The Metal Heart

by Caroline Lea

  But that is all later.

  Now, the man in my arms coughs and heaves and splutters. I turn him in the water and strike his back, keeping his head out of the sea with my other hand.

  When he has stopped choking, I pull his face close to mine and put my hand under his chin. His skin is chill, but I can feel the rasp of his stubble, can feel the heave of air in his throat and down into his chest. His hair brushes my cheek. I rest for a moment, panting, counting the hammering beat of blood under his skin.

  I swim slowly, turning my face from the waves that keep filling my nose and mouth. A heaviness creeps into my limbs and I am suddenly aware of the yawn of water beneath me, the way my body is slowing, pulling me downward, as if towards some invisible rope attached to the sea bed.

  I am so tired. Saltwater fills my mouth.

  I could let him go, this man, this foreigner. I could let him sink and I could swim to the ledge. I could rest.

  No! I keep my eyes fixed on Con’s face; she is waiting for me near the gangplank, her hands outstretched. I kick my legs, my muscles screaming as I reach out and clutch the ledge. The guards shout. Hands reach down and grab the man around the arms, lifting him from the water and dumping him on the ground.

  A wave buffets me, water filling my nose and mouth. Everything is dark and indistinct. I flail, trying to swim, to surface – but which way is up? Again, that heaviness in my limbs, that downward tug towards the sea floor.

  Suddenly, hands are on mine in the water, and then I’m dragged upwards towards light and air. I splutter as Con, in the water next to me, heaves me out of the sea.

  We both lie panting on the ledge, then Con puts her arm across my chest.

  I grip it.

  Heat. Life. Home.

  Dimly, I am aware of the guards calling to us, and the Italians muttering, but all of it is a blur of sound.

  ‘You stupid fool! You could have died,’ she gasps.

  ‘But I didn’t.’ I smile shakily. ‘You saved me.’

  ‘I could have died too.’ She pulls away. A finger width of chill between us.

  The prisoner is being half lifted, half carried by the guards as they walk up the hill towards the camp. He is still coughing and unsteady on his feet.

  As he approaches the barbed-wire fence of the camp, the wind yanks a damp piece of card from his hand. It flutters through the air.

  I run forward to pick it up. It is a tiny picture of Mary and Jesus and a blood-red heart. Crumpled and grubby, and now sea-soaked, but clearly much-loved.

  I can feel eyes upon me, can feel warmth travelling through my chest, into my cheeks. He is staring at me, the prisoner. His hair is wet and his eyes wide.

  You’d be dead, I think, if it wasn’t for me. It is a strange thought – it makes him seem more present and more real than any other person there. More, even, than Con.

  The prisoner nods at the card. ‘For luck,’ he says.

  I hadn’t expected any of the prisoners to speak English. His voice is lilting – there is music in the words and I’m suddenly dry-mouthed, wanting him to speak again.

  And he does. ‘For luck,’ he repeats. And then his face breaks into a smile, and he inclines his head towards the sea and shivers; his dark hair falls over his eyes and he pushes it back. I think of how close we had both come to drowning and I grin too, heat travelling through my limbs, a pulse beating in my chest, in my stomach, on the surface of my skin.

  The sensation is almost as though I know him already, this man – as if something in my body recognizes him. It is something in the span of his shoulders, but it is mostly in his eyes, in his smile.

  He watches me, with the card in my hand, and his head tilted slightly to one side. His shoulders are broad, although he is thin; his stance is upright and proud, even though he is shivering. I am used to people looking at me and Con together, as one, their gaze shifting between us, but this man looks only at me. And, as I gaze back at him, I feel again there is something in this stranger that I understand, or that he understands or knows something of me – impossible as that is, ridiculous as it is. Foolish.

  I hold out the card – my hand is steady, even as I feel I should be trembling. Without looking away from my face, he takes the card and puts it back into his pocket.

  ‘Thank you,’ he says.

