The first opening off the hallway led into a bright rectangular room with white walls and blue curtains. It contained a sofa, two arm chairs, a pine mantelpiece with a little gold clock and Grace Ann MacKay sitting in an adjustable chair covered in a brown leaf-pattern fabric which didn’t match the rest of the room. Her face was small and sharp featured, her grey skin stretched tight to the bone, her hair silvery-white and caught in a tidy bun.
She looked at Cal over glasses which seemed too big for her. She appeared confused, as if she had just woken up.
‘So you’re Uilleam’s and Ishbel’s grandson?’ she said eventually.
Her speech had an unexpected and old fashioned rhythm.
‘I am.’
She smiled quickly at him before examining his face for long forgotten memories.
‘They call you Cal?’
‘My proper name is Caladh. I believe it means harbour in Gaelic.’
Encouraged by Agnes, who whispered ‘she’ll settle in a minute or two’, Cal went to the arm chair closest to Grace Ann. When he had sat down, the old woman said, ‘I’ve been trying to remember. What was your mother’s name? My feeling is I didn’t meet her …’
‘It was Eilidh.’ Cal reached into an inside pocket of his jacket and brought out a brown envelope. He opened the flap, removed a faded photograph and handed it to Grace Ann who took it from him, her hand shaking. The photograph was of a young woman wearing a black hat with a black ribbon around it, and black clothes. A baby wrapped in an off-white shawl lay along her legs.
‘It was taken after my mother’s baptism,’ Cal said. ‘The woman is my grandmother, Ishbel.’
‘Funny thing to wear black at a baptism,’ Agnes said.
‘She was in mourning for my grandfather Uilleam; he died before my mother was born.’
‘The wee soul.’ Agnes’s sympathy was for the baby born without a father. She left the room, taking the shopping with her, and Grace Ann stayed quiet in contemplation of the photograph. The fingers of her free hand stroked the satin border of a blanket lying across her knees.
Cal asked, ‘You knew my grandmother?’
‘Yes. I knew both Ishbel and Uilleam though I knew Uilleam the better of the two.’ Grace Ann paused. ‘What did your mother tell you of them?’
‘Very little.’
She nodded as though it didn’t surprise her. ‘I was sorry to hear of your mother’s death. Rachel told me. … I forget her full name.’
‘Rachel Newby.’ Cal helped.
‘Yes. You know her?’
Cal had wondered if Rachel had mentioned their marriage. It appeared she hadn’t. ‘Yes I do,’ he said before changing the subject. ‘My mother’s death seems a long time ago. I was 17.’
Agnes returned with an enamelled tray on which were two matching mugs of tea and a plate of biscuits. She laid it on the table beside Cal’s chair and put one mug on Grace Ann’s trolley. ‘That’s me away now,’ she said, touching the back of the old woman’s hand. ‘Mind, those wee boxes from your bedroom, they’re on the stool beside you here.’ Then she said to Cal, ‘Pleasure to meet you.’
Grace Ann waited for Agnes to close the front door before speaking again. ‘There are things I should have told your mother …’ Her eyes flicked towards him and away, as if apprehensive about his reaction. Cal thought she seemed frightened. Perhaps she wasn’t used to strangers. ‘Things that I regret.’
He tried to reassure her. ‘I can’t believe that.’
Grace Ann picked up a small black Bible which was lying near her on the trolley. She put it on her lap, plucking at a corner of it with her thumb, before saying, ‘What do you know of the island?’
‘I know its name, Eilean Iasgaich Mor; that it means Great Fishing Island; and that it’s on the north coast of Sutherland, near a settlement called Eastern Township.’
‘Have you been there?’ Grace Ann was watching him again.
‘No.’
‘You haven’t seen the memorial to the men who were killed?’
‘No.’
‘So you don’t know then?’ It was as much an exclamation as a question.
‘Know what?’
Cal glanced at her and noticed her eyes were closed and her head was shaking as if she was upset. Had talk of the memorial brought it on, all those dead men? Rather than remain quiet and draw attention to her distress, he ventured, ‘When did you leave?’
