Thunder Bay

The clock ticked.

It sat on the tiled fireplace, an old-fashioned wooden clock, its rounded top sloping out to wings. Its face was plain, there was nothing ornate about it. Rebecca wondered if it had come with the manse or if it was some kind of family heirloom. But its tick was clear and strong and steady.

Very little sound reached her as she sat beside a warm log fire in this cosy little book-lined study in the rear of the house. Just the clock, rhythmically ticking time into oblivion, and the underlying crackle and hiss of the logs burning in the grate. She could hear the wind, of course; that had been a constant since the day before. It hadn’t seemed to have grown in intensity, though. It was now a backdrop to the island, shrieking and howling over land and water, surrounding the stone-built manse and probing for weakness in slate or render. But the building was a strong one: it had withstood such attacks before, and it would survive this one.

But inside the room, there was, above all, the clock.

Tick

The sound sent her mind flicking to the night before, perched on that slimy rock, the wind plucking at her clothes, the sea singing somewhere in the dark. The Land Rover’s engine winding down. The aria on the radio. Alan’s voice, talking softly to Chaz.

Tick

The blood dripping steadily onto the vehicle’s bodywork. The sound of car doors closing. Lights flashing. Voices calling out.

Tick

Time passing. A second, a minute, an hour, a day, a life. All in a moment. A single heartbeat becomes many, throbs for a time, then stills.

Tick

The clock’s heart wouldn’t still. Even if it did, someone could bring it back to life with a twist of a key.

Tick

You couldn’t do that with a human heart. Not her father’s heart. His heart was still and no one could wind him back. Carl Marsh. Mhairi Sinclair. Gone. Still. The child Rebecca had carried, that had been growing inside her. The clock ticks, once, twice, three times. No longer. Life goes on. The ticking continues. They were all lost in the silence between the ticks.

The door opened and Fiona McRae came in carrying a tray with a cafetière of coffee and cups. Cake, too. Chocolate. Life goes on. Coffee goes on. Chocolate is eternal. Rebecca thought of Maeve Gallagher and her tea ritual and her own clock, silent, dead. God, was that really only a few days ago? So much had happened since then. So many ticks of the clock. So many spaces in between. The dead space.

Fiona set the tray down on the little table between them and sat in the winged leather chair opposite. Under the tray, Fiona had been holding an old leather book, which she slid down beside her. She didn’t make any moves to pour as she stared at Rebecca, concern etched heavily on her kind face. She was pretty, Rebecca noted. She’d probably have been a very pretty young woman. She would’ve had to be to attract her father, for he was a handsome man. Except towards the end, when the disease ate at his once strong body and blunted his once sharp mind. One tick of the clock and he was gone before the next.

‘Have you heard how Chaz is?’

Fiona’s voice startled her, even though she was looking right at her. Her mind had been lost in the ambient sounds; the human voice seemed momentarily alien.

‘He’ll live, thankfully,’ she said. ‘The wheel had pressed against his chest but he was wearing a thick jacket, which helped. His ribs took some punishment. The bit of metal didn’t hit anything major. He’ll be off his feet for a while, may have to walk with a stick for a time.’

Fiona smiled. ‘That’s a relief. With all that’s happened in the past day or so we didn’t need another tragedy.’

Rebecca fell silent, the ticking of the clock filling her mind. She watched the second hand counting the day down. Chaz hadn’t fallen between the ticks. Chaz had beaten time. And she was thankful. Life went on.

‘Rebecca, are you sure you want to do this today?’

She focused on Fiona, saw her kind face was furrowed with concern.

Rebecca nodded. ‘I have to know,’ she said.

Fiona poured two cups of coffee from the cafetière. She cut two slices of cake, laid them on small plates. She placed one in front of Rebecca and set the cup beside it. She picked up her own cup and sat back, sipped, watched Rebecca closely. There was silence between them for a while. Except for the wind outside, moaning like a ghost. And the clock.

Tick

Rebecca waited, her mind still too numb to ask any questions. That young man, Gus, had said she had caused this. All this violence and death. Had she? She didn’t think so, couldn’t bring herself to think so. She didn’t make Roddie Drummond come back home. She hadn’t forced Carl Marsh to abuse his wife all these years. She had no hand in Donnie Kerr being beaten up.

