Con grabs my shoulders. ‘We need to go back inside. We can hide under the bed, barricade the door.’
I shake my head, brushing her hands away and stare at the flaming ship in the middle of the bay. Smoke plumes upwards and, in the orange glow, I can see bodies writhing. From this distance, they might be dancing.
Another blast shakes the earth beneath us. Thunderous roar of water being thrown skywards, then crashing back to the sea, and the shrieking echo of twisting, bending metal.
The ship lists to one side and, even at this distance, we can see the speed the water is taking it.
‘Oh, Lord,’ I say. ‘It’s going to sink.’
The vessel groans. A chorus of cries and splashes as some of the crew jump into the water. I watch as a man in flames stands on the side of the ship and flings himself off, arms flailing.
‘How many men aboard?’ I ask.
There are more lights on in Kirkwall and the alarm shrieks through the air, its pitch rising and falling with my breath.
‘We must get inside,’ Con says, her eyes wild.
‘Five hundred men? A thousand?’ I demand.
She looks away. Both of us are remembering our parents. We’d never found their bodies. And Con had always blamed herself.
‘We can’t let them drown,’ I say.
‘Dot, please.’ She reaches out. ‘The bombs, the Germans. And –’
And I know she is thinking about the people in Kirkwall. The ship will bring them out this way. But we can’t think about that now. I grab her hand and pull her down the hill towards our rowboat, towards the water.
Towards darkness and death.
We can’t think about that now.
‘Dot, stop!’ she calls.
But I ignore her, throwing my whole body at the little boat. It won’t move. I grunt and smack the wood.
‘Stop, Dot!’ she says. ‘We’re not doing this.’
The rowboat is still stuck in the sand. The sinking ship in the bay squeals again and I scream with it: ‘Come on, you bastard!’
The boat shifts forward, gaining momentum as I shove it towards the water.
‘We’re staying,’ Con calls. She nods across to the opposite bay in Kirkwall, where the whistles are still calling and torches bob among dark shapes on the beaches. They are a mile further away from Scapa than us: we are close enough to smell the smoke from the ship, to hear the screams. Con doesn’t move.
‘You stay, then,’ I snap, climbing into the boat and dipping the oars into the water. The boat pulls away.
The dogs are still howling. The alarm is still wailing.
Please, please, I think, looking at Con. And I picture her dead in the bothy when I return. And I picture myself dead in the water without her. And I don’t want to leave her like this. But I can’t watch those men drown.
She must be thinking the same: she covers her face with her hands.
‘Stop!’ she growls, and she throws herself into the water and wades out to the boat, pulling herself in. I try to help, but she slaps my hands away.
I give her an oar.
‘At least if the world is caving in, we’ll die together.’ She sounds, for a moment, like her old self, not the terrified creature I’d lived with over the past months.
‘Don’t be so bloody foolish,’ I say. ‘No one’s drowning.’
Except those men are.
We begin to row.
She gasps as we’re thrown sideways by the huge swell from the bombs. Inky blackness below us. Above, the sky yawns.
I imagine a German ship skulking somewhere in the harbour, taking aim.
Thick black smoke balloons, and the ship lists further, her guns pointing almost vertically towards the star-hammered sky.
‘There!’ We speak at the same time. Mirrored expressions, tight-lipped and trembling – even Con, for all her bluster when she’d joked about dying, is full of fear.
A man in the water, face down, floating. And holding onto his arm, another man, floundering and spluttering.
I lean down and start to haul the man from the sea. His skin is slippery-slick; his mouth stretches wide and noiseless.
We heave him into the boat, where he lies coughing and retching. I pat his shoulder. He blinks, shakes his head.
We row on. How can we choose which life to save? How can we know the difference between a good man and a bad man? Rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief.
Bodies bob in the water, belly up. Their faces wear the wide-eyed blankness of sudden death. An expression that is almost acceptance.
We fish two more men from the sea, both barely alive. The boat rides low in the water and tilts sharply to one side when we pull the last man in. He huddles with the other two, grey-faced and shaking. One groans; the noise is an animal cry. Other men wave in the water, crying weakly for help.
We must leave them.
‘There are other boats coming,’ I call. Then I have to turn away, in case I see a man sink when I can’t save him. The Kirkwall boats are closer now – close enough, I hope.
Con is shaking and rows with her head down, without looking towards the Kirkwall boats.
The men in our boat stare at us, saucer-eyed, open-mouthed. They think they are mad or dreaming, or that their vision is playing tricks.
‘Are you . . .?’ one of the men says, accent unfamiliar and English: vowels flat.
‘Death’s boatmen,’ Con says. ‘Rowing you to the Land of the Dead.’
Con’s always had a black humour when distressed.
‘We’re twins, yes,’ I say. ‘You’re seeing straight. We’ll have you to safety soon.’ Other boats from Kirkwall have finally drawn level, with the old fishermen shouting to each other, pointing out men in the water, tugging them into the boats.
Oh, God, what if the noise and the lights draw another bomb?
I glance at the sky. Starlight clear as a struck bell.
