The Sea House: A Novel (27 page)

I felt breathless in the dry air. What exactly was I going to say to Dr Lawson? Blurt out something about how I wanted to see Dr Montgomery, the head doctor? The old familiar panic, a feeling that things were about to get worse, trying to explain myself to the person who was writing everything down in a Manila folder, their expression closed and attentive.

I took off my jumper. I felt too restless to keep still. I shut my eyes, tried breathing slowly.

I mumbled a ‘Sorry’ to the receptionist as I walked past her, dropping my bag and then my jacket, bending down to bundle them under my arm.

‘I didn’t realise you were in such a hurry, Ruth,’ she called after me as I pushed through the heavy fire door. Standing outside, I breathed in the relief of cooler air.

I walked down to the sea loch over the road, dumped everything on a bench and sank down beside it. I sat waiting for my heart to slow down. I pulled at my T-shirt to dry the slick of sweat. I could feel the cold patches under my arms.

What a fool. If I was going to be the sort of grown-up you’d hand a baby to, I should have gone in, asked for help.

But I knew only too well, once you let them in, once they took over, you never knew where it was going to end. Things written in a folder that you could never change.

I saw a woman in a suit as she bent down to get into the back of a car, my baby in her arms.

The back of my hand was burning. I looked down and realised that I had scraped three long welts across the skin, a trail of watery blood seeping up through the flesh, stinging as it met the air.

CHAPTER 30

Alexander, 1861

I recall that Fanny had left the house, as she did each afternoon on her errands, to help oversee a small school in one of the poorer parts of town, or perhaps to meet with her ladies and plot to raise subscriptions for a new school in the Great Glen, cut off as it was at that time from any education.

I had come to greatly admire Fanny, for her strength of character. It seemed to me that she had turned all her disappointment not to self-pity but to a great desire to see an improvement in the lives of other people’s children. I had made her promise, that as soon as my headaches abated, she would allow me to see what help I might offer in teaching her children.

My enforced idleness, as prescribed by the doctor, left me with a great deal of time, and Matthew advised me to take up again the project of researching the sea lady. However, my capacity to concentrate remained poor, and a morning studying in my room left me with a pounding head and a consequent habit of sleeping too much. It was thus late when I woke and realised that I must hurry if I were to keep my appointment that morning at the Bishop’s residence in Morningside – a meeting that I anticipated with some dread. I had written to the Bishop some days before, tending my resignation from the ministry.

I took breakfast with Matthew and Fanny in the morning room, uncomfortably aware from their cheerfulness that they were under the impression my meeting with His Grace was to confirm a promotion in the ministry. I thought to drop some hint of my intentions, but before I could say anything, Matthew shook his paper straight to better read some article. ‘There’s news here, Alexander, of a ship that left Stornoway some weeks back, heading to Canada. Dreadful business.’

‘What has happened?’ I asked him, my heart beginning to beat hard with some premonition. ‘Did she founder?’

‘Almost as bad,’ he replied as he read the print with close attention. ‘Some poor devil boarded the ship with a case of smallpox. The ship was packed with emigrants. By the time they reached port in Canada, the disease had raged right through it. Only half the passengers and crew survived, the rest had to be committed to the sea.’

‘Conditions are so dreadful on those ships,’ said Fanny. ‘What hope did they have? Alexander, are you well?’

I had gone to read the report over Matthew’s shoulder. Saw the name of the ship,
The Caledonia.
The very same ship that had taken the Finsbay people.

I regained my chair and all but collapsed upon the seat. I saw the linen-wrapped bodies sliding down into the dark water, and knew them to be the same men, women and children – yes, children, there would be children – from the Finsbay village where I had stood and read out the eviction notice, and where, a moment later, all hell had broken loose across the bay.

‘Would you like Matthew to send word to the Bishop that you are unwell? Perhaps you should delay your appointment with him?’ Fanny said.

I gulped some cold water and stood up, feeling shaky but determined.

‘More than ever, more than ever, it is imperative that I speak with the Bishop. I cannot continue. I must go through with my resignation.’

