Stormy Petrel (7 page)

It was a lovely stretch of shore, white sand and sheep-grazed turf backed by a stretch of flat, flowery meadowland. Even from where I stood I could see the white and yellow of dog-daisies and hawkear blowing in the sea-breeze like coloured veils over the green.

No sign of a tent, but over to the left, just showing, was a clump of trees thickly planted and apparently sheltered from the worst of the weather, and, standing up from among them, the chimneys of a house.

The Hamilton house, presumably. Taigh na Tuir. A big house, with no smoke rising from the chimneys. And – I walked another few yards and craned my neck to see – no sign of life in the little bay beyond, with its boathouse and jetty.

Across from the bay, beyond a narrow stretch of water, was a small island, an islet, rather. It was long and low, humped at the northern end and tapering to the south into flat rocks washed by the sea. Just below the hump I could make out – I have good eyes – the dark outline of what must be the ruined broch, and beside that, in its shelter, was a speck of bright, alien orange. A tent. He had found his tent and had already moved to the broch island.

The oystercatcher had come back, and was wheeling noisily over the lochan. ‘So what?' I said to it. So what indeed. Whatever the facts, both men had gone about their affairs, and would presumably not trouble me again. Forget it; get back to something more reasonable in the way of fantasy fiction. Another chapter today would see me nicely into the second half of my story, and this evening I would talk to Crispin and get things sorted out with him. And tonight . . . Well, I had noticed that on both front and back doors of the cottage there were stout and serviceable bolts.

As I squelched my way back round the lochan's edge towards the road, I saw the diver. Unmistakable, even though I had never seen one before; a big bird, brown and grey with a red throat, low in the water, where the wind-rippled surface managed to camouflage it in the most extraordinary way. When I had passed the lochan earlier, there had been no sign of it. It must be nesting, and now my near approach had driven it off the nest.

The thought had hardly occurred to me before the diver, with a weird-sounding cry, left the water in a noisy take-off, and flew seawards in alarm. And there, two paces in front of my feet, was the nest.

Two huge eggs, greenish-brown like the sedge, with a matt surface mottled like moss, lay in a shallow depression on the very edge of the loch, with a distinct sloping runway leading to the water, so that when alarmed the bird could slide invisibly off the eggs into a deep dive, to surface many yards away from its well-camouflaged home.

I glanced around me, quickly. No one in sight; of course there wasn't. No one to see my interest in this spot on the lochan's edge. I stooped quickly and laid the back of a gentle finger against one of the eggs. It was warm. She must just have got off, and she was probably watching me from somewhere high above the distant sea. I turned my back on the lochan and walked a dozen paces away from the edge before heading back towards the road.

A sound from overhead made me look up. The diver went over, high. I reached the road, picked up my groceries, and left her in peace.

I did not see Mrs McDougall that evening. There was a girl in charge of the place, a child of perhaps twelve, who told me that her name was Morag, and that her auntie had stepped out on a visit, but had said the young lady from Camus na Dobhrain might be there to use the telephone, and please to go through.

For what it was worth I asked her if she knew of a Ewen Mackay who might once have lived at Otters' Bay, but she shook her head.

‘No.' She spoke with an accent so soft that it sounded as if an h was attached to each consonant. ‘Not at all. There was a Mr and Mrs Mackay living there, yes, but they moved away, right to the mainland. My auntie would know. Alastair he was called, though, Alastair Mackay, that was gardener to old Mrs Hamilton at the big house.'

‘Did they have any children?'

She hesitated, then nodded, but doubtfully. There had been – yes, she was sure there had been a boy, a long time ago, that would be. She had heard tell of him, but it was when she was very small, and she did not remember him. He would be a grown man now. She did not remember his name. Ewen? It might have been Ewen. Her auntie would know . . .

I supposed that it did endorse part of Ewen Mackay's story. Not, of course, that it mattered . . . I would ask Mrs McDougall next time I was here.

On which fine piece of mental self-deceit I thanked Morag and went to the telephone.

