Sands of Time (16 page)

With shaking hands she unscrewed the fuel can and praying that it was indeed diesel and that it wouldn’t be too rusty, she began to pour. When it was empty she put the old can in the boot. She intended to refill it and return it but in the meantime she wanted to go home.

The phone was flashing a message when at last Ruth let herself into the flat. It was daylight, although it was still early, and sunbeams were warming the polished floor as she threw down her keys and punched the message button.

‘Ruth, darling, I am so sorry. It was a huge mistake. Not what you think. Please. We must talk. Pick up the phone.’

She shook her head sadly and walked across the room towards the bedroom. It was empty. The whole flat was empty. So, Murray was upset, but not so upset he had jumped in the Saab and driven after her. What had he done? Gone back to bed? Sat up discussing the wife who didn’t understand him? Chased after a furious girlfriend who hadn’t known he had a wife at all?

Exhausted, she sat down at the kitchen table and put her head in her hands. She was beyond tiredness. Beyond coherent thought. The phone rang but she ignored it. She heard the click and whirr of messages recorded and listed. She didn’t register if it was Murray’s voice or not. She didn’t care.

Eventually she climbed stiffly to her feet and walking into the bedroom she threw herself down on the bed. She slept at once. When at last she was awoken by the sound of a key in the door it was already late afternoon.

They made up the quarrel in the end. She tried to make herself believe his excuses, tried to see his meaningless dalliance through his eyes as her fault, tried to believe it wouldn’t happen again. But it was only three weeks later that she saw him with his arm around the woman’s shoulders. They were standing at the traffic lights in Hanover Street and gazing into one another’s eyes as though there was no one else in the whole world but them. No reconciliation could survive that look. There was no point in even trying.

As though acknowledging her change of attitude and recognising at last the depth of her hurt, Murray accepted a relocation to his firm’s New York office. There would not be another unexpected glimpse of his happiness with someone else. That at least he would spare her. Ruth did not ask if the new lady was going too and he did not volunteer the information but it seemed a certainty. The divorce was, if not amicable, at least civilised, and sheepishly, perhaps regretting what he had lost as much as looking forward to what he had gained, Murray gave her his half of what was, after all, her cottage so that it would not have to be sold as the flat would have to be sold. ‘Remember the happy times!’ he whispered with a wry shrug as he gave her his key. ‘Don’t let me have spoiled this for you as well.’

He hadn’t, but it took a long time. It was winter when she went back at last and there was a new man in her life. Their relationship was still delicate, gently explorative, a slow unfolding of possibilities and it had been several weeks before she suggested they go to the loch. On the way she wanted to drop off a can of diesel to say thank you to her midnight rescuer.

She had thought about him often, wondering what he had made of his strange nocturnal visitor; wondering why he had not spoken to her or acknowledged her thanks, and her telling of the story had been a way of letting Edward know about her pain, about the tenderness and vulnerability she felt each time she saw him; explaining her reticence about a relationship which was in so many ways just right.

‘I’m not Murray, Ruth,’ Edward said gently as yet again she withdrew suddenly into some safe centre deep inside herself. ‘I am not going to hurt you.’

She nodded. ‘I know. I want to believe you. I want to believe in love and trust, I really do. It’s just –’ She hesitated miserably. ‘It won’t happen. Not yet.’

And he smiled and kissed her gently, like a brother. ‘Give it time, love,’ he said. ‘That’s all you need. Time. I’ll wait. I’ll be there when you want me.’

She pored over the map, trying to decide where it was she had been on that fateful night. She traced with her finger her flight back along the main road, remembered where the car had flashed through the village and up the long slow hill beyond the brae and then she saw it, the right angle bend where she had in the dark driven straight on, doubling back unintentionally towards the sea. On the map she could see it was an unmade track which led onto the hill and then stopped; she could see the wood and the moors and the tiny black square which was the croft.

