The decision to start afresh is never simple. But when it is time to give up my job at the school, I know. I leave with a sense of relief as well as a bittersweet regret. I will miss the children. But there are other factors that make it easy to go. A voice calls after me: ‘So you’re off, then. Well, it was a fine wee job for you when you thought you could still have children.’
I do not rise to the bait. I merely turn and smile. Experience has taught me when to stay and fight and when to just walk away.
And I do miss the children. Life feels barer without their daily contact and laughter. But it tied me to a stale recycling of my own heartache, which I know is unhelpful and which I have to break. It is liberating to bind myself more closely to the croft, my spirit free to embark on the journey ahead of me.
I have made a new friend. It has beautiful tawny plumage and a hook-curled beak. I love to see it whilst I am working on the croft or walking on the hills. It is a delight to hear its call. I stop, straining to listen to the edge of its high-pitched mewing. It is a juvenile, and its cry is quite unlike that of a mature-sounding buzzard – shorter, with a repetitive staccato flow, rather than a single, yearning call. It is a sound that shears the air and slices into your thoughts. Perhaps that sharp quality is characteristic of a young bird. I love to watch its tentative fledgling flights. I seek it out and it watches me back. Over time, it lands lightly on fence posts and sits, eyeing me beadily. I talk to it and grow used to its company. It remains wild and vigilant, yet it starts to follow me closely. Its wings drift in my shadow, so that as I turn, often I see it overhead or alighting in the trees close by. Some days I hear its call when I wake. It makes me glad to open my eyes.
Gradually it claims the croft as its territory. I try not to worry about what this means. Any bird of prey settling on to a territory will inevitably pose a risk to smaller birds and other darting, quivering lives such as voles or mice. But one day it does not come and I miss it. It is a shock to realise that I am unwittingly in its thrall. The next time I see it, I am unsettled by a look in its eye. It swivels its head and fixes its gaze on a small starling on the windowsill. I make a sudden movement to distract it and it lifts away. And I am shaken, because in its keen eyes, the cruel curve of its beak and its unblinking gaze, I saw the face of a predator. For all my observance, its feeding is invisible to me. I see only a fragment of this bird’s daily life, whilst its clear, sharp eyes see everything.
It is a bright day but I am sitting in my house, resting with Maude, watching the birds bobbing on the windowsill. A rose wraps around the frame. I have made soft string ties and hung the wire support of the beautiful climber with simple bird feeders. Every morning I fill them with suet mixed with fresh berries and seeds. One bird is different from the others. It seems shy and sits apart, reluctant to feed with the other birds. The others recognise its difference. As it is quietly picking seeds, the resident starling colony descends and mobs it. I watch as a noisy scuffle unfolds. The solitary bird tries to fend them off but soon takes fright. For several minutes the starlings engage in a feeding frenzy, and then, as rapidly as they arrived, they are gone. It is only then that the smaller bird returns. I smile as it dips its head and starts to pick at the seeds again.
Suddenly, a familiar dark shadow hurls itself against the window. Sharp talons grip the bird, tearing at its chest and throat. The assault is so swift that I am rooted to the spot, looking on in horrified silence. There is a faint fluttering and an agonising shriek. Afterwards, I stare at the empty feeder as tiny feathers drift to the ground.
That spring I make up a new tradition. I designate the end of lambing as the turning point of the year and mark it with my own ritual. It has been a hard, lean winter. As the sun rises high above the mountains, I set light to the old dead grass of the hayfield and the rougher, fallow ground. Its desiccated stalks are wind-dried and frost-burned, holding scant nutritional value for the horse and sheep. All that remains of the beautiful green flowing grasses is bleached white like the old bones of the land. Their brittle stems are hollow, the precious seed heads scattered long ago.
