Flight

by Adam Thorpe

  Her eyes were almost as dark as the pupils, until she moved her face slightly to catch a last warm band of sun and they turned into two reservoirs of burnt oil, flecked with greenish dots. He felt short of breath as he gazed into them.

  ‘I’ve said,’ he repeated.

  His hand resting on his thigh found itself covered by hers. The long slender fingers were surprisingly chilly, but then it wasn’t warm when the sun was in. She had peat in her finger seams; at least, they were darkened, stained from all that digging about.

  ‘Why don’t I believe a word you say, bird man?’

  ‘Scars to prove it.’

  ‘You said those were a car crash. Ice.’

  ‘I did,’ he said, vaguely remembering. ‘I was delirious.’

  ‘Why should I believe you twice?’

  His instinct was to plant his lips on her broad mouth, but instinct has to be fought: getting entangled with a selkie would cause all sorts of leaks in the hull, already carefully holed by Sightly’s report.

  ‘There you are,’ she said, squeezing his knuckles. ‘You’ve made the whole thing up.’

  He said, staring at the hand duet, ‘As my father would tell my second stepmother, “My son talks a lot, Samantha, and some of what he says is quite interesting.”’

  ‘You had two stepmothers? Poor you.’

  ‘Nah, I did make that one up,’ he said hastily. ‘Sorry.’

  She took her hand away. They sat in silence.

  ‘Couldn’t Ewan have come himself?’

  ‘He never sent me,’ she scoffed. ‘I’m a grown-up. I’m thirty-four.’

  ‘That’s almost grown-up.’

  ‘I’ve been picking up the wrong message. And that’s all about it. See you around.’

  She stood and strode off towards the machair in her stout boots, without once looking back. She was sure-footed and sinuous. He could see why the energy outfit was interested – in the peninsula, not in Judith: her long black hair was horizontal in the gusts. KEEP OFF THE BEACH WHEN THE WINDSOCK IS FLYING.

  Maybe she expected him to run after her. He sat on the bench and waited until she was a dot, then went round to the front. It had started raining, hard. There was a moaning noise towards the road: Colin was in the grazing, surrounded by drenched beasts with prominent cheek-bones. He raised a hand from inside a vast hooded sou’wester.

  She didn’t call in on the way back. She would have been very wet. He’d built up a blazing fire for her.

  Being a mystery was a pain.

  6

  SCOTTISH TORCHES HAD a website, all happy faces, charming windmills and green hills, but no mention of Scourlay. They seemed to be into coal, too.

  What if he refused to leave? Could he be an obstruction? The selkie’s hero? Or would he just end up with far too much electricity in his back yard, driven crazy by the hum?

  The croft’s landlord, of course, would have been fully abreast all along. He felt a need to phone his old friend: the man who had twice saved his life, once in distressing circumstances. It did no one any good to think the worst of people. It was perfectly possible that Al had seriously nasty neighbours and was himself in danger.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me, Al?’

  ‘My fool of a cousin agreed to the idea four years ago. Twenty-odd giant propellers that don’t go anywhere. The fight agin climate change, whatever. Honestly, I’d forgotten all about it. Then they made this offer.’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘Three times the fucking ask price. I tussled, they demurred; I turned about-face, they caved in. It was all done through the solicitor. It’ll take a few months to go through. What’s it to you? You’ll be gone by the time the diggers come. Actually, skipper, I thought you’d be screaming to get out after a fortnight, keen to know what dry weather and people look like.’

  ‘I’ve made some very good friends.’

  ‘Male or female?’

  An instant’s hesitation on Bob’s part, and Al was chortling.

  ‘By the way,’ he said, ‘you could always use a pay-as-you-go mobile. Chuck it every so often.’

  ‘Oh, like arms dealers. Drug gangs.’

  It was Al’s turn to hesitate. ‘There are so many snooping gadgets these days. Just thinking of you, as ever, skipper.’

  ‘By the way, how long is High Ridge Drive?’

  ‘Eh?’

  The charred rafters across the tussocks seemed to move, an effect of the storm-gathering light.

  ‘I’d like to send you a postcard to remind you how pretty this unspoiled part of the world is. I don’t want it to fall into the wrong hands. Are there lots of houses on High Ridge Drive?’

