Sophia's Secret

by Susanna Kearsley

  ‘I write,’ I told him. ‘Books.’

  ‘Oh, aye? Fit kind o books?’

  ‘Novels. Set in the past.’

  He clanged the door shut on the Aga and stood, looking fairly impressed. ‘Oh, aye?’

  ‘Yes. The one that I’m working on now is set here,’ I said. ‘That’s why I wanted this cottage. My story takes place at Slains Castle.’

  ‘Oh, aye?’ Jimmy repeated, as though he’d discovered a thing of great interest. I had the feeling that he would have asked me more if someone hadn’t, at that moment, knocked again at the front door.

  ‘Yer in demand the day,’ said Jimmy as I went to open it, and found, as I had half-expected, Stuart on the doorstep.

  ‘Morning. Thought I’d come and see how you were getting on,’ he said.

  ‘I’m fine, thanks. Come on in, your father’s here.’

  ‘My father?’

  ‘Aye,’ said Jimmy, from the kitchen, his eyes crinkling at their corners. ‘I’ve nivver seen ye up sae early, loon. Are ye a’richt?’

  Stuart parried the jab with a smile. ‘It’s after eleven.’

  ‘Aye, I ken fine fit time it is.’

  He finished restoking the fire in my stove and stood when I thanked him. But he didn’t look as though he were in any hurry to go anywhere, and neither did Stuart, so I asked, ‘Does anyone want coffee? I was just about to make a cup.’

  To both Keith men, apparently, a cup of coffee sounded fine. They didn’t sit while waiting. Jimmy wandered out into the main room, whistling faintly through his teeth, while Stuart came after me into the kitchen and leant with his back to the wall, his arms folded. ‘So, how did you like your first night in the cottage? I should have warned you that the bedroom window rattles like the devil when the wind blows off the sea. It didn’t keep you up, I hope?’

  ‘I didn’t actually make it to the bedroom last night. I was working,’ I said, with a nod to the long wooden table.

  Jimmy, who’d been having a look at my computer, added, ‘She’s a writer.’

  ‘Aye, I know she is,’ said Stuart.

  ‘She’ll be writin,’ Jimmy said, ‘aboot oor castle.’

  Stuart looked at me with what might have been pity. ‘It’s a big mistake, to tell my Dad a thing like that.’

  I set the kettle on to boil. ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘He’ll be up to the St Olaf for his lunch, that’s why, and by this afternoon the whole of Cruden Bay will know exactly why you’re here, and what you’re doing. You won’t have a moment’s peace.’

  ‘Ach, the loon disna ken fit he’s on aboot,’ Jimmy said. ‘I’ve nae time fer claikin.’

  ‘That’s “gossiping”,’ Stuart translated the word for my benefit. ‘And don’t believe him. He loves telling stories.’

  His father put in, ‘Aye, and lucky fer me I’ve yersel tae keep geein me somethin tae tell aboot. Is that the kettle?’

  It was. I made the coffee, and we sat around companionably and drank it, and then Jimmy checked his watch and said, ‘Weel, I’m awa hame.’ He jabbed a finger at his son. ‘And dinna ye stop here lang, either.’ And he thanked me for the coffee, and went out.

  The fog was lifting, but the damp sea air surged in behind him, and I felt it even after I had closed the door. It made me restless.

  ‘Tell you what,’ I said to Stuart. ‘Why don’t I go get my coat, and you can give me the Cook’s tour of Cruden Bay?’

  He cast an eye towards the window. ‘What, in this?’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Why not, she says.’ But he gave in, unfolding himself from the chair. ‘Well, the weather’s as good as you’re likely to get at this time of the year, I suppose, so all right.’

  It was good to walk out in the wind, with my hair blowing loose and the spray from the sea carried up from the breakers that crashed on the empty pink beach. The path down the hill was still slippery with water and mud, but whatever misgivings I’d felt here last night in the dark were forgotten by day, and the harbour below looked quite friendly and welcoming.

  It wasn’t a large harbour, just a small square of calm water behind a protective wall fronting the sea, and there were no boats actually moored there – the few I could see had been pulled up and out of the water completely to lie on the land, and I gathered that no one went fishing from here in the wintertime.

