Chapter One
JAYNE
Four years later – late August 1930
Village Bay, St Kilda
Jayne stared down at the humble cross, tacked together from driftwood that had washed up on their single shore long ago and been stored in the coffin cleit, ready for the next death.
Despite their best efforts, it wasn’t much to honour the memory of a girl who had been so radiant in life. Jayne, Effie, Flora and Mhairi had each taken a turn with Effie’s paints, picking out Molly’s name in swirling letters and decorating the spaces with flowers and a tiny motif of the St Kilda wren whose songs she had loved so much.
Jayne sank to the ground and pressed a hand to the lush grass; buttercups nodded in bright greeting but they still made her blanch, even now. She could never forget how they had rained from her hair on her wedding night, daisies and buttercups shaken loose and falling, one by one, until nothing beautiful had remained.
She looked away. She couldn’t believe she was leaving her young sister-in-law behind. It felt like losing her all over again, for there had at least been solace in visiting her grave every day. Jayne had taken to bringing her knitting up to the burial ground and sitting beside the little cross, protected from buffeting winds and prying eyes by the high stone wall that encircled the oval space like a mother’s arms. She sat there most days and kept the girl she’d loved as a sister up to date with all the village news, chatting like they always used to over the kitchen table: Flora and Mhairi were summering with the flocks in Glen Bay; Crabbit Mary was – finally – with child, due any day; Donald had had a nasty fall when they went over to pluck the sheep on Boreray, but he’d recovered well; Effie had fallen in love with an earl’s son who had then, of course, broken her heart...
So much life had been lived since Molly’s death, even here on their tiny isle where supposedly nothing ever happened. Jayne simply couldn’t envisage what awaited them on the other side of the water. She could scarcely believe the evacuation was happening at all. It had seemed like a trick when the news had come in May, everyone stunned. Yes, they’d come to an ‘all or none’ consensus in the weeks that had followed Molly’s passing last November, when Lorna – fuelled by guilt or rage – had argued that no one should die of pneumonia in this age; that if they’d only had the right resources and aid, Molly could have lived. Didn’t they deserve more, better, Lorna had asked?
More and better weren’t words in the St Kildan vocabulary; but then, Lorna MacDonald was a St Kildan by choice, not by birth. And somehow, as the argument wore on through those dark nights of winter, it had become a petition for evacuation to the mainland.
The islanders had been split when the thought was first mooted: the elders wanting to stay, the younger generation enticed by the comforts found on the other side. There was no denying their number, now down to thirty-six, had dropped to a critical level. Half the population was either aged or juvenile, and they needed strong young men to climb the cliffs to catch the very birds and their eggs they lived on; they needed strong young women to birth the future generations of St Kildans, especially now that Mhairi was betrothed to a farmer on Harris, Flora to her gentleman from Glasgow, and Effie, a wild thing, was no more suited to marriage than the wind was meant for a box. Molly had been the worst possible person to die, for so many reasons.
Jayne had collapsed when she had first seen Molly’s face in a vision; she’d felt her insides turn to dust. There had been no one she could tell, no one with whom she could share her horror. Though everything in her being had wanted to scream desperate warnings, to somehow alter the future and deceive fate, it would have been an unconscionable cruelty to utter them. Her mother had warned her of the futility of trying to ever change what was already foreseen.
The horror of that day lingered still, and as she sat by the grave, flashbacks still tormented her. Picking Molly up from the floor and carrying her to her bed...Norman paling at her sudden deterioration, praying to a God he didn’t believe in...Lorna working with fast hands and a grim look...the darkness buffeting and gathering around them, a rolling energy that was spiriting Molly away like she was a ball of rags...
‘Come on, Moll!’ Lorna urging her patient to rally, to respond, her hands moving faster and faster as time began to run out.
‘Oh God,’ Norman crying, sensing it too. ‘Moll, no!’
Molly’s shallow, grasping breaths drawing out ever longer, pauses outweighing little desperate hiccups for oxygen. Silences steadily becoming ominous – and then deafening.
‘Moll?’ Norman’s voice breaking on the whispered word. The big man sounding small. He had vowed to protect his sister, thinking it meant a rich husband and a house on the mainland; never knowing they would be imperilled by sheep in a snowstorm.