From the look that Fanny and Matthew exchanged, I saw how sorely disappointed they were to hear such news.

‘I am sorry. I am sorry,’ I told them.

I left Matthew gazing down at the mess of his boiled egg, the broken shell trailing across the white cloth.

*   *   *

I waited in the Bishop’s study, but he did not appear. It was some time before a maid came to say that I would find him in the garden. She indicated the French windows that led out onto lawns. I followed steps down a grassy bank, and saw no one but an elderly gardener in a hessian apron hoeing the weeds along a bed of gillie flowers. I walked over to ask of him directions as to where I might find the Bishop, but before I could speak, the man dusted down his hand and held it out to shake.

‘How are ye, Alexander? I can’t say how unhappy I am that you feel we must lose you.’

The intelligence of the gaze with which he fixed me, with its unstudied authority, left me in no doubt that I was addressing His Grace.

He indicated a stone bench set in an alcove in a wall, saying, ‘Sit ye down,’ and settled alongside me.

I found myself stumbling through my answers in a way that even to my own ears seemed most unsatisfactory. I had failed my parishioners by my lack of progress in spiritual disciplines. I had become entangled in the affections of a lady. I had failed to support the needy when they were driven from their homes – had helped to drive them from their homes. I had come to the realisation that I was, in truth, unable to reach that state of Godliness that one may expect from the clergy.

I could not speak of the news from the ship, of those that had perished. No words would describe such an awful matter.

He paused for a moment, sighed and leaned forward.

‘How old are you now, Alexander?’

‘Almost thirty, Your Grace.’

‘Are you indeed? And this is your first parish since you were a curate?’

I nodded.

‘And it’s how long that you’ve been out there on the island, with no one to whom you may confide your worries?’

‘A year, a year and a half now, Your Grace.’

He got up, stood in front of me and peered into my face. He tapped on my chest with his finger, and pulled down my bottom eyelid and frowned.

‘And you’ve no’ been looking after yourself too well, I would say. Too much pruning and not enough feeding. You can’t go on like that. I know, I’ve been down that road.’

He went and sat back down, heavily now.

‘You have failed, Alexander. A broken man, yes, but it is only as broken men that we are ready to come to truth and grace, to walk beyond ourselves to where faith begins. If ye’ll only consider biding in your post as a curate for a while, then you will serve a parish well. Will ye no return and bide one more month there?’

Out of obedience, I agreed to his request, but I knew already as I walked from his garden, that even if I returned to my parish, it would not change the knowledge of my own failed nature. I would return and serve out my time at Scarista, but at the end of the promised month, I knew that I must pack up my effects and remove myself to some occupation on the mainland whereby I might usefully gain a living.

I cannot say what grieved me most, the thought that the God I loved and so longed to serve was hidden from me, or the thought that I would no longer walk in a landscape that now seemed to me a home, or the loss of those simple people I had come to love.

CHAPTER 31

Ruth

At three o’clock on a glorious afternoon, we walked across to Scarista church for the burial of the mermaid baby, her remains having been finally released to the island.

The MacKays and the MacDonalds were already seated in the pews. Most of the local people had turned out, the women wearing those black straw hats that they seemed to keep specifically for church each Sunday. Two men in dark suits sat near the front – policemen from Tarbert. Shortly after the service had begun, the door creaked open again. Lachlan slipped in and sat down at the back.

The congregation sang Gaelic psalms, a kind of wailing that makes your hair stand on end. In the pauses you could hear the competing, tuneless sound of a corncrake outside, rasping its one-idea song.

We filed out of the church in silence and followed the small box down to the graveyard turf. All around, the island was shimmering, blue sea and green machair, the corncrake creaking away from somewhere in the silverweed. Two men slowly lowered the tiny box into a hole at the end of the row of headstones. Dougal read prayers, a couple of skylarks winding higher and higher over the sea pastures, a warm wind lifting my hair. I took Michael’s hand; it felt warm. I realised how cold my own was.

There was no name on the stumpy little headstone, simply: ‘A child known to God’. Well, if he knew about that child, he might at least have taken better care of it.

