‘Well, it was never going to be easy,’ Rab reasons. And then we look at each other. It is unsettling to arrive in a place and to be so swiftly unsure of your welcome.
Conversations run in a linear way, following well-rehearsed, formulaic patterns, leaning into each season or what is happening in people’s lives. Exchanges are economical; words are chiselled. Though little is said, much is implied in subtle nuances – the flick of an eye, a quick-witted aside or a curt rebuff. I am missing deeper interactions. There is a reserve and innate guardedness hiding behind a casual, well-oiled warmth that gives nothing intimate away. It is a shield that is difficult to penetrate. Instead you have to wait for it to lift. It takes time to inhabit a landscape and to familiarise yourself with its traditions. Simultaneously, I am occasionally unsettled by the lack of privacy or anonymity. I wonder what is said of us behind closed doors.
Small gestures of help and kindnesses burst into each week like bright blinks of sunshine. They counter any early off-kilter impressions and are all the more generous for being random and unexpected. A lift from the ferry on a rainy day. A friendly wave as we walk past an open window, a sudden shouted invitation to come inside. Headlights that appear on the driveway, long after dark, as hearty ‘bumper’ drams are splashed out from a bottle carried in the deep pocket of a sheepskin coat to wish us well in our new home, or simply to find out, through more uninhibited talk, exactly who we are. Sometimes it is startling and bewildering to receive such a full-spirited yet testing welcome from folk we have barely seen in passing a handful of times, and others we have not yet seen at all.
One morning a van disappears at speed out of the yard. An old wooden chest of drawers has been left there with an unsigned note stuck on to it, the words ‘We hope you can find a use for this’ written in a beautiful script. I am moved by this thoughtfulness and generosity. In all our years in London, I cannot remember such care being taken over welcoming new neighbours. Later, once the chest has been sanded and oiled, tiny mother-of-pearl flowers are visible, like all the flowers of the croft, etched into the fine detailing of each drawer. I hope we will have the chance to return these favours, with our time or in kind, so that this goodwill does not run dry, or change course suddenly like the wind.
There are always those who abruptly turn away, or who won’t meet our smiles. But, as time passes, we learn which doors will open with a warm greeting. And how, as an incomer to the island, hospitality, and belonging to the community, mean opening your own door to all, regardless of the reception you are given in return.
The day the summer breaks, we are still in the caravan. The rain is hammering down. It drums hard on to the leaking roof and soaks the bedsheets, seeping in through those windows still stuck half open. We drag the mattress clear and place buckets on the torn lino floor beneath the windows. Outside the water starts to collect in deep puddles around the house. Even the cows look subdued.
‘Ready or not, it’s time to move,’ Rab says.
We struggle to combat the chill inside the cottage. The thick, uninsulated walls are barely warmed by our logs hissing on the hearth. Our skin shrinks from washing in unheated water. Cold is tiring. But afterwards, you feel a glow.
As the rain persists, the dry, browning grass gradually turns green again. The day I notice this, the electrician arrives from the mainland. We have been waiting for weeks for him to connect us to power, lay pipes across the bog and link our empty water tanks to the spring. There is a shout as Rab waves jubilantly out of a window. Fresh water is at last bubbling through the limescale-crusted taps. We suck hard on a hosepipe and draw the airlocks out. And although the bathroom is chilly, it is a small miracle not to have to lug buckets, and to feel hot water running out of the taps. The tank is so small it barely fills the deep cast-iron bath. But even a few inches of warmth on the skin is luxurious. Stepping over the high sides of the bath, I sigh as that welcome heat soaks into my bones.
I listen to the wind and the rain blowing outside. It is a wonderful feeling to be living inside our home at last. And although the summer and those first short, idyllic weeks are over, I am grateful for this roof over our heads. It teaches us that comfort and discomfort are only a drop of water apart. It makes me conscious of how strangely feral that seems, because even animals have the dignity of being able to groom and wash themselves. It is shocking how quickly we struggle to navigate around each other with ease when basic comforts are denied over an extended period. I hope I will always feel that startling shock of gratitude when water runs out of the taps, or my bare skin steps steaming out of a bath. It is a relief, too, that our conversations flow more easily again.
