Offshore: A short story collection Page 7

  She nodded and went to the bar. When I left, sure-footed up the path despite the dark, she was playing darts with a bunch of the boys who row in the gig team.

  I thought of her all day. Of that distinctive face and the pirate hat. I imagined the painting that it would make, and the story that the picture would tell. Of a woman easy in her own body, searching for answers. When she turned up at the cottage I was ready for her. There was charcoal and paper on the table and I sketched all the time that we talked.

  The next morning the tent was gone and the campsite was clear. No rubbish. Just a patch of flat grass to show that she’d been there at all. Again I had the strange sense that she was some sort of ghost, disappearing as soon as she’d arrived. I got on the phone to one of the boys who crew on the launch.

  ‘The young woman who was camping at Troytown, did she go out to St Mary’s today?’ From St Mary’s you get the ferry or the plane to Penzance. It’s the only way out of the island.

  He hesitated for a moment. He’s not the most observant of men.

  ‘The girl with the hat. She’s not here any more.’

  ‘Oh yes!’ He’s suggestible as well as a bit stupid. If anyone else asks he’ll remember that he saw her, that he caught a glimpse of her leaving the island with the other visitors.

  I recognized the hat as soon as I saw it on the day she arrived. It belonged once to my lover. He came to the islands when I was forty; he was my last chance of passion and a child. He spent a summer with me in the cottage, writing his poetry, helping out in the bulb fields. Occasionally he’d disappear back to the mainland, and on his final visit to me he’d left his hat there. When he arrived in St Agnes without it I should have realized it was a sign.

  That last night, I’d opened wine to celebrate his return. In the cottage near Periglis he took my hand and told me that he was leaving me. He had a woman on the mainland who was carrying his baby. Someone closer to his own age.

  The bright young woman was his daughter. She should have been my daughter. She was here with questions about the man who’d disappeared before her birth.

  ‘I talked to his friends.’ She saw that I was sketching her, but she didn’t seem to mind. ‘They said he’d spent time here on St Agnes and that he’d always loved your work.’ She looked up, frowning. ‘You know what happened to him, don’t you?’ And looking up, she saw the big oil that I’d painted of him. It hangs on the wall over my desk. Her mother had probably shown her photographs and she recognized him immediately.

  Now she’s lying in the sandy soil in my garden, buried next to her father. I couldn’t take a chance, you see. She was intelligent and persistent and could have started rumours and an investigation. She was a free spirit and for a while nobody will miss her and, when they do, they’ll look for her on the mainland. Her rucksack, with the hat stuffed inside it, has been dropped into the water, to be taken away by the strong neap tide. I couldn’t let her live. There’s too much to lose. There’s this view and this light over the water. The chance that one day I’ll create a perfect piece of art.

  Postcard from Skokholm

  by Lynne Chitty

  They came to Skokholm in late summer before the Manx shearwaters and storm petrels left the island, crossing the water from the Pembrokeshire mainland in the early morning. It was a still, sultry day. Light bounced from the water, turning the island into a black silhouette. George was silent, and Molly wondered suddenly if their relationship would survive constant companionship, the routine of domestic life. The boat rounded a headland and she saw a rough jetty, bloated seals hauled onto the rocks. They’d arrived. The first adventure of their retirement. The boatman helped them off with their bags, then disappeared. They’d expected to be met at the pier by the wardens, but there was no sign of the promised tractor. The place was entirely silent.

  The wardens eventually arrived, ploughing through the stillness. Mixing their mutterings with apologies and digs at the remaining tourists, still greedy for the remnants of the summer sun and last sightings of birds ready to migrate. Jack, the driver, had obviously been indulging in a Jar-not-of-the-Night variety before collecting their bags, and Molly secretly thought his lateness was due to an extra glass of whatever he indulged in, rather than a demanding birdwatcher. But she was grateful for the background noise that his grumblings provided, as they left her alone with her thoughts, which for some reason had become deeply melancholic since they had reached the island.

