You, Me & the Sea

by Elizabeth Haynes

‘I wannae see tae the chickens.’

  ‘Aye, go on, then.’

  Fraser watches him depart. He’s left his plate of crumbs behind. Then he turns his attention back to what Rachel’s just said.

  ‘How’d you figure that out?’

  ‘Apparently I’m supposed to have some sort of food hygiene certificate.’

  Fraser throws back his head and barks a laugh. ‘Not the fucking food hygiene certificate! Christ on a bus.’

  ‘I don’t see what’s funny but I’d love to find out,’ she says.

  ‘She threaten you with it?’

  ‘She said I was serving food illegally and if anyone gets food poisoning then I was going to be liable.’

  ‘Oh, aye. I’ve heard that one before.’

  ‘And she asked if I had public liability insurance, too. Which of course I haven’t.’

  Fraser knits his brows and nods. ‘You realise this is all complete bollocks.’

  ‘How can it be?’

  ‘Firstly, she’ll be liable if anyone is, not you. Did you have training?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did anyone ask you if you’ve got a certificate, or insurance for that matter?’

  ‘No, of course not.’

  ‘Then the whole thing is dodgy as fuck and she knows it, so don’t you worry about it.’

  ‘But clearly I do need a food hygiene certificate, otherwise why would she say that? I’m guessing that means she wants me off the island before anything bad happens.’

  ‘No, she doesn’t. And what she was doing, Rachel, was just taking out her frustrations about me, on you. Which makes her an even bigger arsehole, as far as I’m concerned.’

  Rachel thinks about this for a second or two. ‘She really does seem to have a bit of a problem with you.’

  ‘Was she complaining about me, then? You do surprise me.’

  ‘I mean, it was good in that she didn’t have enough time or breath to criticise the bird observatory. But I had to give up trying to defend you in the end.’

  ‘You were defending me, were you?’

  ‘I was trying my hardest.’

  ‘Hm. Well, that was sweet of you but really there’s no need. I don’t give a flying fuck what Marion thinks of me. In fact it’s almost entertaining how much she hates me.’

  ‘You don’t think she’ll use Lefty to try to make things difficult for you? She might try to sack you, Fraser.’

  He genuinely hasn’t given this a moment’s thought. For all her complaining, Marion recognises that Fraser can be left to carry out his duties with minimal supervision. If he’s left alone, he gets on with it. That in itself makes him valuable. The cost of recruiting a replacement will probably prevent her trying to get him out.

  On the other hand, now she’s mentioned it, the thought of it has a strange sort of appeal. He loves the island but right now, if someone told him he had to leave, he thinks he might just do it without complaint. Something about Marion’s visit has soured the place for him in a way that a whole year of Lefty’s presence never did.

  It will do him good to get away for a while. A day or two with the traffic and the people everywhere will remind him that what he actually likes is the solitude and the salt, the crash of the sea and the roar of the wind.

  ‘She won’t,’ he says.

  ‘Let’s hope not. In the meantime, I guess I have to just wait to hear from her?’

  ‘Or you could be a bit proactive.’

  ‘How?’

  If left to his own devices, Fraser’s attitude towards Marion is to ignore her totally unless absolutely boxed into a corner. She tried the same thing with him, not long after she started – back in the days when she was trying to assert herself with him and get him to jump through the very precise and utterly arbitrary hoops she had set up for no discernible reason other than to make their respective positions clear. He had, of course, jumped through no hoops. He had strolled around them, feigning interest for a wee while, before kicking them over and going on his merry way.

  Since then, his professional relationship with Marion has veered from awkward to frustrating, with brief moments of triumph and despair. Still, it isn’t all doom and gloom. He had taken the employment of a person to manage the bird observatory as some sort of defeat for him and a victory for her, but that had turned out surprisingly well so far.

  ‘We can ring the council’s Environmental Health Officer.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘And they can provide appropriate advice for you.’

