Stormy Petrel (11 page)

The girls were still on their perch. I called out: ‘I'm going over to look at the birds,' and left them to it.

From what Neil had told me over supper last night, I knew that the main bird colonies were on the western side of the island, where the cliffy coastline was cut into deep gullies, some of them sheer, and some filled with tumbles of massed boulders. I walked across that way, over the crest of the island, easy walking on windswept turf which in a short distance sloped gently down towards the head of the cliffs, where clouds of seabirds were already wheeling and screaming at my approach.

There was a long promontory thrusting out to sea, with a deep inlet to either side where the tide sucked and swirled among fallen rocks. Above the water the cliffs rose sheer, but seamed with ledges and tufted with seapink and white campion. The birds were there.

I had never seen a big seabird colony before. The noise was horrendous, and the depths in front of me, filled with whirling wings, were frightening. I backed a step or two and sat down. Automatically – the writer's habit – I was trying to find the right word to describe the scene. The one I came up with eventually was ‘indescribable'.

I gave it up and sat still, content to watch.

No rare birds; just the incredible numbers, and the variety. Every niche of the craggy cliff held a nest, every hollow of the turfy ledge just below me had eggs or young gulls nestling there. Further down I saw kittiwakes, with their gentle dark eyes and neat nests; below them, in deeper crevices, the ugly shags with their uglier young, showing the brilliant apricot gape of their beaks as they craned for food. Here and there, unperturbed, solitary among the crowd, the fulmars; and out there in the air, huge and unmistakable among the teeming thousands, those unpleasant predators the great black-backed gulls, with their cruel beaks and dead eyes like sharks' eyes, and their ineffable grace of flight.

The girls arrived then, breathless and laughing, and making sounds of disgust at the pervading smell and slime of birds' droppings.

‘And to think the stuff's valuable!' That was Ann. ‘Guano at how many thousand pounds a ton . . . What a job! I wonder what they pay the chaps that shovel it up? Why don't they make an industry of it here? I'm sure there's just as much on these islands as there is in Peru or wherever . . . No, don't tell me. It's a bit vertical, isn't it? Do you mind if we move back a bit? I don't normally mind heights, but this is different.'

We retreated to the crest of the island, and sat down where the turf was clean and dry. Megan unpacked the picnic tea and handed me a plastic cup.

‘Would you like a biscuit? We've got ginger snaps and shortbread.' Her eyes were shining. ‘What a wonderful place! You'd think that with all those wings the island itself would start to fly!'

‘Like that one in
Gulliver
,' said Ann, and this started a discussion as to whether Scotland could engineer the flight of its islands to hover over England and starve her of sunlight and rain, like Laputa in
Gulliver's Travels
. And this, in spite of some effort on my part to prevent it, led to the subject of science fiction, and where it had gone since the original efforts of Swift and Verne and H. G. Wells. But fortunately there would be no embarrassment: when Megan did eventually mention Hugh Templar, it was in passing, and with respect, along with John Wyndham and Arthur C. Clarke and Ursula le Guin.

Ann had never heard of any of them, and refused to be interested in a genre which she dismissed contemptuously as ‘fairy tales'.

‘But fairy tales were topical and highly moral,' began Megan.

I had to intervene there.
‘Puss in Boots? Jack the Giant Killer?
All those murderous little thugs in Grimm who cheated and stole and lied their way to the princess and half the kingdom? No, no, I know what you mean, and on the whole yes, you're right; your modern fairytale – I don't just mean what's miscalled “science fiction”, but all the stories that feed the modern hunger for the super-natural – they do tend to be more or less moral now. Surprisingly enough, considering the norm of fiction.'

This steered them away, as I had meant it to, and they talked for a while longer, then fell silent, enjoying the warmth and the view.

Away to the west was the enormous glitter of the sea, where the small islands floated, weightless in the gently moving water. Even Mull, with its mountains, looked insubstantial. I could just make out Tobermory, looking like an Anne Redpath painting, cubes of white and blue and primrose and Venetian red, the houses and shops strung out along the bay, tiny in the distance.

