‘I don’t see how I could have thought it was the main road!’ Ruth frowned as the car bumped over the ruts.
Edward shrugged. He threw her a quick smile. ‘You were upset and angry.’
‘But not blind drunk!’ She grimaced as his car grounded and the wheels slithered sideways. ‘Look, maybe this isn’t a good idea. I’m not sure it’s right at all.’
But it was right. Around the next bend they came to the place her car had finally stopped. She recognised the skyline, the hill, the two Scots pine. Leaving the car they walked along the track, Edward carrying the new can of diesel. He was laughing. ‘Remind me never to make you angry. The adrenaline which carried you up here thinking it was the main road must have been formidable!’ He put down the can and stretched his arms. ‘It’s worth it, though. The view is amazing.’ From the path they could see across the moor towards the sea and the islands beyond.
Ruth frowned. ‘There wasn’t a fence here before. There can’t have been.’
‘No?’ He glanced at her. ‘But this has been here for ages, Ruth. Look.’ It was rusty, threaded with dead bindweed and bracken, the posts in places rotted half through, hanging drunkenly from the very wire they were supposed to be supporting.
Ruth walked on. There was the rock where she had spotted the mysterious man. And there in the heather the sheep track they had followed. To reach it she had to climb through the wire.
‘I don’t understand it.’ She shook her head. ‘This doesn’t feel right. Everything is where I expect it to be. The track, the rocks, those trees, but there was no fence.’
‘Well, we’ll soon know. If the cottage is there.’ He put down the heavy can again and reached out to take her hand. The wind was cold and there was a scattering of sleet in the icy sunshine, but there was something else as well. ‘You look scared.’
‘I am scared.’ She was shivering. How Murray would have mocked her. ‘And I have just remembered. I was scared last time, too. Really scared. For no reason. Suddenly. It felt odd. Lonely. Threatening.’ She bit her lip. ‘I’m glad you’re here.’
‘So am I.’ For a moment their eyes met. He smiled. Picking up the can again he began to walk. ‘Come on. Over this rise and we’ll see if we’ve got the right place.’
The croft was there, but there were no white walls, no shaggy turf roof. A few piles of stones, a ruined gable end, the footings of the byre walls surrounded by nettles was all that remained of the place now.
Ruth stared, open mouthed. ‘I don’t understand.’
Edward glanced at her. He had put the can down again. ‘Where did you find the diesel?’ he asked quietly.
‘There. Round the back of the byre. There was an old tractor – ’
Leaving her standing where she was he pushed his way through the weeds and thistles.
‘Don’t bother, Edward. It’s the wrong place. It has to be,’ she called. Ramming her hands deep into her coat pockets she followed him.
The tractor was still there. What was left of it. A pile of rusting metal. And the remains of the other old can stood by the crumbling wall. She had picked it up and shaken, hadn’t she? A rowan tree was growing through it now.
‘No!’ She shook her head and backed away. ‘This is all wrong!’
‘There must be a simple explanation.’ Edward put his arm round her again. She was shaking. ‘I suspect you are right. There are probably several old cottages and crofts around here and they all look much the same. I’m sure they all had ancient tractors and they would all keep a bit of spare fuel, living so far from civilisation.’
She nodded. ‘You’re right.’
There had only been one track on the map. One tiny square to represent a dwelling, amid thousands of empty acres of moor and mountain.
‘If we went into the shop in the village on the main road, maybe they’d know,’ she said hopefully.
He nodded. ‘This must have been a beautiful place, but bleak in winter.’ It was his turn to shiver. ‘The ground is very poor. The tractor must have had a job doing anything at all.’
They stood for a few more minutes, staring round, then they began to retrace their steps towards the car.
