Beyond the Sea

by Melissa Bailey

  ‘So what else is new?’ Freya asked in an attempt to change the subject.

  ‘Well, I’ve met someone.’

  ‘That was quick work,’ said Freya, surprised.

  Marta laughed. ‘I know. They say it often happens when you’re least looking for it. It was just after I came back to London, actually. So we’ve seen each other a few times. His name’s Rob and I really like him.’

  Freya sat upright, registering this new and rather unexpected piece of news. ‘Rob,’ she repeated, looking out of the window and becoming conscious for the first time of an approaching boat. She squinted at it. If she was not mistaken it was Daniel’s, and it was heading for the island.

  ‘And I’m trying, this time,’ Marta added, ‘not to do my usual thing.’

  Freya knew that this was unprecedented for her sister and she was irritated by the distraction of the boat. She stood and walked to the window to get a better view. Yes, it was definitely Daniel. Why was he coming here and what did he want?

  ‘I even thought that you could meet him, Freya. Or that I could bring him to Ailsa Cleit sometime.’

  ‘I would love that. You know I would. I’d absolutely love to be introduced.’ As Marta chatted on, Daniel’s boat drew ever closer. For a moment, Freya considered telling her sister the full story of the necklace. But she could hear Marta’s cool, rational voice telling her, in no uncertain terms, to give the bloody thing straight back to him. No, she didn’t want to talk to Marta about it right now.

  ‘Freya?’

  She could see Daniel mooring his boat beside her own and jumping down onto the jetty. He began to walk swiftly up the hill. She felt the cold sting of fear in her veins. Her hand sought out her neck and she found herself walking to the kitchen door. Before she really thought about what she was doing, she turned the key in the lock. Then she pulled down the blind. At least it would appear as if she was out.

  ‘Hello? Freya? Are you still there?’

  ‘Oh hi, sweetheart. Sorry.’ She went back into the sitting room and stood next to the bookshelves, out of sight of anyone peering in through any of the windows. ‘I’m so happy that you’ve shared your news with me. You have no idea. I’m sorry to be so distracted. There’s just someone coming and I need to go and get the door.’

  ‘Oh, who is it?’

  ‘It’s Daniel,’ said Freya. And as she said it she realised how ridiculous it was that she was hiding from him. But still she didn’t move. ‘So I’ve got to go. Can I call you back later?’

  ‘Of course. I’ll be in tonight. Is everything all right, sis? You don’t sound quite right.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ said Freya, almost whispering now as she heard the clump of heavy men’s boots along the garden path. ‘Speak to you later.’

  She hung up and waited. A few seconds later she heard a rap on the door. She felt her body tense. The knock came again. This time it was harder and more insistent. Freya realised she was holding her breath. She heard Daniel move away from the door, probably over to the kitchen window. Through it he would be able to see the kitchen and the sitting room. But not where she was standing, obscured by the wall and the shelves. She waited a little while longer, not daring to move. Perhaps he was walking along the outside of the cottage, peering in through the windows. She didn’t like to think of it. A moment later another hard rap came against the kitchen door. Then the sound of the handle being turned and, when the door didn’t open, rattled furiously.

  Involuntarily Freya took a breath and put her hand over her mouth. She remained stationary until she heard his footsteps retreat. Then she stayed still for a further five minutes.

  Eventually, when she was sure he was gone, she moved to the sitting-room window and, from its corner, watched his boat sailing away.

  She breathed deeply and only then realised her hands were trembling. How ridiculous. She should simply have let him in and avoided all this drama. But she didn’t want him asking to see the necklace again.

  39

  THAT EVENING FREYA sat on the lamp-room floor, the necklace at her throat, a glass of wine and Sam’s diary beside her.

  There was only one entry left. Yet something in Freya baulked at reading it. Part of her couldn’t believe that she hesitated – now she was so close to the end; so close, perhaps, to knowing what had happened. She had persuaded herself that it was her willpower, her immense discipline that had prevented her from galloping straight through the diary from beginning to end. But now she realised what perhaps she had known, unconsciously, all along. That in reading a little at a time, in delaying the arrival of knowledge, there had been solace. In not knowing there was also a kind of comfort.

