Chapter Three
‘Jayne?’ She felt pressure on her shoulder, a warmth on her chilled, dewy skin. ‘Jayne, wake up.’
Her eyelids fluttered open and she had to squint as the brightness of the dawn fell upon her face. David was crouched beside her, moving slightly so that his shadow covered her, his dark hair falling forward as he smiled down. ‘It’s time. They’re here.’
‘...Who?’ For a moment she felt befuddled; the visions often left her drained afterwards.
‘The Royal Navy,’ he chuckled.
‘Oh. Of course.’ She felt foolish, as lethargic as if she’d drunk a sleeping potion. Lorna had many remedies in her medical bag and had given one to Norman to calm him after Molly’s death; when he had woken the next morning, he too had been in a stupor. It had taken him several minutes to remember what had happened – and Jayne’s role in it.
‘Look.’
She sat up slowly. David was pointing to the huge ship now dropping its whaler in the bay. The scale of it stunned her: masts and rigging both fore and aft, a giant smokestack and several decks. How could something so huge move so silently?
‘So then it’s real,’ she murmured. ‘They actually did it. We’re leaving here.’
David swallowed, his gaze falling to her and then the grassy grave beside her. ‘Aye.’ He rocked back on his heels for a moment, hugging his knees contemplatively, before he rose to standing, holding out his hand for her. She gripped it tightly as he pulled her up and they stared out to sea together, seeing the naval men in their white ducks moving on the deck as a rowing boat was lowered down to the water.
In the village, people were stirring. Jayne saw Old Fin step out of his cottage in his long johns and lean with his hands on the wall, watching intently. She wondered whether he had slept at all. It was no secret he had wanted to stay.
Jayne looked for the sun’s position in the sky and calculated the time to be no later than five. She had had maybe four hours’ sleep. Interrupted, of course. Murky images rose from her muddied mind.
David glanced at her. ‘We should probably get back.’
‘Aye, before...’ Before anyone notices, she had been going to say. Even though they had nothing to hide. They had come here for Molly.
She realized she was still holding his hand, or he hers, and she pulled away. David stepped back, watching as she bent to retrieve her blanket, but her gaze fell to the grave and she sank to her knees with a sudden rush of emotion, pressing her palms to the grassy mound.
‘I love you, Moll,’ she whispered desperately. ‘I’ll never forget you. I promise I’ll always look for you in the stars.’ She bent forward and lightly kissed the hand-painted cross. ‘I’ll keep you with me, sister.’
She closed her eyes and said a silent prayer before she pulled back, looking up and seeing tears in David’s eyes. She stood again, clutching her blanket in one hand as she pressed the other to his arm. ‘I’ll go.’
He looked panicked. ‘Why? You don’t need to.’
‘Aye, David. You should say your goodbyes in private.’ She could see the pain in his eyes; this was going to be harder for him than he had anticipated, but she knew he had to say goodbye in his own way, without the worry of being watched. ‘Take your time. We’ve several hours here yet.’ The Dunara Castle had already left with the majority of their belongings, but all the beds would be coming back with them on the HMS Harebell . ‘I’ll see you back down there.’
She walked away, feeling his eyes on her back. She knew he wanted her to stay, that there was comfort in company. But today wasn’t going to be easy for anyone, and in her own best interests she had to get back before Norman woke. The thought of his anger at finding her out all night chilled her blood, and her mind raced as she walked back quickly towards her home. Perhaps if she was in the kitchen when he awoke, she could make him believe she’d come in late and slept beside him after all?
She slipped through the narrow opening in the dyke and headed left, past the backs of the cottages, just as she had come. It would be best to stay hidden from sight till she could put down her blanket; she didn’t want people to guess she had slept out.
She was passing Donald and Mary McKinnon’s cottage when an unmistakable sound stopped her dead – the mewl of a newborn.
Mary had had her baby?
Her mouth dropped open as she realized this was either very good news or very bad: if Lorna had come calling for Jayne in the middle of the night, needing extra hands for wet towels, fresh sheets, sustenance, then Norman would know that she hadn’t come home. On the other hand, if Lorna hadn’t come by – or at least, if she’d called before Norman had returned – Jayne could tell him she had been here with the other women all night.
It would be a bald-faced lie to her husband and she didn’t like it, but she could do it; she was used to keeping secrets.
She moved quickly, hearing voices beginning to drift as more and more people stepped out. She went round the far end of her own cottage, holding the blanket at her back and slipping in through the front door, unnoticed. Everyone’s eyes were upon the ship.
