Chapter Fourteen
Archie taught her to fish over the next few days. Not the kind of fishing she had known back home, sitting in a boat with ten men trying to catch ling, but the kind where they stood in a river up to their thighs and flicked a line in rhythmic waves over the water. It was freezing cold and tiring, and she could feel the iciness of the water through her rubber waders, but the first time she had a bite, she jumped up and down so excitedly that the pike wriggled itself off the hook again. When they could no longer ignore their hunger, they sat on rocks on the riverbank, smoothing away the snow to eat the pies Mrs Robertson had cooked for them and drinking tea from a thermos flask.
When they returned to the house in the afternoons, once the light had faded and after restorative hot baths, they met again in the library to talk, read the newspapers and play cards. Effie had been right that first day – tea and a fire really were the greatest luxuries. Archie had been right, too – it was often colder inside the house than out.
For three days there was no improvement in the weather. Northerly winds grew ever worse, squalling and quarrelling the skies, whipping the open water into a frothing cauldron. But on the fourth day, they awoke to blue skies and a sudden loud calm.
Archie watched Effie as she came into the breakfast room. Mrs Robertson had hemmed his old trousers for her and it now seemed perfectly normal to see her in his shirts and jumpers.
‘You want to go,’ he said over breakfast: porridge, followed by grilled mackerel.
‘Well, I do have to leave at some point. I can hardly stay here indefinitely, can I?’ she replied. He said nothing, but there was an answer in his eyes anyway, and she knew he wanted her to stay.
She swirled the cream in her porridge, trying to ignore the sudden acceleration of her pulse, pushing down a feeling that was growing inside her. She loved Sholto. He was the love of her life; she knew that with every fibre of her being. But she also knew that there was an easiness between her and Archie that she had never known with anyone else. He was her in male form. The conversation was always unforced and they laughed endlessly. She didn’t feel judged by him or lacking in any way. Even with Sholto, although she knew he adored her, there was a small but distinct dislocation between them; they couldn’t ignore that they came from two different worlds, nor that to the important people in their lives, that mattered. Everything was just so easy with Archie.
‘I don’t trust it,’ he said, staring out through the tall windows. The view was like a painting, almost unreal in its beauty, ever-changing. Effie could imagine the colours of autumn here, almost taste the salty tang of the summer breeze. Living on the water again reminded her of Village Bay, being shushed to sleep every night by the lullaby of waves breaking upon the shore.
‘The wind’s dropped,’ she pointed out.
‘It’s unnaturally still. This could be the eye of the storm.’
She looked at him, knowing they were already in it. Last night she had heard his footsteps in the hallway. They had stopped outside her room, his shadow visible as she stared at the tiny strip of light that came under the door. She had braced for the handle to turn, feeling her heart pound against the mattress, knowing what she would say if he did come in. She knew it would not be the first time he had visited a woman’s room at night. But when she saw the shadow move and the light stream in unimpeded again, she understood it was the first time he had walked away.
Sitting here now, she sensed they both knew his secret. He longed for her; she could see it in the weight of his stare, hear it in the pauses between conversations. The things he didn’t say were becoming louder than those he did. She knew he knew women, but he’d never known a woman like her. Something, something soon, was going to break, and it would either be his resolve or hers.
‘All the more reason to act quickly, then,’ she said, stirring her porridge. ‘If we hold our nerve, we can still outrun it.’
‘Why are you wearing that?’
Archie was sitting on the bench in the entrance porch, pulling on his gumboots. He wore a macintosh over his clothes, clearly anticipating poor weather despite the blue skies, and he rested his elbows on his thighs as she came through, barefoot in her emerald evening gown.
‘Because this is all I have to wear. If I turn up at Dunvegan wearing your clothes, there’ll be a scandal. You know, perhaps you should keep some women’s clothes here?’
‘For my next stowaway, you mean?...I’m not in the habit of collecting them.’ His eyes narrowed as he watched her. ‘I don’t understand why it would matter if you were in my clothes.’
Didn’t he? Even aside from his reaction to seeing her in his dinner suit, she had felt his eyes travelling over her every time he thought she wasn’t looking. She knew that he liked seeing her in his trousers dramatically cinched in with a belt, his shirtsleeves rolled up her arms. He was covering her by proxy, his scent sitting upon her, as if imprinting himself on her. There was an intimacy to sharing layers, and she knew he knew it.
‘...It’s a matter of how it looks.’
