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filled more rapidly. By the time the tide had driven her up the shore there was another half pailful to add to the two that were already in her sack. She carried her sack over to where the dinghy was moored. Her mother and the three other women were waiting for her, their tired bodies slumped against the rocks and their faces whipped to a redness that rivalled that of Kirsty’s purloined pyjamas. Her mother, Fiona noticed, had picked two full hundredweight sacks of whelks; the other women had each picked more than a hundredweight.
    â€˜My, but you’ve done well, Fiona!’ they complimented her as she dumped her sad half sackful.
    She gave them a wry smile. ‘I’ll need to do better,’ she told them.
    It was growing dusk when she and her mother reached home and the hens were waiting hungrily while the cattle crowded around the door of the byre. In the kitchen the fire was out; the lamp unlit. Fiona picked up the milk pail and went outside. The soft milky teats of the cows were like balm on her smarting hands and as she rested her head against the warm comfort of their shaggy flanks great clusters of whelks swam before her tired eyes. When she went back to the house the lamp was lit and the kitchen was full of the smells of peat smoke and hot tea; of boiling potatoes and salt fish. She pulled off her gum-boots and sat on the stout wooden fender, her feet pressed against the metal hob of the grate, and before she went to bed her mother softened home-made ointment in the warmth of the fire and tore strips of clean rags into bandages to protect her hands from the chafing of the rough wool blankets.
    Fiona’s skill at whelk gathering improved so quickly that by the end of the first period of daylight low tides she had three full sacks of whelks ready to be washed before being carried on her back the quarter of a mile up the steep brae to where the carrier would collect them.
    â€˜You’d best make halves of your bags,’ Fiona’s mother told her. ‘It’s no wise for you to carry full ones at your age.’ But though she obediently made two loads of her first sack Fiona was shamed by the sight of her mother and the other women toiling up the brae with their full hundredweights. Rebelliously she roped a full sack to her shoulders and followed in their wake with desperately feigned ease. She was used to carrying heavy loads but the path was boggy and steep; the sacks dripping wet and the whelk shells pressing into her back were hard as pebbles. Before she had covered half the distance her breath was rasping against her hot throat and there was the warm salty taste of blood in her mouth. But every step was taking her nearer the dyke where the whelks would be left for collection and she was too proud to give in and take a rest. Her mother, having deposited the fourth of her eight sacks on the dyke turned and saw her daughter’s struggle but instead of chiding her or going to her aid she only smiled her tired, gentle smile and turned away, pretending to examine the labels on the sacks so that Fiona should not see the glint of pride in her eyes.
    â€˜Aye well, that’s done for the present,’ said Peggy Ruag as she set down her last sack. Pulling back her shoulders she pressed her hands into the small of her back.
    â€˜Till the next time,’ Kirsty reminded her.
    They leaned against the dyke, gossiping and laughing, trying not to betray the degree of their exhaustion.
    At the next daylight tides Fiona picked a further three bags of whelks and estimated that if whelk prices were as good as people were predicting she would, when she had received the money for her six bags, have sufficient to buy not only ‘Janette’ but perhaps a new hat also. She noticed her mother darting shrewdly enquiring glances at her from time to time and was careful to quell her growing excitement.
    A month went by and the whelk gatherers, who were normally accustomed to receiving payment