St Kilda slept. The boulders on the beach glimmered with ice and the land was pillowy with deep drifts, although the snow was pockmarked by dozens of footsteps to the cleits, the kirk and the featherstore. The villagers had been all but confined to their cottages for a month, give or take, only emerging in any numbers in their shawls and tweeds when the winds dropped and the snow clouds held long enough to collect more peat for the fires, or fulmar oil for the lamps. The cows needed daily stripping of their milk in the byres, of course, and Effie made a lonely figure as she trekked morning and dusk to the bull house, whatever the weather. But to all intents and purposes, the island was in hibernation. Winter here had neither subtlety nor mercy.
It had already proved that. The consequences of the sheep drama the preceding month were still being felt, and none could yet shake the pall of despair that had come from it. A sudden, severe blizzard, early on in the season, had blanketed the isle in drifts that came almost to the men’s shoulders in places, and it had taken almost every able-bodied villager to help dig out the sheep stranded on the Am Lag plateau. Mhairi had almost been killed when a dugout collapsed on her and only the quick actions of Donald McKinnon had got her out in time, but by then, everyone had been soaked through and frozen to the bone. Several people had fallen ill with fevers afterwards but Molly had gone on to develop pneumonia and within the space of a few days, she had died.
It had been as swift and simple as that.
One moment she’d been here, the next she was gone: a radiant young woman snuffed out in her prime. No one had been left unaffected. Her brother Norman and his wife Jayne were grieving in their own, very different ways; Lorna was inconsolable, as if she were to blame. And Flora’s own brother David, who had been in love with Molly and prepared to play the long game to win Norman’s blessing, now quietly raged that his patience, respect and kindness had been rewarded in this way.
In the immediate aftermath, Flora, Mhairi and Effie had huddled together in the byres or in Effie’s box room for comfort, knitting and talking in low voices. But somehow Molly’s loss was felt all the more keenly when they were together – their quartet reduced to a trio – and gradually they had begun spending more and more time in their own homes instead. Effie read and painted; Mhairi distracted herself with looking after her siblings. But Flora, faced with David’s despair as well as her own, had nowhere to hide, and she whiled away the hours by her window, as now, gazing upon a blank horizon, feeling caught in a half-life.
‘Flora.’
The sudden rap at the glass made her jump and she startled to see Jayne, spectral, on the other side, looking back at her.
Flora frowned. Jayne was never one to strike up conversation without good cause, but she was especially reclusive at the moment; knocking on windows wasn’t her style. Flora moved to open the window but the older woman simply shook her head and then jerked it in the direction of the street. A second later, she was gone from sight.
For a few moments, Flora didn’t stir. It was all so odd. Surely Jayne didn’t want her to go out there and follow her? Why not just knock on the door?
She got up after a moment, intrigued. Besides, what else was there to do?
‘Where are you going?’ her mother asked, looking up from her fireside chair. She was carding the wool, her husband weaving at the small loom that was usually stored in the roof rafters during the summer. Flora’s brothers and sisters were down at the schoolhouse for the first time in weeks and a pot of fulmar broth was bubbling on the stove, ready for their return.
Flora pushed her feet into her boots. ‘Out for some air. I’ve got to move. I’ll go round the bend if I spend another afternoon in here.’
‘You could always unravel those for me,’ her mother said, pointing a foot towards a pile of jumpers that were outgrown and in need of reconstruction to bigger sizes.
‘I will, just as soon as I’ve stretched my legs,’ Flora said, wrapping two red shawls round her body in a criss-cross arrangement and shrugging on a tweed jacket.
‘Tch, I keep telling you: the active mother makes the lazy daughter,’ she heard her father murmur as she went to the door.
‘Hush now. She’s grieving, can you not see? She’s not herself.’
‘She’s too much herself, if y’ ask me.’
Flora closed the door behind her and stepped into the street, taking care about where she placed her feet. The stones were slippery and a deep lip of snow sat atop the wall. She looked around for sight of Jayne and found her several houses up, waiting in the gap between Ma Peg and Lorna’s cottages.
‘Jayne, is everything quite well?’ she asked, walking on the snowy verge towards her. No one moved easily in their cumbersome boots at the best of times. ‘Is it Norman?’
Norman Ferguson’s tempers were legendary and when he raised his voice it could generally be heard from one end of the village to the other. He was fond of moving out of the cottage into the byre on the occasions Jayne found her voice and argued back, and would have to be cajoled home, days later, like a spoilt child. There had been no all-out fights yet, but since losing Molly he had been caught drunk several times, having stolen from the whisky barrel that had washed ashore two years back and was stored at the manse under the reverend’s watchful eye. It was strictly to be used for high days and holidays only, and the last such celebration had been the ceilidh following the waulking of the tweed in the autumn; but the reverend had taken an unusually sympathetic stance in this instance. ‘He’s afraid of Norman, plain and simple,’ Flora had heard her father say to Donald McKinnon.