  She stood and made her way out onto the gallery, looking southeast towards the Torran Rocks. She could just make out the largest ones, where Jack and Sam had anchored. She tried to see further, to Jura and beyond, but the horizon blurred everything deep blue and charcoal. Moving back into the lamp room she sat down again. It was so familiar to her now, this place, floating somewhere between sea and land and air. It was her place, her home.

  25 April 2014

  Mum will be home in three days and I am counting down the hours.

  Even though I have had a great time with Dad, I have really missed her. Especially at bedtime. It’s funny but I have missed the stories she reads to me even though lots of them are silly. I told Dad this and it made him laugh. He asked me which story I liked best. That was a difficult one as we have read so many. But then it jumped out at me – Beira, Queen of Winter. And I think it is Mum’s favourite too. She always smiles when she reads it. Dad asked me to tell it to him. I couldn’t remember all of it so I just told him the bits I could. They went like this.

  It is winter. Beira is old and dark and fierce. Her beauty has faded. She remembers a time when she was fair, when the world was different and she is sad. Worse still, her reign is only just beginning. Every year it starts the same way, with her washing her great shawl in the sea. The place she chooses is between the western islands of Jura and Scarba, the whirlpool, the Corryvreckan. It is called that because the son of a king, named Breckan, was drowned in it, after his boat was tipped over by the waves.

  Three days before Beira begins her washing her servants make the water ready for her and the Corryvreckan can be heard seething and churning for twenty miles around. On the fourth day Beira throws her shawl into the whirlpool, and stamps on it until the edge of the Corry brims over with foam. When she has finished her washing she puts her shawl on the mountains to dry, and when she lifts it up, they are white with snow. That is how the Queen begins her reign.

  As winter goes on, Beira grows older and angrier until at last her strength is spent. She cannot go on. But then she drinks from the Well of Youth on the Green Island, an impossibly difficult place to find unless you are magical and blessed. Then old Beira grows young and beautiful again with long flowing hair.

  The End.

  Dad liked the story. I think it also reminded him of Mum because he looked a bit sad. I think that he has missed her too. He asked me if I believed the tale of Queen Beira and I said Mum and I had talked about it and thought it was really a story about time and change and the seasons. I also said that Granddad and I had talked about the whirlpool as obviously it wasn’t formed by an old hag washing her shawl. Granddad said it was because of the narrow strait between the islands, the underground rocks and pinnacles and the Atlantic sea currents that flow there. I said I didn’t know about Breckan though and whether he had really died there or not.

  Dad laughed at this and ruffled my hair, which is what he always does when I say something that he likes. Then he asked me if I’d like to go to the Corryvreckan as we hadn’t been for a while. Perhaps the next day just before Mum came home so we could celebrate the story and her return – like that of Queen Beira.

  I thought that was a brilliant idea. And I said it would also be great if we could try and sail to the Green Island afterwards as Mum and I had often talked about it and how dif
ficult it was to find.

  And Dad laughed again and said that he would do his best. He asked where we should try to find it and we got out a map and had a look. I traced a line back from the Corryvreckan, back past the Torran Rocks and Dubh Artach where we had just been.

  I told Dad that I thought our best chance of finding the Green Island was out beyond the black rock heading into the open ocean. Okay, he said, smiling. We’ll go as far as we can. Weather permitting.

  I’m so excited I’m not sure I’ll be able to sleep tonight.

  I wish Mum could come with us.

  But I can tell her all about it when she’s back.

  40

  THE VALKYRIE BOBBED on the water in the heart of the Gulf.

  Freya stared over the side of the boat. It was difficult to tell where the whirlpool ordinarily formed. The water was relatively still, but for the occasional eddy stirring here and there. She tried to see below the surface to the pinnacle of rock she knew was 30 metres down. But it was obscured.

