by Karen Swan
‘If?’
‘If there was still something between you?’
Skye looked stunned. ‘Me and Lochlan? You have got to be kidding!’
More overreaction. ‘Why?’
‘You don’t understand,’ Skye said, shaking her head, her expression closing down. ‘I don’t want to talk about it. It’s too painful.’
‘Okay,’ Alex said quietly. ‘I’m sorry.’
They were quiet for a few moments and both said nothing as the dinner lady came over with Skye’s coffee. They waited for her to leave, each of them distractedly stirring their spoons in the cups, Alex knowing that sometimes silence could be as effective in drawing answers as asking questions.
Sure enough . . .
‘Why did you ask me that? There must have been a reason for it. Has he said something?’ she asked finally.
‘No,’ Alex demurred. ‘He hasn’t said anything. But then he wouldn’t, would he? Tell me, I mean. I’m the last person he’d tell.’ Skye stared at her, knowing there was something more. ‘It’s just how he acts when your name comes up; it got me wondering, that’s all, whether there’s any unfinished business between you.’ She shrugged, and when Skye didn’t say anything she added, ‘And with the wedding being so close, I wondered if perhaps there might be some benefit in talking before . . . well, before things are done which can’t be undone.’
‘I love Al.’
‘Of course you do! I wasn’t . . .’ She paused. ‘Look, I’m not saying you’re not with the right guy; I’ve never met Al, I bet he’s great and that you’re made for each other. But if there are things unsaid between you and Lochlan, which need to be said . . . ? You don’t want to go into married life with question marks hanging over your relationship with your ex, do you?’
Skye blinked at her. ‘Are you sure he hasn’t put you up to this?’
‘Skye, I can barely get him to agree with me that the grass is green.’
‘So then . . .’ Skye looked flummoxed.
‘It was just an observation I made, that’s all. I get paid to notice the details and tell it how it is and sometimes, well –’ she shrugged – ‘it’s misplaced, it’s unwanted. I’m really sorry if I’ve spoken out of turn.’
The dinner lady came over again. ‘I forgot your shortbread,’ she said to Skye, setting down the side plate.
Alex picked up her biscuit at last and took a bite. ‘Mmm,’ she said, watching Skye as she stared, unseeingly, at her own. ‘Delicious.’
The wind was coming from the north-west, a bleak cold-fingered tempest pushing against her, but she didn’t stop. There was no question of quitting. Soon she would get to the headland, and the coast path – what little there was of it – would sweep inland, putting the wind at her back and all this toil would ease. To her left, the battleship-grey sea churned, the storm of the previous week gone but not forgotten, and she wondered what the weather would bring next. It impressed itself upon the daily lives of the island’s inhabitants in a way that it didn’t in the cities – for the sky was lead coloured and heavy, every so often the sun finding a way through, forcing a crack in the clouds and throwing down dazzling, sharp-edged bolts of light that illumined the grey depths, pointedly reminding her that it was a bright day up there above the clouds.
She checked her Apple watch as she ran: 6.4 miles so far with another 3.7 to go. It had been a steady uphill incline this far, but at least it meant she’d be downhill on the home straight, just when her legs were really beginning to burn.
She passed shaggy sheep and wild-fringed highland cattle in walled fields, and was grateful for the wind breaks provided by the vast moss-covered rocky outcrops that dotted the ground. Digging deeper, she forced herself to sprint a short steep section of one of them – the last before the path moved off the jagged coastline and headed back inland, according to her map – but as she rounded the summit, her feet stopped pounding at last, not from fatigue but from the heart-stopping beauty of the sight that greeted her. The sun was streaming down again in a refracted sheet of light across the sea, the bulging cliffs of the west coast like silver walls, and had the gods started surfing the sky in chariots of fire, she would have believed her own eyes. It had something of the epic about it, this island, alternately bleak in one breath, majestic in the other – all depending on the light.
