The Visitors (11 page)

I shrieked and jerked backwards, sending a wave of black water crashing to the bathroom floor. I tumbled from the tub and slammed onto the tiles, taking half the water with me. I scrambled backwards until I banged into the wall, never once taking my eyes from the bathtub. I hauled a towel around myself. Trembling, chest heaving, I found my feet and peered into the bath. The peaty water slopped in a low, quiet wave from side to side. The floor was a sopping puddle.

A pulse hammered madness in my veins. I felt nauseous and exposed, but suddenly uncertain.

I approached the tub in hesitant steps. I leaned low and reached out a hand, moving it slowly over the surface of the water. I took the chain in my hand, tensed and jumped backwards, yanking out the plug.

The water sucked out in a long brown gurgle, leaving a trail of tiny peaty fragments as it drained into the plughole. My adrenaline washed down with it, leaving me hollow, shaken and stupid.

There was nothing in the tub but dirt. I looked around the silent bathroom. The mirror was speckled with scales of condensation, streaks of it running down in thin dark bands.

What an idiot.

I fetched the mop and bucket from the kitchen. Even as I soaked and squeezed the water from the floor, I replayed the moment, over and over again, becoming increasingly less certain of what I’d felt.

It must have been the dream. I’d had a weird dream, that was all. Those twisted drawings from the book. My brain had turned all the dark stuff I’d been studying into something physical. What sort of girl turns that sort of drawing into that sort of fantasy? A rush of shame barrelled through me. And to think I’d seen Ailsa’s dad in the dream, too – taking Richard’s place, his eyes weeping that dark liquid. His face. It really was a handsome face.

Those eyes. They’d seen so far inside me.

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ I told myself. ‘Don’t be daft.’

I took stock and snapped myself out of the fug. I put on my thickest jumper and some leggings, cranked up some music, turned on all the lights and lit a fire, stomping about the house and doing all I could to forget it had ever happened.

Perhaps an hour later, Anders and Ronny clattered into the house, falling over each other and getting stuck in the doorway. Their shambles lifted the weight from my heart. They were company, and they were here.

They were singing something in Danish, extremely badly, at least two seconds out of time with each other. Ronny collapsed onto the living room floor and lay on his back, gasping like a salmon. Anders took to one knee and finished his song as a serenade to me, arms outstretched, holding the last note interminably. Eventually, he stopped braying.

‘That was just lovely. What’s it about?’

He blinked and swayed, just a little.

‘It is a most wonderful fisherman’s song,’ he said. ‘For the fisherman.’

His eyes glistened with tears.

‘Home inside twenty-four hours? You two are getting old.’

‘We’ve been. We’ve been. We’ve been,’ said Ronny, calling from the floor.

I waited.

‘We’ve been … for a drink.’

‘The fisherman,’ whispered Anders.

‘Well,’ I said, ‘I’m going to make you some coffee.’

The coffee helped a little, and the pair were halfway presentable by the time Mum came home. Anders was pretty
much his usual self, and Ronny could talk without slurring. Mum gave him the baby, and he skulked off to deal with a dirty nappy, holding Jamie at arm’s length like a time-bomb.

I made mackerel and mashed potato for tea, and the food gave them both a second wind. Anders cracked open another bottle of whisky, drinking three times as fast as Ronny. The pair of them kept me laughing, and the laughter kept me from thinking about my bad dream in the bathtub. Simply having Anders in the house helped. He was a one-man army. The more time went on, the more I cursed myself for a daft wee girl.

‘How’s your day been, sweetheart?’ asked Mum.

‘Aye, Flo,’ croaked Ronny. ‘Not your usual chirpy, joy-filled self.’

‘Not that great, I suppose. Richard dumped me.’

‘The varlet,’ growled Anders, ‘I’ll have his head on a stick.’

‘No need for that just yet, thanks.’

‘As m’lady commands,’ he said, making a theatrical bow.

‘I’m sorry, pet,’ said my mum.

‘It’s fine,’ I shrugged, spearing a chunk of fish. ‘I knew it would happen. We all knew.’

Mum and Ronny glanced at each other guiltily, then me. Aye, they’d known.

‘Bristol’s a long way away, poppet,’ said Ronny, gently.

‘Honestly,’ I said, putting down my fork, ‘I’m fine. I’m a bit sad, but it’s hardly come out of the blue.’

