The House Beneath the Cliffs

by Sharon Gosling

  ‘Where’s Dougie?’ she asked, grabbing them both towels and helping Frank out of his coat.

  ‘He’s alive,’ Frank said, darkly, ‘but goodness knows for how long.’

  ‘He won’t leave the house,’ David explained, catching his breath. ‘Says the place has been standing since Crovie was built and it’ll still be standing when the rest of us have gone. He doesn’t seem to understand how serious this is.’

  ‘Short of knocking him out and dragging him down here, there’s nothing more we can do,’ Frank said, looking around with a frown. ‘Where’s Pat?’

  ‘Getting the last supplies she can from your place. Terry and Susan are with her.’

  ‘I’ll go and help,’ Frank said, standing up again.

  ‘I’ll go,’ David said. ‘You stay here and get warm. We’ll be back before you know it.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Frank,’ David said, already half out of the door and holding up a hand, ‘Seriously. Be sensible. You look done in.’

  ‘I need your help, anyway,’ Anna said, to distract him. ‘You ever boiled water on a stove before? Everyone’s going to need some hot tea once they get back.’

  Frank cast a glance at her tiny wood burner and snorted. ‘We’d best get on with it then, lass,’ he said. ‘Else they’ll still be waiting at Christmas.’

  Twenty minutes later, the small living area of the Fishergirl’s Luck was crammed with people. David dragged the coffee table out of the way and Terry pushed the armchairs back, leaving enough space on the floor for those without seats to sit. Anna tried to organize the supplies. There were multiple loaves of bread and bags of muesli from Pat’s B&B stores, packs of ham, cheese and butter, punnets of tomatoes, cans and cans of soup. Pat and Susan had also thought to bring as many toilet rolls as they could, as well as warm wool blankets and candles.

  ‘What will happen?’ Anna asked, as they all sat drinking tea and listening to the intermittent rumble of the cliff. They had made a pact not to look outside. After all, there was nowhere else they could go, no matter what they saw. ‘I mean – how long do you think it’ll take for anyone to realize we’re trapped?’

  ‘I think it’ll be down to Old Robbie,’ Terry said. ‘He’s the only person we know is going to try to get down that road any time soon. He’ll see that it’s out and raise the alarm.’

  ‘But then what?’ Pat asked. ‘I don’t see how they can get us out, even if they know what’s happened.’

  ‘The coastguard will find a way,’ Frank said. ‘We’re lucky there’s not more of us, truth be told.’

  ‘What about Douglas?’ Anna asked again, still thinking about that stubborn old man sitting in his house as it crumbled on top of him.

  Frank rubbed a thumb across his eyebrow. ‘Aye. I don’t know, lass, is the answer. He knows where we are. If he has any sense he’ll knock on that door in the next half an hour, begging you to take pity on him.’

  The hours passed in the semi-darkness of flickering candle and fire light. Douglas McKean did not appear. The storm seemed to grow worse with every minute, the slow rumbling of the crumbling cliff swelling and shrinking beneath the roar of the wind. They kept the wood burner stoked so that the room was warm, but no one could sleep. Time seemed to have entered a fugue state – Anna had long ago lost track of the hour when a clattering, tearing sound came from the kitchen. They all turned to look, but nothing had fallen from the shelves. It was Anna who realized that the wind had finally found its way beneath the edges of the shutters over her tiny window and ripped them away. She got up, a blanket around her shoulders, and went to look out. Aside from the rain beating frantically at the thick glass, she could see nothing but pitch-black. Yet the last time she’d looked at the clock it had surely been morning?

  ‘This is horrible,’ Susan said. She was sharing one of the armchairs with Terry, sitting across his knee with them both swaddled in Anna’s quilt. ‘Like waiting for the end.’ Terry held her closer.

  ‘We’ll be all right,’ Anna said, sounding calmer than she felt. Why hadn’t she taken up Robert’s offer of a lift out of here yesterday? Why hadn’t she made Frank and Pat come with her, Terry and Susan too? ‘The Fishergirl’s Luck survived in 1953. In fact, that’s when Bren came up with the name.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Pat asked.