Edward was a good driver and she sat back, enjoying the way he handled his car, content to act as navigator, and tolerantly amused by his raised eyebrow when she missed the turning she wanted him to take. Murray would have fumed and criticised and argued impatiently. But then Murray wouldn’t have wanted to bother to return the diesel at all. Edward merely slowed the car and found a place to turn and they approached the corner again. Again they missed it. The track, if it was there at all, was obviously harder to see in daylight than it had been at night. They consulted the map, heads together, hands almost touching, then he engaged gear and once more slowly they edged towards the place. And there it was, scarcely more than a path, overgrown and muddy, heading into the centre of the wood.

‘I don’t see how I could have thought it was the main road!’ Ruth frowned as the car bumped over the ruts.

Edward shrugged. He threw her a quick smile. ‘You were upset and angry.’

‘But not blind drunk!’ She grimaced as his car grounded and the wheels slithered sideways. ‘Look, maybe this isn’t a good idea. I’m not sure it’s right at all.’

But it was right. Around the next bend they came to the place her car had finally stopped. She recognised the skyline, the hill, the two Scots pine. Leaving the car they walked along the track, Edward carrying the new can of diesel. He was laughing. ‘Remind me never to make you angry. The adrenaline which carried you up here thinking it was the main road must have been formidable!’ He put down the can and stretched his arms. ‘It’s worth it, though. The view is amazing.’ From the path they could see across the moor towards the sea and the islands beyond.

Ruth frowned. ‘There wasn’t a fence here before. There can’t have been.’

‘No?’ He glanced at her. ‘But this has been here for ages, Ruth. Look.’ It was rusty, threaded with dead bindweed and bracken, the posts in places rotted half through, hanging drunkenly from the very wire they were supposed to be supporting.

Ruth walked on. There was the rock where she had spotted the mysterious man. And there in the heather the sheep track they had followed. To reach it she had to climb through the wire.

‘I don’t understand it.’ She shook her head. ‘This doesn’t feel right. Everything is where I expect it to be. The track, the rocks, those trees, but there was no fence.’

‘Well, we’ll soon know. If the cottage is there.’ He put down the heavy can again and reached out to take her hand. The wind was cold and there was a scattering of sleet in the icy sunshine, but there was something else as well. ‘You look scared.’

‘I am scared.’ She was shivering. How Murray would have mocked her. ‘And I have just remembered. I was scared last time, too. Really scared. For no reason. Suddenly. It felt odd. Lonely. Threatening.’ She bit her lip. ‘I’m glad you’re here.’

‘So am I.’ For a moment their eyes met. He smiled. Picking up the can again he began to walk. ‘Come on. Over this rise and we’ll see if we’ve got the right place.’

The croft was there, but there were no white walls, no shaggy turf roof. A few piles of stones, a ruined gable end, the footings of the byre walls surrounded by nettles was all that remained of the place now.

Ruth stared, open mouthed. ‘I don’t understand.’

Edward glanced at her. He had put the can down again. ‘Where did you find the diesel?’ he asked quietly.

‘There. Round the back of the byre. There was an old tractor – ’

Leaving her standing where she was he pushed his way through the weeds and thistles.

‘Don’t bother, Edward. It’s the wrong place. It has to be,’ she called. Ramming her hands deep into her coat pockets she followed him.

The tractor was still there. What was left of it. A pile of rusting metal. And the remains of the other old can stood by the crumbling wall. She had picked it up and shaken, hadn’t she? A rowan tree was growing through it now.

‘No!’ She shook her head and backed away. ‘This is all wrong!’

‘There must be a simple explanation.’ Edward put his arm round her again. She was shaking. ‘I suspect you are right. There are probably several old cottages and crofts around here and they all look much the same. I’m sure they all had ancient tractors and they would all keep a bit of spare fuel, living so far from civilisation.’

She nodded. ‘You’re right.’

There had only been one track on the map. One tiny square to represent a dwelling, amid thousands of empty acres of moor and mountain.

‘If we went into the shop in the village on the main road, maybe they’d know,’ she said hopefully.

He nodded. ‘This must have been a beautiful place, but bleak in winter.’ It was his turn to shiver. ‘The ground is very poor. The tractor must have had a job doing anything at all.’

They stood for a few more minutes, staring round, then they began to retrace their steps towards the car.

