Call of the Undertow (25 page)

Her chewing slowed. He was leaning in slightly and she could smell something on him. Was it vanilla? He looked like one of those old TV adverts for pipe tobacco. Redolent of handsome
homeliness.

‘They obviously really want you,’ he said.

‘Can I bathe like she did too?’

‘It’s not ass’s milk then, in the Pentland Firth?’

She circled the air with a finger as she swallowed another mouthful. ‘Jellyfish,’ she said. ‘You don’t get jellyfish in ass’s milk, do you?’

He sat back in his seat as if satisfied, rubbed his hands together.

She was surprised how the thought of the place now, the sense of her great distance from it, brought a line of geese keening across a wide-open sky, and a surge from within as if she wished to
rise skywards and join them.

She finished chewing.

Richard picked up the wine bottle, tipped it above her glass and raised an eyebrow in enquiry.

She got back on the train at Oxford and started the fifteen hour journey north, watching the old, familiar built-up places drop away and hours later recognising some of the
towns she’d driven through six months before. Invergordon, Golspie, Brora. The trainline looped way inland across dark moorland, passing rowans brilliant with berries, and the shadows of deer
flitting across bog before she regained the coast at Thurso and the top eastern corner of Britain.

She moved into the rented cottage Graham had helped her find, a little north-east of Dunnet Bay on the north side of the peninsula – a landowner he knew; a long lease. And she took her car
to Murdo MacDonald in Quarrytown. He wiped oily hands on a rag after the MOT and declared the car ‘not a bad wee banger’ that would do her another year or two.

Geese arrowed in on their journeys south, waking her with their nightly choruses. She worked on the Pacific Atlas and made phone calls to Carol and Richard, even Helen sometimes. The frosts
started and the occasional trees bronzed and then bared themselves; the moors rang out a burnished red with dying blaeberry bushes. The winds began again, merciless and cutting. On the sand-flats
lugworms built their castles and birds arrived strutting from the Arctic – purple sandpiper and turnstone – bringing winter in their feathers.

With the shrinking days and the solstice, the great hinge of the year, her life contracted further to fireside, drawn curtains, the phone. A new work project and books. The dome of rising dough.
It seemed a hibernation, almost an ending, curling up cat-like inside herself, protecting vital organs; her extremities no longer of concern.

But then in February there was suddenly light again, sharp and transparent, and the birds gathered such volume at dawn that she could no longer sleep through it. Graham came grinning to the
door, saying Mary and he would be moving in nearby. Now he was going to be a father, the commute from Helmsdale was no longer practical. She visited them with a bottle of wine some evenings and
Graham stopped smoking, even outside. The baby was due in June, he told her with a rare sparkle in his eyes. A midsummer bairn, he said, but not to go expecting a faery child or anything.

Hazel catkins dangled and sea thrift burst in miniature pink mountains all over the headlands. On some days there was warmth in the sun. Eggs would soon be laid. And when Maggie went to see the
guillemots making ready on the cliffs at Dunnet Head, they seemed almost like old friends.

It was early April, not long after the return of the wheatear from Africa, the tiny bird whose ‘chick-chack’ made Maggie look up just in time to see a white flash
of rump disappear over a dyke. She and her visitors were scrambling around on the rocks and crumbled wall that cut off the entrance to Ham Bay, making of it a tiny harbour. It was a sunny day and
fresh enough to keep jumpers on. Great pillars of cloud were building over the Pentland Firth, frothy and white and stacked up so as to remind one of the height of the Earth’s atmosphere. The
green land around Dunnet Head was re-asserting itself out of winter’s coarse yellow pallor.

Carol spread out a rug on the dry rocks and unpacked boiled eggs, slices of buttered bread, tomatoes, sausage rolls. She’d brought an enormous flask of tea which was strong and milky,
searing with steam as she poured it into two mugs.

‘Here.’ She held out one to Maggie, who took it but continued to stand, looking out across the water with binoculars around her neck.

‘Jamie. Fran,’ Carol called the children who were crouched over a rock pool, poking something with a stick. Fran’s blonde hair was still held in the two plaits Maggie had put
in for her that morning.

‘This is how I used to keep the wind from stealing my hair on a day like this,’ she’d said, finishing each plait with the purple toggle Fran had insisted on.

The child had looked up at her, concerned, and said, ‘Did the wind steal all your hair?’

‘Only temporarily,’ said Maggie.

‘She used to have lovely long hair,’ Carol said. ‘Remember? When she used to come and stay with us?’

Fran frowned. ‘Maybe.’

‘I’m growing it a wee bit again,’ Maggie said.

‘Oh,’ Fran had said.

‘Do you two want orange juice?’ Carol asked the children, taking out cardboard cartons. They lifted their heads from the pool and scampered over, barefoot, sitting cross-legged on
the rug.

‘Have you seen any yet?’ Jamie asked Maggie. The bay was well known for its grey seal colony.

