Peter May - Entry Island

I love you .

The road was quiet as he turned on to Highway 108 east, just one or two trucks out early to make up time before the traffic got going. It cut like an arrow through the forest, and as he drove the sun came up over the trees to set their leaves alight. He had to lower his visor to avoid being blinded.

At the village of Gould he pulled off the road into a parking area in front of an old auberge. Next door to it was the Chalmers United Church built in 1892, a plain redbrick building surrounded by neatly kept lawns. There was not much left of the original village, just a few scattered houses set back from the old crossroads. Gone were the schools and churches that had sprung up through the nineteenth century. Most of the plots of land so painstakingly cleared by those early settlers had been reclaimed by the forest, almost all evidence that they had ever existed vanished for ever.

He stood and gazed across the woodland. Somewhere out there was the land that his ancestor had cleared.

Lingwick cemetery was about a hundred metres away on the other side of the road, raised up on a hill that looked out over the trees that smothered the eastern province. An elevated resting place for the dead of a far-off land.

The cemetery itself was immaculately kept. Sime walked up the grassy slope to its wrought-iron gates, their shadows extending down the hill to meet him in the early morning sunlight. He paused by the stone gateposts and read the inscription at his right hand. In recognition of the courage and integrity of the Presbyterian pioneers from the Island of Lewis, Scotland. This gate is dedicated to their memory .

The gravestones themselves were set in rows following the contour of the hill. Morrisons and Macleans. Macneils, Macritchies and Macdonalds. Macleods and Nicholsons. And there, in the shade of the forest that pressed in along the east side of the cemetery, was the weathered, lichen-stained headstone of Sime Mackenzie. Born March 18th, 1829, Isle of Lewis and Harris, Scotland. Died November 23rd, 1904 . So he had lived to be seventy-five, and to see in the new century. He had given life to the woman who bore him his son, and seen it taken away. His love for the woman to whom he had been unable to keep the promise made on that tragic day on the banks of the River Clyde had never been fulfilled.

Sime felt an aching sense of sadness for him, for everything he had been through, for ending up here alone, laid for ever to rest in the earth of a foreign place so far from his home.

He knelt by the tombstone and placed both hands on the cool, rough stone, and touched the soul of his ancestor. Beneath his name was the inscription, Gus am bris an latha agus an teich na sgàilean .

‘Do you know what it means?’ The voice startled him, and Sime looked around to see a man standing a few paces away. A man in his forties, dark pony-tailed hair going grey around the hairline. He wore a collarless white shirt open at the neck beneath a tartan waistcoat. Black trousers folded over heavy boots.

Sime stood up. ‘No, I don’t.’

The man smiled. He said, ‘It means, Until the day breaks and the shadows flee away. Quite common on Hebridean graves.’

Sime regarded him with curiosity. ‘Are you Scottish?’

The man laughed. ‘Do I sound it? No, I’m as French as they come. My partner and I own the auberge across the way, but the history of this place is my obsession.’ He glanced down at his waistcoat. ‘As you can see.’ He smiled again. ‘I’ve even been to the Isle of Lewis myself in the company of some local historians. Smelled the peat smoke and tasted the guga.’ He reached out to shake Sime’s hand, then nodded towards the gravestone. ‘Some connection?’

‘My great-great-great-grandfather.’

‘Well, then, I’m even happier to meet you, monsieur. I have quite a collection of papers and memorabilia over at the auberge. Your ancestor was quite a local celebrity. I think I may even have a photograph of him.’

‘Really?’ Sime hardly dared believe it.

‘I think so, yes. Come on over and have a coffee and I’ll see if I can find it.’

As he poured them both coffee from a freshly plunged cafetière, the owner of the auberge said, ‘Your ancestor’s land and his house were about half a mile out of town on the old road south. All gone now, of course. The fella he came here with never developed his, apparently.’

Sime looked up, interested. ‘The Irishman?’

‘Yes, that’s right. Very unusual for an Irishman to settle in these parts.’

‘But he didn’t, you said. He never developed his land.’

‘No.’

‘So what happened to him?’

The man shrugged. ‘No idea. The story is that the two of them went off lumberjacking one year, and only one of them came back. But I don’t really know.’ He stood up. ‘I’ll see if I can find that photograph.’

From his seat in the window Sime sipped his coffee and gazed with interest around the dining room. The walls were lined by old photographs and stags’ heads on one side, and shelves cluttered with bric-a-brac and memorabilia on the other. An antique coffee machine sat on an equally cluttered serving counter and Sime could see through a hatch into the kitchen beyond. The auberge, the owner had told him, was constructed on the site of the original Gould store, built by an émigré from the Scottish mainland.

He returned now with an album full of faded photographs of people long dead and flipped through the pages until he found what he was looking for. ‘There,’ he said, stabbing a finger at a photograph so bleached by time that it was hard to make out the figure in it.

But Sime saw that it was the portrait of an old man with a long beard sitting on a bench. His hair was pure white and swept back across his head, long and curling around his collar. He wore a dark jacket and trousers. A waistcoat and white shirt were only just discernible. He was leaning forward slightly, both hands resting on the top of a walking stick that he held upright in front of him, his right hand over his left. And there, on his ring finger, only just apparent, was the signet ring that Sime now wore on his.

The flight from Quebec City to the Madeleine Isles took just under two hours in the small commuter aircraft. Sime sat next to an island woman whose two teenage sons fidgeted in the seats in front. They wore baseball caps with upturned brims, listening to iPods and playing computer games. She raised semi-regretful eyebrows at Sime, as if apologising for the behaviour of all teenagers. As if he might have cared.

Some time into the flight he closed burning eyes and very nearly drifted off, before being startled awake by an announcement from the pilot. Above the roar of the engines Sime heard him apologising for any turbulence experienced, and informing passengers that there was a storm on the way. Not on the same scale as the remnants of Hurricane Jess, which had so marked Sime’s first visit. But it was likely to hit the islands, the pilot said, with strong to gale-force winds and high precipitation later in the day.

When the plane began its final descent towards Havre aux Maisons, it banked left and Sime saw the storm clouds accumulating in the south-west. And as it swung around for landing, he caught a glimpse once more of Entry Island standing sentinel at the far side of the bay. A dark, featureless shadow waiting for him in the grey, pre-storm light. He had thought, just a matter of days ago, that he had seen the last of it. But now he was back. To try to resolve what seemed like an insoluble mystery. To right what he believed to be a miscarriage of justice. Something that, in all likelihood, would lose him his job.