Lorna turning to them, ashen-faced. ‘She’s gone.’
‘No!’ Norman reaching past her, pulling his sister into his arms. ‘Wake up, Moll!’ His hollow gasp as Molly’s head dropped backward in dreadful proof.
A creak of the latch, footsteps...David MacQueen stopping at the sight of Jayne, Lorna, Norman and Molly positioned like marble figurines. His legs buckling, staggering backwards, his face becoming a Greek mask – tragedy pulling down on a gaping mouth, eyes bulging – as Norman moaned a ghostly sound, his soul being dragged from his innards. But it was worse than that.
A man could live without his soul. But his heart?
Norman’s eyes finding hers, sorrow turning to rage – because she had known all this. Foreseen and not stopped it. Given no warnings.
Her body weakening, knowing there would be consequences. There always were.
‘I thought I might find you here.’
The voice pressed over her memories, pushing them back down into the depths of her psyche, and she looked up to find David standing before her. The sun pressed at his back so that he glowed, his edges black and blurred against a bleached sky.
‘Of course,’ she smiled as he sat beside her in his usual way, looping his elbows over his knees as he looked down the hill, back towards the bay. She knew he felt the same as her. Leaving Molly was going to be the worst part about leaving here. No matter the comforts they might find elsewhere, it was only in this spot right here that either of them felt at peace.
This had become their meeting place in the nine months since Molly had gone. Not intentionally, of course; it had never occurred to her that they might become friends (David was three years her junior, for one thing). But they had each needed to feel close to Molly and had found themselves drawn back here, day after day. At first, they had been at pains to give one another space – David had been Molly’s sweetheart, Jayne her sister-in-law. But over time, instead of scattering, they had begun to sit here together and talk about times past with the girl they had both loved. Sharing their memories had become a way of grieving, a new ritual. Jayne recounted the quiet companionship of cooking with Molly at the stove, washing the sheets in the burn, knitting by the fire. David’s reminiscences were more lively: dancing all night at the ceilidh, Molly’s cheeks flushed and eyes bright; how they would flirt in the kirk, hiding messages in their prayer books. He remembered what had turned out to be their last day together, stealing kisses in her bedroom as they hid from Norman, holding themselves back from temptation in the mistaken belief that they had a future waiting for them and all the time in the world. But where had their patience and virtue got them?
‘Is the madness abating?’ Jayne asked now, picking up her knitting.
Everyone had been packing up for days. Mad Annie had been practising walking up and down the street with her spinning wheel on her back, ready for embarking the boat. Effie had been checking the climbing ropes, brushing off all reminders that they wouldn’t be needed on the mainland. Ma Peg’s windows shone even though in two days’ time, no one would look through them again.
‘Only getting worse,’ David tutted. ‘Old Fin’s adamant he hid a sovereign up the chimney thirty years back, but he can’t find it.’
‘How did he come by a sovereign thirty years back?’ Jayne frowned. Theirs was a barter economy of chores, errands and favours swapped between families. The rich visitors who sometimes sailed in, offering shillings in exchange for photographs or woollen socks, had only been coming in any number since the Great War.
‘Says he won it off a captain. Arm wrestling.’
Jayne smiled. Old Fin was in his twilight years now, but thirty years ago? There were few men who could match a St Kildan’s arm strength. The islanders’ survival depended upon cragging; even challenging one of them to a thumb-wrestle was ill-advised.
‘He reckons he’ll need it at last, so he tried to send Wee Murran up the chimney looking for it.’ David rolled his eyes. ‘Suffice it to say, Rachel was not pleased.’
‘I thought I heard a racket,’ Jayne nodded, smiling. It would mean another round of scrubbing shirts in the burn before they got on the boat. ‘Did you see Norman anywhere?’ Her husband had scarce been home the last two nights.
‘Aye, down at the factor’s house. Thick as thieves, they were. I think he’ll be the only person not to be glad to see the back of Frank Mathieson.’
