by Caroline Lea
I remember the way Con had shrieked at them to go, her whole body rigid.
I remember her silence when they didn’t come back. The way she had taken herself down to the shore, day after day, watching the sea. The way she had blamed herself. The days when she had gone swimming and had held herself below the water, trying to cut off her own breath.
I’d seen the expression on her face today, as she held the coat over the soldier’s face. Along with grief, and fear, I’d seen something like longing. Something like envy.
I hold my trembling hands against my face in the darkness, trying to rid myself of the damp scratch of that wool, warm from the man’s breath.
The next day dawns bright, the light blinding as it reflects off the still sea.
Con is quiet as she scatters grain for the chickens, as she stirs the porridge on the stove.
‘Are you all right?’ I ask.
She tells me she is; she flashes a quick smile at me. But as soon as she turns away from me her smile fades. She looks grief-stricken.
I watch her from the corner of my eyes as she scrubs the man’s brownish bloodstain from her shirt sleeve.
‘Let me do that,’ I say.
‘I’m fine.’ She pushes me away, her face like a waxwork.
‘For Heaven’s sake, Con!’ I snatch the shirt from her. ‘What’s wrong?’
But I know what’s wrong: we both do. Con had gone into the sea to rescue the sailors; instead, she’d held a man down and cut off his air to save him. I can see her thoughts in the way she looks at her hands, the way she rests her fingers on the pulse at her neck when she thinks I’m not looking. The pulse that tells her she is still alive; the hands that tell her she can end a life, if she wants to.
Early January 1942
The town hall in Kirkwall is packed with people: every seat taken and all the standing room besides. Whole families huddle at the back, with mothers anxiously rocking babies and shushing their children’s questions. The windows are misted, the air hot and close. All eyes fix on the table at the front, where John O’Farrell, Kirkwall’s mayor, is shuffling papers and avoiding eye contact.
He is a big man, broad across the shoulders, with a shock of red hair – greying of late. On a normal day, he wears an easy smile, although his face now is serious as he clears his throat and looks out at the murmuring crowd.
‘Thank you for coming,’ he says, and the chatter in the room fades. ‘I know it’s a cold night and there are those of you who’ll want to be getting back to your beds. Myself, for a start.’
A series of polite titters, and everyone waits.
He continues: ‘Now, you’ll all have noticed the ships coming in and unloading materials and I know there’s been some talk and speculation. But I want to tell you that the main priority is to keep these islands safe. The sinking of the Royal Elm has hit all of us hard. The Germans coming so close – it’s a worry.’
A sob from the back of the room, quickly stifled.
O’Farrell coughs. ‘Over eight hundred lives lost that night, but many men saved – hundreds of English sailors – and that’s down to the heroism of the people on these islands. Still, we need to be sure that such a thing never occurs again. We’re in agreement with the English about this –’
A shout from the back: ‘Is it true Churchill himself came here?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous, Donald,’ someone replies. ‘You wouldn’t know Churchill from your own –’
O’Farrell holds up his hands. ‘Aye, it’s true. He came.’
Whispers hiss around the hall.
O’Farrell waves for quiet. ‘Mr Churchill has discussed the matter with myself and the Kirkwall Parish Council, and we’re all in agreement that these islands need fortifying.’
Fortifying? An uneasy mutter rises. What does that mean? Does it have anything to do with the shipments of cement over the past weeks? The sheets of metal, the spools of wire?
‘So,’ O’Farrell holds up his hands again, ‘to that end, we’ve decided to build barriers in the bay, between the islands. Four of them, made of rocks and cement, and strong enough to withstand the currents –’
Shouts ring out: ‘Barriers?’
‘Blocking off the sea?’
‘You must be mad!’
‘What’ll it do to the tides?’
‘The fishing?’
‘It’ll cause floods and all sorts.’
‘Enough!’ John O’Farrell bangs a fist on the table, and there is immediate quiet – he isn’t known for his temper, after all.
‘Enough,’ he repeats, more quietly. ‘The barriers must be built: it’s an order from Churchill himself.’
Stephen Alexander, with the windswept hair and the red-veined cheeks steps forward. ‘With due respect, it could be an order from God Almighty Himself, it still wouldn’t make it right.’
There is some muttering at this blasphemy, despite the nerves.
Stephen apologizes and agrees that he needs to keep away from the bottle, these days.
John O’Farrell clears his throat. ‘In order to facilitate the building of these barriers, a workforce will be needed. So I must tell you that, in two weeks’ time, a large number of foreign prisoners of war will be arriving on the islands.’
A stunned silence.
‘Foreign?’ someone says.
‘Aye, Italian men, currently being held in North Africa. A thousand of them.’
Uproar.
‘A thousand?’
‘You’re jesting,’ someone calls.
O’Farrell stands, his face impassive, but his hands brace against the desk in front of him. His fingers press down hard, whitening under the pressure.
‘The men will stay,’ he says, ‘on Selkie Holm.’
‘No!’ Two voices from the back of the room, speaking together.
