Beyond the Sea (7 page)

THE DAY AFTER
the phone call with her parents, Freya made the journey to the tiny village in the south of Mull.

She knocked on the door and waited. Meanwhile, butterflies gathered in her stomach. It always took a while for him to answer, she knew. But she was surprised, after all this time, that she still felt the same way. Excitement mingled with a touch of anxiety at what exactly he might say. He had always provoked this response in her since she was a small child.

She shifted her weight from one foot to the other and looked at her watch. A minute passed and Freya began to think that she should have called ahead. But he had always seemed to know when she was coming. She was just raising her hand to knock again when the door opened silently and without warning. Instinctively she smiled. An old man stood in front of her, in a pair of faded beige cords and a shirt, of similar insipid colour, with flecks of red and green running through it. His face was brown and wrinkled, like a walnut, while his hair, in distinction, was a wiry eruption of white. For as long as she could remember, he had always looked like this; outside of time, he never seemed older or younger.

For a few moments neither of them said anything. Freya held her breath while the man stared out into the day with milky, unseeing eyes. Then, suddenly, he smiled. ‘Freya. I was wondering when you would come. I've been expecting you.'

‘Hello, Torin,' she said, and felt tears suddenly close. She hadn't appreciated until now just how much she had missed him.

‘And Marta is staying with you, isn't she?'

‘Yes. For the moment.'

‘That's good.'

‘She sends you her love and told me to tell you she'll come next time.'

Torin nodded. ‘Of course. Come nearer,' he said softly.

She stepped forwards and his wizened hands reached for her face. He ran his fingers gently over her skin, tracing the indents of her eyes and the lines around them and on her forehead. So many more now than there had been when they last met over a year ago. His hands moved across her head, in the same light way as a priest during a blessing, and he murmured something to himself. Freya watched the movement of his thin, pale lips. It was as if he was incanting.

After a moment he spoke out loud again. ‘You and I could almost be twins now.' He gave a lock of her hair a playful tug.

She nodded and her cheeks flushed. ‘It's one of the many things I'm still not used to. I keep forgetting …' and her voice petered out.

Torin stared at her for a moment and Freya felt herself becoming as transparent as a pane of glass. Then the old man's gaze dropped and he gestured to the house. ‘Come in, my dear. So much to talk about. Did you make the frushie yourself?'

Freya paused. ‘Yes,' she said, after a moment, looking down at the box of apple cake dangling from her fingers. ‘Just how did you know about that?' she continued, shaking her head.

‘It's a gift,' said the old man, and smiled again.

Torin had second sight. Or, at least, that's what half of the locals said about him. The others claimed it was nothing more than a fiction. There was nothing otherworldly about his blindness. They said he had lived peaceably with his wife on a livestock farm in Ireland until she had discovered his affair with her sister (or brother, depending on the source). The betrayal broke her heart and claimed her sanity, and just before she killed herself, she poisoned Torin with a concentrated dose of formic acid, a preservative she had used in the animal feed. The result was that he lost his sight and, along with it, his capacity to love again. Other stories were less ornate. Some claimed he was the son of a witch, others the offspring of a madman. But no one knew his true heritage. He never spoke of his family or where he originally came from. And he had lived on Mull for such a long time now that people almost treated him as one of their own. Those who did not simply ignored him.

Freya's Scottish grandmother, Maggie, had been Torin's neighbour for most of her life. So Freya had seen him regularly over the years – on family trips to Scotland during the school holidays; on journeys she later made by herself to see her grandmother. She had heard all manner of stories about him. But she knew the truth of only one – that he could see things that other people could not. Over time she had learned to trust in him and his vision and she had grown to love him. Besides, he had another gift, one that she had adored from being a child. He was a great storyteller. Spinning the yarn, as he called it.

He was talking now, reminiscing, about when Sam was a baby. She and Jack had brought him to see Maggie. Torin had been keen to hold him. The little wriggler, he'd called him, as Sam squirmed right out of his arms and fell, head first, onto the tiled kitchen floor. Freya had turned cold, Maggie had gone crazy and Torin had been exiled from the house. He chuckled now in the remembrance of it – Jack, the calm one, bundling the whole family off to hospital, Maggie yelling from the departing car, why hadn't he seen it coming?

