The Winter Sea

CHAPTER 9

THE CASTLE WOOD WAS silent at this hour of the morning. No rooks were wheeling round the treetops, though I saw a few hunched high up in the bare and twisted branches, looking down on me in silence as I passed.

The garden gnomes, more welcoming, laughed up at me from their close huddled spot beside the front walk of the neat, white-painted bungalow. And Dr Weir seemed pleased I’d come to visit.

‘How’s the book coming?’ he asked me, ushering me into the front entry, with its atmosphere of comfort and tradition.

‘Fine, thank you.’

He hung my jacket on the hall tree. ‘Come into the study. Elsie’s just gone with a friend up to Peterhead to have a wander round the shops. She’ll be sorry she missed you.’

He’d clearly been all set to enjoy his day of solitude— beside his leather wing chair in the study lay a tidy stack of books, and on the smoking table one of the great cut-glass tumblers that we’d used the other night was sitting with a generous dash of whisky in it, waiting. Dr Weir explained it as, ‘My morning draught. I always thought the ancient ways of starting off the day were more appealing. An improvement over soggy breakfast flakes.’

I smiled. ‘I thought the morning draught was meant to be strong ale, with toast.’

‘I’ve had the toast already. And in Scotland, we did things a little differently,’ he said. ‘A man might have his ale and toast, but he’d not be a man unless he finished with a dram of good Scots spirits.’

‘Ah.’

He smiled back. ‘But I could make you tea.’

‘I wouldn’t mind a morning draught myself, if that’s all right.’

‘Of course.’ His eyebrows raised a fraction, but he didn’t look at all shocked as he saw me settled into the chintz armchair by the window, as before, with my own glass of whisky beside me.

‘So,’ he said. ‘What brings you by this morning?’

‘Actually, I had a question.’

‘Something about Slains?’

‘No. Something medical.’

That took him by surprise. ‘Oh, aye?’

‘I wondered…’ This was not as easy as I’d hoped. I took a drink. ‘It has to do with memory.’

‘What, specifically?’

I couldn’t answer that until I’d laid the background properly, and so I started with the book itself, and how the writing of it was so unlike anything I’d experienced before, and how sometimes it felt that I wasn’t putting it down on paper so much as trying to keep up with it. And I told him how I’d picked Sophia Paterson, my ancestor, to be my viewpoint character. ‘She didn’t come from here,’ I said. ‘She came from near Kirkcudbright, in the west. I only put her in the story because I needed somebody, a woman, who could bind all the historical characters together.’

Dr Weir, like all good doctors, had sat back to let me talk, not interrupting. But he nodded now to show he understood.

I carried on, ‘The problem is that some of what I’m writing seems to be more fact than fiction.’ And I gave him, as examples, my correctly guessing Captain Gordon’s first name, and his ship’s name, and the name of Captain Hamilton; and how my own invented floor plan of the castle rooms had so exactly matched the one he’d given me. I told him, too, about my walk along the coast path yesterday—although I didn’t tell him that I hadn’t been alone, I only told him of my sense that I had made that walk before.

‘And that’s OK,’ I said, ‘because I know there’s probably a simple explanation for it all. I’ve done a lot of research for this book. I’ve likely read those details somewhere, and seen photographs, and now I’m just recalling things that I forgot I knew. But…’ How did I say this, I wondered, without sounding crazy? ‘But some of the things that I’ve written are details I couldn’t have possibly read somewhere else. Things I couldn’t have known.’ I explained about Sophia’s birthdate, the death of her father, his will that had given the name of her uncle. ‘My father only found those dates, those documents, because I told him where to look. Except I don’t know how I knew to look there. It’s as if…’ I stopped again, and searched for words, and then, because there wasn’t anything to do but take a breath and dive right in, I said, ‘My father always says I like the sea so much because it’s in my blood, because our ancestors were shipbuilders from Belfast, Northern Ireland. He doesn’t mean it literally, but given what’s been happening to me I wondered if you knew if there was such a thing,’ I asked him, ‘as genetic memory?’

His eyes, behind the spectacles, grew thoughtful. ‘Could you have Sophia’s memories, do you mean?’

‘Yes. Is it possible?’

‘It’s interesting.’ He gave it that, and for a moment he was silent, thinking. Then he told me, ‘Memory is a thing that science doesn’t fully understand, at present. We don’t even properly know how a memory is formed, or when our memories start—at birth, or in the womb, or if, as you suggest, we humans carry memory in our genes. Jungian psychologists would argue, in a broader sense, that such a thing exists; that some of us share knowledge that is based, not on experience, but on the learnings of our common ancestors. A sort of deep instinct,’ he said, ‘or what Jung liked to call the “collective unconscious”.’

