Lachlan turned from the phone and broke the news to Phebie. She gave a little cry and buried her face in her hands. Lachlan put his arms round her and held her close, his heart so full he couldn’t speak but just held onto her, standing in the circle of orange light cast by the fire, from a long distance hearing the spitting of hail in the chimney breast and the windows rattling in the wind.
‘Phebie, Phebie,’ he said at last. ‘We must be strong, we canny give up hoping, it would be the end if we did. Niall will be all right, he always could take care of himself and will likely be holed up somewhere safe and sound.’
‘There comes a time, Lachy, when even people like our son can no longer take care of themselves.’ Her voice was flat, lifeless. ‘He went away from here a broken man, I saw despair sitting on his shoulders the likes of which I have never seen on him before – and it might be that he never intended coming home again – maybe he planned for this to happen.’
‘Stop that, Phebie!’ Lachlan’s voice was harsh, his thin face tired and old in the shadows of the room. ‘Would you take away the dignity – the compassion – of our son by even suggesting such a thing? Niall would never set out to deliberately commit suicide on that cold buggering sea or anywhere else for that matter! He’s too fine and decent to lay a thing like that at the door of the people he loves and fine you know it too!’
‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, Lachy.’ She sounded exhausted, her plump face haggard and grey, her voice threaded through with a terrible dread. ‘I don’t know what I’m saying – I – I canny think straight.’
He led her to a chair and made her sit down by the fire. ‘I’m going to get us both a brandy.’ His voice was softer now, his eyes compassionate as he saw the state she was in. It was in her nature to put on a brave face and no matter how many ups and downs there had been she had hitherto succeeded but now she was at breaking point and could no longer put on an act.
The brandy steadied them both. She sat with the empty glass, staring at the flickering flames in the hearth, her shoulders rounded with dejection. ‘You’re right, Lachy,’ she sighed. ‘He would never do anything like that to us deliberately.’ She glanced up at her husband. He wasn’t listening, his whole attitude was one of bleak listlessness and her heart went out to him. Despite personal tragedies and difficulties he still had to carry on, day after day, tending the sick, caring for others.
She went to him and sat at his feet, her head on his knee, automatically his hand came out to stroke her hair. ‘It will be all right, my darling,’ she whispered. ‘He’ll come home to us. The men will look again tomorrow.’
Reaching up she encircled her arms round his waist and laid her head against his chest so that she could hear the steady thump of his heart. ‘I tell you this much, my lad,’ she murmured through her tears. ‘No matter what happens you and me are having a holiday as soon as Christmas is over. I’m going to phone Doctor McLaren and ask if he’ll come and take over here for a while. He’s always quite glad of the chance to do his locum now that he’s retired. Last time I rang him he was asking when you were going to take a break and I’ve decided the time has come.’
‘Ay, I’d like that.’ He raised her face to him and kissed her smooth cheek. ‘Thank God I’ve got you, Phebie, I’d never have made it without you.’
‘Nor I without you,’ she said softly. They were peaceful for a while then Phebie said almost unwillingly, ‘Will Shona have heard?’
‘Ay, of course she will,’ he sighed heavily. ‘How she’ll stand up to it heaven alone knows. It could be the last straw for her.’
The outside door rattled, and, as if on cue, Shona came up the hall and into the room. She stood in the doorway, windblown, breathless, then throwing off her coat she went over and took them both in her embrace.
‘I knew the pair of you would be moping.’ She stood back, a strength in her bearing that made them both stare. ‘Niall will come back – I don’t care what anybody says, he’ll come back.’
‘You sound so – sure,’ faltered Phebie.
‘I am sure. He came back before, didn’t he? And it was worse then because we’d already been told he was dead. Then out of the blue he popped up, large as life and the only thing dead about him his ambitions to fight in the war.’
A ghost of a smile touched Lachlan’s mouth. ‘Ay, you’re right, lass, they canny keep a good man down.’
