Chapter Eighteen
The isle was already slipping into her autumn colours, the days growing shorter, the sun less buoyant in the sky. Evacuation was only three days away but the weather was still fine, a rare blessing as they all prepared to leave their home for the final time. Tomorrow they would begin to bring the sheep back over the ridge in small flocks, containing them in the sheep fanks over in the Am Blaid saddle between Connachair and Oiseval, before boarding them straight onto the Dunara Castle, which would sail the day before the villagers, laden with the livestock and furniture.
There had been no possibility of leaving Glen Bay before now. Mhairi’s milk had come in hard, making her weep with pain without a child to suckle; and when it had finally gone again, she had cried harder as the last vestige of motherhood ebbed away. It felt cruel that her figure looked girlish again so soon, shrunken all the quicker by her absent appetite. No mark had been left on her body and there was no baby to hold. It was almost as if the pregnancy had never transpired at all.
Mhairi’s shock was profound, her guilt even worse; she was barely speaking and was eating just as little. Donald would sit with her, forcing her to swallow some broth, which was all she would take. He was riven with grief too; Flora didn’t think she’d ever seen a more heartbreaking sight than him digging a tiny grave for his lost daughter, the five of them standing around a mound barely bigger than his foot, offering prayers to a god who had cast the most terrible judgement upon them.
Flora wondered how the other villagers hadn’t noticed his stooped dejection and haggard expression but Lorna maintained everyone was distracted with their own business for once, packing up their belongings and cleaning their houses as if new tenants were coming in; the children had even been tasked with lifting the remaining potatoes from the lazybeds. Only Jayne, according to Effie, moved with her usual detachment, knitting on the rocks and driving Norman to despair.
‘There y’ are!’
Flora turned on her back to find Lorna heading over the grass to her. She had proved true to her word, tending to the two young women daily, registering temperatures, pulses and mood. She had taken to wearing the brown-and-white houndstooth lambing scarf, slung diagonally across her body and discreetly filled with her basic medical instruments – thermometer, stethoscope and some calming tonics for Mhairi’s nerves – for striding over the ridge with her medical bag every day would surely have raised suspicions.
‘I’ve been looking for y’ all over.’
‘Oh, it’s you, Lorna,’ Flora said wearily, using her arms to shift her position until she was sitting up. ‘I wasn’t expecting to see you again today,’ she frowned. The nurse had already been over that morning, at sunrise.
‘What are you doing all the way over here?’ Lorna asked, ignoring the comment.
Flora shrugged. She was on Cambir Point, looking out to sea, a twenty-minute walk away from the souterrain. She had taken to coming here when Mhairi’s spirits were especially low; several times she had caught Mhairi staring at her stomach with a look of utmost sorrow, and Flora felt riddled with guilt that her friend was suffering while her own baby continued to grow. It was a torture for them both.
‘Just getting some air,’ she muttered, as Lorna crouched beside her and reached for her wrist to take her pulse. Flora didn’t even think about these tiny assessments now, they were so frequent.
‘Are you feeling well in yourself?’ the nurse asked.
‘Aye.’
‘... No headaches, bleeding, swelling of the feet, itching...?’ Lorna asked, putting a hand to her forehead, before pulling out her implements and getting more thorough readings. Again.
‘No. I’m just tired.’
‘That’s to be expected now you’re into the last month. There’s a lot of growing that comes in the final weeks.’
‘Aye.’ Flora sat patiently as Lorna palpated her belly, listening for a heartbeat, checking her ankles for fluid retention...
‘No contractions yet, I hope? Feelings of tightness, a need to bear down?’
Flora shook her head, puzzled by the nurse’s overly-close attentions. Her anxiety at losing another patient was no secret but even so, this behaviour seemed extreme. ‘Is there something you’re worried about, Lorna?’
‘Me?’
‘Aye. Something you’re not telling me? You checked me over just a few hours ago.’
‘Och, I know, but...’ The nurse sat back on her heels, biting her bottom lip, and Flora saw she was nervous; that she couldn’t meet Flora’s eye.
Immediately she stiffened. ‘There is something.’ She had felt it. Felt it instinctively. ‘Is it the baby? I felt it move just a few minutes ago!’
‘No, no, it’s not the baby,’ Lorna said quickly. ‘I just wanted to get a... baseline reading, before I...’
‘Before you what? What’s happened?’
