June Gemmell

Listen to June read her story

29th August 1930 Hirta, St Kilda

The wooden latch clicked for the last time. Each room had been wished a goodbye, as old hands stroked the rough walls. Her lips moved, speaking in her own tongue. But her eyes held no tears. Tears were used up on harsh winters and dead sons. On storm lashed days and nights, when the boats did not return.

The colour of the sky was knitted into her shawl, and her woollen skirt carried the shades of the sea grasses and the wild thrift. She picked her way down the path, past the thin line of cottages clutching the land that tilted down to the sea.

The boat waited at the pier. Her stiff limbs made walking painful, and her face showed the exertion. On the boat, the women’s headscarves flapped against the wind as they fussed with their children. The men in their Sunday clothes and woollen bunnets gathered in clusters. Some mouths held pipes, but no words. The whole population of the island, all thirty six souls were on the boat. Except one. The woman with the sky in her shawl. 

The furniture had been removed, packed up on the previous boat, but she had left a small stool by the window, and on it were laid an opened Bible and wild flowers from the meadow. The fireplace was banked up with peat, for who could leave a hearth empty and cold? She hoped their voices and their shadows would remain, soft lullabies, women’s laughter, the shouts of men on the cliffs. 

The group on the boat beckoned her forwards, but she raised her eyes to the sky, taking her time. Gannets and fulmars circled above her head, held by the island’s thermals. She wished she could catch this in her arms, the wind, the smell of the sea, the brightness of the sun on the water and take it with her.

A hand came from the boat and reached out. She took it, and stepped one hesitant foot after the other. She could go now. She had done what she set out to do. She was the last one to leave St Kilda.

This piece was first published by Soor Ploom Press

June Gemmell writes short stories and flash fiction. She is a reader for Fractured Lit and Thin Skin Magazines. Her words have been published by Gutter Magazine, Northern Gravy, Hooghly Review, Gone Lawn, The Phare and National Flash Flood.
She has almost completed the final, final draft of her novel, but she has been saying this for a very long time.

Read more from June:

MoonLit Getaway – ‘Ebb and Flow’
The Phare – ‘The Year Spring Never Came’