The Wind off the Small Isles

by Mary Stewart

Genres: Romance; Contemporary Romance; General Fiction

Synopsis

Beloved author Mary Stewart's long-lost novella, now back in print for the first time in 40 years and perfect for fans of Anay Seton, Daphne du Maurier and Santa Montefiore.

'Now she would spell love her own way...'

In 1879, a wealthy young woman elopes with an impoverished fisherman, leaving her family, who live on the volcanic island of Lanzarote, distraught. In 1968, 23-year-old Perdita West, secretary to the famous author Cora Gresham, visits Lanzarote, the strangest and most wild of the Canary Isles, on a research trip. They meet Cora's estranged son, Mike, and fall in love with the unusual, beautiful little island.

While snorkeling, a landslide traps Perdita in an underwater cave. No one knows where she is, so she can't count on a rescue. And her efforts to save herself will reveal the solution to a century-old mystery...

The Wind off the Small Isles is Mary Stewart's sweeping, romantic long-lost novella, finally being brought back to print in a beautiful, all new edition for the first time in more than four decades.

Release date: September 22, 2016

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 80

Sample

She knelt on the window-sill, looking out over the sea. The night was clear, with a faint moon rising, but the stars seemed dim and far away. It must be imagination, but they were not white tonight; the evening star had risen apricot-yellow, and now the main flock of stars crowded hazy and illdefined above a horizon smoking with purple and cinnamon and grey. This was strange, for the day had been sharp and fine, with a sky settled to blue again after the eruption, and the wind blowing strongly from the north, straight from Cape Finisterre and the coast of Spain and down the chain of the Atlantic islands.

Anxiously she peered into the darkness. Yes, the wind blew still. On the wall of the goat-pen near the cliff’s edge she could see the bougainvillaea tossing, and above the roof the palm-leaves shuffled and clicked like playing cards.

Her father had gone to bed long since. He had won tonight, and lying wakeful, waiting, she had heard him call a jovial ‘Buenas noches’ after his friends. Then the heavy door had shut, and the men’s footsteps, with the quick pattering of old Señor Perez’ donkey, had dwindled up the lane into silence.

That was two hours since, and soon the moon would rise clear of the cactus slopes behind the house, and by its light she would see him coming.

Mother of God, let him come. He promised, and I know he is true. I know he will come. He promised.

The rosary moved in her fingers, but she was not praying. That time was over. This was now, the night itself, the night the prayers were to be answered. The clenched beads scored her fingers, and she shut her eyes. When she opened them again, he would be here, his boat stealing round the headland into the bay … Till then, she would shut her eyes on that empty sea, and think about him, as if by thinking she might make his coming sure.

Against the fizzing dark inside her eyelids she could see him now as she had first seen him three weeks ago, down there on the white sand of the bay, the muscles glancing and sliding under his brown skin as he braced himself in the shallows to pull his boat inshore. She had turned quickly away, as a modest girl should, but Conchita had run, child-like, down to the boat to peer in at the catch of fish. She had hesitated then, and called, but the child paid no attention, and then the young fisherman had turned, straightening, and smiled at her. He was barefooted, and his breeches were ragged, and faded with salt and sun, but the light ran and glinted on wet gold skin and black hair, and she could think of nothing but how the smile drove the deep crease down his cheek and lit the dark eyes … Then the smile had gone, and he was staring, and she had stood with her eyes on his and her heart choking her, till Conchita had run back, laughing, and pulled at her hand.

She opened her eyes, and he was here. Round the north headland, shadowy on the shadowy sea, the boat stole like a night-bird, under sail. She thought she could even see him, a shape at the tiller, dark against the sea-fire as the boat heeled in the gentle curve that would bring him into the bay.

She left the sill and moved over to the bed. Her sister’s breathing was so quiet that it hardly stirred the air. She hesitated, stooping over the bed, the rosary dangling from her hand, its tiny cross swinging on a silver link. She tugged at this, and the link parted, and she dropped the cross, warm from her skin, on the child’s pillow. Then she picked up the bundle of clothes wrapped in her shawl, and paused with a hand on the door. A cloud, thick and dark, drove past the window, but she did not need light to show her the room in whose familiar safety she had slept every night of her eighteen years – the bed of Canary pine, the coffer with its worn oak carving that had been her great-grandmother’s dower chest, the wrought-iron candlesticks, the crucifix on the wall: they had been here all her life, they had spelled safety and love. Now she would spell love her own way. And safety, too …? Mary Mother, but she must believe what her heart told her, and soon she would be sure …

She slipped out through the door and along the flagged passage to the kitchen. The dog raised his head and blinked at her, and his tail thumped briefly. The wind blew strongly, and in the draught the straw mats rose along the flagstones.

Something drove rattling against the window-panes, like a handful of rain. The moon’s light had gone, and now she saw how the dark clouds smoked across the stars. Against them, suddenly, light beat redly, and was gone. Then she smelt the faint, familiar reek, and knew the clouds, the sleet, for what they were: the ash-cone to the north, the little Loma, had woken again and was throwing out more ash and cinders. And the wind blew from there.

