‘Now don’t you worry about a thing, Mrs Dahlström,’ Charles Mackay said as I ushered Eirik towards the schoolhouse. It was the new year, three months since Eirik and I had come to Shetland, and many more since Eirik had last attended school; deep down I felt almost as nervous as he did, but I was doing my utmost to hide it. ‘Young Eric will be absolutely fine here.’
‘Eirik,’ I reminded him.
‘Of course, of course, forgive me.’ He smiled warmly at Eirik. ‘We’ll get used to each other in time, won’t we, laddie? I expect obedience and diligence from all my pupils, but I’m sure we won’t have any problems with you. A good, disciplined education provides an essential grounding for later life. Certainly didn’t do me any harm!’
‘Mamma, do I have to go?’ Eirik said in Norwegian, turning to me.
Charles Mackay frowned a little. ‘I will expect him to speak English while he is here, of course,’ he said. ‘It won’t do for the other children not to be able to understand him.’
‘No, of course not,’ I said. ‘He’s still learning, that’s all.’ I turned to my son. ‘Eirik, you must remember to speak English while you are at school. Don’t forget.’
He nodded silently.
‘Now, in you go. I will be here to collect you this afternoon.’ I gave him a quick hug and gently pushed him away from me. Then Charles said sternly, ‘David Couper! Late again?’
I glanced round and saw a small boy about Eirik’s age hurrying through the snow, red-cheeked and breathless.
‘Sorry, Mr Mackay!’ he said breezily as he reached us. ‘I had to help my father rescue our pony from a snowdrift!’
‘That’s no excuse,’ Charles snapped at him. ‘I told you last term I would not tolerate lateness from you, and I won’t tolerate it now. You will stay in at lunchtime and write one hundred lines.’
David’s face fell slightly. ‘Yes, Mr Mackay,’ he said, sounding subdued, while Eirik stared at Charles with wide, frightened eyes.
‘Now, take young Er— Eirik here inside with you and show him where to sit,’ Charles ordered.
David turned to Eirik, his glum expression vanishing again as a grin lit up his face. ‘Hello!’ he said. ‘Are you new? You were at that Christmas party at the camp, weren’t you?’
Smiling back tentatively, Eirik followed him inside, and I walked away from the schoolhouse, trying to ignore the anxiety still twisting in my stomach. You feel guilty because he has been through so much, and this is the first time you have been apart since coming here, that is all, I told myself as I trudged back to the Sinclairs’ croft to collect my bag, pulling my shawl tight around me. Shetland was experiencing its heaviest snow in years, great drifts banked up beside the road. Every day, men from the station could be seen out and about with shovels, helping the locals dig paths through to the more isolated crofts and trying to keep the route into Talafirth open. The clouds were low and lead-coloured, promising more snow to come, and in the mornings the island was often blanketed in thick fog.
As I walked, my boots squeaking on the snow, I thought about the patients I would be calling on today. First on my list was Charles Mackay’s mother Margaret. I hadn’t visited her before; she had problems with her heart and Doctor Gaudie wanted me to check in on her and make sure she was correctly taking the new medicine he had prescribed for her.
‘How did young Eirik get on?’ Elizabeth asked me as I came into her kitchen, the warmth radiating from the stove welcome after the damp chill outside. She was standing at the kitchen table, kneading dough for bread. ‘Ach,’ she added, ‘I’m sure they add sawdust to this flour to make it go further.’
‘You should have seen the flour we had to use back in Norway,’ I told her. ‘I’m certain it was all sawdust.’
She gave me a wry smile.
‘Eirik is fine,’ I added. ‘I am worried his teacher is a little strict, though.’
‘Oh, don’t you worry about Charlie Mackay,’ Elizabeth said. ‘He’s a wee bit too serious for his own good sometimes, but he’s an excellent teacher. Life’s not been easy for him, what with getting hurt in the last war and having to come back here to look after his mother.’
