The Woman Who Walked Into the Sea (8 page)

‘How many nights did you say?’ he barked at Violet, then at the woman: ‘Alexandra, for goodness sake I can do that.’

‘I’m not sure,’ Violet replied. ‘It depends . . .’

Alexandra ignored him and carried on shuffling papers.

Matt looked from one to the other with a perplexed frown as though having to deal with two women at the same time was too much of an imposition.

‘Darling,’ he addressed Alexandra, ‘why don’t you sort out this and let me do that?’

Alexandra gave her husband an exasperated look and surrendered the desk with parting shots about him never being able to find anything and always surrounded by chaos.

‘I’m sorry,’ she directed at Violet, who was still standing just inside the door. ‘As you can see, we are in a bit of a muddle.’ Violet assumed the ‘we’ referred to Matt, because Alexandra gave the impression of being anything but disorganised. She wore a white shirt and black jeans with a thin belt, and she walked the length of the room with a click of heels that seemed to indicate purpose. ‘Hello, I’m Alexandra, Mrs Hamilton,’ she said. She rolled her eyes at Violet, inviting feminine collusion at the hopelessness of men.

‘I just wanted to know,’ Violet said, ‘whether you rent Orasaigh Cottage by the day and how much you charge?’

Alexandra was about to answer when an eruption of complaint from her husband distracted her. ‘Not those, Matt,’ she said, ‘I’ve already hunted through those.’ He responded with a frustrated growl. She turned back to Violet. ‘Well, we don’t really have a day rate; didn’t Matt . . . my husband . . . explain that to you when you rang this morning?’

‘No, he didn’t. He appeared to have other things on his mind once he’d told me how to get here.’

‘Yes, he can be rather short on the telephone.’ She looked apologetic, pressing her lips together.

‘You were saying you don’t have a day rate . . .’

‘Normally we only let it out for a week or more.’

The implication hovered between them until Violet said, ‘Well your husband could have told me that on the phone, couldn’t he?’

An exclamation came from the desk and once again Alexandra’s attention drifted. ‘Don’t say you’ve found it?’

‘No thanks to you,’ he answered and left the room flicking over the stapled pages of a document. When quiet had been restored, Alexandra said, ‘Well, there isn’t a tenant at the moment so I don’t see why we shouldn’t let it for a day or two, however long you want really, since it isn’t booked next week either.’

She accompanied the offer with an emollient smile. ‘How does £50 a day sound or,’ she paused, ‘in view of everything, why don’t we say £40?’

Three days would be good, Violet replied. While she peeled off six of Mr Anwar’s £20 notes, she said, ‘A friend of my mother’s used to stay in the cottage. It was a long time ago, you probably wouldn’t remember her.’

‘Lots
of people have stayed there. . . .’ Alexandra searched a wire basket
on the table beside her. ‘It’s a popular cottage.
. . . Ah, here it is.’ She brandished a note-book and
asked Violet for her name, address and mobile phone number
.

Violet gave her details and handed over the rent money. ‘My mother’s friend,’ she said, ‘was called Megan Bates.’

‘Megan?’ Alexandra said, tucking the money into the notebook and
returning it to the wire tray. ‘Megan Bates.’ She repeated
the name and shook her head. ‘No, but as I
say so many people pass through.’ She selected a set
of keys from a small tin that seemed to be
full of them. ‘Yellow for Orasaigh,’ she said, referring to
the coloured tag and handed it to Violet. ‘And you
’ll need these . . .’ She picked up two sheets of paper
from the wire tray. ‘The house rules, the ‘dos and
don’ts’ as well as some useful numbers,’ she said
handing over the first sheet. ‘And most important of all
 . . .’ She passed over the second. ‘The tide times.’

Violet thanked her and asked if the cottage had recently been done up. ‘I had a look through the front windows and it looked smart inside.’

‘My mother had the place gutted,’ Alexandra replied, ‘when my step-father died six years ago.’

‘Was the furniture replaced?’

‘Oh everything was chucked out as far as I can remember.’

Violet held up the keys, said ‘thanks’ and made for the door, before turning. ‘I don’t suppose you know Duncan Boyd?’

‘Yes,’ Alexandra looked puzzled. ‘Why?’

