Orkney Twilight Page 9

  The fisherman didn’t bother to look up from his task.

  She elbowed Tom in the ribs. ‘It’s always rough in the Pentland Firth,’ she whispered. ‘Didn’t you know?’

  She ran off, smirking as she climbed the wooden stairs to the café; her black overcoat flapped behind her like a witch’s cape. At the top she turned, stared commandingly at the sea beyond the harbour walls and conjured up the sun and the waves and the wind. A herring gull squawked aggressively and a splat of green shit strafed the plank next to her foot. ‘Missed,’ she shouted into the air. It squawked again.

  Tom joined her at a table by the window.

  ‘That’s how the professional does it,’ she said indistinctly, her mouth thick with oozing crab sandwich. She nodded her head in the direction of the harbour. Jim was visible in the distance, distinct yet blending in with his surroundings, always at home in the hinterlands, the places between land and sea, weaving his way around the ropes and the fishermen; talking, listening, laughing. She wondered whether it was the product of being in the army, his ability to conjure up an instant camaraderie with strangers.

  ‘It must be his Scottish accent,’ said Tom, echoing her thoughts.

  ‘Do you think Jim has a Scottish accent?’

  ‘Actually, no. He uses short vowels, so he’s obviously not southern, but it would be hard to pinpoint exactly where he came from on the basis of his accent. Are you sure he’s from Glasgow?’

  ‘That’s what I’ve always been told.’ In the corner of her eye she spotted a massive bonxie high up in the sky being hectored by a flock of terns.

  ‘Haven’t you ever met any of Jim’s relatives?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Don’t you think that’s odd?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘So you’ve never seen a picture of any of them?’

  She hesitated. In fact, she had seen a picture of one of Jim’s brothers. It was in a newspaper of all places, years ago when she was about nine, and she had come downstairs one Friday morning and spotted a redtop lying open on the kitchen table. It only caught her attention because Liz didn’t usually allow tabloids in the house. BUST UP! the headline declared. Beneath the bold type was a small blurry picture of a man who looked a bit like Jim, and below that was a large clear picture of a topless woman and two paragraphs explaining that Ian Coyle had been sentenced to do time at Her Majesty’s Pleasure for his part in a fracas involving bars, booze and birds. Including the one in the picture who worked as a topless model for the Sun. Liz had pointed at the fuzzy image of the man. ‘That’s your uncle, in case anybody asks,’ Liz had said. As if they would. ‘Your other uncle is just as bad,’ she had added when she passed through again, fussing around, getting ready for work. Sam recounted the story to Tom through a spluttering of breadcrumbs. And as she did so, the picture of Jim’s crashed van on the front page of the Southern Advertiser appeared in her mind. Her stomach churned slightly, for no clearly discernible reason, except the vague sense that there was something of a repeat pattern here that she hadn’t noticed before.

  The snippet amused Tom. ‘So you come from a long line of bar-brawlers. I suppose that might explain why he doesn’t stay in touch with his relatives if half of them have got criminal records. But if it were my family I think I would just be open about it all. I can’t see the point of keeping secrets.’

  She licked a blob of mayonnaise from her finger. ‘All families have secrets. I’m just more aware of the secrets than most people. At least I know there are lots of things I don’t know about my dad.’

  Tom pulled his sceptical expression. It had been appearing with increasing frequency. The investigative journalist look, she decided. Question everything.

  She said, ‘Did you know that every time there’s a major plane crash they always find the body of at least one man whose partner had no idea he was on the flight?’

  He raised an eyebrow. ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘Jim.’

  He laughed and they slurped their coffee in amiable silence, watching Jim going about his business. She noticed him tilt his hand to check his watch on the inside of his wrist; she was about to point out the almost imperceptible action to Tom, tell him it was a sure sign of military training, when Jim turned towards the café window and beckoned them down. As if he had known all along they were watching him perform.

  They sat in the Cortina, waiting for the man in the fluorescent jacket to direct them on to the ferry. She put her foot on a black plastic bag lying next to the haversack on the floor under her seat, prodded it with her heel. It twitched. She emitted the first note of a scream, cut it abruptly when she caught sight of Jim smirking.