Freya smiled but she wasn't really listening. She heard the dulcet tone of his voice, the lilt of his words, but she couldn't focus on what he was saying. She found it painful. So instead she concentrated on the view from the window in front of her, taking in the lush expanse of Torin's garden and its subtle incline down to the water's edge. Loch Scridain glinted blue in the afternoon sunlight and the grey-green hills beyond it seemed to sprout right out of the water. An eagle, or a kestrel, she couldn't tell which from this distance, was circling high over the loch, and the sky was spattered with small white clouds. It was a beautiful place, but an isolated one for a blind man living alone. Freya's gaze shifted momentarily to her old friend and realised he had fallen silent.

She picked up the teapot from the table between them and poured them both another cup. Then she placed a second piece of cake on Torin's plate. ‘It's funny,' she said at last, taking up the delicate thread of the conversation. ‘But sometimes it doesn't feel as if they're gone at all. I keep expecting them to walk through the door, from work or school, from football practice or whatever. And then, eventually, there's a slow realisation, or a sudden recollection, I'm not sure which one is worse, that it isn't going to happen. They're gone. And I'm alone.' Freya stopped, took a breath and licked her lips. Should she tell Torin that sometimes the sense of loneliness was so acute that she could taste its bitterness in her throat, feel its touch and weight upon her? As if, heavy and oppressive, it was invading her body. And that, in her darkest moments, she imagined she could vanish beneath it. She took another breath. Perhaps, sometime, she would tell him all these things. But for now she said nothing.

Torin was nodding silently, his cloudy eyes staring ahead. Freya followed his gaze out over the water and wondered, not for the first time, if he could tell that there was sunlight and a dappled sky, or whether there was nothing there for him but darkness. She had asked him about it long ago and his answer had been vague. So she wasn't sure. One thing she was sure of, however, was that Torin knew a thing or two about being alone.

‘Yes, it's strange, isn't it?' he mused, and Freya wondered if he was talking about his blindness or solitariness, both or neither. Torin nodded again and his hand reached for the cake beside him. He broke off a corner and brought it slowly to his mouth. But he held it there, uneaten, for a moment, perhaps indulging a thought that had just come to mind. Freya both loved and hated this about him. He always took his time, in what he said and what he did.

‘What you were saying reminds me of something, although the situations are different. Some said that was the work of loneliness. Perhaps it was, perhaps it wasn't. It may simply have been the result of being alone. People said a lot of things at the time. And later …' Torin finally placed the cake in his mouth and began to chew, an inscrutable look on his face.

Freya waited patiently, imagining the narrative gathering pace within him.

‘Have you heard of the old lighthouse keepers of the Flannan Islands?' he said at last.

‘I remember something,' she said. ‘But nothing clearly.'

‘There are seven Flannan Islands, as you know. They lie just shy of twenty miles west of the isle of Lewis, at the very fringes of the Hebrides. They're also called the Seven Hunters, although I don't know why they are called that.' Torin paused for a moment, as if trying to remember if he had ever known. ‘They have largely been uninhabited. Hebrideans, superstitious bunch that they are, were always fearful of the islands. Indeed, whenever they set foot upon their shores, they made a turn sunwise and removed their hat and other items of clothing. Such was their way.'

Freya's eye caught upon the eagle once more. She watched it floating upwards in the air thermals, wings outstretched. It reminded her of one of Torin's stories, gathering height and aspect, slowly, seemingly without effort.

‘The lighthouse was built in 1899 on the largest of the islands, Eilean Mor, and in clear weather its light could be seen from twenty miles away. But more often than not, mist enshrouded the island and visibility was poor. A three-man crew maintained the lighthouse, and every fourteen days they would be replaced. No one wanted to remain on the Flannan Isles for long.'

Freya looked at the bird for a moment, still moving upwards, then closed her eyes. The Seven Hunters were mere pinpricks of land, bleak and isolated, encircled by a hostile, violent ocean. Eilean Mor had its lighthouse and the ruined chapel of St Flannan, and Eilean Taighe, also part of the northeast group, had a stone shelter. Further out in the western islands was Eilean a'Gobha (Isle of the Blacksmith). These brutal rocky outposts had been populated a long time ago. But they were not really a place for men. For some reason, Freya thought of Sam and the tale of the Green Island.

