by Caroline Lea
‘I . . . How?’ I ask, raising my chin. I don’t say, Why?
He nods towards the commander’s hut. ‘Major Bates gives me new job. I tell him which Italians can help on island. I can help you.’
‘Thank you, but I don’t think you’ll be able to.’ I turn away.
He reaches out, catches my sleeve. I stop, frozen.
‘I try,’ he says, then releases me.
As I walk away, he calls after me. ‘Your name? You have not tell me.’
I turn back to face him. The wind snaps my hair into my eyes, so he is framed, for a moment, in a twisting roil of red.
‘Dot,’ I call. Then, ‘Dorothy.’
‘Dorotea.’ He smiles. ‘I am Cesare.’
My name on his lips sounds like music, like bells, like something beautiful, like something I’ve never imagined for myself. Door-oh-tee-ah.
And the lilt in his name, which I find myself repeating with each step as I walk back to the bothy. Che-sa-ray. Che-sa-ray.
Cesare
Before he hobbles back into the office, Cesare takes the card out of his pocket – he’d pretended to lose it so that he could limp after the woman.
He holds it up to the major as he opens the door. ‘Thank you. It falls from my pocket when I come here.’ He gabbles the lie anxiously.
Major Bates is hunched over some papers and barely looks up. ‘I need you to read through this list of names the guards have given me – they’ve indicated those prisoners they feel are responsible enough to work in Kirkwall and those they can spare from the quarry and other work. You must cross out the name of any man you don’t think will be trustworthy, and underline any man you think will do a good job.’ He hands Cesare a pencil.
‘And if I do not know the man?’ Cesare says.
‘Well, then, make it your business to know him. The men’s hut numbers are next to the names. You’ve time to talk to them – in the mess hut, for instance, or I can give you dispensation to go between the huts in the evenings, before lights out.’
Cesare nods, dizzy at the prospect of sudden freedom.
Major Bates raises an eyebrow and, as if he’s read Cesare’s mind, says, ‘It’s hardly a risk that you’ll try to run, given the state of your foot.’
Cesare shakes his head. ‘I will not –’
‘Ha! I’m jesting, man.’ Major Bates reaches out to clap him on the arm, recoiling at the last moment from the circle of material that is the colour of blood, wiping his hands on his own trousers.
He turns back to his desk. ‘Best get on with it, then. You can talk to the first group of men tonight in the mess.’
The mess hut is crowded and filled with the smell of old cabbage and something metallic and meaty, but it is warm, at least. Cesare limps past the tables of men, who are tearing into bread and dipping it into stew that looks like dishwater. All of them are visibly thinner than when they arrived – Cesare’s hip bones grate against the flimsy mattress when he lies down at night – and the food, grey and tasteless as it is, is usually devoured before the men talk to each other. The major has told him that they are expecting a shipment of more food and supplies any day.
Cesare’s stomach clenches and he tries to hold his shoulders back and his head high, but doesn’t attempt to conceal his limp. If he walks too confidently, the men may accuse him of shirking his work, but if he seems weakened by his injury, some may see him as easy prey – prisoners and guards alike. Many won’t know how he was hurt; several will assume a guard has beaten him. He tries to lock eyes with one of the taller guards, Sergeant Hunter – an Englishman who has a reputation as a bully. He has to hope that will be enough.
He picks up a tray of bread and stew, finds the table with the other men from his hut and slides along the bench.
‘How is Gino?’ Antonio asks. He is holding his spoon awkwardly and it is clear, as he eats, that his arm pains him. Some other injury from a guard.
‘He is enjoying the rest,’ Cesare says.
‘And you?’ Marco says, from across the table. ‘Are you resting? You haven’t been back to the quarry. Maybe we should all drop rocks on our feet. Leave others to do the work.’ His voice is hard.
‘I am not resting,’ Cesare says. ‘I am working in the office.’ And he unfolds the piece of paper the major had given him. It is covered with names, some typed, some scrawled.
The men lean forward.
‘What’s that?’
‘Why’s my name there?’
‘Why do you have our names?’
