by Kiley Dunbar
Neither could tell how long it took for the horizon to claim the floating focus of so much of her grief but by sunrise it was gone and Beatrice was asleep soundly in her bed.
Chapter Seventeen
Holidaying Alone
When Beatrice awoke it was late morning. She’d been dimly aware of the heavy downpour outside and its pattering and splashing had lulled her into a deeper slumber. The sound that roused her was Atholl Fergusson’s voice bidding farewell to the guests who were checking out down in the reception. Breakfast must be over by now.
When she slipped downstairs half an hour later on the hunt for coffee and any leftover bacon that might be going spare in the kitchens she was hit by the warm air coming through the inn doors and a smile from Atholl, not cautious or careful, just glad. The reception was empty now, apart from Echo asleep at Atholl’s feet behind the desk; he must have come back with Kitty and Gene last night.
‘Good morning. You slept.’ Not a question, and delivered with a satisfied stretch of Atholl’s lips at the corners.
‘I actually did, a proper sleep.’ She thought of the state she’d been in last night when she called her sister and how Atholl’s kindness and clever ideas had helped settle all that regret and sadness. ‘I feel ready for anything today.’
‘So… I guess you’ve had enough of willow-weaving then? You don’t fancy attempting a bit of basketry or making a figure?’
‘Umm…’
‘That’s OK,’ he said quickly. ‘Kitty’s around somewhere if you’d like to have a go at the Gaelic lessons? I mean, they are the reason you’re here.’
Beatrice smiled. Only she knew that they really, really weren’t the reason why. She screwed up her nose a little and shook her head rapidly. ‘Mmm, I don’t really fancy lessons at all, sorry.’
‘You’re, eh, no’ leaving are ye?’
‘I know I really should be leaving. There’s so much that needs to be done back home.’
‘Oh, of course.’ He took a step backwards that only Beatrice registered; it looked so unconscious for Atholl. His expression seemed to settle back into the unreadable formality of their first acquaintance.
‘Last night I thought I would go back, but then you appeared with the bassinette and… I feel differently today.’
There was softness in his voice when he spoke. ‘Well, do you just want to stay close to the village today and rest? You had a tough day yesterday. I can arrange a deckchair on the prom garden for you? Send over some tea?’
In spite of his thoughtful words, Beatrice felt she could see him shrinking by the second, somehow growing smaller, retreating into himself once more. And yet, here he was, still trying to fix her, thinking of what she might like and wanting to accommodate it.
‘You must be sick of me by now. Is she staying? Is she going? Why’s she crying?’
Both of them managed to laugh. She looked out the inn door towards the little strips of garden that interrupted the sea wall at intervals all along the front. She had wondered about who owned them. Nobody ever seemed to use them. Each was enclosed with a low fence and little painted gates. The one opposite the inn was populated with squat, weathered palm trees and, curiously, vegetable beds sparsely planted with onions, garlic and nasturtium flowers.
‘Is that Gene and Lana’s little garden out there?’ she asked.
‘Aye, it was.’ He turned his lips down at the sides and cocked his head as though impressed she’d made this connection. ‘It’s the inn’s kitchen garden and very much not my territory. There’s not much in it now. But it’s a braw place to sit and watch a sunset. The gardens are the only place the villagers keep just for themselves, a place where visitors don’t go, and there’s not many spots like that around Port Willow, I can tell you. You’d be welcome to sit there all day, if you’d like?’
Beatrice imagined herself with a blanket and a book watching harbour life and the tourist boats going by. As much as it appealed to her, her mind was already ranging elsewhere.
‘Maybe this afternoon, thanks Atholl. Right now there’s something I really want to do, have to do, in fact.’
‘Can I ask what it is?’
‘Of course you can, Atholl.’ Why was he being so formal again, after everything that had happened yesterday? She found she couldn’t look at him when she spoke.
‘I’m going to stay another day at least… and I just need to be alone… to walk and to try to really think about some stuff. Something I’ve not let myself do for months. I’ll need a map if you have one?’
