“I can’t be long. Max is asleep, but he might wake up. I’m going to try and arrange for the boat to come back and pick you up. Tomorrow if the weather holds up. Do you think you can be ready?”
The wind, as if protesting, pummelled the window. I saw her glance towards it, made out in the dull metallic light a frown creasing her forehead. “It looks like it’s getting worse, not better,” I said. “I doubt Popeye will come out in this.”
Maybe the touch of humour in my voice unnerved her, but her own voice grew distinctly graver. “You’ve got to leave, Philip,” she said.
I shrugged. “Yeah, I know I should never have come. But…”
“You don’t understand. You’re in danger here.”
I stared at her for a moment or two, and then let out a tiny laugh. “Just listen to what you’re saying, Ruby! Being rather theatrical, aren’t we?”
The next instant she kissed me on the lips. Nothing lingering, but it took me by surprise and I put my finger there when she pulled away. “Don’t argue. Don’t ask why. Just leave, Philip. You see that bay from your window? Maybe not tonight, it’s too dark, but that’s where the boat will land, well away from the main jetty. He won’t expect that.” She spoke to the window, at the scene beyond.
“And what will Max have to say? What happens when the boat comes and I say, I’m so sorry, I have to go because I’ve got a boat to catch’?” I shook my head. “This is all sounding a bit too melodramatic.”
“Let me worry about that.”
“Won’t he be annoyed?” I turned from her, back to the window. “And it does seem rather rude of me…”
“Rude!” she said, then caught herself when she realised she’d said it a fraction too loudly. “Philip, you’re in danger here. Haven’t I made myself clear?”
My eyes met hers, and the contrived smile that I thought I’d greet her suggestion with withered and died on my lips when confronted by her expression. With the moonlight now catching the side of her face, throwing it half into shadow, the other bathed in a phosphorous electric blue, I began to have doubts that this was indeed the same Ruby I’d known all those years ago, and that maybe time had wrought subtle though terrible changes over her mind. Certainly she’d behaved very oddly since I’d landed. And, strangely it made perfect sense, really; why else had she married Max unless her mind wasn’t as strong or clear thinking as before? It explained a lot, and yet at the same time complicated things a little, for I was as anxious for her as she undoubtedly was for me. So I took her hand, which hung lifeless and cold in my own, and stared into her dark, troubled orbs. “Don’t worry, Ruby,” I said seriously, perhaps even patronisingly, nodding so that she knew I understood perfectly, yet all the while not understanding at all, rubbing her fingers firmly with an action that I hoped allayed her fears and conveyed a sort of compliance of them on my part.
She gave one quick jerk of the head, as if we’d made an agreement of sorts, and then sped from my room and I was left alone with the dull knocking at the window and the buzzing of the loose pane of glass.
The next morning I awoke to silence.
The storm of the previous night had abated, or so I thought, and it was odd, I have to admit, not hearing the soulful keening of the wind which had been there constantly since first stepping onto the boat and heading out.
I’d left the curtains parted slightly during the night because the darkness of the room had been too intense, and as I lay watching the sunshine stream in and onto the carpet, the conversation with Ruby the night before was as in a dream. I began to wonder whether it had really happened at all or whether my tired mind had fabricated everything. I went to the window and drew back the drapes fully, the warmth of the Sun taking me by surprise. I lingered, like a cat before a fire and once again looked out at the vista; yet this time it had changed, no longer threatening or a realm of turgid darkness and turmoil, but a landscape that might have been the result of a careful child colouring in a picture from a colouring book with lurid felt-tip pens, each line rendered uncommonly sharp by the brilliance. Each colour rose powerfully and curiously pulsating as if given an injection of unadulterated energy by the searing ball of the Sun that sat in a now cloudless sky. And the sea was a clean and pale-blue smear, the waves lapping gently – or so it seemed from this distance – at the foot of the many rocks that formed the bay, no longer black and shapeless but brown and green and grey and not half as jagged as I’d imagined. I heard the sound of a bird, a cawing sound, not the cry of a gull. And I laughed to myself.
