The Ghost at the Wedding

Abstract

All through the night Jessie is humming her song. It wavers and flows like the tide of the river outside the nursing home. Though it's now 1983, she's singing the Gaelic of her forefathers, spinning the threads of their journey from the Western Hebrides to New South Wales, to the big river at the end of the world. The sigh of the Atlantic on the shingle and the whip of the wind round the crags where the eagles hang. The sea-slap on the hulls of the sailing ship for the four long months of the voyage, and the gentle waves of the estuary here, where the journey ends.