  ‘What an odd question. We’re one of twelve, though we don’t see them. Properties tend to use up a lot of room in the Virgin Islands. My childhood council flat would fit into our bathroom, with room to spare for the jacuzzi.’

  Bob knew a lot about Al’s childhood in Fife: the damp walls, the alcoholic mother, the sickening father who died when Al was eleven.

  ‘I’m well impressed, Al. What’s your number?’

  ‘You don’t need to bother with a number, skipper. Just don’t be an idiot and put Al McAllister. The name’s Newton. Felix Newton.’

  Bob rang off. Just twelve houses on High Ridge Drive.

  And he knew Al well. They’d shared too many long hours together. That hesitation of his yawned to a chasm into which Bob stared and saw disagreeable things. The way he’d said, Just thinking of you, as ever, skipper. It was not right. It was strained. Even with the thousands of miles between them, and the tin-can quality of the voice, he could tell. When Bob had mentioned his relief over the grey suits, Al had laughed. It wasn’t a laugh you’d take home with you; it was anxious, a cover. A cover for what? Terrible angels wanna fuck me.

  Plenty stuff you don’t talk about in Cargo World.

  Back home, he closed his eyes and consulted his internal world map, not having brought his heap of tatty aeronautical charts – rescued from Holier Than Thou and now residing in the self-storage hangar, like so much else.

  What he’d forgotten was the proximity of the Virgin Islands to Central America; and he saw how, if bits fell off a jet between Mexico City and some steamy port city in west Africa, they might well fall into Al’s pool.

  Al had been shifty: he’d hidden the wind farm instead of coming clean. Embarrassed, perhaps. Top-secret deals. But drugs?

  There’d been drugs on the return flight from Turkmenbashi; drugs always meant serious money. Al was the possessor of serious money. Maybe he did organise that home substance run – in cahoots with the Taliban. Opportunistically … with Evron Bensoussan not counted in. That would, as Bob had already calculated, have given the latter’s flowery shirt a large dark sweat patch of fury.

  He made himself a mug of strong tea and took notes with a trembling hand. There were lots of arrows sweeping over the page.

  If Al McAllister had truly risen in the fallen world, would that put Al himself out of danger? Possibly. And his former skipper? Probably. And what would happen if the former skipper threatened to expose things? Would he be in danger from Al? No doubt.

  Or, as Bob put it in his diary: NO DOUBT!!

  A rapping on the door, at dusk. It sounded fierce. He picked up the Makarov. It was Judith.

  ‘On my way back from the machair.’

  ‘I didn’t see you go out. Or have you been basking for three days?’

  She laughed. She was cold, even shivering. He cleared up his notes and made some more tea and they sat by the hot Raeburn. She’d taken hydrological readings, consulted old charts, taken samples of soil. The machair did seem to be wetter; there were signs of old potato patches where it was now boggy or pooled.

  Bob nodded and said, ‘You’re a remarkable woman.’

  ‘As long as you don’t call me feisty,’ she said feistily.

  He accompanied her to the gate with a torch. The night was clear, bright with stars. At one point they stopped and stared up.


  ‘Excessive twinkling,’ he commented. ‘Stormy weather imminent.’

  ‘Who says?’

  ‘Old lags.’

  ‘Grey seals steer by the stars,’ she said, her eyes faintly agleam.

  ‘Do they?’

  ‘They pop their heads up in the middle of the ocean and take bearings. Only recently proven.’

  ‘Is that what you do? When you’re swimming out there at night?’

  ‘What?’

  They had cleared the bluff and the only sound was the dim roar of the shoreline: hush-kitted, travelling nowhere.

  ‘It’s so quiet,’ said Bob.

  She was in silhouette against the deep blue flush at the horizon, beneath which was the land’s absolute black.

  ‘For the present,’ she was saying. ‘There’s a protest meeting in Stornoway next week. Will you say a little word, as the peninsula’s only inhabitant? It’ll be in the papers, maybe make the Scotsman or the Guardian. They love that sort of thing. Photos, even. You could look all moody by the loch in your funny cap. You’ll get fan letters from teenage girls.’

