Island of Wings (28 page)

At that moment the minister's shadow filled the small room as he stooped across the
tallan
. ‘What on God's earth is going on here?' His voice was hoarse and his face was enraged. No one moved except for Mrs MacKinnon, who put a comforting hand on the dead man's shoulder.

MacKinnon cleared his throat. ‘Finlay's a stiffy, sir – we have brought him home to his hearth.'

‘For Christ's sake, you don't have to tell me what's happened, man – I saw you from the manse.' MacKenzie looked in fury at the strange effigy by the fire. ‘Now, all of you fools and heretics, get out before I do something I may regret!' He started to usher them towards the
tallan
with his arms, but Mrs MacKinnon stayed put.

‘With respect, sir, you shall not call my kin such names, and nor shall you tell me to leave my uncle alone. No one can persuade me to let my own blood reach purgatory in a sitting position.'

‘MacKinnon, tell your woman to obey my orders,' the minister shouted.

‘If she doesn't obey you, sir, she sure as hell won't obey me. Now, I think for all our sakes that you should go back home to the manse and we will call you when old Finlay here has stretched out properly and is ready for his grave.'

The minister suddenly felt very tired. ‘You must not fight against me – the Lord sees you even when you are hiding in your hovels.' He was overcome by an urge to cry. His eyes watered and his voice was unsteady as he pushed passed them to get out.

7

MARCH 1841 – EXPOSURE

Early morning, with a damp fire in the hearth, all alone, in the mists of dawn. Loneliness was without hope, and the dread of it increased in the spring when desire returned. It was possible to hide the malaise in company, to look around and smile at well-known faces that offered no comfort. But at other times the empty skies closed around Lizzie and nothing entered her still life; the colours had faded. What sustains me? she wondered as she watched the sea through the mist, or perhaps it was a whisper of rain.

Lizzie was pregnant again. For the last three years, since the twins Mary Anne and Margaret were born, she had been spared. But now, in the spring of 1841, it was time again. She thought about her children. She had six children alive. Eliza was already eight years old and James Bannatyne seven. And then there was Jane, Nigel and the twins. She did not want to think of the other three.
The ones she let slip away.
The two lost girls had been replaced, reincarnated in the new Jane and the new Margaret. But the boy Nathaniel, the gift of God that she had never seen, could not be replaced. He had lived silently by her side, reminding her of herself as she was before she got to the island. She remembered seeing the reflections of the stars in the sea one summer night and thinking that it was her lost children showing her the way in this new world. Since then she had been lost many times. I have ­forgotten the stars, she thought.

She was not in control of her life, she did not master it, but she had come to terms with this. Her body had brought forth six healthy children, who had moored her to the island. She swayed gently around their anchors like a ship in a calm sea.

Suddenly, as her thoughts ebbed and flowed, a distant memory surfaced in her mind. She felt the warmth of her husband as he put his arm around her while pointing towards the cradle with the mark of the MacLeods, the embossed twig of juniper. And then a voice: ‘We shall be happy here,' – hearing the doubt in her own voice from so many years past.

That was such a long time ago. In all her terror she had wanted to trust him. How she had adored him! Not with passion perhaps – for what had she known of passion then? – but with all the expectations of a young bride standing at the threshold of adulthood eager to meet life as a real woman. But since the loss of Nathaniel the feeling between Lizzie and Neil had changed subtly. He would withdraw from her and rarely look her in the eyes. Somehow she knew he resented her for losing his firstborn son: the son that should have been born to herald the beginning of his mission on the island. He had rarely touched her outside the bed. She had tried to bring him back, to keep him in the world of human touch, but he had been so occupied with his mission. And for years now she had not known him enough to love him. He had changed – his authority had altered and she could no longer make herself look up to him. She pitied him, and that was the saddest thing. Lately he had weakened terribly and she had come to fear for his mind.

Her thoughts would often stray to the stranger and that brief touch . . . but that too was long ago now and she refused to be drawn back to that mystery. What was the use?

An extension had been added to the manse to house the growing family. Lizzie looked through the open door at her children asleep in bed. She could see Anna, a tall and lanky girl ready for marriage, in bed with the younger ones. Eliza and James were getting too old to share a bed; she would have to ask for another one. She sighed again and returned to the window in the kitchen. Eliza was a serious girl. She kept to herself and wrote secret poems and framed her words with garlands of purple and blue flowers. James on the other hand would still play with the local boys. His hair and skin stank of fulmar oil and worse.

