The Sea House: A Novel (19 page)

‘“It’s dying I am,” she told her husband. But she would not give those spoons up or confess that she had them, because she felt she was owed them, you see. She was sure in her heart that all her sisters looked down on her, and her mother had favoured the others more, and so she thought she must have those spoons to make up for all the years of slights. Which was an odd thing, because all her sisters had the same thoughts about themselves when it came to those spoons. They all felt they were owed those twelve silver spoons to make up for all the slights they had had to put up with from the other females in their family.

‘So Effie’s daughter, Morag, is now on her deathbed, and her own soon to be orphaned children are gathered round her bed, begging her to please get better now. And so she asks for the woman from Drinishader, the old woman with the second sight, who can see as far as the future, and deep, deep back into the heart’s past. I knew her myself, when I was a child.

‘The woman with the second sight comes and she sees straight away what the trouble is. She goes over to the chest of drawers and takes out the twelve spoons, all tied together with a piece of silk ribbon, and needing a shine with some polish since they’ve been hidden away that long. Now they don’t look nice any more; they look black.

‘But her sisters are there and they all know what she has found, and they start screaming and quarrelling like banshees till the old woman with the sight sends everyone out of the room but the sick sister, who can’t get out of her bed anyway.

‘“The problem here,” she tells the dying woman – who has just the strength left to turn her head and see what the woman is holding – “is that you have put a spirit on these spoons, and it has changed their nature so that the silver is all agitated and in motion. We must first name the spirit so that we can order it to leave, and then we must call the spoons by their proper name again and eat from them. Only then can they return to the peace of being simple spoons.”

‘The woman shuts her eyes and sees that the trouble is a spirit of bitterness that is corrupting the metal. So Morag must sit up in bed and tell the spirit of bitterness to leave the spoons, and then she calls out their proper name three times, “Spoons, spoons, spoons.” And at that very moment, as she finishes calling out their proper name, she puts her hands to her head and laughs, because for the first time in years, the jangling in her head has stopped, and she can hear some peace and quiet.

‘Then the old woman summons in all the family and calls for a big pot of porridge. She hands round the spoons, since they must be used for their proper purpose, to make sure the bitter spirit does not come back. The youngest sister divides the spoons out fairly, and it comes back to everyone all the kindnesses they have been given by their sisters.

‘Each sister left the house that day with their own three spoons, which they saw now were nothing but spoons. And each woman went home smiling, with the love of her sisters remembered in her heart.

‘You see, that’s what you have to do to send a haunting spirit back to the day it came from; you must call things by their true name. That is the easy part. Of course, the other part is harder – naming the spirit that was placed onto the spoons or the key or the letter. Many, many things can get a spirit put on them. But you always have to name a spirit to make it go back to its own time.’

‘What a great story,’ said Jamie as we gave Angus a round of applause.

‘No need to clap,’ he said. ‘I am not making this story up, I am only telling you what is true.’

‘A dram from the bottle of spirits,’ said Jamie, unstoppering the bottle of Islay.

‘Now here’s haunted for you,’ said Angus, holding his hand up as if to ward off some curse as he proffered his glass. He would have just one more small whisky with us, he decided. Then he had another. ‘It’s been a while,’ he said.

After a couple more, and some songs in Gaelic, he straightened his cap, tightened the rope that was holding up his trousers, and went home still singing.

That night, as I crossed the hallway to go upstairs, I paused. I thought, Yes, they’re just stairs. Stairs, stairs, stairs.

I was halfway up, thinking about Angus’s whimsical story, wanting to smile and laugh it off, when I felt a chilly draught round my neck. Against all logic, I found myself thinking, ‘But I need to name the spirit. She won’t go away till I’ve named her.’

*   *   *

The next morning, Leaf went up to ask Angus John about one of the hens in the new roost that had stopped laying. Ten minutes later, she was back.

‘He’s not there. I think someone’s burgled his house.’

As we reached the top of the slope, we saw Angus John making his way back along the road from Tarbert. He was taking shaky, exaggerated steps and working so hard at progressing along the road that it was just pitiful to see him. He was carrying a brown plastic shopping bag that clinked.

