All I Want for Christmas

Chapter One

13 May 1930

The dogs were barking on the beach. The old women came to stand at their doors, looking out with hard frowns across the curve of the bay. The tide was going out and there’d been a testy wind all day, whipping up the waves and making the birds wheel with delight.

Effie didn’t move from her position on the milking stone. She had her cheek to Iona’s belly and was filling the pail with relaxed indifference. She knew it could be another twenty minutes before a boat nosed around the headland, though it would probably be sooner today, given these winds. Her collie Poppit – brown-faced, with a white patch over one eye – sat beside her, ears up and looking out over the water, already awaiting the far-off sea intruders, though she wouldn’t leave Effie’s side.

She watched the movements of the villagers from her elevated perch. The milking enclosure was a good third of the way up the hill and she always enjoyed the view. It was a Tuesday, which meant washing day, and she could see the younger women standing in the burns, skirts tucked up and scrubbing the linens as they talked. They wouldn’t like having their sheets flying in the wind if visitors were coming. None of the tourist boats were scheduled to come this week, but if it was a trawler, it wouldn’t be so bad; most of the captains were friends.

The indignity of airing their linens before strangers was taken seriously in a village where privacy was merely a concept. The layout alone meant anyone could see the comings and goings of the villagers from almost any point in the glen; it was shaped like a cone with smooth but steep slopes two-thirds of the way round, leading up to towering cliffs that dropped sharply and precipitously on the other sides to the crashing sea below. The cliffs only dipped, like a dairy bowl’s lip, on the south-easterly corner, skimming down to a shingle beach. There was nowhere else to land on the isle but here. The seas were heavy and torrid all around but by a stroke of luck, the neighbouring isle, Dun – no more than a bony finger of rock – almost abutted the shores of Hirta, creating a natural breakwater and rendering Village Bay as a safe haven in the churning grey waters of the North Atlantic. During some storms they had as many as twenty ships taking refuge there.

Trawlermen, whalers, navy men, they all rhapsodized, as they took shelter, about the welcoming and cosy sight of the village tucked beneath the high-shouldered ellipse, chimneys puffing, oil lamps twinkling. The grey stone cottages – interspersed with the older traditional blackhouses, which had been steadily abandoned since the 1860s – sat shoulder to shoulder and fanned around the east side of the bay, bordered by a strong stone dyke. Looking down from the ridges on high, they were like teeth in a jaw. Giant’s teeth, Effie’s mother used to say.

The village’s position afforded the best protection from winds that would funnel down the slopes at speeds that lifted rocks and tore the steel roofs from the stone walls (at least until the landlord, Sir John MacLeod of MacLeod, had had them strapped down with metal ties).

The Street – and there was only one – was a wide grassy path, set between the cottages and a thick low wall that topped the allotments. It was the beating heart of island life. Everyone congregated there, protected further from the wind by their own homes and able to bask in the sun on fine days. The old women sat knitting and spinning by their front doors; the children ran along the wall, cows occasionally nodding over it. Every morning, the men would meet outside number 5 and number 6 for their daily parliament to decide upon and allocate chores; and after tea, the villagers would amble down it to pick up from their neighbours ‘the evening news’.

In front of each cottage, across the Street, was a long, narrow walled plot that ran down towards the beach. It was here that the villagers planted their potatoes in lazybeds, hung their washing and allowed their few cattle to overwinter. During the summer months, the cows were kept behind the head dyke, whilst the many sheep were grazed on the pastures of Glen Bay, on the other side of the island. Separated from Village Bay by a high ridge, Am Blaid, Glen Bay spiralled down to a sharply shelved cove. There was no beach to speak of over there, for the northerly waves were relentless and though the villagers kept a skiff there for emergencies, heading out and coming ashore were only possible on the rare occasions when the prevailing wind switched and the sea lay fully at rest.

Iona stopped munching and moved with a twitch of irritation. Unperturbed, Effie reached down for the pile of dock leaves she had picked on her way up and wordlessly passed her another few. The cow gave a sigh of contentment and Effie resumed milking. This was their usual morning routine and both were accustomed to its gentle rhythms.