  ‘Bren wrote about it in her recipe book. Here, I’ll read you what she said.’ Anna found her overnight bag amid the tumult and pulled out the old notebook. The others listened as she read out Bren’s account of baking all night in the stove that was now keeping them in fresh tea.

  ‘Well, I’ll be damned,’ said Frank.

  ‘That storm is what the Fishergirl’s Luck was born out of,’ Anna said. ‘And if it survived then, it can survive this, too.’

  ‘But the cliff didn’t come down in 1953,’ Susan said, her voice shaky. ‘Bren wasn’t facing being pushed off the sea wall by a landslide as well as the storm coming in from the sea. I don’t think—’

  Her words were interrupted by a frantic hammering at the door. Anna leapt up and ran to it, expecting to see a bedraggled Douglas McKean shivering on her doorstep. She threw back the bolts they’d set against the wind and yanked it open.

  ‘Robert!’

  ‘Anna!’ He barrelled inside, his wet face furrowed with worry, grasping her arms with gloved hands. ‘Are you all right?’

  The others appeared around them, all asking questions at once.

  ‘There’s no time,’ Robert said, still catching his breath from his battle with the wind. ‘We have to go, now. Is everyone here?’

  ‘All but Dougie McKean,’ Terry supplied. ‘Can’t get him to leave his nest.’

  Robert glowered at that, then pulled Anna’s coat from the peg beside him and thrust it at her. ‘Everyone get down to the harbour. The lifeboat’s waiting but it won’t be able to hold at anchor for long. You have to go. I’ll get Dougie.’

  ‘No!’ Anna exclaimed. ‘You can’t—’

  He grabbed her hand and held it. ‘I can’t leave him, Anna.’

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ Frank said, as the wind rattled the door. ‘Might take two to drag him out of there.’

  ‘No,’ Robbie said firmly, before Pat had a chance to. ‘And there’s no time to argue. You’re going.’ The second he began to open the door the wind found the gap and threw it wide to crash against the wall.

  The blast of wet air took Anna’s breath away as she followed Robbie out into the darkness, clutching her coat around her. He turned to her again and pulled her close. She held on to him, her face against his shoulder, hands clutching at his jacket as the wind threatened to blow them off their feet and the waves tugged at their ankles.

  ‘The lights,’ he yelled, his lips against her ear. ‘Make for the lights.’

  Then he was gone. Anna didn’t know what he meant, and without his bulk surrounding her she felt as if she’d been cast into the maelstrom. The second Robert moved away he was lost to the stormy darkness. Anna felt a hand on her back – David, holding on to her. None of them could hear each other speak over the wind. They moved like a flock of sheep down the sea wall, staying as far from the edge as they could, holding each other upright as waves crashed around their feet. Then, up ahead, something shone through the roiling black. It looked like a festival of lights, huge blue-white slices of illumination scything through the night. Through it, Anna could see the rain slashing against the shore, the cold waves reaching up from the ocean.

  The lifeboat.

  As they stumbled on, figures ran towards them. All was confusion and the Crovie survivors were swept along. David let her go and someone else grabbed hold of her. She couldn’t see who it was until she got to the harbour and gloved hands touched her face, raising it to meet eyes she recognized looking at her anxiously beneath his drenched wool hat.

  ‘Liam!’

  ‘Are you all right?’ she read on his lips.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ she tried to ask, but her words were tor
n away by the wind.

  He pushed her towards the lifeboat. The others were already being helped aboard.

  ‘Wait!’ she shouted, ‘Wait!’

  She turned back towards the village, but it was impossible to see anything at all beyond the halo of light. Liam kept tugging her towards the boat. She dragged him close enough to bring her lips to his ear.

  ‘Robert!’ she bellowed. ‘He went for Douglas McKean!’

  Liam looked into the darkness, but there was nothing to see but storm. He pushed Anna towards the lifeboat again. Other hands took hold of her.

  ‘No!’ Anna shouted, as she realized what Liam was about to do. She’d only meant they should wait. ‘You can’t—’

  There was no point. A second later he was lost to the darkness, forcing his way along the sea wall beneath the rain and waves. Anna found herself aboard the pitching, bucking deck. Someone wound a survival blanket around her, the silver glinting a vivid blue beneath the boat’s shocking lights. She wrapped her arms around her stomach, as if she could keep the baby inside her safe from the world as it destroyed itself around them.

