Women of the Dunes

by Sarah Maine

  But Ellen’s face had adopted a stubborn expression. “People ought to question those teachings, though, and Mr. Alick says that scientists can actually hear the voices of spirits.”

  “What?”

  “From hundreds of miles away.”

  “Ellen—”

  “And he says that perhaps spirits can exist forever, like a sort of gas, so Ulla’s spirit could still be here. And Harald’s.”

  Oliver had swallowed hard. If he was to win this battle, he must remain calm, and his words must carry authority. “Mr. Alick is confused in his own mind, and it is high time we spoke together on these matters. I’ve been meaning to—” but had not found the courage to confront him, valuing his friendship too much. “Listen to me, Ellen, you must disregard what he has told you and—” But she was staring out of the window, beyond the dunes towards the headland, and he saw that he had lost her.

  “Mr. Alick said that he’s a new sort of pagan. He gave it a name.”

  Oliver supplied it through gritted teeth. “An atheist?” She nodded. “But you are not an atheist, Ellen, you are a good Christian.”

  “Did Ulla really become a Christian, do you think, or did she remain a pagan?” Oliver groaned silently. What went on in the girl’s head! “Harald was a pagan, and she had loved him dearly,” she continued, and he began to see where her thinking was taking her.

  “Yes! And Erik was a pagan too! A violent, murderous man.” At that, her face had drained of colour and she had gripped the side of the desk. He had risen and gone to her, putting out his hand, but she had stiffened like a cornered animal, so he dropped it and sat again. “Enough now, Ellen. No more talk of pagans and spirits. Grief has unsettled your mind, my dear. Say your prayers. They will help you and we will speak again, but first I will talk to Mr. Alick.” And somehow resist the un-Christian urge to throttle him.

  Oliver grabbed his hat and coat and left the house. In this at least his duty was clear; he must tackle Alick robustly and should have done so much earlier. What was the man thinking! Expounding intellectual nihilism and placing such doubts in the mind of a susceptible girl, recently bereaved. It was entirely reprehensible! Poor Ellen! And yet, and yet— Honesty compelled him to admit that jealousy was also fuelling his fury, and he paused, rocking perilously on a stepping stone midstream, before leaping to the opposite bank. Ellen, who barely said more than yes sir and no sir to him, had apparently engaged in profound philosophical discussions with Alick, absorbing his nonsense like a heron swallowing a frog.

  And it was Harald the pagan, he observed, not Odrhan the godly, who had been cast in the role of hero.

  He stopped at the thought, and laughed out loud. But how absurd! Dear Lord, he was becoming as bad as Ellen. The thought calmed him, and he slowed his pace, realising that he could hardly march up to Sturrock House and accuse Alick of corrupting his housemaid without creating something of a stir. He paused beside a low mound amongst the dunes and looked out to sea where a cloud bank was forming. And better, of course, to put together a coherent argument first, one that would not sound fusty and prosaic.

  And one that he himself believed in.

  “Oliver!” He turned at the call and saw that his quarry was coming through the garden gate, his hand raised in greeting. “I was coming to see you.”

  Anger flooded back at the sight of him. “Then well met, as I was coming to find you. Let’s walk, shall we?” And he turned towards the shore.

  “By all means. Look, I’ve been thinking about the chalice—”

  “Another time. It’s Ellen I want to talk about.”

  “Ellen?”

  “You’ve upset her, damn you! In fact, you’ve been entirely irresponsible. What did you think you were doing, discussing spirits when her mother is not yet two months in the ground? She’s quite bewildered by it all.”

  Alick winced. “Oh Lord.”

  “Yes. Quite!”

  “I’d not upset Ellen for the world.”

  “Well, you have!” Oliver snapped back. “Filling her head with nonsense about spirit voices that can be heard over hundreds of miles . . .”

  “What?”

  “A new sort of pagan, are you? Good God, man!”

  Alick was staring back at him, mouth agape. “I was talking about telegraphy and radio waves.”

