The Stormy Petrel

by Mary Stewart

  I checked the train of thought. This was no place for it. Moila was too lovely, and my ivory tower was still solid. This was my holiday, and my brother would be here tomorrow, and all would be normal once more.

  The boathouse was empty again, its sea-doors fastened back. I walked to the end of the pier and looked across at the island. There was no sign of life except the birds, and Neil’s tent was again fastened shut. I glanced at my watch. The tide was still falling, and should be safe for another three hours or so. I went across.

  I climbed the slope to the hollow where Neil’s tent was pitched. There was no sign of him there. I stood still, listening. No sound of a hammer. There were gulls flying and calling, but I had not disturbed the main colony, and I thought that I would have heard if he had been working below the cliffs at the north-west point. I gave it a couple of minutes, then made for the broch and the steps up to the landing where the girls had gone yesterday.

  The steps looked fragile; transverse slabs of stone with one end built into the dry-stone structure of the curving wall, and jutting into the air with no other support. But they were solid, and led safely up to the ruined top of the wall where another, larger slab made a good viewpoint. From here I found, as I had hoped, that I could see down to the shore at the point where Neil had told me he wanted to work. If he had been close to the cliff I would not have been able to see him, but I could see the whole section of shoreline, and there was no boat there. Short of clambering down there myself I could be no surer, and there was no real need for that. More rationalisation. I made my way carefully down the staircase, intending to sit in the sun at the foot of the wall and drink my tea, but the breeze could find no way there, and the strange, musky smell from the wall where those plants grew was stronger than ever. Besides, the midges were out. I left the broch and walked uphill as far as I could without disturbing the bird colony, then made my way towards the southern end of the island, where the land sloped gradually down to the sea in long, flat terraces of rock. I found a niche where a small landslide had left a level lawn with a backing of turf, and where the breeze still moved enough to allay the midges, and sat down to my picnic.

  The silence – for the sound of birds and sea adds up to silence as beautifully as we ever know it in the noisy world of today – together with the sweetly moving air, and the scents of thyme and bell heather and sun-warmed bracken, all combined to distil something very potent. It was the sort of time and place where one might have expected an idea, the spring of a poem to well up from the quiet and the beauty. But sheer sensation – the warmth of the sun, the scent of the air, the mundane pleasure of tea and biscuits – simple well-being possessed me so that I could only feel, not think. A look at the sea below me told me that the tide was still low, though presumably it had begun to turn. A glance at my watch showed that it was still only ten past five. I leaned back again, shut my eyes, and let the sun have its way.

  Gradually, as the breeze moved and eddied, I became conscious of a strange, soft sound that was filling the air. It was like the sound of the sea, but it was not the sea. It was like the wind, but was not the wind. It was as if sea and wind together were singing a lament, mourning with a not quite human voice, the voice of water echoing in a sea-cave, weird, unearthly.

  I opened my eyes and sat up to listen, with the skin furring up on my arms.

  Teach me to hear mermaids singing . . .

  The wonderful thing about literature is that great poetry can chime in on any thought or experience. As Donne’s line rang in my head I placed the sound. Something Neil had told me about the island. This was Eilean na Roin, the Island of the Seals, and the grey seals came ashore here to breed and to bask. And now, perhaps, with the evening tide coming in, the seals had come with it, and were singing.

  It is no wonder that, hearing that uncanny sound coming out of the mist, the old sailors ascribed it to mermaids or sirens or strange creatures of the deep. It is almost music, almost a human sound, but never quite. It is as if a wind instrument, soulless in itself, were being played through warm and breathing tissues instead of through wood or metal. And it is magical, compelling wonder. For me, it was the peak of a perfect day. I had done some good writing, and I had heard mermaids singing.

