The Island Nurse

by Mary J. Macleod

  ‘Angus,’ shouted Ina. ‘It will be Callum-Ally in the boat. Ring the home.’

  ‘I have. Callum failed to return from an afternoon’s supervised walk yesterday. Some supervision! And they didn’t think to tell us. We could have been on the watch, the stupid . . .’

  Angus’s jaw moved as he strove to keep calm. He was very angry, but as a devout Free Kirk Elder he was trying to contain himself. He took Ina into his arms – an unusual public gesture for an island man.

  ‘He must have been very persuasive and she is undoubtedly in denial, either about his identity or his mental state – perhaps both,’ he murmured. ‘God help me, but I wish they would lock him up for life. I’m cold with fear for them.’

  I, too, had been remembering that Callum was often violent now.

  ‘Have they any idea where they might be headed?’ I asked Angus.

  ‘Rhuari said they turned out to the west. He shouted after them. He was tryin to warn them about the sea and the weather. They took no notice, just turned out to sea.’

  Ina rocked to and fro in torment. ‘They’ll all be drowned out there, they will.’

  ‘Hush, you,’ instructed Angus. ‘Rhuari raised the alarm and now everyone knows tis an emergency. They have launched the life boat from the mainland.’

  ‘But that will take for ever!’ Ina would not be comforted.

  Angus coughed. ‘They have Roddy’s old boat. It’s no too fast a boat . . .’

  ‘And no too safe, foreby,’ added Ina. ‘So they have stolen a boat as well. Oh the dear Lord! Thieving now!’

  ‘What type of boat is it?’ I asked.

  ‘Outboard, 14 foot, small forward cabin.’ Rhuari had joined us. ‘There will be a bit shelter in the cabin.’

  ‘So long as the fog holds off, they should find them soon – unless they hide among the rocks . . .’

  Angus left the sentence unfinished, for we all knew that to hide among the jagged rocks was no better a scenario than remaining out to sea.

  He continued, ‘The coastguard vessel is nearby and will be searching, and several of the men have launched their boats too.’

  ‘What do we do now?’ Ina was near to collapse.

  I spoke up. ‘You stay at home, Ina. Morag and Mary-Anne will be here in a minute to keep you company. You could put a hot water bottle in the baby’s bed and make sure there is plenty of baby milk in the house. Heat plenty of water and see there are warm dry clothes ready.’ This would give her something to do, although I felt that a hospital bed was a more likely destination for both when they were brought in. If they were brought in. They had not even been sighted yet.

  I had to complete my patient round and then I went to Dr Mac’s house. News would come via his phone or John’s. The doctor’s house was near the harbour, so we would be nearby when (if?) they were found and brought in by boat.

  Dr Mac, Fiona and I sat and waited. So many people were out hunting that there was little we could do at the moment, but we might be needed later. From the window I could see more small boats being launched and fanning out to the west. There were two tiny islands to the west: Ardnacloich was inhabited and Lachach Isle had been uninhabited for the last hundred years or so. Could they be making for Lachach Isle? There were some ruins still on that isle.

  I mentioned this to the doctor, who seemed to think it a possibility and rang John, who contacted the lifeboat, which set off in that direction.

  We jumped as the phone rang. Dr Mac listened while Fiona and I held our breath. His shoulders drooped.

  ‘No sight of them. But the lifeboat is not anywhere near Lachach Isle as yet. The fog is getting worse, especially on the mainland, so there is no hope of the helicopter joining the search. Some dozen or so private boats are out, mainly searching the Papavray coast. Who knows what that stupid pair might do?’ He thumped the arm of the chair he sat in. He was very angry. ‘What is the girl thinking? Surely she could see that a baby ought not to be subjected to a small boat in the open sea. That girl needs psychiatric help as much as her brother!’

  I had never heard Dr Mac raise his voice in anger. It was obvious that he was very concerned for the lives of Jaynie and the baby. I had a sudden worrying thought of my own.

  ‘Can I use your phone, please?’

  I rang home. I brought Nick and Andy up to date with all that was happening and then fiercely forbade them to put to sea in our small boat to help, as I had feared that they might.