‘Will you be OK at school?’

‘I was getting on before he broke up with me, and I’ll get on now. Besides,’ I said, gesturing at the hulking Dane, ‘I’ll always have Anders.’

He put a beefy hand to his chest.

‘Be still, my heart!’

‘You’re a great soft numpty,’ said Mum, shushing him.
‘You’ll let us know, Flora, won’t you? If you need help, or – someone to talk to. You could join a club in Tanno. Go to the judo with Ronny. Or something.’

‘Or nothing. I’ll be fine. I am fine.’

‘Of course she’s fine,’ growled Anders, ‘she has me.’

‘My prince. That’s so sweet.’

‘And as for that,’ said Mum, rounding on the Dane, ‘when are you going to find yourself a woman, Anders?’

‘I wouldn’t wish that job on anyone,’ smirked Ronny. ‘Told you that conversation wasn’t over.’

‘Weasel.’

‘Oaf.’

‘Wheesht, the pair of you,’ said Mum. ‘Well? What of it?’

Silence fell. Anders changed. We felt it. In a blink, all his bluster was gone. He shrugged and studied the wooden tabletop, tracing the knots with his big fingers. Finally, he spoke.

‘In some ways, I already have a woman.’

‘What?’ Ronny pricked up his ears. ‘You what, now?’

‘I’ve been spoken for since I left Denmark. Since the day I turned fifteen.’

‘What the hell?’

‘It is true, my friend,’ said Anders, and he seemed sadder. He took a slug of whisky and forced a grin.

‘Anders! How could you? My heart’s broken,’ I said, throwing a dramatic hand to my temple.

He spoke low. ‘Don’t be joking about broken hearts, Flora. This is not a thing to laugh about.’

‘I’ve known you for almost twenty years! How could I not know about this?’ exclaimed Ronny. ‘What the hell are you talking about? Who is she? Where is she?’

The big Dane was at war with himself, but eventually he decided.

‘She is dead.’

We were still, then, and rain surged against the windows.

‘I was a boy in Jutland. She lived in the next village. We skipped school to play in the fields. That countryside was ours. We climbed every tree, swam in every stream. We would have been married and so happy.’

‘… so what happened?’

‘One day, I was caught and returned to school. She went without me. The last I saw of her was through my classroom window. She waved and smiled for me to join her. They found her three days later. She was face down in a pool, drowned like my own true Ophelia.’

‘Oh, Anders.’

‘But I have learned to live with that. I vowed, then, never to go back. The place and the people are too much for me. Even the language, sometimes. I do not need remembering when already I cannot forget.’

‘That’s awful.’

‘And now you see, how it is not very funny to joke about broken hearts.’

‘Perhaps not,’ I said, ashamed.

‘I can’t believe I never knew this,’ said Ronny.

‘I decided long, long ago I should not talk to anyone about her.’

‘But why not, man?’

‘Because, my friend, you will try to make me feel better, and you will tell me that the time is now come to move on.’

Ronny shut his mouth.

‘So, until today, I do not talk. But lately—’ and here Anders sighed, gesturing round the table. ‘It’s this. It is all of you. Every time I come here, I want this. I wanted a family. I wanted a child. It is hard for me to see this every time.’

‘You could still find someone else,’ I said. ‘You still have time. What about you and Janet? Haven’t there been others?’

‘As you will learn, Flora, there is love, and there is loneliness, and then, somewhere in between, there is comfort. I will never love anyone the way that I love her. It burns in me like this,’ he said, twirling the whisky in its tumbler. Mesmerised, I watched the churn and sparkle. ‘And so I am caught, trapped in this amber we call love. I can’t go on, and I cannot return. I have the joy of love, and the pain also.’

‘This is why you keep working on the rigs,’ said Mum, quietly.

Anders nodded.

‘On the rigs, there is only the rigs.’

The CD had finished.

‘If you are very lucky,’ he said, looking only at me, ‘then maybe one day you will know what it is to love. And if you are most unlucky, you will know what it is, never to be with that one person you love so much.’

‘It’s not fair,’ I said. I couldn’t meet his eye.

‘But what is fair? This is the only world we have. Many times, Flora, bad things happen to good people. And the world, still it turns.’

The wind cried into the chimney pots.

‘But still,’ he said, brightening, ‘I have the best next thing. My friends, and my whisky. This is not the same. But I think it comes maybe pretty close.’