  Very slowly, and keeping down below the seals’ horizon, I crept forward towards the sound of singing. At last I gained the crest of a rise, and there below me stretched the sloping flat rocks, and yes, the mermaids were there, their fur dry in the sun, their bodies slack and contented, their eyes closed, enjoying the afternoon, exactly as I had done myself. A fat, grey mermaid, waving her flippers gently, turned on her back to show a pale, spotted stomach. Another came heaving out of the sea and flopped to where her calf lay, and, delightfully, the baby nuzzled in to suck. Not very far from me another baby lay, apparently full fed and contented. It saw me, and the big eyes stared with mild curiosity, but without fear. This was Eilean na Roin, and I was only a passerby.

  It was time to go. Reluctantly, I inched backwards without disturbing the sleeping nursery, and stood up. I took another glance at my watch. Ten past five.

  Ten past five?

  It had been ten past five when I had last checked on the time.

  I held the watch to my ear – it was battery-run, but a faint tick could normally be heard. No sound. And now that I thought about it, I had vaguely wondered at the ‘good time’ I had made on my walk from the cottage, and at the leisurely stretch of time I had had on the island. Had I even left my cottage at two o’clock? My watch must have been gradually slowing to a stop all day.

  I ran.

  I could still see the causeway. I could also see the rock that Neil had pointed out to me, still half out of water. It was all downhill to the causeway, and the turf was smooth. I would make it.

  I had forgotten the other thing that Neil had told me.

  ‘The tide,’ he had said, ‘comes in like a horse trotting.’

  And it did. Though the marker stone had been half out of water when I started to run, the whole barrage of banked stones, with the causeway atop, was suddenly aswirl and, as I raced for the crossing, the level seemed to rise a foot or more.

  I stood hesitating. I could probably still have got across, but as I have said, the stones of the causeway were thick with seaweed, and treacherous even when exposed. And though I can swim pretty well, the swirl of the tide was fierce, and looked dangerous; and besides, I had no desire to swim.

  And of course the moments of dismay and indecision were moments lost. The next wave came round the point, and the marker vanished. So that was that. And the tide would be high at what? Midnight?

  I had a few moments of fury, a fury compounded of shame at my own stupidity, the triteness of the situation, the thought of my cottage and supper and the cosy fireside. Then the fury faded. Other pictures took the place of these; Neil’s tent, not far up the brae, and the possibility not only, at worst, of having its shelter for the night, but of my seeing from that vantage point when Neil came back with his boat. If so, and if I could attract his attention, he would surely bring the boat over for me.

  I trudged up to the campsite again, to find that there was no need even to look for driftwood for a fire. Inside that stout little tent was a very efficient camping-gas burner, complete with kettle, billycan, matches, tea bags and powdered milk. And investigating Neil’s stores I found baked beans, sardines, a couple of small tins of ham, and some crispbread. Like the Swiss Family Robinson, I had very little to complain about. There was also, of course, a good sleeping-bag. I only hoped, as the sun sank lower and the breeze grew cool, that I was not going to be obliged to use it.

  The seals sang until sunset, and then fell silent.

  As dusk drew in, the air emptied of birds, and gradually they, too, fell silent. Only the tide, full and flowing, filled the half-light of the Highland night with its cold sound. I could no longer distinguish the house, and even the boathouse, much nearer, was lost in the shadows. But no boat came in.

  Lo
ng before the sky dimmed enough to let the stars through, I lit the gas burner and ate baked beans off a paper plate and finished off with tea and biscuits. Then I got into the sleeping-bag.

  14

  I had gone to sleep with the sound of the sea filling the night with subdued song. What woke me was the land singing.

  At first it was part of a dream, which vanished as soon as I woke and knew that I was alone on the broch island, lying on the turf in a sleeping-bag, with my head pillowed on my rolled-up sweater, but seemingly connected with the earth itself, from which, apparently right below my head, came a sound every bit as strange as the mermaids’ song of the seals.

