‘Flossie, is that you?’
Ma Peg’s voice curled around the corner of the kitchen door before Flora could even untie her boots.
‘Aye, it’s me,’ she sighed, feeling her feet spread against the ground as she shrugged off her jacket and shawl. The journey home had felt double the length of the passage out, but somehow she had kept herself glued together as she sat in a carriage of strangers, with full pockets and a broken heart. Scotland had keened in sympathy past the window in a vignette of umber velvet mountains, blackish pine forests and melancholy lochs. Only now, as she returned to the closest thing she had left to a home, did she feel herself begin to unravel.
She could hear the scrape and clatter of pans on the stove, floorboards creaking overhead as her wee brothers played upstairs. The cottage was warm, the electric lights already switched on for the evening and throwing out a cosy glow onto the lane, the smell of coal smoke drifting in tendrils back towards the water.
‘You were gone that long I thought you’d decided on a trip to London instead,’ Ma Peg was saying as Flora pushed on the open door and walked in. ‘I had half a mind to—’ The words cut off abruptly as Ma Peg straightened up from laying the table to better absorb the sight of Flora’s new looks. ‘Och, lass.’
Flora’s hands rose to her bare neck as she patted feebly at the hairstyle which made no sense here. Her long hair had been a symbol of her island wildness, a natural beauty that didn’t rely on artifice, cosmetics and good lighting; the stylish women in the salon, with their painted nails and high heels, couldn’t conceive of a room like this or a life like hers.
‘They gave me extra on account of the good colour, length and thickness,’ Flora said in a tremulous voice as she reached into her pocket and set the haircut money on the table.
Ma Peg crossed the room with her distinctive slow but stout waddle, placing her hands on Flora’s shoulders and regarding her keenly. ‘Well, you’re none the worse for it, dearie,’ she said finally, though Flora could see the sadness in the older woman’s eyes that another layer of their St Kildan identity had been sloughed away. ‘I daresay they could have taken the lot off you and you’d still have had five proposals of marriage on the train home.’
Flora raised a wan smile. ‘Well, if I had, I’d have taken the rings straight to the pawn shop and exchanged them for this.’ She reached into her other pocket and brought out the even greater fortune of coins and notes.
Ma Peg looked down at it in confusion before catching sight of Flora’s bare ring finger. ‘You sold your precious engagement ring?’ she gasped.
‘Money’s what we need now, not love,’ Flora said, ignoring the shock in her eyes. ‘The money for my hair was never going to be enough and seeing as I was already there . . . I was on my way back to the station when I walked past and I asked myself, what good is sentiment when Father needs an operation? How could I prize jewellery for my finger over a working foot for Da?’
‘Och, but pet,’ Ma Peg consoled, looking pained. ‘What a decision to have to make.’
‘It was really very easy in the end,’ Flora said, turning away from Ma Peg’s gently enquiring gaze and walking over to the range as she tried to quell another swell of emotion surging in her chest. A pot of stovies was simmering away, smelling delicious, but she had no appetite. Food held no flavour for her, music no melody; the whole world seemed drained of pigment. ‘Have you had any updates from the hospital?’ she asked, stirring the pot listlessly for want of anything better to do.
‘Aye. Your mother called a wee while back.’ The phone box on the other side of the lane had become a source of much excitement to the MacQueen and MacKinnon children playing in the front gardens, and they screamed with delight any time it suddenly rang.
Flora looked back at her. ‘What did she say? How’s Da?’
‘They’re feeling more confident about the risk of infection now. This surgeon the doctor keeps talking about canna perform the procedure if there’s any inflammation to the wound – but it’s looking good, they think.’
‘Did they say yet how much the surgery will cost?’
Ma Peg tutted as if the subject of money was all a nonsense as she resumed placing the spoons beside the forks on the table. ‘No, but if that lot you’ve brought back tonight doesn’t cover it, then I don’t know what will!’
