The bus seemed tied by an invisible thread to Portree Co-op which it visited several times. Just when the vehicle had got out of third gear a voice from the back shouted, ‘That woman wanted on.’ Surprisingly Cow Girl morphed into the Good Samaritan. The bus turned (via the Co-op) and stopped for the old woman who spent most of her days watching buses pass her by. The driver left her cab to pick up the woman’s bags. ‘Drive the bus away!’ shouted the back row.
Once settled the woman gripped her shopping trolley with tight liver-spotted hands and stared ahead. She needed to be rescued from much more than a nearly missed bus but there was no respite from her intermittent dalliance with dementia or the frantic internal Mexican dance with the skeletons of dead relatives.
The bus stopped in the middle of the back of beyond and cow girl suggested we get off. Sensing that we felt we were being blamed for the golden liquid incident she patiently explained that this was as close to Kingsburgh as we could get by public transport.
Having read that no vestige of Flora Macdonald’s house remains we had no great hopes of seeing anything of significance. On reflection the bull blocking our path was at least significant. It was the size of a First World War tank with a saliva and snot covered ring through its steaming nose, a clichéd fashion statement that imparted a sort of bohemian insouciance to its malevolent demeanor. Since I had read a whole childhood of Beanos and Dandys, alarm bells sounded, sirens went off and my head clouded with images of red rags, china shops, the annual bull-running in Pamplona and general goring. David unhelpfully observed that it had an injured leg. A cursory count suggested five limbs. A randy bull nursing not only lust for anything that moved but also a sense of grievance because of whatever it was that had happened to its injured leg was too much to bear. Astonishingly David reminded me that bulls are vegetarians and sauntered past its rancid stare without a second thought. I repeated the eye contact avoidance strategy that had stood us in good stead in Portree and shuffled after him. The bull hobbled world-wearily away.
The hamlet of Kingsburgh consisted of two bungalows, one of which was called Flora’s Field. This was a good omen. When the long-retired owner eventually appeared he answered our query with a warning look that would have done credit to Aunt Ada Doom from Cold Comfort Farm. After due deliberation he pointed us in the direction not of the wood shed but of a large property at the end of the track. ‘The original house was in there but the woman who lives there hates prowlers, she won’t let anyone in. You could always smile and hope for the best. She’ll see you before you see her.’
I persuaded David to look less menacing by removing his camouflaged jungle hat and clutching a map … I armed myself with my bus pass and an inane smile. Within seconds a super charged Betsy Trotwood figure stormed over the lawn. By way of greeting she bellowed, ‘No one gets to see the building!’ I explained that we were recreating Boswell and Johnson’s journey using our bus passes. She paused, mentally noting that it was perhaps the least likely excuse she had heard from any of the stalkers, hawkers, mendicants, intruders, trespassers, vagrants and busybodies who had made her life a misery down the years. ‘You can have a quick look as I’m expecting visitors, but no photographs.’ With that she disappeared whence she had come.
We stood on the lawn where Flora’s husband Kingsburgh had welcomed the visitors and looked across Loch Snizort at the distant mountains of Lewis.
Boswell, in his new role as a cub reporter for Hello magazine drooled over his host’s outfit; ‘He had his tartan plaid thrown about him, a large blue bonnet with a knot of black ribbon like a cockade, a brown short coat of a kind of duffle, a tartan vest with gold buttons and gold buttonholes, a bluish filibeg, and tartan hose. He had jet-black hair tied behind and with screwed ringlets on each side …’ Whenever Boswell subsequently dressed his fantasy Barbie doll it was always the screwed ringlets he kept until last.
They sat in front of the fire in the parlour, ‘a dram of admirable Holland’s gin went round. Flora joined them and promptly mixed up her guests saying she had heard that ‘Mr Boswell was coming to Skye, and one Mr Johnson, a young English buck, with him. This confusion provided incontrovertible evidence that Holland’s gin, like meths, attacks the eyesight. There followed ‘an excellent roasted turkey, porter to drink at table, and after supper claret and punch’. Johnson got bored and went to bed early leaving Boswell to down three ‘superexcellent’ bowls of punch. Drunk as several lords with screwed ringlets he eventually climbed to the upper chamber where ‘I slept in the same room with Mr Johnson.’
The following day, in the grip of Delirium Tremens with the associated symptoms of diarrhoea, agitation, catatonia, palpitations, irritability and tachycardia, he wrote, ‘Last night’s jovial bout disturbed me somewhat.’
Sacked by Hello magazine he then made his debut with Adventures for Boys and transcribed at breakneck speed second and third hand accounts of Prince Charlie’s adventures. He excitedly interpolated an entire picaresque novella into his narrative. The Wanderer himself became a cross dressing transsexual called Betty who was given to hoisting her linen whenever he/she had to cross a river. She eventually swapped her dress for ‘a tartan short coat and waistcoat, with filibeg and short hose, a plaid, and a wig and bonnet’. His coup de grace was being able to refer to an eye witness whom he subsequently met on Raasay, John Mackenzie who ‘eighteen years before, he hurt one of his legs when dancing, and being obliged to have it cut off, he now was going about with a wooden leg.’
