The Visitors (37 page)

‘It wasn’t for nothing,’ I said. ‘Ailsa’s right. You found Izzy.’

‘You found him, not me. I was too slow, like always. She’s dead. I brought her here to die. None of the rest of it matters.’

I sat down beside him, and wrapped my arms around my shins.

‘He was insane, and she’s gone,’ he said. ‘So what’s the point? What do I do now, Flora Cannan?’

‘You know, don’t you, that you couldn’t have watched her forever.’

‘I swore to keep her safe. For as long as it took.’

‘Like a crofter keeps a selkie?’

His mouth fell open. He looked at me. His eyes were red raw.

‘You told me,’ I said, ‘that a comfortable prison is still prison. In your story, the selkie can’t hide her true self.’

He closed his mouth, and turned back to face the sea. For long minutes, we watched the sunrise paint the sky.

‘I lost my woman a long time ago, Flora. And now I’ve lost my daughter. It comes so there’s a wee bit less for me on land, each time I come up.’

There are worse places to live, she said.

‘Do you understand what I’m telling you?’

My throat was dry. He was saying goodbye.

‘I understand.’

He held my gaze a moment longer. His dark eyes had never been the eyes that loved me. I’d been drawn right to the edge of the abyss, thinking it was him.

A gull hawked and called from the shoreline, pecking at the sand. Waves sloshed in the inlet beneath us.

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Aye. Me too. For all of it.’

John looked out to sea again. Decided, he stood up. He walked down from the headland. He kicked off his shoes. He stripped out of his shirt and his trousers, then his underpants. He left them in a heap, and turned to face the ocean.

‘John,’ I called, ‘wait.’

Impassive, he looked back at me.

‘I thought it was you, John. All that time, I thought you were watching me. I thought I was falling in love with you.’

‘It was never me, lass.’

‘So why didn’t I know?’

Sunrise spilled rosy light across his face.

‘You once told me something about never taking easy options. You remember?’

I nodded.

‘Who was the easier option? Me, or Ailsa?’

I’d missed the truth, even when it stared me in the face.

The new sun was upon us, fire cresting at the horizon. But even as it lightened, the pale sky cast peculiar shadows and I saw Ailsa, for the briefest of moments, hiding in the shadows of her father’s face.

Behind me in Grogport, a car horn beeped, blasting through the millpond silence. A second police car had parked beside my house. Bodies queued at the door. I squinted, trying to make out faces. When I turned around again, John was already gone.

Still Bay was flat calm and the ripples spread in widening circles, reaching further and wider into the oil-dark water. When he popped up again, he was more than a quarter of the way into the bay, gliding with eerie silence. He continued to dip and swim beneath the water. He vanished behind Dog
Rock. I thought I saw a curved head appear once more, when it was well past the islet and into the Atlantic Ocean, but out there waves lapped around the distant headland, crests tipping at the flat morning sun, and it might have been a shadow. It was strange, from a distance, how closely he resembled a seal.

I gathered his clothes and shoes. Halfway home, I stashed them in a thicket of the dune grass and left them to moulder. Even if the police found John’s clothes, they’d never find him. By the jetty, grim-looking frogmen tinkered with the police launch and stared at me. Inside the crofthouse, the baby was crying.

I carried with me things that could never happen. Everything had changed. Bancree used to be my prison. Now it was only one small part of a wide, blank map. I’d grown up.

I opened the door to what was once my home. I walked inside to face the questions and lie to the police about everything.

The autopsy on Izzy’s body noted a badly fractured skull and unexplained burns to the face and head, but the examiner concluded that the final cause of death was drowning. I stuck to my story. I’d woken on the beach with Ailsa and Izzy dead, and couldn’t tell them any more than that. They weren’t interested in me anymore.

When the police searched his shack, they discovered a stash of objects belonging to the missing island men. Doug MacLeod’s cigarette lighter, and a Saint Christopher that belonged to Billy Wright. They found Anders’ hip flask. They found Lachlan’s pocket knife on the beach, gummed with someone’s blood.

