Island of Wings Read online

  Oh dear, she thought to herself, I did not handle that very well. Her gay mood was gone, but her determination to reach the ridge remained as strong as before. She wondered how long she had been gone from the manse. She was beginning to feel thirsty and tired, but the summit of the ridge was close now. At that moment the puppy barked pathetically at a couple of large brown skuas nesting amongst the rocks. Lizzie rushed towards the dog as her husband had warned her about the hot temper of the nesting birds. Too late she grabbed the puppy by the neck and slapped its nose, but the birds were already roused and once in the air they started diving towards her with mounting aggressiveness. She screamed in horror as one of the birds swooped close over her head. Its partner, however, dived even deeper and caught a strand of her hair in its claws. Livid with fright, she beat her arms in the air and started running down the hill, stumbling on the scree. The birds were relentless; their shrieking war cries rang through the air and Lizzie screamed again as one of them hit her face with its wing and tore a thin line of blood along her cheek. She slithered and hobbled down the broom-covered rocks. She tried to lean back to stem her speed and stop the inevitable fall, but her legs got caught in her petticoats and she tripped. She was lucky to fall on to a patch of grass, but as she stumbled forwards and rolled down the slope she felt a sharp pain where her left shin hit a stone. At least the stone stopped her fall and she got up, panting, on her hands and knees.

  Lizzie looked up; the fulmars were still dotting the sky above her, but the skuas were gone. She pulled up her skirts to examine her leg. The stone had cut a hole through her stockings and she was bleeding, but she was able to move the leg all right. Her palm had been slashed as she tried to stop the fall and the wound was dark with dirt. The puppy came up to her and tried to lick her face. She hated it now: a stupid mindless creature which had stirred the nesting birds. She shooed it away, cursing.

  As she started her slow descent she could feel that something was not right. She felt weak and she noticed that her underthings were wet and sticky. A new terror possessed her and she tried to speed up her steps. Oh please, God, don’t let this happen now, she begged. The time is not right! When she reached the glen with the enclosure she was already exhausted and stopped to rest her back against a stone wall. The bright day was blackening in front of her eyes and she tried to steady herself with both hands holding on to the wall behind her. It was all terribly wrong – she could feel that things were not as they should be. She tried to call out for her husband but knew it was in vain, and in any case her voice was too weak to lift on the wind. And then she screamed as the most excruciating pain tore at her intestines. ‘O God,’ she cried in a hoarse voice at the silent skies, ‘please help me.’ She had never experienced such agony and bent over when another wave of torment broke through her.

  As the pain subsided she could not believe that this was happening to her. She thought she heard voices and stumbled forwards a few steps to call out. But when the pain returned, the world around her darkened again and she made out the face of the boy she had met earlier and behind him a short, bearded man running towards her.

  When she awoke a candle burned low on a small table beside the bed. The room was quiet and long shadows fell into the corners. Lizzie was aching but she could not have said where – she felt calm and sedated. Her throat was dry and she was desperate for a drink of water. As she turned her head on the pillow she saw an old woman in a chair next to the bed. The woman got up and moved closer. Her eyes were blue and her hair was grey under the white frill of her cap. She smelled of unwashed clothes and fulmar oil and her hands were claw-like in the candlelight. Lizzie tried to protest as the claws moved closer and pushed her gently back on to the pillow. The old woman held a cup of water to her mouth and Lizzie surrendered and drank greedily. The drink seemed to clear her mind, but as she started to remember she closed her eyes hard in an effort to forget. But she could not ignore her limp body under the sheets; nor did she need to touch the pain to know the empty wound under her heart.

  ‘Where is my baby?’ she asked the old woman. ‘Did my child live?’ she added urgently, her voice thick with dread. Lizzie looked into the pale blue eyes of the old woman as she was told, in a language which she could not – and would not – understand, that her child was dead.

  The next time she woke the old woman was gone and her husband was holding her hand. For a moment, before he noticed that she was awake, she saw the dark sea of grief on his face. Then she stirred and he held her close saying, ‘Oh, Lizzie, I am so, so sorry.’ She clung to him desperately and after a while she managed to ask, ‘Our child – was it a boy or a girl, Neil? Was it complete like a child should be?’

  ‘It was a beautiful little boy,’ he answered, his face turned away. ‘He lived long enough to hear the sacraments and be baptised into the Christian faith. But he was too small to see the world; he never opened his eyes,’ he added weakly.

  They held each other quietly but without being able to share much comfort, destitute even of each other, until she realised what she had forgotten to ask: ‘What name did you give to our son?’

  ‘I called him Nathaniel, as he was a gift of God,’ her husband answered, and she repeated the name once or twice to herself. He looked at her and cleared his throat. ‘Our little boy was not allowed to stay with us. He is with God and we must be happy for him.’ His minister’s voice sounded impersonal as if he was not talking about his own child, but then he added, almost inaudibly, ‘Although it is hard to accept that we let him slip away.’

