by Leah Fleming
Daughter
of the Tide
Also by Leah Fleming
A Wedding in the Olive Garden
The Wedding Dress Maker
Daughter of the Tide
In the Heart of the Garden
Daughter
of the Tide
LEAH FLEMING
www.headofzeus.com
Originally published as Song of the Heart in 2004 by Severn House Publishers Ltd
This edition first published in the UK in 2019 by Head of Zeus Ltd
Copyright © Leah Fleming, 2019
The moral right of Leah Fleming to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN (PBO): 9781789543261
ISBN (E): 9781789543377
Images: © Shutterstock
Author photo: MKI Photography
Head of Zeus Ltd
First Floor East
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London EC1R 4RG
WWW.HEADOFZEUS.COM
In memory of my ‘Purple Granny’, Catherine Maclean Fleming. She’ll know why.
Contents
Also by Leah Fleming
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
PART ONE
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
PART TWO
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
PART THREE
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Glossary
Acknowledgements
About the Author
An Invitation from the Publisher
PART ONE
Blow the wind southerly, southerly, southerly,
Blow the wind south o’er the bonnie blue sea;
Blow the wind southerly, southerly, southerly,
Blow, bonnie breeze, my lover to me.
They told me last night there were ships in the offing
And I hurried down to the deep rolling sea
But my eye could not see it, wherever might be it
The barque that is bearing my lover to me.
One
Kilphetrish, 1930
The girl scampered over the grass, stubbing her toe on a stone, hopping on one foot, cursing into the wind like Uncle Niall when the cow caught him on the nose. Her mother, Eilidh, was standing in the doorway of the stone house waving a cloth, yelling angrily after the child, ‘Mind what I’m telling you, Minn Macfee… away for whelks and limpets, a full pail or it’ll be a thin stew we’ll be getting for the dinner. No dreaming and no singing! We’ve enough bad luck in this house to last us a lifetime without you calling on the sea witches! And mind, the eye of the Lord sees all, lassie!’
‘I hate you! I hate you!’ Minn shouted into the wind with her fingers crossed. The sting from her ‘admonition’ was still throbbing on her thighs. She had spilled the precious milk from the cow, broken an egg when she tripped over a stone. Mother had taken the strap to her legs.
‘If you won’t slow down then you’ll be made to slow down, mo ghaoil, it’s for your own good.’
It was one of Mother’s black days when the mood hung like thunder clouds in the rafters of the crofter’s cottage. Now she must find some seafood or there would be another admonition. School was out so at least she was free from the chores in the smoky house. The rain was only dripping and the shore wind was light. It was time to greet the old seal, sing to the mermaids and spin stones into the sea. She could fill a pail in minutes and then go search for eggs in the machair to soothe away Mother’s gloom.
Minn knew where a hen was laying away, and that secret hoard was usually her own spending money. Only Dan the buth knew about this little arrangement, swapping eggs for liquorice dabs and pan drops in his shop, but today she must find a speckled brown egg for Mother’s tea.
She was making her way down to the old ruined dun, the old fort on the rocks where the limpets clung to the shoreline in clusters. She was good at smashing them off the rocks and scooping up all she could find into her pail whilst brushing away the flies from her ankles.
The seaweed under her bare foot was like dead man’s hands clutching her toes. Sometimes the pot was thickened with carrageen; she hated it slithering about but when she was hungry anything that filled her belly full was swallowed with her nose scrunched up.
Now it was time for the ‘Colonel’ to make his appearance. He lived somewhere under the rocks and when she sang he would bob round into the small bay to admire her performance. He was just an old grey seal with a kindly eye but he always came when she called. Today she was going to sing in English to him: one of the songs they were learning at the school: ‘Mary of Argyll’.
In her heart she knew that Gaelic was the real sound of music but she liked the sad ballads and the jingles about the lords and ladies who always ended up in the kirkyard dead.
If only she could practise her songs in the house, but music was forbidden. She used to practise in the cow’s byre but once Mother caught her singing on the Sabbath to the cow and she beat her mercilessly.
‘I’ll have no blasphemers of the Sabbath in this house! And in English too! We have to beat the dark spirits out of you for your own good.’
Minn took her admonitions without a murmur but her heart was full of rage at the injustice. She had only been singing a school hymn. Mother would not hear a sound of music indoors or in the kirk.
‘Music is devil’s work, ma girl. Don’t you forget it… no matter what the Dominie says or yon fancy minister in the manse. God prefers the spoken word, the silent prayer to all that caterwauling and tonky tunes they have in they hymn books. Music incites the flesh to lust. My word is spoken on the matter.’
‘But the bagpipes, Mother?’ Minn argued.