Torin cleared his throat and Freya sensed him drawing her back to him. She smiled and thought she caught the glimmer of a smile in return. ‘Jack Ducat was principal keeper at the lighthouse and, on the seventh of December, 1900, he returned to duty. His usual first assistant, William Ross, had been taken ill, and had been replaced by local man, Donald MacArthur, an occasional keeper. The second assistant was Thomas Marshall, a regular member of the crew. For the two weeks following the men's return, a heavy fog hung over Eilean Mor and the lighthouse was not visible. The light, however, could still be seen from time to time. It was spotted on the evening of the seventh of December and then was obscured for the next four nights. It was seen again on the twelth of December and after that was not visible again for over a fortnight.

‘On the evening of the fiteenth of December, two ships passing in the vicinity of Eilean Mor reported that there was no light shining from the lighthouse. For some reason, no action was taken. The relief ship, the
Hesperus
, was due to sail to the Flannan Isles on the twenty-first of December. Perhaps that was why. But bad weather delayed the
Hesperus
and it didn't depart until Boxing Day.

‘It was said that those on the relief boat were filled with a sense of dread and foreboding. They suspected something untoward – it was virtually unheard of for keepers to allow a light to go out. When they reached the shore their fears were compounded. A flag would usually be raised to show the relief vessel had been spotted. But the flag was down and there was no sign of the lighthouse crew who would usually assist the incoming men. When the siren was sounded, there was still no response.

‘Third assistant keeper Joseph Moore and second mate McCormack of the
Hesperus
rowed ashore and Moore went to check on the station. He found the outer door locked. With his set of keys, he unlocked the building and went inside. But the place was deserted. The fire was unlit in the grate, the clock on the wall had stopped and the beds were unmade. Some versions of the tale say that an uneaten meal sat upon the table.'

Freya felt the hairs on her arms rise. ‘Like the
Mary Celeste
.'

Torin nodded. ‘Indeed. Moore returned to the launch and informed the relief that the crew were missing. Searches of the island were carried out but no one was found. It seemed that the crew had simply disappeared. The
Hesperus
returned to Lewis, while Moore and a team of others were left behind to man the lighthouse for the time being.'

So they relit the beacon, Freya thought. The light on the Flannan Islands flashed twice in rapid succession every thirty seconds. Freya had tried and failed, as Sam had enjoyed telling her, to memorise the distinctive qualities of each Scottish light. For some reason, however, she remembered this one.

‘As they searched the building more thoroughly, they began to piece together bits of information. Everything appeared to have been running just as normal until the fourteenth of December. The keeper's log, always meticulously maintained, as you know from Pol, noted that there had been a storm on the fourteenth of December. It had, however, blown over by the following day. But the jetty and railings had been badly damaged and while some ropes had been washed away, others had become entangled in a crane seventy feet above normal sea level. A stone, weighing over a tonne, had been tossed high up on the island. Quite a storm and no messing. There were a number of log entries noting the mood of the men during the storm. Ducat had been irritable while MacArthur had wept. Then Ducat had been quiet while MacArthur prayed. Then all three men had prayed together. Quite what had terrified them all, three seasoned veterans of storms, was puzzling.'

Torin paused for a moment, as if still trying to work it out. Then he carried on matter-of-factly. ‘Two sets of the men's outdoor oilskins were missing. The one that remained at the lighthouse belonged to Donald MacArthur.

‘Robert Muirhead, the superintendent of lighthouses for the Northern Lighthouse Board, made for Eilean Mor on the twenty-ninth of December and produced a report of his findings. Muirhead concluded that the three men had left the lighthouse to carry out repair work or secure stores against the storm and had either been blown off the edge of the rocks or washed away by a freak wave. The first theory was disproved as the wind had been blowing inland. And many disbelieved his second idea that a roller, as he called it, could have swept them out to sea.' Torin paused and closed his eyes for a moment. ‘But we all know that freak waves have since been seen and proved.'