Call of the Undertow

by Linda Cracknell

  Once through the low doorway of the church, she looked up to see huge branches criss-crossing the sky where the roof had been. Trothan flickered there briefly, perched high up with his hair swinging, laughing at her. Then gone. It was a curious thing that she found herself equally able to picture him as an angel or a gargoyle.

  She stood in the open church listening. There was a sense of murmuring, and it was hard to say whether it came from the birds or the sigh of foliage or from the old stone walls themselves. Ancient bells echoing far off, booming through watery curtains.

  She went outside again. The surface of the pool in the stone gave off a silvery reflection, but she could see down to where tendrils of its mossy lining washed slightly as if in a current. Since she’d been in the church, some greenery had blown in and now floated at its centre like seaweed. She looked around, almost expecting an impish face to twitch back behind a gravestone. It was as if Trothan was nearby, teasing her. But the stillness around her gave nothing away, however much she searched the shadows and willed the child to reveal himself by a stifled giggle or a shimmer of movement.

  ‘Trothan?’ she tried the name aloud and waited. Nothing.

  She’d had no impulse to pray since childhood. Back then it had been after some irreversible wrongdoing when she asked God to put the clock back, to alter the route she’d taken or what she’d said. She was aware now of being in a place of deep echoes; of the year cracking open at the solstice with her perched in the abyss between its two halves. She might stray to a place that only existed at Midsummer and have to wait until the following solstice to be spat back up again, or perhaps wait another seven years.

  With eyes closed in prayer by the strange green pool, Midsummer illusions – appearances, disappearances, half-human creatures, God even – all became real; all possible. She was sucked down, caught in the heart of a roller, tumbled and disorientated. But her eyes seemed to open into the green and white hurly-burly, into water thick with sand. And she glimpsed hair straggling like kelp and a tiny face plunging past her, mouth gaping and swallowing water, eyes pinched shut. A turmoil of lashing hair. And then it was gone, beyond the reach of her outstretched fingers.

  By the time she cycled home, the north-west horizon had roared red and then lulled to purple and pink; the wind stilling with it. Overhead a strange translucence hung on. There were no longer any shadows.

  Distant dogs complained from somewhere as she freewheeled down the lane. She had no lights but could see enough of her watch-face to know it was around midnight. Across the grey-lit sloping fields she could see the corrugated outline of the dunes, the sky still faintly luminous behind them. But between her and the dunes, a string of lights blinked. She pulled up at the gate of the cottage to watch. The way the lights swung and trembled showed that they were torches carried by hand.

  She knew it was common at the two ends of the year in northern latitudes; burning ships, screaming youths leaping through fires, wild drinking. She’d even heard of an old rite in which cowherds walked the perimeter of their folds on Midsummer’s eve with torches to purify and protect the land. But did they really still do that here?

  Then there was another light. A single one, much closer, moving amongst the derelict farm buildings not far below her. The light vanished and she heard slight creaking as if someone was walking across fallen masonry. Someone was in the barn.

  Two late birds rose from the ragged silhouette of a ruined wall, their wing beats cleanly enunciated as they approached and flapped over her towards the village. Her own wings rose then, a flutter in her stomach. Trothan would be in his lair curling around his sea-treasures, seeking refuge in sleep: Trothan had come back.

  SEVENTEEN

  She left the bike and strode down to the end of the lane. A car was parked beside the gate, a bird-watcher perhaps. But as she climbed the gate and started across the field it was the barn that pulled her into a run, elation elbowing aside any thoughts about the car or the dancing of far torches.

  Her footfall was hushed by the grass path leading into the farm courtyard. She paused. In this odd placid light, neither day nor night, the entrance to the barn was less obvious than she expected, the distances distorted. A breeze sighed in some loose iron sheeting as she located the dark gash of doorway and hurried towards it.

  The interior of the barn was a gloomy cavity except where torchlight flared in the far corner. It made silhouettes of the strewn wreckage on the floor and threw the shadow of a gigantic figure onto the far wall, its back hunched over something. A rhythmic noise came from the corner. A gulping and puffing.