  It was a soft, slow moaning, punctuated with sharp little sounds like cries; the earth grieving in a whisper, but in some weird way with a purpose as if this were a language, a communication. Crooning would be the better word for it, and as the word suggested itself I had a swift and vivid mental picture of the colony of birds on the west of the island, birds aggressive, protective, maternal, tender.

  Weird, perhaps, but not frightening. I sat up. The sound retreated, but still it was there, somewhere in the night, as if thrumming along some wire sunk in the ground. I slid out of the sleeping-bag and unzipped the tent opening. I stuck my head out and looked around me.

  Twilight still, no more than that. The sky was clear, greyed over, with stars. The moon, a half moon polished thin at the edges, swam low and gave a little light. My world, the island, was drained of colour, but every shape was clear. Nothing stirred, no bird cried. But still, faint now but persistent, came that crooning subterraneous song. Then all at once, so subtly that I could hardly be sure when I first saw it, I realised that the sky was full of movement, small shadowy shapes skimming low over the ground, silently, as if bats or night-time swallows were criss-crossing my line of vision, swarming between the broch and the sea.

  The stormy petrels. Mother Carey’s chickens. The fragile, tiny black birds, nocturnal and solitary, that come ashore to nest, but spend most of their lives flying close above the sea-waves, come storm or shine. They must be nesting in the rabbit-holes beneath the turf where the tent was pitched, and in the broch, where the queer chemical smell I had noticed came, not from the plants, but from the holes where the birds sat on their eggs.

  If anything had been needed to crown my day, this would have been it. To be here, alone in the Highland night, and to witness the flight of these marvellous creatures, so shy, so rarely seen . . . I found I was outside the tent, standing up with my jacket clutched to me, the better to see them. They took no notice of me; they were creatures of the night, the air and the ocean, and I was only a piece of the land, meaningless, to be flown round like a boulder or a stump of wood.

  I was brought back to the mundane present by the shiver of chill that ran over me. Pulling my coat more closely round me, I turned my attention from the dark shape of the broch and its flitting ghosts to my own situation. I looked across to where the Hamilton house must stand in its shadows. No light there. But that, of course, meant nothing. Even if Neil had returned while I had been asleep, he would take care not to show a light.

  More importantly, somewhere in the early morning hours the tide was due to turn. I had no way of telling what time it was, but surely it might soon be possible for me to escape from my desert island and make my way back to the cottage and a warm bed.

  I was not familiar enough, yet, with the light nights of the Highlands to be able to guess at the time, but the sky was paler, and the stars were fading. I took a few cautious steps forward to where, by craning, I could just make out the ghostly crescent of the beach opposite the pier. I could not see the state of the causeway.

  Then suddenly, I heard it. A boat’s engine, throttled back and purring softly, somewhere beyond the headland to the east. Neil, coming back to keep the promised watch on his house. And from where? Fishing?

  At that moment, all that this suggested to me was the possibility of fresh mackerel for breakfast . . .

  I dived back into the tent and scrambled into my sweater and shoes. I did zip the tent flap shut, but wasted no other time on housekeeping; I would come back in daylight to tidy up and replace the stores I had used. It was not possible to hurry downhill in that half-light, so I made myself go slowly, and at last reached the beach and the end of the causeway.

  It was almost uncovered. Almost – but I could just make out a narrow stretch halfway over where the water flowed smooth and fast with each swell. As I craned to see, the next wave broke and swirled, luminous with foam. Even if I failed to attract Neil’s attention, I would probably be able to cross quite soon.

  I found that I could no longer hear the boat’s engine. I knew very little about boats, and had hated what little experience of sailing I had had, but it seemed unlikely that any boat would shut down its engine until it was safely round into the bay, or even then. I strained to hear, and had just decided that it would be difficult to hear an idling motor over the lap and rush of the sea in the channel, when I saw the light.

  Not a boat’s riding light; this was the small, dodging light of an electric torch coming round the path that skirted the headland. It was the path from my cottage, and I remembered the little cove called Halfway House, a cove where in any weather a boat might tie up safely and its owner make his way round to Taigh na Tuir. Its owner who did not want, or did not dare, to bring his boat round to the jetty? Not Neil, then. Someone else who did not want his visit known. Ewen Mackay.

