A Handful of Ash Page 12

  I hadn’t expected this. We had been moving towards each other so gradually. His face was still turned away, but his chest rose and fell more quickly, as if asking had been an effort. I leant back against the guard rail, taking long breaths of the sea air. The sun shone on my face and dazzled on the dancing water.

  He shot a glance across at me, then returned his eyes to the horizon. ‘Think about it. There’s no hurry.’

  I thought about it. It was a dozen years since my last family Christmas in Dublin. I’d kept going to Granny Bridget and Da Patrick and all the aunts and uncles and cousins for three years after I’d run away from home, until my plump Granny Bridget died, and then Da Patrick, not long after: ‘He couldn’t manage without her,’ Auntie Bernadette had told me. I’d thought, aged nineteen, that soon I’d know how it felt to love someone so much that you gave up without them. I hadn’t loved Alain that much. I’d felt I was being stifled. Maybe I was too independent. Maybe half-love was the best I could do.

  Uncle Patrick and Auntie Teresa had taken on the family Christmas, but I hadn’t gone. It wouldn’t have been the same. I’d spent Christmas on some tall ship overwintering in the Caribbean, surrounded by strangers, until two years ago. That was the first winter I’d had Khalida, and I’d stayed in that marina in the Med, avoiding the relentlessly cheery turkey and trimmings meal and celebrating a day of not teaching spoiled teenagers. Last year I’d volunteered for the Christmas Day shift at the restaurant in Bergen, and spent the evening alone, until Anders had called in for a Christmas dram, and taken me up to his family. I hadn’t thought about this year, with Dad and Maman’s reconciliation. If they were together, it would be good to be with them … except that maybe this was my chance to love properly, to be part of a different family. I’d spoken to Kenny, when Gavin was out, or taking longer than usual to come downstairs. I could imagine their phone from the sounds around as we talked: an old-fashioned black one fixed in one corner of the hall, with pots and pans noises echoing from the kitchen, and a sheepdog padding in and out through the open door. Kenny seemed encouraging, as if he thought I’d be a good thing. His voice was like Gavin’s, with the soft Highland ‘sss’, but he spoke more hesitantly, as if he was translating in his head as he talked. I’d like to meet Kenny. I hadn’t spoken to their mother, who didn’t answer the phone in case she had to speak the English, Gavin had said. I was uncertain about her; my Irish Gaelic wouldn’t survive a rattle of Scots Gaelic, and nobody was ever good enough for a son –

  Gavin’s sea-grey eyes flicked back at my face. ‘Mother speaks reasonable English, from watching the English TV. She just doesn’t like speaking it on the phone. Kenny’s fluent.’

  There was something unnerving about the way he could read my thoughts, yet something reassuring too, as if I’d come to the end of running away, and I had just to turn and be myself. ‘I’ve spoken to Kenny,’ I said.

  ‘So you have,’ he agreed. ‘You could have fun reviving your Irish Gaelic, to add to your other languages. Where were they from, your Irish grandparents?’

  ‘Munster,’ I said. ‘Da Patrick was more used to the city, he had a building firm in Dublin, but Granny Bridget was a farm girl all her days. All her sayings were farm ones.’ I could hear her voice in my head. Everyone is sociable till a cow invades his garden. It’s a bad hen that does not scratch for herself. I scratched for myself, Granny, I told her in my head, and look where it got me, nearly thirty and with a boat for my love. There are no unmixed blessings in life, I heard her reply.

  ‘Then we’re cousins,’ Gavin said. He tried letting the mainsail out a little, inched it back in, eyes steady on the fluttering ribbons. ‘The Munster Gaelic is the closest to the west of Scotland Gaelic.’

  I knew that. I’d looked it up on Wikipedia, wondering if I’d be able to talk to him in his own language. Tongues mattered. Maman had always spoken to me in French, Dad spoke English, Anders and I used Norwegian as our private language. Here in Shetland I had fallen back into the Shetlandic I’d used as a bairn, playing around the beach with Inga and Martin. Maybe I had too many tongues on land to know who I was there. This was my language, the swell and fall of the sea, and the creak of Khalida’s rig, and the sun dazzling white on the sails.

  Christmas was a fair way away. I’d think about it.

