The Lost Lover, page 1
The
Lost
Lover
Karen
Swan
Contents
Map
Glossary
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Acknowledgements
For Tash Christie-Miller
You keep getting better and betterer
Glossary
Characters
MHAIRI: pronounced Vah-Ree
CRABBIT MARY: Donald McKinnon’s wife, crabbit meaning irritable or angry
BIG MARY: Mary Gillies
BIG GILLIES: Hamish, Mary and their children (as opposed to Effie and her father Robert Gillies; Robert and Hamish are brothers)
Dialect
BLACKHOUSE: a traditional, single-storey, grass-roofed dwelling
BLOODS: youngbloods; local youths
BLUFF: a cliff, headland or hill with a broad, steep face
BOTHY: a basic shelter or dwelling, usually made of stone or wood
BROSE: a kind of porridge
CATCH A SUPPER: to be scolded
CEILIDH: traditional Scottish dance event
CLEIT: a stone storage hut or bothy, only found on St Kilda
CRAGGING: climbing a cliff or crag; a CRAGGER is a climber
CREEL: a large basket with straps, used for carrying cuts of peat
CROTAL: a lichen used for making dye
DINNER: taken at lunchtime
DREICH: dreary, bleak (to describe weather)
DRUGGET: a coarse fabric
EEJIT: fool; idiot
EIGHTSOME: a Scottish reel
EVENING NEWS: daily walk down the street sharing news
FANK: a walled enclosure for sheep, a sheepfold
HOGGET: an older lamb, but one that is not yet old enough to be mutton
LAZYBEDS: parallel banks of ridges with drainage ditches between them; a traditional, now mostly extinct method of arable cultivation
PARLIAMENT: the daily morning meetings on St Kilda, outside crofts five and six, where chores were divvied up for the day
ROUP: a livestock sale
SMACK: boat
SOUTERRAIN: an underground chamber or dwelling
STAC: a sea stack (a column of rock standing in the sea) usually created as a leftover after cliff erosion
STRIPPING THE COW/EWE: milking a cow or sheep
SWEE: an iron arm and hook fitted inside a chimney for hanging pots above the fire
TEA AND A PIECE: tea and fruit cake
TUP: a ram; a ewe that has been mated with can be called TUPPED
WAULKING: a technique to finish newly woven tweed, soaking and beating it
He goes long barefoot that waits for dead men’s shoes.
Old Scottish proverb
Prologue
26 October 1930
Casino de Paris
Flora sat on the slim perch, her legs reaching down in an elegant point as she swung back and forth, high above the stage. The jet beads of her bodysuit glimmered in the lights, the turquoise tail feathers behind her, resplendent. This was her favourite of all the songs she performed, the closest in nature to the melancholy ballads of home, and she felt her voice soar effortlessly, high above the flute and first violin. If she were to close her eyes, she might almost be able to persuade herself that she was still in the green, blanketing grasslands of St Kilda, where the sheep grazed beneath vaulted skies. She might hear the echoes of her girlhood friends, laughing in the byres; she might glimpse her parents walking to the tiny kirk as the pale sun set on another day; she might see her lover run up a frozen slope . . .
But this was no airy, stormy paradise. She was enclosed in a red velvet womb. The air was thick with perfume and smoke; taffetas ruffling as ladies stirred; gentlemen coughing in their starched shirts. Even in the darkness, Paris had its own signatures.
She swung higher in the jewelled birdcage, a whimsical creature enchanting them all. From this vantage point above the lights, she could look out upon the sea of faces and see every single pair of eyes trained upon her. She didn’t need their applause; their open-mouthed wonder told her she was a star. All the pain, loss and heartbreak of the past months had led her here and now Paris lay at her feet, vanquished. But the dream she had stepped into was not her dream.
Her gaze swept lightly over the crowd like a chiffon scarf, falling suddenly upon a face she had never expected to see again. A man from her past, a lover from the mists, he walked inside her shadow, leaving footprints on her soul. He watched intently as she swung above him, a bird of paradise in a parliament of crows.
But he sank from her sight into the white glare of the footlights, gone again by the time she re-emerged.
Lost to her, he was the ghost she could not catch.
Just as she was the woman he could not save.
Chapter One
8 August 1929
Village Bay, St Kilda
Flora swept the hearth, the stone floor cool against her hands and knees as she tipped the ashes into the bucket. Even from inside the cottage, she was well aware of the progress the visitors were making up the street. She could tell from the ripple of excited voices and shy laughter that the villagers were performing the roles that had become something of a ritual whenever a tourist ship dropped anchor in the bay – Mad Annie and Ma Peg knitting socks at a ferocious speed as they sat on their stools; Crabbit Mary stoically carding the wool with her signature frown; Donald McKinnon and Hamish Gillies hauling boulders as they made repairs to one of the ancient cleits. The younger men made a show of strutting about with coils of rope looped over their shoulders, hands stuffed in their pockets, as if they might leap down a cliff at any given moment; time and tides permitting, they would hope to be urged by the visiting captain to give his guests one of their renowned climbing exhibitions. Only the dogs moved with any unselfconsciousness, but then, they cared little for the coins that crossed palms for these small displays of St Kildan life.
