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Back The Lewis Man Save as PDF
Chapters (43)
  1. Pronunciation
  2. Prologue
  3. One
  4. Two
  5. Three
  6. Four
  7. Five
  8. Six
  9. Seven
  10. Eight
  11. Nine
  12. Ten
  13. Eleven
  14. Twelve
  15. Thirteen
  16. Fourteen
  17. Fifteen
  18. Sixteen
  19. Seventeen
  20. Eighteen
  21. Nineteen
  22. Twenty
  23. Twenty-one
  24. Twenty-two
  25. Twenty-three
  26. Twenty-four
  27. Twenty-five
  28. Twenty-six
  29. Twenty-seven
  30. Twenty-eight
  31. Twenty-nine
  32. Thirty
  33. Thirty-one
  34. Thirty-two
  35. Thirty-three
  36. Thirty-four
  37. Thirty-five
  38. Thirty-six
  39. Thirty-seven
  40. Thirty-eight
  41. Thirty-nine
  42. Forty
  43. Acknowledgments

Donald laughed. “You’ve probably never been to the Catholic south, Fin, have you? And I probably wouldn’t either if it hadn’t been for some ecumenical visits.” He flashed him a look. “Maybe I’m not quite as narrow-minded as you would like to think?”

“What are lazy beds?”

“It’s what the islanders developed to grow vegetables, mainly potatoes, when the soil was thin or poor in quality. Like you’ll find in South Uist, or Eriskay. They use seaweed cut from the shore as fertilizer. They lay it in strips, about a foot wide, with another foot between them where they dig up the earth and turn it over on top of the seaweed. That creates drainage channels between the lines of soil and seaweed where they plant the tatties. Lazy beds, they call them. Or feannagan.”

Fin took a mouthful of whisky. “So it’s really not that daft to talk about fertilising the crows.”

“Not at all.” Donald leaned forward on his knees, cradling his mug between his hands and gazing into the dying fire. “Maybe Marsaili’s dad didn’t come from Harris at all, Fin. Maybe he came from the south. South Uist, Eriskay, Barra. Who knows?” He paused to take another sip. “But here’s a thought . . .” And he turned to look at Fin. “He’d never have got the marriage schedule from the registrar allowing my father to marry him if he hadn’t been able to produce a birth certificate. So how would he have got that?”

“Not from the registrar on Harris,” Fin said. “Because the dead boy was known there.”

“Exactly. So he knew, or was related to, the family. Or someone close to him was. And he either stole the birth certificate, or was given it. All you need to do is find that connection.”

A reluctant smile crept up on Fin, and he cocked one eyebrow towards the minister. “You know, Donald, you always were smarter than the rest of us. But a connection like that? It would be like searching for a speck of dust in the cosmos.”

Twenty-three

Twenty-three

Catriona had given him a pair of Donald’s trousers and a woollen jersey which he wore now under his oilskins as he braved the winds that swept unimpeded across the machair.

It had taken until the early hours for the two men to work themselves halfway down the second bottle. Fin had woken up on the settee some time after seven with the smell of bacon wafting through from the kitchen.