1

Nadia’s first impressions of Scotland were not good. On a morning in early February, Glasgow was biting cold and wet, smelling of mud and smoke and puddly streets. The terrain was grey, its landscape cheerless, with endless silhouettes of power stations, warehouses and crummy industrial chimneys. To Nadia it resembled a worn-out shoe.

Nadia stepped down the narrow covered gangplank separating ship from shore. It was drizzling and the landing stage was teeming with humanity; a bustling sea of tweed coats and skirts and steamer trunks. The strong wind blew her shoulder-length hair across her eyes, stinging her cheeks, making the skin tingle. Reaching into her overcoat, she brought out a silk scarf. Under the shadow of ropes hauling baggage from the ship’s hold and groaning pallets being winched high into the sky, she secured the headscarf under her chin and strode into the roaring maelstrom of stevedore cries and clanging bells.

‘‘Guid day McCleish! Ye bampot!’’ came a shout from above, ‘‘Dornt stain arooond lookin’ glaikit, gie those bags aff jist loch ‘at!’’

Nadia turned her face forward. She had to push through the throng of salty dock-hands and porters and people watchers in order to catch up with Iain, who was several paces ahead. She wanted to stick to him like a burr, but he kept moving away. Bumping hips, and arms and shoulders, she weaved through the traffic, hurrying after him. Crowds trailed behind her and from nearby she heard the skirl of bagpipes – a welcoming band perhaps – as passengers and long-shoremen ran round her. But where was the Scotland from the guide books, she asked. She had half expected to see moated castles, thistled hillsides and horse-drawn trams advertising Nairn’s Handbaked Scottish Oatcakes – not this; anything but this.

After a long time of standing around at the Dock Offices and not recognizing anybody, Iain eventually put up his arm and waved. Abandoning Nadia and the luggage, he sprang forward, winter coat tails flapping, to embrace a man with shimmering dark eyes and Iain’s lean build. The two men stood admiring one another for several moments, sizing each other up. ‘‘Nadia this is my brother, Callum. Callum, meet my wife, Nadia.’’

Callum, clad in plus fours and a tweed coat, dipped his head. He peeled off his flat cap. Nadia shook his hand – a big hand, calloused and broad – then offered her condolences. ‘‘I’m sorry for your mother’s passing,’’ she said.

‘‘Och, she was a guid lady. Cannae really believe that she’s gone, tae tell you th’ truth, e’en though it’s bin nearly three months. Aam glad you’ll be with us fur th’ memorial service.’’

‘‘That’ll be on Sunday?’’ Iain asked.

‘‘Aye. Sunday.’’

Callum threaded through the crowd to fetch the car, a Hillman Minx. After securing the luggage to the roof, Iain climbed into the front with his brother, who was driving. Nadia sat in the rear.

Callum pulled the starter and the car moved off.

‘‘Fancy motor,’’ said Iain.

‘‘Aye, better than th’ sheep trailer ah usually get tae drive. Look,’’ he said taking both hands off the wheel. ‘‘Look hoo well it holds th’ road. Wish it were mine, but it belongs tae th’ estate,’’ said Callum. ‘‘Borrowed it fur th’ day. Our petrol allowance has bin cut tae practically naethin’ however.’’

‘‘You been keeping busy all the same?’’

‘‘Och aye. We hud a busy night with th’ steward and th’ ghillies, clearin’ up some ay th’ fallen trees around Badenloch. That’s why aam still in mah work clothes.’’

From her isolation in the back seat, Nadia watched avidly as the city panned out before her eyes: through the pillows of haze, she saw line after line of hunger marchers and picketers and boarded up mills, shop windows covered with newspaper, children scavenging in shoes without laces. An electric tram pushed drearily through the rain. Further ahead, Victorian tenement buildings, brown with soot and rusted metal, in various stages of ruin, reared up like neglected tombs.

She saw drayhorses propped against viaduct walls; labourers in baggy blue boiler suits rolling their own cigarettes; two drunkards fighting over the remains of a whisky bottle; gangs of jobless men, standing in clusters, milling about on railway tracks or under bridges. She heard their guttural vowels, their jumpy snaggle-toothed voices against the roar of the subway trains. By then she understood the meaning of the expression ‘the Great Slump’ – for these were victims of the depression, of economic decay, and it seemed to her that the rot was spreading.

Callum kept glancing at her in his mirror. ‘‘So, Nadia, ah gahther this is your first time in Scotland. Whit do you think of it so far?’’

