by Caroline Lea
I pass him an oar and we begin to row together, heaving the boat away from the shore. He rows awkwardly at first, but he is strong, and soon we find a rhythm, although the wind and waves make it hard to keep time against the pitching boat and the rolling swell of the sea. Salt spray stings my eyes and fills my mouth; my skin is cold and rain-slicked but I pull on the oar with all my strength. A savage energy courses through me. Soon, we will be safe; soon, he will be free.
There are many small towns along the north coast of Scotland – Con and I visited them once with our parents, spending a week travelling from John o’Groats to Wick and down to Crowbie. Inland, I remember a wild landscape of rocks and heather and gorse – whole areas without a house in sight. And I remember old, deserted farmhouses and fishermen’s cottages with collapsed roofs. Con and I have lived in the bothy on Selkie Holm for almost a year: Cesare and I will be able to find somewhere to shelter, at least for a while – somewhere isolated, away from people, where his accent and dark hair and tanned skin won’t matter because no one will find us. And perhaps, if we stay in an area close to the shore, I will hear news of Con from people in one of the villages. And perhaps, after the war is over, I will be able to convince her to come with me to Italy.
Perhaps. Perhaps.
I know these are fairy stories, so I don’t say them out loud to Cesare. I pull on my oar, and every stroke makes my muscles burn and my heart ache.
‘Was Con safe when you left her?’ I ask.
‘Yes, bella.’ He is out of breath but pulls hard on his oar. The boat pitches with every wave. ‘She is safe with Gino.’
We are nearing the barriers now: the water crashes against the rocks and cement, and torrents through the last small gap. I heard Neil MacClenny saying in the chapel that the barriers have changed the current. Everything is dragged northwards now – to who knows where? For a moment, I allow myself to imagine our rowing boat being hauled towards the blank expanse of the North Sea. If we were lucky, we might reach the Shetland Islands, or Fair Isle, where my mother was born. More likely, we would die of thirst.
The boat rocks and pitches. Salt water burns my eyes.
I imagine Con, waiting for me to return. I imagine her alone.
I hear a shout on the wind. A voice that sounds like hers. A word that sounds like a cry of despair.
No!
At first, I think it’s my mind playing tricks on me, but then I hear the cry again and I see a figure on the barrier, running.
No! No, it can’t be.
A figure wearing a heavy skirt, and with long red hair, which is snapped around her face by the squall. She has stopped, her hands shielding her eyes, staring out towards the boat. Then she turns and begins moving back towards the land, running away from the barriers, away from the sea and our tiny vessel.
And then I see why.
Another figure is running along the barriers towards her – towards us. A man. He has seen our boat and gives a cry, pushing past Con and moving towards the end of the barrier, the part we will have to pass through to leave these islands.
I’m not close enough to see his blond hair or that sneering, handsome face, but still I recognize him. Even if we do get past him, Con will be left alone with him.
‘Shit,’ I say.
Cesare follows my gaze and says something in Italian that I don’t understand.
‘I have to go back to help her,’ I shout above the wind.
‘I will come with you –’
‘No! No, you mustn’t. He will kill you.’
‘I will not leave you,’ he calls. And he is already trying to turn the boat, trying to row away from the current that surges between the two halves of the barrier. And I love this man so much. This man who will risk his life for me without hesitation. This man who says, I will not leave you, with utter certainty, as if he is telling me that the sea is wet, or the sun is hot.
On the barrier, Angus is running still, but Con is following him, is running behind him. And I see what she intends.
I pull on the oars harder. We have to reach the barrier before she gets to him. But it is hopeless. The current has gripped the boat and is dragging it towards that gap between the piled rocks and steel and stones, where the water roars. We will be carried through and will leave them behind. I will be leaving Con alone in the darkness, on the lonely blockade, with him.
