When Seth awoke, he looked to see if Talissa was still there. She was asleep, turned away from him. It was cold, and he wanted to drape the sweater over her shoulders, but she was using it as a pillow.
The sun was bright but still low, striking a dim pathway over the sea. He guessed it was about six o’clock, and the best thing he could do was fetch some water from the stream. He had slept well and felt no stiffness as he climbed the bank to the peaty grass behind.
In the bothy was a bucket, which he took to where the stream trickled out of the hillside. He could dig a hole in the stony bed later to get the bucket in at less of an angle. There was an old pan in the chimney and he managed to coax the fire back to life, blowing on the peat embers, feeding in some dry pine needles, then sticks. Very slowly, the water began to heat up.
Talissa was at the door, smiling. ‘I thought you’d left.’
‘No. I’m making tea.’
‘I’m going to wash in the stream.’
With the tea, when the water had finally boiled, they ate some biscuits.
‘We need more eggs,’ said Talissa.
‘Maybe I’ll find a gulls’ nest,’ said Seth. ‘We have to explore.’
‘Be careful. Gulls are savage, aren’t they? We can last till Brodie comes back.’
Afterwards, they climbed the hill to survey the island. Their sheltered beach was on the north-east, and further down the same side was a wooded area – a few wind-whipped larches at any rate – then open ground that seemed as if it could once have been cultivated for oats or root crops, supposing the Celt or Norse farmers had known how. The west of the island, where they’d docked, looked barren in the Atlantic gales.
Talissa began to laugh. ‘It’s so wonderful. To be alone.’
‘Finally.’ Seth put his face towards the wind.
For a few minutes they stood in silence, till Seth pointed. ‘Let’s look down there.’
‘What are we looking for?’
‘Eggs, rabbits. I don’t know.’
‘You go. Be careful. I’ll see you back at the bothy.’
Seth went alone towards the southern headland, a place between the bleak and the habitable. Past the remains of a drystone wall, he noticed that the ground was marked with hoof prints. The wind veered and began to blow hard in his face. A shower stung his eyes, and he crouched down behind a boulder, knowing how quickly it might pass. As it eased, he emerged to find an animal gazing down at him from above. He recoiled for a moment, but saw that it was just a cow. It held his gaze and snorted.
The rain began again, but harder, and Seth pressed back against the boulder. The cow came and stood beside him. He crawled under its belly, smelling its hot, wet flanks until the rain stopped again. Then he stood up and continued to walk towards some open grass, where there was a herd, perhaps thirty of the creatures, with shaggy red coats, bulls with dangling testes and half-grown calves among the females, of which only two had milk. These were not the creatures who’d once fed burger chains and dairies, but something closer to their Neolithic ancestors. They’d gone backwards in time. He watched them from a distance as he went on towards the sea.
When he had put the cattle from his mind and was coming close to the water, he sensed something strange. And then, as he rounded a corner, he saw it – pulled up and secured by a chain to a solitary tree above the rocky shore, a rowing boat. When he got near, he saw it was made of some rugged compound, with wooden oars lying on the deck. He felt affronted by its presence – by the thought that other humans had been to this remote point of his island. Presumably it belonged to the people who came to cull the deer. He turned to go back to the bothy.
The wind was getting up again and the noise of seabirds began to oppress him. He wished he’d paid more attention as a child when Alaric had talked to him about different species on their holidays. He was fairly sure that the shrieking came from an oystercatcher. The only consolation he could take was that if there were oystercatchers then there might be oysters, too. He could search among the rocks. First, he’d build a shelter on the beach so that if it rained at night they could still sleep out with the stars and the moon above them.
He felt an urge to look after Talissa. Although she was far from home and seemed unsure of what to do, she was his lifeline. He needed her. She understood who he was, accepted him and asked no questions. She loved him, obviously.