But Chaz . . .

He was targeted because of her. If she hadn’t come to the island, he would never have been involved. He would not be lying in the hospital. His mother would not have been put through the shock of hearing about what had happened and the fear of losing her only child. Alan, although spared any lasting injury, would not have had to consider life without the man he loved, would not have had to consider the space between the ticks.

‘I’m leaving on the first ferry out of here,’ she said. ‘I never want to see Stoirm again, to be honest.’ She paused, looked directly at Fiona. ‘But I need to know.’

Fiona sipped her coffee, placed the cup carefully on the saucer in her hand and set them both down on the table. She sat back, crossed her legs, laid her forearms on the arms of the chair. The index finger and thumb of her right hand rubbed together, as if feeling the width of some invisible fabric.

Tick

Finally, she spoke. ‘That’s what your father said to me, the day he left. That he never wanted to see Stoirm again. He kept his word.’

‘So will I. But first I need to know. Why did he leave?’

Fiona was very still, just the finger and thumb swirling against each other.

‘Your father’s family came here from Ireland over a hundred and fifty years ago,’ she said. ‘The Connolly clan, they liked to call themselves, and they were part of a small religious group called the Blood of Christ. Three families came over originally, the Connollys, the Devlins, the Cloughertys, but they were all known as the Connolly clan. A few more followed. Nowadays they’d be called fundamentalists but even that doesn’t cover how strict their views were. Basically, the word of God was the law and they adhered to it. Stoirm islanders always had one foot in Presbyterianism, the other in Paganism, and over the years they’ve tolerated New Agers and Wiccans but the Blood’s views were too strong even for them. Still, they were accepted as long as they kept to themselves up in their little clachan in the hills, which is what they did. I suppose you’d call them hillbillies in a lot of ways. There were stories, of course, of strange rituals, but frankly that was just stuff and nonsense. Fairy tales to scare the children over here on the east side of the island. Stoirm is fond of its stories. They were staunch Christians and they were a strong family unit, even compared to Stoirm families, whose bonds are all but unbreachable. Their views were extreme but there weren’t any sacrifices or blood rituals. That was all rumour.’

‘My father wasn’t religious,’ Rebecca said, her voice sounding hollow even to her.

‘No, he wasn’t. Their views tempered over the years. At first they married only one another—Connolly married Devlin, Devlin married Clougherty, Clougherty married Connolly and so on—but that couldn’t continue. Time passes.’

The clock ticks, Rebecca thought.

‘Things change. There was more contact with the outside world, or at least what outside world there was on Stoirm back then. Some people drifted away from the clachan, settled in other parts of the island, married outwith the clan. The Blood of Christ was watered down, you might say, with the blood of Stoirm, and frankly it was all the better for it. They abandoned the Blood’s tenets, adopted something more . . . flexible, shall we say? But your father’s family? They stayed true to their faith. Their numbers dwindled but there were still a few of them in the clachan. Even so, time took its toll and by the time your father came along, they still had their faith but they weren’t as deeply entrenched in it as their parents and grandparents.’

‘So what turned my father against them? Against Stoirm?’

Fiona looked down at the untouched chocolate cake as if it was the answer. ‘There’s an old joke about the kirk. Why does it not approve of having sex standing up? Because it may lead to dancing.’ Fiona didn’t smile. Neither did Rebecca. She wasn’t sure she would again. ‘Morality, Rebecca. You must know that for centuries women weren’t allowed to do many things. Up until the late 1960s I couldn’t have been ordained as a minister for word and sacrament. Women were oppressed for many, many generations and I’m ashamed to say that the kirk was in the forefront of that oppression. There was an old law, centuries ago, in the seventeenth century, against Concealment of Pregnancy, and it remained in force for decades. Basically, if a woman hid the fact that she was pregnant and the child was stillborn, or died at childbirth, the woman would be held guilty of murder. The father, if he knew, was blameless. It was only the woman who was responsible. I suppose it was an anti-abortion law but like many laws it was open to abuse. If the woman was married, then there was no need to conceal the pregnancy but if she was unmarried? There was huge shame to illegitimacy then. If the woman revealed it, she was liable to all kinds of public rebuke, especially at the hands of the Church. She could be shunned, ridiculed, cast out. To an extent, a little of that attitude still exists here on Stoirm.’

