The Metal Heart Page 2

  The stonemason, Andrew Fulton, was stacking slates in his warehouse. I tapped lightly on the door and he looked up. He scratched his wispy grey hair, then walked towards us, wiping his hands on a rag. ‘Ah, Constance,’ he said.

  ‘It’s Dorothy. Con’s there.’

  ‘Of course it is,’ he said, his gaze flicking back and forth between me and Con. ‘And how can I help you, Dorothy?’

  ‘We need slate for the roof. And help laying it, I think. The bothy beams are crumbling.’

  He scratched his head again. ‘Aye, well, that bothy’s in a poor state altogether. But I’m afraid this slate is all spoken for. It’s going south, you see.’

  ‘Along with everything else,’ Con muttered darkly.

  ‘True enough,’ Andrew said. ‘But we’ve to do our bit for the war. Even those of us too decrepit to fight.’ He laughed. When we didn’t join in, he let the noise trail off. ‘Now look, girls –’

  ‘We’re twenty-three,’ said Con.

  ‘Of course. Ladies. Selkie Holm isn’t the best place for you – for anyone. It’s a bad-luck island. Would it not be better for you to come back across to Kirkwall to live in your old house? It’s what your father would have wanted, I’m sure – two young women living alone in that place, it’s not right. And it seems a shame for your old Kirkwall house to be sitting there, locked up and empty –’

  ‘No,’ we said, in unison, as if we’d planned it.

  His eyes darted between us, and then he used the rag to wipe his forehead, smearing slate dust across his brow.

  ‘I see, I see,’ he said. ‘Well, just you take care of yourselves, then. War isn’t the time to hold grudges.’

  I could see Con was about to snap something at him, so I pulled on her hand, dragging her further into town.

  It was the same when we went to buy rope, and when we enquired about new wooden beams: nothing was for sale; everything was being sent south. Wouldn’t we be much better off coming back to Kirkwall, rather than living alone and putting ourselves at risk? Shouldn’t we let the past lie and leave that dreadful island?

  Night was falling when we rowed back to Selkie Holm, in silence, Con slashing the water with her oars. She’s always thrown herself into arguments – it’s as if, at birth, we were given enough anger for one and Con took all of it. At least, I used to think it was anger, or bravery. But of late I’ve realized that Con was never brave: she simply chose not to show her fear to others. What a gleaming thing the world seemed for her, pretending to have no fear.

  Lately, she seems frightened of everything.

  The temperature was dropping as we dragged the boat off the beach and turned to walk up to the broken-down bothy. We’d covered its single window with an old sail, but the wind still winnowed in through the gaps and funnelled out of the gaping hole in the roof.

  Con tried to slam the door, but I caught it before it banged off the wall and loosened the hinges further.

  ‘I’m not going back,’ she said, throwing herself face down on the double bed, which we’d shoved into the corner that didn’t get wet in the storms.

  ‘All right.’ I tipped water from the jug into the single pan and set it on the stove to boil. The gas wouldn’t last long, with rationing pulling all our belts tighter, but I’d worry about that another day. At this moment, we both needed tea.

  ‘I’m not.’ Her voice was muffled.

  ‘All right,’ I said again.

  ‘Don’t try to placate me.’

  ‘All right.’ I grinned, then ducked as she flung the pillow at me. I threw it back and laughed when it hit her squarely on the head. Her face crumpled and her blue eyes filled with tears.

  I swore and put my arms around her. Her body was stiff against mine.

  ‘Don’t make me go back,’ she said, into my neck.

  I reached under the bed and pulled out the bottle of brandy.

  She shook her head. ‘We’re saving that. For when we’ve got something to celebrate.’

  I uncorked it and took a swig. ‘We’re celebrating staying.’

  She fell asleep quickly, her face set in a frown, and now I am awake and alone, remembering Andrew Fulton’s words. The way his laughter had choked in his throat. There’s a hum of fear across all the islands – especially for us here on Selkie Holm, with all the rumours of bad luck and curses. But Con won’t go back. So I listen for engines; I scan the broken patch of sky through the hole in the roof, searching for the light or movement that might be a plane. I hold my breath, waiting. Nothing. Silence, except for Con’s sleeping breath.

  A thud and a roar, the noise like a punch. Both of us bolt upright with a gasp.

