The House Between Tides Read online

  Mustn’t linger. Three more steps above the half-landing looked sound, and she went cautiously upward until her eyes became level with the landing. She stood on tiptoe, and from there she could just see through the doorway and into the room with the small turret.

  It was a wreck. Of course it was. The roof was gone, and the floor was littered with broken beams and fallen slates. But what on earth had she expected? And then as surely as she had needed to come, she needed to leave. The house would go, and this room would go, but the photograph would survive, and that moment would outlive the house and endure. Then another thunder clap sounded overhead and rain began to fall steadily. She stepped backwards, catching her leg on a jagged splinter of wood, and she bent to look, feeling the wetness of blood on her skin.

  “For Christ’s sake, woman!” a furious voice roared from below. “Are you mad?” Only now, she realised that the rhythm of the banging door had been interrupted, and she peered down to see James Cameron looking up at her from the bottom of the stairwell, his face pale in the half-light. The last rumble of thunder must have masked the arrival of the Land Rover, which she now saw had drawn up outside. “Come down, for God’s sake. It’s not to die for.”

  As soon as her foot touched the last stair, he grabbed her arm, propelling her swiftly across the hall, out of the door, and onto the drive before opening the door of the Land Rover and pushing her in, glancing over his shoulder as he did. It was only then that she realised how much the wind had strengthened; the banging of the front door was now echoed by a loud knocking and creaking as loose roof timbers struggled to withstand the gusts.

  He drove away fast, bumping over deeply carved channels running with rainwater, and stopped where she had left her hire car. “Look at you. Soaked to the skin and bloody. Jesus!” He leant forward and rested his arms on top of the steering wheel. “And what now, Hetty? Back over the strand, is it?”

  “Yes.”

  She dug into her pocket and pulled out the car keys, but he reached across and took them. “No.”

  She stared at him. “Why not? What are you doing?”

  He let out the hand brake and they rolled back down to the main track, pausing where it forked. “I was ten, maybe fifteen minutes behind you, but that last channel was above the axles when I crossed.” He took the track which led away from the foreshore towards the farmhouse. “We’re stuck here until the wee hours, maybe longer given the storm,” he said as he swung the Land Rover into the courtyard. “Sit tight.” He ran across, hunched over the padlock on the farmhouse door, and then pushed it open and beckoned. She left the Land Rover and he swept her in, half closed the door, and took an oilskin from a peg behind it. “There’ll be slates flying about soon. I need to move your car.” And he was gone again.

  It was calm and still inside the old farmhouse, the thick walls absorbing the noise of the storm, and the fading light shone pearly-grey through cobwebbed windows. She stood dazed and breathless, and looked about her, steadying herself, as her heart rate slowed. They would have to spend the night here! But where? In the dim light she could see an old cast-iron range and a wooden dresser beside a row of 1950s wooden cupboards, piled high with plastic fish crates and empty petrol cans. A coil of rope festooned with dried seaweed was stashed in a corner next to coloured net floats, crab pots, old newspapers, and a roll of barbed wire. And in the centre, as if rooted there, stood a large pine table with broken chairs and stools arranged around it, and she remembered what Ruairidh had told her: “. . . She sat at the big old kitchen table, drinking tea and reminiscing about childhood days. A lovely woman.” Hetty went across to the table and ran her hand over the worn surface.

  Emily. She had spent her last night on the island here.

  James returned, bringing with him a blast of rain-soaked air, and hung the oilskin behind the door, where it dripped steadily and formed a pool on the old flagstones. He rubbed a hand briskly through his damp hair, then pulled off his sweater, throwing it towards her. “Put that on. I’ve got this.” And he pushed his head through an old torn fisherman’s gansey that lay beside the oilskins. “You’re shivering. Put it on,” he insisted, “and let’s have a look at your leg.” He lifted a hurricane lantern from the window-sill, lit it, and placed it on the table, then from somewhere he produced a first aid kit.