Although the original house is no longer there its replacement is on the same site, surrounded by the original farm buildings and outhouses that the early visitors must have seen. The replacement building is destined to go the way of its predecessor. The black empty windows stare out of the grey farmhouse lurching drunkenly against its newer neighbour. Through the open front door it was apparent that the Adams Family staircase had plummeted into a room not designed to receive it. Inside a Miss Haversham figure draped in cobwebs proudly mutters that she is Flora’s great granddaughter and that the whole thing is a disgrace. That same space once held the tartan clad bedroom that received Prince Charlie and twenty eight years later, the old buck, Johnson.
Dunvegan – Portree
Before any passengers were permitted to board the 56A to Dunvegan they had to be vetted against an exacting standard of adherence to national stereotypes. The American woman announced her abhorrence for the seat at the back of the bus: ‘They (sic) make me sick (sick).’ Several Germans roared instructions into mobile phones checking coordinates while scanning the horizon for incoming fire. Most intriguing was the young Japanese man sitting in front, obsessively plaiting orange peel into an origami nosegay. It was undoubtedly a skill, perhaps marketable in Seville. I had to crouch in an upright position to get a better view of the finished artifact that he kept pressing to his nostrils.
The same American woman interrupted her partner: ‘When you wear a kilt, does the colour of the socks matter?’ Yes Madam, the tartan etiquette police deployed at every tea room in Scotland take particular exception to fashion faux pas of this nature. You can expect to be hanged from your garters until you are dead.
Meanwhile Boswell and Johnson were finding the terrain treacherous. We could just see them across the moor. Even at this distance it was obvious that Johnson’s horse kept sinking up to its fetlocks in the sinking bog under his colossal weight. We caught a glimpse of him stepping off his now shorter horse and walking behind the others, all the while shaking his head. He was still sulking from having fallen ‘at his length upon the ground.’
The bus infiltrated the long line of mobile homes carrying the latest wave of patrician tourists intent on colonising the Wild Western Isles. Their passing was noted with nodding approval by the first settlers now trading in wind chimes and pottery bowls. At night these missionaries from warmer climes will circle their wagons and earnestly recreate the decent intimacies of suburban life. Smoke signals will rise from a hundred barbeques, St George’s Crosses will flut
ter from aerials, and Crime Watch will bounce round the enclosed spaces. Meanwhile the natives scratch a living on the council owned reservations.
The coach park at Dunvegan is larger than the bus station at Agra and created a sense of anticipation normally associated with the Taj Mahal. Is the noble seat of the Macleods best viewed at sunrise or sunset? Is it true that urchin boys will steal your shoes when you take them off at the hallowed threshold of the dining room? Birkbeck Hill got it right in 1890; ‘An architect was employed who must surely have acquired his mischievous art in erecting sham fortresses on the banks of the Clyde for the wealthy traders of Glasgow. It is greatly to be wished that a judicious earthquake would bring to the ground his pepper-pot turrets.’ If ‘old firm footballers’ is substituted for ‘wealthy traders’ it is still totally accurate.
The building is a pastiche of bad taste covered in Victorian excrescences, towers and turrets and crenellated walls. Prince Charles must have been organically orgasmic whenever he rested his chin on his gnarled Harry Lauder walking stick to admire the latest architectural travesty; a detached stucco walled toilet with flying buttresses.
Johnson was entranced by Dunvegan where he ‘tasted lotus and was in danger of forgetting that he was ever to depart’. His young host was the nineteen year old laird, still living at home with his formidable mammy but nonetheless a remarkable young man wrestling with the challenges of his role. In an autobiographical fragment he provided an accurate assessment of his attempt to reconcile duty with firmness: ‘I called the people together; I laid before them the situation of our family; I acknowledged the hardships under which they laboured; I reminded them of the manner in which their ancestors had lived with mine; I combated their passion for America; I promised to live among them.’ This fragment conjures a very depressed young man pursued by debt and driven by his family values and a strong moral sense. It is no surprise that Johnson was fond of the young laird.
We dutifully traipsed from room to room past the roped off bits and the fading artifacts. The bland labels explaining the provenance of the weapons in the glass cases should be rewritten. ‘One blow of this claymore would cut a man off at the knees leading to a rapid, hobbling, bleeding death … The serrated edge on this dagger would seriously mess with the victim’s intestines.’
The display of pale newspaper cuttings offered some respite from this bellicose hubris. Given the quality of austerity newsprint most of the captured images of ancient royalty will mutate from sepia to beige to total invisibility within a few years. Close examination of the picture beneath the headline GAY CLAN OUTING suggests that the MacLeod-Out-and-Proud movement has a decent history. Evidently some Brylcreemed chaps in Aran sweaters had a jolly good time together at some point in the 1950s.