‘I’m going to see her now,’ I said as I picked up my nurse’s bag and checked through it one last time to make sure I had everything I needed. ‘What is she like?’
‘Ach, a sweeter woman you couldn’t hope to meet. She grew up here and she and my younger sister Mary were great friends. But Magnus – Charles’s father – died when he was three, and they had leave Fiskersay and stay with relatives in Edinburgh for a while. Charlie persuaded Margaret to come back here after he was invalided out of the army in 1917, and they’ve lived in their little house in town ever since.’
Magnus. Hearing that name made my heart lurch.
‘It was terrible what happened to Charlie,’ Elizabeth went on. ‘He was the commander of a whole regiment of men – I forget the rank, I’ve never been any good with that sort of thing. But he was important, and a really good sodjer. One night the whole lot of them were shelled in their trench. Charlie was the only survivor, and he was terribly badly hurt. We thought for a while he was not going to pull through, but when he did recover and had to leave the army, he could not find work anywhere – no one wanted him, and the government would not help. Ach, it was a shame. A real shame.’
I felt a sudden pang of sympathy for the man. To look at him, you would never know any of this; he seemed perfectly ordinary – the sort of person who kept themselves to themselves. Elizabeth’s story made me think of Bill, too. I still didn’t know what had happened to him – why he had been taken off the heavy bomber crew he’d told the children about at the Christmas party, or why he’d been sent to Fiskersay, although I was sure his injured leg was something to do with it. I wondered if he would ever tell me.
Stop thinking about Bill. I shook my head, smiling wryly at myself, and headed out of the cottage again to begin the walk into Talafirth.
After meeting Charles Mackay that morning, resplendent in his smart tweed suit and leather shoes, I wasn’t surprised to find that, although his house was a little shabby and old-fashioned, it was spotlessly neat and clean, a strong smell of disinfectant pervading the air. Margaret let me in with a smile, saying, ‘You must be the new nurse Doctor Gaudie was talking about! Can I get you a cup of tea?’
She was pale and bony, her wispy grey hair pulled back in a knot, and had the same pale blue eyes as her son. Hobbling a little, she took me through into a tiny parlour dominated by a large table pushed up against the window. The table was the only thing in the room that looked out of place: its top was scattered with a jumble of wireless sets in various states of repair, and a few oily rags.
‘Will you let me make it?’ I said, rubbing my hands together. The small fire that burned in the grate seemed to give out no warmth; Margaret was bundled up in layers of jumpers and shawls against the chill.
‘Are you sure you don’t mind?’ Even as she said it, Margaret was sinking wearily into a chair. ‘There’s tea in the pantry, in the blue tin, and the kettle is on the stove. Cups, the teapot and matches are on the dresser and the spoons are in the drawer underneath!’ she called after me as I made my way through to the kitchen, just across the hall from the parlour.
The kitchen, too, was spotless, apart from the table where there were more bits of wireless sets in an untidy heap. While I waited for the kettle to boil, I gazed curiously at them. Did Charles take the radios apart or put them back together? It seemed an odd hobby to have. The kettle began to whistle and I fetched the tea tin from the pantry and found the teapot and a jug of milk. Mindful of the ration, although many in Fiskersay got round that by keeping their own cows, I carefully added a few drops to each cup.
‘Now, you must tell me all about yourself,’ Margaret said when I took the tea back to the parlour. ‘You’re the lassie who came over from Norway with her son, aren’t you? On a fishing boat? You speak very good English, I must say. Oh, but wasn’t it a shame about those poor men you were with…’
Margaret didn’t seem to know that they had been resistance men; it seemed Flight Lieutenant Jackson had been successful in preventing that information from getting out. It was almost fifteen minutes before she stopped asking me questions and I was able to steer the conversation around to her heart medicine. She was clearly lonely, and desperate for someone to talk to, but thankfully she seemed to be taking her medicine as prescribed. As we were talking, however, I noticed she kept touching her shin and pressing her lips together as if she was trying not to wince.
