The Sea House: A Novel (16 page)

We met up with Lachlan down at An t’Obbe sound. He directed us to a wooden boat scraping up and down against the seaweed-smeared posts of the harbour jetty. It looked like a scaled-up wooden toy. Red-and-pink buoys hung in bunches from the sides like balloons. Lachlan gave us all life vests, mine just about fastening round the bump, then we set out in the blazing mid-morning sun.

The water of the sound was shallow and as clear as air. You could look down and see little white crabs stirring up minute clouds of white sand as they levitated sideways. Shoals of tiny grey fish darted through the seaweed that frilled through the surface of the water like the tops of small, ochre trees.

The drone of the engine changed and we began to pull further away from land: the sea became opaque and dark, full of shadows, unknowable.

As we got out to the first of the rocky islets, we were surprised to see dappled boulders slide into the sea with a splash; the domed heads of seals appeared out of the water behind us, their round, melancholy eyes staring at us as the boat carried on pulling away.

Out of nowhere, a cold wind got up. We were now out on the open water, every horizon nothing but sky. The boat began to skip and jump, smacking into the waves. The sea had turned dark grey, the darker shadows moving below us. I felt an odd kind of vertigo, dizzily aware of the tall miles of insubstantial water beneath us, where a body could sink down without a trace.

In front of us, a huge black cloud was cranking up and filling the sky.

‘Don’t you worry about that,’ said Lachlan when I pointed it out. ‘The worst of the weather’s not going to be heading this way.’ He was shouting above the noise of the engine and the slap of the boat on the water, above the little wail of Leaf singing something.

‘But are you sure it’s safe to carry on?’ I shouted back.

‘You can never be sure,’ he yelled. ‘But if you’ve brought your waterproofs, you’ll be just fine in this.’

I thought again about the smallness of a body against the tonnage of the sea. The spiteful wind was whipping hair across my eyes. I felt my palms sliding wetly against the wooden seat. Something was wrong. Something was going to go wrong. I put a protective arm across my stomach.

‘Michael, we need to turn back,’ I yelled.

‘How much further?’ Michael called out to Lachlan.

‘Twenty minutes and we’re there.’

The water slopped over the side and soaked my arm. I couldn’t believe no one else was worried. Every nerve was now on full alert, my heart skittering, my head buzzing. Every fibre in my body knew that we had to get back. No alternative.

Michael moved across the boat to sit next to me. He was stooping towards me, a thin man, donnish and reasonable, talking earnestly. It was going to be fine.

The buzzing in my head was drowning out his words. I couldn’t believe he was willing to take such a risk. I heard, ‘… another half hour, so no point going back now…’

‘Listen to me—’

I think I must have lost it then. I couldn’t breathe. I felt my arms flailing, catching his face with my flying hands. Someone was screaming words. I saw Jamie stand up, moving towards us. I stopped. Looked at Michael half cowering against the open water.

No sound but the drone of the engine as all other eyes slid away from us.

Michael sat straight, holding very still. Then he got up and made his way to the cabin, went in to speak to Lachlan.

Lachlan threw the motor into a higher gear and the boat turned. No one was speaking; Jamie was looking out to sea and whistling.

The twenty minutes that it took us to get back to An t’Obbe were unbearable. I willed the boat back to land, cold and sticky with sweat, exhausted.

I was so very glad to scramble out. The solid, unmoving ground hit like a shockwave, all my senses still pitching and tossing.

‘Sorry about that,’ I heard Michael mutter as he took Leaf’s hand to help her off the boat.

I unclasped the life jacket and slid it off, letting air flow down my back. I sat down with a thump on a bollard at the harbourside, the wind whipping my cagoule.

Last time hadn’t been the last time then.

I thought back to the dark afternoon we saw the Sea House for the first time together.

We bought the house in a rush. I couldn’t get time off from the lab work at such short notice so Michael had to go up and bid for the house at auction by himself. So on the day we landed at Tarbert harbour, I’d only ever seen the house in photographs.

It was twilight as we drove down towards the west coast, a cold half-light like a long eclipse. The view was of mile after mile of brown turf, matted and shrunk over the rocky landscape like a threadbare carpet; but mostly it was a view of rocks, shouldering their way out of the ground at every point. The sky was grey. The lochs were grey.

