The Gift

I hadn't expected to find anything interesting that day. Even though it was early in the winter, the beginning of November, the beach was already covered in rubbish, but it was the usual boring stuff. A Wellington boot, scraps of rope, soft drink bottles, a rubber sandal, plastic bags, a hubcap, a broken sprig of imitation holly ...

I had to kick a cracked drum out of the way before I could climb up on the rock. This rock jutted out into the sea and on my walks I always stopped there to gaze at the cliffs of the island opposite. I lingered that day, in spite of the rain advancing across the sound. The sea was grey and the tide race choppy, but it was beautiful, in a wild way.

The beach would have been beautiful too, if it wasn't for the rubbish. There would be much more after the winter storms. Then in the spring, I supposed, I would come along the beach and collect the rubbish in black bags. It was what I'd been doing every year for the twelve years that I had lived in Shetland. The spring clean-up would have offered more than a feeling of environmental duty done if the sea's offerings had been less dull. Combers of other beaches found hand grenades, weather balloons, used syringes, beans from the Caribbean and packets of hash, but not me. I would have got excited over a crate of salt-sodden oranges.

The first spots of rain touched my face, but I was reluctant to turn back. The house was mine - when he left he said I could have it - but it didn't feel like home now that I was alone there. Although he had been gone a fortnight, it hadn't really sunk in yet.

I suppose there must have been some warning signs, but I had missed them. When he announced one morning that he was going, packed a suitcase and went, I was taken completely by surprise. It was such a clich‚ - a middle-aged man running off with a girl who was not much older than his own daughter. What made it more insulting was that I was hardly old and worn out myself. I was only in my mid-thirties and, if my mirror didn't lie, still attractive. But he had made me feel as unwanted as the empty milk cartons and beer cans which passing fishermen threw carelessly over the side.

At least he had had the courage to tell his daughter himself. Not in person - he didn't have that much courage, and anyway she was in Aberdeen - but he had telephoned her. And Cassie had promptly telephoned me and declared, "He's such a sh -"

"Cassandra!" I exclaimed in automatic reproof.

"Well, he is," she said; and I thought, she's right, he is.

Aloud I said to my stepdaughter, "All the same, you shouldn't talk about your father like that."
Cassie sighed gustily. "You always stuck up for him. You didn't realise what he's like, but I knew. Why do you think I left as soon as I could?"

"You wanted to do your journalism course."

"Oh, I could have stayed and done it by distance learning. I left because I wanted to get away from him. I knew he'd make you unhappy one day. I tried to tell you, but you wouldn't listen."

Yes, she had tried to tell me and I hadn't listened. I had just wished the two of them could get on better, and had done my best to pour oil on their choppy relationship. At first I had put the rows down to Cassie's natural grief and resentment. I thought things would settle in time, but they never did.

It had been a relief when Cassie went away to college. When she finished her course she was taken on as a trainee by Aberdeen's Press and Journal, and I thought we had reached calm waters at last. More fool me.

I had to go back to the house before I got soaked. I stepped off the rock and it was then I noticed it: wedged in a cleft, a bottle. Its base rocked sluggishly in the tide, its neck was caught in a clump of mussels. Urged by nothing more than idle curiosity, I reached down to grasp the bottle. A few mussels had to be prised from their hold-fast to the rock, then I pulled it free.

I held up my find. The bottle was of pale green glass, opaque with scratches. Its shape was unfamiliar: thin and narrow, with square shoulders. A red blob covered the whole top of the neck, and it was impossible to tell whether it was stoppered by a cork or a screw top. The bottle felt light, but why bother throwing an empty bottle into the ocean after sealing the top so carefully?

I gave it a shake. Was there something inside? Another shake - yes! I stood there in the rain, holding the bottle up before me and smiling with delight. My years of walking the beach had finally paid off! I had found a bottle message.

When I got back to the house I was very wet. I left my treasure sitting on the kitchen table while I attended to the chores. Like the largest, most succulent scallop put to the side of the plate, the bottle message was a treat to be saved up for last. First the stove had to be stoked up with peats, then I changed, dried my hair and made a cup of coffee. I kept stealing glances at the bottle as I pottered about, and I grinned in anticipation.

