The Shadowy Horses

I struggled to make sense of it all. "So Peter... Peter doesn't know?"

She shook her head. "After Billy died he took a hand in Davy's bringing up—he couldn't help himself. But Davy's Billy Fortune's son, so far as Peter kens."

"And David doesn't know."

"That's right."

"Then why ... ?"

"Why tell you?" The clear blue eyes, so like her son's, touched mine knowingly. "Because, as you say, my Davy's a lot like his father. And you, lass, like me, are a difficult woman."

"Well, yes, but..."

"I took one road, that's all I'm saying. I went down the one road and, now that I'm old, I can see that it wasn't the best road to take."

The herring gull cried and she followed the flight of its shadow with thoughtful eyes, watched it pass over waves rolling in with such force that the sand beneath them boiled and the narrow strip of beach dissolved in foam.

"It's never too late, though, is it?" I ventured. "I mean, you and Peter, you're both single now, and living here, and surely if you wanted to ..."

She shook her head, and for the first time since I'd met her she looked her full age. "You can't ever go back." Far out beyond the harbor mouth the sea-god's horses tossed their curling manes and rushed in on the inevitable tide, and Nancy Fortune stood and watched them come. "Life moves on," she said gently, "and you can't go back. You've only got one chance to get it right."

XXXII

The inside of the tent was much more comfortable than I'd imagined, high-ceilinged and spacious with a camp bed in one corner and even a small wooden desk, buried of course beneath papers. The flaps, tied back to catch the breeze, let in a spear of morning sun and when I breathed, the pungent scents of leather and warm canvas rose up to mingle pleasantly with fainter smells of soap and aftershave.

David, bent over his bootlace, flicked a glance upwards. "Have I grown an extra head?" he asked me.

"Sorry?"

"You've been staring at me strange since you came in." Straightening, he tucked his shirt-tails into the waistband of his khaki shorts and shot me a wicked grin. "Or is it just that I'm so irresistible?"

He was looking rather irresistible, actually, fresh from his morning shower with his hair still damp and rumpled like a boy's. I had a momentary urge to comb my fingers through the curls to tidy them, but instead I answered his question with a noncommittal smile and tipped my head back, admiring the canvas overhead.

"I do like your tent," I said.

"Aye. Pure Abercrombie & Fitch, don't you think? Like being on safari. I wake up every morning with the feeling that I ought to go and shoot something. Of course," he qualified the statement, "I'd be bound to feel like that anyway, wouldn't I, working with Adrian. Tent or no."

I laughed. "Adrian's not so bad."

"Is he not?" He strapped on his wristwatch, considering. "Well, maybe you're right. But his mouth's been making my hand fair itch these past few days."

"He always turns sarcastic when he's foiled in love."

"Oh, aye?"

"And it isn't me he's pining for, whatever you might think," I set him straight. "He's head over heels for Fabia."

David grinned again, more broadly. “Is he, poor sod? He and Brian ought to form a club, then—cry into their beer together. She's got a new lad in her snares. One of these sub-aqua nutters come down for the diving."

I'd suspected as much myself, but I'd never seen her with anyone. I wondered that David had—he almost never left the site now, so absorbed was he in the dig. "You seem to know an awful lot about it."

"Oh, I ken everyone's business," he said cheerfully. "Especially now that my mother's sitting up there at Saltgreens looking out on the harbor all day. It's fair amazing, what she sees.''

"Too bad you're not still living at the Ship," I teased him. "She might have kept an eye on you."

"Just as well I'm here, then." The light in his eyes was decidedly sinful. "There are some things," he said, "I'd not want to do, in full view of my mother."

"Such as?"

He laughed, and took my face in his hands, and showed me.

"Oh," I said, when I could breathe again. "Those things."

"And others' But I'll have to demonstrate another time. We're running late as it is."

In the kitchen at Rosehill we found Robbie impatiently swinging his legs. "I've been waiting and waiting," he told us. "You said ten o'clock, and it's the back of eleven." David apologized. "But we'll not be late, I promise you."

Jeannie turned smiling from the stove. "You're sure it's no bother, now? Brian said he'd meet you down there, when the boats all come back in."

The fleet had sailed this morning up to St. Abbs, near where David's mother had her cottage, to pick up the young Herring Queen and give her a royal escort back along the coast to Eyemouth. David had explained that it was always done this way—the Herring Queen being taken by car to St. Abbs, to be met by the full fishing fleet. Their return was timed for high tide, in the middle of the afternoon. And then there'd be the pomp and circumstance of the crowning ceremony, held on Gunsgreen, right beside the harbor.