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as Peggy Beag had said, you could buy things from the catalogue – glamorous things like the new coat Fiona had set her heart on. ‘Janette’, the caption read, ‘an enchanting coat in smooth blue wool mixture with a sumptuous collar of squirrel coney.’ Fiona had never in her life possessed a shop coat, her mother having made all her coats from the lengths of rough hairy tweed her Aunt Sarah wove. But now she had left school she had the opportunity to go whelk gathering and she planned to earn enough money during the season to buy ‘Janette’.
    â€˜Aye, well, I believe that’s the squall over for a whiley,’ said Anna Vic and the women moved from the shelter of the Creagach to stand for a minute gazing at the thundering walls of green water that were smashing themselves into a filigree of foam against the rocks of the shore.
    â€˜It’s no lookin’ like good whelkin’ weather at all,’ observed Anna Vic sadly.
    But during the night the wind was tamed to a shifty grumbling which by morning had subsided to a steady raw breeze that crisped the short grass of the crofts with frost. Fiona rose early and rushed to feed and milk the cows while her mother, who was also going whelking, fed the hens and calves and when they had padded themselves with extra clothing they went together down to the shore. The other women were waiting by the dinghy.
    â€˜Will we make for the Carraig?’ asked Anna Vic of Fiona’s mother.
    â€˜Aye, that’s the best place I’m thinkin’.’
    Fiona’s mother was the most expert whelk gatherer on the island and it was always left to her to say where the best picking would be. They dumped their pails and sacks into the dinghy and climbed in.
    â€˜I wish I wasn’t so feared of the water,’ moaned Peggy Ruag, planting herself nervously in the middle of a thwart. She giggled. ‘But I’m glad to say my love of money overcomes my fear,’ she admitted gaily. Fiona and Kirsty took an oar each and pulled away from the shore.
    â€˜Kirsty, what in the name of Goodness have you on under your coat?’ shrilled Anna Vic and Kirsty almost lost an oar as she tried to pull her oilskin over her bright red pyjama-covered knees. ‘Why, you look as if you have the pillar box from the post office hidden there.’
    Kirsty blushed. ‘Indeed I never thought the day would come when I would be wearin’ men’s attire,’ she explained apologetically. ‘But I felt such cold in my legs as soon as I went outdoors this mornin’ an’ then when I was lookin’ for somethin’ warm to put on to go to the whelks I saw these an’ I yielded to temptation.’
    â€˜However did you come by them?’ demanded Peggy Ruag. ‘An’ you a woman that says she’s never had a man in her life?’
    â€˜It’s to that American tourist was stayin’ a year or two back they rightly belong,’ Kirsty told her. ‘He left them behind when he went an’ I never heard from him again sayin’ whereabouts he was.’
    The chaffing and chatter continued until after about half an hour’s rowing Fiona’s mother pointed to the land. ‘See an’ make for the rocks there,’ she instructed, indicating a stretch of lonely boulder-strewn shore backed by imposing cliffs which even yet were echoing the rumbling of the previous day’s storm. Fiona and Kirsty turned the boat, making for a weed-carpeted inlet between great slabs of sloping rocks and as they approached a surprised otter slid sinuously over the rocks and into the water.
    â€˜I don’t like that at all,’ remarked Anna Vic edgily. ‘The old folk wouldn’t think that was a good sign to start the whelkin’.’
    â€˜Ach, you’re no believin’ them tales, surely?’ scoffed Peggy Ruag, alluding to the ceilidh stories of witches transforming themselves into otters to