Yet as doors start to open with our neighbours, I notice how, for all its banter, our dialogue is loaded with everything that remains unsaid. The question asked on each new encounter – ‘Who do you know?’ – is different from the obligatory ‘What do you do?’ to which we were accustomed in our old lives. We are strangers. We do not know anyone. We have no kin on the island. Always I am aware of the implicit, unasked follow-up question: ‘Then why are you here?’
At the end of the summer, we are connected to the internet. The signal is slow – with the mast offshore, it is received first by Oban and then beamed across miles of fierce sea to the dish at the fire station. All the same, it is a relief to be reconnected to the wider world. I have given up asking my friends to write letters. ‘Just send an email, it’s quicker,’ they say. It is hard to explain how much more personal a letter feels. There is a beautiful fall of silence that drifts between handwritten words.
I watch the gulls screaming in off the water, tilting their wings, angling precipitously into the wind. They make it look so easy. It takes time for your impressions of the world to be subtly broken, realigned and reconstructed. Rab and I act differently as soon as our feet touch mainland soil. On the island there is little interest in the lives we have left behind. It is as if that part of us has been wilfully disconnected. Sometimes I am uncertain if this part of ourselves will forever stay invisible. We are caught between our desire for acceptance that we belong and a fear that, if we stay, we might end up different from the people we know ourselves to be.
4
Croft
The grasses are running free in flowing waves over the hillsides. The wind breathes on them, billowing a great rippling fullness and swell. Everywhere, seed heads are ripening, flaxen husks swollen taut, straining to shear and scatter next year’s crop along invisible opening seams. As I walk across the hills, the air is heady with a rich abundance. It is a herbaceous, aromatic scent, warmed and seasoned by a strange sirocco that blows in gusts off the sea. It is wearying, at the end of the summer, waiting for that harvest. Some days I wonder if it will ever come.
Once the birch bark splits and clouds of thistledown drift, the fields are shorn and another cusp is passed. Hare streak from the hollow, quivering rushes and sea eaglets stretch adolescent wings over the bare hills. I watch those cruel talons soaring seaward on to the freshening salt uplift, suspended, scarcely moving. Below, tufts of fleece snag across the rough grazing, fluttering like torn prayer flags. It is then that a slow aching hunger is felt keening in the wind.
I walk everywhere. I explore every pocket, parcel, hectare and furlong of land. The granite faces of the mountains come alive in the pale, fallow sunrise. With every flux and fluctuation of light, the landscape becomes chiselled, stark-lit and strangely potent. It throws up its gifts, its bright stories like hard, ringing stones.
Each hill, brae, glen or valley holds a secret. I hear those forgotten lives breathing, their voices echoing on the wind. The old villages sit empty, thick nettles showing where once the midden would have lain. Mice nest in the broken cornerstones and tiny ferns cling to the walls. I follow the overgrown main street winding down through each small settlement. Sometimes, as the wind shifts direction, I can hear the echoes of children running through the grass.
Soon I have a favourite place to go – a rocky headland that sits a
lone, riven off from the hills by steep gullies and precipitous cliffs. It is in the northwest of the island, hidden and not easy to reach. To see it, you have to commit to seeking out its hidden paths. It is approached by sea, or on foot through ancient, twisted, stunted woodland of birch, oak, alder and ash. There is no track or clear marking on the map. I find it only by noticing a lean scatter of grazing on its far shore. These secret, winding paths are long-forgotten songlines marked only by deer and sheep, narrow cleats pitted into the soft, peaty soil. The dense thickets are impassable, ripping my clothing and snagging my hair with briars, until I fold forwards. I learn to make myself still smaller. It is calm and restful out of sight.
Southwesterly gales have shaped this remote headland differently. Here is the massive contoured profile of an uplifted face, eyes staring blind into the sky. Its blunted chest, fierce head and fine aquiline nose are carved of igneous and basalt rock. It is here that the legends are rich: this is the ancient resting place of Ossian, the keeper of the soil. Man is an anachronism; the land does not belong to him. Its strata of rock, from a darker time of myth and instinct, is primal; a creative and destructive force of the earth itself.
