by Clare Carson
‘Did you sleep OK?’
‘Fine thanks. You’ve got a lovely flat. The view is amazing.’
‘I paid for it with the cash I inherited from Mum.’
‘Money well spent. Did you go to university?’
‘Yes. Cambridge.’
Of course, Pierce had mentioned.
‘Isn’t that where Pierce went?’
‘Yes.’
Where half of Intelligence went.
‘What are you doing now?’
‘Campaigning against the poll tax.’
‘What about Militant? Do you have anything to do with them?’
Anna laughed. ‘Are you working for Special Branch?’
‘Just asking.’
‘No, I try not to have anything to do with Militant.’
‘What about the Lenin-alike?’
‘Goatee face? Yeah, he’s definitely a mole, an informer of some kind or another. God knows who he is passing information to; he’s so obvious it’s laughable.’
‘Aren’t you worried?’
‘About?’
‘All the spooks tailing you.’
It was the nearest she could get to a warning.
Anna flicked Sam’s arm. ‘I’ll outwit them.’
Anna; the fearless twelve-year-old who had stolen the Roman tiles from under the nose of the bearded custodian of Blackstone and had trailed her father’s contact from his safehouse. The memory put her on guard again, reminded her that Anna had kept her plans well hidden, had always been keener on the spying games than her.
‘What do you do for a day job?’ She knew the answer because Pierce had told her, but she thought she’d ask anyway.
Anna stuck her hands in the pockets of her jeans. ‘I do some acting here and there. The cash from one TV ad lasts quite a while. And how about you? Who pays your salary?’
Was that a dig?
‘Research Council. I’ve got a grant for an archaeology PhD. UCL.’
‘Becky said you’d been in Orkney all summer excavating some ruin.’
Awkward silence. She didn’t want to talk about Orkney in case she gave Pierce’s location away.
‘Do you want some tea?’
‘I’d better be going.’
‘No, hang on please, I’ve been thinking. I’ve got something to ask you. Come with me.’
Sam followed her to the kitchen, all chrome and white shiny surfaces like something out of an interiors magazine; she must have inherited quite a chunk.
‘Go on, have a cuppa.’
‘Do you have any coffee?’
‘I’ve got instant.’
She liked proper coffee, not instant.
‘I’ll have tea then.’
Anna filled the kettle.
‘You know, thinking about you and your dad. What you were saying last night about regrets. I was wondering whether I should make an effort to find Pierce.’
Anna had her back to her, which was lucky because she couldn’t see Sam flush. Anna knew all along why she was here, of course she did, Anna wasn’t stupid. She studied the graceful lines of her white neck; like Anne Boleyn – a little neck and an irresistible manipulator. Anna stuck her hand in her pocket, removed something, held it in her closed fist.
‘What do you think? Should I look for him?’
Anna opened her hand; the mosaic tile was lying there, blue and gleaming against the whiteness of her palm.
‘I can help you find him if you like.’ She should have stayed out of it; she’d made her mind up to back off. Too late now.
Anna said, ‘If you can get a message to him, tell him I’d like to see him again.’
Sam nodded.
‘And maybe you can find a way to give him this. From me.’ Anna dropped the tile in Sam’s coat pocket. ‘I don’t know what it is about these tiles,’ she added. ‘They mean a lot to me.’
Anna flashed her a smile, turned to attend the boiling kettle. Sam stuck her hand in her pocket, touched the tile, tried to decipher its secret meaning. Anna, as mysterious as ever.
‘But what should I tell Becky?’
‘What should you tell Becky about what?’
‘About you.’
Anna handed her a mug. ‘The truth, I suppose.’
‘The truth?’
‘That my real name is Anna and we met in the summer of 1976. My dad was a spook whose cover was blown and he went into hiding and we couldn’t go with him, so we changed our names and I haven’t seen him since.’
‘OK. The truth.’ She slurped her tea and wondered whether the truth was that simple.
‘Actually,’ Anna said, ‘don’t you tell her anything. I’ll do it. I’m not sure I want her to know. Not yet anyway.’
‘Right.’