Every head in the room turns towards them – those Reid twins, so rarely seen in Kirkwall, these days.
‘No, you can’t,’ one of them says. Her voice is shaking; the other girl’s breathing is loud, as if she’s been running.
‘I’m sorry,’ O’Farrell says, ‘but it’s already been decided.’
A collective held breath, as everyone waits for them to answer.
‘Jesus Christ,’ Stephen Alexander declares loudly. ‘Selkie Holm. That’s a bad omen.’
And in the silence that follows, no one scolds him for his blasphemy.
Everyone files out of the hall, whispering. You’ve heard what happens there: the disappearances, the odd lights and noises, aye. People driven mad by the sight of some creature in the waters there, as beautiful as it is repulsive.
Bad enough, people agree, that those girls are living on the cursed island, let alone a thousand prisoners. Who knows what horrors will be dredged up?
John O’Farrell has sat down at the desk, and doesn’t look up at the girls.
‘You can’t do this,’ Dorothy says.
‘I’m sorry.’ He piles the papers and begins stuffing them into his briefcase. ‘I argued against it.’
‘But . . . it’s our home.’
‘I know. But things are changing.’ He spreads his hands, gesturing to the piled papers.
‘So we should just bow down and do whatever the English say? Are messages from London to be our laws now?’
He looks away, tucks the remaining papers into the briefcase, locks it and stands. ‘I wish you’d come back to live in Kirkwall,’ he says. ‘It’s not right, the two of you being out alone on that island –’
‘Surrounded by a thousand men?’ Dorothy says, her face rigid. ‘And after everything that’s happened . . .’ She glances at Constance, who is holding a hand up to her neck, as if she’s struggling to breathe.
Dorothy drops her voice to a whisper. ‘You know she wanted to be away from men, after Angus.’
O’Farrell’s expression is pained. ‘I wish I could change it.’
‘You know she has nightmares?’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘So am I
,’ Dorothy says.
The girls turn and walk together from the hall, out into the cold night.
There is some talk, among those who’ve been eavesdropping, about following them, trying to talk some sense into them. Those girls have had enough bad luck already, and being on that island can only stir up more misfortune. It’s said that anyone living there will go mad. It’s said that misfortune will follow them. Enough people have died or vanished there, over the years. Surely the girls should be reminded of that.
But then it is agreed that there is only so much you can do. Some people are determined to go their own way, and all you can do is watch and hope.
Mid-January 1942
Dorothy
It is raining when the Italian prisoners arrive.
Con and I had been watching for a ship all morning, peering through the net of mist and drizzle. The cold had wormed its way inside us, so that we shuddered on every breath, but still we didn’t walk back into the bothy.
‘There!’ Con had said, but she didn’t need to point it out: I’d spotted the grey shape at the same moment. There was something monstrous about the sight of that warship, so much bigger than any of the others in the bay.
On the hill, just out of sight of the bothy, was the camp that the prisoners would be living in – we’d watched it being built over the past weeks. A huge rectangle of land had been sectioned off with wire fencing, topped with toothed rolls of barbed wire. Within this yard were flimsy corrugated-iron huts that looked as though they’d be swept away in the next storm. There were bigger huts too: a large building with tables and benches for the men to eat at, and a slightly smaller structure with desks and chairs – we’d seen the English guards bringing them across. There was another hut, tiny, really, which, when the door blew open in a strong gust of wind, revealed a set of manacles chained to the wall.
Con and I had looked at each other in wonder: what sort of men were they expecting that they had prepared chains and manacles? We’d heard rumours in Kirkwall of the awful things that soldiers did elsewhere: Michael Dalton had parachuted from his burning plane over occupied France; it had taken him weeks to escape enemy territory, over the Alps and into Spain. The French women were starving, he’d said. They’d been beaten, shot at. Some of them had been forced to bear German children.
‘These are Italian prisoners,’ Con had said to Michael, ‘not German soldiers.’
‘They’re all Fascists.’ His eyes had been wild. ‘Just listen to the news reports.’
We’d gone home and Con had twisted the aerial on the radio so that the news reports blurred into a static hum.
‘No need to terrify ourselves,’ she’d said. ‘And over rumours and stories.’
I’d nodded, thinking about the older men on the island who’d fought in the trenches in France: the way Mr Mackenzie’s hands trembled; the way Mr Greenwood wept if he heard a car engine backfire. He didn’t seem to notice the tears, but sat staring, wet-cheeked and frozen, until his daughter took him by the hand and led him home. I thought of our own father, who’d woken us all at night, screaming in his sleep.
We’d seen what war could do.
And now, the ship is here: huge and grey, like an approaching wall.
I stand on the clifftop and watch silently as the prisoners are led off it and up towards the huts. So many men, an army of strangers, soldiers. Unarmed, but still – do they carry violence beneath their skin? Have they killed men? Watched them die? Do they support Mussolini and Hitler?
Sometimes, when Con is sleeping, I twist the aerial until it picks up the news reports, then wish I hadn’t.
Capture. Bombardment. Slaughter.
‘It’s not too late to go back to Kirkwall,’ I murmur.
