The Winter Sea

I’d expected that Nathaniel Hooke would have the most to say, and that his voice would be the strongest and the first that I would hear, but in the end the words I heard came not from him, but from a woman, and the words themselves were unexpected.

‘So, you see, my heart is held forever by this place,’ she said. ‘I cannot leave.’

I cannot leave.

That’s all she said, the voice was gone, but still that phrase stayed with me and repeated like a litany, so urgently that when the deal was done and Jane and Jimmy Keith had settled things and I was asked when I would like to take possession, I said, ‘Could I have it now? Tonight?’

They looked at me, the two of them, as though I’d lost my mind.

‘Tonight?’ Jane echoed. ‘But your things are still at our house, and you’re flying back to France tomorrow, aren’t you?’

‘Onywye,’ said Jimmy Keith, ‘it’s nae been cleaned.’

They were right, I knew, and really, one or two days more would hardly make a difference. So we set the date for Wednesday, just the day after tomorrow. But that didn’t stop me feeling, as we locked the cottage door behind us, that I was committing a betrayal.

I felt that way all through the drive back to Peterhead, and through my last night visiting with Jane and little Jack and Alan. And next morning on my way back down to Aberdeen I drove deliberately along the coast, through Cruden Bay, to let the castle ruins know that I had not abandoned them.

It didn’t take me long to settle things in France. I’d rented the house for the season, but the money didn’t matter, and the things that I’d had with me there didn’t fill two suitcases. My landlady, who wasn’t losing anything because I had already paid up front in full, still looked a bit put out until I told her I would probably be back before the winter’s end, to do more research up at the chateau. But I knew, as I was saying it, that I would not be back. There was no need.

My characters had chosen not to come to life at Saint-Germain-en-Laye because their story wasn’t meant to happen there. They were supposed to be at Slains. And so was I.

I’d never been so sure of anything as I was sure of that.

On Tuesday night, the last night that I spent in France, I dreamt of Slains. I woke, still in my dream, to hear the roaring of the sea beneath my windows and the wind that raged against the walls until the air within the room bit cold against my skin. The fire was failing on the hearth, small licks of dying flame that cast half-hearted shadows on the floorboards and gave little light to see by.

‘Let it be,’ a man’s voice mumbled, low, against my neck. ‘We will have warmth enough.’ And then his arm came round me, solid, safe, and drew me firmly back against the shelter of his chest, and I felt peace, and turned my face against the pillow, and I slept…

It was so real. So real, in fact, that I was half-surprised to find myself alone in bed when I woke up on Wednesday morning. I lay blinking for a moment in the soft grey light, and then without waiting to switch on the lamp I reached out for the paper and pen that I kept at my bedside for moments like this, and I wrote down the scene. I wrote quickly, untidily, scratching out the dialogue before the voices of the dream began to fade. I’d learned from hard experience that bits of plot that came to me this way, from my subconscious, often disappeared before they could be registered within my waking mind. I knew I couldn’t trust to memory.

When I finally put the pen down, I sat still a moment, reading what I’d written. Here, again, it was a woman I was seeing, like the woman’s voice I’d heard when I was standing in the cottage. So far, all my major characters were men, but here this woman was, demanding to be part of things. Characters sometimes came into my books that way, unplanned and unannounced, often unwanted. But maybe, I thought, I should let this one stay. Maybe Jane had been right to suggest that my story would be better told by someone other than Nathaniel Hooke, someone I created from my own imagination, who could link the scenes together by her presence.

Besides, I found it easier to write about a woman. I knew what women did when they were on their own, and how they thought. Perhaps this dream last night was my subconscious telling me that what my novel really needed was a woman’s point of view.

The character, I thought, would form herself; I only had to name her.

Which was easier, as always, said than done.

The names of characters defined them, and like clothing, either fitted them or not. I’d tried and tossed out several by the time I reached the Paris airport.

On the plane to Aberdeen, I tried a more methodical approach, by taking out my notebook and dividing one page into two neat columns, and then listing every Scottish name I knew—for I’d decided she would have to be a Scot—and trying different combinations of the first names and the surnames in my search for one that worked.

I’d gone a good way down the list before I noticed I’d become a source of interest to my seatmate. He’d been sleeping when I’d boarded, or at least he had been sitting with his head back and his eyes closed, and since I hadn’t really been in a mood to strike up a conversation on the plane anyway, I’d happily left him in peace. But now he was awake and sitting forward, with his dark head angled slightly so that he could see what I was writing. He was doing it discreetly enough, but when I glanced over he met my gaze cheerfully, not at all embarrassed he’d been caught, and with a nod at the paper said, ‘Choosing an alias, are ye?’

Which settled the question of his nationality. I’d been thinking he might have been French, with his nearly black hair and good looks, but there was no mistaking the burr of his accent. He looked to be close to my age, and his smile was friendly, not flirting, so I smiled back. ‘Nothing so exciting. I’m naming a character.’