The Visitors (14 page)

‘The selkie thing? How’s that going?’

‘Good, aye,’ I said, standing up. She followed me down the stairs. ‘I found some great books in the library, and there’s this beachcomber on the island, he’s got a load of selkie stories.’

‘Has he?’ she said, pricking up her ears. ‘I’d love to hear them.’

‘Go and ask him. He’s not shy when it comes to telling tales. Makes the selkies into interesting wee beasties.’

‘Could I come with you? Next time you go?’

‘Nae bother. Izzy loves an audience.’

We were back in the living room. The little house felt weird.

‘Sure you won’t stay for dinner with my dad?’ asked Ailsa. There was a sudden note of pleading in her voice. With a burst of guilt, I realised that she must be very lonely. I spent so much of my life seeking out solitude, and here was someone who had no choice about living in isolation.

I felt chastened. ‘I can’t, Ailsa. I’m expected home.’

‘Of course,’ she said, ‘right. Never mind. Maybe another time.’

‘Please, aye. I’d like that.’

‘Weather’s turning anyway. We’d better go.’

I took my schoolbag and we went outside. The sun had weakened, retreating behind a veil of cloud, and Still Bay had turned choppy in the cooling afternoon. We took the dinghy in silence, its engine whining high above the sound of the sloshing waves. A gigantic murder of crows bombed the sky above Grogport. Approaching Bancree, I jumped barefoot
onto the beach, dumped my bag and shoes in the sand, and pushed the rib back into the water.

‘See you, then. Thanks for the jumper.’

‘Thanks for the rescue,’ she said.

Still smiling, she turned the yellow inflatable for Dog Rock and didn’t look round once. I watched her all the way back to the islet, sitting motionless at the tiller. Just before she reached the pontoon, I turned and walked home through the band of dune grass.

It was clear that she wanted a friend. As weird as she was, I felt drawn to her, to her sadness and loneliness. I’d had a good time with her. I had to remind myself that I was leaving the island inside a year. There wasn’t room for anyone else in my life. I was trying to cut my ties to Bancree, not find new ones.

At the edge of Grogport, I felt the first pinpricks of rain on my head and hands. I picked up my pace, even as the rain scattered on the tarmac at my feet. I scampered into the house just before it loosed in volleys, hammering on the porch roof.

There was a fire on, and everyone was in the kitchen. Mum was cooking something with leeks and bacon. Jamie lay on his back, giggling and gurgling and flapping his podgy arms at Ronny, who was busy pulling faces.

‘Hey, Flo,’ he said, and blew a raspberry.

‘Hey, it’s the baby. And Jamie, too.’

‘Very funny.’

‘Hi, Mum. Where’s Anders?’

‘Dunno,’ said Ronny. ‘He went home after the pub last night. He was going to get some clean clothes and stop the night, then come back here. But he wasn’t in Tighna when we stopped to pick him up just now. I called, but you know the phones.’

‘I told you,’ said Mum, ‘he’ll have discovered a bottle of
something he’d forgotten about, and he’ll be sitting by himself, singing Danish folksongs because I won’t let him do it here.’

‘Oh, I know, I know. It’s a shame though. He’s back to the rigs next week, and it’s always good to see him.’

‘Always good to be out on the lash, more like,’ muttered Mum, and poked Ronny in the ribs.

‘I’m not sure I could handle another night with Anders. I’m saving myself for the football now.’

‘You’re getting old. I’ll need to find myself a younger model.’

‘Steady now, Cath,’ he grinned, and went to grab her. Mum squealed and flipped away from him.

‘And with that,’ I said, ‘I’m off to my room.’

I left them laughing in the kitchen, feeling suddenly and sharply unable to share the fun. I understood, then, why I liked having Anders in the house. He made me feel less of a stranger.

Through my bedroom wall, I could hear Jamie shrieking with laughter. There were so many years between me and him. There was a different father between us, and Mum had changed for it, too. Her and Ronny was not her and my dad, whoever he was. Ronny was a nice guy, and he made me welcome. He treated me like his own daughter. But I was not his own daughter. I was different from them. As time went on, they didn’t need me.

The windows of my house cast loose squares of light onto the road. I stood on the fringes, in the shadows. Across the water, Dog Rock showed as lights against the darkness.

Unsure of what to do, I stood in the gloom of my room and listened to the swell of the rain as it stampeded on the road.

A few days later, Ailsa and I skipped school early, because we could. From the top deck of the ferry, she gazed into the shifting Sound. I fought the sea breeze to read the Tanno
Gazetteer
. It was a classified ad rag masquerading as a local newssheet. Three weeks after he’d gone missing, poor Doug MacLeod had dropped down to the middle pages. It was pretty much the same article as the previous edition. Friends and family remained concerned. Report any information to DC Tom Duncan.