  He gestured for her to sit down and sat beside her, raising her leg to rest across his knee, and pulled aside her skirt to examine the cut. His sweater swamped her with a comforting warmth; it smelt of woodsmoke and salt water. “Bare legs, on a night like this,” he scoffed, bringing the lantern closer.

  “I hadn’t planned to leave the hotel.”

  He made a derisive sound and wiped away blood which had dried in streaks from her knee to her ankle. But his fingers were gentle, and his efforts revealed a small gash along her calf. “Tetanus up to date?” he asked and dabbed antiseptic liberally on the open wound, adding, “serves you right,” and not looking up when she gasped, biting her lip. Then he sat back and viewed her gravely. “Alright?” She nodded and lifted her leg from his knee.

  He got up and began rummaging in one of the old cupboards, producing a bottle of whisky and two mugs. “Medicinal. And then it’s a choice between baked beans or tinned pilchards.” From the same cupboard he produced an old primus stove, two tins, and a pan, which he took to the sink, holding it under a hand pump, pumping briskly. She watched, fascinated, and he smiled slightly at her expression. “We often stay here during lambing,” he said, over his shoulder, “and besides, old Aonghas never quite finished moving out.” He set the primus going and poured baked beans into the pan, his movements economical and competent, his hair drying in spikes and the old sweater unravelling at both elbows. She tried, and failed, to imagine Giles in such a situation.

  After a cursory inspection, he discarded the pilchards and then sat across the table from her. “So, tell me.”

  And haltingly at first, then more fluently, she described what had passed in the dining room, what she had decided. He was a good listener, saying nothing, not even when she finished, but simply nodded and went to crouch in front of the old range and began laying sticks in the fire basket. After a moment, he spoke, his back still to her. “An old newspaper cutting turned up amongst Aonghas’s papers while I was away. He said he didn’t know it was there.” He rocked back on his heels and turned to her. “But it answers one thing. Emily Armstrong and her second husband were both killed in a motor accident in France a few weeks after she came up here.” He began making spills from old newspapers and struck a match. “Armstrong was South African. A racing car driver.”

  She spread her hands over the surface of the table again, reaching back. “So that explains why my grandmother was going out there, to her father’s family. There was no one left here. And Emily died, leaving trailing threads.” He nodded, watching the fire as it took hold. Then he came and sat down opposite her again, and she found herself telling him about revisiting the museum, about the photographs, her sense of being behind the camera and seeing the house through Theo Blake’s eyes, and how she had felt compelled to trace time back to that brief moment of brightness. “I had to see the place where he and Beatrice had been happy. Just once.” Would he understand?

  Perhaps he did, but he shook his head at her. “Madness. I guessed you’d set off to come here, but I thought you’d have enough sense not to cross over. And then I saw your headlights on the far side as I swung round the bay road.” He got up to stir the baked beans, cursing when he found they had stuck to the pan. “And then I knew there was every chance you’d be crazy enough to go inside, or try to cross back.” He scraped the beans onto two chipped enamel plates and pushed one towards her. “But you’re alive. So eat.”

  They ate in silence. Then: “So you’ll make over the house, legally, to old Aonghas?” he said between mouthfuls, fixing her with his intense look.

  “Yes.”

  “He was all set to move back over here, you know, thinking occupancy would make a
difference, got into a terrible fret.” She began to apologise, but he cut her off. “And the land?”

  James Cameron took no prisoners. “That too. All of it. And I’ve no intention of taking on Mr. MCP Software Inc. either.”

  He looked up at that and grinned. “So you worked that one out, did you? Pity, really. I was looking forward to seeing MacPhail versus Blake in the courts. Playing out the last episode in a long feud.”

  “Who is he?”

