The House Between Tides Page 7

  There was an irony, though, that their returns had coincided so closely, as if the same force had simultaneously reeled them both back in.

  But would he stay?

  If he did, they could work together again. Donald was old enough to help his father now, freeing Cameron to assist Theo. He was intelligent and had good prospects here, he must be made to understand this, and Theo could advance his interests in many ways. He plunged down the landward side of the dunes, his feet sinking deep in the sand, watching as the sun reached the top of Bheinn Mhor and the sweet tang of the damp grass rose to assail him. He would speak to him, and to John, and if he could persuade Cameron to stay, he would have all he could hope for. And in this mature contentment he would rediscover the island. Reclaim it for himself, on his own terms. Timeless and unchanging.

  And he would paint again.

  Chapter 9

  1910, Beatrice

  “Yes, I think that is all, Mrs. Henderson. Thank you.”

  The housekeeper gave a smile and a nod, and then withdrew, closing the door of the morning room behind her, and Beatrice smiled. It was something of a charade, this morning ritual when Mrs. Henderson came to her for instructions, knowing better than she did what needed doing. She always brought a list of suggested meals for the day, and occasionally would offer Beatrice a choice while managing to convey a sense of what she felt would be more appropriate, and Beatrice appreciated her tact. In Mrs. Henderson she recognised an ally. Gradually, and tentatively at first on both parts, they had begun to discuss how they might tackle the house, bring it more up to date and make it more comfortable. They had got as far as making lists for each room of which furniture required a thorough clean, which perhaps could be refashioned or reupholstered, and which ought to be removed altogether, and discovered that they were largely in agreement.

  “I was just a housemaid when the first Mrs. Blake was here, and everything was still quite new then, and these heavy furnishings were more in fashion. Most had been sent up from Paisley,” she told Beatrice. “But I was working on the mainland when the dear lady died, poor thing, and the second Mrs. Blake was never really happy here.”

  “Theo—Mr. Blake said she found it . . . remote.”

  “Aye, she did, so she never cared enough for the place to keep it up. And by then old Mr. Blake was quite set in his ways and didn’t like changes.” Beatrice hoped his son was not going to prove to be the same. “And Mr. Theo, of course, hasn’t spent much time here in recent years.”

  Beatrice wanted to ask why that was, but this was a subject to be approached obliquely. “And yet he clearly loves the place! His paintings show that.”

  “Oh yes! I remember him as a lad, always with his sketch-book. His mama would take him out and they would sketch and paint together, it was lovely to see! But when I came back, everything had changed. She had died, Mr. Blake remarried, the old factor was sick and John Forbes was trying to do his job, a man’s job, it was, though he was hardly more than a lad then. He and Mr. Theo had been firm friends from childhood, you know, and old Mr. Blake saw to it that they had lessons together. They were always off somewhere, with Màili Cameron, the schoolmaster’s little girl, chasing after.” She smiled a moment at the memory. “Happy days, those. But in the time I was away, everything had changed, and Mr. Theo was so quiet, still grieving for his mother.”

  There was much more that Beatrice wanted to know, but Mrs. Henderson had stopped at that point and asked what Beatrice wanted done with linen. “Some of it is so thin, madam, you’ll have your feet through. If you and Mr. Blake have guests to stay, I’ll be hard-pressed to make the beds.” They had agreed to order more linen and find time to sort through the old stuff, and then Mrs. Henderson had left her.

  Beatrice went over to the window and saw the factor setting off down the track, and tried to imagine Theo and him as carefree boys together, escaping lessons. An old friendship must bring with it trust, and so Theo had felt able to leave the estate to his care over the years. And yet, while she had observed that John Forbes was unfailingly respectful, he was never familiar, and his exchanges with Theo seemed limited to estate matters.

  She went over to her bureau and sat, pulling out the letter to Emily which was still unfinished, and found herself hoping very much that she would come up and stay— Then she glanced again at the window and saw that the clouds had lifted and the weather looked set fine, too fine indeed to be indoors. Emily’s letter would have to wait, she decided, and shut the lid of her bureau and went to find her hat.

