The Ice Twins (29 page)

‘Beany? Where are you! Sawney Bean! Sawney!’

Again, he heard nothing. The rain was near-horizontal: giving the wind a rasping edge, cutting coldly into his face. Angus strode forward – but he slipped on a kelp-slimed rock that came out of nowhere; the slip was serious – he fell to his knees, cracking a shin very painfully against the boulder.

‘Fuck.’ He put a hand in the gloop and lifted himself. ‘Beany! Beany! Where the fuck are you? Beannnnyyy!’

Standing up, slowly, Angus bent himself into the driving cold rain.
Lean into the wind.
He took a deep breath of rain and air. He knew very well that in these conditions he was possibly risking his own life. What did Josh say?
In Skye, in winter, no one can hear you scream.
He could break a leg in this horrible, treacherous mud, get himself sucked in, and get himself stuck.

Of course Sarah would telephone someone, but it might take them an hour to rustle up a posse, and the tides rose very fast around Torran. He wouldn’t drown in an hour, but he could freeze to death in the frigid, imprisoning water.

‘Beany!’

Angus scanned the nothingness. Frantically wiping rain off his face.

There?

‘Beany?’

There!

He heard it.

A small, pitiful, unmistakable howl. Weakening, but definitely there. Judging by the noise, the dog was three hundred, four hundred yards away. Angus took out his hand torch and switched it on, his hands slippy and damp, and numbed with iciness, fiddling to press the plastic switch.

That’s it. Angus lifted the hand torch. Combining its light with that of the head torch gave him a powerful beam of illumination. Directing it towards that spot, Angus stared, and stared, into the ghostly drifts of fog.

Yes. It was Beany. He was just a dim shape, but he was alive. And the dog was in mud up to his neck.

The dog was going to drown, very soon. Angus had at most a few minutes to reach the animal, before the waters engulfed him.

‘Jesus. Beany. Beany!’

A pitiful whimper. A dying animal. What would this do to Lydia, if her Beany drowned? It would crack Angus open, too.

Angus began to run, but it was impossible. Every step was either sucked into mud, or dangerously skiddy. He almost toppled forward on one wet, seaweed-skinned boulder, made extra slick by the relentless rain. One bad fall and he could split his skull on a rock. Knock himself out. That would probably be fatal.

Perhaps he had made a mistake. Risking his own life this much. He thought of Sarah’s deceptive smile. She’d planned this? No. Ridiculous.

He had to slow down, but if he slowed, Beany died.

He could crawl faster?

Dropping to his knees, Angus crawled. Through the mud. The rain was achingly cold, dribbling down his neck and shoulders, soaking through into his bones. He was shivering, feeling maybe the first hints of hypothermia, but he was nearly there. Fifty yards. Forty. Thirty.

The dog was dying. Only Beany’s head was visible. Beany’s eyes shone with terror in the beam of the torch. But Angus was getting close. And there was a wooden platform here, perhaps some scuppered boat, half-buried in the slime for decades. It was hard to see in the dark, but the wood provided a bridge to the patch of cold mud where Beany was stranded.

‘OK, boy, OK, OK, I’m here, I’m coming. Hold on.’

Angus crawled across the wood. He was five yards from the dog, he was working out a rescue plan: he’d have to reach into the mud and yank the hound, bodily, from the gunge.

But then Beany moved. The incoming waters must have loosened the mud. The dog was half-swimming, half-struggling: rescuing himself. And he was wriggling away from Angus, up onto the shingle.

Angus called, in desperation, ‘Beany!’

He heard a crack of splitting wood. As Angus lifted a knee, to stand, the wood beneath him snapped, and opened up.

At once Angus was plunged into a sump of cold seawater. Deep and silty, and very cold. There was no mud under here. He was flailing in freezing seas, in heavy boots and waterproofs. Desperate, he lunged for another spar of timber but it sank into gritty water. He was already up to his neck. Kicking at the void.

Across the mudflats, Torran lighthouse flashed through dark. A pale glow of silver. Then black.

22

Where is Angus? Why is he taking so long? Is he drowning? I hope so. And yet I don’t. I do not know any more.

I am standing at the kitchen window, gazing over the dreary flats towards Ornsay, but it is pointless. In this fog and darkness, I could be staring into space: a deep grey saddening void. Without stars.

