Stormy Petrel

by Mary Stewart

  ‘Now, today, nothing. They’ll let me know. So try to forget it, and have a rest. I’m going back to Taigh na Tuir, and I’m taking the girls round in the boat; it’ll give them a short cut to the machair. So I’ll be off now.’

  ‘You are coming over for supper tonight, aren’t you? Love to have you.’

  ‘I’d like that very much. If you’re sure—’

  ‘Of course. I’ll do nothing all day, and Crispin’s brought some goodies, so the meal’s no problem. And there’s still a lot I want to ask you before I can really start to forget it all.’

  ‘Then I’ll come with pleasure. About seven?’

  ‘Yes. And – Neil.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘It’s none of my business, but has Mr Bagshaw said anything yet about the House? The sale, I mean?’

  ‘No. We’ve arranged to meet there tomorrow, and I’ll show him round. But let’s forget that, too, for the present, shall we? Tonight at seven, then. Goodbye.’

  19

  It was after supper that evening. After its explosive start, the day had been peaceful. No one had called at the cottage. I had caught up on some of the sleep I had missed, and then through a long day of sunshine and soft breezes Crispin and I had talked, and lazed, and talked again, till we had caught up on our personal news, and I had told him all I knew about the recent happenings on Moila. Supper was easy, cold chicken and ham with salad, followed by the promised strawberries, and some cheese brought that morning by my brother, and afterwards Neil brought out some camp chairs he had seen that morning in the shed, and set them in the grass by the cottage door. We took coffee cups out and sat there, while below us the sea creamed up over the stones of the beach, and at the jetty Sea Otter bobbed and swayed alongside Stormy Petrel.

  ‘It was rather sweet of him.’ I had been telling them of Mr Bagshaw’s offer of his boat. ‘But I wouldn’t know how to deal with it, and I’m not sure if Cris could either. Could you?’

  ‘I could try,’ said my brother. ‘If Neil will give me a couple of driving lessons, and if I don’t have to use this foot of mine. A boat could come in very handy.’

  Neil laughed. ‘The driving part couldn’t be simpler, but I’m afraid you’d have to be a bit more active than you think. There’s a lot of clambering about to be done, and even getting in and out of the dinghy could be a problem for you for the next few days. No, you’d better forget Stormy Petrel, at any rate for now, and until Archie and I have had time to go over her for damage. I saw a couple of nasty-looking scrapes that look fresh. Ewen must have squeezed it a bit, to get right into the shallows behind that stack. Meantime there’s my boat, and I’ll be very happy to take you both wherever you want to go.’

  ‘Well, thank you,’ said Crispin. ‘That sounds to me an altogether better idea.’

  ‘Once I’ve got tomorrow over, that is.’ Neil set his cup down on the grass beside his chair. ‘I told Rose, I’ve arranged to see Bagshaw at the house. I’m not sure how long he plans to stay in Moila, but naturally he wants to see all there is. And as far as I’m concerned, if it has to be done, the sooner the better.’

  ‘“If it has to be done?” Does that mean that you’re changing your mind about it?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Neil heavily. He sounded tired and despondent. I had put it down to the recent happenings, which of course had been a good deal more unpleasant for Neil than for me, but now I could see that it went deeper. He looked at Crispin. ‘After what you’ve told us about his plans, he’s certainly not the buyer I would have wanted, but it looks now as if that’s up to him. We can only hope the place doesn’t meet his standards.’

  ‘It’s a problem,’ agreed my brother. ‘You might have considered handing the house to an agent for winter lets, and using it yourself in summer, but if you’re teaching in Australia that’s hardly feasible. I don’t really see what else you can do but sell.’

  ‘My job in Sydney is finished. I’ll be in Cambridge next year. So your solution, Crispin, might be possible, if only this option business can be got round.’

  ‘What changed your mind?’ I asked him.

  There was a silence, which all at once seemed charged, and stretched itself almost to breaking before he spoke.

  ‘You,’ he said.

  I stared at him.