‘Yes, of course you would.’ Violet made it sound as though she had made a silly mistake. ‘I suppose you’ve been neighbours for years.’

‘Yes. He was here when I first came to Brae as a child.’

‘How long ago was that?’

‘Oh, I don’t know, must be thirty-five years . . .’ She still had the puzzled expression.

‘You must have been very young.’

‘I was six, but why did you ask about Duncan Boyd?’

‘Oh it’s just that he remembers her, Megan Bates I mean. By the way he reacted to hearing her name, I think he remembers her quite well.’ Violet paused. ‘I’m surprised you don’t since you would have been, what, fourteen or fifteen, when she lived at Orasaigh Cottage?’

With that Violet went out. She walked slowly giving Alexandra the opportunity to come after her, to remember Megan too. Where the drive led into a copse of yew and holly, Violet looked back over her shoulder. Mrs Hamilton was watching her through the estate office window. They regarded each other for a moment, neither quite sure what the other was thinking.

The skull was large with a deep hollow above the slope to its beaked jaw. Cal had found it among a pile of recovered bones which Duncan Boyd had left in a disused stable. Coming across it Cal wondered at first if a horse had died of neglect and its broken skeleton was all that remained. Then, he noticed the skulls – three of them – and recognised two as porpoises. He’d found similar examples on his own beach-combing forays. The remaining skull was the one that interested him. He hadn’t seen anything like it before but he had read about a creature whose description seemed to match the bony structure. Not only the hollow, but the size of the head – 70-80cms from point of beak to the back – and, most of all, the two cylindrical teeth which were still embedded in the bottom jaw, near the tip. He was more or less certain it was the skull of a Cuvier’s, an elusive type of beaked whale which inhabited deep water and dived for squid. This detail had lodged in his memory because he had watched a YouTube clip of American scientists opening up a beached and dead Cuvier’s and removing from its stomach twenty-two carrier bags. Apparently the bags – the way they hung in the water, how light played on them – confused the whales and they mistook them for their staple food.

Cal held the skull in both hands and wondered if that was how this one met its fate too. Thinking Duncan might be interested, he carried it to where he’d left another piece of flotsam which caught his attention. It was a cylinder of wood, more than a metre long, a pole perhaps or a section of mast, and it had been colonised by goose barnacles. Cal had come across barnacles of this type before but never in such concentration on a single object. There were so many than none of the pole was visible, except at one end. The wood there was still saturated, indicating recent recovery from the beach. He thought Duncan might like to know it could have floated a considerable distance before ending its journey at South Bay. Given the sheer number of barnacles it had certainly been at sea for some time. He put the skull down beside the pole as a post van appeared in the yard driven by a middle-aged woman with a white face and curly red hair turning grey at the temples. She drove up to Cal and asked through her open window, ‘Is he about?’

‘Duncan?’ Cal asked, shaking his head. ‘He’s on the beach.’

‘Would you sign for these then?’ The postwoman retrieved four letters from the passenger seat and followed them with a pad and pen for Cal’s signature. ‘One for each letter if you don’t mind,’ she added.

Cal examined the envelopes: each was addressed to Duncan Boyd and each had ‘Final Warning’ stamped in red on it. He screwed up his face in apology and handed them back. ‘Don’t know what I’d be signing for.’

She sighed. ‘I’ll just have to bring them back tomorrow. As likely as not there’ll be a couple more by then.’

‘Sorry I can’t help,’ Cal said.

‘Someone’s got to.’ A frown of concern wrinkled her brow. ‘Have a look in there.’ She nodded towards a lean-to, its door closed. ‘Someone’s got to,’ she said again with more emphasis before turning and driving away.

Cal watched the van go, glanced at the closed door and decided to have a quick look. It opened half-way before sticking. He pushed with his shoulder and it gave some more. After going inside, he found himself looking at another pile – this time of paper. The difference was it hadn’t been collected from the beach. It was a mound of letters and packages of different shapes and sizes. There were so many that Cal wondered if this was where Duncan routinely dumped his post. The notion took further hold when Cal noticed some envelopes like the ones he had handed back to the postwoman. They bore the same blood-red warnings.

