The Antique Map Fair – Part 1: Lost Coastlines

The fair was held every November in the long hall of an old church in Edinburgh, between the stalls of postcards and the table of foxed atlases. Moira wandered through it with her scarf wrapped twice round her neck, running her gloved fingers along the glass cases, looking for nothing in particular.

Then she saw it.

It was folded under a pane of cracked glass at the back of a stall: a hand-coloured map of a small coastal village in the Highlands, the harbour inked in blue, the houses drawn as tiny red squares. In the corner, in faded copperplate: Achnasheen, surveyed 1873.

Her breath caught.

"Can I help you?" said a voice.

The dealer was tall and stooped, with a shock of white hair and half-moon glasses perched on a long nose. He wore a tweed waistcoat that had seen better decades, and he looked at her with amiable, patient interest.

"This map," said Moira. "Of Achnasheen. How much?"

"Ah." He took it out and laid it on the counter. "It is the only one I have seen in thirty years. I am afraid it is not for sale."

"Why not?"

"Because I do not sell maps to people who do not want to tell me why they want them."

Moira stared. Then she laughed, short and surprised.

"I was born there," she said. "Number four, the white house by the pier. My father was the lighthouse keeper's assistant. The house was demolished in 1978, and I have never found a picture of it."

The dealer looked at the map, and then at her.

"Then you had better look closely," he said, and slid it across. "Number four. Third from the harbour."

She bent over it. The tiny red square was exactly where she remembered. She traced it with one finger, and her eyes filled.

"It is there," she whispered.

"It always was," said the dealer, gently. "I am Hamish. Would you like a cup of tea? There is a very bad urn at the back, and a plate of shortbread."

"Is that the price of the map?"

"The price is a story," said Hamish. "Everything I sell, I sell for a story. It keeps me honest."

They sat on two folding chairs behind the stall, with paper cups of tea and a tin of shortbread, and Moira told him about the lighthouse, the grey sea, the winter her father had been trapped on the rock for six days with only a tin of peaches. Hamish listened with his chin on his hand, and laughed in all the right places.

"Can I ask you something?" said Hamish, when she had finished.

"Yes."

"Would you let me frame it for you? It would take a week. And then you could tell me the rest of the stories, when you collect it."

Moira's heart gave a small, hopeful skip. "Yes," she said. "But only if you tell me one of yours."

"Deal," said Hamish. "Green?"

"Green," said Moira. "Very green. Pour the tea, Hamish."