The Visitors (22 page)

There was no time for conversation. Bev was gunning the engine even as I took the baby from Nana. She kissed me on the cheek and climbed back aboard the bus. She gave a thumbs-up as the bus pulled away, rocking in the wind. With the red taillights flickering between the trees, the bus disappeared around the corner and I stood in the middle of the road. The gale howled and hissed in the trees, surf pounding on the beach behind me.

In my arms, Jamie lay fast asleep. His soft hair fluttered in the breezes that ducked inside his hood. The brown-black fluff was the same colour as the matter I’d half-seen in John’s kit bag. And even then, I’d kid myself it was nothing, just some old piece of cloth or something … except that his reaction had been so quick, so vicious. I’d thought he was going to pounce at me, tip me overboard. I turned to sneak a look at Dog Rock. John was still forcing the inflatable through the swell, but he’d almost reached the pontoon. Ailsa flung a rope to him, looping dark against a grey sky. He seized it in a fist and drew in the rib. Together and with evident difficulty, battling both waves and wind, they lashed it to the walkway. The pair left for the cottage, but after a few paces John turned and came back to the dinghy. He reached down to retrieve the kit bag. Casually, he slung it over his shoulder. He followed Ailsa into the house and did not look back.

I didn’t know him. I didn’t know who he was, or what he was capable of. There must have been some good reason he wouldn’t want me to see inside the bag.

What had Ailsa said?

‘I just want him to stop.’

Another gust heaved into me, forcing me take a half step to find my balance. Jamie stirred. The wind chimes hanging from my house clattered in atonal clicks. I started, convinced that someone in Grogport was watching me. The windows of empty houses were blank, reflections showing walls of scudding cloud. The village was deserted. The wind nudged my back. Move. Move. Get indoors. Feeling edgy and exposed, ears ringing with cold and wet, I walked up the road to our cottage.

I mixed up some formula, testing the temperature on my wrist. Sitting in my lap, cradled in the crook of my arm, Jamie guzzled the milk, drinking himself into a contented stupor. I slung him over my shoulder and thumped his back until I’d forced out a burp, then ran him a wee bath and washed him, cleaning him with a sponge. His tiny penis floated in the water, shrimplike and strange. I towelled him dry in Mum and Ronny’s room. Fresh and clean and wrapped up in a sleep suit, I sat him on my lap. He cooed and burbled, examining his hands with a baffled frown. I couldn’t ever see myself a mother. I felt like I was looking after someone else’s kid. Babysitting. Which I was, of course – but he felt like a stranger, not like a brother. Part of that was the age gap. Part of that was having different fathers. And there was something else, too. Mum and Ronny would never say it, but when Jamie came along, I stopped being the kid. Our cottage was small for three, let alone four, and there was only enough space in our lives for one child. Jamie took that spot. He’d need a room of his own, soon, and we all knew that would be my room. It was unspoken, but I’d be leaving home. It made me a little sad, but also fuelled my longing for escape.

I read Jamie a bedtime story about a hungry goat and laid him in his cot. I rocked him for a few moments, then left him to settle.

The rain fell ferociously, hammering the kitchen windows, drumming on the roof. Even the sound of it made me feel cold. I microwaved leftover fish stew for my dinner and sat in a blanket, flicking through the channels. The weather choked the signal, and every station played the same crawling static. Snatches of voices, half-faces. Ghosts. Anders. I turned it off again. The rain was a snare drum.

Idly, I rifled through my History notes, and flicked through the Mutch book. Selkies, selkies wearing skins. They glared at me, challenging, daring, tempting. Come and get me. The selkie woman scowled. I closed the book.

At a loss for what to do, I pinched a slug of whisky from Ronny’s cabinet, one of the cheap ones, tipped my head back and relaxed my shoulders as it burned a slow path into my belly. I built a small fire in the lounge, poured another whisky, and sat to watch the fire and think and drink. The whisky flowed better than my thoughts, and I drank more than I meant to, grimacing with each hot sip of spirit, losing myself in the twists and pulses of the embers. Whisky ran warm inside me, glowing from the inside out. At a loss for anything better to do, I went to bed to read.