She checked, while beside her the dog flattened his ears, and his ruff stirred. If she called now to wake them … La Loma was harmless; all it had done last week – all it ever did – was to shower the place with ashes, and singe a field or two … Ten minutes, and the boat could be clear of the island and beyond pursuit … But call them she must. She could not go like this, leaving them asleep …

As she turned back from the door, she felt the air move like blast, and round the door the light pulsed red, then died to black again. The dog’s chain rattled; he whined, then began to bark, furiously. Somewhere a door slammed, and she heard her father’s voice. They were awake. She pulled open the heavy door as the night lit once more with an arched jet of fire, and the smell of blown sulphur rolled over the yard. A gull went up from the roof, screaming, and as she ran past the pens she heard the beasts bleating with fear.

Her father called out again, and she saw her bedroom window flower with light as he ran in with the lamp. Her sister’s voice answered, shrill and startled. The light sharpened suddenly as he approached the window. The pane was thrust open, and the light spilled out to catch her where she stood, pinned against the outhouses like a moth.

She saw the big head thrust out, peering past the flame. The night was black again. The mountain held its breath. But he saw her. He shouted, ‘It’ll be no more than last time. Let them bide, but see the windows are boarded. Then get yourself to the cellar with your sister.’

The casement shut. The lamp withdrew. As she put a hand, dutifully, to the gaps that served the pens for windows, the mountain shot out a plume of fire that lit the night and showed her the boards fast in their places. She turned and ran across the yard and down the cliff path.

He was there. He was waiting for her below the cactus slopes, as he had said he would wait. He had his best suit on, and a cloak made of coarse blanket, and he was bareheaded.

He put his arms out for her and she ran into them.

Dear Reader,

The Wind Off the Small Isles is a perfect example of Mary Stewart’s perfect writing.

In all of her novels, as with this one, Mary always travelled to where she was going to set her book. Whilst she was there, she would make copious and detailed notes in order that she always had everything in her scenes set correctly. The extraordinary descriptive power of her writing shows this to be the case. Nothing less would have done for her with this novella set on the island of Lanzarote.

Mary spent several holidays in the Canary Islands with her husband Fred, an eminent geologist and professor at Edinburgh University. It was a visit to Lanzarote – some part of which was spent clambering in and out of extinct volcanos! – that inspired this small volume. Fred had decided he needed Mary in his photos so that when he was using them in lectures he would be able to show his students how to gauge the size of the craters. Oh, the things she did for love. But just as much as these adventures, it was the local legends and the numerous and diverse numbers of wildflowers and the rugged, stark topography of this island which inspired her to set her story here. The title is really evocative of what it is like on Lanzarote: wild, beautiful and definitely windy.

As her niece and also her constant companion for the last twelve years of her life, I came to know Mary Stewart (Aunty Mary) extremely well and also to realise how lucky we have been as a family to have had within it this extraordinary and fascinating woman. I miss her terrific sense of humour, her flashes of brilliance, her kind heart and her generosity to everyone she met or knew. Most of all, though, I recall her love for us, her nieces and nephews. We took the place of the children she could never have. The memories of her visits when we were small are filled with scenes of a beautiful woman who always smelled heavenly (Chanel comes to mind now), who was exquisitely dressed and always came armed with presents.

I am sad there will never be another new Mary Stewart book, but the ones she wrote will stand the test of time to be read over and over again by new generations. It is so pleasing that this lovely, lost little book, The Wind Off the Small Isles, has finally been republished, in time to celebrate what would have been Mary’s one-hundredth birthday. I hope you enjoy reading it.

Jennifer Ogden

23 May 2016

Stolen to this paradise.

KEATS: The Eve of St Agnes

My employer, Cora Gresham, is a woman of wealth, and also a woman of whims. She is a writer of children’s stories, anything from riproaring adventure to animal cartoons and space fiction, and has the habit of using exotic and authentic backgrounds for what she calls their educational value. In consequence she is liable to set off for the most out-of-the-way corners of the world at a moment’s notice, and the life of her secretary and personal assistant – myself – is by no means a dull one.

It came as no surprise, therefore, when it was the turn of a new ‘Coralie Gray’ adventure about pirates along the Barbary Coast, to be told to get things in train – and that within a matter of days – for a visit to the Canary Islands.

This was my fault, if fault it can be called. I had had to do all the preliminary research; I had combed through loads of books from the library, haunted travel agents and pestered the air lines, and then presented Mrs Gresham with glowing and wildly enthusiastic descriptions of the islands which from time out of mind have been known as the Fortunate Isles or the Isles of the Blessed, and which, we are told, were the original Garden of the Hesperides. And if there weren’t still nymphs and golden apples, I told her, there were still dragon trees, and the great Mount Teide, twelve thousand feet high and crowned with snow, and for all we know with Atlas still up there on his shoulders, carrying the sky. There were wa. . .