The Silver Dark Sea

She’d loved that tut-tut-tut. She’d smiled at it, in the bathroom – and she is smiling now. A change … How Leah has longed for a change. For years, she has watched the same sights, on Parla – how the lighthouse turns, how sheep kneel to graze, how the Star’s gangplank drops onto the quayside at the precise time it’s meant to. The mainland’s shape does not alter; the rising damp in the downstairs loo does not fade. And for years she has heard the same conversations – about ferries, wool, if the hens are laying, if Milton has fresh milk in stock, whether she’s had breakfast yet, so that Leah has rolled her eyes, thought it is always the same, always the same. Why is it always the same? Or at least, she used to think it. In time, the island made her heavier. It made her lie in her bedroom and think of nothing – nothing at all.

This slow, salty sameness – day in, day out.

But now? Tut-tut. And a man has come. The sea and the north wind left a man at Sye for Sam, of all people, to find. And as Leah had stood on the landing and looked down onto his red-blond hair she’d felt … what? Hope. That’s what. She’d barely recognised it. She has not been hopeful – for what good could it ever have done? How might hope have helped her? And so to have it now, in a dark bedroom, feels tender and lovely and absurd. It is a green shoot amongst the snow.

A man’s come ashore …

There will be an explanation, no doubt, and it will be plain and disappointing when it comes: he is a drunk or a lost guest or a man who fell off a passing ship or a swimmer who grew tired. It will be dull, and the green shoot will be lost, trodden on. I’ll go back to the old feelings – the old weighing down. But tonight, for now, Leah hopes that he is something better; she hopes that he is not merely a man who fell overboard, or a prankster.

Hope. It is the frailest of words.

Others are awake, too.

There is a man in the island’s Old Fish Store who lies, far from sleep. He also knows the wind is northerly. He knows this because of the sounds he can hear – the clear ting of halyards and the wire fences’ song. He can hear the sea saying stash … stash … He is Jim Coyle and he knows his winds.

In a farmhouse with rusting cars outside, Nathan sits in the dark. He has a glass in his hand; he waits for the lighthouse’s beam to whiten the curtains, lighten the room.

The widow at Crest is also awake. She squeezes a camomile tea bag against the side of a mug with a spoon, carries that tea bag to her compost bin. The kitchen light illuminates the night-time grass by her window and she watches it, spoon in hand. The grass flurries. She notes the wind’s direction – northerly? She stands in her pyjamas with her unbrushed hair.

After this, she climbs the stairs. And she sleeps; she sleeps under a white cotton sheet, and what she does not know – how could she possibly? – is that when she next sees that camomile tea bag, dried out and paler in her compost bin, everything will be different. She will look at it and think when I last saw that, I didn’t know … This is Maggie, and she knows how the smallest of things can take on new meanings, how a lifetime can change in a second or less. That used tea bag which is settling on the bottom of a plastic tub will, within a few hours, remind her of before – of a time when she knew less, felt less, and when Sye was a cove and nothing more. It will come to have a thousand meanings. In the hours ahead, Maggie will stare at that tea bag as if it can solve it all. But for now, it is only a tea bag. It sits in its own damp dark.

The lighthouse turns, as always.

Far out, a whale surfaces. Nobody sees it, but it does.

Three

The sky begins to lighten a little after four. In the east, there is a feathered grey, the softest of yellows. The daylight moves across the sea.

At nearly five, it comes to the eastern cliffs – the half-moon harbour, the towers of rock. The seabirds that roost here – fulmars, herring gulls – blink as the sunlight finds them. They bring their beaks down to their chests, and preen.

At the island’s south-eastern point is the main harbour. Slowly, its water turns from black to blue. Light moves along the old sea wall, the railings of the Morning Star and the smaller boats that are moored there – Calypso, Sea Fairy, Lady Caroline. Their ropes shine with hanging weed. The windows of the harbourmaster’s house glint, so that the child who sleeps behind them sniffs and turns onto her side, away from the light. There is a young man in this house who has not slept. He lies on his back, stares.

Above the harbour, on its south side, lies the Old Fish Store. It has a black slate roof – the sunlight strikes the nearest side of it. This is a squat, rectangular house. It is cold, too, as it needed to be in the days when the fish were kept here, laid out in a line. No fish in it now. Instead, two people lie in their bed with two blankets on. She sleeps, but he is stirring. He can hear the house creak, as it warms.

