Call of the Undertow by Linda Cracknell Read Free Book Online Page B

of light reflected from the hardened runway of sand. Her arrival on the
beach lifted a flock of birds from the shore, only their relative sizes distinguishing oystercatchers from the gulls roosting there. There was a great chorus of peeps, a sense of a single gauzy
curtain rising and flurrying in the half light and settling again, further along.
    Dwarwick Head soared up to her right and below it the white croft cottages and bungalows of Dunnet village gleamed. To her left the woodland tumbling down to the shore around Quarrytown village
was rounded into fairytale shapes by moonlight. She was surprised to see torchlight flickering amongst the harbour walls. Then she heard a vehicle door slamming. Headlights burst the dark open,
pointing straight at her. An engine revved and then the lights turned away towards the tunnel-road back to the village.
    Two notes launched the rumble of a different engine. She saw a boat move slowly out of the harbour and into the bay. It wasn’t until it was well out, pointing towards the horizon that the
throttle was opened and the engines whined, fading towards Thurso.
    The quiet and dark resumed, but she felt confused. If she’d seen a light jerking in an Oxford alley, she’d have known it as a student fitting a bicycle light. Here, the map-maker was
lost.
    A few evenings later, she strolled across the field from the bottom of her lane to reach the neighbouring farm buildings that she hadn’t yet explored. She stood in the
grass courtyard amidst the low steadings built from local honey-coloured stone. All the slate roofs had caved in and the timbers were sparring up through them. She felt a strange bond with these
sad, tipped-up shipwrecks, something similar to watching geese on their angular journeys; a vague feeling of yearning and nostalgia.
    She walked through the door of one of the cottages. It obviously hadn’t been abandoned for that long. A transistor radio and work tools still lay on a table as if their use might be
resumed. The rafters leant against a wall, the tooth ends of them poking up in a row towards the blue sky.
    She explored each building in turn, relieved to find no beer cans or bottles, signs of the youthful partying she thought she’d heard. Finally she went into a tall barn that was still
partially roofed. Clambering over boards, roofing-felt, timbers and slates, she reached the far corner where a collection of objects made her pause: shells, pebbles and salt-white twists of
driftwood. It was as if a tide had run up here, licked this far place, and deposited its sea treasures with a layer of silt and salt. She picked up a curious bit of bone shaped like the fin of a
dolphin or porpoise and turned it over in her hands. She couldn’t think what creature it could have come from. When she placed it back down she realised that there was a coil of blankets
underneath the strange collection. It suggested a small nest, a place where a cat might curl up; a lair, a hide-out. Perhaps even a place for an itinerant to return to, a man with a beard and holes
in his boots who’d forgotten how to speak to people.
    She looked over her shoulder; an uneasy trespasser in a place she’d thought abandoned. Perhaps she had a neighbour she didn’t know about.
    Her retreat was only slowed by the threat of rusty nails, but halfway to the door a board lurched and her right foot plunged through it, clutching her leg in its interleaving timbers. She had to
drop onto her hands in order to release it and ended up crawling towards the doorway and the safety of the grass courtyard. She hoped no one had been watching. Children were warned against entering
unsafe buildings or climbing on their roofs. She’d been foolish.

SIX
    The smell of school dinners lurked in the echoey hall. There were small huddles of parents sipping at cups of tea and circulating the tables, each of which was laid out with a
group of small sketch maps. They’d been pasted onto sugar paper with the pupil’s