Flora said nothing. If her understanding of money was scant, Ma Peg’s was non-existent; there was still every chance they would be far short of what they needed. She knew now the worth of a braid compared to a ring – but how did a ring compare to a surgeon’s fees? ‘Where’s David?’
‘Out back, filling the coal bunker with Annie. There was another delivery this afternoon.’
That was another cause of fiscal consternation. Back home, the peats were as free as the air they breathed. Here, they had to pay for their warmth.
Bonnie came running in, stopping abruptly at the sight of Flora’s dramatic new look. ‘Flossie! Flo—’
‘Don’t look so worried,’ Flora smiled, crouching down to her and holding out her arms for a hug. ‘It’s just a haircut.’
‘But . . .’ Her little sister cautiously ran into her embrace and lightly patted the set waves, as if their neat symmetry confused her. ‘Why’s it all crinkly?’
‘They’re called waves and they’re all the rage in the city. Everyone was wearing their hair like this.’
‘What was it like there?’
‘It was loud. And busy. With lots of motor cars. You have to watch out when you cross the road.’
Bonnie pulled a face that suggested she didn’t like the sound of it. ‘You look sad,’ she said, examining her sister’s face more closely.
‘I’m not sad.’
‘You look sad.’
‘Well, maybe I am a little.’ She felt Ma Peg’s concerned scrutiny fall upon her once more; her grief for James accounted for her persistent low mood but she still felt fearful that she would somehow give away her raging sorrow for her lost son too.
‘Let’s sing a song,’ Bonnie said eagerly, climbing onto a chair at the table and standing on it. ‘That’ll cheer you up.’
Flora went to turn away, her heart aching from all the pretence. ‘Later, perhaps.’
Bonnie caught her by the hand. ‘No, now.’
‘I’m really not in the mood for singing just now, Bonnie,’ Flora demurred. ‘I’ve had a long day. And besides, don’t you have schoolwork to be getting on with?’
‘No! And anyway, that’s when you should sing – when you don’t feel like it. It’ll make you feel better.’
‘I feel fine enough.’
‘Your eyes are sad,’ the little girl persisted.
‘They’re not!’ Flora snapped.
Ma Peg turned at the flash of temper. The last thing Flora needed was a closer inspection from the village matriarch. ‘Och, all right,’ she relented. ‘A quick ditty, then. Just the one. Then we need to run the bath.’
‘Shall we sing the Sailing Song?’ It was Bonnie’s favourite.
‘If that’s what you’d like,’ Flora said, and Bonnie immediately launched straight into the first verse.
Flora looked into her little sister’s eyes as they sang together, their voices blending harmoniously, effortlessly – they had sung together their whole lives: at bathtime, during storms, going to bed . . . Flora reached for Bonnie’s hands to hold as they sang facing one another, Bonnie standing on the chair and their palms pressed together on one hand. Flora tried to take the other one too, but Bonnie pulled back, and Flora noticed she was holding something.
‘What are you holding there, Bonnie?’ she asked, dropping out of the song. Carefully Flora prised open her grip to find a shiny silver sixpence in the middle of her sister’s palm. ‘Where did you get this?’ she frowned.
There was a small pause. ‘The man gave it to me.’
Ma Peg, who was pouring milk into a jug, looked up abruptly. ‘Man? What man?’
‘The one outside.’
A throat was cleared. ‘. . . Knock-knock.’
Everyone startled at the sound of the unexpected male voice, just outside the kitchen. It wasn’t David, they knew that much, and Flora’s jaw dropped open as a hand appeared on the door, a signet ring flashing on the pinky finger.
‘Good evening,’ George Pepperly smiled, peering round.
‘What are you doing here?’ Flora shouted, such was her surprise.
‘I’m afraid I followed you back here . . . I hope you don’t mind.’
‘Mind?! Of course I mind!’ she cried, flabbergasted at his cheek.
‘Flora, who is this man?’ Ma Peg demanded, planting her hands on her hips, a wooden spoon within grabbing distance, the rolling pin within lunging distance. She spoke only Gaelic, of course, and Pepperly hesitated a moment as he realized the language barrier.
