Island-in-Waiting

by Anthea Fraser

  “You’re wasting your time with Neil Sheppard, you know. Vivian’s got him all neatly sewn up, and Pam conveniently acts as a blind. Suits him admirably, I shouldn’t wonder – all the perks and none of the responsibilities.”

  I stood up abruptly. “I refuse to be your captive audience while you let your disgusting imagination run riot. I’m not listening to any more.”

  “Well now, I touched a sensitive spot there, didn’t I?” He looked up at me. “Sit down, little Chloe. I’m trying to paint you, remember.”

  I stood glaring back at him but my threat was an empty one. I should merely look foolish if I flounced down the hill and had to stand waiting by his car until he chose to come after me. Rebelliously I sat down again.

  “We’d better get this clear,” I said shakily after a minute. “Once and for all, there will never be anything between us other than this mental hook-up. It’s important that you accept this because I might be staying on after all.”

  “I knew it all along. Didn’t I tell you, and you so stubborn about it? You’ll probably end by staying even longer than I do.”

  I turned sharply, forgetting my pose, and met his raised eyebrows. “And what have I said now?”

  It wasn’t rational, but with spreading coldness I knew the reason for my instinctive alarm. I should indeed be here longer than Ray, because his days were already numbered. Underlining my icy premonition the sun slid suddenly behind a bank of cloud. “I’m cold,” I said sharply.

  He put down his brush. “We’ll have lunch, then, and give the sun a chance to come through again.”

  In silence we unpacked the hamper and Ray spread a groundsheet on the still-damp grass.

  “Remember me telling you about Granny Clegg? I’ll take you down to see her when we’ve finished here. She’s a weird old body but she knows all the island stories. She’ll make your hair stand on end with her tales of the foawr and the lhiannan-shee.”

  My hand brushed against his as I laid out the sandwiches and I felt him tense. “I’m glad you’re staying, Chloe. You’ll find I’m right about the other thing, too, so why not stop struggling like a good girl?” He reached for me and as I ducked away his expression changed. “Has it not occurred to you that I don’t need your permission? No-one’s within miles of us here.”

  I stared at him with suddenly pounding heart, noting the sweat on his upper lip and the little pulse beating at his temple.

  “Ray, please –”

  “Ray, please!” he mimicked savagely. “Damn it, girl, have you no blood in your veins at all?” His arms came tightly round me, pinioning mine to my side and crushing the breath out of my body. Acute panic fused with the conflicting emotions that had been troubling me all morning into a brief, white-hot explosion and even as I tried to cry out, I knew that it was happening again. Perhaps this time it was a means of escape.

  The cool October wind had fallen away and it was May, the old May Day before the change of the calendar. I was standing on the edge of a green field round which clustered a crowd of merrymakers, everyone decked out in garlands and chaplets of yellow flowers. The centre of the field was empty but as a horn sounded near at hand, two parties of young men advanced into it. To my surprise I saw that while one team was dressed in light open-necked shirts, the members of the other were wrapped closely in thick woollen coats and scarves and wore garlands of holly and ivy. It seemed that a mock battle was taking place, though I could not understand why, and for the first time during these switches I was aware of my own identity, of not belonging. I turned from the field to lay a hand urgently on the arm of the man beside me.

  “Please help me!” I began, “I shouldn’t be here!” And recoiled in horror as my hand went straight through his arm. Was he a ghost, then? Or, in this time band, was I? Certainly he hadn’t even turned his head to look at me.

  I stumbled away, swerving out of the path of the crowd and shutting my mind to the knowledge that I could if I wished go straight through them. And now they had started to sing and the insistent beat, thé compulsory words branded themselves on my brain so that I found myself singing with them:

  ‘Robin-y-Ree! Robin-y-Ree! Ridlan aboo

  abban fal dy ridlan, Robin-y-Ree! ’

  The green grass of the meadow came rushing up to meet me and I felt the hardness of it against my face and heard Ray’s voice, sharp with fear. “Chloe! Chloe, for God’s sake what happened?”

