The House Beneath the Cliffs

by Sharon Gosling

  Pat squeezed her hand again, but she was distracted, and Anna had distractions of her own. An email from Melissa about the cookbook had reminded her that life elsewhere was still going on. It was only in reading it that Anna realized that all her recipes were in the notebook that was with the other two she’d left inside the overnight bag she hadn’t had time to pick up during the escape. Really, the cookbook was the least of her worries and she hoped that her editor would be able to understand that, as she said in her emailed reply. A few hours later Anna’s mobile rang.

  ‘Anna,’ Melissa said, as soon as she answered. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  Anna rubbed a hand over her eyes. ‘Look, this cookbook – I’m not sure it’s going to work. Not anymore.’

  ‘Don’t even think about that now,’ her editor said. ‘I’m calling because I wanted to check on you as a friend. But also to put you in touch with someone. You know that we also publish Taymar Zetelli?’

  ‘Oh, yes. I’ve got a couple of her books.’

  ‘Well, since I’ve worked with her she’s become a friend. We’ve talked about you – she’s fascinated by what you’ve done in Crovie, and loves the sound of your food. After I got your email I called her and asked if I could pass on her number, in case she could offer a bit of moral support. She’d love it if you’d give her a call. Actually she said she’s been thinking about getting in touch for a while.’

  Anna frowned. ‘She has? Why?’

  ‘Probably to tell you how brilliant she thinks you’re being. She’s like that. I think a contact like Taymar might be exactly what you need right now.’

  ‘Okay,’ Anna said. ‘Thank you. I’ll give her a call.’

  ‘Do,’ Melissa urged her. ‘And I’m always here, too.’

  Once they’d hung up Anna looked at the number she’d scribbled down, thinking that perhaps Melissa was right, she could do with some moral support from someone who’d ‘been there’. Taymar Zetelli was a colourful, larger-than-life character who had remained the chef-patron of her tiny eatery on the South coast through all three of her pregnancies. As her popularity grew, she’d opened more restaurants and every one of them had been led by women. Her cookery books had put her into a different sphere, as had the television series that had followed. Geoff hated her, ‘on principle’, although Anna had never understood quite what principle this was.

  A couple of days later, Anna called the number she’d been given. The conversation that ensued went on for more than an hour, and in it Anna laughed for the first time since the terrible night that Frank had died.

  Young Robbie was a great comfort to them all, but especially to Pat. He’d come in from school and immediately make her a cup of tea. He’d sit down with her and explain his day in detail, apparently understanding how much she enjoyed simply listening to his voice. He persuaded her to help him bake shortbread, and suggested that he organize a bake sale at school to raise money for the villagers of Crovie.

  ‘That’s a lovely idea,’ Anna told him, not having the heart to point out that it was going to take a magnitude more than any bake sale could raise to save the village.

  Part of her wondered whether this would finish Crovie off for good, the way the storm of 1953 had finally ended the fishing industry there.

  ‘That place has survived such a lot,’ Robert told her a few nights later, as they sat at the kitchen table together. Pat and Robbie had gone to bed, and the two of them were alone. ‘I have to believe there’ll be a way to get it back on its feet again.’

  ‘I can’t help thinking it’ll be too much work for people who are beyond such things,’ Anna said. ‘Pat was already slowing down, and losing Frank has knocked her for six. Terry and Susan are going to struggle themselves. The others – Phil and Marie, David and Glynn – they don’t live there permanently. I can’t help thinking that they’ll all cut their losses and go somewhere else. Here maybe, in Gardenstown. That’d be so much easier, wouldn’t it?’

  He nodded. ‘If ever there were a time to move on, this would be it.’

  Silence sank into the room, and along with it a truth that neither of them voiced. Anna reached for his hand. Robert took it with both of his, frowning at the tangle of their fingers. Something had changed between them in the days that she and Pat had been staying at the MacKenzie house. No, Anna thought then, not changed – deepened. It remained unsaid, though, sketched only in moments like this, when one or both of them could have said something, but somehow never did.

