by Louise Welsh
Eventually they had realised that, although the islands were small, it would take years to fumigate them. The longer they left the dead, rotting in their houses, the greater the danger from disease. In the end they had agreed to burn down the capital of the island, Kirkwall. They had given themselves two weeks to strip the place of useful goods. Stevie had assigned herself to a team clearing the library. They had loaded the books willy-nilly onto vans, not bothering to distinguish by title. Who could say what would prove useful? A detective novel might spark a thought process that inspired the invention of a new form of fuel; a cookery book might spawn a cure for bronchitis.
A fortnight had not been long enough. They had allowed another week’s grace to ransack the place. Then one of their party had caught what might have been typhoid and died. The rest of the survivors had dosed themselves with antibiotics, built a firewall around the cathedral and set the capital ablaze. It had burned for days. Plumes of smoke had reached as far as Stromness and ash had drifted across the island, causing the survivors to fear they might be spreading the diseases they had hoped to avoid. But the worst thing had been the smell, a sickly mix of roasting flesh and melting plastic that had sent them temporarily fleeing mainland Orkney for its outlying islands.
Stevie watched as young Connor ran across the road towards the Pier Arts Centre. The rest of the school class followed close behind. A moment later Lorna Mills, who taught history and religion, came into view. Stevie counted five children and wondered vaguely who was missing.
Alan Bold said, ‘Everyone spies on each other. That’s how islands are. How often do you think you’re on your own, then catch sight of the sun hitting off some nosy parker’s binoculars?’
‘Often, but that’s different.’ There was a hill with a good view of the farmhouse on Wyre, where she could lie in the long grass undetected. From up there the newcomers would look like ants. ‘I’m not quite ready to turn into Poor Alice, poking my nose into everyone’s business.’
Stevie turned her back on the window and the view of the children running along the street. ‘Let’s sort out the rotas. Then I can go home and sleep.’
They had finished allocating the communal tasks and Stevie had nudged Pistol from his slumber beneath her desk when the door opened. They had kept the jaunty shop bell and it jangled with the violence of a fire klaxon.
Candice was standing in the doorway. Her red hair had escaped its knot and her face was flushed and tearstained.
‘What happened?’ Stevie went to the woman and led her into the shop, closing the door behind them. Candice’s horse stood obediently outside, its flank glossy with sweat. Candice and Bjarne’s farmhouse was an hour’s ride from the centre of Stromness, long enough for the woman to have calmed down, but she was still trembling.
Alan Bold started to get to his feet. ‘This looks like a girl thing.’
Stevie threw her deputy a look that set him back in his chair.
Candice said, ‘You need to get that little bitch out of my house.’
Stevie had no doubt who she meant, but she asked, ‘What bitch?’
‘That little whore Willow.’
Bold muttered, ‘Christ Almighty.’
Stevie said, ‘Alan, I think Candice could do with a cup of tea.’
Candice said, ‘Fuck the tea,’ but Alan Bold grumbled off to light the spirit stove and she allowed herself to be settled in the deputy’s chair.
Candice and Bjarne were one of the couples on the islands who had gone through a formal marriage ceremony. Most people swore a set of promises at home in front of friends, but Candice had insisted on taking their vows in the cathedral. Stevie had thought it stupid swank, but later she wondered if the woman had wanted to draw on the building’s gravitas in the hope of making their commitment stick.
She crouched opposite Candice and kept an arm around her, relieved to note that her face was un-bruised, her clothes un-torn. ‘Do you want to tell me what happened?’
A long strand of curls had stuck to the tears on Candice’s face. She peeled it free and took a deep breath. ‘That little slut has put a spell on my husband.’
Stevie closed her eyes. She should have seen the crisis coming. ‘You know I don’t believe in things like spells.’
Candice ignored her. ‘He follows her with his eyes. If she comes into a room he stares at her like a dog that’s waiting to be fed. He doesn’t stop staring until she leaves.’
‘Poor kid.’ The words were out before Stevie could stop them.
Candice shoved Stevie away. ‘She’s not a kid, not in the way you mean. None of them are.’