A few minutes later, the pail was almost full and Effie sat up, patting Iona on the flank. ‘Good girl,’ she murmured, standing up off the milking stone and looking down the slope. As predicted, the prow of a sloop was just nosing round the headland of Dun.

She watched keenly as the ship slipped silently into the embrace of the bay and threw out an anchor, sails drawing down. Not a trawler, then. The women would be displeased. This vessel with its slim-fingered triple masts and low curved hull was a finessed creature, more likely found in the azure waters off France than the outermost Hebrides.

‘Friend or foe?!’

The question echoed around the caldera.

The crew were just black dots from here but she could see the locals already readying the dinghy; the men would need to row powerfully against waves that were pounding the shore. The passengers aboard the sloop had chosen a bad day to sail. The open water would have tossed them like a cork and although Dun’s presence granted mercy, it was no free pass; a south-easterly made the bay’s usually sheltered water froth and roil like a witch’s cauldron and there was no guarantee they would be able to disembark.

Only one thing was certain: if the men were able to land them, no one would be coming back dry, and the villagers knew it. Already faint twists of grey smoke were beginning to twirl from the chimneys, people rushing in and out of the arc of low cottages that smiled around the bay and taking in their washing, sweeping floors, putting on shoes, moving the spinning wheels to their prominent positions so that their visitors might watch.

They all knew the drill. Catering to the tourists had become a quietly profitable sideline. It couldn’t help feed them – with not a single shop on the isle, they had little use for money on Hirta itself – but it was useful for asking the more familiar captains to bring back treats when they were next passing, or to give as extra credit to the factor when he came wanting the rents. Or in Flora’s case, to purchase a brightly coloured lipstick she’d once seen on one of the well-heeled lady visitors – even though it would be wasted on the three hundred sheep she was currently herding in Glen Bay for the summer.

None of the villagers understood quite why the world at large took an interest in them, but the postmaster, Mhairi’s father, Ian McKinnon, had been told by colleagues on the mainland that a St Kilda-stamped postcard was now considered desirable, if not valuable. Their way of life, they were told, was being rapidly left behind by the rest of the world. Industrialization meant society was changing at a more rapid pace than any other time in centuries and they were becoming living relics, curiosities from a bygone age. Some people pitied them, perhaps, but the St Kildans cared naught for sympathy. They had learnt to play the game to their advantage – Effie chief among them.

She lifted the pail and began to walk down the slope, her eyes never fixing off the black dots as they transferred from one heaving vessel to the other. Once they’d dried off and recovered from the swell, she knew they were going to want a show. And she was going to give it to them.

‘Where’ll they do it?’ her father asked gruffly as she finished with churning the butter. He was standing by the window, looking out, his pipe dangling from his bottom lip.

‘Sgeir nan Sgarbh, I should say,’ she replied, closing the lid of the churn and going to stand beside him. ‘It’ll be more protected from the wind round there.’

‘Over the top, aye, but will they get the dinghies round on the water?’

‘Archie MacQueen’s got the arms on him,’ she murmured.

‘Just not the legs.’

‘No, not the legs.’ She watched a trio of men walking down the Street. One she recognized by his distinctive gait – Frank Mathieson, the factor, their landlord’s representative and the islanders’ de facto ruler – but the other men were strangers. They were wearing well-cut dark brown suits and wool hats, but from beneath one of them she caught the gleam of golden blonde hair and a tanned neck. She willed him to turn around, wanting just to glimpse the face that went with that hair and elegant physique; but the path curved, taking them out of sight.

The group that had come ashore had been disappointingly small – a private contingent, Ian McKinnon had said with his usual authority. It meant the tips would be meagre. If the women were to take their sheets in, there had to be good reason for it and two men alone could hardly reward everyone. The captain had been put up in her Uncle Hamish’s cottage and the other two men would stay at the factor’s house, for it was the largest on the isle. She didn’t envy them having to endure Mathieson’s hospitality.