‘Con!’ I call desperately. But she has already reached Angus. She shoves at his back, but he doesn’t move, doesn’t waver, doesn’t stumble. I watch him grabbing at her arm, see him shouting something into her face. I see her shake her head and try to fight him off. But he won’t let go. And our boat is being dragged further away from her.
And then I’m standing up and the boat is plunging, and the sea is surging.
Cesare calls out and grabs my hand, but I shake him off.
And I see Con pushing her hands against Angus’s chest.
I watch him lose his balance and flail backwards.
I see him grab hold of her.
I watch them begin to fall together.
I hear her shout my name.
I jump.
The water hits me and I go under, fighting upwards to the surface, fighting against the current that is dragging everything towards the barriers. A wave crashes over my head and takes me under and twists me around. For a moment, everything is a mass of roaring water. There is no air.
I swim desperately towards light and life, but there is nothing except bubbling confusion. My lungs burn.
I surface briefly and gasp a lungful of air, fighting to see Con or Cesare. But the boat is gone and the wild water around me is empty. Terror and panic swamp me. I have to find them. I swim towards the direction of the barriers, towards the place where I might be able to drag myself out. But another wave crashes over me, taking me under.
And then something grabs at my leg, pulling me further down, pulling me deeper, in towards the rocks and metal under the barrier.
And I know that the hand must belong to Angus, and that he is trying to drown me. And I know that the only thing to do, the only thing that will keep me alive, the only thing that will keep Con alive, wherever she is, is to drown him first.
Part Five
These violent delights have violent ends.
From Romeo and Juliet, William Shakespeare, Act 2 scene vi
September 1942
Constance
After we have put the body in the quarry, after we have put the metal heart on the chest, we sit near the barrier for the rest of the rain-soaked night, hollowed out and shivering.
My clothes are damp and stiff with salt and my fingers are raw from where I’d scrabbled at the rocks. Dot’s are bloodied too, and she shudders violently.
She’s lost so much. I can’t allow her to face any punishment for this. None of it was her fault. And in the morning, there will be answers to give.
So, as I watch the sea shifting from pewter to silver to white, I plan what I am going to say.
And when the guards come to fetch us, to take us away, I hold my hands out and I say, ‘She didn’t do it. I did it. It was me.’
But Dot says almost exactly the same thing, her words blurring with mine and she holds out her own wrists to be taken away.
‘Don’t!’ I say to her, and try to grab her, but a guard seizes her and, to my horror, they begin taking us in different directions. They lead Dot over towards the camp – and I suppose they will put her in the Punishment Hut. But they push me in the direction of the hill and the chapel.
Before Dot disappears out of sight, I call, ‘It wasn’t your fault. None of it was your fault.’
And I hope she hears me. I remember what Dot had told me about the darkness of the Punishment Hut. I remember she’d told me about the chains and the damp soil and the smell of rust and rot. Why would they put her in there? Is it because she tried to escape, because she tried to take Cesare away?
Cesare. Something inside me fractures.
‘It was all my idea,�
� I say to the guard, but he ignores me and inclines his head for me to walk up the hill. I don’t recognize him and I can see no hint of mercy in his face when he looks at me.
‘What about the prisoners in the camp?’ I ask.
‘They’re being sent south later,’ he says, tersely.
‘If I could just see –’
‘You’re seeing no one,’ he says, in a flat English accent. ‘The prisoners have all been confined to their huts since last night, when the weather was so bad, and then we noticed people were missing. Everyone was cooped up in the camp – people from Kirkwall were all shut in the mess hut. And now we’ve found you and it’s a right bloody mess. So there’s a boat coming up to take them south. Good riddance, I say.’
I think of all the men who will be sent away, who I will never see again. Gino. Aureliano. Father Ossani.
‘But we need them to finish the barriers!’ I say, my voice too high-pitched.
‘That’s not your business,’ the guard says. ‘You should be worrying about yourself.’ And something in his expression chills me. He sounds angry, but his face softens and I recognize that look: I’ve seen it so often in Kirkwall. Pity and fear.