  It sometimes felt to her that Skokholm was a living cathedral. Open to the elements and unrestricted by roof, tower and vaults, but carrying in its soil and silence the sacredness that she intuitively knew was at the heart of everything. The mist was like incense rising to heaven, and the birds themselves were the ministers. Little plovers and waders the acolytes, and the great seabirds the priests and confessors, taking the best and the worst of humanity on their outstretched wings as they hung prayerfully in the winds or were tossed and turned in the violence of the gales. She stole a glance at George, but he too was lost in another world and, though she loved him dearly – and he her – she was aware that in some ways she hardly knew him at all, and that left her with a lump in her throat and she found herself wondering again at the essential loneliness of being human.

  Later, when they had unpacked, Molly prepared some hot food. The first meal was always special, and she found herself asking George what sort of bird he would like to be, if he could change for a day. He hadn’t managed to fully hide his puzzlement at her question, but after a long pause he replied, ‘An albatross.’

  Though he hadn’t asked her, she’d said, ‘I’d be a robin.’

  ‘Oh,’ he’d said and gone back to his shepherd’s pie.

  Again a deep sadness threatened to overwhelm her. Was it remembering those earlier deaths on the island – the sudden violence amidst such stunning beauty, like a peregrine tearing into a flock of starlings? Or was it her own forthcoming operation to remove a lump on her breast? She didn’t know, but she struggled to swallow her food and was glad when an old friend of George, who was also staying on the island, called at the wheelhouse to discuss a new sighting and she was able slip outside to try and compose herself.

  It was there that she found it. A postcard, lying on the ground, resisting the efforts of the summer breeze to move it on. Damp and tatty, it depicted an elephant at Bristol Zoo and carried an American stamp. It was addressed simply to ‘Clara, The Lodge, Clifton, Bristol, England’, and although Molly felt slightly uncomfortable, she found herself reading its unsigned message:

  The elephants are still in their enclosure and haven’t forgotten the day we watched them being showered by their keepers. Neither have I. You may be across an ocean, but one day the waves of justice will roll up on your shore. For now I console myself with the memory of those great beasts, and although I too will soon see the world only through bars, one day, my love, so will you . . .

  Appalled at her own nosiness, but equally intrigued, Molly showed the postcard to George, who raised his eyebrows and went to get himself another drink, asking Tim, the young assistant warden, if a woman called Clara was on the island.

  ‘Not that I know of,’ he said. ‘The only woman on her own was here last week. Funny one, she was. Never spoke a word to anyone. A looker, but like a ghost. If it’s the one I’m thinking of, she went off with the boat on Friday. A few of us tried to make conversation, but she seemed to be in a world of her own. Was a mystery why she came at all, as she weren’t no twitcher and seemed out of place somehow. Bit snobby really, I suppose.’

  George sat back down. As he and Molly sipped their drinks, he said he’d make some enquiries in the morning with the other wardens, and then with the boatman when he came back at the end of the week, to see if he had noticed whether anyone had met the woman off the boat. It might be through the boatman that he could find out more about the mystery woman.

  ‘What do you think she could have done?’ Molly asked.

  ‘I’ve really no idea,’ h
e said, disappointingly uninterested.

  Molly herself tried to imagine the man – if it was a man – who had written the card. Perhaps he had once loved the woman deeply, but now . . . ? Umpteen scenarios kept Molly awake all night, and her dreams were a mix of mist and elephants and a robin that everyone kept chasing away.

  In the end it was the boatman who solved the mystery of the woman, not because he’d seen anything, but because he had brought the newspapers across to the island. After a cooked breakfast and an early-morning walk to greet the boat, George had settled down with a coffee and had caught up with the week’s news. His eyes were drawn to a short paragraph on the inside page, and he knew the postcard’s owner had been found:

  Woman’s body discovered in motel room

  Police were called to a motel in St David’s early yesterday morning, where they found the body of a woman. She had drowned in the bath and has been identified as 57-year-old Clara Springer, an American-born wildlife artist who painted under the name of Vanessa Gough. She had been living in England for the last seven years. Her husband is serving a life sentence in a prison in Florida and has been informed of her death.