Of course the truth wasn’t that simple, because here she was lying to Anna, pretending she hadn’t seen Pierce, just as she had pretended that she didn’t know he was staying on Hoy in the summer of ’76. The truth was what happened, and everything afterwards was a story.
CHAPTER 14
Orkney, August 1976
JIM DROVE LIKE a madman from the croft in Swanbister to Stromness, the sun already blistering despite the early hour. He parked on the quayside; the Jessie Ellen was waiting at the pier. ‘The Cortina is staying here. I’ve arranged to pick up a car at Moaness. Come on, move it,’ Jim ordered.
She stood by the clapped-out Cortina while he rummaged around in the glove compartment.
‘Where are the fucking binoculars?’
He wasn’t looking for the binoculars, she knew, because she could see that they were sitting right at the front of the compartment. He was searching for the two white tiles Anna had entrusted to him before she left with Valerie to their next temporary home. Anna had tasked him with handing them to Pierce, and he was taking his duty seriously. She watched him slip the small objects into his back pocket; the sacred treasures to be returned to the Fisher King so the curse could be lifted and the drought brought to an end. Everything and everybody happy ever after. Except not quite yet.
*
THE SOUND WAS glassy, barely a ripple, Hoy an enchanted island shimmering in the heat.
‘In all the years we’ve been coming here,’ Jim said, ‘I don’t remember a day as calm as this.’
The millpond flatness was more unsettling than a rough sea; everything was too bright. Unnaturally still. The ferryman said the tides and hidden currents were stronger in the calm. She hung over the side of the Jessie Ellen and scanned the horizon, searching for a tsunami or a tornado or anything that could explain the unusual serenity. Jim was edgy too. He clamped the binoculars to his eyes, swept the coast ahead, searching for something or somebody. A tiny bird flapped madly across the boat’s wake; she caught a flash of red. Puffin? She thought they had all flown away to sea by August. Perhaps the heat had confused it. She nudged Jim’s elbow, asked if she could borrow the bins. He ignored her, lenses glued to the coast of Hoy. He let the binoculars drop and dangle around his neck. ‘I have to visit somebody.’ She didn’t bother asking who, because he wouldn’t tell her, and anyway, she knew the answer already. Pierce.
‘Rackwick Bay,’ Jim said. ‘It shouldn’t take long to drive there. You’re going to have to occupy yourself for a while, though.’
‘OK.’ She was used to entertaining herself; besides, she had her talisman with her and that would keep her company. She felt in the back pocket of her shorts, found the red tile Anna had given her, warm to the touch.
*
THE TITCHY FERRY chugged into Moaness. Pierce’s navy Volvo estate was parked on the grassy verge beyond the jetty, a short, weather-beaten man wearing a fisherman’s cap leaning against the bonnet. Jim strode over, exchanged a few words before the fisherman sauntered away to the jetty and boarded the Jessie Ellen.
‘He lives at Rackwick Bay too,’ Jim explained as she clambered on to the passenger seat. ‘He’s visiting Stromness for the day so we’ve got the car until he comes back on the ferry this afternoon.’
&nb
sp; The Fisher King’s car. She felt grand, sitting up front in such a large vehicle. The shore side of the coast road was fringed with sandy coves, lobster boats bobbing in blue seas.
‘Pegal Bay is that way,’ Jim said as they turned off the coast road. ‘We can go there later.’
She wound the window down, stuck her head out, peered at the steep mountain slopes but she couldn’t see their summits and felt claustrophobic, pinched between the rocks. She pulled her head inside. The scree fell away and they were driving through maroon bracken, past an enticing glen of tangled trees. Berriedale, according to Jim. The sky opened ahead of them and they reached a hollow in the sandstone cliffs. The tarmac road petered away and Jim parked the Volvo by a deserted croft. All the crofts here seemed to have been abandoned; wooden doors swinging on their hinges, caved-in roofs with crows nesting in their rafters. The only sign of habitation was a red telephone kiosk among the dilapidated buildings, the cables stretching back along the valley they had just travelled. She reckoned Pierce and the gnarled fisherman were the only people still living here.