He produced the concertinaed booklet from behind the reception desk in an instant. ‘One map. And just in case, I’ll make you a packed lunch, aye?’
‘Aye,’ she echoed. ‘Thank you, Atholl.’
* * *
There wasn’t a sound up on the hills behind the village other than the occasional buzzing wasp and a soundtrack of bird song. Without looking at the map Beatrice had followed the main road that led out of Port Willow and after a short while there were no houses to be seen, just a wiggly up and downy pot-holed single lane road with boggy marshes and heathers on either side and, a little further off, the edges of sparse forests.
The walk was exhilarating. The air was fresher than any she had ever breathed, pine-scented, with a ghost of vanilla from the gorse scattered here and there amongst the grey rocks and flowering in big yellow clouds as far as her eye could see.
‘Well this beats walking up and down Warwick high street or round the Royal Priors, hands down,’ she told the blue sky.
After a while she left the road, following the arrow painted onto a roadside rock that said Wester Ross National Scenic Area. No fires.
She was wandering along a narrow path between the heathers when she heard a scurrying sound behind her. She’d read about adders, Scotland’s only poisonous snakes and how they basked in the sun, shedding their skins in the summertime. She froze to the spot, casting a wary eye around her trainers, looking for moving caramel and chocolate scales like the ones she’d seen on the information board way back at the beginning of her walk.
Nothing seemed to be slithering nearby so she walked on, placing her feet a little more gingerly than before and wishing she’d worn long trousers and not her black sundress and the baggy beige cardigan with the big pockets that Rich always said looked like knitted oatmeal but which she loved anyway. She had nothing on her face but sun lotion, and it had made her face shiny and her sunglasses slide down her nose.
Maybe Atholl had thought she’d looked odd this morning too, given that she had completed her outfit with her white trainers. She really hadn’t done her most coordinated packing for her Highland dash, there simply hadn’t been time.
But he hadn’t looked at her like he thought she looked scruffy. In fact, when she thought back to when she came down into the reception this morning, she wondered if she’d seen a little flash of wanting in Atholl’s eyes. Had she imagined it?
She looked down at the bag in her hand and the picnic he had packed for her. Something inside smelled wonderful, like freshly baked bread. Why was Atholl so nice to her? She reached inside one of the paper bags and found two rosy apples and as she polished one against her cardigan sleeve, she felt something that made her blood run cold, something wet and warm nudging her ankle.
Her scream sent a flock of tiny birds scattering from the heathers as she spun round, the white heat of panic making her momentarily dizzy. Could she take on an adder all by herself? Or was it a wild cat, or a boar, or a Lion Rampant?
‘Oh it’s you.’
Echo promptly sat on his bottom and wagged his tail wildly.
‘Have you been following me all this time?’
Echo panted, obviously very pleased with himself. As she leaned down to pat his head he took the opportunity to stick his nose into the picnic bag.
‘Oh, I see. You’re not here to keep me company, you can smell the picnic too. Well, all right then, come on. Let’s find somewhere to sit down.’
Echo bounded past h
er along the path before heading off towards the forest’s edge.
‘Don’t go too far, I’m not Bear Grylls you know,’ she called after him, and to her surprise, the dog turned to wait for her.
After striding along the treeline through the longer heather and shrubby, sharp bushy plants Beatrice didn’t recognise at all, they came to a cluster of rocks. ‘Perfect,’ she announced and they settled themselves and unpacked Atholl’s picnic which turned out to be a slice of a satisfyingly sharp-tasting lemon drizzle cake and a big flat floury breakfast roll somewhat overfilled with cold bacon, square sausage and, of course, haggis.
‘Delicious,’ she said to Echo who grudged her every bite until she relented and started passing him torn off hunks of food which he wolfed down.
They watched a hawk of some kind – Beatrice thought for a second how she wished Atholl was there to identify it – circling and hovering before swooping down into the heathers hunting for its own lunch.
