The Lost Lights of st Kilda

by Elisabeth Gifford

  The truth was, by then we islanders depended on the tourists to buy the tweed and the knitting we spent all winter making. A few years earlier, the island had sold many tons of fulmar feathers to the army quartermasters, their medicinal oils being proof against fleas. Hundreds of pints of fulmar oil and thousands of salted gannets went over to the mainland. But no one wanted to buy them from us any more, not with new petroleum products so cheap and with even cheaper imports from the Empire on the rise.

  But we children understood little of that as we waited on the shore among the barking collies and golden-coated setters to watch the Hebrides come in. The thing that interested us was the boy being carried up from the boat. We had never seen a child like it, a creature who had long missed the sun, dipped in milk with hair the colour of grass at the end of winter. The tide was a long way out that day so the only way from the boat was across the slippery rocks with their blanket of seaweed. He was a tall child, ten years or eleven, long past needing to be carried, but since a stranger does not know how to place a foot in the bare rocks and hold fast, so he must submit to coming ashore in the arms of Malcolm MacQueen, that burly red beard making the child hold himself away as if there were a bad smell about Malcolm. Which there most probably was, oily fish and peat smoke, tobacco and sheep wool, though we did not notice it then being of much the same atmosphere.

  Malcolm set him down on the beach and the boy squirmed in his pale suit and high collar as if adjusting his dignity. Left alone on the beach, the boy looked around as if waiting for someone to come and fetch him or attend to him.

  But it was only us children there, watching from behind the stone dyke, for the steward and the men were all at the boats unloading the sacks and boxes and the women were going up the slope with loads tied to their shoulders, bent double under the weight, all the flour and potatoes and tea and butter that we had been waiting for so long. And at last each home would have its sack of sugar again, along with all the admonishments that the sack was not to be touched, not opened and not a finger dipped in it, since the bag must last the year entire.

  The unloading and loading would go on for another hour. The boy was kicking at the sand in anger at being forgotten. We knew we were looking at the son of the laird who owned the island, and were consumed with curiosity at what sort of creature this was, more than a normal human being, perhaps, but certainly less than God himself. We crept out through the breach in the dyke, making the sparrows between the stones chatter and flurry up, and we sat ourselves quietly a little closer to see him better. Then my little brother Callum waddled even closer, in a squatting position, as if being so low he would not be noticed, and we all moved in behind him. The boy turned and scowled at us. The moment he looked away we came a little closer still, and so on until we had crossed to where the grass becomes sand and were ranged in a half circle not so far away from him. There we settled. With no other attendants, and rising to the occasion, he began to put on something of a show, all the time pretending not to see us. Taking up the largest sea boulder he could lift, staggering under its weight, he threw it into the sea. Then he found a kelp stalk, the kind that makes a good walking stick when it is dried, and began to thrash a pile of sea brack, beating it into submission though it was hard to see how it had offended him. Bored with that, he turned to us, hands on his hips, and told us he was Archie Macleod and so we must do his bidding.

  Now on an island that had never seen a dictator, our ways always being those of long discussion and democratic agreement, be it when to cut the corn or where to harvest the sea fowls, this was a novel game and we jumped up, eager to follow behind our new general with his milk-white face and pale woollen suit.

  He had us march up the glen behind him, a tall feather-haired child leading an assorted row of stocky children in make-piece twice-used breeches and skirts cut simple and bulky from ends of tweed, windblown hair and red cheeks and red kerchiefs well fastened round our necks by our mothers to keep out the wind. We were, he told us, a gang of pirates come up from the sea to raid the island and steal all its treasures. Which was willingly endorsed because had we not heard from Allie MacCrimmon tales of a time when the village had to run and hide in the cave below Mullach Mòr since pirates had indeed once landed in the bay.

