Entry Island (19 page)

He gazed for some minutes at the photograph, before running his fingertips lightly over the glass and replacing it on the table. And he wondered if, like Norman Morrison, he was becoming a little obsessed with her.

The patrolman popped his head around the kitchen door to say goodnight, and Sime watched him from the window as he made his way across the grass in the dark. Although the big house was lit up like a Christmas tree and he could sit and watch TV, Sime did not envy him his job. It was a dead man’s house, and while the body was gone, his spirit remained in every item of furniture, in the clothes that still hung in his closet, in his blood that stained the floor.

‘Where do you mean to sleep?’

Sime spun around, startled. He hadn’t heard her on the stair. She was showered and changed, her hair still damp, and she wore a black silk dressing gown embroidered with colourful Chinese dragons.

‘The settee is fine,’ he said. ‘I won’t sleep.’

She padded through to the kitchen to put the kettle on, and called back through the open door. ‘I’m making tea, do you want any?’

‘What kind?’

‘Green tea with mint.’

‘Sure.’

She came through a couple of minutes later with two steaming mugs and placed one on the coffee table next to the settee for Sime. She took hers to the armchair in the pool of light and folded her legs beneath her as she cradled her mug in her hands, as if cold.

‘Well, this is strange,’ she said.

He sat down on the settee and took a sip of his tea, nearly scalding his lips. ‘Is it?’

‘The hunter and his prey calling a truce for the night and sharing a nice cup of tea.’

Sime was stung. ‘Is that how you see me? As a hunter?’

‘Well, I certainly feel hunted. Like you’ve already decided I’m guilty and it’s only a matter of time before you’ll wear me down and catch me out. I have a picture in my mind of a lion and a gazelle. Guess which one I am.’

‘I’m just—’

‘I know,’ she interrupted him. ‘Doing your job.’ She paused. ‘And I’m just someone who saw her husband stabbed to death. I haven’t slept since.’

‘Well, then, we have that in common at least.’

She cast him a curious glance. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I haven’t slept in weeks.’ As soon as he spoke he regretted it, but it was too late to take it back.

‘Why?’

He just shrugged. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘Something to do with the break-up of your marriage?’ She had gone straight to it and he felt almost guilty. Losing your wife did not fall into quite the same category as seeing your husband brutally murdered.

‘Forget it,’ he said. And he changed the subject. ‘Did you ever find that pendant?’

‘No.’ She gazed thoughtfully into her mug. ‘No, I didn’t. But I have noticed that there are other things I can’t find.’

He replaced his mug on the coffee table, his interest piqued. ‘Such as?’

‘Oh, little things. A cheap bracelet I got as a student. A couple of hair clips, a pair of earrings. Nothing very valuable. And maybe I’ve just mislaid them, but I can’t seem to find them.’

‘Might they not be over in the other house?’

But as if she had decided that she wanted simply to drop the subject, she just shrugged. ‘Maybe.’ But he knew she didn’t believe that. Then, ‘You don’t really think I’m in danger, do you?’

‘From Norman Morrison?’

‘Yes.’

He shook his head. ‘Not really, no. But the lieutenant doesn’t want to take any chances.’

Although she had not nearly finished her tea, she stood up then and carried her mug towards the kitchen, but stopped next to the settee to look at him. ‘Why are you the one they left to watch over me?’

‘I volunteered.’

The merest widening of her eyes was the only sign of her surprise. ‘Why?’

‘Because I knew there was no danger of me falling asleep.’

She held his eye for a long moment, then broke contact and went into the kitchen. He heard her pouring her tea down the sink and rinsing out her mug, then she turned out the light and went through to the back bedroom. A few moments later she appeared with a single white duvet and a pillow. She laid the duvet over the back of the settee and dropped the pillow beside him. ‘Just in case,’ she said. ‘Goodnight.’

The light in the stairwell went out when she’d climbed to the landing. He heard her move across the floor above him, and the creak of her bed as she slipped into it. He flirted momentarily with the thought of her naked between cool sheets, but quickly forced it from his mind.

