by Peter May
It was a mix of hunger, relief and trepidation that made my legs tremble as I made my way down the steep incline, Peter ahead of me, Catherine at my back, to find unaccustomed solid ground beneath my feet. My body was still moving to the rhythm of the boat.
As the crowd thinned, heading for buses and cars, and darkness fell across the hills, we took out our little rectangles of cardboard and hung them around our necks, just as the nuns had instructed. And we waited. And waited. The lights started to go out on the ferry behind us, and the long shadows we had cast across the pier vanished. One or two people threw curious glances in our direction but hurried on. Now there was almost no one left on the pier, and all we could hear were the voices of the sailors on the ferry as they prepared her to spend the night at dock.
A feeling of such despondency fell over me as we stood there alone in the dark, the black waters inside the protective arms of the harbour slopping against the stanchions of the pier. The lights of a hotel beyond the harbour wall looked warm and welcoming, but not for us.
I could see Catherine’s pale face peering up at me out of the darkness. “What do you think we should do?”
“Wait,” I said. “Like the nuns said. Someone will come.”
I don’t know where I found the faith to believe in that. But it was all there was to hold on to. Why would they have sent us all this way across the sea, and told us there would be someone there to meet us, if it wasn’t true?
Then out of the darkness a figure emerged, hurrying along the pier towards us, and I wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or afraid. It was a woman, and as she got closer I could see that she was in her late forties or early fifties. Her hair was piled up beneath a dark-green hat pinned to her head, and her long woollen coat was buttoned up tight to the neck. She wore dark gloves and wellington boots, and carried a shiny handbag.
She slowed as she reached us, a look of consternation on her face, and she bent to peer at the cards around our necks. Her frown vanished as she read the name O’Henley on Catherine’s, and she gave her a good looking over. A hand came up to grip her jaw and turn her face one way, then the other. And then she examined both her hands. She gave us barely a glance. “Aye, you’ll do,” she said, and took Catherine’s hand to lead her away.
Catherine didn’t want to go, pulling back against her.
“Come on,” the O’Henley woman barked. “You’re mine now. And you’ll do what you’re told or suffer the consequences.” She yanked hard on Catherine’s arm, and I’ll never forget the desperate look on wee Cathy’s face as she glanced back at Peter and me. I really thought, then, that I would never seen her again, and I suppose that was the first time I realized that I was in love with her.
“Where’s Catherine going?” Peter said. But I just shook my head, not trusting myself to speak.
I don’t know how long we stood there then, waiting, growing colder, till I couldn’t stop my jaw from chittering. I could see figures moving around inside the lounge bar of the hotel, shadows in the light, people in another world. One that we didn’t inhabit. And then, suddenly, the lights of a vehicle raked across the pier, and a van drove right on to it, stopping just yards away, trapping us in the beam of its headlights like rabbits.
A door slammed and a man moved into the light, casting a giant shadow towards us. I could barely see him with the light behind him. But I could tell that he was a big man. He wore blue overalls and boots, and a cloth cap pulled down on his forehead. He took two steps towards us and peered down at the cards around our necks and grunted. I could smell alcohol and stale tobacco on his breath.
“In the van,” was all he said, and we followed him around to the side of the van where he slid open a door to let us in. “Hurry up, I’m late enough as it is.” Inside were ropes and fishing nets and orange buoys, old wooden crates stinking of rotten fish, creels and a toolkit, and the carcass of a dead sheep. It took me a moment to realize what it was, before recoiling in horror. For some reason it didn’t seem to trouble Peter.
“It’s dead,” he said, and put a hand on its belly. “And still warm.”
So we sat on the floor in the back of that van with the dead sheep and the fishing stuff, and had our bones shaken, breathing exhaust fumes, while he drove us over dark, single-track roads, flat bogland silvered by the moon shimmering away into a black distance.
Until we saw and smelled the sea again, almost dazzling in the glow of the moon, occasional lights rising up the hillside, burning in the windows of unseen cottages.