  Stuart led me up the other way and past his father’s cottage and the others huddled tight beside it, with their roughened plaster walls and roofs of dripping slate. We passed the long, white-painted footbridge that crossed over to the high dunes and the beach, and while I would have liked to detour off in that direction, Stuart had another place in mind.

  We’d turned the ‘S’ curve where Harbour Street changed into Main Street, with its row of houses and its few shops climbing up the one side, and the lively stream cascading down the other, overhung by leafless trees. At the top of the hill, Main Street ended by running straight into the side of another main road – the same road I’d been driving on when I’d come through here last weekend, only I hadn’t stopped then till I’d followed it further and round through the woods. I’d been so focused that day on chasing my view of the ruins that I hadn’t taken much notice of anything else. Like the beautiful building that held court just over the road at the top of Main Street.

  It had red granite walls and white dormers and several bow-fronted two-storey projections that gave it a look of Victorian elegance. We were approaching it now from the side, but its long front looked over a lawn that sloped down to the stream which appeared to behave itself better up here, running quietly under a bridge on the main road as though it, too, felt that the building was owed some respect.

  ‘And this,’ said Stuart grandly, ‘is the “Killie” – the Kilmarnock Arms Hotel. It’s where your friend Bram Stoker stayed when he first came to Cruden Bay, before he moved to Finnyfall, the south end of the beach.’

  ‘To where?’

  ‘To Finnyfall. Spelt “Whinnyfold”, but everybody says it like you’d say it in the Doric. It’s not a large place, just a handful of cottages.’

  Somehow I couldn’t imagine Bram Stoker at home in a cottage. The Kilmarnock Arms would have suited him better. I could easily imagine the creator of the world’s most famous vampire sitting at his writing table in an upstairs window bay, and gazing out across the stormy coast.

  ‘We could go in,’ said Stuart, ‘if you like. They’ve got a Lounge Bar, and they serve a decent lunch.’

  I didn’t need a second nudge. I’d always taken pleasure in exploring places other writers had been to before me. My favourite small hotel in London had once been a haunt of Graham Greene, and in its breakfast room I always sat in the same chair he’d sat in, hoping that some of his genius might rub off on me. Having lunch at the Kilmarnock Arms, I decided, would give me a similar chance to commune with the ghost of Bram Stoker.

  ‘All right,’ I said. ‘Lead on.’

  The Lounge Bar had red upholstered banquet seats with brass and glass globe lamps set at their corners, and dark wood chairs and tables on a carpet of deep blue, but all the woodwork had been painted white, and all the walls, except the stone one at the far end, had been papered in a softly patterned yellow that, together with the windows and the daylight, gave the place a cheerful ambiance, not dark at all. No vampires here.

  I ordered soup and salad and a glass of dry white wine. Wine with lunch was a habit I’d picked up in France, and one I’d likely have to break myself of now that I was here in Scotland. I’d have to be totally sober to face the coast paths, I reminded myself. Even without my mother’s warning, I knew from experience it wouldn’t do to go tottering close to the cliffs. But for now, since I wasn’t intending to go very far from a sidewalk, I judged myself safe.

  Stuart, true to his father’s prediction of yesterday, ordered a pint and sat back in the booth with me, settling his shoulders against the red leather. He was, I thought, a very handsome man, with that nearly black hair fal
ling carelessly over his forehead, and his eyes that were so quick to laugh. His eyes were blue, I noticed, like his father’s, but he didn’t look like Jimmy. Still, in this light, something in his features struck me as familiar, as though I had seen his face, or one quite like it, somewhere else before.

  ‘Why the frown?’ he asked.

  ‘What? Oh, no reason,’ I said. ‘I was thinking, that’s all. Occupational hazard.’

  ‘I see. I’ve never had lunch with a writer before. Should I watch my behaviour, in case I end up as a character in your new book?’

  I assured him he wasn’t in danger. ‘You won’t be a character.’

  He feigned a wounded ego. ‘Oh? And why is that?’

