Atholl suppressed a delighted laugh at her surprise and let the oars settle, dripping in their holders.
The great rock jutting from the water was populated with seals of many colours and sizes basking in the sun, some raising their tails and their whiskers to the sky, others slumped sleepily, eyeing them as they drifted past. Even Echo raised his head to look.
‘Good boy, Echo. You sit still, leave them be,’ Atholl murmured under his breath.
The rest of their journey took them around a rocky promontory, the rowing visibly harder. Atholl leaned back into his exertions, pulling hard, filling his lungs then blowing through puffed cheeks and pursed lips. Beatrice sneaked surreptitious looks every so often, not knowing which was the more attractive view: Atholl’s freckled porcelain skin, flushing cheeks and blue eyes narrowed fiercely with the work of steering their vessel, sweat beading at his hairline and turning his loose red waves into glistening tight curls; or the emerging views of the impressive new bridge they were passing under and the smart pleasure boats and ferries crossing the steely blue strait with the great green wild peaks of the Isle of Skye before them.
She found herself closing her eyes, listening not to the gentle waves and the cutting splash of the oars but zoning in on the increasingly deep breathing of her captain.
The crossing seemed to last only moments but after Atholl had steered the boat to ground on a pebbly bay that led to a private garden and a small carpark beyond, he took a long time to slake his thirst, drinking from a bottle of water from the picnic basket. Beatrice refused to indulge her longing to watch him so she simply imagined his moving throat and his head thrown back as he drank with one foot on the boat, the other onshore, asking herself all the while what exactly had gotten into her today.
‘Echo!’
The whoops and screams of approaching children made her turn her head. ‘Uncle Atholl, can we keep Echo here for the day again?’ the littlest of a gang of five or six ecstatic kids cried.
‘Go on then, but no jumping off the quayside with him this time; he’s an old dug now.’ Atholl registered Beatrice’s surprise. ‘Some of these are my cousin’s bairns, and this is her garden. Most of my family are from the isle originally and live here now, Mum included. I moor here when I visit. This lot are happier to see Echo than they are to see me!’
Echo, his tail wagging, ears pricked up in delight, ran off with the children along the little beach.
‘That’s the last we’ll see of him until we return. He’d rather help them eat their lunch and chase skimming stones than come with us,’ Atholl said with a shrug.
Again, he was offering her his outstretched hand, again she held her breath at the all too brief sensation of his strength as he helped her onto dry land.
Together they dragged the boat up the beach until it rested on grass. That’s when Beatrice made out the faded word on its side.
‘Mary? Isn’t that Seth’s wife’s name? You said this was his boat?’
‘It is. All of Seth’s boats are calledMary, you’ll notice. But he’s too old to row it, and it’s no good for tourist trips anymore. So, any of the Port Willow residents can borrow it when they like.’
‘Hmm,’ Beatrice contemplated this as they walked through the garden and past great mallow bushes, the pink blooms alive with hornets and bees, the picnic basket swinging between them, each holding a side of the handle and Beatrice aware she wasn’t pulling her weight in its carrying. She thought of what Kitty had told her of Seth’s unusual love story. ‘They lived apart for most of their marriage, didn’t they?’
‘That’s right. They made it work.’
‘I’m not sure I get it. Why stay together if you can’t stand actually living together?’
‘There’s a lid for every pot and that’s the way those two fitted.’ Atholl shrugged as though this made perfect sense, and Beatrice found herself beginning to think it did.
They stepped off the mossy lawn onto a tarmacked driveway with a ramshackle garage by the roadside. Beatrice found herself looking up at the towering trees lining the road.
Atholl observed her for a moment before turning his own eyes to the treetops. ‘Do ye see that nest up there at the top of yonder tree?’
It took her a moment to follow the line of his gaze and focus on the wide platform of twigs precariously built into the uppermost crook of a spindly, ancient pine.
‘You cannae see from here but there’s a female osprey on that nest. Were we to stand here all day you’d see her mate flying to her, bringing food for her and their chick.’
‘I wish wecouldstay here all day then!’
‘Ospreys are bonny creatures and special in so many ways – and rare too, only two hunder pairs of them in the Highlands. Ospreys mate for life, ye ken? But they spend half the year away from their mate too.’
‘They do?’
Atholl’s eyes flitted briefly to hers.
‘They spend the winter apart, someplace warmer than Skye where the cold is something frightening. But they come back to their home every spring, they repair their nest together and they raise their young.’
‘And then they separate again?’
‘Aye, every autumn they part, knowing they’ll find each other when the warmth returns to Scotland again. If they survive their migrations, that is.’
