see it going tomorrow and the last of the bread’s gone now. Just as well I bought in lots of dried yeast. The beer’s on the low side too. Let’s hope folks have stocked up for themselves.’
Further north again the settlements petered out. There was a rise in the land and Fran could see the road winding away, the hill and the airstrip on one side and an area of flat grassland on the other. To the right the sloping bulk of Sheep Rock, jutting into the sea, which gave Fair Isle its instantly recognizable shape from Shetland mainland and from the Northlink ferry.
‘What’s that?’ Fran had stopped and turned her back to the wind. She’d thought she was fit but this was hard going and she was glad of the excuse to rest. She pointed to a wire-mesh cage built over the wall. It was shaped like a funnel with a wooden box at the narrow end.
‘A Heligoland trap. It’s where the wardens from the field centre catch the birds for ringing. There have been naturalists here since the fifties; they started off in some wooden huts near the North Haven. The place was set up by a couple of guys who were prisoners of war. Apparently they dreamed of coming back and founding a centre for studying birds and plants. When the North Light went automatic there was a huge fund-raising effort to convert it to a state-of-the-art field centre. In the spring there are organized courses for botanists. This time of year it’s taken over by birdwatchers. Sometimes the Isle seems full of people with binoculars and telescopes chasing rare birds.’ Perez paused. ‘They’re kind of obsessed.’
‘How does it work, the people in the field centre and the islanders? Does everyone get on?’
‘Generally. We all grew up with a centre on the island and everyone agreed with the lighthouse conversion – it’s so far from the rest of the houses that you can’t imagine ordinary folk wanting to live there. It provides business for the shop and the boat and the post office. There’ve been a few complaints in the past about visitors breaking down walls and flattening crops when they get onto folks’ land, but one storm like this could do just as much damage as a horde of birdwatchers. Maurice and Angela have been there for about five years. Folk seem to like them OK.’
‘I thought your mother said the place was run by someone called Jane.’
‘Jane’s the cook. Very good and scarily efficient. The island’s started to have its parties there because the food’s so good.’
He began walking again. Ahead of them was an isthmus with a sandy beach on one side, rocks and shingle on the other.
‘That’s the North Haven where the
They came on to the lighthouse suddenly, rounding a bend in the single-track road. A row of whitewashed cottages with the tower beyond and the whole complex surrounded by a low stone wall that had been whitewashed too, enclosing a paved yard, crossed at one end with washing lines.
Fran was tired after the walk in the wind. The sky was overcast now and there were welcoming lights in the small windows. She imagined tea, a fire, and an escape from the relentless noise of the storm. She wasn’t sure she’d be able to make the walk back to the south of the island.
Perez pulled open a door into a porch with hooks for outdoor clothes, a bench holding odd boots and shoes. There was a smell of damp wellingtons and old socks, waxed jackets. In the distance they heard raised voices.
‘I’m really sorry but that’s impossible.’ A clear, female voice, the voice of someone who expected to be taken seriously. Someone English and well educated. ‘You had the opportunity to fly out on the plane this morning. We did explain that the boat was unlikely to go. The crew won’t put their lives, and those of their passengers, into danger just because you’ve decided you’re bored.’
Fran decided this must be Jane, the cook. Certainly the speaker sounded scarily efficient.
‘Nobody told me about the plane!’ This was another woman. Younger. The voice had the complaining whine of a spoilt teenager.
‘An announcement was made at breakfast.’
‘You know I never eat breakfast. You should have found me and told me. Why didn’t my father tell me?’
‘There was no point by then. The available spare places had already been taken.’
‘Oh, God!’ The words came out as a high-pitched wail, but Fran thought she sensed real panic behind it, the sort of panic she’d felt when she thought the plane was going to crash. ‘I hate this bloody place. I’ll die if I have to stay here for another day.’
Chapter Four
Perez lay awake in his parents’ guest bedroom, the room that had been his when he was a child. Beside him Fran was sleeping. Their sleeping arrangements had probably caused his parents some anxiety. One of the bedrooms in the house was tiny; now it housed the PC and a desk and a huge metal filing cabinet that Mary had taken when it was being thrown out by the school. There was no room for a camp bed. Perez had thought he might be expected to spend the nights on the living room sofa. His father had fixed ideas about sexual morality. But if there had been any argument over the propriety of their sharing a bed, Mary had won. She’d shown them into the room in the roof with an air of triumph.
‘This is a bit different, eh, Jimmy? It’s not like when you stayed here.’
And he saw that it had been transformed in their honour. There was a new double bed, fresh curtains with big blue flowers on them, and matching linen. A pair of blue towels folded on the old chest of drawers. He thought his mother must have been watching makeover programmes on daytime television when the bad weather made outside work impossible.
Lying there, listening to the wind tear at the roof tiles, Perez remembered the first woman with whom he’d had sex. The image came into his head, quite unbidden and remarkably vivid. She’d been a woman while he was still a boy. Beata. A German student, member of a National Trust for Scotland work camp; the camp had taken over the Puffin, an old stone fish store at the south end, for a month in the summer. He was sixteen, home for the long holiday. She was twenty-one.
It was the year all the construction work was done at the North Haven and the students acted as labourers, the year Kenneth Williamson had come to Springfield as a kind of lodger. One night there’d been a barbecue at the Puffin and Perez had been invited along. He remembered bottles of German beer in a row in the shadow of the hut, the smell of singeing meat. He was sitting on the grass talking to the woman and suddenly became aware that she was looking at him oddly. She half-closed her eyes and swayed slightly, lost it seemed to him now, in some erotic fantasy of her own.
‘I want to swim,’ she’d said, opening her eyes wide again. ‘Where can I swim?’
By then the other students were rowdily drunk, singing songs in languages he couldn’t understand. He’d taken her to Gunglesund, a natural pool formed in the rocks on the west of the island. It filled up on the very high tides and the sun warmed it, so it wasn’t so cold there as swimming in the sea. But still cold enough to make the children who came there squeal when they first jumped in.
Beata hadn’t squealed. Without any sort of fuss, she’d taken off all her clothes and slipped into the water. She had small breasts, a flat brown stomach, a white triangle where bikini bottoms had been. Her pubic hair was darker than he’d expected. She’d swum away from him with a languid crawl.
The sun had reflected from the water into his eyes and he’d felt faint. There was a weird shady light as if the sun had been eclipsed for a moment and would soon come out again.
‘Aren’t you coming in?’ she’d demanded, turning back to him. Impatient. A little imperious.
He’d hesitated for a moment. What if someone should come? And he’d known even then that what was expected was more than a shared swim. She’d been looking at him greedily since he’d first arrived at the Puffin. He began to undress.
They’d lain on a pile of clothes on a large flat rock, in shadow now that the sun was so low. The woman’s hunger for his body had scared and flattered him at the same time. And excited him. Of course he’d been excited. It had been like every adolescent’s dream.
When he’d returned home that night, everyone was in bed. He’d half-expected his father to appear, to stand