It had been a successful summer in that regard, the fine weather and calm seas bringing in the rich and the curious by the dozen, and the islanders had built up a small cache of coins that could be used at some point on the neighbouring isles. Though there were no shops or commerce of any kind here, over on Lewis, Harris and North Uist – some thirty-eight miles distant – there were markets, stores and farmers willing to trade, especially given that the landlord’s factor was so intransigent on his punishing terms.
‘Flora, quick now,’ her mother Christina said, rushing back into the kitchen with a flustered look. ‘Give me that pail, they’re almost here.’
Flora sat back on her heels and saw her mother holding out the broom. ‘How many of them are there?’ she sighed, getting to her feet and swapping the bucket for the sweeping brush, knowing exactly what was to be done.
‘Eight or nine, Old Fin thinks, but you know how his counting is.’
Flora moved past her mother and stood in the doorway, glancing down the wide grassy path towards the approaching party. Six people.
‘Eeesht,’ Christina tutted, reaching for the brush and trying to smooth the thick black braid that hung down Flora’s back; she had taken little care with it this morning and fine wisps sprouted from her hairline. ‘And, look, you’ve soot all over y’ face.’ Her mother reached up to smooth it away but appeared to succeed only in smudging it across her cheek. ‘Och!’
‘Not now, Ma,’ Flora said under her breath. ‘They’re almost here.’
Her mother fell back into the shadows as Flora began to sweep the flat rock that served as their front doorstep. Her younger siblings were at their lessons in the schoolhouse, her father and elder brother David up on Connachair, so the cottage was quiet and relatively calm for once.
With her head down as she worked, Flora saw several pairs of smart leather shoes step into her field of vision. She saw the sun glint off the nylon stockings one of the ladies wore, the swirl of punched leather decorating a pair of brogues, and she gave one or two more quick brushes before slowly straightening.
‘Good morning,’ she said politely, in English, for the tourists rarely spoke Gaelic, the language of the islanders. Six faces smiled back, that look of momentary surprise in their expressions as they took in the sight of her. It wasn’t a phenomenon she could explain clearly. There were no mirrors on the isle, save in the reverend’s house, and her only sense of herself was based off what she could glean from standing in the bay on a calm day, but there seemed to be something in the nuance of her features that set her apart – whether it was the curve of her appled cheeks, the fleshiness of her mouth or the flash of her green eyes she couldn’t be sure, but people stared at her with an intensity that often seemed to embarrass them afterwards. Regardless, it had its benefits, and she allowed herself a small smile as she saw the older gentleman of the group reach for his camera.
‘I say . . . would you be so kind as to oblige us with a photograph?’ he asked. Grey-whiskered and pale, with a slight palsy to his hand, he held up the small box which had caused such fear when the first tourists began to visit. Flora remembered her own grandmother gathering her skirts and running back into the cottage in fright when one was first set on legs and pointed at her.
‘Of course, sir,’ she said, assuming her customary position on the threshold of the low stone cottage, her hands resting on the top of the broom, chin tilted slightly and her right hip jutting to ensure something of her shape was captured beneath her thick drugget skirt.
She didn’t smile too brightly for the photograph, partly because the reverend didn’t approve of ‘overt’ joy, but also because she was aware of the two young men in the party watching her. As was typical, they drank her in like a cool glass of water, eyes scrutinizing as if her beauty was a mathematical equation that could be solved if they just knew the formula. Without looking at either of them directly, she established that one of them was shorter and more immediately attractive, with bright blond hair, a cleft chin and an intensity of focus that bordered on impolite. The other was drawn in paler colours: light brown hair, hazel eyes, a close-clipped beard and a way of standing with his shoulders pulled back that suggested a restrained nature. As the camera flashed, she decided they didn’t seem like brothers; something in the way they stood together suggested friendship, not brotherhood. The young women, though – eighteen and thirteen at a guess, standing close by one another, heads inclined in the same manner – had to be sisters?
‘And perhaps another one with us all?’ the gentleman asked.
‘As you wish, sir.’
The man glanced across at the older woman she took to be his wife. ‘It will be interesting to be able to show one of us with the natives, don’t you think, dear?’
‘Hmm,’ his wife breathed, unsmiling. ‘But then, who shall take the picture?’
Flora opened her mouth to offer her mother’s services – it might mean another coin – but the brown-haired man stepped forward.
‘I shall,’ he said, one hand outstretched to receive the Kodak.
‘But, James, then you shan’t be in the picture,’ the older of the two young women said.
‘I think the world will survive that, Sophia,’ he said simply.
