Chapter Two
They walked for a short stretch in silence, turning their backs to the village and heading towards the headland.
‘Was it your father that I met earlier?’ she asked in a tight voice.
‘No. That’s Mr Rushton. Gerald. And his wife, Virginia; and their two daughters, Sophia and Martha.’
She looked at him sharply – the omission was conspicuous by its absence. ‘And what about Edward?’
His eyebrow inclined slightly as if the word sounded foreign coming from her mouth. Or perhaps he was amazed she had remembered. ‘Edward is his son, yes. We went up to Cambridge together.’
‘So you’re a friend, travelling with them?’
‘Yes.’ His mouth parted as if he were about to add something, but the words appeared to fall back again in the next instant and she wondered what he had been about to say, what other titbits he would have added as to why he was travelling with this family. She wondered whether it had anything to do with Miss Sophia Rushton, she with her fashionable clothes and daringly exposed, slender legs. Flora had caught the way the young woman had looked at him on the street earlier, her pout that he wasn’t to be in the family photograph. Was a union hoped for between the two families – or already arranged? It was of no interest to her, regardless; she was simply pleased to learn that it was Sophia and Edward who were siblings.
She felt a ripple of anticipation at the prospect of seeing him again. There was so little that could count as excitement here and she yearned for an adventure of her own, a torrid love affair with a handsome stranger. All the young men on the island were either like brothers or simply not an equal match, for she had a quick wit to match her beauty and a fast temper too. None of them could handle her and everyone knew it. But Edward Rushton – he had a vitality to him that echoed her own, and she felt the primal pull towards him of game recognizing game.
‘Will they stay aboard for long, do you think?’ she asked, looking over towards the yacht as they walked. She had pulled slightly ahead of him where the path narrowed.
‘I doubt it. Edward’s a restless spirit. Easily bored.’
‘Really?’ The upward lilt of the question betokened her interest, she thought – an invitation for him to elaborate and reveal more about his friend; he must have witnessed the flirtation between them earlier? But instead he kept turning towards the looming cliff face as they walked, more interested in examining the bluffs. More interested in fossils.
Flora led him further around the shoulder of the headland until they left the bay – and the yacht – behind and were looking out across open water towards the distant isles of Lewis and Harris, hidden on the other side of the horizon. If they walked around further still, they would see the large neighbouring isle of Boreray, where the St Kildans grazed their sheep; no doubt James Callaghan was as interested in sheep as he was in rocks. She wondered how different, how thrilling, this walk might be if it was Edward here instead and not his awkward friend.
Presently she stopped and pointed upwards. ‘Well, there it is – McKinnon’s Stone,’ she sighed, indicating an unremarkable sharp-angled boulder that pointed from the earth like a tooth, several hundred feet above them. She watched as James’s gaze took in the somewhat underwhelming sight – he would never have found it alone and certainly not from down here. It was more marginally distinctive when seen from above.
They were silent for several moments and she wondered exactly what treasures he thought he might find here. Rocks were just rocks to her, something to sit on, to throw or to build up to create a shelter.
‘How did it come by the name?’ he asked, squinting against the sun.
‘A series of unfortunate accidents for that family, in that spot,’ she said darkly. ‘They won’t go near it now, though the last McKinnon as died there was at least thirty years past.’
He looked back at her, so tall that he seemed to peer down his nose at her. ‘Are your people superstitious, Miss MacQueen?’
Her eyes narrowed again at his choice of words. Was he trying to offend her? ‘My people are sensible, Mr Callaghan. They don’t repeat stupid mistakes. Death is far too easy in a place like this as it is.’ She could hear her own mother’s indignation in her voice.
‘I can well imagine,’ he agreed, scanning the immense, vertical sea cliffs and seemingly unaware of her arch tone. ‘Although I suppose the upside of that is having a vivid sense – an appreciation, if you like – of being alive?’
He smiled so suddenly, the reflex so bright and unexpected, that she found herself unwittingly smiling back, all indignation momentarily forgotten; his eyes caught hers and she felt an intense ‘locking’ between them, as if they were only now seeing one another for the first time. He had none of his friend’s dazzle, but she supposed he had a brooding intensity that was appealing in its own way. ‘Maybe, aye,’ she admitted, though she had never considered it before now.
He looked out to sea. ‘That’s an awareness I try to cherish in myself... although it’s not always easy back home. Too much ready comfort dulls the spirit.’
‘I think it sounds wonderful over there,’ she sighed. She loved the idea of ready comfort.
He looked back at her, as if surprised by the sentiment. ‘It has its charms, of course. Modernization is happening at a furious pace and there’s no question it’s making life easier for the many. But sometimes I wonder if with every advance we make in mechanization or technology, we lose something vital of ourselves? That connectedness with the natural world, our animal spirits? Whereas here, you’re so free; it’s you versus the elements. Versus Mother Nature. God himself.’