Izzy couldn’t have found all those things from beachcombing alone. His movements throughout the islands were traced and gradually matched to a host of suspicious disappearances. John Dobie was never found, but his map, abandoned in Dog Cottage, proved invaluable in closing the case. Back in the beachcomber’s shack, the constabulary also found a series of scrawled and often illegible notes, ranting and raving about sea monsters, about old wives’ tales and ancient myths. From these, it was discovered that Izzy had written a book on the subject, long ago, under the name of Mutch. This added a dash of celebrity and intrigue to the story, and for a few weeks it was all the island papers had to talk about.
Eventually interest waned, and the beachcomber’s life concluded with a string of lewd obituaries:

Marcus Isaac Mutch, little-known writer and artist, had turned beachcomber and lost his mind to isolation. Alone and haunted by his own lunatic convictions, he’d attacked and murdered a number of innocent people throughout the Scottish isles, believing them to be selkies.

Selkies, of all things.

Most of the papers printed extracts from his book. His writing was generally taken as evidence for his insanity. Some papers printed his illustrations – the lurid ink sketches, dripping venom, a slender human hand sliding from the folds of sealskin.

After a few months, with no sign of John, I was permitted to claim Ailsa’s body. She was cremated, and I scattered her ashes on the low-tide beach. I sat alone in winter sun and waited for the tide to take them home. A film of white ash clung to my fingertips.

Mum and Ronny moved away. The decision wasn’t so difficult, in the end. When Munzie Crane sold Clachnabhan, the new owners cut half the staff and brought their own managers, so Ronny looked elsewhere. He found a supervisor’s job with Dalwhinnie, up in the Highlands, and Mum put the croft up for sale. A nice couple from Hampshire bought it for a song, hoping to do it up. They planned to use it as a holiday cottage. Grogport became a ghost town, empty but for gulls and tourists. Mum and Ronny moved out within weeks, taking all their things in a battered hire van. My grandparents planned to follow, if they could sell the bungalow. They wanted to be near their family.

I stayed long enough to finish school. I missed them all, but things would never be the same. A new family didn’t need old baggage. Ronny made it clear there would always be room
for me in their new house. But it would never be my home. For all the months of hugs and promises that came after, Mum and I had said our goodbyes on that half-light morning.

One family at a time, people drained from Bancree. Up on the Ben, the wind farm died, abandoned to the cost of maintenance. The electricity company stopped sending repairmen, and so the island ran on diesel. The huge blades flapped and knocked on gusty days, but didn’t turn. One day, they might dismantle the turbines and recycle the steel, or perhaps the turbines would stand for centuries like Easter Island moai, staring out to sea, waiting for another culture to come and gaze in wonder.

Wonder. That was the heart of it all. The magic of the world, the grace of the sea, the theatre of a story. The shadow race of clouds on hillsides on sunny, gusty days. The kestrels that hover, loop, hover. The seals that watch us from the sea, dipping once and gone.

What are we, without dreams?

What are we, without wonder?

I walked down the village street towards the end of the harbour. Centuries before, the ocean had gouged a cleft into the cliff, creating a steep, narrow inlet. The rocks on either side were dense with weed, and the shingle dropped sharply through gorse into sand and sea. The harbour was surrounded by horseshoes of pastel houses.

South and west of the Rinns, about a hundred yards from shore, the tide rose and fell dramatically on either side of Orsay and Eilean Mhic Coinnich. The two small islands created mad currents that raced and boomed and towered as they smashed into each other. Tucked behind them, the harbour at Portnahaven was remarkably sheltered from the chaos, and seals congregated on the rocks by the dozen.

I watched them from the harbour wall. Their blunt heads dived and dipped in the evening murk. I found steps in the sea-washed concrete and stepped down for a closer look. Here the weed lay piled in low tide heaps, and crabs haunted the slivers between rocks. I stood on the edge of the land, and my reflection heaved and gently slid upon the waves.

