Call of the Undertow (15 page)

She made a small loaf most days in breaks from the computer, kneading comfort back into herself, her hands warm in the soft dough, strong on it as she stretched and beat. She used no measures
now; mixed dough intuitively. It always made her feel better, especially as it rose into its fleshy mound on a warm windowsill and then filled the house as it baked with its great huff of warm
scent.

She fought on to get her work done, snatching sleep between midnight and three a.m. Even then, it was barely dark. And the night sounds continued: the kids in the woods or wherever they were;
the young men’s roaring cars circling the village; and the heave of mechanical equipment droning from the direction of the bay in the darkest hours. She began to understand the notion of
madness that came with a midsummer lack of sleep, the hallucinatory quality of the restless day-night.

All day, each day, making the most of light and a decent spell of weather, the chorus of cement-mixers churned on. She sensed breeze block bungalows rising from the ground almost as if, block
for block, they corresponded with the stone cottages crumbling back into the earth. And yet she heard on the radio that house-building across the UK had dropped to the levels of the 1920s.

One afternoon towards the end of her week of concentrated work, she took time out and walked down to the beach. The verges she passed hummed with pollen from meadowsweet and
sweet cicely; mauve clover-heads the size of golf balls lined the way. The fields were a haze of buttercup yellow. Curlews burbled above her, stone chats in the gorse chit-chatted, and once she was
on the beach, the waves hypnotised. The twin arms of Holborn Head and Dwarwick Head, rather than closing in the bay as they sometimes did, seemed to open wider, revealing an expansive horizon to
the Atlantic, the Northwest. It was like an invitation to travel beyond the offing, and she watched ships, toy-like, pioneering their way through the Pentland Firth.

Tourists had arrived. There were motor-homes parked up on the campsite behind the Sandpiper Centre, and cyclists doing the ‘end to end’ dotted the road in fluorescent jackets.

Graham was busy with visitors when she arrived at the Centre, so she stood at the window watching the bay through binoculars. Voices rose behind her, a tourist remonstrating with him.

‘We’ve been coming here fifteen years and we’ve never seen this going on before.’

She heard Graham’s voice quiet and slow; pacifying.

The other voice came back again: ‘But surely it’s protected? Surely they can’t remove sand from the dunes just like that? Surely someone must be able to stop them.’

‘Of course we might like to...’ She heard the irritation beginning to prickle in Graham’s voice as he explained that it wasn’t his responsibility.

She was reminded of what she’d learnt about Lagos, the Lekki district. Sand was being dredged from the seabed to shore up the vulnerable margins of some of the marshy islands. Lavish
apartments for the rich were springing up there, built on shifting foundations of corruption. Presumably the sea would demolish them within years. It was obvious. But still the rich were entrusting
themselves to a mirage. In turn the moved sand had blocked drainage canals, so that when the rains came, the vegetable market flooded, and small businesses owned by much poorer people had to be
abandoned. Her incomplete dealings with Lagos niggled at her now, and she wanted to shake them off. Richard had told her again, quite firmly this time, that such detail was irrelevant. But she
couldn’t quite let it go.

Maggie turned to see the man with binoculars round his neck stomp away without a satisfactory answer. Graham watched him go with arms stiff at his sides, heaved a sigh and then joined her at the
window.

He was as mystified as her about the sealskin. ‘Can’t help there, I’m afraid. Unless it was someone’s trophy.’

She was disappointed not to have found an explanation; still unsure what to do with the thing. ‘Perhaps I’ll just shove it back in the loft,’ she said.

They looked out on the beach again.

‘You should get yourself out to Dunnet Head,’ he said. ‘The guillemots’ve got their young now. Precious single bairns.’

She thought of Trothan and felt another little twist of anxiety at his absence. She’d half-hoped she might hear something of him when she was out. But he barely seemed to touch anyone
else’s lives.

‘You’re alright now, are you – after the tern attack and that?’ Graham asked.

‘Oh that,’ she said, an involuntary lock in her breath.

‘And the whisky,’ he teased.

‘It was you made me drink it,’ she said.

‘Only because I thought you were about to cry.’

‘What?’ She half-protested, turned away to the window.

‘Right, let’s see what else is out there to attack you,’ he said, standing by her side and picking up the binoculars.

