The Skylark's Secret

by Valpy, Fiona

  But those spirits seem far away today. The water beneath us rolls as smooth as an unfurling bolt of silk as we glide through it, watched by a heron poised on one slender leg in the shallows.

  Slipping the engine into neutral, Davy lets the momentum of the boat carry us alongside an orange float that bobs on the surface of the water near the entrance to a small rocky inlet. With a boathook he catches the rope attached beneath the float and runs it through a pulley. As he winches the handle, the rope begins to tighten and a creel emerges from the depths, black and dripping. He leans over the side to haul it on to the deck and shows us the catch. There are half a dozen squatties, a large crab and a small lobster. He keeps the crab and the squatties, sorting them into separate buckets filled with seawater, but returns the lobster. ‘It’s on the wee side, that one, so we’ll let it grow.’

  Daisy is fascinated by the catch and I have to grab her hand as she attempts to give the crab an exploratory poke. ‘Oops! Careful, those claws can pinch,’ I explain.

  Davy hauls in the rest of the line and declares it a satisfactory catch. He has two good-sized lobsters and a sizeable cluster of squatties to add to the buckets. Then he rebaits the creels with mackerel heads and sets the boat moving slowly forward again so that the line plays out. Each creel lands in the water with a splash that makes Daisy giggle and clap her hands together, until, sinking slowly, the line has been reset. As we set off again, only the orange float remains bobbing on the surface, marking the spot.

  We carry on, following the sweep of the shore westwards until we reach the headland at Inverewe. The exotic trees planted in the gardens of the estate, which are able to flourish this far north in the milder air swept up here from lower latitudes by the Gulf Stream, stand out against the Forestry Commission plantations of dark pines and the bare hills that surround the rest of the loch. Towering rhododendrons paint the rocky promontory with splotches of deep crimson and brilliant scarlet.

  ‘They used to store ammunition in the cove on this side,’ says Davy, pointing to a secluded inlet, almost hidden by a line of rocks. ‘But nowadays there are other inhabitants hiding here.’ He switches off the engine and the sudden silence is broken only by the whisper of wind in the trees and the peeping of a flock of sandpipers on the shore.

  Then Davy begins to whistle a tune. Daisy looks up, startled at first but, after a glance up at me for reassurance, waves her arms in time to the lilt of the music. Davy gestures to me to join in and I sing the words, keeping my voice soft to stop it from cracking.

  ‘Heel ya ho, boys, let her go, boys,

  Heave her head round to the weather,

  Heel ya ho, boys, let her go, boys,

  Sailing homeward to Mingulay . . .’

  Then I stop in amazement as three dark rounded heads appear in the water. Davy gestures to me to keep singing and the seals draw nearer. Then he points behind me and I turn to find two more pairs of eyes gazing at us. I hold Daisy up so that she can see them, too. Her eyes are almost as wide as theirs.

  ‘Look,’ I say. ‘We sang the seals to us!’

  She points a finger at them. ‘Sea?’ she says.

  ‘Yes, seals.’

  One of them dives, its sleek back rounding as it disappears beneath the boat, only to emerge on the other side a few seconds later. The others watch, heads bobbing in the water like black floats.

  Davy grins before starting the engine again. As we chug slowly away, the seals watch us from their secret cove and then, one by one, disappear back beneath the water.

  On the far side of the island, Davy hauls in two more creel lines. There’s another good-sized lobster (plus one whose undercarriage is covered in eggs, so Davy carefully puts her back so that she can have her babies and help keep the stocks replenished), and two more brown crabs, as well as more clusters of squatties and a cross-looking dogfish that Davy throws back. ‘That’s a pretty good haul for today,’ he declares. Then he glances at his watch. ‘How are you two doing? Happy to go a bit further or would you prefer to head for home?’

  ‘I think we’re very happy to keep going,’ I say with a smile. The sun bounces off the water, dazzling our eyes and lifting our spirits. Neither Daisy nor I am ready to return to land yet.

  With a nod of approval, Davy turns the Bonnie Stuart northwards and we follow the western hills to where a stretch of white sand fringes the shore, turning the waters the turquoise of a travel poster.