Marco snatches the piece of paper. ‘What is this?’ he demands. ‘You’re giving our names to Major Bates?’
‘No, no!’ Cesare grabs the piece of paper, smooths it. ‘These are for other jobs. Not in the quarry. These are the names of men who will be helping in Kirkwall, on the big island across the water. They need men who have experience of farming. Animals, fencing, planting.’
The men are leaning forward now. Marco has pushed his plate to one side. Antonio wears an uncertain smile. ‘You mean,’ he says, ‘we can get out of that quarry?’
Cesare nods. ‘If you behave well with the guards, don’t get into trouble. Now,’ Cesare grins, ‘who has farming experience?’
The men’s faces light up and they begin to laugh, quietly at first, then louder as, one by one, they raise their hands.
‘Me!’
‘I grew up on a farm.’
‘I built all our fences.’
Cesare chuckles and begins underlining names.
‘Hey,’ a voice shouts. It’s one of the other guards – a mean-looking man called MacLeod, who’s already renowned for being free with his baton and, occasionally, his boots. There are rumours that he broke a prisoner’s ribs. ‘Hey, what’s that?’
He strides over and wrenches the piece of paper from Cesare’s hand, so that the corner rips. The men’s laughter stops.
Everyone in the mess hut turns to stare.
‘What is this?’ MacLeod demands again, glaring at Cesare.
‘It is a paper for Major Bates,’ Cesare says. ‘Names of prisoners for Kirkwall jobs.’
‘I can see that – do you think I can’t read? But why do you have it?’
‘I am . . . I begin working in his office. I give him names, translate.’
‘Are you now? Well, I’m not sure I trust someone who’s going between sides.’
Then Sergeant Hunter is there, heavy-shouldered, grim, weary-looking.
‘Give it back, MacLeod.’ He takes the piece of paper and puts it on the table in front of Cesare. ‘And stop throwing your weight around.’
‘But –’
‘Don’t you question me, lad. You’re not even in the army, or you’d be fighting somewhere, not traipsing your flat feet around here. Or is it a weak chest you’ve got?’
MacLeod scowls, but mutters, ‘I’m a conscientious objector.’
‘Oh, are you now?’
Cesare doesn’t know what that means, but Sergeant Hunter’s lip curls in contempt.
As both men turn to go, the Italians wink at Cesare, and even Marco gives him a smile.
Occasionally he sees her – a flare of red from the corner of his vision which makes him turn. Sometimes it is simply the target on another man’s arm or thigh. Sometimes it is his imagination: he looks and finds nothing but brown uniforms, and the hopeless faces of his countrymen, who all look like strangers at such moments.
But sometimes it is her. Standing on the edge of the camp, looking in. Her face pale, her arms wrapped around her body. She must be cold. He shivers in sympathy and imagines how, if he could find a blank piece of paper, he might trace the curve of her cheek, the angle of her jaw, the shape of her mouth. He sketches in the margins, alongside the men’s names, but all his drawings are empty. Lifeless lines scribbled on dead trees. He scratches them out.
He hasn’t found a way to ask Major Bates about repairing the roof – what if he asks and is refused? He is waiting for the perfect moment. When he sees her standing at the
edge of the camp – Dorotea, that name that reminds him of the word adorare – he raises his hands to her, shrugs his shoulders, meaning, Not yet, but I’m trying.
He watches her walk away.
And what if, he suddenly panics, what if his shrug means something different to her? What if she thinks he is saying, I don’t know how to solve your problem? Or, worse, I don’t care.
It has been a week since she visited the major, and each day Cesare watches a boatload of prisoners being rowed towards Kirkwall. They return after dark, laughing, exuberant, their voices carrying through the night. He tries to picture Dorotea in her hut, with the hole in the roof. Can she hear their voices, too, in the darkness? Does their laughter reach her, where she waits with her sister, staring up at the stars, shivering?
Early one morning, he makes a decision: he sneaks out of bed in the dark and waits for the major in his office.
Cesare has cleared the floor. Every piece of paper has been tidied and filed.
The list of Italians going across to Kirkwall is complete, along with a new list of jobs.
