The House Between Tides Page 6

  “No indeed! You came to paint. Did you tell him so?”

  “I imagine he’d think I’d other reasons for declining.” He had given her a dry smile and led her towards the tumbled stones of an old ruin. “Come and have a look at St. Ultan’s chapel, my dear, before it erodes away completely.” He pointed out the old gravestones clustered about the ruins, one inscribed with a sword, another with a simple ship. “My father started cataloguing them all once, scraping the lichens away to see the inscriptions. He had this uncontrollable urge to list things—birds, tombstones, or profits and losses.” There was always an edge to Theo’s voice when he spoke of his father, who had remained indifferent to his talent. This much she had learned in Edinburgh from Theo’s sister, Emily, and had observed the coldness between Theo and his stepmother for herself. “The lichen’s beginning to grow back, thank God. Just look at that colour, quite luminous.”

  She agreed that it was lovely, and had watched him as he examined the overlapping pads of moss and lichen on the fallen cross. “Who was St. Ultan?” she asked.

  “An Irishman. He gave succour to infants, I’m told, especially orphans.” He had come and sat beside her, leaning his back against the wall of the ruin, and she felt the warmth of his shoulder next to hers. “My mother wanted to bury her stillborn daughter here, but my father wouldn’t have it, said the babe wasn’t an orphan. He had a plot made on the ridge behind the house, and then two more joined the first, poor wights. Mother hated them being there, exposed to every gale, all alone.”

  Theo rarely spoke of his mother, except to say that she used to draw pictures with him when he was a child. And he, so young when she died, must have felt her loss keenly. “But she’s with them there now,” she said carefully.

  “She’d rather be here, nevertheless.” He got abruptly to his feet. “Come on, I felt spots of rain,” he said, and he had set off, leaving her to follow.

  So far he had shown no inclination to paint, but had been boyishly enthusiastic about his new camera, prowling around the house experimenting, startling housemaids whom he commanded to remain motionless, and self-conscious, in his compositions. He had surprised her too as she sat at her dressing table one morning. “Raise your arms to your hair again. As you were. No. Wait! Yes, there.” And he told her he had captured a thousand images of her, reflected in the angled side mirror. “But what will I do with a thousand Beatrices?” he asked, putting aside his camera. “Just one has all a man could ask for.” And he had swept her laughing from the stool and carried her back to the rumpled bed. The poor girl who had come to collect her breakfast tray half an hour later had been mortified.

  Lifting her head now, she saw him from the window, out on the drained sand, walking towards the house, a dark figure backlit by the low sun, and reached for her clothes. She would join him, if only for the last stretch up to the house. Grabbing a shawl, she looked again at the approaching figure and then stopped, the shawl loose in her hand. For it was not Theo, after all, but the factor’s elder son who was striding across the beach towards the house; the long shadows had deceived her. And as she watched she saw him raise a hand to his mouth and heard a piercing whistle, which brought Bess, the brown pointer, tearing from the shore, circling him in delight. He bent and twisted, hurling a stick far out onto the strand. The dog pelted after it, sending up sprays of diamonds from the shallow water, and she found herself wondering if Theo had ever played so lightheartedly across the sands.

  Halfway down the stairs, she met Mrs. Henderson with her breakfast tray. “I was just bringing this up, madam, with a message from Mr. Blake. He’s ridden over to the manse but says he’ll be back for dinner.” Beatrice smiled brightly and thanked her, agreeing that she would take breakfast in the morning room, and entered just in time to see through the window as Cameron Forbes disappeared around the back of the factor’s house, followed by his dog.

  She poured her tea and bit into the toast, looking round, resolving again that a pair of dusty lapwings over the fireplace would be better suited elsewhere. But she must be patient, not try and change things too quickly, and in the meantime she must find some occupation, for Mrs. Henderson’s competency left her with little to do. “We’re damned lucky to have her,” Theo had said, explaining that she had been trained in one of the big houses on the mainland and had returned to the islands “in trouble.” Running Muirlan House for them was child’s play.