  Cat came up out of the cabin, nose stretched forward, paws on the step between the washboards, as if he was trying to remember what this was like, then, cautiously, he came out into the sun, crouched in a corner of the seat and curved his plumed tail round his front paws. He kept his head up, looking around. Gavin fished the darrow out of the carrier bag, leant over to ease the hooks and lead into the water, then began to unroll it, one-handed, wrist twisting in a figure-of-eight motion. The green line stretched behind Khalida in a shallow diagonal, still visible for several metres beneath the water. It was late for mackerel, but we might be lucky.

  I leant back against the guard rail to enjoy the day. To the south and ahead were a scatter of green islands, named by long-gone Viking settlers: Burra, Papa, Oxna. The grassy hump of the Green Holm was a cable below us, shining emerald in the sun, as if it was summer still, and with a cluster of black cormorants, like badly rolled umbrellas stuck into the green grass. The tide was as high as it could go, so the smaller isle in front of it was underwater, along with the rocks marked by the north cardinal bouy coming up ahead of us, a yellow cone with two upward pointing black arrows at its tip. I looked at Gavin, and nodded my chin at it.

  ‘There,’ I said, ‘that north cardinal. The clear water’s above it, bear away a little.’ I eased the sheet as he pushed the tiller away, and re-cleated it, then eased the jib. The diagonal of the fishing line veered away from us, then came back in line. Khalida slowed a little and rolled to the waves from her stern.

  I turned my head for a last look at Scalloway. From this angle it was a Scottish East Coast fishing village, with the long street facing the sea, and the scatter of grey roofs among the browning sycamores. Past it, the sky was dominated by the five wind turbines on the hill. That was my Dad’s solution to Shetland’s recession: to erect a great chain of turbines, twice the size of these, on the peat hills in the central and west mainland. The electricity generated would be transported down to mainland Scotland by cable, and sold for between ten and fifteen million pounds a year. The council had embraced this fairy godmother with enthusiasm, and sent it straight to the Scottish Energy Minister for rubber-stamping, but now Dad’s firm, Shetland Eco-Energy, was running into opposition. A good number of local people were unhappy, particularly the ones who would be living surrounded by turbines, and wildlife organizations like the John Muir Trust and the RSPB had come out against the plan. They’d had to down the number of turbines due to regulations about the nearness to houses, and objections from Scatsta, the oil terminal’s airport. Figures of carbon dioxide offset and revenue seemed to vary with each press release. The substation and cable that the idea depended on was put back by five years. Now the main local opposition group had announced that they were going to seek a judicial review, to force the local planning enquiry that the council had side-stepped. Dad had been tight-lipped about it all last time I’d spoken to him.

  What I minded most was the effect this was all having on the community. Getting on well with the neighbours you lived so close to was ingrained in Shetlanders, so people talked about contentious issues only within groups they knew shared their view. Now there was a windfarm supporters’ group as well, and letters to the paper came mostly from the secretaries of the pro- and anti- groups, but within communities feelings ran too high, and people who’d been friends were now wary of each other. My friend Inga was one of the opposition group’s officials, and we just didn’t talk about it at all, even though I wasn’t sure how I felt. Given I was a visitor who planned to sail away when my college course was ended, I wasn’t sure I deserved a vote. I could see the financial advantages, assuming Dad’s firm had done their sums right, and more importantly, I could see h
ow Shetland, with its plentiful wind, could help the planet, if the most positive of the carbon dioxide sums were done right.

  Against it, our moors were so beautiful, even in this dying season. I turned my head to the Gallow Hill. To eyes used to the changing blues and greys of sea and sky, it was a tapestry of rich autumn colours: the hill was a warm rose, the chocolate brown heather hazed over with dying pink grass stems. A burnt orange patch was the last bog asphodel flowers, a damp area overlaid with spagnum moss was coloured lime and pomegranate ruby. A drystone dyke bisected the hill, straight as if it had been drawn by a ruler. Parallel to it, a burn ran down to the pale sand beach, a twisting thread of green, with the flash of white where it tumbled over rocks. The water at the shore was overlaid with olive-rust seaweed.