She stood with her hands on her hips, her ponytail still swinging and her breath coming heavily as she walked slowly over to a weather-battered bench just ahead. She sank onto it with a grateful groan and stared out to sea, taking deep, gulping breaths of the fresh air. The ferry was passing by, looking prettier at a distance than it did close up.
A robin landed on the bench and stared at her. She reached into her pocket and brought out a finger of shortbread that she had hidden from the dinner ladies on one of her coffee runs. Crumbling it lightly, she scattered it along the top of the bench. The robin waited a moment, then hopped once, twice, on its stick-legs. But as it began to peck for the biscuit crumbs, a crack of twigs nearby sent the songbird flying away in a flurry of wing flaps.
‘Oh,’ Alex murmured, seeing how the crumbs were lost and spying a hedgehog shuffling through the undergrowth. She reached into her pocket for more biscuit offerings but it was mainly lint from her running parka’s pockets that she scattered.
As she gave up, her eyes fell to the small brass plaque on the back and she had to brush leaf debris out of the grooves of the lettering, squinting as she tried to read it:
In memory of EC
A view to America, his heart and home.
CF 1918
Almost a hundred years old? How the devil was this bench still standing? She wobbled it gingerly, checking the joints, but it seemed sound enough and she supposed it was quite well sheltered in the shrubbery up here, not to mention that probably no one ever sat on it. Which was a shame, given that it was dedicated in memory of someone who had clearly loved to do so.
America, huh? It was hard to imagine that such a huge continent was the next port of call from this desolate point, its hulk hidden over the horizon.
She watched as the seagulls wheeled in the sky. She had overheard Mrs Peggie at breakfast telling the new occupants of the green room – a retired couple from Leeds – that the wind sometimes blew in puffins from the outer isles, but there were none to be seen today.
No puffins and no Lochlan. She had returned from coffee with Skye earlier to find his office locked and his car gone. According to Hamish, who had been passing, he had left for a ‘meeting’ but Alex wasn’t buying it. He was as likely to be ‘meeting’ the brunette in the bed sheet as he was an accountant or banker or . . . or peat cutter; he just didn’t want to meet with her.
But it hadn’t been a wasted day by any means. She had taken a proper guided tour for one thing, finally getting to see in practice what she had mugged up on before arriving here. And interestingly, she had stepped outside her direct brief from Sholto and introduced herself to the teams, making a start on interviewing some of the managers. Strictly speaking, their input and assessments of their CEO weren’t required; this wasn’t a standard ‘performance enhancement’ commission and it didn’t really matter what they thought, just what he thought. Nonetheless, if he refused to engage with her, she had to get material on him from other sources; she had to find his pressure points. Skye was clearly one but her conversations with his senior managers had proved to be enlightening too, building on both what Skye had already related regarding his anger issues and what Torquil had highlighted as to his isolation from the rest of the senior executives as they differed on proposed growth strategies.
It was clear that Lochie’s was an empty victory and there seemed to be a consensus amongst the staff that he was living on borrowed time. Alex was inclined to agree. From everything they had told her, it sounded as though the pressure was already beginning to tell and according to the change state indicator she used for assessing leadership profiles, she – and even Louise – had deduced he was in what was calle
d a Gamma state wherein behaviour becomes frustrated, antisocial and destructive, an open revolt against the status quo. Although she was usually brought in to consult during the preceding Beta state, when first doubts about existing practice start to emerge, she had had a few clients at this juncture before and knew he had two options open to him: turn back to the trodden path or force change.
She thought she could well guess his intended strategy.
Giving a weary sigh, glad this conflict wasn’t hers, she pulled her phone out of her pocket and checked for reception. This remote spot was the only place she’d found since arriving here where she could talk without having to shout, where she didn’t have to hang from a window ledge for a clear line. She scrolled through her contacts and pressed dial, one hand pulling into a tight fist in her lap as she waited for someone to pick up.
‘Hi, it’s me,’ she said, taking a deep breath and stepping onto her own battlefield. ‘How’s he been today?’
