The Restless Sea

‘And you’ve damaged the plane. Reckless. I’ve a good mind to send you home for reassessment. God help us, if you’re the best we’ve got …’

‘It was impossible to see out there, sir …’

‘Don’t you bloody answer back! You’re an idiot, and that’s it. I will have to report this.’ He turns and stomps back to the bridge.

Charlie swallows in the silence. ‘Don’t listen to him,’ says Mole. ‘He’s a bitter old fool who should be in a flowerbed.’

‘Preferably six feet under it,’ says Tugger. ‘And don’t worry about the plane. She’ll be fine.’

‘We did good, Charlie,’ says the Kid.

But the captain’s words wound Charlie deeply. He is not used to falling foul of those in charge. He feels diminished. Only one person doesn’t see his faults: Olivia. Her letters are a lifeline to cling to in turbulent water. He clings to them all the tighter.

CHAPTER 5 (#ulink_dfe5d9db-ef3e-52f5-bb1e-a22cd260d1e5)

Olivia (#ulink_dfe5d9db-ef3e-52f5-bb1e-a22cd260d1e5)

Olivia sits on a bench at the station. The heat is already almost unbearable. Her pale green travelling outfit is crumpled and creased. She fans herself with her hat. The din of people and trains arriving and departing has died down. Trucks and cars, horses and carts, troops and families have been and gone, churning up the dust, making it twirl in the warm air before it settles back in a thin layer over everything. In a way she is glad that she is alone, no longer at the mercy of the wandering eyes and nudges of strangers, like the impertinent ratings on the train who had frightened her with their whispering and pointing. She wishes Charlie, the officer who rescued her at breakfast, had got off here too, but he changed for the train to Thurso, taking his raucous charges with him. She feels comforted as she remembers his protective arm ushering her to safety, the aura of confidence. And then she smiles once more at what turned out to be a wonderful coincidence. Charlie’s godmother her aunt? Funny how one chances across these connections, but perhaps not so unusual among her class.

Olivia reaches to fiddle with the bracelet at her wrist, a nervous habit, but then her heart sinks as she remembers that she has lost it, and tears prick at her eyes. She feels so vulnerable sitting here on this bench in the middle of nowhere, travelling on her own for the first time, no handsome officer to protect her now. The fact that she has lost the one treasure that she owns makes her feel all the more so. Perhaps she left it at Stoke Hall, but she is sure she can remember clicking the delicate clasp together and pulling her cuff down over it yesterday morning. Maybe it came loose during the panic when the faulty siren went off at the station. And then there was that boy with the wild eyes … but that’s unfair – the kind of thing her mother might say. He only helped her find her way to the Underground. No. She must have left it at home. The thought of home, and her bedroom, with its pretty bedspread and her favourite lamps with the hand-painted flowers twisting up their stands, and Jasper, her old teddy bear, on the mantelpiece above the fireplace, and Nanny, who always knows what to do, and all the other familiar things she loves, sends a hot, thin tear sliding down her cheek.

She hears a cough and looks up, wiping her face with the back of her hand. The stationmaster is looming over her. ‘Are you sure I can’t call someone for you, miss?’ he asks.

‘Absolutely,’ says Olivia. ‘My aunt will be here any minute.’

He looks disbelievingly up the empty road. ‘Perhaps you got the wrong day, miss.’

‘I don’t think so,’ she snaps at him, immediately regretting it, but she is hot and tired and worried.

‘Maybe she’s driving slowly. To save on petrol.’

Olivia nods and tries to sit up straight and look as if it is a perfectly normal thing to be sitting outside a train station on one’s own.

Eventually a small car materialises slowly out of the haze and draws to a lazy stop outside the station. A sprightly old man with silver hair and a dour expression clambers out of the driver’s seat. His eyes narrow when he sees her, and he tips his head.

‘Lady Bowman?’ he says, with a strong accent.

The stationmaster appears again, and the driver becomes more animated as the two men exchange pleasantries in a language that Olivia does not recognise while the porter packs her cases into the back of the car. Olivia waits for them to finish. It takes a while; neither man appears to be in a hurry. The sun gleams on the car’s shiny black paintwork, the polished chrome of its radiator and the spokes of its wheels. She fans herself with her hat, and tries to look composed. At last the man is ready to go. He climbs straight into the driver’s seat and leans across to do the passenger door from the inside so that she must pull it open for herself. He sweeps a length of twine and a box of fishing weights on to the floor at her feet, where there is already a pair of galoshes and a rain hat. The car smells of rotten fish, and when she turns to look behind her, there is a creel dripping seawater all over the back seat; a straggle of grassy seaweed caught in the netting glistens at her. She shudders and faces forwards again, leaning her head against the side window.

The journey to Poolewe takes almost four hours. Four hours, and they pass not one other human being. Just a few lonely crofts tucked away in the folds of a hill here and there. The fine morning has become muggy, the air heavy, crackling with energy. Olivia stares at the scenery passing by: great bleak spaces of wilderness, long empty expanses of water. Her clothes stick to her, damp against the leather of the seat. In the back, there are small pale deposits of salt where the seawater dripping from the creel has dried. The driver does not speak. He stares resolutely at the road ahead, occasionally grunting when they bump over a particularly deep rut.