‘‘Wet,’’ she replied.

‘‘Och, the drizzle’s guid fur your skin. Does wonders fur the complexion.’’ Callum Sutherland kept talking. ‘‘Scottish lassies ur knoon fur their bright an’ rosy cheeks, you know. It’s the drizzle, ah tell you, the Scotch mist.’’ He laughed. ‘‘Isnae tha’ right, Iain.’’ He turned and punched Iain in the arm. Nadia thought she sensed a tinge of resentment in Callum’s voice. Was it because Iain never made peace over his father, she wondered? Never tried for some kind of reconciliation?

‘‘How long hae you both been married noo? Six years? More?’’ Callum craned his neck to get another look at Nadia through the mirror. ‘‘What about wee uns? Any signs of having bairns yet?’’

Staggered by the baldness of his tone, Nadia shifted uncomfortably in her seat. Noticing that Iain’s face had turned away, she shook her head as she spoke. ‘‘Not yet.’’

‘‘Mebbe your trews are too tight, Iain,’’ he said punching his brother in the arm once more. Again, Nadia sensed an undertone of disgruntlement.

‘‘What’re you waitin’ fur?’’

She took a breath. ‘‘We’re not waiting for anything,’’ she replied.

Innocent as the question was, it stung her. She realized it shouldn’t have, but it did. We’re not waiting for anything – the words sounded so small ridiculous to her all of a sudden. She was thirty-six years old! She was desperate to give her parents a grandchild. How much more time did she have, she asked herself. Could women get pregnant after the age of forty? She didn’t know anyone that had. And didn’t older mother’s risk miscarriage? Breech babies? Mongols?

She wondered what was going through Iain’s mind. She knew that, like her, he desperately wanted children. But why couldn’t she conceive? Their marriage was strong, not perfect, but strong; nevertheless she couldn’t help but feel as though she was letting him down. And now especially, having worked with Izabel at the orphanage, her longing to hold her own baby was greater than ever.

For the next few hours, as the car headed north, through towns such as Dunkeld, Pitlochry, and Dalwhinnie, Nadia thought time and time about her condition. She used to love being self-sufficient, used to dread the idea of becoming a mother, fearing the responsibility, the sacrifice, the loss of freedom. Now she yearned for it, practically ached for children, yet, for some unknown reason, she could not conceive – and it wasn’t for the lack of trying. It was, she knew, quickly turning into an obsession.

At first her mother dropped subtle looks and hints, reassuring her that it was only a matter of time. But after a while, Mamuchka had begun to ask questions, sifting through her laundry, enquiring about her monthly secretion – was it punctual, was it uniform in colour, was the discharge cloudy or creamy or lumpy, what was the pain like? Sharp? Or a dull ache? Why did it hurt when she went for a pee? Did she always feel nausea during her period? And why were her hands always clammy? Papashka would tell her to stop interfering, but soon, she was saying that Nadia was too skinny, that she wasn’t eating properly, that she ought to avoid meat products and consume more alfalfa, pumpkin seeds, avocados and wheat.

‘‘What about coffee?’’ Mamuchka would ask.

‘‘What about it?’’

‘‘Avoid it.’’ And when that didn’t work, Mamuchka took Nadia to the see the local herbalist on Rua da Palha. The herbalist told her to avoid hot baths as that could change ovulation. He advised that she drink lots of pear juice to alleviate the pain in her bladder whenever she peed. In the meantime, he prescribed an infusion of yellow dock, chamomile and Chinese angelica to be sipped twice daily and for a balm of wild yam to be rubbed on the stomach each night before bed. In addition, he suggested that she remain on her back with her legs raised in the air for twenty minutes after the male had ejaculated. After a month they returned and this time he prescribed an herbal formula consisting of licorice and false unicorn. Yet, still, nothing happened. Her menstrual flows continued.

It was extremely frustrating.

‘‘Perhaps it is the husband who is at fault,’’ suggested Mamuchka, scrambling for any explanation.

The herbalist nodded. And in no time Mamuchka was adding flax seed oil into Iain’s food without him realizing and feeding him copious amounts of cooked clams and pine nuts and sesame seeds for their zinc. Soon after, Iain began complaining of a metallic taste in his mouth and nausea, so she was forced to cut down on her dosage.

‘‘Got your beak in a book, hae you? You like readin’ then?’