Chapter Twelve
Islay House, Islay, 5 February 1918
The wind ran laps around the house, making the windows rattle in their frames and fluttering the pages of the book that her mother had left open and unread by the window seat; Clarissa wasn’t the only one to spend her quiet hours with her face to the glass.
She reached down to the pile of mending at her feet and picked up another stocking that had gone at the toes. Head bent as she darned, she repeatedly tucked away the loose tendrils of blonde hair that escaped her bun, the pads of her fingers speckled with pinpricks from the needle.
The wireless was off and she worked in silence, her fingers and arms weaving a nimble dance. She could do this in her sleep, the motions as automatic to her body as the in-out of her lungs. Today was Tuesday but tomorrow evening would be exactly the same. And the day after that.
She lifted her head suddenly. ‘What was that?’
‘Hmmm?’ her father asked, from his usual position in his fireside chair.
‘I thought I heard something.’
His eyes swivelled in his head before he shook it fractionally. ‘No. It’s just the wind.’
She frowned but resumed her task. After this, she had to do her father’s sweater which the moths had nibbled, and the counterpane on her bed. And if she was feeling really lively, then perhaps pick up her knitting and finish the socks she was working on; she had become so proficient, she could now knit two at once. Her father kept remarking that she and her mother, between the two of them, would single-handedly knit the Allies to victory.
She glanced across at her mother, whose stockinged feet were peeping from under her skirt as she dozed on the chaise longue. She wasn’t used to manual work; Clarissa was even less used to seeing her mother with mud on her face. She had always been a mother of the ornamental sort: soft and fragrant, with a staccato laugh and pretty eyes. Having a son at war was too abrasive for her delicate nerves.
She looked back to the fire, her gaze catching in the mirrored glass above the mantel, and she gasped at what she saw reflected there. As she twisted behind her to see for herself, the darning dropped from her lap. She stood and stared.
‘Dear God.’
Her father looked up. ‘Wha—?’ He rose too and made his way to the window.
The sky was red, a ghoulish extraterrestrial light spreading from one point of the horizon to the other and making the heavy sea glimmer darkly.
‘Red signifies U-boats in the area, doesn’t it, Father?’
He nodded grimly, his hands behind his back as they looked out, unable to make out any detail on the water.
‘Should . . . should we go down there?’ she asked. ‘There might be a boat in distress.’
Her father was silent for a few moments. ‘It’s a warning signal, that’s all,’ he said, turning, cane tapping on the floor as he made his way back to the fire.
‘But what if someone’s been hit? They might need help.’
‘You must stop letting your imagination run away with you. It’s a warning, I’ve told you. And besides, what help could we possibly provide in this darkness, in these conditions?’ he asked, just as the wind picked up strength again and hurled itself against the stone walls. ‘I’ll go down at first light.’
‘But Father—’
‘I’ve said I’ll deal with it. You needn’t concern yourself any further with it. Whatever’s going on, you can be sure it’s no business for a woman. Leave it now,’ he said sternly.
Clarissa looked back into the fire, a throb of bitterness at her craw. But she picked up her sewing and let her hands fall back into their mindless rhythm, her mother still asleep on the chair. It was just another night. The same as all the others.
It was still dark when she dressed, the embers still glowing faintly in her bedroom fire. The wind hadn’t let up – if anything it was worse – and she clutched her coat tightly to her lean frame as she let herself out through the kitchen door and ran through the herb garden.
Mr Dunoon’s bicycle was where he had always kept it: propped up against the stone wall of the potting shed and awaiting his return as though he’d merely popped inside for a cup of tea rather than left for the battlefields of Europe. Grabbing it, taking pains not to brush her finger against the bell and alert anyone, she threw her leg over and – bunching her skirts in one hand – pedalled furiously down the drive. She had barely slept, her dreams febrile and anxious, and she felt propelled by an imperative, an instinct, that she couldn’t explain.