  ‘You’d better send the card to the police, love,’ George finally said.

  ‘Yes, I know,’ Molly replied and went to retrieve it, thinking again of the elephants. Did they really remember Clara and her husband? Suddenly she desperately hoped they did. Who will remember me, she thought, if I don’t come through the operation? Who will speak out my name? Will George? She looked up out of the window and saw a tern gliding effortlessly in the distance.

  Skokholm will, it seemed to say. Skokholm will.

  And, smiling through the ever-present tears, she took the postcard back in to George.

  Thin Air

  A group of old university friends leave the bright lights of London and travel to Unst, Shetland’s most northerly island, to celebrate the marriage of one of their friends to a Shetlander. But late on the night of the wedding party, one of them, Eleanor, disappears – apparently into thin air. It’s mid-summer, a time of light nights and unexpected mists. The following day, Eleanor's friend Polly receives an email. It appears to be a suicide note, saying she'll never be found alive. And then Eleanor’s body is discovered, lying in a small loch close to the cliff edge.

  Detectives Jimmy Perez and Willow Reeves are dispatched to Unst to investigate. Before she went missing, Eleanor claimed to have seen the ghost of a local child who drowned in the 1920s. Her interest in the ghost had seemed unhealthy – obsessive, even – to her friends: an indication of a troubled mind. But Jimmy and Willow are convinced that there is more to Eleanor’s death than they first thought.

  Is there a secret that lies behind the myth? One so shocking that someone would kill – many years later – to protect?

  Ann Cleeves’ striking new Shetland novel explores the tensions between tradition and modernity that lie deep at the heart of a community, and how events from the past can have devastating effects on the present.

  The first chapter follows here.

  Chapter One

  The music started. A single chord played on fiddle and accordion, a breathless moment of silence when the scene was fixed in Polly’s head like a photograph, and then the Meoness community hall was jumping. Polly had spent thirteen hours on the overnight boat from Aberdeen to Lerwick and when she’d first come ashore the ground had seemed to shift under her feet, and this was another kind of illusion. The music appeared to bounce from the walls and the floor and to push people towards the centre of the room, to lift them onto their feet. Even the home-made bunting and the balloons strung from the rafters seemed to dance. The band’s rhythm set toes tapping and heads nodding. Children in party clothes clapped and elderly relatives clambered from their chairs to join in. A young mother jiggled a baby on her knee. Lowrie took the hand of his new bride, Caroline, and led her onto the dance floor to show her off to his family once more.

  This was the hamefarin’. Lowrie was a Shetlander, and after years of courtship Caroline had finally persuaded him, or bullied him, to marry her. The real wedding had taken place close to Caroline’s home in Kent and her two closest friends had followed her to Unst, Shetland’s most northerly island, to complete the celebration. And they’d brought their men with them.

  ‘Doesn’t she look gorgeous?’ It was Eleanor, crouching beside Polly’s chair.

  The two women had known Caroline since they were students; she was their voice of reason and their sister-in-arms. They’d been her bridesmaids in Kent and now they were dressed up again in the cream silk dresses they’d chosen together in London. They’d made the trek north to be part of the hamefarin’. They’d followed Caroline round the room for the bridal march and now they admired again her elegance, her poise, and her very expensive frock.

  ‘It’s what she’s wanted since she first laid eyes on Lowrie during Freshers’ Week,’ Eleanor went on. ‘It was obvious even then that she’d get her way. She’s a determined lady, our Caroline.’

  ‘Lowrie doesn’t seem to mind too much. He hasn’t stopped beaming since they got married.’

  Eleanor laughed. ‘Isn’t this all such fun?’

  Polly thought she hadn’t seen Eleanor so happy for months. ‘Great fun,’ she said. Polly seldom relaxed in social situations, but decided she was actually rather enjoying herself tonight. She smiled back at her friend and felt a moment of connection, of tenderness. Since her parents had died, these people were the only family she had. Then she decided that the drink must be making her maudlin.

  ‘They’ll be setting out supper soon.’ Eleanor had to shout to make herself heard over the band. Her face was flushed and her eyes were bright as if she had a fever. ‘The friends of the bride and groom have to help serve. It’s the tradition.’