She looked towards the street and Stevie followed her gaze. The children had finished whatever had taken them to the arts centre and were retracing their route. Some of their earlier bounce had left them and even Connor was keeping pace with Lorna Mills. Stevie looked for Willow and realised that she and Shug were missing. ‘They look like children to me.’
‘They look like children, but they’re not. There’s nothing innocent about these kids. They’re survivors.’
Alan Bold set two cups of steaming water packed with mint on the table. ‘We’re all survivors.’
The freckles on Candice’s face were bold against her white skin. She looked like a woman who had once lived in the sun, but now hid from it in some unlit place. ‘And we all did things we’re ashamed of to survive.’
It was something they did not talk about on the islands; the things they had done to stay alive while everyone around them died.
Stevie said, ‘She’s lived with you a long time.’
‘And now I want her gone.’
Stevie nodded. It would be a weight off her own mind to have the girl away from Bjarne and Candice’s house.
‘If you don’t want Willow to live with you any more we’ll find somewhere else for her. In the meantime, she can stay with me.’
Candice took a deep shuddering breath. Her words came out in a quick tumble of fear and relief. ‘Bjarne mustn’t know that I came to see you.’
Stevie felt suddenly sorry for the woman. She reached out and touched one of her hands.
‘You don’t have to be scared of Bjarne. If you want to leave him, we’ll protect you.’
‘Why would I leave Bjarne?’ Candice slid her hand beyond Stevie’s reach. Her stare was defiant, her eyes shiny with tears. ‘We’re married. All I need is that little whore to sling her hook and then everything will go back to normal.’
Stevie could barely recall Candice and Bjarne before they had fostered Willow. She wondered if the woman knew what she meant by normal.
‘Where does Bjarne think you are just now?’
Candice blew her nose. Stevie’s promise to take the girl had calmed her. ‘I’ll make something up. He hardly notices whether I’m there or not.’
Alan Bold said, ‘If he fancies Willow, he’ll notice when he’s left alone with her.’
A single tear slid from Candice’s left eye. She lifted her face to the ceiling to stop others following it.
Stevie said, ‘Thanks, Alan, that’s useful.’
The deputy shrugged. ‘Willow’s a pretty girl. She’s getting to an age when men will look at her.’
Outside the wind was rising, clouds scudding across a darkening sky.
Stevie got to her feet. ‘She’s a child. That makes any grown-up who touches her a paedophile.’
Alan Bold’s face flushed. ‘I’m not saying it’s okay, but you can’t burn the eyes from men’s heads.’
Candice had failed to stem the flow of tears. They ran a straight course down her face, like rain against a windowpane, but her voice was calm.
‘I had children, two girls, Emma and Flora. They were children and they died. Willow isn’t like them. She was old when we found her.’
Stevie said, ‘She was no more than seven.’
Candice ignored her. ‘Even when she was little, Willow knew things she shouldn’t.’
Stevie put her face close to Candice’s. She saw the br
own flecks in the woman’s green eyes, felt her breath warm against her own skin.
‘She is a young girl in your care. I’ll collect Willow this afternoon. In the meantime, if anything happens to that child, I’ll blame you.’
Candice got to her feet. The tears were gone now, her expression resolute. ‘It’s your fault I took her in the first place.’
The accusation was a surprise. Stevie felt her own face flush.
‘You begged to keep her. Don’t you remember?’
For a moment it seemed that Candice might recall the way she had fastened her arms around the little girl with the long matted curls, the only island child they had found alive, and pleaded to become her mother. Then her expression shuttered. ‘She was half-feral. Have you never asked how she managed to stay alive all by herself for so long?’
Stevie had a premonition of what Candice was going to say next and spoke quickly to stop her from saying it.
‘Willow foraged as best she could. She was malnourished when we found her. She’d regressed to being a toddler. A few more days and she might have died.’
‘Her mother and father were—’
Stevie interrupted, ‘It was bad, but it was to be expected with so many dogs on the island.’
‘She had blood on her face.’