‘I’m just going to put this in the cool,’ she said, lifting the churn onto her shoulder and walking out, Poppit trotting at her heels. She could see the visitors further down placing pennies into the palm of Mad Annie as she sat carding the wool and telling stories about broomstick marriages and snaring puffins. Unlike most of the village elders her English was good, but that didn’t mean the others couldn’t communicate, and Effie gave a small grin as she saw Ma Peg make a play of bustling and hiding from their camera, even though those days of shock at the new technologies were long past. More coins crossed palms.

She went round the back of the cottage and a short way up the slope that led to the plateau of An Lag, where they herded the sheep into stone fanks in bad weather. Beyond it, Connachair – the island’s tallest mountain – rose majestically like a stepping stone to heaven. For some it was. Many had met their fate over the precipice, tricked into distraction by the summit’s rounded hummock on the village side and caught unaware by the sheer cliffs – 1,400 feet high – that dropped suddenly and vertically to the sea, as if cleaved.

The lush grass was speckled with buttercups and thrift and felt springy underfoot as she moved past the countless identical stone cleits to the one where she and her father stored their butter and cream. She ducked down as she stepped inside and set down the churn. It was the very store her family had been using for this purpose for over three hundred years. There may have been over 1,400 of the hump-topped, stacked-stone huts on the island, but she could identify every single one that belonged to her family – this one below An Lag for the dairy; that one on Ruival for the bird feathers; that on Oiseval for the fulmar oil; that on Connachair for the salted carcasses, that for the peats... There were plenty that lay empty, too, but they also had their uses as emergency larders, rain and wind shelters, hiding places for courting lovers...

She came back down the slope again, jumping nimbly over the rocks nestled in the grass and seeing over the rooftops that everyone was beginning to gather on the beach, preparing for the visitors’ exhibition.

‘Are you joining them, Effie?’ a voice called.

She looked over to find Lorna MacDonald coming out of the postmaster’s hut, fixing her auburn hair. She worked there sometimes with the postmaster.

Effie skipped over, Poppit beating her by two lengths. ‘Aye,’ she grinned. ‘You never know, there might be some pennies in it for me.’

‘And more besides,’ Lorna said with a wink.

‘What do you mean?’

‘He’s a fine-looking fellow, the young one. A smile from him would be payment in itself,’ Lorna laughed, her brown eyes twinkling with merriment.

Effie gave a bemused shrug. ‘I only caught the back of him.’

‘That’s pretty enough too, I should guess.’

Effie chuckled. It was a wonder to her that Lorna was their resident old maid – all of thirty-three years old and still unmarried – for she was a terrible flirt. Alas, the visiting men never stayed for long and the St Kildan bachelor nearest in age to her was Donnie Ferguson, who had no interest in a wife seven years older than him, cleverer than him and almost through her child-bearing years.

‘Who are they, anyway?’

‘Rich,’ Lorna shrugged. ‘If that ship’s anything to go by.’

Lorna knew about such things. She wasn’t a St Kildan by birth but a registered nurse from Stornoway who had chosen to make her life here; she had seen another world to this one and what money bought.

‘Good,’ Effie sighed, catching sight of the men beginning to head up the hill with their ropes, the dogs running ahead in a pack. ‘Well, then I’ll still aim for some pennies from them and you can have the young gentleman’s smile. What do you say?’

‘Deal,’ Lorna winked as Effie took off again and darted back into the cottage to grab their rope. It was thickly plaited from horsehair, supple and rough in her hand. Her father was sitting in his chair by the hearth now – he could never stand for long – tamping his black twist tobacco.

‘Well, I’ll be off then.’

He looked back at her. His eyes had a rheumy look, the whites yellowing with age, but they still revealed a strong man within an infirm body. He gave a nod. He wasn’t one for sentimental farewells. ‘Hold fast, lass.’

‘Aye.’ She nodded back, knowing those had been his last words to her brother too.

For a moment she thought he might say something else; the way he held himself, it was as if an energy for more words lay coiled within him. But the moment passed and she left again with just a nod.

Some of the men were already walking the slopes, ropes slung over their shoulders too. As she’d predicted, they were heading for the easterly cliffs. A small rock stack just out in the water provided enough of a break from the broadside waves for the dinghy to rope up in relative comfort whilst the show was put on.

