I looked up from the ground. ‘Think so. Am I clean?’
He studied my face as if searching for more than slime. ‘Yes ‒ no ‒ you’ve missed the back of your neck. I’ll do it.’ He dipped a corner of the towel in the burn, washed, and dried the nape of my neck and a few ends of hair. ‘I hope your hair’s not too wet.’ He ruffled it, lightly. ‘Damp but the breeze’ll soon dry it. Put this on.’ He dropped the fishing sweater on my knees. ‘It’s clean and your jacket’s far too wet to wear. Your mac’s not thick enough on its own. I’d offer you my suede with pleasure, but the weight and size will weigh you down.’
‘This’ll do fine.’ I pulled on the extra sweater before standing up and turned up the cuffs several times. ‘Do you always carry spare sweaters and towels on picnics?’
‘Naturally, being a pessimist.’ He held out a hand to help me up.
‘Thanks. Oh, blimey!’ The sweater reached to my knees. ‘Where’s me demo? Find me Dai Evans!’
He looked me over and collapsed with laughter. ‘You’ll never forgive me ‒ I’ve forgotten to pack your banner ‒’
‘Haven’t you even a fishing rod?’
‘Of course! What better? I’ll attend to it instantly, then we’ll run straight back to Thessa and collect Dai ‒’ suddenly he stopped laughing. ‘I should’ve asked sooner. Would you like to go back, change, and perhaps have lunch in a hotel? We shouldn’t be too late to be served.’
‘Goodness, no, unless you would?’ He shook his head. ‘I must find a comb and the demo must wait.’
While I did my hair and face, he cleaned my shoes and now inevitably, provided me with a dry pair of nylon socks. ‘Too bulky in your shoes?’
‘Not at all. I’ve just tucked the extra under. Can we go up now?’
‘Or would you prefer to eat down here?’
‘Personally up top. I want to see the view and those stones. Do you know much about brochs?’
‘Not as much as I should. Every time I’m over I promise myself I’ll go down to the library and read them up.’ He loaded himself with rugs and the food haversack. ‘Never seems to be time.’
‘Not in your job. Your only hope of getting away from it is to get right away from ’phones, like this. Is it always as heavy for Mr Fraser?’
‘Yes.’ He closed but did not lock the car doors. ‘And getting heavier with the increase in incomers and rigs. All set?’
‘Sure. Can I carry something?’
‘I can manage, thanks. You set the pace and whenever you want a wee breather just stop and we’ll stand and stare.’
It was ideal walking weather. The sun was gentle, the breeze only brisk enough to be bracing. It smelt faintly of heather and strongly of salt as in the far front of that hill was the North Sea, and round the back the Atlantic. My hair was dry before we were half-way up and Magnus’s was uncharacteristically untidy. I liked it better that way and I liked the way he walked up a hill. I trudged; he swung. ‘Do much climbing, Magnus?’
‘Not now, unfortunately.’
‘Time problem?’
‘Yes.’ He fell silent, the mannerism no longer irritated me, but I was annoyed with myself for taking so long to spot that the main cause of his reserve was shyness. Being an extrovert that wasn’t one of my problems, but I had been friends with enough introverts to know the crippling social handicap it seemed to them even if, as with Magnus, to the casual onlooker there seemed no physical or professional reason for the hang up, and there was then the temptation to dismiss it as outrageous conceit. I hadn’t made that mistake with others, and I wondered why I had with him. I came to the conclusion that it had resulted from a mixture of lack of interest, alien backgrounds, and irrational, unreasoned, prejudice.
‘Did you learn to climb around the time you learnt to walk?’
He was amused. ‘More or less, having been born in the shadow of Ben Gairlie.’
‘Isn’t that the highest mountain in Scotland?’
‘Ben Nevis is higher. But our Ben provides much the same near-Alpine conditions. You ever been up?’
‘No hill higher than this. My ears are popping already.’
‘Let’s take a wee breather.’ He put down a rug for me and sat himself on the turf. ‘You’ve never lived anywhere near mountains?’