  “John MacPhail? Nice guy. Canadian. Son of a post-war emigrant whose forebear was thrown into jail for resisting eviction by Blake’s father.” He reached over and poured whisky into the two mugs. “In one of Blake’s later bizarre acts, he granted the family croft land, and their descendants have held on to it like a sacred trust ever since. John repaired the old house himself some years ago and comes over for a week or so every summer. No electricity, no running water, but he says it keeps him sane. If you’d tried to claim it back, he’d have chewed you up, spat you out, and then jumped on the remains, with a legion of MacPhail phantoms cheering him on.” He laughed at her, his teeth white in the lantern light, and she found herself smiling in response. “He was the ace up my sleeve, you see.” And his laughter was as warming as the amber whisky, but then she saw his face grow thoughtful again. “Blake gave them croft land about the same time he set up the bird reserve.”

  “Bad conscience?”

  He shrugged. “It was years later, but maybe. By now Ruairidh will have opened that package and might have the answer to that little mystery. I was about to go round to him when you made your dramatic exit.” In the poor light she could no longer see his expression, but she sensed him grow tense again.

  He spooned more baked beans onto his plate, his eyes in shadow. “You think it was Theo Blake, then?” she asked, shaking her head at his gesture, refusing her share.

  “Maybe. But there’s a lot we don’t know about the man. At the end he wasn’t just a recluse, he was tormented. Mad, perhaps, some of the time. The stories which come down tell of him striding out across the machair, talking and gesticulating to invisible companions, odd manic behaviour, short spells of normality followed by periods when he was stoned on morphine. Apparently he went berserk on the day of the old factor’s funeral, sobbing and cursing, and then became obsessed about renovating the house. Crazy stuff. And then”—he paused—“and then he took his own life, drowning himself in the strand.”

  She stared. “Drowning himself?”

  “It was covered up to avoid a scandal.” She sat back, stunned, and looked at him, the light from the lantern glinting in his eye. “Donald Forbes found him when the tide had receded, his body caught against a reef near the ruined chapel. Aonghas remembers it well, he’d just come home on leave.”

  “An accident, surely!”

  “He’d filled his pockets with stones.”

  She stared at him, struggling to absorb this new twist to the tragedy, and then another piece fitted into place. “Emily knew,” she said, and told him about the reference to stones in her grandmother’s journal. “It must have been a guilty conscience.”

  “Maybe.” His face had closed again, discouraging further questioning.

  But later, when they had finished eating, their plates scraped clean, he rose and closed the shutters, lighting another storm lantern, and they sat in a small circle of light at the old scrubbed table. And he began to talk.

  “These islands, this place, has always been important to me, the only fixed point in my life.” For once he looked almost vulnerable. “As a boy I used to get parked up here, with the Forbeses, when my father was between jobs. Kenya, Nepal, Belize. Big engineering projects. He was everywhere.” He looked down, running his finger around the top of the tin mug. “And I began to realise that my being here was part of a pattern, one that goes back a long way”—his face was thoughtful, the angles of his features exaggerated by the shifting shadows—“part of something unresolved.” He looked up at her again. “You see, it wasn’t just me who’d spent my childhood up here, almost fostered by Ruairidh’s family. My grandfather had been taken in by them, and after he was killed in the war, his son—my father—grew up here. All strays, all finding sanctuary here with the Forbeses, generation after generation. Drawn back.” He stared into the fire, disappearing again into a private world.

  A question which had long hovered at the edge of her mind suddenly came to her. “What about the surnames? Why are you Cameron and not Forbes, like Ruairidh?”

  He pulled a wry face. “I wondered when you’d ask.” He sat back, one arm hooked over the top of his chair, the long fingers of his other hand wrapped around the mug. “It’s part of the mystery, perhaps an important part. I told you before that Cameron Forbes argued with Blake and left the island in 1911.” She nodded. “Well, my grandfather, Johnnie, was Cameron’s son, so we’re told, and was always known as Johnnie Forbes, as you’d expect. He got married during the war, in London, to an island girl who was nursing down there. Old sweethearts, apparently, and she came back to the island after he was killed, pregnant with my father. When Dad was born, they dug out Johnnie’s birth certificate to find it stated that his father was a John Cameron and his mother Jane Cameron. Big surprise all round, and no one left to explain. Johnnie hadn’t been born on the island, you see. Old John Forbes brought him here as a small child, saying that his mother was dead but that he was Cameron’s son.” He waited while she absorbed this, watching her face, then went on. “If true, it would appear that Cameron Forbes didn’t stay in Canada after all, but came back, changed his name, fathered a son, and then disappeared again.” Shadows from the lantern threw half his face into darkness. “All of which suggests that Cameron Forbes was very keen not to be found. It’s the only reason to change your name that I know of.”