‘Daft old sod,’ I muttered.

‘I guess you knew him, then?’

‘Everyone knows everyone. He was a janitor at the distillery, some of the time, so he worked a bit with Ronny. Cleaning, odd jobs, you know. We used to see him out drinking, sitting on the wall.’

I pointed at the harbour, distant but approaching, barely visible as a grey line beneath the Tighna townscape.

‘He’d drink his cider, or his brew, or get pints from the hotel when he had the money.’

‘Think he fell in?’

‘Don’t know. It’d happen so quickly.’

‘Underwater,’ murmured Ailsa, entranced by the sea. Her eyes glowed, sheening blue reflected in the dark pool of each iris.

‘Aye. Underwater,’ I echoed.

Ailsa would be fine swimming. But we both knew what it meant for Dougie.

‘Hey,’ I said, ‘do you still want to see Izzy?’

‘The beachcomber? Aye, sure.’

‘I might go now, if you fancy coming.’

‘Might be a nice way to kill some time.’

We disembarked and walked down to the beach.

‘What’s that all about?’ asked Ailsa.

She pointed at the building site, a mess of bricks and sand dominated by dozens of gigantic concrete pipes.

‘Nothing, in the end. Some kind of tunnel, drainage or gas or something. The project was abandoned, and they left all that stuff. We used to play in the pipes when we were kids.’

‘They just left it?’

‘This is Bancree. Wasn’t worth the cost of shipping back. Come on.’

The tide was at a low point, and we walked barefoot near the shoreline, where the sand was firmest, and the near waves ploshed and sloshed shallow right beside us.

‘How exactly does he survive as a beachcomber?’ asked Ailsa.

‘I don’t know if you can. He’s an odd-job man, too.’

‘Like Dougie?’

‘Less organised. Izzy lives off-grid. His shack is his castle. You’ll see. But he helps out some of the farmers, and washes dishes for Tony in the hotel sometimes. He makes wind chimes and things for the tourists, too, so I guess you could call him an artist. He does all kinds of things.’

‘Strange ways to make a living.’

‘It’s a calling. His real job is as a shennachie.’

‘Ah,’ she said, nodding, ‘a storyteller.’

‘You know the word?’ I was a bit disappointed.

‘Aye. You don’t move about the islands without meeting a shennachie or two. They’re always on the go. A few months here and a few years there, and off they go again.’

The sea sighed and fizzed on wet sand. Crows a hundred yards ahead, raking through the weed, and gulls skidding on the waves. Dead crabs, the claws sucked dry, the empty fuselage left to scuttle on the wind.

‘I keep thinking that one day I’ll decide to come and see him, and he’ll be gone. He’ll have chucked his shack back into the sea.’

‘Not today, though,’ she said, squinting up the beach.

A ragged stream of smoke bloomed ahead of us, carried inland on the sea breeze.

‘This way,’ I said, and picked the path up from the beach.

As I passed the wooden frame, as always, I reached out and let my fingers trail through the bone and wooden wind chimes. Behind me, Ailsa did the same. A heavy figure sat hunched beside the fire. Something bubbled in a large pot, sat directly on the embers, and splashes from the rolling boil sizzled when they hit the fire.

‘How do, stranger,’ I called out.

The figure jolted and spun, grimacing horribly. I did a double-take. It was Izzy, but one of his eyes was swollen shut, the bruise swelling black. Over his cheek. His knuckles were scraped raw, and there were vicious gashes in his ear and temple. His good eye looked out, clearly startled.

‘Izzy?’ I gasped, ‘What the hell happened to you?’

His battered face broke into a weak smile. He held up a hand.

‘Ach, lass,’ he said, ‘don’t worry about it.’

‘Don’t worry? You’re black and blue, man. Who did this to you?’

I walked closer. The beachcomber leaned forward to roll a
log onto his fire, and winced with the movement. He noticed Ailsa.

‘Who’s your pal? Hello, there.’

‘Hello,’ she mumbled, clearly taken aback.

‘This is Ailsa. She wanted to hear your stories. Don’t change the subject. Who did this?’

He sighed, and leaned back.

‘Look. I’ll not be taking this further. So you’re not to either, understand?’

I folded my arms. He studied me.

‘It was Lachie Crane,’ he relented, finally.

‘Lachlan? That mad bastard? What’s his beef with you?’

‘I don’t know, lass,’ he said, weary as the world. ‘I was here as usual the other night, minding my own business, just having a wee smoke and a wee dram, and next thing I know, him and his fancy pals are kicking about the place.’

