by Peter May
The very first photograph in the album was an overexposed sepia portrait of a very old woman, the glaze cracked and flaking in places. Underneath it, written in a copperplate hand, the legend Great-Great-Grandmother McKay, so discoloured that it was almost unreadable. It appeared to have been taken in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century, and Sime thought that perhaps this album had been started by Kirsty’s mother collating old family photos. He flipped forward through the pages, taking a journey through time that brought him to the arrival of baby Kirsty, a round quizzical face peering at the camera from the arms of her mother.
And then Kirsty as a little girl, aged seven or eight, staring solemnly into the lens. He flicked forward through the pages, and watched her grow up before his eyes. An awkward smile with two missing front teeth. Older now, with pigtails and braces. Then wearing glasses, hair cut short in a bob.
He stopped mid-turn, a tingling sensation all across his neck and shoulders, and let the page fall back. This was the little girl whose cut-out head he had found lying on the floor of Norman Morrison’s bedroom. And he understood now why it was that the child had looked so familiar. In spite of the hair and the glasses and the toothy smile. It was Kirsty.
He turned the next page and saw the dark square left by a missing photograph. The others around it were all of Kirsty at the same age, and he wondered if the absent snapshot was the very picture from which Morrison had cut her head. If it was, then either he had taken it without permission, or Kirsty had given it to him. Though he could not imagine why she would.
He sat staring at it for a long time, before turning the next page to continue his journey. Kirsty stretching through her teens, transformed in a few short years from a cute but gawky ugly duckling to a handsome young woman with knowing blue eyes that seemed to reach through the lens and across the years. And then suddenly the pictures stopped. As she had grown up, so her parents had grown older. And now, presumably, with the death of her mother, the photographic record of a happy family had come to an abrupt end.
He turned back again to the shadow of the missing picture and felt confusion as the sleeplessness of days and weeks washed over him in a wave of almost debilitating fatigue. He rubbed his eyes and glanced at the facing page. A thirteen- or fourteen-year-old Kirsty smiled back at him. Just the age that the Ciorstaidh in his ancestor’s journal would have been when next he saw her. And something drew his mind back to the diaries, to the stories his grandmother had read to them as children. And he could almost hear his ancestor’s voice.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
I was, I think, about fifteen years of age when my father came back from the fishing that year.
In his absence I had been going daily to the moor to fetch the peats we cut in the spring and left drying in stacks called rùdhan mór. It was hard work loading the dried turves into wicker creels to carry the mile or so back to the village, but I had built a splendid stack behind our blackhouse. Peats laid one on the other in a herringbone pattern that allowed the rainwater to drain through. I had taken a great deal of care over it, because I knew my father would examine it critically on his return.
It had been a fine summer, but the first signs of autumn were in the air. And soon the sun would cross the equator, bringing the equinoctial gales that would herald the start of winter.
My father had been away for two months, as he was every summer for the herring fishing at Wick, and it always took him time to settle back into life on the croft. But he was in good spirits. It was the only season of the year when he had money in his pockets, and already it was burning a hole in them. Old blind Calum said to me that morning that it wouldn’t be long before my father would want to be off to Stornoway to spend it. And he was not wrong.
The day was hardly over before my father took me aside and told me to prepare myself for a trip to town in the morning. It was the first time I was to go with him. I knew it would take us a day or more to get there with our old cart and borrowed pony, but I was excited by the prospect. So excited I could barely sleep that night as I lay in my box bed in the dark of the bedroom listening to my sisters beyond the curtains, curled up together in their own bed, fast asleep and purring like cats.
*
We set off in the morning, a brown pony tethered to our cart and pulling it along rutted and potholed roads till we struck the main north–south highway. It was a touch wider, perhaps, than the roads I was used to, and deeply scarred from so much traffic heading to and from Stornoway.
I sat up next to my father and told him I thought that I could walk faster than our pony. But my father said we needed the cart to bring back our winter provisions, so I should be patient with the beast and be thankful that we had her to bear the load on the road home.
It was the first time I had strayed further from our village than Sgagarstaigh, or Ard Mor, and I was amazed at the size of our island. Once you left the sea behind you, you could walk all day without ever seeing it again. But the land was pitted with wee lochs reflecting the sky, and it broke up the monotony of the landscape.
The thing that amazed me most, though, was the size of the sky. It was enormous. You saw much more of it than ever you did at Baile Mhanais. And it was always changing with the wind. You might see rain falling in the distance from a bank of black cloud. But if you turned your head just a little the sun would be shining somewhere else and there could be a rainbow vivid against the black.
The heather was a wonderful deep purple, punctuated by the yellow heads of the wild tormentil that grew everywhere. At first, as we left the mountains behind us in the south, the land folded over on itself again and again, broken only by the silver-mossed rock that burst through the peat, and the streams and rivers that tumbled from higher ground, teeming with fish.
‘Why is it,’ I asked my father, ‘that we don’t eat more fish when the rivers are so full of them?’