She ran and caught them up, listening in as they chatted about the visitors and the news from ‘abroad’, meaning Skye.

‘...friends of the landlord,’ David MacQueen, Flora’s eldest brother, was saying. ‘So we’re to make it good.’

‘Shame the wind’s up or we could have gone further round,’ her cousin Euan said.

‘There’ll be no tips if they’re sick as dogs,’ Ian McKinnon replied.

‘But the cliffs are lower here.’

‘This will do them fine. It will all be high to the likes of them.’

She fell into step with Mhairi’s older brothers, Angus and Finlay.

‘What are you doing here?’ Angus asked with his usual sneer.

‘Same as you,’ she shrugged, slightly breathless as their longer legs covered more ground than hers.

‘We’re not fowling. This is just for display.’

‘Aye, so there’ll be tips.’

‘Then knit them some socks!’

‘You know I’d get a fraction of what I can get up here and the agreement is whenever you’re all on the rocks, I’m allowed to be too.’

‘You’re a pain in my side, Effie Gillies,’ Finlay groaned.

‘And you’re a pain in mine,’ she shot back.

They rolled their eyes but she didn’t care. Her brother’s friends, her friend’s brothers, they had been teasing her all her life and she knew to give as good as she got. They had all grown up playing hide and seek in the cleits as children, learnt to read together in the schoolroom beside the kirk, and kicked each other during the minister’s sermons.

But she couldn’t ignore that things were changing. Or had already changed. A tension existed now, a low-level hum, that hadn’t been there before. Her brother’s death had profoundly affected them all and she was no longer John’s little sister to them – or anyone but herself; sometimes she caught them looking at her in a new way that made her nervous. Finlay’s eyes seemed to follow her wherever she went and Angus had tried to kiss her as she cut the peats one evening; he hadn’t yet forgiven her for laughing.

For visitors wanting to take in the view – and they always did – this would be a forty-minute to hour-long walk, but she and the men did it in under thirty and were already spread across the top and looping out the coils of rope by the time the dinghy appeared around the cliffs. Birds whirled and screeched around them, feathers lilting on the updrafts. From this height, the boat looked no bigger than a bird either. Effie glanced down a few times, scanning the rock face for the line she wanted to take, then casting about for a rock with which to drive in her peg.

Looping the rope around the peg, she leant back, checking its firmness and tension. It vibrated with pleasing freshness and she wrapped it around her waist in the St Kildan style.

She looked down the drop once more. Cousin Euan had been right; it really wasn’t so high here. Seven hundred feet? Half the height of Connachair. A single drop of the ropes would take them maybe a third of the way down. Still, they were merely going to be playing up here today. No bird hunting, no egg collecting, no saving stranded sheep. Just playing.

‘You’re looking peely-wally there, Eff,’ Angus drawled. ‘Sure you’re up to it?’

She looked back at him with scorn. Angus prided himself on being the fastest climber on the island. He had won last year’s Old Trial, a climbing race among the young men to prove they were worthy of providing for their families – and future wives. If he had wanted to prove anything to her, the point had been well and truly lost. Effie was certain she could have beaten him (and the rest) had she only been allowed to enter too. But as a girl... ‘Actually, I was just wondering how quickly I could get down there.’

A smirk grew. ‘You think you can do it fast ?’

‘Faster than you.’ She pulled her fair hair back, tying it away from her face in a balled knot. The last thing she needed was a gust of wind blowing it about and blinding her on the route.

‘Ha! You’re all talk and no trousers, Effie Gillies.’

It was her turn to smirk. ‘Well, yes, even I won’t deny there’s not much in my trews.’ Angus McKinnon might be the fastest man on the isle, but he wasn’t the brightest. As if to make the point, she hitched up her breeches at the waist; they had been John’s and were the only suitable attire for climbing, but she didn’t wear them purely for reasons of practicality.

Finlay blushed furiously. ‘Ignore her,’ he said. ‘You know she’s only trying to rile you. Everyone knows you’re the fastest, brother. Just give the rich people a show. This is an exhibition, not a race.’