‘Mummy, where is Daddy?’

Lydia tugs at the sleeve of my cardigan. Innocent, gap-toothed, blue eyes unblinking; her tiny shoulders are trembling with worry. Much as I loathe Angus, she cannot lose her dad; not like this. Perhaps I should have restrained Angus? But he would always have tried to save his dog, no matter what the danger.

The wind lashes the kitchen window with a whip of rain.

This is taking too long. Once again I read the various shades of grey that constitute the fog, the densely veiled moon, the misty shoreline of Ornsay. Nothing. Every nine seconds the lighthouse bestows a paparazzi flash of silver, but it reveals just glistening emptiness.

‘Mummy! Where is Dada?’

I hold Lydia’s hand. It is shaking.

‘Daddy will be fine. He’s just getting Beany; it’s dark, so it’s difficult.’

I wish I believed this. I wish I understood all this. I wish I knew whether I wanted my husband to live or die.

I’m not even sure how the dog got onto the mudflats: one minute he was in the dining room romping, as much as he does these days, with Lydia; I was in Lydia’s bedroom ironing – and then Lydia screamed and I ran into the dining room and the dog was gone and the back door in the kitchen creaked open in the Hebridean wind.

‘I want Daddy.’

Perhaps Beany saw one of the kitchen rats, and gave chase? Or maybe Lydia chased the dog away? Frightened him into fleeing? Beany always seemed so scared of Torran, or of someone, or something, in the cottage on Torran.

‘Mummy, it’s Beany! I heard him!’

Is she right? Was that a howling? Releasing her hand, I step to the kitchen door and pull it open. At once the ugly weather tries to push me back in, the angry rain, the bullying wind. Helpless, urgent, I shout, towards the mudflats, towards the dim shapes of anchored boats and sandbanks, and the ranked spires of dull fir trees. To where everything is smothered in mist.

‘Angus! Beany! Angus! Beany!’

I may as well be shouting down a coal mine. Or in a locked and dripping cellar. The words are robbed from my mouth and whirled away on the gale. Taken south to Ardnamurchan and the Summer Isles.

Oh, the Summer Isles. The despair surges. Tragedy has chased us from London.

‘Dada is coming back, Mummy?’ says Lydia from the kitchen door. ‘He’s coming back. Like Lydia.’

‘Yes, yes, of course he is.’

She is dressed in thin purple leggings and a little denim skirt, her Hello Kitty top is too thin. The cold will get at her. ‘Go back inside, Lyddie, please. Daddy will be fine, he’s just gone to get Beany. He will be back very soon, please, just go and read something, it won’t be long.’

Lydia turns and runs into the dining room, I pursue her as far as the decrepit, paint-flecked Bakelite telephone on the dining-room window sill. The old receiver is ludicrously heavy and the dial ponderously slow. I grind out Josh and Molly’s number. But it doesn’t answer; their phone just rings and rings, perversely innocuous.

I try Josh’s mobile. Again, nothing. ‘Hi, this is Josh Freedland. If you’re calling about work, try Strontian Stone—’

I slam the phone down. Angry now, angry at everything. Who can help us?

Gordon the boatman! Yes. Gordon. His number is in my mobile. Running into the bedroom, I snatch my barely used mobile from the cluttered drawer in the side table and wait – painfully – for it to switch on, and as I do Lydia wanders into the bedroom. From somewhere. She looks different. Her hair is wilder. She gazes at me, in that placid, trancelike way, as I shake my phone in frustration: Come on, come on,
come the fuck on
. She has Leopardy tucked under one arm. She eyes me dubiously, and says:

‘Mummy, maybe it doesn’t matter about Beany. Kirstie didn’t come back, maybe it doesn’t matter if Beany doesn’t come back.’

‘What, Lyddie, darling? I’m trying to get a number—’

‘Daddy comes back, doesn’t he? Please, Mummy. Lydia doesn’t mind. Kirstie is gone now, so it doesn’t matter what he did. Can we get him off of the mud?’

The what? What is she saying?

I gaze at her. Bewildered. And with tears ready to roll. My tears for Kirstie, and what he did to her.

