‘Oh, yes, the old house above the fantastic beach. Was that your yacht in the bay, then?’
I nodded. ‘Wasn’t it you?’
‘Could well have been. I just drove around a bit. It seems a shame to come to somewhere as special as this and not see a bit more of it.’ He smiled at Maman, and slid away from the subject. ‘You must miss the sea, Eugénie, when you’re in France.’
Maman gave a dismissive flutter of her hands. ‘Oh, in summer, yes, when it is blue and smiling. In winter, when it is steel grey and dashes at the beaches as if it would like to eat them, then no.’ She touched my arm. ‘You can keep it then, Cassandre.’
‘You can keep it too,’ I said. ‘I’ve just done a winter aboard. My next Christmas will be somewhere warm.’
Per checked his watch. ‘But you are going to one of our tall ships now, I think?’
I nodded. ‘Sørlandet.’ He had that preoccupied look of someone who’s not really listening, but Caleb raised his head from Kamilla.
‘One of the Norwegian square-riggers? Gee, that’s great. When does your season start?’
‘Next weekend.’ It was going to be tight timing, but if the storm blew over as it was supposed to I’d make it with a couple of days in hand.
‘Another cup of tea, Cassandre?’ Bryony leaned forward with the teapot.‘Per?’
He shook his head impatiently, rose, and returned to French. ‘Four forty-five. Forty-five minutes, everyone.’
Charles rose too. ‘I will change now, unless anyone wants me.’ He gave a quick look round.
Bryony reached down for her phone and checked the time. ‘I was wanting to dress now. Can I book you for immediately after the rehearsal, just to run through the first Diana aria?’
Charles nodded.
‘Our duet, Eugénie, after that?’ Adrien said. Maman nodded. My chances of a bath were looking good, if they were all going to be busy singing. Bryony rose and collected cups, then took the tray downstairs. Kamilla slipped away; I heard the further door on the other side of the hall close behind her. Adrien gave me a sideways look, then headed for the door. I hoped he wasn’t going back to Lund for a quick bit of digging, while I was safely corralled here. I did a swift calculation. Ten minutes driving twice, a ten minute walk to the headland I’d scared him away from, and back – no, he didn’t have time. I could relax.
‘Well,’ Maman said, rising, ‘I must prepare. Do you come, Dermot?’ Dad nodded, and rose. ‘The bathrooms are upstairs, Cassandre, you will adore the one that has a step, but wait until we are all rehearsing, and then you will bother nobody.’
‘Will do,’ I said.They went out, and across to what I supposed was the master bedroom, straight across the hall, with the view to the front. I caught a glimpse of a wide bed with a curved wooden headboard, and a fireplace with a tapestry screen. It warmed me inside to be able to imagine them through the closed door, as I’d seen them so often in my childhood. Dad would kick off his shoes and stretch out on the bed with his paper, while Maman did her make-up in her pale apricot silk petticoat, and then he’d zip up her dress and fasten her necklace when she was ready.
Forty-five minutes until their rehearsal. The opera had lasted almost two hours in Savigny, and it wasn’t starting until half past seven, which meant we wouldn’t eat until ten o’clock – quarter to, at best. I’d be starving by then. I headed back downstairs, leaving Cat to take over the vacated couch. He was used to making himself at home in strange houses; he knew I’d call him when we needed to go. The sun was slipping down, down, but I was met by a dazzle of light as I opened the kitchen door – the last rays were concentrated on the stainless steel of the Aga and flaring back to hit the doorway just at eye level. I paused, flinched, and came in through it. There was bound, I told myself as I checked out various biscuit tins, to be bread somewhere. A sandwich would keep me going.
I was just checking out the fridge in the little pantry at the far end when I heard the kitchen door swing wide, and the tap of heels. I heard the footsteps stop as I had done, and looked out to see Kamilla narrowing her eyes against the dazzle of sunlight. She turned her head and ducked sideways away from it, towards the worktop beside the sink, where a bunch of letters was lying. Per, coming in just behind her, caught the brightness of it as she moved away, and jerked his head backwards. Beside him, Kamilla lifted her head from the letters and stared as if she’d never seen him before. The blood drained from her face; I thought she was going to faint. One hand went outto the top letter.She lifted it with hands that shook. Her scarlet lips opened, moved soundlessly, then she took a step back, still staring at Per as if he was a ghost.