I descended the stairs cautiously, for the place seemed to be deserted and I had the distinct feeling that somehow I was intruding, my steps light and self-conscious as a result. I was very much aware of the slightest noise I made. I wandered into the large dining room, smelling fried bacon and unashamedly drawn to following the scent. I passed through the room, the picture of the three of us sitting there at the table still hot in my mind, though even this event appeared indistinct, increasingly so, as if this mental picture belonged to another realm, another time, another me, as with Ruby’s visit last night.
I put my head round the doorway at the far end of the dining room and found myself in a narrow corridor which led to another doorway, the door wedged wide open, from which issued the smell of bacon and the overwhelming lure of fresh coffee. I looked behind me, almost furtively, but mainly to reassure myself that the place was indeed empty. I set off down the corridor at a confident pace, the excuse in my mind for my curiosity and intrusion into a part of the house I hadn’t first been invited into being the desire to find someone. Anyone.
“Morning, Collie,” Max said as I peered into the room, which was in fact a small kitchen. He was cracking eggs into a pan of fat that spat indignantly. “Want some?”
“Sorry, I didn’t expect to find you here.” I fidgeted. “I followed my nose, trying to find someone…”
“Do I smell that bad?”
“No, I meant… Well, the bacon.” I pointed to the cooker. “Smells good,” I said.
He indicated a small Formica-topped table with his grease-shiny spatula. “Sit down; I’ll have some served up in a jiffy.”
I did as I was told, listening to him whistling softly. I tried to catch the tune, but as soon as I recognised it as something I was familiar with it changed and became something else. “The weather’s calmed down,” I said, resorting, I know, to the tried and trusted.
“Don’t let it fool you. It’ll change before a few hours are out.”
I looked to the window and the sunlight glistening off the green foliage beyond. I found that hard to believe.
“Sleep well?”
I thought for a brief, tense moment that he was aware of Ruby’s visit, but then I replayed his voice back in my head and on second listening could not detect anything other than a vacant pleasantry. He resumed his whistling and splashed fat on the eggs. “I slept very well, thank you,” I said. “You want me to help?”
He shook his head and opened a cupboard, taking out a couple of plates. He flipped a couple of eggs onto each and speared rashers of bacon with his fork. “I thought I’d show you the island today,” he said as he slid a plate in front of me and then rummaged through a cutlery drawer. “If that’s what you’d like.”
“I don’t mind at all.” I set about the breakfast with as much gusto as if I’d not eaten for days, my appetite signalling an unaccountable change in emotion, which signified I was starting to enjoy myself. Again. It might have been the sunlight, I don’t know. Perhaps the bad weather and the pressing of an unusually dark Stygian night had contributed to my gloomy demeanour, I told myself, as if I needed an excuse. I conveniently forgot Ruby and that she was Max’s wife. Maybe I blotted this fact out because that was the only way I could begin to cope with my feelings, and set it against the renewal of a friendship that I deemed very special at one time. Whatever, I looked forward to seeing more of the island. But I couldn’t stop thinking of Ruby entirely.
“Where’s Ruby?” I
asked with suitable detachment.
“Asleep,” he returned. “She doesn’t sleep well at night; lies awake. Insomnia of a kind, I guess. Catches up on sleep when she can. She might not be down before midday. I’ve known her sleep all day long.”
“Oh,” I said. And following both the chewing over of this information and a tough piece of bacon, I asked, “And what does she do now? I mean, she was getting on pretty well when she…” I caught my words. “Before we parted,” I continued.
“She doesn’t work, if that’s what you mean.”
I looked at him, astonished. “Nothing?” I couldn’t hide the incredulity in my voice. Ruby had been a career woman from the outset, and she’d risen in the managerial ranks pretty sharply. I hadn’t expected her to abandon everything she’d worked for, even if marrying Max meant there was no need financially to ever work again. Ruby had always been her own woman.