  We dammed the stream in front of the manse and we flooded the glebe field, sailing on it boats made of twigs, and then Archie declared we must send out a party to raid for food. Marching up to the factor he got cheese and bread enough for us all, which is what comes of being a pirate of the upper classes. We ate ourselves full on the hillside, watching the gannets dive from nowhere and explode in white plumes of water in the blue sea, some giving themselves away by the flash of the sun on their wings before they folded into blades to cut the water. I chewed my bread and watched how the white clouds on the mountain made the blue above us bluer, just as Archie being there made the day seem brighter, how the cloud like a soft scarf along Conachair’s heights was taken away like breath before it could begin to roll down to us, and I felt a little shiver, for Conachair has its own ways, a stern sort of atmosphere that must always be respected. And so I was telling Archie a story of tourist ladies who had come from their yacht, in great big hats covered in silk veils and birds’ wings, who had climbed up the hill in the sun, when a thick mist had come down of a sudden and the ladies had all stepped off those great cliffs eaten into the back of the mountain, unable to see the chasm that lay before them. How they had never been seen again.

  Archie decided that he should go up and look at the back of the mountain for himself.

  I told him we must not go up Conachair, not with the little ones with us. But Archie was already walking up the slopes leading to the place where the hill becomes sky. I told the littlest ones to go and play outside old Allie’s house as she would watch them, and the six of us who were left followed Archie. My brother Callum at six years old was too little to come with us but he came anyhow.

  We followed the path worn in the grass between the store cleits, those round stone huts with a thatch of green turf, a square door like a mouth and one eye above it for a window, watching all we did. I was shouting out stories to Archie, how the cleits were the heads of buried giants with green turf hair and one eye, how they came out of the ground at night to eat children – one of my best stories. He told me I was making up nonsense so sharply that I knew I had him a little bit scared.

  It was not easy for Archie to stay ahead of we who climb the hills around the village or across to the glen where the cattle are each day, but he would not give in.

  He stopped, holding up his hand so we all stopped.

  ‘Ha,’ said Archie. ‘See how the people look like little beetles, and my father nothing but a big grasshopper.’ Which was a clever observation, I thought, since his long-legged father strode around in a green tweed suit with the top of his head covered in a brown tweed hat with big ear-flaps blown out by the wind, making him look like a big insect. And we were awed by Archie’s boldness in speaking of the laird so, which did certify to us the special powers of being Archie Macleod. We saw the houses were a row of black-roofed matchboxes set along a green cloth, each house facing the sea to watch for storms, or for the boats that might bring dear ones returning from the lands they left for. The waters of our little Village Bay looked like an old green penny, dark and oily.

  When we reached the glen of The Gap we stopped to breathe, sticky sweat on our faces. Callum’s was bright pink, the hair wet on his little round head. The sweaty damp cloth of our tweed clothes was smelling like lambs in the misty rain, of old butter and meal, of memories of days past. The village was all gone now. It was only us children, sitting in the shade of the wall of the sheep fank, the land towards the cliffs rising up each side of us. I pointed to the slope of Oiseval that rears up into the sky like a great snub-nosed whale, cut off cleanly by cliffs all around. The turf there was poor and thin, studded with humps of stone cleits that looked in the distance like barnacles on the head of a leaping whale.
So I told them all that Oiseval had indeed once been a giant whale, far, far bigger than any that the Norway men leave in the bay to take to Bunavoneader in Harris. How the giant whale came to St Kilda meaning to eat up little Stac Levenish, but Hirta saw the whale just in time and cast a spell from the waters of the hill of blessings and just as the whale rose up it was turned into stone, its great open jaws turned to cliffs. Grass grew on its back, and the sheep went up there to graze, but if you looked sideways with your eyes half closed you could still see the barnacles on its back and the shape of its big head as it opened its mouth wide.

  ‘I can see it, I can see it,’ said Callum, and the others were agreeing.

  ‘And one day a year, you must be careful not to climb it, for it will turn back to a whale and eat anyone who climbs it.’

  ‘What day, Chrissie?’ Callum asked earnestly.