Rebecca thought of Mhairi Sinclair. I know what they think of her, her mother had said, that she was a whore. She’d had one child to one man, and feared she was pregnant to another, while living with a third.

‘The law changed, of course, but the shame was still there. Abortion wasn’t as freely available. And the flesh is what the flesh is, so there were still unwanted pregnancies. Certainly, arrangements could be made. The woman could go into hiding until the pregnancy reached term and the child taken away for adoption. We have no idea how many such cases there were. Sometimes they would go to the mainland and a trip to a back street abortionist. The woman didn’t always return.’

‘Fiona, what has this got to do with my father?’

‘The Connolly clan weren’t immune from illegitimacy.’

‘So, was my father illegitimate, is that it? Is that the big secret?’

‘No, your grandparents were legally wed and he was born two years after.’

‘Then what?’

Fiona breathed in deeply. ‘There’s a saying here on the island: They should’ve been taken up into the hills at birth. It means that someone should never have been allowed to live.’

Carl Marsh had said that twice about Roddie Drummond. It had registered with her but she hadn’t given it too much thought.

‘Your great-great-grandmother, Roberta Connolly, was a strong, highly motivated woman. She was strong in her faith, strong in her views and strong in her convictions. To her, a child born outwith wedlock was an abomination, a thing of the devil. They say she fell pregnant herself when she was seventeen to an islander. No one knows what happened to the child, or even if it’s true. But whenever any of the clan fell pregnant out of wedlock and a marriage wasn’t on the table, it was her they turned to.’

Rebecca felt something cold grasp at her stomach. ‘What was she, an abortionist?’

Fiona shook her head. ‘No. Well, not quite. I’m not going to debate the morality of abortion, I’ll have my view, you’ll have yours, we may agree, we may not. But what Roberta did? Well, perhaps it was worse. The pregnant woman went to live with her in what remained of the clachan. We’re talking early twentieth century here, the clan had dispersed even further, the Blood of Christ was all but a memory. Those confined women would remain with her until they gave birth.’

Fiona stopped speaking. Outside the wind threw itself against a window somewhere, rattling it like a demand for entry. The ice in Rebecca’s belly was solid and she recognised it for what it was. Dread. Her mind had jumped ahead of Fiona’s words. When they came, they came with a whisper, as if Fiona didn’t want the elements to hear. ‘They say that Roberta took the new born babies and . . . disposed of them.’

Fiona’s eyes began to fill with tears. Rebecca could tell this was painful for her, even though it had happened more than a hundred years earlier and she didn’t know any of the people personally. Rebecca already knew the answer to her next question, but she needed to ask. She had come this far. The dread could not stop her.

‘I take it you don’t mean she put them up for adoption?’

Fiona took a long time to answer and all Rebecca could hear was the wind whirling and the rain tapping its bony fingers on the window. The clock on the mantelpiece, always the clock.

Tick

‘No,’ Fiona said finally. ‘Roberta had a more direct way of dealing with the girls’ shame. They say when she helped deliver the child, she had a bucket filled with water at her feet. It didn’t take a lot of water, not for a newborn. It would’ve been so very easily done. Seconds, really.’

Seconds. Like the clock. Like the ticking of the clock. All done. A life over before it had begun.

Rebecca soaked this in. In her mind she saw a bare little room and a table. She had no idea what Roberta Connolly looked like but she saw a big woman, severe, standing between the opened legs of a young girl on a tabletop. A metal bucket at her feet, waiting.

She thought of her own unborn child. That had been a twist of fate, a fault in chromosomes. This was purposeful. This was cold and calculated. The horror of it tingled at her spine. Something else. Shame. It was her ancestor who had done it, her blood. In that moment she knew something of how her father felt.

‘And the islanders knew this was going on?’ she asked.