‘What of them? The call of the pipes brings only sorrows to a home and to those that follow them.’ There was no arguing with Mother when her black moods filled the kitchen, when she sat in darkness spinning like a cailleach, muttering curses into the wool. Her face was leathered and lined like old boots and her hair was white, her hands were gnarled and coarse. Minn could never imagine her young or having the beauty that Uncle Niall, her brother, once spoke of wistfully. Eilidh Macfee never smiled.
Minn just had to sing. It bubbled and burst up through her in ripples of phlegm from her chest. She liked to stand square and lift her voice loud into the wind. Let it echo around the rocks. If she cupped her hand like a shell on her left ear she could hear the voice echoing back into her head. Sometimes she could hear the fiddles in her head at the ceilidhs and danced around the beach like a dervish spinning until she fell dizzy and laughing.
‘I have heard the mavis singing
His lovesong to the morn;
I have seen the dewdrop clinging
To the rose just newly born But…’
Minn was shouting by
the edge of the shoreline but for once Colonel Blimp didn’t oblige. Instead a canoe edged round the rocks with a boy grinning as he paddled towards her, his black hair flopping over his eyes.
‘How now brown cow… Is that Minnie Macfee scaring the shoals away again?’
‘Shut your mouth, Ewan dubh, you’ve scared away the Colonel with your paddling. Is your sister coming out to play the now?’ She shook her fist at him. Trust Ewan dubh, the dark one, to spoil her game. He was her friend Agnes’s big brother and son of the Manse. He won all the prizes in the school and would soon be off to the mainland to college for a proper education.
Ewan spent his holidays helping the fishermen or living rough on the small off-shore islands in his canoe, fishing and camping like a boy scout. Agnes said there was nothing he didn’t know about the waters, the tides, the secrets of the shoreline, and he drew all the sea birds for her. He even ate seaweed for the fun of it.
Agnes Mackinnon was her special friend and lent her storybooks in English to read from her own bookshelves. Minn wrapped them in scraps of oilskin and hid them under the boxed bed, for Mother did not approve of ‘Noo… vells’, as she called them. They were of the devil too. At home there was only the big black Bible for Sunday reading.
Everything was of the devil in their small cottage on the edge of the machair. Uncle Niall Macfee, on leave from the ships in his cap and dark reefer jacket, took no interest in Minn’s upbringing but sucked on his clay pipe and looked into the peat fire. His hands were tanned on the outside and pink on the inside from years working in salt water. Sometimes she thought she saw him look upon her kindly with a sigh.
‘Poor caileag, born to shame and no father.’ But that was usually when he was full of the drink from the boat or the bothy where it was purchased in secret by even the Elders of the Kirk when the spirit moved.
At least Agnes saw no shame in knowing her and Ewan just laughed and teased her making her red faced with fury.
‘Want a hand with the pail?’ he asked, lifting his paddles.
‘No, thank you, I’ve nearly finished,’ she replied.
‘There’s some good ones round the corner. You can squeeze in the back and I’ll take you.’
Minn hesitated but the truth was she was afraid to get aboard in case the canoe might turn over and she’d be flung into the sea. The truth was she couldn’t swim and feared the water. Had it not flung Uncle Erchie from his lobster boat one tide and thrown his body ashore the next dashed on the rocks?
Far worse, had it not stolen her father away before his wedding, shaming her mother and giving her the black moods, making Minn a bastard? She was sure he must have drowned at sea, for no one would ever speak of him.
There was always hushed silence around her birthing day when she, ‘conceived in shame and born in fear’, as Mother always reminded her, had clung on to life by a whisper: a frail scrap of pink flesh with a pulsing heart through its ribs that refused to be stilled. She was a summer child who was kept indoors in a wooden crate for a cradle until fit to be seen.
Mother took praying fits ever since that time but no Bible words could ever comfort her sorrows. Everyone knew that Phetray men were all for the sea: they called it the grey widow-maker and Phetray women bore the wind and the weariness on their faces.
*
‘Come on, I won’t bite you, Minnie Mouse.’ Ewan laughed at her reluctance.
‘Don’t call me that. I canny swim,’ she confessed. Ewan smiled, his dark eyes sparkling warmly. As big brothers went Agnes was lucky to have such a gem. ‘I’ll teach you both then,’ he replied with a grin.
‘But I’d get wet and I’ll no be swimming in ma nothings.’ Minn could feel herself blushing at the very thought.
‘I should think not. I’m sure Aggie will lend you one of her knitted efforts. She can learn too. Everyone should be able to swim if you live by the water. It makes sense.’
Minn shrugged her shoulders. None of her kin could swim. No one went into the water unless to wash off winter’s muck and smoke. There were too many dangers in the water, sea cailleachs, sirens and evil sprites waiting to lure innocents to their end, and most of them were female. Minn knew all the superstitions
‘I have to go back with this pail or I’ll be for a skelping.’ Minn backed up the shingle to the tide line and the flies, the machair. There was just time to search for an egg. She was not going to make a fool of herself in front of Ewan dubh, of that she was certain but she didn’t know why.