Stones are hewn, duns are raised and razed, brochs and forts laid, and then laid over. Sheep come, the people go. Times change. All about, the tides ebb and flow and the waves keep breaking. Later, the people return. And still this island rock remains. Regardless of how it is divided up into small strips of grazing: the stringently demarcated, shifting territories that are called crofts.
Our croft is called Rocky Ridge, or the Rough Farm. Our house is built from island stones. Its memories are woven into the landscape, knitted together of ancient Gaelic and Norse names. My mouth wraps about their unfamiliar shapes. The Norse is angular, hard like the fjordic mountains, but the Gaelic is soft, like the fields. Rocks and memories are the island’s geological and cultural backbone. Stories are shared over cups of tea, drams and buttered scones, and are passed on by the bearers of the same names as those carved into upright stones by the church mason over generations. Acquiring the right to belong is as arduous as prising those hard-won rocks from the island’s soil. It is gifted joyfully to each island child, and to those bonded by marriage to its tight-knit cluster of families. It can be earned only by bleeding your own life, joys and sorrows into its dark, shallow earth.
Each pocket of soil is as jealously guarded as any close kinship. Kinship and soil are fiercely defended territories. To name it you have to claim it. Yet, for all your effort, you never deserve it. Belonging is at the behest and tolerance of others jealously guarding their own right to the soil. The history of this croft matters. Its loss is a palpable grief to some and a source of enmity to others. Disused tools, ploughs and anvils which lay forgotten before our arrival gain a sudden provenance. It is strange to see and feel the missing of these items where they used to lie. It is hard to understand how it might be when strangers come and disrupt the croft’s old ways. I wonder if we will ever be forgiven for taking a piece of the island’s soil.
We work our own croft. We drive hard stobs, or wooden posts, into the soil, anchored by corner strainer posts buried three feet deep; we secure tension Rylock fencing wire with gleaming, sharp, double-pointed nails. We fix our march lines, our boundaries, and finally the croft is stockproof. In autumn, at the Oban livestock auction, we buy our first sheep, a mixture of Cheviots and cross mules from the older Black Face sired by Blue Leicester, for its strong bones and fine wool. Our first lambing is scarily, viscerally real, no longer just the topic of pastoral talk, as a three-season tup immediately sets to work.
‘Well, that’s it,’ Rab says proudly, leaning over a metal gate. ‘Nothing wrong with that boy.’
And I think how nothing will stop those lambs from coming. And how easy nature makes that gift of new life seem.
Our first lambing is bleak, beautiful, challenging and uplifting. It is too easy to miss the early signs unless you know what to look for. It takes skill to detect the ‘show’, the creamy, mucous plug released from the cervix, and a keen eye to pick up on a weary dropping of the sacrum as a tailbone dips, concealing a ripe swelling of udder and teats. I learn to look for a thin water bag hanging or bursting a steaming spray on to the ground. Once those waters break, a period of restless agitation follows. An anxious circling, pawing of the ground and inability to settle can take minutes or presage complications if it lasts longer than a few hours.
It is a relief when the ewe lies down. I watch her eyes glaze as she lifts her head and starts straining. The real lambing begins with her stuttering, harsh cries. Sometimes the lamb comes just as it should. Tiny wet hooves peek out at the vaginal opening, wrapped in mucus and birthing fluid. Shortly after a slippery crown appears, I look for dark-blue, unseeing eyes. Once the shoulders are through, the effort is over. The body slides out quickly in a warm, streaming gush of life and afterbirth. Our hands swiftly remove the suffocating caul from the mouth and airways. With every birth my heart leaps at that first fragile, high cry.
‘If only it was always this simple,’ Rab observes as he deftly turns the ewe over, releasing the first creamy spurt of colostrum from a gently worked teat. I am elated when the lamb staggers up and sucks.
But lambing is not always simple. Sometimes the head emerges first, ahead of the legs, and then it needs pushing back inside the ewe or no amount of straining will release it. The strength of a ewe’s contractions against your hand, working gently inside her, is a brutal, crushing force. Sometimes the neck flicks back, or the shoulders get stuck, or an elbow is caught in the birth canal, or the lamb is twisted with a sibling still in utero. It is difficult delivering a breached lamb without severing the umbilicus or damaging its soft internal organs. Rab’s hands carefully help to guide these unborn lives. There is so much at stake. I do not hesitate to administer mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, my lips pressed hard to the lamb’s airways, fingers gently working a tiny stuttering heart. A life is only a life once there is air in the lungs. It is a desperate sight when a perfectly formed lamb lies cold on the ground. With no knowledge or experience, we take each moment as it comes.