His face set and he glowered at the road ahead of him. ‘Because those that own the land won’t let us take them,’ he said. ‘The fish in these rivers, boy, are only for those and such as those. And if you’re caught taking one, you’ll end up in the jail faster than you can say bradan mór’ – which was the Gaelic for big salmon. And plenty of big salmon there were, too. In just a few weeks they would be fighting their way upstream, jumping the rocks and waterfalls to spawn somewhere up in the hills.
As we got further north the land flattened out, and there was not a tree in sight. You could see for miles across the moor towards the west, and on our right I caught occasional glimpses of the sea. The Minch, they called it, and I knew that somewhere beyond The Minch lay the mainland of Scotland.
As darkness fell we were still some miles from town. My father drew our cart into the lee of a crop of rocks where we were sheltered from the wind and unwrapped the marag dhubh that my mother had sliced and fried for us before we left. Blood from the cow, mixed with oatmeal and a little onion. Black pudding they call it now in English, but we knew it then as famine food. Blood drained from the beast in small quantities so that you got at least some protein without having to kill the animal.
And then we slept beneath a tarpaulin, huddled together for warmth, the canvas pulled up over our heads to protect us from the midges, those wee biting flies that come out in black bloody clouds when the wind drops.
*
It was fine weather when we reached town the next morning and made our way among the carts and traps that rattled along the length of Cromwell Street. There were whitewashed cottages on one side, and tall stone buildings the like of which I had never seen before, gables and dormers and bay windows. On the other side sunlight caught the wind-dimpled waters of the inner harbour where fishing boats were lined up at the quay. A spit of land crammed with shops and houses separated the inner and outer harbours. And anchored out in the bay beyond them, several tall, three-masted sailing ships sat proud on the high tide.
Away to our right, on the hill that rose above the inner harbour, Seaforth Lodge dominated the skyline, a
great big two-storey stone house and outbuildings that commanded marvellous views of the town and harbour and the ragged coastline to the east.
‘Who owns that?’ I asked my father.
‘A Mr James Matheson,’ he said. ‘A very rich man who has just bought the whole of the Isle of Lewis.’ He said he had heard that Matheson paid one hundred and ninety thousand pounds for the island. And I could not imagine so much money. ‘It means he owns everything, and everybody, on it,’ my father said. ‘Just like Sir John Guthrie at Ard Mor owns the Langadail estate, and everything and everybody on it. Including us.’
When we reached the centre of the town my father told me to go and explore while he made his tour of the grocery and hardware stores and the ship’s chandlers, to buy tools and grain, and a little something for my mother and the girls. He grinned at me. ‘And a little baccy for myself.’
I was reluctant at first. I had never seen so many people before, and had no idea where to go or what to do. But he shoved me in the back. ‘Go on, son. Time to spread your wings.’
Of all the people in Stornoway that day, it seemed I was the only one who was barefoot. For the first time in my life I felt self-conscious about it, and wished I had come in my Sunday best. I wandered along the quay looking at all the fishing boats, watching my feet on the nets and buoys. The smell of fish was powerful and I turned up a narrow street that led to the outer harbour. Past alehouses and hostels, and down to what they called south beach, where the big boats berthed at the pier.
Most everyone had their heads covered. The men with top hats or cloth caps, the women with all manner of bonnets tied under the chin to stop them from blowing away. The clack of horses’ hooves, and the metal of cartwheels on cobbles filled the air, along with the wind and the voices of people that were carried on it.
I heard a Gaelic greeting: ‘Ciamar a tha thu?’ A young woman’s voice. But I didn’t turn, because I couldn’t imagine that she was addressing me. Until she said it again, and it seemed as if she were right behind me. I turned and found myself looking into the fine face of a pretty teenage girl, her black hair piled up in pleats, a dark coat open over a long dress that buttoned high up to the neck and trailed almost to the ground. She looked at me with knowing blue eyes that seemed to have a smile in them. ‘Bet you don’t know who I am,’ she said to me in English.
I smiled. ‘Of course I do.’ And I hoped she couldn’t hear the thumping of my heart. ‘How could I forget? My arms are still aching from carrying you all that way.’
It pleased me to see her blush, and I pressed home my advantage.
‘I thought you couldn’t speak Gaelic.’
She shrugged casually. ‘I don’t. But I learned a few phrases – just in case I should ever bump into you again.’
Now it was my turn to blush. I could feel the colour rising high and hot on my cheeks.
She had regained the advantage and smiled. ‘But the last time we met you couldn’t speak any English.’
I felt the initiative swing back in my direction, ‘I took English at school,’ I said. ‘Learned the whole language, just in case I should ever come across you lying in a ditch again.’ Her eyes widened a little. ‘But I haven’t had much chance to use it since I left.’
Her face clouded. ‘You’ve left school already?’
‘Three years ago.’
Now she was astonished. ‘But you couldn’t have been any more than …’ She searched my face, trying to guess my age.
I helped her out. ‘Twelve at that time.’
‘That’s far too young to be leaving school. I’ll be tutored until I’m eighteen.’
‘I was needed to work on the croft.’
‘What kind of work?’
‘Well, right now I’m drystane dyking.’
She laughed. ‘Are you still speaking English, or what?’
I smiled back at her, enjoying the laughter in her eyes. ‘It means I’m building stone walls without mortar. Right now, a sheep fank up on the hill above Baile Mhanais. That’s the village where—’
She cut me off. ‘I know where you live.’