  ‘I’d rather not. Sorry.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I need to keep my head down. High predation risk.’

  ‘You become more fascinating by the minute. I hope you’re not on the run from a murder. None of the Christopher Webbs on the Web are you.’

  ‘I’m not a criminal. I think I told you. My ex-wife. American. Her brother’s a lawyer, works for Goldman Sachs.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Judith, as a jet’s lights winked across, too high to hear, ‘why didn’t you say?’

  He could have put his arm around her, gazing up at the stars. Instead he thrust his free hand into his pocket; his knuckles knocked the grip of the Makarov. The night sea went on sounding, not caring either way. His neck ached.

  The jet’s lights vanished, taking his heart with it. He craved to be up there, suddenly, knowing where he was coming from and where he was going.

  Bob wasn’t happy doing it, but he eventually emailed Sightly, asking him to provide a full address and details – including the name of the director, main shareholder, the nature of the links with the Mexican drugs cartels, whatever, of Swallowtail Trading Ltd. And to avoid involving David.

  The Land Rover was outside the shop. He hadn’t seen her for days. He hovered, pretending to watch gulls over the harbour, and Judith appeared.

  ‘Kit Webb, have you been swimming yet?’

  Patchy cloud, no headwind, temperature nudging a freak twelve degrees. Spring was flowering on the machair; a bush by the cottage threatened to be a hydrangea (banned by Olivia), but the water still felt icy. ‘I do a lot of hiking, Dr Byrne.’

  ‘Hop in.’

  ‘I’ve no towel or togs.’

  ‘The wind will dry you. You can jump up and down.’

  Judith changed behind a dune, but not into nakedness. He was glad: naturism had never been his thing – he recalled a beach during a stopover in Brazil in the 1980s full of weighty German hausfraus who’d shaved their tender parts and kept smearing them with sun cream. As Judith walked towards the surf in her black costume, hands out on bent wrists, hair falling down her long olive-coloured back, he thought of the first time he had seen her. Her costume vanished. She hardly paused before disappearing into a minor wave.

  The sunlight and the sea’s turquoise were an illusion of heat. He kept his boxer shorts on, stopped dead once the icy water had clamped them to the top of his thighs. His legs already burned pleasantly, but the rest was goose-pimpled from the breeze. He remembered being given cold baths at school: it was a punishment. This was also a punishment. Once immersed, he’d be fine. It was like his first ever solo flight: once the wheels leave the ground, you’ll be fine, Bob.

  The sea seemed to inflate, rolling up almost to his navel, nudging him backwards. Judith waved from some thirty yards out, shouting ‘Softie’ as he splashed the nape of his neck. At first he thought she was shouting his daughter’s name: he almost turned round to check. A second swell arrived, the lie of the ocean surface painfully delineated across his midriff. He blanked out intelligence and dived forward. A flash of torment as the body adjusted – rotating temperature gauges taking thermometric readings, pulling and resetting circuit breakers until the new levels were reached and he was seriously uncold.

  They braved it for about five minutes; she was a strong swimmer. Her body brushed his at one point, and it felt sleek. They had a crawl race which he let her win. Then she came up behind him and put her arms around his neck and said, ‘Carry me out, stranger.’ So he did so, on his back, pacing softly over the giddying backwash, hopping across the tangle of wrack in which a faded plastic Tesco bag rather spoilt the effect. He put her down and she laughed, hugging herself, shivering. Their skin had lost its glaze in goose pimples. They ran up and down a dune, drying in minutes. They were startled by a sudden flurry off to their right: a black-headed gull, attacking something out of sight, beating its wings.

  Bob pointed. ‘Risk theory! Trade off! High predation area!’

  The gull flapped up, squawking, then swooped so low that he had to duck.

  ‘Irritated fowl syndrome,’ he said.

  She laughed. ‘You know, amateur birders aren’t usually beefcakes with a gift for one-liners. Look at that body. I’m well impressed.’

  ‘I’m working on it,’ he said, pulling in his tummy, slapping it.

  ‘Maybe you’re SAS, on a secret mission.’

  She lay down on her back in the dune’s sunny hollow, stretched out in her flimsy one-piece, her wet hair sprawled in a black star-shape behind her, and closed her eyes.

