Island of Wings

by Karin Altenberg

  As the St Kildans assembled in the cool kirk the summer evening reigned outside. A bumblebee buzzed and bounced against a lancet window and the tide was swelling in the bay. The sweet peas that Mrs MacKenzie had planted in the garden scented the kirk air like incense from the east, mingling with the wild honeysuckle which spurted silently from cracks and crevices. Soon, however, a smell of fulmar oil and sweet sweat like bad carnations filled the room as the natives gathered in their summer best. The women had undone their waistbands and wore their gowns loose, flowing to the ground. The married women wore their mutchs, the frilly white muslin caps that indicated their status, under their tartan shawls. The men had cleaned their hands and faces, and their hair, which had been released from under their filthy caps, had been forced into submission with the aid of some unknown concoction, whose origin Lizzie did not want to contemplate. She was sitting at the head of the church next to the pulpit, watching the faces of her strange neighbours. She recognised them and knew all their names by now, but she still could not communicate with them. They in turn looked at her with unveiled curiosity. Lizzie felt awkward and clumsy and she was no longer pleased about her bonnet; she worried that the cluster of velvet pansies attached to the hatband might be slightly too garish. Her gaze fell on Marion Gilles, whose daughter Catherine had died of the eight-day illness at the end of March. The young woman looked pale and drawn. A small bouquet of St John’s wort was fastened to her shawl by a crude brooch. The flowers were past their prime and a few yellow petals had fallen and littered the woman’s dress. Next to Mrs Gilles, tightly holding her hand, sat Ann MacCrimmon, who was expecting her first child at the age of forty. Lizzie could feel the older woman searching her face and reluctantly she raised her head to meet her eyes. She regretted it immediately. Her own eyes told too much. Exposed, and unable to withdraw her gaze, she felt a sudden affinity that went beyond sympathy and gender. And as she looked into Ann MacCrimmon’s eyes she knew that the bird’s death had been necessary. She did not understand how or why, but the act itself was not threatening or alien. Lizzie felt now that of course she had known all along. This sacrifice could only be matched by the fear and foreboding that colour a woman’s dreams and thoughts as a new soul is about to break out of her body.

  At that moment the minister, who had been interrogating the maor, Donald MacKinnon, about the bird incident, entered the kirk from the passage behind the pulpit. His face was tired and saddened as he looked out over the congregation that he had begun to love. Silence fell over the rough timber pews and naked feet came to rest on the earthen floor. Some thought they heard their minister sigh.

  The Rev. Neil MacKenzie turned the pages of his Gaelic bible on the pulpit and read, his voice dry and intense:

  Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate Me; and showing mercy unto thousands of them that love Me and keep My commandments.

  He looked up and his eyes rested briefly on Ann MacCrimmon and Marion Gilles, who sat huddled together, before he resumed his sermon:

  You will recognise the second commandment from Exodus. It has come to my knowledge that there are people in your midst who believe that superstition may save your newborn children from the convulsive fits which often take their lives within eight days of their coming into this world. This plague, which haunts our island, does indeed seem to be a cruel trick of nature.

  But I tell you now that if you want to change your providence you must take heed of the heresy of superstition and image-worship. Our human nature is as prone to this sin as a river to run to the sea. It concerns us, therefore, to resist this sin. The plague of heresy is very infectious and it is my advice to you to avoid all occasions of this sin.

  You must avoid superstition, which is a bridge that leads over to Rome – to popery and idolatry. Superstition is bringing any ceremony, fancy, or innovation into God’s worship which He never appointed. It is provoking God, because it reflects much upon His honour, as if He were not wise enough to appoint the manner of His own worship. Superstition is Devil-worship!

  A sharp intake of breath was heard from the congregation, and Lizzie wondered what her husband had said.

  There are evil forces in existence that seek to destroy our souls and sanity. I see how you suffer from the childlessness that afflicts this island. You are isolated amid a hostile ocean, and your very existence in this place increases the spiritual vulnerability of your Christian lives. God holds His hand over those who suffer – His grip never fails – but do you honestly think that God will care for you in this secluded spot when you turn from Him to superstition and witchcraft?

  Hear what Paul saith to the Corinthians: ‘The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.’

  You must not be like these heathens who do not understand the glory of God. You must follow the righteous path. You must work hard and pray sincerely from the depths of your hearts. You must strive for purity and adhere to cleanliness – not just of the soul but of the body – for uncleanness is an evil that brings disease and pain.

