It was August. The weather was good and the men decided to start the harvest. The older children were not away at school yet. The work was all by hand and everyone was needed. Later the teacher and his wife came to help. Other islands in the group were using machines to do the harvest, but Kinness was still using the old ways. There was a tractor. Alec had a tractor and they used that to carry the hay from the fields to the crofts. They worked on each person’s land in turn, starting at the south of the island. Everyone, except the very young and infirm, was helping. Mothers brought their children with them. A baby slept in a pram in the sun, toddlers played at the edge of the field. At midday they all ate together outside, where they were working. The islanders were not poor, but the harvest was always done this way.

They worked quickly while the weather lasted. It was unusual to have such a long spell of good weather. Storms could come quickly, without warning, and the harvest could be ruined. They wanted it finished by the time Jim brought his bride back in September. Some of them were going south for the wedding. So they worked quickly, and for a while the rhythm of the harvest—the bending to gather the hay to tie into stooks, the collection of the stooks together to dry and the movement of the tractor from field to croft—ruled the island.

Sarah wanted to get to the island as quickly as possible.

“Why bother with a honeymoon?” she said as they were planning the wedding. “Why not go straight to the island? We’ll have our honeymoon there.”

“There’ll be no chance for a honeymoon once we’re there,” Jim said, and they decided on Cornwall.

Sarah had never been to Kinness. She had arranged to go once, to see it and meet Jim’s family, but then her father had been ill and she was forced to cancel the trip.

She was quite determined, though, that they should live there once they were married. Where else would they live?

When she first met Jim he was working as assistant manager on a big farm in Cheshire and she was a student midwife in Liverpool. They had met at a party in the rugby club where her brother was a member. Jim had just joined and seemed detached from the rowdy good temper of the other young men. It seemed to Sarah that he was more mature than they were, but a little lonely. He treated her with old-fashioned politeness. In those first few months of their relationship he drank a good deal, but gave nothing of himself away. This aroused Sarah’s curiosity and presented something of a challenge. She had just attended a course in psychiatry and thought that he was repressed.

He had not told her at first where he came from. She was English and did not recognize his accent. Later she was grateful for that. She would not have known, if he had told her, whether she was attracted to him or to the romantic idea that he belonged to the island. By the time he told her where he had spent his childhood she was convinced that she loved him. She had heard of the island because it had been featured in one of the colour magazines of a Sunday newspaper. The pictures of the crofts and the cliffs, the detailed description of the life there had caught her imagination. She especially remembered the faces, wary and cheerful, which stared out of the pages at her. The piece had been called “A Study of Paradise.”

She was surprised when he asked her to marry him. He had become more relaxed with her, laughed more easily, and there had been moments of passion, though he seemed almost apologetic about them afterwards. But there had been no intimacy. She did not feel that she knew him. He told her that a croft had become vacant on Kinness and that it had been offered to him.

“But we would not need to live on the island,” he said. “It might be better not to live there.”

“But you love it,” she said. “I can tell from the way you talk about it. You wouldn’t be happy anywhere else.”

This was wishful thinking. She could not tell what he thought about the island, because he hardly ever talked about it. She thought his reluctance to move back was on her behalf.

She enjoyed the honeymoon, but all the time they were in Cornwall she was thinking about moving to the island.

“Make the most of this,” Jim said. “You’ll be there soon enough.”

But she pestered him to tell her about it, to describe the people and the house where they would live, and to go over the plans for the journey, until he was quite irritated.

“You’ll be there soon enough,” he repeated.

Eventually they were almost there. They drove north and took the overnight ferry to Baltasay, the biggest island in the group. The car was packed with their things. Other belongings had been sent on ahead. They took a cabin on the ferry, but Sarah did not sleep well. She was too excited. She had been looking forward to this for so long. She wished that she could share her excitement with Jim but he slept on the bunk above her and did not answer when she called out his name. The ferry pulled into the harbour on Baltasay very early in the morning. It was just as she had imagined. The harbour was full of fishing boats and gulls and the grey and white houses were crowded together around the water. The streets were narrow and cobbled.

Jim stood by her on the deck and pointed things out to her—his old school and houses where friends had lived. She was sure that he was pleased to be back.

They had breakfast in a café overlooking the harbour, then drove to the south of Baltasay to catch the boat to Kinness. Once they were out of the town the landscape was bleak and windswept. There were no trees, even around the crofts, and there were black scars in the hillside caused by peat digging. The road was new and good. They came upon occasional pockets of development—an enormous oil terminal and a modern concrete housing estate which looked like a prison. She tried to persuade herself that she was glad it was so bleak and so strange, and that made the trip even more exciting, but she felt disturbed and a little frightened.

