The Lost Lights of st Kilda

by Elisabeth Gifford

  We fought the squalls to catch the rest of their escaping house, roped the sheets down in a roll too heavy to be blown away and Archie and some of the men carried it down to the cleit.

  ‘What a welcome,’ a voice yelled. I turned to see Fred in a baggy oilskin jacket close to me, his cheeks stung red by the wind, eyes dark as a new calf. His brown hair stained darker with rain. He was holding his elbow with his hand, face strained. ‘I don’t think the island likes our intrusion,’ he shouted above the wind, nodding at the vengeance of the waves.

  ‘That’s island weather. What else did you expect? Now you had better get yourself away to the nurse’s house.’

  The boy was led away by my father to the old factor’s house where Nurse Barclay lived. ‘Thanks,’ he called back as they left. ‘For your help, Chrissie.’

  ‘My little Chrissie, I should have known you would rescue us. Always you leading the charge in all our escapades as children. I hardly recognized you, you’re so grown. Quite the lady. I see I’ll have to mind my manners.’

  There was Archie beaming down his smile on me, water running down his face in spite of the yellow oilskin hood. Blue eyes like drops of summer.

  Then he hurried off to where someone was calling him to the factor’s house to see Fred.

  I walked back home slowly, my hands hugging my elbows, all my soul dancing in the roughness of the wind. All along he’d recalled who I was. He had, I knew it, been teasing me not to say a greeting before.

  And in spite of myself, I was smiling all through supper and through prayers because Archie Macleod still knew my name.

  CHAPTER 12

  Fred

  ST KILDA, 1927

  Fairies are clearly more spiteful than we realized. The moment Archie and I began work on the long souterrain roofed with slabs that they call the fairies’ house – a structure possibly from the bronze or medieval age, date to be confirmed – then gales set in. Giants of dark waves up to sixty feet high, streaming with white spindrift, crashed against the cliffs or folded themselves into great molten barrels of water as they thundered towards the Village Bay. One truly felt what it was to be up against the wrath of the elements. And it was sobering to experience the island’s isolation in bad weather. Imagine a hill farm of some four square miles dropped in the middle of an Atlantic swell that even the sturdiest boats would think twice to sail and you have the situation of St Kilda.

  Old Finlay MacQueen and Finlay Gillies told us – after the event – that they could not understand our thinking in trying to put up a tented cover when we did. They said they could smell a gale coming from a change in the air. So not the work of fairies then. ‘Why did you not tell us?’ I asked Finlay Gillies, the shorter of the two with his folded-in, battered face. Finlay MacQueen, on the other hand, is one of the tallest men I have ever met with a bushy white beard and a very long stare.

  ‘We didn’t like to assume that you didn’t already know,’ he’d replied.

  ‘Please,’ I assured him, ‘I promise not be offended by any advice you want to give me in the future.’

  The winds were like nothing I’d experienced before, strong enough to whip a plank out of your hands and whack it into the man next to you. Soaked as we were by driving rain after we battled to save any equipment not sent spinning over the hill, we were never so glad as to accept the invitation of hot tea and scones from our neighbours.

  Apart from their rather inconvenient modesty in failing to warn us about the weather, we couldn’t have had a better welcome than the one we have had from the people of St Kilda. Oh, they were sorry for us, those old biddies. They fed us up like we were missing sons come home. Decent, that’s the word that comes to mind when I think of the families that made up the village. No one went short while they had something to share. The warmth in those little houses you’d be hard-pressed to match anywhere. You couldn’t miss the fact that they were poor, though. The swept-clean bareness of the cottages where there’s nothing upholstered, furniture made from logs that have washed up on shore – no trees here. Adverts from magazines posted up as pictures. All the signs of a house where there’s not much to spare.

  But you’d be mistaken to think they were cut off in their outlook. Eager for news from the mainland, ready to mull over any topic, well read some of them, all know the Bible end to end, well-versed theologians. Although, I have to say, some of the things they asked could make them sound a bit unworldly – simple, even. I worried how easy it would be for someone to come in and trick the villagers.

