A Very Distant Shore Page 2

  ‘This is your boy?’ Saif said in Arabic to the woman, who, terrified, nodded silently back.

  ‘What’s his name?’ He looked at the child. ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Medhi,’ muttered the little boy, his eyes wide, his body shaking. ‘It hurts! It hurts! It hurts!’

  ‘I know,’ said Saif. ‘I know that. I’m going to take a look at it, okay? Just take a look. I promise I won’t do anything without telling you.’

  He pulled out his scissors – Medhi watched him anxiously – and gently cut around the cloth on the shoulder. He could tell by the worried noise the mother made that these were the only clothes the boy had, but they were now soaked with blood.

  As he carefully removed the shreds of material from the wound, Medhi groaned. Tears were running down his face. He had learned, somewhere, somehow, to remain very, very quiet. Saif didn’t want to think how.

  The wound was deep, and still bleeding heavily. Saif glanced around the silent room. In one corner sat a young man. He was thin but muscular, wearing a filthy old shell suit. He had three days’ growth of beard on his face. He was trying to look grown up but he was truly no more than a boy himself. He was shaking and quietly crying. Saif stared at him until the man was in no doubt that he’d been spotted. Then Saif returned to his work.

  ‘I’ll need alcohol,’ he said to the guard. ‘Drugs if you have them.’

  ‘I thought you Muslims didn’t drink,’ said the man in charge. ‘Drugs too, huh?’

  His comrades laughed, even those who probably didn’t speak English. It was safest to go along with the big man.

  ‘To sterilise the wound,’ said Saif. He ignored the joke. Never listen. Never respond. ‘And if you have some painkillers, that too would be helpful.’

  Rubbing alcohol was brought as Saif tried to staunch the flow of blood; there was no place to put a tourniquet. But nothing stronger than paracetamol could be found in the camp. The other drugs had been stolen, Saif supposed.

  He looked at the boy’s mother, wondering if she understood what needed to be done.

  ‘I’m going to have to stitch him,’ he said.

  Instantly the woman’s mouth grew wide and she started wailing again. The boy turned his head in a panic.

  ‘You must stay calm,’ Saif said, but she couldn’t.

  Everyone here had been through great hardship. Great peril, great trials. But everyone had a breaking point, and this was hers. She yelled, and waved her arms to protect her boy, and the other women gathered around her. They formed a protective ring, holding her in a safe circle of female flesh.

  ‘Don’t worry, Medhi,’ said Saif, as calmly as he could. ‘I’m going to do something to make you better. It’s going to hurt. But after that it won’t hurt and it will get better.’

  ‘Are you going to cut off my arm with those scissors?’ said the boy.

  ‘No, of course not,’ said Saif. The boy’s face relaxed a little, and Saif’s heart sank as he thought of what he was about to do. There was no other way to stop the bleeding.

  ‘I need three men,’ he said. When nobody came forward, he picked the two largest men he could see. ‘And you,’ he added, nodding to the shaking teen in the corner. The young man would sit and endure the child’s pain. If that could not teach him, nothing would.

  The men were each given a limb to hold. Medhi’s face was now a mask of terror. But Saif would not cover up his mouth; he couldn’t risk him suffocating. As long as the boy was screaming, he knew that he was still all right.

  Offering a quick prayer, he went to the corner of the barn and began to scrub his hands.

  Chapter 6

  The hail had, thankfully, stopped as Lorna hopped back in her beloved little Mini and took off up the breezy main street. As so often at this time of year, all four seasons had come to Mure in the space of half an hour. Bent by the wind, snowdrops poked their sturdy heads through the soil; crocuses burst up all over.

  Lorna drove along the seafront, slowing, although she was late, to watch a heron make a perfect landing by the water. She turned left up the hill, finally reaching her place of work.

  The school was almost as old as the parish itself. Its grey floors were softened and crumbled by generations of little Mure feet, even as the number of pupils had risen and fallen through hard times, and emigration, and wars. The building was warm in the winter, when many of its pupils’ homes were cold; empty in the autumn if the harvest was late; packed full at Christmas time.

  She marched through the now-empty playground, smiling at another straggler, who looked at her with fear in his face and muttered, ‘Good MORNING, Miss Lorna.’

  ‘On with you, Ranald MacRanald,’ she said, and he scuttled inside on plump, freckled legs.

  The assembly was nearly over. There were six children in Primary 1. It didn’t matter how many times she counted them, it wasn’t enough. And she knew that little Heather Skinner had just been diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. It was a tragedy for the family, obviously, but a tragedy for the island too. They were a fairly new family, the Skinners; he worked on the oil rigs and wanted somewhere safe and comfortable for his young family to grow up. But they wouldn’t be able to stay here, because they needed a hospital.

