The Summer of the Bear Read online

  ‘Cross my heart, hope to die, stick a needle in my eye,’ Nicky sang, then, at his son’s puzzled frown, scribbled a few words onto the top of his newspaper and ripped away the corner. ‘Here.’ He handed it to Jamie. ‘Happy now?’

  Jamie nodded as he folded the scrap into his pocket. His father did not fib and he did not break promises. ‘My work can be hopelessly unpredictable,’ he’d explained to his children. ‘Things crop up, meetings drag on, so you mustn’t ask me to make promises I might have trouble keeping . . . Oh, cheer up.’ He’d laughed at their dismal faces. ‘It’s not so bad. When I do make a promise, I’ll honour it. In fact, you can write it down and keep it in a box like an IOU.’ But he hadn’t come back in time for homework, or even for bed.

  In the morning Jamie was up early, dressed in clean trousers and his favourite green alligator shirt. He extracted the paper flyer from beneath his pillow and smoothed it out onto his bed. The letters ZIRKUS were blocked over a picture of a cheerful-looking brown bear wearing a minuscule top hat and riding a unicycle.

  ‘Can a bear really do that?’ Jamie had asked his father.

  ‘Oh, bears are wonderful creatures,’ Nicky had replied. ‘They can do almost anything – and if I happen to see him practising, I’ll give him a friendly wave and tell him you’ll be along soon to meet him.’

  Jamie wondered whether to take the flyer with him, then, remembering that he’d torn it off a lamppost in the Münsterplatz when no one was looking and that, technically, this constituted stealing, carefully hid it under his pillow again.

  The door opened suddenly.

  ‘You’re not ready,’ Jamie accused his mother.

  Letty touched her hand to her chest. Her heart felt as raw as butcher’s meat.

  ‘Jamie.’ She sat heavily down on the edge of his bed.

  ‘Is Dada ready?’ Jamie demanded suspiciously.

  Letty took his hand and rubbed the pads of his fingers with her thumb. Jamie decided something was wrong. His mother’s voice had sounded reedy, thin – as though she’d left the bulk of it in another room.

  ‘Jamie,’ she said for the second time. She gulped at some air and squeezed his hand even harder. ‘I have something to tell you.’

  Jamie waited for the axe to fall. The circus had been cancelled. Perhaps his father had been detained at the embassy. It had happened before and the apology often came from his mother. ‘Something important, sweetheart. I’m so sorry.’

  But this did not happen where there was a promise. Never when his father had promised.

  Jamie tried to crack the code of his mother’s expression. She didn’t look particularly sorry. If anything she looked scary. Angry almost. An unpleasant thought occurred to him. Had some inadvertent crime of his been discovered for which the circus treat was to be forfeit?

  ‘Daddy’s had an accident,’ she said.

  ‘Oh!’ Jamie pulled his hand away. This was not what he had been expecting. He pictured his father tripping and spraining an ankle. ‘Poor Dada,’ he said sympathetically. ‘A bad one?’

  Letty hesitated. ‘Yes, I’m afraid so.’

  ‘Oh,’ he said more thoughtfully. He upgraded the level of accident to the time his mother had sliced through her finger with a paring knife. She had been at the sink, cutting a garnish made from carrot, when suddenly she’d turned very white and held her finger under the cold tap for a long time.

  ‘Did he cut himself?’ Jamie ventured.

  ‘No, Jamie. No, darling.’ Letty drew in a breath. Every step of explanation felt like walking across broken glass. ‘He . . . well . . . he had a fall.’

  ‘A fall?’ Jamie’s brow cleared. Falls were painful, no doubt about that, but to a boy who had made a lifelong habit of falling, they were rarely cause for serious concern.

  ‘What did he hurt?’

  Letty had little experience with the terminology of death. Her own father had died the year before but despite her profound sadness, telling the children had felt natural. Their grandfather had been eighty-one. He had died in his sleep.

  ‘Well, he hurt everything, really.’ Letty struggled to regain control of her voice.

  ‘Does he have to get stitches? Does he have to go to hospital?’ Jamie faltered. A hospital trip meant high odds that the trip to see his unicycling bear would be called off.

