The House Between Tides (11 page)

She walked on, feeling liberated by her swinging skirts and sturdy shoes, and heedless that the skies immediately above her were filling with a rasping, clicking sound. By the time she looked up, it was to see a cloud of delicate, black-capped white birds with long forked tails hovering directly overhead, screaming at her. There could be no mistaking their hostility, and she hesitated, unnerved, then took a hasty step and missed her footing, dropping her head just in time to avoid a sudden dive. Another swooped, beady eyes enraged, as the wind snatched off her hat, cartwheeling it away, and she went in pursuit. The birds followed, scolding furiously, until a sharp stab on the top of her head brought her up short, and she looked up to see a white fury hovering overhead, its red beak shrieking a warning.

Panicked now, she bent and had started to run in pursuit of her hat when she heard a shout and looked up to see three figures at the edge of the field, waving and calling, their words carried away by the wind. The factor and his sons. Then another beak struck, sharper this time, and now two of the figures were running towards her; one veered off after her hat while the other continued into the
melee of feathers and rage, stripping off his jacket. Another bird dived.

“Keep your head down, or they'll have your eye out!” Cameron Forbes warned as he threw his jacket over her head. “Grab the sleeve.” He held on to the other and put his arm around her waist, propelling her firmly up the beach until the furious birds dropped back, one by one, and he released her, his eyes alight with amusement.

“Are you alright, Mrs. Blake?” The factor was striding towards them. “You were struck, I think?”

She found a sticky patch on her head and looked at her red fingertip in astonishment. “What on earth are they?”

“Arctic terns.” It was his son who answered. “And they can skewer fish with those beaks.”

“But why did they attack me?”

“They will, you see, if they've eggs and young chicks.” The factor's tone was apologetic. “And you'd strayed into the heart of their territory, not knowing—”

“If we hadn't seen you, there'd be nothing left to find but strips of flesh and a handful of rags.” Cameron Forbes stood with his jacket tossed over a shoulder, a finger hooked into the collar, the other hand reaching down to fondle his dog's ears, a smile still playing across his features.

John Forbes frowned at his son. “May I take a look at your head, madam?” he said, and she dropped her chin. “You must have some ointment on that cut,” he said. “Cameron, take Mrs. Blake back to the house and tell Mrs. Henderson to attend to it.”

“Of course.” The young man pushed an arm back into his jacket sleeve and whistled to his dog. Donald returned too, and held out her hat.

She took it from him and crammed it back onto her head, thanking him briefly, feeling foolish, like a child being taken home after a silly mishap, nettled by his brother's obvious amusement.

“In a few weeks they'll have flown and the beach will be empty again,” he said in a conciliatory tone as they rejoined the track.

“And has the island other forms of vicious wildlife I should know about?”

He seemed to consider. “Eagles or buzzards will attack a lamb or a newborn calf, but I don't imagine they'll try to carry
you
off, madam.” She looked up sharply at this familiarity, still conscious of the way he had propelled her up the beach, and met a cheerful, uncomplicated smile. “Nor would the terns have done you any real harm.”

She found herself responding to him. “
Not
reduced me to rags and strips of flesh?”

“Not for a first offence,” he said gravely, and she dropped her head to hide a smile, wary of encouraging him. After a moment he added, “Edinburgh must seem a long way off, madam.”

“Another world.” And they talked of Edinburgh, which he had visited once, and this led on to his wider travels, and Beatrice was struck, as she had been on earlier occasions, by this young man's easy manners and style of address. Theo, to her surprise, seemed to give him that license. When Cameron's attention was taken by the dog, she glanced across at him. There was something about him, something which set him quite apart from servants she had known at home or in Theo's Edinburgh house. It was more than just the way he carried himself, shoulders straight and assured; it was something in his expression. His directness. Theo seemed to use him as some sort of secretary, so perhaps he did not consider himself a mere servant.

“What was it you were doing today,” she asked, intrigued by him, “with your father and brother?”

“Deciding where to build sand fences to halt the erosion. Futile, really, as the storms will have their way in the end.”

So he was a farmhand too! “But it makes a change from Mr. Blake's catalogues and ledgers.”

“And provides a chance to be heroic.” This time she allowed herself to return his smile.

Later she questioned Theo about Cameron's role, but he was dismissive. “I'm employing him to assist me, when he can be spared. He has a neat hand and knows my ways. He's worked with me before, and I trained him, so to speak.” And with that she had to be content.

But she found that she often came across them together, heads bent over dried specimen in the study, discussing books and articles, like tutor and scholar, absorbed by common interests. Or she would watch them heading out together onto the estate with sporting guns, sometimes with John Forbes, or Donald, but often just the two of them. And yet she sensed a current of tension between them, and once she had met a wrathful Cameron in the hall following a curt dismissal. Earlier there had been raised voices in the study, and from the little she had overheard, it was not natural history that had been under discussion.

