by Caroline Lea
In the morning, when I woke, Dot was gone.
‘Dot!’ I cry now, into the blank, faceless mist on the cold hillside. She will hear me; she will turn; she will run back to me. ‘Dot!’
And then my foot catches on a dip in the land and I fall, my ankle twisting, my hands smacking painfully against the rocky ground.
I lie there for a moment, stunned. The mist eddies around me in a silent blanket, no noise except my own sobbing breaths. No movement apart from the rise and fall of my chest.
She’s gone.
Pain scythes through my ankle when I stand and, though each step is agony, I continue up the hill, limping and, when the pain gets too much, crawling. My hands are ripped by stones and gorse bushes and, through the thin material of my trousers, I can feel my knees throbbing with a warm wetness that must be blood.
I can’t leave her out here.
And then I see a shape moving in the mist. A man. A man, walking towards me. And I know who it is.
He’s found me. And we’re out here alone. In the fog, no one will hear me cry out. No one will hear me scream.
I stay very still, my body frozen, my face pressed against the cold, damp ground. My breath is tight in my chest, as if something is pressing down on my airway. As if fingers are digging into my windpipe.
And I know that I was foolish ever to leave the bothy at all, foolish to think that I could work in the infirmary, that I could be anywhere near Angus without putting myself in danger.
If I can just stay still, perhaps he won’t see me.
I open one eye, then the other.
Stillness, except for the swirling mist. And silence. No sign of the figure in the mist. It wasn’t my imagination – I saw him, I’m sure of it. And perhaps he’s out here, searching for me still.
Gradually, I make my limbs move. I manage to push myself upright, to crouch and then to crawl forward. Slowly. The rocks dig into my knees. I wince and struggle to my feet, still breathless, still waiting to feel his hand on my shoulder, his fist in my hair.
I walk forward quietly, moving up the hill. Away from the camp, away from the infirmary. Away from the men.
At last, I see a building rearing out of the mist. At first it is distorted by the vortices of whirling cloud, but then it resolves itself into home. Our home. The bothy. The place where I know we’re safe.
Before our parents left, before everything with Angus, I used to feel like that about returning to the blue house in Kirkwall – even the sight of it was warmth.
Some tension in my gut uncoils and I drag myself over the doorstep, calling Dot’s name, wanting to throw my arms around her, to apologize, to tell her that all I want is for her to be safe.
But the bothy is empty, the fireplace cold. The bed hasn’t been slept in.
With a sob, I turn back to face the blank rectangle of mist in the doorway and I shout her name again and again, the sound disappearing into the mist.
There is no reply.
Dorothy
The mist has cleared and it’s almost dark when I reach the bothy. My throat is raw from shouting for Con. My legs ache and my stomach clenches around itself. I’ve eaten nothing all day. Instead I walked along the beaches and, with my heart in my mouth, I stared into the beating water beneath the cliffs, searching for her pale skin, her red hair.
In the end, I’d returned to the bothy, although I doubt she will come back here as I know the roof reminds her of Angus.
The bothy looks gloomy and skeletal in the dusk, almost as if it is years into the future, after Con and I have gone and the land is rising to reclaim our abandoned home. But as I reach the door, the shadows resolve themselves into the solid shape of the place we left some weeks ago.
My lamp casts shivering shadows on the pockmarked walls. The little table is bare. The stove, when I touch it, is cold. She hasn’t been here.
As I turn to leave, I hear a sound. Something like an exhalation from the corner of the room. I wheel around, the lamp swaying in my hands, so that the light flickers and almost dies.
The blanket on the bed is moving.
And I think of the curse on this island, the stories that Con has always been so ready to believe: the talk of dead lovers and restless ghosts and desolate spirits. I think of the Nuckelavee: the skinless monster, half man, half horse, that is said to crawl from the sea, ready to exhale madness and disease.
The blanket shifts and writhes, then sits upright. And, in the shaking lamplight, the monster turns into Con.