  But Archie said, ‘Really, you natives do speak such nonsense,’ in his Gaelic that has an English sound to it, and I was cross then because I saw that Archie likes to be first in all he does.

  We drank from a stream, bright glass in the sun, and ploughed on through the nodding pinks and the silver-green plantain leaves, and the long grass with its brown butterflies tumbling across in the swift breeze.

  At the top, the wind reached us cold from the Arctic, even in the full sun. Below us you could see how the back of the mountain was eaten away by the sea. We huddled down on the ground, arms around ourselves in the cold. Even Archie was lost for words by the greatness of the cliffs, how swiftly the land ended in a violent drop, how far we were above the seas below. We showed Archie how to creep forward, down on our bellies until our heads were all in a row in the air, taking in the skin-tingling sight of the sea below, dizzy with how far away it was.

  ‘Father says the cliffs are a thousand and three hundred feet high,’ I called out.

  ‘One thousand three hundred and two to be precise,’ Archie called back.

  The sea was darkest blue and shining. We watched waves breaking on the pink rocks below in a frill of white surf. Fulmars sailed level with our heads, rising and falling on the currents of the wind, gliding and then breaking with a few flaps before gliding again. You could see their steady black eyes and little grey beaks. No words now, only the birds’ secret calls and creaks, the sounds of the distant surf so tiny and far away, and the softness of the wind across our ears.

  Then Archie said, ‘Don’t you people climb down the cliffs?’

  ‘Aye,’ said Donald. ‘St Kildans are famous for being the best cragsmen.’

  ‘Show me then. Show me how you do it.’

  ‘But we’ve no rope,’ Donald told him. ‘No one goes down the cliffs without a rope and a man to hold him steady.’

  ‘A rope,’ said Archie. ‘I knew you’d find an excuse not to go.’

  ‘Archie, it is true,’ I told him. I thought of the night I had spent on the cliff with only the storm petrels for company and shivered. ‘No man, not even big Finlay MacQueen, would do it without ropes and a second man.’

  ‘But I want you to,’ said Archie, a strange gleam in his eye. ‘This is my island and I order you to go.’

  I was going to point out that it was his father our island belongs to, but I heard a shifting and a scraping behind me, and turning my head saw my brother Callum sliding round, his legs already over the cliff edge.

  ‘I’ll go for ye,’ he called out cheerfully. I froze, could feel the fall of his body through the empty air, a bird not yet learned to fly, and it was me, flying across the grass to throw myself down and grab him by the arm.

  Too late, for I felt the pull of the bones in his hand slipping out of my hold, and I lunged and clamped my other arm on his wrist, holding on, his round face surprised by the feeling of his legs dangling in nothing. Oh, but he was too much for me to pull up again. Then Donald was there too, leaning out to grab his shirt by the neck, the sound of the cloth tearing as we hauled Callum up, scraping over the edge of the broken turf so that we raked the earth up with him and you could hear the pebbles under it rattling away down the cliff, the fulmars on the ledges below crackling and sawing their calls.

  I dragged him yards inland, him crying to me to let go for I was hurting him. I shouted all the while, how stupid he was.

  The one I wanted to shout at was Archie Macleod, though I did not dare.

  After the crying had stopped, the air was not the same as before. All the respect for Archie Macleod had blown away, a foolish boy sat on the grass with green stains on his pale breeches. And he felt it for he burst into tears. ‘I never meant that. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it. A joke. I’m always doing something bad, I know it.’

  We felt sorry for Archie then, his white face streaked with dashes of grey as he rubbed at his eyes, for he did not know the island as we did, and he surely hadn’t meant to kill Callum.

  And wasn’t it Callum who had porridge for brains?

  We went down the hill, children together, following behind Donald, the past moments all but forgot as he shouted back how he would show Archie where to get the guillemot eggs on the rocks out by the skerries.