‘Can't see your cottage from here,' said Ann. She had binoculars out and was looking the other way. ‘Can't really see that house, either; too many trees.' She focussed nearer. ‘I wonder whose that tent is? No sign of them. Rather an odd place to camp, having to keep your eye on the tides the whole time.'

‘He's a geologist,' I said. ‘I've met him. And he has a boat.'

She lowered the glasses and glanced at her wrist. ‘And talking of watching the tides, it's nearly half past four, and Mrs McD does a high tea at half six. If we're to go home through the fields by the shore – what did you call them, Meg?'

‘The machair. Yes, we ought to go. Can we get there along the shore from the causeway? Can you see? It looks as if there's a wall sticking right out over the shingle.'

‘That's the belvedere at the end of the House gardens,' I said. ‘But there's a path round under the wall, and the machair starts just beyond the trees.'

‘Yes. You're right.' Megan had the glasses now. ‘That's fine, then, we'll go that way . . . These are good glasses, Ann. I can just about see that B & B we had in Tobermory, and – hang on a minute . . . I wonder? Yes, it could be . . .'

‘What?' Ann and I spoke together.

‘The
Stormy Petrel
. I'm sure it is.'

‘
What
?' My voice went high with excitement. ‘A stormy petrel? Where?'

‘There. You see? That boat just out of Tobermory. You take a look, Ann.' She handed the binoculars over. ‘Is it?'

‘Wait a mo.' Ann stood up and focussed. ‘I don't think – I can't quite – I honestly can't tell one boat from another, but it looks different. I think it's just a fishing boat.'

I subsided on to the turf. ‘A boat . . . I thought you were talking about a bird, though how you'd spot one of those little things . . . Ah, well, skip it. What boat did you think it was? What's this
Stormy Petrel
?'

‘Oh, it belongs to a terribly nice chap we met on Mull.' Ann lowered the glasses. ‘No, he's not coming this way, so I can't get a close look, but I'm sure it's not him.'

‘Probably just as well, from what Mrs McDougall told us,' said Megan.

‘Just what are you two talking about? What has Mrs McDougall got to do with it?' I asked.

‘It's nothing, really. We met a chap the other day when we were staying near Dervaig, over the other side of Mull. We found a tiny B & B in a heavenly spot, a lovely bay and hardly any people. He had this boat called
Stormy Petrel
and he was living on it. Well, we sort of got together a couple of times – he was an interesting sort of man – done a lot of sailing, single-handed stuff. He'd even been round the Horn—'

‘Had he indeed?' I sat up again, all interest now. ‘Sorry, go on, Ann.'

‘He did have some really good stories,' said Ann, ‘and the way he told them – well, he was fun, and we both liked him. He took us out in his boat a couple of times, and he offered to take us over to the Treshnish Isles, but the forecast wasn't too good, so we never made it. He said he was coming to Moila later on, on business. He really was terribly nice, wasn't he, Megan?'

‘Well, we thought so.'

I looked from one to the other. ‘And Mrs McDougall told you something about him that changed your minds?'

Ann said, judicially: ‘What she told us doesn't alter the fact that he had bags of charm, but it seems that it's his – well, his stock-in-trade . . . She knew him. She said he was from Moila, and ever since he was a boy he'd been a sort of con artist, and could get away with anything—'

‘A pathological liar and a thief.' Generations of Welsh Methodists spoke in Megan's direct voice. ‘What she told us meant just that, even though he was only a boy when she knew him. And as for sailing single-handed round the Horn—'

‘We'd have been lucky to get as far as the Treshnish Isles,' said Ann. ‘And Mrs McD was a bit staggered when we told her he was in Mull. Apparently everyone was hoping that he wouldn't come back here, because his people moved out after he went to prison, and asked Mrs McD not to let him know their address.'

‘
He went to prison?
' I caught Megan's quick glance, but Ann seemed to take my sharp interest for granted.

