The House Between Tides (9 page)

She agreed that it was lovely, and had watched him as he examined the overlapping pads of moss and lichen on the fallen cross. “Who was St. Ultan?” she asked.

“An Irishman. He gave succour to infants, I'm told, especially orphans.” He had come and sat beside her, leaning his back against the wall of the ruin, and she felt the warmth of his shoulder next to hers. “My mother wanted to bury her stillborn daughter here, but my father wouldn't have it, said the babe wasn't an orphan. He had a plot made on the ridge behind the house, and then two more joined the first, poor wights. Mother hated them being there, exposed to every gale, all alone.”

Theo rarely spoke of his mother, except to say that she used to draw pictures with him when he was a child. And he, so young when she died, must have felt her loss keenly. “But she's with them there now,” she said carefully.

“She'd rather be here, nevertheless.” He got abruptly to his feet. “Come on, I felt spots of rain,” he said, and he had set off, leaving her to follow.

So far he had shown no inclination to paint, but had been boyishly enthusiastic about his new camera, prowling around the house experimenting, startling housemaids whom he commanded
to remain motionless, and self-conscious, in his compositions. He had surprised her too as she sat at her dressing table one morning. “Raise your arms to your hair again. As you were. No. Wait! Yes, there.” And he told her he had captured a thousand images of her, reflected in the angled side mirror. “But what will I do with a thousand Beatrices?” he asked, putting aside his camera. “Just one has all a man could ask for.” And he had swept her laughing from the stool and carried her back to the rumpled bed. The poor girl who had come to collect her breakfast tray half an hour later had been mortified.

Lifting her head now, she saw him from the window, out on the drained sand, walking towards the house, a dark figure backlit by the low sun, and reached for her clothes. She would join him, if only for the last stretch up to the house. Grabbing a shawl, she looked again at the approaching figure and then stopped, the shawl loose in her hand. For it was not Theo, after all, but the factor's elder son who was striding across the beach towards the house; the long shadows had deceived her. And as she watched she saw him raise a hand to his mouth and heard a piercing whistle, which brought Bess, the brown pointer, tearing from the shore, circling him in delight. He bent and twisted, hurling a stick far out onto the strand. The dog pelted after it, sending up sprays of diamonds from the shallow water, and she found herself wondering if Theo had ever played so lightheartedly across the sands.

Halfway down the stairs, she met Mrs. Henderson with her breakfast tray. “I was just bringing this up, madam, with a message from Mr. Blake. He's ridden over to the manse but says he'll be back for dinner.” Beatrice smiled brightly and thanked her, agreeing that she would take breakfast in the morning room, and entered just in time to see through the window as Cameron Forbes disappeared around the back of the factor's house, followed by his dog.

She poured her tea and bit into the toast, looking round,
resolving again that a pair of dusty lapwings over the fireplace would be better suited elsewhere. But she must be patient, not try and change things too quickly, and in the meantime she must find some occupation, for Mrs. Henderson's competency left her with little to do. “We're damned lucky to have her,” Theo had said, explaining that she had been trained in one of the big houses on the mainland and had returned to the islands “in trouble.” Running Muirlan House for them was child's play.

She pulled out a half-finished letter to Emily Blake and picked up her pen.
Your brother has not yet dipped brush in paint,
she wrote,
but spends his days either out on the estate or closeted in his study with the factor's son. Still settling in, he tells me. Do you think you will come this summer? You mustn't think you intrude . . .
When Theo had first suggested they spend the summer on the island, she had felt a stab of disappointment, hoping he might have suggested Europe. “Venice stinks in summer,” he had said, “and Rome's full of foreigners.” And something in his face had told her that coming here was important to him.
The island is as lovely as you described and I confess that I don't miss Edinburgh one bit.
She paused again, thinking back to the endless, deadening round of social occasion and intrigue, driven as she had been by the cheerless imperative to find a husband as her father careered towards financial disaster. He had led a reckless life, with a circle of ramshackle friends, and his love of the racecourse had never been equalled by his successes there, but her mother's frank revelations regarding his debts had come as a shock. “Don't fall for a charming smile, my dear. We must find you a man of substance, and
quickly.
” Her mother had made an unequal match, marrying against her family's wishes, and Beatrice had watched, mortified, as she used all her remaining connections to thrust her daughter forward before her husband burned through her remaining inheritance.

Beatrice had tried to play by the rules, hating the whole business,
and had a number of admirers, but when her first close association was found to have considerable debts of his own, and a rather unsavoury past, she had been whisked away, narrowly avoiding a personal disaster.

And it was then that she had met Theo Blake.

She knew his name, of course, as well as his reputation, and had been pleased to be invited to a private viewing of his recent work, completed during a long stay in Europe. He had been pointed out to her upon arrival, a strikingly handsome man, bronzed and healthy-looking among the pale city dwellers, moving amongst them with an assured nonchalance. But as she wandered through the exhibition, examining his paintings, she was conscious of disappointment. They were mostly rural scenes, goat herds amongst sage scrub on parched hillsides, ochre buildings decaying in golden sunlight, a dog asleep in the shadows. Beautifully executed but unremarkable.