‘Bit of an acquired taste, the land on this side, but wait till you see the view from the house,’ Michael said after a long silence.

A mist was starting to come down, a sinking cloud sealing off the tops of the hills. By the time we got to the Sea House, it was almost dark. You could just about make out the shape of the building against the paler dark of the sea and the sand.

I got the torches from the car. Two little posts were standing in the middle of nowhere where there must once have been a gate. A rough path left us stumbling up and down hummocks in the faint torchlight.

I’d seen pictures of the house. I’d read the reports. I thought I knew what to expect. The windows were blank and boarded up. A strong, fusty smell came off the place. Inside, I shone my torch around. An old sideboard covered in plaster debris; rows of empty jars streaked with dirt along shelves; a sink hanging off one wall.

Michael flicked a light switch, but of course the electricity was off. I found myself trying not to breathe in the rotting stench.

‘I know it’s hard to picture it now,’ Michael was saying, ‘but…’

A scattering sound overhead. He ran the pale light of his torch over the cracked ceiling.

‘Mice,’ said Michael.

Scratchy nails were chasing back and forth after something. I could feel hairs rising on my scalp.

‘Too big.’

The noise stopped.

‘Bet it’s rats squatting in the roof, cheeky things,’ he said.

The noise started up again, louder, frantic this time.

But I was already struggling with the front door bolts. I burst out into the darkness. Stood breathing in the cold, damp air. We’d made a mistake. A horrible mistake. I heard Michael following. He moved in close and draped his long arm round my shoulders. My heart was starting to slow down, but my lungs felt raw and strained.

‘Ruth, it’ll be fine. We’ll put down traps.’

‘I can’t believe I trusted you on this. We can’t live here.’

‘Come on, Ruth. I’ll sort it out. I promise. At least finish looking round.’

I felt a slight pressure from his arm against my back, steering us back inside. Suddenly, I was struggling free of his hold, beating him off with a mad swimming movement, like someone going under for the last time. I felt the back of my hand hit his chin.

He put his hand to his mouth, his eyes wide with surprise. He touched his tongue, wincing. A patch of dark on his fingers. He’d bitten down on his tongue with the blow.

‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry,’ I said, hunting for a clean tissue. I couldn’t believe what I’d done.

He held himself very still for a moment. Then he spoke very calmly, slowly. ‘Okay. It’s been too much. The journey and everything. We’ll go to the bed and breakfast. Get something to eat and sort out what we’re going to do about this tomorrow.’

We walked back to the car, following the jagged circles of torchlight sliding up and down the hummocks. Why couldn’t I stay calm, discuss things like an adult instead of behaving like some kid throwing a tantrum? Fits of panic would flare up with a will of their own, out of nowhere. Each time I was sure I’d never be so stupid again.

But just now it had happened again. I was staring at the water, at the brown sea scum around a tangle of litter and a dead bird washed up against the An t’Obbe jetty. I was beginning to see something I didn’t want to look at.

*   *   *

When we got back to the house, cold and exhausted by the boat trip, Michael and I carried on sitting in the van in silence.

I waited for Michael to speak, afraid of what he was going to say.

What do you have to do to make someone give up on you?

Michael shuffled in his seat and turned to face me.

‘So what happened out there?’

‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have lost it like that, but I just knew. Something was going to happen. Michael, it wasn’t safe.’

‘But it was safe. What did you think was going to happen, for goodness’ sake? Lachlan’s been sailing for forty years.’

‘Michael, I want you to cancel the boat.’

He didn’t answer for a while.

He took my hand in his. His hand felt clammy, trembling and nervy. ‘I know it can’t be easy for you out on the water, with your mum and everything, but…’

I pulled away. ‘It isn’t that. It’s just … I don’t know what’s happening. I get so scared by everything right now. Scared that something’s going to happen to the baby. Scared that once the baby comes, I won’t know what to do. I don’t want to be like this, Michael. I can’t even do a simple thing like take a boat trip. I don’t know why I think I can bring up a kid. I just don’t…’

‘Shh.’ He sighed and enveloped me in the familiar warmth of his Shetland jumper. ‘It’s okay to feel scared. Being parents, it’s huge. I know I’m terrified.’