Suddenly she saw a figure amongst the boulders by the landing rock. The morning mist was still clinging to the ground and the figure seemed cloaked in smoke. Whoever it was seemed to be hiding from the view of the village. Lizzie looked again and recognised her first maid, Betty Scott. Betty was moving once more, and it was soon clear that she was making her way towards the feather store. The feather store was kept locked, but a recent storm had torn a hole in the wall that faced the bay, and this was where Betty was heading.

In this place where men and women were quite separate Lizzie had learned to converse with the women. She still did not speak Gaelic, and they spoke little or no English. They communicated through small services and acts of kindness. But if she was honest she knew she was not close to anyone on the island. She was completely apart. The only person she had ever spoken to at any length was Betty. But even Betty belonged to another world, and their meetings would always be conducted on neutral ground. She smiled as she thought of the golden girl with the bouncy curls who had come to help her in the manse all those years ago.

Betty, who had married Calum MacDonald, had proved to be very fertile. There was something almost animal-like about her sturdy body that smelt of musk and sweat. Her feet were broad like a man's and large enough to carry her strong frame, her hips were wide and low and her breasts were heavy. She had given birth to a baby almost every year since she married, but they had all been lost to the eight-day sickness. One after the other Betty had watched as her children were suffocated to death by that strange devilry. Lizzie shivered when she thought about such a fate. Betty served as the island's midwife, and so her time was spent bringing life into the world. But as so many of the babies died it was like a Sisyphean task. And yet Betty was ever cheerful and strong. Her fair curls bounced on the wind and her songs rang through the air, but when you looked at her, if you tried to seek her gaze, she would avert her blue eyes so that you could not see into their depths. How shall I ever understand Betty? Lizzie thought as she watched the woman disappear from view.

A queer feeling came over Lizzie all of a sudden. It was not like Betty to behave like that. Betty would never hide. And yet there was the sense that would come upon Lizzie from time to time that there was a dark side to that Highland strength. Lizzie turned to the stove where she was heating porridge for the children's breakfast. She laughed to herself as she stirred the pot with a wooden spoon. I am so silly to create mystery where there can be none, she thought. She looked into the oatmeal, which was beginning to erupt and sink back into little craters. It was almost the last of the oats, and the boat from the mainland was not due for many months. She worried about the islanders. They were starving and things were not good. Some of the children had bloated stomachs, and the old people were looking increasingly drawn and tired. Her husband told them to pray. He believed that Jesus Christ would save them, but she could sense that people were losing their faith.

Suddenly she dropped the spoon into the porridge and ran out of the manse without stopping for her shawl. Afterwards she wondered what it was that had made her act in that way. Had she heard something?

It took her a minute or two to reach the back of the feather store and the hole in the wall. Her hands were cupped over her pregnant stomach and her swollen feet hurt in her boots. There was no sound from within the building, and Lizzie felt an itchy sweat in her armpits. ‘Betty?' There was no reply. She stooped to enter the building and remembered the last time she had entered the feather store. She had stayed away from the building since. She felt sick and her throat contracted in panic. ‘Betty? Are you in here, dear?' Her eyes were not yet accustomed to the darkness. She could not hear anything but suddenly sensed a movement to her left. She fell to her knees and crawled along the floor until she felt a leg. The younger woman was slumped on the floor, seemingly unconscious. But as Lizzie's hands reached Betty's face she could feel that it was soaked in tears. ‘Oh, Betty . . .' She held her friend in her arms and felt a strange cord around the younger woman's neck; the texture was dry and a bit oily at the same time. She moved around so that some light fell on Betty's slumped body. The ligature around her neck had snapped.

‘It broke; they would not hold me,' Betty moaned feebly. ‘Oh, my babies!'

The wailing tore through Lizzie's heart. ‘Oh, Betty, what have you done? What is this?' She tore at the snare and tried to remove it from Betty's throat.

‘Leave it!' Betty's voice was suddenly fierce and she pulled herself away from Lizzie while clasping the cord. Her eyes were wild in the dusky light. She moaned again, ‘I thought they would help me, my babies, to come to them.'

Lizzie looked down at the end of the rope in her hands. It seemed to have been made of bits of some kind of organic mater­ial knotted together. Lizzie felt cold inside and swallowed to reduce the sick feeling that was rising in her. ‘What is this?' she asked again in a hoarse whisper.