  ‘It’s just that I don’t base my characters on people I know. Not a whole person, anyway. Bits and pieces, sometimes – someone’s habits, someone’s way of moving, things they might have said. But everything gets mixed up with the person I imagine,’ I explained. ‘You wouldn’t recognise yourself, if I did use you.’

  ‘Would you cast me as the hero, or the villain?’

  That surprised me. Not the question, but the tone in which he asked it. For the first time since I’d met him, he was flirting. Not that I minded, but it did catch me off guard, and it took me a moment to shift my own footing, adjust to the change. ‘I don’t know, I’ve just met you.’

  ‘First impressions.’

  ‘Villain,’ I said, lightly. ‘But you’d have to grow a beard, or something.’

  ‘Done,’ he promised. ‘Could I have a cape?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘A man can’t be a villain,’ Stuart said, ‘without a cape.’ He grinned, and once again I had that feeling, strange and new, unsettling, that I had seen his face before.

  I asked, ‘Were you in France on business, or on holiday?’

  ‘On business. Always working, I am.’ His sigh was so long-suffering as he sat back and raised his pint that I couldn’t help challenging.

  ‘Always?’

  ‘Well, maybe not now,’ he admitted. ‘But in a few days I’ll be back at it, away down to London.’

  ‘You work with computers, your dad said?’

  ‘In a way. I do pre-sales support for an enterprise resource planning system.’ He named the firm he worked for, but it meant nothing to me. ‘Their product is good, so I’m in high demand.’

  And with a smile like that, I knew, he likely had a girl in every port. But still, he made me laugh, and it had been at least a year since I’d been on a date. I’d been too caught up in my work – no time for meeting men, no time to do much with one even if I’d met one. Writing got like that for me, sometimes. It could be all-consuming. When I got deep in a story I forgot the need for food, for sleep, for everything. The world that I’d created seemed more real, then, than the world outside my window, and I wanted nothing more than to escape to my computer, to be lost within that other place and time.

  It was probably just as well Stuart Keith’s work kept him moving. He’d find me poor company, were he to stay.

  The Kilmarnock Arms was the start and the end of my first tour of Cruden Bay. Stuart seemed happy to sit there in comfort and warmth and displayed no great interest in taking me anywhere else. He was back to being friendly when he walked me home. No flirting, just a smile on the doorstep and a promise he’d look in on me tomorrow.

  I checked the kitchen fire and found it burning low, and so I stoked it in the way that Jimmy’d shown me, feeling almost expert. ‘There,’ I said and stood, raising a hand to catch the sudden yawn that was intended to remind me I had barely slept at all last night, and had just drunk a glass of wine and needed to lie down.

  My little bedroom in the back had just a wardrobe and an iron bed, complete with sagging mattress on old-fashioned springs that squeaked when I sat down. There was a window here that looked towards the north, and I could see the jagged outcropping of rock with ruined Slains high on it, rising red against the sky. But I was far too tired, just now, to take much notice of the view.

  The bed squeaked loudly when I lay on it, but to my weary face the pillowcase felt soft and cool, and when I slipped beneath the freshly laundered warmth of sheets and blankets I could feel my state of consciousness slip, too.

  I should have slept.

  But what I saw when my eyes closed was neither darkness nor a dream.

  I saw a river, and green hills with trees below a sky of summer blue. Although I didn’t recognise the place, the image would not leave. It went on playing like a private film within my mind until I lost all sense of being tired.

  I rose, and went to write.

  II

  She dreamt of the woods, and the soft western hills, and the River Dee dancing in sunlight beyond the green fields, and the soft waving touch of the high grasses bowing before her wherever she walked. She could feel the clean air of the morning, the cool gentle breeze, and the happiness carried upon it, while nearby her mother sat singing a tune that Sophia could only remember in dreams…

  It was gone, words and all, when she opened her eyes. And the sun was gone, too. Here, the light was a harder flat grey, and it couldn’t reach into the bedchamber’s corners, so they stayed in darkness, although she knew well from what she’d seen last night by the candle that there would be little to hide in the shadows. The room was a plain one, with only one tapestry trying to soften the stark grey stone walls, and one painting – a portrait of some unknown woman with sad-looking eyes – hanging over the mantel. Below both of those lay a hearth that was too small to be any match for the wail of the wind at the rain-spattered glass of the window.

