The House Between Tides (45 page)

But now, in her bed, Beatrice rolled onto her side, drawing her knees up under the sheets, clasping her arms around them, screwing her eyes shut as the image of Theo hammered into her mind. Fear and remorse swamped the joy, and she lay flat again, her eyes fixed on the ceiling, where the crack had been filled and where fresh paint now covered the rainwater stain.

Theo must never know.

1911, Beatrice

“How could you ever think it?”

“I see it every day, in his eyes, in his manner whenever you're around. And everything I learn confirms it.”

“
No.
” Cameron had cleared a space for them inside one of the ruined crofts to the west, on estate land where few ventured, well hidden, down by the shore with clear views in both directions. He had filled hay bags for them and they lay there now, under the rotting thatch, passion spent for the moment, reflective. “What there is between us goes back a long way, but it was never
that.
Not ever.”

“Not on your part, perhaps, but I'm certain he feels otherwise.”

Cameron sat up, frowning down at her. “No,” he repeated, and reached out, turning her face to him. “
No!
He enjoyed showing me things, explaining things. We shared the same interests, and I—I admired him hugely.” Beatrice saw that same bleak expression cross his face, and he told her how, when he was a boy, he had been sent with a message and was told to wait in the study. Theo had come back to find him sitting at his desk, engrossed in one of his books, struggling with the unfamiliar words and, far from punishing him, he had spent the rest of the afternoon with Cameron studying the stuffed birds and animals, discussing their habits. Cameron had described his own observations, and Theo had listened, encouraging him. From there it had grown. “I was so pleased to be given the run of the study I never questioned why, and then, bit by bit, I began assisting him and learning more. When the suggestion of
an education came up, I suppose I just took it all for granted.” He dropped his eyes back to her. “But he never laid a finger on me. No hint of it. Then he began travelling again and was hardly ever here. Restless. And lonely, I believe. And whenever he came back, he sought my assistance.”

“Why only you and not Donald?”

“Donald reads the land, not books, and he was always my father's shadow.”

She lay back, staring up at the dense mass of cobwebs which hung like a tangled mist from the roof above them, remembering how Theo's eyes seemed to follow Cameron, unsettled by his presence. Despite Cameron's denials, those looks held longing.

“But he's changed.” Cameron's tone was grim, and Beatrice turned back to him. “There's a hardness to him now. A bitterness. Since he returned here last year.”

“With me.”

“But not
because
of you.” Cameron pulled her to him. “That I cannot understand.” He held her tight. “But he'd stayed away too long, visited too briefly, and over the years he has lost touch. All he wants now is for time to stand still or, better still, wind it back. He can't see beyond himself, can't see that there's a new restlessness up here, a refusal to conform.”

After a long silence, Beatrice spoke again. “Are we so very wicked, Cameron, to steal these few days for ourselves?”

His head lay close to hers. “Do anarchists acknowledge right and wrong?” He smiled, and after a moment added, “But I wonder if, in the end, we'll regret it.” And he pulled her to him again, smothering her question.

Later she remembered. “You meant if we get found out?”

He shook his head. “That mustn't happen. But do you expect just to walk away from this unscathed?” He had brought a blanket from the house, and she pulled it close, chilled suddenly.

They became artful in their deception, meeting in different places, at different times to allay suspicion. Beatrice was already a familiar figure out on the estate, known for her long walks, and they would arrange to meet as if by accident so then they could stay and talk together in the open. Reality was put aside as they lost themselves in the delight of each other. It seemed to Beatrice that everyone must know, must sense the joy radiating from her. Perversely, she chose to believe that that same joy was also a shield, protecting them. “These are stolen days, Cameron,” she said. “Ours alone. And then you will go and build a life for yourself, remembering, perhaps . . . And Theo and I will learn to rub the sharp edges away.” But they were careful, avoiding risks, knowing that the consequences of discovery would reach beyond themselves—the position of Cameron's father would become untenable, the family cast adrift. And as the days passed, the future began to loom more darkly until one afternoon, as they lay together in the old croft house, Cameron raised his head and looked down at her, his face set and serious.

“If I had gone this spring as planned, if my father hadn't fallen, I'd have left and not come back. Feeling as I did about you.” He threaded his fingers between hers. “But not now. It's all changed now. You must come with me when I go.”

She had been plucking straw from her skirts, and stayed her hand. Go with him? Her breath caught in her throat. “You know I cannot.” He rose and went to stand at the threshold, his back to her, and said no more.

Sometimes she watched him from her bedroom window, remembering how she had once mistaken him for Theo crossing the strand towards her. And when she saw him now, Bess running beside him, her heart would lift and she would find some excuse to leave the house to encounter him as he came up from the foreshore. Through Mrs. Henderson she asked if he would complete the repairs to the bower, and she worked beside him, delighting
in his close company. Mrs. Henderson brought them tea each day, and they spun the job out for as long as they could, and he smiled, conceding defeat, when her first rose opened tentative yellow petals in the sunshine.