She looked towards the window. ‘In October 1943.’ Then back at him as though the event was still alive to her. ‘There was such a storm blowing the island was hidden in spray when I reached the mainland. I looked back and it was gone.’
‘Did you ever return?’
‘So many times in my sleep.’ She paused. ‘If I could have gone back and put things right I would have.’
Once more she closed her eyes tight. ‘God forgive me.’
‘It’s all right,’ Cal reassured her.
‘No, no it’s not,’ she snapped back.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, surprised by the reprimand.
She picked at the satin trim of the blanket on her legs. A sigh came from her, then a thin, weak smile. She looked at him. ‘You remind me so much of Uilleam, it brings it all back.’ Her eyes were wet with tears.
She sipped at her tea and Cal let her settle again. Then she said, as if he had asked the question and she was answering it, ‘There were eight families on the island – MacKay, Rae, Gunn, MacLeod, Murray, Sutherland, McIntosh. And of course Sinclair which was your mother’s family.’
Grace Ann repeated the names counting them off on her fingers
‘But if you ask me which families ran the island, it was the MacKays and the Raes. There were three brothers in each family. They ruled the roost.’
‘They were your relations?’
‘They were cousins. We were poor relations. Our circumstances were closer to your mother’s family, the Sinclairs, who were our neighbours. There wasn’t an able bodied man in our house; nor for many years had there been one in the Sinclair house.’ She sipped at her tea. Cal did too, relieved she had regained some composure. Putting down her mug, she said, ‘You see if you had a man on the boat you were all right. If you didn’t, well …’
She reached down for a bleached cardboard box on the stool by her chair. She lifted the lid and offered it to Cal. He found himself looking at a wooden model of a fishing boat lying on a bed of cotton wool. ‘Eilean Iasgaich’ was painted in black on its side.
‘My father carved it from an old deck timber,’ Grace Ann said.
‘Was it a big boat?’
‘A proper trawler, 300 tonnes, it was. Other islands had boats but nothing as big as ours.’
The pride came through in her voice. ‘It must have been something,’ he said.
‘It had a crew of 16 and every man of them came from the island. They wouldn’t have it any other way even if they were short-handed. They thought a stranger off the mainland would bring them bad luck.’ Grace Ann shook her head at the stupidity of it. ‘A boat never had such misfortune.’ After Cal handed the model back to her, she stared at it, momentarily forgetting herself. ‘Did I tell you every crew member had an equal share of the boat’s profits?’
’No.’
‘Well, they did. So the MacKays and the Raes, with three crew members for each family, had six shares of the profits. But without a man on the boat, money was hard to come by. My family and yours, the Sinclairs, had to survive on whatever the land or nature provided: oats, fish, potatoes, eggs and as many seabirds as we could store.’
‘Was there land to grow crops?’
‘There was the green pasture between the island’s two hills, Cnoc a’ Mhonaidh and Cnoc na Faire, the peat hill and the watch hill. Much of it was boggy but other parts were dry enough and fertile. My family and your family had the two best strips.’ She stared out of the window before adding, ‘God knows it was the only blessing the island bestowed on us.’
Grace Ann’s face had flushed purple. The col
our looked livid against the silvery-white of her hair.
‘Are you sure this isn’t too much for you?’ he asked, wary of provoking another reprimand.
She didn’t answer, instead taking another sip of tea. After dabbing at her upper lip with a handkerchief, she said, ‘My father was a MacKay, so the other MacKays looked after us now and again, but they wanted your mother’s family off the island so their cousins the Raes could take over the Sinclair croft.’
She let out a snort. ‘They hadn’t reckoned on your great-grandmother who was determined to hold on until Uilleam, your grandfather, was old enough to inherit and to take his place among the boat’s crew.’
Cal removed a photograph of his grandfather Uilleam from the envelope and gave it to Grace Ann. She examined it, becoming wistful. ‘His mother used to say,’ she shook her head, ‘his smile could light up a room and his laughter could warm it; and so they could too.’
She seemed to become quite lost in her memories until Cal asked, ‘Were you the same age?’
