A heat rises in my throat – nausea or a scream. But the blood on the man’s shirt gleams in the moonlight and his limbs are trembling with cold and fear and pain.
And I put my hands over hers. The wool of the coat is rough and the man’s breath is warm. Again, he kicks his legs and a tremor runs through my body and Con’s, but we press down harder. The other men on the beach are silent, their heads bowed as if in prayer.
I count to thirty, to a hundred.
The man has been still for a long time when we lift the coat from his bloodied mouth. Sobbing, Con dips the wool into the sea and wipes his face clean. He could be sleeping.
At the hospital, they will wrap him in a sheet and send him home to Fiona.
Afterwards, as we row back across to our island, and tuck ourselves into our bed, I can’t help feeling that something has crumbled or broken.
I can still feel the rough wool under my fingers and I know that Con can’t sleep either. I can tell from the shallow, broken rhythm of her breathing that she is awake, that she is crying. My own tears are hot on my cheeks. I want to reach for Con, want to take her in my arms, but every time I do, I can see the man’s face; I can hear his laboured sobs. And, as I drift in and out of sleep, his face blurs with our father’s face, with our mother’s. I remember the last time I saw them, when they pushed their boat out towards the darkening horizon. Mother was failing fast, and they needed medicine from a bigger hospital than Kirkwall’s. But the sea was too rough by the time they left; it was too much of a risk. They should have waited.
I remember the way Con had shrieked at them to go, her whole body rigid.
I remember her silence when they didn’t come back. The way she had taken herself down to the shore, day after day, watching the sea. The way she had blamed herself. The days when she had gone swimming and had held herself below the water, trying to cut off her own breath.
I’d seen the expression on her face today, as she held the coat over the soldier’s face. Along with grief, and fear, I’d seen something like longing. Something like envy.
I hold my trembling hands against my face in the darkness, trying to rid myself of the damp scratch of that wool, warm from the man’s breath.
The next day dawns bright, the light blinding as it reflects off the still sea.
Con is quiet as she scatters grain for the chickens, as she stirs the porridge on the stove.
‘Are you all right?’ I ask.
She tells me she is; she flashes a quick smile at me. But as soon as she turns away from me her smile fades. She looks grief-stricken.
I watch her from the corner of my eyes as she scrubs the man’s brownish bloodstain from her shirt sleeve.
‘Let me do that,’ I say.
‘I’m fine.’ She pushes me away, her face like a waxwork.
‘For Heaven’s sake, Con!’ I snatch the shirt from her. ‘What’s wrong?’
But I know what’s wrong: we both do. Con had gone into the sea to rescue the sailors; instead, she’d held a man down and cut off his air to save him. I can see her thoughts in the way she looks at her hands, the way she rests her fingers on the pulse at her neck when she thinks I’m not looking. The pulse that tells her she is still alive; the hands that tell her she can end a life, if she wants to.
Early January 1942
The town hall in Kirkwall is packed with people: every seat taken and all the standing room besides. Whole families huddle at the back, with mothers anxiously rocking babies and shushing their children’s questions. The windows are misted, the air hot and close. All eyes fix on the table at the front, where John O’Farrell, Kirkwall’s mayor, is shuffling papers and avoiding eye contact.
He is a big man, broad across the shoulders, with a shock of red hair – greying of late. On a normal day, he wears an easy smile, although his face now is serious as he clears his throat and looks out at the murmuring crowd.
‘Thank you for coming,’ he says, and the chatter in the room fades. ‘I know it’s a cold night and there are those of you who’ll want to be getting back to your beds. Myself, for a start.’
A series of polite titters, and everyone waits.
He continues: ‘Now, you’ll all have noticed the ships coming in and unloading materials and I know there’s been some talk and speculation. But I want to tell you that the main priority is to keep these islands safe. The sinking of the Royal Elm has hit all of us hard. The Germans coming so close – it’s a worry.’
A sob from the back of the room, quickly stifled.
O’Farrell coughs. ‘Over eight hundred lives lost that night, but many men saved – hundreds of English sailors – and that’s down to the heroism of the people on these islands. Still, we need to be sure that such a thing never occurs again. We’re in agreement with the English about this –’
A shout from the back: ‘Is it true Churchill himself came here?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous, Donald,’ someone replies. ‘You wouldn’t know Churchill from your own –’
O’Farrell holds up his hands. ‘Aye, it’s true. He came.’
Whispers hiss around the hall.
O’Farrell waves for quiet. ‘Mr Churchill has discussed the matter with myself and the Kirkwall Parish Council, and we’re all in agreement