  We came back to the village, the people grown back into their proper size. The laird was with Archie’s brother, who was almost as tall as his father, and favoured by all since he was the heir. The laird saw Archie with his dirty face and grass-marked suit, hand-knitted socks stiff with peat stains from wading in the stream, and said, ‘Can you never stay clean for a moment, boy? You might have some concern that I would worry with you gone for hours.’

  Archie looked beaten down by these words. I saw how he turned himself away, anger over his face lest he cry again. I slipped away back to the hills, herding the others before me so that Archie would not feel shamed by all our eyes upon him.

  I pondered as my mother filled my plate with mutton stew that evening, on how the mothers and the fathers on St Kilda are strict and never let us get away with mischief or play games on the Sabbath but only read the Bible or go to the church, but how they are kind and cossetting in the welcome of their eyes, how they think that children should have sweets if sweets are to be had, and how they do not chide us with unkind words to make the heart give up, always being glad to see the children in the village.

  Supper done, a lingering brightness outside, I stood at the foot of the hills and turned around, seeing our home as if with new eyes, the bigness of the hills and the wideness of the silver plains of sea, a land you could walk across to reach the other side of the world. I knew we were poor and insignificant but I knew too that I would never swap with Archie Macleod in his castle in Dunvegan.

  At that time of year, it is still gloaming at nine o’clock, a greenish and purple last light over the sea. No one minded that we children were still out as we gathered on the slopes at the back gate to the factor’s house, waiting until Archie saw us there. At last we saw a fair head and narrow shoulders down in the back window, a pause and then he came out in answer to our frantic beckonings.

  Donald showed Archie a tin cup of sugar concealed beneath his jacket. ‘This way now,’ he whispered to a suspicious Archie. Over the croft lands, the evening air smelled fresh of grass and burn water. Sea spray on a wind that carried the calls of birds thinking about going to sleep. We folded Archie into our midst and led him to the fairies’ house, Donald leading the way with the cup of sugar under his jersey.

  In the near gloom of the souterrain, we lit a fire of dried grass and peat and sat an old iron dish on top, pouring in the sugar while I said spells. We watched it melt and turn brown, adding a piece of stolen butter as I stirred and stirred fast with a stick. Out on the grass, to the cracked bells of sheep calls, we showed Archie how to tip the mixture onto a flat stone so that it cooled. Then we sat around it, peeling off the toffee, chewing the heavenly substance slowly, all the while telling the worst stories we could think of from the island, of great birds who became witches, pirates who were cannibals, spiteful fairies who made you drop down dead for refusing them a drink
of milk, of children stolen by the Devil because they did not know how to say the Lord’s Prayer. We forgot that Archie was a Macleod of Dunvegan, and Archie too had forgotten it, lying back on his elbow and laughing with the other St Kilda bairns at Donald acting out the part of a witch.

  The Hebrides sat calm in the bay as we left for our homes, the sun setting behind her. In the morning, Archie would be leaving. I felt sad then, for who knew how many months or years before he might return?

  And I wondered if I too might like to go on that boat and travel to Dunvegan or to lands beyond. But curious though I was, I could not think how I could ever leave one day and give up my home here on the island, any more than I might tear out my own bones and leave them behind me.

  It would indeed be a while before I’d see Archie Macleod again. For by the next year we were at war with the Kaiser, the Great War. A grey steel boat sailed into Village Bay and fast as you liked the navy men were building a row of huts down by the feather store, the radio mast finally mended. A full dozen men were stationed on the island to keep lookout over the Atlantic for German U-boats. We’d never had a time like it, for suddenly there was paid work for all the men on the island, digging trenches, putting up the wooden barracks down by the shore, or sitting up all night and day on Mullach Mòr as lookouts.

  You could see the realisation on the faces of those young men, so this is how it is on the mainland: people would pay you to do simple tasks, and no need to risk your life wresting a living from the cliffs and the sea. There was a shop to spend their pay in. A boat came every week bringing letters. All the things we ordered came right back in a few days, new boots and pretty fabric and marmalade and sweets, because we had the money, you see.