Читать книгу The Ice Twins - S.K. Tremayne, S. K. Tremayne - Страница 12

Angus Moorcroft parked outside the Selkie Hotel, climbed from his cheap, tinny rental car – hired last night at Inverness Airport – and gazed across the mudflats, and the placid waters, to Torran. The sky was clean of cloud, giving a rare glimpse of northern sun: on a cold November day. Despite the clarity of the air, the cottage was only just visible, peering above the seaweedy rocks, with the white lighthouse behind.

With a hand shielding the sun, Angus squinted at his family’s new home. But a second car disturbed his thoughts – squealing to a stop, and parking. An old blue Renault.

His friend Josh Freedland got out, wearing a chunky Arran jumper, and jeans faintly floured with the dust of granite, or slate, or marble. Angus waved, and briefly looked down at his own jeans. He was going to miss good suits and silk ties.

Josh approached.

‘The white settler has arrived!’

The two men hugged, slapping backs. Angus apologized for his own lateness, for missing the original flight – Josh told him not to worry.

This response had a certain irony, in Angus’s mind. There was a time when it was Josh who was always late. When Josh was the most unreliable man in Great Britain. Everything was changing.

As one, they both turned, and gazed at the view across the Sound.

Angus murmured. ‘You know, I’d forgotten just how beautiful it is.’

‘So, when was the last time you were here?’

‘With you. And the gang. That last summer holiday.’

‘Really?’ Josh smiled, in frank surprise. ‘Junkie overboard! Junkie overboard!’

It was a catchphrase from that memorable holiday: when they’d come up here as college kids, to Angus’s granny’s island. They’d spent an epic weekend drinking too much, laughing too much, being obnoxious and loud, annoying the locals – and having enormous fun. They’d nearly sunk the rowing boat as they sculled back from the Selkie in the sweet, violet, Scottish summer gloaming: the twilight that never went totally black. Seals had emerged: perpendicular, and observing them. ‘Junkie overboard’ was born from one spectacularly intoxicated episode, when Josh, completely mashed on Ecstasy, had tried to embrace one of these seals, then fallen in the cold black water – at maybe 11 p.m.

It was a potentially lethal accident, but they were twenty-one years old and obviously immortal. So Josh just swam to the island, fully clothed – and then they’d got drunk, all over again, in that cranky, beautiful lighthouse-keeper’s cottage.

‘How long ago was that? Fifteen years? Jesus!’ Josh was chatting away, hands in pockets. The cool sunny wind tousled his ginger Jewish hair. ‘But we had fun, didn’t we? All that cider we drank in Coruisk. You seen any of the gang?’

‘Not so much.’

Angus could have added for obvious reasons. But he didn’t have to. Josh knew all the facts.

This last year, following Lydia’s death, Angus had turned to Josh, above all others: for long consoling phone calls, and the odd one-sided session in the pub, when Josh came down to London. And Josh had done his duty, listening to Angus talking about Lydia. Talking until the words turned to spit, until the words were a bodily fluid being purged, drooling from his mouth; talking until whisky and sleep blotted everything.

Josh was the only man who had seen Angus really cry about his dead daughter: one, dark, terrifying evening, when the nightflower of anguish had opened, and bloomed. A taboo had been broken that night, maybe in a good way. A man crying in front of a man, snot running, tears streaming.

And now?

Josh was checking something on his phone. Angus surveyed distant Torran Island once more. It was a long way across the mudflats: much further than he remembered. He’d have to walk down to the foreshore, then hike all the way around the big tidal island of Salmadair, then cross the causeway to the smaller, secondary tidal island of Torran. It would take thirty or forty minutes at the very least.

And this walking distance mattered, because the old island rowboat had long ago rotted to nothing. Which meant they had no boat. And until they acquired a new boat, he, Sarah and Kirstie would have to trek these dank, slippy, treacherous mudflats to access the island, and they could only do that at low tide.

‘Know anyone with a cheap dinghy? To sell?’

Josh looked up from his phone.