For their benefit she smiled, trying desperately not to let them guess at the cold dread which churned ceaselessly in her belly. She had cleaned and fired Mo Dhachaidh, all it needed now was the man who would bring it alive – if – if by some miracle he was still of the earth. She daren’t let her thoughts wander further. On hearing the news that he was missing her first instinct had been to run away and hide but there could be none of that now, she had to force herself to go on, to be strong when strength was the least of her resources.
‘I’m away through to make us a nice strupak,’ she said brightly, ‘and we’re going to sit here by the fire and talk about all the nice things we’ll do at Christmas with Niall back and all the family under the one roof on Christmas day.’
The next day some small boys were playing on the shore at Aosdana Bay. One of them ran to the silvery tide trace and picked up a chunk of wood wedged among the rocks. ‘It’s a name board off a boat,’ he cried, waving it high in the air.
His companions came running, one pulled away bits of sea-wrack and stared. ‘It’s the name of Niall McLachlan’s boat. It is The Sea Urchin!’
The boy who had found it gaped with round eyes. ‘The fishin’ boats were out lookin’ for him, so were the coastguard.’
‘They’ll no’ find him now. The sea has got him.’
‘Maybe we’ll get a reward if we take this back and show it.’
The first boy snatched the board back. ‘I found it, it’s mine. If anybody’s gettin’ a reward it will be me.’
He ran up the beach, the piece of wood tucked firmly under his armpit. His companions ran after him, their voices carried off by the wind which sang low over the sea.
Captain Mac sat in his favourite chair by the fire, his untouched tot of rum sitting on the mantelpiece beside his unsmoked pipe. His bushy white eyebrows were drawn down so far they almost obliterated his eyes and only two brown chinks were visible. His big, mottled hands were clenched on the knees of his navy blue serge trousers, his stockinged feet, normally held in wiggling pleasure to the agreeable heat from the glowing peats, sat square and immobile on the rough stone hearth, his bulbous nose, that cheerful beacon, was as pallidly grey as the rest of his wide-pored face.
From the chair opposite an audible sigh arose and Nellie, fingers flying in keeping with her needles, wondered just how long this unnatural silence could prevail. Often she had wished for a sign of gentility in her large, blustering, noisily cheerful brother but now she saw the drawbacks of such a drastic turnabout. The croft positively held its breath, as if it too was anticipating a return to normal. Smatterings of hail battered off the boulder-hung tin roof, the wind whistled round corners but the worst had blown itself out, leaving in its wake a fresh trail of destruction and an uneasy truce.
Nellie placed another slice of peat on the fire and leaving aside her knitting, folded her hands over her stomach and patted her hair, her usual preliminaries before she plunged into conversation. But this time, as if anticipating the subject she had been about to broach, her brother sat up with a jerk and smacked his heavy hand off his knee with such force the cat was startled out of a deep slumber and glared at him out of one reproachful green eye.
‘Wait you, Nell!’ Mac’s tones were authoritative. ‘I am after mindin’ something young Niall said afore he left. I thought at the time it was gey queer but never thought any more about it till now.’
‘Ay,’ Nellie spoke encouragingly, glad to at last air the subject of Niall’s disappearance. Since the news of it, and the subsequent abortive attempts to find him, had filtered through, Mac had been so stunned he had sunk into a
state of comatose disbelief and for the last twenty-four hours had maintained such a state of near unbroken silence, Nellie had seriously wondered if his mind had been affected. ‘Do you mind how he was when we said he ought to go home? Angry and rebelling against the idea like a virgin wifie at an orgy? Then how he changed his tune, said it was time to stop for a whily and get his thoughts in order? Well, Nell, it is my opinion he is no’ dead and I think I know where he is!’
Before she could speak he was up, downing his rum in one gulp, shrugging into his jacket, going to the porch to push his feet into wellington boots with scuffed collars stained to a greeny grey. Nellie rushed out to the porch after him, her ponderous bulk hampering not the speed of her movements.
‘And just where do you think you are going, my lad?’ She eyed her brother whose hitherto glum features were animated, his wide mouth stretched into a most anticipatory grin. He took his sister by the shoulders and kissed her soundly on the tip of her big jolly nose. ‘I am going to the pub, Nell, to see will I coax some o’ the lads to take a boat out.’