  She cried then, and for the first time since setting foot on the island she allowed self-pity to overcome her. She cried for the boy Nathaniel, who had slipped out of her and whom she had never seen, she cried for the ache in her swelling breasts and empty womb and she cried for her impossible loneliness.

  It was almost dawn when Neil MacKenzie left his wife asleep in their bed and went into his study. He sat down at his desk and looked out the window at the bay which was barely distinguishable between the night and the day. He was trying to understand the events of the previous afternoon. Had God wanted to punish him? For what – for Will’s death? Had he not tried to redeem himself by giving his life to the Church, by coming to this place where no one else was willing to go to preach the Gospel? He sighed and pulled out a leather-bound notebook from one of the desk drawers. In the ashy morning he dipped his pen in the well of Perth ink and drew a horizontal line. Below this he continued to draw two vertical lines next to the margin. He paused before making his first entry of birth and death into the parish book of St Kilda: ‘1830,’ he put next to the margin, and just below, at the top of the first column, ‘July 18,’ and in the next column, ‘Nathaniel of N. MacKenzie, missionary. Infant.’

  2

  MAY 1831 – A VISIT

  The wind was in from the west, and life in Village Bay was still on the lee side. A group of children were playing on the thin strip of sandy beach exposed by the ebb tide. Their cries and laughter glittered in the clear spring morning. An eider sailed past the rocks in the shallows, proud of her clever chicks which were towed after her in an erratic, downy line. Further out in Village Bay gannets were dropping into the sea, their necks stretched like feathered arrows as they pierced the surface of the waves.

  The adult men and mongrel dogs had all gone off fowling on the sheer cliffs on the north-east side of the island. Their new minister, who had been on the island for barely a year, had accompanied them on the expedition as he took a keen interest in watching the cragsmen catching the fulmar. May was the most important season of the year to the fowler as the fulmar and many other manners of seabirds were hatching all over the grassy ledges on the sea cliffs of Hirta.

  In the manse the minister’s young wife was busy with the spring cleaning. Every now and again she would sit down to rest between a bucket and a broom. Although the new baby was not due until the end of the summer, she was a lot heavier than during her p
regnancy the previous spring.

  After the premature birth and death of the boy Nathaniel, Mr and Mrs MacKenzie had not talked of him again. The memories of the child who had been too small to live were hidden in the shadowy corners of the manse, buried amongst the futile daily chores of its inhabitants. During the black months when the island had been unyielding and desolate, when all the birds were gone and the natives had retreated into their burrows, the MacKenzies, who were convinced that their separate griefs were insignificant, had pretended to each other that they had almost forgotten the death of their child. They had talked about practical matters and of their friends and family on the mainland, but for much of the time they had been quiet, smiling vaguely at each other in the dusty light from the fire. Winter followed autumn almost unnoticed, in the same way that dusk was merely a darkening of each gloomy day. The island was thus empty of life, and the fierce Atlantic gales that swept across the crags and glens week after week, month after month, increased the isolation of the couple in the manse. When their need for closeness and their longing to be loved was too great they would sneak around each other like cats around a plate of hot milk, snatching at tenderness. Their shared misery, which was too great to convey, made them shy and kept them apart until, at last, they were united again by truth and silence. It must have been around this time that their new child was conceived.

  Just before Christmas, after a period of paralysis and dark moods, the minister had thrown himself into his work. He organised Bible classes at least once a week and often gave two or more sermons on the Sabbath. In addition, he started a day school for the children in order to teach them reading, writing and arithmetic. He would regularly visit their dwellings in the clachan to test the natives on the shorter catechism, and many of them had practised it at home throughout the winter. Hibernating half underground, the St Kildan men and women spun, weaved and made clothes from the wool of the Soay sheep. In the twilight, disguised by the smoke that escaped from the hearth and clung to the low ceiling, the reciting of the catechism was intermingled with the singing of the old songs.

  As she swept the floor on this May morning Lizzie stirred up whiffs of grief and unexpressed emotion, of silent love and words not spoken. She swept them out of the open door into the spring air, into the smell of new life and secret decay which was blended into the sunlit space between the stunted lilac and the sea-struck hawthorn which grew on either side of the porch.

  The unfortunate puppy had grown into an anxious young dog eager for Lizzie’s love and friendship. It had no purpose and it still had no proper name. The letter which Lizzie had started to her sister had never been sent. She was still in bed – due to her injured leg and low spirits, it was generally agreed – when the taxman called a month later to collect the last of the rents. No ship had been sighted since.

  Now, at the end of May, the supplies of flour, sugar, tea and tobacco were running low and the St Kildans craved news from the world outside their own. Over the winter months Lizzie had begun to think that the name Dog suited her animal just fine. Her own language, which she had taken for granted, had become precious and rare to her. As no one on the island, except for her husband, understood anything she said it was almost as if she spoke a secret language. Dog was therefore a highly appropriate name for the only other creature on the island that seemed to understand English.