  ‘The way you talked at supper. The things you said about the place, the broch, the machair, this little cove with the otters. And Eilean na Roin . . . I’ve known all my life about the seals and the birds, and I believe I knew about the storm petrels, though I never saw one, but you talked about them –’ he hesitated – ‘well, you talked as if the place belonged to them, and when you come to think about it, I suppose it does. I was only a boy when I was here before, and I’d forgotten . . . Then, coming back, and going round the place with you . . .’ He paused again, then added, almost as if it were something he was ashamed of admitting: ‘When you told us about your night on the island, and the petrels, I could see that they had really got to you. It was like, well, I suppose poets must feel that way.’

  I said nothing. I saw Crispin smile.

  ‘So when I heard what Crispin had to tell us about Bagshaw’s plans – Bagshaw was pretty specific, wasn’t he, during that night in the train? – I knew I had to get out of the sale if I could. But how?’

  ‘Hope that he finds the house depressing,’ said Crispin. ‘Hope that it pours tomorrow and the roof leaks and then tell him that one can never get workmen to do anything in the West Highlands. Everything’s mañana, or whatever that is in Gaelic.’

  Neil laughed. ‘There’s no such word in Gaelic. It conveys too much urgency. Any other ideas?’

  ‘Invite him to stay,’ I offered, ‘and give him a horrible supper, and tell him that you simply cannot get supplies here in Moila, and that the electricity fails almost every night.’

  ‘The absurd thing is,’ said my brother, slowly, ‘that I rather like him. I know he’s brash and full of ideas that we might find hideous, but he’s not a bad sort of chap, and he’s had a horrific couple of years in jail, and I honestly believe him when he says he got in too deep before he quite knew what was happening. I’m talking about the Prescott fraud case. It’s just possible – no, no, I’m talking nonsense.’

  ‘You’re not. I like him myself. Go on,’ said Neil.

  ‘In the first place – I know nothing about Scots law, but it’s possible that this option bussiness is not binding on you, in which case you have no problem, except what to do with the place in the long run. But it does occur to me that if you show Mr Bagshaw everything – I mean the beauties of the place just as it is, with the birds and seals and the machair flowers – and try to show him how the holiday crowds would destroy the very things that they thought they were paying for . . . Isn’t it just possible that he might decide to go somewhere a little more suitable?’

  ‘It’s possible, but I wouldn’t bet on it,’ said Neil. ‘I have a feeling that the whole set-up is too tempting. We’ll just have to trust that the option won’t hold water, and let me worry about the future once Bagshaw has given up and gone home. I won’t pretend it isn’t a worry. That house won’t be easy to get rid of reasonably, even letting it as you suggested. Of course, the setting’s lovely. That’s what will do it, if anything does . . . You sound as if you know it. Have you been here before?’

  ‘No. Rose has told me about it. She was, well, poetic on the subject. I can hardly wait to see the petrels. I suppose that must wait till tomorrow night, and then, if their fate is sealed, it will be a sad sort of pilgrimage.’

  ‘It needn’t wait,’ said Neil. ‘We could go now, if you’re not tired? You spent last night on the train, after all. And don’t worry about the leg. We’ll take the boat; the tide’s wrong for the crossing, and in any case I’m sure you couldn’t manage the causeway. You’d really like to go? What about you, Rose?’

  ‘I’ve rested today. I’m fine. I’d love to go.’

  ‘Then let’s do it at once,’ said Neil, ri
sing. ‘And I doubt if there’s a word in Gaelic for that, either.’

  They were there. There was no sound from the seals’ rocks, and from the seabirds only the occasional muted cry, sounding distant and sleepy. But the petrels were there, waiting for night. Dusk fell slowly, the veils of evening. For some time, as we sat in silence outside Neil’s tent, we heard nothing but the slow hush of the sea below us, and the faint stirring of the long grasses in the dying breeze. Then at last the song began.

  In that long, quiet twilight the sound was still as weird, as romantic, as spirit-stirring as anything I had ever known. We sat quite still. Nobody spoke. And then the flight began. The motes of shadow whirled and dipped, and now and again a bird went by so closely, and in such a silence of small velvet wings, that it was as if a flake of the very darkness had broken away to be blown, weightless, out to sea.

  All at once, the spell was broken. Neil got to his feet suddenly, as if impelled by springs, said ‘Hell!’ and started rubbing a hand violently over his face and hair. Then he turned and dived back into the tent, and we could hear him rummaging there.