Olivia’s mind wanders. What an exhausting few hours she’s had. From the thrill of the station and air-raid siren, to the boy with the wild eyes at the station, and then Charlie, so handsome in his uniform, so gallant, off to protect the seas. Well, if he can face the Nazis, she’s sure she can face some Scottish solitude.

She sticks her hand out of the open window. Beyond her fingers, the desolate emptiness stretches on forever. She closes her eyes. The breeze pushes at her arm, cools her skin, blows in her hair. It reminds her of climbing out on to the roof at home, the view so different to this one: the neatly rolled grass court where the rabbits crouch, flashes of brown and white in the long grass at its edge; the cedars with their stately, sweeping branches; the cobbled stable yard with its bell tower; the pale dovecote next to it; the mottled doves, half-pigeon now, circling above.

At last they turn through an ornate pair of iron gates and bump along a potholed drive at the end of which is a large white house. Taigh Mor. Olivia scrambles out on to the gravel, glancing up at the smart black windows, and then across the lawn that sweeps down to an enormous loch surrounded by hills. The front door is wide open, but instead of Aunt Nancy appearing, Olivia is greeted by an elderly servant with hair that was once black but is now peppered with grey.

‘Your aunt sends her apologies,’ says the servant. ‘But she’s a wee bit tied up with unexpected visitors. She says Munro’s to take you down to the bothy, and she’ll be there as soon as she can.’

Olivia stares at the maid blankly.

The man who she assumes is Munro grunts as he opens the trunk and starts to unload the cases, handing two to her, by which she understands that she is meant to carry them.

‘Shouldn’t we leave them here?’ she asks.

‘Oh no,’ says the maid. ‘You’ll be needing your things.’

‘You mean I’m not staying in the house?’

‘No, no. Didn’t I say? You’re in the bothy. You’re very lucky. She doesn’t usually let anyone stay down there.’

The maid disappears back into the house. Olivia’s bottom lip trembles. Munro looks her up and down with disgust. She digs her nails into her palm. She won’t give him the satisfaction of seeing her cry.

She traipses after him down a dry, rutted track covered in wispy, pale grass that soon becomes a tunnel flanked by twisted rhododendron bushes beneath thick woodland. The house disappears behind them. The air is cooler here, and birds and other creatures call warnings to each other as they trudge on. Olivia’s fingers ache, the blood squeezed out of them by the handles of the bags. A layer of dirt attaches itself to her shoes. They will soon be ruined.

Eventually, they emerge into the sunlight on another lawn that ends only a couple of hundred yards away at the shore of the loch. To their left is a small white cottage, bright beneath the dark Scots pines of the woodland behind.

Munro puts the bags down on the stone steps.

‘Is this it? Is this the bothy?’ she asks.

‘Aye,’ he says. ‘You go and have a look around. Take your time. We’ve plenty of it.’

Olivia climbs the steps. The door is propped open with a large pebble. Inside, it is cool compared to the thundery heat outside. It smells of flowers and the sea. Along the sills are old shells, stones, sea urchins, and driftwood that have paled in the sunlight over the years. To the left is a small sitting room that looks out towards the loch; on the right is a tiny kitchen warmed by a large range stove, and a bedroom that is just large enough for a bed and a dressing table, also with a view of the loch. Someone has blown the dust from the kettle, there are fresh sheets on the bed, the cupboards are filled with food, and the windows have been flung open. At the back of the cottage an old lean-to has been converted into a lavatory accessible through the kitchen; the other half acts as coal shed and wood store.

The entire cottage is smaller than the folly at Stoke Hall.

Munro is still standing on the steps, staring out towards the loch. The only sound is the rasp of water on the shingle and the whisper of wind in the leaves behind the bothy. What Olivia would give to hear a familiar noise: the whistle of the groom, or cook shouting in the kitchen, or Pike banging the gong for tea. She makes a noise, a half-strangled sob, and Munro turns to look at her, his eyebrows knitting together. He clears his throat. ‘Where would ye like to start?’ he asks.

‘I don’t want to start anywhere,’ says Olivia.

‘Would ye rather fish?’

‘No,’ says Olivia. ‘I don’t want to fish. And I don’t want to stay in this hovel. I can’t understand what I’m doing here. I just want to go home.’

He watches her without blinking, and then slowly shakes his head as she runs past him and back up to the house.

Olivia stumbles through the front door and across the echoing hall, wildly trying every door to every empty room until she finds the occupied one. It is a large drawing room with French windows opening out on to the lawn and grand views of the loch, the sea a sliver of silver beyond it. And there at last is her aunt, head bent over a table, deep in conversation with a couple of men. As her niece enters, Aunt Nancy looks up, a smile breaking across her face. ‘Darling girl,’ she says. ‘So sorry. We’re just wrapping up here …’

Olivia stops, suddenly self-conscious. She smooths the creased pale-green coat and pats her blonde hair. Her hat is lying somewhere on the floor of the bothy. She is out of breath, and aware that she is not entirely decorous before these men.

Her aunt bustles out from behind the table, extending her arms and clasping Olivia’s face in her hands. ‘Look at you! You must be exhausted. Have you found everything you need?’

‘I … Well …’

‘Did Munro show you how to light the stove? Don’t you love it? It’s my favourite place in all the world. So special …’

Olivia swallows, aware that the men are watching her. ‘It’s just,’ she says. ‘It’s just … so … so lonely.’