She let the latch drop and stood for a moment in the bare croft, her body straining for clues as to her husband’s whereabouts. She had long ago learned to keep her back to the wall.
No sound came from the bedroom, and as her eyes travelled she could see the slate and the oatcakes still out, exactly as she’d left them. They were untouched. With a frown, she moved further into the room and saw that the bedroom door was wide open, the bed sheets tucked in and unrumpled.
Norman hadn’t come home either? He’d been out all night?
If she was confused, she still didn’t hesitate. She knew opportunity when it came knocking and he would be back at any moment now. She rubbed the message from the slate and ran into the bedroom, stripping the bed of its sheets and folding them down into a final bundle.
Her heart pounded with relief. There was nothing now to indicate her own absence from the marital bed, and even better, she wouldn’t have to lie about it. He wouldn’t ask after her final night here.
She plucked a few stray grass stems from the blanket and carefully placed it with the sheets, thinking of David still sitting with Molly as the sun steadily rose into a peerless blue sky. They, at least, were getting to have a proper goodbye; but for her...? She looked around at the four stone walls of the bedroom. There had been precious little joy here and certainly never any love.
She dropped the linen bundle on the front step and walked out without looking back, going to stand with her neighbours by the wall. The sun was at their backs as they watched the sailors row across the bay. Coming for them...The dogs, of course, were barking on the beach. They had always been St Kilda’s first line of defence.
She cast her gaze around for a sighting of her husband, but he was still nowhere to be seen. Her eyes rose up to Mullach Bi where she had last seen the factor striding out alone. The men had been separated by then, but that didn’t mean they hadn’t met up again minutes later, or even hours. She felt an anxious tightening in her gut as to what it all might mean when the vision had been clear this time.
Norman hadn’t come home. What had he been doing all night?
She looked away sharply, pushing the thoughts down. He wouldn’t do such a thing, she told herself. For all his faults, he wasn’t capable of that , surely?
But her body was on high alert – heart pounding, nausea rising in her throat. She knew what her neighbours did not. She had seen the rage that gleamed in the back of Norman’s eyes some nights. He wasn’t a man to be crossed.
She looked over at Ian MacKinnon, Angus and Fin; at Hamish and Neil Gillies, Archie MacQueen. What would they do to Norman if she shared her fears?
And if she was wrong, what would Norman to do to her? Last night had been a delirium, swirling with confused images and imaginings. What had been real and what a dream? No one yet knew that tragedy had even struck.
She took a deep breath, trying to steady herself. She was allowing her fears to get the better of her. She would not think about what lay on the other side of that ridge, and she would not sound the alarm. She must keep to herself, as she always had.
But for someone who hadn’t wanted to leave here, suddenly escape couldn’t come soon enough.
It was thirty minutes past the seventh hour and the last of the furniture had been loaded. The cottages had been locked, the front steps swept and Bibles left open on the surfaces that remained. The younger children, mothers and elders were already on board, and Jayne stood on the jetty awaiting her turn.
Beside her, David, Fin MacKinnon and Neil Gillies stood as silent as statues, their wet trousers dripping onto the stone. Drowning the dogs had been a distressing but necessary final chore. The islanders hadn’t the means to pay for the dog licences that were obligatory on the mainland, and without any natural prey on the isles for the dogs to hunt, the only mercy available had been to kill them quickly.
Jayne could see from the anguished looks on all three of the men’s faces that they wouldn’t forget it quickly.
‘Effie Gillies!’
Robert’s voice resounded around the glen. From here Effie was but a bright spot on the bluffs, but even at this distance, they could see how she clutched Poppit tightly to her as Angus MacKinnon and Hamish Gillies began to climb the cliffs. There could be no exceptions. Not even for the girl whose dog was family, her most constant companion – the only friend she had known this past summer, with Mhairi and Flora in the other glen and the earl’s son long gone over the horizon.
‘Miss?’
Jayne looked down to find the sailors had moored next to the jetty again, one of them holding out a hand to help her down.
She glanced back at Mullach Mor, then at the three young men she had known her whole life. ‘But Norman—’ she protested.
‘Is coming. Stop fretting. There’s no one wants to get away from here more than him,’ Neil said.
She knew he was right on that score at least. Norman had finally made an appearance an hour earlier, striding along the street and manhandling Mr Bonner, claiming he had found him ‘hiding out’ in one of the cleits. The reporter had protested he had merely been ‘exploring’ the isle, but Norman had been adamant he found him crouched in the far end, trying to stay hidden and out of the light.
