A nurse hurried over. ‘The doctor prescribed some sedatives earlier. I’ll ask the ward sister if she can take them now.’ She came back a few moments later with some tablets which she managed to get Alessandra to swallow. ‘You need peace and quiet now, Miss Granton. Whatever is worrying you, we’ll try to sort it out for you.’ She began to tidy up the bedclothes and placed the pillows flat on the bed. ‘Lie down,’ she urged. ‘Get some rest. Things are always better after a good sleep.’ The nurse turned to Saskia. ‘You should go now.’
In the dark watches of the night the herring ‘swims’ begin to ascend from the mid-water regions of the sea. Across the surface the bountiful plankton float with the currents. At the time of the full moon, stirred up by strong tides, millions of fish, shoal upon shoal, rise to feed.
Saskia rested her forehead against the window in the drawing room of Cliff House. On the surface of the water she could see gannets plunging, puffins riding the waves. Dusk was falling. Her own reflection was beginning to take shape in the window before her. It was not yet so clear an image as to identify her as Saskia. I could be Alessandra, thought Saskia, standing here, watching the sea. If I lived as long in this house, would I become so attached to it that to leave it even for one night would upset me?
‘She’ll go crazy.’
That’s what Neil Buchan had said would happen if Alessandra was not allowed home from hospital. Saskia examined the word in her head. Crazy. No, Alessandra was not crazy. She had been mentally ill. She was still very emotionally fragile, but she was not crazy. And anyway, ‘crazy’ was not a word to describe people who were sick in that way. A picture of Gideon’s younger sister came to Saskia; the girl’s stick-like arms, her pinched, thin face, becoming more gaunt as anorexia enclosed her mind in its vice. Gideon’s sister wasn’t crazy. She was unwell and needed treatment.
Knowing there was nothing else she could do tonight Saskia decided to take a bath. It would help unwind her after the trauma of the day. She turned from the window and her eyes caught sight of Alessandra’s bureau lying open. As she reached over to close up the flap she saw a pile of papers there: Alessandra’s cheque book, bank statements and receipts. Saskia pushed the papers into the bureau and closed it shut. She walked past the big table where the books, pamphlets, papers and maps lay spread out. Saskia stopped and, without thinking, sat down and pressed the PLAY button on the tape recorder. She heard Alessandra’s voice, the beautiful melodic tones of the Northeast, asking the interview questions in her native tongue.
She was speaking to her own people.
As she had once done to Saskia.
Walking on the beach together, Alessandra talking, her voice textured like shot silk, a reprise of the sea itself and the rolling fertile land of the Northeast. The translucent shimmering phrases, the soft burr of the ‘r’ within the words, the rounding fullness of the vowel sounds.
‘Ken now, little quine, Ah’ll tell ye a tale of the mermaids who come an’ sit on the rocks abune to comb their gowden hair and sing the sangs that sailors love to hear.’
But now Alessandra had ironed out her accent. When Saskia had earlier reminded her great-aunt that she had spoken to her in the Doric as a child, and asked Alessandra why she never spoke like that now, Alessandra shook her head and said, ‘I am better understood this way.’ But even when quite small Saskia had understood Alessandra very well. Like any young child she was borne along, uplifted by the musicality of the language, riding high on the pounding surge of the story itself. Not to have this any more gave Saskia a keen sense of loss. Her fingers lingered on the tape recorder. Alessandra had done this consciously. But surely by deliberately eliminating her native speech Alessandra was eliminating part of her identity?
Saskia lifted her head. Now that it was fully dark outside, the room, reflected in the window, showed her a young woman sitting at a table, alone.
Was Alessandra trying to eradicate who she was? Always wearing the same black or grey clothes, her restrained manner, the careful use of language? Saskia thought of the way she herself spoke, how her sentences were constructed, and the way Neil Buchan formed his, and the difference between them. But Alessandra’s way of talking was distinct from both of them; her speech had no natural rhythm, except here on the interview tapes or when telling Saskia of her youth. When Alessandra was speaking to her own people, she seemed more at ease, without fear.
Fear.
That was it! Saskia rewound the tape and played it again. She listened to the voice of her great-aunt. It was relaxed, whereas most other times, within the timbre of Alessandra’s voice was another note. Fear. Her aunt seemed to be in a constant state of fear.
