Glen Bay, St Kilda
Flora hurried down from the ridge, heading for home, where stubby shadows slanted on sappy grass, and freshly scrubbed sheets and curtains flapped in the breeze as everyone spring-cleaned their homes after the long winter confinement. She had been in Glen Bay for two weeks now – Mhairi needed a companion as she tended the sheep flocks in the summer pastures – and to her surprise, she was missing the daily bustle and flow along the street, her neighbours’ idle chatter and busy hands never stopping as life continued for them, uninterrupted.
The weeks were counting down quickly now to her summer departure, and it was as if she was suddenly seeing her home with fresh eyes. For nineteen years, she had followed the rhythms of island life without question or excitement; there was no novelty in pursuits which stretched back beyond the limits of her own memory. Now, though, she was acutely aware that everything she did would be for the last time: the gannet harvest, seeding the crops, lambing, hoeing the lazybeds, waulking the tweed . . . Even just walking to the kirk with Mhairi and Effie in the snow, scratching for lichen on the rocks above a stormy sea, seeing the pink thrift and buttercups bloom on the Ruival slopes, watching the wrens build their nests in the drystone walls – none of it would have a place in her new home.
But if there wouldn’t be the same beauty there, hopefully the danger would be absent too. Death and disaster frilled the minutiae of their daily lives here and this morning had been no exception, with Mhairi sent into a wild panic as she milked the first of the ewes and caught sight of the semaphore over on Boreray. The girls had seen the boat going across only yesterday for the annual sheep plucking; the men were expected to stay over there for several days yet, but two huge cuts in the turf, visible across the water, had sent out a shockwave and a rescue boat had been quickly deployed by the remaining villagers. Two cuts signified injury – three, death – but they had no way of knowing who it was that was afflicted, and Mhairi wouldn’t be calmed until they had news. It was down to Flora to get over here as fast as she could, her bare feet flying over the grass and dark hair streaming in the wind.
‘Flora!’
Her name carried like a bird’s call and she looked up to see Effie standing by the wall of the bull’s house, waving wildly. She changed course, heading over to her.
‘Where’s the fire?’ Effie grinned as they hugged in greeting.
‘Uff,’ Flora panted, exhausted by her exertions all over again and leaning back against the wall. She had lost more fitness than she had realized. ‘I’m dead. She made me run the whole way here.’
‘Mhairi did?’
‘Aye.’
Immediately Effie looked worried. ‘Why couldn’t she run? Is she hurt?’
Flora quickly put up a hand. ‘She’s fine. But we were over on Cambir when we saw the cuts . . .’ She looked directly at Effie. ‘Who is it?’
‘Donald McKinnon.’
‘What?’ Flora snapped up to standing again.
‘He’s got a head injury.’
‘Is he going to recover?’
‘Aye. He fell catching a sheep and cut his head, but Lorna thinks he’ll be fine with some rest. She’s going to stay with them for the next few nights too.’
‘She is?’ Flora was concerned. It must be a bad cut if Lorna was needed around the clock.
‘Aye. Poor Mary’s not up to much.’
‘No,’ Flora agreed, biting her lip. Mary’s longed-for pregnancy was known, among the villagers, to be precarious, requiring plenty of bed rest. ‘But he’s definitely going to be all right?’
Effie grinned at her concern. ‘Is absence making the heart grow fonder? Are you missing us over there while you idle the summer away?’
‘Idle?!’ Flora huffed, grabbing a stalk of grass poking from the wall and threading it through her fingers. ‘We’ve three hundred sheep over there.’
‘Aye, grazing and giving you no bother, from the look of things.’ Effie’s eyes twinkled with mischief.
‘And what does that mean?’
‘Just that you look bonny as ever. I thought it was hunger that had driven you back, but evidently not . . .’ Effie teased, reaching forward to stroke her hair. ‘The look of love?’