‘No,’ Jayne replied, ‘he’s well enough today. He’s down in the featherstore, doing an inventory of the oil stocks.’
She turned away and began walking between the cottages, towards the head dyke. She clearly expected Flora to follow her.
‘Ah, so you just . . . want some company, then?’
Jayne smiled. ‘Aye. Some company would be nice.’ But she lapsed almost immediately into silence as they began climbing up the steep slope, leaving Flora puzzled. Never once in her nineteen years had Jayne requested her company for a walk.
‘Can I ask you something?’ Flora said presently, as they crossed over the stream and started up the south face of Mullach Bi. Their breath was coming more quickly, more deeply, but they were fit and strong, well used to this terrain.
‘Of course.’
‘Did you see it?’
Jayne stopped walking. She knew immediately what Flora meant, but it seemed an age before she turned her head and looked at her. ‘Aye.’
Jayne’s visions – her so-called gift of second sight – were recognized and accepted by all the villagers, even the reverend, who was always the first to decry superstition. Few people dared to ask Jayne about them but Flora had a bolder spirit, an enquiring curiosity that meant she couldn’t hold her tongue.
‘And I prayed day and night for God to spare her.’ Jayne gave a hopeless shrug, words inadequate in the face of such an unjust death. For all her gifts, she had no power to stop what she foresaw. She was a hostage to her own mind.
Flora swallowed. ‘When . . .?’
‘When did I see it? A few days before. The night of the ceilidh.’
Flora thought back; it had been their usual celebration after waulking the tweed, a tradition that stretched back beyond all their lifetimes, including Ma Peg and Old Fin’s. They had feasted on hogget and danced in the MacQueens’ own byre; Flora remembered seeing Jayne dancing a little, enjoying herself. But then . . . she concentrated harder . . . she hadn’t seen her much after the Eightsome.
‘Did you know it was Molly? Were you certain?’
Jayne only nodded this time, a pained look on her pale features.
‘Oh, Jayne.’ The two women had lived together in the cottage with Norman. How had Jayne kept such a horror from her? How had she eaten meals, talked with her, laughed . . . knowing what was coming? ‘Do you think . . .?’ She could barely get the words out. ‘Did she . . . did she suspect?’
Jayne shook her head quickly. ‘I made certain of that. I could not have borne for her to know that terror too.’
Too. Flora watched her and felt a sense of the weight Jayne carried, the burden she could never share. To suffer in silence, knowing a loved one’s death was coming in mere days and nothing could be done to stop it . . .
‘She was so well, Flora . . . so s-strong . . . I couldn’t understand how it would happen – not until the weather came suddenly in and the men began rounding everyone up to help.’ Jayne swallowed, as if the words were hot coals burning her throat. ‘. . . When Mhairi was carried back, I thought at first I’d been mistaken. That I’d seen the wrong girl and – God help me’ – she lifted her face skywards, her eyes closed – ‘God help me, but for a moment I felt relief.’ She looked across at Flora with urgency. ‘I wanted no harm to come to Mhairi, you know that. But Molly – she was only my sister-in-law, but I loved her like blood.’
‘I know,’ Flora whispered, placing a hand on her arm. ‘I know you did. And I understand why you thought that way.’
‘You do?’ Guilt played over her face like a shadow.
‘Of course. Anyone would feel the same about their own.’
Jayne nodded but there was no real comfort to be had. They resumed walking, the snow crunching underfoot; on these higher slopes, it sat pristine and unmarked, virgin territory.
Jayne’s words tumbled in Flora’s head, thoughts dislodged by every footstep, and it began to occur to her that there was something else too that must have been terrifying for Jayne. Her husband could sulk over a wrong look; to have lost his sister . . . She looked across at Jayne, always so forbearing. So discreet.
‘Jayne.’
‘Aye?’
‘. . . Did Norman . . .’ Flora hesitated over even using the word. ‘Did he blame you?’
There was a hesitation. ‘For not stopping it?’
‘For not warning him.’
Jayne swallowed, her body seeming to deflate of air. ‘. . . Yes.’
Flora squinted. She hadn’t heard any rows – and it suddenly didn’t make sense. Norman Ferguson, an angry man, had lost his only sister; and every night he lay beside the woman who had foreseen it – a worry James himself had once articulated. She suddenly knew Norman wouldn’t have let it pass unmarked. ‘. . . Show me.’
Jayne stopped walking again. ‘What?’
‘Show me how he blamed you.’
For a dizzying moment, as the two women held eye contact, Flora feared she had gone too far. No one ever pressed Jayne for details of her life; no one ever pushed for explanations. People kept their distance, afeared of her gift as if it could be summoned at will, a demon she could manipulate against her enemies. But Flora knew more happened behind their stone walls than in the other cottages. That Jayne was a keeper of all kinds of secrets.
‘Show me.’
Slowly, Jayne pulled up the layers on her torso to reveal faint red marks across her ribs – marks like a boot print. But Molly had died a month earlier. Exactly how hard had he kicked her, for traces still to remain?