The old lady in the post office stared at them over her spectacles. ‘You must mean Carn Breac.’ She shook her head. ‘That place has been empty since before the war. Michael Macdonald stayed on there a year or two after his parents died, then he upped and left. He settled in Canada I believe.’ She frowned, searching her memory. ‘If you hold on now, I’ve a photo here.’ She came out from behind the counter and disappeared for a moment into the sitting room which opened out of the shop. When she came back she was carrying an album. ‘Yes, see here.’ She opened it and stabbed at a faded photo with her finger. ‘That’s Michael, and Donald, his father, next to him.’ The sepia shadows showed some half-dozen men ranged against a wall, staring ahead at the camera. The one called Michael had a wooden rake in his hand.
Ruth felt her mouth go dry. For a moment she thought she was going to faint.
‘What do you want with him?’ The post mistress slowly closed the book.
Ruth couldn’t speak. It was Edward who said quietly, ‘We have something of his we want to return.’
‘I don’t know his address.’ She shook her head. ‘It’s so long ago. You could maybe ask the minister. He’s only been twenty years or so at the manse, but I think there are records there. If anyone knows where he went, it will be him.’
‘You think he might still be alive then?’ Edward probed gently.
She shrugged. ‘I’ve no idea.’
The minister knew the family. Michael James Macdonald had died in Prince George, British Columbia on 24th July that year, at the age of eighty-nine. It was the day Ruth had seen him leaning on a rock by the croft where he had been born.
Edward poured them both a glass of wine and joined her by the fire in the cottage by the loch. ‘Are you OK now?’
She nodded. ‘I still can’t believe I’ve seen a ghost!’
‘You’re a lucky lady. Not only to see one, but to be rescued by him.’
She sipped the wine. ‘How is it that the diesel worked? You’d think it would have gone off. Rusted. Evaporated. Something.’
He stared into the depths of his glass. ‘The other can had disintegrated completely.’
‘Perhaps a farmer had left it there recently?’ She looked at him hopefully.
He smiled. ‘Perhaps. I don’t think you are ever going to know the answer to that one.’
‘And, if it was him, why did he appear as a young man and not the age he was?’
‘We can’t answer that either.’ He leaned back and put his arm round her shoulders. ‘One thing you can be sure of though. He must have loved that place. It must have been very hard to leave it forever. Perhaps he promised himself he would go back one day.’
‘At least he had a happy life, and a wonderful marriage.’ The minister had told them that. She didn’t realise how wistful the words sounded until they were out of her mouth.
Edward didn’t answer. He was staring into the fire.
‘Have you ever been married?’ She realised with a shock she had never even asked him.
He shook his head. ‘Nearly. We thought better of it. Just as well as we haven’t seen each other for five years. Since then I haven’t come close.’
‘Oh.’ Her voice was bleak.
‘Until now.’ He hesitated. ‘This is going to sound very corny, but when you find something precious you need to hang on to it otherwise you are going to regret it all your life. Our relationship – Sarah’s and mine – just wasn’t that precious.’ Once again he paused. ‘Why did you and Murray end yours so quickly?’
She thought for a long time. ‘I suppose I wasn’t that precious to him. Not in your sense of the word. And perhaps –’ She paused thoughtfully. ‘Perhaps after all he wasn’t that precious to me. I gave him a second chance. I wasn’t prepared to give him a third.’ She shrugged. ‘That doesn’t show me in a very good lig
ht.’
‘It shows you as a realist. And your Michael Macdonald. Presumably he was as well. He knew the croft couldn’t sustain him. In his eyes he had no choice.’
She stood up and went to sit on the floor by the fire. ‘It’s a sad little story.’
‘No.’ He followed her. Kneeling down he reached over and kissed her gently. ‘It’s actually a wonderful story. Why are we letting it make us sad? It had a happy ending. He came home. And he helped a damsel in distress. He made choices, but they seem to have been the right choices. After all he had children and grandchildren and even great-grandchildren to succeed him. No doubt one day they will come home and stand where you stood and stare at the tiny croft which is their heritage. But I wonder if they will see him as you did?’ He raised his glass. ‘Let’s drink to his memory. And to our future.’ He grinned. ‘Who knows, maybe I’ll come and haunt this place when I’m eighty-nine!’