  He throttles back the engine, then puts down an anchor and, as he plays out the rope, we drift gently towards the beach until we can see the scallop shells on the sea floor beneath us through the crystal-clear water.

  ‘Time for some lunch,’ Davy declares, dragging a wicker basket from beneath the bench. He brings out some greaseproof-paper-wrapped sandwiches. ‘I wasn’t sure what you’d like, so there are some ham ones and some with crowdie which I thought Daisy might manage.’

  The soft cream cheese meets with Daisy’s approval and she stuffs the morsels of sandwich that I hand her into her mouth with gusto. We sit, basking like seals in the sunshine, eating our lunch and letting the light soak into the skin of our faces. Then I give Daisy some banana and a bottle of milk, after which she settles herself into the curve of my arm with a contented sigh and drowsily watches the patterns that the light throws on to the door of the wheelhouse.

  Davy sets up a small camp stove and puts a kettle of water on to heat.

  ‘What luxury,’ I say. ‘This is a very fine restaurant indeed.’

  ‘Glad to hear it measures up to your fancy London eateries,’ Davy says with a smile that makes his grey-blue eyes shine. I notice how white his teeth are against the weathered tan of his skin. Then his expression grows more serious. ‘You must miss it all, that life you had down there.’

  I consider his words – more of a statement than a question – as he puts teabags into mugs and pours water from the kettle.

  ‘Not really,’ I say, nodding as he holds up a jam jar filled with milk and raises his eyebrows enquiringly. ‘Just a dash, please. Thank you.’ I take the tin mug he hands to me and blow on the surface to cool it. ‘I thought I would miss it terribly when I left London, but I really don’t. In fact, having Ardtuath to come home to has turned out to be the best thing. For Daisy and for me. The one thing I do miss is being able to sing. But that ability seems to belong to someone else now – the person I was in another lifetime.’

  ‘It must have been really hard, losing your voice like that.’

  I nod, taking a sip of my tea and settling Daisy a little more comfortably as her eyelids begin to droop. ‘It was. At the time it was the end of my world. It was all I had. My voice had become my whole identity. I went from rising star to forgotten nobody in the space of a few weeks.’

  Davy sits in silence for a moment, watching a bird of prey that’s circling high above the hills. ‘Are you always so hard on yourself?’ he asks at last, the tone of his words light so that I can’t take offence.

  ‘I suppose I am,’ I reply. ‘But then, so I should be. I’ve messed everything up so badly.’

  He laughs. ‘There you go again, proving my point. From where I’m sitting, you’ve done pretty well so far. You’ve achieved things that most people only dream of, and now here you are with a daughter of your own to raise, which seems to be another pretty good thing.’

  I look down and stroke a fingertip against Daisy’s cheek where the sunshine and the sea air have blushed it rosy pink. She’s fallen asleep, lulled by a full belly and the peaceful drift of the boat.

  He watches me, then asks gently, ‘Is Daisy’s dad on the scene at all?’

  Without raising my eyes, I shake my head, unable to speak. At the time, Piers’s words were horrible. But his silence and his complete rejection of me and Daisy ever since have been even worse.

  I don’t tell Davy about all of that, though. I just shrug at last and say, ‘No, Daisy’s dad isn’t part of our lives.’ The understatement of the year.

  ‘I see. His loss, then,’ D
avy says quietly. From the look he gives me, I can see he understands. And maybe Bridie’s told him what Mum had already surmised: that Piers wasn’t fit for fatherhood.

  ‘Does it hurt when you sing now?’ he asks, after a pause.

  I shake my head. ‘No. But my voice has deepened and my range has diminished. It’s a bit rougher, too, sometimes. Certainly no good for the stage any more.’

  ‘You’ve a great tone, though,’ he says. ‘It holds a lot of feeling. If you like the old songs, you could come along to the bar on a Saturday night sometime. There’s a group of us who play. Anyone with a musical bone in their bodies is welcome to join in.’

  ‘What do you play?’

  ‘Guitar. And mandolin.’

  I nod. ‘I’d like that.’ Although I’d need someone to mind Daisy and I panic a little at the thought. I’ve never been out without her.