I got straight through to my brother at the number Ruth gave me, of the hospital in Carlisle.

‘What's this about another X-ray?' I asked him. ‘Have you had the result? Is it really only a sprain?'

‘That's all, but it was – still is – badly swollen, and they insisted, quite rightly, on sending me here to have another look taken at it. The first X-ray showed what might have been a crack. But it's all clear. No crack. They've given me an elbow crutch, and I can make the journey perfectly well now, if I thought the blasted train would stay on the lines, but there's not much I could do once I got to Moila, is there, if I can't walk? What's it like?'

‘I think it's lovely. The cottage is tiny, but it's got all we need, and there's just enough island to explore without transport. I'm afraid there's none of that – transport, I mean – except Archie McLaren's Land Rover, the one that carries you from the harbour. You'd be a bit stuck. But would it matter? You'd be away from the job and the telephone, and you'd be resting. Unless – do you have to go back to a hospital with it, or anything?'

‘No, no. There's nothing I can't deal with myself.'

‘Well, Archie has a boat, and he says he can take us out to the bird islands, and I'm sure we could get him to take you somewhere in the Land Rover where you can fish. Of course, if it's really painful, forget it. I'll be fine, and I'm writing, and if it gets a bit unlively I could perhaps find somewhere else—'

‘No, why should you? I was only doubtful because of spoiling your holiday. I can manage perfectly well, and I'd hate to miss Moila.'

‘It would spoil my holiday far more if you didn't come,' I said. ‘So risk the train, will you? And do you want me to ring the Oban hotel and tell them what's happened and change the booking? You have? That's great . . . It really is lovely here, and – well, I didn't want to over-persuade you, but I found a red-throated diver's nest today, perfectly lovely, two eggs, and I didn't bring a camera. Didn't think we'd need two, and mine's not nearly as good as yours, even if I could take half as good a picture.'

‘And you don't call that over-persuading? I'll be there,' said my brother. ‘Expect me on Monday's ferry, then. If I know anything about it, I'll be well and truly mobile by then.'

‘Physician, heal thyself,' I said, laughing, and rang off, with a lightened heart.

8

Next morning was fair and sunny, with a breeze, but I journeyed duly into outer space, to tackle the problems of my party on Terra Secunda. Their difficulties were rapidly threatening to become too much for them, and consequently for me, too. In those circumstances I have always found it wise to abandon effort and leave the subconscious mind to sort things out while the conscious mind does something quite different. Goes for a walk, for example, and takes a look at the Hamilton house and that delectable stretch of milk-white sand bordering the machair.

I followed the cliff path which led steeply up out of Otters' Bay and then westward over the headland for something less than half a mile, to bring me in sight of the bay I had seen yesterday. Just inland from this, against its background of sheltering trees, stood the house.

A high dry-stone wall enclosed the land round it for some four or five acres, and inside this enclosure were more trees, oak and fir and beech above the massed colours of rhododendrons in flower, with one big horse-chestnut in full bloom holding its creamy candelabra out across the wall. A stone archway in the seaward wall spanned a tall ironwork gate.

Straight across from the house lay the broch islet. Now, with the tide low, the causeway connecting the islet with Moila's mainland was high and dry, running across at the narrowest point of the channel. It consisted of natural slabs of flattish stone which at some time in the past had been levelled by wedges, and ‘helped' in places by concrete, to form a crossing-place. But time and tide and neglect had eaten away at the structure so that even at low tide, with the slabs fully exposed, crossing would be tricky.

To either side of this causeway was a tumble of half-exposed rocks, glossy with black seaweed, where the water rose and fell, barely stirring the weed. Apart from this crossing-point the channel seemed, even at this stage of the tide, to be fairly deep. Deep enough, at any rate, for a boat to get in to the boathouse which was tucked in under the cliff at the southern end of the bay, below the path where I stood. Beside the boathouse a jetty thrust out into the water, and from this a weedy, once-gravelled path led along above the beach to the stone archway which was the garden gate of Taigh na Tuir.