‘Please – I can explain everything,’ he said, holding his hands up but making no move to come further into the room. ‘I mean no harm. I hope Flora will vouch for that, at least?’
Ma Peg looked at Flora for help – and Flora reluctantly translated a quick account of their meeting.
He looked at Flora apologetically. ‘I couldn’t just let you disappear into the ether, Miss MacQueen. That would have been a tragedy.’
‘I hardly think so!’ she scoffed.
‘You don’t know my plans for you yet.’
‘You’ve only just met me. How can you have plans already?’
‘Believe me – people in my industry dream of moments such as occurred this afternoon. Talent is around every corner, but stardust? That’s an entirely different thing, and if one is ever so lucky as to happen upon it – as I did today with you – it’s really very obvious what the next step must be.’
‘Which is?’
‘We launch you to where you belong – right into the stratosphere.’
She shrugged, rolling her eyes. ‘I don’t know what that means.’
‘Flora, what is this man talking about?’ Ma Peg demanded, interjecting herself bodily between them now. Once again, Flora brought her up to speed.
‘Flora, I’m a show producer,’ Pepperly said. ‘That’s what I do. And I would like to produce a brand new show around you. In short, you’d be singing and dancing on stage, in front of an adoring paying audience . . . At least, to begin with. But if this goes the way I think it will, then we’d move into pictures quickly. The talkies are really taking off.’
‘Talkies?’
‘Yes – and I’m confident the camera will love you. I know a few influential people in the studios in Hollywood. In America. I’d make some calls and get the ball rolling. In the meantime, we’d start you on some acting and dancing lessons too, although your singing – as I had hoped – is definitely already there.’
‘You’ve never heard me sing,’ Flora protested.
‘I had an instinct about it earlier; there’s a melodic quality to your speaking voice.’ He nodded towards Bonnie and her shiny coin. ‘And I asked your sister on her way in here if she would get you to sing, just so I could listen in. If it sounded like a cat was being murdered, I’d have slipped away without you ever knowing I’d been here, but now that I know you have the combination of that face and that voice . . . I’m afraid I really can’t give up without a fight, Miss MacQueen.’
‘A fight?’ Ma Peg seemed to understand something of the word, for she reached for the spoon.
‘Figuratively speaking,’ he said quickly. ‘Look, I do understand this is a lot to take in, but all I am asking for is a little time to explain the ideas I have for you. Tell me, have you heard of Miss Baker?’
Flora shook her head.
‘Josephine Baker is one of the biggest stars in the world right now,’ he explained, undeterred. ‘She started out, five, six years ago, in a show called the Revue Nègre, which was brought over to Europe from the United States. There are better singers, better dancers, prettier faces even, but she has presence. She has charisma. She has star power – just like you, Flora. People can’t tear their eyes off her when she’s on that stage. She could be up there singing the alphabet and no one would bat an eye, because she would be singing the alphabet. Do you see?’
‘I . . .’ She sighed. She felt so weary and worn down. ‘Not really, no.’
‘People are enchanted by you, Flora. You have a magnetic aura. People would pay just to be able to look at you.’
‘No one would pay to see the likes of me!’ she said dismissively. ‘You should see the looks I got in the city today. They disapprove of me. I don’t belong.’
‘No, that’s just it – it’s not disapproval that makes them stare. They’re fascinated, don’t you see? I was fifty paces behind you the whole way back here and even dressed as a . . . a laundry maid, you outshone every woman you passed.’
‘I’m not a maid!’
‘Oh heavens, not again.’ He winced. ‘Better a thief than a maid, eh?’ He arched an eyebrow in an attempt to share the inside joke, but she didn’t crack a smile. ‘What have you got against maids, anyway?’
‘Nothing. But they’re like . . . slaves, and I’ve my freedom.’
He looked at her, as if considering her point. ‘Have you, though? Really?’
‘Of course I have. What do you mean?’
‘Things are different over here. I don’t claim to know much about your home, but I know you lived off the land and had no need for money. I can see why you felt free. But here? Money is the god that rules us all.’
