by Emma Fraser
‘I am but a year younger than you!’ What could he mean? To cover her confusion she knelt by the fire and added some lumps of peat. Although she couldn’t see him, she knew his eyes were on her.
The room was deathly quiet, with only the sparking of the fire.
It seemed for ever before Archie spoke again. ‘I’m sorry, I must leave you now. I have work to do.’
When she turned, he was gone.
But if she’d thought their disagreement would keep him away, she was delighted to find it did not. Like the summer before, she saw him whenever she could. It wasn’t every day as Archie was kept busy on the croft and she was out frequently with Papa most days.
The islanders became accustomed to seeing her with the doctor and sometimes, if they telephoned or called at the house looking for him but he was out on a visit, they told Isabel their complaint. She learned to ask the right questions. How long have you been ill? What is your cough like? Is there blood? Does your child have a fever? Sometimes she’d advise them to come to the surgery, at others, if she wasn’t sure, she’d tell them her father would call to see them as soon as he was able. He was pleased with her. The information she gathered helped him decide which patients required his help more urgently.
Whenever she wasn’t helping her father, she was with Archie. He was full of what he was learning at school and they talked for hours, arguing over Darwin’s theories or books they had both read.
She became accustomed to him disagreeing with her – more than that, she enjoyed the way their minds clashed and parried. No one at school challenged her as he did, and she told him so.
‘They say it’s not feminine to be well read and knowledgeable,’ she complained.
‘Why does it matter what they think?’ he replied. ‘You must learn to be your own person and not care so much about the opinions of others.’
Of course she didn’t care about what other people thought – except Mama and Papa.
Archie told her about the ceilidhs at which everyone met to exchange gossip and news before the singing and dancing started. Now and then the sound of voices, accompanied by fiddles and accordions, soared across the hills to Borreraig House. She often longed to join in, but Archie had never asked her, and even if he did, she couldn’t have gone. Mama would never have tolerated it.
He was her friend. Her only true friend. If she didn’t completely understand his moods, it was only to be expected.
Chapter 6
Skye, summer 1906
Life in Edinburgh with her older brother, George, and his family was stultifying. If possible, George was even stricter than Mama, allowing Isabel to go out only with him and his wife, Gertrude, to the theatre or to one of their tedious friends’ homes for dinner at the weekends. Happily, Gertrude considered Isabel too young to require her company in the drawing room after dinner so she used the long, empty evenings to study every textbook about medicine she could find. She intended to learn as much as possible before she started her medical studies.
Grateful to be back on Skye, she wondered if Archie would be there. Last summer, to her disappointment, he had stayed in Inverness. Perhaps it would be the same this year.
On the first fine day she went looking for him. When she crested the hill near Galtrigill she was pleased to find him, sitting against a rock and chewing a stalk of clover.
He was dressed in wool trousers – without a single hole, she noticed – and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up to the elbow. He was also sporting a small moustache. She felt curiously shy of him. Since she’d last seen him, the boy she’d known had grown into a man.
‘Isabel! I heard you were back.’
‘Of course you did,’ she teased. ‘Probably the moment I stepped off the boat.’
They shared a smile. Over the years, Isabel had come to realise that there was very little the islanders didn’t know about what happened on Skye.
‘I knew you were coming before you even left Edinburgh. Dr MacKenzie told my mother you were expected. He also said you’re going to finishing school in Switzerland after the summer.’
Isabel grimaced. ‘I know. It makes me sound like a piece of incomplete embroidery, doesn’t it? But it will allow me to brush up on my German and French. Mama says all women, even if they plan to become doctors, should speak at least one other language fluently.’
There was an uncomfortable silence between them as if they had forgotten how to talk to each other.
‘How are your parents? And Jessie?’ she asked.
‘Mam is well, and Jessie won the bursary right enough but…’ his blue eyes darkened, ‘…she can’t take it up. Dad’s not so well and Jessie has to stay at home to help Mam look after him.’
They had talked often about Jessie’s desire to become a nurse and Isabel knew that she required at least a year’s further schooling and her intermediate certificate before a reputable hospital would take her on for training. ‘I’m sorry about Jessie. Is there nothing to be done?’
‘Not for the time being. Maybe in a year or two.’
‘And you? You didn’t come last year.’
‘I was helping to teach at a school for the summer while I studied for my school leaving certificate.’ He glanced at her. ‘I have it now.’
Isabel frowned. ‘I thought you were going to find work as a schoolmaster once you had it?’
Archie shook his head. ‘As I said, Dad’s not keeping well and I’m needed on the croft.’
‘Has my father seen him?’
‘Aye. But he can’t find anything wrong. He thinks that the time he spent in prison might have weakened his chest.’
Once more silence stretched between them.
An eagle mewed like a cat above their heads. The sun warmed Isabel’s face, and from the east, the smell of peat smoke drifted on the wind. One lungful was enough to make her feel at home.
‘Mrs MacDonald tells me the people here still look up to your papa for standing up to the Earl of Glendale. You didn’t tell me the whole story the first time we met. I’d like to know what really happened.’
Archie jumped to his feet. ‘Let’s walk while we talk. I’ve sat long enough.’