The boat—the Ruth Isabella—belonged on Kinness and came to Baltasay once a week for mail, provisions, and passengers. Its base on Baltasay was a deep bay called Lutwick. There was a jetty there, but nothing more. Sarah had expected a village, more grey and white houses, perhaps a hotel where they could wait in comfort, but found only a corrugated iron shack, a telephone box, and a pebble beach. They were the first people to arrive at Lutwick. Later, when the boat appeared on the horizon, a mail van came down the road and parked by the hut, and then an old lady driving a delivery van with fresh meat, fruit, and vegetables. Inside the hut a tray of bread stood next to some of their furniture which had already been delivered. On the jetty there were drums of diesel and Calor Gas cylinders.

The boat seemed to approach very quickly and Sarah’s high spirits returned. Baltasay might be bleak and ugly, but Kinness would be different. Hadn’t the newspaper said that it was paradise? As the Ruth Isabella drew nearer the clouds parted and the sun came out. Sarah put her hand to her eyes to shield them from the reflected glare. Soon she could see every detail on the boat. Someone came out of the wheelhouse on to the deck and waved.

The old lady got out of the van and began to unload the goods inside it. The skin on her face was as tough and red as that of an old swede. The postman did not move and she began to complain to him about how heavy the boxes were, but he did not take the hint and get out to help her. He wound down the window of the van and looked out at the boat. The old woman nodded at Sarah, who was standing some distance away.

“That’ll be Sandy Stennet’s new daughter-in-law then,” she said to the postman.

He grunted in reply.

“I think it’s terrible sad for a young girl like that to be stuck on Kinness. Especially coming from the south, you’d think she’d want more from life than that.”

“I went there once.” The man spoke after a pause which gave the impression of considerable thought. “I didn’t think a great deal of it.”

“They say that they’re terrible inbred,” she said, inviting gossip.

But the postman had made his contribution. He climbed slowly out of his van and swung two sacks of letters behind him, without bothering to answer.

The boat was pulling into the jetty. A middle-aged man was at the wheel and two younger ones were acting as crew. The three men obviously belonged to the same family. Jim went forward to help. He took the ropes thrown by the younger men and made them secure. He shouted to them. They were laughing together. Sarah watched Jim throw back his head and laugh. She had never seen him like that before. He seemed to have become a different person. She did not understand what the men said to each other. The dialect they used was very broad and Jim had lapsed into it, too. For a moment she felt excluded and resentful. It was her day. She had expected to be the focus of attention. Why had Jim not introduced her?

Then Sarah recognized the three men. They had been at the wedding. The older man was Jim’s father and the younger ones were his brothers. Alec was older than Jim. He was married and had two sons. Will was in the sixth form of the school at Baltasay. They came ashore. The father, Sandy, approached her, took her hands in his and kissed her. His face was brown and whiskery and smelled of oil and tobacco. She felt that Alec was staring at her. She looked at him and he winked at her and grinned. Will seemed embarrassed and looked away.

They loaded the boat efficiently and quickly. The postman drove back up the road, but the old woman waited in her van to watch. She seemed in no hurry to go. There would have been room to take Jim’s car on the boat, but he had decided to leave it behind, for the time being at least. A friend would take it back to the town.

“The road’s not very good on the island,” he said. “It really needs improving. That’s something I’ll want to sort out.”

Sarah rather liked the idea of a place with no cars and dilapidated roads. It was something else to make the island different.

“Surely we won’t need a car,” she said, but he took no notice.

The boat was loaded. Alec took Sarah by the hand and helped her aboard. He held her hand slightly longer than necessary. They were ready to go, but nothing happened. She wondered what they were waiting for. Alec had folded a rug for her, to sit more comfortably on the deck. She was sitting out of the wind and the sun felt quite warm on her face. Jim was in the wheelhouse with the other men. She could hear them talking and joking. She did not feel able to interrupt them to ask why they were waiting. The old woman with the grocery van must have decided that nothing more interesting was going to happen. Sarah watched her drive away. As she followed the van shaking up the narrow road away from Lutwick, she saw another car coming in the other direction. The men must have recognized it because they moved out of the wheelhouse and a prepared to cast off.

“Who is it?” Sarah asked. “What are we waiting for?”

“It’s the taxi from town,” Jim said. “We’re expecting a passenger. He’s been to the island several times. He’s staying at the school house with Jonathan and Sylvia Drysdale.”

Sarah watched the new arrival with a sense of superiority, because she belonged on the island now, although she had never been there and he was only a holidaymaker. She was disappointed when Sandy greeted the man even more affectionately than he had welcomed her. Even Jim seemed to consider him a friend. The passenger was perhaps in his midsixties. He was tall and gaunt, with a long forehead and long chin. His hair was very short. He was soberly dressed and his voice when he spoke to Sandy was well-bred English. He climbed easily aboard, and apologised immediately for being late. He seemed really to mind that he had kept them waiting. The taxi had broken down, he said, and it had taken a while to get it going again. Sandy reassured him that there was no hurry, but as soon as the man was settled next to Sarah, he started the engine. Will loosened the ropes and jumped aboard.