‘Mate, you haven’t sorted a boat?’

‘No.’

‘Gus, come on. Really? How can you live on Torran without a boat?’

‘We can’t. But we’ll just have to, until I buy one. And money is an issue.’

‘I can give you a lift in mine, right now?’

‘No, I want to walk across the mudflats. Test it.’

Angus’s friend was tilting his head, offering a sceptical smile.

‘You do remember those mudflats are dangerous, right?’

‘Er. Yeah.’

‘Seriously, Gus, at night – after civil twilight – you don’t want to cross those mudflats. Even with a torch, you could break an ankle on rocks, get stuck in the mud, and then you’re fucked.’

‘Josh—’

‘In Skye, no one can hear you scream: half the houses along the shore are empty. Holiday homes. In winter the tide will come in, cold and lethal: you’d drown.’

‘Josh! I know all this. It’s my island! Practically lived here as a boy.’

‘But you nearly always came in summer, no? In winter, days are five hours long, or less. Mate. Think about it. Even with a boat, Torran can be very tricky in winter. You can still be stranded for days.’

‘All right. Aye. I know winters are tough. I know it won’t be easy. But I don’t care.’

Josh laughed. ‘Sure. I get it. I think.’

Angus pressed on: ‘So, you mentioned, on the phone, the tides. This afternoon?’

Josh glanced at the receding sea, then back at Angus. ‘I emailed you a link earlier: official Mallaig tide tables, with all the details.’

‘Haven’t had a chance to check: on the go since breakfast.’

Josh nodded. He was training his gaze, thoughtfully, on the mudflats and the seaweed, drying in the feeble sun. ‘OK. Well, low-tide today is four p.m. You’ve got an hour either side of that, max. So we have half an hour to kill; till about three.’

Another silence descended between them, momentarily. Angus knew what came next. Gently, his friend enquired: ‘… how’s Kirstie?’

Of course. This is what you have to ask. How’s Kirstie? How is Kirstie?

What should he say?

He wanted to tell the truth. Maybe six months ago Kirstie had begun behaving very peculiarly. Something truly strange and disturbing had happened to his surviving daughter: to her persona. Things got so bad Angus nearly went to a doctor: and then, at the last moment, Angus had found a remedy. Of sorts.

But Angus was unable to tell anyone, not even Josh. Especially not Josh, because Josh would tell Molly, his wife, and Molly and Sarah were fairly intimate. And Sarah could not be allowed to know about this; she must not be told, ever. He simply didn’t trust her with this. He hadn’t trusted her, for so many months, in so many ways.

So it had to be lies. Even with Josh.

‘Kirstie’s good. Given the situation.’

‘OK. And Sarah? Is she doing, y’know, all right now? Doing better?’

Another inevitable question.

‘Yes. She’s fine. We’re all fine. Really looking forward to moving.’ Angus spoke as calmly as he could. ‘Kirstie wants to see a mermaid. Or a seal. A seal would probably do.’

‘Hah.’

‘Anyway. We’ve got time to kill? Shall we have a coffee?’

‘Uh-huh. You’ll notice a few changes in here,’ Josh said, as he pushed the creaking door of the pub.

He wasn’t wrong. As they stepped inside the Selkie, Angus gazed around: surprised.

The old, stained, cosy, herring-fisherman’s pub was transformed. The piped pop music was replaced with piped modern folk – bodhrans and fiddles. The muddy carpeted floor had evolved into expensive grey slates.

At the other end of the bar a chalked sign advertised ‘squab lobster’; and in between the boxes of leaflets from local theatres, and stacks of pamphlets on sea-eagle spotting, a chubby teenage girl stood behind the beer-pumps, toying sullenly with her nose-ring – and obviously resenting the fact she had to take Josh’s order for coffees.

The metamorphosis was impressive, but not exceptional. This was yet another boutique hotel and gastropub, aiming itself at rich tourists seeking the Highlands and Islands experience. It was no longer the scruffy, vinegar-scented local boozer of two decades back.