One morning I find a tiny lamb stretched out in the darkness, born just before dawn and abandoned by her mother. Her stiff body is freezing, her tongue swollen and already turning blue. I wrap her in my scarf and come running indoors. I rub her with towels, and place her carefully in a box filled with straw. Only time will tell, I think, as I switch the heat lamp on. Tears spring to my eyes as she opens her mouth and cries. Humanity is extraordinary like that. You appreciate life so much more after each brush with death.
Painstakingly we slide a thin tube from her mouth to her stomach, and as powdered colostrum in sterilised warm water slowly resuscitates her, I know she has a fighting chance. Later, though, her mother rejects her. She brutally lowers her head and charges her again and again. The hard, bony forehead hammers into the lamb. We make a crate and tie the ewe with a soft halter so that the lamb is protected. But she is too bruised and dazed from the birth, her tongue is still swollen and she is unable to feed from the teat. There is no option. Until she can, she has to be bottle-fed. ‘Still have to twin her on,’ a farmer tells us. Another shrugs: ‘Why bother? Simpler to just knock her on the head.’
‘I can’t do that, not whilst she is trying to live,’ I say.
After each feed, we put her back into the pen. We hold the ewe so that the lamb can learn to teat-feed, but her healthy sibling is stronger and pushes her roughly out of the way. Each time, the mother lunges for her. She will not settle with her in the pen. When I lift the lamb, she leans into me, trembling.
‘I can’t bear it,’ I say, as she is knocked down again and again. It is agonising to watch. Soon she hides from her mother. After three days, I cannot stand it any more. I remove her from the ewe and raise her as a pet. I name her Tilda. She sleeps in the barn, surrounded by the sights and sounds of the lambing, but in the daytime she follows me everywhere. As soon as I wake, I warm
a milk bottle, fix a sterilised teat and run to the barn. I can hear Tilda making the very special call that a lamb bleats to its own mother. It is an intimate sound of recognition, joy and hunger. For three weeks, Tilda needs help to feed. But slowly the trauma of her difficult birth heals. She has a beautiful face with a strong conformation. ‘I think you’re going to have beautiful lambs of your own one day,’ I tell her. When I lift her up to feed her, she eagerly nibbles my nose. She falls asleep in my lap. She is fascinated by the cat and has a passion for fresh-shooting raspberry leaves.
‘She can’t stay in the house,’ Rab tells me. I am using an old biscuit tin as a makeshift litter tray. This arrangement will only be viable whilst she is very young, and I know she will soon need to live outside. ‘She needs a friend to keep her company,’ I say. When a tiny triplet arrives, unable to keep up with its siblings in the daily struggle to feed, she joins Tilda. I call her Milly. She is so small that on colder days she sits inside a straw-filled terracotta flowerpot to keep herself out of the wind. Her miniature nose and bright eyes follow Tilda everywhere. At night, they play inside the cottage on the bare floorboards, sucking greedily from warmed milk bottles before bedding down in a straw crate.
When lambing is over we bury others that did not make it. Lambing brings you close to the miracle of life and to the shattering pain of its losses. It inures you to the exhaustion of the spring grind.
The sheep know where every herb and fresh blade lies. It takes hours to herd them in from the open grazing. Once they find the trees, no amount of persuasion will draw them out of the narrow tracks that zigzag sheer above the cliffs. ‘I can’t do this,’ I yell to Rab, in position above me ready to direct the flock as I attempt to steer them out from a treacherous ledge. It is nerve-wracking trying to find a foothold and branches to hold on to. One part of my head is screaming, ‘It’s too dangerous!’ while the other part insists, ‘Hold on, just don’t look down.’ We are both exhausted by the time we push the sheep back to safety. ‘This is crazy,’ I say. ‘We need a dog.’ The sheep are running rings around us. They have a canny intelligence, none more so than the matriarch ewe who leads the flock to where they are most inaccessible to us.
I Am an Island Page 4