  ‘Really? But what if they say yes, you do need a certificate and we’re going to close you down until you have one?’

  ‘They won’t say that.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Because I phoned them last year when Marion joined the Trust, when she tried the exact same scare tactics on me. In fact – hold on a sec.’

  He goes to the drawer in the kitchen into which random objects are tossed, ferrets around inside it until he comes up with a business card. ‘Here you go.’

  Ellie Griffiths, it says. Senior Environmental Health Officer. An office number and a mobile, and an email address. He passes it over to Rachel, who studies it.

  ‘I spoke to this very nice lady last year,’ he says. ‘Why don’t you call her – or, better still, send her an email so you’ve got a paper trail? Explain the situation and be honest, and let’s see what she says.’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ Rachel says. ‘I don’t want to make things worse.’

  ‘I have a feeling you’ll find it reassuring.’

  There is a chance it could backfire, he thinks, but he’s not going to tell Rachel that. Really, in the ongoing war between him and Marion, this is another chance to get a shot fired over her proverbial bows. Because last year the very nice lady at the council had informed him that Marion was responsible, and liable, and that if he wasn’t serving food to anyone then he didn’t need a food hygiene certificate. A letter had been sent to Marion to make that position very clear. She had been fully informed of the legislation and given plenty of guidance regarding the practical and legal requirements of opening the business to the general public rather than guests, which was what the birders had been up to that point. He knows this, because the nice lady had kept him informed. And clearly Marion has ignored all of that guidance.

  He feels positively buoyant at the thought of it.

  Rachel

  Thursday.

  They have heard nothing from Marion.

  Rachel has been corresponding with Ellie Griffiths by email. The Environmental Health Officer was reassuring, explaining that this was definitely Marion’s responsibility. But then things took an alarming turn when she also said she would be communicating with Marion about it and ensuring that action was taken to ensure that no members of the public were put at risk.

  Rachel is hoping that Marion will not think she has been telling tales. She points this out to Fraser, who gives her an amused smirk and says something like, ‘Serves her bloody right,’ which doesn’t help at all.

  Fraser is going to the mainland tomorrow.

  Rachel has deliberately not commented on this because she doesn’t want to seem needy or desperate. Or jealous.

  She wants to know if Fraser is going to see Kelly, and at the same time she wants to know nothing about it. There are moments when she almost asks, and then she changes her mind and bites her lip and tries to think about something else. And of course the whole thing is pointless anyway, because he is not hers, she is not with him, they are not a couple.

  He is going tomorrow when the boat comes with their provisions, and he is coming back on the boat with the new lot of birders, on Saturday. He made the mistake of asking her if there is anything she needs, and she has issued him with a shopping list of items she doesn’t feel comfortable asking Robert to get. She tried to give him money, but he insisted they should settle up when he gets back, when he knows how much it costs.

  He asked her again – in bed, just as she was falling asleep
– if she wanted to come with him.

  She didn’t think he meant it then, either. If he was serious, he’d ask her properly, when she’s wide awake.

  Fraser

  This is just sex.

  He thinks it on Tuesday, when they have recovered from the horrors of Marion’s visit and are sleeping together again. He watches her sleep and can’t quite believe it, still can’t fully fathom how this came to happen, this girl in his bed, this girl and how she makes him feel.

  This is just sex, he thinks on Wednesday, as he watches her picking up her clothes which are scattered around the floor of the main room in the bird observatory. She is strolling around casually naked, glancing at him over her shoulder and laughing.

  He came to see what she was doing because he was bored and thinking about her, thinking about the boat ride on Friday and the mainland and whether he’s going to see Kelly, and so he came over to the bird observatory and found her wiping down the cupboards, which to his mind are perfectly clean; he kissed her hard and lifted her on to one of the high stools at the breakfast bar and let her unbutton his jeans. Fucked her there until the stool felt as though it was going to topple, and then on the sofa, and then on the rug on the floor. And then he watches her dress and thinks how impossible the whole thing is.