‘Do you?’ I was surprised.
She nodded. ‘I came once and stood on the hill and looked down at it. I was pretty sure I saw you on the shore. It looked as if you were gathering seaweed.’
I was excited by the thought that she had taken the trouble to come and see where I lived, but tried to hide it. ‘That’s quite possible.’
She cocked her head and looked at me curiously. ‘Why would you gather seaweed?’
‘It’s good fertiliser. We spread it on the lazy beds.’ I could see from her expression that she had no idea what I was talking about, and I didn’t want to seem like some peasant boy, so I changed the subject. ‘A tutor’s a teacher, right?’
‘A private teacher, yes.’
‘So do you go somewhere to be tutored?’
‘No, I’m tutored at the castle. My tutor has a room there.’
A group of boys pushing a cart at the gallop almost knocked us over, shouting at us to get out of the way, and we started walking along the seafront. ‘It must be amazing to live in a castle,’ I said.
But she didn’t seem impressed. ‘You live in one of those squat little stone houses with straw roofs,’ she said.
‘A blackhouse, aye.’
She shuddered. ‘I would hate that.’
Which made me laugh. ‘They’re not so little. There’s plenty of room inside for folk in one end and cows at the other.’ I knew this would get a reaction and it did.
There was horror on her face. ‘You have cows living in your house?’
‘It keeps us warm,’ I said. ‘And there’s always fresh milk on tap.’
She shuddered. ‘It sounds medieval.’
‘Not the same as living in a castle, I imagine, but I like it well enough.’
We walked on in silence for a short time and I stole a glance at her. She was quite tall. Past my shoulder, anyway, and there was a light in her smile that gave me butterflies in my tummy. She caught me looking at her and her face coloured a little, eyes dipping, a tiny smile turning up the corners of her mouth.
She said, ‘What are you doing in Stornoway?’
‘I came with my father to get provisions for the winter. He’s just back from the fishing on the mainland, so we have some money.’
‘Don’t you make money from your croft?’
I laughed at her innocence. ‘The croft barely feeds us.’
She looked at me, consternation in her voice. ‘Well, where do you get your clothes?’
‘We spin wool from the sheep and weave it into cloth for my mother to make into clothes.’ And I had that feeling of self-consciousness again as she looked me up and down, her eyes coming to rest on my bare feet.
‘Don’t you have any shoes?’
‘Oh, yes. But we have to buy them, and they wear out pretty fast. So we keep them for going to church on Sundays.’
I saw in her eyes that she could not even begin to understand how we lived.
‘What are you doing in town?’ I asked.
‘My father brought us. Some friends who are staying at the castle wanted to do some shopping. We’ll be lunching at the new Royal Hotel in Cromwell Street. And we’re staying over there tonight.’ She seemed excited by the idea.
I didn’t tell her that my father and I wouldn’t be lunching at all. We would eat the last of the black pudding my mother had made and spend the night in our cart, hoping that it wouldn’t rain. We stopped and gazed out at the water washing in along the shore, and I saw a tall ship in full sail tacking carefully into the comparative shelter of the harbour through the narrow channel between the rocks.
‘I asked the staff at the castle, but no one seemed to know your name.’ She glanced up at me. ‘Except that you were a Mackenzie.’
I flushed with pleasure at her interest. ‘Sime,’ I said.
‘Sheem?’ She frowned. ‘What kind of name’s that?’
‘It’s the Gaeli
c for Simon.’
‘Well, it’s a silly name. I will just call you Simon.’
‘Oh will you?’ I raised an eyebrow.
She nodded quite definitely. ‘I will.’
‘In that case, I’ll just call you Ciorstaidh.’
She frowned. ‘Why? It doesn’t sound that different.’
‘Because it’s the Gaelic for Kirsty, and I’ll see it differently.’
She looked at me with such penetration in those blue eyes that it set my butterflies going again. ‘You remember my name, then?’
Caught in that gaze of hers I felt my mouth go dry and I could hardly find my voice. ‘I remember every little thing about you.’
‘Hey! What do you think you’re playing at?’
The voice shouting so close startled me, and I turned to find myself facing a teenage boy, perhaps a year or two older than me. He had a thick head of gingery hair and was tall, a well-built lad wearing fine clothes and a pair of shiny black boots. A slightly smaller boy with short black hair stood at his shoulder. The bigger boy pushed me in the chest and I staggered back, taken by surprise.
‘George!’ Kirsty shouted at him, but he ignored her, angry green eyes fixed on me.
‘What the hell do you think you’re doing talking to my sister?’
‘It’s none of your business, George,’ Kirsty said.
‘Any cotter boy talking to my sister is my business.’ He shoved the flat of his hand once more into my chest. Though this time I stood my ground.
Kirsty stepped between us. ‘This is Simon. He’s the boy who saved my life the day the trap went into the ditch and Mr Cumming was killed.’
He pushed her out of the way, puffing up his chest and moving close so that his face was just inches from mine. ‘Well, if you think that gives you any rights, then you can think again.’
‘We were just talking,’ I said.