But that was what frightened him. How was he meant to respond to the depth of her feeling? It was not that he was unmoved by her. Her skin was beautiful to him, as was the deep brown of her eyes and her swift physical movements. He was drawn to the fragile certainty of her manner – the sense she gave of knowing what was hers by right while having access to it only sometimes, and by chance. But he would never be able to satisfy the alien hunger that he sensed in her.
In the evening, when they ate dinner inside, he told her about the cattle.
‘I suppose they’re feral,’ she said. ‘Domestic animals no longer being shaped by humans. They can rediscover some genes that have been dormant for hundreds of generations. But they can’t go back to being wild aurochsen. It’s too late. We’ve changed them.’
‘Do you know this from your work?’
‘I don’t know that much about genetics, to be honest. But I do know some Germans early in the last century thought they could recreate the original cows, which were these huge aurochs things. I think they were Nazis. The scientists, I mean.’
Neither of them spoke for a while.
‘Are you going to sleep on the beach again?’ said Seth eventually.
‘Yes. It looks dry.’
‘Tomorrow I’ll try to build a shelter so you won’t get wet.’
‘What with?’
‘I suppose … with …’
‘Animal hides? On sharpened poles? A palisade?’
‘Whatever comes to hand.’
Talissa laughed. ‘Have some whisky.’
He went and fetched a bottle from the shelf. Talissa lit some candles and let a few drops of wax drip onto the table so she could anchor them.
‘Do you like it here?’ she said.
‘Yes. I feel free. I feel I can be myself. And nothing matters.’
‘Will it take a long time? To work out who you are and what to do?’
‘I don’t know. I might need to come and live here for a time. A year or more. Put a bed in. Bring some hens. And beer.’
‘Could I come too?’
‘What about your job?’
‘They owe me a sabbatical. And my freshman course is already taught by AI.’
‘Really?’
‘Can I try some whisky?’ said Talissa. ‘Boy, that’s fierce. Tell me, what do you really want?’
‘Well …’ Seth looked up for a moment, to the roof of the shelter, then back to Talissa’s worried face. ‘I can tell you what I don’t want. I don’t want my whole life to be about who or what created me. I don’t want my life to be all about who my parents and their parents were. Where they came from and what that makes me.’
‘I understand.’
‘I’m a man. Can’t we leave it at that?’
‘I can. But what would you like your life to be about instead?’
‘Bridges and engineering. Work.’ He smiled. ‘The manufacture of concrete generates huge carbon emissions, but we’ve discovered a process that consumes more than it emits. It’s what they call carbonederous.’
‘That sounds exciting. And what else?’
‘Horses. Privacy. Just seeing how my life turns out. How my story goes.’
Talissa said nothing.
‘What about you?’ said Seth.
‘Oh, pretty much the same. But for the bridges, read anthropology. Thinking about who we are and how we got here. The how, and the how strange.’
There was another silence, in which they could hear the wind.
‘Not horses, then,’ said Seth, to break the quiet.
‘Maybe I could learn to love them too.’
‘I don’t suppose you’ve had to spend all your life being fixated on where your family came from. You could always just be an American.’
Talissa smiled. ‘Yeah. I’m American OK. My four grandparents came from three different continents. But the way you are … There’s always someone who won’t like it.’
‘Aren’t all Americans like you? From all over?’
‘Some more than others. But I can’t complain. I might have had Iraqi parents. Or Russian. Or from somewhere even more despised.’
‘Shall we go down to the beach while it’s still light? So we can see the way.’
‘All right. I’m going to bring another sweater.’
They sat against the rocks behind their sleeping place. The sun had set on the other side of the island, but in the moonlight they could still make out where the sea was turning back on itself, slack and restless on the black stones.
‘Do you know how old these rocks are?’ said Talissa.
‘No.’
‘About three hundred and fifty million years, I’d say. That’s roughly when the plates beneath the earth collided and forced up the mountains. This kind of rock’s called gneiss.’
‘Niece?’
She spelled it for him.
‘Are you all right?’ said Seth. ‘You seem …’
‘I’m fine. You mentioning your parents made me think about mine.’