Apart from the occasional car crunching along the road a good three hundred yards away they were completely alone.
‘So tell me, Echo. Your master? What’s he like to live with, eh?’ There was a flask of hot coffee at the bottom of the bag which she unscrewed. ‘He seems kind and caring, right? If a bit gruff at first?’
Echo stared out at the grey mountains beneath the broad sky, sniffing for rabbits.
‘It must be nice living here, you lucky boy. I didn’t like the Highlands at first, mind you, your boss was so grumpy and rude then. And so was I, I suppose.’ Echo, full of food and giving up on the rabbits, turned towards her and lay his head over her knee. ‘Aww, thanks boy. See, I’m not grumpy now, am I? Or badly behaved. Being here seems to have helped me get out of some old habits I’d got stuck with. I was sad, you see, for a long time.’ She placed a hand on the dog’s warm skull and he closed his eyes contentedly, rolled onto his side and let his head shift onto her lap. ‘But I’ve managed to process some of those feelings a bit and it was your boss that did it… he helped me say goodbye to some difficult things, and he got me talking. And now look at me, talking to you like a weirdo.’
She smiled at the sound of Echo grunting as she shifted a little, trying to make herself comfy on the rock.
‘The trouble with talking about your feelings is you just keep finding more feelings underneath, even messier ones. Like suddenly wishing I could phone my husband.’
Echo sleepily raised a bushy black eyebrow and glanced up at her before drifting off to sleep.
‘You’re surprised? Tell me about it. I didn’t think Rich and I had anything more to say to each other, but now…’ Beatrice sighed and drained the little coffee cup before refilling it, trying to remember when the feeling had first appeared. She had been dimly aware of the need last night and had awakened this morning with it pressing upon her again. Watching that bassinette floating away from her made her realise how much she wished Rich had been there to say goodbye too. Somehow the farewell felt one-sided and only partial – and a little wrong – without her baby’s other parent there.
‘But he’s not around, Echo. Got his own place now, which is kind of sad, isn’t it?’ She absently stroked the silky fluff that ran along Echo’s floppy ears, half thinking how white it was, half lost in thoughts of Rich and how their house had been cold and empty for a long time even before Rich moved out. Familiarity had replaced passion long ago, and yet losing that familiar, comforting presence had been devastating. ‘I hadn’t really thought about it ‘til now… too mixed up with losing Mum, and my job – a job I was so good at and honestly it was my reason for existing for nearly twenty years – and then of course, there was the baby. But you know, Echo, my whole way of life was yanked out from under me, and Rich did a runner right when I was at my lowest point. That’s hardly fair, is it? I mean, I know I was hard work at the end, but it still stings.’
Something unexpected bubbled up in her blood and for once it wasn’t accompanied by guilt or grief. She was just straight-up, honest to God, angry.
‘The bastard!’
Echo suddenly sat up, alert, scanning the landscape and sniffing the air, his ears pricked up into points.
‘It’s all right, Echo. We’re on our own. Come on, snuggle up again.’
He didn’t need much convincing and after a few ear scratches from Beatrice he curled into a ball against her thigh, but kept his eyes open this time.
‘Didn’t mean to scare you, sorry little mate.’ Beatrice examined her feelings and they felt clearer than ever before. Yes, she was angry but the brittle bitterness had left her.
‘Even if he is a bastard for leaving, I still wish I could reach him and tell him about the bassinette… and talk about the baby a little. I told your master about him, but it’s Rich I should really be talking to about him. But I don’t even know where he is.’
She missed her husband, plain and simple, but the feeling of being abandoned, of being unwanted didn’t ache quite so much as she expected.
She circled her hand through the thick fur of Echo’s neck. Where had it come from, this new lightness that was soothing her pain and had allowed her to laugh again, to admire beautiful views, to chat and gossip with new friends at the inn, and to very nearly almost kiss another man? A man who wasn’t her husband but a handsome, broad, rugged red-haired Scotsman. Was Atholl the source of this new lightness? She didn’t have to probe her feelings too deeply to know that, in part, he was.