The long finger of a stone jetty reached out into still waters, and a small boat rose gently on the swell. A man we would come to know later as Neil Campbell sat smoking in the wheelhouse, and came out to greet us while the big man with the cap parked his van. When he’d done, he told us to get out.
The two men spoke and there was an exchange of laughter. But I had no idea what it was they said. We were ushered, then, down into the boat which chugged across the moonlit strait towards the ragged shape of an island rising up out of the sea, odd lights dotted around its looming hillsides. It took only ten minutes or so to reach it, and we climbed up on to a crumbling stone jetty at one side of a narrow neck of water leading into a small bay. I could see houses on both sides of it. Strange, squat, stone dwellings with grass for roofs that I later learned was called thatch. The tide was out, and the bay was ringed with black and gold seaweed.
The boat headed off, back across the strait. “Follow me,” the big man said, and we trotted after him along a beaten track that circled the bay, and then up the hill on a stony, rutted path to one of those thatched cottages we had seen from the harbour. There I encountered my first-ever smell of peat smoke as the wooden door squeaked open into a dingy inner room, half filled with the stuff. A faint yellow light spilled from a Tilley lamp hanging low from the rafters, and a bank of peats glowed red in the open door of a black, cast-iron stove set against the end wall. An earthen floor was strewn with sand. This was the kitchen, living room and dining room all in one, a large table sitting in the middle of it, a dresser against the back wall, two small deep windows set on either side of the door. A tongue-and-groove wood-lined passage hung with coats and tools led off to what I would discover were three bedrooms. There was no toilet, no running water, no electricity. It was as if we had travelled back in time from the twentieth century to some medieval past. Sad little orphaned time-travellers.
A woman in a dark-blue patterned print dress and long white apron turned from the stove as we came in. It was hard to say what age she was. Her hair was like brushed steel, dragged back from her face and held by combs. But it wasn’t an old face. Certainly not lined. Though she wasn’t young. She gave us a long, appraising look and said, “Sit in at the table. You’ll be hungry.” And we were.
The man sat down, too, and took off his cap, so that I saw his face for the first time. A lean, hard face, with a big crooked nose on it. He had hands like shovels, with hair growing on his knuckles, and more of it poking out from beneath his sleeves. What little hair he had left on his head was plastered to it in swirls from the sweat of his cap.
The woman delivered four steaming plates to the table. Some kind of meat in a gravy swimming with grease, and potatoes boiled to the point of disintegration. The man closed his eyes and muttered something in a language I didn’t understand, then as he started to eat he said to us in English, “My name is Donald Seamus. This is my sister, Mary-Anne. Mr. and Miss Gillies to you. This is our house, and this is your home now. Forget wherever it is you came from. That’s history. From now on you’ll be Donald John and Donald Peter Gillies, and if you don’t do what you’re told, so help me you’ll regret the day you were born.” He shoved a forkful of food into his mouth and glanced at his sister as he chewed on it. She remained silent and passive the whole time. He looked back at us. “We speak Gaelic in this house, so you’d better learn it bloody fast. Just like the poor souls who speak Gaelic in the English court, if you utter a word of English in my presence you’ll be dee
med not to have spoken. Is that understood?”
I nodded, and Peter glanced at me for confirmation before nodding too. I had no idea what Gaelic was, or how it would be possible for me to speak it. But I didn’t say so.
When we had finished eating, he handed me a shovel and said, “You’ll be needing to relieve yourselves before you go to bed. You can just water the heather. But if you need anything more you can dig a hole for it. Not too near the house, mind.”
And so we were tipped out into the night to do our toilet. The wind had risen, and clouds scurried across the vast expanse of sky overhead, moonlight flitting in sporadic bursts across the hillside. I led Peter away from the house to where we had an uninterrupted view back across the water, and I began to dig, wondering what on earth we would do if it was raining.
“Hiya!” The little voice, caught on the wind, startled us both, and I turned in amazement to find Catherine standing there grinning at us in the dark.
I could barely formulate the question. “How . . . ?”