  She headed into her tiny, untidy office. As usual, snotty Malcolm from Primary 6 was waiting outside for her, having caused trouble somewhere or other. Malcolm was barely ten, but already he had the broad shoulders and hefty build of generations of Mure men who were used to throwing cows about. He had not the slightest use for school, and she often felt she agreed with him. Nothing she could do or say did any good. He was desperate to be suspended so he could join his big brothers working in the fields, patching up old motorbikes and spending their modest wages down the pub. She simply nodded and decided to deal with him shortly.

  The form was on her desk, buried under various Curriculum for Excellence pieces of paper. People thought it was easy running a very small school, but you got just as much government paperwork as everybody else, without half as much help. She pulled the form out anyway. It was from the local council and was headed ‘Application for Emergency Medical Care Forms B2/75’. It needed a back-up letter from a ‘respected member of the community’, which seemed to mean her, the spinster headmistress. She sighed. She was only thirty, but people married early round here.

  She opened her creaky, ancient computer and began to type a letter to her MP.

  Chapter 7

  Saif couldn’t have told you afterwards how long he had worked, although he went as quickly as he safely could. Everything became a dream of concentration: the sweat on Medhi’s skin and how he tried so hard to stop himself from shouting out; the crying teenager holding the boy’s legs, praying under his breath for forgiveness; the hush in the great processing barn, except for the odd sob from the child’s mother.

  He didn’t notice the man arrive until he had finished, with sweat on his own brow but his work done, nimble and quick. Then he looked up and saw the man staring at him.

  He wasn’t local; you could tell that by the suit, which was unusual. Saif knew somehow that it was expensive. He was very tall and thin and pale, and surrounded by young, keen-looking people – from the charities and voluntary groups, Saif supposed. He had met many of them on the way. Their help was limited and sometimes confusing.

  Anyway, he ignored him and tried to talk to the boy’s mother, who was now sobbing and clutching his arm. Her other arm was round the boy, who was lying against her, falling into a feverish sleep. He told her that it was important to keep the wound clean, to disinfect it, to give her boy medicine if she could get hold of it.

  Then he turned to the crying teenager and stared him straight in the eye.

  ‘Give me the knife,’ he said quietly. The boy, still shaking, handed it over without arguing. ‘We have to do this peacefully or not at all, God willing,’ Saif said, putting it in his bag. It might yet come in useful.

  Someone cleared his throat. It was the tall, pale man he had
noticed before.

  ‘You speak English?’ said the man in a clipped voice.

  Saif nodded. ‘I have English qualifications.’

  They paused at that. He’d been saying it at every border for so long, and no one had cared. But now they looked at one another.

  ‘Follow me.’

  Saif glanced behind him at the boy. He still didn’t like his colour, or the drowsiness in his eyes. The woman stared at him. But there was nothing more he could do.

  ‘There is a place for you. Do you understand what I am saying?’

  The man was talking, but Saif was so tired he could barely make out what he was saying. It was as if all his energy had been saved for travelling, for staying alert and out of people’s way. And now that he had been found, now that someone was paying him some attention, the tiredness, the tension, needed to release itself. He could hardly keep his eyes open.

  He blinked. Now was not the time to lose concentration.

  ‘What about my family?’ he asked. The tall man looked mildly annoyed, as if a family was a tedious pest, like lice.

  ‘Where are they?’

  ‘We got… separated. In…’

  He couldn’t think about that night. The cold, the flashing, the panic. The no way of knowing which way was up. The shouting, in so many different languages. No. He couldn’t think about it. He forced himself to speak nicely. His father had been a language professor at the university, a noisy, energetic man of the world. He had rather overshadowed his youngest son, and had forced Saif to take the British exams at the University of Beirut. ‘Then you can work anywhere,’ he had said, as Saif struggled with English spelling.

  It had, Saif knew, broken his father’s heart when he’d chosen to go back to Syria, the country of his birth, and work for the poor of Damascus. His father had had bigger dreams than that. He had seen how things might turn out.

  Saif missed him every day.

  ‘On a boat,’ he said quietly. The man raised an eyebrow.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

  Saif shook his head smartly.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘They will have been picked up by another boat.’

  He looked up, trying not to appear pleading. Pleading did not work, he had learned. School bullies knew that. His world was run by school bullies now.

  ‘Can you find them for me?’

  ‘No, but if you’ve actually got British qualifications, we can get you a job,’ said the man from the government. ‘Then you can find them yourself.’

  Chapter 8

  Weeks went by before Lorna got a copy of the official letter about a new doctor for the island. The council had been doing a victory dance, all delighted by the news.