Coffee drunk, I sat at the table and gloated over the sea's gift. It had come as if someone out there knew I needed cheering up. Who would have sent it? It must have been a child; probably a boy. I could picture him clearly, launching the bottle optimistically into the waves. He would be ten years old, his curly brown hair dishevelled and his dark eyes bright with excitement ...

No, not that boy. I conjured up other images. A blonde Scandinavian with ruddy cheeks; or a broad-faced Slavic lad, with flat black hair like that of the men from the factory ships which used to throng Lerwick harbour during the herring and mackerel seasons. Whoever he was, wouldn't he be thrilled when I wrote to tell him about finding his message? We might strike up a friendship, become pen pals, visit each other. Who knows, he might even have a handsome widowed father! With all my experience of that species I should given up such romantic dreams, but you can always hope, can't you?

I ran my fingers over the bottle's shoulders and down its narrow sides. Its water-smoothed contours were pleasing to the touch. I found myself remembering my erring husband and the seamen's stories he liked to tell: of strange mer-creatures caught in nets, seal-women singing at dusk, boats found adrift with their crews mysteriously vanished, compasses inexplicably refusing to work ... Such things were still said to happen. Today's fishermen protected themselves with satellite navigators and plotters instead of rituals and secret languages, but the sea remained an unpredictable and dangerous force.

I shivered, suddenly uneasy. This bottle - where had it come from? What currents had carried it? What would be inside it? Did I dare ...? Perhaps my uneasiness was a premonition. I had a cowardly urge to put on my waterproofs and take the bottle back to the rock, but the powers of the deep wouldn't fall for that trick. I had found the bottle - it was meant for me. I told myself there was nothing to worry about. Bottle messages turned up from time to time and they were totally harmless. Forget the superstitious stories. I tried to cling to the images of my happy boys, my handsome widower, but the uneasiness lingered. There was only one way to dispel it.

And here was a difficulty - I didn't want broken glass everywhere. I could have smashed the bottle on the concrete front doorstep, but the rain was teeming down and I would get wet again. It was tempting to postpone any action to the next day, but I knew I wouldn't be able to sleep if the bottle was in the house with its secret intact.

I hunted out a back copy of The Shetland Times. I spread the newspaper out on the table, placed the bottle diagonally in the centre, folded the edges of the sheets over top and bottom and rolled it up. Three strips of Sellotape held the package together. Once the bottle was hidden I was more reassured. The clumsy wrappings made it look like a child's innocent present, and surely that was all it was.

My first hammer blow was too tentative. I hit harder and felt the bottle give squashily through the newspaper. Another blow for luck, then I ripped off the Sellotape and opened the wrappings.

The body of the bottle had disintegrated into jagged spikes of glass. Under the splinters was a folded and curled sheet of yellow paper. Still postponing the fateful moment, I picked up the paper, tapped it to get rid of any glass fragments, then put it aside while I rewrapped the broken bottle and placed it in the rubbish bin.

Now. I took a deep breath and unfolded the paper. I skimmed down the message quickly, only taking in that it was in English and printed in large capitals, before focussing on the signature at the bottom. Ingrid Fronsdal.

Ingrid? I hadn't considered the possibility of the bottle being sent by a girl. But why not? I read her message.

My mouth fell open and I dropped the paper as if it had turned into a snapping crab. I staggered to the sink and gulped a glass of water. My head was whirling with a mixture of disbelief and disappointment. So much for the laughing children?!But who would write such a thing in a bottle message? Nobody in their right mind. Nobody except ... a witch?

I crossed back to the table. Without touching the paper, I bent over it to look at the message again. I might have misread or misunderstood it.

No, the English was stilted but the meaning was completely clear. The message had been written by Ingrid Fronsdal, widow, on her eighty-fifth birthday. The bottle had been thrown into the sea from the beach below her farm in the Lofoten Islands in Norway. That was unexpected, but not alarming. It was the last sentence which made my stomach clench in a knot of primitive dread.

