‘Na, na, lass. You kept your head very well, what with those pig-snouts, and me appearing wi’ me Viking war cry.’ He got back into his car. ‘Fine to meet you, Gavin. Safe journey south.’
Chapter Twenty-one
My Khalida was just as I’d left her. I clambered aboard and felt the familiar smell of wood and polish and lamp oil close around me. Home. Cat jumped out of his basket, whiskers twitching, and jumped straight onto my berth.
The storm hadn’t done any damage. The only sign of its passing was the logbook having slid down to the fiddled edge of the table, and the little fish horse brass squint on its nail. I straightened it, then set food and water down for Cat. We’d be late back, after Mass; there wasn’t a ferry until 20.15. I told him to be good, opened the forehatch so he could slip out, and checked the mooring ropes while Dad turned the car, then ran for it. We had twenty-one miles to go, and twenty-three minutes to do it in. It was lucky that Dad was used to single-track roads, I reflected, as we swung up past the kirk, and along the higher road where Bluemull Sound dazzled below us, then round the curve and down again, past the ferry terminal, past the wooden hut of Wind Dog Café, and onto the main road south. Now we had a double carriageway. Dad put his foot down, and the 4x4 shot forward between the rust-coloured peat hills, past the little industrial estate of Sellafirth, with the grey corrugated hall beside it, and around the long voe, humped with lines of mussel floats. I hoped that Gavin, beside me in the back seat, couldn’t see the speedometer.
‘Bothwell was captured by the Danish up there,’ I said, tilting my chin at the ruined croft on the skyline across the voe. ‘He’d been engaged to some Danish woman before he married Mary Queen of Scots, and she was mad about it, so she had him slung in a dungeon. You can still see his mummy.’
Gavin’s hand closed around mine. ‘Amazing, the stuff you learn in school.
‘We did a play about it, for the drama festival.’ Inga had been Mary, stately in a red velvet dress, and I’d been one of the Maries.
The small factory where salmon was canned for John West was below us, to the left, and the burn where they raced plastic ducks in hairst. To our right, the neat lodge, and then Windhouse itself, a grey ruin up on its hill, with the castellations standing out against the sky. The windows gaped; I could see a fallen roof timber slanting behind one.
‘I remember that house being almost saveable. It’s supposed to be horribly haunted.’ My friend, Dodie, who worked on the ferries, had several hair-raising tales, which he’d told us at night, after a day’s regatta. The car sped on, around the bend above West Sandwick and along the straight above the Wick of Sound, a little island joined to the land by a double beach. Across from us now lay the north mainland with the jagged outline of the Ramna Stacks that Magnie and I had sailed past, only four days ago, and the red cliffs of Fethaland and North Roe, backed by the great silver-pink bulk of Ronas Hill. We came around the last bend and saw the ferry, tight against the pier, with the cars moving forward in line.
‘Made it,’ Dad said. He stopped at the roundabout and waited for the line to end, then fell in behind a Tesco lorry, painted with tourist slogans: ‘200,000 sheep – 22,000 people’.
We went up into the lounge to join the company, seated round two tables. Fournier was brooding darkly, and Bryony was still red-eyed, but Per seemed more bouyant, as if they had left the worst of their troubles behind with Adrien’s body, in Belmont House, two seas away.
‘It won’t be the same, of course,’ Maman said, sliding into the red-covered seat, ‘and we must be prepared for some adverse publicity, but the British also admire the, what is it called, Dermot? Where you carry on regardless.’
‘Blitz spirit.’ Dad grimaced. ‘We need some of that here.’
‘The College of Music in Glasgow has two possibles to sing Hippolyte, both fourth-year students,’ Per said. ‘It’s a great opportunity for them. The Principal is going to get back to me today. It means yet another rehearsal, of course, but we’ll have time in Edinburgh to listen to them and choose.’
‘And Gabriella is meeting us at Mareel,’ Dad said. ‘Fournier ordered a taxi for her, from the airport.’
Maman rose. ‘I need some air. Come with me, Cassandre.’
Beside me, Gavin met her eyes. She gave a little nod, and he rose too. We made our way to the observation deck at the aft end of the cabin and stood together on the little balcony, with the car roofs below us, and the navy tailgate. Behind us, the water churned.
‘I was lying,’ Maman said.
