The Winter Sea

CHAPTER 15

I’D NEVER DONE MUCH gardening. My mother had, when I was young—but being young, I hadn’t paid attention. I’d assumed that, in the winter, there was nothing to be done, but Dr Weir was bent and busy in his shrubberies when I walked over in the afternoon.

‘We’ve not seen you about these past few days,’ he said. ‘Have you been away?’

‘Well, in a sense. I’ve been at Slains,’ I said, ‘three hundred years ago. That’s why I’m here, because a couple of my characters, so far, have mentioned spies.’

‘Oh, aye?’

‘Daniel Defoe, in particular.’

‘Ah.’ He straightened. ‘Well, I might be able to assist you there. Just bear with me a minute while I check the stakes and straps on Elsie’s lilac, after last night’s wind.’

I followed him with interest to the bare-branched shrub, much taller than the others, at the far end of the border, by one window of the bungalow. ‘That’s a lilac?’

‘Aye. I haven’t had much luck with it. It’s meant to be a tree, but it’s a stubborn-minded thing, and it won’t grow.’

The bark felt smooth against my fingers, when I touched it. Leafless, it stood half the height of that which I’d remembered in the garden up at Slains, against the wall where Moray and Sophia had said their farewells. But even so, it touched a chord of sadness in my mind. ‘I’ve never liked the smell of lilacs,’ I confessed. ‘I always wondered why, and now I think I’ve found the answer.’

‘Oh?’ The doctor turned. His eyes, behind the spectacles, showed interest. ‘What is that?’

And so I told him of the scene I had just written.

‘Ah,’ he said, ‘that’s very telling. Scent is a powerful trigger for memory.’

‘I know.’ One whiff of pipe tobacco could transport me straight back to my childhood and my grandfather’s small study, where we’d sat and eaten cookies and discussed what I had thought were grown-up things. It had been there that he’d first told me of the small stone with a hole in it, and how it would protect me if I ever chanced to find one.

Dr Weir asked, ‘What becomes of him, the soldier in your book?’

‘I don’t know, yet. He must not have come back, though, because three years after he left Slains, the real Sophia was back in Kirkcudbright,’ I said, ‘marrying my ancestor.’

He shrugged. ‘Well, they were dangerous times. He most likely got killed on the Continent.’

‘You don’t think he could have died in the ’08, do you? In the invasion attempt, somehow?’

‘I don’t think that anyone died in the ’08.’ He gave a faint frown as he tried to remember. ‘I’d have to read over my books, to be sure, but I don’t mind that anyone died.’

‘Oh.’ It would have been a nice romantic feature for my plot, I knew, but never mind.

The doctor straightened from his work, his round face keen. ‘Now, come inside and have a cup of tea, and tell me what you’d like to know about Daniel Defoe.’

Elsie Weir had a decided opinion of the man who had written such classics as Robinson Crusoe and Moll Flanders. ‘Nasty little weasel of a man,’ she called him.

The doctor took a biscuit from the plate she held out, and said, ‘Elsie.’

‘He was, Douglas. You’ve said yourself.’

‘Aye, well.’ The doctor settled back into his chair and set his biscuit neatly on the saucer of his teacup. The curtains at the end wall of the sitting room were drawn well back this afternoon to let in the sunlight, which fell with a comforting warmth on my shoulders as I chose a biscuit myself, from my seat by the long row of glass-fronted bookcases.

‘Daniel Defoe,’ Dr Weir said, ‘was doing what he thought was right. That’s what motivates most spies.’

Elsie took her seat beside me, unconvinced. ‘He was doing what he thought would save his skin, and line his pockets.’

The doctor’s eyes twinkled briefly, as though his wife’s stubborn dislike of Defoe struck him as something amusing. To me, he said, ‘She won’t even read his books.’

‘No, I won’t,’ Elsie said, firm.

‘Even though the man’s been dead too long,’ her husband pointed out, ‘to profit from the royalties.’ He smiled. ‘Defoe,’ he told me, ‘was a stout supporter of King William, and no friend of the Jacobites. But he made the mistake, near the start of Queen Anne’s reign, of publishing a satirical pamphlet that the queen didn’t care for, and so he was arrested. He was bankrupt as well, at the time, so when the government Minister Robert Harley offered him an alternative to prison and the pillory, he leaped at it. And Harley was, of course, the queen’s chief spymaster.’

I knew the name, from my own reading.

‘Harley,’ Dr Weir went on, ‘was quick to see the benefits of having someone like Defoe to write his propaganda. And being a writer, Defoe was well-placed to do more for the government. Just before the Union, Harley sent him up to Edinburgh, to work in secret for the Union cause and to discredit those opposed to it. Defoe, as his cover, let dab he was writing a book on the Union and needed some help with his research. Not unlike what you yourself are doing, here in Cruden Bay.’