2010, Hetty

Hetty stood drumming her fingers on the window-sill and looked across to Muirlan Island, where clouds hung low, threatening rain. She stooped to pick up a mug left under a chair and took it through to the kitchen. She wanted to go back across and have another look around, on her own, but was thwarted now by tide and police prohibition. No one was to go near the bones again, the inspector had warned, and nothing was to be said until the forensic team had removed them. Any interest caused by unusual activity up at the old house could be explained away, if necessary, by Hetty's arrival.

But no one was going over the strand this morning, anyway, and Ruairidh's tide tables suggested it would be hours before it was safe to cross. She needed a walk, though, and decided she would explore along the shore following the edge of the bay to where she'd seen the tide pouring in between the two spear points of land, and take some photographs.

She thought again about James Cameron's report as she pulled on her jacket and reached for her camera. In fact, she thought of little else— His estimation of costs was quite unreachable, but then Giles had once spoken of partnerships, ways and means of raising finance to make the project viable, but she had resisted the idea. Once the restoration was done, she had hoped the hotel would cover its own running costs, but James's view suggested otherwise. She would, after all, have to ask Giles to explain her options in more detail. Finance was his forte.

But how far did she want to involve Giles? The question couldn't be dodged forever.

Almost without her noticing, over this last year Giles had drawn her into his world and become part of her landscape. Or, rather, she had become part of his. She was fond of Giles, and grateful to him. He had been there when her need had been the greatest, first in a professional capacity but later, after that encounter in the art gallery, he had stepped in and supported her at a time when she was overwhelmed by the relentless bureaucracy of death, steering her through probate, the house sale, even helping her find a suitable home for her grandmother as her dementia deepened. And they had been seeing each other, off and on, ever since. They met two or three times a week these days, for a film or a drink, had holidayed together twice, and now almost invariably spent the weekends together, at either his flat or hers, although she had resisted his entreaties that she move in with him. She was not ready for that. Her friends told her she was lucky. Nice man, well set up, clearly devoted, and he had started to talk about the future.

She paused, balancing on a slippery rock. Friends might see them as an established couple, and perhaps they were . . . but it was hard to explain to them how she felt as if Giles could drain the oxygen from a room, and it was this characteristic which made her hesitate. He meant well, of course, but even in the darkest days she had needed her own space, and she needed it still. He was only trying to help, he told her, but— It seemed her thoughts always stalled with that blunt little word, like a railway buffer at the end of a track.

Was that what they were approaching? The end of the track?

A shaft of sunlight split the clouds, turning a pool of water on the strand to hammered silver, and she pulled out her camera, pushing Giles into a siding for the moment, as she tried to capture
the image before it faded. From here the house looked almost intact. Ahead of her there was a small headland from where she might get an even better shot, across the water, so she walked on, towards an old croft house which stood at the end of the headland, stoically facing the bay.

It was one of the traditional stone dwellings, with two roof-lights and two lower windows, the front door hidden on the landward side, and a miscellany of floats and lobster pots scattered amongst bog cotton and coarse grasses. A neat peat stack stood, somewhat incongruously, beside a propane tank, and a traditional-looking wooden boat was pulled up above the high-tide mark between two large boulders. Did the occupants still survive by fishing, she wondered, or did they have land elsewhere? Sheep, perhaps, or cattle. Island life was a mystery to her.

But she could learn.

It wasn't clear to her where the beach began and the croft land ended, and ideally she would climb onto the larger boulder for her shot. There was no sign of life, however, and perhaps the owners wouldn't mind. So she tucked her camera inside her jacket and scrambled up, experimenting with the zoom until, right on cue, a shaft of light raced across the low-lying land and lit the walls of Muirlan House. Brilliant!

“Should be good.” She jumped at a voice behind her and turned to see James Cameron leaning out of one of the upstairs windows, his arms folded on the sill. “Never the same light twice.”

“Oh. This is your—?” But he had vanished. She climbed down from the boulder, putting her camera away, and wished it had
not
been his house. Wrong-footed yet again. He reappeared a moment later from round the side of the house, and she apologised. “I'm probably trespassing.”

“Yep,” he agreed, “so you'd better come in and account for yourself”—he gestured open-handed round the side of the house,
and there was the Land Rover parked in the shadow of the far wall. How had she not seen it?—“and have a cup of tea.”

She could hardly refuse. Was he the boat owner too? And the lobster pots? She followed him round the side of the house, wondering where on earth Emma had found him. Was he even
qualified
to have a view on restoring Muirlan House?

She stopped at the door of the cottage and looked inside, and felt at once that her question had been answered. The interior was stunning—the ground floor had been knocked through and opened up, and a new wooden staircase now separated a cooking and eating area from what had been the small parlour. Original features, including the kitchen range and parlour fireplace, had been carefully restored, and the narrow wooden panelling on the walls was freshly painted and expertly lit. A clever blend of the old and new, practical and minimalist, yet striking, and what he had done had taken skill, and taste.

He offered her tea. “Or coffee?”

“Tea, please,” she said, just as the phone rang.