  The music stopped and the guests clapped and laughed. Polly’s partner, Marcus, had been dancing with Lowrie’s mother. His dancing had been lively, even if he couldn’t quite follow the steps. He came over to them, still following the beat of the music, almost skipping.

  ‘It’s supper time,’ Eleanor said to him. ‘You have to help put out the trestles. Ian’s weighing in already. We’ll come through in a moment to act as waitresses.’

  Marcus dropped a kiss onto Polly’s head and disappeared. Polly was proud that she hadn’t asked him if he was having a good time. She was always anxious about their relationship and could tell that her need for reassurance was beginning to irritate him.

  The men had set out tables and benches in a smaller room, and Lowrie’s friends were handing out mugs of soup to the waiting guests. Eleanor and Polly took a tray each. Eleanor was enjoying herself immensely. She was showing off, flirting with the old men and revelling in the attention. Then there were bannocks and platters of mutton and salt beef. Bannocks and flesh, Lowrie had called it. Polly was vegetarian and the mounds of meat at the end of her fingertips as she carried the plates from the kitchen made her feel a little queasy. There was a sense of dislocation about the whole event. It was being on the ship for thirteen hours the night before and spending all day in the open air. The strangeness of the evening light. Eleanor being so manic. Polly sipped tea and nibbled on a piece of wedding cake and thought she could still feel the rolling of the ship under her feet.

  When the meal was over she and Marcus helped to clear the tables, then the band began to play again and, despite her protests, she was swung into an eightsome reel. She found herself in the centre of the circle, being passed from man to man and then spinning. Lowrie’s father was her partner. He had his arms crossed and braced and the force of the movement almost lifted her from her feet. She’d thought of him as an elderly man and hadn’t expected him to be so strong. There was a fleeting and astonishing moment of sexual desire. When the music stopped she saw that she was trembling. It was the physical effort and an odd excitement. There was no sign of Eleanor or Marcus and she went outside for air.

  It must have been nearly eleven o’clock, but it was s
till light. Lowrie said that in Shetland this was called the ‘simmer dim’, the summer dusk. So far north it never really got dark in June and now the shore was all grey and silver. Polly spent her working life analysing folk tales and she could understand how Shetlanders had come to create the trowes, the little people with magical powers. It must be a result of the dramatic seasons and the strange light. It occurred to her that she might write a paper on it. There might be interest from Scandinavian academics.

  From the hall behind her came the sound of the band finishing another tune, laughter and the clink of crockery being washed up in the kitchen. On the beach below a couple sat, smoking. Polly could see them only as silhouettes. Then a little girl appeared on the shore, apparently from nowhere. She was dressed in white and the low light caught her and she seemed to shine. The dress was high-waisted and trimmed with lace and she wore white ribbons in her hair. She stretched out her arms to hold the skirt wide and skipped across the sand, dancing to the music in her head. As Polly watched, the girl turned to her and, very serious, curtsied. Polly stood and clapped her hands.

  She looked around her to see if there were any other adults watching. She hadn’t noticed the girl in the party earlier, but she must be there with her parents. Perhaps she belonged to the couple sitting below her. But when she turned back to the tideline the girl had vanished and all that was left was a shimmering reflection of the rising moon in the water.

  About the Author

  Ann Cleeves is the author behind ITV’s VERA and BBC One’s SHETLAND. She has written over twenty-five novels, and is the creator of detectives Vera Stanhope and Jimmy Perez – characters loved both on screen and in print. Her books have now sold over 1 million copies worldwide.

  Ann worked as a probation officer, bird observatory cook and auxiliary coastguard before she started writing. She is a member of ‘Murder Squad’, working with other British northern writers to promote crime fiction. In 2006 Ann was awarded the Duncan Lawrie Dagger (CWA Gold Dagger) for Best Crime Novel, for Raven Black, the first book in her Shetland series. In 2012 she was inducted into the CWA Crime Thriller Awards Hall of Fame. Ann lives in North Tyneside.