  Dog had been greatly alarmed by the return of the seabirds in early spring which so delighted his braver cousins. He had cowered under the desk in the study with his preposterous paws folded on top of his nose. For two days on end he stayed there, failing in his genetically ordained purpose, as the noise of the gathering birds grew stronger and stronger. Perhaps somewhere in his poor mind lingered a memory of the two great skuas he had roused the previous summer. Lizzie, on the other hand, had been pleased to see the birds returning. Although she had found the seabirds hateful and frightening when she first arrived on the island, the silent winter had been equally unbearable. But spring was different – suddenly everything was alive again – man, bird and beast were so closely linked with the elements in this place that the very seasons seemed to depend on their fusion.

  Spring also brought a dangerous glimmer of expectation. As the birds busied themselves making their nests and hatching amongst the forbidding rocks Lizzie refused to allow herself to hope for the birth of the child she knew by heart; the child inside her who was nearly the same age as the boy Nathaniel had been when he was brought forth to light and death – when she had let him slip away. She withdrew from this new mystery; she did not stroke her growing stomach, she did not whisper to it at night and she did not talk to it during the day, but she knew that the little heart which was beating stronger as spring progressed was communicating with her own.

  Through the open door Lizzie heard excited cries from the children playing on the beach. She looked out to find them pointing towards the sea. She stepped on to the porch and turned to scan the horizon and there, far out on the waves, she could see a small sailing vessel tacking against the westerly. It looked almost comic, like a dimple in the great flesh of the Atlantic. The commotion on the beach was increasing as the children debated how to handle the situation. In the end the younger ones rushed up towards the cluster of houses to break the news to the women while a couple of the older boys set off towards the passage beyond the small glen to tell the cragsmen on the other side of the hill. The boat was making slow progress – it would be a good hour before it reached the wind shadow of Village Bay.

  Lizzie could feel a new excitement rise in her as she watched the small vessel tossing on the waves. She wondered who it might be and prayed silently that whoever it was would speak her language. To hear English spoken would surely break her sense of seclusion. She went back inside, removed her apron and put the broom down behind the door.

  She washed her hands and face in the bucket she had drawn from the spring and went into the bedroom to look in the mirror. Her complexion was fresh, her cheeks pink from the morning’s activities and her eyes were swift and dark, but her hair was as unruly as ever. She lifted her arms to unfasten the coil at the nape of her neck and brushed the hair slowly until it shone, illuminated by the faceted light which was breaking in the salt crystals on the window panes. Then she arranged it again in the fashion that young ladies had worn in Paisley before she left the mainland. She put a thin lace shawl over the shoulders of her plain dress of navy cotton and fastened it with the silver and amethyst brooch which her husband had given her when he was courting her. She looked in her box of ribbons for a silk one to tie around the waist of her dress, choosing a broad purple one to go with the amethysts. She returned to the mirror, and this time she was not too displeased with her appearance in the dull glass.

  Lizzie was still lingering there, dreamy with her own reflection and memories of other times when she had dressed up, for balls and dances, when the minister entered the manse a moment later, flushed from his walk across the hill. ‘It looks like we will be getting visitors!’ he called cheerfully. Looking at his wife from the doorway he realised that he may be bringing old news. He smiled at her and added quickly, ‘And they are sure to be much impressed by the beauty of the minister’s wife!’ She blushed, feeling blood and life returning to her face as he kissed her briefly but softly on the forehead.

  ‘Who do you think they are?’ she asked, unable to hide the high-pitched excitement in her voice.

  ‘I do not know,’ he answered thoughtfully. ‘The boys who brought the message thought it was the taxman, but John Gilles, who returned with me from the rocks, tells me the vessel is too small to belong to the laird’s representative – our visitors seem to be independent travellers.’

  ‘Surely we will need to host them in the manse,’ she said pleadingly, almost desperately. ‘We cannot let them stay in the hamlet amongst the filth of the natives!’

  The minister looked slightly put off by this remark. ‘Our friend
s in the clachan may seem primitive to you, but they are most hospitable; they have been putting up strangers for thousands of years,’ he said sharply, but added, ‘but of course it is my duty as minister to invite any gentleman visitors to stay with us.’

  Lizzie ignored his rebuke and looked anxiously around the room, which was fresh and pleasant after the spring cleaning. ‘I will prepare a luncheon – we will have to roast a few of the puffins which the old widow gave you a couple of days ago,’ she exclaimed agitatedly. ‘What else can we offer these strangers?’ she asked herself anxiously. ‘Our supplies are so low there is hardly any fresh fare, except for the birds that the men caught this morning, and it would be too inhuman to serve them the gibean!’

  ‘If the gibean is good enough for us it will be good enough for our guests,’ said Mr MacKenzie sternly.

  Lizzie gave no answer. Gibean was the most common meal on St Kilda and, to her, the least palatable – being comprised of the fat extracted from boiled fulmar mixed with that of the young gannet. This grey matter was eaten with rye bread and porridge and considered greatly nutritious by the natives. They were much attached to their concoction, and one of them who had taken ill while visiting Harris claimed that it was due to the absence of gibean.