  Between me and the shore stretched the dancing water. I let out a long breath I hadn’t realised I’d been holding. Ah, it was good to be in my element again. I let my body feel the movement of the boat on the water: the hesitation before the wave at her stern took her, then the rise as it came under, the surge as she slid along its back, then the fall as it slipped away from under her and rolled ahead towards the open sea which lay dazzling to the horizon. If I set Khalida’s nose to it, our next landfall would be the toe of Greenland, then America, two thousand miles of tumbling grey rollers away. I glanced at Gavin from under my lashes, wondering how he’d take being kidnapped on a voyage to America. Maybe he’d like it. Maybe he wanted a girlfriend who’d do surprising things. Maybe he wanted me …

  The north cardinal slid closer. I reached below for the chart and held it in front of Gavin, indicating where we were. A good skipper didn’t take the wheel from the crew for the interesting bits. ‘Once we’re past this then it’s a straight run through these islands.’ I glanced at the log. Its electronic numerals read 4.2; a reasonable speed for this following wind, but we’d make better time soon. ‘Then your course is a straight 270 degrees.’

  Gavin glanced at Khalida’s compass and nodded. We came around the cardinal, then he set Khalida’s nose between the scatter of little islands. I tightened the sheets as she came up into the wind; she heeled to it, and the numbers on her log rose: 4.5, 4.9, 5.1, 5.3, 5.5. Now the water peeled back from her prow in a gurgle and froosh of curled water, and the white nylon curved taut from the spars. Our wake was arrow-straight behind us. Gavin’s brown hand was steady on the tiller, his eyes narrowed at the horizon.

  Langa came first, to starboard, two low, green islands joined by a strip of pale gold sand, and flanked by two rows of circular salmon cages. I could see the glitter and flash of fish jumping. Papa, the priests’ isle, was almost opposite it, a bigger island with the ruins of grey walls and dykes on the green western end, and sheep still on the hill scattald of the rest of the island. People had lived there until the twentieth century, when life on the mainland became easier than life on an isle, and the car took over from the boat as transport. Hascosay, opposite it, had a house still, and a landing place. It was a summer cottage for a family who didn’t mind carting water from the burn and using a generator for electricity.

  As we came along the top of Papa, the island changed. To the east, there had been pebble beaches in sheltered bays. Now, on the side exposed to the force of the Atlantic, the soil had been washed clean from the rocks, leaving the grey mountain bones bare to the snatching sea. I glanced back at Scalloway, out of sight now, with the Gallow Hill protecting it, looked forward, then back again in a double-take. I was certain I’d seen something move right on the point of the hill, where the burning site had been. I reached into the spy-glasses holder just inside the cabin, and did a slow sweep along the top of the hill. Yes, there! A figure appeared briefly on the horizon, then blended into the hill again. Now I looked there were four, moving over the hill, converging towards the summit. They were all wearing camouflage colours, green or brown, and without the binoculars I’d have difficulty in picking them out. They were moving slowly between the twisting green line that showed the course of the burn and the straight dyke that bisected the hill, and there was something stealthy about the movements, a quietly determined progression towards the burning site. I focused on one of the figures. He or she was walking slowly, then stopping, bending down, and picking something up. There seemed to be a bundle under one arm. It was too far away to tell what, but I wondered if it was dry heather, to kindle a fire. Sacrifices …

  I tried to remember when you picked heather berries. The memory was a summer one, August, when Inga, Martin, and I had searched among the heather stems – not this late, I wouldn’t have thought, with school back and the evenings spent between homework and early-bed-with-school-tomorrow, but there might have been some left, or those thin-stemmed brown fungi growing among the heather tussocks. Magic mushrooms, maybe.

  Gavin let his darrow trail from the cleat, and lifted his own binoculars. ‘Might they be bird people counting nests now the summer is over?’

  It was a nice explanation, but I could see he didn’t believe it, and neither did I. As I looked, one of the little figures straightened and turned to gaze seawards. It was looking straight at us. An arm came up to point. I covered the lenses of the glasses so that they wouldn’t flash, and lowered them. ‘They’re looking at us.’

  I turned my back to the hill, feeling absurdly vulnerable. A high-powered rifle could pick us off at this distance … but there was no reason why anyone should goshooting at us, and none of the little figures had carried a metal stick. All the same, I was glad Khalida was carrying us away from them. ‘Do you suppose,’ I said, carefully casual, ‘that it was the witches preparing their bonfire for Hallowe’en?’

