Call of the Undertow (22 page)

Out of nowhere a yearning swooped inside her. A yearning for a winter here, for an exchange of birds, some shoaling south and others arriving from the north. She would have welcomed the change.
Long shadows. The scent of ice just to the north. The wood-burning stove would have roared through long nights. Fragments of stone, bone, shell would gather with

feathers on the hearth. She’d hang pictures on the wall. It would be a growing life, weighted to anchor her properly here. Quite a different kind of weight to the one she’d been
dragging around like a ball and chain.

Her focus came back onto Sally, the sole representative of the village in her official green coat, who then apologised, turned, and drifted away from Maggie’s still-open door.

Maggie walked to the beach with her head down. In the days since last seeing Graham she stayed at the Quarrytown end and didn’t go as far as the Centre. He seemed to have
joined everyone in consigning Trothan to the deep; the search apparently scaled down. Their ‘deep’ might have been abduction or drowning or a plummeting mine shaft. But it amounted to
the same thing. It was nothing like the deep she pictured for him in which he remained living and might still return.

Today the sea had retreated further than she’d ever seen it. Spring tides again. Extreme rising; extreme falling. She’d been staring at the sea’s surface in the last weeks,
trying to imagine, to see as the child had done, what lay beneath; the old fishermen’s dying maps. But all she got back was reflected light, the fleet shadows of seabirds skimming the mirror
and then dissolving beneath. She wondered what they charted. Wrecks, fish-traps, engagement rings and contraband; soft coral fingers pointing upwards from the deepest rocks.

But now the vast surface was peeled back, the ‘beneath’ revealed: sand wrinkled by small currents, heaped with kelp and dotted with the lugworms’ curled castles of sculpted
mud; a landscape new and unfamiliar to her. It seemed like the foreboding of a tsunami, the lurch of sea back towards the horizon. Birds were grounded by the event, stalking the mud, flightless and
silenced.

Her shoes were off, her bare feet soon numbed by wading the pools caught between grey strands. The flat, bright no man’s land stretched around her and the dunes fell back as she moved
beyond the cartographer’s ‘blue line’ showing what was un-mappable beyond the tide. She was traversing both water and land. If she went further she might come across the downed
spitfire and find herself sharing the territory of seals.

As if sucked out by the moon’s lure; as if called towards a distant singing heard through folding valleys, she continued. Under her feet strange crevasses gaped, oozing grey residues. She
wandered on, feet slick, back turned on what she knew, towards the horizon.

Trothan’s map was already on the wall of the cottage. She’d been surprised that no-one had asked for it back, but she certainly wasn’t going to offer it. At
least the details exposed on it would surely now be acted upon. How could the archaeologists ignore the desecrated Viking grave, or the police not investigate the illegal removal of sand and
shooting of seals?

She tore out the local page from the Road Atlas with its few lines for roads, its occasional settlements, its exaggerated white spaces within the cat’s-head outline of the coast. She found
a smaller frame for it so it could hang next to Trothan’s for her remaining days; the map that had called her here. She hammered a nail directly into Sally’s pristine white wall, each
bang a small, fierce thrill.

The rest of the Road Atlas now stayed on her table. She flicked through it as she ate breakfast, turning west to Ullapool which looked remote and was far enough away that her story might not
pursue her there. She turned over another wad of pages. Manchester. A scream of colour and line. The other end of the atlas; North Devon, perhaps. If the car could get that far.

She couldn’t yet settle to work on the new project. There was always a period after a deadline when relief and sadness mingled; the accelerating activity followed by a hiatus. But this
wasn’t just inertia.

One afternoon about six weeks after Trothan’s disappearance Graham came to the cottage to find her. He’d been at the pier at Dwarwick when the boat came in; the men had been putting
out creels for lobsters.

She gasped when he told her and sank onto the sofa, head in her hands. Graham came and sat next to her, his body heat reaching her even through the crackle of his waterproof. He said nothing at
first, then: ‘Breathe, Maggie. Breathe.’

‘You said he’d probably fallen down a hole,’ she finally said.

‘Aye, well. Looks like I was wrong.’

