Entry Island

He knelt by the tombstone and placed both hands on the cool, rough stone, and touched the soul of his ancestor. Beneath his name was the inscription, Gus am bris an latha agus an teich na sgàilean.

‘Do you know what it means?’ The voice startled him, and Sime looked around to see a man standing a few paces away. A man in his forties, dark pony-tailed hair going grey around the hairline. He wore a collarless white shirt open at the neck beneath a tartan waistcoat. Black trousers folded over heavy boots.

Sime stood up. ‘No, I don’t.’

The man smiled. He said, ‘It means, Until the day breaks and the shadows flee away. Quite common on Hebridean graves.’

Sime regarded him with curiosity. ‘Are you Scottish?’

The man laughed. ‘Do I sound it? No, I’m as French as they come. My partner and I own the auberge across the way, but the history of this place is my obsession.’ He glanced down at his waistcoat. ‘As you can see.’ He smiled again. ‘I’ve even been to the Isle of Lewis myself in the company of some local historians. Smelled the peat smoke and tasted the guga.’ He reached out to shake Sime’s hand, then nodded towards the gravestone. ‘Some connection?’

‘My great-great-great-grandfather.’

‘Well, then, I’m even happier to meet you, monsieur. I have quite a collection of papers and memorabilia over at the auberge. Your ancestor was quite a local celebrity. I think I may even have a photograph of him.’

‘Really?’ Sime hardly dared believe it.

‘I think so, yes. Come on over and have a coffee and I’ll see if I can find it.’

As he poured them both coffee from a freshly plunged cafetière, the owner of the auberge said, ‘Your ancestor’s land and his house were about half a mile out of town on the old road south. All gone now, of course. The fella he came here with never developed his, apparently.’

Sime looked up, interested. ‘The Irishman?’

‘Yes, that’s right. Very unusual for an Irishman to settle in these parts.’

‘But he didn’t, you said. He never developed his land.’

‘No.’

‘So what happened to him?’

The man shrugged. ‘No idea. The story is that the two of them went off lumberjacking one year, and only one of them came back. But I don’t really know.’ He stood up. ‘I’ll see if I can find that photograph.’

From his seat in the window Sime sipped his coffee and gazed with interest around the dining room. The walls were lined by old photographs and stags’ heads on one side, and shelves cluttered with bric-a-brac and memorabilia on the other. An antique coffee machine sat on an equally cluttered serving counter and Sime could see through a hatch into the kitchen beyond. The auberge, the owner had told him, was constructed on the site of the original Gould store, built by an émigré from the Scottish mainland.

He returned now with an album full of faded photographs of people long dead and flipped through the pages until he found what he was looking for. ‘There,’ he said, stabbing a finger at a photograph so bleached by time that it was hard to make out the figure in it.

But Sime saw that it was the portrait of an old man with a long beard sitting on a bench. His hair was pure white and swept back across his head, long and curling around his collar. He wore a dark jacket and trousers. A waistcoat and white shirt were only just discernible. He was leaning forward slightly, both hands resting on the top of a walking stick that he held upright in front of him, his right hand over his left. And there, on his ring finger, only just apparent, was the signet ring that Sime now wore on his.

Chapter forty-four

I

The flight from Quebec City to the Madeleine Isles took just under two hours in the small commuter aircraft. Sime sat next to an island woman whose two teenage sons fidgeted in the seats in front. They wore baseball caps with upturned brims, listening to iPods and playing computer games. She raised semi-regretful eyebrows at Sime, as if apologising for the behaviour of all teenagers. As if he might have cared.

Some time into the flight he closed burning eyes and very nearly drifted off, before being startled awake by an announcement from the pilot. Above the roar of the engines Sime heard him apologising for any turbulence experienced, and informing passengers that there was a storm on the way. Not on the same scale as the remnants of Hurricane Jess, which had so marked Sime’s first visit. But it was likely to hit the islands, the pilot said, with strong to gale-force winds and high precipitation later in the day.