He and Ronny chinked their glasses together.

‘I should do the dishes,’ I said.

We left it at that. The awkward atmosphere didn’t dissolve until I’d returned from the washing-up and we started playing cards. Ronny poured me a glass of beer. Anders winked and snuck me foamy top-ups when he thought Mum wasn’t looking. But even with the teasing and laughter, I thought of poor Anders and his girl. He soon returned to his usual self, loud and lairy, but Mum and Ronny could see I wasn’t right.
They would have marked it up to being dumped, and Flo not taking it well, the poor dear … She talks tough, but she’s soft underneath, the lass, and so on.

Thinking I couldn’t cope riled me more than Richard leaving.

Flashes of the bathtub made my skin prickle, but they grew fewer and further between as the evening rolled on. I sought out memories of that presence against my skin, trying to recall what I’d felt, what had happened, but the more we talked – the more beer I drank – the dimmer it became. My heart swelled for the company.

Mum and I drifted to our beds at eleven or so. Anders and Ronny stayed up talking old times over the whisky, with a strict warning not to sing again. Their chuckles and silences kept me awake for hours. When sleep came it was dark and fractured, full of leering ink sketches morphing into people and people turning into seals, flailing about in skins that didn’t fit. Kelp and condoms, slack and stretched. Hands appeared from within bodies, searching out seams and thrusting through the skin, fingers clenched in white-tight fists. I woke more than once, heart humming loud, and heard nothing but the low weight of the sea, growling on the shore.

‘Right then, folks,’ said Miss Carlyle, ‘how are we finding the project?’

The class fell into an uncomfortable silence. I’d done loads of work. As well as Izzy’s selkie story, I’d ordered two more books on Scottish myths from the library, and already drafted several pages. I felt pretty good about the report, and was genuinely interested in my selkies. But I knew better than to volunteer that sort of information to the class, and I kept my mouth shut.

‘I’m struggling to find good sources, Miss.’

‘You’re doing giants, aren’t you, Una? Where have you tried so far?’

‘I’ve used the web, but everything I’ve found round here says the same thing. The only other source I’ve got is my grandma, but I didn’t think that would count.’

‘Why not?’

‘Well … She’s never right, Miss.’

‘Ah! What have I taught you? There are no “rights” in history, remember?’

‘No, Miss. I mean my grandma’s not right. She’s mental.’

‘Never mind that, Una. She still has important things to say.’

‘You’ve never met my grandma, Miss.’

‘Wheesht. She’ll have been brought up on songs and folk tales. That’s perfect. Use her all you can.’

‘Miss Carlyle,’ I said, ‘what’s a shennachie?’

‘Ah, now that’s an interesting question. Why do you ask, Flora?’

‘There’s one on Bancree. He has selkie stories.’

‘Fascinating. A shennachie – are the rest of you listening? A shennachie is a traditional storyteller. They would be wanderers, performing their stories in exchange for food and lodgings. New stories would be collected on their travels, remembered, told and passed on.’

‘He said it was wrong to write his stories down, though.’

‘Most shennachies would have been illiterate. The memory was prized above all, because that was all they had. But I’m sure you can get the basics into your report. That will be enough.’

‘Yes, Miss,’ I said, thinking of my promise to Izzy.

‘You’re very lucky to have a resource like that, Flora,’ she said. ‘I suggest you take full advantage of him.’

Halfway through the class, I nipped up to the library. I finally planned to contact Broch Books, the people who’d published Mutch’s mental stories. I wanted to know why anyone would print such a peculiar book and, if possible, find out about the mysterious M.I. Mutch. The publishers had to know something about the author, even if no one else did. The book had grown on me day by day. Those demented ink pictures had wormed into my dreams, where they writhed and bunched and bulged. Selkies hid in peaty dishwater, and ducked into the trough of every wave.

Broch Books had no website, but the name returned a couple of positive hits in an Orkney business directory. Intriguingly, Broch claimed to specialise in poetry and island walking guides. Mutch’s mad stories seemed a far cry from either of those.

I kept digging, and eventually found an ancient email address. I composed a friendly message, asking for more
information about the book – about why it had been commissioned, and about M.I. Mutch – and sent it off.

The library was heavy with the tang of furniture polish. I did some more research online, reading about selkies in the Faroes, and in Iceland. The same stories returned from each culture, give or take minor details.