She laughed. ‘Perhaps you will. And maybe you’ll still be coming here in the flesh!’ She clinked her glass against his. ‘Who knows?’
The Last Train to Yesterday
Chloë awoke with a start and stared up at the ceiling, her heart thumping. Dusky pink curtains across the window intercepted the harsh red glow from the eastern sky and filled the room with a warm eerie half-light. With a groan she rolled over and groped for the alarm clock, peering at it myopically as her sleepy brain tried to work out the time. Five minutes before the alarm. Pressing down the knob to pre-empt the angry buzz she put it back on the bedside table and swung her feet to the floor.
Drawing back the curtains, she sighed.
Red sky in the morning
Shepherd’s warning
Already threatening bars of cloud were hovering above the fields beyond the garden. By the time she left for the station it would be raining. She was peering into the mirror, trying to put on her eye liner before inserting her contact lenses when she heard the first rain pattering down on the leaves outside the window.
‘Damn!’ London was never fun at the best of times for a rushed business day. The smart sandals she had planned to wear would have cheered her up. In the soupy dirt of wet pavements they would never work.
She tucked in the lenses and carried out a quick survey of the face that zoomed suddenly into focus. Short reddish-brown curls, artfully casual. Eyes – not bad – a deep hazel green. Skin good. Still fairly unmarked by time. Nose, small and ordinary – not what romantic books would call tip-tilted – more of a small conk really. Mouth, definitely a bit big, but Edmund used to say that was attractive. The expression in front of her degenerated into a fearsome scowl. Edmund and his opinions were no longer to be considered. Off the scene. Out of the plot. Finito.
She claimed one of the last spaces in the car park – the regular commuters long gone, before dawn – and hauled her briefcase out of the car. Behind her: cottage, garden, and two tolerantly patient cats who would welcome her home, if not with the gin and tonic she might have liked, then at least with expectant glances towards the tin opener! It was better than no one. In front of her lay noise, bustle, meetings, rush. She loved the contrast.
A spatter of September leaves whirled into a puddle near her. She grimaced. Mud on her boots already and she had twenty yards to go to the footbridge which led up and over the line to the ticket office which was on platform two, the only platform still in use.
Behind her, hidden by a skimpy hedge liberally threaded with old rusty wire, lay the old railway hotel, derelict behind its boarded windows. On fine days the pigeons cooed and strutted on the roof and basked on the broken tiles. Today they sat disconsolately, their feathers puffed, while a loose hoarding banged in the wind. She shivered suddenly and pulled up the collar of her coat.
‘Good morning, Mrs Denver.’ The figure beside her raised a hand. She had barely noticed him park next to her and climb out beside her. ‘One of your days in town?’
Chloë smiled at him. The new man who had bought the Beeches on Thorney Road. She groped for a name and came up with a blank.
He grinned. ‘Miles. Miles Rowton.’
‘Of course.’ She smiled. He had a nice face. Square, almost ugly, deeply lined between nose and mouth and at the corners of his eyes, but nice. Probably in his forties. Once she might have been interested. Not now. What she wanted now was the peace and stability of her own company.
They reached the footbridge in silence and he paused with old-fashioned courtesy to allow her to go up ahead of him. The wind and the sweeping rain precluded conversation. She climbed, trying not to be aware that he was close behind her, concentrating on the steep metal treads, her hand on the cold wet rail, its black paint dimpled with rust.
Afterwards she supposed she had stumbled. The world seemed to do a strange somersault and for a moment she thought she could hear music carried in the wind. Then it was gone and she was standing near the top of the long flight, panting, clutching the handrail with both hands.
‘Are you all right?’ He didn’t touch her. He merely stood there, two steps below her, so his face was level with hers, registering surprise and mild concern. Apparently he could not see how her heart was pounding or the sheen of sweat on her face.
