Entry Island(108)

‘How come you speak English here when the rest of the islands are francophone?’

‘Not all of them are,’ she said. A gust of wind blew her hair into her face and she carefully drew it aside with her small finger, then shook it back. ‘They speak English at the north end, too. At Grand Entry Island, and Old Harry and GrosseÎle. Old Harry is where James came from originally. But, yes, most of the population of the Magdalen Islands are French-speakers. I guess maybe only 5 or 10 per cent of us speak English.’ She shrugged. ‘It’s our heritage, our culture. And when you’re a minority you tend to protect those things, nurture them, defend them. Like the French minority in Canada.’

Duke had wandered off, sniffing among the grasses, and was very close to the cliff’s edge. She shouted to him, but all he did was raise his head and cast a dispassionate glance in their direction.

‘Come on,’ she said to Sime. ‘If we head back up the path he’ll follow us.’ She smiled. ‘Duke’s made it his lifetime’s work to follow every visitor to the island.’

They walked up along the path, side by side, at a leisurely rate. Anyone watching from a distance might have taken them for old friends. But the silence between them was tense.

She said suddenly, ‘You probably know, but we still use all the English names for the islands here on Entry. Magdalen rather than Madeleine. Cap aux Meules is Grindstone, Havre Aubert is Amherst – well, I already told you that. Havre aux Maisons is known as Alright Island.’ It was as if she felt that by talking about things of no consequence, those things of enormous consequence that were creating the tension, would be somehow dissipated. ‘The whole archipelago is surrounded by shipwrecks. I saw a map once that pinpointed them all. Hundreds of them, all around the coast.’

‘How come they all washed up here?’

‘Who knows? Bad weather, bad luck, and no lighthouse back in the early days. And I suppose we are slap-bang in the middle of the main shipping lane to the St Lawrence River and Quebec City.’ She glanced at him and bit her lip. ‘How the hell do you make polite conversation with someone who thinks you’re a murderer?’

‘That’s not necessarily what I think,’ he said, and as soon as he’d said it, regretted it. Because, on balance, it was what he thought. It just wasn’t what he wanted to think.

She looked at him intently. As if those blue eyes could penetrate his outer defences and reach the truth. ‘Sure,’ she said eventually, unconvinced.

Duke hirpled past them and threw himself into a ditch full of water at the side of the path. He splashed about in it for a while, cooling himself down, then hauled himself out again with difficulty. He shook his coat violently, and sent water spraying all over Kirsty and Sime. She let out a yell and stepped back, almost losing her footing, and Sime was quick to grab her arm and stop her from falling.

She laughed. ‘Damn dog!’ And then her smile faded as she realised that Sime was still holding her. They were both immediately awkward and he let go of her, self-conscious, almost embarrassed by their unexpected physical contact.

They turned and followed Duke as he ran off with renewed vigour to where the road dipped down over the top of the hill. The wind was stronger here. Below them the bay simmered intermittently in flitting sunlight. Cowell’s house stood proud on the edge of the cliffs, the summerhouse where Kirsty had been born just beyond it. The roof of the police patrol car glinted in the sunshine next to Cowell’s beige Range Rover.

‘Don’t you have a car?’ Sime said suddenly.

‘No.’

‘How do you get around?’

‘You don’t need a car on the island. There’s nowhere you can’t walk to.’

‘But James felt the need for one.’

‘He often brought stuff over on the plane with him. I suppose if I’d ever needed one, I could have used his. Except that I don’t drive.’

Sime was surprised. ‘That’s unusual.’

But she didn’t respond, her attention caught by his right hand as he ran it back through his hair. ‘What happened to your hand?’

He looked at it and saw that the knuckles were bruised and grazed, slightly swollen where he had struck Crozes. He pushed it into his pocket, embarrassed. ‘Nothing,’ he said. And to his amazement she reached forward to seize his wrist and pull his hand back out of the pocket so that she could examine it.

‘You’ve been in a fight.’

‘Have I?’

She was still holding his hand, and pushed up an eyebrow. ‘This is a tough island, Mr Mackenzie. There are no policemen here. Men often settle their differences with fists. It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve seen busted knuckles.’ She paused, glancing down again at his hand. ‘And yours weren’t like this yesterday.’