‘Never.’ We were now high enough to see over the lower hills and the blue slits weaving in from the sea, as if searching for the watery heart of the island. ‘I know these are only hills, but I’m beginning to realize what I’ve missed. You must miss your Ben like hell in the city.’
He looked at me thoughtfully for a few seconds then nodded. ‘There’s no real hill within easy range, but hills well worth walking are only a short drive away. I get out and up whenever I can.’ His faint smile was self-derisive. ‘Instant transfusion.’
‘It shows.’
‘Indeed?’ He looked down. ‘Not that I’m new to city life. Seventeen years since I left school for university and since then nothing but cities. First the two in the south, Edinburgh and Glasgow, then I came back north.’
I said, ‘I still can’t get over the shock of hearing Edinburgh’s in the south. Still far north to me.’
‘I still get similar shocks. Yesterday Wally Ferguson told me Harriet Ryan had been out to a broken down trawler right away to the far south, off Fair Isle.
I laughed. ‘That puts London just north of the equator. But didn’t Alan tell me you’ve some Shetland blood?’
‘From my maternal grandfather, a Thessa man.’
‘Do you find that helps your job here?’
Again, he needed time. ‘Initially, probably. But after the first doors are opened, though allowances will be made for a stranger’s ignorance, you’re judged on your own merits, or otherwise. If you then make friends with the Shetlanders you’ve made friends for life. By the same token, make an enemy of one, and it will not be forgotten, very probably by all. A very close-knit people, with deeper bonds than family relationships, extensive though those are. They’ve a shared, passionate love for their islands ‒ no other word’ll serve ‒ and for the sea. I’ve never met one Shetlander off the islands who hadn’t a deep longing to return home, or one able to live happily out of sight of the sea.’
I hugged my knees and told him of a conversation I’d had with a patient’s relative the other day. ‘One of Mrs Archiebald’s brothers. Up on holiday. Works in Canterbury. Beautiful city, nice people, he said, but at least once a week he has to get on a bus to Dover and stand and look at the Channel. He’s changing jobs and working for one of the oil companies up here by the end of the year. His wife’s all for it. She’s from Kent. Three small kids.’
‘I’ve heard more and more of these returning Shetlanders every time I’m over. Personally, I think whatever the disadvantages of the oil, they’re secondary to the human advantages the boom’s providing. And the straight health advantages of this infusion of new blood into a small, isolated community. In the long-term not just useful, but essential.’
‘Mrs Torens wouldn’t agree.’
‘No, nor the many on and off the islands who share her view. The fact remains ‒ the oil is there and going to be used and anyone who believes otherwise and that backs should be turned on prosperity, is living in a dream world and has almost certainly never known great hardship. These islands have. They deserve to enjoy the prosperity hurtling towards them.’
I told him of my inaudible tidal wave at Dalry. ‘I’m glad for them. I just hope it won’t crush ’em.’
He said quietly, ‘I doubt it will. These are a very strong people, with an unusually strong fabric of life built up over the centuries, and an ingrained basic awareness of the importance of human values. So ingrained, in fact, that these get taken for granted. Family ties are family ties, so obviously they can’t be broken so if Cousin This or Great-Aunt That is a wee bit difficult ‒ well, where’s the family without one difficult member? If a neighbour’s in trouble ‒ obviously the other neighbours must rally.’
�
�You don’t think that can be changed?’
‘No, because it is too deep-rooted. Maybe the sea’s responsible.’
I looked at him. ‘How?’
‘By providing the continuing element affecting all their lives throughout their history. By breeding resilience ‒ and to live from and off the sea for so long here, you’ve to be very resilient. Have you seen the wee open boats in which they do deep-sea fishing?’
‘Yes. Just coracles! I’d be scared stiff to cross the Sound in one on a calm day.’
His glance reminded me of the phobia I only then discovered I had forgotten. ‘I’ve a personal theory the sea explains Thessa’s almost total lack of teenage hooligans. Any laddie in the mood for “aggro” can work it all out of his system in the next gale in his father’s boat ‒ and there’s always a next gale. I think it equally responsible for the higher status of women on Thessa. I find that much higher here than in my part of Scotland. Maybe you’ll notice it less after England.’
