by Caroline Lea
‘I didn’t know,’ he whispered. ‘I never thought he would have . . . I’m sorry.’
An ache builds in my chest and my throat burns with unshed tears. I hear the word again and again. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry.
And the voices blur until they sound like a blessing or a prayer, until they echo like the hush of the wings of many birds, travelling south.
They look at me expectantly, and a small part of me wants to rage and rail at them. Of course they should be sorry, but why should I forgive them? Why is it up to me to console them? Forgiveness feels too easy for them, and too heavy a burden to carry – the weight of those words: I forgive you. I don’t know how to say them.
I turn away from them, breathing slowly. I don’t know what to say to these people who want something from me that I can’t give.
Up on the hill, the chapel gleams in the sun. I imagine the light pouring in through the window. The pictures on the walls will gleam with life. And, on the ceiling above the altar, a white dove soars through a bright blue sky.
How does something so beautiful come from such darkness?
The tears are flowing freely now, as I turn back to the people watching me and I force myself to say, ‘Thank you.’
Because building something is hard. Because building something is a choice. Because hope is the only way we can stop the darkness swallowing us. Because people who came from another country have shown me how to find my way home.
And I allow these people – my people – to take my hands as we stand around the grave and we say the Lord’s Prayer. I’m not religious, but I join my voice with theirs.
Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.
‘I’m sorry,’ I whisper to the grave.
All across Europe, bodies are falling from the sky or into the sea, or are being blown high into the air. Every explosion is a name. Every lost life is carved on someone else’s heart. Every death takes more than a single life. It takes memories and longing and hope. But not the love. The love remains.
They let me see her body, yesterday, in the morgue in Kirkwall. I couldn’t make myself go into the chilly room. Seeing her would make it final. Seeing her would make it true. For a moment, my knees buckled. I made myself move forward, one shaky step at a time, like a child learning to walk – although even then I’d had her to balance against, walking alongside me.
Her body lay on a cold slab, covered with a sheet. I reached out slowly.
That sheet was the heaviest thing I’ve ever lifted – all the weight of the years between us. Our shared smiles, our tears, the way we woke giggling from the same dreams. My name in her mouth.
Her voice silent now. Her breath stopped.
How can she be gone? It isn’t possible.
I pulled the sheet back and something inside me ripped wide open.
She was pale and still. She might have been asleep. Her skin was like marble under my lips. I kissed her again and again. I held her. Said her name.
I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.
I sank to the floor. I wanted to howl, but no sound came from my mouth. Just as after our parents disappeared, I felt unmoored and desperate. The grief felt too heavy to carry by myself, and yet I had never been more alone.
But now, on the hillside, next to her grave, half of Kirkwall stands alongside me: holding my hands, praying with me.
And it makes no difference: she is still gone.
And yet. And yet, it makes all the difference.
Onto her coffin, I drop an old dandelion stalk, left over from the summer. I have always liked the way that dandelions can be two things at once: yellow flowers and then, once they seem to have died, they become balls of white seeds, which can be carried far and wide by the wind. New life, somewhere else.
Every beat of my heart aches in my chest.
One by one, the people from Kirkwall come forward with their grave offerings. Marjorie Croy sprinkles salt over the coffin, and her daughter, Bess, puts in an ear of corn. Mr Cameron drops in a sea stone, and John O’Farrell scatters a handful of peat.
Gifts from land and sea, to help her rest peacefully. Years ago, bodies were bound tightly in sailcloth before being lowered into their graves, to stop the spirit returning to haunt the living. I would give anything for her to haunt me.
After everyone has stepped away from the grave, I drop in two more things. The jagged scrap of metal feels small and insignificant. It is barely longer than my finger, but it is sharp – sharp enough to threaten to cut a man’s throat, and to mean it. Sharp enough to make him leave you alone, to make him stumble away from you, to make him flinch from you when, for all his life, everyone has flinched from him.
But I don’t want the piece of metal any more. It’s done its job and I release it. It thuds against the newly turned earth. The second object I drop lands silently. The thin gold chain is too fine to glint in the darkness of the grave.
I nearly threw it into the sea instead, but I want to know where it is. I want it buried.
‘You don’t need to be scared of him any more,’ I whisper.
I close my eyes and open them, but the grave is still there, the new, dark earth a wound in the ground. After they cover the coffin with soil, the grass will grow. In the spring there will be flowers. It will be summer, then winter. Sunshine and snow and rain. Other deaths, other births. In time, people will forget who, exactly, she was. This will all be a story – something to be told around the fireside, like the tales of the selkies or the Sea Mither or the poor woman from a hundred years ago, who is said to have drowned her lover, but always denied it.
We will never know the truth.
Bess Croy puts a gentle hand on my shoulder. ‘You are welcome to come to our house for tea and a bannock. It’s noisy, with the children, but we’d like to have you.’
Behind her, Marjorie Croy is nodding. ‘You’d be welcome.’
‘Thank you,’ I say. ‘But I’d like to . . . I want to see the other islands. Places we went together. I’d like to . . .’ My voice cracks.