I nodded. ‘I know.’
‘I wanted to explain to you.’ Her eyes flickered towards Gavin. ‘To you both. Constable Buchanan who spoke to me, he might have understood, but the woman with the glass-green eyes, she would not. But I can explain to Gavin.’ Her hand flowed towards him, palm up.‘Then you can tell her.’
Gavin shook his head. ‘I can’t interview you, or take a statement, because of Cass.’
Maman’s dark lashes flickered down; her hands gripped together. ‘Then I shall tell Cass, and you can listen.’ The lashes rose; her dark eyes fixed on him, pleading. ‘Will you do that?’
Gavin nodded.
Maman was silent for a moment, then she looked at me. ‘You see, Cass, your father and I were not quite separated and not quite together for, oh, so many years. Thirteen years, it was then. We were both too proud. And I was getting older. I would be fifty soon, and I was lonely, and sad.’ Her slim hand reached over to mine. ‘You have been lonely too.’
I turned my hand to hold hers, and felt how cold it was. ‘Yes.’
‘Three years ago, I was in a show with Caleb. Castor et Pollux, the original version; he sang Pollux, and I was Télaïre. It was his first time in France, and he was love-struck with it. It was spring, and the cherry blossom was out in front of Notre-Dame, and the Seine was patrolled by lovers. And I was all that romance for him. It didn’t matter that I was old, and he was young. I was the mystery and the beauty of Paris, and we enjoyed that together.’ She flushed a delicate rose. ‘Oh, it did not go far – dinners, and walks together, and one kiss, by starlight, on the Pont Saint-Louis. We weren’t lovers. I was on a pedestal for him. It was dizzy, and beautiful, and sweet.’
Gavin had been watching her. Now, in this little world between worlds, with the water flowing around us, he cast aside his Scottish taciturn-male heritage. ‘If I’d been his age, in Paris, I’d have been honoured to be your squire.’ His cheeks went crimson, and he turned his face away. There was silence for a moment.
‘And then, you see,’ Maman said, ‘when the leaves opened, and the blossom began to fall, I knew it was time to get back to real life. You cannot live on starlight.’ She smiled at Gavin. ‘The squire must not make real love to his lady. I wanted to come home, to Dermot, where I belonged. He would not come to me, so I had to come to him, and hope that somehow being together would bridge the barriers. And so I organised this tour. I knew Vincent Fournier could wangle us the Scottish venues, and I insisted that we must come to Shetland, even if I had to finance that part of the tour myself. I told Dermot the dates. If he still cared, he would be here. It was a gamble, and I do not know if it would have worked – but that does not matter now.’ She smiled at me. ‘You called me for help, and everything fell into place once more.’
Then she turned to Gavin. ‘But this is what is important: there was nothing discreditable about Caleb and I. Oh, I suppose it could be exaggerated to make a story for the papers, but without photos or proof there would be nothing to catch the public’s interest. Besides, Dermot is Irish, and romantic, he would believe me and understand. It is not a motive for murder.’ She leaned forward, hands eloquent. ‘And most important of all, Kamilla was not like that. Your young officer is ferreting here, ferreting there, looking for secrets she could have threatened someone with. I tell you, she was simple and sparkling, like sunshine on a shallow river. She would not have done that. Oh, she had had hard times earlier in her career, we have all struggled, but now she was
rising. She was the media’s darling, directors were showcasing her. She was in love with all the world. She would not have been petty, taking a mean way to discredit me.’
Yell Sound slid past us, the waves still choppy from the storm, masking the whirlpools that oiled the surface on a still day. The ferry turned in a churning of reverse-thrust. Maman gripped my hand, let it go, and went back into the cabin.We followed her, clattered down the iron steps and got back into the car. In front of us, the tailgate began to lower.
I leaned towards Gavin. ‘Do we have to go straight to Mareel?’
‘Why?’
‘I’d like to do a detour to Brae.’
‘Connected with our business, or because you need a new spanner from the Brae Building Centre?’
‘Connected. Maybe.’ I wanted to call on Inga and Charlie, to see if they’d heard anything more of Caleb.
‘No,’ Inga said. when we arrived on her doorstep ten minutes later, via the Brae loop, which involved a grandstand view of Sullom Voe oil terminal, the tugs sitting at their jetty, and a tsunami event from six thousand years ago. ‘Come in, the kettle’s just boiled. No strange Americans. Why?’