‘Ah...Well, we can’t have that,’ he said archly, looking at her with an expression she couldn’t read. ‘We all know how desperately it matters what other people think.’
There was an uncharacteristic bitterness to his words and she felt a fierce disappointment in herself. Caring about others’ opinions was the antithesis of everything that happened between them here these past few days. They had both been their free, true selves. Mhairi had always cared far too much about reputation, but Effie had fancied herself free from all that. But it wasn’t just her own good name she had to think about now – it was Sholto’s too. He deserved her respect.
‘Archie, you know what I mean,’ she said as he abruptly got up. ‘I’m engaged to Sholto. I have to consider how it reflects on him.’
His jaw balled for a moment. He was, in spite of himself, a gentleman. ‘At least put on a jumper.’ He grabbed a navy fishing jersey, rough but windproof, from a basket and held it out to her. ‘I’ll see you down there.’
He walked outside, and she watched as the door slammed shut behind him. A tension had already crept in between them, now that this interlude from both their lives was being forced to a stop. The friendship was being halted in its tracks. She belonged to another man, and he could no longer pretend she didn’t.
She shrugged the jumper on over her dress and followed him, at a distance, down to the jetty. She hopped on board as he ran through his checks; it suited him to be busy, to neither look at her nor make small talk. She shrugged on the cork life jacket instead; it didn’t rub against her ribs this time, thanks to the cushioning of Archie’s jumper.
They cast off into the wind, Archie expertly tacking side to side up the sound, turning the huge helm with ease, his gaze dead ahead. Effie sat beside him, where she had sat on the way out, glancing up at him every few minutes and wishing he would talk to her. But what he wanted to say couldn’t be said, and anything else wasn’t worth saying.
‘Look, seals!’ she exclaimed after a while, spotting a colony sleeping on rocks.
He smiled, softening a little. He loved being on the water too much to hold a grudge, and he began pointing things out at intervals – the fin of a minke whale and then the eyrie of a pair of sea eagles high up in a pine tree, though there was no sign of the birds now.
Effie closed her eyes, her face angled to the sun and basking in its pale, wintry warmth. She didn’t care that the wind made a tangle of her hair. She enjoyed the sounds of the boat: the rattle of the rigging, the flap of the sails, the sluicing of the water, her dress billowing in the wind.
She didn’t notice immediately when the sun went in, but as they passed the wide mouth of Portree and came onto the shoulder of the Trotternish peninsula, the Lady Tara began to pitch. An army of white horses was galloping towards them, surrounding them on all sides, and she saw from the way Archie’s eyes narrowed, the forward thrust of his jaw, that they were heading into the heavier weather he had feared. He glanced at her, catching her gaze. If he had been right about being in the eye of the storm, he was too gracious to say it.
Effie gripped the handrail, feeling the rain being carried in on the wind, striking her cheeks like glass bullets. But the strength of the coming storm increased dramatically as they sailed into Staffin Bay and headed towards the straits of Little Minch. They were fully exposed now to the northerly front, a merciless onslaught. These were the very winds that had always plagued St Kilda, alone in her solitary outpost in the ocean. Effie was no stranger to their wildness, but to experience them on a small boat, surrounded by rising waves...
‘Stay low,’ he shouted, his voice barely audible as the wind whipped it away. ‘Don’t let go!’
Water doused them, splashing over the sides every few moments. Archie widened his stance at the helm, his body bracing as he kept one hand on the wheel and with the other, adjusted the sail. Surprisingly, for all the discomfort they were enduring, she didn’t feel frightened. She trusted his abilities as a sailor; he was skilled and fearless. There was very little this man couldn’t do. He had been born accomplished.
She didn’t feel frightened until she heard the crack. It was like a pistol-whip, sharp above the contralto wind, and she saw how quickly Archie’s head snapped up, the look on his face as he studied the mast.
He visibly paled.
‘What is it?’ she asked, looking up too, but all she could see was a sail at full stretch, the rig clinking wildly on the pitch of the waves.
He didn’t reply. He was struggling with the helm as the boat suddenly started to pull to starboard. ‘We’re losing the mast!’ he hollered, and she saw the sail sag like a bellows without air, her eye catching sight of a deep crack – like the eye of a needle – at the very top of the main mast. It hadn’t broken away – not yet – but the pressure from the sail was pulling on it, making it wider and deeper...It would give at any moment. Effie could guess what would come next: no mast, no sail, no control.
‘What can we do?’ she cried.