‘Not me.’
He regarded her with outright scepticism. ‘You sold your ring today, so that will buy you some time, I suppose. But what will happen when the money’s spent? What else have you to sell?’ He didn’t look around the room to make his point. He didn’t need to. ‘How will you survive then?’
She hesitated. ‘I have a job. I earn a wage as a weaver in a factory.’
‘And do you feel . . . free there?’
She looked away, realizing she’d been tripped up.
No one spoke for several moments, before he reached into his jacket and pulled out a small paper booklet. He pressed it against the wall and began writing on it.
‘What is that? What’s he doing?’ Ma Peg demanded to know.
‘It’s a banker’s cheque – written out to cash for one hundred pounds.’ Pepperly blew on the ink, waving the booklet in the air for a few moments before ripping out the top sheet and holding it towards the older woman.
She could read and understand the numbers she saw written there. ‘One hun—?’ For once, Ma Peg’s voice failed her.
Outside, coming around the back of the house, they heard the low timbre of David and Mad Annie’s voices. A moment later, the back door swung open to reveal the two rail-thin, lanky figures. They stopped in their tracks at the sight of Flora clasping Bonnie standing on the chair, Ma Peg armed with a wooden spoon, and a strange man holding out a piece of paper. David and Mad Annie, for their own part, were covered in coal dust, their blue eyes blinking pale against sooty skin; David was carrying a filled coal bucket, and Mad Annie’s pipe dangled from her lip.
‘What’s going on here? Who’s this?’ David asked, immediately setting down his load and stepping forward as the man of the house.
‘Don’t worry, David,’ Flora said quickly. ‘There’s no cause for concern. His name is Mr Pepperly. He’s a show producer.’
‘A what?’
‘I met him in Glasgow today. He wants to make a singing and dancing show around me. He wants to—’
‘I want to make her rich,’ Pepperly interrupted, meeting David’s gaze and regarding him, man to man. ‘Flora said her father was badly injured and that he cannot work? This money here – this banker’s cheque for a hundred pounds – is her freedom.’ He waved the scrap of paper lightly. Flora couldn’t fathom how something so nondescript could wield such power.
There was an astounded silence as the promise of one hundred pounds wafted through the room like a perfume, scenting their thoughts with promises and wishes.
Quickly, Ma Peg updated Annie on developments.
‘What rot!’ Mad Annie cried, breaking the spell and striding forth, snatching the piece of paper from his hands. Her eyes ran over it with studied intensity, giving no indication to their guest that she couldn’t read. ‘This is not a hundred pounds. I’ve seen bank notes, and this isn’t one.’
‘Take it to a bank and they will cash it for you,’ Pepperly said calmly, seeming to catch the drift of their arguments.
Mad Annie’s eyes narrowed and she looked back at Flora. ‘Why would he do such a thing? Money’s not free.’
Flora asked him the same question in English.
‘It’s an advance against future earnings, not a gift. I’m not a charity – I’m a businessman. I have utmost confidence that you will be a star, but my understanding was you need the money now, not later?’ He didn’t move a muscle as Annie turned the cheque over, looking for any clues that it might be a trap. ‘Forget the pennies you’ve got to scrape together working on a loom or at the Forestry Commission. That cheque right there is your financial independence.’
‘Let me see it, Annie,’ David said, walking up to her and examining the piece of paper too.
Pepperly gave Flora a steady look. ‘This is only a small advance against what you’d earn. You would be a rich woman within a year – able to provide for your father whatever the outcome of his accident. If he can’t work again, it wouldn’t matter – you’d be able to support him.’
Flora thought of the surgery they were trying to afford even now. If they could save Father’s foot, he could still have a meaningful, active life.
But, more than that, another thought began to bloom in her mind . . .
‘What’s more, you could break as many engagements as you liked.’ He smiled, unaware of the pain his words brought to her. ‘You wouldn’t have to marry for money, or position, or status – all those things would already be yours. Because let’s be honest, that’s how women are really owned, is it not? What is it they say – don’t marry for money; you can borrow it cheaper?’