  ‘Trothan?’ she said. The noises all wrong. All ugly.

  There was a gasp. A crackle of clothing as the silhouette turned sharply and Maggie realised her mistake, her inner flight crashing to the ground.

  ‘Nora,’ she said, aware that she couldn’t be seen, at least not in any clear way. ‘It’s Maggie.’

  She started to make her way over then, getting down to use her hands where she needed to, unable to see rusty nails, sharp edges. Just the clattering of loose boards in her ears and splinters in her hands and her heart thumping.

  ‘Sorry to give you a fright,’ she said as she reached Nora, who was kneeling on the blanket Trothan had presumably left there. She took a deep breath. ‘I thought he’d come back. When I saw the torchlight.’

  Nora lowered her wild head; shook it.

  Maggie saw by the dim light of the torch, now lying in the folds of the blanket, the red cuffs of Nora’s parka and that she held a large white pebble in one hand; a bone in the other. It was the bone Maggie had associated with the shape of a dolphin’s fin. Graham had doubled over with laughter when she’d suggested this. It was a seabird’s breast bone, he’d said, with a prominent sternum. She’d learnt that much since moving to this bird-dense end of the world.

  ‘So this is his den?’ Maggie said, kneeling down near Nora on the edge of the blanket, picking up a gull’s feather.

  Nora nodded.

  ‘I didn’t know about it,’ Maggie said. ‘Why here?’

  Nora took a guttering breath and looked up so that the torchlight from below outlined some curls, sculpted her face with goblinish shadows. ‘It’s where he liked to go. When we lived here.’

  A dark rift opened up in Maggie. ‘When you lived here?’

  Nora nodded, raised a hand towards Flotsam Cottage.

  Maggie stared at her.

  ‘He didn’t tell you? We lived here, not for long. We had burst pipes, it was while the damage was mended.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Just before you moved in.’

  Maggie slumped down onto the blanket, re-organising everything in her mind. She thought of the child’s ease in the place, the times he’d turned up at her door so soon after her arrival home in the afternoon as if he’d been nearby, watching. Feathers tangled in his hair. And yesterday morning – this morning – his slept-rough look when he’d appeared so early in her sitting room.

  Nora looked at her hands curling upwards on each knee. She took a deep breath. ‘We thought he’d be back by now too,’ she said hoarsely.

  ‘I can’t understand,’ Maggie tried to compose her voice. ‘Why no one was bothered.’

  She heard the crackle of Nora’s abrupt movement again. ‘What do you mean by that?’

  ‘Why the police, you, didn’t start looking.’

  ‘No,’ said Nora.

  Maggie heard a sort of admission and wanted more.

  ‘No,’ Nora said again. ‘You wouldn’t understand.’

  Maggie fought against a storm. Remained seated.

  ‘It’s not the first time he’s annoyed people with his ways,’ Nora said. ‘But this time he’s in trouble. Big trouble.’ As she said the last two words the whites of her eyes glimmered through darkness. ‘The police have been back and forth all day. Interviewing us. Wanting to talk to him.’

  Maggie found herself trembling. Why had Nora started to care about her son now? ‘I had no idea th
at there was a gun. I didn’t even know about his den here. About the sand, or the Viking bones, or the black fish.’

  ‘Apparently it was you that got him going with that...’ Nora seemed to struggle to articulate the words with enough disgust. ‘That map thing.’

  Maggie leapt up to standing, wobbling slightly on the uneven boards.

  ‘Why did you want to show up everyone like that?’ Nora demanded.

  ‘I just encouraged his mapmaking. That involves going to places. But he went further, he must’ve been digging about.’ It was true that Trothan’s map seemed to have a moralistic element, a determination to expose people.

  Nora looked up at her now through the gloom.

  A still sea spread between the two women. They both seemed to wait. Maggie’s breathing almost painfully loud, a twist in her gut. She sat back down, kept her head low.

  ‘What happens now?’ she asked quietly.

  Nora gestured behind with her head. ‘You’ll have seen them. Mountain rescue, the dog unit coming, the whole lot of them.’