‘I thought the life lines that we shared would take me to them. Through this cord they were attached to me, each one of them, and when they were born I failed them. I wanted to be pulled back to them . . .' Lizzie could not make out the rest of the sentence. She looked in horror at the dried umbilical cords in her hands. They had been preserved in oil and tied together, all six of them, into a rope that was about six feet long. What grief would drive a person to such madness? Carefully she moved closer to Betty and held her again in her arms. Betty's limp body rested heavily on her own pregnancy as she rocked her friend softly and cooed in her ear. ‘Shh, it is all right, oh, sweet Betty, it will be all right.' To herself she thought, Not Betty! Not Betty who was indestructible. On whom can I rely now?

In his study Mr MacKenzie stood by the window looking out over the bay. He was resting his forehead against the windowpane. The glass was slightly concave, which made the seascape wobble and buckle. He frowned as a lock of hair fell over his face. It was definitely grey, in this light he was sure of it; he was ageing. Perhaps he was already old. He shuddered at the thought and tried to recall his youth. How could it have left him so deviously without making him aware of its departure? How had he not been told?

The illness came upon him from time to time. At first it had merely been a vague nausea, a need to sit down and rest for a while. But slowly the headaches and dizziness had turned into migraines which would send him to bed in agony. At such moments it was as if somebody had crammed an iron helmet over his head, tightening it around his skull like an instrument from the sweltering chambers of the Inquisition. As he lay in his bed in still darkness the pain would bring to his eyes tears that would well and spill over his cheeks and into his ears. The noise of his children's gay voices would beat against his poor brain like steely waves against the winter rocks. His daughter Eliza was the only one allowed into the bedroom at such times. She would sometimes come and sit quietly by his bed and hold her cool little palms against his temples. But if he heard his wife at the door he would wipe his face on the pillow and pretend to be asleep. Behind his closed eyes volcanoes would erupt and red-hot lava would flow and fill the plains of blue and green. This was his predicament.
This is what they have reduced me to.

He watched his tired reflection in the glass a moment longer and then he sighed and closed his eyes. He stood and thought, his face resting heavily against the window.
Our heavens are brass and our earth is iron. I need to address their conscience in plain discourse and show them the difference between those who truly fear our Lord and those who are mere formalists and hypocrites. They must listen now. They must understand!
It was suddenly clear to him that what was needed was a revival of the senses – an outpouring of the Holy Ghost! He stood straight and snapped his fingers. Why had he not thought of this before? He reached his desk in two strides and pulled out sheets of paper and his inkwell. He pushed the fringe out of his eyes and smiled to himself.
Just when our faith is weakest the Lord shows us His power
. The timing was good, as the men were away on Soay for a few days and he knew from experience that the women were more easily persuaded.

He set to writing his sermon. He would start with explaining the meaning of the petition ‘Lead us not into temptation', and then, when he was sure they had understood, he would apply it in the most inspired way to their own consciences. He would describe in the most vivid colour what evils waited if they continued to give way to temptation and superstition. Ah, the demons and snakes of fire, the infernal torment! But oh, when they were thus terrified of the dangers to which they were exposed, he would turn their feeble thoughts to the power of the Saviour, the wise, powerful and merciful Christ who alone has the ability to save souls.

There was a knock on the door. Irritated, he looked up from his papers to see his wife enter the study.

‘Yes?' She stood there in the dull light. Her face was red and she seemed fat. Had he really touched that body enough to impregnate it? The thought suddenly repulsed him.

She remained by the door, with a hand under her stomach and the other against the doorpost.

‘Well?' His irritation was mounting. Had he not told her never to disturb him at work?

‘Something has got to be done, Neil; the islanders are suffering!' Her voice was strong and calm and she ignored the look in his eyes.

‘How so?' He yawned and stretched in his chair.

‘They are despairing. They have been too long without food and fuel and we cannot cope another year without additional supplies. Their minds are weakening.' She did not want to tell him about Betty. He must never know about what had happened. Lizzie had brought Betty back to her house and put her to bed. She was sleeping now after drinking a brew of St John's wort, but Lizzie had been terrified by the incident. How would they be able to stand against the storm if the strongest of them all could be crippled into such weakness?

To her surprise he sat up and smiled at her.