‘He was older by three years,’ Grace Ann replied. Then she hesitated. ‘I believed I would marry him, but his eyes and his heart were set at another and that was that. What could I do?’
‘Was that my grandmother?’
‘Yes, Ishbel Stewart was her name then. She was from Aberdeen. Her parents moved to Eastern Township, the settlement nearest to the island on the mainland. They inherited the general store from an aunt. Uilleam fell in love with Ishbel the moment he saw her.’ She rapped her knuckles on her Bible to emphasise the suddenness of it.
‘It must have been difficult for you.’
Another thin smile, this one of disappointment, faded as quickly as it formed. ‘It was hard seeing him so happy with her. We were living so close. I don’t suppose I behaved as I should, but I’d grown up knowing I would marry Uilleam. The whole island knew.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Cal commiserated, realising with a shock that she loved Uilleam still.
She drifted off with her memories, talking softly to herself. Then looking at Cal, she said, ‘My mama wouldn’t say a word to him or Ishbel even though they were living next door. I was scarcely more welcoming, God forgive me.’
Cal noticed her lips trembling.
‘You see, Ishbel wasn’t from a fishing family and she was Episcopalian, not Church of Scotland like the rest of us. She didn’t have the Gaelic. It set her apart. The MacKays and the Raes wouldn’t speak to her, though they had their own reasons.’ Grace Ann appeared distressed recalling it. ‘When she was expecting a baby the Raes skinned a baby rabbit and nailed it to the Sinclair door.’
‘Why?’
‘They wanted to frighten Ishbel off the island. The Raes and the MacKays knew they’d never get the Sinclair croft if Ishbel had her baby and it was a boy.’
‘The baby was my mother?’
‘It was, and now even the bairn’s dead.’ Grace Ann stared out of the window.
After a while, Cal prompted her. ‘The boat … didn’t it become an anti-submarine trawler?’ He knew it did but he wanted to keep the story going.
She nodded. ‘I can still remember the day: the Eilean Iasgaich coming into the bay for the first time with her gun; the men all lining the deck; Hector MacKay, the skipper, leading his crew ashore. Oh, we were proud: our island sending a boat to war.’ Her face said something different: what fools they’d been. ‘The women and children stood on the steps to the pier and hugged the men as they passed by, all except Uilleam who walked untouched all the way to the top where his mother and Ishbel waited for him.’
Grace Ann laid her cheek against the back of her chair where her eyes were hidden from Cal. After a while her head rolled back towards him. ‘If only I’d held him then. Everything would have been different.’
‘He’d hurt you,’ Cal said with understanding.
She gazed out of the window once more, her face etched with regret.
‘When all the men had gone by us we cried; the women first followed by the children. My mama said it was a cold wind blowing from one generation to the next. I’ll never forget her saying that.’
‘How long after was it …?’ He didn’t like to say ‘the men died’.
Grace Ann shivered as though she felt that cold wind still. ‘That October, after the first storm of autumn, the Eilean Iasgaich tied up at the pier. The news went round the island. Seven men had been lost. The boat had been to Archangelsk, with an Arctic convoy. Hector MacKay appeared alone on the track and the women ran for their Bibles. They closed their doors and begged for Hector to go to their neighbour’s door, not theirs.
‘My Mama and me prayed out aloud.’ Now she pressed her hands together as if in prayer. ‘And we listened for my brother Sandy’s foot on the loose slab on the path, but it was Hector’s we heard. My mama ran at him and beat him with her fists. How dare you come to my house? How dare you?’
She clenched a hand and beat the air with it.
‘Hector, who was a big man, stood there letting her hit him, him not saying a word. Then she fell to the floor and Hector took me aside and told me, ‘We lost him Grace Ann, we lost him.’ I carried mama back into our house and the next thing there was a cry from Uilleam’s mother next door. Uilleam had gone too. So had the Gunn brothers, Alexander and Sinclair, and Alasdair Murray, as well as Donal and Angus MacKay, Hector’s two brothers. No wonder he let my mama strike him. He was half-deranged with his own loss, though it’s said Sandy’s death weighed heaviest with him because he was the youngest.’