‘Ach! Ach!’ Nellie expostulated angrily. ‘The men will no’ leave their drink just to please you – besides, man, it’s a dark, bitter night out there and the tide will be out for hours yet.’
But Mac was away, the swinging door fanning freezing blasts of air into the house, the slap of his steps on the crackling stalks of the frost-timed turf, receding rapidly. A few minutes later a laboured putt-putting came from the shed at the side of the house where Niall’s motor bike was kept. The smell and the roar of it as it passed the window made Nellie screw up her face in disgust and wonder if the bodach had gone off his head altogether as what he knew about driving a motor bike could comfortably sit on the head of one of her knitting needles.
The saliva which speckled Mac’s whiskers was soon frozen into spicules of ice on the four-mile journey into Port Feall. The road climbed through the moors which stretched black as peat on either side except where the white splash from the headlight fell on silver-speared banks of heather and on the rocky gorges glittering with barbs of opaque white where the burns were starting to freeze. The sky was ablaze with stars so dense in places they flared over the vast expanse like wisps of cloud. Far in the distance the horizon paled as the moon came up, splashing its light into the sea till it became a dazzling streak that stretched between the low-slung undulations of the moors and made silver basins of the numerous small inlets along the shore.
Mac’s bare hands were so stiff when he reached Port Feall it was all he could do to unwind them from the handlebars. The sinews of his fingers refused to straighten and the joints cracked with the explosion of small fireworks in the dense air which seemed to compact heavily around his ears as the motor bike engine shuddered into silence.
The warmth of the tiny lounge bar embraced him and cries of welcome came from the bar which was well supported by the fishermen who were dousing the cold of the sea from their bones in the agreeable company of local worthies and visitors alike, for quite a few exiles had arrived on the island to spend Christmas and New Year with relatives.
Captain Mac’s whiskers thawed along with his muscles as his innards warmed to the appealing fire of the water of life. His tongue became garrulous as the time ticked pleasantly by, and perhaps because there was a bit of the Irish blood in him, his gift of the gab, which had earned him locally the nickname of Isaac the Tongue, soon bedazzled the listening fishermen. Niall was known and liked by them all and many a time he had stood at this very same bar entrancing them with stories of the animals who had come under his care.
‘He’s a good lad, a good lad,’ emphasized Iain Dubh, which in Gaelic meant Black John, a huge man whose ox-like shoulders strained against the speckled wool of his fisherknit jersey, fashioned locally by Nellie herself, one of many which she sold for only a modest profit to the grateful fisherwives.
Iain Dubh was the skipper of The Pibroch and his towering black haired figure and fists of steel had earned him a staunch if uneasy respect from fishermen in just about every port along the western seaboard. It was to Iain Dubh therefore that the wily Mac addressed his appeal, worded in such a way that the big man couldn’t resist the challenge to his ego. He’d had no sleep for twenty-four hours but fired by the whisky and the spirit of Mac’s rhetoric he leapt onto a chair and, fists raking the air, black beard glistening with beer and spittle, he challenged his crew to return to the element which they had so recently abandoned with gusto.
Only the sickly and the old resisted a call from Iain Dubh and the men were unanimous in their decision to go with him to look for Niall. It was a good night to be on the sea, clear visibility and a frontal calm. They would have to wait for the tide to turn since Port Feall was a shallow harbour, meanwhile a good hour or so remained before closing time and, with shoulders hunched, the men set about their drinking in earnest, discussing among themselves which house they would go to ceilidh in afterwards.
The Pibroch, her engine throbbing steadily, her squat bow cleaving a creamy V through the translucent waves, made good time in the silent hours of night. The pale moon rode higher in the heavens, spreading her welcome beam over the endless reaches of sea, diffusing the freezing darkness so that it was possible to see for miles. The pale flicker of islands appeared ghost-like on the Sound of Barra, a satiny mother-o’-pearl ribbon under the moon. Barra itself came into view. On its narrow northern peninsula rose the bastion of Scurrival Point, an inky blotch against the ebony backdrop of the star-splintered sky. At this point Iain Dubh set The Pibroch’s snub snout south-westwards. He had been drinking for a solid six hours and now the whisky was curdling in his belly, its heating effects wearing off, bringing the first stabs of icy cold which pierced through his mahogany skin and shivered into his souring entrails.