Archie stared up at it as he wrestled to keep the boat from turning in towards the coastline. ‘I can’t get up there,’ he yelled. ‘I have to keep my hands on this.’
Effie looked up too. It was high, but nothing to her. ‘I can go!’
Archie looked down at her as if she was mad. ‘... What ?’
‘I can climb up there and strap it! Have you some rope?’
‘Effie, no!’
‘Arch, there’s no time. You have to trust me. I am not some delicate flower.’ Being so slight – ‘a strip of wind’, she’d always been called back home – had always meant she was agile and nimble. Here, a lithe body was prized only for wearing the latest fashions well, and she hated that she had been recast as fragile. Her strength, agility and skill on the ropes had defined her in St Kilda, but over here, no one knew or cared. It was as if her identity had been cleaved away. ‘Just hand me some rope.’
Still he stared at her, and she saw desperation in his eyes. ‘Effie, I can’t! If anything were to happen to you—’
She looked back up and saw the crack breach and widen again, the sail tugging on it. ‘You have to! Once it breaks, we’ll lose the sail, and then we’re both done for.’
With a look of disbelief that he was doing it, Archie reached under the helm and passed her a small loop of rope. Without hesitation she threw it over her head, the loop across her body.
‘Help me up!’ she said, reaching for his hand. The boat was rolling and lurching in the swell, buffeted by the wind as the slackened sail pulled them off course.
He grabbed her, hand upon hand, just as he had when they’d reeled in Portree those four nights back. Then he yanked her up from the bench, his other hand on the helm. The boat lurched as they were caught side-on by a wave and she felt the deck run out beneath her as she was thrown into the open expanse of the bridge. She was still too far away to reach the mast, their arms outstretched at full reach, but Archie didn’t let go, gripping her tightly in no-man’s-land until they eased into the trough for a few short seconds.
‘Now!’ she shouted, and he released her, watching as she sprinted the short distance to the mast.
‘Dear God, Effie,’ he cried, helpless now that she was out of his reach. ‘Be careful!’
‘Aye,’ she replied, looking up the tall, narrow pole. It was slippery in the rain, no natural grip. She would have preferred a granite cliff-face, but at least there were some hand-and footholds: she could stand on the boom, grab the ropes...She hugged the mast like a monkey on a tree and, as she waited again for the Lady Tara to hit another trough, took one arm off to tuck her long skirt into her underwear. The dress being soaked through worked to her advantage, as it flapped less and clung in position up her thighs.
She felt the boat level out and sprang up instinctively onto the mast, hugging it between her arms and legs as she shimmied herself upwards. It was slippery, but she was strong and had expert balance. It didn’t take her long to get to the top but she had to cling ever more tightly as she ascended, for the higher she rose, the greater the pendulum swing, side to side, of the mast.
She looked down and saw Archie watching with utter horror as he struggled to keep the boat the right side of the wind. He looked so small from here, and from this vantage point she could see how truly vulnerable they were, the immensity of the sea roiling around them.
She made herself focus on the job in hand – panicking wouldn’t help them now. Up close, the crack was worse than it had appeared from the deck. It was going to fail at any moment...
She set about strapping it with the rope, looping figures of eight to bind it tightly and hopefully minimize the breach. It wasn’t a perfect solution, but it absorbed some of the strain. As she fastened off the end of the rope, she watched the crack closely as they continued to roll left to right. The sail was certainly better supported now that the mast had been strengthened. She could see the almost immediate relief for Archie on the helm as it stopped fighting him, but with these winds so strong and relentless, she couldn’t risk leaving it and coming back down again. One particularly sharp gust might be enough to loosen the strapping, catch the sail at full throttle and send it all crashing down. There was nothing else for it.
‘I’m staying up here!’ she shouted down to him.
There was a pause as Archie processed her words. Could he not hear her clearly, or did he not believe her?
‘Effie, no! That’s enough! You’ve done enough! Get back down here.’ He sounded desperate, his signature laconic drawl lost to the drama.
She clung to the mast, trying not to let fear take over. With every pitch it felt as if she would be dunked into the raging sea. ‘I can’t! It’s too unstable!’ she shouted back. ‘Just keep going! I’m fine...I can hold on. We can do this!’
She saw him shake his head, but to argue was draining them both of precious energy, and he knew enough of her wild spirit now to understand she wouldn’t be talked down. He stared ahead at the horizon, facing down the storm as the rain lashed and the wind moaned and the sea heaved. And Effie clung on, an emerald button on a conductor’s baton – tick, tick, tick, marking time.