  I came back from Cloud Nine to feel my face and hands stinging and my hair itching as if I had been beaten with nettles. As the breeze had died, the midges had come out, and in force. The bracken near us would be full of them, and possibly, even, the petrels as they crept from their burrows had disturbed them and sent them to fill the air like stinging dust.

  My brother, moving more clumsily and rather more slowly, was on his feet propped by the elbow crutch, and he, too, was rubbing and slapping furiously. Neil crawled out of the tent with a small plastic bottle clutched in his hand.

  ‘Here. Shoo them,’ he said.

  ‘I’m trying, but they don’t take a damned bit of notice,’ said Crispin testily.

  I laughed. ‘It’s the name of the midge-repellent, you nit. Quick. Put it on.’

  ‘After you. Look, Rose, Neil – this has been very wonderful, and I wouldn’t have missed it for worlds, but do you mind very much if we go away now, this moment, and come back another day when there’s a Force Five gale?’

  I handed him the bottle. ‘Suits me. I should have warned you. This time of year, whenever the breeze drops, the Defenders of the Highlands are out in force. Neil? You ready to go?’

  ‘Not quite,’ said Neil. He finished shutting the tent, and turned to take three long paces over to where I stood waiting to help my brother down the slope.

  ‘Excuse me,’ he said, and pulled me into his arms and planted a kiss on each cheek. ‘There. That’s by way of a “thank you”. You’ve just shown me what to do tomorrow. And now let’s just get the hell out of this infested isle, and leave the petrels in peace.’

  20

  ‘I’ll be frank with you,’ said Mr Bagshaw, sounding very frank indeed, ‘there’ll be a lot of work involved, and you say it’s difficult to get construction work done here?’

  ‘Almost impossible,’ said Neil.

  ‘But given the time and the capital, it can be done? A good team in from Glasgow, get a supply chain going, they live in the house while they get set up, then the Portakabins on that flat field by the beach . . . It could be done.’

  ‘The weather can be a problem,’ said Neil.

  We were standing in the belvedere, which commanded a view to northward of the machair, and straight across the channel to the island where, in the sunlight, the outlines of the broch showed sharply. Down to our left Neil’s boat lay by the jetty, with Crispin sitting in the stern, fishing.

  It had been a long day. Neil had brought Sea Otter round soon after breakfast, and taken Crispin and me to the house. Not long after that Archie’s Land Rover brought Mr Bagshaw down, and the tour of inspection began. At Neil’s request I had stayed with the two men while they looked over the house, and then had – this at my own suggestion – given them lunch of a kind in the kitchen. I had made sandwiches earlier with the rest of the cold chicken and some ham, and brought some cheese and fruit to finish with. Crispin had taken his share earlier, and had gone off on his own to look at the machair; he had insisted that he could manage perfectly well with the elbow crutch, and since he could obviously look after himself we had let him go, and turned our attention to a hopeful discouragement of Mr Bagshaw.

  It did not appear to be working. On that lovely sunny day the house failed to look depressing, or even very neglected, though I drew Neil’s attention twice to damp-marks on the ceilings, and Neil responded with a rueful remark about the state of the roof, then checked himself with a quick, worried look at Mr Bagshaw. The rather awful back premises of the house drew nothing more from the latter than pursed lips and a reference to the excellent architect who was, apparently, living only to make Mr Bagshaw’s dreams come true. And the weedy garden was no problem at all: with those bushes, whatever they were called, said Mr Bagshaw, eyeing the rhododendrons with enthusiasm, all you needed do was keep the grass cut, and who needed a garden when you had a view like this?

  And of course the machair decided it. It looked, to Neil’s and my fury, exactly like the most idyllic picture postcard of an island view. There was the long, gentle curve of milk-white sand, backed by a sea of turquoise and pale jade and indigo. There were the far cliffs, violet-shadowed as any classical landscape. And for the four miles of the flat coastline, between the white beach and the green slope of the moor, stretched the wild-flower meadow that in Gaelic is the machair. The turf is barely visible, starred with the tiny yellow and white flowers of tormentil and daisy and silver-weed. Then comes the next layer, at a few inches high, eyebright and bugle and yellow rattle, and over these, in soft motion always in the breezes, the dog-daisies and ragwort and knapweed and brilliant hawkears and the lace of pignut and wild chervil, and the sweet delicate harebells that are the bluebells of Scotland.