  I finish my tea and Davy holds out a hand to take the mug. He packs everything away in the basket and then, as Daisy begins to stir, checks his watch. ‘Time to be getting back, I reckon. We’ll go just a wee bit further so you can see the rock arch and then we’ll head round the north point of the island and back to Aultbea.’

  Back at the jetty he makes the boat fast and then helps me ashore as Daisy stirs in my arms. He scoops a few handfuls of squatties into a carrier bag. ‘These’ll do for your supper. I’ll drive you home, then come back and sort everything out here,’ he offers, carrying my many bags to the Land Rover. I laugh when I see he’s left it sitting outside his house with the key in the ignition.

  ‘What?’ he says with a shrug. ‘We all do it. You’re not in London now, remember.’

  We unload everything at Keeper’s Cottage. ‘Thanks for a wonderful time,’ I say. ‘It was great to be out on the water.’

  ‘No bother. Glad you enjoyed it.’ He turns to go.

  ‘Davy,’ I call after him, ‘would you like to come over for supper tomorrow night? We could share these?’ I hold up the carrier bag.

  ‘That’d be grand,’ he says. ‘Thanks, Lexie. See you then.’

  ‘See you,’ I agree.

  And as I start to hang up our coats and hats and put away the gloves that we didn’t need, I begin to sing the song that we entertained the seals with earlier while Daisy keeps time with a cup of juice.

  Flora, 1940

  The sun was slow to set in the days of high summer, seeming scarcely to dip below the western horizon an hour or so from midnight before it reappeared in the east in the early morning hours. In the evenings, when they’d been released from their duties, Flora, Alec and Ruaridh would take their trout rods and climb into the hills to fish. Their catch provided a welcome addition to the rations, both at the scrubbed pine table in the kitchen of Keeper’s Cottage and on the polished mahogany one in the dining room of Ardtuath House.

  From the hills above Aultbea and Mellon Charles, they could glimpse the constant buzz of activity on Loch Ewe, where ships moved ponderously like a huge grey shoal and their tenders sped in between them like the insects that skated over the surface of the lochan where they fished. They preferred to turn their backs on the busyness of the naval manoeuvres, though, and watch the calm waters cupped within the folds of the hills, where white water lilies drifted among the reflections of the clouds, hiding brown trout beneath the broad pads of their leaves. The three of them would set down their packs beside the old bothy and then spread out, each finding their preferred spot on the bank of the lochan from which to cast. Little was said, apart from the occasional quiet comment when a fish was landed. The song of the skylarks and the plaintive cries of the curlews from the moor above them filled the summer evenings with their music.

  On one such evening, Flora was just about to cast her last fly into the deeper corner of the little loch where the rushes grew tallest, when she was surprised by Corry, Sir Charles’s spaniel, who came bouncing through the starry sphagnum moss that grew thick on the hummocks of the hill surrounding the lochan.

  ‘Hello, boy.’ She bent down to stroke his silky ears and he wagged his whole body enthusiastically. ‘Where’s your master?’

  A moment later the laird appeared, carrying his own fishing rod. ‘Aha, I see you lot got here before me. Have you caught all the good ones already?’ Sir Charles’s deep baritone reverberated in the evening air, silencing the larks. He strode across to where Flora stood, her catch laid out on the mossy bank. ‘Not a bad evening’s work, Miss Gordon. I see you’ve managed to beat the boys.’ Two of her three trout were larger than the single fish that Ruaridh and Alec had each caught.

  She smiled and nodded. ‘Alec will bring those two back to the big house. They should make a nice supper for you all.’

  Sir Charles scarcely acknowledged her remark, turning towards his son. ‘Pack your things away now and get on back to the house. Your mother is fretting because we have the Urquharts arriving tomorrow for the weekend. We’ve a day’s fishing planned for them and the Kingsley-Scotts invited to dinner afterwards. Take her those trout – she’ll be glad of them – and see what you can do to help. You know how short-handed we are these days. Although I certainly don’t intend to let standards slip, just because there’s a war on.’