  The strength went from Letty’s arms. The girls had cried themselves into a sleep from which they had yet to wake, but she could not close her own eyes without seeing Nicky on the ground, the pool of blood lacquered around his head. And now here was Jamie, and this was his moment. She was his knock on the door, his war telegram. Jamie was still living in the before while Letty would forever exist in the after and the gap between them was immeasurable. She knew she had no choice but to shatter his world – but into how many pieces was something she did have control over. She must find a way to tiptoe through the landmines of his age, his innocence, his very strangeness.

  ‘Find words that won’t frighten them.’ The Ambassadress had put her arm around Letty’s shaking shoulders and gently, firmly pulled her away. They hadn’t wanted Letty to go to the embassy. Nicky could not be moved for some time. It was a question of jurisdiction, they said, of government formalities, but Letty couldn’t bear for him to lie there on the tarmac, cold, alone. She had taken his coat to lay over him then knelt beside him, barely noticing the cramps or the pins and needles until finally, with the permission of the Ambassador, he had been loaded into an ambulance by the German authorities.

  ‘Heaven only knows it’s going to be hard enough for James without having nightmares to contend with . . . oh, the poor little boy. Oh, Letitia . . . oh, my dear . . .’ The Ambassadress had gripped her hands and offered to come with her, but Letty had to be alone, if only for a few minutes. And now she summoned every ounce of steel she had remaining.

  ‘Jamie, Daddy’s not in hospital . . . Daddy’s gone.’

  ‘Oh, I see.’ Jamie slumped down on his bed. He didn’t see at all, but he matched his mother’s solemnity of tone. ‘When is he coming back?’

  ‘Darling, Daddy isn’t coming back. Try to understand.’

  ‘But when will I see him again?’ His voice began to rise plaintively.

  ‘Oh, Jamie.’ The fragile shell holding Letty together splintered and broke. ‘Not for a long, long time.’ She began to cry. ‘I’m sorry, Jamie, oh God, I’m so sorry, but Dada’s gone now and you have to be brave.’ She pulled him to her and held him tight. ‘We all have to be so brave.’

  Jamie went very quiet. When he was finally released, he looked at his mother’s tear-stained face with more than a trace of annoyance.

  ‘Who’s going to take me to the circus, then?’

  12

  The Minch

  In the perpetual dusk of a summer’s night, the ferry at long last shunted its way into Lochbealach harbour. Like some freakish sea monster, it opened its mouth, laid down the metallic tongue of its gangplank and began spewing out the contents of its belly. One hundred or so mildly traumatized sheep were the first off, followed by a windswept line of foot passengers.

  It had proved an unexpectedly stormy crossing and the crew had taken several attempts to bring the ferry in. At one point, Letty, watching from the deck with the children, wondered whether the pier might collapse, such was the speed of the first approach. On the second try, the crew missed the pier altogether and their third attempt was foiled by a mischievous gust of wind that blew the boat off course at the eleventh hour. Once again the engines were thrown into reverse and, with a clanking of pulleys and chains, the ferry was dragged back into the choppy waters of the bay. Letty was not overly concerned. The crew of Caledonian MacBrayne were widely admired for their skilful handling of this particular strait and it was their determined ‘What won’t sink must float’ attitude which was responsible for them having once set sail on Christmas Eve in a force ten gale, on the basis that it was every islander’s God-given right to be returned home in time for a fine roast lunch. Ope
ning into the Sea of the Hebrides, the Minch was a notoriously angry stretch of water and one the locals talked about as though it were a husband-bashing wife for whom the community held a grudging respect.

  ‘Aye, she’s a rough one all right.’

  ‘She’ll toss and turn a man at will.’

  On the fourth attempt the crew manoeuvred in the boat with the tact and gentleness of a marriage counsellor and this time their persistence was rewarded. The wind and current momentarily aligned and the ferry surged neatly forwards, eventually butting up against the heavy fenders lining the pier.

  Letty stood with the children on the upper deck and listened to the noise of the motors grind beneath the boat. She tilted her face upwards to catch the rain, falling in a light mist against her cheek.