The wind howled beneath the eaves. Restless and bored and alive to the sounds of the gale, I couldn’t concentrate on my book. I turned onto my back and looked at the ceiling. My mind sluiced with thoughts, flitting from Mutch and his twisted pictures to Tina Robson and her gang. Selkies with twisted backs and my Anders, vanished in a wink, gone without goodbyes. Viking stones, and poor Ailsa, so unhappy, craving stillness. I especially thought of John Dobie, of how he’d snapped when I caught the kit bag. It was too much. I couldn’t keep it all in perspective. I wanted a moment of distraction, of peace, of nothingness.

I lit a couple of candles and turned off the glaring bedside
lamp. This was what Richard and I used to do. Candles and empty houses. Stupid to think so, but the anticipation felt greater alone than I’d ever felt with him. In the flickering gloom, I turned down the volume on the baby monitor, and set it on the bedside cabinet. Jamie hadn’t stirred for an hour or more, and I didn’t want to be interrupted.

I let my hand slip beneath the covers and drift across my stomach. The candlelight cast ghosts around my room. I pushed my hand beneath my waistband and let my fingertips brush against my inner thigh. I needed something to focus on. I thought of Richard. I pictured his skinny body and mine folded in a jumble on our bed, and remembered how it felt to be with him. I tried recreating the dream I’d had, the two of us on the headland while the sun sped round and round, but it wasn’t working. I let my mind drift elsewhere. I tried pop stars and film stars, but nothing clicked.

Another face came to me, unbidden. I tried pushing it away, but it wouldn’t go. A sensual, handsome face, even though he scared me. Older than me, with dark, dark eyes. I resisted, but eventually I let my weakness win. I drew John Dobie towards me, and closer still, until he was directly before me, his peaty eyes gazing into mine. Something changed, the closer I drew him in. It was John, and at the same time, it was something else, someone else. But then it didn’t matter any more, and the rhythm of my touch carried me a long, long way from Bancree.

Darkness and light washed through me – softer than snow, someone sang a nursery rhyme in Gaelic. Seo mo làimhean: here are my hands.

I surged upwards, back arched – and released, lowering myself slowly back to the mattress. I lay in my cocoon of sheets for long minutes, trembling, soaking in the afterglow of that soft Gaelic croon. The fire receded from my belly, and
a soporific looseness washed through me, tinged with prickles of shame. John Dobie was three times my age, and father to my only friend. Looking Ailsa in the eye would take some nerve, next time I saw her. Something else niggled at me, too.

I’d wanted it to happen again.

I wanted that hand on my leg. I wanted to let the fantasy run, to know what happened next. What a stupid thing to wish for.

‘Great,’ I muttered, out loud, ‘just wonderful, Flora. Ridiculous girl.’

With that, I started to heave myself out of bed. But then I stopped.

The nursery rhyme was still playing.

My head snapped towards the baby monitor. The LCD volume bar flickered in time to a quiet soft croon, a gentle voice singing in Gaelic.

‘Seo mo làimhean …’

The hushed voice crackled through the intercom. In an empty house, someone was singing to Jamie.

In a blur of panic and protection, I hurled myself out of bed and sprinted through the house. I burst into the room, rain still slashing against the windows. Silhouetted against the glow of the night-light, Jamie’s cot rocked back and forth, swinging without anyone to swing it. I crossed the carpet, approaching the crib. With no one there to push it, the cot slowed through natural momentum, and then the rocking stopped.

Jamie peered up at me. He gurgled with laughter and waved his arms, wanting to be picked up. The room was empty. He was fine. Numb with relief, I slumped down on the bed. Head in my hands, I shook with the thought of Jamie being hurt or harmed. He was settling, cooing and humming himself back to sleep.

Here are my hands. Here are my hands.

I shivered in the nightlight gloom, trembling with confusion and doubt. The windows were latched. The front door was locked. No one could have found a way inside. That was impossible.

Maybe Jamie had worked out how to rock the cradle by himself.

Maybe I’d daydreamed the nursery rhyme, woozy with sleep, woozy with touch.

Maybe I had an overactive imagination.

And maybe I’d drunk too much whisky.

Jamie had fallen back asleep, snoring with a little whistle, his face lit in the dim yellow of the night-light. I reached into the cot and gently traced the outline of his tummy. I tried to recall the voice, but the monitor had masked all detail. I only knew it was slow, and sad, and soft.

I checked all the doors and windows, for the first time scared of my own house, painfully aware of how my silhouette would appear to anyone looking in on me. With shivers in my neck, I went back to bed and pulled the covers to my chin. My book gave no respite. Wired awake, I listened to the storm and watched the dancing shadows, afraid to blow the candles out.