  She clutched a blanket to her for protection from the cold, and rose, and crossed to see what view she had. She hoped for hills, or trees…though she could not remember seeing trees upon the landscape when they had approached the house last night. In fact, this part of Scotland seemed quite bare of vegetation save the gorse and rougher grasses that grew close beside the sea. The salt, perhaps, made it impossible for anything more delicate to grow.

  Another angry blast of rain assailed the window as she reached it. For a moment she saw nothing, then the wind chased off the water in thin, sideways-running rivulets, and let her see beyond the glass.

  The sight was unexpected, and it stole her breath. She saw the sea, and nothing else. She might have been aboard a ship, with days of journeying between herself and land, and nothing round her but the grey sky and the storm-grey waves that stretched forever to the grey horizon. She’d been warned by the Countess of Erroll at supper last night that the walls of Slains Castle had been, at some places, set close to the cliffs, but it seemed to Sophia the walls must rise straight from the rock for her chamber to have such a view, and that there could be nothing below but a sheer drop of stone wall and precipice, down to the boiling foam of the sea round the rocks of the shore.

  The wind hurled a fierce blast of rain at her window and turning, she drew near the small fire and took her best gown from the clothes-press, doing what she could to make herself presentable. It had been her mother’s gown, and was not nearly as in fashion as the one that the countess had been wearing last night, but the soft blue colour suited her, and with her hair combed carefully and pinned into its style she felt more capable of facing what might come.

  She did not know, yet, her position in this house. It had not been discussed at supper, the countess seeming quite content to feed her guests and see their needs attended to with gracious hospitality that asked for nothing in return, and gave Sophia hope that here indeed might be the kind and happy home whose promise she had followed all these days and nights since she had first begun her eastward journey.

  But life, if nothing else, had taught her promises weren’t always to be counted on, and what appeared at first a shining chance might end in bitter disappointment.

  Drawing in a calming breath, she squared her shoulders, smoothed her hands along the bodice of her dress, and went downstairs. It was yet early, and it seemed she was the
only one awake. She moved from empty room to empty room, and since the house was large, with many doorways, she soon found herself quite turned around, and might have gone on wandering if she had not become aware of sounds of life from one rear hallway – voices, and a clanking that she took to be a kettle, and a snatch of cheerful singing drew her steps toward the kitchen door. She had no doubt it was the kitchen. Even through the panelled oak, the warmth and comfortable smells of cooking reached to make her welcome, and the door itself swung open to her touch.

  It was a long and well-scrubbed kitchen, with a massive hearth at one end, and a flagstone floor, and one long table, very plain, at which a young man, roughly dressed, was sitting with a pipe between his teeth, chair tilted back, his booted feet crossed at the ankles. He hadn’t seen Sophia yet, because his eyes were for the girl who had been singing and who, having perhaps reached a place in her song where the words were forgotten, had happily changed to a hum while she laid out a tray with clean dishes.

  And at the hearth, a woman, middle-aged, stood with her broad back turned to both of them, and stirred at something in an open kettle. That something, to Sophia, smelt like barley, and her stomach gave a hungry twist, and so she said, ‘Good morning.’

  The humming stopped. The young man’s chair thumped down, and all three heads came round in mild surprise.

  The girl spoke first. She cleared her throat. ‘Good morning, mistress. Were ye wishing something?’

  ‘Is that broth?’

  ‘Aye. But ye’ll be having more than that, the day, for breakfast. I’ll be serving in the dining room in half an hour’s time.’

  ‘I…could I please just have a bowl of that, in here? Would that be possible?’

  The mild surprise grew more pronounced. Sophia stood uncomfortably and sought the words to tell them she was not accustomed to a great house such as this, that hers had always been a simple life – not poor, exactly, but not far above their own place in the order of society – and that, to her, this clean and cheery kitchen had an air of home about it that the dining room did not.