Jim said, ‘You can go and explore the beach.’
‘OK.’
‘Don’t go in the sea.’
That was Jim’s approach to parenting; he reckoned so long as his daughters were armed with a set of orders forbidding them from doing anything dangerous they would be safe. The law, and he had laid it down.
‘I’ll meet you back at the car in...’ he flicked his hand, checked his watch that he always wore with the face on the inside of his wrist, ‘...an hour. No, make that an hour and a half.’
She nodded.
‘If I’m not back, wait for me here, don’t come looking for me.’
‘I won’t.’
‘Liz made some sandwiches, so we’ll drive to Pegal Bay when I’m done and eat those there.’
He folded his arms and leaned back against the Volvo and she knew it was her signal to leave; he didn’t want her watching him go.
‘See you later then.’ She set off along a stony track, past a roofless bothy, through the marram grass, leaping stepping stones across the trickling burn, heading to the sea. She stopped, glanced over her shoulder, saw Jim following a path along the far side of the bay, and right. She continued on her way; she had seen enough to work out where he was heading – there weren’t many crofts from which to choose. She clambered over the ridge of the dune, the bay curving away below, a fingernail of sand. She sat among the sea-ringed boulders, the sun radiating on the shingle. So quiet, so still, she could hear the crack and pop of the incoming tide, filling the spaces between the pebbles. The cry of a solitary oyster catcher broke her concentration. She watched it paddling along the shore with its funny red legs and orange beak dipping in the water. It waddled towards the cliff and disappeared. Where had it gone? She stood, clambered over the rocky fingers slanting into the sea, and jumped down to a sandy inlet, wet and channelled by the ebbing tide, followed it along to a narrow cave mouth between the folds of sandstone, invisible from the beach. She passed through the entrance, deeper into the rock. The jagged lips obscured the sunlight; for a moment she could see nothing in the gloom and then, as her eyes adjusted, she spotted glittering creatures – barnacles, anemones, mussels – studding the rough walls like jewels. Entranced by the beauty of the cave, she followed the rocky floor upwards until it joined the sloping roof. The far end was littered with treasures deposited by the ocean: feathers, bones, sea glass, a kelp-entwined creel, fading buoys, salt-rusted metal scraps. A secret Aladdin’s cave. She wondered whether the water would reach the roof at high tide. She dug the toe of her plimsoll into the triangle of sand at the very back of the cave and saw that it was dry; a safe place in the heart of the sandstone. She lodged herself there for a while, listening to the distant lapping of the water and the clamour of the gulls.
*
AFTER A WHILE she walked back to the shore, blinking in the sunshine. She thought she had been inside the cave for ages, but only ten minutes had passed. Another hour before she was supposed to meet Jim back at the car. She glanced at the croft above the bay, bit her lip. It wasn’t far. She could get there and back in under twenty minutes and Jim would be none the wiser. And anyway, it looked as if Pierce’s place was to the side of the path that wound its way up the cliff and she wanted to follow it because she was sure the view would be spectacular. There was no harm in it. He said don’t go in the sea, he didn’t say don’t walk up the cliff path. She retraced her trail across the boulders to the dunes, over the burn.
She skipped along the path, past deserted homes with the relics of their former inhabitants still visible through their glassless windows – smashed paraffin lamps, broken crockery, an armchair with the springs in its seat painfully exposed. Ghost town. What was it like living here, she wondered, in the long nights and storms of winter? Did Pierce have electricity? Water? Where did he buy his food? The croft into which Jim had disappeared looked well maintained with its whitewashed walls. At least it had a roof, even if it was made of turf. The windows were open. The path was hidden from view, she hoped, by its banks and the long grass and cow parsley growing on either side. She reached a bend, the croft to her right. If she took a couple of steps off the path through a gap in the bank, she would be within earshot of the open windows. Her pulse thumped in her neck and she couldn’t work out why she was even considering doing this; the possibility of information which she could use when she got home and saw Anna again, perhaps. A reckless streak. She took the steps. Too late now. If Jim looked out the window at the wrong moment, she would be in for it. She could hear Pierce’s voice – not the soft low tone, but the harsher clipped syllables that had startled her, and taken Jim by surprise, that afternoon when he dropped Anna off outside their house. Water... fault. And, she could hear now, they seemed to be repeating the same conversation. Except this time Pierce sounded angrier.