‘I’ve heard the term.’

‘It’s still a controversial theory, though it might, to some degree, explain the actions of some primates, chimpanzees, who, even after being raised in isolation from their families so they couldn’t have learned anything directly, still showed knowledge that the researchers could not explain—the way to use a rock to open nuts for food, and such like. But then, a good part of Jung’s theories can’t be tested. His idea that our common human wariness of heights, for instance, might have been passed down to us from some poor, luckless prehistoric man who took a tumble off a cliff and lived to learn the lesson of it. Pure conjecture,’ he pronounced. ‘And besides, the “collective unconscious” idea is not about people recalling specific events.’

‘These are pretty specific,’ I said.

‘So I gather.’ He gave me another look, closely assessing, as though I were one of his patients. ‘If it were only déjà vu, I’d have you in to see a specialist tomorrow. Dejà vu can be a side effect of certain kinds of epilepsy, or more rarely of a lesion on the brain. But this, from what you’ve said, is something more. When did this start?’

I considered the question. ‘I think when I first saw the castle.’

‘That’s interesting.’

‘Why?’

‘Well, you said that your ancestor came from the west coast of Scotland.’

‘That’s right.’

‘So it’s unlikely she ever saw Slains.’

‘Well, we know she was born near Kirkcudbright. We know she was married there. People in those days just didn’t go traipsing all over the country.’

‘Aye, true enough. So it may not be memory, after all. How could you have her memories of Slains,’ he said, ‘if she was never here?’

I had no answer to that question, and I’d come no closer to one by the time I left, a little dazed, less from our talk than from the fact that I’d drunk whisky before noon.

I nearly walked past Jimmy Keith, just coming out of his front door, no doubt on his way to his daily lunch at the St Olaf Hotel.

‘Aye-aye,’ was his cheerful greeting. ‘Foo are ye the day?’

I didn’t know exactly how I was, but I told him, ‘Fine, thank you,’ and we passed a bit of small talk back and forth about the weather, which was grey and dismal.

‘Ye’ll be needing yer electric meter emptied. I’ve nae done it yet this week.’

I had forgotten. ‘Yes, I’m nearly out of coins.’

‘I’ll come along and dee it noo. Ye dinna wish tae find yersel on such a day as this, athoot the lichts.’

I glanced at him from time to time as we walked up Ward Hill, and tried to think which of his sons was most like him. Stuart, I thought, had his straight nose and effortless charm, whereas Graham had more of the roughness, the strength of his build and the roll of his walk. Strange, I thought, how genetics worked—how one man could pass on such diverse traits to his children.

It was clear, though, that neither one of them had taught their father how to make the meter over my door run without the key. Inside, he emptied out the coins and gave them back to me, and I in turn fished out a ten pound note and thanked him.

‘Ach, nae bother.’ He looked round. ‘Ye’re getting on a’richt, are ye?’

‘Yes, thanks.’ Past him, through the window of my front room, I could see the sprawl of Slains towards the north. I pulled my gaze away, deliberately avoiding it. It wasn’t that I wanted to escape the book, exactly, but the things that had been happening these past few days had left me feeling overwhelmed, and desperately in need of a diversion. On impulse I said, ‘Jimmy?’

‘Aye?’

‘I might be away for a few days.’

‘Oh, aye? Far would ye be awa til?’

Where would I be away to? Good question. ‘To Edinburgh, maybe. There’s some research for the book I need to do.’

‘Ye’ll be hame at the wikkend, then, will ye?’

I thought of the driving tour I had been promised on Saturday, and answered with certainty, ‘Yes.’

‘Because Graham, my ither loon, said he’d be up at the wikkend, and I thocht ye’d want tae meet him. He’s a lecturer in history, like I telt ye, and I doot that he’ll ken somethin aboot Slains that’ll be o’ use tae ye.’

My first reaction was surprise that Graham hadn’t mentioned that he’d met me, but I tried my best to hide that. He’d doubtless had his reasons.

Jimmy, unaware, said, ‘I was thinking ye micht want tae come fer lunch on Sunday. Nothing fancy, mind ye. I can roast a bit o’ beef fin I’m in luck, but I’ll nae promise mair than that.’

It was impossible to say no to his smile. I said, ‘I’ll be there.’