He sat for a long time in the half-light cast by the reading lamp before getting up to cross the room and switch it off. He went to lock the front door then and turn on the outside light in the porch before going through to lock the back door. Locking doors, he knew, was anathema on the island, but he was not going to take any risks.

He went back to the settee and took off his shoes, then lay along the length of it, his head propped on the pillow she had left. The light from the porch shone through the windows, casting long shadows across the room. By its reflection
he picked out the cracks and dimples on the ceiling that would become his focus during the long sleepless hours ahead.

From time to time he heard her turning over and wondered if she, too, was failing to find sleep. There was an odd sense of intimacy in his being here, so close to her as she lay in her bed just above him. And yet there could hardly be a greater gulf between them.

After a while he began to feel cold. The heating had gone off, and the temperature outside was dropping. He reached up and pulled the duvet over himself. Its softness enveloped him, and he felt his own warmth reflecting back from it. He took a long, slow breath and closed aching eyes. He thought about his ring. And the pendant.
Don’t let her fuck with your mind
, Crozes had said to him. But somehow he believed her about the pendant.

He tried to remember if his father had ever made mention of the ring. Where it had come from. Why it was important. But he had never paid enough attention to family stories. About their Scottish roots. His heritage. Sime had been too busy fitting in. Being a Quebecois, speaking French. All that had really stayed with him were those stories his grandmother had read from the diaries, still so vivid, even after all these years.

It is raining. A fine, wetting rain, almost like a mist. A smirr. It blows in off the sea on the edge of a wind that would cut you in two.

I am with my father. But we are gripped by fear, and running crouched along the line of the hill behind and beyond Baile Mhanais, where it dips down towards the sea loch that I know as Loch Glas. My clothes are soaked and I am almost numb with the cold. I am not sure of my age, but I’m not much older now than when Kirsty and I first kissed by the standing stones beyond the beach.

My father’s old torn cloth cap is pulled down low above his eyes, and I see how black they are as he looks back over his shoulder. ‘For God’s sake keep down, boy. If they see us they’ll come after us, and put us on the boat, too.’

We reach an outcrop of rocks almost buried by peat at the top of the hill. And splashing through a stream in spate, we throw ourselves down into the wet grass behind them. I can hear voices carried on the wind. Men shouting. We crawl forward on our bellies, until we have a view down the slope to
the shore of Loch Glas, and the village of Sgagarstaigh with its little stone jetty.

My eye is caught at once by the tall, three-masted sailing ship anchored out in the loch. And by the crowd of villagers on the quayside. Before my attention is drawn to the smoke and flames that rise up from the village itself.

The paths between the blackhouses are littered with furniture and other household debris. Sheets and prams, broken crockery, children’s toys. A group of men swarms from house to house, shouting and yelling. They carry flaming torches with which they set light to the doors and roof thatch of the houses.

My horror and confusion is absolute, and it is only the restraining arm of my father that stops me from getting to my feet and shouting out in protest. I watch in total stupefaction as the men, women and children of the village are herded on to the jetty by constables in uniform wielding long wooden batons. There are boys I was at school with being struck across the arms and legs by those stout ash truncheons. Women and girls, too. Kicked and punched. They have with them, it seems, only such belongings as they have been able to carry from their homes. And I see for the first time the rowing boat ferrying its human cargo from the jetty to the tall ship.

Finally I find my voice. ‘What’s happening?’

My father’s own voice is grim as he responds through clenched teeth. ‘They’re clearing Sgagarstaigh.’

‘Clearing Sgagarstaigh of what?’

‘Of people, son.’

I shake my head, perplexed. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘They’ve been clearing folk off the land all over the Highlands ever since the government defeated the Jacobites at Culloden.’

‘Jacobites?’

My father glares at me in exasperation. ‘Jesus, son, did they teach you nothing at school?’ Then he shakes his head angrily. ‘Aye, right enough, maybe they wouldn’t. They say that history is only written by the victors.’ He raises his head, drawing phlegm into his mouth, and spitting into the flow of water that tumbles down the hill. ‘But I heard it from my father, who heard it from his. And now you’re hearing it from me.’