Major Bates comes into the office quietly, jumping when he sees Cesare waiting. ‘Ah, you’re early. You shouldn’t really be in here without me. But . . . Have you filed all those papers? Good Lord! You must have been here half the night. I suppose I can forgive you, then. How’s the foot doing?’
‘Some pain but is better. Thank you.’
‘Good, good. Bloody cold out there – bet you’re glad not to be in the quarry.’
Cesare returns the major’s smile, although he feels, in truth, very guilty. Some of the other men have begun to make snide remarks about his easy office life, and Marco has again taken to glaring and shoving past him in the mess hut. At night, Cesare is able to sleep only once he is certain that Marco is snoring.
Now, Cesare picks up the piece of paper he’d placed on the major’s desk early this morning. ‘There is a ship from England yesterday and they send more food. And some other things. Too much, I think.’
The major scans the piece of paper. ‘What the devil are they doing sending us so much wood? We can’t use all of this in the quarry. Send it back.’
‘The ship is gone.’
‘I suppose we’ll use it eventually. Bloody waste, though.’
‘I think . . .’ Cesare swallows, inhales. He pictures her face: her disappointed expression as she’d turned from him after he shrugged; the way she’d held her arms tight around her body. Trembling.
Hailstones patter against the window.
‘We can use this wood. For the lady’s roof.’
Major Bates looks up from his paper. Cesare can feel his neck growing hot.
‘It is cold and I do not like thinking . . .’ Cesare nods towards the window, the wind-whipped hail, the ice riming the glass.
‘I agree it’s bitter. But we’ve no men to spare –’
‘I . . . I can go?’
‘You? But I need you here. And your foot –’
‘My foot is not hurt now. And . . . I am doing all this work.’ Cesare gestures at the tidy office, the stacks of files.
The major looks around, sighs, scratches his head.
‘It is so cold,’ Cesare says. ‘Please.’
February 1942
Dorothy
Con has kept me awake with her coughing. When she’d first begun to wheeze and pick at her food, I’d wondered if she might be exaggerating to get attention – she’d often done this when we were younger; our mother had scolded her for it, and teased her. The wee bampot wants every eye on her, Mammy and Daddy had said, laughing as Con had scowled at them.
A week ago, when Con’s coughing worsened, I’d thought maybe it was in her head – she hadn’t been right since the sinking of the Royal Elm, since the man who’d died in our boat when we’d held a coat over his face. But then she’d developed a fever and chills.
Now her eyes are glassy and I can feel the burn of the sickness in my own skin. I have a constant roiling in my gut, as though the illness is creeping from Con’s body to mine.
There is an old belief on these islands that our souls can be tethered to another’s before birth, and that the moment you meet your soul’s twin, you recognize them. Our mother had told us that you couldn’t bind your soul to a stranger: we were each other’s soul twins because we had known each other always, she said. Anything else was ridiculous, a fairytale, something to be woven into a story, along with family feuds and shipwrecks.
‘And you must look after one another,’ Mammy had said sternly. ‘I’ll know if you don’t.’
It has been a year since our parents disappeared.
And now Con is ill – really ill – and I know I must do something. I feel itchy with anxiety, untethered. A week of her coughing through the nights, wheezing on each breath. I sit on the bed beside her, wiping a cloth across her sweat-sheened forehead, over the growing shadows above her collarbones. When I gather her in my arms, the rungs of her ribs feel fragile, as if she is shrinking.
‘I need to take you to Kirkwall,’ I murmur. ‘The hospital –’
‘No,’ Con gasps. Her eyes are glassy with fever.
Above my head, through the hole in the roof, I see clouds, then blue sky, then stars. Time blurs and I begin to count the days by listening for the whistles from the camp, the shouts that carry on the wind, the explosions from the quarry that ripple through the ground, like seizures.
I imagine him walking down to the quarry. I remember his promise. I can help you. I try.
The wind blasts through the bothy. In the mornings the sailcloth over the window is crisp with ice. He isn’t coming – how could he?
The shrill of the whistle wakes me. Con is worse, her lips pale, her skin translucent. I count to five and then I force myself to stand, to pull on my dress, to open the door and feed the chickens, to boil water for porridge that Con will not eat.
