don’t know how big she is, or how fast she goes, but it would make me anxious, and that’s a fact.’
‘Two hundred tons,’ said Archie absently. ‘And up to nine knots. No need to be anxious though: she was built at John Wood’s in Glasgow.’
Someone was shouting from the hall, ‘House! House I say! Is anyone there? Kneen, are you there?’
‘I must go, sir. Will you excuse me?’
Thankful for the interruption, Archie buttered his toast, and seized the chance to look over the notes in his pocketbook. He wrote underneath them in pencil: Watterson. Betsey? Check draught. And then again, as he sipped his coffee: Scott?
Scott was the very devil. Would Mr Stevenson expect him to stand bail for the fellow? They had their own laws out here. God-forsaken ones too, probably. So long as they didn’t decide to transport the fellow: if it was as bad as that Archie would have to intervene. Though why should he? God knew what sort of sentence Scott would get. Maybe God cared; Archie didn’t. He was inclined to leave Scott to rot. He’d brought it all on himself, after all, and Archie had a job to do. But Mr Stevenson might have other views about it. Bound to have, in fact. Did it matter? He didn’t need to please Mr Stevenson any more. Archie had given everything to this job, and it had taken him this long to realise there were no more rewards for an ambitious young fellow unless his name was Stevenson. No, there was no need to worry about what Mr Stevenson would say about Scott.
Archie poured more coffee. While he sipped he unfolded a letter that was already limp with constant re-reading. It was sheer indulgence: he knew its contents by heart, but it gave him inordinate pleasure just to see the words again. That’s why he’d brought the letter with him. It still said exactly the same, and it still thrilled him every time he looked at it. He was just beginning to realise that it was all true: this thing really was going to happen.
Dear Mr Buchanan,
Further to our meeting of the 17th inst, I am gratified to be able to inform you that your application for the post of surveyor to the Scientific Expedition of HMS Beagle has been successful. You are required to report for duty at HMS Beagle, currently stationed at Greenwich, by September 1st, 1831.
Following our illuminating discussion in London, I would highly recommend a perusal of Mr Lyell’s new volume. Some of his arguments are unnecessarily ambiguous, and could even be interpreted as atheistical, but he is a man of sound observation, and, as far as I have yet read, he does allow a man the freedom to draw his own conclusions. You may find the work pertinent to our proposed expedition.
I should remind you that the Beagle is a ninety-foot ten-gun brig, and will be carrying its full complement of sixteen officers. In addition there will be five supernumeraries, including yourself. Space for equipment and personal effects will therefore be severely limited.
May I be the first to congratulate you on this splendid opportu nity? I look forward to renewing our acquaintance.
Yours &c,
Robt. Fitzroy
Commander, HMS Beagle
Four months to go. Only four months. To hell with Scott. To hell with Quirk the Water Bailiff, and to hell with this God-forsaken Island. To hell with … no, never to hell with Robert Stevenson. Archie owed him too much, and liked him too well. It was going to be hard to tell the old man. But, even so, Archie had his letter. He could only begin to imagine how much this was going to change everything.
CHAPTER 3
THE COCK WAS CROWING IN THE YARD, OUT THERE WHERE the heat flattened the parched ground. It was so hot outdoors one could hardly draw a breath. In here it was cool. She could smell the tamarind tree that cast its shadow over the steps in a pattern of leaves that sometimes moved in the breeze. There was no breeze today. Today the tree shadows were as still as if they’d been carved in clay like the jali. Where she was standing, the sunlight made a sharply-etched latticework on the marble floor of the veranda, an exact echo of the intricate patterns of the jali through which it shone. When she shut her eyes the pattern was still there, emblazoned in green and gold. The marble was cool under her feet. Her sandals were on the step. She squatted down to shake them, and an enormous scorpion fell out. She screamed and dropped the sandal. And a voice called from inside the house: she was about to hear the comforting voice from inside the house: she could remember the different sounds, the very words, almost … almost …
The cock crowed again. Diya rolled over, and woke. A shaft of sun pierced the crack in the shutter. It fell right across the pillow where she’d been lying. The sea soughed against the rocks outside; she could hear it through the open window. At home in Grandmother’s house Diya used to look out at the sea from her white bed under the rafters through the small square window of her top-floor room. She’d been able to see the whole of Castletown Bay over the top of the Garrison chapel. But that window, like all the windows in Grandmother’s house, had been kept firmly closed. Here on Ellan Bride Lucy always kept the window open unless the wind was very strong. Diya had been forced to grow used to the unhealthy practice. Jim used to keep the window open too. In the beginning Diya had been frightened by the night air, laden with demons of the deep, smelling of salt and wind, stealing in through the perilous crack.
Diya didn’t want the weather in her dreams, still less the sea. She could hear the sea now, and the sound of it seemed to brush her dream into oblivion. She tried to recapture the receding images, but they were dissolving in the relentless freshness of the island. She could smell salt all too plainly; in the dream it had been tamarind … the warm, spicy smell of the tamarind tree. What was gone, was gone for ever; only faint shadows might fall from the past into the present, and even those were merely an illusion.
Sometimes when Jim had been there he’d left the light burning by itself and come to her, briefly, in their curtained bed in the kitchen recess – his parents had slept in the bedroom then – but Diya knew that Jim was never unaware, even for a moment, of the steady beam of light outside the window. While the light was lit he would not sleep. He would come, on a calm night, and then, just as she was falling asleep, he would go again. She always woke with an empty place beside her. Now Lucy had Jim’s half of the bed, and Jim was gone for ever.
They’d been so helpless. Exposed to all the fury of the elements, this island could – and too often did – turn itself in no time at all into a little hell on earth. That night five years ago had been worse than hell. In hell one despaired, and that was all. Hope was more cruel because it tantalised: it would seem to offer a glimmer of light, and then it would just blow itself away again in a night, leaving only destruction behind it. That was why the wind was the worst of all. Rain, mist, hail, fog, sleet: of all the elements that flung themselves against the island the wind was the real demon. It mocked you as it swept your strength away – you couldn’t breathe, you couldn’t balance, you couldn’t even think. Diya hated the wind more than anything else in the world.
The wind that had swept Jim away that night had shaken the house so hard it made the stone walls shudder as if this were a house of cards. It had whined under the door, lifting the rag rug as if it were an animal come alive. When Diya had tried to look out for Jim’s lantern, the shutter had jerked loose from her hand and been wrenched off its hinge. When the shutter banged against the wall, the cat had fled under the dresser, and the baby had woken up screaming.
Billy had screamed too; Diya could remember that: ‘Mam! Mam!’
