by Caroline Lea
He didn’t move. He kissed me again, harder.
‘Get off!’ I shouted, with the little air I could gather in my lungs. ‘Get –’
And then my words were cut off by his hands around my throat.
I choked and coughed, beating my legs on the sand, batting my hands against him, trying to claw at his face. My chest burned; my vision narrowed to the single point of his features – eyes, lips, teeth.
I’m going to die here. I’m going to die.
I tried to slap his face again. He grabbed both my hands in one of his and then tried to press his other arm on my neck to hold me down. His arm brushed my lips. I opened my mouth and bit down, hard, until I tasted iron, until something crunched between my teeth.
He yelled and jumped off me. I drew in a lungful of air and stumbled to my knees, crouching, retching.
‘You bitch!’ he shouted, clutching his arm. ‘You bitch!’ His voice was full of fury, his face twisted, and he moved towards me. I began to run.
I don’t know why he didn’t chase after me. When I got home, Dot had fallen asleep on the sofa. I crept past her and filled the kitchen sink with cold water, then washed myself. I scrubbed at the livid scratches and purple bruises until my skin felt scorched. I threw away my ripped skirt, knowing she’d ask questions if she found it.
In the following days, I wore a scarf. I refused to tell Dot where I’d been. And, as more bruises bloomed maroon and blue on my neck, I stayed inside the Kirkwall house, shut away, safe from prying eyes. But the rumours started anyway.
Dot came home from the grocer’s, her face flushed. ‘You need to tell me what happened with Angus,’ she said.
I stared out of the window, wrapped my scarf more tightly around my neck. ‘I don’t need to tell you anything.’ The thought of her knowing how stupid I’d been, the thought of causing her pain . . . The shame was more than I could bear.
‘I found your skirt. The one you threw away.’
I bit the inside of my cheek, fighting the burning behind my eyelids.
She took my hand between hers. ‘People are saying – Angus is saying that you led him on. He says you went onto the beach with him. That you kissed him and then . . . He says you bit him.’
I flinched, blinked, breathed. I didn’t deny it. There was nothing in what Dot had said that wasn’t true. I felt her watching me. I felt her expression change.
‘I still love you,’ she said. ‘No matter what.’
My cheeks burned, but I didn’t say a word.
Three weeks later, Dot and I left to come to Selkie Holm. In my pocket, I took the gold chain Angus had given me, as a reminder not to trust anyone, as a reminder of my disgrace.
Now, in the chapel, looking at the bright spots of colour on Dot’s neck, I can’t escape the idea of Cesare’s fingers there, of his mouth there. I can’t rid myself of the thought of his body on hers.
Bile rises in my gullet. The chapel, sunlit as it is, feels suddenly dark and airless. I feel my throat narrowing, as if I have swallowed a stone, or as if someone’s arm is pressing down on my windpipe.
‘I have to go,’ I manage to choke, and then I shove past Dot and out into the glaring sun.
But before I can run back to the bothy and lock myself away, Dot grabs my shoulder.
‘There’s nothing to be scared of,’ she says. ‘We’re safe here. I promise.’
I stare at her bright eyes, her earnest expression. She believes her own words. On her neck, still, are red marks – from his lips or his fingers, I can’t tell – and yet she truly believes what she’s saying. And it’s impossible to know what to do.
There are so many pathways to disaster: I walked out with Angus and I can still feel his hands around my throat; I rowed out to rescue the drowning sailors and I can still sense the dying man’s shuddering last breath beneath my hands as I pressed the coat down on his face. It’s so easy to make the wrong choice. Easier just to hide away, where I can do no harm.
I look at Dot: her wide eyes, her face full of hope and life. She is everything I once was and I can’t leave her here alone.
I’m still holding the brush, my hand white-knuckled around it. Dot follows my gaze. ‘You could help me paint?’ she suggests softly.
My head aches. ‘I’d like that.’