“I saw you come across in the wee boat, about half an hour after me.” She turned and pointed across the hillside. “I’m just over there, with Mrs. O’Henley. She says I’ve to be called Ceit now. Funny spelling. C - E - I - T. But pronounced Kate. It’s Gaelic.”
“Ceit,” I said. And I liked the sound of it.
“It seems we’re what they call homers. Kids that the fucking Church has dumped here from the mainland. There’s dozens of us on this wee island.” Her face clouded for a moment. “I thought I’d lost you.”
I grinned. “You cannae get rid of me that easy.” And I couldn’t have been happier that I’d found her again.
“Dad, you’ve got to take your trousers off. They’re still wet.”
So they are! They must have got soaked on the boat. I stand up and I can’t seem to get the zip down. She helps me open them up and I step out of them as they fall to the floor. Now she’s pulling my jersey up over my head. Easier just to let her do it. But I can manage the shirt buttons myself. I don’t know why, but my fingers feel so stiff and clumsy these days.
I watch her as she crosses to the wardrobe to get fresh trousers and a neatly pressed white shirt. She’s a lovely-looking girl.
“Here, Dad.” She holds out the shirt towards me. “Do you want to put it on yourself?”
I reach out and stroke her face, and feel such tenderness for her. “I don’t know what I’d have done if they hadn’t taken you to the island, too, Ceit. I really thought I’d lost you for good.”
I see such confusion in her eyes. Doesn’t she realize how I feel about her?
“Well, I’m here now,” she says, and I beam at her. So many memories, so much emotion.
“Remember how we used to haul the seaweed up from the shore?” I say. “In those big panniers on the little horses. To fertilize the feannagan. And I would help you dig yours.”
Why is she frowning? Maybe she doesn’t remember.
“Feannagan?” she says. “Crows?” Switching to English now. “How can you fertilize crows, Dad?”
Silly girl! I can hear myself laughing. “That’s what they called them, of course. Grand tatties they gave us, too.”
She’s shaking her head again. And sighs, “Oh, Dad.”
I want to shake her, dammit! Why doesn’t she remember?
“Dad, I came to tell you that I have to go to Glasgow to sit some exams. So I won’t be here for a couple of days. But Fionnlagh’ll come and see you. And Fin.”
I don’t know who she’s talking about. But I don’t want visitors. I don’t want her to leave. She’s buttoning up my shirt now, her face very close. So I just lean in to kiss her softly on the lips. She seems startled and jumps back. I hope I haven’t upset her. “I’m so glad I found you again, Ceit,” I tell her, wanting to give her reassurance. “I’ll never forget those days at The Dean. Never. And the turrets of Danny’s place that we could see from the roof.” It makes me laugh to remember it. “Just to remind us of our place in the world.” And I lower my voice, proud of what we’ve become. “Still and all, we didn’t do too bad for a couple of orphan waifs.”
Twenty-one
It was dark when Fin dropped George Gunn in Stornoway and headed across the Barvas moor to the west coast. It was a black, wet night, the Atlantic hissing its fury into his face as he drove west. Just like the night his parents were killed on this very road. He knew the dip in it like the back of his hand. He had passed it every week on the bus that took him to the school hostel in Stornoway on Monday, and then back again on Friday. Although he couldn’t see it now, he knew that the green-roofed shieling was only a hundred yards or so away to his right, and that it was just about here that the sheep had leapt suddenly up from the ditch, causing his father to swerve.
There were still sheep on the road now. Crofters had long ago given up trying to fence off the grazing. Only a few rotted posts remained to give witness to the fact that they had once tried. At night you saw the eyes of the sheep glowing in the dark. Two luminous points of light, like devil’s eyes reflecting your headlights back at you. They were stupid beasts. You never knew the minute they would startle, and run out in front of you. On still days they would congregate on the road, leaving the bog to escape the tiny, biting midges that were the curse of the West Highlands. And you knew that if the sheep were troubled by them, then it must be bad.