Truth was, I wouldn’t have been likely, anyway, to say no to a chance to spend a bit more time with Graham. But I didn’t tell his father that.

‘Aweel,’ said Jimmy, pleased, ‘g’awa tae Edinburgh finever ye like, quine, and nivver fash. I’ll keep the cottage snod, and yer lum rikkin.’ Then he caught himself, as though he’d just remembered I was not a local, and started to rephrase that, but I stopped him.

‘No, it’s all right, I got all of that. I understand.’

‘Oh aye? Fit did I tell ye, noo?’

‘You told me not to worry, that you’d keep the cottage in good order and my chimney smoking.’

Jimmy grinned. ‘Michty, ye’ve a rare grasp o’ the Doric fer a quine fa’s nivver heard it afore.’

I’d never given it much thought, but I supposed that he was right. And come to think of it, a few of my own characters—the servants up at Slains—spoke in the Doric in my mind, and though I modified their speech when I was writing so my readers wouldn’t curse me, I still understood what they had said originally. Just as I understood everything Jimmy Keith said.

It was almost as if I had heard it before. Heard it spoken so often that I had remembered…

My gaze was pulled back to the window, and Slains.

Jimmy cheerfully said, ‘Weel, that’s me awa hame. Best o luck wi’ yer research, my quine.’

And I thanked him.

But part of me wasn’t so sure that I wanted good luck, at the moment. It was one thing, I thought, to ask questions, and look for the answers. It might be another to actually find them.

In the end, I decided the Duke of Hamilton would be the safest subject for my research. I did need to learn more about the man, since it appeared he was going to play a key role, whether onstage or off, in my novel. And I knew I’d have no trouble finding information on him down in Edinburgh.

I’d been there several times already, doing research for this book, but always I’d just flown across from France and stayed a few days in the flat that Jane still kept there for her use when she went down each month to work out of the office of her literary agency. Her agency was large and based in London, but she’d worked for them so long and so effectively that, when she’d married Alan, they had in effect created a new office for her private use, in Edinburgh. Since then, a few more agents had moved up to work in Scotland, so she didn’t feel the pressure to come down from Peterhead as often as she had before, but she still came enough to need the flat.

It was a tidy little place, two rooms, conveniently central. If I’d wanted to, I could have walked the short way down to Holyroodhouse, which had stood in its imposing park for centuries behind its great iron gates. I could have walked around it, or even tried to get permission to tour the old apartments of the Duke of Hamilton himself, to get more detail for the scenes that happened there between Sophia and the duke at the beginning of my story.

But I didn’t.

I would never have admitted that I stayed away in part because I didn’t want to know what those rooms looked like, didn’t want to take the chance that they, too, might be just the way I had imagined them.

Instead, I told myself I simply didn’t have the time this week for sightseeing—I had too many documents to slog through.

So it was that Wednesday morning found me settled in the record office reading room, a comfortably familiar environment, happily sifting through the Duke of Hamilton’s private correspondence.

The letters that he’d written and received gave me a clearer picture of the man—his double-edged role as the patriot and the betrayer, though I doubted he’d have ever judged himself like that. He’d simply served himself, I thought, before all others. His political and personal decisions, which so many of his own friends, in their letters, claimed they could not fathom, all could be reduced with mathematical precision to that one common denominator: what would best advance the duke’s ambition.

Always short of money, he had married an heiress with large estates in England, and he hadn’t been likely to do anything to irritate the English into cutting off that prime source of his income. He gave speeches in the parliament against the Union, but when others wanted to oppose with force instead of words, he held them back with empty promises until their opportunity was lost, and so made certain that the Union went ahead. He had not been a stupid man, and in his letters he’d left no clear evidence that he’d been bribed by England to support the vote for Union, but I knew, just from his character, that he would not have risked his reputation if he hadn’t stood to gain by it.

I knew exactly whom the countess had been speaking of to Hooke in that last scene I’d written, when she’d said, ‘He is suspected of holding a correspondence with the court of London…’

Someone coughed.

I looked up from my work, and saw a youngish female clerk who looked a little nervous. ‘You’re…excuse me, but you’re Carolyn McClelland, aren’t you?’

‘Yes, I am.’ I smiled politely, understanding now. She was a fan.

‘I’ve read your books,’ she told me. ‘Every one of them. They’re marvelous.’

‘Well, thank you. That’s so nice to hear.’

‘I love the history. Well, I would. That’s why I work here. But you make it come to life, you really do.’