  Piece by piece, little by little, she was beginning to put together a picture of her husband’s past, she thought as she pulled the front door closed behind her and went down towards the shore. From Theo himself she had learned only the basic facts of his existence; the rest was hidden behind an impenetrable reserve. Mrs. Henderson would perhaps tell her more as they got to know each other better, and Emily too might fill in the gaps, although Theo must have been a man already grown and gone before she really knew him.

  And Beatrice felt she barely knew him herself—

  He had seemed quite formidable at first, she thought, as she walked down to the foreshore, rather aloof and often ironic, and she had felt shy with him. But she had also been drawn, intrigued by an enigmatic quality, sensing a depth and a restrained passion. She remembered the buzz of astonishment when their engagement was announced a few weeks after they had met at the exhibition. Envious friends had congratulated her on his wealth and sighed over his handsome face, while spiteful ones had commiserated with her for marrying someone almost twenty years her senior. “But you can always take a lover in a year or two,” one bold young matron had told her, and Beatrice had pulled away, resenting such cynicism. Besides, Theo did not seem old to her. Only his eyes, perhaps, remote sometimes, staring off into some distant, private world.

  When the exhibition of his work had finished, she had asked him if she could keep the painting over which they had met, not sell it—and an unexplained shadow had darkened his face. But later he agreed and had written a dedication to her on the back, and it hung now in the drawing room in Muirlan House. She often stood in front of it seeing how, through observation and consummate skill, he had captured the island’s unique quality. His works spoke of space, of light and of limitless horizons, a restless landscape—and they resonated with her present mood. She stopped a moment, elated as the wind flattened her skirts against her legs and loosened the ribbons of her hat, and she felt like a newborn creature, discovering stiff, untried limbs. And here, amidst the backdrop and the inspiration of so many of his paintings, she could appreciate more fully the complexity of his work.

  She walked on, feeling liberated by her swinging skirts and sturdy shoes, and heedless that the skies immediately above her were filling with a rasping, clicking sound. By the time she looked up, it was to see a cloud of delicate, black-capped white birds with long forked tails hovering directly overhead, screaming at her. There could be no mistaking their hostility, and she hesitated, unnerved, then took a hasty step and missed her footing, dropping her head just in time to avoid a sudden dive. Another swooped, beady eyes enraged, as the wind snatched off her hat, cartwheeling it away, and she went in pursuit. The birds followed, scolding furiously, until a sharp stab on the top of her head brought her up short, and she looked up to see a white fury hovering overhead, its red beak shrieking a warning.

  Panicked now, she bent and had started to run in pursuit of her hat when she heard a shout and looked up to see three figures at the edge of the field, waving and calling, their words carried away by the wind. The factor and his sons. Then another beak struck, sharper this time, and now two of the figures were running towards her; one veered off after her hat while the other continued into the melee of feathers and rage, stripping off his jacket. Another bird dived.

  “Keep your head down, or they’ll have your eye out!” Cameron Forbes warned as he threw his jacket over her head. “Grab the sleeve.” He held on to the other and put his arm
around her waist, propelling her firmly up the beach until the furious birds dropped back, one by one, and he released her, his eyes alight with amusement.

  “Are you alright, Mrs. Blake?” The factor was striding towards them. “You were struck, I think?”

  She found a sticky patch on her head and looked at her red fingertip in astonishment. “What on earth are they?”

  “Arctic terns.” It was his son who answered. “And they can skewer fish with those beaks.”

  “But why did they attack me?”

  “They will, you see, if they’ve eggs and young chicks.” The factor’s tone was apologetic. “And you’d strayed into the heart of their territory, not knowing—”

  “If we hadn’t seen you, there’d be nothing left to find but strips of flesh and a handful of rags.” Cameron Forbes stood with his jacket tossed over a shoulder, a finger hooked into the collar, the other hand reaching down to fondle his dog’s ears, a smile still playing across his features.