  I forced my eyes open to find myself lying amid the wreckage of the picnic lunch while Ray, kneeling beside me, was rubbing my hands between his own and the roughness of the bandage scratched my skin. Behind the fear in his eyes was a feverish excitement.

  “What happened?” he demanded again. “What was it you were saying, can you remember?”

  The memory was becoming blurred and my tongue stumbled over the unfamiliar words. “‘Abban fal dy ridlan, Robin-y-Ree!’”

  He drew a deep breath and sat back. “Tell me everything!” he commanded, and I had no will to withstand him. Mechanically I described the field and the crowds while his eyes remained fixed almost hypnotically on my face. At last, because the words ran out, I stumbled to a halt.

  “What was it?” I asked after a moment.

  His voice shook with excitement. “It seems to have been one of the old traditions, the battle of Summer and Winter. The chorus of that song, ‘Topknots of scarlet and ribbons of green’ – hell, Chloe, you must actually have been there How else – unless Uncle Tom – but even so, the power that would have been needed –”

  Dizzily I sat up, a hand to my head.

  “Has it happened before? Anything like this?” And again, as I hesitated, the imperious “Tell me!” So I told him, about Illiam Dhone and then about the strange, snake-like dance on the hard sand near Kirk Michael.

  “The Flitterdaunsey,” he muttered almost to himself. “I remember Uncle telling me about it. It used to be held on Good Friday, when people went to the shore to gather flitters – limpets. Iron and steel couldn’t be used on Good Friday so the barley bread was moulded by hand, and after the picnic any remaining food was thrown into the sea with the words He stopped, his eyes burning into me.

  “ ‘Gow show as bannee ornn’”, I supplied dully, though I wasn’t aware of having heard the words before.

  “That’s right: ‘Take this and bless us’. Chloe, why didn’t you tell me all this before?”

  “I was afraid,” I said in a low voice.

  “Of what?”

  Of admitting the extent of my involvement. I hadn’t answered but I think he understood because he didn’t press the point.

  “Take me with you next time!” he said softly.

  “How can I?” I burst out. “If I’d any control at all over it I wouldn’t let it happen!” I scrambled unsteadily to my feet. “I don’t want to talk about it any more. Please will you take me home?”

  He rose to his feet. “Very well, we’ll go now, but not home. We’re going to Granny Clegg’s, remember. Perhaps she can tell us more about May Day and the Flitterdaunsey. Now –” as I started to protest – “go and see if you approve of the way your portrait’s coming along.”

  Obediently I walked over to look at the picture. Although the details were still vague the figure now had an almost uncanny resemblance to myself, with a depth about it that suggested he had been looking into as well as at me. I was reminded of the portrait of his grandmother, with its yearning sense of loneliness.

  “Well?”

  “It makes me a little uncomfortable.”

  “Good. So it should. Now help me pack the hamper, will you? This infernal bandage keeps getting in the way.”

  We drove straight down the coast road to Peel and gradually, as Ray kept the conversation carefully inconsequential, my tension began to ease. The harbour was throbbing with boats of all descriptions and he pointed out Peel Island with the old ruined church of St German humped against the skyline. “According to tradition St German was sent by St Patrick to found the Manx church.
That would date it from the fifth century. And there’s Peel Castle and Fenella’s Tower. Walter Scott wrote about that.” He flashed me a glance. “The castle’s haunted, naturally, by the Moddy Dhoo, or Black Dog. If you see it, they say you ’ll die soon after.”

  We drove slowly along the cobbled quayside and stopped in front of one of the old-time fishermen’s cottages, whitewashed and snug now in the mellow sunshine.

  “You’ll have to shout,” Ray warned me. “The Granny’s as deaf as a post.”

  His knock on the wooden door was answered by a tall angular woman in an apron. Her hair was scraped severely back and tied in a knot on top of her head, but her eyes, so deep a blue as to appear purple, were startlingly beautiful. They were oddly incongruous in such a setting, as though something lovely and fragile were imprisoned in the uncompromisingly awkward frame.

  “Good day to you, Kirree. Would your mother be at home?”

  “Isn’t it yourself that knows she never crosses the threshold?”

