The Winter Sea

Jane asked me, ‘What’s the sigh for?’

‘Did I sigh?’

‘With feeling.’

‘Well, just look at this,’ I said, and spread my hands wide to the view. ‘It’s all so beautiful.’

The ruins felt much lonelier this afternoon, with us the only visitors. The wind wept round the high pink granite walls and followed when we walked along the grassy floors of what had once been corridors. I had wanted to see if, from what still remained, I could make out the floor plan, and Jane, her equilibrium restored now that we’d stepped a little further from the edge, was keen to join me in the game.

‘I think,’ she said, ‘this might have been the kitchen. Here’s a bit of chimney stack, and look at the size of that hearth.’

‘I don’t know.’ I walked further along. ‘I think maybe the kitchen was somewhere down here, near the stables.’

‘And what makes you think those are stables?’

She wasn’t convinced, and I knew I was letting the house I’d imagined last night, when I’d written the scenes of Sophia at Slains, shape my judgment of where things should be. There was nothing at all at this end of the house to suggest what the rooms might have been—only roofless rectangular spaces with crumbling walls, nothing more. But I still spent a happy few minutes meandering round, playing at fitting my made-up rooms onto the real ones.

Sophia’s bedchamber, I thought, could be within that tall square tower standing proudly at the corner of the castle’s front, against the cliffs. I couldn’t see a way to get inside it, but my mind could fill the details in, and guess at what the views might be. And down there, at the end of this long corridor with all the doors, could be the castle’s dining room, and this, I thought as I stepped through a narrow arching door into the soaring room I’d liked so much my first time here, the one where I had seen the tracks of man and dog and where the gaping window gave a wide view of the sea, this surely must have been the drawing room. Well, under the drawing room, actually, since I was standing in what would have been the lower level of the house, the floorless main rooms being all above me, but the view would be the same from the great window I saw higher up the wall. A person could have stood there and looked out towards the east along the glinting path of sunlight on the waves to the horizon.

I was gazing out that way myself, when Jane came up to join me.

‘What?’ she asked.

I turned, uncomprehending. ‘Pardon?’

‘What’s so interesting?’

‘Oh. Nothing. I’m just looking.’ But I brought my head back round again and stared a moment longer at the line where sea met sky, as though I needed to be sure, now that she mentioned it, that there was nothing there.

Jane left just after two o’clock, and I went into Cruden Bay to get some food for supper. I’d never much liked shopping in the larger modern grocery stores, it took too much time to find anything, so I was delighted when I found a little corner shop on Main Street. I didn’t need much—just some apples and a pork chop and another loaf of bread. The man who kept the shop was friendly, and because my face was new to him, he asked me where I came from. We were deep in a discussion about Canada and hockey when the shop’s door jangled open and the wind blew Jimmy Keith in.

‘Aye-aye.’ He looked happy. ‘I’ve been lookin fer ye.’

I said, ‘You have?’

‘Oh, aye. I was up tae the St Olaf Hotel yestereen, and I found some folk tae help ye wi’ yer book. I’ve made a wee list.’

His ‘wee list’ appeared to have at least a half a dozen names. He read them off and told me who they were, although I couldn’t keep them straight. I wasn’t sure whether the schoolteacher or the plumber had offered to give me a driving tour of the district. But I did take note of one name.

‘Dr Weir,’ said Jimmy, last of all, ‘taks a rare interest in the local history. He’s a gran man. He’s aye fightin tae save Slains. He’ll be at hame the nicht, if ye’ve a mind tae wander ower there and spik wi’ him.’

‘I’d like that very much. Thanks.’

‘He’s got hissel a bungalow up by the Castle Wood. I’ll tell ye the wye, it’s nae bother tae find.’

I walked out after supper. The dark had settled in, and on the path down from my cottage to the road the strange, uneasy feeling gripped me once again, although there was no one and nothing there that could have threatened me. I shook it off and made my legs move faster, but it followed, like an unseen force that chased me to the road, and then retreated into darkness, waiting…knowing it would have another chance at me, tonight, when I came home.

CHAPTER 6

THE CASTLE WOOD STOOD not far up past the Kilmarnock Arms. I’d gone through it that first day when I had been driving to Jane’s, and by daylight had thought it a peaceful place, but in the dark it was different, and I was grateful that I could pass by it tonight on the far sidewalk, keeping the road in between. There were masses of rooks wheeling noisily over the treetops, their harsh cries unnerving. And the tall trees themselves with their strange gnarled branches looked twisted and weird, like the wolf-and witch-concealing forests in the illustrations of my old book of Grimm’s Fairy Tales.

Dr Weir’s house was a welcome sight—a neat, low bungalow, with wind chimes hung beside the door and a family of small painted gnomes peering up from the tidy front garden.