  We are pleased to inform you that your application for additional GP services has been accepted. Your allocated full-time GP will be arriving on 12 April…

  It went on, but that was all she needed to hear. Her father’s headaches had settled a little with some stronger medication, but she was still worried about him. She thought Sandy should have sent him to a specialist on the mainland.

  A second opinion would be a wonderful thing.

  This being Mure, the news was all round the village by the time she popped down to the local farm shop to pick up one of their delicious ham and piccalilli sandwiches.

  ‘Ooh, do you think he’ll be young?’ old Mrs Bruce was asking Morag, the shopkeeper. Mrs Bruce was seventy-eight, so her idea of young was anyone under the age of seventy-three.

  ‘Don’t be daft,’ Morag said, filling the old lady’s shopping bag for her. She didn’t buy much, but she always bought the best, Mrs Bruce. ‘They’re all lassies now anyway, doctors. It’s all girls.’

  Mrs Bruce frowned. ‘That’s a shame,’ she said, then turned to see Lorna standing there. ‘Might have been a nice young man in there for you, Miss Lorna.’

  ‘Thank you for looking out for me, Mrs Bruce,’ said Lorna, smiling.

  The last three men Mrs Bruce had suggested for Lorna had been: a) Iain Bruich, who was twenty years old but looked fourteen; b) Callum MacPherson, ten minutes after he’d been thrown out of his house again by his wife for his nasty night-time habits; and c) Wullie MacIver.

  ‘That’s all right, hen,’ said Mrs Bruce, patting her arm in a motherly way. ‘You know the right man will come along.’

  Lorna and Morag, who were good friends, looked at one another. Morag had no use for men at all, but she could wrestle a good-sized calf to the ground if its ears needed syringing.

  ‘Well, I just hope he – or she – is a good doctor,’ said Lorna, a little primly, she realised.

  ‘Actually, average will be fine,’ said Morag. ‘Average to not that good will still be an improvement on what we have at the moment. What? What did I say?’

  Mrs Bruce pursed her lips and left the shop – she wouldn’t hear a word spoken against that lovely young Dr MacAllister. Morag and Lorna burst out laughing.

  Chapter 9

  Saif had known that there would be a boat. His geography of Britain was hazy, but that much had been obvious. He had sat several exams, and then been given his placement. He was to be sent to an island, where he was to stay for at least two years, working.

  After that, something else would happen to him, although nobody seemed clear what that would be.

  But he hadn’t really thought about what it would actually be like to go on a boat again.

  The train had been wonderful. Surrounded by so much… so much normality. A rich chatter of voices, strange accents he couldn’t understand. Everyone looked at him, he noticed. He knew he didn’t fit in. He had very little money. His shoes were wrong, but he wasn’t exactly sure how. He had found a seat by the window and relished the feeling of travelling, of moving, without waiting to be stopped, shouted at.

  A woman in a uniform came through checking tickets, and he felt a sudden moment of terror – was he going to be thrown off the train, or worse? He panicked slightly, looking for the ticket in his tattered wallet. But she glanced at the orange-striped piece of paper briefly, without interest, and moved on. Then his heart rate gradually slowed and he loosened his grip on his black bag.

  For the rest of the journey, he stared out of the window, shocked at the amazing rich greenness of Great Britain; the huge open fields, some shining bright yellow; the intense weight of the grey clouds. The sky felt a lot closer here than at home, as if everything was very slightly damp. It was beautiful, he thought, but strange.

  He saw no children playing in the streets of the towns they passed through. He bought an expensive sandwich from the buffet and could not finish it. He took out his English edition of Gray’s Anatomy but grew weary. Then, with the hard-won knack of grabbing sleep whenever he needed to, he drifted off.

  The boat, though. The boat was something else.

  Chapter 10

  A small crowd had gathered down by the quayside, and a photographer had come from the Oban Times.

  ‘Seriously,’ said Lorna’s friend Flora, who was down there being nosy and was annoyed that everyone else was too. ‘Is there really nothing else to do on Mu… Don’t answer that.’

  It was a Saturday morning and they were meant to be going for coffee, but they’d seen the crowd down by the harbour wall.

  There had been a lot of discussion on the matter. Not all of it pleasant. Much of it heated. And all of it ending with the sure fact that Mure needed a doctor, and no one else seemed to want to do it.

  It was an odd thing to discuss on a spring day when the sun was high, the beaches were golden and filled with people, and the Atlantic wind felt soft and fresh. There were crabs and langoustine for the taking in the water. The cafés along the front were doing a roaring trade in ice cream, and the evenings were starting to get longer. It felt, on days like this, like paradise; not exactly a hardship to live somewhere so beautiful. Yet nobody, it seemed, wanted to.