‘Aye. I can’t understand it myself,’ she murmured, although she thought perhaps she did. To the rest of the village, the landlord’s rent collector and ‘man on the ground’ was a bully. He lorded it over them all and, some of the men were convinced, pocketed the hefty difference between the rates at which he bought from them and sold on to others. But her husband was an ambitious man; he had proved as much when he’d denied his sister her heart’s wish to marry David. News of the evacuation had excited him. With Molly gone, he had become ever more dissatisfied with life here – with her – and he now saw a chance for the more and better Lorna had promised.
Unlike everyone else, Norman viewed Mathieson as his equal; he saw himself as a man of the world, not of the soil. He knew the factor had seen things and been places, and although her husband was too proud to ask for advice, he absorbed Mathieson’s vainglorious boasts and stories like a sponge. He was learning from him; he wanted to know as much as possible.
‘There’s Mhairi,’ David murmured, his eyes fixed up the slopes of Oiseval. Jayne followed his gaze towards the distant, flame-haired figure heading for the fanks on the An Lag plateau. A flock of sheep trotted before her, herded by two dogs, one of which was Poppit. Jayne’s eyes automatically scanned for Effie too, for she and Poppit were never parted. Sure enough, she was up ahead, arms wide as she channelled the animals into the correct enclosure. There was vivacity in her movements and Jayne could tell, even from here, that Effie was glad to be with her friend again. Mhairi and Flora had trialled summering on the distant pastures, and if Jayne herself had felt the loss of their company, poor Effie had been as lonesome as a ghost.
She watched as the flock grouped in nervous clusters against the stone walls. They were moving easily and breathing freely now, but it had been very different on the day of the snowstorm back in November. How could something so innocuous have turned so deadly? At first, it had been Mhairi who was almost lost; but there she was now, standing in the sun, while Molly lay in the ground here beside them. The reversal of fortune had come as a shock to all but Jayne.
She looked away sharply, David doing the same, and she knew they were sharing the same thought. It happened a lot.
‘What will we do on the other side, when we can’t come here?’ David murmured.
Her chest tightened at the question. It was something she had been asking herself in the quiet hours, but her voice was calm and level when she spoke. ‘We’ll still talk, you and I, just in a new place. We’ll find somewhere special Molly would have loved.’
She smiled with encouragement, but a small frown puckered his brow. ‘But what if they don’t keep us all together?’
‘They have said they will try, and I...I choose to take them at their word,’ she replied after a moment, unable to bear the alternative. She knew that like her, he had no one else to talk to about Molly. The villagers, their friends, had already moved on; Molly was still beloved, but her name was already infrequently mentioned as the seasons began to run one into another, and she would be left even further behind once they sailed from these shores. There was no time to dwell on death on St Kilda when they had to work so hard at staying alive.
‘But what if they don’t, Jayne?’ he persisted.
She swallowed. ‘Then I hope we can write to one another and continue to talk that way.’
He looked over at her, and she saw it was an inadequate solution. So much of what they shared went unsaid, sitting together in silences crowded with thoughts and memories. How would that translate on a page? For the first time, she realized that it was not just Molly she might lose, but David too. Life could part them with the same ease as death. Their new friendship was like a glass bubble, strong and fragile all at once: it floated here, but would it shatter on the mainland?
He was still staring, as if reading her thoughts, before he looked away abruptly and tightened his grip around his knees. Neither of them spoke for several moments. ‘Jayne, I came up here because...well, there’s something I wanted to put to you.’
‘Oh?’
‘I wondered if we might stay with her here together, on the last night? I...I don’t want her to be alone.’
‘You mean to sleep here?’
‘Under the stars, aye. Molly’s never going to have our company again. I can’t bear to think of her alone for all the nights to come, when this place is silent.’
Jayne felt a sob come to her throat and pulse there at the thought of it too. Complete abandonment. There would be no human life treading the grass any more, only bones in the earth.
‘So?’ he prompted.
Still she hesitated. How would she explain to her husband that her last night on St Kilda would be spent here and not in their bed? She knew he would not take it well, but she saw the plea in David’s eyes and nodded. For his sake, for Molly’s, she would make it happen. Norman could join them if he so chose – Molly was his sister, after all – but she knew only too well that he was not sentimental. ‘I think that would be a lovely way to say goodbye,’ she murmured.