  ‘I want you to go round the headlands near Dhubaig and Coiravaig and look in all the bays that you can see. And alert Basher. He might see . . .’

  ‘I have already, Mum. He and his parents are searching their coast and waters.’

  Doctor, Fiona and I waited again. Fiona made some tea and we waited some more. There was no moon. Did they have a light? Had they taken enough baby milk powder? Did they have clean water to mix it? Warm water? And what was the weather doing now?

  As though reading my thoughts, Dr Mac turned the ancient wireless on for the weather forecast. To our horror, gales were forecast for the Hebrides. The phone rang, but it was only an update from the coastguard HQ.

  ‘No real news yet. They might have landed on the north shore of Papavray. Their boat is incapable of much speed, so they cannot have gone beyond the area already searched. Apart from the lifeboat and the coastguard, there are about 20 boats of various sizes out looking. But is just possible that they are on Lachach Isle, and a search party has just been put ashore there.’

  ‘I feel useless here,’ I said. ‘Now that the search has been extended to these shores, I think I could be of more use over in our area, which I know so well.’

  And with that I drove home, changed into warm things and joined the dozens who were already scouring the shores, rocky outcrops and bays on the north side of Papavray.

  From the headlands, we could see the powerful beams of the coastguard vessel as it swept the surface of the sea, picking out the tops of the waves and turning the white spray into golden showers. The ‘thrum’ of the lifeboat engines was loud as it nosed its way in and out of the dangerous rocks near Papavray and the islands of Lachach and Ardnacloich.

  Suddenly, we heard the sound of a foghorn. Once, twice, three blasts! This was not the normal, doleful sound of the usual strictly timed warnings.

  ‘They’ve found something – that’s what that means,’ shouted Archie. ‘Come on!’

  Back over Ben Criel we went with Nick, Andy, Rory and Big Craig all packed into my car. We were excited but already dreading what the boats had found. Were they alive? Were they safe? Uninjured? The baby?

  As we approached the harbour at Dalhavaig, we could see the lifeboat ploughing through the tumult of the sea in the deteriorating weather, slowing to negotiate the notoriously difficult entrance. We leapt from the car and ran to the quay. We strained our eyes to peer through the gloom, trying to see onto the deck. Then one of the crew on board raised his hand in our direction with his thumb firmly in the air. They were safe!

  Ina and Angus rushed up the gangplank, and Dr Mac and I followed them into the cabin area. There sat Jaynie, wet and bedraggled, with blood on her face and hands, crying uncontrollably and clasping the baby. Wee Janet was very pale, wet and quiet. Too quiet! Ina rushed to Jaynie and took the baby in her arms with scarcely a glance at her daughter. She took one look at the tiny soul and turned to me. I was unzipping my warm padded coat and ripping open the two cardigans beneath it. I took the baby, Ina held on to the wet blanket, and I clasped the child to my body, wrapping the cardigans around us both while Ina, quickly understanding, zipped up my coat. This is the best way to warm a baby in an emergency – body heat. It would do for now.

  The ambulance was on the quay. Dr Mac and Ina jumped in, while a grim-faced Angus carried Jaynie. I was helped in with my little burden. This baby was cold and floppy, pale and far too quiet. Her eyes were open, but they had no expression in them. She was in a very bad state.

  The staff of the little hospital was ready, and the
patients, parents and Dr Mac disappeared into its warmth.

  I went slowly back to my car. My involvement would be later, when Jaynie and little Janet came home. If Janet survived, I reminded myself unhappily. She was in a critical condition.

  I was just drawing away when I spotted John. ‘Where is Callum-Ally? I didn’t see him in the lifeboat,’ I called.

  John shook his head. ‘No. The coastguard took him to keep him away from the other two. He didn’t seem to be hurt, but he’ll be assessed on the mainland and then probably locked up. He is obviously quite deranged.’ John rubbed his head. ‘What on earth possessed that place to let him out? And what was young Jaynie thinking of, to risk her baby like that? Och! It’s beyond me.’