  ‘What’s in that bag?’ she demanded. ‘It moved.’

  ‘Crab. What did you think I was talking to the fishermen about?’

  She frowned. ‘Is it still alive?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Won’t it die if you leave it in that bag?’

  ‘Should be okay until we get to Orkney. I’ve put a damp cloth over it. That normally helps.’

  ‘Seafood paella,’ she suggested.

  ‘Nah,’ he said. ‘No point messing about with seafood. If it’s fresh, eat it straight. And if it isn’t fresh, don’t bother eating it.’

  She nodded slowly. The rear lights of the car in front glowed red and the line moved forwards.

  ‘Are you going to boil it alive?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That’s cruel.’

  ‘It doesn’t hurt.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  He huffed, exasperated, and steered the car towards the gaping mouth of the ferry.

  ‘Only a cop would claim it doesn’t hurt to be plunged in boiling water,’ she said.

  Jim gave her a filthy glare and she feared for a moment he was about to wallop her, but the man in the yellow jacket was gesticulating, making urgent turning signs in the air with his finger and he had to keep both hands on the wheel. They clanked over the metal flaps bridging the gap between harbour and ferry, a glimpse of roiling green sea churned by propellers below.

  ‘If you have to be a smart-arse,’ he said, ‘I’d try not to do it while you’re sitting next to open water.’

  She peered down at the narrow boarding bridge. ‘You’re closer to the edge than me.’

  ‘Possibly. But I’m professionally trained. I’m prepared to deal with the consequences of my smart-arsery and I’m not sure you are.’

  She shrugged and, as she did so, some instinct, a bristle, made her look back. She glimpsed a movement in the furthest edge of her vision; a dim blur advancing across the headland. A car? Or was it just the shadow of a scudding cloud? She craned her neck, trying to get a better view. But it was too late; the Cortina was swallowed down into the cavernous belly of the St Ola, engulfed by the miasma of engine oil and darkness.

  7

  Stromness filled the view, the gable ends of sombre houses hiding their faces from the wind. The Cortina breached the peace as Jim rolled off the ferry, steered around the quayside, through the narrow streets and out into the farmland beyond. Sam was surprised by how much was familiar, how easily she could navigate the green and grey contours without conscious effort. Past and present, living and dead, woven together in fields and hills; ghosts of summer holidays past playing among the standing stones, whalebone arches, burial mounds. Around every bend, the sea appeared. She licked the salt from her lips, stole a sideways peek at Jim and wondered whether he was happy to be revisiting old haunts. His mouth was set in a grim slash across his face, his eyes fixed on the road. She checked the wing mirror; the road stretched away behind emptily to the straggling edges of Stromness. The backward glance; it was becoming a bit of a nervous tic.

  They found Nethergate halfway up a hill behind Tirlsay, a crofter’s dwelling long and low, perpendicular to the road. It exuded melancholia, a sense of abandonment. Although, as they stood in the gravel courtyard waiting for Jim to locate the keys, she noticed small sig
ns of life everywhere: a manky donkey looking sorry for itself in the thistle-filled meadow behind the croft; a sleek black cat patrolling the garden perimeter; a dumpy bird with a black executioner’s hood glaring malevolently from its rooftop perch. The bird cawed as Jim returned, waving the key he had retrieved from one of the outhouses clustered at the far side of the courtyard.

  ‘Hooded crow,’ he said. ‘You have to be careful here. There are eyes everywhere. Corvids: rooks, crows, ravens. Intelligent birds. But a bit mischievous. Not to be trusted.’

  Jim grinned and the crow cocked its head on one side, as if it were taking the measure of him.

  She asked, ‘Who owns the cottage?’

  ‘Bill.’

  ‘Who is Bill?’

  ‘Don’t think you ever met him. He only moved up here a couple of years ago. He used to be a policeman. Uniform. Sergeant.’

  Of course.

  ‘This is his grandmother’s cottage. He inherited it when she died and decided to give up policing, move here, see if he could scrape a living as a smallholder. Then he decided to buy another place over by Stromness. Flatter. More usable land. Kept this place on as a holiday let. Luckily for us, he doesn’t get much business before the start of the school holidays.’