‘And scratches all over her body from foraging for blackberries. She’s just a kid, Candice. If I hear that you’ve been spreading rumours about her, I’ll have you and that child-molesting fuck you live with thrown off these islands.’
Alan Bold had been watching them, like an umpire at a tennis match. He leaned forward. ‘Ladies …’
Stevie’s voice was dangerously calm. ‘Keep out of this, Alan.’
Candice got to her feet. She had been plump when she had arrived on Orkney, a sweet-faced cherub who had clung to Bjarne as if he was her only hope. Seven years had sucked the flesh and softness from her. Her cheekbones jutted from her face like stumps, her eyes gleamed deep in their sockets.
‘You’re a stuck-up bitch, Stevie Flint. You think you own this place, but it took a lot of deaths to make you important.’
It was the same thing that Alan Bold had said the night before. This time it forced the breath from Stevie’s chest. Did the rest of the islanders believe that she had scaled the piles of corpses, stuck an island flag on them and made herself president?
Alan Bold showed no sign of recognising a kindred spirit. He grinned his fuck-and-be-damned grin and said, ‘I hope we can still rely on your vote in the election?’
‘You can stick your votes where they belong.’ Candice tugged the stack of carefully charted communal rotas from the desk and threw them at Bold. The papers caught in the stale air of the old shop and fluttered to the floor, landing around her. She looked at Stevie. ‘You think I’m jealous of Willow because she’s young and beautiful with her whole life ahead of her and I’m an old woman at thirty-five.’ She scuffed her work boots over the rotas, smearing the pages with the mud on the soles of her boots. Alan Bold groaned, but Candice ignored him. ‘It’s true. I am jealous of her. My children are dead, I’ve lost my looks and my husband wants to fuck our foster daughter, but that’s not why I’m here.’
Stevie kept her voice low. ‘So why are you here?’
Candice ran a hand through her hair. The copper that used to catch the sun, shining like fuse wire, had faded and there was grey amongst the strands, but a Pre-Raphaelite keen on witches might still have wanted to paint her. ‘I’m here because if that little bitch stays another night under my roof, someone’s going to die.’ Candice lifted Alan Bold’s glass of water from the desk, poured it over the rotas it had taken them hours to write and scuffed her boots through them again. ‘I’m here to promise you that Bjarne and I will not end up like that little cannibal’s real mother and father.’
Stevie said, ‘It was the dogs …’
But Candice was at the door. She slammed it behind her, setting the bell ringing as loud as closing time in a sailors’ pub.
Pistol had dozed through the row, but the bell woke him. He rose from his post beneath the desk and let out a bark.
Alan Bold scratched the dog’s head, quieting him. ‘That went well.’
Stevie could not bear to meet his eyes. She crouched down and started to peel the sodden pages from the floor. The ink had run, the words slid together; the carefully composed rotas ruined. She wanted to ask Alan if everyone thought she was glad the Sweats had killed the world. Did they really believe she was happier exiled on these treeless rocks surrounded by sea than she had been in London? Some nights she woke with the sound of high heels sharp against concrete still clattering in her head. Only in dreams could she recapture the heat of the city, the sweet sense of being alone in a crowd.
‘Looks like you were right. I’m going to have to put off sleep for a while.’
The deputy knelt beside her and helped to gather the ruined pages.
‘Night-time always comes around.’ Bold knew better now than to touch her, but he gave her a smile. ‘Even in a northern summer.’
Six
Magnus could not take much pleasure in his possessions. Even things that had belonged to his family, such as the croft and its contents, were prizes of the plague. They had come to him too soon and it felt wrong to take satisfaction in owning them. His Clydesdale horse Jock was an exception. It was impossible to look at the beast and not feel honoured to be the man who walked behind him, guiding the plough into a straight furrow. Jock was what Magnus’s father used to call show quality but there were grey hairs amongst his chestnut coat; the horse was getting on. Magnus did not like to tire him, but when he went to saddle his usual ride Straven he saw that the horse was lame. That left him with the choice of Sid, the Shetland pony who not so long ago (it felt to him) had been Shug’s pride and joy, the old Clydesdale or a bicycle. Sid the Shetland pony came up to Magnus’s waist. He also had a Napoleon complex that made him inclined to biting and not averse to aiming a kick.