  ‘I think she needs treatment too, John. We failed to realise that the trauma of the birth had had such an effect on her. She seemed all right, and Ina was so good with her and the baby that we were too confident. But Callum-Ally must have been extremely devious and persuasive to get Jaynie to agree to such a stupid and dangerous undertaking. Where were they found, John?’

  ‘On Lachach Isle. The lifeboat chappies found them. They were in one of the old ruins. No roof, no floor, no fire – nothing! Just huddled in a corner. Jaynie seemed relieved to be found, the chaps said, but Callum-Ally tried to fight them off, shouting that they were to get off “his island”. He seemed to think he owned the house and the whole island, daft devil that he is! They should lock him up and throw the key away!’ And having delivered himself of this uncharacteristically venomous opinion, John marched off.

  I realised that John probably knew of the brother/sister connection. Not that it mattered now – it would never be a secret again. Callum-Ally would have to be dealt with, and it would undoubtedly be in all the papers. But that was all in the future. It was the present that was important.

  Jaynie recovered physically, but she was withdrawn and uncommunicative, and still ignored her baby altogether. Little Janet hovered close to death during the first few hours: she was seriously hypothermic. Ina never left her side, and after a day or two she was out of danger. Sores caused by clothes soaked in salty seawater took days to heal, and the state of her little bottom showed that her napkin had not been changed at all. She needed a lot of persuading to take her bottle, frequently vomiting the contents. I think her stomach had been affected by the cold milk that Jaynie had given her during that terrible day. As I had feared, they had not taken any means of heating milk or water.

  But gradually she recovered and was taken home to be loved and cherished by a relieved and thankful Ina. I visited every day for some weeks, and my respect for that family knew no bounds. Not only had they to deal with the delicate baby and Jaynie’s withdrawn state and Callum-Ally’s criminal acts, but the publicity as well. The newspapers had a field day. But Angus and Ina were stoic. Their faith upheld them, they said.

  There was still a long, long way to go for this family before they could know any real peace of mind: I felt that this was still only ‘the end of the beginning’.

  TWENTY-SIX

  Shearing in the sunshine

  I climbed the hill ahead of everyone else so that for a short while I would have the solitary peace that I so enjoyed. I was on my way to the sheep fank, high on the heather-clad hills that rose steeply behind Dhubaig. Soon, eight or ten crofters would arrive together with their wives and their collie dogs. We were going to shear the sheep!

  The woolly beasts, belonging to all the crofts in the village, would be gathered by the busy collies and herded into the fank – a stone pen.

  Today, it was the turn of the ewes with lambs at heel. They were always sheared later in the summer than those who, for some reason, had not produced a lamb. Those who had were allowed to keep their wool while the lambs were still young and needed to snuggle up to their mothers’ warm flanks during the chilly nights.

  In an hour or so, the hillside would swarm with people, and the clamour of whistles and shouts would pierce the quietness. Laughter, too, would ring out over the glen, to bounce back from the far hills. The islanders always found something to laugh about in the most unlikely circumstances – stress, exhaustion, sadness even. But for now I sat amid the quietness of this flawless day.

  Nothing intruded on my solitude except for the sound of the distant sea, where gentle waves erupted shoreward and fronds of seaweed ululated in the shallows. A cheeky robin perched on a nearby bank and watched me with his beady little eye. Maybe he knew that the presence of humans meant an abundance of crumbs. But the most evocative of all the wild wilderness sounds was the call of the curlew. There is a legend which claims that the call of the curlew aids the spirits of the dying to leave the body and travel to the next world. This idea might have been of great comfort to the folk of old.

  I enjoyed these days, when I could work alongside the crofters, watching and understanding their practical skills, their ingenuity and their cheerful acceptance of the hardships of life. To the rest of the UK, crofting may seem archaic, but in times of real hardship – drought, flood, earthquake, and so on – the crofters would be likely to survive far better than those with more ‘up-to-date’ lifestyles. They reared their own animals, grew their own crops; they dug peat for fuel; they had always been frugal with water and other resources. They knew the moods of the sea, could read the weather and so on: all the skills necessary for survival in cataclysmic circumstances.