Effie shrugged as if she couldn’t care less either way, but they all knew the gauntlet had been thrown down. She – a girl! – was challenging Angus for his crown; the competition could happen here between the two of them. Why not? It was as good a chance as any. She watched him looking down the cliff as the islanders did final checks on their ropes and took their positions on the cliff edge.

Effie kept her eyes ahead, her hands already around the rope. Waiting. Hoping—

‘H’away then!’ Archie MacQueen cried. Flora’s father, he had been an experienced cragger himself, but he left these shows to the younger ones these days; already lame in one leg, his grip wasn’t what it used to be either. Besides, someone had to stay up top in case anyone needed hauling up.

It was the cue to go, to perform, to show off their derring-do and the skills that made the St Kildans famous around the world as they all but skipped and danced over the cliffs. Without hesitation, Effie leant back and stepped over. She felt the swoop of her stomach as her body angled into open space and the rope tightened. She pushed off, allowing the rope to swing on a pendulum, her bare feet already braced for contact with the rock face, ready to caper across it in a bold defiance of gravity. A visitor had once told them it was like watching spiders drop from the top of a wall. She herself loved the sound of the ropes under tension – a huzzahing – as she and the men scampered and sprang from side to side.

‘First to the boat then?’

She looked across to find Angus on his rope, staring straight at her. She smiled at his tactic – finishing the race at the boat, not the bottom, when neither one of them could swim... ‘Aye. But I’ll wait for you, don’t worry.’

Angus’s eyes narrowed at her insult, but she was already off. Abandoning the acrobatics, her foot found a toehold and she brought her weight to bear on it as the other foot searched. The St Kildans never climbed in boots, always bare feet. The cliffs were too unyielding to give any more than a half inch to grab and there was nothing that compared to skin on rock. Shoes and boots – the hallmarks of civilization – had no place on a granite cliff.

She left the older men to the games, their powerful arms and legs flexed as they made a point of playing on the rock faces, bouncing off with their feet, reaching up for a fingerhold and pulling themselves up like lizards, before repeating again. Others scrambled sideways, scuttling like crabs over the rocks.

Effie just focused on going down. She could see the boat between her legs, far below her, as she descended on the rope, her arms braced as she lowered herself, hand over hand. She didn’t have biceps the size of boulders to help her, but as she always said to her father, she didn’t need them. She was wiry and light, skinny even, but that didn’t mean she was weak. The less there was of her, the less she had to support. She wouldn’t tire so quickly. She was more nimble, more flexible...

From her peripheral vision, she sensed she was already ahead of Angus, but only just. He had power, height and gravity on his side.

Soon enough she was out of rope. Balancing on a narrow ledge, she unwound the rope’s end from her torso.

‘What are you doing?’ Ian McKinnon called sharply down to her as she began to free climb.

‘Winning! Don’t worry. It was Angus’s idea.’

It always felt different scaling without the rope and she knew it was reckless, but there was something about the intensity it brought – her brain and eyes seemed to tune into hyper-focus, the adrenaline refreshed her muscles – that meant she could remember her mother’s eyes and smile, hear again her brother’s ready laugh. Somehow, by thinning the skein of life, it seemed she could almost reach the dead.

Down she went, agile and sharp until the horizon drew level, then hovered above her, and the crash of the waves began to intrude on her concentration. White splashes of cold sea were beginning to reach towards her, spraying her bare brown calves, but she didn’t care about getting wet or cold. She just had to win. She had to know – and crucially, Angus had to know – that she was the fastest and the best.

She saw the dark sea, ominously close. She was less than thirty feet above the waves now, but the cliffs just sliced into the ocean depths, and as she scaled ever downwards, she realized that the only place where she could stand and pivot was a narrow ledge perhaps six feet above the surface, no wider than her hand’s span.