‘The fucking water... betrayed.’
Betrayed. Traitor, Anna had called her when she wanted to return the stolen tiles to Blackstone, and now here was Pierce accusing Jim of the same crime.
Jim replied, his voice strange and tense, ‘I would never betray...’
She didn’t like what she was hearing. She wished she hadn’t done this, peered through this crack, the open window, a glimpse into another place, a much darker place, she didn’t want to see. Where her father wasn’t reliable, where he did bad things. Betrayed. She’d had enough. She couldn’t bear it, edged away, anxious not to make a sound and attract attention. Her foot felt the path. She hesitated. She could return to the beach, or she could continue up the hill. If she headed up, she’d have an alibi if Jim had spotted her through the open window; she hadn’t been spying on him, she had wanted air. The view. She resisted the urge to run, reached a gate directly above the croft, pushed it open and heard Pierce bellowing as if he were in pain. ‘You gave... fucking tortured.’
She put her hands over her ears and belted up the grassy slope, the path cutting through the red rocks of the cliff-edge, heather tickling her bare ankle as she brushed past. She wouldn’t like to be here in the wind. The drop was petrifying, although it was hard not to peer over and look for dolphins or seals, hard not to be drawn down to the water. The fucking water. She had to blank the dark thoughts. She hadn’t heard anything, not a word. She checked her watch. Thirty minutes before she had to meet Jim back at the car. She should turn around now and then she would be back past the croft before Jim reappeared, but she wanted to stop a moment and catch her breath. Wipe her eyes. There was a rocky outcrop above the path at the summit of the cliff that looked like a whale. She could rest there for a moment. She scrambled across the springy grass, reached the rock, sat on the hump, gazed out to sea and spotted the ferry heading to Scrabster. Fucking tortured. Why had Jim come here? Why was he having this conversation with Pierce? Why was her dad talking in that strange, strangulated voice that she’d never heard before? I would never betray... They were in the same family, Jim had said. And that’s wh
at families were like, always arguing, squabbling. Sometimes worse. Betrayed. Traitor.
She stuck her hand in the back pocket of her shorts and felt the mosaic tile that she had taken to carrying everywhere, transferring it from pocket to pocket, convinced that it was keeping her safe from harm. Her talisman. She removed it, held it in the crease of her left palm, brushed it with one finger of her right, its warmth tingling her skin. And suddenly she wanted rid of it. She didn’t want anything to do with this strange family which had been dumped on their doorstep. Her blood sister Anna. This man Pierce. These odd relatives who came to stay and drew her into their orbit in ways which intrigued her but also scared her because she felt she was losing control. Hearing things she didn’t want to hear. She’d had enough. She raised her arm and aimed; if she chucked it, the tile would fall down and down the face of the sandstone cliff until it made the tiniest splash in the Atlantic and she would never have to see it again. Maybe it would be washed by the tide to the small triangle of sand at the back of her Aladdin’s cave and found by some other girl in some other time, many years from now when whatever Jim had done would be buried and forgotten and nobody would ever, ever know. She lowered her arm. She couldn’t do it. She was scared she might harm herself, lose the magic protection of the tile. Hurt Anna. She cast her eyes around for a suitable spot, identified a fissure in the head of the whale stone, a mouth-shaped crack, wide enough for her to wiggle her hand between the two layers of rock. She reached in, fiddled around, feeling the hidden space and found a hollow where earth and moss had gathered, a natural cubbyhole. Her fingers touched hardness, a sharp point, she scrabbled, drew the object out. A bird’s skull. She examined it in her palm, distracted from her anxieties for a moment by the curve of its black-tipped beak, the fragile roundness of the bleached cranium. What kind of bird was it? A crow perhaps. A deep rasp made her look up – a vast black corvid circled overhead. She could tell it was a raven by the diamond shape of its tail.