As the boat left the shelter of the Bay of Lutwick the breeze was stronger. The sun was bright, already low in the sky.

I should remember this, Sarah thought, every detail of it. This journey to Kinness seemed much more important to her than her marriage ceremony.

“You are very lucky to have the opportunity to live on the island,” the man said to her, interrupting her thoughts, seeming to guess what she was thinking. “Sandy writes to me occasionally to keep me in touch with what is going on. He told me about you. Naturally he is delighted.”

“Do you go to Kinness often?” she asked.

“Not as often as I would like. Jonathan, who teaches in the island primary school, was at university with my son. Jonathan shares my interest in ornithology and invited me to stay with him. You’re not a birdwatcher are you?”

She shook her head.

“What a shame. Kinness is very good, you know, but it’s desperately underwatched. I think it would rival Fair Isle if it were properly covered.”

She did not know what he was talking about. She wanted to savour every moment of her journey to Kinness and did not ask him to explain.

It took nearly three hours to get there. Sarah wanted to capture the essence of it in her memory. She knew that she would never again feel such anticipation and excitement. But after the first sharp pleasure as the boat moved away from the jetty and she thought: this is it, the start of a new life for Jim and me, she became only sleepy and a little sick. The long monotonous rolls of the boat, and the sound of the engine and the meaningless jumble of words in the wheelhouse, made her drowsy. She did not quite sleep, but she closed her eyes and thought of nothing but the movement and sound of the boat, and the increasing sense of sickness in the pit of her stomach.

She was surprised when Jim came to tell her that they were nearly there. She had almost forgotten about him. As they approached the island the swell flattened and she felt ready to take an interest in her surroundings again.

“You weren’t sick then,” he said. “I thought that you might be sick.”

“Not me,” she said. “I’m an islander now, don’t forget.”

“There are lots of folk from the island who get seasick.”

She took his hand to claim him again and to reassure herself that he belonged to her, not to the men in the wheelhouse. She made him sit by her and point out the features of the island. He began in a distant, dutiful way, but became more involved as the boat moved closer to the cliffs. She had seen a map of Kinness and knew its shape. They were approaching it from the north-east. It was roughly egg-shaped but tilted, with the longest part running north-east to south-west. The only natural harbour was on the west side—a small bay sheltered by two points. The boat would go down the north-east length of the island, round Ellie’s Head, a round, high headland, and halfway up the west side to the harbour. Kinness was three miles long and two miles wide.

She stood up and leaned against the deck rail to get a first close view. The wind blew the spray on to her face. She took Jim’s arm and pulled him close to her. He had a name for every cliff and valley and field. The north of the island was high and hilly, used only for grazing and peat. There were no crofts there, and the lighthouse which could be seen from Baltasay was automatic.

“The light was only made automatic about five years ago,” Jim said. “Before that lighthouse men from the Northern Lights Board lived there with their families. My uncle was assistant keeper and used to cycle up the island for his watches. It was great fun to go with him.”

He pointed out the cliffs where he had collected gulls’ eggs, and where the puffins bred, and the hill where he and his family always dug their peat. She listened to the enthusiasm in his voice and thought: it was right for us to come back here to live although he pretended that he wasn’t sure if he wanted to. He loves it.

He described the Hill Sheep Gather when they collected all the sheep for shearing, and showed her the seals hauled up on to the rocks at the base of the cliff. It was all she had dreamed of.

The land began to flatten and she saw the church and the school and low stone houses. At the very south of the island, above a rocky beach, he showed her the white house which would be their home. Then the Ruth Isabella moved north again and around one of the long curved headlands which protected the harbour from westerly gales, and Jim disappeared to help to bring the boat alongside the quay.

She had hoped that the islanders would do something special to mark her arrival, but it was all much more spectacular than she had imagined. She did not know that most of the islanders came to the harbour every boat day, and she thought that the whole of Kinness had turned out just to welcome her. There was a crowd and they all seemed to be waving and smiling. A banner reading JIM AND SARAH WELCOME HOME had been strung along the wall by the jetty. She felt like visiting royalty.

The other passenger tactfully left the boat first, quietly with no fuss, and disappeared into the crowd. Sarah stood, savouring the attention, the magic of being there, and waited for Jim to join her. He jumped on to the quay first. Instead of giving her his hand to help her ashore as she had expected, he took her into his arms and swung her on to the quay. The crowd cheered.