Quite why the reporter should want to do that, Norman couldn’t explain. He would have been risking his life. With all their paltry crops lifted from the ground and the livestock removed to the mainland, there was nothing left here to sustain a man – not unless he could crag a cliff like the St Kildans, and from the look of his shiny leather shoes and coat, that didn’t seem likely. The Dunara Castle was scheduled to make a tourist trip several days after the evacuation to what they were now touting as ‘the ghost isle’ but it was entirely weather dependent; there were no guarantees of a sailing, and therefore, of rescue.
Mr Bonner had been dispatched back to HMS Harebell with the first of the bed deliveries and Norman had gone off again, seeming to forget he had a wife. He didn’t come back to their cottage for a ‘last look’ and he hadn’t offered any explanation for his absence last night. Jayne had caught pitying looks between Mad Annie and Old Fin as he’d headed round the back and disappeared once more, but that wasn’t what bothered her. His rage at the reporter had been disconcerting. Her husband clearly wasn’t himself.
‘Miss,’ the sailor said again.
Jayne accepted his help and stepped carefully into the boat. It frightened her, going out on the water. She couldn’t swim, and it was usually only the men who rowed out into the bay to the visiting ships. Jayne herself had only stepped foot off St Kildan rock once, when she was a child and her father had allowed her to join them on a row for the postbag.
The three men, well versed in jumping into the smack and the wallowy feeling of bobbing on the waves, leapt in after her. She gripped the sides as the boat rocked, swallowing down a gasp and unable to understand why none of them were terrified. Fin and Neil were positioned right in front of her, David beyond them, his gaze pinned back to shore. She knew it wasn’t Effie he was staring at as the sailors released the tethering rope and they began to row towards the ship.
The children on board were either gathered at the bow rails or running around the bulkheads as the mothers clustered together, talking intently. Mr Bonner was standing apart, his gaze fixed firmly upon the drama unfolding on shore. Would he write about it in his newspaper report? What had he been hoping to achieve by staying back here?
‘Welcome aboard,’ a naval man said as they drew alongside the stern. Jayne was disembarked first. She only realized her hands were shaking when the sailor took them to steady her as she stepped on deck.
Ma Peg was singing a lament, Mad Annie puffing on her pipe and looking back at her home through slitted eyes. Jayne caught sight of Mhairi and Flora sitting together and talking in whispers, as if they had been separated the entire summer and not in fact sequestered together. She supposed they had grown even closer during that time. It was hard not to think once more of Molly, left behind now in every way possible.
Automatically, she looked around to see where David had gone. Drowning the dogs would have been a terrible duty for him when he had such a gentle nature. She found him at the far end of the deck, his hands gripping the bow rail as he stared back to land, and she turned in his direction.
A piercing scream tore suddenly into the sky.
Everyone paused their singing, talking, playing as the scream was followed by more. The sound was heartrending.
‘Oh my goodness! Who—?’ Rachel gasped.
‘What was that?’ Christina asked. But they knew it could only have come from Effie.
The villagers rushed to the side of the ship, looking for a sighting of her. Every pair of eyes scanned the bottom of the cliffs, finding no trace of her anywhere, even though both Angus MacKinnon and Hamish Gillies could be seen still scrambling up the bluffs.
Rachel and Big Mary looked at one another in horror. Had their son and husband, charging up the cliffs after her, provoked a fatal error in Effie? A desperate leap? Effie had been guarding her dog with her life. They all knew she would never give Poppit up.
For several minutes no one spoke as they tried to make sense of what was happening back on shore.
Jayne felt a hand on her shoulder and looked over to see Flora had come to stand beside her. The young woman was pale beneath her sunburnt skin, her eyes puffy and red-rimmed with tears. Jayne didn’t know if she was crying for her lost lover, for leaving here, or out of fear over Effie’s fate. But she took Flora’s hand and squeezed it, trying to reassure her as they looked back towards the Ruival cliffs again.
Angus and Hamish were getting to their feet now, the bluff scaled, but there was movement to their right and Jayne could make out another two figures: just pale dots against the grass, coming down the slopes. Effie’s bright hair shone like glinting glass in the sunlight. From her lurching gait, it was clear she was being dragged along.
It was a moment before Jayne noticed Poppit was nowhere to be seen. Effie’s shadow, she was usually never more than a few feet away from her mistress.
Jayne felt her stomach drop as she realized the reason for the scream – and the reason Flora had come over to console her . Angus and Hamish had been too far away to have been involved. Norman was the only one other person left on the isle who would have done what had to be done.
