Hattie’s feelings were spiralling out of control. She loved being in the islands but whenever she imagined Mima lying in the rain, shot by Ronald Clouston, she started to cry and she couldn’t stop. Her imagination was a curse.
Perhaps she was ill again. Depression had first appeared when she was at school, but then it had been insidious, almost gentle, so for some time the people around her hadn’t recognized what had been going on. When her mother had finally bullied her into seeing her GP, he’d prescribed medication, talked about stress, said it was unlikely to happen again. But at university there’d been a major breakdown and there’d been a couple of short episodes since.
It usually started with an obsession, an inability to let go of one thought or idea. At eighteen it had all been about her schoolwork, the individual project that was submitted as part of the history course. She’d been relatively relaxed about the other subjects. She’d wallowed rather in T. S. Eliot’s ‘The Waste Land’, but her English teacher had told her anxious mother that many adolescents did that. No, it was her work on a nineteenth-century almshouse close to her home that had taken over her life and her dreams. She’d stumbled on to the original records by chance through a friend of her mother’s, and from reading the first page of neat and tiny writing she’d been hooked.
The idea of the essay had been to set the records in their social context, to explore the conditions that had allowed the formation of the houses and how their establishment fitted in with the political debate of the time. But it was the individual stories that had captivated her. She had felt herself living under the humourless regime of the almshouse trustees, saw the world through the residents’ eyes. Before she became ill enough to need a doctor she had the sense to change her university application from history to archaeology. It was the specific and the human that fascinated her, not the political or strategic. What could be more grounded than digging in the earth?
Somehow she completed her examinations and submitted her dissertation. It was when school broke up for the summer and the familiar routine of revision and writing was over that she lost any sense of perspective. Then she heard the old women in the almshouse talking to her and couldn’t let them go.
The depression had come back big style at the end of Hattie’s first year at university. She stopped eating and her mother wheeled her off to see a specialist. But then it had been Paul Berglund rather than her academic work that had triggered the illness. At school she’d had no time for men or sex, watched the antics of her friends as if they were the mad ones with their dressing up and flirting, the parties and the desperation. Falling for a man seemed just as ridiculous to her as getting excited about food. Then in her first long vacation she’d volunteered on a dig managed by Professor Berglund. It had been a hot summer, day after day of clear skies and sunshine. They’d camped out in a barn quite similar to the Whalsay Bod. The team was full of oddballs and eccentrics and Hattie had felt wonderfully at home. Here, she was no weirder than the rest of them. In the evening they went to the pub and drank pints of beer and rolled home singing.
The site had been surrounded by fields of ripening corn and her first view of Paul had been of him striding down the side of a field towards them. He’d been wearing a yellow T-shirt, slightly ripped at the neck. Because of the angle of the field she hadn’t been able to see his legs. He was a bull-necked, blunt northerner quite different from anyone she’d ever met before. None of her mother’s friends were so forthright or so rude. So this is what all the girls at school were going on about, she’d thought. Paul Berglund had become her obsession. Later, when she returned to London she lost her mind completely. She found herself unable to sleep. The events of the summer continued to haunt her. Images flashed into her head with the jagged brilliance of a drug-induced trip. Again she couldn’t bring herself to eat.
She’d been admitted to an enlightened NHS psychiatric hospital that ran a residential unit for teenagers. She supposed her mother had pulled strings to get her in. By that time she was hardly aware of what was happening. The stated cause of admission was the eating disorder, which had become the focus of her mother’s concern. An eating disorder was fashionable, almost commonplace among the children of the high-powered women with whom Gwen James worked. But quite simply, Hattie thought she’d been mad. She developed paranoia, heard voices again, this time loud, controlling, battering into her brain. She couldn’t trust anyone.
The unit had twenty-four beds and had an old-fashioned emphasis on talking and shared activity. They took pills too, of course, but the other treatments seemed just as important. The place was run by a nurse called Mark who was a little overweight, with a soft doughy face and thinning hair. Perhaps his unappealing appearance was part of his strategy. He was so sympathetic that if he’d been at all good-looking all the young women would have fallen in love with him. As it was they could treat him as a favourite uncle or adored older brother. Hattie had regarded the unit as her sanctuary. She still considered some of the other patients as her friends. She had few others.
