Kitta had learned the names of the faraway places that Da and the boys would go to, and she listed them for us, holding court. Stornaway, she said, her eyes mysterious, her fingers tracing circles in the air. Castlebay, Scalloway. Lerwick, Baltasound.

Will they see elephants? Elspet whispered. Will there be Wild Injuns?

And we laughed at her, Kitta and I, laughed at such foolishness. But you know, lambsie, there was something hushed and magical about those foreign names, and it seemed to us that our fathers and brothers had become strangers already. At school we begged Miss Birnie to show us on the coloured globe of the world. The speck she said was Aberdeen was the closest place to us, and we traced a line from there to where the herring boats would travel. It didn’t seem so far on the globe, measured in bits of inches, but still we were in awe. And in time we would be jealous.

Only now, looking back, can I set my mind to thinking how jealous Granda Jeemsie must have been, how bitter to be left behind with the wifies and quinies. Too old for the drifters, he was, but fit enough still to take the Lily Maud out after cod and haddock off the coast—fish for those of us left in Tiller Street, and for Ma’s creel. This he would manage with a makeshift crew—whoever he could find. Whoever was, like him, too old for the drifters, or perhaps too young.

And so that year it began to unravel, the pattern of life in Roanhaven, for so long knitted together with plain, sturdy yarn and only a rare dropped stitch or knobbly thread to interrupt the seamless everyday. The order of things changed, aye. But not the old ways.

And this is the important thing, lambsie. In 1903, in the midst of so much Progress, so much change, the old ones remained with us in Roanhaven. The old ways clung.

If ever I find the words to tell you about what happened to Brukie’s Sandy, this is what you will have to remember.

June 1972

June 1972

Kathryn and her worry eyes came today. All this nonsense about salt, I canna abide it. I have been eating salt all my life, one way or another, I told her. I will not be taking my eggs without it now. But she has been to that fiend with the horse face and gloomy words and has booked me in, she says, to have my blood pressure checked and all manner of other things.