And, like myself, Defoe had found that people, by and large, were happy to sit down and tell a writer what they knew.

‘They didn’t think he was a spy,’ said Dr Weir. ‘But everything they told him found its way to Harley, down in London. And Defoe was good at learning things, observing, and manipulating. There’s no doubt that he had an impact on the Union being passed.’

‘A weasel,’ Elsie said again, and set her teacup down with force.

I asked, ‘Would he have ever been to Slains?’

‘Defoe?’ The doctor frowned. ‘I wouldn’t think so, no. He might have known what they were up to, and he doubtless would have met the Earl of Erroll, who was often down in Edinburgh, but I’ve not heard Defoe came up to Slains. But there were other spies. And not only in Scotland,’ he told me. ‘The English took a great interest in what went on at Saint-Germain. They had a whole network of spies based in Paris, and some at Versailles, with their ears to the ground. And they even sent people right into Saint-Germain, when they could manage it. Young women, usually, who slept with men at court and carried back what news they could.’

‘The tried and trusted method,’ Elsie said, to me, her mood improving now that we’d got off the subject of Daniel Defoe.

Dr Weir was thinking. ‘As for Slains…I’ll have to do a bit of reading, see if I can’t find a spy or two who might have ventured that far north.’

And with that settled, we moved on to talk of other things.

I stayed much longer than I’d meant to. By the time I left them it was dusk. The rooks were gathering again above the Castle Wood, great clouds of black birds wheeling round against the night-blue sky and cawing raucously. I quickened my steps. Up ahead I could see the warm lights of the Kilmarnock Arms spilling out through its windows and onto the sidewalk, and crossing the road I turned briskly down Main Street, my eyes on the dim looming shapes of the dunes rising up on the opposite side of the swift-rushing stream.

It was windy tonight. I could hear, farther off, the great roar of the waves as they rolled in to break on the beach and slip backward, collecting their strength to reshape and roll shoreward again in an endlessly punishing rhythm.

It had a hypnotic effect. When I started to climb the dark path up Ward Hill, my steps were all but automatic and my mind was filled with waking dreams. Not all of them were pleasant. There was something unseen on that path, not chasing me but waiting for me, and as I tried hard to fight the rising sense of panic gripping me, I suddenly stepped forward into nothingness.

It was like stepping off a curb without expecting to. The ground was there, but lower than I’d thought that it would be, and when my foot came down it came down hard into a deep rut underneath the thickly tufted grass, and twisted so I lost my balance and began to slide.

There was no time to think. Pure instinct made me grab at anything to stop myself, and by the time I’d registered the fact that I had left the path and was now slipping dangerously down the steep side of the hill above the sea, my fall was stopped abruptly by a line of leaning temporary fencing that was strong enough at least to hold me while I tried to catch my breath.

From my ankle came a fiercely shooting pain that burned like fire. In full awareness now, I looked up at the spot from which I’d fallen. What a stupid thing to do, I thought. The path would have been plain to see, despite the growing darkness. I had no excuse. Except…

Now that I thought of it, this hadn’t been the first time that my judgment had been off. The only difference was that when I’d come close to stepping off the path before, there had been someone walking at my side to steer me back. Tonight, there hadn’t been. I’d been alone, and lost in thought, and with no guide but my subconscious.

Distracted for a moment from my ankle’s pain, I chanced a look down at the steep fall to the sea below me, and I wondered just what shape the shore had been, in 1708. Could it be possible my own steps were remembering a different path, along a stretch of land that had since fallen to the slow, eroding forces of the wind and sea?

As if replying to that thought, the wind blew colder, and reminded me I’d fallen in that place along the path that always made me feel uneasy. And when I saw the shadowed shape above me of somebody walking past along the path, my first response was not to feel relief, but apprehension.

I was glad to see the shadow stretch and shape itself to something more familiar, if a little unexpected. And I called to it as loudly as I could.

‘Christ!’ said Stuart Keith. He came down the hill like a sure-footed mountain goat, and in an instant was crouching beside me. ‘What’s happened?’

‘I fell,’ I said. ‘It’s nothing much, I’ve only hurt my ankle. But I need a little help.’

He frowned, and felt my ankle. ‘Is it broken, do you think?’

I shook my head. ‘It’s only twisted. Maybe sprained.’

‘Well, you’d best let a doctor decide that.’

‘It isn’t that serious. Honest,’ I said, to his unconvinced face. ‘I’ve broken my ankle before, and I know how that felt, and this doesn’t feel anything like it.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘Very sure. If you’ll just help me up,’ I said, holding my hand out.

‘You’re sure you can manage? Because I could carry you.’