  What is it? What was that? Are you hurt?

  The bothy is still standing, neither of us is injured but that noise can only have been one thing.

  A bomb. The Germans. We tug on sweaters and boots, and step out into the night, blinking.

  A ship in the bay is on fire.

  Across the bay, lights appear on the hill one by one, along with the sound of whistles and a high-pitched alarm signalling for people to find safety. In Kirkwall, there is an old air-raid shelter from the last war, but its walls are crumbling – for years it’s been clambered over by children playing war games. Con turns to look back at our crumbling bothy, its broken walls, its missing roof. There is nowhere for us to hide. I scan the sky for a plane, but can see nothing, can hear no engines. Still, the desire to find shelter and curl up into a ball sets my knees shaking. My teeth chatter. A chorus of dogs howls, their voices threading into the black sky, like the rending cries of wolves.

  Con grabs my shoulders. ‘We need to go back inside. We can hide under the bed, barricade the door.’

  I shake my head, brushing her hands away and stare at the flaming ship in the middle of the bay. Smoke plumes upwards and, in the orange glow, I can see bodies writhing. From this distance, they might be dancing.

  Another blast shakes the earth beneath us. Thunderous roar of water being thrown skywards, then crashing back to the sea, and the shrieking echo of twisting, bending metal.

  The ship lists to one side and, even at this distance, we can see the speed the water is taking it.

  ‘Oh, Lord,’ I say. ‘It’s going to sink.’

  The vessel groans. A chorus of cries and splashes as some of the crew jump into the water. I watch as a man in flames stands on the side of the ship and flings himself off, arms flailing.

  ‘How many men aboard?’ I ask.

  There are more lights on in Kirkwall and the alarm shrieks through the air, its pitch rising and falling with my breath.

  ‘We must get inside,’ Con says, her eyes wild.

  ‘Five hundred men? A thousand?’ I demand.

  She looks away. Both of us are remembering our parents. We’d never found their bodies. And Con had always blamed herself.

  ‘We can’t let them drown,’ I say.

  ‘Dot, please.’ She reaches out. ‘The bombs, the Germans. And –’

  And I know she is thinking about the people in Kirkwall. The ship will bring them out this way. But we can’t think about that now. I grab her hand and pull her down the hill towards our rowboat, towards the water.

  Towards darkness and death.

  We can’t think about that now.

  ‘Dot, stop!’ she calls.

  But I ignore her, throwing my whole body at the little boat. It won’t move. I grunt and smack the wood.

  ‘Stop, Dot!’ she says. ‘We’re not doing this.’

  The rowboat is still stuck in the sand. The sinking ship in the bay squeals again and I scream with it: ‘Come on, you bastard!’

  The boat shifts forward, gaining momentum as I shove it towards the water.

  ‘We’re staying,’ Con calls. She nods across to the opposite bay in Kirkwall, where the whistles are still calling and torches bob among dark shapes on the beaches. They are a mile further away from Scapa than us: we are close enough to smell the smoke from the ship, to hear the screams. Con doesn�
��t move.

  ‘You stay, then,’ I snap, climbing into the boat and dipping the oars into the water. The boat pulls away.

  The dogs are still howling. The alarm is still wailing.

  Please, please, I think, looking at Con. And I picture her dead in the bothy when I return. And I picture myself dead in the water without her. And I don’t want to leave her like this. But I can’t watch those men drown.

  She must be thinking the same: she covers her face with her hands.

  ‘Stop!’ she growls, and she throws herself into the water and wades out to the boat, pulling herself in. I try to help, but she slaps my hands away.

  I give her an oar.

  ‘At least if the world is caving in, we’ll die together.’ She sounds, for a moment, like her old self, not the terrified creature I’d lived with over the past months.

  ‘Don’t be so bloody foolish,’ I say. ‘No one’s drowning.’

  Except those men are.

  We begin to row.

  She gasps as we’re thrown sideways by the huge swell from the bombs. Inky blackness below us. Above, the sky yawns.

  I imagine a German ship skulking somewhere in the harbour, taking aim.

  Thick black smoke balloons, and the ship lists further, her guns pointing almost vertically towards the star-hammered sky.

  ‘There!’ We speak at the same time. Mirrored expressions, tight-lipped and trembling – even Con, for all her bluster when she’d joked about dying, is full of fear.

