The Ice Twins (10 page)
Angus chuckles politely. He already looks more Scottish, here in Scotland. His cheeks are ruddier, his stubble is darker, he is definitely a bit dirtier: more rugged, salt-bitten and masculine. Instead of his architect’s purple silk ties he has scratches on his hands and paint flecks in his hair. He’s been here three days ‘preparing the place’ so as to make it habitable for me and Kirstie.
‘Josh is going to give us a lift, in his boat.’
‘You guys,’ Josh says, kissing me warmly, on both sides of my face, ‘you guys REALLY HAVE to get a boat. Torran is a nightmare without a boat, the tides will drive you doolally.’
I force a smile. ‘Thanks, Josh, that’s just what we need to hear, on our very first day.’
He grins in that boyish way. And I remember that I like Josh. He is my favourite of Angus’s friends: it helps that he is a non-drinker – completely sober. Because he slows down Angus’s boozing.
Like a team of explorers abseiling, we climb down the steps of the pier, to Josh’s boat. Beany goes second, chivvied by Angus, then leaping with unexpected grace into the vessel. Kirstie follows: she is excited, in that eerie calm way that Lydia used to get excited; her head is perfectly still, staring out, as if she is catatonic, but you can see the shine in her eyes. Enraptured.
‘All aboard, shiver my timbers, Torran ahoy!’ says Josh, for Kirstie’s benefit – and Kirstie giggles. Josh poles the boat into the deeps and Angus gathers in the rope, very quickly, and we begin our miniature yet crucial voyage, rippling around the bigger tidal island, Salmadair, that divides Torran from Ornsay.
‘That’s where the packaging billionaire lives.’
Half my attention is given to Salmadair – but the other half is fixed on Kirstie’s happy little face: her soft blue eyes gazing in wonder at the water and the islands and the enormous Hebridean skies.
I remember her shout of despair.
Mummy Mummy come quickly, Lydie-lo has fallen.
Again, it strikes me, with painful force, how those words are, really, the only evidence we have for believing it was Lydia that died, not Kirstie. But why did I believe those words?
Because there was no obvious reason for her to lie. At that moment of all moments. But maybe she was confused in some bizarre way. And I can see why she might have been confused, given that the twins were always swapping names, swapping their whole identities, during that fateful summer. When they were dressed alike, when they had the same haircut. It was a game they liked to play, that summer, on me and Angus. Which one am I, Mummy? Which one am I?
So maybe they were playing that game that evening? And then disaster happened. And the fatal blurring of their identities froze over, and became fixed, like a flaw in ice.
Or maybe Kirstie is
still playing this game. But playing it in the most terrifying way. Perhaps that is why she is smiling. Perhaps she is playing the game to hurt me, and to punish me.
But punish me for what?
‘OK,’ says Angus, ‘this is Torran Island.’
The next five days are all about work, I do not have time to stop and breathe and brood or think too much. Because the cottage is a brutal nightmare. God knows what it was like before Angus ‘prepared it’ for our arrival.
The basic structure of our new home is pretty sound: two gabled white cottages, designed by Robert Louis Stevenson’s father in the 1880s, and knocked into one family house in the 1950s. But the first hour’s exploration of Torran cottage proves, beyond doubt, that no one has significantly touched the buildings
since
the 1950s.
The kitchen is indescribable: the fridge is rotten, there is black stuff inside. The whole thing will have to go. The cooker is usable, but demonically filthy: on the afternoon of Day One I spend hours cleaning it, till my knees burn from the kneeling, but when the evening light falls – so early, so early – I’m only halfway finished. And I have not even touched the deep ceramic kitchen sink, which smells like it’s been used for butchering seabirds.
The rest of the kitchen is little better. The taps above the sink spout tainted liquid: Angus forgot to tell me that our only running water would be provided by a thin plastic pipe from the mainland – and this pipe is exposed at low tide on the causeway. It hisses with leaks, and lets seawater in; at low tide I can actually
see
the leaks as I stare out the kitchen window – joyous little fountains of spray, squirting from the pipe, and saying hello to the sky.