On with the sunlight.

A lane heads west, inland. It leaves the quayside and climbs past the ragwort, past the stones walls that have fallen, mostly, so that sheep step across them or nestle in their hollowed parts. These stones have lichen on them – as yellow as yolk, and lace-like – and they grow more yellow as the sunlight comes. The lane passes a picnic table and a phone box. There is a viewpoint here, with a large wooden board that names the other islands that can be seen from this spot – Utta, Cantalay, far-off Merme. By day, there are always tourists here, hands on their hips as they read it. But not now – not at this moment. It is too early. There are only sparrows and their short, burred flight.

The ground begins to flatten out. The island stretches ahead. The lane runs past more ragwort and a few small, blackened circles of earth where campfires have been, for this is the island’s wild camping ground. The isle’s airstrip is here too. It is rarely used: it exists for emergencies or when the sea is so rough that the Morning Star cannot sail and supplies on the island run low. A wooden hut says Welcome to Parla but salt has blistered its paint.

After this, there is the crossroads. It’s small – a place where four dusty tracks meet each other, where most of the island’s homes cluster like barnacles. Here, too, is the tiny primary school with its chalked snake drawn in the playground. It has hopscotch squares and a single swing; its roof is cherry-red. The school has five windows and in each one there is a letter, cut from coloured card. PARLA. The sunshine lights these letters up. It lights, also, the metal boot scraper outside the house next door. This house is the schoolteacher’s; the only Bundy daughter lives here with her husband and son. Also, it is one of the few homes with trees: there are birches and an apple tree which no longer bears fruit. Bird feeders hang from them, for George loves his birds. They are what brought him here, to this island; they are also what led him to Hester – which makes him love his birds even more. At this moment, they are both sleeping. But the birds are awake and they squabble on the feeders, spill seed onto the ground.

The church is also here. It is wooden, white-painted, with a cross on its roof. The minister’s house is wooden also but it remains wood-coloured and its wood is splintery. It has a trellis with ivy growing on it so that its door is half-hidden by its bottle-coloured leaves. They brush the minister’s bald head when he goes in or out. He – Lorcan – has counted the steps it takes him to get from his bed to the altar and it is thirty-seven. He can hear the latch on the church door being opened, as he lies in his bath.

Parla Stores sits by a rhododendron bush. The shop is cave-like, inside – its shelves brim with tins, jars, bottles. There are also picnic tables outside, and an awning. There is no pub on Parla but this is the nearest thing to it. Milton sells beer, wine and spirits and turns a blind eye to locals sitting under his awning with aluminium cans. He likes hearing their laughter, coming through the door; he feels proud, somehow, to hear it – as if they have come here to see him. And Milton is proud of his noticeboard for amongst the ferry times and useful phone numbers he has pinned a plastic folder with leaflets inside – a map of Parla, self-guided tours, a little natural history, Things to See and Do. He is proud because he wrote them. They are all his work – typed out, and folded.

The crossroads is the heart of the island. The school, the shop, the half-pub and the church, all side by side. It is where the news is, where the stories are passed on.

South of here, the lane grasses over. It winds down past the island’s graveyard and its long blackthorn hedge to Lowfield. The sun barely finds this house for it is hidden by grass and gorse. The banks of earth beside it are so high that sheep have stepped onto its roof, or so the nurse tells it. But the sun finds her bicycle and its bell. Beyond Lowfield, there is Tavey – the pig farm where no-one lives now. The pigs are gone and its people too. For years it has been empty yet its furniture stands under dust-sheets, as if expecting to be used any day now. Nettles grow freely in these parts. In the nettle patch near Litty there are voles – anxious, with eyes like polished pins. They dart into undergrowth like gunshots. The lane ends on a shingle beach.

