Part One: The Sea.

Northwest Scotland, August 1987

 

Chapter 1 – A beach holiday

 

I woke early on the day I met my first ghost. My eyes opened to dust particles floating slowly in shards of copper light. The crackle of rain on canvas was gone. The seams of my tent glowed. Sun, at last! I pulled on my jeans and stepped outside.

I took in only colours at first: a blue sky, the early-morning glow on dunes, dark granite cliffs in light and shade at each end of a long, pale beach of fine sand and tidal pools. A cry from a herring gull overhead caught my attention. I followed its flight over my dad. He stood over a steaming kettle outside his own tent.

We were digging, as we did in the summer. Careful, neat trenches, my dad supervising, inspecting what we found. It was usually a bustle of students with picks, trowels and brushes, chatting away, a murmur of excitement as sand or soil was brushed away to reveal something significant. Or a twig. This was archaeology, but everyone called it a 'dig'.

When I was very young, I’d spent days down on the tide line building ramparts with my mum in the wet sand, shoring them up against the advancing water, watching them crumble, laughing, starting again. In recent years we had joined in with the students, carefully scraping the sides of trenches as they did. But we would also go off walking. And fishing. This was my favourite: I loved the waiting and whispering. We caught tiny translucent parrs, setting them free to grow, intoning solemn summoning spells for their return to us when they could feed us properly. Or we would take photos, look for wildflowers and bees, otters and deer. Or we'd go for an ice cream if we were near a town, or a walk along the beach. It was magic, even in the rain.

My dad specialised in wrecks, which meant that we all did.

If we want to live with him, George - and we do, I think - we have to live this life, my mum said to me once, or perhaps to herself.

I think? I replied, and she laughed.

But we did want to. And we did live it. I could tell you the difference between a Spanish rivet and a Viking nail, and where the ship we were looking for had sailed from. My dad would tell its story. A strange life, perhaps. But it helped me with what came later.

And we were always on a beach in summer, which was good. It doesn’t rain as much as people say. In winter we stayed at home in Edinburgh. There was schoolwork too. I was home-schooled, but it was not really 'school', my mum would, as if to reassure me. It was just learning - reading, writing, talking, working things out.

My childhood. And this year it had ended. Perhaps we were trying to get it back, my dad and me.

***

This summer, mum wasn't here. Our camp was more remote than usual, on a beach miles from anywhere. Any road, even. There was only sky, water, dunes, us. The light changed constantly as clouds rolled past in the breeze, which made no noise that could compete with the endless, roaring sea-sound echoing back off the cliffs. It made me feel I was dreaming.

This year, my dad had looked over old documents and maps in his study at his new college in London, sometimes sharing scraps and ideas with me. I'd barely been there before we headed north again. After what happened to my mum there, I didn’t mind. I preferred going back north. It was going to be our adventure, the two of us digging for the remains of a Spanish ship. He had been looking for it for a long time.

These thoughts rumbled around my head, working hard to keep others at bay. My stomach was also wanting attention. Eleven-and-a-half was clearly a growth-spurt sort of age. I was constantly hungry. Maybe it was the digging. I could feel saliva rising in my mouth. My dad was about to start cooking the first of our four (at least) daily meals.

“Morning, George! Busy day ahead. I’ll get started with the pans soon. No good will come of digging on an empty stomach,” he said.

It was his morning catchphrase. He finished his coffee, and I watched as he set to once again. For breakfast it was toast, bacon, eggs, other delights. Meals were prepared on an extravagant, wheeled field kitchen. We had pulled it along a narrow track across a moor, down a slope and through a narrow valley into the dunes. Strapped onto it had come two large tents, a small tent for me, a ladder, a trunk full of food in tins and packets and a bundle of spades, shovels, picks, brushes, labels and bags. We were prepared.

We had spent four days digging a series of trenches around a huge dune set a little way back from the long sweep of beach. So far, we had found tussock grass roots, twigs and stones. They had all been examined and discarded, as Professor William Ferrier, Eminent Archaeologist, was only interested in traces of life, people, Civilization (you know, the important stuff. I preferred nature. But there was plenty of that too).

We were looking for a particular wreck, the San Juan Bautista, a ship of the Spanish Armada, but so far, we had found nothing.

And it was magic to start with, despite my mother’s absence. But two days ago, my father's colleague, Henrietta MacKay, had arrived suddenly. My father had clearly been expecting her. She usually came to digs but I didn't want her at this one.

As I sat eating, my shoulders slumped at the thought of more digging and I felt my mind begin to wander to places I didn't want it to go. I finished the plate and stood up. My father and Henrietta could delve ever more enthusiastically into their perfect trenches. I was going for a walk.

"Dad, I'm going for a walk."

"OK. Are you sure you don't want more breakfast?"

He pointed at the tattered remains of an omelette in the pan. Tempting. I pointed at the sky.

"No - I should go. The light's still good."

The warm, early-morning light would give way to glare soon, and I’d miss my chance to capture it. In theory. Really, I just wanted to be alone. I set off through the dunes with the old camera my mum had given me for my tenth birthday. My mind flitted briefly to the previous summer, the two of us looking for shapes and creatures to photograph in rock pools. I shut down the memory.