Lorna stared at the grass for a moment before she raised her eyes. She reached for Flora’s hand and clasped it between her own. ‘Flora, there’s been some news and I... I need you to prepare yourself. I’m afraid it isn’t good.’
Flora felt her body go cold, her hands automatically drawing back and clutching her stomach as her mind raced ahead to the worst-case scenario, the one she had been fearing these past few weeks, ever since Frank Mathieson’s heartless taunts. The one everyone had told her wouldn’t come to pass. ‘... James.’
Lorna’s mouth opened but there was a lag before her voice came. ‘... Mathieson wasn’t lying about the Quest being stuck in the ice.’
‘But you said...?’
‘I know. I was trying to protect you, Floss. I knew you’d only fret if you knew the truth. I kept hoping that... they’d get through it somehow. That it would all be passed by the time we got over there.’
‘But...?’ Flora could hardly breathe.
‘A fishing boat’s come in this morning and the skipper says...’ Lorna looked broken by the news. ‘He says word on the shipping wires is the ice moved... squeezed, and the hull was breached—’
‘No,’ Flora gasped, her eyes wide as she envisaged the scenes: polar seas engulfing the vessels, men thrashing in fathomless blue water... James sinking...
‘He’s feared lost. They all are. I’m so sorry.’
Flora shook her head, refusing to believe it.
No.
She looked out to the horizon, crisp and darkly delineated against a bright sky. He couldn’t be down there... He just couldn’t...
No.
‘Flora, try to stay calm.’ Lorna’s voice was distant, as if she’d fallen down a drop. ‘Flora – Flora, are you hearing me?’
For a moment Flora had a sense of herself, hunched on all fours, her head hanging as a dull pain radiated through her bones. She felt she might disintegrate into dust, this agony obliterating her into tiny particles the wind could blow and scatter.
‘Try to control your breathing for me. You’re hyperventilating, Flora... Flora?... Breathe slowly... Slow-ly.’
‘It’s... it’s not true,’ Flora moaned, beginning to rock and sway. ‘Oh God, tell me it’s not. Tell me...’ Sobs burst from her, violent and gushing, as she keened forward, her head touching the parched ground. She could feel the solid weight of his baby curled up inside her, limbs twitching and stretching out, impatiently awaiting birth – just as his own life force was extinguished and he fell into eternal stillness? ‘No, no, no...!’
‘Here, take this.’
She felt hands grasping her chin and she looked blindly across as Lorna spooned some soothing tonic into her mouth; she spluttered, almost coughing it up again, but Lorna held her jaw shut, forcing her to swallow. It was bitter and rancid, but it had been the only thing to keep Mhairi calm these past few weeks. Now it was Flora’s turn.
‘Flora,’ Lorna’s voice remained steady. Low, by her side. ‘I’m so desperately sorry. I wish I could change it for you – but you need to think of the baby... Are y’ hearing me?... Y’ must calm yourself for the baby’s sake.’
‘This can’t be real!’ she wailed. A year she had waited for him! A year of holding him in her mind’s eye and her heart, waiting and hoping for their life together to begin... only for him to be snatched away in these dying hours?
‘It’s all going to be fine—’
‘No! It’ll never be fine again!’ A sound escaped her like her soul was splitting in two.
‘You will survive this, do you hear me?’ Lorna said firmly. ‘You’re strong, Flora. And young.’
Flora knew what she was really saying: that there was still time for her to find love again. But she didn’t want anyone else! Couldn’t Lorna understand that? Couldn’t she see that love wasn’t just about attraction, but connection too? That it was rare, a one-time deal? Mhairi knew it, Effie knew it. But Lorna, a spinster – what did she know of love?
Lorna’s hand rubbed her back in circles as Flora wept; as if sensing her own ignorance in matters of the heart, she said nothing more. No words could make this better. No comfort could be given when beyond this heartbreak lay another calamity, too – for at a stroke, Flora’s entire future had been swept away, her circumstances drastically changed. She was going to step onto the mainland penniless, unmarried and pregnant. She would be cloaked in shame and scandal.
All these months, she hadn’t known why it should be that she should have such good luck and her friends such bad. Effie had never heard back from Sholto; Mhairi and Donald, already grieving their child, were to be separated after all... It had made her feel strangely nervous, this gross imbalance of fortunes, but she saw now that it had only been a matter of timing. Her loan of good luck had finally come to an end.
The debt was being called in.