For a moment, she felt a visceral spasm of fear. This was madness! If her father was to hear of the carelessness with which she was treating her life... Or maybe that was the point of it. Maybe she wanted him to hear of it. His heart had been broken by death too many times, and she was the only one left. He couldn’t – or wouldn’t – love her in case he lost her too. Was that it? If she was to slip, to go straight down, under the waves... would he weep? Would she be mourned like the others? On the other hand, if she won, would he be proud? Would he see that she could be enough?

There was no time to think. Everything was instinct. Her feet touched down and her arms splayed wide as she hugged the wall, gripping its surface with her fingertips, her cheek pressed to the cold, wet granite. Breath coming fast, she gave her muscles a moment to rest. They were burning, but she knew she wasn’t there yet.

She glanced up. Angus was only a few feet above her. What he lacked in nimbleness, he made up for in power. In a few more seconds... She looked carefully back over her shoulder and saw the dinghy tied to a rock just a short distance away. Her Uncle Hamish, skippering, was frowning and watching her intently, the way Poppit had watched for the boat earlier. He saw her movement and seemed to understand she wanted in; that she was going to launch herself towards it, one way or another. If he was alarmed, he didn’t hesitate nonetheless. Not in front of the guests. Quickly he pulled in on the rope, hauling the small dinghy as close as he dared to the cliff wall, knowing that if he went too far, the swell risked tossing them against the rocks.

A nervous flinch inside the boat betrayed someone’s nerves as her intentions became commonly understood. Effie knew she would have to time the next wave and then leap. She hugged the wall as she watched and braced for the next break – just as Angus landed beside her.

A blast of white water broke upon them both, making them gasp with the shocking cold as they were soaked. She didn’t care. As she felt the draft pull back, she twisted and leapt blind. Death or glory then!

For one stunning, protracted moment, she felt almost as if she could fly, like the very birds that soared and wheeled and sliced around her in this island sky. Then gravity took hold, and she landed – half in the dinghy, half in the water. She took a hard knock to her chest but her arms gripped the prow as the boat rocked wildly, water slopping over the sides. But it was flat-bottomed and made for heavy weather; it righted itself almost immediately, and she laughed victoriously as her uncle Hamish hastily got a hand to her waistband and dragged her aboard in one swift movement like a landed salmon.

‘I didna’ know you had decided to make it a race to the bottom,’ Uncle Hamish said to her with a stern, disapproving look. It was the most he would reveal in front of the tourists, but she already knew he’d be telling her father about this. There would be trouble to come, most likely a hiding; but it was worth it. Effie’s eyes were bright. She’d beaten Angus McKinnon! The fastest cragger on the isle. Not just that – he could make no further claims now of providing for her when she herself had beaten him.

‘It was Angus’s idea,’ she panted, scrambling to her knees and looking back to find him still clinging to the ledge. With her leap to victory, he now stood frozen in place and was becoming more soaked with every breaking wave. He either had to jump too or climb back up, but he couldn’t stay there.

With an angry sigh, he jerked his thumb upwards, indicating the latter. He had lost. What good was there in riding back with them now? She would only crow her victory at him.

Uncle Hamish nodded, understanding perfectly what had just happened between them. It was a man’s look, the kind that cut her out, but what did she care? With a satisfied smile, Effie sat on the bench, pulling out her hair tie and wringing her long hair. Seawater puddled in the dinghy floor.

‘Heavens above!’ a voice said. ‘It’s a girl ?’

She twisted back to face the visitors properly at last. In all her ambition to beat Angus, she’d forgotten who they were trying to impress in the first place. The three men seated towards the back were staring at her in wide-eyed amazement: Frank Mathieson, the factor, and the two men she’d glimpsed from behind earlier.

‘Well, I can’t climb in a skirt, sir,’ she grinned, wringing out her tweed breeches as best she could.

‘It wasn’t just your clothes that fooled me. The speed! I’ve never seen a spectacle like it. You scaled that cliff like a squirrel down a tree!’ It was the older man speaking. He was portly, with a dark moustache, lightly salted. Spectacles made it difficult to see his eyes past the reflection, but he appeared friendly as well as impressed. ‘Do you mean to say females climb here, too?’ he asked their skipper.

‘Only this one,’ Uncle Hamish said with a resigned tone, untying the rope from the mooring rock and beginning to row. ‘This is my niece, Euphemia Gillies.’