He hadn’t changed altogether, Isabel thought, smiling to herself. He was the same restless, lively Archie she’d always known.
‘There’s nothing much more to tell than I told you before,’ Archie said, as she fell into step beside him. ‘Back in the eighties, many of the landlords were clearing the land of people so they could put sheep on it. They reckoned sheep would make them more money than the rents they were getting from the crofters.’ His lips twisted. ‘They were probably right. It’s hard enough to make a living as a crofter without having to pay rent too.’ He gestured to the fields. ‘They even stopped us gathering heather to thatch our roofs and fill our mattresses. As you can see, there’s plenty of it just lying around.’
‘That’s dreadful!’
‘They wanted us out of our homes and off their land. After that it got even harder to make a living and most of the crofters on Skye couldn’t keep up with the rent, especially when the factors kept increasing it. You’ve seen how we live. There’s little to spare. And if crofters tried to improve their houses, making them bigger, for example, the landlords wanted more rent.’
‘Didn’t they care that the crofters couldn’t afford it?’
‘Most of them don’t even stay in the big houses they own. And those who do leave it to the factors and managers to look after their business. I doubt many of them give us much thought.’
No wonder he sounded bitter.
‘One day, the earl’s factor tried to stop the crofters using the common grazing for their cattle – even though they didn’t use it themselves. But the men of Glendale wouldn’t accept it. They held a meeting, which was against the law, and decided to ignore the order. My father’s croft wasn’t in Glendale but he knew that whatever the factors did to them they would do here too, so he joined in the protests. Dad wanted it known that no one coul
d ever put him and his family off his land. Mam was expecting my older brother then.’
Isabel frowned. ‘You never told me you had a brother.’
‘He died.’
She touched his hand lightly. ‘I’m so sorry.’
‘It was a long time ago. Before I was born.’
‘Tell me more about your father,’ Isabel said, ‘but let’s stop walking so I can concentrate on what you’re saying instead of watching where I put my feet lest I step in a cowpat.’
Archie removed his jacket, with the flourish of a man wearing the best that money could buy, and laid it on a patch of grass. The air was heavily scented with clover and freshly cut hay, and splashes of bright purple heather punctuated the hills.
‘Where was I?’ Archie said, staring out towards the sea. ‘Anyway the boat arrived with policemen from the mainland. They wanted to arrest everyone who had been at the meeting. Instead, my father and four others put themselves forward to take the blame. They sent the gunboat packing and insisted on making their own way to Edinburgh on the RMS Claymore.’
Archie was a natural storyteller, Isabel thought. She could imagine the meeting, the men dressed in their kilts (whether they had worn them or not she had no idea, but the image appealed to her), their women clutching at their husbands. Or had the women stood stiff-shouldered and proud? An image flashed into her head. The one from near the beginning of The Bride of Lammermoor where, with a flash of steel, the men pulled out their swords after the Keeper threatened to stop Edgar’s father’s funeral. Isabel had read the book several times and still didn’t much care for the pliant Lucy. Edgar, on the other hand, would always be her ideal of a romantic hero. Come to think of it, Archie reminded her of Edgar, except that he wasn’t nearly so dour. Not that she would ever see Archie in that way.
‘The men were sentenced to two months in Carlton gaol in Edinburgh for sedition,’ Archie continued. ‘At first they were treated like any other prisoners, but eventually they gave them proper soft beds to lie on instead of the hard beds the others had.’ He smiled. ‘Most of them were used to sleeping on straw mattresses at home, or on the mud floor of bothies, so the hard beds wouldn’t have bothered them, but they were also allowed a fire and newspapers and the hotel across the road sent them hot meals. To the annoyance of the government, they were treated like heroes. When they were released, almost every islander who could walk was there to greet the Martyrs of Glendale when their boat berthed at Portree.’
‘Then what happened?’
‘The government set up a commission to look into the problem. That resulted in a change to the law that gave crofters security of tenure. They can’t throw us out of our homes any more. It was a victory for the ordinary man, and my father was part of it.’
His voice rose. ‘It doesn’t change the fact that most of us can’t vote and still have to scrape a living from this land, but at least now we have rights that can’t be taken from us. Never again will families be forcibly removed from the only place they know, their cottages burned to the ground, and the people put into the cargo holds of ships, like cattle, to be sent to lands they know nothing about, only to die in their hundreds on the way there.’
He smiled ruefully. ‘Listen to me! Jessie says I should be a politician. Fine chance when I’m still not allowed to vote.’
‘It infuriates me,’ Isabel said, ‘that only certain men have suffrage. Everyone, including women, should have the right to vote on the affairs of this country. Every person over the age of twenty-one at least.’
Archie tossed aside his stem of clover. ‘Well, men should.’
‘You don’t believe in votes for women?’
‘I didn’t say that. I just think that if all men, men like my father, had the vote, things would be different. Women wouldn’t need the vote then. Their men would look after them.’
Isabel decided to let that pass for the moment. ‘How would it be different?’