  ‘A search?’ Maggie realised now what the torches must have been. A sweep of searchers moving inland from the beach.

  No answer came. There was no sense of movement.

  When Nora did speak it was unexpected. ‘So you saw him last?’

  ‘As far as I know.’

  Nora gathered her hands towards each other, breathed deeply again. ‘Did he take anything? From the cottage.’

  Maggie shook her head. ‘He left his map.’ And then she pictured him again as he’d been when he left, wrapped in the pelt, the way it fell around his shoulders transforming to a coat of mist. ‘And I gave him a sealskin – he went off with it.’

  Nora was rising up from the blanket onto her knees, awkward and unsteady, her shiny face looming towards Maggie. ‘Why?’

  ‘He just seemed to like it. He seemed sad.’

  Nora was close to her, staring.

  ‘I don’t even know why it was in the cottage,’ Maggie said, realising a possibility as she said it. ‘Do you?’

  After a moment Nora nodded.

  ‘Why?’

  Nora thrashed away from her with a gust of breath. ‘It meant a lot to him when he was wee,’ she said.

  ‘So it was his anyway. Why shouldn’t he have it, then? And why did you leave it here anyway?’

  There was no immediate answer.

  ‘Did you leave it?’

  Maggie recalled the last time Nora had been here, collecting Trothan. It was after that she found the sealskin. Might Trothan have put it in the loft himself?

  ‘Didn’t you see the danger?’ Nora’s volume was rising, her voice beginning to yowl. ‘He was fragile yesterday morning after all that carry-on.’

  There was a gap. A gap in what had been said and understood. Maggie heard the blame and braced herself against it. All that great weight to heave around.

  Nora’s accusation trailed into a scoffing noise. She paused on an intake of breath, bosom inflated inside her red parka, then rose to her feet, turning to scrabble her way back across the chaotic floor, the torchlight pitching about the floor and walls as she made her seasick crossing. Finally the listing figure was silhouetted against the grey light of the entrance, one arm stretched out for balance.

  Maggie, collecting herself too late, called after her, ‘Do you have the car? Can I give you a lift home?’

  But Nora had gone.

  First swelling of morning light. The throb of a low-flying Sea King summoned her out of bed to a window. Cars stopping in the lane. Lots of them. Doors slamming; voices. Maggie looked out at accumulating cars with white, red and blue stripes; huddles of black uniforms, caps going on. Steps sounded on the gravel and a dark shape passed one window, then another. Finally PC Small was framed in the glass of the door, knuckles raised and about to strike when he saw her approaching.

  He took his hat off. ‘Morning,’ he said. ‘Mind if I come in?’

  ‘So you’re finally taking it seriously? The disappearance?’

  ‘We’ll need to take another statement from you. About when you last saw the lad.’

  There was something she wasn’t going to be allowed to know. She let him in. ‘Coffee?’

  ‘Please,’ he said, preparing for the interview by laying out paper and pens at the table.

  She glanced out of the window. Andersons and Smalls, cloned, had been released in long parallel marching lines alongside Gore-Tex-uniformed mountain rescuers, to scramble over the jagged masonry of the old farm buildings and beyond. She sensed the trajectories of other search parties she couldn’t see. Over the coarse grass of the dunes, out past the brick World War II huts, through the shifting strata of the flagstone works. All the fishing boats on alert.

  PC Anderson came in without knocking. Maggie’s house seemed to have become public property. She made coffee, answered questions on what Trothan had been wearing, what he’d said, who she thought his friends were. They wanted to know all the places significant to the lad, and where he might have gone. She unrolled his map across the table and stood a mug on each corner to keep it flat. It made best sense to show them like this, even though it felt an act of betrayal.

  ‘So he left this here,’ Anderson indicated the map. ‘He wasn’t carrying anything else?’

  Something made her hold back. She wasn’t sure why. It was almost as if she was colluding with Nora.

  They searched her house, wanted to know if he’d ever spent a night, which rooms he went to when he visited. As if she might be imprisoning him in a basement. How could such a spirit be imprisoned anyway? An Ariel in a tree trunk.