‘Effie is Robert Gillies’s daughter. They live at number nine,’ the factor added, as if that information was somehow enlightening. ‘How are you, Effie?’

‘Aye, well, sir, thank you for asking.’

‘Becoming bolder, I see.’

‘If by bolder you mean faster.’

He laughed. ‘Allow me to present the Earl of Dumfries and his son, Lord Sholto,’ he said. ‘I’m sure you will be aware that they are great friends of Lord MacLeod.’

‘Ah,’ she said blandly, although she was aware of nothing of the sort. Who their landlord kept as friends was no business of hers, though it confirmed Lorna’s observation that the visitors were rich.

‘They were visiting his lordship at Dunvegan when they heard I was planning on making the voyage here—’

‘It’s been something of an ambition of mine to get over here,’ the earl said brightly, interrupting. ‘I’m a keen birder, you see, and Sir John very kindly agreed to my proposal that we might sail Mr Mathieson here ourselves. Two birds, one stone and all that.’

‘Aye.’ She could feel the younger man watching her keenly as she talked, but for as long as the others spoke, she had no such opportunity to cast her gaze openly over him. ‘So will you be staying for long, then?’

The factor inhaled. ‘Well, a lot will depend upon the wea—’

‘Certainly a week,’ Lord Sholto said suddenly, allowing a dazzling smile to enliven his features as she finally met his eyes.

‘A week?’ Effie smiled back at the blue-eyed, golden-haired man. Finally she could see his face at last. And she liked it.

‘Miss Gillies.’

She turned to find the factor hurrying up the beach after her. Uncle Hamish was tying up the boat, the distinguished guests having been appropriated by the minister again the moment they’d set foot on shore.

‘Mr Mathieson.’ She tried not to show her impatience, but her tweed breeches were soaked from her half-swim and she wanted to get back and change. Their progress round the headland had been slow as they’d met the headwinds and she was shivering now.

He stopped in front of her, slightly downhill from where she stood, so that she was aware of standing taller than him. He wasn’t a tall man, stocky but not conspicuously short either, and the consequence of not standing out in any way seemed to work to his advantage; many times an islander had been caught saying things they shouldn’t, not realizing he was within earshot. His relationship with the St Kildans was highly taut, for as the bringer of supplies every spring, and the collector of rents every autumn, he was both carrot and stick to the island community. He could smile and be charming when it suited him, but no one could ever quite forget that the power he wielded over them was almost absolute, and few – apart from Mad Annie – would clash with him. He wore finer suits than the village men and affected the manners of his employer, but reddened, pitted cheeks and the forearms of a wrestler betrayed him as a fighter first.

‘Well, that was quite a display,’ he said.

Effie wasn’t sure this was intended as a compliment. ‘That’s the idea,’ she replied vaguely. ‘They always like it.’ A sudden gust blew her long, wet hair forward and she had to use both hands to pin it back. The sky was growing ominously dark.

‘Indeed.’ He gave what she had come to learn over the years was his customary pause. It preceded a direct contradiction of what came after it. ‘Although I’m not sure such daredevil antics require the added novelty factor.’

It took a moment to understand his meaning. ‘Of a girl climbing, you mean?’

He shrugged. ‘I understand your obligations to your father impel you to undertake men’s work in a regular capacity, but when it comes to making a good impression on visitors...’

‘But they seemed to like it.’

‘Well, they’re polite, of course, but things are quite different in the wider world. I know it’s not your fault that you don’t know any differently – why should you? – but decorum and good taste are held in high regard. Women scrambling over cliffs like monkeys...’ He pulled a face. ‘No. It’s important to think about the impression you make on these visitors and how you and your neighbours will be conveyed in their onward conversations. I’m sure you wouldn’t want to embarrass Sir John, would you?’

She had never met Sir John. ‘...Of course not.’

‘Very well, then. So we’re agreed there’ll be no more fits of vanity on the ropes. We must strive to make sure the guests are not made to feel uncomfortable by what they witness here. Best foot forward, yes?’