  She pulled out a half-finished letter to Emily Blake and picked up her pen. Your brother has not yet dipped brush in paint, she wrote, but spends his days either out on the estate or closeted in his study with the factor’s son. Still settling in, he tells me. Do you think you will come this summer? You mustn’t think you intrude . . . When Theo had first suggested they spend the summer on the island, she had felt a stab of disappointment, hoping he might have suggested Europe. “Venice stinks in summer,” he had said, “and Rome’s full of foreigners.” And something in his face had told her that coming here was important to him. The island is as lovely as you described and I confess that I don’t miss Edinburgh one bit. She paused again, thinking back to the endless, deadening round of social occasion and intrigue, driven as she had been by the cheerless imperative to find a husband as her father careered towards financial disaster. He had led a reckless life, with a circle of ramshackle friends, and his love of the racecourse had never been equalled by his successes there, but her mother’s frank revelations regarding his debts had come as a shock. “Don’t fall for a charming smile, my dear. We must find you a man of substance, and quickly.” Her mother had made an unequal match, marrying against her family’s wishes, and Beatrice had watched, mortified, as she used all her remaining connections to thrust her daughter forward before her husband burned through her remaining inheritance.

  Beatrice had tried to play by the rules, hating the whole business, and had a number of admirers, but when her first close association was found to have considerable debts of his own, and a rather unsavoury past, she had been whisked away, narrowly avoiding a personal disaster.

  And it was then that she had met Theo Blake.

  She knew his name, of course, as well as his reputation, and had been pleased to be invited to a private viewing of his recent work, completed during a long stay in Europe. He had been pointed out to her upon arrival, a strikingly handsome man, bronzed and healthy-looking among the pale city dwellers, moving amongst them with an assured nonchalance. But as she wandered through the exhibition, examining his paintings, she was conscious of disappointment. They were mostly rural scenes, goat herds amongst sage scrub on parched hillsides, ochre buildings decaying in golden sunlight, a dog asleep in the shadows. Beautifully executed but unremarkable.

  And then she had been drawn to a painting which hung in a corner, away from the others, a painting she now recognised as the view from the foreshore in front of the house. It showed two ill-defined figures walking across the strand, through contrasting patches of light, shadow, and mist, walking in parallel, slightly apart from each other, and somehow clearly a man and a woman. But were they coming together or drifting apart? The painting left it unresolved, and she had been arrested by a sense of deep poignancy. She stood looking at it for a long time, then spoke to the companion she imagined stood behind her. “Why, this is quite ethereal. A mirage—”

  “A mirage, you say?” A deep voice spoke across her shoulder. “Something you’re compelled to reach for”—she had turned to find the painter himself looking at it over her head, his eyes sharp and intense—“knowing you can never grasp it.”

  Introductions were swiftly made, and he had explored her face with an unsettling directness, then others had stolen his attention and she watched him accepting congratulations with urbane dismissal, his manners easy and smooth. And she had detected a hint of disdain, as if he held neither their flattery nor the paintings in any great esteem. His single state, his established reputation and, more particularly, his controlling interest in his deceased father’s textile mills had made him
the subject of considerable interest in Edinburgh society, and she watched predatory mamas calculating their chances.

  And then he was beside her again. “I sense indifference, Miss Somersgill.”

  She looked up guiltily to find that he was smiling. “Not indifference, no. Only . . . only these are so very different from the other one.”

  “That’s because these, you see, are exercises in technique designed to”—he opened the exhibition catalogue—“ ‘demonstrate complete mastery of brushwork and perspective, an eye for the charm of the commonplace, a superior understanding of tonal quality.’  ” He lowered the catalogue and smiled over the top of it. “And to remind people that I’m still alive.”

  “And the other?” She smiled back at him. “To remind yourself that that’s the case?” She had spoken without thinking and was startled by his changed expression. “There’s a greater . . . a greater sensitivity, a depth of feeling—” she added, faltering and confused. “I like it better.”