Because of this saline taint, we have to boil everything. But still everything tastes of fish. Fixing the water supply is consequently essential – we can’t keep humping bottled water from the Co-op supermarket at Broadford; we can’t spare the cash or the effort. Yet filtering or purifying water with tablets is too tricky and time-consuming, as a long-term solution. But how do we tempt the water company to come out and help us, just three people who chose, of their own volition, to go and live on a ridiculously remote island?
Perhaps when the water company eventually come to our aid, they will also, out of pity, help us to get rid of the rats.
Because there are rats everywhere. I can hear them when I sleep – they wake me with their scrabbling in the walls, playing and tumbling, dancing and squealing. The rats mean we have to keep all our food in wire baskets, in the kitchen, suspended from a metal clothes line.
I would like to put our food in the kitchen cupboards: but they are all damp and rotten; when I first opened the door of the very largest cupboard I found nothing but mould, dirt, and emptiness – and the small, white, intricate skeleton of a shrew, placed in the centre of the shelf.
It was like a beautiful museum piece, collected by an antiquarian: something strange and exquisite, something macabre but marvellous. I got Angus to throw it into the sea.
Now it is Day Five, and I am sitting here, smutted and tired, and alone, in the gathering darkness of a solitary lamp; I am letting the big fragrant woodfire crackle into nothing: because I like staring at the dying flames. Angus is snoring in our bedroom, on the large, old, wooden-sided bed he calls the Admiral’s Bed. I’ve no idea why it has that name. My daughter is likewise asleep in her room, beside her precious nightlight, at the other end of the house.
The fire spits a huge spark onto the Turkish rug. I do not move because I know the Turkish rug is too damp to take flame. I am looking at a To Do list jotted on the notepad on my lap. It is sappingly long – and yet I am still writing in the semi-dark.
We must get a boat. Angus is negotiating every day with potential sellers – but boats are unnervingly expensive. Yet we can’t risk buying something cheaper that might sink.
We also need the phone fixed: the ancient, black, 1960s Bakelite phone, that sits on the side-table in the chilly dining room, is freckled with hard drops of old paint, and is mysteriously singed on the bottom. Someone must once have put it on a hot stove, I think. Perhaps they were blind drunk from whisky, as they tried to keep out the cold, and not think about the rats.
Whatever the explanation, the phone-line pops and crackles so loudly, any voice on the other end is barely distinguishable; and I fear this is because the line is corrupted – rotted by seawater; which means that just buying a new receiver will not give us reception. There is of course no internet access, and no cell phone coverage. The isolation is intense.
But what can I do?
Finish the list.
I listen to the creak of the old house, bending in the low Sleat wind. I listen to the gristly noise of the woodfire, its salt-watered logs reluctantly burning. All my clothes smell of woodsmoke.
What else? We have yet to unpack all our crockery and glassware: they’re all in the boxes laboriously ferried across, by Josh and Angus and the removal men. We’re still drinking red wine out of jam jars.
Underlining the word
boxes
, I stare around.
Some of the walls have strange, unsettling paintings of dancers, and mermaids, and Scottish warriors: probably the work of returning squatters, over the years. They will have to go, they are a little eerie. The lumber-room at the back of the kitchen is even worse – a centuries-old mess; I’ll leave that to Gus. Beyond that, the big shed outside is dilapidated, and filthy with gull feathers. And the walled garden is weedy, rocky, and will take years to redeem.
And then there’s the toilet, by the bathroom, which actually has a cardboard sign on the cistern, written in Angus’s grandmother’s elderly hand:
Please leave the stone on the seat, it is to keep out the mink.
I write:
Fix Toilet
on my To Do list. Then I write
Kill Mink
.
And then I stop, and half smile.
Despite it all, I can still find satisfaction here, a glimpse of future contentment, even. This is a proper project, and it is enormous, and daunting, yet I like the way this huge undertaking encompasses me, and commands me. I know for sure what I will be doing for thirty months: turning this beautiful horrible house into a lovely home. Bringing the dead back to life.
There it is. I have no choice. I just have to get on with it. And I am eager to obey.
There are also some serious pluses. The two larger bedrooms and this living room are habitable spaces; they have plastered walls, and functional radiators. The potential of the other bedrooms, and the dining room, and scullery, is obvious. This place is big.