  I thought, the people here, this place, Fred, you’ve got a chance to be a better man here. A new start. Archie and I had been a bit wild at times as students, I had to admit. Perhaps I’d followed him too easily, for he had the shine of glamour about everything he did. We’d not always done things we might be proud of in Cambridge. It would be important to have something academically strong in our chosen fields in order for us to be welcomed back next term – especially in Archie’s case, though as to the girl in question, Archie assured me that she’d exaggerated out of all proportion.

  As for me, I have apparently blotted my copybook with the lesser – or greater – sin of always being ready to argue for the new way of thinking. But how can one not? I should, Archie says, keep such debates for the student common room since most of our professors have been teaching since long before the Great War ruptured every certainty. Their minds remain stuffed with the fragile china of Victorian ideas. They are still happy to recite the creed and the Lord’s Prayer in chapel while their God has allowed millions upon millions to perish in a barbaric and futile war, my own brother and Archie’s brother among those who died. Died before they saw twenty years. And who could believe in any God who sent the Spanish sickness that killed my own father at the end of the war? Who took my mother away while I was still small? And Christian forgiveness? If there were a God, I doubt that I would forgive him for all he so carelessly lets happen. No, we are alone on this earth, and we must do the best we can in this darkness.

  And yet, there is still goodness, in the kindness of my uncle who took me home to live with him in his cottage on the Dunvegan estate where he looked after the laird’s cars, kindness too in the help that Archie’s family has given me, and a natural kindness in the people here. There was, I found, something about the island that cleansed the soul of bitterness.

  I truly was full of all good intentions to make a better stab at things as I left our door and passed before the line of houses and lamp-lit windows on my way to Nurse Williamina Barclay’s house to have my arm checked and, I hoped, the bandage removed. The evening wind was keen and cleansing, the sky was filled with swirls and marches of clouds in palest rose and ashy violet, behind them a light beaming from the sea as if it were dawn rather than sunset. A dog tied outside a cottage lay lop-eared, nose burrowed into paws ready for sleep, and I felt the pride of him not being bothered to bark as I walked by – not a stranger any more. I could hear the burn full with the spring rains, its gurgle and splutter under the flagstone bridge in its path towards the sea. There was the whirr and scuffle of the secretive wrens that nest between the boulders of the old houses that still stood between the smooth-rendered newer bothies, where more birds nest in the roofs of old byres with turfed roofs on top. A thick smell of cow dung on the evening air mixed with the tang of peat smoke, undertones of paraffin or petrol, took me right back to the garage and my uncle.

  My father was a good man. After Mother died, he transferred to the Edinburgh branch of his bank, rose to become deputy manager, well respected and an elder at the church. But he was not an approachable father. At mealtimes, he orated and I listened. I thought of my father, eating his meals alone in that cold dining room in his frock coat and stiff collar. And I thought of him when I entered the poor homes along the village street here, homes crowded with the warmth of parents and children who were content with each other. No lone wolf cub setting out into the world could have known a more trenchant and atavistic longing for the warmth of b
elonging than I did those evenings as I listened to the old mothers and grannies and their unlikely tales of second sight and hauntings, one them always spinning wool by the glow of a peat fire that never went out.

  I began to develop a passion for recording their stories, their customs, the whole life here on St Kilda, conscious of how I might be watching a unique culture slipping away before my eyes. No detail too small to go down in my diaries. I feared for what the future held for the young people. Chrissie, for instance, who watches me from the corner of her parents’ kitchen when I go to take a cup of her mother’s very strong tea, who is as bright and intelligent as any girl you might meet at Cambridge, and generally a lot more sensible.