  A man in the water, face down, floating. And holding onto his arm, another man, floundering and spluttering.

  I lean down and start to haul the man from the sea. His skin is slippery-slick; his mouth stretches wide and noiseless.

  We heave him into the boat, where he lies coughing and retching. I pat his shoulder. He blinks, shakes his head.

  We row on. How can we choose which life to save? How can we know the difference between a good man and a bad man? Rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief.

  Bodies bob in the water, belly up. Their faces wear the wide-eyed blankness of sudden death. An expression that is almost acceptance.

  We fish two more men from the sea, both barely alive. The boat rides low in the water and tilts sharply to one side when we pull the last man in. He huddles with the other two, grey-faced and shaking. One groans; the noise is an animal cry. Other men wave in the water, crying weakly for help.

  We must leave them.

  ‘There are other boats coming,’ I call. Then I have to turn away, in case I see a man sink when I can’t save him. The Kirkwall boats are closer now – close enough, I hope.

  Con is shaking and rows with her head down, without looking towards the Kirkwall boats.

  The men in our boat stare at us, saucer-eyed, open-mouthed. They think they are mad or dreaming, or that their vision is playing tricks.

  ‘Are you . . .?’ one of the men says, accent unfamiliar and English: vowels flat.

  ‘Death’s boatmen,’ Con says. ‘Rowing you to the Land of the Dead.’

  Con’s always had a black humour when distressed.

  ‘We’re twins, yes,’ I say. ‘You’re seeing straight. We’ll have you to safety soon.’ Other boats from Kirkwall have finally drawn level, with the old fishermen shouting to each other, pointing out men in the water, tugging them into the boats.

  Oh, God, what if the noise and the lights draw another bomb?

  I glance at the sky. Starlight clear as a struck bell. No bother for a German pilot to see us and finish the job. My breath is tight in my throat again.

  ‘It wasn’t planes,’ one of the men in the boat says. He speaks quietly, so that we have to lean closer, our faces millimetres from the man’s wild eyes. His breath smells of metal; when he coughs, a dark ribbon creeps down his chin and drips onto his white shirt. He groans and clutches his chest.

  ‘Not planes,’ he whispers again. ‘German submarine.’

  We stare at each other. Surely not. These waters are safe – half the British fleet is moored here. The rocks around Scapa Flow make it impossible for an enemy ship to sneak through. And there is an entire barrier of sunken craft from the Great War.

  ‘How did it get through?’ Con asks.

  The man shrugs and coughs again. Another plume of blood. He cries out in pain and the man next to him tries to say something, then pats him on the back. The other man’s hands are badly burned, the fingers blackened. He holds them up near to his face, examining them as though they don’t belong to him, as though they’re objects he’s found and he’s wondering where they’ve come from.

  ‘How . . .?’ he says. And it is difficult to give a reply because there are so many questions with no clear answers.

  ‘What shall we do with them?’ Con hisses. ‘We can’t take them back to the bothy – they need proper medical care.’

  ‘Kirkwall,’ I say, ignoring the way she flinches from the suggestion, ignoring the fear in her eyes.

  We row towards the shore that is still busy with lights and shouting people, but then, at the last minute, Con pulls more strongly on her oar, giving three good strokes that redirect the boat to a small rocky cove.

  ‘It’s closer to the hospital,’ she says, without looking at me. There are no torches here, no moving shadows, no other boats.

  The man in the white shirt wheezes. Darkness mushrooms on his shirt. I take one hand from my oar and place it on his shoulder. Con does the same. He shivers convulsively, his teeth chattering.

  ‘We’re nearly there,’ I murmur.

  ‘We’ll get you help,’ Con adds. ‘Not long now.’ We pull past the rocks and the boat crunches up onto the sand.

  Behind us, the ship is disappearing beneath the waves. We turn to watch, along with the men. Then, at the last, one by one, we turn away. All except for the man with the hole in his chest, whose eyes are fixed and staring. For a moment, I think he must have gone already – must have died, right there, sitting up in our boat.

  I lean in closer and can hear the rasp of his breath.

  All the men are shivering now. I take off my shawl and wrap it around the two who have climbed down onto the sand. ‘We’ll take you to the hospital in a moment. Just . . .’ I nod towards the boat, towards their comrade. Con has laid him back so that his head is in her lap.