‘May I look at your leg, Mrs Mackay?’ I asked her gently.
‘Oh, it’s nothing…’
‘Please. It’s no trouble. I might be able to help.’
Reluctantly, she rolled down her stocking, and I saw an angry-looking wound on her leg, purple-red and beginning to ulcerate. ‘My goodness,’ I said, trying to hide my shock. ‘Does that not hurt you?’
‘It is rather sore. I knocked my leg a few weeks ago and it doesn’t seem to be healing as well as it should. I suppose it is because I am so old. We don’t really have the money to be bothering the doctor all the time…’
I took ointment and bandages from my bag and dressed Margaret’s leg carefully, wondering why Charles had not tried to convince her to do something about it. ‘I’ll need to return daily for a while to check on the wound,’ I said. ‘It’s probably a good idea if Doctor Gaudie takes a look at it as well.’ I had already made my mind up that if Margaret couldn’t afford his visit, I would pay for it myself out of my wages.
‘You are so kind,’ Margaret said as I put my things away and stood to go and wash my hands. ‘I really don’t deserve it.’
Why don’t you? I wanted to ask her, but I did not, because that feeling was all too familiar to me. Even now I could hear Anders inside my head: You are nothing. You deserve nothing. I could take all this away from you – this house, these things – in an instant. If it wasn’t for me, you’d be out on the street like the whore that you are.
Had Magnus – Margaret’s Magnus – ever said anything like that to her?
Stop, Hedda. It was no use thinking things like this. It was not my job to interfere in other people’s business, especially when I was a newcomer to the island, mine and Eirik’s future still a complete unknown.
‘I must leave you now,’ I said. ‘But please, try to rest your leg as much as you can. I’ll see myself out.’
I had three more patients to see; then I returned to the Sinclairs’ croft where Elizabeth had a bowl of hot soup waiting for me. As I sat down to eat, I couldn’t ignore the small but steady glow of satisfaction my work this morning had given me, knowing I’d been able to help and reassure people in their hour of need. It helped to quieten Anders inside my head. I wonder what he would say, I thought, if he could see me now.
No doubt he would still find something to sneer at – he always had. Nothing I ever did would be good enough for him. I tried to push Anders from my mind, not wanting thoughts of him to sour my good mood.
Later, I walked over to the school to meet Eirik. ‘Mamma, I have a new storybook to read!’ he said to me in Norwegian as he ran out, beaming.
‘You must speak English, remember?’ I admonished him, seeing Charles Mackay emerge from the schoolhouse behind him.
‘Sorry, Mamma,’ he said.
‘I hope he has been good?’ I said to Charles.
‘Oh, yes, a model pupil.’ Charles smiled at me. ‘We’ll get him up to speed in no time!’
His smile was genuine and warm, but to me – perhaps because I was over-sensitive to others’ moods after years of trying to predict Anders’ emotional weather so I could avoid provoking a reaction from him – it seemed tinged with an underlying sadness; I remembered what Elizabeth had told me about him and felt another wave of sympathy for the man. I knew only too well what it felt like to feel useless and unwanted. It must have been a struggle for him, having to return here and begin again. Brave, too.
‘Thank you,’ I said, and smiled back. ‘I’m relieved to hear it. It is so long since Eirik was last in school – I was worried he would have fallen too far behind to catch up.’
‘Oh, no, not at all!’ Charles said.
Thanking him again, I turned to Eirik, who was chattering away to David Couper and a few other boys. ‘Come, Eirik. Let’s hurry before we get too cold – it’s beginning to snow again! You can tell me about your storybook on the way home.’
Eirik said goodbye to his friends, I bid Charles farewell, and with flakes falling softly like feathers around us, the afternoon already turning to dusk, we made our way back to the cheerful warmth of the croft.
It wasn’t until we were almost there that I realised I’d called it home without even thinking.