Then she wrenched herself back into reality. She brought the hand holding the letter up to her chest, clutching it to her. Per’s eyes fell on it. He gave it a puzzled glance, then brought his eyes back up to her face. She made an inarticulate noise and looked wildly around, as if seeking escape, then dodged past him out of the kitchen door. Her footsteps thudded up the stairs. Per stood for a long half-minute longer, his eyes staring blindly around. I came forward out of the pantry, and he gave a little start. ‘Cassandre! I didn’t realise you were in there.’
‘I was just looking for bread.’
Per turned his face away from the light, frowning, then looked back at me and gestured towards the pile of letters. ‘You didn’t happen to see what was the letter that upset her so? It was the top one.’
I narrowed my eyes, trying to visualise them, then shook my head. ‘I didn’t look at them.’
Per sighed. ‘It had a French stamp. I’ll speak to Bryony, and she can perhaps see what is wrong.’ His hand came up in a half-hearted, would-be jaunty dismissal, then he turned as slowly as an old man, and went into the hall. His feet trudged upwards to the first floor, the second, leaving a heavy silence behind them.
Wirds ir spoken, freend tae freend,
Wi’oot a soond being heard,
Sheeksin, weddings, births and deaths,
Winging dir way across da warld.
... a letter
Friday, 27th March (continued)
Tide Times at Mid Yell, UT and at Dover, UT
High Water16.04, 1.8m;16.24
Low Water22.15, 1.2m;23.19
Sunset18.31
Moonset02.23
First quarter moon
I hae nae hauns, and strike nae blow,
Yet kings and princes bring I low.
Chapter Seven
I found a sliced loaf at the bottom of the fridge, a hunk of cheese in the middle, and made my sandwich, puzzling. I couldn’t imagine what could be in Kamilla’s letter to make her react so. Blackmail, my mind said helpfully. Murder, incest, child abuse. A French stamp ...
Thirty-five minutes to hang around before the rehearsal. I took my sandwich up to the drawing room, along with another cup of tea and Treasure Island, until Charles began unpacking his keyboard in the far corner, muttering darkly at the sun which was blazing gold in the window behind him, and eventually closing the wooden shutters against it. He started his finger-loosening scales, and I heard feet moving about on the upstairs landing. I dodged into the study and admired the view while they filed past, then headed upwards, in search of the promised bath. The one with the step, Maman had said.
The second flight of stairs was as wide as the first, with another leg-height window looking out over the farm, and a square landing with two doors on my left, one straight ahead and a little flight of steps up to the right. A tall mirror stood in one corner – I was surprised Maman hadn’t annexed that – and four dinner jackets and white shirts hung on the pegs opposite me, two on each side of the closed door.
The first door on my left was a bathroom with wooden walls painted in warm pink, with a grey fireplace. A skylight let the last rays of the sun shine into a dazzlingly white bath. The shelf above the circular sink was stacked with the men’s gear – leather and black washbags, a pair of razors, brushes in the tooth-mug. There was no step, though. I moved on.
The roo
m up the little steps was a bedroom. Caleb’s red rucksack was propped against the fireplace, and a French comic-book lay on the nearest bed. Charles, I supposed, the youngest cast member and musician sharing. That meant the room on my left was Per and Adrien. A swift glance sideways showed a Norwegian paperback and Per’s jumper on the nearest bed, a bottle of Vittel water on the bedside table.
The last door, then, between the penguin suits, had to be the one with a step.
I fell in love straight away. It was the most beautiful bath I’d ever seen: gleamingly white enamel encased in varnished wood, dark with age, and set so high that it really needed the elegantly shaped step to get up into it. There was a shower head with a dangling chrome snake laid across the taps, but I ignored that. I set the hot tap running, skooshed some of the vanilla shower gel in, and let it fill to almost halfway before getting in. Bliss.
The warm-up started on time below me. I floated gently in my beautiful hot bath and listened. I heard Per’s voice, then Charles on the keyboard. He played a note, and Caleb and Kamilla, the two lower voices, took it up and sang with it: up the scale for two octaves and down again. A note up, the scale again, another, another, and then Maman, Bryony and Adrien joined in, taking the top notes alone. Then there was a soprano voice, singing an aria alone: Bryony. After that, it was Adrien and Maman. I could hear that Maman was already Aricia in her head. Kamilla came after them, seeming to have put the letter that had startled her aside, focusing only on the lovely sounds coming from her scarlet mouth. Then the accompaniment stopped, and the sounds died away. It was time I got out, to clear the bathroom for make-up. I towelled, scrunched my hair into its natural curls – where were little stars when you needed them? – and dressed hastily in my one pretty dress, a swirling georgette affair in black with fawn swirls, touched by green and raspberry.