‘He said he was related,’ I explained. We followed her through the passage and into her spacious kitchen-living room. Peerie Charlie was drawing at his low table, lower lip thrust out in concentration. He looked up. ‘Dass! I drawing.’ He dropped his crayon and brought it over to show me. ‘That Spidey and that Iceman. He’s grey.’
Then he noticed Gavin’s kilt, and fell silent, dodging behind my leg to peek out. I sat down and pulled him up on the couch beside me. ‘Iceman should be white.’
‘My Iceman is grey,’ Peerie Charlie said. ‘He’s ice from the sea. It’s grey,’ he added unanswerably.
‘Fair enough,’ I agreed. I looked over at Inga, juggling mugs on the other side of the counter. ‘He spent all day yesterday on the mainland, and he may just have been checking out ponies and puffins, like a good tourist, but he was asking about you.’ I tried to dredge Magnie’s recollections out of my memory. ‘Something about an Andrew from Eastayre who went to the States around the turn of the century.’
Inga shrugged. ‘Charlie’s family, Charlie’s memory.’ She went to the far door and called upwards. ‘Charlie!’ There was an answering shout and sound of footsteps. ‘Tea or coffee?’
‘Tea, please.’
‘Tea.’ Inga set a plate out and reached up for a biscuit tin. ‘Cake.’
Big Charlie came in as she was laying out a neat pattern of squares of millionaire’s shortbread and the sort of traybake that has Maltesers in it. He was tall, broad, fair, the picture of a Viking descendant; Peerie Charlie had inherited his colouring. ‘Now, Cass, fine to see you. Coffee for me, Inga.’ He sat down on the couch opposite. ‘What’s all doing wi’ you? I thought Inga said you were heading for a tall ship.’
‘Next week, as soon as this gale’s blown out. Yourself?’
‘Oh, doing away. Working wi’ the scallop boat, and a bit of whitefish, not that there’s muckle around yet. I got twartree mackerel yesterday, if you want to take one for your cat.’
Cat would love that, but I had doubts about how well a carrier bag of mackerel would go down in Mareel, Shetland’s plush new cinema and arts centre. I was just about to turn the offer down, with regret, when there was a diffident knock at the door. Inga and Charlie exchanged one of those couple-glances that mutually said ‘I’m not expecting anyone’ and Charlie shrugged and went to the door. ‘Yes?’
It was Caleb’s voice that answered him, formal. ‘Mr Anderson? I have a delivery to make. May I come in?’
His stage training stopped him from moving nervously. He clocked me sitting there with Peerie Charlie in my lap, and reddened, then his gaze moved to Gavin, and the embarrassment was replaced by wariness. Inga gestured him to a chair, and he unwound his scarf and sat down.
‘Will you take a cup of tea?’ Inga asked.
Caleb shook his head. ‘I haven’t got accustomed to your English tea yet. Do you have coffee?’
Inga nodded, and lifted down another mug.
Caleb fished in his pocket and brought out a leather pouch, shiny with wear, and closed by a drawstring. It chinked as he laid it on the table, exactly in the middle of the square of sun. He loosened the neck, and two coins rolled out, glinting gold.
‘This,’ Caleb said, ‘is for you, from my grandfather’s father, Andrew Anderson, your great-great-uncle.’
There was a long silence, as the two coins spun on the table. Peerie Charlie pushed forward from my knee and put out a finger to touch the nearest one. ‘Doubloon,’ he said. I’d been telling him stories of pirates. ‘Pieces of eight.’
I stared at the two gold coins, and the leather purse. I’d never seen a real doubloon. It couldn’t be –
‘Old Andrew’s son,’ Charlie said, at last. ‘Andrew, who went off to join the Gold Rush, and never came home.’
