The Malice of Waves

by Mark Douglas-Home

  Catriona said, ‘Mine was cheating.’

  ‘Mine too,’ Helen said, ‘although he told me he needed to take time out, to find out what he really wanted. It turned out to be a blonde called Phoebe.’

  ‘Same,’ Catriona said, ‘except she wasn’t called Phoebe.’

  ‘Well,’ Helen said, ‘I think we’re going to have to look out for one another.’ She made a point of glancing around the sitting room. ‘Would you give me a tour?’

  Catriona started opening doors and turning on lights. ‘In here is a bedroom. In here is another. In here is the bathroom and toilet. And here …’ the last door swung open, ‘is the kitchen.’ Helen followed behind, looking into each room and enthusing about the size or the furnishings.

  ‘If there’s anything you need, just come over to the tea room when it’s open – ten to six – or ring on the landline. There’s an honesty box.’ Catriona walked over towards a side table beside a sofa and picked up a blue ring file from the bottom shelf. ‘There’s lots of information about the area, things to see, the best beaches, walks.’

  ‘What about the flattest places to run?’

  Catriona seemed amused.

  ‘I told you, it’s the new me,’ Helen said. ‘A run before breakfast, a walk after lunch …’ She put on a serious face. ‘And cake for tea … Well, it’s all right for a slim wee thing like you. But I need an incentive, something to look forward to after all that healthy exercise. No hills, though. Which way would you suggest?’

  Catriona said, ‘It’s about two miles before the end of the road whether you go east or west.’ She pointed east. ‘But it’s flatter that way.’

  ‘So, east it is,’ Helen said and thought ruefully: it was one thing Catriona being amused, quite another Cal. She imagined his surprise when he realized who was running along the road towards him, then his mocking smile: Detective Sergeant Jamieson, in tracksuit, trainers, fleece and bobble hat. It had been DCI Beacom’s idea. On an island, he’d said, everyone was expert in furtive behaviour and concealment. Being upfront was less suspicious, he’d said to Helen.

  ‘Mind,’ Catriona said doubtfully, ‘I’d see what the weather’s like. It’s already quite wild outside. There’s a storm coming in tonight and another one forecast for tomorrow.’

  15

  Linda knelt beside the open suitcase and looked around the hall floor at the possessions that would accompany her. Practical items were to her right – her clothes, shoes, make-up and wash bags, a light raincoat, a hand towel and a collection of important documents, among them her passport and birth certificate. Items of emotional significance, those from which she could not be separated, were to her left. There were only four: a framed photograph of her father at her graduation day, in his good blue suit; a gold crown coin her grandmother had pressed into her hand the day before she died, when Linda was six; a Meissen porcelain figure of a monkey playing the violin which had belonged to her mother; a small wooden boat Linda had made in carpentry in her primary school. Even as she was going round the house, gathering up what she would need and those things she could not bear to leave behind, she was uncertain whether she would be able to walk out of the door, whether she had it in her. But when everything was assembled in the hall and she saw her few emotional possessions, how little the house contained of her, she realized she would have to go, that she had no choice. As she packed, she surprised herself again. Rather than being regretful or torn, as she had expected, she became impatient to leave. How much longer would the taxi be? Should she ring and ask for it to come earlier? She could always spend a few hours at the airport, drinking coffee, reading a book or a newspaper. Instead she wrote Stanley two identical letters. One she put into her handbag in case time made her forget her reasons. The other she put on the kitchen table.

  Stanley,

  I’m going away. I don’t know where. I’m taking a taxi to the airport and I will make up my mind then. I have to get away from this house, from you, from your deception and from the shame you have brought to my father’s good name. I gave you that name so that you could start again, so that WE could start again after the last time you let me down. You are welcome to go on living here. If not, the house will be sold and I will give you half of the proceeds. My only condition is that you stop calling yourself Stanley Pryke and that you revert to Stanley Wise. Do not try to find me. I do not want to see you again. Linda

  Afterwards, she sat on the chair in the hall with her suitcase beside her. She watched the hands of the grandfather clock mark out the early hours of the morning. At five minutes to four, she stood up, put on her gloves and went to the front door. She opened it and stepped outside. She banged the door shut, double locked it and put her keys through the letter box. It was dark, the new day still to dawn. Suddenly Linda found it hard to take another step. But she managed one, then another, then another. By the time she arrived at the pavement, the taxi was pulling up. ‘To the airport, is it, love?’ the driver said, opening his door to help with her bag. ‘Going somewhere nice?’