  ‘It’s not against the law,’ Gavin said. He frowned across at me, the policeman hat gathering on his brow. ‘You wouldn’t consider staying in Aith until Tuesday? Or visiting Brae?’

  I was afraid of the power of the elements, of storms at sea, of falling overboard in the clawing waves. I wasn’t going to be afraid of some land fancy. I tilted my chin. ‘They’re not going to scare me away.’

  Gavin nodded, as if he hadn’t expected anything different.

  ‘You can tell one of your police friends to keep an eye on the marina,’ I conceded. ‘Any sign of any fish on that line?’

  ‘We’re going too fast.’ He began hauling it in. Cat stretched his neck, interested, and Gavin put out a hand to fend him off the hooks, without looking at him, as if he had to do this to the farmyard cat at home every time he wound up a line. I looked ahead at the friendly sea horizon, at the islands coming closer.

  ‘Keep to port,’ I said, indicating on the chart. ‘There’s a bristling of rocks on the Hildasay side, see, and only that one, tucked round the corner, on the Cheynies. See, the outermost rocks are almost in the middle of the channel.’ They were dead ahead, almost awash with the high tide, but with a warning of white crests around them. ‘I’ll go make a cup of tea.’

  It was good to be below in my little cabin, with the rattle of the water echoing around me. Cat followed me down and curled up in my bunk, remembering where the swell would bother him least. I buttered rolls and watched the islands slip slowly by as the bacon crisped and the kettle boiled. I wrote up the log, spun the dividers over the chart to see how far we’d come, and made two mugs of hot chocolate, put bacon in four rolls and took them up. Suddenly, as Gavin balanced his second bacon roll on the wooden thwart, without caring about a plate, and ate the first without taking his hand from the helm or his eyes from the horizon, I knew I needn’t have worried. It was going to be a happy day.

  We took hour tricks with the helm. When it was my turn to sit aft with the tiller, Gavin slipped his fishing line over the stern again and settled on the other side of the boat, eyes ahead, one brown hand dangling the line that made a V-arrow in the water. The ribbons on his socks fluttered in the wind. He moved about the boat as soft-footed as a cat, and didn’t chat or fidget, just relaxed as if being on water was as much a part of his life as it was of mine. We sped over towards the rugged poi
nt of Skelda Ness, the bottom point of the triangle-shaped westside, then continued until we were half a mile off. In two hours we’d be off the red cliffs of Watsness, with the swell from the last windy days bouncing back to make it an unsettled place for a little boat. As it was, some of the long Atlantic rollers were as high as Khalida’s cabin – but it was so peaceful out there, with only the suck and curl of waves breaking, the occasional crackle of voices on the radio, the creak of Khalida’s spars as she leant to the wind. At one point a kittiwake came down from the cliffs to glide above us, then landed on the water and settled there, chin tucked in, black beady eyes watching us. In the air he could outpace us without even trying.

  We made good time, with the wind on the beam. We were passing Vaila’s square watchtower by eleven, and came through the Papa Stour channel on the last of the east-bound stream. There, in the curve of St Magnus Bay, we hove to. From being heeled over, with the waves rushing past, suddenly Khalida was bobbing gently among them, her sails set against each other.

  ‘Now,’ Gavin said. He paid out his line again, brows intent, then smiled at me over his shoulder. ‘There. Have you a bucket?’

  Already? I whisked below for a bucket, and by the time I brought it up Cat was darting a paw at a flapping mackerel, tiger-striped green, black, and silver. Gavin fished in his pocket for a little implement like a wooden truncheon, and gave it an efficient tap on the head. Another two writhed on the hooks in the water.

  ‘Wow,’ I said.

  He looked up, smiling. ‘I’ve impressed you at last.’

  ‘You were lucky. You can’t see a shoal of mackerel underwater.’

  ‘Very true.’ He drew out the knife from his sock, and turned the wooden handle towards me. It was thin-bladed, and lethally sharp, a fisherman’s knife. It was just as well Khalida was private property. ‘Would you prefer them filleted?’