‘Do you remember your father?’
‘Not very well. I remember a kind of … attitude more than a man. Of kindness and routine. Of doing things his way. He did love me. I do know that, thank God. I haven’t had to carry that doubt. He was … amused by me. I made him laugh. But his death was hard to take in at that age. For years I dreamed he was alive and we were going off to do normal things as a family. Every week I’d have these dreams. Then one day, maybe five years after he died, I had to break it to him that he was in fact dead. It was so hard to do.’
Talissa felt her throat closing down on a buried feeling that was trying to escape, trapping the air in her lungs till it exploded in a sob. Through her clouded eyes, the rocks and hills, the caves and the sea seemed to break into black fragments, millions of years old, shattering into some dust in the stars above them. She closed her eyes and Seth held her in his arms.
When the spasms had subsided, she moved away a little and began to breathe evenly.
Seth said, ‘What’s it like to dream?’
Talissa stood up and looked at him, dry-eyed.
‘Do you mean … that dream? My dream? It was …’
‘No. Any dream. I’ve never had one.’
When Talissa woke in the morning, she looked over the calm sea. She was alone. She levered herself up from the sand and walked back to the bothy, where Seth was making tea. The wind had dropped and the sun was already hot.
It was hard to understand the turmoil she had felt the night before. It had been replaced by a feeling of serenity, as if nothing could touch her now. She was in a place beyond pain.
When they had had breakfast of more tea and some cake from a packet, Seth said he was going to swim. ‘Or paddle, anyway. Get myself wet. I’m too hot.’
They walked back to their beach and he took off his clothes.
‘Are you going to come in?’ he said.
She hesitated.
‘Are you embarrassed?’
‘I don’t think I know how to be,’ said Talissa. ‘Not any more.’
She pulled off her dress and underwear and they walked down to the water together. There were seals in the shallow water and, a little way off, a pair of them lumbering onto the beach. For all the heat of the sun, the sea was colder than she’d expected and they went in gradually, stopping when it was waist-high. He seemed unsure if he was allowed to look at her breasts and their dark circles just above the waves. She leant over and kissed him.
When they were starting to grow cold, they went back and lay down on the sand. The sun dried them quickly and Talissa lay with her head on Seth’s shoulder. The back of her hand brushed against him, where he was aroused.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said.
‘It’s all right. What would you like to do?’ she said.
He looked troubled, as if trying to guess what she wanted.
‘To kiss you here,’ he said, touching her. ‘Would you turn round?’
She knelt and let him spread her flesh apart with his thumbs. The movement of his tongue reduced her to a single point of longing. It went on till it seemed this sense of dying was all she’d ever wanted. She crawled away, breathing hard, and turned round. ‘Will you stand up?’ she said.
She knelt and used her tongue in turn, then stopped and looked up at him. ‘These,’ she said. ‘They remind me of the pods on a sycamore.’ She smiled. ‘But heavy.’
She thought of the mixed seeds they carried, the weight in her palm. She said, ‘If you want to, you can …’
‘Not if you don’t—’
‘I want you to. But don’t finish. Stop just before.’
She knelt down on the sand again and he did as he was told. It was not long before he began to gasp. ‘I think it’s nearly …’ Talissa moved away, stood up and took him in her hand.
When it was done, they looked down at the sand and the piece of rock where the first spurt had landed.
‘So,’ said Talissa. ‘And after all that …’
‘I know.’
They stared at the pools of sticky, mundane fluid heating in the sun.
‘It’s just like … It’s the same as …’
‘What did you expect, Talissa?’
The next day was equally hot and they wore no clothes. Although they made love again, it didn’t cure or sate Talissa’s longing. It didn’t seem enough.
They walked towards the wooded side of the island, through grass and camomile and buttercups. At a sheltered part of the hill, they sat down and looked over the sea.
‘I wish we had wine,’ said Seth.
Talissa laughed. ‘Water’s all we need. Here.’ She’d filled an empty whisky bottle at the stream.
