Chapters (43)
- Pronunciation
- Prologue
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-one
- Twenty-two
- Twenty-three
- Twenty-four
- Twenty-five
- Twenty-six
- Twenty-seven
- Twenty-eight
- Twenty-nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-one
- Thirty-two
- Thirty-three
- Thirty-four
- Thirty-five
- Thirty-six
- Thirty-seven
- Thirty-eight
- Thirty-nine
- Forty
- Acknowledgments
In the years to come I learned about the Clearances. How, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, absentee landlords, encouraged by the government in London, cleared the people off the land to make way for sheep. Tens of thousands of crofters evicted from their homes and forced aboard boats that took them off to the new world where many had been pre-sold, almost as slaves. I know now how they must have felt as they saw their homes and their country vanish in the haze, with nothing ahead of them but mounting seas and a hopeless uncertainty.
I looked then at my little brother, clinging on to the rail and staring back, the salt-filled wind dragging at his clothes and raking through his hair, and I almost envied him his innocence, his lack of awareness. There was a look in his face almost like exhilaration. He had nothing to fear, because he knew beyond any shadow of a doubt that his big brother would look after him. For the first time I felt almost crushed by the weight of that responsibility.
Maybe Catherine saw it, too. I caught her looking at me, and a little half-smile stretched her lips before her hand slipped into mine, and I cannot begin to describe the comfort and warmth of that little hand in mine.
The nuns had given us a box of sandwiches which we ate quite quickly, and within an hour had thrown up again. As all trace of land vanished, so the wind had whipped itself into a fury, and the sea with it. The big black-and-white painted tub that was the Claymore ploughed through white-topped waves, spray breaking over her bow to carry on the wind and soak anyone who ventured out on deck.
And so we took it in turns to throw up in the toilet off the non-smoking lounge where we had managed to bag ourselves some seats by a rain-streaked window, and where people smoked anyway, and drank beer, and in a language we didn’t understand shouted to be heard above the thud of the motors.
Sometimes in the distance we would see the blurry outline of some island come briefly into focus before vanishing again beyond the waves. Each time wondering if that was where we were headed. Hoping beyond hope that this nightmare was coming to an end. But it never did. Or so it seemed. Hour after hour we endured it. Wind and rain and sea, stomachs retching, with nothing more to give up but green bile. I am not sure that I have ever felt quite so miserable in my life.