  She nodded slowly, recognising that this was something he had thought through many times. “And so you think the body is the reason Cameron had to disappear?”

  He nodded, his face still tense. “The letter he sent when he arrived in Canada seems deliberately vague about his plans, gives no address, so maybe he was on the run. And then a few years later John Forbes brings his child here, to wait for Cameron to come for him, he said. The old factor knew something, and he expected Cameron to come back.” He tossed down the last of the whisky and got to his feet. “I just don’t get it. Never have. And God knows who Jane Cameron was. I can’t trace her at all.”

  They cleared away the remains of the meal in silence and he set the primus alight again for coffee. “You can understand why they all kept coming back to this house—there’s something reassuringly solid and practical about the place. And unlike Muirlan House, it was built to endure. Want to look around? No mysteries here.”

  And he was right. There was no place for ghosts amongst the assortment of junk which the years had accumulated. Plastic fertiliser bags, hessian potato sacks, and obscure pieces of machinery filled the front parlour, and a rusty paraffin heater still occupied a blocked space in front of the old stone fireplace. Dark rectangles on the stained wallpaper showed where pictures had once hung, and more potato sacks spilled from the cupboard under the stairs.

  The lantern cast moving shadows on the walls as they went upstairs, their footsteps ringing hollow on the bare wood. Under the sloping roofs of the bedrooms there was more junk, a child’s cot, a dented tin trunk, a bewildering array of household and farm utensils, and broken pieces of furniture as old as the house itself. Opposite the window in the largest bedroom, the rusty frame of a double bed still stood propped against one wall.

  “Like I said, Aonghas never quite moved out.” Hetty went and stood by the window, looking through the broken glass at where white crests now tipped the waves, and the wind blew spray across the dark surface, and she understood the danger James had saved her from.

  Then he was there beside her, very close. “What a way to go, drowning in a rusty Ford Fiesta,” he said. “I’d never have forgiven myself.”

  And even as
she willed it, his hands were on her shoulders, turning her towards him, and he kissed her. He drew back after a moment to look at her. “I’ve been wanting to do that for a while.” The angles of his face were sharply etched by the light coming through the window, and his eyes glinted a smile. “Right from the start, in fact”—she raised a hand to his face, and he twisted his head to kiss her palm—“despite the difficulties.”

  “Consorting with the enemy?” she said, a little unsteadily.

  “Something like that,” he said, drawing her closer, his cheek cool against hers. His old gansey smelt vaguely of creosote and sawdust, nostalgic, familiar smells, and on his lips she could taste the whisky they had shared.

  How strange was this feeling, of things falling into place.

  A flash of lightning startled them apart, followed by a crash of thunder which shook the house. He glanced up at the ceiling. “Right overhead.” He bent to pick up the lantern. “Come on. You’re shivering again.” He scooped up a pile of potato sacks, guiding her back down the stairs and into the kitchen, where the kettle on the primus was dancing. “Sit over by the range and warm up. I’ll be back in a minute.”

  Cold air filled the room as he left, and the primus flame stuttered. She dragged one of the old chairs close to the fire and tucked her feet up under her, pulling his sweater over her knees, and a deep sense of well-being crept over her. No longer the enemy. How suddenly, and how quickly, matters corrected themselves. The current of connection which she had sought had become live and vital in a way she could not have imagined, separating the before and after. And she sat there, staring into the fire, absorbing the idea of James, and with it a quiet thrum of excitement. No longer the enemy! Then she rose and searched the cupboards, finding a small jar of dried-out Nescafé and a twisted bag of solid sugar.