‘Not yet. You have to be patient.’

‘But what if they don’t come today?’

Carol and the children would need to get packed, ready to leave first thing the next day.

‘There’s always the summer holidays when you’ll come and visit me again.’

Jamie brightened.

She pointed out shags hanging their wings out to dry on one of the skerries where the bay’s waist opened back out into the Pentland Firth. ‘Scarfies,’ she said,
‘that’s what they’re called here.’

Each of the children looked at them through the binoculars.

Fran was looking at the clear water, turquoise-coloured where it washed in above the pale sand. ‘Can we swim here?’

‘No,’ snapped Carol. ‘Keep away from the water. It’s very deep and dangerous.’

Maggie heard the implicit criticism. She shouldn’t have brought the children here. A sandy beach would have been much more relaxing.

‘I doubt you’d enjoy it,’ said Maggie. ‘It’s not exactly warm. And...’ She gathered her hands into claws and launched them at the children, snapping them open
and shut. ‘There’s crabs,’ she said as Jamie sniggered slightly and Fran squealed.

Maggie looked across the tiny bay, back inland. A high grassy bank on the far shore was always kept mown by the people of the house opposite; a good vantage point for watching wildlife. Maggie
saw that someone was up on the path now, facing the sea. She looked at the figure through binoculars, starting from the feet and drawing her gaze upwards. As she half expected, the person’s
head was covered in close amber-blonde curls, and the woman stared down into the water of the bay. She’d seen little of Nora over the winter, or even since the memorial service for Trothan,
probably because she’d moved further away from the village.

Fran tugged at Maggie’s arm from behind her. She was looking in the opposite direction, pulling her towards something. ‘Is that a dog in the water?’

‘Look, there’s two.’ It was Jamie now, sounding excited.

‘It’s a young one. It’s a young one. Oh, look, Auntie Maggie.’

Maggie swung around and saw two grey heads, one large, one smaller, risen on curious, long necks from the water. She saw their wide round eyes and flaring nostrils and put the binoculars in
front of Fran’s eyes, adjusting for size.

Carol was getting up from the rug now and Jamie clamouring for a shot with the binoculars.

‘It turned and looked at me.’ Fran jumped up and down. ‘Mum. The seal looked at me.’

‘Isn’t that another one?’ Carol pointed to the rocks and a large grey shape flopping its way awkwardly across boulders. It slipped into the sea, transforming itself, pouring
like silk. It dived, showing a silent round of oily back before surfacing again alongside the other two. The seals made sudden, splashy dives and then rapidly resurfaced as if they’d been
dancing underwater.

‘Listen,’ Maggie said.

They all strained in the direction she indicated towards a low platform of rocks at the base of a stack. And heard it. A longing, a melancholy call.

‘Is he singing?’ Fran threw her arms around Maggie’s waist and looked up at her.

‘Yes, love. He’s singing,’ and she played with the tail of Fran’s plait as she gazed out to where the song came from.

Nora was still up on the path, listening and watching too. She and Maggie turned a little towards each other and Nora’s free hand parted from her side, rose and opened slowly, into a high,
wide wave. She held her hand there for several seconds, the fingers dark against the pale sky, parting wide so that light filled their negatives.

The sisters returned the wave, Maggie holding it for a little longer, opening her hand in the same way as if to meet and match the other woman’s.

Acknowledgements

I’d like to thank Hamish Ashcroft for inspiring me with his astonishing map-drawing skills when he was six years old. Apologies to the people of Castletown and Dunnet Bay
whose marvellous location and stories I’ve inhabited with invented characters.

For help with the development of the novel I’m grateful to the Scottish Book Trust’s mentoring scheme and the support of Caitrin Armstrong, Jan Rutherford and my excellent mentor
Andrew Crumey. Early readers Sarah Salway, Elspeth Mackay and Phil Horey gave me invaluable feedback, and my agent Jenny Brown has been steadfast in her encouragement and deserves a medal for
patience. To my hosts and fellow writers at the Château de Lavigny writers’ residence in September 2012 I owe the courage to press the ‘send’ button.

For technical advice on map history and map-making, thanks are due to Carolyn Anderson, and to Anne Mahon and Vaila Donnachie of HarperCollins Publishers, particularly the latter for her careful
reading of a draft. For help on wildlife matters thanks go to Kenny Taylor, Highland Council Ranger Paul Castle, and Helen McLachlan of WWF Scotland. ‘PC Pedro’ knows who he is and was
of great assistance as was Jane Bechtel, Humanist Celebrant. Any factual errors are my own.

To the good people of Freight Books – a grand salute for your belief in this work and for all your publishing skills. For her sensitive and creative editing, thanks go to Elizabeth
Reeder.

Finally, of the many people who have encouraged me, the last mention must go to Gavin Wallace who was a wonderful supporter of writers and writing through his positions at the Scottish Arts
Council and Creative Scotland and is greatly missed.