  “I’ve brought Miss Winter to see her, if it’s convenient.”

  The glorious eyes switched to me and I felt them lance into my brain. Then she nodded briefly and stood to one side. Ray motioned me ahead and we went in, bending our heads to avoid the low lintel. The one-roomed cottage had made little concession to the twentieth century. To my delight a spinning wheel stood in one corner, and a closer look at the skirt Kirree Clegg was wearing intimated that it was still very much in use. From the depths of a rocking-chair beside the turf fire, Granny surveyed us with beady black eyes. She was a tiny figure all in black, her grey hair screwed into the same style as her daughter’s, her face seamed by myriads of wrinkles.

  “’Tis herself you’ve brought, then,” she greeted Ray, nodding vigorously. “Didn’t I tell you, daughter, when you dropped the knife at breakfast? Well now, child, I was expecting you.”

  I moved to take the small claw she held out in my direction. “Good afternoon, Mrs Clegg.”

  The button-black eyes probed into mine. “You’ve travelled far this day, I’m thinking.”

  I said nothing, knowing that the distance she spoke of was measured not in miles but in years.

  “’Tis temporary, this gift of yours, but not done yet. And there’s trouble ahead.”

  I winced and withdrew my hand from hers.

  “Trouble, and danger in the mist.”

  “Oh come on now, Granny, is that the way to greet a visitor, at all?”

  “I tells what I sees,” the old woman insisted stubbornly. “Sure and she’s not a simpleton. Doesn’t she know it herself already?” Her eyes slid past me to Ray and a glazed expression clouded them. “Begun in September, done ere November,” she muttered indistinctly.

  He gave a nervous laugh. “Aren’t you full of the croaks of doom today!”

  “Evil comes home to roost, son, and don’t say I wasn’t after warning you.”

  “Never mind me, now. Chloe wants to hear some of your fairy tales.” But the old woman had turned away to stare into the depths of the fire, shaking her head and rocking gently.

  “You’ll be getting no more out of her today,” Kirree said matter-of-factly. “Will you stay for a cup of tea?”

  But the old woman’s words, mystifying though they were, had disturbed us both and after a quickly exchanged glance Ray shook his head. “Not today, Kirree, thanks all the same. Since the Granny’s not herself we won’t bother you any longer.”

  “It’s welcome you’ll be another time,” she said kindly, “and Mother will read the lassie’s hand if the mood takes her right.”

  “Thank you,” I said awkwardly. My eyes went back to the tiny rocking figure muttering to herself in the depths of the old chair. “Good-bye, Mrs Clegg.”

  There was no reply and after a brief exchange of formalities Ray and I were outside on the quay again. We had been in the cottage barely ten minutes. Unaccountably it seemed much longer.

  Back in the car we drove in silence for some time, until I said suddenly, “She didn’t seem at all deaf.”

  “She was hearing with her inner ear today. Clairaudience and clairvoyance often go together.” He paused. “I wonder what that doggerel about September and November was supposed to mean.”

  I’d wondered, too. And about the danger in the mist she had foreseen for me. The dream, perhaps.

  “Has she ever told you anything that came true?” I asked uneasily.

  “Nothing momentous. She’ll say something like ‘There’s a letter coming from across the sea’ when I’d written to someone on the mainland and was expecting a reply anyway.”

  “Has she read your hand?”

  “Once or twice, over the years. Again, all very vague and ambiguous. ‘Beware the coloured stars ’ – that kind of thing, and she leaves you to unravel it as best you can. No, she’s a bit of a dead loss when it comes to fortune-telling, but she’s really great on legend. A pity she was in one of her more wafty moods today.”

  The blueness of evening was settling over the countryside as we came up shadowed Glen Helen and by the time Ray finally drew up outside Hugo’s cottage the stars were out.

  “My timetable’s full for the rest of the week, but you’ll give me another sitting on Saturday, won’t you?”

  A tremor of unease inched up my spine. “I don’t know.”

  “I’ll have to behave myself, is that it?”

  But that wasn’t the only reason why I felt a strong reluctance to sit for Ray again.