  He ended the sermon with a short prayer. The parishioners clenched their hands tightly and bowed their heads in embarrassed submission to the Lord they were only just beginning to understand.

  *

  Later that evening Mr and Mrs MacKenzie sat by the table in the manse. A bruised sky had crept in over the island and a soft rain was falling on the mustard plant that stretched below the open window. Mrs MacKenzie was sewing a new waistcoat for her husband, who was reading from Adam Smith’s Moral Sentiments. A couple of candles were burning on the mantelpiece, spreading a thin carpet of slow light across the floor. He put the book down and listened to the rain.

  ‘The dread of pain makes us selfish. It is a naturally directed instinct to care first of all for ourselves and those we love. But those instincts do not foster a peaceful society. Do they not understand that it is the business of God, not man, to ensure universal happiness?’

  Lizzie assumed he was talking to her. ‘Eight out of ten children born on this island die of the cramps within eight days of their birth – as long as we are at ease we cannot begin to understand the hardships of these mothers!’ She had drawn strength from his weakness, but realised too late that he had not wanted her to answer his question.

  He looked at her in surprise. Perhaps he did not know his wife; the thought had not crossed his mind before.

  ‘It might be good to be able to suffer along with my subjects,’ he agreed, but remained unconvinced of the benefit of identifying with the emotions of others. At least he was magnanimous, a guider of spirits and soother of souls. ‘Do they understand that I have compassion for their misery?’

  ‘I am sure they will understand,’ she answered, as no one else could ease his mind, ‘but you must give them time. Your sermon will have made them ashamed of their actions – I could not understand its meaning, of course, but judging from your tone it was very harsh.’ She hesitated but as he did not object she continued, ‘They are impressionable and they seemed greatly upset by your reprimands. Perhaps next time you should focus more on the blessings of the Gospel?’ She did not want him to worry, but she felt a certain loyalty to Mrs MacCrimmon, whose eyes had shared their secrets with hers. She wished she could hold her husband’s head between her palms and stroke his temples, but the act would have been too large for the small room on this evening. Instead she continued stitching her love into his waistcoat. She made an effort to make every stitch equally perfect, although the light was poor.

  After a while she yawned an
d said she was going to bed. He nodded and smiled. Everything was all right then, although he wished that he could have remained a while longer looking at his wife sewing in the blue night.

  Two weeks later Mrs MacKenzie gave birth to twin girls. It all happened as it should. The old crone from the village was called to cut the umbilical cords from the tiny bodies and smear the stumps with bird grease. The first to be born was called Margaret. She seemed to be the stronger of the two. Jane slithered out of her mother in close succession, much to the surprise of the minister, who assisted at the birth. The old woman wrapped the girls in linen towels, but rather poorly as there was only enough linen for one baby. Lizzie was concerned that the girls were not washed before being wrapped but was too exhausted to do anything about it just then. She lay back on the pillows with a silent daughter in each arm. She could not help worrying about them, but soon they started feeding and she laughed with relief at their swollen lips and tiny hands that fumbled blindly at her breasts. The minister watched the scene of nativity as the gay sun fell through the window on to the blue-veined heads of his daughters. Their vulnerability was too great for him and he drew the curtains to shield them from the intruding light. But his wife smiled at him and said that the light was good for them, it would make them stronger. MacKenzie felt too large, his hand as it held a tiny foot seemed grotesque and he wondered how he was going to be able to keep his family safe.

  In the end, of course he could not. On the fourth day Jane gave up suckling, and after another day Margaret followed suit. They did not cry much but lay breathing with their eyes closed, head to foot in the pretty cot with the sprig of juniper carved by the workmen from Dunvegan. Lizzie tried to pour warm cow’s milk blended with a little whisky into their mouths, but after another day their gums were clenched together and it was impossible to get anything down their throats. Soon their bodies were ridden by convulsive fits. Wave upon wave of cramps would toss the girls as if they were riding out a great storm at sea. The little bodies seemed to struggle against excessive torments until, on the eighth day, their strength was exhausted. Jane, who was the weaker, died first, in one breath, one moment, one life. Margaret struggled on for another three hours before she too gave up and joined her sister, just after midday on the sixth day of August.

  Perhaps now I will be able to pray, Lizzie thought, and maybe they will be saved.