  How many times have I sat down to make notes on this place, and ended up writing about Chrissie? I would begin to write about the qualities of the rocks, the proportion of salt and calcium, of smooth olivine-gabbro and sparkling black feldspar, and it is Chrissie’s qualities I saw, those dark sparkling eyes and her suntanned arms as she walked with a basket on her hip, the way her red scarf fell from her hair. It seemed to me that to understand this place you’d need to understand what makes a girl like Chrissie, just as much as you needed to understand the layers and fissures of the ancient rocks that band the hills and cliffs and the sweetness of the minerals that produce the flowers of spring and the tiny overlooked alpine gentians and the sweet common daisies.

  I pictured Chrissie’s eyes now, dark as blue gentians. But they did not look back at me. They were always turned towards Archie, though he chose not to see it.

  CHAPTER 13

  Fred

  FRANCE, 1940

  As the three of us fled from the farm, cycling as fast as we could along the tracks between open fields of stubble and ploughed earth, Angus began to drop behind. I stopped to let him catch up but his bike wobbled and he dismounted, leaning over the handlebars. I rode back to see what was the matter. He looked yellowish, sweat around his forehead and lips.

  ‘Is it the stomach cramps again?’ I asked. He’d been complaining of them on and off for a while but I’d assumed they’d worn off since he’d stopped mentioning them for the past few days.

  ‘Bad,’ was all Angus could manage. Then he vomited over the handlebars. He crumpled up and, letting the bicycle fall, curled up on the ground. By now, our guide had also wheeled back. He looked around frantically in case anyone should pass and come to investigate with awkward questions.

  ‘He can’t go a little further? We’re just a few miles away.’

  No reply from Angus. He was out cold.

  We dragged him up the bank to the edge of a field where a thicket would give us some protection from the eyes of any passers-by.

  ‘What do you think is the matter with him?’ the guide asked.

  ‘From his groans, I’d say we needed to get him a doctor as fast as possible.’

  Clearly panicked by this change in plans, our companion pulled his cap lower and sped off to see what he could do, the bike jolting with his frantic pedalling. I sat by Angus as the day’s cold intensified, put my jacket over him, wondering if the man would ever return. Couldn’t blame him if he’d given up on us and done a runner. I tried to feed sips of water from my army flask between Angus’s dry lips but the response was a worrying retching and more groans.

  It must have been almost two hours later by the time I heard a voice on the track below us. I looked out through the bushes to see a sight from medieval times, a mule and cart driven by a small woman in a grey habit. Her head was covered with a grey veil, a band of white wimple showing. Close by, at the foot of the bank, she stopped, called out again, ‘Vous êtes toujours là?’

  I stayed silent.

  ‘Je suis venue pour le malade. Montrez-vous s’il vous plaît.’

  She’d come for the sick man. So this was our ambulance. I slid down the bank and helped her up to where Angus lay. She knelt down heavily, her rosy face showing the signs of early old age, an authority to her manner that brooked no discussion. She felt his forehead and examined his stomach gently. A deep moan from Angus when her fingertips pressed to one side.

  ‘It is appendicitis. I’m sure of it. We must not delay.’

  We carried Angus as gently as we could down to the cart, laid him in the back and covered him with empty hessian sacks, the smell of string and dust and Angus’s vomit mixing in the air. How he’d breathe under there I didn’t know.

  It was an agonizing journey as we made our way through the country lanes in the frigid air. The mule objected to the extra load and stopped every few hundred yards, refusing to move again until it suited him. Her range of French to encourage the beast was surprising for a woman in holy orders. I followed at a distance on my bicycle but soon abandoned it and took to pulling the mule by the reins, holding handfuls of grass out for him to walk towards in the way I’d seen Chrissie do to encourage the cows.

  We’d another couple of miles to go, she said, almost there, when an open-topped car appeared on the road ahead, two German officers in caps with black bands and silver skulls. The same moment the mule chose to stop again. They drew up alongside us. One of the officers got out.

  He asked if they could be of any assistance to the good sister. His French was very good. His charm impeccable, benign.

  ‘Allow me,’ the officer said with a courteous smile.