The chapel is as beautiful as ever. A thin ray of sun washes over the outside walls and makes the inside of the building glow with golden light. But still, when the guard closes the door, it is cold. I huddle against the wall with my knees up.
My head aches. Where is Dot now? And Cesare? Grief bubbles up in me and I wipe the tears from my cheeks.
I wanted to save you, I think. I wanted to save you both.
Perhaps I sleep then, because when I wake, the chapel door is opening and Major Bates is standing in the doorway. His face is severe and I remember that, for all his kindnesses about the chapel, he is an army leader who has killed men, or ordered them killed. He is the man who commanded that Cesare be put in the Punishment Hut.
I would like to stand up, but I can’t make myself move.
He stands in front of me, hands behind his back, his expression thoughtful.
‘Constance, isn’t it?’
I nod, my blood singing in my ears.
‘I don’t think we’ve met, Constance. But you’re in the midst of quite a problem.’
‘It’s all my fault,’ I whisper.
‘So I’ve heard.’ He crouches down and looks me full in the face. His eyes are dark grey and tired. His skin is pale and pouched. He looks, suddenly, like an older man than he once seemed. I wonder if he has children – or grandchildren. I wonder if he sits them on his knee and reads them stories. And I wonder if he sleeps well at night, knowing that he has locked prisoners in the Punishment Hut – knowing that my sister is in there now.
‘It was all my idea,’ I say desperately. Perhaps if I can convince him of this, he’ll let her go.
‘So you keep saying.’ He scratches his head and sits on the floor, watching me. ‘Can you tell me what happened?’ he asks, his voice gentler than I expect.
But perhaps this is a trick, this gentleness.
‘I . . . I can’t remember.’
‘Well,’ he smiles, not unkindly, ‘if you can’t remember, then how can you be so sure it was all your idea?’
‘I just know it was. But I can’t remember some of it.’
He leans forward. ‘What do you remember?’
Water. Screaming. The rocks. The body. The terror.
It feels like a dream now, all of it blurred and unreal. The more I try to remember, the more everything slides away from me. It is like trying to pick up water between my fingers.
I look down at my scabbed hands, folded in my lap.
‘I remember trying to swim,’ I say. ‘But nothing else, until the guards brought me here.’
He sighs, stands up, brushes his hands over his trousers. I wait for him to leave, but he’s looking around at the chapel and he doesn’t know I’m watching him. In that moment, his expression is full of astonishment, as unguarded as a child’s.
‘Incredible,’ he says softly. Then he looks down at me, and in a harder voice, a more impatient voice, he says, ‘What happened last night was a tragedy. You should work on getting your memory back.’
He slams the door behind him, and then I hear something being slid across the wood, like a bolt. I hear him talking to someone outside, a man, and then, as I hear his footsteps receding down the hill, a shadow blocks the light under the door.
I’m locked in, with a guard outside.
I watch the pale sun pouring through the window, casting a wan square on the opposite wall. It moves across the delicate rood screen, the pictures of the birds. I imagine Cesare’s hand making every brush stroke. I imagine the other men who painted most of the tiles behind my back. Are any of them still on the island?
I slide my body closer to the door and press my face to the gap in the wood next to the hinge. If I close one eye, I can just about make out the hill outside, but I can’t see the camp, beyond a blur in the distance, which may just be a trick of the light.
I imagine the prisoners leaving: I picture them climbing aboard a boat and sailing around the island, around the barriers, past the vicious current that drags everything away. In my thoughts, I don’t allow the boat to stop in Wales. I let it continue south, sailing around France and Spain, through the narrow Strait of Gibraltar and onwards through the Mediterranean Sea. I allow the boat to carry the Italian men safely home.
