Stormy Petrel

I slept later than usual next morning, and woke to see half past nine on my bedside clock, and a cascade of raindrops chasing each other down the window. By the time I had had breakfast and done the morning’s chores it was after eleven and, though the rain was letting up, it was still wet enough to keep anyone indoors who didn’t have to go out.

I decided that I didn’t have to go out. It was not a hard decision to take. Rationalised, it meant that Neil already knew enough about Ewen Mackay’s record, and of course he was already on the watch for any more suspicious moves. If he, Neil, was content to leave the house unwatched by day, and to spend his time looking at rocks on the broch island, then I could stay indoors with a clear conscience, and wait for the rainstorm to pass.

I got back to work, by which I mean that I got my papers and notes out, and then sat looking at them for what seemed like a dreary lifetime, and was really probably only twenty minutes. The words I had written – and had almost, in the interval, forgotten – mocked me and were meaningless. My notes told me what was to happen next, but my brain no longer knew how to move plot and people forward. Block. Complete block. I sat and stared at the paper in front of me and tried to blank out the present and get back into my story – forward, that is, into my invented future, and out of the world of queries and vague apprehensions.

From experience, I knew what to do. Write. Write anything. Bad sentences, meaningless sentences, anything to get the mind fixed again to that sheet of paper and oblivious of the ‘real’ world. Write until the words begin to make sense, the cogs mesh, the wheels start to turn, the creaking movement quickens and becomes a smooth, oiled run, and then, with luck, exhaustion will be forgotten, and the real writing will begin. But look up once from that paper, get up from the table to make coffee or stir the fire, even just raise your head to look at the view outside the window, and you may as well give up until tomorrow. Or for ever.

I wrote. A year or so later, or it may have been an hour, I crumpled up four sheets of paper and threw them to the floor, and started another, and I was there. And in another light-year or two I was through the word-barrier, and the book had suddenly reached the stage – the wonderful moment to get to – where I could walk right into my imaginary country and see things that I had not consciously created, and listen to people talking and watch them moving, all apparently independent of me.

It was half past two by my watch when I reached the Hamilton house. I went to the back door – still fast shut – and knocked. The sound echoed through the silence with that hollow, unmistakably empty noise. Perhaps he was working on the island again. I made my way round the house and crossed the mossy terrace to look in through the drawing-room window. Nobody there, of course. It looked just the same. If he was really living in the house he must be taking pains to leave no signs of his occupancy. Somehow the knowledge irked me. He had been right, I thought; in spite of what the girls and Mrs McDougall had told me, the whole idea of a ‘mystery’ was, in this place, wrong and irritating. Whatever Ewen Mackay was up to, it could really hardly matter. Must not be allowed to matter. He no longer belonged here. Had never belonged. He was the changeling of the classic tale, thrust on good people, who was to repay good with evil. The hints he had thrown out, that he was connected in some illegitimate way with the Hamilton family, could be dismissed as a typical lie told to impress, another Cape Horn. I wondered what his real origins were, and if there really was such a thing as original sin, people born evil. It was fashionable not to think so, but there were people of whom it had to be believed. For instance—

The boathouse was empty again, its sea-doors fastened back. I walked to the end of the pier and looked across at the island. There was no sign of life except the birds, and Neil’s tent was again fastened shut. I glanced at my watch. The tide was still falling, and should be safe for another three hours or so. I went across.

I climbed the slope to the hollow where Neil’s tent was pitched. There was no sign of him there. I stood still, listening. No sound of a hammer. There were gulls flying and calling, but I had not disturbed the main colony, and I thought that I would have heard if he had been working below the cliffs at the north-west point. I gave it a couple of minutes, then made for the broch and the steps up to the landing where the girls had gone yesterday.

The steps looked fragile; transverse slabs of stone with one end built into the dry-stone structure of the curving wall, and jutting into the air with no other support. But they were solid, and led safely up to the ruined top of the wall where another, larger slab made a good viewpoint. From here I found, as I had hoped, that I could see down to the shore at the point where Neil had told me he wanted to work. If he had been close to the cliff I would not have been able to see him, but I could see the whole section of shoreline, and there was no boat there. Short of clambering down there myself I could be no surer, and there was no real need for that. More rationalisation. I made my way carefully down the staircase, intending to sit in the sun at the foot of the wall and drink my tea, but the breeze could find no way there, and the strange, musky smell from the wall where those plants grew was stronger than ever. Besides, the midges were out. I left the broch and walked uphill as far as I could without disturbing the bird colony, then made my way towards the southern end of the island, where the land sloped gradually down to the sea in long, flat terraces of rock. I found a niche where a small landslide had left a level lawn with a backing of turf, and where the breeze still moved enough to allay the midges, and sat down to my picnic.