I needn’t have hurried. As soon as the bedroom doors had closed behind them, the sounds began again: Maman, in a series of trills, muffled by the floor between us; Caleb next door, thundering out some kind of denunciation, loudly first then softer, with the purity of the notes increasing as the volume diminished. ‘The real test of a singer,’ Maman had told me, twenty years ago, ‘is to sing beautifully softly.’ It was like sailing, I supposed; any fool could drive a dinghy in a brisk wind, but it took a sailor to keep her moving when the water was glass-calm. Bryony and Kamilla rang out a shared piece. Only Adrien was silent, though I heard him moving about in the other upstairs room.
At twenty to seven, the house suddenly filled with volunteers in turquoise Belmont Trust T-shirts. There were furniture-moving noises from the drawing room, then a march of people carrying plastic chairs. I went to see if I could help. The couches had been moved to the sides of the room, one in the corner below the front window, the other beneath the dropped-paint-pots-style modern art, so that there was a clear space in the middle of the room, with Charles’ keyboard to the right of the fireplace. The singers would take up the space in front of the mantelpiece, and the chairs were being set out across the length of the room. I helped hook them together in fours, as required by fire regulations.
‘Thanks,’ the girl in charge said. She looked across at Gutcher, just ten minutes across the water. ‘Okay, guys, that’s the ferry moving now. Stations, everyone.’
Footsteps headed for the front door, the back porch, the top of the stairs, the table by the door, ready to take tickets. I produced my ticket and bagged myself a comfy seat on the couch with the best view of the voe. Five minutes later, Dad joined me, in his best black suit with a bow tie. I was glad I’d made the effort to dress up.
‘Well, Cassie, are you all set to hear it all again? Not that it’s not worth hearing over and over. Now, when do you join your ship?’
Nearly forty years away from Dublin hadn’t eased out any of Dad’s Irish accent. He’d been a builder’s son, and had risen to foreman, then the practical head of the building enterprise in the sudden boom of work when the huge oil terminal of Sullom Voe had been created. He’d also worked on the new opera house in Lille, which was where he’d met Maman, thrilled to have her chance in the chorus. He’d turned on the charm and persuaded her to leave her habitat for domesticity, oil-wife tea parties, and a child toddling behind her. It was a wonder that she’d stayed so long, for she’d fitted like a phoenix trapped in a budgie’s cage. Now it seemed they’d worked out a nomadic life together: she would come to Shetland between engagements, and he’d join her at her latest gig. I hoped that Gavin and I could work out something similar.
Apart from that, Dad was tall, energetic and still dark, although he was in his sixties now, with eyes the blue of the Irish Sea. I wouldn’t care to cross him in business – at present he was fighting through permission to build a wind farm up the central spine of north Shetland – but we’d got on well in those years when it had been just the two of us, and that companionable relationship seemed to have returned at last.
‘As soon as the wind’ll let me,’ I replied. ‘Next week’s looking good, once this has blown past.’
‘I’ll put up a word to St Medard for you.’ Dad was a great one for obscure saints with particular duties. ‘He’s the boy you need to prevent bad weather.’ He nodded at Cat, on the couch beside me now, and resolutely ignoring the stamping feet as the audience filed in. ‘I see that cat’s made himself at home. He’s good as a dog, so he is.’
The chairs were filled now, and the audience paused in that expectant hush that said it was half past. The woman on the door set her table to the side, and the company came in: Maman in her Trojan jewellery, on Adrien’s arm; Kamilla, scarlet clad, on Caleb’s; Bryony walking beside Per. The singers spread themselves in a semicircle, ready to step forward as the story required, and Per sat down beside the keyboard, visible but not obtrusive. A series of notes, and Maman stepped forward and began the lament that I’d heard her singing earlier, notes bell-clear now without the distorting window. Around her, the faces were absorbed, intent only on the music: Kamilla; Bryony; Adrien; Caleb.