  John Forbes frowned at his son. “May I take a look at your head, madam?” he said, and she dropped her chin. “You must have some ointment on that cut,” he said. “Cameron, take Mrs. Blake back to the house and tell Mrs. Henderson to attend to it.”

  “Of course.” The young man pushed an arm back into his jacket sleeve and whistled to his dog. Donald returned too, and held out her hat.

  She took it from him and crammed it back onto her head, thanking him briefly, feeling foolish, like a child being taken home after a silly mishap, nettled by his brother’s obvious amusement.

  “In a few weeks they’ll have flown and the beach will be empty again,” he said in a conciliatory tone as they rejoined the track.

  “And has the island other forms of vicious wildlife I should know about?”

  He seemed to consider. “Eagles or buzzards will attack a lamb or a newborn calf, but I don’t imagine they’ll try to carry you off, madam.” She looked up sharply at this familiarity, still conscious of the way he had propelled her up the beach, and met a cheerful, uncomplicated smile. “Nor would the terns have done you any real harm.”

  She found herself responding to him. “Not reduced me to rags and strips of flesh?”

  “Not for a first offence,” he said gravely, and she dropped her head to hide a smile, wary of encouraging him. After a moment he added, “Edinburgh must seem a long way off, madam.”

  “Another world.” And they talked of Edinburgh, which he had visited once, and this led on to his wider travels, and Beatrice was struck, as she had been on earlier occasions, by this young man’s easy manners and style of address. Theo, to her surprise, seemed to give him that license. When Cameron’s attention was taken by the dog, she glanced across at him. There was something about him, something which set him quite apart from servants she had known at home or in Theo’s Edinburgh house. It was more than just the way he carried himself, shoulders straight and assured; it was something in his expression. His directness. Theo seemed to use him as some sort of secretary, so perhaps he did not consider himself a mere servant.

  “What was it you were doing today,” she asked, intrigued by him, “with your father and brother?”

  “Deciding where to build sand fences to halt the erosion. Futile, really, as the storms will have their way in the end.”

  So he was a farmhand too! “But it makes a change from Mr. Blake’s catalogues and ledgers.”

  “And provides a chance to be heroic.” This time she allowed herself to return his smile.

  Later she questioned Theo about Cameron’s role, but he was dismissive. “I’m employing him to assist me, when he can be spared. He has a neat hand and knows my ways. He’s worked with me before, and I trained him, so to speak.” And with that she had to be content.

  But she found that she often came across them together, heads bent over dried specimen in the study, discussing books and articles, like tutor and scholar, absorbed by common interests. Or she would watch them heading out together onto the estate with sporting guns, sometimes with John Forbes, or Donald, but often just the two of them. And yet she sensed a current of tension between them, and once she had met a wrathful Cameron in the hall following a curt dismissal. Earlier there had been raised voices in the study, and from the little she had overheard, it was not natural history that had been under discussion.

  Chapter 10

  2010, Hetty

  Hetty stood drumming her fingers on the window-sill and looked across to Muirlan Island, where clouds hung low, threatening rain. She stooped to pick up a mug left under a chair and took it through to the kitchen. She wanted to go back across and have another look around, on her own, but was thwarted now by tide and police prohibition. No one was to go near the bones again, the inspector had warned, and nothing was to be said until the forensic team had removed them. Any interest caused by unusual activity up at the old house could be explained away, if necessary, by Hetty’s arrival.

  But no one was going over the strand this morning, anyway, and Ruairidh’s tide tables suggested it would be hours before it was safe to cross. She needed a walk, though, and decided she would explore along the shore following the edge of the bay to where she’d seen the tide pouring in between the two spear points of land, and take some photographs.

  She thought again about James Cameron’s report as she pulled on her jacket and reached for her camera. In fact, she thought of little else— His estimation of costs was quite unreachable, but then Giles had once spoken of partnerships, ways and means of raising finance to make the project viable, but she had resisted the idea. Once the restoration was done, she had hoped the hotel would cover its own running costs, but James’s view suggested otherwise. She would, after all, have to ask Giles to explain her options in more detail. Finance was his forte.