  At the mention of the Kingsley-Scotts, Flora stiffened slightly, shooting a quick glance at Alec. He hadn’t mentioned that they’d be there. She wondered whether Diana would be coming with her parents. She put her catch into the willow creel and handed it to Alec, not quite meeting his eye.

  ‘Here,’ he demurred, trying to give her back the three smaller fish, ‘you take these for your own supper.’

  ‘No,’ she said, firmly replacing them in the basket. ‘It sounds as if you’re going to need them if you’ve all those visitors coming.’

  ‘Thank you,’ he whispered. ‘I didn’t know he’d invited the Kingsley-Scotts.’ He put a hand against Flora’s cheek, reassuring her, and stooped to kiss her.

  ‘You’d better get going, Alec.’ His father’s voice was sharp with impatience. ‘In fact, since you and your friends have been so kind as to do my work for me this evening, I think I’ll accompany you home. We can both give your mother a hand.’ He shouldered his rod and called Corry to heel. ‘Good evening, Ruaridh, Flora.’ He gave them a curt nod and she saw how cold his eyes were; his earlier joviality had evaporated. ‘Tell your father I’d like to speak to him tomorrow morning about the arrangements for the weekend.’

  Alec hesitated, reluctant to leave, but his father snapped, ‘Come on, man, I haven’t got time to waste.’

  Wordlessly, Ruaridh and Flora watched the two figures striding back down the hill. Then they gathered together their things, securing their hooks in the cork handles of their rods and pulling on the jackets they’d discarded earlier, before following more slowly in the footsteps of Alec and Sir Charles.

  Flora was washing up the breakfast things when her father came back from his morning briefing with Sir Charles up at the house. Outwardly, his expression was as calm as ever, but she could tell he was out of sorts by the way he dragged the deerstalker from his head and threw it on to the table.

  ‘Are you in for a busy day with the guests?’ she asked him, drying her hands on the pinny tied around her waist. His duties as keeper had been unofficially expanded to those of ghillie as well, but she knew he’d rather be out on the hills than standing on a riverbank or rowing a boat while instructing inept guests on how to cast for salmon.

  ‘Aye,’ he grunted, his tone gruff, ‘but I’m not the only one. Sir Charles has asked for you to go up and help out with the dinner this evening. He wishes Lady Helen to accompany the fishing party, too, and so he wants you to finish off the cooking. I’m not happy about it. It’s not your duty. But you know how short-handed they are now.’

  Flora nodded. The housekeeper had left at the end of the previous month, returning to care for her mother back home in Clydebank where there were well-paid jobs to be had in the munitions factories and the prospect of a far livelier social life than was to be found in
the kitchen of Ardtuath House. And so, apart from Mrs McTaggart from the village who came in to clean in the mornings and do a little light cooking, Lady Helen was having to manage things on her own.

  ‘Don’t fret, Dad. I’m not bothered. I’ll be happy to help out. It’ll be good for Lady Helen to be included in the party for once – she never usually goes out with the rods.’

  Flora’s words belied her conflicting emotions. It would be a chance to see Alec and she wanted to be of help, but she was all too aware that this was an opportunity for Sir Charles to put her firmly in her place.

  ‘It’s ridiculous, Himself carrying on inviting those people. The world’s changed for everyone except His Lordship, apparently. It’s not right that they expect you to skivvy for them.’

  ‘But Dad, we have our home because of him. And Lady Helen’s always been so good to us. I don’t begrudge them a helping hand every now and then. I wasn’t intending on doing anything else tonight, in any case.’

  Ordinarily on a Saturday evening, she and Alec would go to a dance or a film in the hall at Aultbea, or for a picnic with Mairi, Bridie and Ruaridh on the rare occasions that they were all off duty at the same time and the weather was fine. But that evening Mairi was helping her mother at home, and Ruaridh had a date with Wendy. And she’d known for weeks that Alec would be expected to attend the dinner with the house party staying at Ardtuath.

  ‘Well, I still don’t like it,’ Iain grumbled, reluctantly going to gather up the rods and reels needed for the day’s fishing. From the boot room he called, ‘You’re to go up to the house after lunch. Lady Helen will leave you instructions in the kitchen.’