As if he can read my thoughts, Davy glances up from the menu and says, ‘Don’t look so sad, Lexie. Life is full of beginnings as well as endings.’ He pours wine into our glasses from a bottle that the waiter has placed between us. ‘A toast,’ he proposes. ‘To beginnings. And to finding new songs to sing.’
I raise my glass and echo his words: ‘To finding new songs to sing.’
As we talk and eat and talk some more, I begin to relax. And something seems to nourish me besides the very good steak and chips we consume. When we’ve finished our meal and drained the last drops of wine from our glasses, a sense of contentment has settled over me. It’s a novel feeling, not just the contentment of a full belly after a good dinner. It’s more than that. It seems to have something to do with being in the company of Davy Laverock.
By the end of the evening, when he gives me a goodnight kiss at the gate of Keeper’s Cottage （supposedly so that Bridie won’t see us, but I’m sure I catch a glimpse of light from the corner of the sitting room curtain）， I notice something. Beneath the beating of my heart and the hushing of the waves there’s a current that runs through my veins that seems stronger than the tides of the ocean.
I think I recognise it from bygone times: its name is hope.
Flora, 1943
As the year went by, Flora began to grow accustomed to the cycle of arrivals and departures. The loch was seldom peaceful, with the constant to-ing and fro-ing of the navy and the busy activity of the refuelling tankers and the boom-net trawlers. After a convoy left, churning the waters to a frothing chop, there might be a day or two of relative calm. But within a few days more merchant ships would begin to gather, dropping anchor beyond the island, until thirty or forty more joined them to form a solid mass of shipping. Then they would slip into their positions, one behind the other, and set off on the next perilous journey.
But no matter how many times the gathering and the leaving were repeated, she felt she could never get used to saying goodbye to Alec. Every time he left, she’d linger in his arms, savouring the final precious moments before they would have to tell each other, ‘I’ll be seeing you,’ and she would watch him walk away again. Try as she might, she couldn’t harden her heart against the lurch of pain she felt at the sight of his broad shoulders disappearing down the path, squared determinedly as he prepared to face the Arctic seas again. It only seemed to hurt more, knowing that each time he went he’d have to endure those things that corroded his soul a little further. Sometimes she felt that they were both adrift on the cold grey waters, struggling against undercurrents that were trying to sweep them apart and might well prove too strong for their relationship to survive.
Flora knew that with the desperate struggle for Stalingrad through the cruel winter of 1942, surrounded and besieged by Hitler’s forces, it had become even more critical to keep the Soviet supply lines open. Yet, for exactly the same reason, it had become even more important for the Nazis to try to stop those same supplies from getting through. She pictured Alec on board the Isla, trying to protect the convoys as they ran the gauntlet of the stormy, ice-strewn wastes of the Barents Sea in the darkness. The men on board never knew when the next attack might come from above or below, while they battled through gale-whipped waves that turned the decks of the ships into lopsided, top-heavy ice palaces, threatening to capsize even the heaviest vessels. They might have had anti-aircraft guns and depth charges to defend themselves against the U-boats and the Heinkel bombers, but all they had to fight back against the smothering blanket of ice were pickaxes and shovels. Somehow, though, many of the ships got through, delivering their precious cargoes of fighter planes and tanks, trucks and weapons, as well as supplies of food, ammunition and fuel oil.
At the end of the winter, the convoys had been suspended again through the summer months and Alec had been sent back out on patrol on the stretch of sea between the Northern Isles. Time and time again, Flora waited and watched as she drove her ambulance along the loch, scanning the horizon for new arrivals and searching among the flotilla of vessels at anchor in the bay for his ship.
And then, at last, her patience was rewarded. He’d been given a few days of leave, days she hoped they’d spend beachcombing along the shore and fishing in the lily-covered lochan. But his father found jobs for him to do on the estate, and she suspected Sir Charles was deliberately keeping Alec away from Keeper’s Cottage.
On a warm summer’s evening Flora wandered up to the stable block, having volunteered to see to the garron. As she approached, she heard the rhythmic thud of an axe on wood. Behind the stables, she found Alec. She smiled at first, watching the muscles of his back move beneath his shirt with each swing of the axe and each blow. He must have been at work for hours, she realised, noticing the split logs strewn chaotically around him, left unstacked. Then she saw how his shirt clung to his back, soaked by sweat.