  ‘You have to do what’s right for you,’ Robert said. ‘What’s right for the baby. I understand that.’

  Anna took a shallow breath. ‘Living in a ruined village that has no access apart from by sea… Even if the Fishergirl’s Luck is completely untouched, even if—’

  ‘I know,’ he said. ‘I know.’

  She shook her head, dumbly, unable to speak. In that moment she wanted him to lean over the table and kiss her, but he didn’t. She could have done the same and kissed him, but Anna didn’t do that, either. Where was the wisdom in starting something when she may have to leave this place, and soon? How ironic that she had spent her first days in the village desperate to leave, and these last ones desperate to stay.

  ‘I’ll take you there once the weather’s set fair,’ Robert MacKenzie said, in a voice that was barely loud enough for her to hear. ‘Anyone who wants to go. We’ll take the Cassie’s Joy. When the weather’s calm enough.’

  The moment was broken, and Anna gently drew back her hand from between his. He let her go and stood up to take her empty mug from the table, keeping his back to her as he put it into the sink. Anna’s eye was drawn to the photograph of Cassie, still in place on the fridge, and with a sudden flash of clarity knew that there was a future, somewhere, where another photograph could join it, a photograph which would contain her and the baby inside her that was growing larger with every passing day. She stood up and said goodnight while he still had his back turned, escaping while she still had the strength to leave.

  ‘Don’t close yourself off from it,’ Cathy said, later still, as Anna lay beneath his blankets on the sofa in the darkness with her phone to her ear.

  ‘I have to.’

  ‘Why?’

  Anna gave a short burst of laughter that had nothing to do with mirth. Cathy was the only one to whom she had confessed her new secret – that Taymar Zetelli had offered her a job as head chef at her next restaurant, which would be opening in Newcastle the following year. Taymar hadn’t been fazed at all by Anna’s pregnancy. The same couldn’t be said for the owner of the only restaurant within driving distance of Crovie that had been looking for a chef. He had directed a pointed look at her stomach before telling her that the position had miraculously been filled overnight.

  ‘How can I stay?’ Anna said. ‘It was impractical before. Now it would be plain crazy, wouldn’t it?’

  There was a pause. ‘I want you to have the career you deserve. I really do,’ Cathy said. ‘You’re so talented and you love the kitchen. But I also want you to have a life. A family. Love. If you take Zetelli’s offer you’ll have to leave Robert MacKenzie behind, and I don’t think—’

  Anna cut her off. ‘He hasn’t – this isn’t – there hasn’t been time for any of that. There isn’t time for any of that.’

  ‘But you know. Don’t you?’

  ‘I don’t know anything,’ Anna said, ‘except that the only home I can call my own is in the village where nothing else may have been left standing, and I’ve been thrown a lifeline to start again elsewhere.’

  Selkie lass,

  I can’t lose something that never was, and yet…

  I lie awake at night and wonder how you would explain it, if you were the one telling, and Robbie was the one listening. I think you’d tell him that life is like the sea, with its own tides. I think you’d say that the tide takes things out, as well as bringing things in, and that life is like that too.

  I tell myself that if she leaves – and how can she not, now? – that it’
s only the tide turning again. I tell myself that I’m not losing a thing, because a person can’t be so lucky twice in a lifetime.

  There cannot possibly be enough love in the world for that.

  Thirty-One

  Liam flew home the day before the villagers returned to Crovie for the first time. Anna took him to the airport in Inverness, where they both cried. He offered to stay for Frank’s funeral the following week, but what would have been the point? Two or three days – two or three weeks – would have made no difference, except to give him an added expense he would not be able to easily afford. They had parted with the promise that he would call as soon as he reached home, and that was that. Anna was sanguine about it, really. Part of her thought she was probably numb.