We were invited back to Dougal’s manse in An t’Obbe, a neat bungalow with beige, pebbledash walls. The ladies from church had sandwiches ready, and the essential nip of whisky came out. Lachlan was evidently Mr Popular with the old ladies. They rushed to stow his coat and get him a well-stocked plate of home-baking.

Someone caught my elbow. It was Christine. ‘You didn’t come and see me, Ruth.’

‘Sorry. I’ve been so busy. Oh, and here’s Lachlan.’

Lachlan had managed to escape the fan club and was on his way over, bringing Dougal with him.

‘Come by, tomorrow, Ruth. Don’t forget now. It may all be nothing, but there’s someone I think you should speak with.’

I was relieved to see her move away to catch someone else.

‘Sorry to have arrived so late,’ said Lachlan as he joined us. ‘But I was determined to get here for the burial.’

‘I hope you had a good trip to Edinburgh anyway,’ said Dougal.

‘Yes, very good. And I spent quite a lot of time in the library at the Historical Society.’ He glanced in my direction, looking very pleased with himself.

‘You found out some more about Ferguson?’

‘I did. The archivist there was very helpful. Apparently there’s an entry for a manuscript written by a Reverend Ferguson in the library catalogue. She can’t put her hands on it as yet, but she thinks it must be in the archives somewhere, since there’s no record of anyone taking it out, and so she’s trying to locate it for me.’

‘That’s great news.’

‘Right now though, Ruth, the reason I rushed back today is that I wanted to hand over this.’

Looking somewhat apprehensive, he fetched an envelope from the inside of his jacket. It was a brown, slim envelope, like a bill. He’d promised to give Michael a final costing out for the boat, but I couldn’t understand why he was giving it to us now, at a funeral. He held it out for me to take.

‘I think you should give that to Michael.’

But as Michael unfolded the paper inside, I could see it didn’t look anything like a bill. The paper was old, so thin that it was almost transparent, the pages sharply creased as if they’d been lying folded up for a long time.

‘What is this?’ said Michael.

‘The Reverend’s wife bequeathed her husband’s manuscript to the library after he passed away, and she must have slipped that letter inside. The letter was left unopened, but stored separately with other small documents. When the archivist came across it yesterday, she called me immediately.’

‘D’you mean it’s a letter from Alexander?’

‘Not from Alexander, Ruth. It’s from his wife. That’s her signature at the end of the letter.’

‘What was she called?’

‘I’m afraid she signed herself as Mrs Alexander Ferguson, as was the way then. Her writing’s quite shaky, so the letter must have been written when she was very old. Anyway, once I read it, I asked the archivist if I might bring it with me, on account of the circumstances today.’ He turned to the vicar. ‘Dougal, the baby you buried today, she does have a name, and her name is in that letter.’

Michael had already started reading. ‘This is dreadful. Have you read this, Lachlan?’

‘But I still don’t understand. Why put a letter in with the manuscript?’ I said.

‘I think the details were simply too shocking to make public at that time and this must have been his wife’s way of leaving a record of the poor wee child we buried today at Scarista. I have to warn you, it’s not a nice story in that letter.’

CHAPTER 32

Moira, 1861

I kept the house dusted and aired, ready for the Reverend, but the weeks went by and no letter came to say when he would be back from Edinburgh.

And no letter came from my cousin Annie, though it were still early to expect one to arrive all the way from Canada, but I did heartily long for a word from someone who knew me.

The grasslands of Scarista seemed more empty in all their beauty than ever. I began to see how very strange it was to have but one or two children running about the open machair, which was now coming into full bloom, and heavy with the scent of flowers and honey. It had not rained for days. The sea was such a holy, deep blue, and the sky so innocent, with the green of the grass as cheerful as the beginning of Creation, and yet it was an empty place, with the people gone.

I walked down along the white foam and saw the seals bobbing up with their dark heads, the oyster catchers with their beaks dipping in the sea, skittering in the foam with their quick feet. Surely, I thought, men may have stolen the land, and yet the land remains itself, and has always greeted me like a friend.