James flashed through her mind again, as he always did, and she wondered what he was doing right at this moment – swooping in the skies in his Gipsy Moth seaplane, mapping and marking every jut and crevice of the Greenland coast? Or huddling in a tent pitched on the icy tundra, someone on watch for the polar bears? She had no way of knowing. Once he had left Iceland, as warned, all communication had ceased; no mail was possible from the wilderness. It would be months yet before he sailed back to London and some days it felt unendurable – she ached to hear his voice, to feel his touch.
‘There’s nothing bonny about spending a fortnight alone with Mhairi, let me tell you. She’s grown up with her brothers telling tales about the McKinnon curse and dash if she doesn’t believe it. She’s frightened everything’s going to kill her or her kin.’ Flora rolled her eyes, moving the subject – and attention – back onto their friend, wishing she could tell Effie the whole story.
‘Well, you can tell her it’s all fine. No relatives harmed.’
‘But Donald’s not out of the woods yet?’
‘No, but if Lorna thought it really bad, she’d have sent him to the mainland.’
‘How?’ Flora asked doubtfully, but as she looked up she noticed, for the first time, the yacht anchored in the bay. She gave a gasp at the sight of the elegant cruiser. How could she have missed it? It hadn’t the racing lines of Sir Thomas’s Shamrock V but it was a different beast to the Rushtons’ boat James had sailed in on last summer too. Sleeker, with a graceful, curved hull and a triple mast, it sat comfortably between the other two vessels, at the very top of its class. ‘Whose is that?’
Effie sighed. ‘They’re friends of MacLeod. The Earl of Dumfries and his son. They brought Mathieson over.’
‘Eeesht,’ Flora groaned, her mood immediately dipping at the mention of him. The factor rarely improved anyone’s day with his presence.
‘I know. We thought we got lucky that the men decided to cross to Boreray on account of the weather and they took Mathieson with them, giving us some peace. Only . . . the next day, they’re back again.’
‘Bad luck.’
Effie shrugged. ‘Worse for Donald.’
Tiny, the bull, gave a sudden snort and a few bucks as he trotted happily up the enclosure.
‘He looks pleased with himself,’ Flora murmured.
‘He should be. He’s had a long mating season,’ Effie grinned.
‘Men! Man or beast, they’re all the same,’ Flora joked back, reaching for Effie and pressing their heads together as she felt a sudden rush of love for her dear friend. Sometimes, the break between girlhood and womanhood hit her out of the blue and she felt a pang for those days before love had come into her life, when she had lived with a wide-eyed innocence that knew nothing of the obsessions to come. When she was with Effie she was reminded of their games in the grass, mischief-making in kirk, snorting with laughter in the byre in the evenings . . . But now, lambing in Glen Bay, she could only be sustained by thoughts of James. Her waking hours were dominated by a thin clutch of memories that played on a loop; her dreams were fevered, so that she awoke each morning tangled in her sheet and with a feeling of incompleteness.
She drew back and saw Effie give her a puzzled look, as if she sensed secrets. She looked as if she was about to say something but her expression cleared again in the next moment.
‘Will you stay for dinner?’ Effie asked instead. ‘They’ll be pleased to see you. Your pa had to skipper the boat back to Boreray, so he’s worn out. David’s still over there and your ma’s upset by the fall.’
Flora bit her lip, pensive. ‘If they see me, they’ll make me stay. But Mhairi’s got the jitters. She made me promise to come straight back.’
Effie scowled. ‘I don’t understand why, if Mhairi’s got the jitters, she didn’t come over here herself instead of sending you?’
But Flora was distracted. She had spotted Lorna talking to Crabbit Mary around the back of their cottage. The nurse was holding the stricken wife’s hand consolingly as they spoke closely in what appeared to be low tones. Out of the patient’s earshot? ‘That doesn’t look promising,’ she murmured, feeling even more concerned.
‘No,’ Effie agreed.
‘Perhaps I should stay a wee while after all, then. See if the situation changes.’ She couldn’t possibly go back to Mhairi with only half a story about Donald McKinnon’s welfare: injured but recuperating was one thing, but Mhairi would need to know if he was thriving or languishing. Their love affair was a closely guarded secret but if he began to fail, she had a right to know, to be over here . . .