  The mackerel disappeared from the breakfast table, and the mystery came back with a rush. It was certainly Ewen Mackay. I could see him now, outlined fairly clearly against the light background of the beach, as the torchbeam cleared the path and he came fast along the shore towards the boathouse.

  I sat down on the sand, in the darkness cast by a large boulder. He would never see me unless I moved. He was at the boathouse. A flash of the torch again, as if to check that no boat was there, then he turned to face the causeway, took something from a pocket and raised what were apparently night-glasses to his eyes. I froze in the shelter of my rock, but the glasses were aimed higher, at the tent. I had a momentary qualm; what would he read into the carefully closed flaps? That Neil was not sleeping there after all, or merely that he shut the flaps at night against the midges or the weather? I supposed, since to him Neil was only ‘John Parsons’, it did not matter either way, and if Ewen saw the little pile of debris – tins and used paper plates and my thermos – that I had left outside the tent, it would surely go to persuade him that Neil was safely ensconced on the island.

  But, unfortunately, Neil was not even safely ensconced in the house, as he should have been, so Ewen Mackay was free to resume whatever his business had been there on Wednesday night. And with no witness but me.

  I sat very still. He turned away, apparently satisfied, then pushed the glasses back into his pocket, flashed the torch briefly down at the rough stones of the pier, and went away with long strides in the direction of the house.

  The next wave broke with a crash and a swirl and a dangerous-looking suck of water back into the channel. Not this time. Nor next. Nor the time after, I thought, even if the causeway came clear. There was no way I was going across to follow Ewen Mackay to spy on his activities at the house. If he really had left his boat in the cove round the point, he would have to come this way again, and I would certainly be able to see if he brought anything with him. I hugged my jacket close round me, and waited.

  It seemed a very long time before he came back. The tide had cleared the causeway, and it was perceptibly lighter, when he came out through the stone arch of the garden gate. He carried what looked like a bag, bulging with something, over one shoulder. He made his way rapidly to the boathouse – there was no need, now, for the torch – and disappeared behind it. Almost at once he reappeared, without the bag, and set off again, walking fast, for the house.

  I stood up, the better to see the state of the causeway, and made some rapid calculations. Though it was n
ow possible to cross, the central stones were still wet, and in that poor light would be treacherous. It was an easy decision to make. Sensibly, I decided to wait and see.

  Which was just as well, as this time he came back after a very few minutes. He was carrying a flat, square object which looked heavy. When he had left that, too, behind the boathouse, he emerged stretching his arms as if in relief, as he stood once more scanning the bay and the shadowy slopes of the broch island.

  And that seemed to be it for the night. He vanished again behind the boathouse, and when I saw him again he was aiming fast for the cliff path, with the bag once again slung over his shoulder. I watched him round the end of the point, and out of sight, then ran for the causeway.

  I got across without mishap, and was at the back of the boathouse within seconds. The square object was there, leaning against the wall. It looked, in that half-light, like a big framed picture, propped up with its face to the wall.

  It was a picture. I tilted it to see. A portrait, unglazed, in oils, with a heavy, ornate frame. The portrait of a man, not young, in country tweeds, with a gun over his shoulder and a spaniel at heel. I did not know enough about painting to recognise it, or even guess at its value, but in the present-day crazy art market even a relatively modern painting might well be very valuable, and this one was apparently worth the trouble and risk that Ewen Mackay had taken. I toyed with the idea of taking it myself, and hiding it somewhere, but it was almost too heavy for me to carry, and there was nowhere much nearer than the house itself where it could be hidden. The boathouse was too obvious, and anywhere in the woods or garden was still wet with the night’s dew. Besides, the move would hardly help, only alert him and start him searching, not just for the picture, but for whoever had moved it.