By the time she got back to the village it was hot, the humidity reaching a peak now, and moisture clouds were pressing low on the horizon. People were out in shorts and
singlets, sunburned, eating ice creams. Boys rode past on their ridiculous low-saddled bikes. In the playpark, a cluster of small girls sported pinkened skin. She was surprised when two of them
turned on the climbing frame and waved at her as she passed, smiling. She half-looked over her shoulder to see who they’d seen behind her. ‘Hello Maggie,’ one of them called out.
She waved back, realising she must have met them on her visits to the school.

A police car slunk down the main street and induced in Maggie a guilty flinch. She went into the shop for a couple of things and then on an impulse, instead of turning for home, she turned into
the grid of streets, touring them systematically until she found the one with the right name.

It was a street of single-storey quarriers’ cottages. Each short, front garden had a narrow gravel path leading to the front door across a lawn. She walked until she found their house
number. A builder’s van was parked outside the gate. It wasn’t Rab McNicholl’s but a blue one from Thurso. The house was prickling with scaffolding and two men straddled the roof,
hammering new sarking boards across the bare frame. A radio was bellowing summer pop songs into the sky and a voice accompanied it in yelps and high notes that were abbreviated by the regular
beating of two hammers.

She stopped, stared. The front door stood wide open and builders’ tools and stacks of slates were dumped right in front of it. The house betrayed no occupants.

She pushed the gate open and stood in the centre of the path.

‘I need you more than want you
,’ wailed the younger man along with Glen Campbell.

‘Excuse me,’ she shouted up, repeating it when the song continued.

Eventually the banging paused on both ends of the roof and the two men peered down at her, legs braced in front of them.

‘The Gilbertsons?’ she asked.

‘We’ve put them out, darling.’ The older man smiled down at her.

‘Put them out?’ She had a picture of eviction, of rent arrears. ‘Where have they gone?’

The men looked at each other. ‘To her sister’s, I think.’

‘Where’s that?’

The younger man named a place she’d never heard of and the older one added, ‘Far side of Thurso.’

Maggie put her hand to her head. Trothan in a new house, a new school, totally removed from the area.

‘Put a note in the house if you like, they’ll get it when they’re back.’

Relief flooded her. ‘They’ve not moved out then?’

‘We’ve only put them out while we do this. They don’t think much about his singing, eh?’ The older man laughed.

The younger one resumed his hammering, and, more quietly, his singing.

‘When are they back?’ she called, but was not heard.

It was dark in the house by contrast to the brilliance of the day and her eyes took a moment to adjust. She walked straight into a small sitting room with a sofa and two matching armchairs in a
traditional floral print. The room seemed crowded with furniture; gingham, the smell of artificial air-freshener. There was a well-trodden sense of people going in and out, wearing the dark carpet
thin towards the door where traces of sand scattered from the threshold. A fake wood-burning stove stood in a fireplace. A shelf behind it was decorated with a few ornaments, some books and a
TV.

On the wall there were photos. She moved closer. A small baby wrapped in a white blanket with a solemn, elfin face and huge brown eyes. Trothan holding his mother’s hand on the front path,
a small red rucksack on his back – the first day at school, she imagined. Another outside Edinburgh Castle. Always Trothan with his mother or father, never anyone else, never any friends or
wider family, the photo always taken by one of them.

It seemed a normal, traditional house; just small. There would be nowhere to lay out a map to work on it; there was no computer or laptop visible. She found the bathroom off the living room. It
was decorated with seahorse tiles, bright soaps that gushed strawberry scent, a fluffy bath mat. Everything was in its place, as if the house had been prepared for an absence. A house that felt
private and contained, holding the lives of three people in a contented balance with each other.

She registered a sense of disappointment. She’d expected to find some evidence of discord or negligence but wasn’t sure how that would have looked anyway. Discarded chip wrappers on
the floor or dangerous things left lying about? But then she thought, perhaps a child left excessively to himself would make a home within a home in his bedroom.