  The sea and the sky were still a uniform grey as the Cassie’s Joy carried the Usual Suspects across the bay towards the stricken village. Robert MacKenzie had left a protesting Young Robbie behind in the care of his grandmother, and Douglas McKean had also remained in Gardenstown. Terry and Susan were with them, though, and David and Phil, too. Phil had been in close contact since the storm and had decided to make a trip specifically to assess the damage. Marie would join him in a couple of days, for Frank’s funeral. Anna hadn’t wanted Pat to come, had said they could report back to her, could even film it if she really wanted to see, but Pat had been adamant.

  ‘It can’t be avoided, love,’ she said, in a voice that was a dull echo of how it had sounded before they’d lost Frank. ‘It’s something I have to deal with, that’s all.’

  Everyone was silent as the boat rounded the cliff. There was something eerie about the village before they’d even cleared the promontory, a stillness that made Anna shiver. It took her a few moments to realize that the absence was the sea birds. There were no gulls wheeling over the cliffs, screaming into the wind. The whole village felt like an empty house. There was no sign of life.

  Robert brought the boat into the harbour and they helped one another out. There was debris strewn everywhere, littering the cars at the foot of the cliff and the concrete on which they stood. Anna’s Fiat had shifted sideways on its wheels and was caked with mud and clods of earth. There were smuts of peaty soil everywhere, dark and wet, as well as splinters of wood that Anna belatedly realized were the remains of one of the wooden shacks that had stood at the rear of the car parking space. Most of the barrows had been dashed to pieces, lifted and dropped, lifted and dropped. The storm had smashed them to kindling. The air was heavy with the smell of earth. Anna took Pat’s hand and held it.

  To get to the Inn they had to step over ridges of soil and stones washed down from the collapse of the road. It was the first time anyone had seen what it looked like. They stood like the stunned survivors of an apocalypse, staring up at the ruin of cracked tarmac concertinaed beneath a muddy glacier of displaced earth and rock.

  ‘God,’ David muttered. ‘How are they ever going to clear that?’

  No one answered him and in the shocked silence, there came the whirr of helicopter blades. They looked up to see the aircraft coming over the bay towards the village.

  ‘That’ll be the news reporters,’ Phil said darkly. ‘There’ll be more of them soon enough.’

  They tried to ignore their overhead spectators and continued. The Inn seemed untouched apart from spatters of debris that had been thrown against the walls.

  No one spoke as they picked their way along the sea wall. Robert kept one arm around Pat. The helicopter still hovered overhead and Anna was suddenly and ferociously angry at those inside. It must have been obvious who they were and surely anyone could understand how traumatic it was to be here, now, to be discovering for the first time how much of one’s life and livelihood was lost. It felt intrusive to have it watched by outsiders, especially when she knew it would be broadcast around the world. She stopped, staring up, wondering who was flying the helicopter, if that person had any connection to this coast at all. But a low light was breaking through the incessant cloud, and the glare was enough to hide those inside from view. Anna felt someone brush her free hand with theirs. It was Robert, reaching back for her.

  ‘Forget them,’ he told her. ‘There’s nothing we can do and after all, the footage they’ll shoot will tell us more than we can see for ourselves right now.’

  The debris worsened as they moved further towards the most affected end of the village. Any plant pots that had been outside the houses had either vanished or had been lifted by the wind and smashed into the ground or through windows. There were shards of glass everywhere. Something flapped past Anna and she realized it was a curtain from one of the rentals. Broken tiles were strewn across the concrete.

  They reached the culvert in the centre of the village where the burn joined the sea beside the pier without too much trouble. Beyond, though, it was as if the cliff were a sack that had split its seams, spilling everything inside down on the houses furthest from the road. Anna had already known that the Fishergirl’s Luck was still standing because she’d been able to see it from the harbour at Gardenstown. That had planted the vague notion that it might have somehow remained untouched. But as she walked closer her foot scuffed at something underfoot. It was a large splinter of wood, painted blue. For a second she couldn’t place it, although it seemed familiar. Then she realized, with a sick jolt to her stomach, that it was part of one of the shutters that had covered her window. She’d known they’d been torn off, but seeing it there amid the soil underfoot stabbed a blade of misgiving into her gut. The feeling wasn’t diminished as they got closer and she saw Liam’s bench. It had been picked up from her garden and blown clear across the sea path to lean, upended, against the Weaver’s Nook. One of the planks that made up its surface had been torn in half, the rest of it was ragged splinters.