She took a deep breath and shook her head slightly. ‘Sorry. I must have tripped.’
Mary! Mary wait!
Where had the voice come from? Her head was swimming. She glanced down the flight of steps and clutched more tightly at the rail, knuckles white.
‘It’s a bit slippery in this rain.’ Miles Rowton was beside her now. Then in front. ‘Shall I lead the way?’
Hadn’t he heard it? She shook her head a little, trying to clear the sound from her brain. There was no one near them. No one else anywhere in sight. He glanced over his shoulder at her and smiled encouragingly. She must look perfectly normal then, or surely he would have stayed at her side.
Stop! Mary, wait!
The words must have come from somewhere in her head.
Help me, someone. Mary!
She didn’t know what was wrong. She was still clinging to the rail, shaking.
Please, don’t leave me!
This couldn’t be happening. Miles had walked on. He paused to glance back. ‘Coming? The train has been signalled,’ he called. She could see his hair lifting boyishly on his forehead in the wind. The words were being whipped from his mouth.
Somehow she forced herself to take a step forward. Then another. Then suddenly it was easy. She was hurrying after him, the wind tugging at her hair. Behind her, on the roof of the old hotel, the pigeons lifted as one, whirled high above the station and settled back onto the old broken slates.
On the train, still shaken by her experience, she ordered a coffee from the trolley. Miles Rowton had seated himself opposite her, across the aisle. Too far away for easy conversation, but close enough not to appear rude. Once their eyes met as she sipped the scalding liquid and they smiled. Then both looked away back to their respective laps, his covered in papers, hers the newspaper she had grabbed at the village shop as she drove past.
London was all Chloë had feared. Crowded, wet, taxis impossible to find and when she did, gridlocked in the traffic. She was late for her first meeting, then the knock-on effect came into play and the whole sequence of the day slipped back first twenty minutes, then forty, and by the time she reached the end of lunch she was running an hour and a half late. Moving her design consultancy to the country at Edmund’s behest still worked best for her most of the time. It was on days like this when she wondered briefly whether the hassle of commuting and serving many masters was worth it all. Thankfully they did not happen that often.
In the end she caught a very late train home. The cats would be livid, showing their displeasure by sulkily shunning their food and refusing to climb into bed for a goodnight cuddle. She smiled at the thought. Was she so devoid of human relationships these days, that she was worried that her cats would be cross with her? Settling back in her seat, exhausted, she unbuttoned her jacket and kick
ed off her shoes. There was barely anyone else left in the carriage.
With a sigh she fought back a longing for a huge baguette, the kind it is impossible to eat without doing an impression of Quasimodo, and which, when bitten, empty their contents down one’s front. She had had to run to catch this train and at this hour, when she needed it most, there would almost certainly be no trolley on the train. She hadn’t even had time to buy an evening paper. Closing her eyes Chloë dozed.
It was dark when she stepped onto the deserted platform and took a deep lungful of the cool fresh air. It had stopped raining at last and she could see the stars. There was no one else on the station. Even the ticket office was closed. There would be only one more train that night.
With an exhausted sigh she gripped the handle of her briefcase more tightly and set off for the footbridge. Halfway over she realised she could hear, above the ringing echo of her own footsteps, the sound of music drifting on the wind across the car park. She stopped and listened. Below in the dark the car park was deserted. Only three cars remained from the huge crowd this morning, their bodywork gleaming gently in the darkness. She could barely see over the tall parapet, but standing on tiptoes she gazed into the dark with sudden misgivings. The station was down a quiet lane some half-mile from the village. There were no houses near by. Yet she could see lights. They seemed to be coming from the direction of the derelict hotel. And again, faintly, in the distance, the music drifted up towards her.
Nervously she began to move forward, trying to silence the sharp echo of her heels. At the top of the downward flight she stopped again, reaching out for the handrail.
Mary, please come back!
The man’s voice sounded so close to her that she recoiled.