The House Between Tides (18 page)

Then he crouched beside her chair, showing her how to drip the tepid liquid onto the lamb's nose and mouth from a soft rag. She became absorbed by the task, forgetting Cameron, watching as the orphan gradually woke to the smell and taste of the milk, its tiny tongue first licking, then tasting, and eventually settling down to suck. Beatrice looked up in delight to find that Cameron was watching her. “Well done,” he said.

That evening, Theo did not retreat to the study but sat beside the fire in the drawing room, a brandy beside him, leafing through a book. Once she had enjoyed the quiet intimacy of these evenings. She would write her journal or letters, while Theo sat opposite reading, the lamps filling the room with a soft glow. If the weather was fine, he might light a cigar and wander onto the terrace or down to the foreshore, and sometimes she would fetch a shawl and join him, tucking her arm in his, and he would smile at her. But lately, when the business of the day was finished and they were alone together, a glass wall seemed to descend between them, and the silence was no longer companionable.

“We talked of doing things to the house, Theo,” she began tentatively, exploring how things now stood between them. “To brighten it up.”

He barely lifted his eyes from his book. “There's really little point, my dear. I'm not sure we'll come here every year.”

“Will we not?” She stared at him; they had talked of coming every summer.

“Besides, I've got used to it this way.”

“But you had plans, Theo. To finish your catalogue. To paint—”

He smiled briefly. “And you wanted to see Venice and Rome.” He sat with his long legs crossed, wearing a comfortable old jacket, outwardly relaxed, but she sensed a tension in him.

After a moment she tried again. “How does the catalogue progress, Theo?”

“Am I neglecting you?” This time he lowered the book and looked over the top at her.

His directness stalled her. “I thought perhaps there was something I could help you with.”

“Thank you, my dear, I'll bear it in mind.”

It was a masterly deflection, but she would not leave the matter there. “I'm sure I could do whatever it is Cameron Forbes does, checking lists and marking up illustrations.” He acknowledged her words with a nod, implying that he would consider it. “And then he'd be free to go back to Canada.” At that he raised his eyes. “He must be keen to be off, now his father is well again.” She clamped her teeth together awaiting his response.

Theo lowered his book, staring past her to the window. “He's agreed to assist me for the summer,” he said after a moment. “Then get a passage in the spring.”

“But surely he's more useful to John out on the estate now, while the weather holds. I could help—”

Theo switched his gaze to her. “Do you dislike having Cameron in the house, my dear?”

“No, not at all. By no means.” Again his directness wrong-footed her.

“I hope not, because I'm trying to persuade him to stay on. Having helped educate the blighter, I'd like to reap the rewards.”

The throbbing in her temples started again. “But if we're only here for a few weeks—”

“There's a role for him in Edinburgh too.”

Her heart lurched violently. “Is there?”

“I believe so.” And with that he returned to his book, reading doggedly. But after a moment he rose, selected a cigar from the ebony box on the sideboard and trimmed it briefly, before making for the door. “I'll take the air a moment, my dear, before retiring.” And she watched him walk onto the terrace, shoulders hunched as he lit the cigar, and then, one hand in his pocket, and his collar turned up against the wind, he strolled down the drive and disappeared through the gateposts, out onto the strand.

2010, Hetty

Hetty emerged from the cottage next morning to see the red Saab pulling onto the grass verge. “Were you away out?” Ruairidh Forbes asked, opening the car door.

“I'm going over to the island again. I forgot my camera last time.”

He looked across the strand and then at his watch. “You'll be alright for a couple of hours or so. I just dropped by to let you know they came and took the bones away early this morning. But I won't keep you.”

“So they've gone.” She looked towards the house, glad that she had not known.

“There'll probably be something in the papers, but let me know if anyone bothers you.” She nodded gratefully. “And I've had a word with Aonghas, my granddad.”

She had forgotten about the old man. “Could he help?”

“Not a lot, I'm afraid. Blake's wife was called Beatrice, he's certain of that much. And as far as he knows she left the island with her husband, but it was years before he was born, of course, so it's all hearsay.” He ran his hand through his hair, scratching the back of his head. “And he's certain that when Blake came back, years later, he came alone, and he never saw a woman up there. Blake was in a poor way, he said, by the time he died. Hardly ever came out of the house, leaving matters to Aonghas's grandfather and latterly to his dad, though he remembers the bird reserve being set up because
he helped drive in the boundary markers.” He glanced across the strand again. “Anyway, I mustn't hold you up, these westerlies bring the tide in fast, so keep an eye on the time.” He lowered himself into the car, giving a friendly wave as he drove off.