Over the rise he saw the lights of Barvas flickering in the rain, a long string of them following the line of the coast before vanishing into darkness. Fin followed intermittent beads of them north until the scattered lights of Ness spread more densely across the headland, and he turned up towards Crobost. The ocean was hidden in obscurity, suffocated by the night, but he heard it breathing its anger all along the cliffs as he parked and got out of his car at Marsaili’s bungalow.
Her car was not there, and he realized that she must already have left for Glasgow. But there was a light burning in the kitchen window, and he made a dash for the door through the rain. There was no one in the kitchen and he went through to the living room where the television was playing the evening news in the corner. But there was no one here either. He went out into the hall and called upstairs to Fionnlagh’s bedroom.
“Anyone home?”
A line of light lay along the foot of the door and he started up the stairs. He was only halfway up when the door opened and Fionnlagh came out on to the top landing, shutting it quickly behind him. “Fin!” He seemed startled, surprised, oddly hesitant, before hurrying down the stairs and squeezing past Fin on the way. “I thought you were in Harris.”
Fin turned and followed him down to the living room, where he could see in the light that Fionnlagh was slightly flushed, self-conscious, almost embarrassed. “Well, I’m back.”
“So I see.”
“Your mum said I could use the plumbing whenever I needed to. Until I get things fixed up at the croft.”
“Sure. Feel free.” He was clearly uncomfortable, and moved now through to the kitchen. Fin followed in time to see him opening the fridge. “Beer?” Fionnlagh turned, holding out a bottle.
“Thanks.” Fin took it, twisting off the cap, and sat down at the table. Fionnlagh hesitated before taking one himself. He stood leaning back against the fridge and threw the cap across the kitchen into the sink before taking a long pull at the bottle.
“So what did you find out about Grampa?”
“Nothing,” Fin said. “Except that he’s not Tormod Macdonald.”
Fionnlagh stared at him, a look of vacant incomprehension on his face. “What do you mean?”
“Tormod Macdonald died at the age of eighteen in a boating accident. I’ve seen his death certificate and his grave.”
“It must be some other Tormod Macdonald then.”
Fin shook his head. “It’s the Tormod Macdonald your grandfather claims to be.”
Fionnlagh took several swigs of beer, trying to digest this. “Well, if he’s not Tormod Macdonald, who is he?”
“Good question. But not one he’s likely to give us an answer to any time soon.”
Fionnlagh was silent, then, for a long time, staring into his half-empty beer bottle. “Do you think he killed that man they found in the peat bog?”
“I have no idea. But he was related to him, that’s for sure. And if we can establish the identity of one, then that’ll probably tell us who the other is, and maybe what happened.”
“You sound like a cop.”
Fin smiled. “It’s what I was for most of my adult life. The mindset doesn’t change overnight just because you quit your job.”
“Why did you?”
Fin sighed. “Most people spend their lives never knowing what lies beneath the stones they walk on. Cops spend theirs lifting those stones and having to deal with what they find.” He drained his bottle. “I was sick of spending my life in the shadows, Fionnlagh. When all you know is the darkest side of human nature, you start to find the darkness in yourself. And that’s a scary thing.”
Fionnlagh tossed his empty bottle into a box of them by the door, and the dull clunk of glass on glass filled the silence in the kitchen. He still appeared ill at ease.
Fin said, “I hope I haven’t interrupted anything.”
Quick eyes flashed towards him, then away again. “You haven’t.” Then, “Mum went to see Grampa this afternoon.”
“Any joy?”
The boy shook his head. “No. He was sitting out in the rain, apparently, but seemed to think he was on a boat. Then he started wittering on about collecting seaweed to fertilize the crows.”
Fin scowled. “Crows?”
“Aye. He used the Gaelic word, feannagan. Crows.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
“No, it doesn’t.”
Fin hesitated. “Fionnlagh . . .” The boy looked at him expectantly. “Better let me tell your mum about your grandfather.” And Fionnlagh nodded, only too happy, it seemed, to be relieved of the responsibility.