  This is just sex.

  He repeats it like a mantra, as if the act of repeating it will make it true.

  It’s just sex, fucking her against the sheltered wall of the lighthouse, the sun warming his bare arse as he penetrates her, concentrating on her hand splayed against the stone, the bones under the pale skin, the tiny golden freckles, trying to hold on, trying to make it last. Every time, in case it’s the last time, for surely his luck is going to run out soon.

  It’s just sex, nothing else, he thinks, as he glances down at her fellating him in the living room on Wednesday night, the TV on for a change, the ten o’clock news showing the prime minister making a tit of himself outside a hospital, a placard being held up behind him by a fierce-looking woman which says, This too will pass. It’s only the fact that he’s muted the sound – lest he misses the sound of Lefty’s door opening – that makes it possible for him to stand it. And then Rachel looks up at him, meets his eyes, her mouth full – and winks.

  It’s just sex.

  ‘It’s just sex,’ he says aloud, on Thursday night.

  She’s straddling him on the bed. They started in the bathroom, maybe half an hour ago. She looks down at him, breathless, brows knitted.

  ‘What?’

  And he backtracks. ‘Nothing,’ he says. ‘Nothing.’

  The more he says it, the less it is true. It’s as though he’s diluting it. But he keeps saying it, keeps thinking it, until Friday morning, early, when he’s watching her sleep, her hair all over the place, her eyes closed. The boat is coming at eleven. He has hours yet, and although he should get up and feed Bess and take her round the island, checking the trap and searching for injured birds and migrant birds, he has no desire to move. He has been looking forward to getting off the island for a while, because, whenever he does, he always misses it and wants to come back. He has also been looking forward to seeing Kelly, although he hasn’t called her, hasn’t told her he’s coming, just in case he changes his mind.

  It’s not that he feels he owes Kelly anything. It’s not that he thinks what he’s doing with Rachel is somehow cheating on her – he and Kelly have no commitment to each other; he’s made that clear and she understands it. She is undoubtedly sleeping with other men and he neither cares nor wants to hear about it. It’s not that. He just feels a strange sort of trepidation about what he might say to her.

  In the half-light, hypnotised by the sound of Rachel breathing, he explores that thought, intersperses it with a brief fantasy about what he’s going to do with Rachel when he comes back – absence making the heart fonder and all that – and, while thinking it’s just sex for the hundredth time, he realises that he’s kept himself so distracted with his own mantra that he seems to have backed into something else entirely.

  Something a wee bit life-changing.

  10

  Kelly

  Rachel

  Rachel stands on the jetty and watches as the Island Princess roars noisily backwards, doing its awkward three-point turn in the harbour.

  She had been in two minds as to whether to see him off, thinking of what she would look like, all forlorn on the concrete jetty like a tragic soul waving goodbye to her lover. In the end she comes down to watch because she always does, and seeing the boat is like a little reminder that the real world still exists beyond the grey-green waves.

  On the jetty she is bright, chirpy, having issued him with a list of things to get her while he’s near some shops. Shampoo. Some gossip magazines. Thick socks. Bess sits by her feet, looking anxiously at Fraser’s sports bag.

  ‘We’ll be okay, won’t we, Bess? And he’ll be back tomorrow. I’ll give you extra cheese.’

  There is no awkward hug or anything. Robert ties the boat up loosely and the boxes of shopping are handed over. Lefty is going to bring the quad later, and take them up to the bird observatory. Fraser casts off and steps across on to the deck. Robert waves at Rachel from the little bridge on the upper deck, then they’re off.

  As soon as the boat has chugged out of sight Rachel heads back to the lighthouse and climbs the tower. She has done this a couple of times, usually in the mornings, watching for whales, although she has not been up here since Marion’s visit. It would make such a good blogpost, although the likelihood of her phone’s camera zooming in well enough to take a picture is quite slim.