I thanked her once again, and meant it. When a person cared enough to stop and tell me that they liked my books, I valued that connection. Since I wrote in isolation, just me and my computer, it was good to be reminded there were readers at the end of that long process who enjoyed the stories. And it was because of readers like this young clerk, after all, that my books had been successful.

So I put my pencil down, and asked her, ‘What’s your name?’

‘Kirsty.’

‘One of the characters in my new book is named Kirsty.’

She beamed. ‘Is this for your new book, the research you’re doing?’ She glanced at my table. ‘The Hamilton papers?’

‘Yes, the 4th duke is one of my characters, too, so I’m getting my facts straight.’ The people around us appeared to be packing up. I stole a glance at my watch. It was closing time. Where had the day gone, I wondered?

‘I feel like I’ve only just started,’ I told the girl Kirsty, and smiled. ‘Guess I’ll have to come back in the morning.’

Which made her look more pleased. ‘Do you think…’ she started, then broke off and tried again. ‘If I brought one of my books in…’

I knew what she was asking me. ‘Of course. Bring whatever you have, I’ll be happy to sign them.’

‘Oh, that would be wonderful.’

I had so clearly made her day that I left feeling happy, too, if humbled.

When I came back to the record office first thing the next morning, I felt humbled even more. It wasn’t only that she’d brought my novels in for me to sign—all hardback copies, obviously read and re-read many times—but she’d gone to the trouble of arranging an assortment of materials she’d thought I might find useful in my research. ‘They’re mostly papers, family papers, that have some connection to your Duke of Hamilton. The letters aren’t by anybody famous, and most people wouldn’t know that they were here, but I remember someone else was looking up the duke last year and said that these were very helpful.’

I was touched, so I took extra care to sign all her books well, with my friendliest wishes and thanks for her help.

The papers she had found for me were of more interest, I discovered, than the letters the duke wrote himself. It was interesting, always, to learn about someone by how other people described him. By late morning, I had learned so much I didn’t think it possible that anything was left that could surprise me.

Till I turned to the next letter.

It was one of several written by an Edinburgh physician to his younger brother, and was dated 19th April 1707. After going on for half a page about a dying patient, he said, ‘Coming home, I did meet Mr Hall, whom I am sure you will remember from our dinner with His Grace the Duke of Hamilton, and who is by the duke now greatly valued and esteemed. Mr Hall appeared quite pale, but when I questioned him he did assure me he was well, but only quite worn out from having traveled on His Grace’s business. He has ridden these five days from Slains, the castle of the Earl of Erroll in the north, where he last month conveyed a young kinswoman of the earl who had come lately from the Western Shires. This lady, who is named not Hay but Paterson, had very much impressed the Duke of Hamilton as being of good character, and learning that her parents had both perished in the Darien adventure, which His Grace does hold to be our nation’s greatest tragedy, His Grace did then endeavor to do all he could to aid the lady in her journey northward, and to that end did commission Mr Hall to be her guide.

‘With such an act of kindness does His Grace reveal again his true benevolence to those who do apply to him in need…’

The letter carried on to praise the Duke of Hamilton for fully one more page, but I just skimmed it to the finish, and went back.

I had to read that passage several times before I could believe that the words, the facts set down in front of me, were really there—that everything I’d written in my own book had been true in every detail, and not fiction.

But the line dividing fiction from the truth had blurred so badly now I didn’t have a clue where it began, or where it ended. And I didn’t know exactly how to deal with that.

My first thought was to share the news with Dr Weir, to tell him that I’d found what looked like proof Sophia Paterson had been to Slains. Not only that, but that she’d been there at the time and in the circumstances I had written down in my own story. But the doctor, when I called him, wasn’t home. And likely wouldn’t be, said Elsie, until sometime Sunday afternoon. He’d gone to see his brother, near Glasgow.

‘Oh,’ I said.

‘If it’s important, I could—’

‘No, it’s all right. I can wait till Sunday.’ But it seemed a long way off. I could have used the doctor’s counsel and encouragement when I came home to Cruden Bay late Friday night, too tired to take much notice of the apprehensive feeling that, as always, met me halfway up the path above the harbor.

The night was calm. There was a winter moon to see by, and as I drew closer to the cottage I could see that Jimmy had left lights on for me, spilling warmly out the front room windows. And inside, I found things looking just as I had left them. But the voices of my characters, beginning now to whisper in my mind, advised me differently. I heard the countess saying clearly: ‘Much has changed since you were last at Slains.’

I didn’t doubt that she was right.

And so I crossed to my computer, sitting patient on the long scrubbed table, waiting for me. And I switched it on.