  The minister went to the Point of Coll. He shouted soundlessly into the waves, and his knees were bloodied on the rocks as he bit at his prayers: ‘Lord, why did you have to take Margaret and Jane? Why did you take their brother, Nathaniel? I continually ask You forgiveness for my sins. I serve You as faithfully as I can. My children were innocent, Lord. Do not let them suffer for the sins of their parents. I am weak and unworthy, I know, and the children were the fruits of my lust. But their souls were white and pure. Did You not see their beauty? What suffering do I need to endure in order to redeem myself for William’s death? Would not one death have been enough?’

  He realised this was not the way to speak to the God he had chosen to serve, and he slumped wretchedly on the rocks. He wanted the world to make sense, and as he lay there, with the waves sighing miserably around him, it occurred to him that God wanted him to suffer with the islanders and become their equal. Had he not told Lizzie only a few weeks ago, after the incident with the tortured bird, that it might be good to suffer with his subjects? He shuddered in admiration of God’s omnipotence. He had been too proud, that must be it! He had not been humble enough, and God had exercised justice. It was cruelly perfect, and the minister thanked his Lord for revealing this mystery to him.

  A group of women had gathered outside the manse as the minister returned. They looked at his trousers, which were torn and bloodied at the knees, and the shirt which was ruffled and dirty, but MacKenzie had known the lowest depth and could not be ashamed.

  Mrs MacKenzie was sitting impassively by the cradle. Somebody had covered the girls so that their faces, frozen and deformed in the last, monstrous cramps of the eight-day illness, could not be seen. Marion Gilles was standing by Lizzie’s side stroking her hair, but the latter did not seem to notice. She looked up as her husband entered the room. ‘I want them to have a proper burial,’ she said factually. ‘With a coffin each,’ she added. He looked at her with greater compassion than his heart could afford to waste. ‘Of course I would like that too, but you know there is no wood on the island,’ he answered carefully. ‘I don’t care – I will find some myself if I have to!’ Lizzie cried, and stood up. Marion Gilles looked questioningly at the minister, who said a few words to her in Gaelic. She nodded sadly and left the room. Mr MacKenzie put his arms around his struggling wife to calm her. ‘Why?’ she cried softly now against his shoulder. ‘I don’t know, my love,’ he said, because he could not tell her the truth, ‘but God will answer our prayers.’ He knew that sounded weak but could not yet admit to her that the children had died because of his shortcomings. ‘I want the coffins,’ she demanded childishly. ‘Yes, yes,’ he soothed her, ‘but our loss is not greater than the loss of the other parents on the island, and there just isn’t any timber that can be spared for coffins.’ Then, as if it would somehow make a difference to her grief, he added, ‘I will ask the taxman to bring some when we see him next.’ She knew of course that he was right. She also knew that her grief could not be important – that she was insignificant in all this.

  A couple of the local women, including Marion Gilles, came back that evening to wash and shroud the twins. Lizzie managed to smile gratefully at them and wondered if she would have found the right words to express her feelings if she had known their language. The women served her tea brewed with St John’s wort and she slept exhausted through the night. As she got up to fetch some water from the well the following morning the door struck something as she tried to open it. She pushed carefully and stepped on to the porch. There on the stone step in front of her lay two small wooden coffins. She knelt down to examine them. They were quite crude and of varying dimensions and they had been put together from odd bits of wood; the sides were partly constructed from a barrel and the lids contained fragments of washed-out driftwood whitened by salt. One of the coffins contained the wooden sole of a fisherman’s boot, and the other one part of a wooden plate.

  Lizzie remained on her knees. She recognised this generous gesture by the St Kildans whom she had tried so hard to avoid getting to know. A group of children were peeping around the corner of the manse, shuffling and hushing. ‘Did you make these?’ she asked with tears in her eyes. ‘Thank you, oh, thank you so much – they are truly beautiful!’

  The funeral service was brief. All the St Kildans – except for Mrs MacCrimmon, whose labours had started – turned up to the unmarked grave site as the makeshift coffins which sheltered the tiny bodies of Margaret and Jane were lowered into the ground. As her husband offered the souls of their daughters to God Lizzie thought of the tortured gull. Her husband had told her that the women on the island hated the black-backed gull as they somehow connected it with the death of their children. The women would often take a gull’s egg and suck out its contents, only to replace it so that the gull would roost on an empty shell for the rest of the summer. Lizzie, still struggling to believe in the God who had taken her girls away, wished that she too could free her mind and create a mythology of her own like the St Kildan women had done. She wished that she could find some sense to her situation.