As I follow her into the chapel, I can see Cesare and the other prisoners watching us. I can feel the guard’s eyes on us – I don’t know him. I don’t know what he’s thinking, what he might be planning. My breath balloons in my chest, my legs tingle with the urge to run.
I can’t leave her here.
I force myself to follow Dot. I force myself to copy her movements, dipping my brush into the brown pigment and lifting it to the wall. She shows me how to paint the centre of each tile dark brown, and then to make the outside paler. She shows me how to use white paint at the edges of each tile.
‘It’ll give the illusion of light, from a distance,’ she says confidently.
I glance sideways at her, my sister, the other half of myself, as she speaks in a voice I don’t recognize, telling me things I don’t know, and for a moment, I feel a surge of bitterness at the way these prisoners have pulled us apart. But I also know that the separation started long before they arrived. It started after Angus held me down on the beach and I wouldn’t tell Dot the truth. Or perhaps it started before that. Perhaps it started the night our parents left and I blamed myself. And she blamed me too, I’m sure of it.
My hand trembles and my brush blotches the paint. ‘It’s all my fault,’ I whisper.
Dot pauses in her painting. ‘Oh, don’t worry about mistakes,’ she says brightly. ‘It can all be corrected. See?’ And she takes her brush and paints out the blurry smudge, before going back to her own tile and running a dark streak across it.
‘You try,’ she says.
Carefully, my hand still shaking, I paint over the ugly brown line, blending it into the surrounding tile, so that no one would ever know there had been a mistake at all.
‘Now stand back from it,’ Dot says.
I step back three paces and look at the wall, which is simply flat plasterboard. But from a distance, each painted tile looks real, as though it is part of some living, breathing building.
Behind us, Cesare and the other two men give a small round of applause and I can feel myself beginning to smile. I can feel some tension inside me loosening, as though a hand that has grasped me for so long is finally releasing its grip.
July 1942
Dorothy
Usually, July would be a time for working on the land and at sea. There are fish to be caught and salted; there are blocks of peat to be cut and dried out, ready for burning in the winter. But this year, there is a constant supply of food, sent from the south for the prisoners, who are happy to share with us.
The barriers are coming on fast: huge cages full of rocks act as stepping stones between the islands now, and the prisoners are busy tipping more rocks into the gaps. The sea roars between these spaces and the currents around the islands are unrecognizable, dragging everything far out to sea.
The chapel, too, is nearly finished. Major Bates lets the men scavenge scraps of metal from the ships lying in the bay. Cesare wants real tiles for the chapel floor and I have started to go with him, helping to lever up the tiles from the head in one of the half-sunk ships.
Con watches me leave from the chapel doorway, her face anxious. ‘Come back before the tide turns.’
‘Of course.’
As Cesare sets off towards the shoreline, I glance back over my shoulder at Con. She looks thin and pale-faced, but she lifts her hand and waves.
The chapel is more than just a building for all of us. Somehow, it’s a bridge. Somehow, it’s an outstretched hand.
The land is brash with new growth. The wind buffets the grass and the tiny petals of the sea pinks; bees buzz drunkenly from flower to flower, the hum of their wings lost in the hushing whisper of the sea. From the rain-softened earth, the damp smell of life
pulses.
Cesare walks ahead of me, turning back occasionally to smile. We have been on this journey twice before, and we know there is no time to linger.
The nearest ship is the easiest to reach: it is only partially submerged, its raw metal skeleton rising skywards from the water, while some of it rests on bare mud during a low tide. But it is so close to the shoreline that is has been almost completely stripped; the ship beyond it is the one that contains the real treasure.
The sea is cold around my legs as I wade out, gathering my skirt in one hand and lifting it clear of the water. Cesare’s trousers are rolled above his knees, but the material on his thighs soon darkens. I watch the water creeping up his legs, laughing when he gasps at the chill.
‘You are cruel,’ he says. ‘This sea is cruel. It wants to kill me with cold because it did not drown me.’
I laugh, but it feels strained. ‘You shouldn’t jump into the sea if you can’t swim.’