I will row across to Kirkwall myself, I decide. The hospital will have medicine and, if I explain, they will surely give me something. Or the doctor may come to see her – I will use some of the money we have saved from selling the house in Kirkwall at the end of last year, when we decided that, no matter what, we wouldn’t be leaving Selkie Holm.
I take the porridge off the stove and put it on the table to cool. I will leave Con to sleep a while longer, then tell her I am going.
There is a metallic rattling outside, then a knock at the door. I jump. Con doesn’t stir.
I open the door, ready to tell Angus to leave us alone.
And there he is.
Che-sa-ray.
‘Dorotea,’ he says.
The expression on his face is serious, uncertain, and, for a lurching moment, I think he must have escaped from the camp somehow, that he has come here expecting to hide. Or that he has died and this is his ghost. That the curse on this haunted island is exactly as they describe it in Kirkwall.
I begin to shut the door.
‘Wait!’ He puts the toe of his boot in the gap. The door stops. No ghost, then. ‘Do not be frightened,’ he says.
‘Why are you here? How are you here?’
‘The major says I can come. For your roof.’ He cranes his neck and gestures at the hole, which shows a cloud-scudded patch of sky.
I open the door and peer outside. Behind him, a large wheelbarrow, full of wood and some pieces of slate.
‘I make a promise to you,’ he says.
‘Oh.’ I can find nothing else to say.
I follow him outside into the weak winter sunlight, flinching at the scouring wind. Cesare begins to unload the wood from the wheelbarrow. His shoulders are broad and he lifts the wood with ease at first, but he looks thin and he has to pause at one point to catch his breath.
‘In Italy I am strong,’ he says, as if reading my thoughts. ‘But here . . .’ He indicates the sky, hunches his shoulders at the wind and shrugs. ‘Hard to be strong.’ He stops, looks at me. ‘You are here alone? It is dangerous. Cold.’
‘I live with my
sister. We like it here.’
He nods. His eyes are dark, warm, unreadable. ‘Very beautiful here.’
I can feel the heat in my cheeks. I look away. ‘My sister is ill. She’s sleeping now. I . . .’ To my horror, I feel tears burning my eyes, an ache in my throat. I blink rapidly, until the feeling passes.
Cesare reaches out, as if to touch my arm, and stops. ‘I will make your roof good,’ he says. ‘Your sister will be better. She will be warm.’
I swallow. ‘Thank you.’
He looks up at the roof and picks up pieces of wood, measuring them with his eye before selecting one. ‘I must climb up.’
‘I don’t have a ladder, but here . . .’ He follows me to the side of the bothy, where our three chickens peck and scratch in their wooden coop. ‘Will this frame be strong enough?’
He eyes it, pressing down hard on one of the wooden struts. ‘Maybe strong. Maybe break.’ He grins, apparently unconcerned at the idea of fracturing his leg or neck.
He lifts it; the chickens, suddenly homeless, cluck in disapproval and rush towards their nesting box. Cesare scoops up one bird and holds her for a moment against his chest. She squawks indignantly but doesn’t struggle.
‘Is warm,’ he says.
‘She’s called Henrietta.’
‘En-ree-ayt-ah,’ he echoes, and again, it is music. ‘You are living only from eggs?’ He releases Henrietta, who stalks off, clucking.
‘No. My parents had a house in Kirkwall. We sold it and moved here after they . . .’ Left. Disappeared. Vanished. ‘Well, some time after.’ We had been in the Kirkwall house for three months before we had had to leave and it had taken us longer to sell it. I take a breath. ‘And I sometimes work at the hospital in Kirkwall.’ When I can leave Con.
‘You are doctor?’ His expression is serious, not a hint of mockery.
‘Perhaps one day. But now we are here. So I am a nurse. Sometimes.’
‘And your sister is ill,’ he says. ‘And your roof is bad.’
He doesn’t ask again why we are on this isolated island, doesn’t question me about why we haven’t gone to the hospital, and I’m filled with gratitude for the way he simply places the chicken coop next to the wall and begins to climb.