‘We’d be equal. We wouldn’t have to work for rich, ignorant men who don’t know anything about the land they own. We could make something of ourselves – fight for decent wages and decent living conditions. We could start businesses, make proper money, become politicians, even. Why shouldn’t we do anything they can?’ He paused. ‘Things have to change.’
His words made Isabel feel ashamed, as if she were responsible too. But women had even less power than men. All she could do was try to forge her own future.
‘When I was in Edinburgh I saw the suffragettes march in Princes Street. There were hundreds of them – and thousands more women lining the street and waving. One of the leaders rode a horse astride, like a man, and she was dressed in a uniform, like a soldier. I thought she was wonderful. They say they won’t stop marching and fighting until women get the vote. Perhaps we’re not that different, Archie. Neither of us can do what we want. Not yet, anyway.’
She smiled at him, wanting to banish the darkness in his eyes. ‘Whatever happens, we’ll always be friends, won’t we?’
He frowned. ‘I doubt that. You’ll be a fine doctor with your own practice, and I’ll…’ He tugged a clump of grass from the ground and threw it in the air. ‘Who knows? Perhaps I’ll be a rich man. One thing I do know, I’m not going to be a crofter all my life.’
They sat in silence for a bit, listening to the murmur of the waves on the rocks.
‘I’m thinking,’ Archie said finally, ‘that one day I might go to America. There’s talk in the newspapers that a man can make his fortune there if he’s prepared to work hard.’ He stared into the distance as if imagining this new life for himself.
America! The thought of him going so far away dismayed her. In her mind he was part of Skye and she hated the thought of returning and not finding him here.
‘What about the croft?’ she asked.
His gaze locked on hers as he leaned back on his elbow and propped his head on his hand. ‘Dad will get better and he and Mam will manage. As soon as I make money I’ll send it to them. It’ll be enough so that they won’t have to work so hard, and perhaps enough to pay Jessie’s way at school.’
‘You have it all worked out, don’t you?’ Her heart ached at the thought of him leaving. But he was right to think of the future. Archie had always wanted more than the island could offer. And it was too sad that his brother had died. She couldn’t bear it if anything happened to Andrew.
He pulled another blade of grass and tickled her under the chin, making her laugh. ‘That’s better,’ he said. ‘I don’t like to see you sad.’
‘I was thinking of what I would do if my brother died. What happened to yours?’
‘Mam said a fever killed him. She never knew what it was exactly. She still tends his grave. He’s buried at the back of our house.’ He shook his head. ‘Almost every family here has a brother or sister, or both, buried on their land.’
Isabel felt a pang of guilt – almost as if it were her fault that people like Archie and his family suffered. But her father would never behave towards anyone as the landowners had behaved towards their tenants. He treated everyone with kindness and courtesy, no matter how poor they were.
‘Mam says my brother is in a better place,’ Archie said. ‘She believes we’ll all meet again in the next life.’ He murmured something in Gaelic she couldn’t understand.
‘What did you say?’ she asked.
‘It is a line from the Bible. From the Song of Solomon. “Until the dawn breaks and the shadows flee.” It’s written on most of the graves here. Do you not know it?’
‘I don’t think so, although I like it.’
‘Why?’ He stared at her intently as if her answer really mattered to him.
She thought for a while. She wanted to tell him exactly how the words made her feel. ‘Because it promises so much more than a life with God in Heaven after death. It promises that when pain seems without end, almost beyond bearing and without the possibility of happiness, that it will end, and just as the dawn will surely follow even the darkest night, ha
ppiness will follow sorrow.’
She took a deep breath when she’d finished. She hadn’t known that she’d been going to say all that. Would Archie even understand?
But judging by the way his eyes creased at the corners, he was pleased with her reply. ‘You know poetry yet you don’t know your Bible. Not so learned, after all,’ he teased.
‘Just because you know one line from the Bible doesn’t mean you know it all.’
He leaned towards her. ‘That’s where you’d be mistaken. I know the Song of Solomon by heart. I had to learn a book from the Bible and that was one of the shortest.’
‘Say it to me, then.’
He raised an eyebrow. ‘I will not. It’s rude. When I discovered that, I learned another instead.’
‘The Bible rude?’ She laughed. ‘Now I know you’re only pretending to have learned it.’
He smiled slowly. ‘Don’t say you didn’t ask for it. Are you ready?’
When she nodded, he continued: ‘“How beautiful are thy feet with shoes. O prince’s daughter! The joints of thy thighs are like jewels, the work of the hands of a cunning workman.”’
Heat flooded her cheeks. He was right. It was rude.
For a moment the air seemed to shiver between them. As his eyes held hers, Isabel stared back, noticing for the first time that they weren’t simply blue but had flecks of navy in them, reminding her of the different colours of the sea. The way he was studying her, as if he could see into her soul, made her heart race.
His voice deepened as he continued. ‘“Thy neck is as a tower of ivory: thine eyes like the fishpools in Heshbon.”’
He reached up a hand and gently touched her cheek. Her skin burned under his fingertips. His arm, she saw, was covered with fine dark hairs.
‘“I charge you, O daughters of Jerusalem, that ye stir not up nor awake my love, until he please,”’ he continued.
She knew she should pull away, but she couldn’t make her limbs move.