  Joss paid attention to every sound, to the thuds and thumps of the wind, to the rattle of a squall of rain, the hawser rubbing against the roof, the creaks and growls of the caravan being lifted and dropped by a passing gust. She listened too, in terror, for those small noises, the roll of a stone, the snap of a stalk of heather, the fall of a foot by the caravan’s door, for an approach stealthier than the storm’s. She sat upright and tense on her bunk in the dark. Her right hand gripped her mobile phone – the last time she looked it had no signal. Still, what else did she have to cling on to? What other hope did she have of calling for help when, if, they came? Her left hand covered her mouth, as though clamped to a wound. She breathed in the soapy smell from her fingers to banish the taste of Ewan’s tongue, to drive from her memory its warmth and wetness, stubbing against her teeth, demanding to be let in. Every so often she would shudder and imagine it being in the caravan with her, disembodied and dog-penis pink, waiting to slip itself silently into her mouth if ever she took her hand away. Invasion of one kind or another played on her mind. She imagined the shrieking of the wind being baying voices, her enemies emboldened by the knowledge that Ewan would no longer protect her. In alarm she checked the windows to make sure the cardboard reinforcements were still in place. Then she pulled at the rope tying up the door, testing its strength.

  When she was back in her bed, the wind blew stronger than before, eighty, ninety miles an hour. Joss listened for the rubbing of the hawser, for the roof to compress under its pressure, for the caravan to tip and become level again as had happened a hundred times already that night, a thousand times since she’d taken up residence.

  This time was different. As the caravan was being lifted, it slewed broadside to the wind. Joss waited for the sound of the straining hawser, for the recoil of the caravan, for the bump as it settled back on its chassis. Instead the caravan kept on rising and then it rolled, a white shadow tumbling through a black night, the crash and screech of metal buckling and, faintly, the high note of a young woman’s scream.

  16

  The storm had roared and raged, depriving Stanley of sleep. His arms and legs shook from cold. His shoulders and back ached from lying on rocky ground with barely a centimetre of covering soil. Every part of him felt battered and bruised as if some mindless thug had punched and kicked him. His spirit was leaking away, like blood from a gash. Even with the wind drumming in his ears, a small voice made itself heard above the din. Are you up for this, Stanley? You’ve let yourself go – you’re past climbing cliffs. You’re only fooling yourself, Stanley.

  In the hour before dawn, he attempted to bolster his morale, what little was left, by recalling the honourable tradition to which he belonged and the sacrifices it demanded. More than belonged, he told himself, to emphasize his particular responsibility. Wasn’t he the last of the field men? Wasn’t he the best of the breed? As if reciting a poem learned in childhood, he made a mental list of those like him who had endured discomfo
rt for their calling. They were egg collectors with names that resonated with resilience and character, men like the Rev. F. C. R. Jourdain, Dr Stennett Sloan Chesser and Edgar Percival Chance. Some, like Major Charles Bendire, had taken mortal risks to add to their collections, in his case joining the US cavalry and reportedly removing a zone-tailed hawk’s egg while being attacked by Apache. He kept his prize safe by putting it in his mouth.

  As the wind and rain gnawed at Stanley, he rehearsed other similar feats of derring-do, how his forebears conquered the highest crags and cliffs with only an old length of rope, a walking stick, a sturdy pair of boots and a bottomless well of courage. Which of them would have allowed such weather conditions and a sleepless night to sap his indomitable spirit? Yet here he was, on a metaphorical cliff edge of self-pity, with weatherproof clothing, a good climbing rope and a safety harness. Had he gone soft? The question was implicit in his self-doubt, the answer too. Chastened, he lamented his lack of fortitude on this, his last expedition, the one that would place him above all those others whose names he’d heard first from his father.