‘Yes. She says he must have been released early, and she's dreading him coming to see her and demanding his parents' address. His name's Mackay, so if you should come across him—'

‘Did she tell you what he'd been in prison for?'

‘No. She rather skated away from the subject after a while.'

‘After she learned that you knew me and were coming down to see me?'

They were gathering their things together, ready to go. They stopped and stared at me.

‘Well, ye-es, I suppose it could have been? Ann?'

‘I think so. Why, Rose? What's it got to do with you?'

I got to my feet. ‘Nothing, I hope,' I said cheerfully. ‘Only that the Mackays used to live in my cottage. They moved away two years ago. That's all Mrs McDougall told me. Perhaps she didn't want me to worry about it. In any case, she must have thought he was still safely locked away.'

‘Now that you know he's out – and around – will you mind being alone down there till Monday?'

‘No. Now, don't worry about me. If you want to get back for your high tea, you'd better go.'

‘Aren't you coming over now?'

‘Not straight away. There's time yet. Come and see me again, won't you, and thanks for the tea.'

‘Thank
you
for the lunch,' they said. ‘It's been a lovely day. Be seeing you!'

I watched them down to the causeway. Once across, they turned and waved, then were soon out of sight beyond the belvedere.

12

After the girls had gone I sat for a little time, thinking.

What they had told me put quite a different complexion on the ‘mystery'. I would have to seek Neil out and tell him that his old acquaintance was now, if not necessarily dangerous, at the least some kind of villain, who needed careful watching.

Neil had told me that he might spend the daytime hours between tides over here on Seal Island. He was working at present on the rocks at the north-west point, which were only accessible at low tide, or from a boat. I thought that, in spite of the noise of the birds, I would have heard a hammer going down there along the cliffs. In any case, there was not enough time left for me to go that way to look for him.

I made my way down towards the causeway. Neil's rock, shaped like a shoe, was still dry, the causeway exposed. I crossed carefully – even at low tide the seaweeds made the stones treacherous – then went to the boathouse window and peered in.

No boat. The place was empty. It was also full of daylight: the angle at which it stood to the water had made it impossible to see from the islet, as I now saw, that the doors were open.

Well, if he was out there hammering the cliffs to bits, he would be back keeping watch on the house tonight, and tomorrow would be time enough, surely, to see him and warn him? After all, he had known Ewen Mackay as a boy, and was aware of the reputation the latter had had even then. The only new thing I could add was the prison bit, and Mrs McDougall had not told the girls anything about the offence of which Ewen had been convicted. I thought about it as I walked up through the weedy garden. Even if I had had pencil and paper on me, I would not have cared to leave a note where someone else might see it first. So tomorrow would have to do, and the obvious move now was to see Mrs McDougall myself and get what might be called hard evidence from her. She might be willing to give me, as the tenant of the former Mackay home, the details she had kept back from Ann and Megan. For my part I would have to decide how much I could tell her without giving away Neil's presence on Moila. I did not see how he could keep it secret for much longer, but that was his business.

However, after that visit to my cottage, Ewen Mackay was mine.

For form's sake, when I reached the house, I tried the french windows, then, round at the back, the door. All locked. I went home to the cottage, had an early supper, then set off on the walk to the post office.

The shop was shut, but the house door stood open. There was no sign of the girls, so I supposed they must have gone out again after their high tea. I met Morag on the step. She had been given a message, she told me, and was it the telephone? Her auntie was in, but I was to go at any time for the telephone . . . Well, but her auntie would be pleased to see me. Any time. Please to come in . . .

Mrs McDougall was in her kitchen, not baking this time, though a pleasant after-smell of cooking pervaded the room. She was sitting beside the Rayburn, knitting. She made me welcome, and nodded me to a chair on the other side of the stove. Morag unpacked her ‘message', which was a large cauliflower from someone's garden, and a couple of pounds of tomatoes which had obviously, from the scent, been freshly picked, then, after we had admired them, left us.