‘Pfft! But what’s he like, eh? Your boss. I’m not the only one changing, am I? He almost killed me on those rocks at the coral beach. You know, you were there. And he did nothing but antagonise me… and patch up my knees, and give me a nice room to stay in… and try to teach me new things like willow-weaving… and Highland customs that can really help a girl out of a fix…’ She let out a long breath and her shoulders fell. ‘And he introduced me to his family when I was all alone, whisked me off to Skye… Maybe he isn’t softening, maybe he was soft all along and it was me that was as hard as nails.’
But he did seem to be giving way even more, she thought. Was it seeing his brother on the brink of finding love and independence that did it? Was it getting degree by degree closer to running his willow workshops as a business that was making him happier? Or was there more to it?
‘You don’t think your old man might… like me… a little bit, do you, Echo? He definitely leaned into that kiss, didn’t he? Before you turned up all covered in river crap and spoiled it, thanks very much.’
She replayed the moment yesterday and was convinced their lips had almost touched. And she’d seen his Adam’s apple bob as he’d swallowed hard when she was talking about the signs of attraction. Thinking back she could have sworn the conversation was having an effect on the very air between them, charging it with a low electric buzz. Yes, he really had leaned in for a kiss. She couldn’t have imagined all of that? And his respectful tenderness last night? The way he’d kept his distance, waiting by the inn door until she had said her goodbyes.
‘There’s only one way to know what he thinks about me for sure, Echo. I need to tell him I like him, right?’
But the simplicity of the idea and the flush of enthusiasm and adrenalin it brought on within her suddenly waned at the thought of Rich and the life she’d run away from. The whole mess was still back home in Warwickshire waiting for her.
She flicked the last drops of coffee from the cup and screwed it back onto the Thermos. ‘I’m supposed to be leaving soon… so what would be the point? I really should be getting back tomorrow if I can. There’s so much to do at home. I’ve got to move out of my own house, you see, as well as working up the courage and the energy I’ll need to sort things out with Rich. And there’s Angela and Vic’s wedding plans to put into action, and I’d love a cuddle from little Clara…’ This thought alone cheered her. ‘Yeah, I’m going home soon and, honestly, I hardly know Atholl Fergusson, right? And I don’t want to make a fool of myself with him if he isn’t interested in me, and anyway, I am still te
chnically married to Rich.’ She worried her bottom lip and readjusted her sunglasses. ‘Where’s Angela when I need her? She’d tell me to chill out and enjoy my holiday. Put yourself first, she’d say, and don’t get all worked up over nothing.’
She nodded to herself sagely. ‘OK. Today’s for me. This holiday’s for me. Calm down, Bea.’
She reached into the bag she’d carried all the way from Mr Shirlaw’s general stores since she’d called in for midge repellent and sun lotion this morning. There had been a rack of second hand books by the door and two bright, inviting covers had stood out to her.
One was a slim romance novel, and for fifty pence it had become hers. Mr Shirlaw had called out to his wife back in the stock room that she’d never guess what, he’d sold it after all these years. She’d come out to see who its new owner was and they’d chatted about the weather and her walking route and they’d tried to wheedle some gossip about Kitty and Gene, and it had felt easy and friendly – like she was one of the locals and not some fly-by-night who couldn’t stop prevaricating about whether she even wanted to stick around for the full duration of her holiday in Port Willow. But her mind was made up now. Yes, she’d stay a little longer and try to relax and enjoy the new lightness in her chest and in her mind where there had been nothing but cloudy heaviness for so long.
She fingered the book’s spine and its dog-eared pages before finding she could think of nothing she’d rather do than sit still and devour the whole thing, and so that was what she did.
The story was about young love and there was no marriage or baby talk and nothing really bad happened so nothing felt too close to home for comfort. It was like a lovely, absorbing dream, light as air.