North of the crossroads, the island rises up. It gathers height quickly. After the school, the grass becomes sharper and thistles grow by the roadside. Here, the sheep are more plentiful. They lift up from the lane with their swinging, clotted tails. The first house is High Haven – a small farmhouse down a single track. It has a wood-pile under tarpaulin and four cars in its driveway, all without tyres, or engines, or doors, but Nathan keeps them all the same. It is in his nature, perhaps – to keep, to store. He hates loss; he has lost enough things. He looks at these old cars, now. Nathan is awake – he has barely slept – and he stands in the kitchen with a mug of tea and an aspirin on his tongue. He swallows the pill with a toss of his head, and stares at the empty wheel-arches. Beyond, he can see Wind Rising. It’s the biggest farmhouse, and the oldest. Nathan grew up there. Now, his brother’s family live in it – he sees the open-sided barn, the row of Calor gas bottles, the silage in black bales. Their dog is scratching her ear with her hind leg and Nathan can hear her chain ringing, or he thinks he can. He looks at his wristwatch; not yet six.

The woman at Easterly is also awake. Her cottage is beyond High Haven, along the same track so she must pass those cars propped up on bricks whenever she leaves her home. She does not like those cars, and she’s told Nathan this. But why would he listen? At this precise moment, she stands in her dressing gown. She rubs rose-scented hand cream into her hands as she waits for the toast to pop up, and she thinks of her children, or those that are left. Emmeline lists them – Ian, Hester, Nathan. Her hands tell the story of a life on a farm – age spots, scars, papery skin on the backs of them – and she turns them over, studying.

The lane keeps rising. The north is the wildest part of the isle – the gorse is wind-bent, and the ditches are deep. In winter it is a harsh place, not made for life. But in the summer, the skylarks sing down upon it and to kneel and touch the earth is to feel its warmth. It is sunlit here, now. Here, at the island’s highest point, all the coasts can be seen. A house with a yellow door perches in the north-east corner, near the cliff edge. It has gulls on its roof and tomato plants in its porch and its name is carved into driftwood – Crest, propped by the door. The woman who lives here is brushing her teeth. She is in her early forties but looks older somehow. She bends down to the sink, spits.

After this, there is only the lighthouse. Its lantern is, now, sleeping. So, too, is the girl who lives at its base, who has turned the old lighthouse-keepers’ quarters into a tea room and a few hostel rooms. She has worked hard for it. She sleeps on her front, in a floral vest and knickers that match. As the sunlight finds the back wall of her room, her alarm clock goes off and she stretches, rubs her eyes. Six fifteen. Rona could do with more sleep but she has plenty to do – breakfast, linen, fresh scones, her accounts. She tells herself this, as she turns off the alarm: get up. A new day. In theory anything could happen but Rona is pretty sure it won’t.

* * *

Parla wakes slowly. It stretches, lowers a foot from its bed.

In Wind Rising, the top of an orange juice carton is pulled apart. Constance wears an oversized man’s pyjama shirt that reaches her knees and a pair of walking socks. Her hair was black, once – raven-black, almost blue; now she has streaks of grey in it. Like a misty night, she tells herself. It is her reassurance.

She pours the juice. A man?

At Sye.

Dead?

Nope, he’s alive. Or he was last night.

Who is he?

No idea. Without taking his eyes off the paper, Ian bites into his toast.

None?

He was barely conscious – he says this with his mouth full. We couldn’t ask him much.

She looks out of the window, drinks. Constance was almost asleep when her husband returned last night. He’d climbed in beside her, beer-smelling, and she’d thought to ask what happened tonight? Where? But he’d been snoring promptly. He’d lain on his back, slept deeply, and so Constance could only imagine.

She’d not imagined this. A man washing ashore … Incredulous. Have you spoken to Ed about it?

Sam was there. He’ll have told him.

He should be told, Ian. A fishing boat or something might have gone down. There might be others out there who need saving. Shouldn’t you phone him?

Sam, he repeats, will do it. Or Tab will. Leave it.

Constance watches him. And as always, when she watches him, she thinks he is my children’s father. She thinks, too, he’s my husband and that amazes her – that she is old enough to be married or that she was ever bold enough. But her first thoughts are of the children, always, who are not so childlike these days. Will Jonny have the same wide neck, when he’s older? Will Leah’s skin also wrinkle by her mouth, in time? They take after their father, she knows that – in their looks, and quiet ways.

She sips. Ian?

He makes a sound – annoyed. He wants to read the paper.

What does he look like? This man?