  “And did she know that?” Oliver rounded on him. “I knew it was your doing when she mentioned the ether. Did you imagine that the theories of Maxwell and his ilk would be in any way comprehensible to her? Just the thing for a girl like Ellen. Yes, you might well look aghast!” Oliver felt his anger boiling over. “A little learning is a dangerous thing, Pope said, and shallow draughts intoxicate the brain. Well, Ellen’s mind was already drunk on this wretched legend and straining under the burden of her mother’s death—”

  Alick’s distress was almost ludicrous. Then he turned and looked out towards the headland, adding in chastened tones: “She seemed to think it might be Ulla’s bones that Mungo dug up.”

  “What! Why?”

  “I didn’t try to correct her because then I’d have had to tell her about the cleaved skull, and I thought that might be worse.” Oliver hissed his annoyance. “She thinks she’s possessed by the spirit of Ulla, you see.” Alick spoke quickly, like a child wanting to get the worst off his chest.

  Oliver looked at him over his shoulder in contempt. “And who put the idea in her head!”

  “Not I! We simply met out on the headland. She was just sitting there, looking so damned miserable, so we sat and talked for ages. I only wanted to comfort her. Oliver, we’ve known each other since childhood! I’m fond of her.”

  Oliver remained silent. Then, with a deep reluctance, he said, “That’s as may be, but I suggest that you tread carefully.”

  “Meaning what?” Hauteur returned to Alick’s voice, and Oliver was reminded of Sir Donald.

  “Meaning that having cast herself as Ulla, she needs little encouragement to see you as Harald.”

  Chapter 29

   Libby

  Libby banned the students from going up to the house next day and they saw nothing of Laila, or Alice. Instead, that evening a shuttle of cars got everyone to the pub and, by agreement with the landlord, phones and laptops were recharged there while pints were pulled. Libby took hers to the corner of the room where the locals made space for the students, smiling her thanks as she wove her way through the tables. It was good to be away from the camp where the presence of Laila in Sturrock House seemed to hang like a menacing cloud. As far as Libby knew, no taxi had come to collect her, and so by now she would have missed her flight. Who knew what would happen next, but Libby sensed that things were coming rapidly to a head.

  A commotion at the bar drew her attention, and the intensity of student noise suddenly increased. And then she saw why.

  Declan.

  He had emerged from the door leading to the stairs up to the bedrooms and was now being greeted enthusiastically by the students, for whom he was soon buying a round. She watched him scan the room until he found her, nod briefly, and then turn back to the students. She’d have to go over and talk to him, of course, and keep up the appearance of common purpose. But Declan, on top of everything else! She gave him a minute or two to come to her, and then wove her way back through the tables to the bar. He turned as she approached. “Going well, I hear,” he said, but coldly.

  “As well as can be expected, but the mound has been pretty well destroyed.”

  “Callum said.”

  “But it’s still a useful—”

  “You’ve not started at the headland, I understand,” he interrupted. “Why not?”

  His tone was aggressive, but she answered calmly. “We needed to finish other things first. But I thought we’d start there tomorrow.”

  “Dead right we will. I’ll be down first thing and set things up there while you tie up the other loose ends. It’s potentially the most interesting part of the site—besides the church.” He hesitated, then gave
her a calculating look. “I hear that Lady Sturrock is in residence, and Rodri Sturrock isn’t.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Good.” She knew what he was thinking, of course, but he’d soon learn that Laila had other things on her mind. “I’ll be down straight after breakfast,” he said, and turned back to join in the students’ banter.

  It was almost dark by the time everyone had been shuttled back to camp. The western sky was drained of colour, leaving the horizon a smudged line of pale shades fading into a dark sea. She parked her car, depressed by the thought of Declan, and was getting the laptop from the boot when she caught a glint of metal in the darkness. The Land Rover. It was parked up close to the old manse, half-hidden in the shadows. He was back! But parked here and not at the house— She scanned the camp, then went over to the caravan and looked inside. Empty.

  But she knew where he would be.