So the bones had gone, she thought, as she crossed the strand, conscious of spots of rain on the wind. Torn from their sandy grave to be transported to some impersonal laboratory hundreds of miles away, labelled and packaged, another job number. Perhaps it would have been better if they'd been left in peace, their story untold.

She didn't linger in the burial ground this time, and having taken her photographs she set off to explore in the other direction, away from the house to where the wind and tides had sculpted the shoreline into small coves and headlands linking wide expanses of sand. She saw more ruins as she walked, almost a small hamlet, and was reminded again of the sepia photograph on James's wall. Had Blake's father cleared these people off their land too, or had they left to find an easier life? Past wrongs had a lasting potency, if James's attitude was anything to go by, a bitterness which lingered. Did he, and her sullen landlord, cast her in the same mould? Despoiler. Oppressor. The idea was ludicrous.

She walked for perhaps a mile, then stopped when she rounded the next headland, puzzled by the sight of another old black house, tucked into the shelter of the cove. But this one was no ruin. It had been carefully restored, the roof recently thatched, weighted down by ropes and large stones, and glass shone from the deep-set windows. A pair of sturdy boots stood beside a peat stack near the door, and beyond the house she could see a patch of turned ground where a leafy crop was coming through. There were no cables, no propane tank, only a tin water butt, and two pairs of socks leaping energetically on a washing line. It needed only a few hens scratching at the threshold or a black-and-white collie chained near the door to be the subject of one of Blake's paintings.

She stood and stared, her brow puckered. She'd been told that the island was uninhabited, and as far as she could recall from the map Emma Dawson had sent her, this part of the island was estate land. Yet someone was clearly living here. Should she go and knock on the door? She shrank from the thought of another confrontation. Then the cry of a gull overhead recalled her to the present, and she glanced at her watch and saw that it was time to turn back. She'd ask Ruairidh and take the matter from there.

Distracted by this new concern, she must have mistaken her route, and found herself on a track which brought her not to the bottom of Muirlan House drive but down the slope to the farm buildings behind the factor's house. And there, in the middle of the farmyard, stood the battered Land Rover.

As she hesitated, considering whether to slip away unseen, the back door of the old farmhouse opened and the Land Rover's owner emerged, a toolbox in his hand. “Hallo there,” he said, banging the door closed with his foot and locking it. “Been up for another look?” He tossed the tools into the vehicle, wiping his hands as he came towards her.

“I came to see the burial ground, then had a walk.”

He glanced back up the ridge. “Aye. They're all up there, saints and sinners.” He opened another door, took out a shovel and a small pickaxe, and carried them to the Land Rover. “By the way, the boys in blue have been.” And he nodded towards the tools.

“I know. Ruairidh called by.” Had James been there when the bones were lifted? She hoped so; it made the business somehow less impersonal.

“Where did you walk to?” he asked.

She remembered the occupied house. “Just along the shore for a mile or so”—she hesitated—“and in one of the little bays I saw a house.”

“A house,” he repeated.

“A restored croft house, with people living there.”

He bent to scrape mortar off the shovel blade. “And did you see anyone?”

“No, but there was washing on the line.” He carried on scraping, saying nothing. “I thought you said no one lived over here?”

He glanced up, giving her an odd look. “Then you've yet to encounter your one remaining tenant, Miss Deveraux.”

“No one mentioned a tenant.”

“No? Well, you'll meet him soon enough.” And there was a glint in his eye as he turned away. “Have you been to see the photographs in the museum yet?”

“No.” Was James Cameron playing games?

“And you're away soon?” he added, as the shovel joined the other tools in the back.

“Yes. But I'll find time to look,” she said, “so I can see what the interiors were like. And get some inspiration.”

He looked round then. “So you're going ahead?” The glint had sharpened, but she held his look.

“I haven't discussed your report with my agents yet,” she replied, and he leant against the Land Rover, his arms folded. “And they might have other ideas.”

“Such as?”

“Getting a second opinion, perhaps.”

He nodded, still watching her.

“And you said I need capital. My— I have a friend who's an accountant. He understands finance.”

“Does he.” He straightened, evidently unimpressed, and went round to the driver's door. “Hop in, I'll take you back over.”

“Thanks, but I'll walk.”

His head came up, and he looked across at her, eyes narrowing. Then he glanced over the bay and seemed about to insist, but he
gave his maddening shrug instead. “Suit yourself. But get a move on. The tide moves fast with a westerly behind it.”