  The morning after the burial she rose early and dressed in her plain blue dress and straw bonnet. She packed a basket with some bread and a few apples. MacKenzie was astounded. ‘Where are you going?’ He needed her close and unchanged.

  ‘I am going to visit Mrs MacCrimmon – she must have had her child by now,’ she answered determinedly.

  ‘But you don’t know where she lives.’ He was dumbfounded. ‘I will take you there if you like.’

  ‘Thank you, dear, I would rather go on my own.�
�� She was out the door before he could say anything more. The sea mist was rolling in over the island like the smoke of a spent battle. Soon it closed around her until she walked in a void. The fog muffled all sound and she was completely on her own. There was only one single element and she had entered it as if it were a liminal place, a place of transition from one world to another. She knew that she was tempting fate, but she was not frightened; she could still make out the path to the village under her feet. This is where I belong, she thought. My heart broke and split in two equal parts for my girls. Nothing will ever be the same again; I will never be what I was. I have shed a layer of my soul like a snake and I must be naked until I find new life – until I can bring new birth. This island is my home now, and I must enter its cycle where everything comes again, light and dark, storm and stillness, life and death, again and forever. Shapes were moving in the fog; cold, damp hands were stroking her cheeks and her brow. As she looked up she saw the forms of her dead children walking beside her. They had grown up, and she was grateful to them for showing themselves as they would have become.

  When she reached the clachan she put out her free hand to follow a wall until she heard voices and walked in their direction. A dog which did not recognise her barked, catching the attention of two men a couple of yards ahead of her whose features she could only just make out. ‘MacCrimmon?’ she asked softly so as not to break the spell of the mist. The two men, their fair hair curled into pelt by the moisture in the air, looked at her in astonishment. ‘Ann MacCrimmon?’ she asked again, and showed the basket in her hand. One of the men indicated to her to follow him and led her to the wooden door of a nearby dwelling. Mrs MacKenzie stopped for a moment to gather herself. She ner­vously tucked some straying hair under the bonnet and knocked on the door. She could hear no answer from within so she opened the door on to the dark passage. The stench was more than she could bear and she took a step back. However, she had not come unprepared and she pulled out a handkerchief dabbed in lavender water which she had kept up the sleeve of her dress. With the handkerchief pressed over her nose and mouth and with the basket held out in front of her like a shield, she stooped to enter the house. When she reached the dark byre at the end of the passage somebody caught her arm and helped her across the tallan into the room where a weak fire was burning in the pit on the floor, casting strange shadows around the rough stone walls. Mrs MacKenzie pulled the handkerchief from her face and tucked it under the neckline of her dress where she could still smell it. It was hard to say who was more shocked by the situation, the guest who had never been in one of the native houses before or the hosts who had never before received a lady in their midst. Mr MacCrimmon, who was the person who had helped Lizzie into the room, was the first to come to terms with the unusual situation. He greeted her formally in Gaelic, and Lizzie, who could think of no other way to reply, bowed gently. ‘I have come with a gift for the mother and child,’ she said, and showed the basket. A number of people were seated on the floor of the house; Lizzie recognised Catriona and Niall, two of the children of Mr MacCrimmon’s first wife, who had died in childbirth ten years previously. Marion Gilles was there, along with a few other young married women. Ann MacCrimmon was sitting close to the fire with a baby in her arms. The baby was so new to the world that it could barely open its eyes. Lizzie was suddenly shy and blushed, but Mrs MacCrimmon smiled at her and somebody pulled a chest up to the fire for Lizzie to sit on. She sat down, grateful not to have to squat on the floor which was covered in all sorts of horrors. Mrs MacCrimmon showed her the baby, a little boy, and said his name, Iain. She shook her head sadly and made a gesture to indicate that he was not feeding properly. Lizzie did not reply as there was nothing for her to say, but she sat quietly listening to the soot dripping from the damp ceiling. More than anything else she wanted this boy to survive, and she could feel that the women who had assembled in the room had all forgotten their separate griefs and pains; they were all praying wordlessly to their own gods and spirits for the survival of this golden boy. For every baby who survived was a gift to the community; every child who lived ensured the continuation of the way of life as they knew it; and every mortality – although often accepted as providence – was a threat to their future and a manifestation of the curse that seemed to be endemic to their island.