The old lady in the post office stared at them over her spectacles. ‘You must mean Carn Breac.’ She shook her head. ‘That place has been empty since before the war. Michael Macdonald stayed on there a year or two after his parents died, then he upped and left. He settled in Canada I believe.’ She frowned, searching her memory. ‘If you hold on now, I’ve a photo here.’ She came out from behind the counter and disappeared for a moment into the sitting room which opened out of the shop. When she came back she was carrying an album. ‘Yes, see here.’ She opened it and stabbed at a faded photo with her finger. ‘That’s Michael, and Donald, his father, next to him.’ The sepia shadows showed some half-dozen men ranged against a wall, staring ahead at the camera. The one called Michael had a wooden rake in his hand.

Ruth felt her mouth go dry. For a moment she thought she was going to faint.

‘What do you want with him?’ The post mistress slowly closed the book.

Ruth couldn’t speak. It was Edward who said quietly, ‘We have something of his we want to return.’

‘I don’t know his address.’ She shook her head. ‘It’s so long ago. You could maybe ask the minister. He’s only been twenty years or so at the manse, but I think there are records there. If anyone knows where he went, it will be him.’

‘You think he might still be alive then?’ Edward probed gently.

She shrugged. ‘I’ve no idea.’

The minister knew the family. Michael James Macdonald had died in Prince George, British Columbia on 24th July that year, at the age of eighty-nine. It was the day Ruth had seen him leaning on a rock by the croft where he had been born.

Edward poured them both a glass of wine and joined her by the fire in the cottage by the loch. ‘Are you OK now?’

She nodded. ‘I still can’t believe I’ve seen a ghost!’

‘You’re a lucky lady. Not only to see one, but to be rescued by him.’

She sipped the wine. ‘How is it that the diesel worked? You’d think it would have gone off. Rusted. Evaporated. Something.’

He stared into the depths of his glass. ‘The other can had disintegrated completely.’

‘Perhaps a farmer had left it there recently?’ She looked at him hopefully.

He smiled. ‘Perhaps. I don’t think you are ever going to know the answer to that one.’

‘And, if it was him, why did he appear as a young man and not the age he was?’

‘We can’t answer that either.’ He leaned back and put his arm round her shoulders. ‘One thing you can be sure of though. He must have loved that place. It must have been very hard to leave it forever. Perhaps he promised himself he would go back one day.’

‘At least he had a happy life, and a wonderful marriage.’ The minister had told them that. She didn’t realise how wistful the words sounded until they were out of her mouth.

Edward didn’t answer. He was staring into the fire.

‘Have you ever been married?’ She realised with a shock she had never even asked him.

He shook his head. ‘Nearly. We thought better of it. Just as well as we haven’t seen each other for five years. Since then I haven’t come close.’

‘Oh.’ Her voice was bleak.

‘Until now.’ He hesitated. ‘This is going to sound very corny, but when you find something precious you need to hang on to it otherwise you are going to regret it all your life. Our relationship – Sarah’s and mine – just wasn’t that precious.’ Once again he paused. ‘Why did you and Murray end yours so quickly?’

She thought for a long time. ‘I suppose I wasn’t that precious to him. Not in your sense of the word. And perhaps –’ She paused thoughtfully. ‘Perhaps after all he wasn’t that precious to me. I gave him a second chance. I wasn’t prepared to give him a third.’ She shrugged. ‘That doesn’t show me in a very good light.’

‘It shows you as a realist. And your Michael Macdonald. Presumably he was as well. He knew the croft couldn’t sustain him. In his eyes he had no choice.’

She stood up and went to sit on the floor by the fire. ‘It’s a sad little story.’

‘No.’ He followed her. Kneeling down he reached over and kissed her gently. ‘It’s actually a wonderful story. Why are we letting it make us sad? It had a happy ending. He came home. And he helped a damsel in distress. He made choices, but they seem to have been the right choices. After all he had children and grandchildren and even great-grandchildren to succeed him. No doubt one day they will come home and stand where you stood and stare at the tiny croft which is their heritage. But I wonder if they will see him as you did?’ He raised his glass. ‘Let’s drink to his memory. And to our future.’ He grinned. ‘Who knows, maybe I’ll come and haunt this place when I’m eighty-nine!’