‘Great. Then we’d both end up over the edge.’ With my jaw set, I said, ‘I can climb, I’ll just need you to help me.’

He did more than help me. He practically hauled me back up the long hillside and onto the path. Then, wrapping an arm round my shoulders, he supported my weight while I hobbled the rest of the way to the cottage.

‘Here we are,’ said Stuart, his own breathing labored from holding me up. He waited for me to unlock the door, then helped me through it and steered me across into one of the armchairs.

‘Thanks,’ I said with feeling. ‘I don’t know what I’d have done, if you hadn’t turned up.’

‘Aye, well—rescuer of damsels in distress, that’s me.’ He flashed a smile more self-aware than Graham’s. ‘Keep that ankle up, now. I’ll get something to put on it.’

All that I had in the small freezer part of my fridge was a bag of mixed vegetables, but that worked fine. And it did make my ankle feel better. I leaned back in my chair and looked at Stuart. ‘When did you get back, anyway?’

‘Just now. I had thought of waiting till morning to look in on you. A good thing I didn’t.’

The telephone rang.

‘No,’ he said, ‘you stay sitting. I’ll get it.’

The phone was a portable one, and I’d hoped he would just bring it over, but no—being Stuart, he answered it first. I was praying it wasn’t my mother, or, worse still, my father, when Stuart said charmingly, ‘No, she’s just resting. Hang on a minute.’ Crossing back, he handed me the phone.

I closed my eyes, prepared for anything. ‘Hello?’

Jane’s voice was dry. ‘Shall I ring back another time?’

‘No, of course not.’

‘I just wondered. You sound…busy.’

‘I—’

‘You don’t need to explain,’ she swept away my explanation. ‘I’m your agent, not your mother.’

Actually, I might have found it easier if it had been my mother on the phone, because my mother, while she did have her opinions, didn’t pry, whereas Jane would never let this drop, no matter what she’d said, till she’d had all the details. Still, she’d known me long enough to not come at me all at once, with questions. ‘I won’t keep you long, at any rate. I only called to ask you up for lunch,’ she said, ‘on Saturday.’

I hesitated. Saturdays and Sundays were the days I spent with Graham, and I didn’t like to lose them. But I valued, too, my time with Jane and Alan, and their baby, and surely by Saturday I would be able to walk. ‘Yes, of course,’ I said. ‘I’d love to come.’

‘Good. Will you need me to come fetch you in the car, or do you have a driver now?’

I didn’t take the bait. ‘I’ll let you know.’

‘Local man, is he?’

‘Jane.’

‘Right, I’ll keep out of it. Let you get on with your evening.’ I heard the conspirator’s smile in her voice as she wished me good night and rang off.

I sighed, and set down the receiver. Stuart didn’t notice. He was standing at the door, beneath the black electric meter, making some adjustment to it. Realizing that I was off the phone, he turned and grinned. ‘Don’t look. You’re nearly out of time on this. I’m fixing it.’

‘Yes, well, your brother’s done that once already, and your father’s bound to figure out, someday, that I’m not paying what I should.’

He didn’t seem concerned about his dad’s suspicions. Something else I’d said had grabbed his interest. ‘Graham’s been here? When was that?’

I’d slipped up, and I knew it. ‘Oh, a while ago,’ I told him. ‘He was helping with my book.’ And then, before Stuart could think to ask anything else, I distracted his attention by leaning to push down my sock for a look at my ankle.

It worked. He said, ‘Christ, look at that.’

It was swollen. The pain, though, now that I’d stopped hobbling around, had dulled itself down to a steady throb, something I found easier to manage.

Stuart frowned. ‘You’re sure you won’t have someone look at that?’

‘I’ll show it to Dr Weir tomorrow,’ I promised. ‘But trust me, it’s only a sprain, if it’s anything. Nothing that rest and some aspirin won’t cure.’

His torn expression, I decided, wasn’t just because I wouldn’t see a doctor. More than likely it owed something to the fact that he’d have headed here to visit me tonight with a seduction scene in mind. But even Stuart, in the end, had too much chivalry to try it on with someone who’d been injured.

He brought me my aspirin and water to take it with, settled me into my chair with the phone at my side, and then smiled with the confidence of a commander who’d lost the day’s battle but fully expected a victory the next time around. ‘Get your rest, then,’ he told me. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’

I had every intention of resting. I did. After Stuart had gone, I leaned back in the chair and tried closing my eyes for a moment, but then the wind rose at the windows and rattled the glass and moaned low round the cottage, until the lamenting became a low murmur, like voices, and one voice from among them warned, ‘The moment will be lost.’

So I knew the idea of resting was out. It was difficult, standing and making my shuffling way to the work table, but it would have been even more difficult to sit still when my characters called.

And I knew, at this point in the story, I wasn’t the only one dealing with pain.