  It was finally behind them; the grisly little Pimlico flat; the handouts from the Diplomatic Wives’ Fund; the negotiating of Nicky’s pension; sorting out his affairs and sifting through his life. Oh, the endless bureaucracy and loneliness of it, and all the time not knowing, not being given any answers, wondering if there was a point, a life ahead of them, wondering even if there was a God. Now they were home. Everyone has a place where they fit into their skins, a place where they are able to make sense of the world, and the island was hers. There were no rules, no protocol, no politics or intrigue. There was no Cold War, no Russia, no spectre of power waiting to corrupt even the most morally recalcitrant of souls. On the island there was only sand and rock and the rain to wash over them.

  ‘Why are you crying?’ Georgie asked, alarmed. ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘It’s only spray, darling.’ She kissed Georgie’s hand and quickly wiped her cheek. ‘Come on, we’d better go.’

  Considering its near-drowning in the waterfall, the Peugeot had made a miraculous recovery, drying out in the care of Macleod Motors, a dour father-and-son team who had arrived at the river with a tow truck and much simultaneous chain-smoking and head-shaking. Nevertheless, it had been a couple of days before the children were able to ease themselves gingerly back onto the damp, eggy-smelling seats. ‘Aye,’ Macleod Snr commented drily, ‘best let the sea air blow through her.’

  ‘But it’s safe to drive?’ Letty had asked. She’d spent the night punishing herself with every conceivable scenario, Jamie trapped in the car, Jamie pinned under the wheels, and her eyes were puffy with tiredness.

  ‘Safe enough,’ Macleod said. ‘It’s the interior that’s taken the damage. I’ve stapled the carpet back but that plywood of yours will go rotten soon enough.’ He handed her the worn leather key ring. ‘I can pull it out for you now if you like. Give you more luggage room.’ There followed a silence broken only by the clang of metal, a dropped spanner or rolling hubcap, and only then did Letty realize that Macleod was still peering at her with a mildly expectant air. She focused, snatched the keys. ‘I’m sure it’s fine, thank you.’ Later she would recall a thread of this exchange that had jarred, a whisper in her ear to pay attention, but at the time there had been the ferry to make and the clock was already against them.

  Unloading the ferry was almost as laborious a process as docking it, involving the lowering and raising of a metal turntable that lifted vehicles in groups of three from the car deck to sea level. The timing of this system was arbitrary and depended on some secret equation of lorries versus cars, versus height of tide, time of day and, most appreciably, the whim of the crew. Sure enough, it was a further three-quarters of an hour before Letty was given the nod to start the engine. She drove onto the metal turntable, where, dwarfed by a Mother’s Pride truck, the old Peugeot was hoisted up and finally released into the brackish air of the Outer Isles.

  13

  The Outer Hebrides

  When his strength returned, he pushed himself to his feet and took a look around. Ahead, the sea stretched to the horizon, its treachery and turmoil hidden beneath a sudden lull. Behind him a natural archway dead-ended in a crater, flanked on all sides by black rock in whose crevices several dozen fulmars were nesting. The cliff was sheer and the only section benign enough to climb – a spine of screed cushioned on either side by moss – offered no foothold within easy reach. Still, the crater was filling up like a kettle under a tap and soon the only way out would be to swim. His efforts at scrambling resulted in much feather-ruffling amongst the birds. A pair of them swooped down, distrust in their sharp yellow eyes, their stubby beaks thrust towards him. Scared, he dropped back to the bottom. Next he tried a running jump but the screed was impossibly crumbly and the rock slick from spray. The birds swooped ever lower until suddenly one of them opened its beak and hawked a putrid-smelling substance onto his head. Even more unsettled, he hastened back under the archway.

  He more or less chanced upon the cave. Some trick of light and perspective made it appear as a shadow on the tunnel wall and it was only as he was tumbling backwards through the opening that he realized it was there. Once again, effortlessly floored by the elements, he lay still for a count of ten while his eyes adjusted to the dark. The cave was large, perhaps twenty feet long, with a floor sloping sharply upwards. The incoming tide was boiling past the entrance, but a happy combination of gravity and speed served to keep the water within the narrow confines of the channel. He peered back out of the opening and that’s when he spotted it.

