There is a moment, about three-quarters of the way through Carys Davies’s third novel, Clear, so simultaneously startling and pleasing that I put the book down in delight. In trepidation, too: this is a story with the electric hum of a thriller — in a gentle key.
Davies, an award-winning short story writer, has a talent for creating slender masterpieces in historical settings: her first novel, West, was a fable-like tale about the exploration of America in the 19th century.
Clear, barely 150 pages long and a similar exercise in brevity, is set in Scotland in 1843 at the time of the Highland Clearances, when landowners forcibly uprooted the rural poor from their homes. But it is primarily about the power of human connection in unlikely circumstances. It begins with the perilous landing of minister John Ferguson on a remote island beyond Shetland: nearer Norway than Aberdeen.
In need of money, he has taken on the unlikely job of evicting the island’s sole remaining inhabitant. He comes alone, armed with his half-translated gospels, his wife’s fruitcake — and a gun.
The target of his mission is Ivar, his face “lined and weather-worn … heavy, with a kind of hewn quality”. He has been alone for years, kept company in his fragile existence by the shifting moods of the landscape. One day he finds John unconscious at the bottom of a cliff. He straps him to his horse and takes him into his home.
Davies doesn’t just describe the landscape, she puts us there, makes us feel the spray on our faces and the wind through our hair
He knows as much of John’s English and Scots as the minister knows of his obscure dialect: virtually none. It means John cannot tell him the true nature of his task even if he wanted to. Despite their mutual incomprehension, the two slowly form a bond, settling into an uneasy domesticity that feels almost dream-like. Ivar, concerned about the cold, knits John a pair of socks and makes sure they stay on when he sleeps. He feeds him porridge, mends his coat.
John, meanwhile, turns the “smudgy, sea-rinsed pages” of his gospels into a glossary of Ivar’s dying language. But John’s gun, left behind in the house he stayed in before his fall from the cliffs, is never fully forgotten.
The island and its dialect are as much characters as the two men. Davies doesn’t just describe the landscape, she puts us there, makes us feel the spray on our faces and the wind through our hair: “There were days when the mist fell like a cloak on to the island’s shoulders; when rain fell in big, coarse drops, melting the soil into a soft brown soup; when a cold, light wind blew low over the ground making the bogs shiver.”
But Clear’s structure is as skilfully woven as its sentences. There is a third strand to Davies’s tale: John’s wife, Mary, who is still on the mainland. Increasingly worried about her unworldly husband, she pawns her wedding ring and boards a ship to find him.
And so the three sides of the triangle are drawn together, with Ivar and John’s fragile happiness underscored by dread. The chapters become shorter and more urgent, the clock ticking on Mary’s arrival and whether John’s true task — and that Chekhovian gun — will be discovered.
After such a careful building of suspense, the ending feels oddly rushed. But at a time when so much in the world feels too loud and too overwhelming, there is great pleasure to be found in Davies’s clear and calm prose, her wry asides and deep love of language, and in the book’s quiet optimism. It is a slim, masterfully carved gem of a story that you won’t easily forget: slip it into your pocket.
Clear by Carys Davies (Granta, £12.99) is out now