The gale relented in the small hours, and the Sound woke calm beneath a crisp, clean sky. I’d already fed and clothed Jamie by the time Mum and Ronny returned on the first morning ferry. We were playing on the lounge floor when they came home. The baby turned upon hearing them enter, and clapped his little hands in glee. Mum swept him up, and Ronny hugged both of them to him. I flushed bittersweet to see them as a complete family, bound together by their blood. I made a pot of coffee while they fussed over each other. The coffee tasted of peat. Everything tasted of peat. I wondered how much of the island had passed through me over the years. How much of the sediment had filtered through my system? Would it fill a shot glass? A tea mug? A pint? A bathtub? The coffee percolated with a gurgle.

Ronny came through to the kitchen. He looked shattered.

‘Don’t suppose there’s been anything from Anders?’

‘Sorry, no. Nothing.’

‘Didn’t think so. I’ve tried everyone I can think of. Munzie’s let me take a couple of days to help out with the search.’

‘Has Lachlan ever any business in the islands?’

‘Crane? Aye, of course. He goes all over, seeing the other distilleries.’

‘What about Findhorn?’

‘With the hippies?’ Ronny snorted. ‘I doubt it. Don’t think that’s Lachlan’s style. Why do you ask?’

‘Oh. No reason. I’d better get to school.’

‘All right, sweetheart,’ said Mum, still cuddling Jamie. He played with curls of her hair. ‘See you later. Thanks for having the baby. Was he good?’

The cradle, rocking by itself. The voice on the monitor.

‘He was fine,’ I said, tying my laces, ‘it was a quiet night. Nothing happened at all.’

The ferry took me into Tanno an hour before English, and I idled round the harbour, window-shopping in thrift stores I’d long since exhausted. A hard tap fell upon my shoulder. I turned, surprised, and stumbled.

‘Hello, Flora,’ said John Dobie.

I gaped at him, and took an involuntary pace away.

‘It’s John,’ he said, stepping closer. ‘Ailsa’s father.’

‘Yes, I know, hi,’ I stammered, feeling myself flush red. ‘You’ve actually come to town?’

He gestured at the harbour. ‘Clearly.’

Caught between shame and fright, I couldn’t meet his eye.

‘Don’t be scared of me,’ he said.

My fantasies, lost in his dark eyes, suddenly repelled me. The tufts in his bag had looked like hair. In the turmoil of my doubt, I stepped away from him again, avoiding his eye. With my gaze lowered, I focused on his hands, his wrists. He was holding a stack of local newspapers, gathered from across the islands. His fingers were gnarled from seawater, engines and rope.

‘Listen,’ he said. ‘I wanted to apologise for yesterday. I don’t want you getting the wrong idea. I’m sorry I shouted.’

‘No bother,’ I said, trying to sound light-hearted.

‘Sorry for raising my voice. That’s all. I have many things on my mind.’

I shifted on my feet, torn between two Johns: the one I felt
magnetised towards, and the one I feared. I couldn’t fathom him at all.

‘I should push on—’ I started, but he cut me off.

‘Maybe you’re good for Ailsa,’ he said, abruptly. ‘She’s never had many friends. But she can be … wayward. I want her keeping safe.’

Nerves or not, this rankled with me.

‘She knows her own mind.’

‘That’s what worries me. Her own mind might not be best for her.’

‘She’s old enough to make her own decisions,’ I said through gritted teeth. ‘We both are.’

He considered carefully before speaking again.

‘She’s told you about her mother?’

‘Aye. And I’m sorry. For you both.’

‘That’s why she needs looking after. It’s not that I mistrust her. It’s the rest of the world I don’t trust. I won’t sit back while trouble finds her. When I’m looking for her mother … I can’t always be there for Ailsa.’

The sadness turned inside him like a whirlpool.

‘In places like pubs,’ he said, carefully.

He knew. Somehow, he knew about our night out.

‘We weren’t in any danger.’

‘Are you sure? Ailsa said your dad’s friend has vanished, and he’s not the only one. Bancree doesn’t seem very safe to me.’

‘So why did you bring her here?’

His flinched as though he’d been slapped. ‘Because I lost my wife,’ he said, simply, ‘and I need to find her.’

The harbourfront bustle faded to nothing. He was so lost, so alone. I studied his face, seeking out my attraction to him. No matter how I looked, I couldn’t place it, couldn’t fit it to him. He caught me watching.