She stared back at him, shivering with cold and anger. ‘...Aye, sir.’

He looked over her shoulder, along the Street. ‘How is your father, anyway? Still lame?’

Her eyes narrowed. ‘And always will be.’

‘Which only makes him all the luckier to have you,’ he nodded, oblivious to her terse tone. ‘But please tell him I shall need to find him later and discuss the rent arrears.’

‘Arrears?’ Alarm shot through the word.

‘As I recall, you were short thirteen Scotch ells of tweed last year. Your uncle picked up some of the slack, but you were also down nine gallons of oil and seven sacks of black feathers.’

‘It’ll be fine this year,’ she said quickly. ‘We were only short because I twisted my ankle and couldn’t walk for ten days. It was just bad luck that it happened when we were fowling.’

The factor looked unconvinced. ‘I’ll need to reappraise the quota with him. You will remember I extended a great kindness in not reducing the oatmeal bolls after your brother’s accident and as a result you have enjoyed more than your share for nigh-on four years now—’

Effie looked at him with wild panic. What he said was true, but it still wasn’t enough. The past few winters had been hard ones and their harvests had all but failed, save for a half-dozen potatoes and those oats that were only half blackened by frost.

‘—I have been both generous and patient, but it’s not fair to expect others to compensate for your shortfalls. Accidents will always happen, Miss Gillies. You cannot expect to be fit and well every day of the year.’

‘But I do. And I will,’ she said urgently. The factor didn’t know it yet, but she and her father had lost four of their sheep over the top this year already, so they were already down on their wool yield. Her father had bartered 100 extra fulmars instead with Donald McKinnon and it had been a rare endorsement of Effie’s climbing skills that both men believed she was capable of bagging the extra haul, on top of the usual harvest.

‘Miss Gillies, you don’t need me to remind you that you are a girl doing a man’s job. The odds are already grossly stacked against you.’

‘But I’m eighteen now, and I’ve grown this last year. I can do anything they can and I’ll prove it to you. I’ll show you, sir.’

The factor looked at her keenly. ‘You receive more than you are due and you deliver less than you owe. You see my predicament? I must be fair, Miss Gillies. Why should I make – and keep making – exceptions for you? If the others were to know—’

‘But they won’t. I’ll make sure we’re square and level come this September.’

‘So you’re saying you want me to keep this a secret?’

‘Secret...?’ Behind him, the reverend and the two gentlemen guests walked past on the path back to the village, the minister holding forth on the repairs made to the manse. Lord Sholto glanced across at them talking as he passed by and she found herself smiling back at him, as though he’d pulled it from her on a string.

‘From your neighbours? And your father too?’

She looked back at the factor in confusion. He was watching her intently. ‘...No, please don’t tell him. I don’t want him to worry. I can make the quota this year, I know I can.’

He tutted. ‘I don’t know why I allow you to manipulate me, Miss Gillies—’

She frowned. Did she manipulate him?

‘A “thank you” doesn’t pay the fiddler, now, does it?’ he sighed. ‘Still, I have sympathy for your predicament and although I have a job to do, I believe in being a friend in the hour of need.’

Effie bit her lip – she had to – to keep from laughing out loud. What? There wasn’t a person on the isle who would have considered the factor a friend. He bought their feathers at five shillings a stone and sold them at fifteen, and the supplies he brought over – oatmeal, flour, sugar, tea and tobacco – cost them three times what he paid. Was it any wonder the villagers tried to bypass him with money they earnt from the tourists and could spend directly themselves?

‘Talking of which, I have brought you something, again.’

‘For our studies?’ She had finished her schooling four years ago, but he never seemed to remember this.

‘I’ve left it in the usual spot. Just... be discreet, please. I can’t oblige these sorts of favours for everyone.’

Favours? Secrets? ‘But—’

‘Good day, Miss Gillies,’ he said briskly, assuming his usual manner as he noticed the three men now ahead of him on the path. ‘I must get on. Our visitors will be requiring some refreshments after the afternoon’s... excitement. Just remember what we discussed. We shall have to hope first impressions don’t stick.’