Their hands. That''s what I remember. The breadth of his knuckles. The smell of smoke - both peat and coal - that pervaded every pore. The blue scars on the back of wrists and hands, the ones that matched the dark star on his cheek. The mat of short white hair spreading out from his wrist to his fingers. And her hands too. The way they looked chafed and rubbed almost to the bone.

The pattern of her veins visible through the thinness of her skin. The manner in which they seemed always to be clasped in prayer. The tight ring she wore. And, of course, the way he hoisted me up in his grip, almost from the instant the steamer arrived at the harbour, before I had even stepped down the gangway from the Lochness. I looked down at the rough cloth of the old man''s jacket, noting the dark cap tightly wedged on his grey head, the black gabardine trousers he wore. ''Alasdair. You''ve the same name as my own grandfather,'' my grandad said. I could see my sister, Rachel, clutching our grandma''s hand, her black curly hair whipped by the wind.

She was shivering, partly because she had been sick on the voyage over from Mallaig, partly due to the chill of the early afternoon. I remembered how I had looked at her again and again on the steamer, fingering the label that my father had fastened to my jacket before leaving us with the people going on the boat, telling me--''at the risk of your life''--not to take it off. The upset and upheaval seemed to have surged and rippled through her stomach, vomit spilling through her throat. One of the adults on board, a minister''s wife, had tried to help her, daubing her mouth clean, holding up the long locks of her hair. She was the one who spoke to our grandma for a long time on the pier, telling her of the horrors of the voyage, how the pitch and roll of the boat had made Rachel sick. ''Wheesht. Wheesht. She''ll be all right now.

'' The entire scene seemed to affect my grandma, Catriona, in a different way. The heavy layers of clothing wrapped around her thin, frail frame appeared to make her shake--her long blustering skirt, thick black coat, the dark shawl wrapped around her head, all trembling in the breeze. It was as if she were a stalk of grass wavering in the wind, barely upright in the storms that life had sent to whirl around her. Occasionally she sighed. Her eyes, a shade of amber, closing. Taking in huge breaths of air, seeking to brace herself for the ordeal that lay ahead, the length of the journey to Ness that still stretched before us. ''Siuthadaibh,'' the old woman said. ''Things will be all right now.

'' It didn''t feel that way. Not at that moment. Not after those long hours at sea, the difference between rain and waves blurring as they lashed against the portholes of that boat. Not on that pier with its salt scents and smells, the stink of oil and coal in the wind. The noises, too, were strange and alien to me. The screech of gulls. The swish of the sea on the pierhead. The rattle of cartwheels across cobblestones.

Boat whistles and the clatter of chains as fish were carried between vessel and pier. (It was all such a different world from the one we had left behind in Glasgow, even though that one, too, had pitched rough and fierce since the afternoon my mother had been taken to hospital, that ratcheting cough of hers echoing in the entrance of the tenement as she was carried out on a stretcher.) Even the accents and the sound of the words people spoke as they sidled up to our grandparents were peculiar to my ears. ''Aye. I heard your news, Tormod,'' one said to my grandad. ''It''s a sad business that takes you to these parts.'' ''It always is. I can''t think of a time when good news brought me to Stornoway.

The last time I was here was when I took my own girl to the pier, to see her off to Glasgow. Not realising I''d never see her again.'' ''That''s something a lot of people have had to do with their children over the years.'' ''Aye. There''s no jobs to keep them here. Little inclination either.'' A woman bent down, clucking over the two of us. ''These are the children? The poor souls.

'' ''That''s them. But - with strength and love - they''ll get over all these things eventually.'' ''I''ve no doubt about that, but it''s a long road that''s ahead of you,'' the minister who had been with us on the boat declared. ''I pray God will accompany you every step of the way.''.