door. A tongue-and-groove wood-lined passage hung with coats and tools led off to what I would discover were three bedrooms. There was no toilet, no running water, no electricity. It was as if we had travelled back in time from the twentieth century to some medieval past. Sad little orphaned time-travellers.
A woman in a dark-blue patterned print dress and long white apron turned from the stove as we came in. It was hard to say what age she was. Her hair was like brushed steel, dragged back from her face and held by combs. But it wasn’t an old face. Certainly not lined. Though she wasn’t young. She gave us a long, appraising look and said, ‘Sit in at the table. You’ll be hungry.’ And we were.
The man sat down, too, and took off his cap, so that I saw his face for the first time. A lean, hard face, with a big crooked nose on it. He had hands like shovels, with hair growing on his knuckles, and more of it poking out from beneath his sleeves. What little hair he had left on his head was plastered to it in swirls from the sweat of his cap.
The woman delivered four steaming plates to the table. Some kind of meat in a gravy swimming with grease, and potatoes boiled to the point of disintegration. The man closed his eyes and muttered something in a language I didn’t understand, then as he started to eat he said to us in English, ‘My name is Donald Seamus. This is my sister, Mary-Anne. Mr and Miss Gillies to you. This is our house, and this is your home now. Forget wherever it is you came from. That’s history. From now on you’ll be Donald John and Donald Peter Gillies, and if you don’t do what you’re told, so help me you’ll regret the day you were born.’ He shoved a forkful of food into his mouth and glanced at his sister as he chewed on it. She remained silent and passive the whole time. He looked back at us. ‘We speak Gaelic in this house, so you’d better learn it bloody fast. Just like the poor souls who speak Gaelic in the English court, if you utter a word of English in my presence you’ll be deemed not to have spoken. Is that understood?’
I nodded, and Peter glanced at me for confirmation before nodding too. I had no idea what Gaelic was, or how it would be possible for me to speak it. But I didn’t say so.
When we had finished eating, he handed me a shovel and said, ‘You’ll be needing to relieve yourselves before you go to bed. You can just water the heather. But if you need anything more you can dig a hole for it. Not too near the house, mind.’
And so we were tipped out into the night to do our toilet. The wind had risen, and clouds scurried across the vast expanse of sky overhead, moonlight flitting in sporadic bursts across the hillside. I led Peter away from the house to where we had an uninterrupted view back across the water, and I began to dig, wondering what on earth we would do if it was raining.
‘Hiya!’ The little voice, caught on the wind, startled us both, and I turned in amazement to find Catherine standing there grinning at us in the dark.
I could barely formulate the question. ‘How …?’
‘I saw you come across in the wee boat, about half an hour after me.’ She turned and pointed across the hillside. ‘I’m just over there, with Mrs O’Henley. She says I’ve to be called Ceit now. Funny spelling. C — E — I — T. But pronounced Kate. It’s Gaelic.’
‘Ceit,’ I said. And I liked the sound of it.
‘It seems we’re what they call
I grinned. ‘You cannae get rid of me that easy.’ And I couldn’t have been happier that I’d found her again.
‘Dad, you’ve got to take your trousers off. They’re still wet.’
So they are! They must have got soaked on the boat. I stand up and I can’t seem to get the zip down. She helps me open them up and I step out of them as they fall to the floor. Now she’s pulling my jersey up over my head. Easier just to let her do it. But I can manage the shirt buttons myself. I don’t know why, but my fingers feel so stiff and clumsy these days.
I watch her as she crosses to the wardrobe to get fresh trousers and a neatly pressed white shirt. She’s a lovely-looking girl.
‘Here, Dad.’ She holds out the shirt towards me. ‘Do you want to put it on yourself?’
I reach out and stroke her face, and feel such tenderness for her. ‘I don’t know what I’d have done if they hadn’t taken you to the island, too, Ceit. I really thought I’d lost you for good.’
I see such confusion in her eyes. Doesn’t she realize how I feel about her?
‘Well, I’m here now,’ she says, and I beam at her. So many memories, so much emotion.
‘Remember how we used to haul the seaweed up from the shore?’ I say. ‘In those big panniers on the little horses. To fertilize the
Why is she frowning? Maybe she doesn’t remember.
‘
Silly girl! I can hear myself laughing. ‘That’s what they called them, of course. Grand tatties they gave us, too.’
She’s shaking her head again. And sighs, ‘Oh, Dad.’
I want to shake her, dammit! Why doesn’t she remember?
‘Dad, I came to tell you that I have to go to Glasgow to sit some exams. So I won’t be here for a couple of days. But Fionnlagh’ll come and see you. And Fin.’
I don’t know who she’s talking about. But I don’t want visitors. I don’t want her to leave. She’s buttoning up my shirt now, her face very close. So I just lean in to kiss her softly on the lips. She seems startled and jumps back. I hope I haven’t upset her. ‘I’m so glad I found you again, Ceit,’ I tell her, wanting to give her reassurance. ‘I’ll never forget those days at The Dean. Never. And the turrets of Danny’s place that we could see from the roof.’ It makes me laugh to remember it. ‘Just to remind us of our place in the world.’ And I lower my voice, proud of what we’ve become. ‘Still and all, we didn’t do too bad for a couple of orphan waifs.’
TWENTY-ONE
It was dark when Fin dropped George Gunn in Stornoway and headed across the Barvas moor to the west coast. It was a black, wet night, the Atlantic hissing its fury into his face as he drove west. Just like the night his parents were killed on this very road. He knew the dip in it like the back of his hand. He had passed it every week on the bus that took him to the school hostel in Stornoway on Monday, and then back again on Friday. Although he couldn’t see it now, he knew that the green-roofed shieling was only a hundred yards or so away to his right, and that it was just about here that the sheep had leapt suddenly up from the ditch, causing his father to swerve.
There were still sheep on the road now. Crofters had long ago given up trying to fence off the grazing. Only a few rotted posts remained to give witness to the fact that they had once tried. At night you saw the eyes of the sheep glowing in the dark. Two luminous points of light, like devil’s eyes reflecting your headlights back at you. They were stupid beasts. You never knew the minute they would startle, and run out in front of you. On still days they would congregate on the road, leaving the bog to escape the tiny, biting midges that were the curse of the West Highlands. And you knew that if the sheep were troubled by them, then it must be bad.
Over the rise he saw the lights of Barvas flickering in the rain, a long string of them following the line of the coast before vanishing into darkness. Fin followed intermittent beads of them north until the scattered lights of Ness spread more densely across the headland, and he turned up towards Crobost. The ocean was hidden in obscurity, suffocated by the night, but he heard it breathing its anger all along the cliffs as he parked and got out of his car at Marsaili’s bungalow.
Her car was not there, and he realized that she must already have left for Glasgow. But there was a light burning in the kitchen window, and he made a dash for the door through the rain. There was no one in the kitchen and he went through to the living room where the television was playing the evening news in the corner. But there was no one here either. He went out into the hall and called upstairs to Fionnlagh’s bedroom.
‘Anyone home?’
A line of light lay along the foot of the door and he started up the stairs. He was only halfway up when the door opened and Fionnlagh came out on to the top landing, shutting it quickly behind him. ‘Fin!’ He seemed startled,
