Stormy Petrel (10 page)

‘Binding on me, that is,' said Neil, ‘though the buyer, once he sees the property, may still withdraw.'

‘So there's still a chance you could keep it?'

He shook his head. ‘Not really. How could I? Even if I didn't have a job that keeps me at the other end of the country for most of the year, this sort of place couldn't provide a living. Originally the family owned the whole island, which holds about four farms, but those have all been sold off now, and there's no land except the stretch from Otters' Bay to the other end of the machair. And Eilean na Roin, of course.' He shrugged, a gesture at once apologetic and dismissive. ‘But even if the estate was still intact, there's hardly a living in farming nowadays. Or so I understand. There certainly wouldn't be for me. I don't know a tup from a gimmer. Shall we go?'

When we reached the jetty we paused for a few moments to look across at the islet. Gulls were wheeling over it, and the noise was incessant. A different noise made itself heard, and there among the circling gulls, high up, a fighter plane among the domestic craft, tore a peregrine falcon.

‘She nests on the mainland cliffs,' said Neil. ‘Ever since I remember there's been a peregrine on that cliff. I tried to climb down to the nest once. I was about eleven years old. They caught me at it, luckily, before I'd gone over the edge. Over there, see? The white streaks high on the cliff.' He was pointing northwards, to the cliffs towering beyond the machair. I could just make out the spot he indicated.

I said, with reverence: ‘My God.'

He laughed. ‘Makes your blood run cold to think what small boys will do without a second thought.'

‘I don't suppose my brother will have any hope of a picture there, even from a boat and with a telephoto lens . . . But if he can manage it, may I please take him over to the island to look at the birds there? What is its name again?'

‘Eilean na Roin. It means Island of the Seals. They come ashore there to breed. Go over by all means, but do watch the tides. ‘The crossing's only really safe for about two hours to either side of low tide. You see that rock there, shaped a bit like a shoe?' He pointed at a rock near the causeway. ‘When the sea gets to the base of that, the tide's already too high, and it comes in like a horse trotting, as they say. You don't need my permission to go over there anyway. Didn't you know there's no law of trespass in Scotland?'

‘Not even in your house?'

He smiled. ‘That was a pleasure. The whole visit has been a pleasure. I'd have liked to prolong it by asking you to supper, but . . .' A gesture finished it for him: the empty house, the deserted kitchen.

‘That was very nicely done,' I said appreciatively. ‘Aren't you taking a risk, though? I mean, I'm a don. What makes you think I can cook as well as get stroppy about words?'

‘The fact that you came to Moila and took that godforsaken cottage – and that your brother agreed to come with you,' said Neil cheerfully. ‘Besides, I saw eggs and cheese and all sorts of stuff in the cupboard when I spent the night there. Do I take it that I'm invited, Mistress Fenemore?'

‘Well, of course, and for pity's sake stop reminding me about that. My name's Rose. Just tell me, though – failing our meeting this afternoon, what were you planning to do? Suck gulls' eggs?'

‘Come over to Otters' Bay again and beg for shelter. What else?'

‘Considering you told me that you'd taken supplies on in Oban and that you managed perfectly well all of yesterday, and that your boat is probably stiff with tins and even bottles—'

‘Bottles! Now, that's a thought. We'll collect a couple here and now . . . And you might be right about the supplies. Will you dine with me tomorrow, please? And if your brother should happen to make it, bring him, too, of course.'

‘At the house? Lights on, chimney smoking, and your lovely alibi wasted? Had you forgotten your plan, Mr Parsons?'

‘Do you know, I had. And how right you are.' He sounded, suddenly, irritated. ‘And how absurd to think that there's any need for all this cloak and dagger stuff . . . Yes, I'd forgotten. All right, we'll give it another day or two, but I'm seeing you back home now, and don't try to talk me out of it. I'm starving. And for pity's sake call me Neil.'

‘All right.' It was extraordinary, but suddenly we seemed to be on quite different terms. ‘All right, I'll feed you. But only if you do get those bottles, and quickly. I'm starving, too.'