“She doesn’t need to,” he explained calmly. Then he gazed at me for a moment. “She doesn’t want to.” His forehead creased a little. “She can’t work, not just yet…” He jabbed a fork in my direction. “Look, Collie, I know what you must have thought when you first saw her. I wanted to tell you, but, well, it’s kinda hard, you understand? You being a friend and everything. You two being…”
I gave a nod, but stared down at my food. I’d suddenly lost interest in it. “It’s difficult,” I said.
“Sure, I know that. I’m not totally insensitive. But there are other things you should know about Ruby…”
I looked at him and frowned. “What kind of things?”
He shrugged and waved his hand. His expression was grave. “Forget it. It’s none of your concern now. She’s my wife. My problem.”
“Hold on a minute, Max, you’re forgetting I was her husband too, once. Is something wrong? She’s not ill, is she?”
He shook his head slowly and took in a breath. “Not ill, no, not in the way…” There was a pause while he tweaked his earlobe and grimaced fractionally. “You might already be aware that she’s been – well, she’s been acting strangely.” He looked at me for confirmation. How much did he really know about Ruby’s visit last night? Had he known all along? Dare I tell him in case he was still ignorant of her nocturnal wanderings? And what would he say if he knew the histrionic content of what she’d said? Or was he aware of that also? I was torn between coming clean and upholding the confidentiality Ruby expected of me. I doubt I hid my mind’s fluster at all well.
“I – I have to agree, to some extent. She does seem rather fraught,” I said.
Max’s head snapped up and looked at the doorway. I heard movement behind me, and my gaze followed his. I must without a doubt have gasped in shock, for standing there was the impossible. Standing there was Connie Stone – young, as radiant as ever, and very much alive.
But of course it couldn’t be, and in fact it wasn’t.
Yet for one moment I nearly fainted away at the sight of the strange woman, and I can only say that it was perhaps because my mind had been wandering to thinking of Connie, or some such reason, because in reality, as I stared hard at her, she looked less like Connie with every passing second.
By the time Max spoke – which must only have been an instant or two after I followed his glance – I was reprimanding myself, for I couldn’t think what it was that made me believe this woman was the image of Connie, nor that there could be a dead woman stood there in the doorway. To hide my startled expression I turned away from her and faced Max.
“Good morning, Helen,” he said. “Breakfast?”
“I’ve already eaten, Mr Stone,” she returned without real emotion. “I’m sorry to disturb you – I wasn’t aware…”
“That’s OK,” he said, rising. “This is Collie – excuse me, Philip Calder. Philip, this is Helen Beauman.”
I rose from my seat, held out my hand to shake hers. She smiled. “Mr Stone has told me all about you,” she said. “I apologise for not meeting you last night but I had work to complete, papers to write up.”
I looked to Max to explain, and he smiled at me, then turned to the woman.
“I’m glad you came when you did, Helen. I was just about to tell Collie about you. You see,” Max said to me, “Helen is Ruby’s nurse.”
* * * *
33
Sunday
Today is Sunday.
At least I think it’s a Sunday. I can’t be certain. But according to my cobbled-together calendar today should be a Sunday, so I treat it as such.
So what does that mean exactly? It didn’t mean anything to me before I came to this island, so why do I persist in trying to give it meaning?
Because meaning is everything. Without it there is nothing.
I used to rest on Sunday’s. A day of rest and all that. I’d put my pen down and refuse to write, but that became increasingly intolerable because without writing my day became meaningless. So I wrote in order to establish a meaning for Sundays, but that only made it the same as any other day. So why want to name a day when each day is exactly the same?
I digress. I was thinking that I’m sure it was on a Sunday when I first met the woman called Helen Beauman.
“I don’t understand, Max,” I admitted, “why on earth would Ruby need a nurse?”