  Then they were leaving.

  ‘You don’t think, do you?’ A hectic flapping of alarm in her. ‘He couldn’t be in danger from anyone he incriminated?’ She thought of the church and Rab McNicholl, his brute of a dog.

  ‘We’ll be doing all we can.’ PC Anderson sounded almost sympathetic.

  And they left, asking her again not to leave without letting them know.

  Their car rumbled off towards missing person reports, interviews, incident rooms, press releases. Left her to silence.

  She wanted him back in this room. She longed to hear his mischievous laugh or to see him balancing on the log over the burn. She wanted him safe and by her side with their rituals resumed.

  Instead she kept seeing an image of a child with its eyes and chin raised towards something; a strange enchantment drawing it into danger.

  Two days later Trothan had still not returned. Her feet took her. Pounding down to the harbour; past the harbour and onto the beach. If she could walk along a steady undemanding surface she would be soothed. Walk and walk and walk. To Dunnet and back. Two hours. Two hours which she wouldn’t need to fill with anything else; when she would need nothing to distract her.

  The tide was out. The sand a great shining apron from the base of the dunes. Near the Dunnet end a few people with dogs had spilled onto the beach from the caravan site. But, there. A single figure standing ahead; a woman. Her arms were by her sides as she stood mid-beach and stared towards the horizon. She wore a red jacket. With a lurch, Maggie realised it was Nora. She beat away, heading towards the tower of Dunnet church, where cloud was stacked in blocks high above the village.

  The perpendicular figure in this field of endless horizontals remained in Maggie’s mind. Twice she looked back and saw that Nora was still there. A monument dividing the landscape.

  At the far end of the bay, sand and water gave into rock that scrambled up to meet turf, grass, buildings. She wanted to stay longer at this meeting place of one slip against another. But finally she turned and started to walk back. An almost wintry wind hurt her head and it began to rain.

  Nora was no longer alone. Trothan’s father was there, wrapping his arms around her, resting his head for a moment on her shoulder. But she remained rigid. Maggie imagined he was nudging her with words too. Then he parted from her, stood next to her, raised his fists and threw one forward as if trying to f
ight the sea or the sky. He folded at the waist, head down, arms wrapping himself.

  By the time she reached them, the pair were side-by-side staring at a sea prickling with rainfall. Maggie stopped. She could hear the man breathing next to her, drawing in and out, overlaying the breathing of the sea. Her own lungs seemed to slow.

  She watched the waves, the froth-flecked water and its characteristic red tide of algae. Alarm flashed through her. What if a body had been found? She turned and asked: ‘Is there any news?’

  ‘No,’ the father turned slightly towards her and she looked into his wide, wrinkle-scarred face. He seemed to struggle for words, raised his hands slightly, dabbing at the air.

  There was a murmur then from the woman behind him. Words that prickled with madness, rose in volume, turned a blade of blame towards Maggie. He cast back some quiet words, turning to his wife with his hands outstretched.

  Beyond the man, Maggie heard the crisp shift of Nora’s coat, saw a red shape flurrying past him. Nora hurtled two or three strides towards Maggie and two palms banged hard on her chest, knocking breath out of her as she overbalanced and fell onto the wet sand, an elbow breaking her fall. She sat up quickly, crawled onto her knees. A swipe came across the side of her head, clumsy and fleshy, but hard enough to topple and dizzy her. A flailing body was now above and around Maggie, blows pounding onto her shoulders and arms, each one accompanied by a grunt of effort.

  ‘Hey, hey,’ the Father’s voice was loud, close behind the red fury.

  And then the blows receded.

  Squinting round from her slump on the sand, Maggie saw he had caught Nora from behind in a bear-hug, trapping her arms between his own. He was crooning, ‘Nora, Nora.’

  Maggie scrambled up and recovered her footing, but remained unbalanced. She began to walk backwards and away, unable to take her eyes off the mother and father, screwing up everything towards understanding. All she had done was help the child with a map.