  My pulse skips and the heat spreads even further, a steady pulsing flame licking over my skin, down to my fingertips. I want to say something to him, but I can’t think of a single word, so I watch him walk away, until he disappears behind the gates of the camp, until his brown uniform blends with all the other men’s.

  Con’s eyes are on me. There is stillness between us. A gull caws.

  ‘Thank you for diving in for me,’ I say.

  ‘Let’s go back to the bothy,’ she says, and turns her back. My skirts slap against my legs and each step feels colder than the last.

  That night, the air is raw and the wind whips through the hole in the bothy roof. Next to me, Con’s breathing is steady, regular, peaceful. I ease myself from the bed and slip out of the door, like a ghost. The grass crisps beneath my bare feet and the chill is instant, numbing: I won’t be able to stand here for long.

  On the breast of the opposite hill, the huts cast cut-out shadows against the night sky. Dimly, I can make out a faint orange glow from the fires inside. It looks almost cosy from here, like something in a fairytale. All such folktales end in death, but I can’t imagine how this particular story might finish. It feels new, something that has never been told so far north: the hundreds of men brought as prisoners to an ill-fated island during wartime. And somewhere, in one of those huts, the broad-shouldered man with the card.

  I remember the weight of his body in the water. I remember the heat of his cheek against mine as I swam.

  The next morning, Con and I take the rods down to catch mackerel.

  Our feet lead us in the direction of the camp, even though we haven’t discussed it. What will the men be doing today? When will they start work on the barriers – and how? We know ships will be bringing in some of the supplies, but the men will need to dig the rock from the islands, somehow.

  At the town-hall meeting, someone had mentioned explosives. A quarry.

  The barbed wire around the camp glitters in the early-morning sun. A whistle rings out, then the sound of boots thudding. A shout, quickly smothered. My heart hammers in my chest. So close to the camp, the sounds seem spiked with violence.

  I stop, unable to make myself go any closer to the wire.

  Con stops, too, and we sit in the long grasses near the huts. It’s possible to remain unseen, if you’re still enough. Some of the prisoners walk to the square of dirt in the centre of the yard, where one of the guards shouts orders at them – the wind whips away his words, but the anger of his tone carries, and the Italian men stare down at their boots, their shoulders hunched.

  ‘They must feel so far from home,’ I say.

  Con nods.

  Another whistle sounds and the men flinch to attention, then turn to go into the large central hut. For food, I suppose.

  What would have to happen to men so that they react to a whistle like that? Like weary dogs, wary of the constant threats of fist and boot.

  There is another shout from further down the hill, on the shore. A dozen people, most of them dressed in civilian clothes, are pulling a boat up onto the beach.

  ‘They must be from Kirkwall,’ I say, waiting for Con to protest against yet more men arriving on our island, but she says nothing and we watch the group walking up the hill – men and women both, I see now. Some are carrying baskets and boxes, and some of the men are dressed in the dark uniform of the guards. They are too far away for us to make out their faces or hear their conversation but, still, there is something fascinating and horrifying about seeing them moving towards the camp. It is like watching a show – the sort of performance that used to be played by travelling companies on the Kirkwall streets in the summer, where the actors put on plays
by Shakespeare. We’d liked The Tempest best. Magic and secrets and the sea. The actors had their entrances and exits and some held weapons, and you knew that, at any moment, everything might change. As children, we’d cheered at love and death alike.

  Over the coming days, we go back to the camp again and again to watch the men: their daily routine of walking down to dig gravel or rocks out of the new quarry on the shore. I search for his face among them. His eyes had been serious, but warm. He had smiled at me – or perhaps I had imagined that. Each time I try to picture him, his face blurs in my mind until I can’t remember exactly how he’d looked. If I close my eyes, I can still feel the scratch of his stubble against my hand as I’d held him in the water.

  The Italians unload equipment from the ship: a lorry, a digger, a drum for cement. Each noisy machine that rolls off the boat brings new sound and activity to the island. And even during the night, our peace is shattered. The light from the camp obliterates the stars, and the shouts of men – in pain, despair or joy, we never know – pull us awake.