Flora looked back at Effie. ‘Have I missed much?’
She expected a roll of her friend’s eyes – how much ever happened here? – but to her surprise, Effie hesitated. ‘There’s been some excitement, aye.’
Flora brightened. She was thirsting for news, something to draw her out of her own head. ‘Speak to me. Tell me.’
‘I’ve been guiding the visitors while the men were gone.’
Flora’s excitement abated. Was that all? ‘Aye.’
‘I’m being paid two shillings for my trouble.’
‘Two?’ It seemed a standard fee.
‘And . . . we’ve become friends.’
‘I thought you said they were lords?’
‘Well, yes, but you wouldn’t know it. Not really. There’s no airs and graces when we’re all out walking together.’
Flora’s eyes narrowed. She detected an unusual hesitancy in her friend. ‘And . . .?’ she prompted, sensing more. That look she had seen on Effie just now – had she been not sensing secrets, but keeping them? ‘What else is there?’
‘Miss Gillies! I’ve been searching for you.’
The shout startled them both and they looked up to find the factor striding towards them.
Flora gave a shudder of contempt. She had been locked in a battle of wills with him for several years now. When she was a child, he had paid her no attention, but as she grew into young womanhood and found her voice along with her curves, she seemed to levy a resistance in him that grew fiercer at every encounter. He didn’t desire her, she knew that – she knew exactly how men looked at a woman they wanted – but she had come to realize that her beauty provided her with an advantage over everyone else that he considered to be his alone.
She had power. And that set them at odds.
It was her beauty that made people want to be her friend, to be near her, to look upon her. It was her beauty that made them want to help, oblige and please her. And it was her beauty that had first captured the attention of a rich, powerful, adventure-hunting fiancé. Her beauty would, a few months from now, propel her into a world far beyond this place and above the level of society he inhabited on the mainland. It had given her a power that had put her out of his reach. He couldn’t threaten or intimidate her, and they both knew it.
‘Eeesht,’ she said under her breath. ‘If it’s not the devil himself. I’ll catch you later.’
‘Flora, wait,’ Effie implored.
But Flora was already sauntering down the hill. ‘Mr Mathieson,’ she said breezily as she passed him with a swing of her hips, her nose in the air.
He gave a terse nod in reply and she could feel his eyes on her back as she slipped through the gap in the dyke and headed towards the cottages.
Lorna and Mary were still talking, heads bent together, the rest of the world shut out so that they didn’t notice her approach until she was only a few steps away.
‘Oh!’ Mary startled, jumping back. ‘. . . Och, Flora, it’s only you.’ She pressed a hand to her heart as if to steady it. Her hand was trembling, Flora noticed, and she looked so guilty that even if Flora had not been privy to her secret, she would have known from her behaviour that she was harbouring one.
‘Aye. I’ve come to check on Donald. I hear he’s the one hurt?’
‘Aye,’ Lorna nodded, looking sombre.
‘Mhairi sent you, did she?’ Mary asked, and Flora picked up the thread of sarcasm in the words. The woman bristled with hostility, as if it was Flora who had stolen her husband from her.
‘She was worried. It looks like she has reason to be?’ Flora directed her question to the nurse. There was little point in entering into an argument with her best friend’s lover’s wife – this was not her battle.
Lorna stood a little taller, as if trying to assert her professionalism; this wasn’t her battle either, but she had been drawn into the secret on account of her medical expertise. Whatever her personal feelings about the love triangle, she could see that their arrangement – and so-called solution – wouldn’t be possible without her assistance. If reputations were at stake, without Lorna, so were lives.
‘He’s taken a nasty blow to the head. Swelling of the brain is my main concern but so far he’s alert to stimuli and lucid, so I’m confident he’ll recover quickly with bed rest.’