She stopped again and Cal asked, ‘What age was he?’
‘Just sixteen he was with his blond hair and freckles. He joined the crew two months before. It broke my mama’s heart, though any boy of 16 would have wanted the same, to be with the men at sea.’
‘Mama,’ I used to say when we stood on the cliff waving the boat off, ‘He’s with his cousins and with Uilleam. Uilleam will take care of him mama, you’ll see.’ Despite the difficulties between me and Uilleam, the two of them were like brothers, always looking out for each other, though my mama became angry with me when I said it. She had no time for Uilleam after he married your grandmother.’
Now it was Cal’s turn to exclaim. ‘So the Alexander MacKay who died with my grandfather was your brother?’
She nodded.
‘I didn’t realise.’
After a pause, he said, ‘Wasn’t the boat returning from Archangelsk when they died? Hadn’t they gone to secure a depth charge which had broken loose?’
‘Yes.’ She followed it with a hoarse cry: what a thing to die for, it meant. ‘Five were killed by German planes on the way out to Archangelsk. Uilleam and my Sandy died together on the way back. There had been a storm and Sandy had gone on deck and Uilleam went after him, as I knew he would. The same wave took them both away.’
Grace Ann held her Bible to her mouth and said in a whisper, ‘God bless them both.’
Not knowing what else to say, Cal muttered ‘amen’. He bowed his head because it seemed the appropriate thing to do.
A minute passed, maybe more. He glanced at her and saw her eyes were closed again. Cal wondered if she was sleeping when without warning she began talking, softly, quickly, hurrying to finish her story, as if she’d rehearsed it so often she knew it off by heart, as if she was living it again.
‘I had no rest that first night what with my own grief and my mama’s crying. The next morning, I went to leave the house and when mama heard the hinge of the door, she shouted after me ‘Don’t be wasting your sympathies on the Sinclairs. They killed my Sandy.’
I ran back to her and said, ‘What are you saying?’
‘She gripped me by the hand. ‘They killed him, Grace Ann.’
‘I couldn’t bear to listen to her and I ran outside. Half way to the hill I came upon Ishbel. She was crying, her arms wrapped round her unborn child; your mother, Cal. Unlike me, Ishbel was a talker and something she said that morning didn’t sound right.
‘Surely it was Hector Ma
cKay, who came to your door,’ I said to her. She looked surprised at my interruption. ‘No, it was Hamish Sutherland as I told you.’
‘I didn’t say any more for Ishbel, not being from the island, didn’t know our custom. For as long as anyone could remember the skipper of the boat had delivered the news which made widows of wives. Why had Hamish gone to the Sinclair door when Hector MacKay had been to ours? I walked home with Ishbel, each of us going to our separate houses, and when I went inside my mama flew at me. ‘We’ve tragedy enough without you bringing disgrace on us too?’
‘Mama, Ishbel is a widow with an unborn child.’
‘She gave me a look I’ll never forget. ‘Sandy would be alive today but for her husband,’ she said.
‘Later, in spite of my mama’s opposition, I visited the Sinclairs to pay my respects to Margaret, Uilleam’s mother. She and Ishbel were sitting in silence and I sat with them too.
‘In time Margaret said to me, ‘Why do they blame Uilleam for your Sandy’s death?’
‘Why would they,’ I said, ‘for they died together, one 16, one 21, two brave young men?’
‘Margaret replied, ‘They say the depth charge breaking loose was Uilleam’s fault. They say he repaired the rack after the German planes had damaged it, that it was Uilleam’s responsibility that it came loose, his job to go and secure it.’
‘He did, with Sandy.’
‘They say Sandy went to it first and when Uilleam followed him Sandy had already been swept overboard.’
‘I said, ‘Well, if that’s what they say where’s the fault between two brave young men like them? The war is to blame, not them.’
Grace Ann sighed, her eyes still closed, her head shaking. Hadn’t Agnes warned him about her living in the past? He didn’t like to speak, to disturb her in case she was sleeping.
The Sea Detective Page 10
