand but not till I’m inside do I let my fear overcome me. Leaning back against the door I give in to my trembling. If Jed had seen me earlier, and followed me, what would have happened then? I don’t want to think about it. Worse still is what might have happened just now if Jed wasn’t afraid of Marn, or of Ton and Elsie’s reaction if he should fall out with Marn.

  Shivering with fear for my future I creep up the stairs and slip into the bed beside Sophie. I envy her easy sleep – but I envy more besides. She has a father, for one, and a home where she truly belongs. I’ve never belonged at Leewood, not really, and I’d belong still less at Cotterburn. Even as sleep arrives to dull my dread, the thought that this whole island has no place for me clambers uppermost in my thoughts.

  Chapter 21

  As if I have not enough to worry over, Tilda appears in the morning with a temper fit to scald the hide off a hog. When she turns her acid tongue on Jed, Sophie’s satisfaction is written on her face but I’m careful to keep my thoughts to myself. It helps me not at all to have the pair of them riled. Luckily Tilda turns her ill-temper as fast on me, so at least Jed won’t be thinking that I’ve spoken out against him – though it’s clear from the way he looks at me that he doesn’t trust me any more than I trust him.

  Dev had better do without me until Jed’s gone home, I decide – though I doubt I’ll feel safe even then. Perhaps I never will again.

  It feels, the whole time, as if I’m holding my breath. Fear for Dev nags at the back of my mind, yet alongside it are all the things he told me, swooping and swirling like trapped birds. When the idea that we might return to fishing flaps for attention, it’s hard to keep from running straight to Skellap Bay.

  Holding myself in check I tidy the remains of our breakfast before I hurry outside, eager to escape Tilda’s scrutiny. The vegetable plot needs attention but I go first to check on the goats, hoping the walk might calm me. Leaning on the gate my eyes seek out each familiar body, gold, tan and palest cream. They’re all there, busy with eating or shaking off the night’s rest. Sandpiper is standing a little way from the other young ones. She’s like me, I think: not really belonging.

  The sun is creeping up the sky as I collect a hoe from the barn and turn to weeding the rows where my shoots will soon appear. The carrots will be the first to lift their feathered tops to the light, followed by onions and beets. After that it’ll be warm enough to plant our summer crops. I’ll be needing stakes for the beans, and extra palings for the fence. Last spring the goats broke through just as the seedlings shot away and all my early plantings were lost.

  Tucking my hair behind my ear with a grubby finger, I consider the vision I have of our first harvest, and alongside it my new knowledge. If we could start fis
hing again we wouldn’t be so vulnerable to the seasons – or to the goats. There’d be fish, dried as well as fresh, to supplement our diet and see us through the winter, and if late frosts or storms should slow our spring gardens there’d be something besides grain to fall back on.

  That would free the townsfolk from their dependence on farmers – which surely wouldn’t suit Colm. As well as being a landowner, Colm has a butchery in Tarbet and another in Dun. If people were less dependent on meat, Colm would lose trade – which will make convincing him that we should start fishing again near to impossible. Convincing anyone may be, when even Ty is ready to believe that the world stops and starts with farming.

  Sweat prickles down my back as I begin work on the next vegetable plot. Bella once told me that her grandfather built up the soil with seaweed and the crops grew all the better for it. When I see Dev I’ll ask him if he’s heard of such a thing. I mean to ask him, as well, what he knows of other islands.

  When I was four or five, my father sailed to Tay. All the boats were supposed to have been broken up by then, but he got one from somewhere. He never spoke of what he found – leastways not to me – and no one besides Bella and Marn knew that he’d been. I remember it because it was the first time Pa left Ty and me behind at Leewood. Dev said his people hadn’t known that anyone was alive on the islands. I’ve been wondering since if that’s what Pa found on Tay.

  Sophie’s voice breaks into my thoughts, startling me back to the day.

  ‘Ness? Tilda says I can gather green-shoots and check on the berries. I wondered if maybe you’d like to come with me?’

