Free The Sea House: A Novel by Elisabeth Gifford Page B

that he has trusted only me to keep for him. And that she should get to read the story before I have even heard it. And I did promise myself that I would learn to read by the end of the week so that I could find the Selkie story on his desk and read it before she ever got to set her eyes on it.
    After she left, I solemnly told the Reverend I would pay for a new cup from my wages, but he said, ‘Oh no matter, no matter,’ and he went off to his study no doubt to write his grandmother’s tale out for her, and he quite forgot about my reading lesson, which was a pity since I had planned to surprise him greatly by how far I had come in the reader about the doings of a hen and a rat and in how fast I could now string the letters together into words.
    *   *   *
    It was some few weeks later, and after I had found all there was to know of that hen and that rat, that I went in early to set the fire and I found a paper on his desk, neatly written out, a note to Dear Miss Marstone. I took the lion paperweight off it as it was in need of a little polish, and that’s when I noticed the title on the paper: ‘The Story of Ishbel and the Seal Man’. Well, the beady eyes of the little brass lion were watching me, but I placed him back on the desk and picked up the paper. I sat down in the Reverend’s big chair and then I began to read, although much of it took me more than one try before I got the sense of the words.
    I was glad I had worked so very hard at my letters then, for I read it all, and I saw them before me, that woman and her seal man. I saw how she lived in a place so very like my own home. I knew as I read it that I could know her life better than Miss Marstone ever could, and better even than the Reverend, my Alexander, who is, it is true, even the descendant of a Selkie.

CHAPTER 8
    Alexander
    Dear Miss Marstone,
    I offer below my attempts to transcribe the story of the Selkie, as told to me by my late grandmother. I cannot say, in all honesty, if some details are precisely as she recounted them to me. It may be that the intervening years have allowed elements of my own imaginings to creep in. Likewise, in the retelling, I suspect that over generations, the clarity of the story may owe as much to dramatic invention as to the recalling of facts. I offer it therefore as a curio that may amuse, and not as an historical account that should be taken with any seriousness.
    I remain your humble servant,
    Reverend Alexander Ferguson
     
    The Story of Ishbel and the Seal Man
    Ishbel McOdrum was a plain girl but strong. She had a long beak of a nose and above her lip, a faint line of hair was visible, suggesting in thirty years’ time a notable moustache. She had long, capable hands and her feet were as big as a man’s.
    Since she was covered from wrist to ankle in brown woollen skirts and shawls, no one knew that Ishbel McOdrum was in possession of a tiny waist, and since her hair was habitually covered by a red scarf, tied securely round her shoulders to keep out the weather, no one was aware of the long chestnut tresses that flowed down her back.
    Everyone on the island knew that Ishbel was as strong as any crofter. She could lift a creel of sea kelp heavy as a wet sheep and carry it from the glistening rocks to the croft without faltering once. If you were to look down upon the green sweep of the hillside, there you would see Ishbel, carrying over the baskets of seaweed from the shore to build up the sandy machair soil, or moving up and down the long rigs of potato beds, breaking her back with the heavy work of the digging.
    Ishbel’s father was a widower and frail. Both her sisters were married and gone so he was glad to have her remain with him as the seasons went by. In winter when the gales blew in from hundreds of miles across the Atlantic, gathering strength as they came, to beat upon the squat stone house, Ishbel would sing under the booming wind, carding wool or working the distaff to spin woollen thread.
    With