  ‘So you know him from the police.’ she said.

  Jim paused. ‘He comes from Glasgow. I went to school with him.’ He glanced up at the crow before walking briskly towards the croft, leaving her standing open-mouthed, gobsmacked by his straightforward divulgence about a person from his past.

  They followed him into the cramped galley kitchen. Jim opened the window to let in fresh air; the donkey’s snout appeared, snuffling hopefully. He offered it one of the apples they had purchased at a corner shop on their way over. It crunched in time to the insistent ticking of a wall clock.

  ‘God, that’s really irritating,’ she said.

  ‘What?’ said Jim.

  ‘That clock. Ticking.’

  ‘Doesn’t bother me. I’ve made my peace with the passing of time.’

  He pushed open the door leading off from the kitchen and assessed the adjacent bedroom.

  ‘I’d better take this room then. You two can have the far end.’

  Up three concrete steps to a homely sitting room: fraying forest-green cord sofa, two mismatching armchairs with crocheted antimacassars. She picked up the handset of the dirty cream Bakelite telephone sitting on a nest of side-tables. No dial tone on the line; incoming calls only. The shelves on one side of the chimneybreast held the usual holiday cottage odds and sods: a couple of board games, a row of read and discarded paperbacks, a pile of well-thumbed copies of the Reader’s Digest and something more unusual – an ivory whale’s tooth, finely etched with a three-mast ship sailing towards a sea-serpent rearing up from the water.

  ‘Scrimshaw,’ said Tom, peering over her shoulder.

  She nodded, edged away, sliding along the tiled edge of the hearth to get a closer view of the print hanging above the mantelpiece. It looked like an illustration from a children’s book, Grimm’s Fairy Tales perhaps. It had that sinister edge: a shadowy streak of horses, hounds and birds chasing across an indigo night sky – a phantom hunt led by a cloaked rider, brimmed hat shielding his face, horn in hand. The image seemed out of place among the conservative homeliness of the rest of the room, a reminder of stormy nights pressing in, the wildness of the wind. She checked Tom; he was examining the reading matter. She backed quietly out of the room, through a short hallway with a door that opened on to the garden. She claimed the dim gable-end room with its one front-facing window, a moth-eaten candlewick-covered bed and a tatty wardrobe. A small mirror hung at an awkward height on one of its doors. She stood on her toes to look at her face, saw her khaki eye staring back at her unblinkingly and, behind her, another mirror on the wall. She shifted position slightly until she found the spot from which she could see a line of faces, reflections of her eye watching into infinity.

  Squatting, knees up by her armpits, in a dark, wind-free corner of the furthest barn, next to a rusty Qualcast lawnmower, she fumbled with a couple of Rizlas, licked the glue strips, pressed them together, ripped open the white stomach of a Silk Cut and disembowelled its contents on to the carefully crafted paper shroud. Balancing her efforts in the palm of one hand, she dug around in her overcoat pocket with the other, pulled out the matchbox and removed the cling film wrapped resinous lump.

  Tom screwed his nose as she heated and crumbled. ‘Whacky backy. Won’t Jim smell it?’

  ‘No. And even if he did, he wouldn’t care. It’s only a bit of dope.’ She struck another Swan Vesta, held it under her hash.

  ‘Does he ever actually arrest anybody for anything?’

  She looked up. ‘Ow, shit.’ The acrid tang of burned skin momentarily filled the air.

  ‘You should be more careful with your drug habits,’ Tom said.

  She blinked in the surreal pink light as they returned outside, lay on her back on the coarse grass of the lawn, searching for the last warmth of the evening sun, extremities tingling. She was sinking into the earth. She was atoms, dust, sediment, sandwiched between sky and sea, nothing more than a thin layer of history. Tom lifted his binoculars and focused over the stunted rose bushes at the panoramic sweep of the Bay of Firth beyond. The mournful notes of a bird’s song drifted through the air.

  ‘Curlew,’ said Sam.

  ‘You’re good on wildlife. That’s why you always win Trivial Pursuit, because you can do the green questions,’ he said. Accusingly.