Ingrid Fronsdal had written: "You who find my message, respond, or my curse is on you."

A witch, I thought. Ingrid is a sea-witch and she's put a curse in the bottle.

I tried to fight down my fear. That's nonsense, I told myself. Don't be childish. She's not a witch, just a batty old woman who didn't think about the effect her words might have. Treat this like a chain letter - get rid of it.

I snatched up the paper, darted to the stove and was about to hurl the cruel message into the flames when something checked me at the last second. Could I risk it? A long-submerged memory had surfaced in my mind.

Oxford, when I was, what - nineteen? On my way to meet my boyfriend, who was going to take me for a ride in the country. His name was gone, but I remembered his motorbike and his long red hair. Hurrying eagerly, I was turning the corner into his street when someone thrust an object into my hand.

"Oh, thank you," I said vaguely, my thoughts on the red hair soon to be blowing in my face. But my path was blocked by a woman, a drab, dirty creature in a long skirt, and she was demanding money. I saw that what she had given me was a bunch of white heather tied with a scrap of ribbon.

"I don't want it," I blurted, holding it out.

The woman snatched back the heather and spat on the pavement.

"You'll have bad luck!" she snarled.

And had I? I wouldn't have said so; until now, that is. But perhaps her curse had been lurking in the depths all this time, waiting for the right moment to strike? I couldn't chance it happening again.

"You're not going to frighten me, Ingrid Fronsdal," I said out loud. "I'll respond - but you won't like what I'm going to say to you!"

I sat down at the table, already composing a sharp reply to the old Norwegian, when for the first time I looked at the date printed at the top of the message. The twenty-fourth of April, nineteen - something - five. What was the third number? The style of printing was foreign and hard to make out. I held the paper this way and that to the light, and eventually decided it must be a five or a six. Either number was equally dismaying. The bottle had been in the sea for more than thirty years. If Ingrid had been eighty-five years old when she wrote it, she would now be -

She would be dead. How was I supposed to respond to her? Write a letter to her descendants? Hold a s‚ance? Build a memorial cairn? Light a candle and say a prayer?

While I was frowning over this, the telephone rang. It was Cassie.

"You'll never guess what -" I began, but she cut across me.

"They're giving me my own byline," she cried, and chattered on. My attention was only half on her excited flow of words, but she didn't notice. After a couple of minutes she paused and said, "Listen ..."

"I am listening," I said patiently.

"Are you all right? Really all right, I mean? I've been worrying about you being on your own with winter coming. I know how you hate the storms."

I didn't welcome this reminder of the storms. They had been bearable when he was here. On the nights when the wind raged and bellowed round the house so wildly that the bed shook, he would pull the eiderdown up over our heads and hold me tightly, saying, "Dinna fear, I've got you."

I whispered back the magic words that kept me safe, "And I've got you ..."

Now that I didn't have him, how would I control my terror? But I was a grown woman and knew I shouldn't be frightened by a bit of weather. Trying to sound confident and capable, I said to Cassandra, "Don't worry about me, I'll manage."

"Well, if you feel you can't, come down and stay with me."

"But I thought your flat only had one bedroom? You won't want me sharing."

"There's a sofa bed in the sitting room, that's where I work and I often crash out on it anyway. You could have the bedroom. It would be lovely to have you here - just the two of us? It'd be fun."

Tears pricked my eyelids. "That's really sweet of you," I said. "I'll keep it in mind if I get desperate."

Cassie is a nice girl. Her offer was kind, although it sounded impractical and couldn't be a long-term solution. I was glad I hadn't told her about the bottle message. Her father's superstitions might have rubbed off on her too, and for all she seemed well-balanced now, that balance might be precarious. It was another risk I couldn't take. Ingrid's message was something I had to deal with on my own - like the winter storms.