  But how far did she want to involve Giles? The question couldn’t be dodged forever.

  Almost without her noticing, over this last year Giles had drawn her into his world and become part of her landscape. Or, rather, she had become part of his. She was fond of Giles, and grateful to him. He had been there when her need had been the greatest, first in a professional capacity but later, after that encounter in the art gallery, he had stepped in and supported her at a time when she was overwhelmed by the relentless bureaucracy of death, steering her through probate, the house sale, even helping her find a suitable home for her grandmother as her dementia deepened. And they had been seeing each other, off and on, ever since. They met two or three times a week these days, for a film or a drink, had holidayed together twice, and now almost invariably spent the weekends together, at either his flat or hers, although she had resisted his entreaties that she move in with him. She was not ready for that. Her friends told her she was lucky. Nice man, well set up, clearly devoted, and he had started to talk about the future.

  She paused, balancing on a slippery rock. Friends might see them as an established couple, and perhaps they were . . . but it was hard to explain to them how she felt as if Giles could drain the oxygen from a room, and it was this characteristic which made her hesitate. He meant well, of course, but even in the darkest days she had needed her own space, and she needed it still. He was only trying to help, he told her, but— It seemed her thoughts always stalled with that blunt little word, like a railway buffer at the end of a track.

  Was that what they were approaching? The end of the track?

  A shaft of sunlight split the clouds, turning a pool of water on the strand to hammered silver, and she pulled out her camera, pushing Giles into a siding for the moment, as she tried to capture the image before it faded. From here the house looked almost intact. Ahead of her there was a small headland from where she might get an even better shot, across the water, so she walked on, towards an old croft house which stood at the end of the headland, stoically facing the bay.

  It was one of the traditional stone dwellings, with two roof-lights and two lower windows, the front door hidden on the landward side, and a miscellany of floats and lobster pot
s scattered amongst bog cotton and coarse grasses. A neat peat stack stood, somewhat incongruously, beside a propane tank, and a traditional-looking wooden boat was pulled up above the high-tide mark between two large boulders. Did the occupants still survive by fishing, she wondered, or did they have land elsewhere? Sheep, perhaps, or cattle. Island life was a mystery to her.

  But she could learn.

  It wasn’t clear to her where the beach began and the croft land ended, and ideally she would climb onto the larger boulder for her shot. There was no sign of life, however, and perhaps the owners wouldn’t mind. So she tucked her camera inside her jacket and scrambled up, experimenting with the zoom until, right on cue, a shaft of light raced across the low-lying land and lit the walls of Muirlan House. Brilliant!

  “Should be good.” She jumped at a voice behind her and turned to see James Cameron leaning out of one of the upstairs windows, his arms folded on the sill. “Never the same light twice.”

  “Oh. This is your—?” But he had vanished. She climbed down from the boulder, putting her camera away, and wished it had not been his house. Wrong-footed yet again. He reappeared a moment later from round the side of the house, and she apologised. “I’m probably trespassing.”

  “Yep,” he agreed, “so you’d better come in and account for yourself”—he gestured open-handed round the side of the house, and there was the Land Rover parked in the shadow of the far wall. How had she not seen it?—“and have a cup of tea.”

  She could hardly refuse. Was he the boat owner too? And the lobster pots? She followed him round the side of the house, wondering where on earth Emma had found him. Was he even qualified to have a view on restoring Muirlan House?

  She stopped at the door of the cottage and looked inside, and felt at once that her question had been answered. The interior was stunning—the ground floor had been knocked through and opened up, and a new wooden staircase now separated a cooking and eating area from what had been the small parlour. Original features, including the kitchen range and parlour fireplace, had been carefully restored, and the narrow wooden panelling on the walls was freshly painted and expertly lit. A clever blend of the old and new, practical and minimalist, yet striking, and what he had done had taken skill, and taste.