‘He went to Nome,’ Caleb explained. ‘The Nome Gold Rush, just a little later than the Klondike one. It’s in Alaska, on the Bering Sea, just up from the mouth of the Yukon. As close as Canada gets to Siberia. Now, this is the story as I heard it from my grandfather, when he gave me this. His father was Andrew Anderson, the oldest son. He was expected to stay home on the croft, but when he heard about gold being found in Canada, he was wild to go. There were furious rows about it, with all his kin telling him he was a fool who’d never find anything, and in the end he ran away. That was in 1902, and he was just twenty.’ He upended the bag, and the coins flashed and clattered over the table. There must have been thirty, forty of them. ‘Well, he didn’t strike the big one, but he made enough. He came down into the States, to Portland, and began his own business, got married, had a family of seven, but he never forgot. All his life he meant to come back and tell them he had made good, but there was World War I, and he died at Vimy Ridge. His son, my grandfather, was busy wrestling with the Depression, and then World War II came. He was in the army, and he planned to come up here during his leave, but he found it was a restricted area, nobody allowed in. My father, well, he doesn’t leave Portland, he’s too busy running it. What do you call it here, the City Council? Whatever you call it, my father’s in it. Is it. So here I am, only three generations late, and great-grandfather Andrew’s purse of gold is on your kitchen table, the way he wanted.’He held out his hand. ‘Cousin Charles.’
Charlie shook his hand. ‘Boy, you’re come a long way. But listen –’ He picked up one of the coins. ‘This is real gold. We canna take this. It must be worth a fortune, at today’s prices.’
Caleb shrugged. ‘Forty Edward VII Canadian gold sovereigns, 1908, the first minting. If it had been 1909, they’d only be worth around five hundred pounds apiece. 1908’s as rare as gold coins come.’ He blushed. ‘I’ve been using this as my overdraft facility in Paris. Last time I pawned one, to see me through a lean patch, it was worth four and a half thousand.’
Inga was in the middle of carrying the plate of fancies through. She stopped dead, and the plate tilted alarmingly. Even though I wasn’t going to have any, I put out a hand to steady it. Inga’s millionaire shortbread was too good to waste. ‘Four and a half thousand.’ She set the plate down with hands that trembled, and picked one up. ‘Four and a half thousand, each?’
‘Pounds?’ Charlie said, disbelievingly.
Caleb nodded.‘Great-grandfather set it aside. As soon as the sovereigns were minted, he bought them, to bring home.’
‘But –’ Inga said. ‘That’s ...’ She tailed off, her lips moving soundlessly, as she worked it out. ‘We can’t take that.’
I’d always beaten her at mental arithmetic. After a stunned moment of It can’t possibly be that! and some re-assessing of zeros, I’d already made it a hundred and eighty grand.
Charlie had worked it out too. Now he reached out to lift one coin wonderingly. He turned it over in his hand. Then, with a decisive movement, he swept them together and tipped them back into the bag.
He pulled the string tight and gave it back to Caleb. ‘We canna possibly take this.’
‘Listen,’ Caleb said. He leaned forward, hands outstretched. ‘See, the way my grandfather told it, what his father, old Andrew, minded most about was his sister. Janey, she was called, and she was bright as a button, like this little fellow here.’ He made a gesture towards Peerie Charlie, who drew himself up indignantly.
‘I not little. I three and a half.’
‘That’s a good age,’ Caleb agreed. ‘You’ll be four soon.’ He turned back to Charlie. ‘If Andrew had stayed home, then his sister Janey could have stayed at school, maybe gone for a teacher, instead of having to leave early to help on the croft.’
Charlie’s brows drew together. ‘Janey ... Inga, where’s the folder with all the family tree and that?’ He turned back to Caleb. ‘I did some research on the Bayanne website. It’s something I can do at sea, a bit more interesting than just reading another thriller or watching a film.’
Inga put the plate of fancies in safety, and bent down to rummage in the corner unit. ‘This one?’ She brandished a beige paper wallet. Then she remembered her duties as a hostess, and passed the plate round. I shook my head at it, comforting myself with the reminder that the two I would have taken made an extra two pounds for Christian Aid. I regretted it; the caretaker’s bannocks had been a long time ago, and goodness knew what lunch would be, given that it was Sunday, and most of Lerwick closed.
‘That’s him,’ Charlie agreed. He delved into the folder, and came out with a family tree, which he spread out on the couch beside Caleb. ‘Here you are. There’s your Andrew, and that’s his sister Janey. She was born in 1894, and she lived until she was ninety-five, so I mind her fine. We used to visit her when I was a bairn, for Sunday tea, and then she came to all the family Christmas dinners and the like.’
‘Andrew knew he’d ruined her chances by going, and he always regretted that. He meant to bring this back so that she could have her chance.’
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