The silence – for the sound of birds and sea adds up to silence as beautifully as we ever know it in the noisy world of today – together with the sweetly moving air, and the scents of thyme and bell heather and sun-warmed bracken, all combined to distil something very potent. It was the sort of time and place where one might have expected an idea, the spring of a poem to well up from the quiet and the beauty. But sheer sensation – the warmth of the sun, the scent of the air, the mundane pleasure of tea and biscuits – simple well-being possessed me so that I could only feel, not think. A look at the sea below me told me that the tide was still low, though presumably it had begun to turn. A glance at my watch showed that it was still only ten past five. I leaned back again, shut my eyes, and let the sun have its way.

Gradually, as the breeze moved and eddied, I became conscious of a strange, soft sound that was filling the air. It was like the sound of the sea, but it was not the sea. It was like the wind, but was not the wind. It was as if sea and wind together were singing a lament, mourning with a not quite human voice, the voice of water echoing in a sea-cave, weird, unearthly.

The wonderful thing about literature is that great poetry can chime in on any thought or experience. As Donne’s line rang in my head I placed the sound. Something Neil had told me about the island. This was Eilean na Roin, the Island of the Seals, and the grey seals came ashore here to breed and to bask. And now, perhaps, with the evening tide coming in, the seals had come with it, and were singing.

It is no wonder that, hearing that uncanny sound coming out of the mist, the old sailors ascribed it to mermaids or sirens or strange creatures of the deep. It is almost music, almost a human sound, but never quite. It is as if a wind instrument, soulless in itself, were being played through warm and breathing tissues instead of through wood or metal. And it is magical, compelling wonder. For me, it was the peak of a perfect day. I had done some good writing, and I had heard mermaids singing.

Very slowly, and keeping down below the seals’ horizon, I crept forward towards the sound of singing. At last I gained the crest of a rise, and there below me stretched the sloping flat rocks, and yes, the mermaids were there, their fur dry in the sun, their bodies slack and contented, their eyes closed, enjoying the afternoon, exactly as I had done myself. A fat, grey mermaid, waving her flippers gently, turned on her back to show a pale, spotted stomach. Another came heaving out of the sea and flopped to where her calf lay, and, delightfully, the baby nuzzled in to suck. Not very far from me another baby lay, apparently full fed and contented. It saw me, and the big eyes stared with mild curiosity, but without fear. This was Eilean na Roin, and I was only a passerby.

I held the watch to my ear – it was battery-run, but a faint tick could normally be heard. No sound. And now that I thought about it, I had vaguely wondered at the ‘good time’ I had made on my walk from the cottage, and at the leisurely stretch of time I had had on the island. Had I even left my cottage at two o’clock? My watch must have been gradually slowing to a stop all day.

I stood hesitating. I could probably still have got across, but as I have said, the stones of the causeway were thick with seaweed, and treacherous even when exposed. And though I can swim pretty well, the swirl of the tide was fierce, and looked dangerous; and besides, I had no desire to swim.

I had a few moments of fury, a fury compounded of shame at my own stupidity, the triteness of the situation, the thought of my cottage and supper and the cosy fireside. Then the fury faded. Other pictures took the place of these; Neil’s tent, not far up the brae, and the possibility not only, at worst, of having its shelter for the night, but of my seeing from that vantage point when Neil came back with his boat. If so, and if I could attract his attention, he would surely bring the boat over for me.

I trudged up to the campsite again, to find that there was no need even to look for driftwood for a fire. Inside that stout little tent was a very efficient camping-gas burner, complete with kettle, billycan, matches, tea bags and powdered milk. And investigating Neil’s stores I found baked beans, sardines, a couple of small tins of ham, and some crispbread. Like the Swiss Family Robinson, I had very little to complain about. There was also, of course, a good sleeping-bag. I only hoped, as the sun sank lower and the breeze grew cool, that I was not going to be obliged to use it.

As dusk drew in, the air emptied of birds, and gradually they, too, fell silent. Only the tide, full and flowing, filled the half-light of the Highland night with its cold sound. I could no longer distinguish the house, and even the boathouse, much nearer, was lost in the shadows. But no boat came in.