‘ “Paradise for women and hell for horses”? Can’t speak for the horses, but I’ve nursed more than a few battered wives who’d put that the other way round. But, yes, I have noticed the Thessa women I’ve nursed seem more aware of their ‒ what’s the word I want ‒ value?’
‘That’s it. Women learn their own after centuries of carrying all responsibility for home and family while the men are at sea. And so do their men.’
I turned this over mentally, then nodded. ‘It’s in their faces. Know, what I mean?’
He smiled. ‘Yes.’
‘And the sea’s in all their eyes. Take a look! Just the colour it is now.’
‘So it is. Do you always notice colours?’
‘Always. When I leave here, when I’ve forgotten everything else, I’ll remember the colours of Thessa. A green island of blue water. That sound daft?’
‘Not at all. Tacitus saw it much the same two thousand years ago.’
‘He came to Thessa?’
‘Of that, I’m not sure, but he seems to have come to the Shetlands. His description has a first-hand ring.’
‘What did he say? Can you remember?’
He hesitated then quoted slowly and a little nervously, ‘ “Nowhere does the sea hold wider sway: it carries to and fro in its motions a mass of currents and in its ebb and flow it is not held by the coast, but penetrates deep into the land and winds about the hills, as if in its own domain”.’
‘Oh, yes. Oh, yes! Thanks.’
We sat on in silence for a while before going up. We were nearing the top when the wind changed and within a minute it began to rain. ‘I’ll give you a hand as we must move fast!’ He hauled me up the last stretch, between the huge stones, and quickly down into a short wide tunnel running underground from the crest and opening into a shallow open cave that was well-protected from the heavy, slanting rain, by the overhang on the Atlantic side. He put down his load and pushed his wet hair away from his eyes. ‘Charlotte, I do apologize.’
‘Why? You said the wind would change.’
‘I shouldn’t have delayed us blethering.’ He spread out the rugs to give us the hill face as a back rest. ‘I hope you’re not prone to rheumatism?’
‘No, nor chronic bronchitis.’ I sat down to comb my now soaking hair. ‘So the electric blanket can stay in your haversack with the snowshoes and distress rockets. Thanks all the same.’
His eyes smiled as he seated himself and began organizing the food. ‘To be briefly serious, I’m a wee bit alarmed at the impression you’ll take back at a Scotsman’s idea of a pleasant day out in the country.’
‘Will you be alarmed if I tell you on present showing it’s bearing a marked resemblance to an Englishman’s idea of the same? Truly.’ He was dubious. ‘I can’t remember one jolly summer’s outing when it didn’t either rain, hail, thunder, or all three and we didn’t end up spilling cold coffee and hard-boiled eggs down our necks in the car.’ He was opening a half-bottle of white wine. ‘Correction. This is a marked improvement. Not even one hard-boiled egg in sight. Better and better.’
‘I put some in the sandwiches ‒ here. There ‒ chicken, ham, cheese, tomato. Please help yourself.’
I helped myself to chicken and thought of Dalry Airport. ‘Do you cope for yourself in your relatives’ house?’
‘Only over the weekends when I’m in, which isn’t often as I just have Sunday off. During the week my sister’s help comes in daily.’ He poured me a full paper cup of wine and himself a half. ‘Slàinte.’
‘Cheers,’ I said and we smiled at ourselves as well as each other. It was an oddly pleasant moment.
The meal was fun. The food was good, the coffee hot, the wine light and dry, and as so many shy people, having started talking, he needed no more prompting. He told me a great deal about his home in Gairlie. His father was a Minister who flatly refused to retire, and his mother couldn’t see why there should be any talk of such nonsense for a man only just turned seventy. ‘Has your father retired, Charlotte?’ I nodded. ‘Was he in medicine?’
‘Civil Servant.’
‘Always in London?’
‘Apart from the war he’s always lived in Blackheath till he and Mother moved out to Australia last year. My brother’s based in Melbourne and married to an Australian. The sun suits Dad.’
‘Health not too good? I’m sorry.’
‘Thanks, though thank God he’s not too bad. It’s just that he once helped build a railway for the Japanese and being now in the sixties the bill tends to come in.’
‘I’m afraid it would. Pity. Have you not thought of joining them out there?’