In the old myths of regeneration, the dead land was purged of all that sucked it dry. I am forging my own future, erasing years of crofting hardship on this pyre. It is a still day, yet as the fire catches, the heat scorches my face and arms so I beat it with wet cloths, setting new boundaries for the crackling edges of those smouldering flames. Sometimes you have to cut yourself loose from the dead grass of your outworn existence. I know I need to make and break my own rules. I watch as the fire incinerates those dark memories, burning them to oblivion. Witnessing my old life disintegrating is strangely liberating and brings a new perspective on some things I am still striving to make sense of. I wonder what exactly I will need to do differently in future in order to free myself from the island’s rigid strictures and start to live on my own terms.
Yet for all my determination to break new ground, I do not know where I am heading. Sometimes change forces your hand, and comes to find you before you are quite ready for it. Life is always a struggle. But there is one thing I know for sure: every time you are knocked down, you get up. Every single time.
5
Swallow
‘I have missed you,’ Cristall says.
‘I have missed you, too,’ I admit. ‘I am glad the lambing is over for another year.’
We talk as we work. Somehow it is easier to talk about important things out here in the fresh air, our fingers snapping pea pods off budding plants entwined around willow canes. The sound is cool, crisp, rasping. The air is heady with the scent of broken sweet peas. Where the dogs have scurried, the earth smells rich, of shadows, tousled ears and soft wings.
‘Tell me, is it still so hard?’ I ask quietly. I know some days are worse than others, and that those days are a struggle for her. I try to offer some comfort, but I am lost for words. I have been busy and it is difficult to know how to help. And then her eyes fill with tears. ‘Oh, my dear girl. I miss him so much it’s as if it happened only yesterday. And yet it is so hard to talk about. It is somehow shocking to say how I feel.’
Grief is still too close to both of us. It has been two years since Anthony died of pancreatic cancer. It was a shattering loss, a life over in a matter of weeks. Something felt so deeply, some bond torn away so brutally, that it left only half a life behind. Cristall tells me how, in nature, it takes a greening plant two or three full seasons to heal a deep incision, longer still if you cut off a limb or a leading branch. She tells me that it takes time for a notch to grow, and longer still to bud, before it can start flowering again. How sometimes the branch just dies, and then it is only a matter of time until it must be cut back entirely.
‘I sometimes think the life in me has died,’ Cristall whispers. ‘I miss him so much, I wish that my life would end so I can be close to him. So I can be with him. Are you shocked? I wish for this every day since he died. Some days the feeling passes. But some days it stays there. Maybe it never goes away entirely. But I know it’s wrong to think like this. So each day, I wake up, force myself to get up, and get on with life.’
And in my own small way, I think I understand. My own suffering is written deep into my body, in all the subtle ways only a kindred spirit can intimately know. ‘Don’t give in to it,’ she tells me. ‘Keep taking one breath in and one breath out. Keep holding on to the small things and the usual small routines. Routine is important when you live alone.’ I know what she means. I try to keep busy when I feel that tightness constrict me like a bird in a snare. Loneliness can catch you off guard. It is like balancing on a high wire waiting to slip.
Outwardly we both maintain we are fine. We each put on a well-rehearsed, near-perfected front. She glitters. I stay vigilant. But when you sit with a friend so close, out here, there is no hiding. We are both tired of being brave. ‘I am so alone that sometimes I do not know myself,’ I confess. Cristall understands that sometimes I find it hard to explain how that feels. It is as if I am cut a
drift, as if I am lost or have been left alone in the dark. Some days I cannot move. The weight in my heart is too heavy.
We work on in companionable silence. A shared solitude is one that comes of a long, trusting friendship. When she next speaks, her voice lifts light as a bird’s song. ‘Life is all about finding a slipstream, a safe passage. If you can do this, then things will start to steady again.’ Our conversations often go like this. The last difficult years pared back to just a few words. ‘And you know you always have me.’ She reaches out and gently takes my hands.
‘Promise me you won’t leave me,’ she says quietly. ‘Family is so close in spirit, but so far away. What we share is a special bond. Promise me, if anything happens, to one of us or both of us, that we’ll leave this island together. I couldn’t bear to stay or to leave without you. I don’t want to be alone.’