Flora translated for the others and Mad Annie’s chin raised a little in the air. This was her kind of conversation. But Flora was feeling something within herself beginning to stir at his words as well. True independence was something she had never dreamt of before now. She had longed for freedom from St Kilda, a bigger life elsewhere, but had always understood it to be possible only if she were attached to someone else, someone like Edward or James. Escape had always involved becoming a wife, but she had become a mother instead.
A husband would still provide the respectability of legitimacy, of course, but that no longer seemed as important as it once had. Not over here. What did matter was the pain that grew with each passing day at being separated from her son. She could feel herself dying inside. She had given him up to Donald in the belief that he and Mary could provide for her son in a way that she could not. But if what this man was saying was true – and he certainly seemed to have convinced himself of it – she would be able to provide for her baby herself.
She felt a judder of shock as for the first time, something like hope awakened in her. Could she get her baby back?
‘You paint a rosy picture, Mr Pepperly,’ David said, going to hand back the cheque, though the producer refused it. Unwilling to be beholden, her brother set it down on the kitchen table instead.
‘Call me Pepper, please.’
David’s eyes narrowed at the accelerated familiarity. ‘It all sounds too good to be true.’
‘For most people, yes, it would be. But Flora is not most people. She stands apart.’
Flora noted that her brother didn’t argue with him on that.
‘There’s no light without shadow,’ Annie interrupted, her voice rolling in low syllables as she addressed David. ‘What are the pitfalls of this grand plan? Get him to speak plainly. I’m no fool.’
David recounted the command and Pepperly drew himself up as he looked away in contemplation. ‘Well, I must admit it would be very hard work – particularly in the beginning, as we get the show set up. The days are long in rehearsal.’
David translated.
‘No longer than the days on the fulmar harvest, I would wager,’ Annie countered, as if it was a competition. ‘What else?’
‘. . . The hours are unsociable. Flora would be working late into the night.’
‘Like during lambing season? Or on the gannet hunt?’
David shrugged and Mad Annie looked back at Pepperly for more obstructions, flicking her wrist impatiently for him to get on with it.
‘And working with artistic types can bring its . . . frustrations. Tempers can be short, language colourful. She’d need to have a thick skin if the director flies off the handle, for example.’
David relayed the point in Gaelic.
‘Ha!’ Annie gave a small snort. ‘He’s clearly never met Norman Ferguson or Frank Mathieson. We’ve all dealt with far worse, you can assure him of that.’
Flora bit back a smile. Annie appeared to have no awareness that in matching the producer woe for woe, she was in fact removing any and all objections.
‘Then I imagine her greatest sacrifice would be having to leave home. Here,’ Pepperly shrugged. ‘She’d go long stretches, perhaps even months, without being able to see her family and friends – and for someone from a close-knit community such as yours, I fear that might be quite a struggle.’
Flora considered the point as David translated for the older women. Once upon a time, even just a month ago, she hadn’t been able to wait to disappear into her new life – but that had all changed in the wake of losing James and their baby. With Effie, Mhairi and Molly all gone too, the thought of leaving her family as well would have been too much to bear, even just yesterday morning. But her father’s accident had changed their fates once more. The wheel of misfortune had continued to turn and their future had never been more uncertain.
She looked at Pepperly – a rich, self-assured, powerful man who had followed her all the way back here to make his case. That had to speak to his conviction in his own plan, surely?
‘I’m sure there would be opportunities to see everyone,’ Flora said quietly. After all, she had gone into the city alone today. ‘It’s not so very far to Glasgow by train.’
Pepperly looked at her, confusion quickly making way for clarity. ‘No, no, the show wouldn’t be in Glasgow.’
She frowned. ‘Where, then?’
‘Where else but the City of Light?’ he asked, spreading out his hands.
They all looked at him blankly.
‘Miss MacQueen,’ he smiled. ‘We’d be going to Paris!’