There was Alessandra’s manner of twisting her hands. Her way of walking, of holding herself, of watching, always alert. Was it she, Saskia, that Alessandra feared? No, it couldn’t be. If it was, then her great-aunt would not have welcomed her to stay with her. Who then? Or what? Or . . . where? Could it be places? Alessandra seemed to avoid certain places – the attic room, the beach near the far rocks, and the outside cellar, where she always stood near the door.
Saskia looked around her. Was it the house? Was Alessandra actually afraid of the house, and that was why she could not leave it? Had the house cast some kind of spell upon her? Well, now, she Saskia was alone in Cliff House tonight. Should she be afraid?
Saskia stood up. She was tired and possibly having a reaction to the accident and the upset at the hospital. She mustn’t allow herself to be swamped by it all. She would have a bath – that would de-stress her and then she would sleep better.
As she ran the bath Saskia thought about her situation in the house. If she didn’t want to be on her own, she could easily call Neil Buchan and ask him to take her to a local bed and breakfast. She wouldn’t need to explain anything, just say that she was nervous by herself. But she wasn’t nervous. She liked the house. It was a beautiful house and she could understand why her great-aunt would not want to leave it. Alessandra was entwined with the house as the house was with the cliff, the land with the sea.
Saskia stepped into the bath and stirred the water to make the bubble bath foam around her. She looked down at her body, glad that she could bear to do so now without flinching, that the years of embarrassing puberty were over. Those long months of tortuous evolving, the lack of choice as your hair, face, voice changed without giving notice, the seesaw swings from absolute confidence to earth-moving uncertainty, the search for self which she realized was still ongoing. She recalled the brief time Gideon and she had been together, both merely seeking some comfort from the barrenness of their home life, and both fortunately recognizing it almost at the same time, so that they had ended their relationship but managed to remain friends. He too was constrained to stay at home. He had submitted applications to local colleges and universities, saying that he couldn’t leave because his parents provided too much good material for his writing. But later, when he and Saskia confided in each other, he had told her that it was for his little sister that he stayed behind. He wanted to wait until she was a bit older before leaving.
But she, Saskia, did not have that consideration. So what was keeping her at home? Love? Comfort? Selfish reasons? Her father had made it clear that he would withdraw financial support if she did not do what he wanted, that she would not benefit from the business if she was not prepared to take an active part in it. As she lay in the bath, the unfairness of that struck her. Before, she had always thought it a reasonable stance for him to take, but now it rankled slightly. Surely she should be able to choose? One or two friends were in similar circumstances. Ahmad’s father was determined he would be a doctor as he was, and would sanction no other career plans from his son.
Saskia wrung out the facecloth, placed it over her eyes and slid down under the water. She had a vision of herself from above, hair floating free in the water. She who loved water would become part of it, poor drowned Saskia, like the fair Ophelia in the pre-Raphaelite painting pinned on the wall of the sixth-for
m common room. Saskia submerged her face. Water would bubble into her lungs and she would not care. The silkies would come to take her under the waves to the ocean floor. There she would lie, and passing mermaids would comb her hair. Behind Saskia’s eyelids wide elongated ribbons of fire-flame unravelled: the northern lights inside her head.
From outside the house came a faint rustle. Saskia sat up quickly, water streaming from her. This upstairs bathroom was above the kitchen. If someone was at the back door she would have heard them knock. It must be shale running from the cliff.
Saskia got out of the bath. The water had become cold. She’d go downstairs and make herself a warm milky drink for bed. There was a towelling dressing gown hanging on the back of the bathroom door. Saskia looked at it for a moment or two before putting it on. It must belong to Alessandra. But her great-aunt had said that she didn’t climb stairs . . . her arthritis . . . It was one of the reasons Alessandra had given for not going up to the attic . . .
Saskia thought about the accident this afternoon. It seemed such a long time ago, not just a few hours. Alessandra couldn’t have serious arthritis and ride a bicycle. She was almost as fit as Saskia, had been no more than a hundred metres behind her as she reached the top of the road this afternoon. And her great-aunt gardened and chopped wood with an axe. This hangnail of uncertainty about Alessandra was with Saskia as she went downstairs.