  And at night, while Con sleeps, I fiddle with the twisted radio aerial until I pick up stray words, fizzing through the darkness: invasion . . . utmost violence . . . death toll.

  One morning, about a week after the Italians arrived, Con and I are sitting near a patch of gorse, close to the camp.

  We are absolutely still when I see a flash of movement from the corner of my eye. A man is walking alongside the barbed wire, dressed in the dark green uniform of the prison guards. Too far away to see the face, but I can make out the blond hair and wide shoulders of Angus MacLeod. And he is staring at us.

  I feel a wash of ice water running through me.

  ‘Bastard,’ I mutter, all thoughts of the Italians driven from my mind. ‘Come on, Con. Back to the bothy.’ There is still time: she hasn’t seen him.

  Con makes to protest.

  ‘Come on,’ I say, my chest tight, my mouth dry. Please don’t see him, please don’t see him.

  It is too late: Angus is walking towards us. Grinning.

  My heart drumming, I stand and try to keep my voice steady. ‘What’re you doing here?’

  ‘What sort of a greeting is that now, Dot? I thought you’d be pleased to see me. Con is. Aren’t you, Con?’ Angus had usually been able to tell us apart, somehow, ever since we had been children together at school.

  ‘You’re a guard here?’ Con’s voice is tight. ‘Who made you a guard?’

  Angus turns around, spreading his arms wide, as if showing off his uniform. ‘I hear you went for a swim in the sea last week, Dot.’

  ‘Never you mind.’

  ‘There’s talk of it. Jumped off a cliff. Half drowned yourself. Much suspicion as to why you’re so intent on rescuing foreign men from the sea. Some have said that you’re feeling the lack of a man here.’ He gives a lewd grin.

  ‘You’re best to stay away from this island, Angus.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t believe any of the rumours about this place. The pair of you seem safe enough here. And there’s such a beautiful view.’ MacLeod gestures towards us.

  ‘Go back to Kirkwall,’ I say, my jaw clenched.

  ‘Now, Dot, you be careful, or you’ll get the same vicious reputation as your sister. I’m just looking. No harm in admiring beauty, is there?’

  Next to me, Con’s breathing is loud, laboured. I put my arm across her shoulders and pull her towards me.

  ‘Come on. Let’s go home.’

  We turn away from him.

  ‘Oh, now, that’s a shame,’ Angus calls. ‘Aren’t you going to invite me for a bannock?’

  I can feel his gaze following us, all the way to the bothy.

  And even after I have shut the door, I still sense his eyes on us. I can’t escape the feeling that, no matter how hard we try, we will never escape him.

  We can never keep him out. The realization is a cold fist twisting inside my chest. Suddenly, it is hard to breathe.

  I press the old piece of sailcloth more closely around the window, then wedge half an old plank across the window frame, piling stones around the base to secure it. Con uses a nail to tighten the screws in the door’s hinges, and then we stand on the bed together, steadying each other as we rearrange the wood, plastic sheeting and sailcloth that covers the hole in the roof. There is still a small gap, revealing the darkening sky, but it will have to do.

  Then, without a word, we get our father’s gun from the kitchen cabinet. I pass the bullets to Con, and she loads them into the barrel, one by one.

  We keep the gun between us on the bed.

  That night, there is a rattling at our door. A scrabbling noise, as if something is clawing at the wood, then at the metal handle. Silver moonlight splashes through the hole in the roof, shifting as the wind lifts the tattered piece of sailcloth.

  There’s a scratch, scratch of something at the door. A rat? A fox? But, no, there are no foxes here. My hands are clammy, my heart knocking against my ribs.

  The bothy wall is hard against my back, and Con’s breathing is loud. ‘What is it?’ she gasps.

  I shake my head.

  The lock on the door holds fast, and the board in the window doesn’t move but, still, we sit with our backs hard against the wall, watching the door, waiting. The metal of the gun is cold; I clutch it so hard that my knuckles ache.

  The scratching continues, then turns to a series of rattling thuds. And with every thud comes a cold, creeping terror and, a dank smell, like old soil.