I could smell the anxious sweat from his armpit. I pulled back and looked at him. His face was white and shadowy with fatigue.

‘If you talked to someone, Ruth. Maybe talked to a doctor?’

‘No.’

He let his head fall back against the headrest. I heard a small thump.

I forced myself to say, ‘Look, maybe you should go ahead with the boat. Run it with Jamie. It’ll just be one of those things that we don’t share. But promise me, promise, Michael, that you’ll never ever take our kid out on that thing.’

‘Ruth, I can’t promise that.’

We stared through the windscreen at the blank side of the house.

‘Why do you stay with me, Michael?’

‘Oh, Ruth, do you honestly think that if there was any real risk, any chance that I could lose you, I’d have let you set foot on that boat today?’

I reached over, stroked back some strands of hair that were clinging stickily to his forehead, and he let his eyes close for a moment.

*   *   *

Back in the house, he went into the sea room to catch the end of the news. As I walked past with my mug of tea, I saw him through the doorway. He looked defeated, sprawled out on the sofa in front of the expanse of pine flooring, the new varnish still giving off its plasticky smell. I headed upstairs to finish off the last of the lizard drawings.

With so much going on, I was very behind and the publisher was starting to make polite enquiries about when he might be able to get hold of his illustrations.

The bedroom seemed diminished and underlit as I sat down at the desk. I couldn’t concentrate, an unsettled feeling looming behind my shoulder, the faint but insistent sound of the TV downstairs.

I was working from textbooks now that the dissection drawings were finished. I spread the large reference book open on the desk with a slight thwack. There was an immediate scuffle from the lizard tank. I sighed. One lizard still remained in the tank, masquerading as a pet, scuttling away in nervous terror each time anyone approached the glass. I’d been hoping it would die.

I carried on with the drawing, my hand mapping out the skeletal structure, but my mind was elsewhere. Hot shame was creeping in as I thought about the boat trip again, how I’d lashed out at Michael.

The last time I’d hurt Michael hadn’t been the last time then. But I’d promised myself. And what if it had been a child standing there?

The baby kicked, the small reverberations spreading and then stilling within its tightly bound world. This baby was getting bigger. Soon I’d have to buy some special maternity clothes instead of wearing Michael’s trousers rolled up at the bottom, his big shirts and jumpers tenting over the bump.

I stared through the glass wall of the tank at the mess of droppings mixed in with the cotton wool and wood shavings. Something was bothering me at the back of my mind. I got up and peered down into the tank, the acrid smell of chrysalises and keratinised scales filling my nose. Poor, dry little lizard: a whole life lived in terror; his nose always flaring for the scent of a predator, toe pads alert to the vibrations of a footfall, perpetually tensed to flee.

I narrowed my eyes, reminded of all the things I’d learned about reptile biology. How there’s a reptile brain still there at the base of the human cortex. Our history of evolution is all there in the body, patterned into the human blueprint: that useless appendix; the stub of a tail at the base of our spine; so many obsolete reminders of our ancestors.

But there’s nothing obsolete about our lizard brain. We kept our lizard brain precisely because it’s so successful, a tiny guardian barring the gateway to death; a knot of nerves wired directly into our sense of smell, ready in a split second to jerk the limbs into action and make sure we live through one more day. And mostly we don’t hear from that little reptile. Mostly he sleeps, coiled up at the base of the cortex, only called up for grave and rare emergencies; stirred up by the sharp smell of death – by the smell of pond water, the oily sheen glinting on the canal, Mum’s white body rising up, the water sliding off in planes of light, again and again.

But what if you were someone with death seared into your mind? What if you had got so close to death, its breath on your face, that the old lizard brain had woken up permanently? And what if it never stopped running around in your head, never slept, jerking your hands faster than thought, faster than reason?

It began to make horrible sense. I’d always been a nervy person, screaming at the smallest bang, jumping a mile at a slammed door, wakeful long into the night, but recently – perhaps because I knew I had another small life to take care of – it had all got so much worse. These days I was afraid of the dark, afraid of the water, afraid of the house I lived in; reptile-eyed and running around in a panic; and now lashing out at Michael.