He stroked the back of her hand, then turned it over and admired the colours of her skin.
‘Do you love me?’ he said.
‘Oh yes,’ said Talissa. ‘But much more than love. Alas.’
Seth looked puzzled. ‘I thought that was the best that we could feel.’
‘So did I. Till I met you.’
‘And now what do you think?’
‘When I look at you, or touch your face, like this … I feel beyond myself. As if every atom of my body was in yours. I feel you are me. You are more me than I am.’
Seth stroked her hand again. ‘And does that make you happy?’
‘No. The weight of being you is more than I can bear.’
‘You mustn’t say that.’
‘All my life force, every nerve, is on fire with pity for you. For us. Me too. For all of us for having to be alive. And die.’
That night, it became cooler and the clouds lowered. They ate the best things they could find among the tins on the shelf. Seth persuaded Talissa to drink some whisky with him, diluted with water from the stream.
‘What’s that noise?’ said Seth.
‘I can’t hear anything.’
They went outside, and a minute later she heard the nervous thud of a helicopter.
‘Do you think they’ve come to rescue us?’ said Talissa. ‘Maybe Brodie knows the weather’s turning and he’s had to get help.’
Seth looked up into the clouds. ‘If it was an air-sea rescue thing it would be marked, wouldn’t it?’
‘Yes. A logo saying Scottish Coastguard or something.’
‘This one isn’t marked. I’m going to put out the fire so there’s no smoke for them to see.’
‘Good idea.’
‘It’s starting to rain,’ said Seth, once they were inside. ‘At least that’ll make it harder for them to make out anything.’
‘Who do you think it is?’ There was a note of panic in Talissa’s voice.
‘Press. Galatia. Maybe even scientists. Or those Vector people.’
‘It’ll be all right, Seth.’ Now she was pleading. ‘You must believe me. We can find a way to outflank them. To manoeuvre our way. If not here, then at home next week we can make a plan to get through this together.’
‘I don’t understand.’
After a few minutes, Seth went out again. The helicopter had gone. Either it had done what it wanted or had been frustrated by the low cloud. In its place he could sense the presence of numerous small drones.
Seth turned his face up into the rain and let the water run down over his neck and shoulders. He had made up his mind.
They put on some clothes and slept close together, entwined in the straw of the wooden bed.
When Talissa awoke the next morning, she was alone. Something made her think that this time he was not coming back. On the table was a pencil note that said, ‘Thank you for loving me. Please thank my parents too. S’.
He must be on the island somewhere. Unless he’d somehow made a deal with the helicopter people. Talissa dressed and drank some tea, trying to stay calm. It had stopped raining when she went to the stream to brush her teeth, but the cloud was still low.
First, she climbed to the top of the hill so she could survey the island in the small hope that she would spot him. She walked for hours, till the sun was high. It was late in the afternoon when she approached the southern headland. Past the remains of a drystone wall, she noticed that the ground was marked not just with hoof prints but by human feet. A few minutes later, she came across a herd of wild cattle. She remembered Brodie’s warning as well as Seth’s description as she pressed on towards the sea.
The footprints petered out a few yards short of the water. She looked around and called his name. Her voice was drowned by the screech of birds.
She saw a chain on the ground. One end was attached to a solitary tree above the rocky shore, the other end was free.
The birds were circling in a frenzy above her head. Why did they hate her so much? They mustered like airborne troops, peeling off in ones and twos and diving down towards her where she stood, calling his name. The flap of wings and screeching drove her back.
In the bothy, she drank and drank, until the whisky was finished. She lay down on the straw and felt the world spin about her head.
She was awoken by a hammering on the door. Pushing back her hair, unsteady on her legs, she went to open it.
‘I’ve come to take you back.’ It was the boatman in his yellow jacket. It was early morning.
‘I thought we had more time.’
‘Yes, but the port’s crawling with people. One of them tried to get me to bring him over here. Some American folk, too. I think they’re chartering a helicopter. Where’s the young laddie?’
