Entry Island

The shrill sounds of whistles pierce the air, and I see uniformed constables ploughing through bodies, batons swinging. Another surge sweeps me away, and I realise that my only hope of finding her again is at the Eliza.

I am determined now, driven by anger and fear. I am young and strong and fight my way through the panicked hordes, head down, using my shoulders to clear the way ahead. And when next I look up the Eliza is towering over me, and I realise it must be high tide. The crowd is funnelling like water on to the narrow gangplank that leads up to the deck, marshalled by sheriff’s officers.

Hands grasp my arms and my shoulders, propelling me forward, and I go helplessly with the flow, craning my neck and turning to look left and right above their heads to catch a glimpse of Kirsty.

We spill out on to the deck, hundreds of us it seems, and I elbow my way to the side of the boat from where I have a view of the gangplank and the crowded quay. I have seen sheep herded this way before, but never people. And never so many in one place and at one time.

I scan the faces that fill my field of vision, apprehension rising like bile as I fail to find her. I have been pushed further and further along the deck, and away from the rail. Voices rise above the melee, and I am aware of the gangplank being pulled aboard.

Total panic fuels my fight through protesting voices back to the embarkation point, and I see dockers loosing ropes as thick as a man’s arm from the loops that secure them to their capstans. More voices raised from above turn my head upwards in time to see vast sheets of canvas unfurling to catch the breeze, and I feel the ship lurch for the first time beneath my feet.

‘Ciorstaidh!’ My voice tears itself from my lungs and I hear her call my name in reply, so far away I fear I am just imagining it. I reach the rail in time to see that the Eliza has slipped her berth and is pulling out now into the main channel of the river where the water is deeper and the current runs fast.

And there, among the faces of the crowd on the quay, the pale upturned face of the girl I love. My sense of disbelief and dismay is almost overwhelming.

‘Ciorstaidh!’ I scream again. And for a fleeting moment I consider jumping overboard. But like most islanders, fear of water has always robbed me of the ability to swim, and I know I would be leaping to certain death. ‘Wait for me!’

I can see the fear and consternation in her face as she pushes through the crowds, trying to keep up with the Eliza as she drifts away. ‘Where?’

I have no idea. I search desperately in my confusion to find a single rational thought to hang on to. And fail. ‘Wherever you are,’ I shout through my hopelessness, ‘I’ll find you. I promise!’

And I watch helplessly as her face recedes from view, blurred and lost among my tears, as I realise it is a promise I can never keep.

Chapter ten

I

Sime awoke calling her name. Hearing it rip from his throat. He sat bolt upright on the bed, and felt the sweat trickle down his face. And yet he was shivering with cold. His breath came in short rasping bursts, and his heart felt like someone hammering at his ribs from the inside, trying to break their way out.

It was just a dream, but so vivid that the same hopeless impotence felt by Simon when his lover faded from view lingered in his own consciousness like a black cloud of depression.

It was the first time he had dreamed it, but this was a story he knew. He pulled his knees up to his chest, leaning his elbows on them and closing his eyes. And for a moment he was transported in his mind back to childhood. To his grandmother’s house on the banks of the Salmon River in Scotstown. An old timber house built in the early twentieth century and made gloomy by three tall trees that loomed darkly over it.

He could almost smell it. That perfume of old age and dampness, of dust and history that permeated every corner. And he could hear her voice. Low, almost monotone, and always with an underlying sense of melancholy as she read to him and his sister from the diaries.

He had not thought once about those memoirs in all the years since, and yet he seemed to recall them now with great clarity. Not in every detail, but with a striking sense of place and story. The story of his ancestor’s life, begun on his voyage across the ocean. The man after whom Sime had been named, whose story had ended in a tragedy that his grandmother had always refused to read them.