Though, as it was mid-November, and a weekday afternoon, locals were the only clients to service, right now.

‘Yes, both with milk, thanks, Jenny.’

Angus glanced across to the corner. Five men, of varying ages and virtually identical crew-neck jumpers, sat at a large round wooden table. The pub was otherwise deserted. The men were silent as they squinted back at Angus over their pints.

Then they turned to each other, like conspirators, and started talking again. In a very foreign language.

Angus tried not to gawp. Instead he asked Josh, ‘Gaelic?’

‘Yep. You hear it a lot in Sleat these days, there’s a new Gaelic college down the road. And the schools teach it, of course.’ Josh grinned, discreetly. ‘But I bet they were speaking English before we walked in. They do it as a joke, to wind up the incomers.’

Josh lifted a hand and waved at one of the men, a stubbled, stout, handsome guy, in his mid-forties.

‘Gordon. All right?’

Gordon turned, and offered his own, very taciturn smile.

‘Afternoon, Joshua. Afternoon. Ciamar a tha thu fhein?’

‘Absolutely. My aunt was struck by lightning.’ Josh tutted, good-naturedly. ‘Gordon, you know I’ll never learn it.’

‘Aye, but maybe one day ye can give it a try now, Josh.’

‘OK, I will, I promise. Let’s catch up soon!’

The coffees had arrived: proffered by the bored bar-girl. Angus stared at the twee little cups in Josh’s rough, red, stonemason’s hands.

Angus yearned for a Scotch. You were meant to drink Scotch, in Scotland, it was expected. Yet he felt awkward downing booze, in the afternoon, with sober Josh.

It was a slightly paradoxical feeling: because Josh Freedland hadn’t always been sober. There was a time when Josh had been the very opposite of sober. Whereas the rest of the gang from Uni – including Angus – had mildly dabbled in drugs, then got bored and returned to booze, Josh had spiralled from popping pills at parties, into serious heroin addiction: and into darkness and dereliction. For years it seemed that Josh was slated for total failure, or worse – and no could save him, much as they tried, especially Angus.

But then, abruptly, at the age of 30, Josh had saved himself. With Narcotics Anonymous.

And Josh had gone for sobriety the same way he’d gone for drugs: with total commitment. He did his sixty meetings in sixty days. He completed the twelve-step programme, and entrusted himself to a higher power. Then he’d met a nice, affluent young woman in an NA meeting, in Notting Hill – Molly Margettson. She was a cocaine addict, but she was cleaning her scene, like Josh.

They’d promptly fallen in love, and soon after that Josh and Molly had married, in a small poignant ceremony, and then they’d exited London, stage north. They’d used the money from selling her flat in Holland Park to buy a very nice house, here in Sleat, right on the water’s edge, half a mile from the Selkie, in the middle of the place they had all loved: near to Angus’s grandmother’s island.

The beautiful Sound of Sleat, the most beautiful place on earth.

Now Josh was a stonemason and Molly, remarkably, was a housewife and businesswoman: she made a decent living selling fruits and jams, honeys and chutneys. She also did the occasional painting.

Angus stared across the pub. Pensive. After years of feeling sorry for Josh, the truth was, he now envied him. Even as he was happy for Josh and Molly, he was jealous of the purity of their lives. Nothing but air, stone, sky, glass, salt, rock and sea. And Hebridean heather honey. Angus too wanted this purity, he wanted to rinse away the complexities of the city and dive into cleanness and simplicity. Fresh air, real bread, raw wind on your face.

The two friends walked to a lonely table: far away from Gordon and his Gaelic-speaking mates. Josh sat and sipped coffee, and spoke with his own conspirator’s smile.

‘That was Gordon Fraser. He does everything, fixes shit from Kylerhea to Ardvasar. Toasters, boats, and lonely wives. If you need a boat, he could probably help.’

‘Yes, I remember him. I think.’ Angus shrugged. Did he really remember? How much could he recall, from so long ago? In truth, he was still shocked by his own miscalculation of Torran Island’s nearness to the mainland. What else had he remembered wrongly? What else had he forgotten?