  He took his pistol from his holster, raised it into the air and fired. The mule shot forward, the sister jerked back in her seat but managed to hold on to the reins. I ran beside her, eyes down, a lumbering farmhand – hoping that Angus’s groans couldn’t be heard. Behind us, the slamming of car doors, laughter, the engine roaring away.

  The convent hospital was a two-storied building with tall windows that adjoined a grey church on the edge of the village square. As soon as we were through the archway and in the back courtyard, nuns in hospital armbands and white headdresses ran down the steps to uncover Angus from his sacking and roll him onto a stretcher. Our nun, giving orders as she ran, disappeared with the stretcher and a younger woman came down to take me inside.

  ‘Can you find out what is happening to Angus?’

  She came back a while later to say that he was in surgery. They hoped for the best but she had to warn me that Angus’s condition had been left too long.

  An hour later, perhaps less, and the nun who had collected us came along the corridor, removing her bloodstained apron.

  ‘We will know in the morning. And the sisters will pray for him through the night. Now, tell me, do you know of an address where we may send news to his family?’

  I wrote it down hastily on the notepad she held out.

  ‘He is from Scotland. Écossais. And you, Monsieur. . .’

  ‘Lawson. Fred Lawson. Also Scots.’

  ‘You also must have family you wish to contact. We can send a letter.’

  ‘There is no one,’ I told her.

  She examined my face for a moment, a look of pity?

  ‘Know that we will also include you in our prayers tonight, Mr Lawson. You have a family here.’

  I was given a bed in a side room that was not being used for patients. I lay sleepless, thinking of Angus, willing him to get better. At intervals through the night, I could hear the faint singing of women’s voices, the sisters in the convent chapel keeping the offices of their order, or sometimes the quiet-soled shoes of sisters passing along the hospital corridors, answering the calls of the sick.

  In the morning, Angus was awake, groggy and sore but cheerful. But with no memory of the cart ride or any German officers.

  It was going to be another two or three weeks before Angus could be moved. His scar gave him a bone fide reason for being in a hospital, but I was a liability and needed to be hidden. By day, I became a mute labourer who worked for the sisters. I donned a hessian apron and set to digging in the convent gardens at the back of the hospital walls, alongside an elderly gardener with two brown teeth and a cracked smile. He was in fear of the sister who had rescued us, th
e Mother Superior, probably because of the brown bottle he kept in his pocket, and a habit of falling asleep in the barn when the sun warmed the afternoon.

  In fact, I found the sister very good company. She loved a cigarette and a small glass of sweet wine in the evening, and she played to win, as I soon found out when she challenged me to a game of chess.

  At the end of two weeks, she came rushing into my room with serious news. Someone had informed German authorities that she was hiding English soldiers. Angus, with his post-operative scar, was possible to explain if he kept quiet, but I would have to hide. And there was very little time. She shut me into her study. I crouched behind her desk, listening as she spoke to the German officer in the corridor.

  ‘You have my word,’ she assured him. ‘There is nothing to this rumour. We have no English soldiers here.’

  ‘As a woman of God, your word is enough,’ he replied, and I heard the sound of boots retreating along the corridors.

  A while later she came in, shaking.

  ‘They are gone,’ she said. ‘With a little white lie. After all, we have no English soldiers. Only Scottish ones.’

  Our original guide returned and I set off with him by bicycle once again, leaving Angus to follow in a day or two – hidden in the boot of the midwife’s car since she had official permission to drive between villages and a modest petrol allowance. I hated to leave Angus, feeling as responsible for him as I would for a younger brother.

  ‘But can’t you tell me where you’re going in case something goes wrong?’ he asked, reverting to Gaelic in his distress.

  ‘You know that’s not how it’s done.’

  He bit his lips together, tried a joke. ‘Just not sure how you’ll manage without me, that’s all.’

  I embraced him, promised we’d meet up again in a few days’ time and set off following the stranger on the bicycle ahead, a slanting sun rising, the fields blanketed with a white mist, no end or landmark in sight.