The wind had got up, and by the time I went to bed the rain was lashing the house. It had always been he who went outside last thing to check that the shed door was properly shut and that anything which might be blown over was tied down or moved inside. I couldn't face it. I pulled the eiderdown over my head and hugged myself, but my own arms gave me no comfort. This wasn't even a real storm, only a gale, and not a severe one at that. All the same, it was a foretaste of what was to come. Something else to worry about.

In the noisy darkness I lay and tussled with the problem of what to do about the message from Ingrid Fronsdal. Respond, or my curse is on you. But how? I couldn't "respond" to her - she was dead. Oh, why did it have to be me who found the bottle? Why did she write those words? Didn't it occur to her how old she was? Or had she spent a very happy birthday drinking whatever had been in the bottle, and got so pissed she didn't care? If she did, I hope it killed her.

The wind dropped down and my heart lightened for a moment. Perhaps a person's curse died with them? But then I remembered the curses written on the walls of Egyptian tombs and the inquisitive archaeologists struck down by them, and despaired. Once it was put into words, a curse held forever. I would be cursed because I couldn't respond to Ingrid Fronsdal, late of the Lofoten Islands. The wind rose again and I wept into my pillow.

A loud crash startled me awake in the middle of the night. Heart racing, I sat up in bed, trying to identify the sound. It was only the dustbin blowing over. I lay back, then sat up again abruptly. The noise had cleared my head and I saw Ingrid's message in a new light. Respond, it said: respond. Yes, I thought, I can! Of course I can!

The next two weeks were busy ones. I spent a long session with my solicitor and contacted an auctioneer who handled house displenishments. A stationer supplied me with a stick of sealing wax, and the Wine Shop at Lerwick's Market Cross produced a bottle of Orkney's finest: a bottle of twelve-year old Highland Park malt whisky. When I got this last home I transferred the malt to an empty bottle which had held something inferior, so that the Highland Park bottle could have its label soaked off and be washed and thoroughly dried.

On my last evening in the house I poured the last glass of malt and sat down at the kitchen table. Arranged in front of me were the Highland Park bottle, a pad of writing paper, the sealing-wax, a candle in a saucer and the atlas, opened at the page which showed the British Isles. His seaman's background had taught me one useful thing at least. I tore a sheet of paper from the pad and began my message.

At the top of the page I put the next day's date. I thought for a minute, then wrote, "This message is from - -" Out of habit I was about to put my married name, but I made a decision and boldly signed myself Smith. The name was so ordinary that I had once been glad to change it, but it was mine. "I am thirty-six years old," I continued, "divorced" - (well, I soon would be) - "with curly brown hair and dark eyes." Dear me, it was reading like an ad for a lonely hearts column! Enough of the personal stuff: get down to business.

My message finished, I rolled up the paper and pushed it into the empty bottle. Then I lit the candle and held the stick of sealing-wax in the flame, letting the red drops fall round the bottle cap until it was tightly sealed.

"There, Ingrid Fronsdal," I said. "I have responded. Rest in peace." And I raised my glass in a toast to her.

The following evening, when the P & O ferry left Holmsgarth pier at six, I went with it. I sat in the bar for a while, then went to my cabin and read a paperback. When I guessed that the ship had travelled the right distance, I put on my padded jacket and made my way to the deserted upper deck. The wind was strong and cold. The storms would be starting any day now - I was leaving just in time.

I drew the bottle out from under my jacket. Leaning over the rail as far as I could, I flung it into the waves. For a few seconds it reflected a glint from the ship's lights, then it was lost in the darkness.

I wonder where it will land up? My bottle might wander the seas for years like Ingrid's, a flying Orkneyman, or I might hear back from someone in a week. Tomorrow, after taking my bags to Cassie's flat, I will visit the central post office to make the arrangements.

One of his favourite mottoes was that those who take from the sea must give something back. Should I tell Cassie what I have given and taken? I still haven't decided. Wait and see is my motto.

I couldn't help smiling as I left the deck. The final part of my message read: "I am dropping this bottle from the MV St Clair at 58ø30'N, 1ø00W. Whoever finds it, you have my blessing. Please write to me at Poste Restante, Aberdeen."

Well, you can always hope, can't you?

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