‘Oh Jayne,’ she whispered, tears gathering in her eyes. ‘. . . Did you show Lorna?’
Jayne nodded. ‘She’s been very kind. And very discreet. As I hope—’
‘Of course,’ Flora said quickly. ‘I would never breathe a word.’
‘Thank you.’ Jayne began walking once more but Flora caught her hand and held it as they climbed together.
‘You can always talk to me, Jayne – you know that? I’m not superstitious like the rest.’
‘I know that. You’re fearless, Flora MacQueen.’ Jayne smiled, squeezing her hand and swinging their arms between them.
They got to the saddle of the Am Blaid ridge and Flora turned to look back down at the village. She felt glad to have come out after all. The walk had warmed her in spite of the perishing temperatures, and she felt a rush of love for this snowy rock in the ocean, grey smoke twisting from every chimney, lights glowing from the windows. Her home.
‘Flora, come and see.’
She turned back to see Jayne standing a hundred yards further up, right on the crest of the ridge. She was pointing towards something in Glen Bay. It was one of those rare days when the wind had switched direction, blowing straight into Village Bay and whipping up waves that would make any disembarkment impossible. But here, on the north coast, protected by this very ridge, the sea lay perfectly at rest, a banner of battleship-grey silk, rippling lightly below milky skies.
‘What is it?’ Flora panted, gathering her skirts for the final strides and coming to join her.
‘It’s the reason I brought you up here,’ Jayne said, clasping her arm and holding her close as Flora tried to understand what she was seeing.
‘What is that?’ she frowned. She had seen aeroplanes, distant specks in the sky, a few times, but . . . this thing was floating on the water’s surface, tethered to a rocky outcrop.
‘I believe it’s a seaplane,’ Jayne said. ‘I saw it circling, coming in to land earlier, when I was coming back with a peat. It would have been too rough to land on the other side.’
Flora hadn’t heard the dogs barking on the beach for once. They warned of approaching ships, not planes. ‘But who . . .?’
Jayne looked at her and smiled. ‘The letters B.A.A.R.E. were written underneath the body of it.’
Flora blinked. ‘B . . .?’
British Arctic Air Route Expedition. She gasped, her hands flying to her mouth. ‘Surely not?’ she cried, immediately scanning the wide bowl of the glen for a sighting of him. Where . . .?
Then she saw it: a single track of footprints dotting the landscape from the rocky cove, all the way through to . . . She stepped forward and saw him in a dip, a dark speck in the snow, slowly making his way towards the ridge.
‘James!’ she called, hardly daring to believe her eyes.
He stopped and looked up, his silhouette visibly relaxing at the sight of her as she waved. ‘Flora?!’
‘He’s really here? It’s really him?’ Flora laughed, looking across at Jayne.
‘It really is.’
Flora pressed her fingers to her lips as she watched him break into a slow run. ‘Who else did you tell he was here?’ How long would they have together before the crowds intruded again? Had the reverend been alerted? He always liked to press the flesh of their well-heeled visitors.
‘No one,’ Jayne shrugged. ‘And I won’t be telling anyone, either.’
‘You won’t?’ Flora looked at her in surprise.
‘No. You’ve not had five minutes alone with him since he asked you to marry him and there’s a long winter coming. Have some time together without everyone’s fuss.’ Jayne patted her arm and turned to take her leave.
‘Jayne, thank you,’ Flora called after her.
She smiled. ‘There’s been enough sadness here recently, Flora. As far as I’m concerned, it’s about time one of us had a happy ending.’
Flora waited for him, shivering in the wind, seeing his power as he ran up the last of the slope, his bloody-minded determination to get back here one last time.
‘I can’t believe this is really happening!’ she laughed as he drew ever nearer, still running until the very last step. ‘You actually came back!’
‘Didn’t I promise I would?’ he panted, eyes bright as he reached for her.
She stood on tiptoe to kiss him, feeling the warmth of his cheeks in her palms. He had the first shadow of a beard and his hair was longer than when she’d seen him in the autumn.
‘You’re crazy,’ she whispered, running her hands over his face and in his hair.
‘You’re beautiful,’ he murmured back, kissing her again and again, their passion surging like an underground spring. ‘And cold! Flora, you’re shivering.’ Even just a few moments standing on this exposed hillside was enough to whip the warmth from her, but she didn’t care. If it meant they had a few extra moments alone . . .
Without hesitation, he shrugged off his heavy shearling-lined jacket, seeming not to notice he was now in shirtsleeves. ‘Come, we can’t stay up here. Let’s get you inside.’
‘Wait,’ she said, pulling back as he began to turn downhill, towards the ridge. ‘I know somewhere else we can go . . . Somewhere private.’ He looked at her. ‘No one knows you’re here. We don’t have to go to the village. For once, we can be together, just the two of us.’
He looked uncertain for a moment and she saw a question pass through his eyes. She knew exactly what he was asking. ‘Really?’
She nodded. She’d never been more sure of anything.
‘Really,’ she smiled, taking his hand.