Flora’s eyes swept over the young woman who had spoken, as the group assembled around her. She was wearing what Flora knew to be called a cloche hat – very fashionable – and a lavender coat with a dropped waist and a pea-green ribbon detail; her shoes were cut low at the front and there was a thin strap holding them on. Flora remembered too late that she was still barefoot – the islanders only ever wore boots in the very deepest depths of winter, or when visitors arrived – and she tried to curl her toes under, certain they must be blackened with mud, dirt and soot.
The man called James seemed to see the movement because he glanced up from the camera momentarily, his gaze dropping to her feet and a tiny smile flickering over his lips before he lowered his head again and told them all to say ‘cheese’. It was a custom Flora didn’t understand – what did cheese have to do with a photograph? – and she simply stared straight into the lens, wondering what it was he could see in that dark circle. She felt aware of the blond man by her right shoulder, standing so close she could feel his breath on her hair.
The camera flashed again and she felt herself released.
‘Thank you, miss. It’s kind of you to oblige us,’ the older man said, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a few coins. Flora eyed them dully as he counted them out. Money bought treasures back where they lived, but here it would go towards a hoe or a sack of potatoes.
‘Yes, you’re very kind,’ the blond man said, catching her eye. ‘What is your name, miss?’
She looked at him and saw her own usual confidence reflected in his eyes. She could tell he was a man also used to second looks and lingering stares, and she felt the energetic spar between them. ‘Flora MacQueen.’
‘Flora MacQueen,’ he repeated, enunciating the words roundly as if liking the weight of them in his mouth. ‘Well, Miss MacQueen, we shall be sure to tell everyone your name when we recount our travels and show them these pictures.’
‘As you please, sir,’ she replied. She kept her tone diffident, but it was difficult to look away from him, and the moment began to draw out. The women of the group had their backs to them as they trod carefully over the smooth stones onto the street, and as the stare held, Flora had to force herself to break it and turn from him, if only because she sensed her mother standing in the shadows. She knew she’d catch a supper if she was caught being bold.
‘Come along now, Edward,’ the older woman said, glancing back finally, and he – the blond man – smiled as if something had been confirmed for him. He tapped a finger to his temple, doffing an imaginary cap, as he took his leave from her.
‘Thank you again, Miss MacQueen,’ the older man said, tipping the coins into her hand.
‘Enjoy your trip, sir,’ she murmured, her hands clasping the top of the broom handle as, enviously, she watched them go. She felt their perfumed presence withdraw, leaving her alone on the stone step. Their privilege was careless and lightly worn in the short length of the young woman’s coat and high heels; in the younger girl’s dress embroidered with colours impossible to find here. She watched Edward’s athletic stride as he sauntered off, his hands in his pockets, and felt something of her power return as he glanced back several times with a rapacious grin. James, the quiet one, didn’t look around. His back straight, he walked on as if he’d never laid eyes on her; as if she was forgotten already.
She frowned, but when Edward looked round once more, he winked, his eyes sparkling with unspoken compliments that put the smile back on her face.
‘How much did they give you?’ Christina asked, emerging from the gloom a few moments later.
‘A shilling and sixpence.’
‘Generous,’ her mother said. ‘I hope they’ll be as good to Ma Peg.’
Ma Peg fared as joint favourite on the island when it came to picture requests; her mother said it was down to their nominal matriarch representing the ‘true’ St Kildan spirit to the outsiders. In Flora’s case, by contrast, it was generally thought she was so striking, the visitors needed evidence of it, proof almost, as if she were a siren or selkie.
‘Hm, that young fellow was certainly full o’ himself.’
‘He’s just confident.’
‘Cocksure is what he is,’ her mother muttered, taking the coins and disappearing back inside the house.
Flora followed after her, watching her drop the coins into the old glass bottle on the shelf that served as their bank.
‘G’mornin’.’
They looked up as Effie swung in, the coil of rope looped over her shoulder like the rest of the craggers. Poppit, Effie’s brown-and-white collie, lay down at the door, nose between her paws as she watched her mistress from the threshold.
‘Eff,’ Flora smiled, relaxing at the sight of her friend. She was dressed in her late brother’s trousers and shirt, as usual, the cuffs rolled up and her skinny brown ankles sticking out. If Flora had thought her own feet were mucky, it was nothing to the state of Effie’s. ‘Where’ve you been? I didn’t see you at the burn.’
‘Feeding Tiny.’ Tending the bull was a sought-after position, earning the keeper an annual one-pound sum which could be paid in cash or negotiated off the rents. It was a job that usually alternated between households, but ever since her brother John’s death in a climbing accident two years earlier, leaving Effie as their family’s sole provider, a tacit agreement had been reached among the village men that the role would fall to her each year. ‘I saw the new boat come in.’
‘Aye. You getting ready to go up to the Gap? They’re big tippers, this bunch.’
‘Maybe. Hamish says there’s a big swell round the east side that’s too rough for the smack just now. He’s waiting on it to settle down first.’ Effie paced the small room restlessly, unable to sit still. She was like a small squally wind, always blowing through houses and tearing over the moors.