Nadia looked up and saw Callum’s eyes in the mirror. ‘‘I’m sorry?’’ On her lap was a copy of A Passage to India, opened to chapter one. She had yet to read a line of Forster’s novel.

‘‘Hoo about a cuppa and a bit ay lunch?’’

‘‘My brother wants to know if you’re hungry,’’ said Iain, glancing round and smiling.

A side road emerged through the trees. Turning off at a town called Aviemore they stopped at a restaurant overlooking the Cairngorm Mountains where they rang a lunch gong and ate Cullen Skink with cheese crackers.

The men talked about golf and rugby and the ten-point stag that was shot on the Achantoul Estate. Nadia wrote a postcard home, confirming their safe arrival. For a while she studied the inky whorls which made up her distinctive hand. She held the postcard against the window, trailing the flight of a distant cormorant hovering high in the clouds. The bird must have abandoned its nest, she decided.

Already, she missed her mother.

 

It was her first afternoon in Helmsdale. The small cottage was cool and dry; its walls trimmed with roebuck horns, decorated with quilted tartan. Nadia liked her room – the doors creaked, the upholstery itched, the pipes beside the washstand growled (the water ran brown with peat), the old black wireless crackled – it made her feel welcome.

Nadia sat with Callum’s wife, Jane, by the window-bay looking out towards the sea. Shafts of sunlight spilled through the glass, speckling the room with gold dust. Nadia followed a nimbus of cloud streak across the horizon. The north-sea sky looked anaemic to her, like marine ivory, and there was a sheen of frosty dew that settled upon the blackthorn like sun-bleached sand.

After a while her gaze turned to Jane. She was a slight, busy-looking woman of about thirty with sharp eyes and a kind-hearted tongue. Her hair was straggly, like a bundle of straw. She enjoyed talking with Nadia about her recent sea voyage, asking questions about the ship and the stops it made out of China. She was eager and quizzical, and though she seemed to be tied to the land, as though bound by its earth and roots, Nadia could tell that she longed to get away from the restraints of village life. After years of being confined to the local gossip, she was hungry to hear about other, new, things.

‘‘I’m so glad you’re spending a wee while with us,’’ said Jane, her accent and intonations nowhere as meaty as Callum’s. There was a need-to-impress urgency to her voice. ‘‘We never ever have visitors from abroad and I’ve heard so much about you from Iain’s letters. A Russian woman living in the Far East! It sounds so exotic! I had to look on the map to see where Macao was. I didn’t realize it was only forty miles from Hong Kong. And I hear you run a cigar shop. You’d do well here, almost everybody smokes.’’ Nadia noticed Jane’s long fingers which were clutched tightly round a white cotton handkerchief. The fingers tripped about whenever she grew animated and she seemed to talk without stopping. ‘‘And who would have believed that you’d come all this way to be with us in wee-tiny Helmsdale. I mean, I have cousins who come to see us at Christmas – they live in Oban – and we have the Highland Games every year in Inverness but we seldom have people travelling from across the world!’’

Nadia looked at Jane fondly and smiled. ‘‘You’re part of our family. Coming here was a pleasure.’’

Jane then talked a little about her own children, who were six, eight and eleven, all currently attending the local school, but Nadia managed to steer the conversation toward Iain – his job, his hobbies … anything in order to avoid hearing that dreaded question, ‘And what about you, Nadia, don’t you want to have a baby of your own? Don’t you want to hear the pitter-patter of tiny feet?’

As they talked, Nadia found that they had similar interests. She soon realized they would get along just fine.

‘‘Callum mentioned that Iain will be going to Edinburgh in a fortnight,’’ said Jane.

‘‘Yes, he’s meeting with some old colleagues. Then we’re off to London for ten days to meet with more of his superiors.’’

‘‘Will you be going too? You’re very welcome to stay until he returns.’’

‘‘That’s very kind of you.’’ Nadia felt her heart sink. She remembered her appointment with Dr. Goode, the fertility expert. ‘‘But, I think I should accompany him.’’ After that she fell silent, listening to the seagulls in the bay.

‘‘You’ll love Edinburgh. It’s a beautiful city to explore. You’ll have a grand time.’’

‘‘Yes,’’ said Nadia.

Once again she grew silent, as though the anticipation of meeting with Dr. Goode had smothered her. She was terrified of being told that she could not conceive. Why was it, she wondered, that there were some women, like Jane, who were like baby-factories, squeezing out six, seven, even eight children over the course of a lifetime, while others were desolate. Was she desolate? Did she bear only withered fruit? The idea made her heart ache. What was wrong with her? She tried to repress the black feelings.