  ‘This is paradise,’ she murmured, ‘apart from the hordes under their parasols.’

  He nodded. ‘And the smell of the fast-food joints.’

  ‘And the motorway’s a wee bit close, and it’s on stilts.’

  He scanned the emptiness. ‘As for the high-rise hotels …’

  She opened her eyes. ‘What’s happened to your scars?’

  The cold had brought them out: they snaked over the flushed, goose-pimpled skin like a pattern on one of Olivia’s shop dresses, ivory pale.

  ‘Looks pretty bad, Kit. Car or skis?’

  ‘Scars you see, scars you don’t.’

  ‘Tell me a scar I don’t see.’

  He pulled his shirt on and sat down near her. The sand was detectably warm. He let his thoughts drift to the usual black rock.

  ‘One day, when I was at boarding school, aged eleven, the headmaster called me to his study.’

  ‘A boarding-school story,’ she said softly.

  ‘They’re the best. So Mr Dodson-Watts shook my hand and asked me to sit down. He handed me a framed studio photo of a young woman, saying that I had to put it on my bedside table. It was in colour, and she had bright red lips and was fairly beautiful: like a film star. It had been sent to him by my father. That’s very kind of Daddy, I thought: a present. It must be to do with growing up. I seriously thought that. “This is your father’s new wife,” said Dodson-Watts. “You must give me the old photograph on your creaser, as this one is to replace it. Those are your father’s express instructions, Winrush.” The old photograph was of Joan. Joan had been my stepmother since I was seven. Quiet person. She felt like my mother to me, obviously. The new one was called Samantha.’

  He stopped. What was he up to? He was saying much too much. He’d been lured into saying far too much.

  ‘Joan had died?’

  ‘Not at all. Divorce.’

  ‘What’s a creaser?’

  ‘Oh. The little bedside table. In the dorm.’

  ‘And did you?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Replace it?’

  ‘I went to five schools,’ Bob said. ‘I got chucked out of four. You see? I’m not that much of a mystery.’

  She stretched a bare arm out and touched the scars, following them with her fingertips. His heart began to rock his entire body. There was a mewing sound: he glance
d up. It was spying on them from on high, in silhouette, wing tips adjusting to the laminar flow, white fan-tail glowing; even from this far down he could see its head cocking from side to side, judging angles, gauging distance, taking accurate readings on two dots in the marram. Judith’s fingertips had paused on his thigh. They burned away there, forgotten about, her eyes turned to the sky, shimmering like silver discs.

  ‘Sea eagle,’ he said.

  ‘I know that,’ she scoffed, her fingers leaving his skin.

  It banked away towards the machair, the sun catching its head, part of a wing, and vanished for a moment into its own knife’s-edge thinness – spotting another dot too big for a mouse, with a longish shadow on two thin legs, heading away from the beach towards the road: but Bob didn’t know that then.

  What he did know was that the spell was broken. He was cross with himself: he’d been lured out of cover, exposed, in return for getting something out of his system that would be still there tomorrow, and for ever.

  He went behind a dune to change and almost stepped on what the gull had been fussing over: a small rabbit, eyeless and gutted. Dropped by the sea eagle, perhaps, as not being worth the fuss. Pulling off his damp boxers, he decided to say nothing about the rabbit.

  Judith had dressed, was tugging at her salt-stuck locks with a comb.

  ‘Why did the headmaster call you Winrush, by the way?’

  ‘What? Oh. Just my nickname. Wind Rush. I rushed like the wind.’

  ‘I like it. Can I call you that?’

  ‘No, basically. Ugly memories.’

  She looked at him through a hanging screen of hair, and grinned. ‘I will in my head.’

  7

  ALTHOUGH A WEEKLY power shower at Marcie’s was now routine, he’d pop into the MacLeans now and then for tea or a dram – if Angus’s white van was outside. The conversation was forced, but he needed the company and not to visit would have puzzled Angus.

  Carol said, one time, when Angus was on the phone in the sitting room, ‘How is your consolation in the café?’

  He’d shaken his head. ‘You’ve got the wrong idea, Carol.’

  ‘Och, then so has the whole island.’