  Stopping only to collect a torch from her tent, she left the students on their way to the food tent for a last drink, and picked her way carefully along the causeway. Light still lingered in the sky, but darkness was creeping over the sea as the world became monochrome. She scrambled up to the plateau, the torch in her hand, and saw him, seated with his back against the walls of Odrhan’s tumbled cell, his elbows resting on bent knees, staring out to the horizon.

  He turned his head as the beam from her torch found him. “Libby? Good. I hoped you’d come.” And in the dying light she saw how drawn his face was, how tired. He gestured to the space beside him and she sat. “Is everything alright here? I’ve not been up to the house yet.”

  “Everything’s fine. Though Laila’s in a fury over her passport and money.”

  He gave a mirthless laugh. “She would be, but I couldn’t risk her following me.”

  They sat in silence. Was he going to explain? “You went to Dubai?” she prompted. But could he have been there and back so quickly?

  “Oslo. Hector’s in Norway. He’s never been in Dubai.”

  “Oh.”

  There was a longer silence. “Hector’s dying,” he said, and his voice sounded thin and strained. “Three months, the doctors said, six if he’s lucky. He’s in a private hospital. Been in and out over the last year attempting to dry out. Hopeless case. As soon as he gets out, they told me, he backslides. Every sodding time.”

  He turned his head away from her and a light breeze ruffled the hair on his forehead, covering the frown which now seemed permanently etched there. “I’m sorry,” she said, and put a hand on his arm. Without turning back, he closed his own over it, and kept it there.

  “Not as sorry as I am,” he said, and then, after a moment, “I’ve been so blind.” He fell silent again and she said nothing. He would tell this story his own way, or not at all.

  Eventually, he did.

  “I’ve known Laila was a bad lot for a long time,” he said, “but not that she was wicked. Every damn e-mail I’ve had over the last few months has been from her, masquerading as Hector or Hector’s secretary, deliberately driving the wedge between us.” He let out his breath in a juddering sigh. “Every demand for money has been instigated by her, made to look as if it came from him. He’s been in this hospital more or less continuously since March, just about the time she came here to cash in the Nasmyth, a virtual prisoner, from what I can gather. The doctors kept trying to send him home, but she’d told them he was violent and begged them to keep him. She has his credit cards, passport, e-mail passwords, everything—and she’s been smuggling drink in to him there. He’s so bloody stupid he thought she did it from kindness.” He dropped his head and stared down at the grass between his knees.

  “And the pregnancy?” she asked.

  His shoulder shook slightly before he replied. “I asked him about it, and just for a moment I saw such a blaze of joy on his face— Then his eyes went dead and he said it wasn’t his, and that it was unlikely to be true anyway, and told me why.” He stopped again, for longer this time. “And then he started to put other things together in his head,” he continued in a flat tone, “and so I’ve spent the last two days destroying the one thing he had to cling to, his love for that worthless woman.”

  He raised his head and gazed out over the dark ocean, and then bit by bit the story came out. He’d caught a flight to Oslo and gone straight to Hector’s house to find it locked and empty. A neighbour had come out, and when he told her who he was the woman assumed that Laila had sent him to collect things to take, imagining her to be at the hospital. “Such a lovely lady, the neighbour said.” He’d gone along with the story and she’d let him in using the key she held for them.

  Once inside he had rifled through their papers until he’d found bills from a private hospital, located in the mountainous area between Oslo and Bergen, and he’d set off to go there.

  “But how did you know to go to Oslo, and not Dubai?” she asked.

  “A hunch,” he said. “That night—when was it?—two nights ago, it suddenly occurred to me what was happening. For weeks now, every time I tried to contact Hector I got a text or e-mail back, never a call. And they were brusque and brief, cold and impersonal; either he was busy or off somewhere with some trade delegation and didn’t want to be bothered by estate matters. He’d tell me to just deal with it, and then demand more money be sent through to him. I’d taken offence, as I was meant to do, seeing myself exploited and deliberately distanced, so I contacted him less and less. All part of Laila’s little plan, and Hector, away up in the mountains, didn’t have a clue.” He paused. “And then that night, after what you said, it hit me what might be happening, so I put it to the test. You saw me ring him and leave a voicemail message and then text him?”