Her cloche hat threatened to blow off several times as she sped down the gardens, out of the estate and over the open windswept moors, heading downhill for the port, her eyes streaming as she navigated the increasingly bumpy, rutted track. It was sleeting, the temperature raw and merciless, and she wondered why she was doing this, her soft bed still warm. What would there be to see? Her father had said it was a warning flare to the other ships in the waters, that was all.
But as she drew closer, her breath coming hard as she stood out of the saddle to crest a hill, she could see activity in the little town – horses on the shore and chimneys puffing at a time when most were resolutely dormant. It was still early, far too early for the residents to be up yet. Even the farmers didn’t rise at this hour; the sun was barely peeping over the horizon, as though ashamed of what it might reveal.
She felt her gut tighten as she pedalled harder, a gust finally blowing off her hat as she rounded the corner into town, passing the rows of white fishermen’s houses. Women were standing in the street weeping.
‘What . . .’ she panted, throwing the bike down, its wheels still spinning. ‘What’s happened?’
‘An American troopship was torpedoed last night,’ Maggie MacFarlane managed, dabbing her eyes with the corners of her shawl. ‘Those poor, poor lads.’
Clarissa’s insides felt liquid at the memory of the red sky. She had known it! Felt it, somehow. ‘Were there any survivors?’ she asked, feeling a stab of revulsion at herself for being so easily swayed by her father, warm and bored in the big house.
‘See for yourself,’ Morag McKenzie said, jerking her chin towards the golden scoop of sand. The tide was out and the beach was littered with long, rubbery fronds of kelp – and bodies. Scores of bodies. Some face down. Some naked. Some, their skin dashed to ribbons from the merciless rocks she herself had grown up scrambling on for mussels.
No.
She ran towards them, towards the men now carefully lifting the perished into the cart that Farmer Kilearan had brought down, his horse tacked up and ready to pull those big wheels from the sand.
‘Mr McLachlan,’ she cried, flying up to the nearest man as he drew a blanket over the face of one dead soldier. The shore winds lashed the sleet against her, slapping her skin red, her own hair blinding her.
‘Get back, lass. This is no sight for you to see.’
She raked her hair back from her face. ‘Please, did any survive?’
The ploughman looked back at her. He looked as though he’d been up all night. His face
was blue-tinged from the cold and the wet, exhaustion and hunger. She noticed he was in his shirtsleeves and that they were wet. ‘Eight. We think.’
‘Eight?’ she whispered. That was all? From a troopship?
‘It was a force ten gale. I don’t know how there’s even that many as made it.’ He jerked his chin towards the far side of the beach where the cliffs and high rocks – so deadly last night – now provided shelter from the wind. A small group of women were doling out hot soup, the survivors hunched and shrouded in blankets, coats, anything that covered them. Several, it seemed, had lost their clothes.
She staggered across, her gaze fixed on the young men who were staring back out to sea with hollow eyes. They were still wet, some of them. Had they been in the water all night? That couldn’t be possible, could it, to have survived so long in these temperatures?
‘What can I do? Tell me how I can help,’ she demanded, grabbing the arm of Amy MacKenzie, one of the quilter women.
‘We’re just waiting for Old Euan’s cart so we can transport these ones up the beach. They can’t walk – injuries some of them, but shock and exposure too. They’re awful weak and cannae stand. We need to get them off the sand as quickly as possible and in front of some fires. Run up to the hotel and tell Muirne we need water boiled for baths and more clothes. Plenty more clothes. They’ll catch hypothermia. Be quick now. That one there isn’t looking too good,’ she said in a lower voice, glancing at one soldier who was shivering violently, his eyes red-rimmed but his lips a glacial blue. ‘And when you’re done, go and take over from Molly Buchanan. She’s been up all night churning the butter. Her arm will come clean off if someone doesn’t help her.’
‘Butter?’ Clarissa queried.
‘For making scones. These boys are going to need feeding if we’re to heat them back up from the inside.’
Clarissa felt another burst of self-disgust. All night, she’d slept in a feathered bed, a fire crackling at her feet and these lads . . .