‘Good. I’m glad you agree,’ he said, getting to his feet and brushing the grass from his trousers. ‘I’d best get on. Pa wants me to help him with bringing down the loom.’
The looms, cumbersome items that took up half a room, were stored in the rafters through the summer months and their removal to the ground was a sign they were in the lee of the move. Tomorrow, SS Dunara Castle would drop anchor in the bay and they would begin the process of moving their household belongings and animals aboard. The day after that, the HMS Harebell would come for the villagers themselves, and the evacuation would be under way.
Jayne couldn’t bear to think of the island falling silent. After two thousand years of human settlement, their ancient rock was being left to the wind and the waves, the birds and the sheep. There would be no more evening news along the street; the chimneys would no longer puff with peat smoke. Sailors harbouring from a storm would find no friendly welcome on the beach.
She watched David walk away, past the many other rudimentary crosses stuck in the ground. He was fully grown now, tall and rangy with an easy lope that was clearly discernible even at a distance – at least, it was to her. His almost-black hair had a curl at the collar and his hazel-green eyes were always kind. It occurred to Jayne that his future was far brighter than he could see from this spot; his heart was still tied to Molly, in part because there was nothing more here for him, but there would be plenty of girls on the mainland who’d like the look of such a fine young man. He had prospects even if he couldn’t see them yet, and Jayne felt her own heart ache for Molly. She was going to lose him for good on the other side.
They both would.
‘You’re back,’ she said, looking up from the stool as Norman walked through. He was sunburnt from the long and relentless days outside recently, his linen shirt tucked inside the waistband of his trousers like a rag. He looked especially handsome, but if her heart still skipped a beat at the sight of him, her body withdrew.
She watched as he bent to wash himself in the bucket, muscles rippling with careless grace. Their marriage had come to balance on an uneasy point, a strange tension formed between distrust and lust, despair and resignation. Over the years, she had come to understand why he had proposed to her, plain Jayne: she was little more than a shadow in the room, pale warmth in the bed. He had married her precisely because she was the bare minimum, taking up no room in his life.
‘Y’ make it sound like I have somewhere else t’ go,’ he replied.
She watched as he splashed water on his face from the pail before running a wet hand through his hair. ‘I only meant that I’ve scarce seen you the past few days.’
‘It seems to me you’re the only one with time to sit down.’ His eyes flashed in her direction. Had he seen her sitting in the burial ground with David? He had taken against David for being indelibly intertwined with the moment of Molly’s death: Norman had lost control of his emotions and David had witnessed his weakness. She knew Norman would never forgive him for it. ‘All the others are frenzied trying to get done but you’re on y’ backside darning socks.’
Jayne looked around the spotless cottage. They owned precious little as it was – certainly less than those with big families – but she had folded their blankets, sheets and spare clothes into the wooden chest, she had taken down the curtains at the windows and polished the glass to a shine. The hearth was swept, her spinning wheel and bundle of yarns already sitting by the door. The pans were gleaming; the butter churn scrubbed...But she knew better than to plead her case.
‘Well, your tea’s ready to eat,’ she said instead, getting up and reaching for the stove door. She had cooked roasted puffin as a last treat. Lorna had told her it wasn’t so readily eaten over the other side – why would it be, when they had a daily butcher’s choice of lamb, beef, pork and chicken? Jayne had listened on with wide eyes, wondering if perhaps one day, they might look back at their sparse diet here with something like nostalgia. It seemed hard to believe.
‘In a while. I’ve to help Mathieson with some jobs.’
She straightened up. ‘Again? But weren’t you helping him earlier?’
‘Aye, in between moving the fulmar oil down from the top for ourselves.’
‘But what does Mr Mathieson have to do that requires so much help? Surely he’s here just to collect the rent and oversee the move?’
‘Jayne, I know you are simple-headed but surely even y’ can understand that he has work to do on behalf of MacLeod? Hirta is being closed up, and he needs to check the cleits and all over the isle to make sure nothing is missed. We’ll be lucky to get it done, the two of us, in the time that’s left.’