I don’t need to look at Con to know she is shaking her head.
Half of Orkney has come out to see the men arrive. Some of the people are far-off specks on the hills on the mainland; others have taken to their boats and watch the huge battleship weigh anchor. They are watching us too, the Selkie Holm islanders. We see them, bobbing on the water, staring, as if waiting for a performance to begin.
Sometimes, at night, I think of the curse on this island. The talk of madness. The story about the girl who had lived here long ago and, driven to the point of insanity by the curse, and fearing that her husband meant her harm, had stabbed him in his sleep. To live here is to risk killing a lover.
But Con doesn’t have a lover and neither do I. And we don’t believe the old tales.
Hundreds of men begin marching down the gangplank onto our island. Identical, at this distance.
Swarm, I think. Shoal. Flock.
Our father’s old gun is back in the bothy. Just in case.
‘They’re handsome,’ I say, ‘and they look . . .’ I nearly say ordinary, but it’s not quite true. ‘Well, they don’t look frightening.’
‘Best to be wary, even if they’re not murderers,’ Con says.
Even a dangerous man may look like an angel. Our mother had told us that long ago and, of course, she’d been right. But by the time Con discovered what Angus MacLeod was really like, our mother was gone.
A thin, pale sunlight breaks the clouds; some of the prisoners stop and gaze out at where the water is a shifting mirror. One smiles and points at a fulmar wheeling overhead. The bird swoops, dives, smashes into its watery reflection, then emerges with a fish flapping in its beak.
The two prisoners cheer, then grin at each other. They don’t look like foreign soldiers, for a moment. They could be dark-haired young men from anywhere.
They’re just like us. The thought is sudden and surprising.
The guards shout, stepping forward with their batons.
The men flinch, then move on, heads down. The gangplank is crowded now, the guards chivvying the men to move faster. They bump into each other and stumble.
There is a sudden cry from the ship. As I look up, I see that one of the prisoners who had cheered is teetering on the edge of the overcrowded gangplank, his arms flailing, clutching at the hands of his comrades, who reach for him.
Too late.
He plummets into the water and disappears.
There is a gasp and the Italians stop walking and stare at the spot of water where the man fell. The sea is green-grey, moodily shifting, but there is no sign of the man.
‘Oh, God,’ I whisper.
In their boats, some of the islanders are crossing themselves. I can imagine the stories: the prisoner who disappeared, the sacrifice taken by the sea before she would allow foreigners safe passage to the island. The superstitions about Selkie Holm will grow.
Death. Murder. Sacrifice.
On shore, the guards shout to each other and pace up and down, watching the water.
‘We have to do something.’ The words emerge before I’m aware of thinking them. How can I let the man drown? I remember the men from the ship sinking, their fading cries. I remember the stillness of the man’s body as we lifted Con’s coat from his bloodied face.
‘We have to do something,’ I say again.
‘Don’t even think of it,’ Con replies. ‘It’s not like before. The water’s rough. You’d never find him.’ Her face is tense, her jaw clenched. Con has barely slept since the sinking of the boat and the death of the poor sailor. She refuses to wear her coat – I found it stuffed under the bed, a black bloodstain on the blue wool.
She shivers.
I remember the feeling of the man’s face under my fingers. The way his body had fought for air, even when he’d decided he wanted to die.
We wait. Nothing. A body can survive for three minutes without air.
The guards pace, watching, waiting. Not one will jump in to save him. Again, that heat rises in me – the nauseating panic and dread.
He is gone.
He is drowning.
He is under those waters, fighting for breath, his lungs burning.
‘Lay salt upon his chest.’ Con murmurs the beginnings of the old funeral rite.
‘He’s not dead yet,’ I snap.
Ten paces in front of me is the cliff face.
I let go of Con’s hand and run.
Whistling wind, then the smack and cold shock of the water.
Stupid to do this in January. Brainless. Foolhardy.
I hear a cry above me. Con’s pale face, like a coin. I can see her running down towards the harbour, the gangplank, where she might try to reach me. But by that time, it will be too late for the man.
I dive down, kicking out. Under the surface, a vice of icy water clamps around my skull. I surface, gasping, then plunge down again, reaching out. Nothing.
I come up for another lungful, then flip and dive steeply, deeper than I feel I should, until my own chest is alight, the air bubbling from my lips. My thoughts are screaming.
Three minutes. Three minutes.
And still nothing until – something soft. A hand? Clothes? I grasp the fabric, yank and pull, flicking my body upwards, tugging something to the surface – heavy, like some sea creature dragged up from the deep.
God, oh, God. He’s dead and I’m too late.
The bone-breaking cold of the water squeezes me as I slap him across the face. Again and again I shout at him, some wordless cry. This will be what the islanders talk of later – this moment when I pulled a drowned foreigner from the water and screamed life back into him.
They will agree that it was unnatural I’d dived for him, uncanny that I’d saved him. And that shriek I’d given – Good Lord, but did you hear it? Echoed off the cliffs, it did, as if it was some beast screaming, not a woman.