‘I once thought I might. I don’t think so now ‒ aside from a visit when I’ve saved enough.’ I watched the curtain of rain. ‘Shame we can’t see the view.’
He got up to peer through at the sky. ‘No sign of a break yet, but it can turn off as abruptly as it turned on.’ He came back. ‘You don’t look too comfortable against that hard face. Sit forward and I’ll thrust in the haversack as a cushion. How’s that?’
‘Fine, thanks.’ I hoped I didn’t sound as amused as I felt. I’d expected a shoulder not a haversack. Less and less like an Englishman’s idea of a jolly outing and yet surprisingly enjoyable. ‘All those poor birds’ll get so wet. Or will they’ve found shelter?’
‘They will.’ He sat against the hill about a yard from me, stretched out his legs and folded his arms. ‘That’s why most are here.’
‘Resting place?’
‘Yes. After flying hundreds of miles from the Arctic and Scandinavia, they rest and recover strength on the islands before flying on. Their oasis in the sea.’
‘Just like the hospital for so many of the patients.’
‘I’ve often thought that. Tell me, Charlotte ‒ am I right in thinking you’re much enjoying working here?’
‘You are. So that shows?’
‘Indeed.’
We drifted into another silence, but unlike the one in the car, this was soothing and companionable. I watched the rain, drank the wine, and thought how absurd, how even sad it would’ve been, had I not fallen in that slime. He was so much nicer once he shed the melancholy poet, that for the first time I began seriously to doubt the universal inter-staff conviction that there was a long-lasting great thing going between him and Jenny Pringle. I could be wrong, but if the staff were right, I didn’t now think he would have asked me out today. He wasn’t the type. He’d have gone fishing. Unless ‒ unless they’d had some kind of showdown earlier this week and when, as I was still certain, Sister Olaf twisted his arm, he thought, indeed, why not? On the outward drive he had probably decided he knew exactly why not. I thought of his first answer when I asked for his views on the oil boom. He had turned it over mentally for about three miles. ‘Well ‒ er ‒ a complex problem of course’. I had lost interest and changed the subject.
I went to sleep at that point and didn’t know it until I woke about an hour later, and as I slowly surfaced discovered I was refreshed, warm and very c
omfortable. Then I discovered why. I had slept on Magnus’s shoulder and he had his right arm round me. He smiled as I blinked. ‘You’ve had a fine wee sleep.’
‘I’m so sorry ‒’
‘Och, why? You’ve had a traumatic day ‒’
‘Hardly civilized to go out like a light on my host.’
‘This host sees no occasion for complaint.’
‘Good. Thanks for your shoulder.’
He kissed me lightly, then raised his head and looked at me as he never had before. I knew perfectly well that if I moved at all he would remove his arm, pour me another cup of coffee and go on with the conversation. I thought of moving, and didn’t. That time he kissed me properly and so well I closed my eyes as much with astonishment as self-defence. I hadn’t expected that particular reaction. Two years was a long time.
He let go, stood up and walked to the opening of the cave. ‘Now,’ he said a little breathlessly, ‘now come and look at the view I promised you.’
The rain could only have just stopped as the sun was then breaking through and the rays transformed the heather to glistening purple, the peat hills far below to topaz and the white sand edging the Atlantic coast, silver. While we watched a rainbow formed directly above our hill, one end fell into the ocean and made the grey rollers dance with irradiance.
He poured us both coffee and held out my cup. He did not touch me again for the rest of the day. We spent hours looking at the broch, discussing prehistory in the same absent-minded fashion. Later we had tea at a farm fifteen miles south, owned by an elderly couple who had been friends of his mother when she was a girl. Our return drive to Thessa was nearly as silent as our outward journey, and again the quality had altered. That silence was neither strained nor companionable. I was relieved when we reached the Home and he did not suggest dinner. I knew I would have accepted and then regretted it. It was senseless to get involved. In two weeks I was due back in London, and whatever the situation was or wasn’t between him and Jenny, he would then go back to the mainland. ‘Over five hundred miles from Martha’s, give or take a few,’ he said on our drive to the farm.
In Storm and In Calm Page 11