Disgruntled, he stared out of red-rimmed, salt-filled eyes. The scale-encrusted hatch on the hold shimmered with iridescent hues but he had no eye for the aesthetic things in life at that ungodly hour of morning. The smell of the tarred ropes, the odours of stinking fish, engraved into the wood for all time, poured into his lungs and heaved into his belly. Roughly he bawled out an order for tea which arrived in a chipped, blue-rimmed enamel mug round which he curled his thick lips, drinking deeply of the thick, hot, sweet beverage while he allbwed Captain Mac to take the wheel.
‘You bloody old Irish wolfhound!’ he oathed into the older man’s thickly haired purpled ears. ‘I’ll expect a flagon o’ the hard stuff after this. I don’t like my Jeannie’s bed to grow too cold for I’ve a suspicion she has other ways o’ warmin’ it when I’m no’ there. It’s a good three nights now since I straddled her backside.’
‘Ach, you’ll get to straddle her all you like wi’ New Year comin’ on and be sick o’ the sight o’ it by the end o’ it. Breac Beag is just a few miles away now. I can see the hump o’ her lyin’ under the moon so just you have a wee rest and let me take the boat in.’
The rocky islets and hidden reefs which peppered the coastal waters round Breac Beag and Breac Mor were a source of danger to any shipping but Captain Mac knew every lurking spur and every sharp-fanged reef like the back of his hand. Unerringly he steered The Pibroch towards the haven of Valsaal Bay nestling between the half-shut claws of long ridges of pink gneiss rock where the sea foamed white. Valsaal Bay was a placid lagoon where smooth-backed rocks were coated with orange and silver lichens. Before The Pibroch even dropped anchor Mac’s big nose was questing the wind, twitching as an oddly familiar scent filtered over the water.
‘By jove, it’s peat or my name is no’ Isaac MacIntosh! Peat I tell you, man! Coming from an island that has no’ been inhabited by man for nigh on twenty years!’
Dawn was spreading slowly across the eastern sky, swallowing the stars into its pearly grey throat. The green cap which covered the flat northern end of the island was frost rimed, the burns, which flowed from Dun Ree on the rocky southern side, were frozen, caught in the hoary breath of the bitter dawn. Further down, where the water
had cleft deep gorges in the rock and carved out trenches through the machair before it spread out over the pebbles on the shore, it was still flowing though with less velocity than usual.
The men pulled the dinghy ashore and hadn’t gone far when they came upon the smouldering remains of a bonfire, almost exactly at the same spot where, in the summer, Niall and Mac had piled driftwood and dead bracken to make a bonfire for a little girl who had never lived to see it.
The piping of the shore birds was almost drowned out by the seagulls’ wild cries as they plummeted off the cliffs or just drifted above, mewing plaintively.
Mac scrambled over the marram dunes with such agility it was difficult to believe he had just spent a sleepless and frozen night aboard The Pibroch. It was easy to follow the tracks through the machair. Although there were no sheep now on the island they had left behind their marks in the numerous tracks criss-crossing the sandy ridges of the dunes. The sands here were golden, fringed by pink and yellow granite gneiss. At the shore end stood the gaunt ruins of a house surrounded by a platform of green turf, a house in the same style as the one they had so happily violated that hot summer’s day not so many months ago.
Mac topped a rise and saw it, the mottled grey walls pallid against the ochre and orange splodged rocks behind it, its two tall chimneys prodding upwards to a cold, honey tinted sky. A wisp of smoke curled from one of the chimneys and Mac’s heart accelerated with joy, all his sorrow, his frustration, dispersing as easily as the peat smoke drifting in a blue haze over the umber brown stain of the moor. A figure was emerging from the house which materialized into the man everyone had so valiantly sought.
‘Mac!’ His cry of gladness froze in the cold still air of morning. He came scrambling over the heather to throw his arms about the neck of the old man whose raucous roars of delight brought smiles to the faces of Iain Dubh and his crew.
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