‘‘Well then,’’ said Jane looking at her watch, ‘‘I expect the men won’t be back from the pub ‘til after three. There’s a wee bit of tension between them that needs sorting out. We don’t want to lose the whole day waiting for their return, do we? Would you like to go for a walk around the village before the weather breaks? We could pay our respects to Iain and Callum’s mother.’’ She gave a little sigh. ‘‘Poor old thing, up to the very end she was upset that Iain never made peace with his father.’’

‘‘Yes, I know. Tell me, how did he die? Iain’s father, I mean. Iain doesn’t like to talk about it.’’

‘‘Liver cancer. He left us in 1935.’’

‘‘Oh.’’

‘‘Poor Callum took it quite badly. After James died in the war and with Iain away abroad, he and his Daa grew very close. I don’t think Callum has ever forgiven Iain for breaking his father’s heart.’’ She sighed. ‘‘Anyway, what’s past is past, God rest his soul. I was wondering whether you ‘d like to go for a wee stroll?’’

Nadia set down her thick tea cup. ‘‘I’d like that, yes.’’

‘‘There’s not much to see really, just the church and the early-spring salmon leaping about at the mouth of the river. Callum’s the factor at one of the estates. He’s got the rest of the afternoon off today, as you know, but I could get his permission to show you the grouse moors if you like. I’d also like to take you to the little house where Iain and Callum grew up.’’

‘‘That sounds lovely.’’

‘‘But we can’t have you walking around dressed like that, can we?’’

Jane’s words took her by surprise. Nadia looked down at her slim-line, woolen skirt and pale yellow sweater. It was what she called her Myrna Loy look. ‘‘Why, what’s wrong?’’

‘‘You’ll have all the children in the village following you around, that’s what’s wrong. They’ll think the Duchess of Argyll has arrived.’’

‘‘Too bright?’’

‘‘Come,’’ said Jane, taking Nadia by the hand. ‘‘Let’s get you into some country tweeds and wellies.’’

 

The graveyard was on a small headland. It rested on level ground at the top of a slope, looking down onto the dark, pebbly beach.

The Highland sky was grey, darkening quickly as a mizzle of rain swabbed the spiny gorse and yellow broom. Looking behind her, Nadia saw a barren little hill and a fringe of lonely, whitewashed cottages along the shore. Oystercatchers swooped. Seabirds and herring gulls flew in downward arches.

It was late-afternoon and the herons were taking up positions on the edges of the cliff.

Nadia, clad in a pair of green Wellington boots, knelt down by a white headstone. The tablet was new and unblemished and as she read the inscription, she recognized the name. SUSAN VALENTINA SUTHERLAND 1874–1936, it said, BELOVED WIFE AND MOTHER. Next to it, a mere yard away, was the grave of Iain’s father, dead two years. The pink and canary-coloured flowers she’d purchased from the village shop skipped and hopped in the gale. Nadia planted them under a stone.

Behind her, Jane stared out into the ocean. When the wind was like this, blowing in from the north, it smelled of rock-weed and periwinkles and sweet hand-scythed hay. Callum’s wife was watching the fishermen as they hauled their short wooden currachs into the sea.

The surf roared, throwing tiny specks of water into the wind, misting the fishermen’s faces. Each man braced as the bow met the swell. Further out, beyond the roll of waves, a group of boats floated serenely; spatulate thumbs worked hard, as the fishers, burdened with coiled ropes and keepnets, baited their lines with mussels, 150 hooks per line.

After a while, Nadia and Jane came down from the headland, descending the narrow hill path that led to the sea. In the distance they could hear the calls of the lobster men over in the tiny harbour – a frisson of excitement as they fed the seals who were coming out of the water, taking the fish straight from their hands.

Nadia hung onto Jane’s arm as they forded the shallow surf, feeling the water tug and suck at their boots. Their hair whipped across their eyes. The two women held between them two little wooden boats, replicas of Chinese junks, filled with lighted incense sticks. Sea-grass baskets and cast nets bobbed in the shingles as the surf rushed up like a greedy outspread hand, washing away their footprints. Cheeks wet with salt-spray, they pushed the boats into the foamy water. ‘‘Incense to purify departed souls,’’ Nadia whispered.

The waves clapped. The ocean sang. The tiny boats danced on the beads of froth until they fell into the curls of the sea.