Marjorie nods. ‘I understand. To say goodbye.’
‘Will you be coming to the hospital in Kirkwall? To work?’ Bess asks.
‘Not yet,’ I say. ‘Maybe one day, but I want some time alone first.’
Bess nods unhappily, her face hurt. I’d like to explain to her, but I can’t – not without risking everything.
I walk up to the chapel alone. The sun is dropping now; the light on the walls is gilded. Outside is the statue Cesare had made, of St George defeating the dragon. The dragon, he said, stood for war and St George battled it daily.
‘And one day,’ Cesare had said, ‘there is peace.’
‘There can’t be peace everywhere,’ I’d said.
‘We can hope,’ he’d said, looking at the chapel. ‘We must hope.’
I have to hope.
Now, in my hand, I have the metal heart. Inside the chapel, it is cool. The mattress I slept on is gone and everything is peace and silence once more. No traces of Angus’s blood on the tiles. No hint of everything that happened here. There is only light and beauty.
Between the two halves of the filigreed rood screen, there is a gap in the floor – a dip in the cement that has been chipped and dug out with a piece of metal. It is a hollow in the shape of a heart. As I sat and waited for them to pass judgement on me, I had hewn and scrabbled and dug away at the concrete floor. My fingers are raw and sore and there are bashed edges all along one side of the heart.
I press it into the gap in the concrete. It fits almost exactly, like a key in a lock.
I stand and I force myself to turn and walk away from it. I don’t want to leave it, but I must appear to be content to turn away from the heart.
I have to leave it, for it never belonged to the person I am. It never belonged to Con.
The heart was given to Dot and, as far as everyone knows, Dot is gone. As far as everyone believes, Dot drowned in the storm. Dot is buried in the hillside grave with sa
lt sprinkled on her chest.
And now I must pretend to be Con.
At first I didn’t realize, I didn’t remember. They saw my trousers and they called me Con. All my memories were so foggy that, when they called me by my sister’s name, I answered. I knew that Dot was alive, somehow, somewhere, but I didn’t understand how I could know that. The memories came back slowly.
I remember swimming from the boat, leaving Cesare to get to Con. But the water was a shifting, swirling mass and I couldn’t see her anywhere. I swam to the barriers, where I’d seen her fall in and I dived beneath the waves again and again, reaching out.
Every time I surfaced, I called Con’s name.
Then something below the water grasped my foot. Hands around my ankle. I cried out and then dived down again, one last time.
Con was next to the rocks of the barrier. Relief washed over me and I tugged on her hand. Her body came towards me, but something snagged, keeping her under. It was then I realized that her skirt was caught in the rocks.
My skirt. The skirt she had worn to pretend to be me, so that I could escape with Cesare. I yanked as hard as I could, but she was stuck.
No!
I swam to her face and, pressing my lips against hers, breathed a lungful of air into her mouth. Then, chest burning, I surfaced again, before diving back below the water and pulling on her skirt. The material wouldn’t rip and I couldn’t get her free.
Mind whirring, I swam to her face again, the water battering against both of us.
I went to breathe into her mouth again, but she shook her head. She fought me off, turning away and pushing my hands from her face.
No! I thought. I tried again, but again she pushed me away. She reached out and stroked my cheek. She placed her hand on my chest, just for a moment.
Then she put her hand in mine and I watched as she let the air bubble from her lungs.
No, no, no! I could see what she was going to do. I could see she’d made a decision to let me go, to let me escape with Cesare. I could already feel the chasm opening between us, could feel her drifting. I wanted to pull her back, wanted to swap places, wanted to change everything.
Please.
She breathed in.
The water blurred everything, but I could see her face, faintly – a moment of struggle, of terror, and a final squeeze of her hand on mine.
Then she was still. And everything crumbled. I swam up to the surface and I screamed. The storm carried my cries away. The waves pushed me against the rocks again and again, battering my body against the barrier. A rock hit my head and I nearly fell back into the water, nearly let myself go under. But no. I had to carry on. I had a choice and I had to take it. I worked to get her body free from the rocks. And I pulled my sister from the water.
I don’t remember dragging her to the quarry. It seemed, somehow, that she was with me then. That we were dragging Angus between us. I wanted so much for him to be dead and gone that I imagined his lifeless face. We were glad he was gone, but we knew we would have to pay for his death, somehow.
But I didn’t want Con to be guilty for ever. I wanted her to prove that she was innocent. I wanted her to be free. I wanted her to be able to live, without the shadow of Angus, all those rumours and all the guilt. I just had to find a way to help her to live.
So when they came to take me away, I said to them, ‘I did it. She didn’t do it. It was me.’ And then I stopped being Dot and I told them I was Con.
I walk back to the bothy slowly, to pack up the life we shared. I have given away the chickens and the sheep to people in Kirkwall. I have told them I need some time before I come back – if I come back. They haven’t questioned me too deeply. They are used to Con hiding herself away.
The bothy is cold; the ashes in the grate are grey and dusty. Perhaps someone else will make a home here, one day. I pick up the case that the two of us brought over, a year ago, and I fill it with our clothes: my skirt and her trousers. I’d like to keep something of hers close to my skin.