  I stretch my spine and throw her a smile. The first hint of summer is today fresh in the air. It’s just a passing change in spring’s usual fare of fretful weather, but it makes searching for green-shoots a tempting suggestion.

  Sophie talks of nothing in particular as we climb the slope to the wood. Buds are bursting everywhere we look and there are enough fresh shoots to satisfy even Tilda. I can’t help thinking of the day, weeks ago now, when Tilda first sent us out looking; the day we found Dev.

  Sophie’s thoughts have turned the same way. ‘Ness, do you think there’s any way Dev could have survived the storm?’ she asks suddenly.

  I hesitate then shrug. I could do with Sophie’s help but there’s no sense putting her in the way of trouble.

  ‘Only, yesterday, when I went to Cotterburn, I came home by the footpath that runs below Cullin Hill,’ she says. I glance at her cautiously. ‘Tilda sent me to see if there were any vegetables ready in Elsie’s garden, so they wouldn’t go to waste while Elsie and Ton are away.’ Sophie stops to search out a blackberry bush where we picked buckets of fruit last summer, looking pleased at the abundance of tight green knots. ‘There were only overblown cabbages so it was hardly worth the walk,’ she continues, turning to meet my eyes. ‘Ness, you know the place where the path runs below the scarp of Cullin Hill and you can see part of the beach?’

  I nod. I’ve stood there often enough, staring out across the water.

  ‘The cloud was low but I could make out the rocks and the line of the sea.’ She pauses. ‘There was someone standing on the sand.’

  My mouth has plopped open and I snap it shut, choosing my words. ‘It was me, most like,’ I say at last. ‘If it was in the afternoon, it was probably me that you saw.’ A more worrying explanation is troubling me but I’m not going to give it words, at least not to Sophie.

  ‘It didn’t look like you,’ Sophie says. ‘It was too far to tell for certain but it looked like a man.’

  I don’t say anything. I can see what Sophie thinks in the shape of her face.

  ‘Ness?’ she persists.

  I make a quick decision. ‘I went to the cave a few days after the storm,’ I tell her truthfully. ‘I called in on my way back from Merryn’s – that’s why I was covered in mud, that time Tilda got so angry.’ I pause. ‘The waves had been near as high as the roof, Sophie. The sea would have swept away anything that was inside.’ That’s true enough, I tell myself, but Sophie is eyeing me sceptically. ‘Shall we try up beside the stream?’ I suggest. ‘There were shoots as thick as mushrooms there last season.’

  She’s not to be shaken off so easily. ‘Ness, if Dev is still alive, there’ll be trouble if he’s found. You’ve heard the way Jed is talking, and not just about strangers. About Merryn.’

  ‘That’s only the Barritts and such fools as listen to them. Merryn’s safe. Apart from anything else, people like her tonics too much to fall out with her.’

  ‘Jed …’ Sophie starts, and stops, and starts again. ‘Jed watches you. It’s all wrong. It’s … unfriendly.’

  Sophie knows because I’ve told her that Jed’s sometimes erred the opposite way, but I know exactly what she means. There’s something ill-wishing in Jed’s behaviour towards me now. I nod. ‘The sooner he goes home the better,’ I agree. ‘Only, I doubt we’ll have seen the last of him, even then.’

  Sophie’s face is hard to read. ‘I doubt we’ve seen the last of anyone,’ she says.

  She doesn’t believe me about Dev, but it’s for her own good that I’m holding my tongue. I ignore her reference and bend to our task, snapping the emerald stems between my fingers so that sap seeps out and stains my skin like grassy blood.

  Chapter 22

  Perhaps as a reaction to Tilda’s temper, which continues to gust through the house with a bite as bad as a midwinter wind, Jed asks Marn if he might return to Cotterburn. Ton sent word via Dylan Larkey that he and Elsie would be home come the end of the week, and Jed claims he’d like to get the house ready for them. Marn’s reluctance is evident but he eventually relents.