‘You will teach me to swim,’ he says. ‘And I will not need to be frightened of the sea.’ He reaches out for the lowered side of the sunken ship and pulls himself up, then holds out a hand for me.
‘Everyone should be frightened of the sea,’ I say.
And I can’t help thinking of the night when our mother and father left on the boat. There was a storm brewing but Mammy was in pain again – her stomach had swollen so much over the past months, as her arms and legs had grown thin, her face gaunt. Daddy had been planning to take her across to the mainland to ask about stronger medicine than we could get in Kirkwall, but Mammy wouldn’t leave without saying goodbye to Con, who was out walking.
Con didn’t want them to leave at all, so stayed out as long as she could. By the time she got home, darkness was dropping, the wind was howling and the waves were wild. Mammy was doubled up with pain and groaning, but Daddy wouldn’t take out the boat in such bad conditions.
‘Take her, please,’ Con had begged, her voice tight with fear and guilt.
At first, Daddy had refused and I’d argued against it too. But Con had begged and pleaded, while Mammy had writhed in pain. Eventually, Daddy relented and set off in the smaller of our two boats. Con and I watched them row away.
They didn’t come back.
He’d been out fishing in worse, I consoled Con. Perhaps they had sheltered on one of the other islands. Perhaps they would return one day, I said desperately, knowing they wouldn’t, finding it hard to keep the anger from my voice.
I never blamed her out loud.
Con wouldn’t talk about it, barely spoke to me at all, barely left the house. And then one night, with no explanation, she had gone walking with Angus MacLeod.
Now, with one hand on a sunken ship, the other held out to me, Cesare says, ‘You look sad.’
I force myself to smile. ‘No, not sad at all.’ Maybe I will be able to tell him one day, but not yet. Not until I’m certain I can trust him not to judge Con, not to criticize her.
We gather scraps of wood, bits of metal and old tiles in silence. Whenever I catch Cesare’s eye, he smiles and, gradually, the feeling of darkness recedes.
‘Your family,’ I say. ‘Are they like you?’
He pauses, his head on one side, and puts a piece of wood into his bag. ‘They are different but the same also.’
I wait.
He bends to pick up more wood. ‘They believe sometimes things that are different, I think. They talk about Il Duce – I think they believe this, in here.’ He points to his head.
‘And you?’ I don’t dare look at him.
‘I do not believe this. And this makes me angry, what they are believing. But now, I think . . .’ He wipes the salt water from his hands and takes my arm. ‘I think there is a belief in here,’ he touches two fingers to my temple, ‘and a belief here.’ He touches the fingers to the centre of my ribcage and leaves them there. ‘And this is the belief that matters.’ He taps his fingers against my chest, like a heartbeat.
I nod, thinking of Con, who believes that the men are terrifying, but cares for them anyway.
‘You’re right,’ I say. ‘It’s easy to get swept up in imagining all sorts of things. But it’s the heart that matters. That’s who you are. That doesn’t change.’
When both our bags are full, he takes my hand and kisses me, very gently.
‘We can go back to the chapel. If you are not wanting to go to the cave.’
I shake my head. ‘I want to.’ I kiss him back. He smells of leather, of wood, of the sea.
We have been to the cave twice before but, as we walk back along the cliff path, it still sets a deep pulse in my stomach. I’m intensely aware of Cesare alongside me: the sound of his breath, the sweat on his skin. We have to skirt around the camp to avoid being seen. I keep my eyes focused on the boggy ground, the tussocks of grass, the rocks and gorse, but still, from the corner of my eye, I can see him looking at me, can feel his eyes on my face. Twice, he trips and nearly falls, pulling laughter from both of us.
Once we are on the north side of the island, there is no need to stay out of sight: no one comes to this treacherous land, with its hidden sinkholes and marshy ground. In Kirkwall, they tell of how the Nuckelavee roams the seas around this part of the island, of how this is the ground where cursed women – too many of them to count – have buried their dead lovers. With each telling, the tales get taller. Con and I had chosen to believe none of them, although Con is reluctant to come out this way when the mists roll in from the sea.