  She likes being up here. She likes looking out for Fraser, and Lefty, and the birders, mapping their presence on the island, little dots moving on the green slopes, the seething mass of birds in the sky making it difficult to spot them.

  From here she can see the boat, looking as though it’s barely moving, heading towards the Isle of May. They have to pick someone up on the way back. This is why Fraser chose today to go to the mainland; with no birders to collect this week, Robert would have brought the shopping on Saturday otherwise.

  There is still radio silence from Marion. Rachel has spent the past few days helping Fraser, sometimes with Lefty present. They have counted terns from a distance, although whatever the distance they still risk being pecked on the head, as the birds have started laying eggs. They have counted eider pairs and noted the positions of this year’s nests. They have ringed a short-eared owl, which Rachel found slightly terrifying. They had one brilliant day – Wednesday – when an easterly wind blew a whole load of migrating warblers on to the island for shelter. They ringed several that ended up in the Heligoland trap, and Rachel had her first sighting of several birds – chiffchaffs and willow warblers, whitethroats, and a blackcap that Fraser told her was a rare visitor. Lefty was with them when they were ringing, passing over the correct-sized ring while Rachel noted down the number and the bird’s weight.

  She thinks that Fraser is shouting at Lefty less often. Maybe he feels sorry for him after Marion’s terrifying appearance at the door of his room – although this seems unlikely. It might be just when she is there, because yesterday she was walking back towards the east cliff and she heard the familiar sound of Fraser’s roaring: ‘You stupid arse, get down here now!’ Whatever Lefty was doing, he had stopped doing it by the time she reached them, and everything was calm.

  It still surprises her that Lefty does not seem upset by Fraser’s outbursts. She has seen him flinch, without a doubt; she has actually seen him cowering while Fraser stands over him, barking obscenities. But once it’s out of the way they just seem to carry on as if nothing’s happened.

  Now she looks north towards the low, rocky end of the island, the ruins; sees Lefty trudging back towards the lighthouse, trailing a plastic sack behind him which is probably full of beach litter.

  She thinks, again, of the knife on the bedside table.

  Because I’m going to kill hi
m.

  Rachel

  Lefty is in the kitchen when she gets down the stairs, making himself a huge breakfast sandwich full of microwaved bacon, crisps, cheese and ketchup. He grins at her.

  ‘Big man wouldnae let me have something like this,’ he says, cheerfully.

  ‘Well, don’t worry. I won’t tell him.’

  She leans against the counter, watching as he puts the cheese away. Bess sits up, staring hopefully.

  ‘You found lots of litter?’

  ‘Aye. All be back again tomorrow, though.’

  He looks at his fingers, licks off a smear of ketchup. She can see him thinking. Waits for the thought to come, waits for him to say it. If he doesn’t speak soon, she’s going to ask.

  And then he looks at her, clear blue eyes, straight at her.

  ‘You an’ Fraser,’ he says.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Just to say you should be careful o’ him, though, right? You know?’

  ‘What do you mean, careful?’

  ‘It’s no’ that he’s got a temper, I mean you can see that for yersel’, right? And he’s no’ shoutin’ at you, right, not like … It’s just that he’s …’

  ‘He’s what?’

  ‘He’s no’ right in the head,’ he says, tapping his fingers on his temple.

  Rachel frowns at this assessment, thinking that on more than one occasion Fraser has said almost exactly the same thing about Lefty, and, while it has been easy to believe of the wild-looking, scrappy-haired youth, perhaps it doesn’t sit quite as well on Fraser’s calm, solid shoulders. But maybe it should.

  ‘You mean with his anger?’

  ‘That, and depression.’

  ‘He’s depressed?’

  ‘Aye, he has been – well, before you turned up, anyway. He wouldnae admit tae it. Or talk about it, if you asked him. But that’s what I’d call it.’

  He goes to the fridge and retrieves one of his cans, pops the ring, takes a deep swig. Lets out a not very subtle bubble-cheeked belch.