  But my ruminations were interrupted as, gradually, this all-encompassing serenity fractured and I became aware of the voices of the men, the twitter of women’s chatter and an excited bark or two as the crowd puffed its way up to the fank.

  ‘Ahh. It’s yourself then, Nurse! You are gie early, foreby,’ Morag called as she heaved a heavy basket of food onto the wall. She sat thankfully, breathing hard. It was a very steep hill.

  Archie, Mary, Fergie and Old Roderick, who was at least 80, arrived next, carrying various bits of rope, bags of animal feed – in case bribery proved necessary – and some cans of water for the dogs, as there was no stream nearby. Struggling up behind them came old Kirsty (also in her 80s). She always came to the shearing, just to watch.

  Fergie had a cardboard box containing some mysterious bottles and three or four old paintbrushes. Paintbrushes? He saw me looking at them.

  ‘Aha. These are for paintin antiseptic on the sheep’s skin if the maggots have got to it yet.’

  I nodded. The fleeces were thick and any maggots were well hidden. But once the woolly overcoat had been shorn off, they would be visible in the fleece itself, and any damage to the flesh might be in need of treatment. Maggots are pale, disgusting creatures that, if left for any length of time, can burrow into the body of the sheep and virtually eat it alive. It doesn’t bear thinking about.

  The last to arrive was George – not as fit as the sturdy, hardy crofters who were so used to striding about in the hills. He had in his hand a pair of his own shears, bought for the occasion in the crofters’ store in Dalhavaig. He was going to be taught how to use them.

  In the 1970s, shearing was still done by hand on most of the more remote islands. They used the large, clumsy-looking, scissor-shaped metal shears that had been around for centuries. Farms in the more affluent south had long been using electric shears, making the job so much quicker and easier. On Papavray, although ‘the electric’ had come in the 1950s, the supplies were to the villages in the glens, while the fanks, built so long before electricity was thought of, were high in the hills.

  More recently, modern amenities have started to become commonplace. Ugly, galvanised-iron fanks of complicated design are appearing in or near every village, so that ‘the electric’ is available for the shearing. The old shears are consigned to the back of the byre, and the new automatic implements are used. The collies bring the flock down from the hills to be sheared and then back again.

  But today, here on the high hill, there was a flurry of activity, a lot of whistling and soon a group of 20 or so sheep appeared over the brow of another h
ill. The dogs, who seemed to know by instinct what to do – the crofters giving very few commands – drove the flock into the fank and then lay down at the entrance to discourage attempts at escape. Several men grabbed a sheep each, hauled her into an uncomfortable-looking ‘sitting’ position, and set to work.

  ‘Right then, George! Tis time you had your first lesson. Y’see, you get hold of her like this . . .’ Archie demonstrated as he spoke.

  George made a futile grab at a docile-looking beast, lost his footing, and the ewe pranced away. I’m sure she was grinning! After several more attempts, George was ready and Archie handed him the shears. He began . . .

  Thirty minutes later, he straightened up, red in the face, covered in sweat and breathing heavily. Then he realised that everyone had been watching him. He glanced down at his poor, patient old ewe. In some places the skin was pink and rather sore, in others tufts of wool stood out like lavatory brushes. A loud, raucous cheer broke out.

  ‘Don’t give up the day job, George!’ Archie laughed heartily.

  George came over to where I was rolling the grubby, oily fleeces.

  ‘Phew! It looks so easy when these guys do it. Five minutes per sheep! My poor beast will probably be psychologically damaged for life.’

  ‘Well, at least you had a go. I wouldn’t even get one into position, I’m sure. I’m safer just rolling fleeces.’

  Just then, a shout went up. It was time for tea. There was a break before the next batch was brought down from the high hill, so we sat in a circle on the grass or perched on the old walls of the fank and drank thirstily in the warm, bright sunlight.

  ‘Have ye no heard the latest?’ Archie was mumbling through a mouthful of dumpling.

  ‘Heard what?’ George had recovered his breath.

  ‘About the airyport. Tis to be opened next week, I’m hearin. Some grand body is comin to cut a bit o’ ribbon and then the first plane will come in and land.’