I made my way down into the bay. That alone would have been worth the scramble round the cliff path. I had never seen anything like it before, a crescent of dazzling white, where a million pearly shells had been pounded and smashed by the Atlantic swells into fine sand, marked only by the tides, and above the tide-marks by the myriad criss-crossing prints of seabirds.

It was not to be resisted. I sat down and took off my shoes and socks – I was wearing slacks and trainers – and then walked across the bay, luxuriating in the feel of the fine warm sand under my bare feet. I went right down to the sea's edge, but the water was too cold for pleasure, so I retreated to the dry level and sat down to brush the sand off my feet and put on my shoes again.

This done, I stood for a moment looking across at the broch islet. Directly across the channel was another, bigger bay, a long curving stretch of lovely white sand, with above it a sweep of green turf and bracken rising as far as the dark circle of the broch. The whole place was alive with the wings and calls of seabirds. It was very tempting, but it would be stupid to go across now, until I knew more about the tides. I wondered where John Parsons was; looking for his garnet-studded ‘intrusion', whatever that was, on the other side of the island? I could see the tent from here, pitched in a hollow not far from the broch wall. The entrance flaps were shut.

I trod up through the seaweed at the edge of the beach, then followed the path to the gate in the garden wall. I peered through the bars. Inside the grounds the path continued, curving up between the overgrown rhododendrons in the direction of the house. I hesitated. There would presumably be a driveway of sorts leading from the back of the house to the road and my easiest way home. To try and get to it by going round outside the garden wall meant ploughing through waist-high nettles and clumps of bramble. So . . . ? So I opened the gate and went through.

There had never been much of a garden, only the rhododendrons flowering red and pink and lilac, where bees droned happily. Beyond the wild tangle of flowers I could just see the upper storey of the house, grey stone with tall sashed windows and a roof of grey slate with its unsmoking chimney stacks. There were curtains in the windows. The place must still be furnished, then. I tried to remember when Mrs McDougall had said the old lady had died. February? And Archie McLaren had told me that the house would probably have to be sold, so it was to be supposed that at any time now people might be coming to look at it.

It was the subconscious mind taking over again. I found myself halfway up the path between the rhododendrons before the conscious mind caught up with the fact that, though there had been a padlock on the garden gate, the gate had been unlocked. So, surely there could be no objection to someone taking a look at a place that would soon be up for sale anyway? I crossed a lawn that badly needed cutting, and started on a cautious tour of the Hamilton house.

I doubt if there are many normal women who can resist looking at houses. I believe, in fact, that when a house is up for sale more than half the people who look over it are not prospective buyers, but merely ladies who cannot resist exploring someone else's house. I had never done that, but I was not immune. I trod carefully up to the most important-looking window, and peered in.

The drawing-room. A rather lovely fireplace, with a hideous overmantel. Faded carpet and curtains. Typical family paintings of dim-looking, not-quite-Raeburns, and improbable horses and dogs. Round tables with skirts, their surfaces smothered with photographs. Sagging armchairs with faded covers, not too clean. A quite awful vase in one corner, full of dried pampas grass.

The dining-room. More portraits, if possible duller still, and lightened by a couple of horrendous still lifes, dead hares and poultry, staring eyes and blood congealing from beaks and nostrils; just the thing to give one an appetite for meals.

The gunroom . . . But enough of that. It was a very ordinary, rather pleasant, Highland country house; originally a shooting-lodge and of no great size or importance for the day when it was built. And meant only for summer and early autumn; no heating apparatus except the open fires, and a kitchen rather on a par for mod cons with my cottage at Otters' Bay.

The only thing that was quite extraordinary was what I found when I got as far as the back premises.

The back door was standing open.

My excuse, a thin one, is still the subconscious mind. I did knock at the door, then, when there was no response, took a couple of steps through into a passage floored with stone slabs and containing nothing but some buckets of coal and a rack of ancient clothes, gardening clobber by the look of it. In spite of the open door, the place smelled of damp and disuse.