Opening her eyes and looking out across the grey, rippling water, in the sky she spotted an osprey, its cream and brown striped wings extended as it wheeled in long, slow descending spirals searching the loch for prey. Lizzie watched the quiet and graceful way it moved through the sky and thought about her life over the last few years, in the heart of Scotland. She had been fortunate to be staying somewhere with a loving family in a place where she got plenty of fresh air, mountain water, and, of course, there was always food in the home of a farmer. It was a far cry from what she’d expected when her parents had sent her from the island to live with her relatives. But all the better for it.
Alerted by the raised sounds of bleating sheep drifting up from their flock below, her attention was drawn down the hillside. Her uncle had started to round them up for the evening. Lizzie watched the sight she’d viewed what felt like a thousand times, Uncle Hamish surrounded by scores of white, shaggy, long-horned sheep marked with their painted red crosses that identified them as their own, bounding down the hillside for home. Ambling down in his languorous stride, his knotted staff steadying his way, her uncle was wearing his usual flat cap and green plaid jacket that had long started to fray around his neckline and cuffs. But this was his favourite, and even though her aunt had bought him numerous new coats through the years, he still seemed to gravitate to this familiar and comfortable tweed. As he went, he whistled through his teeth and called out to Bob and Chip, the sheepdogs always by his side, communicating in ways that only the three of them understood.
Trudging down the steep hill in her green rubber boots and long wool skirt, her thick coat wrapped around her shoulders, Lizzie made her way towards him. She would be changing into a blue uniform tomorrow night, she thought. Leaving first thing on a 6.00 a.m. train. She would change trains in Glasgow, which would take her across the border and down through England, past big cities she’d only ever heard about, like Manchester and Birmingham, all the way to London.
Lizzie galloped to the bottom field to catch up with her uncle, who had reached the far gate, calling out to him, still far off. The wind whipped up at her back and carried her voice ahead of her to find him. He swivelled around and acknowledged her with a brief wave of his hand, clad in one of the thick black woollen gloves she had knitted for him two winters before.
As she finally joined him at his side, out of breath, he was heaving open the top gate of the lower field, set in the drystone wall he had built with his father many years before. Resting one of his mud-crusted boots on the bottom rung of the gate, he hunched over it as he waited for the dogs, who diligently continued to circle the sheep, steering them towards the entrance as they bleated their displeasure at being herded. As the last of the sheep moved into the lower field, Uncle Hamish pulled the gate shut and took a moment to look down at his niece, a broad smile crinkling his piercing green eyes and spreading across his shiny weather-reddened cheeks.
‘Oh, there’s my girl,’ he said in his usual sing-song Scottish manner. ‘Are you all ready?’
‘I am,’ she said, fighting with the wind that continued to tug loose strands from under her woollen cap, creating a candy floss of hair that whipped around her face.
‘All ready for your adventure in the big city?’ he continued, widening his eyes with anticipation. ‘Though I won’t imagine it will be for long, because if Jerry manages to make it over here, he will be sure to turn around and leave once he sees a Mackenzie waiting for him.’
He put his arm around her shoulder and pulled her close for a vigorous side hug as he chuckled to himself. They’d been close since she arrived, the eldest daughter of his twin brother. They’d discovered a shared love of the fields, of the Highlands, and the farming. ‘I’ll miss you, Lizzie. You have been a great help to me and your aunt. But we’ve all got to do our bit. I’m very proud of you. I’m proud of what you’re doing.’
Now side by side, his arm still resting on her shoulders, they strode through the muddy lower field, that sucked at their boots and was already well marked and grooved with the numerous slotted hooves of the sheep and soft pads of their collies. With his heavy silence, Lizzie could tell her uncle was contemplating something. Maybe he was worried about her leaving.
‘It won’t be long till I’m back, Uncle Hamish. You wait and see. We’ll get this war sorted out, and I’ll be back to help here on the farm. I won’t be going back to Barra.’
He shook his head, as if that wasn’t where his thoughts had been, then taking a moment to answer, he swallowed down emotion before he spoke again, his voice a low rumble. ‘I was thinking that this will be a nice fresh start for you, Lizzie. A new time in your life.’
She swallowed too, realizing what he was referring to. The last five years had not been easy for her, and sometimes she forgot just how much it affected her aunt and uncle and their family too. She followed him through the bottom gate and into the farm courtyard, where the sheep were already gathered around the entrance to their pen, bleating their desire for their dinner. Lizzie helped him usher them in and lift the large grain sacks to feed the sheep, taking a moment to remember.
Thinking back to the time five years before, which had been so difficult. Her cousin, Fiona, was that age now. Just fourteen Lizzie had been when she’d fallen in love with Fergus McGregor. The boy from the next farm on Barra. The whole thing seemed so foolish now as she thought back, but she had been convinced she was in love, and they had been barely children, experimenting, caught up in emerging feelings. But what had started out so innocently for her had changed rapidly for him. Lizzie thought back to how it had all turned so ugly so quickly that night and pushed the unbearable memories away. She had confessed it to her best friend, who instead of supporting her had turned against her and turned many of her other friends against her too. The pain of the rejection had been heartbreaking, and she’d vowed she would never trust a friend in the same way again. Lizzie had never told her parents what had really happened between her and Fergus that night and she never would have, if not for the fact that she’d found out she was pregnant. With both families being devout Catholics, they had got together to discuss it in the cold, unwelcoming, visitors’ parlour as the two of them had sat there staring at their hands, shame-faced. She was unable to look at him without feeling sick and angry.
There had been much toing and froing between both the families, but eventually it had been decided that she would go away to her aunt and uncle’s across the water in the Highlands, have the baby, and give it up for adoption. Everyone had been clear: fourteen was no age to start a family, especially with a baby conceived out of wedlock. Fergus had wanted to finish his schooling and Lizzie had family obligations. It just wasn’t right to saddle her with a young one when she was still a child herself, her father had insisted, his hand resting heavily on her shoulder as tears had streamed down her face.
Lizzie remembered the stony-faced disappointment on her parents’ faces as they had seen her off onto the boat, and how she had cried with the loneliness on the train journey afterwards. Before she found a kinder home with her aunt and uncle, she’d had been desperate, leaving the only home she had known on the isle in the Outer Hebrides, wondering what was to become of her. And then again, when she gave up the baby. Which was the hardest thing she’d ever done. Harder even than seeing her own parents turn against her when she’d found herself pregnant in the first place. Quickly, she pushed the painful thoughts away from her mind as she felt the reassuring hand of her uncle on her shoulder again.