As she passed the phone in the hall it occurred to her she should tell her parents that Alessandra was in hospital.
‘Oh, poor Alessandra,’ said Saskia’s mother at once. ‘What a shock for her. I hope there’s nothing else broken.’ And then she added, ‘Are you all right in that big house on your own, Saskia?’
‘I’m fine,’ said Saskia. ‘It’ll just be for one night.’
‘Well if you change your mind just check into the hotel in the village.’
‘I’ll be fine, Mum. Stop fussing. I’m more concerned about Alessandra being in hospital.’
‘It’s probably a precaution in case she has a delayed reaction. I’ll send her a card and maybe flowers to cheer her up. She had strange little ways but we got on all right.’
‘How strange?’ asked Saskia. ‘I know she wasn’t well for a while.’
‘Oh, has she told you about that? Just her manner, I suppose, always watchful, never at ease. And . . . in the past she did a few odd things.’
‘Like what?’’
‘She tore down all the curtains at one time, and your father thinks she smashed things and burned them. He said his mother told him the house was full of beautiful furniture when he was young – oak chests, tables, ornate lamps, brass candlesticks. The last time he was there he went through all the rooms and a lot of the good stuff is gone.’
Saskia heard her father speaking close to her mother and then he came on the line. ‘Are you all right, Saskia?’ he asked, his voice sharp with anxiety. ‘Your mother told me there had been an accident. I had to speak to you myself – she is so hopeless at telling me anything.’
Because you don’t pay her any attention, thought Saskia. ‘I’m OK,’ she said.
‘I’ll fly up to Aberdeen. I’ll come right now if you need me.’
Saskia smiled, knowing that her father was trying to be friendly after their argument about her summer job. She wondered what he’d do if she said, ‘Yes, come, I need you.’ Instead she said, ‘Aunt Alessandra has a broken ankle, that’s all.’
Saskia went to make a hot drink. Her parents had sounded concerned. Both of them had put their own selfishness to one side to enquire about her. That was comforting, and she felt better as she poured her mug of hot chocolate and took it through to the big room. In the right-hand corner of the window, on the cliff road, there was flash of car headlights. Saskia picked up the binoculars from the windowsill and put them to her eyes. A car had pulled in at the indent on the cliff road above the headland. She could only see the headlights. It was too dark for her to see the occupants of the car, but not, she realized, for anyone to see her. She was standing outlined in the light of the drawing room. Feeling suddenly vulnerable, Saskia wrapped the towelling dressing gown closer and tied the belt more tightly.
Her mother telling her that Alessandra smashed things had unsettled her. There was certainly nothing of much value in the house; the furniture was sparse and functional. Had her great-aunt destroyed the rest of it in some kind of mad fit? Were Alessandra’s careful movements those of a person hanging onto their self-control? The axe her aunt used to split kindling was embedded in the block of wood at the back door.
Saskia moved away from the window. She picked up her mug of hot chocolate and warmed her hands around it. From the garden came a small sputter of disturbed gravel. Saskia whirled round. Birds on the wall outside? Then another noise. This time Saskia was in no doubt about the sound. Someone was moving quietly on the gravel path around the house.
Saskia’s fingers clenched around her mug of hot chocolate. She fought down her fear and tried to think. If there was a prowler outside then she should phone the police. She stepped quietly into the hall. Then she heard a gentle tap on the front door and someone said her name.
‘Who’s there?’ she called out.
‘Neil. Neil Buchan.’
Saskia unlocked the front door. Neil Buchan stepped from the shadows.
Saskia felt faint.
Neil Buchan looked into her face. ‘Sorry if I scared ye,’ he said. ‘I thought I’d walk along and ask how Miss Granton is. I saw a light on upstairs, but when I got to the house it had gone oot. I waited to see if ye were aboot, but when I didn’t hear anything I decided to knock quietly and if ye didn’t answer just go awa’ again.’
‘Come in,’ said Saskia. She stood for a moment in the hall to recover herself and then led him into the drawing room. ‘They’ve kept my great-aunt in overnight, and what you said is true – she is extremely distressed about it.’