The tide was out. I walked along the empty beach, my bare feet on cold, wet sand, listening to the distant detonations of air escaping the waves as they collapsed onto the sand. Bright puddles around me reflected patches of cloud moving slowly across the sky. I tested one. The sun had not warmed it yet. I turned back towards the dunes. The sea roar faded gradually, and I could now hear my footsteps: the salt-crunch of the high-tide mark, then the gentle groans of fine, floury sand being compressed. I came to a halt by a dune and sat down beneath a clump of coarse grass.

I had enjoyed being with my dad, but Henrietta had arrived, and any sense of a new family adventure had finally evaporated with the morning sunshine. It wasn't the same without my mum. I just wanted to be on my own. I sat and stared at the rolling sea, listening to the waves gathering the courage to hurl themselves onto the beach.

****

I had no idea how long I'd been there, chasing the same moments and memories around my head. Aa deep voice interrupted my contemplation.

“You are digging in the wrong place.”

I flinched. It wasn't obvious where the tall, bearded man, suddenly beside me, had appeared from. My eyes flitted around for a gap in the dunes from which he might have emerged, but I saw none. They settled on the strange individual. He was wearing a long, partially-unbuttoned shirt, which had once been white, and rolled-up trousers of an indeterminate colour, best described as ‘dirt’. His huge feet were callused and tanned, with sand pushing up between his toes and sitting under his toenails. The man looked at me for a moment, smiled, and sat down next to me.

“Good morning”, he said.

“Good morning,” I replied automatically.

It was. I was too startled to say anything else and turned away to focus on a pair of powerful, yellow-headed birds beyond the breakers which were taking it in turns to dive into the water from a great height, likely terrorising the same shoal of mackerel I had caught our dinner from the previous night. The man followed my gaze.

 “Good fishermen, gannets. Edible too. But you have to boil them for hours. Taste of fish,” he added, looking at me with a grin, waiting for a reaction. I sat still.

“Not really surprising, I suppose, given their diet. I prefer to eat the fish themselves," he added.

He turned his body towards me and cocked his head slightly to one side.

"And how are you this morning?”

“I’m fine,” I said. It was another automatic response, as was my question, “how are you?”

My mum had always told me it was important to have conversations with people rather than just answer their questions.

“I am having a very good day,” replied the man. I looked at his face properly for the first time. He had a huge greying beard, tied here and there with ribbons of various colours. There was a gleam in his eyes, of something like mischief, which seemed to come and go, like clouds passing quickly in front of the sun.

“Why is that?” I asked.

“I have not spoken to anyone in a long time. And now I am. Even if you are not saying much.”

It was perhaps because I was still pulling myself out of a contemplation of the sea that I took in this comment without surprise, or even that I was too surprised to be alarmed. But when I think back to this first meeting with Gaspar Diaz, as I often do, I realise that I was already fascinated by him, by his eyes, which flashed life and then nothing, light and then dark. And I trusted him, immediately. Even years later, I cannot understand why. But I was right.

“You must meet people up here.”

Although I had not seen him while we had been camping in the dunes, it made sense to me that this man should live here, near this long, deserted beach, where the gulls seemed to cry louder to be heard above the fierce roll of the surf. Though where, exactly, I could only guess. A single ruined, roofless bothy sat guarding the pass down to the beach, and this was two hours’ walk from where we had parked at the beginning of the week. There were only our tents, dwarfed by the dunes around them.

“I do. But they don't like to talk.”

I decided he was a wild man, who lived in a cave, ate seaweed for breakfast and caught fish for his supper. A hermit. I was pleased with the word, which I remembered from somewhere. My mum had probably taught it to me. She liked unusual words.

I suddenly remembered what the man had said.

“Why do you say we are digging in the wrong place?”

“Because you are.” He looked into my eyes, as if this was a satisfactory explanation.

“I see”, I replied. I didn't.

I held the bearded man’s stare, wanting to know more. He stared back, impassive. But, slowly, the granite lines on his face creased and became waves which rolled down to his mouth and broke into a smile, followed immediately by a laugh, a deep murmur which travelled across the beach to lose itself in the roar of the sea. It was not a mocking laugh, but one of joy, contagious. At first, I thought he was laughing at me, but no: he was just laughing. As I caught the glow in his eye I began to laugh too. I was aware I had not laughed so much in a long time. Or at all, this year. I laughed until my face hurt and tears flowed. It felt good.

“You amuse me, child. What is your name?”

“George,” I replied, catching my breath, “George Ferrier. What’s yours?”

The bearded man paused and breathed, studying my face. He also had tears in his eyes.

“It is a pleasure to meet you, George Ferrier,” he said, his eyes smiling even more than his beaming face. “I am Gaspar Cortes Diaz,” he said, intonating the name slowly, rhythmically, as if recalling it from a distant corner of his mind.

“Where are you from, Gaspar?” I asked, aware that it was not a Scottish name. My mum had trained me to ask these kinds of questions.

“That is a very long story. I will tell it to you if you would hear it, but I must also remember it. My memory has for so long been untroubled.”

“I would like to,” I said. Finally, something I was sure of this long summer.