  ‘It’s a credit to you, Jed, that you’re thinking of your mother,’ he says. ‘You can go home tomorrow once we’ve finished ploughing the boundary fields – Ty and I can manage the flats. That should give you half a day. Ton will be relieved that he doesn’t have the ploughing to face with his shoulder as it is.’

  ‘He’ll be grateful, I’m sure,’ Jed says. His words sound false to me but Marn seems happy to accept them at face value. ‘He’d do the same for us,’ is all he says.

  I can’t settle to anything for the rest of the day: I’m as anxious as a nesting swallow to see Jed gone. That night I save as much of our meal as I can, thinking I’ll take it to Dev just as soon as I’m safe from Jed’s prying.

  Next day I’m hard pressed to hide my happiness as we gather to see him off. ‘Give our regards to your parents,’ I say, though the words feel mealy in my mouth.

  Jed’s expression is sly. ‘I’ll be seeing you soon Ness,’ is all he says. It feels more a threat than a promise.

  As I watch him round the corner of the road, I can hardly stop my tongue from shouting out my relief. When Tilda announces she has a headache coming on, I could almost sing for joy. I make myself wait until she’s comfortably settled in her bed, checking on her needs and finishing my chores, then I set my feet loose to take me where I’ve been hard-pressed to stop them heading long before now.

  The sky is overcast but there’s no smell of rain, and before I know it I’m down on the beach, my nose filled with the fresh-washed welcome of the sea. Dev is standing at the cave mouth. ‘I thought you’d forgotten me,’ he says.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘Jed caught me coming home last time. I couldn’t risk visiting you again until he was gone. You must be near starved to death.’

  ‘I caught a fish,’ Dev says.

  Dread stops me in my tracks. ‘Here? But –’

  Dev smiles. ‘I only ate a little at first. Ness, I haven’t been poisoned.’

  I shake my head. ‘But so many people died…’

  He nods. ‘On the mainland too. But we suspected the worst of the contamination had cleared – that’s why we came. And our preliminary tests looked promising.’

  I can’t take my eyes from him, as if at any moment I expect him to clasp his belly and fall down. Finally he laughs and draws me to the ledge at the back of
the cave. ‘It was only a little fish,’ he says, eyeing my bundle. ‘I’m still hungry.’

  Twitching myself into action I unpack the food I’ve brought. It’s little enough. As he eats, I study him critically, seeing how thin he is, and how dark smudges of exhaustion shadow his eyes.

  ‘I’ve been exercising,’ he tells me, when the food is all but gone. ‘Inside the cave,’ he assures me, as my mouth starts to shape a protest. ‘I do circuits,’ his arm waves around the cave, ‘and climb up and down the ledges. My leg’s still weak.’

  I nod. The wound was deep and slow to heal. ‘How’s your shoulder?’ I ask.

  Dev raises his arm within the sling I made for him. I can see that it pains him a little but it’s a relief to me that he can move it at all. ‘I’ve been exercising that too, just a little each day. Ness, it’s time I made plans,’ he says.

  I’ve been thinking about it too. The information Dev has to offer is most likely to find a welcome in the towns, where a return to fishing would serve them best. ‘Dun used to have the largest fishing fleet,’ I tell him. ‘There might be people there who’ll listen – if we can find them,’ I add. ‘Merryn may know of someone who can help, and she’ll give me a hearing at least.’

  As Dev nods his agreement, a new emotion starts to creep over me. I’m not ready to say good-bye to him. There’s so much more I want to ask about the way things are in the world he’s from, things that might help me understand my own. Soon it will be too late.

  ‘I’ll speak to Merryn tomorrow,’ I say quickly, pushing away my regrets. If Tilda’s tonic were to run out, she’d send me herself to see Merryn and I could come back via the cave. ‘I’ll come straight away and let you know what she says,’ I tell him. ‘And I’ll bring food – I don’t think you should eat any more fish for now.’

  Dev laughs, though it’s no laughing matter. ‘I’m glad I have you to worry over me,’ he says, then drops his bantering tone. ‘Without your help, Ness, I’d have died. I thank you for that.’