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him
breathin’.”
    Marian always lost half of these exchanges,
because even the bits that were cohered English lost every ounce of
their Englishness in the mouths of the older islanders, who
appeared to be speaking what they called English only under duress.
Certainly these two, Mrs MacKinnon and Jamie’s father, had never
used the language amongst themselves; Gaelic was the order of the
day.
    Whatever, the import of Mrs MacKinnon’s words
appeared to be painfully obvious this time. Marian slammed the
Golf’s door behind her and strode over the house, her trainers
softly slapping the pavement.
    “Let me in,” she said quickly, “I’m a nurse.
Let me see.”
    Mrs MacKinnon stepped back reluctantly, and
Marian ran up the stairs into Duncan’s bedroom. He wasn’t dead, but
only just not; his breathing was shallow and irregular, his eyes
closed, his eyelids flickering only slightly when Marian called his
name.
    She took his frail old hand into hers, and it
was cold, the wrist blue with the tangled veins of old age.
Watching him drift slowly away, with his limp, winkled hand cradled
in her own, Marian’s eyes filled with tears. She had only known him
for a week, and that was the first time he had laid eyes on his son
for almost five years, and yet he had selflessly send them away
from a vigil for the dying to a vision of beauty when he saw how
much she loved his island.
    He had seemed so much better when they had
first come, weak, but spunky, his cheeks flushed with what Marian
only now recognised as nothing more than happiness. “If I had
known…” Marian whispered guiltily, rubbing his hand with gentle
fingers. “I wouldn’t have gone, Duncan, I wouldn’t have taken him.
He came because you begged him, because you needed him. And I took
him away…”
    “Marian?”
    “He’s going, Jamie. Come here, hold his hand.
I’m sure he knows you’re here.”
    Jamie’s eyes were wide and oddly defenceless.
He came in slowly; it was almost with reluctance that he took his
father’s hand. Marian relinquished it, wiping her eyes with the
back of her own, and turned away.
    “Where are you going?”
    “I’m leaving you a bit of time, Jamie. It’s
you and him now. It isn’t me he begged to come to him.”
    “But where are you going?” Jamie repeated,
almost straining to follow her, with something very like fear in
his eyes.
    “I’ll be close,” she said. “Talk to him, for
God’s sake, Jamie. I don’t know if he can hear you, but it’s the
last chance you’ll get!”
    She walked out, only half-closing the door
behind her. Mrs MacKinnon was clattering with something in the
kitchen. The parlour was empty and quiet; Marian entered it,
crossing creaking floorboards to the window where she stood looking
out. It was still light outside, although it was past eight
already. She wondered how it was possible for her to miss so much
an old man she had hardly known at all.
    “Will ye have a coop o’tea, then?” said Mrs
MacKinnon at her elbow suddenly, startling her. The older woman’s
hair was coming out in straggles, and her hands were still uneasily
lacing her fingers in and out of one another.
    She was unsettled, and far from a calming
presence. Besides, she spoke what was only nominally English and
really an acutely foreign language. Marian didn’t feel up to
deciphering Scotticisms at that moment.
    “No, thank you,” she said. “I’m going out for
a breath of air. Will you tell my… will you tell Jamie I’ll be
right back? I’ll just walk to the harbour and back.”
    Not waiting for a reply, she turned and
almost ran out of the house and into the street. A young woman
passing by gave her a sort of half smile; Marian nodded back.
Everyone acted as though they had known you all their lives up
here. Perfect strangers greeted you heartily in the street; people
struck up conversations in pubs with wide and open-hearted
friendliness that was none the less pleasing because it was usually
more or less