  ‘Not long,’ I say to the men.

  They flinch, then collapse onto the wet sand. The man with the burned hands is sobbing quietly, still holding them in front of his face. Out on the water, the sounds of oars and the shouts of injured men, and rescued men, and drowning men, who will not last the night.

  I climb in alongside the dying man and place my hand on his chest, near the gaping hole where some shard of metal has found a home. He coughs. Blood splatters our dresses.

  ‘Oh, God,’ he gasps. ‘Oh, God. Make it stop.’

  I’ve never been religious. But, still, there is a Bible on our shelf, swollen with damp, crusted with salt, like everything on these islands. And I know the stories it contains: sacrifice, suffering, peace, eternal life. Sometimes death can be a gift that you offer to another. Sometimes death can be a thing that you take for yourself.

  Con looks terrified as she leans close to the man. Is she thinking about our parents too? Is she wondering, as I am, how much they suffered? I feel sick.

  ‘Do you have a sweetheart?’ she asks.

  The man draws a pained breath. ‘Fiona,’ he wheezes.

  ‘I’ll write to Fiona for you, and I’ll tell her you fought well.’

  He closes his eyes and his mouth twitches into something that might be a smile.

  The sea slaps the sides of the boat.

  ‘It hurts,’ he says. ‘Help me. Please help me.’

  Such a flimsy door between life and death. Such a thin skin.

  Con puts her mouth close to his ear.

  ‘You want it to stop?’ I hear her ask.

  A pause. The man shivers, then gives the slightest of nods. ‘Make it stop. Please.’

  Co
n takes off her coat. ‘Lie down.’ He hesitates. ‘Go on,’ she says. ‘It’ll be quick.’

  The man glances at his comrades on the beach, who are both frozen, gaping. All of us waiting.

  I watch as he shifts his weight and lies down on the floor of the boat. He coughs and another streamer of blood spatters onto his shirt. I imagine the sour metal of it, like the taste of fear in my mouth. I swallow.

  The man groans, then whispers, ‘Please.’

  Con bunches up her coat and presses it over his face, cupping her hands over his nose and mouth, closing her eyes. The man doesn’t struggle at first, then he kicks his legs.

  Behind us, the men yell and Con lifts the coat free of the man’s face. He draws in a breath and then coughs again, catches Con’s hands in his and presses the coat against his own face. Con’s face is rigid as she holds the coat against his nose and mouth. Her cheeks are wet.

  ‘Help me,’ she says. And I know what she means: the thought of a slow, lonely death is monstrous. The idea of leaving this man to die alone would torture us both. I imagine the nurses in the hospital, watching him labouring for breath. And I know that, if we let him go now, he will stay like this in our thoughts: not fully alive but not quite dead. Struggling. Fading. He will haunt us, like our parents, whose bodies must be out there somewhere. Whose bones must be beneath these waters.

  A heat rises in my throat – nausea or a scream. But the blood on the man’s shirt gleams in the moonlight and his limbs are trembling with cold and fear and pain.

  And I put my hands over hers. The wool of the coat is rough and the man’s breath is warm. Again, he kicks his legs and a tremor runs through my body and Con’s, but we press down harder. The other men on the beach are silent, their heads bowed as if in prayer.

  I count to thirty, to a hundred.

  The man has been still for a long time when we lift the coat from his bloodied mouth. Sobbing, Con dips the wool into the sea and wipes his face clean. He could be sleeping.

  At the hospital, they will wrap him in a sheet and send him home to Fiona.

  Afterwards, as we row back across to our island, and tuck ourselves into our bed, I can’t help feeling that something has crumbled or broken.

  I can still feel the rough wool under my fingers and I know that Con can’t sleep either. I can tell from the shallow, broken rhythm of her breathing that she is awake, that she is crying. My own tears are hot on my cheeks. I want to reach for Con, want to take her in my arms, but every time I do, I can see the man’s face; I can hear his laboured sobs. And, as I drift in and out of sleep, his face blurs with our father’s face, with our mother’s. I remember the last time I saw them, when they pushed their boat out towards the darkening horizon. Mother was failing fast, and they needed medicine from a bigger hospital than Kirkwall’s. But the sea was too rough by the time they left; it was too much of a risk. They should have waited.