Susanna Kearsley: The Winter Sea

‘Jimmy Keith?’

‘That’s right.’

He gave a smile so broad it fell just short of laughter, as he bent to pick up both my suitcases. ‘You’d best let me give you that lift, after all. I’m not so big my father wouldn’t skelp me if he knew I’d left you here to hire a car when I was heading north myself.’

‘Your father?’

‘Aye. Did I not say my name, before? I’m Stuart Keith.’ He grinned. ‘And since it appears that you’ve taken the cottage where I like to stay, so you’re making me sleep on my father’s spare bed—and a very uncomfortable bed it is, too—then the least you can give me is company during the drive,’ he concluded. ‘Come on.’

And having no argument, really, for that, I had little choice left but to follow.

HE DROVE A SILVER Lotus, sleek and fast, and drove it recklessly. I found it hard to focus on the things that he was pointing out as we went whizzing past.

‘Of course it’s all changed since the big offshore oil rigs went in, in the seventies,’ he said. ‘Not that I remember what it was like before then, I’m not so old as all that, but the area’s been built up, with the people coming north to work in Aberdeen and Peterhead. And we’ve got the golf course, and the beach. The golf course is a good one, it draws a fair number of tourists. Do you play?’

‘Golf ? No, not really. You?’

‘It all depends what you call playing. I can knock the ball around, no problem. Putting it anywhere close to the hole, well…’ He shrugged. ‘It’s too slow a sport for my liking.’

From the way he was driving, I guessed that he didn’t like anything slow. We covered the twenty-five miles in about half the time it had taken me on Sunday. The thick snow that had been here then had melted so the green of grass showed through the white in places, and as we turned down the Main Street to the harbor I could see the golden grasses blowing wild along the dunes above the wide pink curve of beach. Already the place had a welcoming feel, half-familiar. As we parked the car on Harbour Street, I felt a settling of my spirit that reminded me a little of the feeling that I got whenever I flew back to Canada and knew that I was home.

It was a nice way to feel, after spending the past year in transit, bouncing from author appearances to writers’ conferences, one hotel to another, and then the months of fruitless work in France. Something told me that spending this winter in Scotland would be good for me, as well as for the book.

‘Come on,’ said Stuart Keith. ‘You’ll want to get your key, I’m sure, and Dad will want to walk you up the hill and see that you’ve got everything you need. In fact, if I know him,’ he said, and checked his watch, ‘he’ll likely have you stay to lunch.’

Jimmy Keith lived in a grey, stone-built cottage wedged tightly between its two neighbors and set at the edge of the street. His sitting room was at the front. I knew this because he had the window partly open, and I could hear a television announcer giving a play-by-play of something that sounded like soccer.

Stuart didn’t ring the bell or knock, but simply used his own key to walk in, with me behind him. The narrow front hall, with its mirror and mat, and the cheerfully yellowing wallpaper, wrapped me with warmth and the faintly lingering smells of a fried-egg-and-sausage breakfast.

From the front room, Jimmy called, ‘Aye-aye. Which one o’ ye is that?’

‘It’s me, Dad.’

‘Stuie! I didna expect ye till Friday. Come in, loon, drap yer things and come and watch the match wi’ me. It’s on video—I’ll wind it back.’

‘In a minute. I just need the key to the cottage.’

‘The cottage, aye.’ Jimmy’s voice took on a note of apology. ‘Listen, there’s been a wee change o’ plan…’

‘I gathered that.’ And taking two more steps so that he stood within the open doorway of the sitting-room, Stuart motioned me to come stand at his side. ‘I’ve brought your tenant with me.’

Jimmy Keith rose from his chair with that chivalric reflex that some men of his generation hadn’t lost, and most men of my own had never learned. ‘Miss McClelland,’ he said, sounding pleased. ‘How on earth did ye manage tae meet up wi’ this sorry loon?’ He used that last word the way people from elsewhere in Scotland used ‘lad’, so I guessed that it meant the same thing.

Stuart said, ‘We were on the same plane. We—’

‘Ye micht let the quine spik a word fer hersel.’ Which was harder to fathom, but my ear was retuning itself to the sound of the Doric, the language that Jimmy Keith spoke, and I translated that to ‘You might let the girl speak a word for herself ’, which I figured was right because Jimmy’s mild eyes held the warning of a parent to a child to mind its manners. Then he thought of something else, and turned to me. ‘Ye nivver let ma Stuie drive ye fae the airport? Michty, come in,’ he said, as I nodded. ‘Sit down, quine. Ye must’ve been feart fer yer life.’

Stuart shifted to let me go by him. ‘You know, Dad, you’re meant to be telling her all of my good points, not all of my faults. And you might want to try speaking English.’

‘What way?’ Jimmy asked, which I knew from my past trips to Scotland meant ‘Why?’ But when Jimmy pronounced it in Doric the first word came out more like ‘fit’—which I later would learn was a feature of Doric, the way that some ‘w’s sounded like ‘f ’s—and the second word came out as ‘wye’. So, ‘Fit wye?’ Jimmy asked. ‘She can folly me fine.’

He was right, I could follow him easily, though Stuart seemed unconvinced. Jimmy saw me settled in an armchair by the window, with my feet warmed by an old electric heater in the fireplace, and a clear view of the television. ‘Stuie, awa up tae the St Olaf wi’ ye, and bring us back three plates o’ huddock and chips.’

‘They don’t do take-away at the St Olaf.’

‘Na, na,’ his father said, knowing, ‘they’ll dee it fer me. Ye’ll stay tae lunch,’ he told me, but he made it sound an invitation rather than an order. ‘Efter drivin wi’ ma Stuie ye’ll be needin tae recover. We can tak yer things up tae the cottage later.’

Stuart didn’t argue, only smiled as though he’d long since learned there was no point resisting. ‘You do like fish and chips?’ was the only thing he wanted to make sure, before he left. ‘Right then, I won’t be long.’

His footsteps echoed on the road outside as he went past the window, and his father drily said, ‘Dinna believe it. Ma Stuie’s nivver gone past the St Olaf Hotel athoot tasting a pint. Mind, he’s nae sic a bad loon,’ he added, as he caught my eye, ‘but dinna tell him I telt ye that. He thinks a great deal o’ hissel as it is.’

I smiled. ‘You have two sons, somebody said.’

‘Aye. There’s Stuie, he’s the younger, and his brother Graham’s doon in Aiberdeen.’

‘He’s a student, isn’t he, at the university?’ I was trying to remember what the woman at the post office had told me.

‘Ach no, quine. He’s nae a student, he’s a lecturer. In History.’ His eyes crinkled at the corners with good humor. ‘They’re naething alike, ma twa sons.’

I tried to imagine Stuart Keith attending classes, much less teaching them, and failed.

‘Graham taks efter his mither, God rest her sweet soul. She loved her history, loved tae read.’

Which would have been the perfect opening for me to tell him what I did, and why I’d come to Cruden Bay, but at the moment, with the warm fire at my feet and in the comfort of the armchair, I felt no sense of urgency to talk about my work. He’d find out soon enough, I reasoned, from his son. And anyway, I doubted that a man like Jimmy Keith would take an interest in the sort of books I wrote.