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
“If you watched much telly, that is. She was a big star on one of those soap operas. Not short of a bob or two, I’ll tell you. Keeps her Christmas lights up all year round, and drives a pink, open-topped Mercedes.” He laughed. “They say her house is like Aladdin’s cave inside, though I’ve never been in it myself.”
Fin said, “How many people are there still living on Eriskay these days?”
“Och, not many. About a hundred and thirty now. Even when I was a lad there was only about five hundred or so. The island’s only two and a half miles long, you see. One and a half at its widest point. There’s not much of a living to be made here. Not from the land, and not from the sea now either.”
Fin let his gaze wander over the desolate, rocky hillsides and wondered how folk had ever managed to survive here. His eyes came to rest on a dark building sitting high up on the hill to his right, dominating the island. “What’s that place?”
The old man followed his gaze. “That’s the church,” he said. “St. Michael’s.”
Fin drove up the hill towards the little settlement of houses known as Rubha Ban which was built around the primary school and the health centre. A sign for Eaglais Naomh Mhicheil led him up a narrow track to a stone-built church with steeply pitched roofs and tall windows delineated in white. An arched doorway topped by a white cross and the logo Quis ut Deus—Who is like God?—opened into the church at its south end. Outside its walls a black ship’s bell was mounted on a stand, and Fin wondered if that is what they rang to call the faithful to worship. The name, painted on it in white, was SMS Derfflinger.
He parked his car and looked back down the hill towards the jetty at Haunn, and across the Sound to South Uist. The sea shimmered and sparkled and moved as if it were alive, and sunlight streamed across the hills beyond it, the shadows of clouds tracking across their contours at speed. The wind was powerful up here, filling Fin’s jacket, and blowing through the tight curls of his hair as if trying to straighten them.
A very elderly lady in a red cardigan and dark-grey skirt was washing the floor in the entrance hall. She wore elbow-length green rubber gloves and sloshed soapy water from a bright red bucket. She wore a silk headscarf around cotton-wool hair, and nodded acknowledgement to him as she moved aside to let him past.