  “Yes.”

  “And a little later she left the room, and, hey presto, I got a text message back from Hector. A surprisingly genial one. I replied to it, letting her see that I’d done so, and when she could, she slipped away again. Same thing happened, I got a reply. So when you and she were sorting coffee in the library, I went up and looked in her handbag. Two phones. His and hers. And my message flagged up on the screen of his.”

  “Oh God.”

  “Half of me thought he was dead already.” He paused for a long moment, his jaw set hard, as if reliving the moment. “But I needed to find out, so I took her passport and cards, gambling on getting away before she found they were gone. I had to know she was out of the game for a while.” He stopped again. “And I couldn’t tell anyone, you see, in case I was wrong.”

  Libby sat in silence, staggered by Laila’s calculated cruelty. “And so the fictional baby is her insurance in case Hector dies?”

  “Not in case, when. I can’t begin to tell you the mess he’s in. Liver’s shot to hell, the doctors said, kidneys starting to fail and other stuff. It’s just a matter of time— And when he died, who was going to challenge his grieving widow over the paternity of her child?” He stopped again, staring back down at the ground. “So once Laila had established to the world, and to me in particular, that she’s pregnant with a son, the sooner Hector died the better, as that bump of hers has got to grow. These next weeks were going to be the hardest part of the charade. Once he was dead, she could simply flee somewhere, distraught with grief, for the requisite number of months, and then emerge triumphant with the next baronet who even now some surrogate mother is presumably cooking up for her. Laila is not to be underestimated.”

  Libby sat, stunned, while she absorbed this. “But why didn’t she get pregnant herself? Surely that would have been easier.”

  There was another long silence. “She couldn’t. And besides, she had to be not pregnant when she visited Hector and the doctors, and pregnant for me and, after he died, for the rest of the world. A tricky act to keep up, but she was playing for high stakes, and Hector, hanging on to life as he is doing, must have been a worry to her. They’re broke, I gather, all washed up, and I dread to think what her next move would have been. He has hefty life insurance cover, he told me.”

  S
he felt a sudden chill as a zephyr blew across the surface of the sea, and she watched a night bird flying over the waves, low and fast.

  “So then I had to get back here to tell her the game is up, and watch out for the boys. And David.”

  His sudden fear was tangible, and she touched his arm again. “The boys are fine,” she said, “and they have Angus and Maddy and Alice looking out for them.” What could Laila possibly do to them? “They haven’t been here at all. Alice has, though, and she’s borne the brunt of Laila’s temper.”

  He gave a short laugh. “Alice is a trooper, bless her.”

  “So what happens now?” Somewhere out at sea a gull’s wild cry was snatched away by the wind.

  “I’ll go to the house and confront her.” She caught a glint in his eye, sharp as a blade. “And then she can strip off whatever it is she has strapped to her belly and give an account of herself. But not tonight, I don’t trust myself tonight.” He paused, and she sensed him struggling to restrain a passion so strong— “I’ll sleep in the Land Rover and tackle her in the morning.”

  That, she was certain, was a good idea, for the look in his eye was murderous. “She said that if you weren’t back by today, she’d report the theft to the police.”

  “Good. I’d like Fergus to hear all this, the sooner the better.” He rubbed the heel of his hand into his eye, and she saw exhaustion replace menace as he turned back to her. “And I’ve got you embroiled in this ghastly mess, Libby. It’s not where I want to be with you. I’m sorry.”

  She looked away. The words and the tone reached beyond the moment. But it was not for now, and would not spoil for waiting.

  “Don’t be,” was all she said. Then: “And there’s no need to sleep in the Land Rover. I can shift a few boxes and you can stretch out in the caravan. There’s a spare sleeping bag in there.”

  He got up and reached a hand down to her. “Right. I’ll do that.” He pulled her to her feet and together they walked back along the causeway. The camp was in darkness now, the last of the revellers having retired to their tents, and they went silently across the chilly dunes, through the campsite to the caravan. Libby shifted the finds trays and boxes from the couch and retrieved the sleeping bag.