It was one of his wellies. Just one. Faded blue. The white daisies dancing across it. They’d found it washed up under the cliffs on Dunnet Head. She bit back all her ‘buts’;
realised it wasn’t worth questioning what it meant. Graham had come specifically to tell her. And now the Fairy Godmother’s spell had been comprehensively broken; the coach horses
returned to rats. And she was being drummed out of the place which connected her to the child.

Graham made her a cup of tea; searched the cottage unsuccessfully for whisky. She stayed on the sofa. Graham tried to get her to speak but her head was a deep murmuring pit. Eventually he had to
leave for the long drive home.

‘Are Sally and Nora friends?’ She asked him just as he was going out of the door.

He shrugged, frowned. ‘They’ll know each other of course. Boys in the same class; both oddballs in a way.’

‘So Sally was doing Nora a favour when she let her move in here?’

Graham laughed, clearly keen to leave now. ‘I’ve no idea. Why does it matter?’

‘Just wondering.’ The collusion seemed obvious to Maggie. Sally had been a placid, welcoming woman and was now evicting her under Nora’s dark charm.

After Graham left, Maggie didn’t move from the sofa, numbed by a dead-weight. The ticks from her watch told her of time passing, but measured it in sickening distortions. Twenty minutes,
according to its face, occupied what felt like a whole day.

She moved in the early evening to lie fully-clothed on the bed. Dusk brought the cackles of crows to the high trees outside. Nora’s face bore down on her; wings, horns, a tail tucked back
behind her.

At ten, in an attempt to disentangle herself, she phoned Carol.

‘She attacked me,’ Maggie finally blurted. ‘On the beach, the last time I saw her.’

There was a silence then: ‘Physically?’

‘Yes. I had bruises for weeks.’

Carol’s voice came slowly, words carefully manoeuvred, ‘And I assume you reported it to the police?’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

It had never occurred to Maggie to do so. Perhaps she’d believed herself in some way deserving of it. Not now though. Not now, as she surged upright in bed. ‘I’d hit back. Now.
If I could.’ The image came of her hands on Nora’s face; her fingers plunging into bloody places. Then she was on her feet, pacing the room, breathing erratically into the phone.

‘Maggie,’ Carol crooned, reducing her to a hurt child.

Maggie took a deep breath. ‘If she’d been a proper mother in the first place...’

‘Maggie,’ Carol came again. ‘It might be hard for you to understand, because...’

Maggie waited.

‘It’s primeval. That mother’s defence.’

‘The attack?’

‘I’d probably do the same. Probably capable of it. If...’

‘If what?’ screeched Maggie. ‘If someone tried to help your child? When you couldn’t be bothered?’

‘Calm down.’ Words curt now, less patient. ‘I know why you’re taking it so personally, obviously, but I assume others there won’t know why.’

Maggie was speechless.

‘Just keep away from her, eh? She’s grieving.’

‘And I’m not?’

‘She’ll always be grieving now. And she could be a danger to you.’

Maggie’s hands were shaking so much the phone rattled as she put it back into its stand. Her stomach was a raw wound, and all Carol had done was salt it. She returned to bed, jittered
through the dark, ambushed by dreams which she escaped from into a half-waking state. She heard the ghastly grinding of her own teeth.

By the time dawn came, Maggie at least knew one thing. She wasn’t going to leave without facing Nora. Sleeplessness had made a blade of her.

The phone rang just as she was about to leave the house. She hovered over it for three rings and then grabbed it to her ear;

listened.

‘Maggie?’

‘Yes, Richard,’ she said.

‘That was strange.’

‘What?’

‘I didn’t hear you speak.’

‘I didn’t.’

Richard paused for a moment. ‘You okay?’

Maggie took a breath, trying to pull herself back a little from the path she was already striding. ‘Just a little distracted,’ she said. ‘Sorry.’

‘I hadn’t heard from you in such a long time, thought I’d just see if there’s anything you need from me.’

‘Right’.

‘I guess you’ll be in the thick of your summer visitors, all lured up to the seaside?’

She puffed out a breath of amusement at this idea. ‘Something like that.’

There was a pause. Maggie glimpsed waves through the trees below the cottage churning towards the dunes.

‘Must be lovely at this time of year,’ Richard said. ‘I’ve always meant to get up to John O’Groats myself. Been to Land’s End enough times.’

‘I haven’t forgotten,’ Maggie said, trying to collect herself. ‘About the new project. Despite the distractions.’