More importantly, if his long-term memory was unreliable, how reliable was his judgement? Did he trust himself to live, peacefully, with Sarah on this island? It could be very difficult: especially if she was opening the boxes, shining lights into the darkness. And what if she was lying to him? Again?

He wanted to think about something else.

‘So, Josh, how much has it changed? Declined? Torran?’

‘The cottage?’ Josh shrugged. ‘Well you really should prepare yourself, mate. As I said on the phone, I’ve been doing my best to keep an eye on it. So has Gordon – he loved your gran – and the local fishermen stop by. But it’s in a state, no denying it.’

‘But – the lighthouse keepers?’

Josh shook his head. ‘Nah. They only come once a fortnight, and they’re in and out, polish a lens, fix a battery, job done, head back to the Selkie for a jar.’

‘OK.’

‘We’ve all done our best, but, y’know, life, it’s busy, man. Molly doesn’t like using the boat on her own. And your gran stopped coming here four years ago, so it hasn’t really been inhabited since then, at all.’

‘That’s a long time.’

‘Too right, mate. Four long Hebridean winters? Damp and rot and wind, it’s all taken a toll.’ He sighed, then brightened. ‘Though you did have some squatters for a while, last summer.’

‘We did?’

‘Yeah. Actually they were OK. Two guys, two girls – couple of lookers. Just kids, students. They actually came in the Selkie one night, bold as bollocks. Gordon and the guys told them all the stories – Torran was haunted – and they freaked. Left next morning. Didn’t do that much damage. Burned most of your gran’s remaining firewood though. Fucking Londoners.’

Angus acknowledged the irony. He remembered when he and the gang, from London, had been the same: sitting in this pub, listening to the folktales of Skye, told by locals, in return for a dram, those tales designed to while away the long winter nights. His granny had also told these stories of Skye. The Widow of Portree. The Fear that Walked in the Dark. And och, the Gruagach – her hair as white as snow, mourning her own reflection …

‘Why haven’t you been up since?’

‘Sorry?’

Josh persisted: ‘It’s fifteen bloody years since you’ve been here. Why?’

Angus frowned, and sighed. It was a good question: one he had asked himself. He struggled towards an answer.

‘Don’t know. Not really. Maybe Torran became a kind of symbol. Place I would one day return to. Lost paradise. Also it’s about five million miles away. Kept meaning to come up, especially since you guys moved here, but of course …’ And there it was again, that fateful pause. ‘By then we had the girls, the twins. And. That changed everything. Cold Scottish island, with yowling babies? Toddlers? All a bit daunting. You’ll understand, Josh, when you have kids with Molly.’

‘If we have kids.’ Josh shook his head. Stared down at the stains of milky coffee in his cup. ‘If.’

A slightly painful silence ensued. One man mourning his lost child, another man mourning the children he hadn’t yet had.

Angus finished the last of his lukewarm coffee. He turned in the uncomfortable wooden pew and glanced out of the window, with its thick, flawed, wind-resistant bullseye-glass.

The glass of the window warped the beauty of Torran Island, making it look ugly. Here was a leering landscape, smeared and improper. He thought of Sarah’s face, in the semi-dark of the loft, warped by the uncertain light. As she peered into the boxes.

That had to stop.

Josh spoke up: ‘The tide must be out now, so you’ve got two hours, max. You sure you don’t want me to come with, or give you a lift in the RIB?’

‘Nope. I want to squelch across.’

The two exited the pub into the cold. The wind had keened and sharpened as the tide had fallen. Angus waved goodbye to Josh – I’ll come round the house tomorrow – as Josh’s car skidded away, chucking mud.

Opening the boot, Angus hauled out his rucksack. He’d packed the rucksack, very carefully, this morning, at his cheap Inverness hotel, so he had everything he needed for one night on the island. Tomorrow he could buy stuff. Tonight he just had to get there.

Across the mudflats.