  Stanley Wise (also known as Pryke), field man: he would be proud to own this simple epitaph.

  At last, with dawn, the rain stopped and some light and bravura returned. The nagging worries about his bulk and fitness – would he be able to control his descent, would he be able to haul himself back up the cliff? – were all but forgotten as Stanley allowed himself to be diverted by the sensuous allure of those rosy-pink eggs.

  Like a young woman’s soft lips.

  So near.

  The expectancy of imminent possession buoyed him. So did an easing of the wind. Sitting against the boulder that had provided inadequate shelter during the night, he was optimistic enough to consider the weather his assistant instead of an implacable foe. The notion offered a solution to the problem that had worried Stanley since his second meeting with Bella MacLeod. Although she would not tell him the location of the nest, she’d described its general disposition so that he would know what to prepare for, what equipment to bring. It was, she said, a substantial structure of branches and twigs on a ledge some ten metres from the top of a cliff and concealed beneath a sheer overhang of rock. This last detail had sent Stanley into a sweat. But the weather seemed to present an unexpected solution. He would abseil down the cliff face, drop below the overhang until he was opposite the ledge. Hanging in mid-air, he’d wait for a gust to blow him towards the nest. The wind was westerly, ideal for his purpose, and no longer so strong he risked being dashed against the rock face.

  Walking stiffly and hunched towards the cliff, Stanley found that, though his mind was willing, his body was proving less adaptable. It was as if all his joints had fused, so still had he lain and so paralysed by cold and wet had he been during the night. Also, his earlier estimation of the wind’s strength now seemed inadequate. The gusts were so forceful he was taking one step back for every three forward. But those tweedy gentlemen of the past spurred him on again as did the sight of a single raven flapping by him – the cock. The hen would be on the nest, protecting her eggs, protecting his eggs.

  The thought helped Stanley to feel his old enthusiasm for the challenge, man against nature. Even if there was a flickering flame where once there had been a raging fire, it was sufficient to goad him on. He looped the rope, a familiar and trusted friend, around a boulder close to the edge. Making sure it was secure, he attached the rope to his harness. Then, after leaving his backpack in the shelter of a depression, he stepped off the cliff and experienced a rush of exhilaration, even joy: an addict rediscovering his drug of choice. Though the wind was strong and waves crashed about with a thunderous sound below him, he felt alive, a field man again.

  Pausing for a moment, he warned himself against over-eagerness when he was close to the nest, when he first saw the eggs. Then he lowered himself, working the belay, waiting for the wind’s lulls, his body at an angle of forty-five degrees, his boots pressing against glistening black rock. Soon he was on the overhang and preparing to descend to the recessed ledge hidden somewhere below. All he had to do was push off with his feet, let out rope and gravity would do the rest. It was a simple manoeuvre, one he had done before, but neither his hands nor his feet would do as he asked. His courage had taken flight. He couldn’t go down. Nor, he realized, could he go up. He was stuck. All his doubts clamoured for attention. You’re too fat, Stanley, past it, gone soft.

  A powerful gust dislodged him and, in panic, he let out too much rope. As he dropped, he was aware of a large platform of brown sticks and black raven wings brushing against his shoulder.

  And the colour pink.

  Four, was it five eggs?

  One moment Stanley was hurtling past the nest towards the sea, the next he jolted to a halt. Swinging in the wind above rearing waves, his nerve was shot and his limbs shook. It took a while for him to regain his breath and a few minutes more to control his arms and legs. Even the proximity of the raven’s nest failed to rally him. Each time he looked up he saw the overhang looming above, black, forbidding and dripping with salt spray. But, before his strength departed, he had to attempt to haul himself up. Two heaves brought him to the ledge; another and a gust of wind took him to within reach of the nest, which was more than a metre high and as much across, the accumulation of so much material evidence of many years’ occupation. He grabbed at the base. His fingers closed round a tangle of heather branches. Some snapped, others broke free and he grasped again at the nest as a drowning man pulls at the hand of a rescuer. The structure shifted towards him just as he lunged upwards and another gust of wind caught him. He crash-landed on flat rock.

