It’s a strange question: what would you give up to save a life?
In the soft glow of the moonlight, I look at our hands – so alike that, with our fingers intertwined, even I can’t tell whose hand is whose.
‘I love you,’ Con whispers.
‘I love you too,’ I say. And it is an odd thing: the words feel hollow, suddenly, but they are as easy to say as any others. As easy to say as, ‘I didn’t do it,’ or ‘I’m sorry,’ or ‘I’m keeping you safe.’Orcadians
There’s a whisper of snow in the air as people trudge up the path to Kirkwall Town Hall. It is late and dark, so most of the women and children are at home, where they have been told to stay because the meeting may be upsetting.
Marjorie Croy has come anyway. ‘If my children’s feet are hardy enough to stand worn-out shoes, then our ears can all cope with whatever’s to be said.’
So, she sits in the hall, two children at her sides and one perched on her knees. Her cheeks are pink with cold, her hands folded across her lap. In her face, it’s possible to see her daughter Bess’s jawline – softened by age, but with the same pugnacious tilt to it.
She and her children sit quietly with the other Orcadians as John O’Farrell and Major Bates walk into the hall.
Everyone sits up: they’ve seen Major Bates on only one occasion so far, when he came to the island to recruit for the camp, and the general thought, at first, was that he was an odd one: severe, they’d thought, and a cold fish, although there was increasing talk from some of the guards that he could be kindly too, at times.
Now, at the beginning of March, he looks thinner, older, greyer. Smaller, somehow.
John O’Farrell is thinner too. There’s still more grey in his hair, people note.
He stands, looks at Major Bates, who nods encouragement.
John O’Farrell’s voice is steady. ‘I know there have been some new complaints about the prisoners –’
‘It’s not complaints about the prisoners,’ Artair Flett says. ‘It’s a question of where the bloody hell they’ve got to –’
‘Language!’ someone shouts.
‘Shit. Sorry.’ Artair ducks his head in apology to Marjorie, whose children are wide-eyed and grinning at the expletives.
‘I’m in a mither,’ Artair says, ‘and I’m not the only one. They’re good workers, those men, and now I’m told they’ll not be helping me? What am I supposed to do with my boundary wall? It’s half finished.’
There are murmurs of agreement: Alasdair Neill has a ditch half dug, and Rabbie Firth needs help getting his sheep in.
John O’Farrell holds up his hands for quiet and, gradually, the muttering dies down. ‘The prisoners,’ he says gravely, ‘are on strike.’
‘On strike?’ Rabbie says. ‘Is it better wages they’re wanting? Or a pension for when they retire?’
Muffled laughter, then Major Bates stands and silence falls.
‘The prisoners are unhappy because they believe that their work contravenes the Geneva Convention, which stipulates that prisoners cannot be compelled to construct enemy fortifications.’
A sea of blank stares.
‘So,’ Major Bates says, ‘we have been investigating the possibility that these . . . boundaries… are not barriers at all. Nothing to do with the war. They are,’ he pauses, ‘causeways. Much-needed causeways to link the islands together. Civilian constructions, for use in peacetime. So that you and your families can travel easily between the islands. It’s something you’ve long needed.’
‘My arse it is,’ someone mutters, and is quickly hushed.
‘You need these causeways,’ Major Bates says. ‘This is a message that I would like to be unanimous.’
Silence.
At last, Rabbie Firth says, ‘So . . . if we tell the prisoners they’re building causeways, they’ll come back and help with our work too?’
‘Indeed.’
There’s a general noise of approval as people rise to leave, but then Marjorie Croy calls, ‘What about the treatment of the prisoners? Isn’t that the real problem?’
Everyone stops, falls quiet, stares. Marjorie is still in her seat, her children around her, her baby still on her lap, and she repeats, ‘What about the way they’re kept? I’ve heard stories from my Bess.’
People sit down again.
‘She’s working in the infirmary,’ Marjorie says, half turning so that everyone can hear her. ‘And she says that those prisoners are being beaten. Horribly bruised, some of them. Fed on bread and water, she says. Locked up in the dark, she tells me. Left to starve.’
And as Major Bates tries to shout that this isn’t the case, that it’s all been blown out of proportion, his voice is drowned in the protests: people on these islands have brothers and sons who have been captured and imprisoned in Germany. Only last month, the radio told them, the Japanese invaded Singapore and took sixty thousand British prisoners of war.
‘Are we treating these men like animals?’ Marjorie calls. And her children, as if they have heard all this before, stare unblinking at the major, like the Fates sitting in judgement.
‘Of course not,’ he says, flushing. ‘Of course not.’
And, as he sits down, John O’Farrell leans across and murmurs, ‘News travels fast on these islands. They’ll not be having this. These are a people who have their own separate land laws dating back to the thirteenth century and they’re a close-knit community. They’ll not be having men starved or beaten on one of their islands. It’s against their sense of justice –’
‘Their sense of justice be damned,’ Major Bates says. ‘They’re not in charge of the camp or the men.’
‘True,’ John O’Farrell says, ‘but we don’t want a riot on the main island, as well as in the camp. The people here will only accept so much before they take the law into their own hands. It might be wise to listen to them now.’
Part Three
How could it be? There was a stifling grove,
Yet here was the light; what wonder led
us to it?
From ‘The Grove’, Edwin Muir
February 1942Constance
The day I first consider