  A small boat, hugging the shoreline. Travelling slowly, east to west.

  They were looking for him.

  Of course they were.

  14

  The island’s single road was a meandering tarmac track, barely wide enough to accommodate the chassis of the average car let alone a tractor or plough. Every half-mile or so, crescent-shaped passing places had been gouged from the verge but these appeared to be an afterthought to the island’s civil engineering, as though the possibility of two-way traffic in such a remote place had been so laughable it had not been worth planning for.

  After the dramatic pageantry of Scotland’s west coast, the brooding hills of Glencoe, the Wagnerian scenery of Skye, there seemed precious little to admire of the island’s flat, barren topography. There was instead the squat architecture of the townships; the islanders’ predisposition to build modern bungalows right on the doorstep of their more picturesque crofts; the dumps of broken rusted cars; the dishevelled highland cattle grazing around them and then those never-ending barbed-wire fences that criss-crossed acres of bog-leaden ground. Pity the few day-trippers, lured to the Outer Isles by some ‘Visit Scotland’ guide’s tepid promise of breezy sands and unique culture. Why wouldn’t they book themselves back to the mainland on the next ferry? How could they know that the ugliness was purely cosmetic, that the magic was hidden – that the whole island was magic?

  Georgie breathed in the familiar smell of peat smoke. They had turned at the church and were juddering past the ghostly whitewash of Euan’s croft and round the corner with its skyscraper of nettles.

  ‘Look, there’s Alick now!’ Letty exclaimed as a swaying pinprick of light came into view at the end of the road. She slowed the car and wound down the window.

  ‘Ah, Let-ic-ia.’ Alick’s rubbery face broke into a grin.

  For as long as she could remember, Alick had met them off the ferry like this, his black serge jacket buttoned over a navy boiler suit, the handle of the lantern swinging in his hands. ‘Welcome to the country,’ he would always say, which, to Letty, was not only an affirmation of the island’s isolation, but a reminder that the islanders themselves believed they came from a completely different world.

  ‘Oh, Alick.’ She took his hand and squeezed it. ‘You’re so good to wait for us.’ It didn’t matter how firmly she told him it was unnecessary, Alick was as stubborn as an ink blot and she knew perfectly well he’d been standing there, cold rain slanting across his face, for the full two hours the ferry had been delayed.

  ‘Shall I help you in with the luggage, Let-ic-ia?’ He hooked the remaining inch of a roll-up from his pocket, pinching it between oily fingers while he hunted briskly for a match.
Possibly somewhere in his early forties, he was a short, wiry man, incapable of remaining still for more than two seconds at any given time. Letty watched him drawing noisily on the stub, his eyes flicking right to left, left to right as though constantly on the watch for enemy planes, and she thought how familiar every angle of his face was to her; the piercing eyes under mildly surprised brows, the sprigs of tightly coiled hair that looked as if they’d been blown back by the wind for so many years that they’d given up trying to grow in any other direction. He looked like a gnome. Alick Macdonald was her neighbour, friend and protector but he was as unpredictable as the weather. The last time she’d come up he’d been waiting for her on the road as usual, but he’d been visibly agitated and as soon as the car had been unloaded, had pulled her through the kitchen and into the passage where, to her astonishment, she saw that a long line of mice had been laid out on the carpet.

  ‘Now, will you look at these wee mice, Let-ic-ia,’ he said, as if she hadn’t been already staring at them, mouth agape. The mice had been positioned with incredible precision, almost mathematically set apart and each facing the same direction, as though in preparation for a mass embalming. ‘Thirty-six in total,’ Alick had declared with satisfaction.

  ‘Yes, I can see there are quite a lot of them,’ Letty agreed, ‘but what are they doing here?’

  ‘I kept them for you to have a look at.’ Alick dropped to his haunches and rolled one over with his blackened finger. ‘They have such queer long noses!’ His eyes darted in wonderment along the line of little synchronized bodies.

  ‘I think perhaps that’s because they’re not mice,’ she hazarded. They looked more like voles to her, although she did not feel altogether confident in her ability to identify small vermin.

  ‘Of course they’re mice!’ Alick said with feeling. ‘They’re fairy mice, that’s what they are!’