‘What happened?’ said Ailsa.

He looked at her warily.

‘They had a poke about, and I told them to get away, and they wouldn’t, and … Well. There was more of them than there was of me.’

Gingerly, he rolled up his sweater. His body was barrel-thick and downed in white hair, but peppered with red and black marks.

‘Oh, Izzy. What about your ear?’

The gash was gruesome, the blood crusted black in the curls of skin.

‘Lachie had a wee knife with him,’ muttered Izzy. ‘Think he wanted to make his mark.’

‘Christ alive.’

‘No, I was glad of it. The knife scared his pals. When he got that out, it stopped being funny. They called it a day. Left me to put my things back together.’

‘Lachlan Crane is a sewer of a man.’

‘He’s a wee boy,’ corrected Izzy, sadly, ‘pulling wings off moths, just to show he can. He’ll be no better when his dad gives him Clachnabhan.’

We all brewed on that for a moment. Munzie Crane wasn’t getting any younger.

‘I don’t know,’ said Izzy. ‘I like it here, but it might be time to move on.’

‘You need to tell the police.’

‘Aye, right. The Cranes send a dozen crates of whisky to the station every Christmas.’

‘Flora’s right,’ said Ailsa, ‘you should report it, at least.’

The beachcomber spat heavily into the fire. It fizzed, boiling to nothing in a flash.

‘And how would I prove it, lass? The cops think I’m a bum at the best of times, while Lachie and his pals are perfectly respectable businessmen on a perfectly respectable business trip. Who are they going to believe?’

Ailsa and I looked at each other. He was right.

‘And what if I tell, and nothing comes of it. What then? Lachie comes back on his own with that wicked little knife of his, and there’ll be no more Izzy, no more shennachie.’

‘It’s not fair,’ I said.

‘This is the world,’ said the storyteller, opening up his arms, ‘and this is how it always goes. You’re young, but you’d better get used to it, girl.’

Above us, gulls hacked and swung on updrafts.

‘Let me look at your ear.’

Reluctantly, Izzy gave me some strips of rag, halfway to clean, and a bowl of water. He reached beneath his seat and pulled out a bottle of Clachnabhan, sloshed some into the bowl – then took a slug himself. I dabbed the rags in the mix
and started to explore the wound. It was thick with blood. The first time, Izzy jerked away from me, and I had to steady him with a hand on his shoulder. His massive body exuded a gravity all of its own. I imagined Lachie’s pals buzzing about him like flies.

Gradually, the wet rags dissolved the clotted blood, and rosy water fell from Izzy’s ear, dripping down his cheek and into the neck of his thick jumper. Exposed, the wound wasn’t as bad as it had first seemed. Poor Izzy flinched each time I daubed it with the whisky, but I cleaned it to a ragged pink slash.

‘Have you any plasters?’ I said, already knowing the answer.

‘Plasters? Do they wash up on the beach, lass?’ he replied, indignantly.

‘Did the whisky?’

He just winked at me.

‘Fine. You need to keep something on it though, at least until it’s dry.’

He grumbled, but pressed another of the rags against his ear.

‘So why are you two here, anyway? You didn’t come to play Mary Seacole to an old fart like me, did you?’

‘No. I came in the hope you’d remembered another selkie story. Ailsa wanted to hear them, too.’

‘Is that right?’ he said, eyeing her up. ‘You like a tall tale, do you, Miss?’

She nodded. ‘Aye. There was a shennachie on Rum for a while. He stayed a summer. I listened to a few of his stories.’

‘So you know the score. Selkies again, is it? I’ve got others if you prefer.’

‘Selkies, please,’ I said.

I sat on my usual crate. Ailsa sat cross-legged on the ground beside me, arms folded in front – like a kid at primary school being good for story-time. Sometimes her movements were so childlike.

‘Selkies …’ muttered Izzy, and took another swig of his whisky. ‘All right. Here we have it. Listen close, children.’

There was a selkie woman, and she loved a sailor. He was a true lad. Whenever he went to sea, she spied on him from the troughs of waves. She blessed him with fair winds and gifted fish into his nets, though he never knew it. The more she gazed upon him, the more she desired him for a husband. The selkie hatched a plan to seize his heart. She followed him to sea and conjured a terrible storm from the calmest summer day. His smack overturned in the tempest, and the sailor and his mates were cast into the ocean. The selkie approached him in the form of a beautiful woman, and offered to save him. But even in drowning, the sailor refused her. He already had a wife, a lass he loved most dearly, and he could not be swayed, even in the face of death.