Mark had taught her strategies for avoiding stress and for taking control. He told her she wasn’t to blame for what had happened, but that she found harder to accept. He encouraged her to put her thoughts into words. When she first left home for university she’d developed the habit of writing a weekly letter to her mother. A letter was less demanding than a phone call, but it still kept Gwen off her back. Now, in the unit, she continued the practice. There was nothing of any importance in the letters – certainly she didn’t confide in Gwen as she had in Mark – but she enjoyed passing on the details of life in the hospital. Her mother replied with chatty notes about the House, anecdotes about the neighbours in the Islington street where Hattie had grown up. Letters seemed their most effective means of communication. In their letters they could persuade themselves that they liked each other. Stranded in the unit, Hattie looked forward to receiving them.
She was discharged from hospital in the middle of the autumn and came home to prepare for her return to university. Her tutor was understanding – she was so bright, he said that she’d have no problems catching up with the academic work. On the last day of October her mother drove her back to the hall of residence and left her there, Hattie thought, with some relief. Now Gwen could return to her real passion, politics. She convinced herself that the stay in hospital had cured Hattie for ever. The illness would never come back.
Now Hattie knew she had developed another obsession. She’d returned to Whalsay full of hope and dreams. Then Mima had died and everything had become more complicated. Perhaps she was ill again, though she didn’t recognize this as depression. She was suffering from the same symptoms as before – the difficulty in sleeping, a reluctance to eat, the inability to trust her own judgement – but it didn’t feel at all the same.
It had been very different when she’d first arrived back in Whalsay. Then the summer had spread ahead of her, full of possibilities.
Mima had realized how happy she was. Two nights before she’d been shot, she’d called Hattie into the house. She’d poured glasses of whisky, put them on a tray with the bottle and a little jug of water. It had been unusually mild and they’d sat outside on the bench made of driftwood that stood by the kitchen door, the tray on the ground between them.
‘Now what has happened to you over the winter? You look like the cat that got the cream.’
‘Nothing’s happened. I’m just pleased to be back in the island. You know how much I like it here. It’s the only place I feel quite sane. It’s the best place in the whole world.’
‘Maybe it is.’ Mima had gathered her cat on to her lap and given a little laugh. ‘But what would I know? I’ve never lived anywhere else. But maybe it would be good to see a bit of the world before I die. Perhaps you’ll dig up a hoard of treasure in my land and I’ll be able to travel like the young ones do.’
Then she’d looked at Hattie with her bright black eyes, quite serious. ‘And it’s not so perfect here, you ken. Bad things happen here the same as everywhere else. Terrible things have happened here.’
Hattie had taken another drink of the whisky, which she thought tasted of peat fires. ‘I can’t believe that. What are you talking about?’
She’d expected gossip. Mima was a great gossip. She thought there’d be a list of the usual island sins – adultery, greed and the foolishness of bored young men. But Mima hadn’t answered directly at all. Instead she’d gone on to talk about her own youth. ‘I got married straight after the war,’ she said. ‘I was far too young. But my man worked with the men of the Shetland Bus and we got used to seeing them taking risks. You’ll have heard about the Shetland Bus?’
Hattie shook her head. She was dazed now by the whisky, the low spring sun in her eyes.
‘It was after the Germans had invaded Norway. Small fishing boats were used to carry agents in and bring folk out. They called that the Bus. It was run from the big house in Lunna. There were a few Whalsay men who helped and they got close to the Norwegian sailors. I’m never sure exactly what happened. Jerry never liked to speak about it and he wasn’t quite the same afterwards…’ She stared into the distance. ‘We were all crazy then.’
Hattie had thought Mima was going to explain, but she had wrapped her arms around the cat, poured herself another dram and laughed. ‘Certainly more mad than dee!’