‘Himself?’ She gave a dismissive laugh. ‘You think God is a man, do you? Mad Annie would take you to task over that.’
‘Mad Annie?’ He looked vaguely amused.
‘One of the village elders. She doesn’t believe in the patriarchy. She says women are superior to men.’
‘How so?’
‘She says our brains are sharper, we learn better, we tolerate pain better, we’re more resilient and we can both give life and support life with our bodies. She says God wouldn’t have given those superior gifts to women if God was a man, he’d have given them to men. Therefore, God is a woman.’
‘I see.’ He laughed, the sound buoyant and deep. ‘And what does your church minister say to this?’
‘Och, they have terrible fights over it, but they clash on everything,’ she shrugged. ‘Annie never goes to church anyway, so she doesn’t care what he thinks. She does everything he deplores, I think mainly to spite him – she drinks whisky, smokes a pipe and spits like a camel.’
He arched an eyebrow. ‘Have you ever seen a camel spit?’
‘I’ve never seen a camel,’ she admitted. ‘But a fisherman told us about them once after Annie spat at his feet for flirting with her.’
‘She didn’t want him flirting with her?’
‘She’s a widow. She says she’s done her time with men in this lifetime and deserves her peace.’
He laughed, again the sound earthier and more substantial than she would have expected for a man who liked fossils. ‘She doesn’t sound like she should be crossed. How will I know her when I meet her?’
‘Oh, trust me – you’ll know her when you meet her.’ She pulled a face that made him grin again.
‘I’ll make sure to have my wits about me, then. And strictly no flirting.’
Flora managed to bite her tongue in time. Surely that was a joke? James Callaghan could no sooner flirt than she could fly.
She sat on a smooth boulder while he began to move around a small area below McKinnon’s Stone. Squatting on his heels, he sorted through the stones that lay scattered, many of them fragments of larger rocks that had splintered on their fall from the bluffs. He examined each one closely, running his thumb over the surfaces, checking seams and fracture lines, before discarding them and moving on to the next.
She watched, somehow intrigued by his endeavours. His profile was handsome and she felt it a pity that it was wasted on such an awkward man. He had moments of charisma, flashes of magnetism...
He glanced up, as if sensing her stare, before looking back at the stone held between his thumb and forefinger. ‘You, er... you said earlier, you liked the sound of life on the mainland. I’m afraid I rudely cut you off with my interlocutions on the joys of life here. Have you been over to the mainland?’
‘No.’
He seemed surprised. ‘Really? Not ever?’
‘Never. But I long to see it.’
‘Hm; it might disappoint you.’
‘No, never. I know it wouldn’t.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Because sometimes the captains give us colour magazines that their passengers have discarded and my friends and I pore over them in the byres in the evening, when our parents think we’re knitting.’ She smiled, remembering Effie’s shock at an illustration advertising ladies’ girdles; such a contraption had looked more like some kind of advanced climbing sling to her eye, but Flora had simply loved how it transformed the woman’s shapely figure into something even more nuanced.
‘And what do you like about them so much?’
‘We see the fashions and the make-up and the way the ladies set their hair.’ She smoothed her own. ‘Here, the wind is so fierce, we have to wear scarves to keep it from whipping us. The idea of hair that doesn’t move...’ She sighed wistfully, staring dreamily into the distance, just as a gust – as if taunting her – twisted around her and swung her thick braid.
‘I see. So you yearn for hair that doesn’t move,’ he repeated. ‘What else?’
‘Gramophones.’
‘You like music?’ He placed a stone upon another one and began rhythmically tapping it with a smaller, sharper one, like a tool.
‘I love singing. Dancing, too, sometimes.’ She watched him work.
‘Only sometimes?’
‘We can’t do it much here, only in times of celebration. The reverend doesn’t believe in too much festivity. He says it froths the spirit and wakens the devil.’
‘Does he now?’ James murmured, a slight frown on his brow, but not stopping his endeavours. ‘How much store do you put by his words?’
‘He’s the most influential man on the isle.’
He nodded. ‘Much to Mad Annie’s chagrin, I should imagine.’
‘Exactly,’ she murmured, pleased he had heard the distinction. ‘He’s the most influential man and she’s the most influential woman.’
‘Well, then, perhaps she too would like life on the mainland.’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘Because that’s the way the winds of change are blowing – more rights for the working man, and for women. The reverend would find himself with a smaller congregation on the other side of the water, I can assure you.’
‘So then, now I want to go even more.’
He glanced up at her; it was like sunlight bouncing off water. ‘I’m sure one day you shall.’