  They may not all have been flowering at once, but that is the impression the machair gives you, and the scent, mingled somehow with the smell of the sea and the tangle at the tide’s edge, is the unforgettable, un-forgotten smell of the summer isles.

  Mr Bagshaw, predictably, was in ecstasies. The bathing, the sun-beaches, the pictures in the brochures, the water-sports, and yes, he supposed there were wet days, but he had been assured in the village that the television reception was OK, and in fact had watched it last night, and of course there would be the night-life, the leisure centre, discos . . .

  So at length we came back to the garden and the belvedere. Mr Bagshaw did not notice Echo and Narcissus watching us sadly from their weedy beds, or I am sure they would have inspired him to new plans, but he kept his eyes fixed on the bright prospect framed by the trees at the end of the belvedere.

  ‘That’s the remains of a broch you can see,’ said Neil. He sounded tired and dispirited. ‘An Iron Age stronghold. You wouldn’t be allowed to touch that, of course.’

  ‘Of course not. But it would make another attraction. Culture,’ said Mr Bagshaw. ‘And that’s another good beach on the other side. There’s something romantic about an island, I always think. Don’t you?’

  ‘Oh, yes. But the tides are difficult, and the channel can be very dangerous.’

  Mr Bagshaw was silent for a minute, then turned those bright, shrewd little eyes on him. ‘I get the impression that you’re not all that willing to sell. Am I right?’

  Neil hesitated. ‘I suppose so. I realise that I may have to, but it’s – well, it’s not easy to envisage such, er, changes to a place one has known and loved. And what you propose, Mr Bagshaw, would change the whole island. I wouldn’t want to feel responsible – I mean, I did try to explain—’

  ‘Yes, you did. But the whole world changes, every day,’ said Mr Bagshaw, with truth, ‘and this sort of place has to change with the times. People have leisure, and they want clean air and the sea, and to have fun, and if we can provide it here in this country, it keeps their cash here, doesn’t it?’

  ‘So you really want to take up the option?’

  ‘I can see nothing against
it.’

  ‘Well, that’s it, then,’ Neil got up from where he had been sitting on the wall. ‘But would you like to see the little island, too? I’ll take you right round it, to the bird cliffs, and then if you like we can land you to look at that beach, and the broch.’

  Mr Bagshaw would be delighted. And presently he was in Sea Otter with the three of us and we were cruising round the outside of Eilean na Roin. The birds rose in screaming clouds, to the pleasure, different in either case, of Crispin and Mr Bagshaw, as Neil took the boat gently on and along the machair as far as the peregrine cliffs. Then, slowly, back again. It was difficult to talk above the noise of the engine, and Mr Bagshaw seemed deep in his own thoughts. I handed round plastic mugs of thermos tea, and then sat enjoying the colours of the advancing twilight, and the pleasure in my brother’s face.

  Some time around half past six the wind died, and with it the last brightness fell from the day. The evening was still far from dark, but all through the afternoon the slow clouds had been building up in the west, and as the sun sank lower behind them, twilight dimmed the outlines of the land and greyed the sea.

  I saw Neil looking around him with satisfaction, and then the engine’s noise sank to a mutter, and he brought the boat softly in to the inner shore of Eilean na Roin, and let her drift alongside the causeway. He jumped out and handed Mr Bagshaw ashore.

  I made ready to get out, but he shook his head at me. ‘Wait a bit, do you mind?’ Then, to Mr Bagshaw: ‘Why don’t you go ahead and take a look around before it gets too dark? Take your time. I’m going over to the boathouse for a few minutes to fix something. OK?’

  Mr Bagshaw was understood to say OK, and Sea Otter drifted back into mid-channel. We saw Mr Bagshaw making his way rapidly uphill towards the broch, then Neil turned the boat and headed, not for the boathouse, but for the headland beyond which lay the cove called Halfway House.

  It was a narrow cove, with a wedge of stony beach, and to either side sheer-sided rocks where a boat could lie as if at a jetty. Landing was simple. We tied up to a ring that he himself, said Neil, had driven into a crevice in the rock many years ago, and silence came back as the engine died.