As well as she could, Talissa explained what had happened.
‘I can get a signal on the hill,’ said Brodie. ‘I’ll call for help. But we only have a short time to catch the tide. Get your things together.’
An hour later, she sat crouched in the stern as the boat ploughed on with a will of its own.
Brodie put his mouth to her ear. ‘The rescue team are on the way. They’re the best in the islands. They’ll find him.’
She wrapped her arms round her knees.
Next day, a ferry took her back to the mainland. No dolphins escorted them, though she could smell the black pudding from the galley. She looked through the window at the blue vertebrae of island rocks heaving through the seas. From the dock, she told the rental car to take her to an airport.
One day, many hundreds of years into the future, on a beach in a remote Scottish island, two observant youngsters might see a bone and have their curiosity aroused. A genome test would say that this was a hybrid human and the definitive twenty-first-century date would send the world into a spin, upending all previous beliefs about interbreeding and extinction. Some would claim it was a new species and would go to look for others in the sediment and in the caves. No one would have heard of Seth.
What she felt for him had registered on her nerves and in her mind, making her think that the feeling was hers. But it was his existence she had experienced, not her response to it. It no more belonged to her than a tree belonged to the silvered glass of a mirror that reflected it. And he – was he cursed or blessed, she couldn’t say – was not able, in return, to feel her compassion and despair.
In the car, she calculated she could be in London that night. When Seth had told her that he didn’t dream, perhaps he meant only that, like Pelham, he didn’t remember his dreams. And in the end that came to the same thing. She’d spend one night in London, she thought, talk to Kavya, then be in New York the next day. There she could see Susan, her friend. She could connect with some colleagues and students and with what seemed to be her life. She’d call Mark, maybe, check in on Felix and her still-living mother. In the evening she would sit on the couch with Pelham, lame now, feel his head on her shoulder, hold his aching ribcage in her arm, and think about the thousands of years in which their forebears had come to rely on one another, one with speed and one with spears, sharing the kill that came from it, till reliance had mutated into love.
She believed that Seth was in a better place by being dead. His life would not have been tolerable and her own burning pity could now sleep. She thought of Kavya telling her about Sanjiv, the child she’d loved, and how he no longer existed. And Kavya had been stoical about the fact. Love passed, lives ended; and if you thought that only what was permanent had value, you were lost.
When she was back home she would tell no one, not even Susan, about her feelings for Seth or about their time on the island. There were no words for such things. They would remain between the two of them, so private as barely to exist.
In the bothy, the day before, Seth had sensed the dawn coming when he climbed from the straw.
He looked down at Talissa, breathing evenly. When he saw the rise of her chest, the black eyelashes on her cheek and heard in his mind her low voice speaking, he felt the beginnings of a new emotion in his belly. It was a hard and frightening thing, however, something that might crush him. He strode towards the door.
It grated on the stone as he pulled at it. Looking back into the room, he had a moment’s remorse. He scribbled on a piece of paper on the table, then went out into the morning.
Past the broken stone wall he pressed on, walking swiftly, not weighed down by doubt. The red cattle were nowhere to be seen, but he remembered his course easily enough. He found the rowing boat, unhooked the chain and dragged it over the shingle to the sand.
He had never rowed before, but he didn’t think it could be hard. To go backwards was the thing, that much he knew. When the water was up to his knees, he climbed in, put the oars through the rowlocks and began. It took a few minutes of splashing before he was able to make the boat move steadily away from the island. As he left the shelter of the cove, the waves began to mount. But by then he had a rhythm and could force the boat onward through the swell.
When he felt he was far enough away, a hundred yards or so, he pulled the oars in. Drowning, he’d once read, was not as bad as you might think. Apparently you fainted or your heart failed before you swallowed all that water.
Seth lowered himself over the side, then with both feet kicked the boat as hard as he could towards the shore. He splashed as he sank and for a moment the saltwater buoyed him up. Then he went under, feeling the sea at first cold on his scalp, then warmer as it claimed him.