I also like the lighthouse, especially at night. It flashes every nine seconds, I reckon. Not so brightly that it keeps me awake; in fact it helps me sleep, like a metronome, like a very, very slow maternal heartbeat.
And, lastly but most importantly, I adore the views. Even though I expected this scenery, it still amazes me. Every day.
Sometimes I find myself standing, paintbrush in hand, bucket of white spirit by my feet, open-mouthed – and then I come to, and realize that I’ve spent twenty minutes in silence, watching the rays of sunlight spear the tawny mountains, goring the darkened rocks with gold; watching the white clouds drift languidly, over the snow-chafed hills of Knoydart: Sgurr nan Eugallt, Sgurr a’Choire-Bheithe, Fraoch Bheinn.
Pen in hand, pad on lap, I write down these words.
Sgurr nan Eugallt, Sgurr a’Choire-Bheithe, Fraoch Bheinn.
Angus is teaching me these words. These beautiful, liquid, salt-soaked Gaelic names, that stream into the culture, like the burns from the Cuillins tumbling into Coruisk. We drink whisky at night, together, and he shows me the Gaelic names on the map: and I repeat these mysterious vowels and consonants. Laughing, lightly but contentedly. Snuggled under the rug. Tender and together. With my husband.
Now Angus is asleep in our bed, and I am keen to join him. But for the last time today, I write down the names of the hills: as if they are an incantation that will protect this little family. The Moorcrofts. Alone on their very own island, with its little silver beaches, and its inquisitive seals.
The pen is almost dropping from my hand. I can feel myself nodding towards sleep; I have the deep satisfying tiredness, born of hard physical labour.
But I am woken.
‘Mummy, Mummy …??’
A voice calls me. Muffled by doors and distance.
‘Mummy!? Mama?!’
It must be another nightmare? Dropping my pad, I pick up a torch, turn it on – and walk the dark cold hallway to her room. Her door is shut. Is she talking in her sleep?
‘Mummy …’
Her voice sounds odd. For a moment I am ridiculously paralysed at the door. I don’t want to go in.
I am scared.
This is absurd, but my heart flutters with sudden panic. I can’t go into my own daughter’s room? Something unexpected holds me back, as if there is an evil beyond, a silly, childish, horror-film fear of ghosts is fluxing through me. Monsters under the bed, monsters behind the door. My daughter might be in there, smiling at me, in that way. The way she did in the car. Trying to confuse me, to punish me. You let my sister die. You weren’t there.
But this is nonsense. This is just memories of my father shouting at me. He always shouted so much, as his career faded. Shouted at my cowering mother. I would hear the shouting behind doors like monsters, or thunder, and closed doors agitate me.
So. No. I am a better mother than this.
Suppressing my nerves, I twist the knob. And step over the threshold, and peer into the gloom within.
At once my anxiety flees: and I am suffused with concern – Kirstie is sitting up in her bed, and she is certainly not smiling: tears are streaming down her face. What is wrong? Her nightlight is still on, though its illumination is feeble. What has happened?
‘Baby baby – what’s wrong what’s wrong, what is it?’
I swoop to her side and embrace her, and she cries, quietly, for several minutes, as I rock her from side to side, tight in my arms. She is wordless and harrowed.
It must surely be another nightmare. Slowly she sobs, and sobs. And the sea accompanies her grief, I can hear the waves outside, yearning and restless. Inhaling and exhaling. I wonder who left the window open? Maybe Angus. He has a thing about fresh air.
Gradually my little girl whimpers into silence. And I hold her face between two hands, feeling the warm damp tears on my fingers:
‘Come on, darling. What is it? Was it another bad dream?’
My little girl shakes her head. She emits a stifled sob. Then she shakes her head again, and lifts a finger and points.
A big printed photograph lies on her bed. I pick it up – and feel the instant pain it evokes. The quality of the photo is poor – printed out from a computer – but the image is nonetheless stark. It is a cheery photo of Lydia and Kirstie on holiday in Devon, maybe a year before the accident; they are on the beach at Instow, smiling in their twin pink Duplo Valley hoodies from Legoland, holding buckets and spades, slightly squinting in the sun: but smiling happily at me, and my cameraphone.
The grief tumbles, like a ceaseless waterfall, stained brown by peat.
‘Kirstie, where did you get this?’