I slowed my breathing to match the rhythm of the tide.

Inhale, exhale. Breathe. Focus.

Cautiously, one of the seals swam closer. It bobbed in the water, almost within arm’s reach, gazing up at me with frank curiosity. It was speckled grey and black and glossy
with water. Droplets clung to its whiskers, and its eyes were round black pools, deep enough to drown in. For heartbeats, we looked at one another. Moving slowly, I kneeled on the rocks, and reached out my hand. I was near enough to touch when it flinched away and began to sink, nostrils closing tight as it dropped beneath the surface. There was a flicker of a pale ghost in the water, and then only ripples, floating on the ocean, moving apart, washing away.

Islay wasn’t even a hundred miles from Bancree, but at the same time, it was another world.

Smiling, I clambered back across the rocks and onto the harbour road. A wall of cloud hung on the horizon, but it was moving out to westward. I watched the sea and sky dance together. Spring was late, this year, and when the cold nipped at me, I ducked into the tiny pub on the corner. Inside was fiercely hot, peat popping like firecrackers in the stove. After a cold, brisk day walking on Islay’s rocky western beaches, the racing heat was welcome, and soon I took my jacket off. I sat in the corner, reading my book and making occasional notes. After a while, Fraser brought me a pint and a toastie. His hand lingered on mine as I took the glass.

The room began to fill as evening deepened into night. After a month in Portnahaven, and more than one late night in the pub, I knew many of the faces, and most people nodded hello or stopped to chat. After an hour or so, the tiny room was full, and the villagers gathered shoulder to shoulder. Fraser cast me another of his looks. He was a handsome lad, all corkscrew curls and blue eyes and sleeves rolled up. I smiled back, remembering last night’s lock-in, me and Keira and Fraser and two Kiwi backpackers dancing and singing till dawn.

It was pitch dark by eight, and the pub was in full swing. Sitting quietly by myself, I rested in the shadows and studied
every face. I memorised their laughter, watching how they moved, how they talked to each other. I was learning to see patterns in people.

It was busier than previous nights. Word had spread, and folk had come through from Port Charlotte. One couple had driven round Loch Indaal from Bowmore. The tiny pub was close and loud and dark. There was movement by the door, and the crowd shifted to let Keira in. She slipped through to the bar and ordered a cider. She grinned and raised her glass.

When I felt ready, I waved at Fraser, and he ducked behind the bar. A moment later, the lights dimmed low.

I stood up, then. The villagers nearest to me fell quiet, and their silence spread around the pub. Fraser killed the jukebox. The distant booming of the Orsay and Coinnich currents sounded through the room. In the stove, the fire slumped upon itself, sending sparks against the glass.

Stories are written in woodsmoke and salt.

Every face was turned to mine.

‘I’m going to tell you a story,’ I said, ‘because stories explain the things we can’t control.’

I spoke calmly, but my voice carried in the bar. Ruddy in the firelight and hidden by the dancing shadows, the villagers looked at me. Standing behind the counter, one hand on the beer pumps, Fraser watched me wide-eyed. He looked like a wee boy when I told my stories.

‘It’s about a lot of things …’

Keira joined the fringes of the circle.

‘… but it’s mostly about love. It’s about finding love in peculiar places. It’s about finding love, even when it’s hidden in plain sight.’

She held my gaze.

‘And it goes like this.’

I lowered my voice, and pin-drop silence needled through the bar. I enjoyed it, making them wait.

‘Once, there was an island girl.’

The turning of the tide. The shifting of the sea.

We only stay for a short while, and then we go. Sometimes we leave traces of ourselves behind, and sometimes we are remembered. Every one of us is a visitor.

The only question in this life is who we choose to travel with.

Simon Sylvester is a writer, teacher and occasional filmmaker. His work has been published in a range of magazines, journals and anthologies, and he has written more than a thousand flash stories on Twitter. He lives in Cumbria with his wife and daughter.
The Visitors
is his first novel.