‘They knew, but they didn’t talk about or acknowledge it in any way. This island has its secrets, Rebecca, and the people keep them. Only the older folk know of it now, people my age and upwards, and it’s never, ever spoken about. The past haunts the present on Stoirm, but it must never taint it. To talk of it gives it life. By not talking about it, the shame of it will die. But back then it was accepted. And even condoned.’

‘And my father found out about it?’

Fiona gave her a slight nod. ‘Yes, he did.’

‘How? If no one talked about it, how did he find out all that time afterwards?’

Fiona hesitated before she answered. ‘Roberta kept a journal. He found it.’

Rebecca’s eyes flicked to the spine of the leather book wedged between Fiona and the arm of the chair. ‘Is that it?’

Fiona’s breath escaped in a long sigh as she retrieved the book and held it in both hands, as if she was afraid it would get away from her. ‘I don’t know why she kept a record of sorts. She doesn’t go into great detail but it’s clear from the language what she was doing. Perhaps it was her way of expunging her guilt. Perhaps she thought it important that these small deaths, these little lives with no names, be recorded. Perhaps she was proud of it. I really don’t know. Anyway, your father found it among some old things and he read it. He was, what? Seventeen, eighteen? But he was so disgusted with what his family had done, what they had known about, what the whole island seemed to have known about, that he left. He told me he couldn’t live here any more, knowing what had gone on back then, what had been allowed to go on. He gave it to me the day he left. Now it’s yours.’ She held the book out to Rebecca. ‘If you want it.’

Rebecca stared at the dark leather volume. She knew why her father had refused to even talk about Stoirm, but there would be more detail in the book. She could learn about her family, where she had come from. She saw herself reach out to take the book, felt its coolness on her fingertips, saw herself opening the cover and carefully turning the yellowing pages, deciphering a spidery hand filled with dates and names and religious indignation and horrible, spiteful, bitter thoughts. She saw all that without ever actually taking the book from Fiona’s hands.

She didn’t need the book to tell her where she came from. She already knew. She wasn’t a Connolly from Stoirm. Her life began with John and Val. Mum and dad. She was a product of their love and their care. She was a part of them and they were part of her. It was also true that whoever had gone before also lived within her. All his adult life her father had carried guilt that was not his to carry. She knew part of that guilt would now remain with her. It would join her own. Those little lost souls would be with her forever. She didn’t need a tangible reminder.

Tick

‘Burn it,’ she said.

Fiona seemed satisfied and immediately threw the book into the fire. They both watched in silence as the flames began to singe the old paper and curl the edges of the cover. The paper erupted into flame and smoke but the leather merely blackened. Within a few minutes the words written down so long ago were at one with the smoke. There seemed nothing more to be said, so Rebecca stood up to leave.

‘Your father was a good man,’ Fiona said as she rose.

‘He was,’ said Rebecca.

‘He tried all his life to make up for what Roberta did.’

‘I see that now.’

‘I think he more than made up for it, don’t you?’ The minister stared directly into Rebecca’s eyes, as if she had divined her earlier thoughts. ‘It wasn’t his debt but he repaid it, in full and with interest. You owe nothing, Rebecca. You are not Roberta. The book is gone, the slate is clean. Understand?’

Rebecca nodded and said her goodbyes. They hugged. In another world Fiona might’ve been her mother. In another world that book and what it recorded would never have existed. But in this world Fiona was just her father’s old girlfriend and that book was now ash and blackened leather. The words were gone and the smoke was gone, but what they recorded was still there, hanging in the air around her. And within her.

On the roadway back to Portnaseil, the wind whipping at her coat, she stopped and stared across the island to the hills in the west. Somewhere up there, hidden in the wet mist and standing firm against the storm, was what was left of the clachan. Somewhere up there, perhaps, was a table with old, forgotten dark stains upon it. And perhaps a rusting metal bucket lying on its side in a corner.

A noise drifted towards her through the wind and the rain that beat on her face and her hair. A little cry, something pitiful, something alone out there in the open land. It could have been a sheep or a bird. But to Rebecca it sounded like something else.

A child’s cry.

A child not meant to live, its single, heartrending wail the first and last it ever made.

A cry that would be carried by the wind and echo forever around the island.

The cold feeling in her gut erupted and she bent double, her retching joined by deep, shuddering sobs.