A cheer, carried to us on the edge of the rain, draws our eyes back to the chaos unravelling below, and we see that the roof of one of the blackhouses has fallen in, sending a shower of sparks into the air to be carried off in the wind.

My father turns back to me. ‘The Jacobites were supporters of the Stuart kings that once ruled Scotland and England, son. Just about a hundred years ago there was an uprising all across the Highlands. Jacobites who wanted to restore the Stuarts to the throne. With the Young Pretender, Prince Charlie, at their head, they marched south and came within striking distance of London. But in the end they were driven back, and finally crushed at a place called Culloden, near
Inverness.’ He sucked in a long, slow breath and shook his head. ‘It was a slaughter, son. And afterwards, the government sent a battalion of criminals from English jails on a rampage through the Highlands. They killed Gaelic speakers and raped their women. And in London the government passed laws that made it illegal to wear the kilt or play the bagpipes. If you spoke the Gaelic in a court of law you were deemed not to have spoken at all, and so there was no way of getting justice.’

It is the first time I have heard any of this, and I feel a growing sense of outrage.

‘The government wanted to destroy the old clan system, so there could never be another uprising. They bribed some of the old clan chiefs, and sold off the estates of others to wealthy Lowlanders and Englishmen. And the new breed of lairds, like Guthrie, and Matheson, and Gordon of Clunie, wanted the people off their land. You see, sheep are more profitable than people, son.’

‘Sheep?’

‘Aye, they want to turn over all the land to sheep.’

‘But how can they do that?’

My father’s laugh was full of bitterness and no humour at all. ‘The landowners can do what they like, boy. They have the law on their side.’

I shake my head. ‘But … how?’

‘Because the law is made to keep the powerful in power, and the rich wealthy. As well as the poor in poverty. Tenants
like us can barely survive on what we produce on our crofts. Well, you know that! But it doesn’t stop us having to pay rent, even though we have no money. So the landlords issue notices of eviction. If we can’t pay up we get thrown off. Burned out of our homes so we can’t go back to them. Forced on to boats and sent off across the sea to Canada and America. That way they’re rid of us once and for all. The bastards even pay our passage. Some of them. They must reckon it’s cheap at the price.’

I find it hard to take in everything my father is saying. I am bewildered. I had always thought that Baile Mhanais and everything I know here would be for ever. ‘But what if you don’t want to go?’

‘Pfah!’ My father’s contempt explodes from his mouth like spittle. ‘You don’t have any choice, son. Your life is not your own. Like I’ve told you before, the laird owns the land and everything on it. And that includes us.’ He removes his cap to sweep his hair back from his forehead before pulling it back on again. ‘Even under the old clan chiefs. If they wanted us to go and fight in whatever war they’d given their support to, we had to drop everything and march off to battle. Give them our lives. Even if it was for some bloody cause that meant nothing to us.’

More shouts from below draw our attention.

‘Jesus,’ my father almost whispers. ‘The poor buggers are jumping off the ship now.’

We crawl a little further around the rock to get a better
view, and I see two men in the water, and a third jumping from the deck of the tall ship after them. The rowing boat is halfway between the ship and the shore, and laden with another load of villagers. So it can’t go after them.

The men who have jumped ship strike out for shore, swimming for their lives. But the water is choppy in the wind, and icy cold. I see one of the men struggling now, splashing frantically, before he vanishes beneath the surface. And he is gone, and doesn’t reappear. I find it hard to believe I am lying here on the hillside, not half an hour from my own home, watching a man drown in the loch as hundreds of people look on.

A quiet, slow-burning anger takes root inside of me. ‘Are you telling me it’s our own laird, Sir John Guthrie, who’s doing this?’ I say.

‘Aye, son, it is. He’s been clearing villages all up the west coast this last year.’ He turns to look at me. ‘I reckon if it wasn’t for you saving his daughter’s life all those years ago, Baile Mhanais would have been long gone, too.’

The two others who jumped ship reach shore below us. One of them can barely stand, and is easy prey for the group of half a dozen constables who detach themselves from the rest and run around the loch’s edge. They are on him in a moment, batons rising and falling in the rain, beating him to the ground.