And then she had been drawn to a painting which hung in a corner, away from the others, a painting she now recognised as the view from the foreshore in front of the house. It showed two ill-defined figures walking across the strand, through contrasting patches of light, shadow, and mist, walking in parallel, slightly apart from each other, and somehow clearly a man and a woman. But were they coming together or drifting apart? The painting left it unresolved, and she had been arrested by a sense of deep poignancy. She stood looking at it for a long time, then spoke to the companion she imagined stood behind her. “Why, this is quite ethereal. A mirage—”

“A mirage, you say?” A deep voice spoke across her shoulder. “Something you're compelled to reach for”—she had turned to find the painter himself looking at it over her head, his eyes sharp and intense—“knowing you can never grasp it.”

Introductions were swiftly made, and he had explored her face
with an unsettling directness, then others had stolen his attention and she watched him accepting congratulations with urbane dismissal, his manners easy and smooth. And she had detected a hint of disdain, as if he held neither their flattery nor the paintings in any great esteem. His single state, his established reputation and, more particularly, his controlling interest in his deceased father's textile mills had made him the subject of considerable interest in Edinburgh society, and she watched predatory mamas calculating their chances.

And then he was beside her again. “I sense indifference, Miss Somersgill.”

She looked up guiltily to find that he was smiling. “Not indifference, no. Only . . . only these are so very different from the other one.”

“That's because these, you see, are exercises in technique designed to”—he opened the exhibition catalogue—“ ‘demonstrate complete mastery of brushwork and perspective, an eye for the charm of the commonplace, a superior understanding of tonal quality.'  ” He lowered the catalogue and smiled over the top of it. “And to remind people that I'm still alive.”

“And the other?” She smiled back at him. “To remind
yourself
that that's the case?” She had spoken without thinking and was startled by his changed expression. “There's a greater . . . a greater sensitivity, a depth of feeling—” she added, faltering and confused. “I like it better.”

“So do I.” Again that searching, unsettling intensity. “Let me help you to the refreshments. You've spoken the first sensible word I've heard tonight.”

And so it had begun.

1910, Theo

He stood motionless on the top of the dunes and stared out to the horizon, and the world was still and quiet around him. Below him the sea was a dark wash of ultramarine tipped with white stretching clear to the horizon but an icy jade where the waves rose to meet the shore. He watched, transfixed by the sight, by the relentless energy, seeing veils of spray flung back as each wave raced ashore. Torrann Bay—at last! Here was the very essence of the island, its elemental spirit. Mystical at dawn, blazing white hot at midday or drenched by showers, and an awesome symphony of light as the sun drowned in the western sea.

Twenty years ago he had set up his easel just behind where he now stood and had painted the scene. It felt like yesterday, and the sound and the smell of the place had haunted him throughout his self-imposed exile.

After a while he turned away and sat on a stone, his customary seat, and leant against the wall of a ruined croft house, closing his eyes and losing himself to the sound of the waves and the wind rattling through the dune grasses.

The sun had not yet tipped the peak of Bheinn Mhor on the main island when he'd reached the dunes this morning, and he'd been panting by the time he'd climbed to the top. City living had taken its toll. Or was it age? Forty, by God! He'd looked back across the machair towards the house, where he had left Beatrice sleeping. Content, it seemed, to be here. Or was it simply the novelty? Or
to please him? Beatrice, bless her, was eager to please. He smiled slightly, his eyes still closed, savouring the thought of her, and this perfect moment, before the land was flooded with light. A calm, expectant moment, a moment of quiet solitude.

To reflect.

And slowly, as he sat there, he felt the sanctity of the place wrap around him, and knew that he had truly returned.

He had not dared to come here until now—

His eyes remained shut.

But even with them closed, he could clearly see Màili standing where he had just stood, and where he had once sketched her, skirt flattened against her bare legs, outlining the curves of her form. A few deft strokes, a little light shading, and he had captured her—or so he had thought.

But she had slipped away, as surely as a selkie maid.

Once, as they had lain lazily in a sandy hollow just below here, where dunes became beach, she had told him the island legend of the selkies, the seal people who came ashore at midsummer, shedding their skins to dance on the beach. Unwary fishermen would fall under their enchantment, she had told him, her eyes wide and believing, and then steal their skins, binding the creatures to them, compelling them to stay ashore as wistful wives, forever seeking their lost pelts, their only chance of returning to their ocean home. She had been stretched out on her stomach plaiting the coarse dune grasses as she told the story, and he beside her, watching her nimble fingers twisting the blades. “And are you weaving binding spells in the marram grass?” he asked, capturing her hands and ruining her handiwork as he pulled her to him. “Strong magic, Màili.”

But no spell had been needed; by then he was already bound to her, hand and foot and heart.

And it was here, on another occasion, that they had stood together and looked up to the sky and watched two sea eagles twisting
and turning in a strange, violent dance. “Are they fighting?” Màili had asked as the birds came together, locked talons grappling, tumbling, and rolling over each other, doing cartwheels through the air, their wing pinions fluttering and feathered legs swinging out below.