‘Red or white? And is it gin or sherry?' He was at the boathouse door, taking a key from his pocket. ‘No, never mind. I'll bring the lot. And I promise to help with the washing up.'

11

Saturday morning, and once again a fair and breezy day, so fair that I decided to give myself a holiday from writing, and go straight after breakfast to pick up the supplies I would need for the weekend. Mrs McDougall had promised to have milk and bread for me, and there might possibly be mail, brought over by the morning's ferry.

Neil had told me to try and forget about the ‘mystery', and this proved surprisingly easy to do. On such a morning, with the sky full of larks, and the banks beside the road stiff with foxgloves and wild roses, the odd events of Wednesday night seemed remote, and indeed little more than odd. So I busied myself, as I walked, with plans for supper on Monday night, when I hoped that my brother would be here, and I had invited Neil to join us.

When I drew near the village I could see two girls sitting on the parapet of the little bridge. They seemed to be watching me, and then one of them waved, and I saw that they were Megan Lloyd and Ann Tracy, from Cambridge.

Ann, Megan's constant companion, was a complete contrast to the dark, rather intense Welsh girl. She was a land agent's daughter from somewhere in Norfolk, tall and fair, with heavy gilt hair curling down over her shoulders, and a long, slim, slightly drooping body that had a certain elegance. Her oval face, with its thick fair eyebrows, blue eyes, and high colour, and the small mouth with the slight droop there, too, looked deceptively gentle. In fact I knew her for a tough-minded young woman with feminist leanings and rather more interest in student politics than would be helpful in her academic work. At present, Ann led and Megan followed, but that would sort itself out in the long run. Ann had a good brain, but Megan had it in her to be brilliant.

When the greetings and exclamations were over, they told me that they had been staying on Mull for a few days, and had just arrived on Moila, and were putting up at the post office with Mrs McDougall.

‘She told us where your cottage was, and we've got a map. Not that you really need one on Moila. We were planning to come down today and see you.' That was Ann. Megan put in quickly: ‘We knew you were on your own. Mrs McDougall told us about your brother. We're terribly sorry. Is he badly hurt?'

‘No, no. He says it's nothing, and he should know. He's a doctor. I've talked with him on the telephone and with any luck he should be over here on Monday. I don't know how well he'll be able to get about, but we'll manage somehow. I'd love you to see the cottage. Were you thinking of visiting me this morning?'

‘Yes,' said Ann, ‘and then Mrs McDougall said you'd be coming up here for your shopping, so we waited.'

‘And don't worry,' said Megan, patting a haversack that lay beside her on the parapet. ‘We've got masses of food for a picnic, so you don't have to feed us. We were going to say hullo to you, and then walk round to that little island – it's called Seal Island – I can't say the Gaelic name but Mrs McDougall told me that's what it means. It's the one with the broch on it. It looks as if there's a path over from your cottage, so perhaps we could walk round there and then come back to you for tea?'

‘Well, of course you may, but did you ask about the tides? That's not a bridge that's marked on the map, it's a causeway that's covered most of the time. I was down there yesterday, and I doubt if you'll be able to cross much before two o'clock. Why not make sure? I think I saw tide tables in the post office.'

While the girls studied the tide tables I bought my groceries. There were no letters, and to my relief no messages either. No news being good news, that meant Crispin on Monday. I told Morag (Mrs McDougall was busy over the tide tables with Ann and Megan) then went out to wait for them.

It appeared that my guess about the tide had been near enough.

‘Low tide at 4.04,' said Ann, ‘and we've been warned to leave not one second later than six, or be marooned all night. Oh well, we'll just have to have our picnic on the mainland. Did you say you were down there yesterday, Dr Fenemore? What's it like? There's a house marked, right beside the bridge – the causeway, I mean – so will there be people about?'

‘The house is empty, and the place is quite lovely. I was just too late yesterday to go across, but the islet looked marvellous. There's quite a lot of the broch showing, too, almost the complete circle, with one very high bit where I'm told there are steps going up to what's left of the top level, with a view.'

‘It sounds terrific,' said Megan.