His eyes remained fixed on the narrow track ahead, his strong hands working at the steering wheel of the Range Rover, like it was a creature that attempted to slide out of his grasp. We were rolling gently down a sweeping hill. Ahead I made out the sea and the curve of a small bay, which I knew to be the same one viewed from my bedroom window. He braked the car some distance from the shingle beach, our way barred by a wall of rock.
“We’ll have to walk from here,” Max said. “We can reach what I want to show you by following the beach round. See that hill poking above the cliffs? That’s Gowan Torr. That’s where we’re going.”
He clambered out of the car and slammed the door making his way to the rocks without even a backwards glance at me. I followed, resisting the urge to flick down the lock on the passenger door.
The weather was deceptively warm and sunny, but I didn’t have to be a local to know that the clouds that were building up on the horizon beyond the sombre mound of Gowan Torr foretold another lashing storm. It was a place of contrasts, I thought, one thing one moment, quite different the next. I looked at Max’s back and thought the island and its mercurial temperament a fitting sanctuary for him.
“Max, I need to know,” I called. My voice sounded unusually amplified, even above the waves as they threw themselves languidly onto the pebbles. The sea was blue – such a blue I could not begin to describe, and for a moment I was drawn to it and stood still, letting the breeze make streamers out of my hair. He paused by two rowing boats that had been hauled up high onto the beach.
“Do you still fish?” he said.
I shook my head. “In any case, I’m only used to the brick ponds back home, not the Atlantic.”
“That’s a shame. Maybe we could have gone out…”
“Max, about Ruby…”
He turned away, his hand rubbing the wood of the nearest rowing boat, faded red paint peeling off like dead skin. “I brought her to Eilean Mor to recover. The first time I realised anything was wrong was when she broke down in a fit when we were in London. I was book signing…” He turned away and I came closer, as his voice had fallen quiet. “She just started screaming. You’ve never seen such terror in a person’s eyes, Collie. I thought she was going to die, I really did. At any time her heart was going to give way. That was the first time. It’s been regular and getting worse. She’s afraid of people, believes all manner of things are going to happen. Rape, murder…” He glanced at me and I felt he must know something of her visit.
“Why?” I asked.
“Who knows? I wish I knew the answer. When she gets into a state like that the only option is sedation. We’ve tried everything else. So I bring her here, and the isolation seems to help. She relaxes somewhat, but it can
flare up at any time. I’m losing her, Collie. She’s not the Ruby we once knew. Her mind…” His eyes looked to have tears in them. “So forgive her if she acts a little strange. I meant to tell you, but how can you tell someone that kind of thing? I had hoped to break it to you gently, but I just couldn’t find the right moment.”
“There’s no cure?”
“I’m told it’s getting worse. Soon she’ll be…” His hand rapped the boat. “Sure you don’t want to fish? One day when the weather picks up for any length of time?”
Again I shook my head, but it was a laborious movement. There was a chill in my stomach and my chest tightened. Poor Ruby, I thought. I cast my mind back to envision her standing there in my room, like a ghostly figure from a gothic novel, and I saw the signs. I saw them clearly. I turned over her voice in my head, and it was there too, thick and inescapable. I was losing Ruby for a second time.
“Come on, Collie,” Max said, coming to me and placing his hand warmly on my shoulder. “It can’t be helped. No one is to blame. It’s just one of those things.”
“Yes, I guess it is,” I murmured.
We walked in silence along the beach, the sound of each footstep like the ripping of cloth, and the beauty I saw all around me minutes earlier had dissolved into desolation, a bleak, harsh landscape that scoured the soul with its dispirited aspect and incessant winds. Then we were climbing up a small thread-like path that wove its way in and around boulders and rocks, leaving the sounds of the sea behind till it registered like a pitiful spirit keening at our backs. As to where he was taking me I had not the slightest idea, and at that moment I couldn’t care less. I followed like some dumb thing, my thoughts providing morbid company.
We had almost broached Gowan Torr before my mind fully registered climbing it at all. My complaining legs, however, were quick to remind me.
“There,” said Max.
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