  He vomited. He pissed his trousers. He called for Linda.

  The ledge, as Stanley blearily saw, was almost three metres long. It stopped where a wide diagonal crack cut up beside the rock overhang. Stanley raised himself on trembling arms to view the eggs. They lay on top of the nest platform in a concave bed of sheep’s wool, the narrower ends pointing towards each other so that the eggs described a circle. Three were pale rosy-pink with hellebore-red blotches, just as he’d hoped. The other two were blush-white with a variety of pink and red blotches and spots.

  Stanley stroked each one, feeling the leftover warmth of the hen raven on his fingertip. He took his father’s pouch from his anorak pocket and picked up each egg as though they were precious beyond price. One by one he slid them into the individual padded cells. The excitement of possession gave him courage for the ascent. He bit against the pouch’s cloth handle, the eggs contained and swinging safely below his chin. With both hands free to hold the rope, he shuffled to the edge of the ledge and dropped off. Between gusts, he pulled himself slowly up.

  Fortune was on his side, he thought, when the wind veered suddenly to north-west. It blew him along the cliff face, where the overhang was less pronounced. But another, stronger blast started him spinning. He yanked on the rope and arched his body. He tried to use his weight to return to the ledge. Instead, he spun faster and faster until he was so dizzy he didn’t realize his mouth was gaping wide, or that he’d let go of the pouch or that his trusty rope was fraying against jagged rock at the edge of the overhang. Nor did he register, a split second later, the difference between light-headedness and weightlessness. The instant before he splashed into the sea, he saw his father’s pouch on the crest of a wave. It was rising towards him. Stanley reached out but the wave swirled and dipped, holding the pouch just beyond his outstretched fingers, as if taunting him, as if enjoying a moment of malice.

  Ewan Chisholm was agitated. He paced the shingle beach. Cal had watched him since daylight started to drape the day in colour – steel-grey and spindrift-white for the sea; pale yellows, duns and black for the land. For half an hour, more, Ewan had put on a display of impatience. Sometimes he threw out his arms. At others he kicked in temper at the shingle or gazed out to sea. Cal knew what was going through his head. The same was going through Cal’s. The wind was moderating and changing direction. One
storm was departing and another was about to arrive. A window of opportunity to cross the sound would soon close. Then there would be no escape for twenty-four hours, perhaps longer. In another, more violent gesture of frustration, Ewan kicked again at the shingle. He swore – Cal saw the accompanying grimace; heard the delayed bark of his voice – before striding off the beach, apparently going to chivvy his companion. As Ewan began climbing the hill, he put on a balaclava. Cal wondered why. After all, his face had been uncovered since daylight. Why hide it now?

  When Ewan went behind the skyline, Cal broke cover, running, keeping to the short grass that fringed the shore, passing the jetty and the chapel. It took him ten minutes to reach the other end of the island, another two to untie the RIB and to edge out into the sound. Soon he was rolling and pitching among waves three, four metres high, steering a course along black canyons of water with white spray scudding above. Cal kept to the troughs and watched to port for billowing waves threatening to crash over the RIB. Narrowly avoiding one by accelerating, he glanced up at its breaking crest and saw a carcass. It was barrel-bloated, rotating as if on a spit, four stiff legs slicing the sea: Millie, still putting on a show and looking for applause, was floating.

  Cal whooped as the wave plunged behind him. ‘Good pig, Millie.’

  And then, suddenly, he was in calmer, more sheltered water. Eilean Dubh’s shoreline was close by, the old slipway two hundred metres to starboard. Cal turned the RIB and throttled back, allowing the wind and waves to carry him. A figure was standing by the slipway, in tracksuit, trainers and a woollen hat. ‘Jamieson?’ Cal looked again. ‘Helen?’ He turned the RIB towards her.

  ‘Don’t,’ she warned.

  ‘Don’t what?’

  ‘That,’ she said, ‘that smirk.’ She’d seen it before, a flicker of amusement at the edges of his mouth, one moment there, the next gone. When the RIB nudged against the slipway, Helen said, ‘Your face, what happened, Cal? It’s all scratched.’