Angus felt a pang of self-consciousness: as if someone was watching him, mockingly, as he adjusted the straps of his rucksack, distributing the weight. Reflexively he glanced around – looking for faces in windows, kids pointing and laughing. The leafless trees and silent houses gazed back. He was the only human visible. And he needed to be on his way.

The path led directly from the Selkie car park, down to some mossed and very weathered stone steps. Angus followed the route. At the bottom of the steps the path curved past a row of wooden boats – their keels lifted high onto the shingle, safe from approaching winter storms. Then the path disappeared completely, into a low maze of seaweedy rocks, and grey acres of reeking mud. It was going to take him half an hour, at least.

And his phone was ringing.

Marvelling at the fact he could get a signal – hoping faintly, futilely, that there might also be a signal on Torran – Angus dropped his rucksack on to the pebbles, and plucked his mobile from his jeans pocket.

The screen said Sarah.

He took the call. The fourth, from his wife, of the day.

‘Hello?’

‘Are you there yet?’

‘I’m trying. I was about to cross. I’m at Ornsay. Just seen Josh.’

‘OK, so, what’s it like?’

‘I don’t know, babe.’ He tutted. ‘Told you: I’m not there yet. Why don’t you let me get there, first, and I’ll call you back as soon as I can.’

‘OK, yes, sorry. Hah.’ Her laughter was false. He could tell this even on a cell phone, from six hundred miles away.

‘Sarah. Are you all right?’

A hesitation. A distinct, definite pause.

‘Yes, Gus. I’m a bit nervous. You know? That’s all …’

She paused. He frowned. Where was this going? He needed to distract his wife, get her focused on the future. He spoke very carefully.

‘The island looks lovely, Sarah. Beautiful as I remember it. More beautiful. We haven’t made a mistake. We were right to move here.’

‘OK. Good. Sorry. I’m just jangling. All this packing!’

Sarah’s anxiety was still there, lurking. He could tell. Which meant he had to ask; even though he didn’t want to know any answers. But he had to ask: ‘How’s Kirstie?’

‘She’s OK, she’s …’

‘What?’

‘Oh. It’s nothing.’

‘Sorry?’

‘It’s nothing. Nothing.’

‘No, it’s not, Sarah, it’s clearly not. What is it?’ He gripped his frustration. This was another of his silent wife’s conversational stratagems: drop a tiny unsettling hint, then say ‘it’s nothing’. Forcing him to gouge the information out of her; so he felt guilty and bad – even when he didn’t want the information. Like now.

The tactic drove him crazy, these days. Made him feel actually, physically angry.

‘Sarah. What’s up? Tell me?’

‘Well, she …’ Another long, infuriating pause stopped the dialogue. Angus resisted the temptation to shout What the fuck is it?

At last Sarah coughed it up: ‘Last night. She had another nightmare.’

This was, if anything, a relief to Angus. Only a nightmare? That’s all this was about?

‘OK. Another bad dream.’

‘Yes.’

‘The same one?’

‘Yes.’ A further wifely silence. ‘The one with the room; she is stuck in that white room, with the faces staring at her, staring down. It’s nearly always the same nightmare. She gets that one, always – why is that?’

‘I don’t know, Sarah, but I know it will stop. And soon. Remember what they said at the Anna Freud Centre? That’s one reason we’re moving. New place, new dreams. New beginning. No memories.’

‘All right, yes, of course. Let’s talk tomorrow?’

‘Yes. Love you.’

‘Love you.’

Angus frowned, at his own words, and ended the call. Slipping his phone in his pocket, he hoisted his heavy rucksack – feeling like a mountaineer attempting a summit. He could hear the clink of a heavy wine bottle inside, knocking against something hard. Maybe his Swiss Army knife.

Picking his way through, he edged along rocks and sand, trying to find the safest route. The air was redolent with the heady smell of rotting seaweed. Seagulls wheeled above, calling and heckling. Haranguing him for something he hadn’t done.