‘No problem,’ Richard said. ‘Just touching base, as I say. West Africa’ll be rolling off the press soon. We’ll have to celebrate. Need to get you down for the next
editorial meeting anyway.’

‘Sorry Richard. But I’d better go.’ And then searching for an excuse, ‘Doctor’s appointment.’

‘Sure,’ he said. ‘You’re okay?’

‘I’m okay,’ she said, and was quickly on her way.

This time she knocked when she reached their door, didn’t walk in as she had before. Her heart chattered in her chest and her mouth felt dry. She half-hoped that no one
would be in.

She was about to turn away when the door opened a crack. The darkness inside against August’s brilliance gave nothing away, and she entertained a fantasy that it was Trothan opening the
door; that he’d returned and no one had told her. But when the door opened a little more, she saw that it was George, wearing a fisherman’s-style jumper with a frayed neck. She was glad
it wasn’t Nora.

It was the first time she’d seen him since the incident on the beach. If she’d passed him on the street, a red-eyed and droop-faced stranger, she’d have guessed he was an
alcoholic. He ran a hand over the top of his head, eyes on the mat. When he looked up there was no trace of animosity. It was more like a baffled enquiry.

‘Could I speak to Nora?’ she blurted.

He looked at her for a few seconds without speaking. ‘You’ll have heard?’

Some sort of fluff had got attached to the stubble on his chin and it made her think of Trothan with feathers caught in his hair. It triggered an impulse to reach out and straighten him up.

She nodded, muttered, ‘I’m really sorry.’

A minute or so passed in which they each seemed to withdraw and yet stayed where they were. A gauze of time stretching between them. A windless calm. There was something bear-like about this
man. An embrace with him, she imagined, would be both abrasive and soft, scented with woodsmoke and this morning’s bacon. She could picture him with a tiny baby bundled in his arms. Outside.
On the beach would be right. He’d smile down at a pink face, his hand larger than the child’s head that it cupped.

‘Look,’ he said. ‘A bitty time’s passed now. I’m sorry for that – you know,’ he nodded in the direction of the sea. ‘On the beach that
day.’

‘It’s okay.’ Maggie said. ‘I just wanted to speak to her.’

‘She’s not here.’

Like a door slamming. Eyes shutting against her. A refusal.

‘When will she be back?’ asked Maggie.

George shrugged. ‘Like I said...’ But he didn’t seem quite able to make a sentence. ‘We’re just getting...’

Maggie knew that he couldn’t possibly mean ‘back to normal.’ She started to turn away, driven by common courtesy, a doorway narrowing, George’s face receding. But she
couldn’t now just turn tail in defeat. She swung back to face the door, the lit stripe of face. As if in response, it opened a little again.

‘Sorry, but. Where is she?’

‘Aye, she’s on her own just now,’ he said gently, stepping more fully into the gap.

‘I’d like to know where she is.’ She was surprised by the sound of her own boldness.

George repeated the sweep of his hand over his head. With a kick in the gut, the idea arrived with Maggie that Nora might have left him.

‘She goes...’ he waved his hand vaguely. ‘Every day. Where she gets a wee bitty sense of connection.’

Maggie bit her lip. Did he mean the beach?

‘I don’t go,’ he said. ‘Don’t want to get in the way. It’s a mother thing maybe.’

She heard the warning. ‘Okay.’

Maggie thought it unlikely he was willing to say any more. She stepped backwards and simultaneously he did the same. The door between them clicked gently to. She turned, then, and walked back up
the path to her bicycle. Barely pausing to think, guided by a gut geography, she pointed the bike inland.

When she arrived at Saint Trothan’s, Mobility Man was parked at the wrought-iron gate on his scooter; a fluorescent slump over a cigarette. She leant her bicycle against
the wall under the dark shade of the trees and greeted him. He squinted at her, not moving except for the slow rise of the cigarette to his mouth, nodding with his head a-cock.

‘Anyone else inside?’ She peered over his head into the graveyard where stones leaned and tree-shaped shadows writhed across the grass.

Mobility Man looked vaguely over his shoulder. ‘Aye,’ he said, as if the answer was complete in itself.

Maggie’s instinct had brought her towards this miniature heart of moss and stone. Bone and leaf. A place which rang out Trothan’s name even though it couldn’t provide a resting
place for his body.