  In Kirkwall, they tell so many tales about lost lovers: drowned men and women – stories of adoration, stories of despair. For years, they’ve kept people away from this island, this damned place.

  There is another tale told about a girl – a shepherd’s daughter – who grew up poor on Selkie Holm and lived in this bothy. She fell in love with a rich Scottish man, though she had a lover already, to whom she was betrothed. But he was poor and she was tired of being cold, sick of Selkie Holm, sick of the taste of potatoes and the texture of dry bread. The rich man would never look twice at her, she knew, while she was engaged to this poor man. Quietly and without fuss, she cooked a stew of potatoes and hemlock for her lover. When he complained at the bitter taste, she wept, so that he ate every last drop, just to dry her tears. Then she rowed his body out to sea and married the rich man. But she was driven mad by guilt and couldn’t rest, even in death. On some nights, the people in Kirkwall believe that her cold ghost and the ghost of her murdered beloved both walk the island on Selkie Holm, tormenting those who feel guilty. They are trying to return to the bothy, shivering. Searching for a body, hot with shame that might lend them warmth.

  When Con first heard the story, she said that the girl should have buried the man, because you can never trust that the sea won’t wash things up.

  People only feel guilty if they’re worried about being caught.

  It’s easy to believe the old tales in the middle of the night, as the wind buffets the door and the moonlight slews across the walls and the scratching, rattling thuds continue.

  I imagine the door swinging open. I will raise the gun and steady it. I will aim for the heart or the head. My muscles ache. I count to one hundred, one thousand, ten thousand. I eye the hole in the roof, waiting for someone to climb through it. I watch the door, waiting for it to open. But the lock holds and the ragged rent of sky above remains a dark blank.

  The wind drops, the scratching stops and, eventually, Con rests her head against my shoulder and I feel her body slump into sleep. Her breath whispers against my neck. I think of all I would do to protect her, everything I would sacrifice.

  I try to imagine tomorrow and the days after with Angus MacLeod here and with the souls of a thousand men on the island. I imagine them all breathing into the darkness: the prisoners, the guards and the cooks and the people who will deliver letters and food. It is as if our lives have become a map, which is being folded ever smaller, as the world outside crushes everything together.

  ‘We’re not
alone any more,’ I whisper, to Con, to myself, to the noises in the darkness, to the buzzing of the words circling in my thoughts. ‘We won’t ever be alone again.’

  Part Two

  It is the way you lean into me

  and the way I lean into you, as if

  we are each other’s prevailing.

  From ‘Orkney / This Life’, Andrew Greig

  Mid-January 1942

  Cesare

  These are the things he finds hard in Orkney: the sky, the open space, the weather. The sea, a yawn of water that roars and growls and threatens a cold grave. The ice that gnaws at his bones, day and night. The eyes watching him – the guards watching him dig, or his fellow prisoners watching him sleep in the hut at night. Never alone but always lonely. The anger. He finds the anger hard because there is nothing to do with it, except clench it inside.

  Home for Cesare was Moena, in northern Italy. Border country, surrounded by mountains, bursting with green life. It had been invaded time and time again over the years, and had a language unique to the area – Ladin – and flew a Turkish flag. They were outsiders, the people of Moena, but, like the people of Orkney, they were also insiders: they belonged wholly to each other, to themselves. None of this mattered to the small boy that Cesare had been – dark-haired, broad and muddy-cheeked from pressing his face against the ground to watch a procession of ants, or grubby-kneed from crouching to study a spider’s web.

  He went to the local school and was a sharp student, but always wanted to be outside. Wild-haired and full of daydreams – his teachers despaired.

  My God, Cesare, you must sit still! Late again, Cesare, and will you look at the state of your knees?

  But they smiled fondly as they said it for, late as he always was, he often brought them gifts: a picture of a kingfisher’s head, sketched in exquisite detail; a carving of a field mouse, with bright wooden eyes polished to a shine. They ruffled his hair, pinched his cheek. You will be on time tomorrow, Cesare.