Entry Island

My heart was banging in my chest. A chance to escape. ‘I do,’ I said. ‘But I’ve got no money.’

‘You bloody Scots never do!’ he said. ‘But don’t worry about that. You can pay me back sometime. As long as you don’t mind travelling second class.’ And he grinned at me through his whiskers. ‘Are you in?’

I nodded.

Despite my desperation to get off this damned island, by late afternoon I was regretting my impulsive decision to go with Michaél and the Irish. I had promised Catrìona Macdonald that I would take care of her children. And although I told myself it was unfair of her to burden me with that responsibility I still felt guilty at abandoning them. So I decided to go to the hospital to speak to her myself.

It was my first visit to the hospital shed, and when I crossed the threshold I felt as if I had passed from one world to another, from hell on earth to hell below it.

It was long and dark, windows blanked to keep out the daylight. The smell was worse than on the boat. And having breathed God’s own clean air for three days it was all the harder to take. Beds were lined up side by side, with the narrowest of spaces between them. Just wooden frames with boards and filthy mattresses.

Nurses in dirty, stained and worn uniforms moved among the dying like angels of mercy, doing what they could to relieve pain and suffering. But they were little more than sanitation workers cleaning up in the wake of death. The strain was clear on pallid faces with deeply shadowed eyes. Even although the doctor had told me there was a reasonably high recovery rate, it seemed hard to believe that anyone could survive this place. The medical practitioners here wore long gowns and hats and face masks to protect them from the miasma of infection that permeated the very air they breathed.

I wanted to turn and go back out immediately. But I steeled myself. The very least I owed Catrìona Macdonald was an explanation. I stopped one of the nurses and asked which bed she was in. She lifted some charts hanging from the wall and riffled through several sheets, running her finger down the names. At length she stopped at one. ‘Ah, yes. Catrìona Macdonald. She died this morning.’

It was hot outside, the sun showing itself periodically through a broken sky. I stood gulping down fresh air and fighting mixed feelings. A part of me was relieved that I wouldn’t have to face her. Another part of me wanted to weep for the woman from whose loins I had torn life. And yet another part of me died a little bit for her children, and her baby who would never know her.

I found Michaél in Lazaretto No. 3, he and a little group of co-conspirators gathered around a table. My fellow escapees. ‘I need to talk to you,’ I said, and we went outside.

I suppose I must have had something of an aura of death around me, for he gave me an odd look. ‘What can I do for you, Scotsman?’

‘I need some money.’

He frowned. ‘What for?’

‘It’s a long story. I’ll pay you back when I can.’ I couldn’t tell him I needed it to buy off my conscience. But even in the short time that I have known him, I have realised that Michaél has a way of reading folk.

He looked at me for a long time. A gaze that penetrated my very soul, it seemed. Then he grinned and said, ‘What the hell. What we need we’ll fockin’ steal.’ And he dug into an inside jacket pocket and pulled out a small purse with its strings pulled tight and tied in a knot. He took my hand and pressed it into it. ‘Ten gold sovereigns in there. I hope they’re going to a good cause.’

I nodded open-mouthed, barely able to believe such generosity. ‘They are. But I don’t know that I can take this much.’

‘Take it!’ he bellowed. ‘And never ask where I got it. The bloody things are far too heavy anyway. And besides, they’ve got the head of the fockin’ English queen on them. No self-respecting Irishman would be found dead with those in his pocket.’

I went straight to the Mackinnon family who had been looking after Catrìona’s children when I wasn’t there. I was blunt with them. Told them that Catrìona was dead and that I was leaving tonight. I produced the coins and laid them out on the table, and said this was to pay for the children’s keep. They had three children of their own already, but the husband and wife both looked at the money with eyes like saucers. It was more than either of them had ever seen. Or me, for that matter. And for a moment I wondered how on earth I was ever going to pay Michaél back.

The children themselves took the news of their mother’s death in a strangely solemn silence. I wondered if perhaps they had just seen so much of it that death no longer registered They were more upset to learn that I was leaving. They clung to me, silent tears running down their cheeks, little hands clutching my jacket. And I held them both, fighting hard not to weep myself, and wondered how I could be so selfish.