The Winter Sea

‘Aye. Tell you what—I’ll take you early so that you can have your look from out at sea, and if you want when we get back I’ll watch wee Jack awhile and Jane can drive you down to have a wander round. It’ll do you both good, get a breath of sea air.’

And so that’s what we did.

What I saw from the air looked much larger than what I had seen from the ground—a roofless, sprawling ruin that seemed to sit right at the edge of the cliffs, with the sea boiling white far below. It sent one small cold thrill down my spine, and I knew that familiar sensation enough to be frankly impatient to get on the ground, so that Jane could take over and drive me back down.

There were two other cars in the car park this time, and the snow of the footpath showed deep, sliding prints. I ploughed ahead of Jane, and raised my face towards the salt blasts of the wind that left a taste upon my lips and set me shivering again within the warm folds of my jacket.

I confess I couldn’t, afterwards, remember any other people being there, although I knew there had been. Nor could I recall too many details of the ruin itself—just images, of pointed walls and hard pink granite flecked with grey that glittered in the light…the one high square-walled tower standing solid near the cliff ’s edge…the silence of the inner chambers, where the wind stopped raging and began to moan and weep, and where the bare roof timbers overhead cast shadows on the drifted snow. In one large room a massive gaping window faced the sea, and when I stood and leaned my hands against the sunwarmed sill I noticed, looking down, the imprints of a small dog’s paws, perhaps a spaniel’s, and beside them deeper footprints showing where a man had stood and looked, as I was looking, out towards the limitless horizon.

I could almost feel him standing at my shoulder now, but in my mind he’d changed so that he wasn’t any more the modern stranger I had talked to in the car park yesterday, but someone of an older time, a man with boots and cloak and sword. The thought of him became so real I turned… and found Jane watching me.

She smiled at the expression on my face. She knew it well, from all the times that she’d been present when my characters began to stir, and talk, and take on life. Her voice was casual. ‘You know that you can always come and stay with us, and work. We have the room.’

I shook my head. ‘You have a baby. You don’t need a house guest, too.’

She looked at me again, and what she saw made her decide. ‘Then come on. Let’s go down and find a place for you to let in Cruden Bay.’

CHAPTER 2

CRUDEN BAY’S MAIN STREET sloped gently downhill and bent round to the right and then left again, curving away out of sight to the harbor. It was narrow, a line of joined cottages and a few shops on the one side, and on the other a swiftly running stream that surged between its frozen banks and passed a single shop, a newsagent’s, before it ran to meet the wide and empty sweep of beach that stretched away beyond the high snow-covered dunes.

The post office was marked by its red sign against the grey stone walls, and by the varied notices displayed in its front window announcing items for sale and upcoming events, including an enticingly-named ‘Buttery Morning’ to be held at the local hall. Inside the shop were postcards, books, some souvenirs and candy, and a very helpful woman. Yes, she knew of one place in the village that might suit me. A little cottage, basic, nothing fancy on the inside. ‘It was old Miss Keith’s before she passed away,’ she said. ‘Her brother has it now, but since he has a house himself down by the harbor, he’s no use for it. He lets it out to tourists in the summer. Winters, there’ll be no one there except his sons from time to time, and they’re not often home. The younger lad, he likes to travel, and his brother’s at the university in Aberdeen, so Jimmy Keith would probably be glad to let you have the place these next few months. I can give him a phone, if you like.’

And so it came to pass that, with a newly purchased pack of postcards stuffed into the pocket of my coat, I walked with Jane along the sidewalk by the rushing stream and down to where the road bent round and changed its name to Harbour Street. The houses here were like the ones along the Main Street higher up—still low and joined to one another, and across from them a series of small gardens, some with sheds, sprang up between us and the wide pink beach.

From down here I could see the beach itself was huge, a curve at least two miles long with dunes that rose like hills behind it, casting shadows on the shore. A narrow white wood footbridge spanned the shallow gully of the stream to where those dunes began, but even as I paused and looked at it and wondered if I might have time to go across, Jane said with satisfaction, ‘There’s the path,’ and shepherded me past the bridge and round to where a wide and slushy pathway veered up from the street to climb a good-sized hill. Ward Hill, the woman at the Post Office had called it.

It was a headland, high and rounded, thrusting out above the sea, and as I came up to the top I looked behind and saw I’d climbed above the level of the dunes and had a view not only of the beach, but of the distant houses and the hills beyond. And turning back again I saw, towards the north, the blood-red ruin of Slains castle clear against cliffs of the next headland.

I felt a small thrill. ‘Oh, how perfect.’

‘I don’t know,’ Jane said, slowly. ‘It looks rather dismal.’ She was looking at the cottage, standing all alone here on the hill. It had been rubble-built, with plain square whitewashed walls beneath a roof of old grey slates that dripped with dampness from the melting snow. The windows were small, with their frames peeling paint and the worn blinds inside were pulled down like closed eyelids, as if the small cottage had wearied of watching the endless approach and retreat of the sea.