The Restless Sea. Vanessa de Haan
week’s leave is over quickly. Charlie has shown her his favourite spots. He has taught her how to build a small fire on the beach to cook her catch on, finding the driest leaves and hearing them crackle as they catch and burn. He has taken her up to the string of freshwater lochs, and to the places where the golden eagles glide on thermals high above the hills. The osprey nest was not used this year – possibly because of all the commotion around the loch, but it meant they could get a bit closer to examine the great heap of twigs and branches. Sometimes, in the evenings up at Taigh Mor, she catches him staring at nothing and glimpses that darkness or hardness again in his eyes. But she doesn’t pry.
She tries to be cheerful on his last day, but she knows she will miss having him around. His case is packed and he is getting a lift to Inverness with some of the other returning sailors. ‘Thank you,’ he says, taking her hands in his.
‘For what?’
‘I’ve had the best leave ever. Like one of the summers of my childhood. Swimming. Shooting. Fishing. Heaven.’
‘Do you know where you’re going next?’
He shakes his head. ‘But I do know I’ll be back as soon as I can next get leave.’
She kisses him on the cheek. ‘Be careful, won’t you?’ she says.
‘You’ll write?’
She nods. ‘Of course,’ she says.
‘In that case, I can do anything.’ He stands up straight, smoothing his sleeves down, every part the young officer. The light bounces off the stripes on his sleeves, but the cap throws his face into darkness.
With autumn comes terrible news from down south as the Luftwaffe begin to attack London and beyond, night after night. The RAF struggles to keep them at bay. Returning home is out of the question. Mother tries to keep her tone light on the telephone, but Olivia can hear the buzz of exhaustion beneath. Stoke Hall is so close to the coast, there could easily be a stray bomb – or even an intentional one. There was a furore recently when two parachutists were seen landing in the Fir Wood, but the soldiers who are now camped out in the gardens went to investigate and found the two German airmen dead. The thought of those two dead men – German or not – dangling among the dark and spiky conifers, puts her own inconveniences to shame. She stops moaning about the security checkpoints that have sprung up at all the roads coming into or leaving the area – Gairloch, Achnasheen, Inverness. There is even one at Laide, near Mrs Campbell’s shop, where Olivia is sent to stock up on tea for Aunt Nancy, which the shopkeeper marks neatly in their ration books. And now more ships begin to arrive at the loch – this time a hotchpotch of merchant ships, refuelling before setting off on their long and treacherous journeys across the ocean. Sailors and soldiers begin to outnumber locals significantly.
The news from Charlie is intermittent. It seems he does not have time to write, and each long stretch without a letter is accompanied by a fear that there will be never be another one. But Aunt Nancy tells her not to worry, making a passing reference to Fleet Air Arm pilots helping the RAF over London. ‘Charlie will be fine. He’s extremely accomplished. You just keep writing. Give him something to look forward to,’ she says.
As the nights draw in and winter approaches, the fish supplies dwindle. Olivia thinks it is time to take Charlie’s advice. ‘I’m too old to take you up there, lassie,’ says Mac, pointing at his creaking knees and swollen knuckles. But Olivia soon works him around.
Mac is impressed by Olivia’s marksmanship and her quiet respect. They walk and climb and inch for miles up into the hills that turn from purple to gold and russet through the autumn. Olivia learns how to throw a piece of torn heather into the air to determine which way the wind is blowing. She learns how to track, and how to avoid a herd. She learns their habits, where they like to shelter, where to eat. She learns how to use a spyglass without it catching the light. She learns how the fog distorts sound and distance. She knows when a mist will settle and when it will clear. Together they crawl and creep for hours, above the clouds, across peat bogs and through the heather, and over boulders and up glens, only to turn back if the stag is too fine. Mac teaches her to hunt the frail, as well as poor quality and weaker beasts. Thistle, the old stalking pony, is brought back into service. Olivia slowly gains the pony’s trust, and when she shoots her first stag and Mac grallochs it, she learns the fine art of balancing a stag across the pony’s stalking saddle. Mac hangs the beast in the large, cold game larder. He butchers it himself, swift and deft despite his arthritis.
The Macs have a sailor billeted with them, a steward who has never tried venison before, but is keen to sample anything that hasn’t been salted or dried or stewed within an inch of its life. He chews on the meat thoughtfully, nodding his head and licking his lips. ‘I think this would go down well in our messes,’ he says. ‘Could we buy some? Our men are always clamouring for fresh meat.’
The idea snowballs. Word spreads around the ships, and Olivia is soon inundated with orders, from sailors, soldiers, and Wrens. She is worried about what Aunt Nancy will say, but her aunt is thrilled that she is showing initiative. ‘And Clarkson could do with some decent meat to serve to the officers we have billeted here,’ she says. She even takes the time to show Olivia how to write the orders in a ledger and keep a note of the money coming in and going out. It is the longest amount of time she has spent with Olivia since she arrived. ‘Watch those men,’ she says. ‘Don’t think they won’t try for a bargain just because you’re a girl.’ But Olivia is as canny as anyone, and she turns it to her advantage. She finds the men are keen to talk, and even keener for a smile. Many of them have been away at sea for weeks and miss female company.
Mac is delighted: he gets a cut, and Olivia starts to offer his eggs and milk too. They turn more of the garden over to growing vegetables. Other locals offer what they can: last year’s jam; Ben Munro’s apples; Mrs McLellan’s chutney. Mrs Campbell comes in on the business, always happy to receive more supplies for her store – particularly when the roads are blocked with snow and she is running low. Olivia learns how to drive Aunt Nancy’s ancient Austin and, each week, she transports whatever she hasn’t sold directly to the ships to Mrs Campbell’s shop. By late autumn, they even have a buyer from Edinburgh, who bumps along the single track road from the city once a week to collect venison or lobsters for his restaurant.
It is deep winter, and fresh meat stocks are running low again. The stag-hunting season is over, but there are plenty of hinds to be taken. Olivia is up and out of the house before dawn breaks across the loch. There is no need for a torch: the snow that settled overnight has turned the world luminous. Something crackles away into the undergrowth, startled by the crunch of her feet on the path, in turn setting a bird fluttering and flapping through the branches above. Then silence again. A world muffled by snow. Beyond the trees, the loch: grey and silent as the ships packed with sleeping men. She has grown to love this time in the morning, the only time there is true peace and quiet these days. The roads are empty once again and she can slip into the hills unnoticed.
Her pass and gas mask and ID card are gathering dust on the dressing table in her bedroom. She has no need of them; she knows how to get past the checkpoints and guards, crossing between Gairloch and Poolewe undetected by following the low road along the shoreline like the other locals. And there are no checkpoints up in the hills. No one would be foolish enough to cross them without local knowledge.
The hills are where she is headed now. She cannot see them, but she can sense them looming in the darkness ahead, steady and solid, unmoving and unmoved by the world’s turmoil. By the time she gets to the farm, the sky is beginning to glow aquamarine as dawn breaks. The tack room is empty. A faint orange glow of embers breathes among the ash as she opens the door to retrieve Thistle’s saddle. The pony comes straight to her now, letting her slip on his head collar without a fuss. She adjusts the stalking saddle, holds her hands under the pony’s mane, where he is warmest, and presses her face against his shaggy grey fur, breathing in the horsey smell.
She leads him out over the cobbles. The snow is dirty here, trampled with mud and grit. The pony snorts, clearing his nostrils into the chilly air. His bright dark eyes peer out at her from beneath his ragged forelock. She glances down at herself, pleased at how her camouflage has turned