  She turned to check the tide clock attached to the doorway of the cabin. It was ebb of tide. She had timed her journey precisely to ensure there was no danger. Still it was hard to imagine, seeing the Gulf in its current placid state, how deadly this place could be at flow of tide and in high winds. Freya turned towards Eilean Beag, the islet off the coast of Jura. Perhaps that was where the Speedwell had met its end. It looked so innocuous in the still of the day. Gulls perching, sunbathing, silent but for the occasional flap of their wings. When the wind and tide were up it would be difficult, if not impossible, to get from there across the foaming gulf and on to land.

  She sat down and took out Sam’s diary once more. She had no idea what time of day her son and husband would have visited here. But she imagined they had come approaching high tide to see the best, most dramatic effects of the whirlpool. Then perhaps they had been caught out by the turn in the weather. But if they made it away from the whirlpool in time, they might have caught the Great Race, the large spill of high water out of the gulf of Corryvreckan onto the lower water to the west of Jura, and ridden that towards Colonsay. And then who knows how far they might have ventured before the storm hit. Beyond the Torran Rocks. Beyond the black rock. Perhaps even to the Green Island.

  Freya put the diary down. She didn’t really need to see it – she had read it over and over and it was committed to her memory. But she had reached the final chapter and still she didn’t know where the last journey of her family ended. In all likelihood she never would.

  For a long time she gazed over the water, looking at the sea caught between Jura and Scarba. She remembered having read about the documentary makers who had once thrown a mannequin, complete with life jacket and depth gauge, into the heart of the Corryvreckan. It was swallowed up and spat out far down-current, with a depth reading of over 250 metres, showing it had been dragged along the bottom of the sea floor for at least part of its journey. She closed her eyes and tried to rid herself of such thoughts. In their stead, she wanted to see her son and husband on their last day out together.

  The sun was shining, although there was a tinge to the sky, a smell on the air that indicated to the wary that the weather might well change. She could see Sam standing at the back of the boat, in jeans and his favourite checked blue shirt, turning towards his father and smiling at him, his blond hair, blown by the breeze. She saw the scar on his forehead from a fall when he was four years old. She could almost smell his unique scent on the breeze. Milky sweetness, like almonds, mixed with the wildness of the Atlantic Ocean.

  She could see Jack beside him: strong, protective, a larger version of his son; his blue eyes, often as unfathomable as the sea, now twinkling in the sunlight. She could see his lips, curved into a smile, hear his voice, speaking to Sam, telling him about the Gulf, pointing to birds flying close by. She saw them sail away beyond the reach of the whirlpool and caught Jack turning back to look towards her. Then she heard his voice, whispering, words for her alone to hear, words he once uttered to her in the darkness of night. And in the daylight beside the Corryvreckan, she surrendered to the ebb and flow of love and memory and longing.

  Freya opened her eyes and looked at the clock again. She still had time before the flow of tide beginning at the southern end of the Strait of Jura reached here. But perhaps it was better to leave now. This was her final pilgrimage, she realised, the last time she would make a journey retracing the steps of her husband and son. She touched the silver necklace at her throat, worn as a token to Sam, and then zipped up her jacket. The breeze on the water was cold today.

  As she went into the cabin to start the engine, she noticed another boat approaching from the northern coast of Jura. She hadn’t noticed it before; didn’t know how long it had been there or if it had only just now come into view. She watched it draw closer. It was Daniel.

  ‘Hi,’ he shouted, as he drew alongside her.

  ‘Hi,’ said Freya, smiling but she felt a flicker of fear move through her. ‘What are you doing out here?’ she asked.

  ‘I know. Such an odd coincidence, right?’ And then he laughed, awkwardly. ‘Work, kind of.’

  ‘Right,’ said Freya, but for a fleeting second, as he tethered his boat to hers, she had an irrational thought that he had followed her here. As she walked towards him, she tried not to think about it.

  ‘How are you?’ he asked her.