Ann made a face. ‘You can have it.' Then, to me: ‘We went to Orkney last summer, and she made me crawl in through a ghastly tunnel into some underground charnel-house. Never again! It's bad enough now, but it must have been really something when it was occupied. Apparently they ate nothing but shellfish, and just dropped the shells on the floor when they'd finished. You can imagine.'

‘Unfair to Celts,' said Megan. ‘Racist. We had middens, and—'

‘Yes, just outside the front door. We saw those, too . . .' Ann turned a laughing face to me. ‘Dr Fenemore, would you like to come with us? We'd love you to, and you can tell Megan all about her wretched broch. She's been reading them up for days.'

‘Yes, do!' Megan joined her plea to Ann's, with such eager sincerity that I laughed and agreed.

‘I'd love to. But Megan can do the lecturing. I don't know the first thing about brochs. Look, why not come down to my cottage now, and we'll have lunch there – I never have much more than just a picnic myself – then we can go across this afternoon, and maybe take tea to have on the island? But on one condition, that you stop calling me “Dr Fenemore”. We're a long way from Cambridge now, and my name is Rose.'

We shared our resources for lunch – the girls' picnic sandwiches and a cold pie and some fruit I had bought that morning – and ate it comfortably in the cottage kitchen, with its grandstand view of the bay. To our delight we also got a grandstand view of the original owners of the bay – the otters. An adult, presumably the female, came close inshore, followed by two young ones, and she seemed to be teaching them to fish, but after a few splashing sallies with no success she gave up, and dived away. The pups slithered out onto the weedy boulders, not forty feet from the cottage window, and waited expectantly until she reappeared carrying a sizeable fish, which the two of them ate together, wrestling over it among the sea-tangle. Then the three of them swam away into the deeper water under the headland.

‘They'll come back,' I said comfortingly to the girls, who were lamenting that they had forgotten to bring a camera. ‘Surely they will. This isn't called Otters' Bay for nothing. And if they come when my brother's here, he'll get some marvellous shots of them, I promise you, telephoto lens, the lot, and I think he's got a video camera now, too. He'll make prints for you. Now, anyone for coffee?'

‘It is thought by some,' said Megan, in a smooth lecturer's voice from which all trace of her faint Welsh lilt had vanished, ‘that the Scottish brochs may be an extension of the southern round-house culture, as exemplified in some sites of south-western England, but this seems unlikely, in view of—'

‘The Scots'll be pleased to hear that,' said Ann. ‘But I'm just not enthralled, and I'm sure Dr – I'm sure Rose isn't either.'

‘Do I really sound like that?' I asked.

Megan gasped and went scarlet. ‘It wasn't – I didn't –' Then she saw me laughing and flopped her hands forward in a gesture of relief. ‘Of course you don't! I was quoting, anyway. I've been reading up on brochs, but when you're actually there it's really just the setting that's so marvellous, and trying to imagine the sort of life they lived.'

‘Raw shellfish for breakfast,' muttered Ann.

She was ignored. ‘Weren't they really forts?' I asked. ‘Defensive places?'

‘Yes. They must have been the Iron Age equivalent of the mediæval castle with the village and everything clustered round. You can see where there could have been some buildings outside the main ring wall. Hey, Ann, be careful! Where d'you think you're going?'

Ann was already halfway up the primitive stairway, a series of flat stones jutting out from the inner surface of the highest section of wall. ‘To look at the view. It's quite safe. They're solid. Come on up.' And Megan went, as she always went where Ann led.

As she had said, there was really nothing left here but the view, and the girls were exclaiming over it now, talking eagerly, and pointing. I left them to it and made my way along the inner side of the curving wall towards the doorway. This high western section was remarkably well preserved, the stone slabs tightly laid, and the primitive stairway safe and solid. But apart from this the broch wall showed only as a circle of raised turf, with a tumble of stones here and there. Outside the circle a few mounds and stones were all that remained of the huddle of huts that had once crowded under the broch's protection. Nettles grew everywhere, and ragwort, and the wall itself was thick with plants growing in every available gap. I saw saxifrages and wild thyme and others that were unfamiliar to me. There was a lot of some sort of stone-crop, which was pretty enough, but smelled at close quarters rather like cleaning fluid.