‘I will go wherever you go,’ I say solemnly.
‘And promise me if, God forbid, anything happens to me, that wherever we are you will look after Isla. She knows you and loves you. I would feel happier if I knew she could stay with you.’
I nod. ‘I give my word.’ She squeezes my hand.
‘I cannot imagine my life without you,’ I tell her. And then I take a deep breath and say it again, only this time looking straight into her eyes. It matters to do this. There are so few times in life when you really say what you mean. We hug tightly. I want to hold on to this moment. I feel so happy it almost hurts.
Then we are laughing, the wind blowing on our backs, Cristall’s dog Isla springing about us ecstatically. It is a release, when you have been talking of real, serious things, to laugh out loud. To feel the elation in those racing paws whirling circles, the peeled-back ears and panting breath. To feel that wilder, joyful self come alive inside. And suddenly it is easier to breathe, because life is a beautiful, simple thing.
The next morning, early, I am in the garden. Cristall goes past on her way to the ferry. She is waving out of the window of her battered Peugeot. ‘Toot toot!’ she calls. I smile and wave back. I watch her go and then I think, I wish I had told her I love her, that she is like my family. It is there in my heart, but I wish I had said it out loud.
‘I love you,’ I call after her. I shout it again, louder. ‘I love you!’
But already she is gone.
Later, in the afternoon, I go to catch the ferry. It is my first trip in many months to the mainland. I am going to meet Cristall for tea at the small hotel that sits at the top of the slipway facing back over the sea to the island. She has been for lunch with her brother and sister-in-law, who live an hour’s drive away, on another island further down the coast. As the ferry throttles its way over the water, I let my head rest against the glass of the window. I blink at the sunlight refracting off the sea. It is a beautiful afternoon and a quick crossing today. The sea is rushing out at turn of the high water. The seals are basking, wet viscous pelts glistening heavy on the rocks. Sandpipers and curlew are already wading through the upper shallows. Sharp beaks stab into the first low pools left behind by the tide.
Back across the water, the island rests in its fierce tidal channel. It is brilliant green in the bright sunshine, a tiny Hebridean jewel. And suddenly I catch a strange feeling flickering inside me. It is as if my heart is smiling. I look up at the swallows rising and falling above me. And I think of how the season is turning, and how perhaps life may change for me. For a minute, I wonder, is this happiness? It is so long since I have known happiness, I cannot be sure. But it is a different feeling, and that is enough. I am grateful for it.
I remember the promise I shared with Cristall. It somehow connects me to the landscape in a new way, as if I have close kin and a sense of belonging here of my own. I feel rooted by the strength of that bond. As I breathe in the sunshine, it is as if summer has sped in from behind the mountains and lifted all the grey from the world. I smile as I recall how she greeted me as she drove past in her blue car so early this morning. And then I think of all the ways she matters to me. We have looked after each other so closely that we have woven unbreakable ties.
As I step off the ferry, I smile at the ferryman. I walk up to the little hotel at the top of the slip. This is still a working pier and already the fishing boats are tying up. Baskets of fresh langoustines, crab and fish are being unloaded and packed. It is so different from my London life. There is a simplicity to each day, and yet it is busier and fuller in more ways than I ever remember experiencing in all those years in town. I step into the bar and restaurant. It is a treat to sit at a table and order a freshly made coffee. Strange how such small things can bring such pleasure.
An hour later, I am standing by the hotel window, watching the sun dip behind clouds. I stare out through the glass. Oystercatchers are high-stepping the low tide, bills bent low, bright orange eyes darting into the wet gullies and ebbing pools. Powder-white gulls soar the clear air, harsh cries tearing the high reaches. I blink and try to steady myself, to take in all the things Cristall so loves.
She has not yet arrived because there has been an accident, two cars in a collision, and the road has been temporarily closed. And then the receptionist is beckoning me, holding up the receiver of her phone. I listen in disbelief as she tells me, ‘A doctor wants to speak to you. It is your friend Cristall in one of those cars.’