‘Dot! You’re safe!’
‘God, Con, you terrified me! What were you thinking, running off like that?’
She rubs her eyes, which look swollen, as if she has been weeping. ‘I was looking for you. Where were you?’
‘I went to check on some of the patients in their huts.’
Con’s gaze hardens and, despite myself, I can feel my heart beating faster, can feel the anxiety, the shame. I had left the infirmary early that morning, while Con was still sleeping. The guards on duty were used to seeing me walk around the camp, so no one stopped me when I approached Cesare’s hut. I paused outside the door, hearing movement within. What if the men were getting dressed? And what would they think, finding me outside the hut before first light, asking for Cesare?
Just as I turned to go, the door to the hut opened and one of the men emerged. He saw me, jumped, exclaimed something in Italian, then said, ‘Scusi!’
I held up the bottle of sulfa tablets I had taken from the infirmary. ‘Is Cesare here?’ I felt ridiculous – what had I been thinking?
But then the man called behind him and, suddenly, Cesare was there, smiling.
‘Dorotea. You are well?’
‘Yes, I brought . . .’ I held up the sulfa tablets again.
‘Thank you, but I am not needing. I am better.’
‘Oh. Good.’
I could see the men behind him glancing at each other and grinning, and I felt my cheeks heating.
‘You are good nurse,’ said Cesare.
‘Thank you.’
One of the men muttered something in Italian. Cesare snapped a reply and glared at him.
Oh, Lord, what are they saying?
‘I must go,’ I said. ‘I’m glad you are better –’
‘The huts are here for building the chapel,’ he said, his face bright. ‘They are on the hill, I think. You will see them with me?’
‘Now? But –’
‘Major Bates is letting me see them. He tells the guards to let me see the huts, work on them. We can go now. No hurt, you will see.’
I tried to return his smile. I couldn’t say no – I didn’t want to – and yet I was aware of the whispering, grinning men behind Cesare, and what they would think. And I was aware of the guards, who would see me walk out of the camp with a prisoner. However much freedom Major Bates, in his guilt, was allowing them, it wouldn’t change what the guards would say to each other.
I thought of Con – all the rumours that had started about her. The lewd jokes that were shouted at her in the street before we left Kirkwall.
Cesare watched me, his expression more serious. ‘You do not want? You can tell me this.’ But something in his face was closing down, as if he’d had a new thought about me, as if I had disappointed him.
‘No!’ I said. ‘I can come with you.’
Now, as I watch the same expression of disappointment on Con’s face, I know I can’t tell her that I walked out of the camp gates, with Cesare at my side. I can’t tell her that I walked up the hill with a strange man, a foreigner, and that, as we walked, the mist began to close around us.
So I say, ‘I took medicine for Cesare. And when I got back to the infirmary you were gone. I’ve been looking for you ever since.’ All of this is true, in some way.
‘Oh,’ she says, and I can see she doesn’t believe me. Then she says, ‘I think we should come back and live here, in the bothy.’ She raises her chin, and there’s a defiant set to her mouth.
The lamp flicke
rs; the shadows on the walls shift.
‘All right,’ I say. ‘You want to stay now? Won’t Bess wonder where we are?’
‘We can go back down to the camp tomorrow.’ Con is still watching me, and I know that if I object she’ll fire question after question that I cannot answer. I know she’ll demand to be told where I really was this morning.
I can’t tell her that, as I walked up the hill with Cesare, our footsteps were in time. I can’t tell her the joy I felt at seeing him happily tell me about the men’s excitement over the chapel. I can’t tell her that the mist grew dense around us and we never reached the huts. I can’t tell her that I was confused suddenly, that I didn’t know which way to turn.
‘I’m lost,’ I’d said, feeling fear well in me and clutch at my throat. I didn’t know if I was frightened of this man, this stranger, or if it was the simple terror of being disoriented. I didn’t know if I was scared because – because I wanted to be lost with him. I wanted . . . something I couldn’t name. And the wanting travelled through me like fire.