The door to his cottage stood open. The kitchen felt damp, as if the door had stood open all night and let in the mist. I was horrified to see every single one of his mother’s cherished old plates had been taken down from the dresser and smashed: the willow pattern platters, the rose-covered jugs, the old cream bowls, all lay in pieces, scattered over the floor. Worst of all, someone had taken a poker to the old dresser – Angus always loved to point out how unique it was, how his mother had commissioned it especially from a carpenter in Skye. The wood was now scarred and splintered from repeated blows.

Two empty whisky bottles lay on the table.

Angus John sat down in his chair and immediately fell asleep.

‘Oh, what have you done this time, Angus?’ Mrs MacKay appeared at the door, a square, solid presence battened down in tweed skirt and nylon overall. She went and pulled his head up so she could see his face, then let it fall back onto his chest. ‘You and that temper of yours,’ she shouted, but he didn’t stir.

‘You can help me get him through to his bed, girls.’

Even in early summer, his bedroom was a cold little place. There were spots of black mould on the curtains and window; a wardrobe with an ancient suitcase on top; an elderly bed with a balding candlewick bedspread. The matchboard walls had been painted in hard gloss. We got him laid out on the bed. I pulled off his boots. Leaf covered him with a blanket, and then we went through to clean up the kitchen.

‘You’ve done enough now. I’ll see to this. Goodness knows, I’ve been seeing to that man’s disasters for enough years.’

Leaf was holding two halves of a blue-and-white plate, seeing if they would fit together. ‘But I don’t understand. He’s always so sweet.’

‘Not when he’s drinking he’s not.’

‘Is that the reason his wife left him?’ I said, a pulse high in my throat.

She looked at me in surprise.

‘Oh, Katie. I haven’t thought of Angus’s Katie for years.’ She sighed. ‘It was the drink, and then the nightmares. He’d wake in the night of a sudden, lash out and hit her before he knew what he was about. She was afraid of him. That’s why she took herself away, and their little boy.’

‘He had a little boy?’

‘Oh yes. Callum. It was very sad. The last day I saw Callum was the day his mother took him away.’

*   *   *

That afternoon, Dr Lawson visited Angus. Angus was taken over to the mainland for a stay in a psychiatric unit in Inverness.

‘But isn’t that a bit extreme?’ I said to Dougal when he came by to tell us, after he’d helped Dr Lawson with getting Angus into his car.

‘Angus did his bit in the war, but now he suffers from the shellshock, and when he’s addled with drink, things slip around in his head. He thought Dr Lawson and the nurse were German officers, taking him off for questioning. They had to go along with it to get him in the car.’

‘Was it our fault?’ I said. ‘Letting him drink whisky?’

‘You’re not to blame for how Angus John is. We must keep him in our prayers, that with grace he may overcome.’

After Dougal left, I felt utterly drained. My arms and legs seemed so heavy. I went up to the bedroom, and told myself I was going to finish sewing the cover for a decrepit armchair – another old bit of furniture we’d collected that was going to be as good as new one day, with a bit of paint and hard work.

I sat down in the lumpy old chair, its arms shiny and frayed, and stared at the length of flowered cotton that was going to transform it. The light was growing faded and smoky, a sad hopelessness in the air. I stared at it until the light was almost all gone, then I took the scissors, and with tears running down my face, I sheared the new cloth into jagged, useless rips.

CHAPTER 20

Alexander

I awaited my departure for Edinburgh with some impatience, greatly pleased that Carfax, my old friend in the university museum, had offered me undisturbed access to the now vast collection of specimens in his care.

And of course, I could not think of being in Edinburgh without feeling the exhilaration of returning to those same streets Mr Darwin once walked as a medical student. I pictured him, then little more than a boy, standing white and sweating outside the medical buildings, unable to stomach another dismemberment of a human body.

I pictured him following his mentor Grant on cold and wet journeys along the coast to collect their sea specimens. Grant strides along, a little ahead of the stockier Darwin, all the while busily dropping his theories of species development into ears already attuned to transmology by Darwin’s own grandfather, the radical Erasmus.

I almost felt a tingle in the soles of my feet as I anticipated following Darwin up the marble steps of the university museum, to perhaps make my own small contribution to our understanding of species.