The tide was way out, exposing old grey metal chains, slacked in the mud, linked to plastic buoys. Whitewashed cottages regarded him, indifferently, from the curving wooded shoreline of mainland Skye, to his right. On the left, Salmadair was a dome of rock and grass, encircled by sombre firs; he could just see the top of that big unoccupied house, on Salmadair, owned by the billionaire, the Swedish guy.

Josh had told Angus all about Karlssen: how he only came here for a few weeks in the summer, for the shooting and the sailing, and the famous views over the Sound: to the waters of Loch Hourn and Loch Nevis, and between them the vast massif of Knoydart, with its snow-iced hills.

As Angus trudged along, hunched under the weight of his rucksack, he occasionally lifted his head to look at these same brooding hills. The great summits of Knoydart, the last true wilderness in western Europe. Angus realized, as he surveyed the view, that he could still distinctly remember the names of Knoydart’s enigmatic peaks. His granny had taught him so many times: Sgurr an Fhuarain, Sgurr Mor, Fraoch Bheinn.

It was a poem. Angus was not a fan of poetry, yet this place was a poem.

Sgurr an Fhuarain, Sgurr Mor, Fraoch Bheinn.

He walked on.

The silence was piercing. A kingdom of quietness. No boats out fishing, no people walking, no engine noise.

Angus walked, and sweated, and nearly slipped. He wondered at the windless tranquillity of the afternoon, a day so still and clear he could see the last ferry, in the blue distance, crossing from Armadale to Mallaig.

Many houses, hidden in the firs and rowans, were totally shuttered for the winter. That accounted for much of the quiet: for this sense of desolation. In a way, this sheltered, stunning, southern peninsula of Skye was increasingly like one of the richest quarters of London: emptied by its own desirability, used by the wealthy for a few days a year. An investment opportunity. A place to store money. Other, less alluring parts of the Hebrides paradoxically had more life, because the houses were cheaper.

This place was cursed by its own loveliness.

But it was still lovely. And it was also getting dark.

The walk took him fifty difficult minutes, because the dark grey mud sucked at his boots, slowing him down, and because at one point he went wrong: climbing up onto Salmadair proper, heading unconsciously for the billionaire’s house with the huge, glass-walled living room, which suddenly reared in front of him, in the gathering gloom, protected by its rusty twines of barbed wire.

He’d taken the wrong path left. Instead of skirting Salmadair’s shingled beach.

Angus remembered Josh’s warnings about the mudflats at night. You could die out there. People die.

But how many really died? One a year? One a decade? It was still much safer than crossing a London road. This place was crime-free; the air was clean and good. It was much safer for kids. Safer for Kirstie.

Pressing between gorse bushes, slowly negotiating the beaten path, Angus scrambled over some very slippery rocks – gnarled with old barnacles, which scraped his fingers. His hands were bleeding a little. He was scratched and weary. The north wind was perfumed with seagull shit and bladderwrack, maybe the scent of newly chopped pine-wood, carried all the way from Scoraig and Assynt.

He was nearly there. In the dregs of the afternoon light he could see the exposed tidal causeway of rocks and grey shingle, littered with smashed crabshells. A slender green pipe snaked across the Torran causeway, burying itself in and out of the sands. He recognized the waterpipe, just as he recognized this part of the route. He remembered walking it as a boy, and as a very young man. And here he was again.

The lighthouse, the cottage, lay beyond, in the last of the cold, slanted sunlight. In just two minutes he would press the doorway, into his new home. Where his family would live: as best they could.

Reflexively, he looked at his phone. No signal. Of course. What did he expect? The island was entire and of itself: alone and isolated, and as remote as you could get in Britain.

As he ascended the final rise, to the lighthouse-keeper’s cottage, Angus turned and looked back at the mudflats.

Yes. Remote as possible. That was good. He was glad that he had coaxed his wife into making the decision to move here: he was glad he had persuaded her into believing, moreover, that it was her choice. He’d wanted them far away from everything for months, and now they had achieved it. On Torran they would be safe at last. No one would ask questions. No interfering neighbours. No friends and relatives. No police.