There followed a progression of glorious days, and it seemed to Beatrice that the elements conspired in her celebration of this stolen time. For surely the machair had never before blazed with wild flowers in such profusion, reckless and abandoned, and the air was clearer, sharper, the breeze more caressing, while the cries of the wild birds found an echo within her. Only at night, when she lay in bed, did the sense of betrayal return to overwhelm her. She fought it, argued against it, for Theo was guilty too in his betrayal of
her.
He had brought her here to his dreamworld, and she had been enchanted, eager to share it with him, but his passion had turned aside, turned inward, excluding her, darkening to something she could not understand, and she had become lost. But no longer! She felt willful, as unrestrained as the elements themselves, for a different sort of morality operated here, where the skies were wide and open, and the island recognised only rules of its own devising. And she refused to consider the future.

Yet, through the maelstrom of delight, she would glimpse a strained look on Cameron's face, troubled shadows in his eyes. But her questions brought no answers, only an increase in the intensity and urgency of his love, and at night she would banish her unquiet thoughts, and the guilt. For in these few precious days, there was room only for joy. So pure and profound a feeling that none other could survive beside it.

But wispy clouds, mares' tails, crept unnoticed across the skies, and one day she woke to clouds and a strengthening wind. Defiantly, she pulled a shawl around her and set off to walk across the island. She looked back and saw that Mrs. Henderson was standing at the morning room window, watching her go.

They had agreed to meet that morning at Torrann Bay, where the tenants were once again bringing the tangle ashore, and she stood beside him watching from the top of the dunes. “Last year we met here and you reproved me for bemoaning my lot,” she said. “Called it a benign slavery.”

“Last year you were a whey-faced doll in city clothes.” He turned and glinted at her in the way she had grown to love. “Eyes as wide as dinner plates, as if you'd landed among the heathen of Africa. Donald and I laid bets on how soon you'd demand to be taken home.”

“But you were wrong.”

“So very wrong.” He spoke slowly and then gave her an odd, angry look as she gazed out over the ocean, remembering the feeling that had welled up in her last year. Limitless horizons. But now the horizon was blurred, grey and undefined. Beside her he spoke again, his tone hard. “And now you tell
me
to go, and leave you.”

“Cameron—”

“Steal a few days, you said. Fool that I was. And that's to be the end to it? We just walk away?” He half turned to hide his face from the shore. “You
must
leave with me, Beatrice.”

“You know I cannot. Theo—”

“He had his chance. He held a precious thing in his hand and was crushing it.”

“Your father, your family—”

He was still. Silenced again. “Then we should stop now,” he said. “Better that we had never begun.” And he strode off towards the kelp workers, calling sharply to one of them.

She waited until it was clear that he would not return, then walked back to the house, and she was almost at the top of the rise when she heard the sound of hooves on the grass behind her.

He slid from the pony in front of her. “Sometimes it's too much to bear.” Her eyes filled and she dropped her chin. “I'll be at the old house as soon as I have toured the lambing in the morning.
Will you come?” She nodded and he remounted, riding off towards the strand.

As she walked up the drive, past the veronica and escallonia bushes, alive with the chattering of buntings and sparrows, she felt the house looking down at her, grave and reproachful, and felt the chill as she entered the hall. For it
was
a betrayal, when all was said and done.
You can always take a lover in a year or two
, the pert young woman had told her when her engagement to Theo had been announced, and she had been affronted. But this was not the ritual adultery of her own class where infidelity was a game, the rules clear and known to all, tolerated provided that care was taken to avoid a scandal. This was something different, more primitive, more honest. More dangerous— And for all that she drew confidence from the wild landscape, she knew that the consequences of discovery would go far beyond mere scandal. And she knew that it was this which brought the shadows into Cameron's eyes. This, and thoughts of the future.

Next day at the cottage, those shadows were darker. “Give me a little time out there, just enough to get established. Then I'll come back for you.” He had been waiting at the doorway, looking out for her, and had grabbed her two hands, pulling her to him. “Leave him. When you're in Edinburgh. Next winter. Leave him then. Before you return in the spring. And I'll come back for you, and then we'll return to Canada together. No one need ever know you left with me.” He gripped her hands, crushing them.

“Disappear into Canada?”

“I see no other way.” She looked aside as the image of Theo on the shore came back to her, that look of anguish, of grief, and she felt a rush of remorse. Cameron released her hands and his eyes narrowed at her silence. “What is it?”

“Last winter I lost Theo's baby. By next year there might be another. What then?”

His fist smote the door-frame. “Then leave with me now and
damn
the consequences. I won't leave without you.” He reached for her, but she pulled back, suddenly fearful.

“Perhaps you're right, my love. We should stop.”

But he gripped her by the shoulders and kissed her fiercely. “Too late,” he said, and she felt the pressure of his legs against hers as he forced her backwards, pulling her down onto the hay bags, tugging aside her skirts to reach her. “No time for regrets, Beatrice. I warned you.”

1911, Beatrice