‘I hope it didn’t upset you too much to see the skull in the practice trench.’ Hattie had remembered Mima’s white face, the way she’d fled into the house. ‘It’s not that unusual, you know. Old bones turning up at a dig. I suppose we’re used to it and we’re not squeamish any more.’
‘I’m not squeamish!’ Mima’s voice had been almost brutal. ‘It was a shock, that was all.’ Hattie hoped she was going to explain further, but the old woman pushed the cat from her lap and stood up. It was clear Mima was ready for her to go: ‘You’ll have to excuse me. There’s a phone call I must make.’ And Mima had stomped into the house without saying goodbye. Hattie had heard her voice through the open door. It sounded angry and loud.
Now Mima was dead and Hattie would never find out what had so disturbed her. Setter felt quite different without Mima there. Even from outside it was different. Before, they’d have heard the radio, Mima singing along or shouting at it if she disagreed with one of the speakers. Sophie saw Sandy through the window as they were walking past and it was her idea to go in.
‘Come on,’ Sophie said in her loud, confident, public-schoolgirl voice. ‘We’d better go in and tell him we’re here. Besides, he might have the kettle on.’ They hadn’t seen Joseph at that point and could hardly turn round and go out again when they realized Mima’s son was there.
Then Hattie had brought up the matter of the dig. So eager to please, so apologetic, the words had tumbled out. And Joseph had frowned and refused to give any sort of commitment about the future of the project. At least that was how it had seemed to her. She thought she might be banished from Shetland and never allowed back. Why didn’t I keep my mouth shut? she thought. Why didn’t we just sneak past the house and go on with our work?
After Sandy’s phone had rung he and his father left Setter. Hattie watched them go and it was only as she felt her pulse steady at their departure that she realized how anxious the men had made her. She was kneeling in the main trench, carefully easing her trowel around what could have been the base of a stone doorpost. The soil was a slightly different colour here and she wanted to dig in context. Sophie had gone to turn on the outside tap so the water would run into the flot tank. She was planning to wash the soil from the second trench, allowing the soil to float off and the more dense fragments to sink and be collected in the net beneath. Sophie called over from the tank: ‘Did you get the impression that Mima’s son doesn’t want us here?’
Hattie was surprised. She’d got exactly the same impression but had wondered if she was being paranoid again.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, I did.’
Sophie stretched her arms above her head to ease the tension out of her muscles. ‘I don’t think we have to worry about him throwing us off the croft. Evelyn’s all in favour of the project and none of the men in that family stands up to her.’
Hattie looked up at her and considered. ‘Do you think so? Joseph seems very easy to manage, but if there was something he really wanted I’m sure he’d get his own way in the end.’
Sophie gave one of her wide, easy, slightly predatory smiles. ‘All the men on this island are easy to manage. Don’t you think so?’
Hattie didn’t know what to say to that. She disapproved of Sophie’s relationships with the island men. Sophie continued: ‘I mean what they really want is a bit of fun. The women here take themselves so seriously.’
Hattie thought some of the Whalsay men must want more than fun, but she didn’t answer. As she looked back into the trench the pale sun caught something softly metallic.
Hattie leaned forward on the kneeler. She could smell the soil, felt it damp through her sweater where she must have propped herself on her elbow. She trowelled back the soil around the object. Sometimes it felt that the trowel was an extension of her arm, more sensitive even than her fingers. She could be as delicate as she would be with a brush. Sophie must have sensed her excitement because she jumped across the trench so she could get a better view without blocking the light. Hattie could tell the other woman was holding her breath and realized she was too. Now Hattie did take a brush and cleaned the object that stood in relief proud of the soil.
‘What do you think?’
‘A coin.’ Sophie looked down with a huge grin. For a moment the tension between them evaporated.
‘Similar to the ones they found at Dunrossness?’ It had been in Hattie’s mind from the moment she’d seen it. At a dig in the south of Shetland mainland, a dwelling had been validated by the discovery of a store of medieval coins.
‘Absolutely.’ Sophie grinned again. ‘I’d say you’ve found your merchant’s house. And I think the boss will be in on the next plane.’
And now, Hattie thought with relief, I’ll be able to stay in the islands for ever.