Other men went on to the boat then, and started to unload it. Sarah expected Jim to go with them to help, but he took her hand and led her off to introduce her to family and friends. She had met his immediate family at the wedding, but everyone wanted to take her hand, kiss her cheek. Jim stood close beside her, as if she might need protection from those people who only wanted to be friendly.

George Palmer-Jones, the elderly passenger, stood at the back of the crowd and watched with interest. He could not decide whether Sarah would settle on the island or not. He rather thought that she would not. He watched as Agnes, Jim’s mother, tried to introduce her youngest child to Sarah. The child, Mary, would not have it. She pulled away from her mother’s hand and would not look at Sarah. George thought that Mary was playing up on purpose because she knew that Agnes would be specially upset if there was a scene today. The girl’s face was red with the exertion of the tantrum, but she had a gleam in her eye as if she were enjoying herself immensely. Mary was twelve, but she behaved at times like a six-year-old. George thought that she was disturbed, but not as disturbed as she pretended to be. Perhaps if her deafness had been recognized earlier, or if Agnes had agreed to send her to a special school on the mainland, she might have been different.

“Come to meet your new sister-in-law,” Agnes said. She spoke very slowly and looked directly at Mary so that the girl could lipread. “This is Sarah, Jim’s wife.”

“Don’t want to!” Mary said. It seemed to George that she emphasised the nasal, toneless quality of the voice. She was exaggerating her deafness.

She hid behind her mother and began to kick and scream. Sarah did not know how to react to the girl’s rudeness. She did not want her first day on the island spoilt by unpleasantness. She wished that Agnes would take Mary away. She was confident that she would win Mary round if she had the girl to herself. She was good with children. She had enjoyed her spell on the paediatric ward. She wanted children of her own. Lots of them. Of course her children would not be difficult or deaf.

She smiled at Agnes.

“Don’t upset her,” she said. “There will be plenty of time for Mary and I to become friends. I’m sure that we will be.”

Behind her mother’s back, Mary was sticking out her tongue and rolling her eyes, but Sarah pretended not to notice.

When Sarah moved on to greet another group of islanders, Mary left her mother and ran along the quay to where George Palmer-Jones was standing. He was nervous of her unpredictable behaviour, but during his holidays on Kinness she seemed to have become attached to him and his wife. She always came to the school house to visit them at least once during their stay. He usually left his wife to deal with the child and now he did not know what to say.

“That’s a very pretty scarf you’re wearing, Mary,” he said. It was pretty. It was green silk with a batik pattern in black and white. “Where did you get it?”

She understood him immediately.

“It’s a secret,” she said. Then, after a pause: “Do you like secrets?”

“Very much.”

“So do I. Will you be at the party tonight?”

“Yes.”

“Will you dance with me? Nobody else will, except Daddy.”

“Of course.”

“I’ve another secret too. I’ll tell it you at the party. I want to see Uncle James with the lorry.”

She was gone. She ran down the road which led to her home, without waiting for her family, long legs and pigtails flying, the green silk scarf streaming behind her like a banner.

The men had finished unloading the boat. The diesel, gas, and provisions were stacked on the tractor and trailer. Jonathan Drysdale, the teacher, had been working with them. He left the other men, without a word, and joined George Palmer-Jones.

“Sorry to keep you waiting,” he said. “We’ll have to hang around a bit longer if you don’t mind, until James comes with the lorry to take away the newlyweds. It’s all nonsense but I’ve been told by some upstart in the Education department in Baltasay that I should participate more in community affairs.”

They did not have long to wait. The lorry was big and very old. It had once been a coal lorry on the mainland. It had been on the island since Palmer-Jones had begun to visit. When it came down the hill to the quay now, driven by Jim’s uncle James, George could see that it had been transformed into a vehicle of magnificence. There were heart-shaped balloons tied to the cab and the whole base of the lorry was covered in pink and white paper flowers. There was a throne of flowers for the couple to sit on, and their names were sprayed in silver paint on the bonnet. It had become a carnival float of a lorry.

How embarrassing! thought George Palmer-Jones as the young people were carried on to the lorry. But the girl’s loving it. I hope that she doesn’t expect it to be like this always.

“I’m sorry about all this,” Jim said to Sarah. “I didn’t expect quite so much fuss.”

“It’s lovely,” she said.

It’s over the top, Jim thought. They never did this when Alec brought Maggie back to the island. What are they trying to do?

Then he saw a face in the crowd which he recognized. She’s here, he thought. I didn’t see her before. She must have been avoiding me. No one told me that she was here. So that’s why they’re making so much fuss. It’s their way of saying sorry.

The lorry pulled away to take them home. Small children in their Sunday-best jerseys ran beside it and cheered. Sarah threw paper flowers to them and released the balloons.