Then, with the fog blanketing our eyes and filling our lungs, Cesare had reached out and taken my hand.
‘Stop,’ he’d said. And he laced his fingers through mine.
I turned to face him. Tendrils of mist spiralled between us.
‘You are frightened?’ he asked softly.
I nodded, unable to speak past the fear.
‘I am frightened also,’ he whispered.
We stood like that for some time while the mist shifted around us, while the waves throbbed on the distant beach, while my own pulse vibrated in my ears. I was aware of the warmth of his hands, their size, their strength.
He squeezed my fingers gently and said, ‘We must go back to the camp.’
I nodded.
‘It is down the hill?’
I nodded again. We turned and began walking slowly back in the direction of where the camp must have been. Neither of us said anything. He kept hold of my hand and, very gently, he rubbed his thumb over my knuckles.
Finally, the shape of the wire fence and the shadow of the guard on the gate emerged from the mist.
‘There,’ I said.
Cesare still didn’t let go. Only at the very last minute, just before the guard saw us and called out for us to identify ourselves, did he give my fingers a final squeeze, then let my hand fall back to my side.
Before he walked to his hut, he said, ‘We will see the chapel hut another day, Dorotea?’
I had walked back to the infirmary, my hand warm from his.
Now, as I build a fire in the bothy with Con, I can still feel his fingers through mine.
I am frightened also, he had said.
Con places the last piece of wood in the grate and leans forward to light the match. As she does so, I see a flash of gold at her neck.
‘What is that?’
‘What? Oh!’ Her hand flies to her throat and she pulls up her jumper so that the gold chain she is wearing is entirely hidden.
We stand, looking at one another. A dry log shifts in the growing flames. It is hard to tell whether the colour in Con’s cheeks is from the sudden heat or something else.
‘It’s nothing,’ she finally says. ‘I must get another log for the fire.’
She pushes past me, out of the bothy, and I hear her footsteps going around the side of the building, past the woodpile. Where on earth could she have got a necklace? It doesn’t look like anything our mother would have left behind – she was never one for jewellery, and we sold the rings she had left long ago, during that first hard winter. Could Con have found the necklace somewhere, perhaps, or – and this is a troubling thought – could she have stolen it? I don’t recognize it, but I do know the expression on Con’s face. It’s the look she used to wear after shouting at our parents. It’s the expression she wore when she returned to the blue Kirkwall house last year, with her skirt torn and livid marks on her neck.
Shame.
There is a scrape against the wall, and I can imagine her, leaning her back against it, looking out into the swelling darkness.
I place my hand against the wall where she must be standing on the other side. I close my eyes, willing some peace, some calm, to pass through the thin layer of plaster and brick.
When Con returns to the bothy, some minutes later, she isn’t carrying a log for the fire. She walks past me and begins undressing for bed. I watch, from the corner of my eye, as she pulls her sweater off over her head.
The necklace is gone – no glint of gold. Around her throat instead, are deep, red scratches, as if something has clawed at her. Or as if, standing there, alone in the dark, my sister has tried to scrape off her own skin.
Cesare
When he first sees the old metal huts, half rusted and moss-coated, Cesare has to work hard to keep the smile fixed upon his face. He and a small group of men, including Gino and Marco, have been released from digging duties to decide what supplies they might need.
All of them stare at the building that is to be their ‘church’. A bundle of tangled barbed wire lies next to the decaying huts.
The guard who had accompanied the prisoners up the hill pokes the wire with his toe. He is young and blond and new – just recently put in charge of supplies. He’d introduced himself by name, as Stuart, and then, perhaps worried about seeming too friendly, had shouted at them to get moving. When Cesare had met his eye, the guard had given a nervous grin, which he quickly turned into a frown.
But he had soon relaxed, and as they walked up the hill, he’d told Cesare about his five younger sisters: how much they argued and how much they ate.
‘Gannets, they are. Bloody gannets.’
