few were luckier, like me.’
Fin raised an eyebrow. ‘You were a homer?’
‘I was, Mr Macleod. Boarded with a family at Parks, over on the other side of the island. All gone now, of course. No children of their own, you see. But unlike many, I have happy memories of my time here. Which is why I had no problems about coming back.’ She emptied her glass. ‘I need a wee top-up. How about you?’
‘No thanks.’ Fin had barely touched his.
Morag moved Dino off her knee and eased herself out of the settee to pour another drink. ‘Of course, it wasn’t just the locals who gave the kids a hard time. There were incomers, too. Mostly English. Like the headmaster at Daliburgh school.’ She smiled. ‘Thought he was coming here to civilize us,
‘What’s that?’
‘It’s the name they gave to the Hogmanay tradition when gangs of boys went around the houses on New Year’s Eve blessing each house with a poem, and being rewarded with bread and scones, and cake and fruit. All dropped into the white flour sacks they carried. They’d been doing it for centuries. But Mr Bidgood thought it smacked of begging, and issued an edict forbidding any of his pupils to take part.’
‘And everyone obeyed?’
‘Well, most did. But there was one boy in my class. Donald John. A homer. He boarded with the Gillies family, a brother and sister, over there on the other side the hill. He defied the ban and went out with the older boys. When Bidgood found out he gave that lad such a leathering with the tawse.’
Fin shook his head. ‘He shouldn’t have had the right to do that.’
‘Oh, they had the right to do what they pleased in those days. But Donald Seamus — that was the man that Donald John boarded with — he took exception. Went up to the school and beat the living shit out of that headmaster. Excuse my French. He took Donald John out of school that very day, too, and the boy never went back.’ She smiled. ‘Bidgood returned to England with his tail between his legs within the month.’ She smiled. ‘It was a colourful life we lived back then.’
Fin looked around and thought that it was a colourful life that she was living still. ‘So do you have any idea what happened to Ceit?’
Morag shrugged and sipped again at her gin. ‘None at all, I’m afraid,
Another dead end.
By the time Fin came to leave, the cloud was gathering ominously all along the western bay, the wind had stiffened and carried the odd spot of rain. Somewhere much further to the west, beyond the cloud, the sun was drizzling liquid gold on the ocean as it dipped towards the horizon.
Morag said, ‘I’d better run you back over the hill,
She tapped a code into a controller at the side of the door, and it swung slowly upwards to fold flat into the roof. As they got into the car, Fin spotted an old spinning wheel at the back of the garage. ‘You don’t spin wool, do you?’ he said.
She laughed. ‘Good God, no. Never have, never will.’ Dino jumped up into her lap and she closed the door, but kept the roof down this time. He snuffled and yelped and rubbed his wet nose all over the window until she lowered it, and he draped himself in his habitual place over her arm to poke his face out into the wind. As she drove down the driveway she said, ‘It’s an old one I’m having restored. It’ll sit nicely in the dining room. A reminder of days gone by. All the women spun wool here when I was a girl. They would oil it and knit it into blankets and socks and jerseys for the menfolk. Most of the men were fishermen in those days, at sea five days a week, and the Eriskay jerseys knitted with that oiled wool were as good as waterproofs. They all wore them.’
She swerved at the foot of the drive as she took a draw on her cigarette, and missed the fencepost by inches.
‘Each of the women had her own pattern, you know. Usually handed down from mother to daughter. So distinctive that when a man’s body was pulled from the sea, decayed beyond recognition, he could almost always be identified from the knitted pattern of his pullover. As good as a fingerprint, it was.’
She waved at the old man and his dog to whom Fin had spoken earlier, and the Mercedes nearly went into a ditch. But Morag seemed oblivious.
‘There’s an old retired priest on the island who’s a bit of a historian.’ She laughed. ‘Nothing much else for a celibate man to do on a long winter’s night.’ She swung a mischievous smile Fin’s way. ‘Anyway, he’s a bit of an expert on the knitted patterns of old Eriskay. Has a collection of photographs and drawings, I’ve heard. Goes back a hundred years and more, they say.’
As they reached the top of the hill she glanced curiously across at her passenger. ‘You don’t say much, Mr Macleod.’
And Fin thought it would have been difficult to get a word in edgeways. But all he said was, ‘I’ve enjoyed hearing your stories, Morag.’
After a moment she said, ‘What’s your interest in the folk who lived at the O’Henley croft?’
‘It’s not really the O’Henley woman herself that I’m interested in, Morag. I’m trying to trace the roots of an old man now living on Lewis. I think he might have come from Eriskay.’
‘Well, maybe I know him. What’s his name?’
‘Oh, it’s not a name you would know. He calls himself Tormod Macdonald now. But that’s not his real name.’
‘Then what is?’
‘That’s what I don’t know.’
The rain started as Fin drove north from Ludagh, sweeping across the machair from the open sea to the west. Big fat drops that came first in ones and twos, before reinforcements arrived and compelled him to put his wipers on at double speed. He turned off at Daliburgh on to the Lochboisdale road, his mind filled still with the thought that Morag’s story of Eriskay knitting patterns was perhaps his last chance to track down the true identity of Marsaili’s father. A very, very long shot indeed.
The Lochboisdale Hotel sat on the hill above the harbour, in the lee of Ben Kenneth. It was an old, traditional, whitewashed building with modern extensions, and a dining lounge with a view out over the bay. At a dark reception desk in the lobby, a girl in a tartan skirt gave him keys to a single room, and confirmed that they did, indeed, have a fax machine. Fin noted the number and climbed the staircase to his room.
From his dormer window, he looked down on the pier in the fading light as the CalMac ferry from Oban, with its red twin funnels, emerged from the rain to manoeuvre itself up to the ramp and lower the door of its car deck. Tiny figures in yellow oilskins braved the weather to wave the cars off. Fin wondered how it must have been for those poor bewildered kids, plucked from everything they had known and dumped here on the pier to face their fate. And he felt anger at the men whose religion and politics had dictated it.
Who had known about it then, apart from those involved? Why had it never been reported in the press, as it certainly would be today? How would people have reacted had they known what was going on? His own parents, he was sure, would have been outraged. Anger welled within him as he thought about it. The anger of a parent. And the hurt of an orphan. His ability to empathize with those wretched children was almost painful. He wanted to lash out and hit something, or someone, on their behalf.
And the rain ran down his window like tears spilled for all those poor lost souls.
He crossed his room to sit on the edge of the bed in the evening gloom, and as he turned on his bedside lamp felt depression descend on him like a shroud. From the address book on his mobile phone he tracked down George Gunn’s home number and hit the dial key. Gunn’s wife answered, and Fin recalled the invitations George had extended on more than one occasion to come and eat wild salmon with him and his wife. He had still never met her.
‘Hello, Mrs Gunn, it’s Fin Macleod here. Is George there?’
‘Oh, hello, Mr Macleod,’ she said, as if they were old friends. ‘One moment. I’ll go and get him.’
After a few moments he heard Gunn’s voice. ‘Where are you, Mr Macleod?’
‘Lochboisdale, George.’
He heard the surprise in his voice. ‘What on earth are you doing down there?’
‘I’m pretty certain that Marsaili’s dad came from Eriskay. And I think there might be a way of identifying who
