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abandoned to the elements. On colder days when the tide was out they walked across the long shore to the harbour and saw the fishermen digging for bait and the fearful blanched and bristling worms that emerged from the depths of the clean sand. In the rock pools were jewel studs of anemones and transparent shrimps like water fairies, and sometimes the black questing pincers and antennae of a lobster lurking in myopic retreat beneath the weedy ledges.
    Janet built castles for princesses with strandy green lawns and walls hung in pink shells and cowrie shells, pillared gate- ways of razor shells, roof-tops of mussels and limpet battlements. She ran in and out of the curving waves or sat among them, feeling the sands pull and sink away from under her and then come billowing back with a rush and a splash. Francis stood still for hours spinning flat stones across the shining water and Rhona dug holes in tireless absorption. The dogs dug holes too, flinging up showers of sand into the wind; or they rushed after storms of seagulls barking hysterically.
    The beach spread in a great curve, fringed by mournful dunes. At one end was the harbour with its high grey pier and the fishermen ’ s boats pulled up on the shingle; far off at the other end crags and cliffs loomed, with the scar of a lofty boulder-strewn cave where once Macduff had hidden for his life from murderous, mad Macbeth. Above, on the short turf scattered with pink thrift, stood the ruins of a tower and there in happier times Lady Macduff and her women had gone to bathe, clambering down the secret stairway hewn in the cliff face into a glass-green cove where the wind could not reach the water for the surrounding basalt walls. In the summer you could hear the ladies ’ laughter, for the sound of the sea then was an echo, a soft sighing, the hushed murmur in a shell; but in the storms of winter the air swirled and boomed with the howling of the damned, the outrage of the murdered innocents. Janet was afraid of this place and did not like its sinister jutting outline, even against the blue and sunny skies. She also knew that one must be brave and so she would walk carefully, accompanied by Rab, the heroic lion dog, each day a little further, but never very far, along the shore towards it. When she had felt brave enough, her hand plunged in the dense gold fur of Rab ’ s neck, she would turn around and look back at her family, diminished and vulnerable under the great sky, before the great sea – Francis still as a cormorant at the water ’ s edge, Rhona squat by her mound of sand, Hector and Vera laughing, smoking and flicking ash on to the lesser dog ’ s wiry coat. Then she would run as fast as she could, feet slapping through the wet, and hurl herself down beside them in the warm soft sand, sending it flying into Rhona ’ s eyes, into sandwiches, into the precious thermos of tea.
    Retribution and exile immediately followed, but not for long, for those days were a breathing space between the war and the rest of life and they were days of a rare happiness, goodwill and forgiveness. When the chill of evening came on the sands although the sun still shone, they carried their baskets back up the path through the dunes, across the lane and into the manse garden. Dazed with the long hours of bright sea air, the children trailed rugs behind them through the lingering perfume of phloxes, past the clump of golden rod where Dandelion the cat was curled in his den, glaring out at the dogs with unflinching malevolence. Nanny issued from behind the white rose hedge wielding a rough towel; now came the ritual of rubbing off sand and emptying sandals and shaking out jerseys. Then, at the exact moment when they began to feel cold, it was through the house, up the stairs and into the blissful hot waters of the bath big enough to take all three of them. After the bath came Nanny ’ s dreadful question, ‘ Have you done what you should do today? ’ If the answer was wrong they were