‘Confident?’ Flora echoed. She needed cast-iron guarantees for Mhairi. ‘But you’re staying here overnight, so . . . you must have some concerns?’
‘Let’s say I’m cautiously hopeful, then. My staying over is purely precautionary. I’m expecting a full recovery but he’s not out of the woods yet. Complications are always possible. I need to be on hand in case he deteriorates in the night, and of course Mary’s condition precludes . . .’
The lie died on her lips and she gave a small, ironic smile. They had all become too well versed, too practised in the rehearsed narrative, to drop it easily. Mary was putting on such a convincing show of being pregnant that it was easy, even for those who knew otherwise, to believe it was true.
Lorna took a steadying breath, recalibrating her thoughts, her voice low. ‘. . . I just don’t want to take any chances. Donald must not die. The baby will need its father. And Mary will need a husband to provide.’
Flora was silent for a moment at the unsentimental logic applied to his survival. ‘Aye.’
What a mess it all was. She still didn’t know how Mhairi could bear to go along with it.
Flora could still remember the wave of shock that had rippled through her as Mhairi had sat by the peat fire on their first night in Glen Bay and revealed to her the whole, scandalous truth. It had made Flora’s own secret seem meagre by comparison. For Mhairi to fall in love with Donald, a married man, had been inadvisable to say the very least, but the catastrophe was far larger than just that: her betrothed, Alexander, Mhairi had finally admitted, was a brutish man at the mercy of his own carnal desires. Flora had recalled the unnatural brightness in Mhairi’s eyes when she’d returned from meeting him in Harris. Her friend was terrified of becoming this stranger’s wife – but the betrothal had been confirmed and it was unstoppable now. Donald couldn’t simply divorce Mary and marry Mhairi, of course: the reverend would never permit it and the villagers would never accept their love.
But to give up their baby too – to relinquish it into the care of his unloving wife . . .? That was the price Mhairi had agreed to pay for Mary’s silence: she well knew the weight placed here upon reputation, family honour and sin. Mary would never breathe a word about the affair in return for raising their child as her own – and who would doubt it was hers? Her longstanding yearning to be a mother was well known among the villagers and the McKinnons’ childlessness was commonly understood to be the reason for the enduring unhappiness of their marriage. This pact, such as it was, ensured reputations would remain intact for all parties. Vows taken before God would not be wholly sundered and life would continue upon its allotted path.
‘It’s the only way,’ Mhairi had wept as the firelight flickered on her face. ‘The baby will be with its father and no one shall ever be any the wiser.’
And so far, everything had gone according to plan. Donald had ‘saved’ his mistress by suggesting to the village’s parliament that they trial two shepherdesses summering in Glen Bay: freshly filled milk churns would be deposited at the Am Blaid ridge, the halfway point between the pastures and the village, and empty ones returned there each day. This would allow Mhairi’s pregnancy to develop away from nosy neighbours – for if Mad Annie had a sharp tongue, she had even sharper eyes – and only Lorna and Flora would need to be brought in on the truth.
‘So I can tell Mhairi he’ll be well?’ Flora asked the nurse. Donald’s survival wasn’t a matter of practicality for her friend. Their love was true. Honest. Real – Flora had seen it with her own eyes. Every day, at some point, Donald would steal over the ridge to spend precious hours with Mhairi, the two of them lying in the grass and talking intently even as the sands of time slipped between their fingers. They looked so right together; and yet here was his wife, maintaining an elaborate charade of a happy family-to-be in front of the neighbours.
‘Barring any complications, he should be back on his feet within the week,’ Lorna said.
Flora looked back towards the ridge with a sigh. Effie and the factor were still talking near the bull’s enclosure. There was a stricken look on Effie’s pale face.
‘Good. I’ll relay that to Mhairi then.’
‘Aye, you can tell my husband’s whore he’ll live to see another day yet,’ Mary said coldly as Flora went to turn away. ‘He’ll not die because I’ll not let him. He made this whole sorry mess – and I’m going to make sure he damn well sits in it.’