Her husband had never been a sentimental man. But she couldn’t say he wasn’t also a bad one.
The last of the villagers climbed aboard just before eight o’clock, the crew swinging into action as the whaler was slowly winched up and the smokestack began to puff. Big Mary had taken up singing the lament now, but the passengers were otherwise silent, every set of eyes trained upon Effie as she walked barefoot, without her shadow.
Instinctively Jayne’s hand went out as she passed. ‘Effie, I’m so sorry.’
The girl looked at her, but her eyes were blank. She was hollowed out with shock. She had lost too many that she loved recently and the pain sat upon her like a gauze veil.
Jayne’s hand fell back. What good was her apology when she was married to the man who had done this to Effie?
Without a word, Effie staggered over to where Flora was sitting and the two young women collapsed into each other like folded petals, just as Flora and Mhairi had done earlier. Jayne felt not just Molly’s exclusion from the three girls’ close bond, but her own too. She sat apart from everyone – too old for the girls but too young (and childless) to fall in with the mothers.
‘So there y’are,’ Norman muttered, coming to sit beside her as if she was the one who had been missing all night and almost all morning. As if he hadn’t just committed an act of atrocious cruelty.
It took her a moment to find her voice. ‘Did you finish what you were doing?’ she asked, seeing the dark expression he still wore. He was outwardly composed but she knew him too well; his spirit was agitated.
He gave a small grunt. ‘Well enough.’
‘That’s good then,’ she said lightly. ‘We can leave with no regrets.’
Norman looked down at her but she had turned away. The anchor chain was rattling loudly, the sailors running through their drills, the vibration of the engines beginning to hum beneath their feet as they powered up. There was a collective pull of tension as the St Kildans realized the moment was finally, truly here.
They were leaving. They were really going.
Everyone rose and looked back to shore as slowly the ship began to pivot, pushing away huge volumes of water that rolled in waves to crash upon their beach. It was impossible to believe that the cottages now stood empty, the chimneys cold, the cleits cleared. Jayne’s gaze rose over the slopes, cliffs, moors and crags they knew so well, the birds flying in their thousands overhead, as yet unaware that all this was now theirs.
From this vantage point, the islanders could finally see how very small their home truly was. A two-mile-long rock in the Atlantic, unable to bear crops or trees and surrounded on almost all sides by precipitous sea cliffs, had somehow sustained human life since the Bronze Age.
Until today.
None of them knew what they were sailing towards. Norman was dreaming of riches and position, but all Jayne wanted was security: close neighbours and a good friend nearby. For the first time she was facing the prospect of living truly alone with her husband – and it terrified her.
She looked around, seeing how every islander was lost in their own thoughts. David still stood alone, his eyes trained upon the distinctive oval wall of the burial ground; Flora was weeping silently as the wind rippled her dark hair, Effie shell-shocked beside her; Lorna was below deck with the McKinnons, helping them adjust to life as new parents. Celebrations for the baby’s overnight birth had had to be largely ‘postponed’, although with the new family travelling on in the minority to Oban, it was unlikely anything would come of it. The villagers’ salutary visits to the McKinnon cottage following the birth, just after midnight, would have to suffice.
To her relief, no one had asked Jayne where she had been, just as none of them seemingly noticed the glaring absence in their midst. Frank Mathieson hadn’t been seen all day, and she alone knew why. Of course, everyone was highly distracted, she knew that – there were several decks on the ship, so the islanders were scattered, or could be, if they so chose. The drama with Effie and Poppit had diverted attention too, and the high emotion as they pulled away was driving everyone into introspection. They weren’t thinking about what they couldn’t see. Not yet, anyway.
But Norman, who hadn’t let the man out of his sights for the past few days, hadn’t uttered Mathieson’s name once. And he was gripping the bow rail with blanched knuckles, his gaze trained on a distant spot, out of sight. She watched his finger tap-tap-tap impatiently on the chrome until the giant anchor finally burst out of the water like a whale’s tail and they all felt the ship come free, untethered now from the island’s last grasp. The rudders shifted, the vessel gaining traction as they began to splice through the bay.
She watched her husband’s hands loosen their grip, becoming relaxed at last, and she stole a horrified glance at his beautiful, brooding profile. She already knew he had blood on his hands this morning from his altercation with the reporter, his casual violence towards Poppit...But more than that?
She stared at the open horizon where their future lay, with one question on her mind.
What exactly was her husband capable of?