  They won’t cast off, she thought to herself, staring wildly into the darkness. Not with three men left out there. Not with Robert and Liam and Douglas still—

  She became aware of a closer commotion happening behind her. Anna turned to see Frank on his knees, Pat holding his shoulders. Two of the lifeboat crew were with the couple, doing something that Anna couldn’t make out. Had Frank fallen? The scene took on the strange effect of a stage tableau, the harsh white lights making everything unreal and staccato as they strobed into the storm. Anna couldn’t understand what was going on. She could see only slices of action, movements frozen into frames. Everything was happening in stutters, disconnected, underscored by sounds too huge to mean anything at all.

  Anna moved towards her friends. Time slowed. If felt as if she were fighting her way through mud. Then a louder roar took up behind her. It sounded like an ancient creature, bellowing into the falling sky. The rain took on a new smell, incongruous in the storm. Wet earth.

  The cliff was coming down.

  Anna turned, gripping the lifeboat’s handrail with one hand, the other against the baby hidden away inside her. She could see nothing beyond the harbour but knew, clear as day, that there were tons of earth and rock raining down from the cliffs. On Douglas McKean’s house. On the entire village. On Liam Harper. On Robert MacKenzie.

  ‘Please,’ she felt herself screaming impotently into the wind. ‘Please—’

  Then there they were. Three figures stumbled out of the collapsing darkness. Two trying to run through a streaming torrent, either side of a smaller figure they were holding up between them.

  Thirty

  Frank hadn’t fallen. It was a heart attack. Pat looked on in agony as the lifeboat crew did what they could, but they couldn’t save the man who had been by her side for thirty-five years. Frank died on the way to Macduff, but it was Pat who looked like a ghost. She sat in the lifeboat station wrapped in a blanket, gripped by a grief that speared all who saw it.

  ‘He’d been having trouble for while,’ Pat sobbed, as Anna held her hand and let the tears slide down her own face. ‘I tried to get him to slow down. But he wouldn’t listen. Not to me, not to the doctors. Not to his own heart! Still kept on as he always had. “Can’t teach an old dog new tricks, love,” that’s what he’d say. Oh, Frank—’

  The storm was relentless. It had settled over the coast and was hurling itself at the land with everything it had. It wouldn’t be long until the lifeboat would be needed again. Anna looked up from Pat’s side and saw Robert MacKenzie talking to Liam, and the thought of him going back out into those waves scared her bone-deep. She got up, leaving Susan to take her place beside Pat. Robert saw her coming. His gaze looked past her to the sad gathering beyond.

  ‘How’s Pat?’ he asked quietly.

  Anna’s eyes filled with tears again. ‘In shock, I think. I can’t believe it, either. Frank—’

  Robert made as if to reach for her, but it was Liam who pulled her against him. He held her for a few minutes, then pulled back. ‘I still think you need to go to hospital yourself, get checked out.’

  ‘The paramedics say we’re fine. I feel fine. And right now I need to be with Pat. Really,’ she said, off Liam’s look. ‘I’m okay – thanks to you two and the rest of the crew. Liam, what were you even doing on the lifeboat?’

  Robert cleared his throat. ‘It was thanks to Liam that we knew the road was out. He called us.’

  ‘When I couldn’t get you on the phone I wanted to check you were okay,’ Liam explained. ‘Drove over and saw what had happened. Didn’t know what else to do.’

  ‘We’d all been called in,’ Robert added, ‘or I would have come over myself and seen the landslide earlier.’ He nodded at Liam. ‘This guy wouldn’t let us leave without him.’

  ‘It’s not as if I can’t handle myself in rough seas,’ Liam pointed out.

  ‘Well,’ said Robert, ‘if you were to stick around, we could use you, that’s for sure.’

  Liam glanced at Anna. ‘I would if I could, believe me.’

  Robert nodded and then pulled his keys from his pocket, passing them to Anna. ‘Liam can take you and Pat to my place,’ he said. ‘Rhona’s coming to get Terry and Susan. I’ve already called someone for Dougie and David’s got a friend here in Macduff.’