Cal picked up a few of them. They hadn’t been opened but others on the mound had. Cal examined the closest to him, scanning a few lines before straying to the next letter. Either they were about the windfarm, or about Duncan being in breach of environmental or building safety regulations of one kind or another. The common denominator, as far as Cal could tell from his fleeting sample, was a threatening tone warning of legal or other enforcement action. One letter which impressed itself particularly on Cal was from lawyers acting for BRC. It threatened compulsory purchase and compensation for Duncan of ‘a nominal sum considering our client’s potential liabilities arising from your reckless negligence of many years’. The only response by Duncan that could prevent ‘imminent’ court proceedings would be ‘immediate and unconditional acceptance of our clients’ existing offer to purchase Boyd’s Farm in its entirety’.

Three weeks had passed since the letter had been written and, presumably, ignored by Duncan.

Muttering ‘bastards’ Cal went out into the yard. He collected the whale skull and the barnacle-encrusted pole and lugged them to the barn where the Neptune Scroll was hanging. He put them by the table on which Duncan displayed his prized finds and tore a sheet from the small notebook he kept in his pocket. He wrote about Cuvier’s, telling Duncan how rare it was to find a beaked whale skull like that, and also about the barnacles, speculating how they might even have travelled from the tropics on the North Atlantic Current. He thought about adding something about the windfarm, an indication of his outrage, but instead asked Duncan to ring him.

I’m
leaving my phone number in case you’ve mislaid it
.

While he was writing he prepared a speech to deliver when Duncan contacted him, how he was right to stand firm against BRC, against big business extending its realm over the sea, in this case 362 square kilometres, using the cover of global warming, the false promise of jobs and an over-promoted technology to fool people into allowing the oceans to be industrialised. When Cal turned round to leave, Duncan was standing in the doorway. His expression was morose, his skin grey, eyes cloudy. He seemed drained of life.

The speech stayed unsaid. Thinking now that too many people were telling Duncan what to do, Cal thanked him instead for letting him look around.

Duncan neither reacted nor spoke.

‘I’ve left you a note about these…’ Cal indicated the skull and the encrusted pole. Then he said, ‘Look, I know people who might help you – marine scientists, guys I studied with, experts on offshore windfarms, how they disrupt currents and so on. They could raise objections, delay things until BRC loses patience and walks away.’

Duncan didn’t even blink. It felt to Cal as if his offer had also been consigned, unopened, to a dump, just like all those threatening letters. ‘Of course, it’s up to you,’ he added, wishing he’d said nothing. ‘I’ll be around for a few days if you change your mind.’

* * *

Violet wandered from room to room, imagining the daily routine of Megan Bates’s life.

Did she rise early? Did she make coffee while running a bath? Was it her habit to bathe in the morning? Did she listen to the radio? Did she read? On which side of the fireplace in the sitting room did she sit? Did she light the fire? Did she cook? Was she tidy? Did she talk to herself? Did she go to bed early or late? Was she in love?

Orasaigh cottage, Violet discovered, was like a sullen stranger. It gave nothing of its past away. The effect was demoralising. Within an hour of turning the key on the front door and entering the porch in high excitement, she had retreated to the kitchen and was standing with her back to the sink, her jaw locked in disappointment. The house was empty of personality. Nothing of her mother remained and for a brief mad moment brought on by distress Violet saw the span of the last twenty-six years, starting with her birth, as a continuing and deliberate conspiracy. It began with a calculated act: her mother walking across a beach and abandoning her daughter forever. It continued with the sea refusing to give up her body. Another part of the plot had taken place in this cottage where Violet was standing: anything which might hold her mother’s memory had been stripped from it and still the conspiracy continued. Duncan Boyd had shut his ears to the sound of her name. Alexandra Hamilton said she hadn’t even heard of her.

Later
, when she was calmer, Violet understood the hurt she felt
was that of a child who yearns for a sighting
of her mother, even if she has to make do
with the dim memory of someone who met her long
ago. She longed to know how she
was
, whether she
had been extrovert or introvert, whether she’d been kind
, whether she’d laughed loudly or softly. The answer to
any one of these Violet would treasure, and once she
had knowledge of it she would look for it in
herself and then in her own daughter Anna.