I restore their bombed houses and their broken churches. I call their families back from the grave. I let them step from the boat and wrap their mothers and their sisters and their wives in their strong arms. I let them tuck their children into bed, kissing their foreheads and lulling them to sleep with tales about a far-off island to the north, where strange creatures shift beneath wild seas.
I wake with my cheek pressed against the cold, tiled floor. My face is still near to the door, but the light is different now: brighter and harder. It must be nearly midday.
There is a scraping at the door – that is what woke me, I realize. I can hear the lock being pushed back. The door opens and a sudden burst of sun cuts through the dim glow from the light in the window. I am standing already, but I throw my arm up to shield my eyes against the moment of sun-dazzled blindness.
‘Hello, Con.’
John O’Farrell steps into the chapel.
‘Hello,’ I say, my voice creaky, as if I haven’t spoken in days. I wonder if he’s here as Mayor of Kirkwall, or as my family’s friend, but I can’t bring myself to ask.
Like Major Bates, John looks tired, his face drawn and his eyes spidered with tiny veins.
‘Aren’t you going to invite me in?’ he asks, and I give a polite smile, although the expression feels strange. And I wonder if I shouldn’t smile, even when someone tries to make a joke, because perhaps if I look happy after all that has happened, I will seem heartless. And perhaps that will make me seem guiltier.
John walks into the chapel, looking around in awe, as everyone does. I wonder if beauty ever becomes ordinary. I hope not.
‘Major Bates tells me you’ve lost your memory,’ John says.
‘Yes.’ I keep my eyes downcast, in case something in my expression gives me away.
‘But he tells me you’re certain that you’re to blame. And I have to say, Con, that doesn’t sound right. Is it possible you’re confused? Is it possible that it was all someone else’s idea, and you simply went along with it?’
I say nothing. John turns to look at the stained-glass window. The colours cast light and shadow in weird patterns on his face.
‘Could it have been Angus’s idea, for example? Or that prisoner, Cesare – could it have been his idea? Or Dot’s idea?’
‘Not Dot’s idea!’ I say. ‘She’s not to blame at all.’
A bird clatters onto the roof of the chapel. Then I hear it flitting away, its wingbeats like the thrum of a panicked heart.
He nods slowly, and walks along the back of the chapel, running his hand over the altar and
tabernacle, brushing his hand across the font, which looks like stone, but is really an old car tyre and exhaust pipe, covered with cement.
Earlier, I had run my own hands over that font, remembering the feeling of cement between my fingers. And then something glinting at its base had caught my eye. And from under the font, I had pulled out a length of scrap metal. It is the size and width of my little finger, but as sharp as a knife. I’d hidden it in my sleeve.
John O’Farrell’s expression is still full of wonder as he looks at the chapel. And I remember how this makeshift building felt like safety, how it felt like home. I remember the sound of the prisoners’ laughter, echoing, as if we were in a high-ceilinged church.
My head throbs.
‘But you must understand,’ John says, ‘that this is a very serious matter, with serious consequences. You’re talking about . . . murder, Con.’
I think of long ropes tied around wooden beams. My body swinging. The pressure around my throat, like hands that won’t let go.
My breath comes in noisy rasps.
The people will gather and watch a hanging, the way they watch fish being dragged in or animals being slaughtered. Afterwards, they will return to their houses and talk about it over dinner. The story of my death will warm their bones.
I clutch at my neck, curling my body into a tight ball.
‘Breathe deeply,’ John says. ‘Slowly, now.’
But I can’t. My airway is narrowing, my vision contracting.
John puts his arm under my elbow and pulls me to my feet, walking me out of the chapel. A burst of brightness makes me shut my eyes. Vaguely, I’m aware of the guard objecting, of John shouting at him, of the guard recoiling.
He steers me down the hill, away from the chapel, away from the camp and the Punishment Hut, away from the barrier, and in the direction of the bay. I walk next to him blindly, my breaths loud and ragged, as he says to me time and again, ‘Slowly now. Steady. Easy now.’