  Anna took the keys with a sense of relief.

  ‘You stay as long as you like,’ he added. ‘The doctor’s emergency number is on the fridge if either of you need it. The wee boy’s with Barbara and I’ll leave him there until the morning so you two can get settled. There’s only one guest room, but—’

  ‘I’ll be fine on the sofa,’ she said.

  A siren began to sound throughout the building. ‘I’ve got to go.’

  ‘Robert—’ Anna said as he turned to go, but then found she didn’t know what it was she wanted to say. ‘Thank you. For coming for us.’

  ‘Any time,’ he said. For a second it looked as if he might want to say something else, but instead he nodded to them both, glanced over at Pat, and went.

  Liam drove Pat and Anna to Gardenstown and made them both cocoa in Robert MacKenzie’s kitchen while the two women sat together. Anna wasn’t sure that the events of the past hours had really sunk in for Pat. They hadn’t for Anna, either. Despite her grief, Pat was exhausted, and at length Anna managed to persuade her into bed. She sat on the thick quilt in the MacKenzies’ cosy attic room and held the older woman’s hand as she drifted into sleep.

  ‘I can stay, if you like,’ Liam said as Anna crept back down the stairs with blankets for herself.

  ‘I’ll be fine,’ Anna told him. ‘All I want is to sleep.’

  Liam nodded and then pulled her into his arms, resting his cheek against her hair.

  ‘When I think about what could have happened—’ he said.

  ‘But it didn’t,’ Anna pointed out softly. ‘Thanks to you.’

  After he left, Anna lay down on the sofa beneath her nest of blankets and listened to the storm raging outside. She imagined Robert MacKenzie on the lifeboat. The thought of him out there, in the very midst of the storm, terrified her. She drifted into a fitful sleep, filled with dreams of darkness and ruin. In the middle of it all stood the Fishergirl’s Luck. She woke with tears on her face, disoriented. There was a weak morning light pushing in around the curtains, but still the wind blew.

  ‘Hey,’ said a soft voice.

  Robert was sitting in the armchair opposite the sofa where she lay. He’d changed into his usual clothes. His face was lined with exhaustion, dark smudges beneath his eyes. Anna said nothing, but reached out her hand. He took it, his thumb smoothing over her skin as they looked at each other. They sat like that for a long time, until Anna fell back into another unsettled sleep.

  It took two more days before the storm had exhausted itself, and even then the rain still fell. When it had died down enough for
a person to be able to stand upright, the tattered remains of the Usual Suspects assembled in Gamrie harbour and looked across the grey waters of the bay to Crovie. Even from this distance it was possible to see the huge scar of the landslide, a wide slash in the cliff behind the village. It was hard to see how any of the houses would have avoided the onslaught. The row was clearly still standing, but it was impossible to tell what damage the individual houses had sustained to their rear walls and foundations.

  The Fishergirl’s Luck still stood with her back to the sea. Anna was surprised how emotional seeing it there made her. There had been a part of her, she realized, that had expected it to have been swept over the sea wall and into the bay.

  It was Anna who helped Pat with Frank’s funeral arrangements. Doing so seemed surreal. She kept expecting the door to Robert MacKenzie’s house to open and to see Frank walk through it, that smile on his face, the sound of laughter underlying his words.

  ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do now I’m on my own,’ Pat said, more than once. Her grief was monumental, as if her bones were carved from it. They cried together, Pat and Anna, and in her darker moments Anna wondered how this grief was affecting the baby in her womb. More than that, she wondered why humans did it – why they fell in love at all when the loss of it caused such immense pain. Anna felt as if she’d lost her father all over again.

  ‘I know it’s not enough,’ Anna said, on one of these occasions. ‘But I’m here. You’re not on your own.’

  Pat squeezed her hand. ‘I’m not your responsibility, love,’ she said. ‘You’ve got more than enough already. You can’t stay in a village that’s gone to rack and ruin, not when you’ve got more important things to think about.’

  ‘There’s no point talking like that until we know the extent of the damage,’ Anna said. ‘It might not be as bad as we all fear. We know the Weaver’s Nook and the Fishergirl’s Luck are still standing, after all.’