Free Island by Jane Rogers Page A

open; you’d think if his mother cared an iota for him she’d have taken the poor sod to a dentist.
    ‘Go on.’
    ‘Some crofters, they were thrown out of their c-croft. They went in their boat going up the kyle and in a storm it was, their boat overturned. Right near Seal Rock.’ He stopped and looked at me.
    ‘That it?’
    He shook his head perfectly seriously. ‘They all d-drowned but the baby. The baby was taken up by the seals.’
    Of course it was, taken up by lovely cuddly furry bewhiskered seals and fed and tickled and cuddled and cared for and the mummy seal knitted it booties and the daddy seal caught a fishy-wishy for its diddums tea. Calum had stopped to try and remember what he was talking about. It was like waiting for paint to dry.
    ‘She sucked milk from a mother with pups. She learned to squeak and bark like a seal. Sh-she learned diving and swimming instead of walking.’
    ‘Yeah and how did she get on in winter in the ice?’
    His good eye widened in surprise. ‘No ice here. She caught fish and ate them raw, p-people saw her on the rocks playing with the seals. Her hair was long like a mermaid. The fishermen tried but no one could ever get near her.’
    ‘And it all endedbadly.’
    He stared at me stupidly for a minute then started snapping a twig of heather into fragments. It was enough to make me grateful for what I’d got – at least I
could
fly and fall, instead of creeping on my belly through the dirt.
    ‘Well? What happened?’
    ‘Sh-she’s still there.’
    Sure. Like his father in the woodshed. He packed up his thermos and we set off again. He wasn’t going to tell me the end of the story. I didn’t even want to hear the stupid thing in the first place but now he was offended and not speaking. He was making me feel bad, unkind to a dumb animal. Why should I feel sorry for him? Why the hell should
I
feel sorry for
him?
    We plodded along in silence again. Clearly he was
capable
of talking. I asked about his mumsy and dadsy and their idyllic island life. It was like dealing with a child; once he started he couldn’t stop. Turned out Daddy MacLeod kept a lot of lobsterpots. Sometimes he took men with big rods out deep-sea fishing; he had sheep too which had passed on to Calum.
    ‘Did you get his boat? Do
you
take tourists out?’
    He looked at me with a strange face. ‘It sank. It broke up. I’m not allowed–’
    ‘On the sea?’
    ‘Near the water. No Calum.’
    Well what a nice protective mother caring so deeply for her son’s well-being.
    ‘He wasang-angry.’
    I realised then that I could pump him all I liked. ‘Why?’
    ‘They were fighting and he j-just – he went out and banged the door.’
    ‘What happened?’
    He shrugged. ‘Bits of the boat washed up around the shore.’
    When I let myself back into my room there were lights on in the house. I opened my door to the hall a crack and I could hear the quiet burble of a TV. She was shut up somewhere watching telly. The room at the end of the hall, nearest the front door – that’s where I reckoned she was.
    I ate beans on toast and paced and listened and heard every move she made which was few. At 10.15 she turned off the TV and went along the hall to the kitchen; she was in there maybe a quarter of an hour then I heard her shuffling back along the hall. There was a bitter herby smell. She drew the bolt on the front door and turned off the downstairs lights then went slowly up the stairs, a couple of them creaked. I could hear her moving about upstairs also the sound of running water and toilet flush, she had another bathroom up there. There was definitely only her in the place. The last noise I heard was about 10.45; after that she was quiet, sleeping the sleep of the ignorant who don’t yet know what’s coming to them. I noted down the times. A murderer would need to know all her moves; know her little routine. I imagined going upstairs when she was out, I would look in her room for traces of me. The fact that