Next to the Struthers, the minister and the dominie were almost gentry. They were the undisputed leaders of Phetray. Ewan would be expected to follow in his father’s footsteps: away to university and away from the island.
All the clever ones took that path to freedom and few came back. Only crofters’ sons and fishermen stayed. Cottar children with no prospects had little choice in the matter.
Even at ten Minn sensed her family’s place was at the bottom of the midden heap, last in line for a decent education. They had been pushed to the edge of the sea with just a few chickens and crops, to live from the sea as best they could. Somebody had to stay on the island and do the menial jobs, kelping, field work, road mending, fishing and waiting on. That would be her fate, however bright she knew she was.
‘Yon lass’s as quick as a weasel out of a dike,’ Uncle Niall would laugh about her as he sat by the lamplight filling his baccy pipe.
If she collected every hidden egg on the island her savings would never be enough to get away from Phetray. Mother said Macfees were cursed if they left the island, but Uncle Niall could go and come as he pleased. It was his stone cottage with the turf roof weighed down with stones and nets that sheltered them from the gales that whipped across the island.
The message was drummed into her skull and beaten into her thighs: those that were conceived in fear and born in shame must never leave this shore.
Balenottar Point
Ewan Mackinnon kept his promise to the cottar girl and on the next fine day he brought his sister, Agnes, down to the shore to meet Minn, teaching them both to swim. There was lots of screaming and splashing around for the girls were fearful of the waves and the cold sea. ‘Move your arms like me,’ he demonstrated, prostrate on the sand, aping the breaststroke and kicking frog-like shapes with his legs, sending grains and shells in all directions.
The girls giggled as they practised their strokes in the sand. He took them to the safe open bay with a long slope into deep water where they could wade and feel their feet on sand. The sea was blue and inviting and the waves were just ripples. They changed modestly in the sand dunes, the heat of the summer sun stinging the soles of their feet.
Minn Macfee was already a head taller than Agnes Mackinnon. Ewan could not help but notice the tiny breast buds filling out her knitted swimsuit where Agnes was still flat and undeveloped. Patiently he trawled each in turn through the water so they could practise their leg strokes and then he clasped them round the waist. Then it was time for the girls to jump on to the water and thrash towards his waiting hand. In deeper water he held them by the chin so they could feel the buoyancy of being held up by the sea.
Agnes was not so well coordinated as her friend and trembled at the thought of letting go of his grasp. She thrashed and sank, afraid to float.
‘You must let go…’ he urged her. ‘Float on your back and let your arms gently paddle. You are the boat and your arms and legs are your rudder. If you can float you will always be safe in calm water. Go on, Minn, you can do it.’ Ewan was shouting encouragingly, holding on to her tiny waist.
Minn lay back stiffly. ‘I can’t, I can’t!’
‘Look… I’m hardly holding you.’ Her teacher was lifting her like a waiter holds a tea tray. ‘Just float out of my hands. Head to the sky.’ He watched Minn’s eyes, distrustful at first, blinking back her fear. ‘See, you can do it!’ She was fixing her gaze trustingly on his own dark eyes. ‘I’m watching you… you’re floating now.’
Her silver-blue eyes st
ared intently at him hardly believing she was afloat, gently bobbing away from his arms.
‘Me next…’ yelled Agnes breaking the spell between them. ‘It’s my turn now.’
The moment his attention turned to his sister, Minn capsized, gulping in a mug of salt water. ‘You made me sink!’ She managed to turn and thrash back to safety.
Agnes wanted his attention, making Ewan grab her knitted costume straps like a harness. ‘Come on, you can do better,’ he yelled.
Over the weeks he watched them both grow more confident swimming a little further each time so their feet no longer touched the sand. He warned them never to swim unsupervised or in any other place than the safe shelving shores of Kilphetrish Bay. The Phetray coast was treacherous and the currents unpredictable. Once they could swim Ewan felt it was safe for them to come out in the dinghy alongside him.
Minn kept whining that she had never left the island and begged for trips further out to sea. ‘I can swim back to the shore,’ she boasted.
‘You’ll do no such thing. There are jagged rocks hidden under the surface at high tide waiting to trap you. Have you never heard of the sea hags of Ardnag Point? They lie in wait to lure silly girls on to the rocks who disobey orders. Just because you can swim does not mean you can outrun the tides,’ warned Ewan.
Then his father, the Reverend John Mackinnon, took his son to task for spending so much time with two young girls: his moustache twitching as if there was something faintly indecent about these activities.
‘You mustn’t single out one of my parish poor, giving her ideas above her station. It has come to my attention you have been seen cavorting half naked over the sands, and you almost a man now, sprouting bodily hair.’ The minister was wagging his finger as if he disapproved that Ewan’s height was already outstripping his own.
‘I’m just teaching my sister and her friend to swim,’ Ewan argued. ‘Where’s the harm in that, sir?’