‘I thought that might happen.’ Neil looked at Saskia and then said cautiously. ‘Years ago . . . there was a time when she didn’t keep well.’
‘I know,’ said Saskia. ‘Alessandra told me all about it.’ Then she reflected to herself that, almost certainly, her great-aunt had not told her everything there was to know.
Neil nodded. ‘Aye, well then, ye’ll know that she was in a special hospital for a while?’
‘Yes,’ said Saskia.
‘She’s told you?’
‘Bits of it,’ said Saskia. ‘She said that she used to sleepwalk right onto the beach. She was explaining to me why you were reassuring her that day I found the sick seal.’
‘We get on fine. Tho’ she’s a proud woman, she’d never tak’ help from a’body. Some winters I wondered that she survived, though I ken she’s sold bits o’ furniture to antique dealers.’
Saskia stared at Neil. ‘I – we . . . I don’t think my parents knew about that.’
‘Well, now she’s got her wee job at the Heritage Centre and that’s been good for her in many ways.’ Neil picked up one of the old photographs that was lying on the table. ‘She’s the perfect person to do this kind of work. Kens so much aboot the sea and the land. Some o’ these photographs are from way before the last war but she kens a’ aboot the old ways. That’s my own father sitting there with the pipe in his mouth.’
Saskia took the photograph from Neil. ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘I can see the likeness.’ She glanced at Neil and then back to the photograph. ‘Your features are so strong, your forehead, the shape of your face.’
Neil looked pleased. He pointed to the thick sweaters that all the men were wearing. ‘What ye canna see properly in these black and white photographs is that each fisherman’s gansey had a different pattern. Ye could almost tell the family name by the colour and the design. Sometimes it was the only way to identify a man if he’d been washed overboard and been in the sea a lang time.’ Neil leaned over to look at a map spread out on the table. ‘“The Lands of Buchan in Aberdeenshire”,’ he read out loud. ‘They say that eve
rybody in this area has a drop of Buchan blood. Such a ton of stuff she’s kept. There must be mony a tale here for the telling. And she’s the one that would ken how tae dae it. She a’ways had a good brain.’
‘You’ve known her since she was small?’
‘Aye. She was the finest-looking woman in these parts but nae body daured go near her for fear o’ her father. A cruel hard man with a filthy temper. My own father was a strict parent, but John Granton had a dark side. When she went with the rest of the quines to follow the fishing, the boys were round her like a flock o’ gulls following a boat.’
‘She never told me anything about that,’ said Saskia.
‘She wisnae as dour as she is now, ye ken,’ said Neil. ‘She was a’fa’ bonnie. Tall, fine features, with hair the colour of the setting sun. She’d tae keep awa’ fae the harbour, mind, when the boats were due to sail. It’s an old superstition. Even now mony a captain would turn back if they met a man with a beard or a quine with red hair. I’d come along to her hoose to keep her company when a’body else was doon at the harbour seeing them off.’
‘You never went to sea?’
‘I wanted to, to follow my father, an’ his father, and his father’s father.’ Neil sighed. ‘All drownded, bar me. I was lucky. My mother a’ways said that. The “lucky loon” she ca’d me. I was the last in the family, her only boy, an’ when Ah was born Ah weighed nae mair than twa tatties, an’ I wisnae breathing.
‘“Git his coffin ready,” the midwife said, “ye can tell that bairn’s nae lang for this world.” An’ my mother began tae cry, and the midwife scolded her and said, “Ye ken fine the way it is, Kate. The Lord wills that some ye’ve tae gae back richt awa’.”
‘But my oldest sister, Chris, she was only thirteen, she took me and drapped me intae the basin fu’ o’ hot water. “The Lord can bide His time for this one,” she said, “we’re keepin’ him here wi’ us.”
‘An’ then Ah let out a cry, an’ even though the midwife thocht it blasphemy what my sister had said, she spat in my mouth an’ there Ah was. They had to feed me with milk through an eye-dropper for the first few weeks. An’ when I grew, they wouldna’ let me gang tae the fishin’. The girls kept a’ their money for me, and after the war they bought me an auld car. I learned tae drive an’ began tae hire out, folk gaun tae Aberdeen, or weddings, or such like. An’ that’s a’ Ah am today, a taxi driver.’
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