The Restless Sea. Vanessa Haan de

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СКАЧАТЬ a scene. I can’t think what my sister is doing bringing up a creature with no idea how to think or do anything for herself. Do you know what I was doing at your age?’

      Olivia does not reply.

      ‘I was driving ambulances in France for injured and dying men. You think living in a warm cottage by the side of a loch, where your family have sent you to be safe, is a hardship? I could tell you things that would fill your childish slumbers with nightmares. I could tell you how I watched your uncle bleed to death before I could get him home. And now here you are, in his home, safely. I do not want to hear such nonsense again. Now stand up straight and behave as a woman of your standing should. With a bit of bloody backbone and some good grace.’

      Olivia swallows, shamefaced. She has only met her aunt a couple of times. She had been fooled into thinking that she was like her sister, Olivia’s mother, a quiet and kind, gentle person. But this steely creature whose young life was forged in that Great War is nothing like her. In the dark of the great hall, poor, dead Uncle Howard stares down at them through the gloom, handsome in his olive-green army uniform and peaked cap, painted into a frame from which he will remain for ever twenty-five years old.

      Aunt Nancy pats her shoulder. ‘Now,’ she says. ‘I’ve said my piece and, as far as I’m concerned, it’s done and dusted. Come and have some tea and meet the brigadier and commander properly.’

      Olivia hopes her cheeks will stop burning before she re-enters the drawing room.

      After that first afternoon, Olivia resigns herself to this temporary new life. There is no time to mope: Aunt Nancy is determined that her niece will be useful, helping in the garden and on the farm now that all the young men have rushed off to join up. She soon has Olivia digging for potatoes with Greer the gardener, hauling creels in and out of the water with Munro, wheeling manure, drying seeds, not to mention plucking pigeons with the maid and cook, who she now knows as Clarkson. Her time in the bothy is spent reading through the cobwebbed copies of books on the shelves, learning by trial and error how to cook, how to keep the greedy stove going, and how to light a fire in the sitting room, how to wash her own clothes, how to refill the oil lamps, to make her own bed.

      Then the first letters arrive from Charlie, and Olivia is hugely grateful to him, for her aunt seems to warm to her a little. She really doesn’t need Aunt Nancy to encourage her to write back to the young officer; she enjoys it, writing letters as though Charlie is a diary, a confidant. For although she is busy, she is terribly lonely. Her aunt is always preoccupied with visitors and paperwork – something to do with joining the FANYs again, as far as she can glean from Munro – and the local schoolchildren – of which there are only a handful – are all half Olivia’s age. The other neighbours are kind, but they are not companions, and she still does not speak Gaelic.

      The letters she receives back from Charlie are her only friends in those long hours of loneliness. And they make Olivia appreciate her own situation all the more when she reads about conditions on his ship, and how he keeps a sense of humour about the horrible cockroaches that invade, capturing and racing them against each other. Of course she has no idea where he is, but she shuffles closer to the fire when he writes of the snow and ice, and how he has to be winched out his pilot’s seat after a flight, his hands stuck like claws until someone brings him a steaming cup of cocoa.

      As the days pass, Olivia’s truculence begins to ebb. The world slows to the lazy chewing of one of the cows that watch her with liquid eyes from beneath their thick, curly brown hair. Munro has indeed taught her to fish, and how to catch shiny green prawns in the rock pools. She is captivated by things she never knew about: baby starfish no bigger than a fingernail, seals lumbering across the rocks, the sudden flash of a pine marten’s creamy chest.

      She speaks to her mother on the telephone once a week, but she does not miss home as much as she thought she would; somehow the pull of the breeze sweeping in off the loch and down from the hills is hard to resist. Take today, for example. It is one of those blustery autumn days, the weather as changeable as her moods can be. This morning she was eating corned beef from the tin while the rain lashed against the window as she tried to play patience in the yellow glow of an oil lamp. Now she is following the tumbling, churning burn that careers down the hill behind the farm between the thick, sodden bent heads of bracken. She sticks to the rocky bits, using the boulders as steps. When she looks up, she has to narrow her eyes as the rain drives into them. When she looks back to the loch, far below, only the pale foam of whipped-up water delineates dark grey water from dark grey sky. She is drenched to the bone.

      She is looking for Mac, who farms behind Taigh Mor. One of his sheep has got stuck, and she has been sent to help. She finally spots him, a small green figure in a flat cap crouched on the rocks like moss. The sheep is still stuck. The farmer isn’t surprised to see her there. He doesn’t even glance up. But Olivia is growing used to the quiet, calm manner of the locals – and in a situation like this, there’s no time for pleasantries. The banks down to the burn are steep here, carved into the hillside over thousands of years. The sheep has slipped and got wedged between some rocks. It is in an awkward position, about level with Mac’s head. It bleats in their faces, a loud, raspy, aggressive mixture of fear and confusion. Its musky fleece is heavy with the rain.

      Mac shouts above the crash of the water, his voice thick and lilting like the burn in calmer times. She is quicker to tune in to the inflections now. ‘I cannae get behind, lassie,’ he says. ‘We need to tie a rope.’

      Olivia looks up at the steep rock. The rain streams down her face and drips off her nose. Mac points further up, jabbing with his finger. The sheep gets noisier, the sound a hoarse bark. ‘You want me to climb up there and throw the rope down?’ she says.

      Mac nods and gives her the rope. He looks so small and wrinkled, like a walnut. She heads away further up the hill, past a craggy rowan tree that marks a deep pool, and to the boulders above. Her feet slip with every step, and she has to be careful not to catch her ankle in one of the uneven, bottomless holes. It is steep, and for a moment her head spins. She is in the right place: from here she can see the top of the sodden sheep and Mac’s flat cap. She crawls out on to the rocks. They scrape into her knees, cutting through her flannel trousers. She lies down and inches forward to look over the edge. Mac and the sheep are directly below her. There is nothing to grab on to, just the weight of her body holding her to the ground. Her heart thumps against solid rock. She dangles the rope down. It takes a few goes, but she manages to feed it in behind the sheep, and Mac disappears to scrabble for the end underneath the creature. He reappears, gives her the thumbs-up, and then she throws the other end of the rope down to him and scrambles away from the edge, her hip bones grazed against the rock.

      By the time she gets back, Mac has tied the rope around the sheep. They each take the rope in their hands and begin to pull. The rope burns, but, with a struggle and a grunt, the sheep is freed. It rolls on to the ground for a moment, a bundle of legs and wool. Then it stands up and trots away with a dismissive bark.

      ‘Ungrateful creature,’ says Mac, and they both burst out laughing, wiping the water from their faces, unsticking their feet from the squelching mud.

      ‘Will it be all right?’ Olivia asks.

      ‘Thanks to you, lassie.’ Mac smiles, and she can see his eyes are brilliant blue in the leathery face.

      In the farmhouse, Mrs Mac says, ‘Stay for something to eat, won’t you?’ She offers Olivia a slice of cake and a cup of tea. She drapes a towel around Olivia’s back and rubs at her scraggy hair to soak up some of the rain. The simple movement touches something deep in Olivia. It is nice to be mothered.

      ‘Hard work out there without our boys,’ says Mac.

      ‘I think the girl will do just as well for now,’ says his wife.

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