Now the day is bright and clear, and I know exactly where the track is. My feet find the solid path and, behind me, Cesare places his own feet in the exact spots where I’ve trodden.
‘One day,’ he says, ‘I will show you the hills around Moena. There, I can lead you. It is beautiful.’
‘I’d like that,’ I say, but the words are painful because how can that be? How could he ever show me his land? It feels like the myths of the dead lovers, like the stories of the Nuckelavee, like a made-up tale. It feels like something you might believe, for a short time, in the sleepless dark, knowing that daylight will make it dissolve. I worry, for a moment, that he will have heard the hesitation in my voice, and that he may think I don’t care for him.
He says nothing.
The land drops away before us. To someone who has never been here, it would look like the edge of the cliff. Far below, the sea shifts against the sharp rocks. But I’ve been this way enough times to know where I must place my hands and feet, lowering myself into something like a tunnel, where I half crawl, crouching, until I reach the cave.
There is a blanket on an old wooden pallet laid out in one corner, alongside an unlit candle. Below the single gap in the cave roof, a spill of daylight shows the burned-out ashes of our fire from last week.
We are both breathing hard as he kisses me. We fumble with each other’s buttons, our skin pimpling in the chilly air of the cave.
‘You are cold.’ He rubs my arms.
‘I don’t care.’
The heat of him, the weight of him. The closeness of him as we kiss again and again. His back is hard and smooth. His eyes on mine are wide, serious.
‘Ti amo,’ he says.
I kiss him again.
And everything in me rises to meet him. His mouth on my mouth. His breath in my lungs. For a stretch of time, nothing else exists.
As the sweat cools on our skin, he lights the fire, then lies back on the blanket, his arm across me. He runs his fingers over my neck, my breasts, my ribcage, down to my belly and back up, watching the pattern of goosebumps, then pressing his lips to smooth my skin again.
Then he lays his head on my chest.
‘I mean this, about the mountains in Moena,’ he says, and I know then that he heard the hesitation and disbelief in my voice earlier. ‘I will show these to you. After the war, I will take you home.’
‘After the war?’ I say. ‘But the barriers are nearly finished. And who knows where you will go afterwards, what will happen?’ And it won’t be m
y home.
I close my eyes and breathe in slowly to quell the panic I feel at a world without Cesare. It’s a foolish idea that I can’t survive without him, that when he goes, my world will be a washed-out grey. Before I met him, I didn’t know that I was missing anything at all. I could have lived very happily without him. But now . . .
‘Major Bates has said that you will be sent somewhere else, in England or Wales.’ It is painful. A physical ache in my chest.
‘I will come back for you.’ He kisses my neck, my jaw, my mouth.
‘How do we know when the war will end? It could be months or years.’ I stare at him, trying to hide my fear. But in his eyes, I see the same terror, the same longing.
‘Then I will wait for you,’ he says. And he kisses me.
We cannot stay long in the cave: people will talk and Con will worry. There is a track, to the east of the cliffs, which leads down to the sea, where we rinse our bodies in the cold water, gasping, and where Cesare tries to swim.
I’ve shown him every time we’ve been to the caves, and although he can’t stay afloat for more than a few strokes, he’s able to turn onto his back now.
‘Relax,’ I say, my body floating underneath his. ‘As if you’re lying down.’
‘I don’t lie down in water,’ he says irritably.
At first he panics and tries to stand up, but eventually he lets his weight rest on me, and then, as I swim out from under him, he stays floating, looking up at the sky, smiling.
Afterwards, we let the heat of the sun pull the water from our skin and then we tug on our clothes and start to walk up the path and back towards the camp, the bothy, the chapel.
Cesare presses something cold into my hand.
‘What is that?’ I open my palm and, in it, I see a jagged piece of metal, which must have come from somewhere on the ship. It looks like a miniature gabled roof, or the arch of a small bird’s folded wing.
‘What is it?’ I ask again.
His eyes are warm. ‘Cuore,’ he says. ‘This is a heart.’