‘Oh, I know I shall,’ she said with certainty.
‘You do?’
She nodded. ‘I was born here, but I’ve always had a sense I won’t die here.’
He stopped tapping and sat back on his heels watching her. ‘A sense? But you maintain you’re not superstitious?’
‘Don’t mock me!’ she gasped, grabbing a clutch of moss and throwing it at him.
‘Your words, not mine,’ he smiled, ducking.
She laughed, before catching herself and looking away quickly. She felt embarrassed by her sudden burst of playfulness. It was childish and unsophisticated.
‘If it’s superstitious you want, then you need to meet Jayne Ferguson, Norman’s wife,’ she said after a moment.
He widened his eyes dramatically. ‘Is she a witch?’
‘Not exactly.’
‘Not exactly?’ A wry note spun off the words.
‘She’s got the gift of second sight. Well, they call it a gift, but it’s more of a curse.’
‘And what does the reverend make of that? Does he believe in the phenomenon?’
‘It’s not a matter of choosing to believe it or not. It’s irrefutable,’ she shrugged. ‘Jayne’s never wrong. When she has one of her dreams or visions, sure as eggs that person will drop dead within three days.’
James stopped knocking the rocks together, his amusement dropping from his face. ‘How terrible for her.’
‘It really is; it’s a burden. She keeps to herself mainly. I think it’s a way of protecting herself.’
‘Does she ever reveal her dreams? It must be a terrible ethical dilemma?’
Flora shook her head. ‘Never beforehand. Sometimes they’re... so indistinct, she says she can’t fully understand what she’s seeing.’
‘Does she actually see the death? The manner of it?’
‘No.’
‘That’s a pity.’
Flora looked at him, appalled. ‘Why?’
‘Because then perhaps she’d at least have some ability to prefigure it and help alter that person’s actions – if it was an accidental death, for instance. It would give her some agency. It must be terrible to have to be so passive in that circumstance, just some helpless onlooker waiting for it to happen.’
Flora considered the point for a moment. ‘I’m not sure she would interfere, even if she could. Jayne would see it as meddling with God’s plan.’
‘She might be right.’ It was a moment before James spoke again, and Flora could see he was troubled by this revelation. ‘I’m surprised she ever leaves her bed.’
‘She takes herself off, most days. She’s quite reclusive. I think she fears any marked change in her day-to-day behaviour might give her away, and it would be so terrible to accidentally reveal to someone that she had dreamt of them. Can you imagine?’
‘Her husband’s certainly a brave man. I’m not sure I’d want to lie in bed night after night next to someone who might at any moment foresee my death.’
‘Hmph.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘Norman would be the easiest to trick of anyone on the isle.’
‘Really?’ He had resumed tapping at the stone. From where she was sitting, Flora could see a small seam was beginning to widen. ‘Why?’
‘He’s brutish and has all the subtlety of an axe. Jayne’s so gentle and meek, he never even notices her. Sometimes I think she could die in her chair and he wouldn’t notice until she didn’t get up for his dinner.’
James chuckled, but winced at the same time. He tapped harder. ‘You’re a sharp judge, Miss MacQueen. Your own husband must have dancing feet, keeping on his toes all the time.’
‘I have no husband,’ she said simply. ‘Nor will I, from here.’
‘No? But there must be one man, surely, who is sweet on you?’
Flora stared at him in disbelief. Did he honestly think...? But he was looking back at her with such earnestness, she couldn’t find words to fit to her temper.
Suddenly the stone split open and he looked down; a second later, his face fell with disappointment. He gave a sigh. Whatever it was he saw there, it wasn’t what he’d hoped for. This had all been for naught and it all would be. There was no treasure on these isles.
‘I’m afraid I shall need to head back,’ she said, primly gathering her skirts. She had never been so offended. How could he think she had any trouble finding a man to fall in love with her? It was stopping them from falling for her that was the difficulty!
‘... Yes, of course,’ he muttered, looking up after a moment and making to move as well.
‘It’s quite all right. You can stay here. I can make my own way back just fine.’ She knew she sounded peevish, but she couldn’t help it. He agitated her from one moment to the next and she wanted to escape him. She had done what he’d asked her to do, hadn’t she? She’d guided him to McKinnon’s Stone. Let him pay her and be rid of him.
‘Well, I’ve not brought my tools with me, so I think any further exploration here will be futile without them anyway.’ He rose to his feet and returned to the path, blind to the exasperation on her face.