‘You’re worth ten of that wee bastard,’ Magnus whispered to the Clydesdale. ‘I’d take my bike, but by the time I got there, that cunt Bjarne might have gelded Shug, and we don’t want that.’
He had given the horse some extra feed to apologise for the task ahead. The Clydesdale snorted and Magnus said, ‘I know he could have had the bollocks off the boy by now, but Shug’s canny enough to sidestep that big bear.’ Jock’s large head nodded, as if he understood. Magnus clapped his neck and clambered aboard, stretching his legs around the horse’s barrel of a body. ‘If I really thought there was going to be trouble I would have gone there straight away.’
Magnus had fed and mucked-out the pig and hens, his waterproof zipped tight, hood up against the building rain. He had hoped the weather would divert Shug from his course, but if the boy were any kind of boat he would be a tug, small and determined, able to withstand wild conditions and willing to tackle the largest battleships. Magnus had felt a rising sense of anxiety as he had gone about his tasks. Now he could feel panic building in his chest. He tugged the Clydesdale’s reins, directing him to the left as they went through the gate and into the driving rain.
‘Shug’s too smart to walk into a beating.’
The horse kept his head high and plodded into the storm, his hooves clopping a familiar rhythm against the cracked tarmac. Sheep, lazing on the road, impervious to the weather, rose awkwardly onto spindly legs, and scurried out of the way, bleating lambs in tow.
Magnus resisted the urge to press Jock to go faster. There was no point in laming the horse for what was probably a wasted mission. Rain coursed down his face, it slipped through the scarf knotted around his neck and slid beneath his waterproof, onto his body. The urge to curse Shuggie was strong, but it was not the boy who was to blame, it was Bjarne. ‘Bloody bear.’ Magnus’s knees pressed harder against Jock’s sides and the horse obediently upped-pace. The movement had been involuntary, but Magnus did not bother to correct it. The bad feeling that had been building inside him had tak
en hold.
Before the Sweats, people had taken mobile phones for granted. When the satellites that powered them went down at the height of the pandemic, it had felt like a cruel joke. Magnus had been left with the suspicion that if he had texted less, or limited his calls to the purely necessary, he might have had one last conversation with his mother and his sister Rhona. It was a ridiculous notion, born out of survivor guilt, but he had heard other people talk about the way they used to waste and suspected they felt something similar.
He had grown used to a world where communications were limited, but now Magnus wished that he could simply take a phone from his pocket and call Shug to check that he was okay. He grimaced against the gale. Who was he kidding? The boy would have seen Magnus’s name flashing on the incoming display and rejected the call.
Perhaps his anxiety was as misplaced as Bjarne’s, a symptom of the knowledge that the boy was approaching adulthood and would leave him soon. For a fraction of a moment during the ceilidh, when Belle’s face had come into focus, older and scarred in a way it had not been before, he had feared that she had come to claim the boy. But Shug was nothing to her, just a child they had rescued along the way. Magnus had often wondered what had happened to Belle. He was surprised to find that, now he was sober, he felt wary of her. ‘She’s not here for your boy,’ he said out loud.
No, a small voice inside him answered, but she’s here for something.
He was rounding a bend, a tight twist in the rise that was the highest point before they made the descent towards Bjarne and Candice’s croft. Rain and mist obscured the view, but he could almost make out their house in the distance, a vague square of white against the greens and browns of the landscape below.
‘Good boy.’ He clapped Jock’s neck. The old Clydesdale plodded on without acknowledging his touch. Magnus’s face was numb with cold. He wiped it with his scarf but it was a useless gesture. The sky held infinite quantities of water and they were all descending on Orkney.
Some movement on the valley road below snagged his eye. Magnus drew Jock to a halt and leaned forward, sheltering his eyes. It was Shuggie. The boy had lost his dazzling white jacket, but he was unharmed and cycling for all he was worth.