‘What is gannets?’
The guard had glanced at Cesare in surprise and said, ‘You know, those birds. Greedy buggers.’
‘Yes.’ Cesare had smiled, not knowing which bird the guard meant, but enjoying, for a moment, the familiarity – the companionship in assuming that another person understood what you were saying. You know, those birds.
Now Stuart stands, blinking nervously, holding a clipboard and a scrap of paper flapping in the wind, and pokes at the wire again.
‘And this is a church you’re making? A church, from this . . . stuff?’
Cesare nods, more confidently than he feels.
‘And,’ Stuart says, ‘you don’t think someone’s pulling your leg?’
‘He is right,’ Gino says in Italian. ‘This is a pile of shit. They’re laughing at us.’
‘Fooling us,’ Marco agrees, ‘so that we will work on their barriers.’
The other men agree loudly, in Italian, and Stuart watches them, listening to the patter of foreign language, the angry gestures. Cesare notices his hand moving towards his baton.
‘Stop!’ Cesare says in English, but to the Italians, not to the guard. ‘Stop this complaining. We ask for a place to pray. This is our place. It does not look like a church – it is not a church. It was a prison, this place, or it was used in war. These huts are the dark places. We live in the huts like this. We know. But –’ he holds up a hand so the men can’t interrupt ‘– but we will make this a beautiful place. We will bring light to this place. In these huts, there will be no more the war. In these huts, we will make the peace.’
The men nod. Some of them smile. And they follow Cesare, one by one, into the darkness of the first hut.
Like the huts they sleep in, it is cold and draughty. The whole structure is a single semicircle of corrugated steel. In some places, rain has corroded the metal and scrawled curlicues of rust over the ceiling and walls. The air smells sharp and bitter, and Cesare is reminded strongly of the Punishment Hut, of the terror that had gripped him, of the way that the cold air had seemed to squeeze him, like a promise of death to come.
The men gaze around them, their eyes wide, and Cesare can see the despair in their expressions. He feels it himself, but he mustn’t show it. If the men object, or rebel, if the mood in the camp plunges, they will all
refuse to work again. Once more, there will be lines of men standing in the yard every day, shivering in their thin uniforms, then limping to the mess hut to eat bread and drink water before being pushed out again into the wind and the rain. If there is another riot, no amount of guilt or kindness from Major Bates will save them.
This hut is more than a chapel. This hut is life.
‘Listen!’ Cesare says. ‘Shut your eyes and listen.’
The men look at him doubtfully. Gino raises an eyebrow, and Cesare shoots him a pleading glance. They all close their eyes. Even Stuart, the guard, stands with his arms folded and his eyes shut.
The wind gusts over the sea into the chapel. And as it escapes through the rust-crazed cracks in the roof, it whistles. A high note, at first, when a sudden fierce blast billows in, followed by a lower note as the wind drops, then a higher note again, higher still, and dropping lower once more. Softly, Cesare hums the five notes.
‘Listen,’ he whispers in Italian. ‘It sounds like the Ave Maria.’
The men look sceptical. Gino opens his mouth to object, but before he can, Cesare hums the five notes again. They rise through the echoing space, resonating off the metal walls. Unmistakably, the start of the Ave Maria.
One by one, the men’s faces break into smiles and, when the wind gusts through the chapel again, the men all hum the five notes, then continue to hum the rest of the song.
Ave Maria, Gratia plena . . . Ave Dominus–…
Even Stuart hums along – somehow this foreigner, this Orcadian, knows the tune, the Catholic prayer that feels like the sound of home to the Italian men.
Cesare’s eyes fill with tears as the men’s voices unite in the prayer, the plea. The sound rises, swirls, swells to fill the space. And in this rusted old hut, this piece of discarded war junk, there is sudden beauty. The men’s faces fill with wonder and hope as they sing. They must picture, as Cesare does, the vast, beautiful churches of home. The gleaming altar. The arching ceilings, covered with beautiful frescos.