At least, such was my hope.

*   *   *

Bad weather turned the crossing into an ordeal of twelve hours before we came near the harbour of Oban. I sat out on deck, shivering, since the wash of seasickness from suffering travellers made the interior of the cabin impossible. Sharing my end of the bench was an old man who belched and made other noises of an upset digestion for some hours. On my other side sat a fishwife who waved bread and pickled herring under my nose and declared them just the thing to settle the stomach.

Arriving at the large sandstone house that served Matthew and Fanny as a manse, I was once again encouraged to believe in civilisation. Edinburgh may have many alleys and wynds of unspeakable filth and degradation, but the New Town is a monument to progress and the rational mind.

I was as warmly greeted as ever by my hosts, but it was evident that Fanny had suffered from ill health since I had last seen her. She was a great deal thinner, with dark hollows round her eyes, and I wondered that Matthew had not thought to mention their troubles to me.

I had considered Fanny a somewhat silly girl, concerned only with puddings and purchasing furniture for their already well-appointed house, but the woman who greeted me in the hallway seemed to have passed through a sadness, now borne with silent dignity. She clasped my hand in both of hers and called me ‘our dear friend’.

If Fanny was indeed convalescing from some grave illness, I decided that I should quietly enquire of Matthew whether my stay was inconveniencing them, and remove to lodgings nearby. But I soon discovered that they had my every waking moment mapped out. Indeed, my arrival must have been their main topic of conversation for some weeks, judging by the thought that they had given to my comfort.

Fanny told Matthew to show me straight away to my room, which she had readied for my arrival with great thoughtfulness. But as my eyes ranged around the walls and the tall windows overlooking the garden, I could not help recalling a previous visit when I had seen the same room, with a large rocking horse from Fanny’s childhood; with sprigged wallpaper and lace curtains; and a strange chair with low legs and a high back. This, Fanny had termed a nursing chair – another family heirloom. A previous family had evidently used the room as a nursery and at that time the wooden rails across the window had been left untouched.

The bars had now been removed, the chair and the old toys cleared away. A writing desk was set beneath the window. A narrow, high bed took up one wall, with a marble washstand and dressing screen set nearby. I found a bookcase supplied with those books that Matthew clearly deemed might be of use in my studies.

After a pleasant luncheon taken on the terrace overlooking the lawn, Matthew and I set out through the avenues of the New Town. I was anxious to know if Matthew felt my visit a burden to his wife, when she seemed in delicate health. My question seemed to make him flinch. He walked on in silence and then said, ‘We all but lost Fanny last winter, Alexander.’

‘But why did you not tell me? If I could have helped in some way.’

‘There was nothing you could have done. Fanny did not want me to tell anyone, other than those who must know about her troubles. We are fortunate indeed, living in a place where we have some of the most advanced hospitals and surgeons in the world. She lost the child she was carrying, but there were complications. She will never bear a child now.’

‘I am so sorry, so deeply sorry. Is there nothing…?’

‘It is quite final. She will never be a mother. She accepts it, although it has broken her heart. I am simply thankful that I did not lose her.’

He did not speak again for some while. I put my hand on his shoulder and we walked on until he rallied and regained the use of his voice. He left me at the steps of the museum, and I saw him hurry away, heading back in the direction of their house.

*   *   *

I found Carfax in an upper gallery, where a multitude of artefacts were being removed from their cases and packed into tea chests to be carried away by a procession of workmen in aprons. Robert the Bruce’s dirk, the teacup from which Mary Queen of Scots once drank, and diverse curios from Africa were being put into storage as either surplus copies or items of dubious provenance. I stood aside while a large canoe went past in mid-air. One of the workmen stumbled as he turned the corner, dropping the boat on the floor with an unfortunate tearing sound. I helped him to regain his feet and studied the large rip along the bow. The fabric was ancient and varnished heavily. When I helped them lift the craft, I found it very light, being made not of paper as I had assumed, but a parchment-thin hide, with wooden struts inside to keep the long canoe shape. I turned over a label: ‘Supposed Eskimo Canoe, found Sunderland, circa 1690’.