No. I have to look at the phone. Its happy friendly screen glows in the darkness of the badly lit cottage. It tells me that I have no signal. Of course. I press two buttons and I reach CONTACTS. G or F, G or F.

Gordon Fraser. Here’s his number.

Running with the phone in hand to the dining room, I grab the heavy old receiver and dial, with frenzied patience, 3, 9, 4, 6, and the phone rings at the other end – pick up, pick up,
pick up
– and eventually I hear a crackled voice, frail and yet gruff, transported through the storm.

‘Gordon Fraser.’

‘Gordon, it’s Sarah. Sarah Moorcroft from Torran.’

A slow, frustrating pause.

‘Aye. Sarah. Well now. How are you?’

‘We’ve got a problem, a big—’ The line is popping and seething. ‘Please.’

‘I’m not—’ Hissssss ‘—atching you—’

‘F—’

‘Sarah …’

‘We need help, please help—’ the landline goes dead, even the fuzz of static disappears, and I almost throw it at the wall in frustration: of all times, it chooses now to give up? But then the static whistles in my ear, so loud it hurts, and the line suddenly clears, and I hear that voice again.

‘Are ye in some trouble now, Mrs Moorcroft?’

‘Yes!’

‘What exactly?’

‘My husband, Angus, is on the mudflats – we lost the dog, he went out to save him, at low tide, in the dark, and now I’m worried, he’s been gone so long, ages, I don’t know what to do – I’m worried for him and—’

‘On the mudflats, ye say?’

‘Yes.’

‘On his own, off Torran?’

‘Yes!’

I can hear the disapproval in the hissy silence that follows.

‘OK now, calm yerself, Mrs Moorcroft. I’ll get some of the boys from the Selkie.’

‘Oh thanks, thank you!’

I put the phone down before the line gives out on me, as if this is some deadly computer game and the phone is your life-force seeping away until you hear
bzzz game over
; and then I turn and there she is again: Lydia. I almost fall back against the wall in alarm, and surprise.

She is simply standing there. Blank-faced. Tranced. Eyes open wide and saddening blue, right behind me.

How did she do that? These floorboards creak from the slightest pressure. I heard nothing.

Lydia is a mere three feet away. Rigid and silent, and staring, her face pallid with anxiety. I didn’t hear her come in. I certainly didn’t hear her standing right behind me.

How does she do this? How many Lydias lurk in this house? This is crazy. I have the dizzyingly insane sensation that there are two identical Lydias in this house, playing games in the shadows and cold, between the cobwebs and the rats, just like Lydia and Kirstie used to play games in London, especially that last summer:
this is me, no, it’s me
, their girlish laughter ringing down the hallway as I first chased one then the other, hiding and seeking, trying to perplex me.

But this is my
mind misting up; I need clarity.

‘Daddy is coming back, with Beany, isn’t he?’

Frowning and sad, she gazes. The pain inside her must be unbearable, losing a twin, and now frightened of losing her dog, and her daddy. That will complete her destruction.

As much as I despise Angus, he has to survive.

‘Mummy, he is coming back, isn’t he? Please, Mummy?’

‘Yes!’

I kneel down and crush her into my arms and hug her tight tight tight. ‘Sweetheart, Daddy will be coming back soon, I promise.’

‘Promise?’

‘Really promise. A million times. Come on, let’s go into the kitchen and make some tea and wait for Daddy and Beany.’

I don’t mean this. I just want an excuse to stand in the kitchen and look through the window, to see if anything is happening. And so, as I funnel brackish water from the vile tap into the kettle, my eyes fix, furiously, on the blackness.

Just blackness. Maybe a smear of moonlight as the clouds and fog part for a moment. Closer to hand, the pathetic light from our kitchen shows a green patch of cold wet grass, a silly oblong of lurid colour. Sodden washing flaps wildly, on the line. The wind’s howling is unabating. As if it could go on for weeks.

This is real winter coming in now: the new regime announcing itself.

‘Look, Mummy!’

Prickles of light pierce the murk. Misty beams from car headlamps. Torches maybe? Lights on boats? It must be Gordon and his friends: yes, there are shadows of men on the pier, their torch-beams mingling and crossing, like lights in wartime, seeking bombers above London. The men are clearly going out onto the water. The boats are rounding Salmadair, several of them, I can see them quite well now.