And suddenly my feet are running across the floor and my heart is beating so fast it feels like I am floating.
‘Is she OK?’ I ask immediately. ‘Is she hurt?’ My voice is sharp, anxious.
‘Please don’t worry. She is OK. Everything is going to be fine.’
I heave a sigh of relief. The doctor needs a telephone number for her daughter who lives down south – the others are in New Zealand – and I kick myself that I don’t have it to hand because I have left my phone at home. But I am grateful, and touched, that he has thought to call her, so that she can come as soon as she can. ‘That is so kind of you, and she will need that,’ I say. ‘Someone to help me look after her.’ And, I think, Cristall’s daughter will want to visit her, if she has to go into hospital. I give him the number of someone on the island who I think may be able to help, and then I reassure him, ‘OK, I’m on my way, I’ll be ten minutes,’ because I know it will take her daughter some time to get here. And I know Cristall will want me with her.
He sounds distracted. ‘No, better to stay where you are,’ he says firmly. ‘There’s a long queue of traffic, and you won’t get through. It’s all cordoned off by the police, and they don’t know you.’
‘But she’s OK?’ Anxious, I press the point.
‘Yes, she’s OK. Just stay put so I can ring you straight back. Trust me, everything is going to be fine.’ Only suddenly the line goes quiet, until he says hurriedly, ‘I’m sorry, I have to go.’ And then there is just a flat tone. He has rung off. It is only when I go back to my table and sit down that I think, why does he want to speak to her daughter personally, if there is nothing to worry about?
I will ring for a taxi and go straight to her, I resolve, the instant he calls. But the phone doesn’t ring. I grow more frustrated as the minutes pass. I know I must sit tight but I am desperate to get moving. The doctor did not say if she was hurt. I try to push the thought out of my mind, but it refuses to go. I realise there will be things she needs, so I try to distract myself by making a list.
An hour later, the phone rings again and a paramedic is talking to me. His voice is calm, low, measured and professional, so I know this is more serious than I had ever imagined.
‘What’s happened?’ I ask, my heart going cold. And suddenly I am frightened.
He tells me carefully that it was a head-on collision. That Cristall is still conscious, but she is trapped inside the car and they cannot get to her. ‘It’s a mess. The fire brigade are cutting the roof off the vehicle,’ he reassures me. ‘It is the only way they will be able to free her. The car is a wreck.’
When he says that I know that Cristall would want me there. Because I
know she will be frightened, trapped in her mangled car alone. I am so sure of this it makes my throat catch. And in that instant, all I can see are her beautiful sky-blue eyes. I am already picking up my bag to leave, and he knows this. He is trained to know this. ‘Please stay where you are,’ he tells me. ‘We’re doing everything we can for her.’
After the line goes dead, I find I am still clutching the receiver, white-knuckled, hanging on to it as if to a lifeline. I hold on fiercely to every word he has said to me.
I feel so helpless.
I stare through the window at the gulls clustering around the fishing boats out on the water, wishing I was a bird, able to stretch its wings and fly swiftly across that open skyscape. I make a quick calculation of how long it will take me to reach the hospital. As my eyes follow the ferry disappearing into the distance, low clouds scudding across the water, the sun dips behind the mountains. Home is still there, only it is suddenly in shadow.
I wait. I do not move. I stay because they tell me to stay. I listen. I trust. It’s OK, everything’s going to be OK, I tell myself over and over again. As if by repeating something you can make it true. It will take me years to understand why I stayed put when I should have been with her, and still longer to forgive myself. I cannot retrace the footsteps I didn’t make.
Authority has a way of making you less brave. Trust is a subtle, dangerous thing. You hand over your voice, tether your instinct. That sickening realisation comes suddenly in a wave. I do not make it outside. I run to the ladies’ room and then I am not sure what happens, because time unravels. All I remember is that hard floor and my fingers white, clutching the rim of the basin.
I Am an Island Page 16