  He reached for my hand and, as I stiffened, said quickly, “Relax, I’m not going to force myself on you. That’s been my mistake all along, hasn’t it? I’m used to having to fight for what I want but I should have realized it was different with you. You’ll come to me in your own good time. I know that now.”

  I said with difficulty, “Ray, I tried to explain –”

  He lifted my hand to his mouth and held it there while I sat like a rock staring at the shaggy bent head and feeling his lips move over the surface of my palm. And such was the strength of his will that, appalled, I began to wonder if he was right. I tugged my hand free and said breathlessly, “You’re wrong, quite wrong. You must believe me.”

  “No, my darling,” he said softly, “you must believe me. I’m not one for making pretty speeches but we belong together, you and I. The fact that you came when I called you proves that. I’ll wait if I have to; just don’t let it be too long.”

  I gazed at him speechlessly and he met my look with those deep, burning eyes unwavering on my face.

  “Good-night,” I said in a rush, and almost fell out of the car. I had reached the front door before I heard him drive away.

  Martha’s exclamation on the tartan skirt and Hugo’s deceptively casual enquiry about the sitting I dealt with as best I could. In the last ten minutes my relationship with Ray had changed out of all recognition, becoming at the same time deeper and more threatening. For despite my protestations he had felt sure enough of me to commit himself, and that was dangerous. I could only guess at his reaction to any imagined betrayal.

  Twelve

  Annette had left some recipe books for me as requested and I was thankful that my contributions to the bazaar would occupy me for most of the day. As I’d anticipated, Martha’s store cupboard did not extend to such commodities as yeast, cream of tartar and ground almonds, and it was obvious that a trip to Ramsey would be my first priority.

  The Ford’s petrol gauge was almost on ‘empty’ so I turned into the first garage I came to and had pulled up at the pumps before I realized with a shock that the blue Renault already there belonged to Ray. Hastily I switched on the ignition again, but it was too late. He had come out of the office and caught sight of me, and I reluctantly got out of the car.

  “You’re out bright and early this morning!” he greeted me.

  “So are you. Why aren’t you at college?”

  “I’m collecting an assortment of petrol tins for a still-life class. Where are you off to?”

  “R
amsey. I’ve a lot of baking to do for the bazaar and need to stock up on supplies.”

  “So you’ll be spending the day slaving over a hot stove? Come out with me this evening to recuperate!”

  “I’m sorry, I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “I – already have an engagement.” I kept my eyes on the swiftly moving figures of the petrol pump.

  “Have you now? Might I ask what it is?”

  My finger nails were digging into my palms. Better this way, I told myself feverishly. He must be made to understand the position and the sooner it was done the less damage might be inflicted.

  “Well?” he asked with a touch of impatience. “Is it a state secret?”

  “No,” I answered as steadily as I could. “As a matter of fact, I’m having dinner with Neil.”

  He stared at me blankly. “The hell you are! You kept pretty quiet about that yesterday.”

  “It didn’t seem relevant.”

  “Oh, you think not? Well, it seems pretty damn relevant to me! What price all that coy ‘Don’t touch me – I’m not that kind of girl! ’ when all the time – My God, you could teach Claudine Bouchet a trick or two, and that’s saying something!”

  “Ray, I did try to tell you –”

  “And I’m willing to bet our Neil doesn’t get fobbed off with any arm’s length treatment! He’s not one to waste his time if there’s nothing in it for him – ask Pam or your precious Vivian! You rotten, two-faced little bitch! You even let me-” He broke off, fighting to control his breathing.

  “Very well, my love, but you needn’t think it changes the outcome one iota, just the way we go about it. If you want to play dirty, that’s all right by me. In fact, I’ll enjoy it. If Neil Sheppard knows what’s good for him, he’ll beat a hasty retreat back to Vivian’s apron strings. Old Nicholas might turn a blind eye to a bit on the side, but by God I won’t!”

  The hunched shoulders of the garage attendant registered avid if tactful interest. Without looking at him I held out a handful of notes, leaving him to extract the amount he required. Behind me Ray’s car leapt forward with a roar, screeched across the forecourt and out on to the road. I was sorry for his first class that morning.