The Winter Sea

Near the garden wall the mastiff tore his lead free of her hand and made a dash towards the stables with a single woof of welcome. Rory stood within the stable doorway, wiping down his horse with hay to dry its sweat-stained flanks. He said, ‘We saw the sails from Dunottar. Her ladyship is in the house already.’

‘And the ship?’ asked Kirsty, breathless. ‘Is it—?’

‘Aye. Now get inside, afore the twa of ye are missed.’ He said no more, but turned back quickly to his work, and Kirsty tugged Sophia’s hand again and told her, ‘Come,’ and so Sophia hurried with her to the kitchen door, not knowing what awaited her inside, nor why the ship was so important, nor indeed if those men rowing to the shore below the castle, who might even now have landed, carried with them something pleasurable, or something to be feared.

CHAPTER 8

I WOKE, STILL IN the armchair, to the hard grey light of morning, and a numbing sense of cold. In the confusion of new consciousness, I looked around and noticed that the lamp I’d left switched on last night was off, as was the little electric fire plugged into the wall at my feet. And then, becoming more awake, I realized what had happened, and a quick look at the black box fastened to the wall above the door confirmed that the meter was no longer spinning. The needles rested in the red. I’d used up all my coins, and now my power had gone off.

Worse, I had gone to sleep before I’d stoked the stove up for the evening, and the kitchen fire was out, as well. The stove, when I got up to touch it, wasn’t even warm.

I swore, with feeling, since my mother wasn’t in the room to hear me, and dropping to my knees began to rake the old dead coals and ashes over, hoping there would be enough left in the hod to start a new fire.

I was still at it when Graham came to fetch me for our walk. I must have looked a sight when I opened the door to him, with my face smudged and my clothes in hopeless wrinkles from my sleeping in them, but he was nice enough not to comment on it, and only the deepening creases at the corners of his eyes as I explained the situation to him showed that he found anything amusing.

‘And I can’t get the stove to start again,’ I finished in frustration. ‘And because it’s hooked up to the water heater, that means I have no hot water for washing, and—’

Graham cut in. ‘You look fine,’ he said, calmingly. ‘Why don’t you go and find something warm to put on over that shirt, and I’ll take care of this out here, all right?’

I looked at him with gratitude. ‘All right.’

I did a little more than simply put a sweater on. I scrubbed my face, uncaring of the freezing water, and used a wet comb to bring my hair back into order. When I’d finished, my reflection in the mirror was a bit more recognizable. It wasn’t quite the face I’d hoped to show him when he came, but it was one that I could live with.

In the kitchen, I found Graham boiling water on the small electric stove. The air already felt a little warmer from the fire he’d started in the Aga, and the lamp that I’d left burning in the front room by my chair was on again. I crossed to switch it off, and, bending, pulled the plug on the electric fire.

‘Thanks,’ I said.

‘No problem. I take it you haven’t had breakfast? You’ll need to eat something, before we head out. It’s a fair walk. What is it you drink, tea or coffee?’

He was reaching in the cupboards with the confidence of somebody who knew where things would be, and I wondered whether he, like Stuart, had ever stayed here on his own. The thought of Stuart having lived here, on and off, had not affected me, but knowing Graham might have once slept in that small back bedroom, in my bed, was something different. I chased the stray thought from my mind, and asked instead, ‘How did you get the meter running?’ People these days, after all, weren’t likely to be going round with pockets full of 50p coins.

‘That,’ he told me, smiling, ‘is a trick that Stuie taught me, and I swore I’d never tell. It wouldn’t do to let Dad’s tenants learn the way of it.’ The kettle had boiled, and he took it off, asking again, ‘D’ye take tea, or coffee?’

‘Oh. Coffee, please.’

He took a pan and cooked me eggs, as well, and made me toast, and served it all up with a slab of cheese. ‘To weigh you down,’ he said, ‘so that the wind won’t knock you off the path.’

I took the plate, and looked towards the windows. ‘It’s not windy.’

‘Eat your breakfast.’ Having made a cup of coffee for himself, he poured the rest of the hot water in the frying pan and washed it, while I watched and tried to think of the last time a man had cooked for me and washed my dishes afterwards. I drew a total blank.

I asked, ‘Where’s Angus? How’s his paw?’

‘It’s not so sore, but if he tried to walk the way up to the Bullers, it would be. I left him with my father for the day. He’ll be all right. Dad always stuffs him full of sausages.’ He rinsed the pan and set it on the draining board to dry.

His mention of the Bullers made me stop dead in the middle of my toast. Oh, damn, I thought. I hadn’t written down my dream. I’d had that marvelous, long dream last night, with all that perfect action, and I’d gone and let it go to waste, because I hadn’t thought to write it down. It would be lost, now. If I concentrated, maybe I could reconstruct some bits of it, but dialogue just disappeared unless I got it down on paper moments after it had formed.