It is light still outside, and everyone has gone back to Kirkwall. Down the hill, the camp is deserted. I close my eyes, imagining it full of life again. I picture Gino, Marco, Father Ossani. And Cesare. Always Cesare.
The waters around here carry everything north.
Behind me, the chapel is a reminder that there is always hope.
I open my eyes and inhale. Sky and sea and gorse as clean as freshly sawn wood. Uprising sap in the air. For the first time in an age, I am free.
I am free, and it feels like some part of me will always be drowning.
A crow circles overhead, cawing mournfully. Far off, the peregrine calls.
Mine. Mine. Mine.
A sudden crushing in my chest. The years without her will stack up like loose change, uncountable, unending. Everything will remind me of her. Every moment without her will be half lived.
There are some sadnesses too heavy to carry, but still I must keep walking, I must keep breathing. For now, I have to live for the twin souls inside me.
I bundle up my fishing line and lift my case, with its few bits of clothing and food. The place I am going to is not far. If I don’t find him there, I will keep searching. I won’t ever stop searching.
Before I go north, I walk out onto the barrier for the last time – at least for the moment, although I don’t doubt that my feet will bring me back this way one day.
There is a clear path now, all the way to Kirkwall. Anyone who wants to come to this island will be able to walk across the waters. No one is alone any more. That’s just one of the things that war gave us. It crammed all of us together, one way or another.
I look across the water at the things on the horizon that may be gathering clouds or pieces of land and, for the moment, it does not matter which they are. I think over all the old stories and rumours about lost souls and drowned lovers.
I wonder which ones are invented and which ones are the truth. Perhaps this doesn’t matter either. Perhaps it only matters what we believe. And perhaps this is a choice.
I lean over the side of the barrier and I allow my fingers to trail in the water. There is a dark shape below me. In the past, we used to think monsters lived in the sea, and so it may be. But there are monsters on the outside too, in the real world, walking among us in their human skins. And there are the monsters within us that we will never show to another soul, that we will hide even from ourselves.
And then there are the things we leave behind for the people who follow us: the stone tombs and the stories. The pieces of metal buried in the earth. The chapel on the hillside and the tale of how it was made.
The sun comes out from behind the cloud and the outline of a shadow emerges in the water next to the barrier. It is my own reflection but I can see so many faces in it: I see my parents, my sister, myself. I have a single life to live for all of us.
Out in the bay are the shadows of the long-dead ships from past wars. Our mistakes are everywhere; the skeletons of our past ghost us daily. We can only try to stay above them, to remember them.
Orcadians
In the latter years of the war, there is a tale told about the northern part of the newly named Chapel Island, where it is rumoured that a selkie lives with her mate – somewhere within the land. There are tales told: that she has taken him into the sea with her and taught him to swim, which is not the usual way of things. Sometimes, on a clear night, people walking across the barrier towards the island have heard splashing and shouts of laughter. A child, wandering too far north, says that he saw two people swimming in the sea, like seals – his mother scolds him for stirring the gossip pot, then passes on the story to all of her friends.
A tradition quickly grows: it is good fortune, people say, for those who are in love to walk across the Churchill barrier early in the morning, before the sun is up or when it is still low in the sky, and the sea mist still swirls around the islands. You must travel northwards with your beloved, past the old camp and the Italian Chapel, and you must lay
an offering of food on the furthest tip of the island. Then you must both walk away, holding hands, without looking back. By the next day, the food will be gone: this is a sign of the blessing on the couple in love, who have travelled on this journey together.
Afterwards, the couple must go into the little Italian Chapel and kneel. They will listen to the hush of the sea, with its secrets; they will look at the chapel walls and they’ll marvel at the beauty of it all. They will press their fingers to the metal heart in the chapel floor and they will hope.
They confess their sins; they beg forgiveness; they vow to change. They promise to be faithful and true. They think of the terrible acts that people commit, during war and peace, and they promise to hold their loved ones closer. They promise to make every breathing moment an act of worship.
Then they walk out into the sunlight and they feel the blessing of the sky and the sea all around them. And they thank whatever god they believe in for the prisoners who conjured hope from war.
September 1942
Dorothy
It takes me less than an hour to reach the northern tip of the island. On every step, I feel torn between anticipation and terror. What if he isn’t here? What if he has been carried far out to sea? What if the storm has left his broken boat and shattered body lying on the jagged north rocks?
It is a place of swelling hills and serrated cliffs, with a freshwater loch nearby. There are rumours of a great snake that twists in the depths. It’s not an area that anyone visits often: when Con and I were much younger, we used to sneak up here with some of the other children – sometimes with Angus MacLeod – but then one of the boys fell down a gorge and cracked his skull. He lived, but he was never the same afterwards, and no one liked to go too far north after that; the boy’s friends said that the gorge had appeared out of nowhere, as if the ground had opened under his feet.
Slowly, the myths about the place grew, and it had been years since anyone had visited here – anyone except me and Cesare.