  ‘Knowledge of science and nature is not normally considered a form of cheating.’

  ‘Where did you learn all that stuff anyway?’

  She was going to tell him that Darwin had been her first crush, filled her with a lifelong desire, compulsion, to classify the flora and fauna around her. She had collected beetles when she was younger; asphyxiated them in a jam jar with torn-up laurel leaves, their corpses kept in a neatly labelled matchbox morgue. She decided against giving him that bit of information.

  ‘Jim used to tell me the names of the birds when we were here every year for our summer holiday. He loves nature, wildlife. He’s an instinctive environmentalist. I reckon it’s something to do with his Jesuit education. He’s been taught to appreciate the order and beauty in all things; he sees the spiritual in nature, he looks beyond the physical reality. I sometimes think that’s what makes him a good cop. He sees the shadows and the ghosts.’

  Tom snorted derisively. ‘Is there anything to look at here other than birds?’ he asked.

  ‘You could see if there’s anything going on in Tirlsay.’

  He swung the bins in the direction of the village, nestling in a coastal dip.

  ‘There’s absolutely nothing happening. Oh, hang on. I’m wrong. Someone’s just got out of a silver Merc and walked into the post office.’

  She tried to lever her head up without moving her body from its comfortable horizontal position, decided it was not worth the effort and lay back on her grass mattress again.

  ‘Does it get dark here at midsummer?’ he asked.

  ‘Not really. The sun sets at ten, but it doesn’t drop very far below the horizon. There are about six hours of crimson before it reappears. Like a drawn-out sunset. Eternal twilight.’

  ‘So you can see clearly all night.’

  ‘Well, I remember people playing golf at midnight on midsummer’s day, but I think it’s harder to see clearly in the half-light than in the dark. Eyes can adapt to the dark. In the twilight it’s like trying to watch television with a broken aerial; nothing is clear.’

  She glanced back at the magenta cloudland building behind the darkening purple hills.

  ‘Still, it’s very pretty.’

  The clank of pans spilled out through the open kitchen door into the evening air; the gushing of a tap, Jim filling a pot with water.

  ‘Dad, will you shut the door,’ she yelled. ‘I don’t want to hear the crab scream.’

  ‘That’s a
bloody old wives’ tale, you big eejit,’ he shouted back. ‘Of course they don’t scream.’

  There was a pause in the pot bashing. A click. The twang of an acoustic guitar wafted around the courtyard – a lament for the lost bones of Tom Paine. Jim’s favourite folk song. Hers too.

  ‘Folk music? He likes folk music?’ Tom asked.

  She nodded.

  ‘Don’t you think it’s a bit funny?’

  ‘What? The song?’

  ‘No. I didn’t mean the song. I meant, don’t you think it’s funny that an undercover cop likes listening to lefty folk music?’

  ‘Oh. No. Not really. Maybe I’m just used to it.’

  She was more than used to it; she was inured to it. She’d had to put up with years of the playground taunts, the snotty-nosed looks from the stockbrokers’ kids. ‘My mum says your dad is a dirty hippy. So I can’t come round to play at your house.’ And all she could do was shrug her shoulders and say so what with carefully practised indifference. Always covering for Jim. She gazed down the hill at the shifting light on the bay below, casting dark shadows among the waves like bobbing seals’ heads. Or maybe they actually were seals’ heads, it was hard to tell in the dusk. A thin scream emanated from the kitchen.

  ‘Did you hear that?’ she asked. ‘That must be the crab.’

  ‘It was the tape. Why do folk singers have to wail like that? They always sound as if they are suffering from indigestion. Which bit of the Force did you say he worked for anyway?’

  ‘I didn’t.’

  He focused the binoculars on her. She raised her arm in front of her face to avoid his scrutiny, heaved herself half up and crawled over to the scrubby roses. She scrabbled around among the thorny stalks, examining the sandstone rocks that marked the bed’s border and identified a flat-bottomed stone that satisfied her requirements, lifted it, brushed away the millipedes, lugged it over to the centre of the lawn and attempted to balance it upright. It remained standing. She identified another, carried it over, placed it carefully next to the first and sat back on her heels to admire her handiwork.