  Her fences had vanished, swallowed whole by the sea. Of the four chimneys she had planted with flowers, three were gone completely and the other was shattered almost beyond recognition. There were tiles and shards of glass everywhere, a sea of slate grey and reflected sky. Anna looked up from the garden to see that the window to her bedroom had been smashed clear out of its frame. Through the gaping hole, she could see the sky. For a moment her mind couldn’t understand what she was seeing. Then she realized her roof had gone. It wasn’t only the slate that had been lifted, either. The storm had ripped out half the supporting struts and the internal gabled ceiling. As she stared up in shock, it began to rain again. The Fishergirl’s Luck was open to the elements.

  With a cry Anna went for the front door. Robert held on to her.

  ‘It won’t be safe,’ he said.

  ‘I have to go in,’ she said. ‘There’s something I have to— I didn’t have time to pick it up when we left.’

  He let her go. Inside the cottage the living room was eerily untouched, despite the cold damp blasting down through the open roof upstairs. Anna barely noticed. She saw the go-bag she had packed and then left on the floor when Robert had turned up with the lifeboat. She snatched it up and unzipped it, dropping it again once she’d pulled out what she was looking for. The photograph of her family, together on the beach all those years ago. She stared down at the picture, her emotions in turmoil.

  ‘Now that we’re here,’ Robert said, at her shoulder, ‘You should bring whatever you need.’ He paused to glance at the staircase in the corner, bathed in a weird light from the ruined roof overhead. ‘If you can get to it without going upstairs.’

  Anna picked up the bag. ‘I’ve got everything,’ she said. It wasn’t what was in the Fishergirl’s Luck that was important to her but the place itself, and she couldn’t take that with her. Bren’s bothy would stay put, the rain seeping in, in a way it never had when its original owner had been alive.

  When they stepped back outside, they found that Terry and Susan had gone with Pat into the Weaver’s Nook.

  ‘You wait here,’ Robert said. ‘I’m going down to look at Dougie’s place and Pat and Frank’s rental. Don’t let her follow until I’ve checked
it out, all right?’

  Anna nodded. ‘Be careful.’

  He smiled at her, though his eyes were sombre. Anna watched him pick his way past the wreck of Liam’s bench, over ridges of silt and what looked like crumbled stone.

  As for the Weaver’s Nook, all the windows had been blown out, the rooms water-damaged and scattered with debris, ruined.

  Anna found Pat in the private sitting room above the kitchen, the one that Pat and Frank had kept for themselves for whenever they had guests staying. The window had blown in, but the rocking chair Pat had used each evening still waited beside the fireplace and the old oak armchair that had been Frank’s remained on the other side. The two chairs faced each other as they had done ever since they were installed. Pat was staring at Frank’s chair, tears streaming down her face.

  ‘What am I going to do?’ Pat said. ‘What am I going to do without him?’

  ‘Oh, Pat,’ Anna said.

  ‘He hadn’t even started the crib,’ Pat sobbed, as Anna held her. ‘He was so determined to make it perfect for the baby, Anna. Look – there are his designs, still on the chair where he left them that last night.’

  Anna picked up the notebook and saw page after page of sketches and notes detailing types of wood and measurements. It would have been a beautiful piece of furniture, Anna saw, made with such love that looking at the designs made her cry again.

  ‘We shouldn’t stay too long,’ Anna said, through her tears. ‘Pat, we’ll come back again as soon as we can, but right now – what do you want to take with you?’

  Pat gathered up a few things – photographs of Frank mainly, a few pieces of jewellery and some clothes.

  ‘You keep that,’ she said to Anna, of the notebook full of Frank’s designs. ‘He would have wanted you to have it. He would have wanted you and the baby to have such a lot of things.’