‘Then surely the other men can help as well? It’s not fair for the burden to fall to you.’
His gaze came to rest upon her. ‘They don’t have the time. They all have families to look after.’
She heard the silence beat after the words, the accusation hanging inside them of her inability thus far to bear him a child. Jayne looked away. He was free enough with his fists but it was his tongue that often caused the most hurt: barren , dry , fallow , those were the taunts that lingered long after the handprints had faded. Was it true? Or was her biology denying him in ways her body could not, knowing she wasn’t safe? Even Crabbit Mary and Donald had succeeded where they had failed – and everyone knew those two could scarce share a room together, much less a bed.
‘Who do I have, but for you?’ he shrugged, walking into the bedroom.
Jayne stared at the floor, hearing him moving around, his footsteps falling still, then breaking into loops around the room as he found everything had been packed up, nothing in its rightful place any longer. A moment later he was back in the doorway. It had always struck Jayne as the cruellest irony that he was never more handsome than when he was at his most dangerous.
‘Where’s my knife?’
‘What do you need that for?’
Norman frowned. ‘I don’t answer to y’, woman! Where is it?’
She hurried over, squeezing past him in the doorway and feeling his eyes upon her as their bodies touched. For a moment, she thought he might clasp her wrist and stop her in her tracks, as he sometimes did; but she slipped past, liquid as water, over to the wooden trunk and opened it. The knife, along with his climbing rope, lay atop the linens and blankets. ‘Here.’
He took it from her palm, his gaze still heavy upon her. He had come to bed so late these past few nights, she couldn’t even be sure he’d come to bed at all, rising again with the light before she awoke, and she knew he was battling himself. He was a man with needs but he was also a man with ambition, and if he felt he had an opportunity to ingratiate himself with the factor, he would not pass it up. Not even for that.
‘Have tea ready for when I return,’ he muttered finally.
Her mouth opened to ask him when that would be – to tell him it was already ready – but she closed it, watching as he slipped the knife into his waistband and headed outdoors again. He would be back when he was back. That was all she needed to know.
The bed creaked as Norman moved on top of her, his breathing ragged in her ear. She watched the usual spot on the ceiling and waited, knowing that in a few moments it would be done for the night. Her body was passively compliant as his pace quickened, groans beginning to gather in his throat as he lost himself, the bully growing defenceless until finally he stiffened, stilled, then collapsed upon her. His full weight pressed her deeper into the horsehair mattress for several seconds before he pushed back on his arms and rolled off her with a sigh.
They never spoke during the act, nor after, and barely two minutes passed before she heard his breathing slow and grow deeper. Jayne pulled the blanket tightly around her shoulders and turned her head towards the window. The curtain was thin, no match for tonight’s full-bodied moon, and she tried to imagine its view back down at their tiny landmass, a lambent speck in the midnight ocean. It helped her to visualize their insignificance, as if their smallness could somehow scale down the pain and loneliness that often felt overwhelming to her. ‘This is nothing,’ she would whisper to herself in the darkness. ‘We’re nothing.’
She closed her eyes and tried to sleep, to fall into the easy oblivion her husband enjoyed, for he was never troubled with bad dreams or wakeful nights. But rest wouldn’t come. She felt strangely disquieted, and as she blinked again into the brightness, she understood why.
The room was beginning to blur, golden shadows flickering across her eyes.
Oh God, no...
She tried to move, as if it was something she could dodge, but the portent settled like a lead cloak, holding her down. She felt the tingle begin to hum in her fingers and the growing heaviness in her soul, as if another spirit was clambering over her and sitting upon her own.
Time stopped.
She became aware of nothing but the thud of her own heart, the future showing itself in her mind’s eye, indecipherable images offering a flashed glance behind the curtain. It was always difficult to understand what she was seeing at first; the sights that floated before her eyes were often little more than impressions, only growing distinct as the moment drew near. But this time a face appeared with perfect clarity, and she felt a dread even worse than when she had seen Molly’s – because she understood this was going to change everything. They were standing in the shadow of their departure, but the Fates weren’t done with them yet.
Death was coming again to St Kilda.