You are mad. Mad ...
Who had Kamilla said that to? Bryony is jealous, Maman had said, so we are keeping them apart. Until now, that was, when it seemed they had to share a room, so that Maman and Dad could be together. Had Bryony done something mad? But she was too light-footed to be the steps I’d heard scrunching across the gravel. I looked across at Adrien’s dark face, and could envisage him being obsessive ... about Kamilla, perhaps? Maybe he’d believed this tour would get them back together, but if he was keen and she wasn’t, why was she meeting him in the garden?
And what had that odd scene in the kitchen meant? Kamilla had been working with Per for two weeks now, so there didn’t seem any reason for his presence behind her to startle her so. He’d taken it to be the letter, from France. I couldn’t think of anything else. She’d come in, turned her head away from the sun, which meant she was looking towards the sink, the nearest chairs, the Aga. She’d have seen the letters, my sailing jacket slung over the back of the chair ... what sudden terror could come from a worn red Musto jacket?
I qualified that thought. No, it hadn’t quite been terror. I saw her face again in my mind’s eye, and the nearest I could get was a shock of recognition so intense that it had left her unable to react normally. The handwriting on a letter, or maybe an unexpected visitor by sea.
Whatever it had been, there was no sign of it now. For the moment, Kamilla was Phaedra, in love with her stepson. I thought, as I’d thought at the château, how much this show had been cast against type: the older couple, Maman and Adrien, as the young lovers; and the younger, Caleb and Kamilla, as the parents. Here was another example, with Kamilla, who didn’t want Adrien, making passionate love to him. If he still loved her, that had to be pretty hard to take.
Mad, mad ... there was an uneasy feeling trickling down my spine about all this. If I’d been at sea I’d have been lashing down canvas for a brewing storm.
I’d noticed Cat slipping out during the performance, and the reaso
n wasn’t hard to guess: the caterers had arrived, and a savoury odour of cullen skink, the Scottish fish and cream soup, was drifting upwards. As Cat knew from Antoine, the college chef, people in kitchens were generally well-disposed towards a handsome cat who kept out of their way while fixing them with a hopeful yellow gaze. I had no doubt that some fish trimmings would be coming his way.
I was hungry myself. It was coming up for half past nine. The opera ended in a final triumphant duet from Maman and Adrien, a swirl of chords from the piano, and a standing ovation from the audience. I’d resigned myself to a round of chat after it, but the company was too professional to stand around in costume. Maman led her troops out, and Dad and I took the compliments on her behalf. One of them, whose face was vaguely familiar, seemed to have been her old singing tutor, here in Shetland. He said he’d been the one to start her off on early music, and gave several highly technical sentences of praise which were totally lost on me, but which I said I’d do my best to pass on. The room emptied at last, and we were free to go down to the dining room, on the right of the front door. The oval table was covered with an immaculately white, ironed tablecloth, laid with silver cutlery, and lit by two candelabras which reflected in the gold-framed mirror and the darkened windows. Crystal glasses stood ready on the mahogany sideboard. There were fifteen places squeezed in. An older woman in waitress black, with a notepad in one hand, stood by the door.
‘Do you know,’ I asked her, ‘if a grey cat’s making himself at home in the kitchen?’
She nodded straight off. ‘He’s been there this last hour.’
‘Not being a nuisance?’
‘We thought he belonged to the house, so we lured him into the cloakroom with a plate of lamb trimmings.’
‘He’ll be fine there,’ I agreed. ‘You could maybe let him out once the serving’s over.’
There were place cards beside each setting. The Captain’s Table gambit, I reckoned, with the Belmont House trustees and other influential folk beside the lead performers. Maman, at head of the table, was between two of them, with Per and Dad on their other sides, and Vincent Fournier, at the foot, had another two. One was Peter, his beard brushed to Navy smartness, and wearing an eye-dazzling, all-over gansey in shades of brown. He was leaning forward to chat to Fournier about the problems with treasure-seekers. His voice was just loud enough for Adrien to overhear, and he darted the occasional glance at him. The one on Fournier’s other side was talking to Adrien about the restoration. Adrien himself seemed distracted, crumbling his roll between his long fingers, and casting sideways glances around the table. Opposite me, Dad had another unknown between him and Kamilla, who was turning on the charm – the Shetland Arts Music Development officer, from the sound of the conversation.
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