He kept the conversation flowing on the way back, asking her questions about herself and her family as if he was genuinely interested, when all she really wanted to tell him about was the many declarations of ardour she had received in her young life: the boys who had threatened to throw themselves over the top if she refused their proposals; men who wanted to prove themselves to her in fearsome trials; poems that had been left on her windowsill; posies of buttercups self-consciously handed over on the way to kirk; all those rich tourists offering coins to have their pictures taken with her... She wanted to tell him of each and every one, and yet she sensed that even if she did, he would look at her blankly, completely unaffected. He simply didn’t care one way or another. He didn’t see her the way other men did. What little interest he had in her seemed to focus on her thoughts rather than her face.
They walked back alongside the bay and into the shelving embrace of the village.
‘There you are!’ a voice thundered, stopping them both in their tracks. ‘I’ve been looking all over for you.’
Flora felt a rush of relief as Edward jogged over from the featherstore, looking dynamic and uniquely happy to see them. She watched as he approached, wondering if his call had been to his friend, or to her.
‘Miss MacQueen,’ he beamed, resolving the query at a stroke by taking her hand in his and kissing it. As if she were a friend. ‘... James,’ he said, straightening up. ‘We wondered where you were. Sophia was quite concerned.’
James frowned. ‘I don’t know why. I had told Martha of my plans.’
‘Very last-minute, though. I’d thought you were coming to the boat?’
James shrugged. ‘I was planning to, but then I remembered something I’d read about McKinnon’s Stone and decided this was my chance to see it for myself.’
‘McKinnon’s Stone? What about it?’
‘I wanted to look for fossils there.’
‘Fossils? Since when—?’
Flora turned back to James, interrupting the two men, her chin in the air. ‘You promised me a coin, Mr Callaghan.’
She caught his gaze and it took him a moment to react. ‘Yes... Indeed I did, Miss MacQueen.’ He reached into his pocket and pulled out the promised pound.
Flora bit her lip; it was far more than she deserved for such a trifling favour. In thanks – and to give him an example of her feminine powers – she smiled her most dazzling smile, the one that made every man fall. Surely he would see now that her being without a husband was not on account of any shortcomings she might possess...? If he was blind to her charms, then he was blind alone.
In her peripheral vision, she saw Edward smile, but James looked back blankly, her efforts like sunrays sinking into mud.
‘That was a short rest,’ James said to his friend.
‘Well, you know me, old boy, can’t sit around for long. Especially when we’ve seemingly found the homeland of the famed sirens.’ He arched an eyebrow provocatively at her, not aiming for subtlety in the least.
Flora immediately stood a little taller, though she allowed the compliment to pass without comment.
‘Did everyone come back to shore?’ James asked, casting around the bay.
‘Me and the girls. My parents are still resting.’ He was talking to James, but Edward didn’t lift his eyes off Flora once. ‘Sophia and Martha are having some knitting instruction with one of Miss MacQueen’s pretty friends.’
‘Oh. Who?’ Flora asked.
‘I didn’t catch her name. Light brown hair, and a freckle just there.’ He pointed to the high curve of his left cheek.
‘Ah, that’s Molly.’
‘You sound relieved.’
‘Well, I am. If it was Effie teaching knitting...’ She pulled a face. ‘Let’s just say her own father says her blankets are only fit for wrapping the dead.’
Edward burst out laughing. ‘He sounds a very droll fellow.’
‘Sharp-tongued, for sure,’ Flora smiled. ‘But it’s water off Effie’s back. She doesn’t care a hoot for knitting, only cragging.’
‘Do you crag, Miss MacQueen?’ he asked, slipping one hand into his trouser pocket.
Flora tipped her head to the side coquettishly. ‘Do I look as if I do?’
‘Indeed no. You look as if you should nibble on cake while dripping in pearls, with baby cherubim singing to you.’
She gave an astonished laugh and they stared at one another for a moment, recognizing that they had broken past manners into open flirtation. It had taken mere minutes. This rich, handsome man was already in her thrall.
‘I say, would you care to walk along the beach with me?’ Edward asked. ‘I appreciate it must be the dullest thing on earth for you; you’ve probably walked it a thousand times, but I don’t fancy the look of those hills and I find myself wanting to know everything about you.’ He crooked his arm, inviting her to slip hers through. ‘I promise, I won’t hunt for fossils.’
Flora gave a sudden laugh, amused by the tease. ‘Well, if you promise that,’ she smiled, accepting his arm and throwing a careless look James Callaghan’s way. Was he in any doubt of her powers now?
‘Before you go,’ James said to her quickly.
She waited, triumphant at last.
‘Would you tell me where I might find Miss Ferguson?’
Flora blinked, feeling the sting of obsolescence. He made her feel like a fly buzzing a horse. ‘... Third house on the right.’
‘Much obliged, Miss MacQueen,’ he smiled, continuing along the path. ‘Enjoy your walk.’