  “So do I.” Again that searching, unsettling intensity. “Let me help you to the refreshments. You’ve spoken the first sensible word I’ve heard tonight.”

  And so it had begun.

  Chapter 8

  1910, Theo

  He stood motionless on the top of the dunes and stared out to the horizon, and the world was still and quiet around him. Below him the sea was a dark wash of ultramarine tipped with white stretching clear to the horizon but an icy jade where the waves rose to meet the shore. He watched, transfixed by the sight, by the relentless energy, seeing veils of spray flung back as each wave raced ashore. Torrann Bay—at last! Here was the very essence of the island, its elemental spirit. Mystical at dawn, blazing white hot at midday or drenched by showers, and an awesome symphony of light as the sun drowned in the western sea.

  Twenty years ago he had set up his easel just behind where he now stood and had painted the scene. It felt like yesterday, and the sound and the smell of the place had haunted him throughout his self-imposed exile.

  After a while he turned away and sat on a stone, his customary seat, and leant against the wall of a ruined croft house, closing his eyes and losing himself to the sound of the waves and the wind rattling through the dune grasses.

  The sun had not yet tipped the peak of Bheinn Mhor on the main island when he’d reached the dunes this morning, and he’d been panting by the time he’d climbed to the top. City living had taken its toll. Or was it age? Forty, by God! He’d looked back across the machair towards the house, where he had left Beatrice sleeping. Content, it seemed, to be here. Or was it simply the novelty? Or to please him? Beatrice, bless her, was eager to please. He smiled slightly, his eyes still closed, savouring the thought of her, and this perfect moment, before the land was flooded with light. A calm, expectant moment, a moment of quiet solitude.

  To reflect.

  And slowly, as he sat there, he felt the sanctity of the place wrap around him, and knew that he had truly returned.

  He had not dared to come here until now—

  His eyes remained shut.

  But even with them closed, he could clearly see Màili standing where he had just stood, and where he had once sketched her, skirt flattened against her bare legs, outlining the curves of her form. A few deft strokes, a little light shading, and he had captured her—or so he had thought.

  But she had slipped away, as surely as a selkie maid.

  Once, as they had lain lazily in a sandy hollow just below here, where dunes became beach, she had told him the island legend of the selkies, the seal people who came ashore at midsummer, shedding their skins to dance on the beach. Unwary fishermen would fall under their enchantment, she had told him, her eyes wide and believing, and then steal their skins, binding the creatures to them, compelling them to stay ashore as wistful wives, forever seeking their lost pelts, their only chance of returning to their ocean home. She had been stretched out on her stomach plaiting the coarse dune grasses as she told the story, and he beside her, watching her nimble fingers twisting the blades. “And are you weaving binding spells in the marram grass?” he asked, capturing her hands and ruining her handiwork as he pulled her to him. “Strong magic, Màili.”

  But no spell had been needed; by then he was already bound to her, hand and foot and heart.

  And it was here, on another occasion, that they had stood together and looked up to the sky and watched two sea eagles twisting and turning in a strange, violent dance. “Are they fighting?” Màili had asked as the birds came together, locked talons grappling, tumbling, and rolling over each other, doing cartwheels through the air, their wing pinions fluttering and feathered legs swinging out below.

  “Courting, not fighting,” he had replied.

  They had watched as the birds plummeted, apparently out of control, until the last moment, when they had recovered and climbed again, only to repeat the performance.

  Then she had given him her slant-eyed smile. “And I thought courtship was a gentle business.”

  But he had not heeded her words. And later that day he had sketched her lying on the sand below the dunes, her arm outstretched and her hair entwined with the tangle, becoming part of it. She had laughed at his sudden intensity, but the composition had excited him: dark curls merging with trails of seaweed, bare legs the colour of shell sand, and he had begged her to let him paint her, in that same pose, unclothed: “A true selkie. Please, Màili.” But she had shot to her feet, dark eyes enormous and cheeks crimson, ready to flee.