  ‘I’m okay,’ she said. His eyes were flat, as unreadable as ever. ‘I got to the end of Sam’s diary. The last entry was about them coming to the Corryvreckan. So that’s why I’m here. What about you?’

  ‘Hmm. It’s a bit of a long story.’

  ‘Well, we have time.’ Freya looked towards the tide clock and then back at him.

  ‘I guess I’ve been thinking about the letters that I read the last time I came to your cottage.’ He looked at her directly then, seemingly analysing her reaction. She met his gaze steadily even though her heart was pounding.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I just finished reading them myself.’ She paused, looking out over the whirlpool. ‘And they end here, of course.’

  ‘Exactly. I dropped by to see you the other day actually. I wanted to talk to you about it all. But I think you were out. The door was locked.’

  ‘Oh. Then I must have been.’ Freya met his eye again.

  ‘I thought I remembered you saying you never lock the door. That it’s not necessary around here.’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t usually – although sometimes it’s just instinct if I’m not thinking. A hangover from London.’

  ‘And your boat was at the jetty.’

  ‘Maybe I’d just gone out for a walk then.’

  ‘Well, I scoured the island and didn’t see you, so I don’t think so.’

  Something about the persistence of Daniel’s enquiries, his tone, bothered her. He clearly suspected that she’d been at home. ‘Oh well.’ She said it lightly, trying to lift the unsettling mood. ‘Perhaps a friend came to pick me up. Anyway …’ She let the word hang on the air, hoping to move the conversation on.

  ‘Yes, anyway.’ Daniel looked away from her, then out over the sea, playing with an object around his neck. Freya realised that it was the mermaid blade she had given him.

  ‘Would you look at that?’ she said. ‘I like what you’ve done with this …’ She gestured to her own neckline and, as she did so, immediately remembered the silver necklace she was wearing. Instinctively, she touched the neckline of her jacket, which was obscuring it. She didn’t want him to see it and for it to become an issue again way out here.

  But Daniel, it seemed, was thinking of other things. ‘I had some tests carried out on this. Like you suggested.’

  ‘You did? What did you find out?’

  ‘Nothing about the basalt – apart from the fact that the rock was local and old. But while they were running those tests, they discovered what they thought was a fish scale wedged into the base of the blade – here, where it splits into two parts.’ Daniel
leaned over towards her to show her. ‘Tests on fish scales aren’t performed often as they’re difficult and time intensive. But they usually yield results. So here came the surprise. My colleague couldn’t identify the scale. And that’s not something that he’s come across before. You can generally establish, at the least, the group of fish the sample came from. The best he could do was say it was probably akin to a porpoise or dolphin but wasn’t a porpoise or dolphin. It was likely something undiscovered.’

  ‘Wow,’ Freya said.

  ‘Mmm. So while we don’t know what it is, we know it isn’t something very ordinary.’

  Freya looked at Daniel, but he was staring into the Gulf, completely preoccupied. ‘What is it?’

  ‘I think it started with the blade and your stories of mermaids out in the deep ocean. Then there was the inconclusive test on the fish scale. It all adds up, don’t you think?’

  ‘To what?’

  ‘To the fact that I don’t think the fish scale belonged to the fish that was hunted. I think it was from the fish that was the hunter.’

  ‘That’s quite a leap,’ said Freya.

  ‘Perhaps.’ Daniel shrugged. ‘But then the letters suggest something similar too. And now it all seems to me to point that way. And I’m a man of science.’ Daniel laughed, but the sound was entirely devoid of joy.

  Freya met his eyes. They were cold, and she realised for the first time that there was also something dead about them. Annalise’s disappearance had killed something in him, something that perhaps he would never get back. Something perhaps he didn’t want back. She wondered for a second if the same was true of her. That her restlessness – roaming the sea searching for something, her desire to be alone with the ghosts of the past – was actually a death wish rather than seeking to come to terms with things.

  ‘I’ve been exploring the myths of the Scottish mermaid, the Ceasg, since all this other stuff came to light.’