The hammering was still coming regularly from above. She glanced down the path through the open door, then moved quickly. She soon found it – a small room with a single bed and a
jungle-themed duvet cover. Fishes dangled from a mobile, spinning in sunlight. There was a shelf of books – dinosaurs featured, just like in her nephew Jamie’s room. There were
childish, but accomplished drawings of boats and animals on the wall. Apart from that, there was none of the usual children’s paraphernalia of TV, computer, boy band posters. There was no
sign either of the roll of maps or Rotring pens. He must have taken them. He must still be working on the map.

The bed sank beneath her and she felt herself sucked down by tiredness. She would rest, just for a minute or two, somewhere she felt safe and secure. Unable to battle it any longer, she leant
her head down onto the pillow. The salty scent of Trothan. Faint but distinct. She closed her eyes despite the open door, her trespass, the persistent hammering and singing descending the pitch of
the roof above her. It would beat out time until the two men descended and might discover that she was still here, sleeping with her feet on the floor.

The Wednesday of the school showcase was another blue-skied scorcher. Late in the afternoon, Maggie went for a walk on the beach, lay down for a moment in the sun and woke to
find that a bank of greasy cloud was spilling over Dunnet Head, oozing down towards the beach; a blanket of the infamous haar wrought by cool sea air colliding with the hot land. It moved
stealthily, covering the village of Dunnet except for the white tower of the church which pierced through it. Feeling its chill effect in anticipation, she stood up and brushed the sand from her
hair.

At home, she considered what to wear. She could feel sunburn pulsing down one side of her face; the effect of her brief sleep on the beach. Despite the cool fog now enveloping the village, she
chose a summer dress. But when she put it on the neckline exposed a white scallop of chest. She considered changing but instead she retrieved the cornflower blue scarf that had hung over the hall
mirror since she’d arrived. She draped it around her neck and shoulders to mediate her skin colours and then peered at herself in the mirror. She found an ancient tube of blocking foundation
which she rubbed onto the red flash on her left cheek and the flaming bulb of one nostril, put on sandals, and found a handbag into which she put a notebook and pen. Snatching a final glance in the
mirror she rescued lipstick from the depths of her bag, dabbed some on and then plunged out of the door.

She hadn’t expected the school hall to be quite so packed. Two swathes of seats had been set out with an aisle down the centre. The parents seemed to be treating it
almost as a prize-giving ceremony; there were frocks and even the occasional hat.

Audrey button-holed her as soon as she came in, handing her a piece of paper. ‘Here’s the questions I’d suggest.’

‘For Trothan?’ Maggie asked. ‘You know we’ve not had a chance to plan this? He’s been away.’

‘I know. He’s not been at school for a few days either.’ Audrey was twitchy, looking around, perhaps ticking off a mental list of people she had to speak to. ‘It’ll
be fine, just show the map and get him to answer the questions. Haven’t had a chance to look at it myself. He finished it while he’s been away apparently, but Mrs Burt’s uploaded
a scan onto the laptop so he can project it.’

‘The whole map?’

‘Yes, and he’s chosen some close-ups himself, I believe. Remember there’s a time limit, though!’ Audrey mimed a head being cut off.

‘Where is he?’ Maggie asked. But Audrey was already moving away.

Maggie looked around. At some invisible signal the congregation were starting to break from small chattering groups and settling into their seats. She sat down at the end of a row next to the
aisle, clutching her list of questions. A hush gathered as most of the assembly looked reverentially forwards. Audrey settled the Minister in a prime position and then sat down next to him in the
front row.

Maggie continued to search the hall, surprised by how many people she recognised. Debbie was on the other side of the aisle, gaudy and orange-tanned but carefully groomed; her husband next to
her, swarthy and surly-looking. Sally, Maggie’s landlady, was there with her two boys. There were a couple of people she recognised from the shop tills, and a short, stocky blonde woman she
couldn’t quite place in red trousers and a floral blouse.

She waved across at Graham, who was slumped with arms folded next to some of his ranger colleagues a few rows back, already looking bored. She supposed their work with the school must oblige
them to be present. Finally, further back than Graham, she saw Trothan, his face mostly obscured by hair, sitting next to Nora who had her hands in her lap, smiling straight ahead. It was a relief
to find they were here. Maggie knew they were back at home because she’d caught sight of Nora lumbering away from the shop towards her house earlier that day. The glimpse had also been
welcome. Maggie wished she had the guts to sit down next to Trothan, to show herself connected to him.