  Theo opened his eyes and stared, unfocussed, over the surface of the sea. Only once did he allow his gaze to stray to the headland, where hidden amongst the rocks and grassy tussocks was the rock pool, with its cushions of pink thrift rooted in the cracks and crevices. It was after that day that things had changed. After that day she had gone seeking her pelt, and then slipped away—

  He took a deep breath and, after a moment, pulled his field glasses from their worn leather case and began raking the shoreline for birds, dragging his mind back from the past, and began mentally ticking off the species as he saw them. At least some things in this charmed place remained constant— He followed the flight of a pair of shelduck which had risen near the rocks, and then paused to fix upon two dark shapes beyond. He sat forward and watched them intently for a while until he was certain, then he lowered the glasses, smiling with a deep satisfaction. Divers. Immature males, overwintering, no doubt. They would leave soon. Or did they, like him, intend to stay, look for sweet-tempered mates, and settle? It was too much to hope for.

  He looked about him once more. Surely he could come back here now and paint again, really paint, not just go through the motions in some Parisian atelier or picturesque French village. This was where he belonged, where he had first found that compelling absorption, that sense of purpose, the intense, slow burn of passion.

  And he would bring Beatrice here.

  Soon. Very soon—

  He smiled again at the thought of Beatrice. Lovely Beatrice, with her calm manner and her poise. She seemed delighted by all he had shown her, and she seemed to understand, as he thought she might when he had first seen her at the gallery staring with such intensity at his painting. “A mirage,” she had said, seeing it for what it was. He’d been chasing mirages across the world for far too long! That painting had been a wrenching farewell to his old love, conceived in grief, but Beatrice, of course, could not have known that.

  He released another deep breath. It had taken a long time to work up the courage to come back to the island for anything more than was necessary to keep the estate in order. Pitiful! Such wretched cowardice. But now Beatrice offered him a new beginning. New hope. They would spend every spring and summer here and leave with the corncrakes in the autumn.

  He lifted his face to the sun, closed his eyes, and let the light flood around him, seeking strength from its energy. There must be no more fruitless grieving. He would be resolute and put it all behind him, for Beatrice was here with him, his shield an
d his talisman, untouched by the past.

  A past that could be put aside at last.

  But for Cameron—

  The thought brought him back to earth and he opened his eyes, a frown creasing his forehead. How the devil was he to cope with Cameron being here? When he had appeared so suddenly that first day, without warning, Theo had felt the impact like a blow, and could only stand, winded and off-balance, and watch him approach. That familiar, confident stride—and when he had raised his eyes and smiled, extending his hand, it had been Màili who had looked out at him.

  He got to his feet and went to stand again at the edge of the dune, his hands thrust deep into his pockets, and stared down at the beach below him. Those eyes had always been a conduit back to Màili, a thin and precious thread. And once, years ago, he had stood here with Cameron, a boy who barely reached his shoulder and who had pulled urgently at his sleeve. “Look, sir! Sea eagles.” And together they had watched them, perhaps the same pair, for they were long-lived creatures. And as the lad lifted excited eyes to Theo, he had looked down at him and been swamped by a powerful emotion, the strength of which had never left him.

  Having him close had been like having Màili, again—

  He turned away from the sea and bent to pick up his field glasses, shaking his head to rid himself of impossible longings. And it was time to be heading back; the sun was up.

  The lad had altered, he thought, as he walked along the ridge of the dunes. Or was he just two years older? He looked well, though, very well, and Theo wanted desperately to talk to him, hear of his travels, his impressions, get to know him again, but he sensed in Cameron a new reserve and a greater assurance. Almost challenging—though that was nothing new! And he smiled, remembering Cameron as a boy with his precocious self-confidence. But what had drawn him back here? Canada must surely have offered opportunities for a young man like him. John Forbes had been ill last winter. Was it that which had brought him back? Or was it the pull of the island itself? God knows it gave a powerful tug!