The eccentric displays along the walls leading to the toilets were better value for money: the brass name plate from a 1930s steam locomotive; sepia photographs of St. Kilda’s last inhabitants including a rare snap of two morose women stamping on their drawers in a washing tub and two fine lads flaunting thick belts of dead fulmars.
St. Kilda was part of the Macleod fiefdom and Johnson seriously considered visiting the island. That would have been an account worth reading. Though whether sea sickness or whimpering cowardice would have claimed Boswell first is a moot point.
By way of joshing compliment the young laird told Johnson he would gift him the small island of Isa on the condition that he lived there for one month of the year. Johnson enjoyed the thought and wrote to Mrs. Thrale, ‘MacLeod has offered me an island; if it was not too far off I should hardly refuse it.’ He then strangely suggests that it would be a better place to live than Brighton. It was probably better than Skegness, Accrington and many other places come to that.
Neither Johnson nor Boswell mention the barbaric proximity of the dungeon, complete with its own bijou bottle-shaped pit, to Dunvegan’s living quarters. Generations of Macleods would bang the wall: ‘Stop that dreadful solitary moaning I can’t hear the telly.’ The note of explanation on the wall ruefully notes that ‘Cooking smells from the kitchen would drift down to torment the starving prisoners.’ But smell is a two-edged sword. The ragged tithe defaulter wafts his foul breeches towards the dimly lit aperture, ‘Get a load of that you mutton-chewing tossers!’
The experience of sitting in the supermarket sized café/restaurant/small township situated in the car park induced nostalgia for an old fashioned tea room, with perhaps just a hint of the 18th century salon. It should at least be renamed Dr. Johnson’s Tea Basin in recognition of his prodigious tea drinking feat when in residence. Knox who visited Dunvegan thirteen years later records the following anecdote, ‘Lady Macleod, who had repeatedly helped Dr. Johnson to sixteen dishes or upwards of tea, asked him if a small basin would not save him trouble, and be more agreeable. “I wonder, Madam,’’ answered he roughly, “why all the ladies ask me such impertinent questions. It is to save yourselves trouble, madam, and not me.’’ The lady was silent and went on with her task.’ Why did she stop at a basin, why not a bathtub of Liptons or a trough of Tetley’s finest?
It had been good to see Reynold’s portrait of Johnson and the thank-you note written as they waited ‘for a boat and a wind, Boswell grows impatient: but the kind treatment which I find wherever I go makes me leave with some heaviness of heart an island which I not likely to see again.’
Walter Scott painted a more compelling picture of a grumpy old man trapped in the castle by the weather, too frequently in the presence of air-headed young girls who simpered in his presence. Exasperated, Johnson retired early to bed and having forgotten his nightcap would turn his stinking wig inside out and pull it over his head. Perhaps four days had been too long a stay. Both Boswell and Johnson secretly feared that this inactivity would provoke the malevolent twins of Melancholy and Madness who were never more than a change of horses behind them.
Mercifully neither of the twins were waiting in the bus queue for the return journey to Portree. Our own siblings were Disappointment and Frustration. Deploying his formidable mastery of bus timetables David had been able to plan a route that would include Talisker. Yet for no apparent reason an emergency and greatly truncated timetable had been implemented overnight which severely restricted our options. We sought consolation in reminding ourselves that Boswell and Johnson also changed their plans at the whim of wind and tide.
*
Monday 20th September Dunvegan
Dear Margaret,
I tell you of bad dream I have and I say this not to frighten you. In my dreams the big house where we first stay catch fire and the flames reach also to James Court. I know this not happen as no flame can travel so far. Just bad dream.(1)
We leave this Sky island and sail to next. The sea is like wild animals and the waves come from devil. As ever the master is full of fear and hides in doctor’s big coat. And then bad thing happen. The water come in boat and our baggages sit in water. I take out doctors things and shake them dry, his pens, his other wig which he never wear, his big holy bible, his snuff which is now not good to put up nose, all stuck with water. And then the bad thing. I take out doctors spurs, big wave come and they fly off boat into the deep waters. They sink under waves and Joseph want sea to open and swallow him like Jonah. I think Joseph’s time to be hit with knob stick as doctor he look angry and then he shake head and go back to thoughts.
After boat we stay in big grand happy house with much music – no pipes – and Joseph too eat like king of Bohemia. After supper the lady sing song of love in own tongue.(2) I cry. Later when men drink I ask lady what words mean. She tell me wait and she bring me paper with English song words. They beautiful. I not show them to master I want to show them to my Margaret as they tell her my heart pain. They will be in Joseph book. I like woman picture on song but she not so pretty as lady of my soul.
Margaret, I must ask, what is special with the Black Cock? It is a bird like all birds. In Bohemia we have black cocks so thick the skies are like end of world. The doc
tor he eat whole black cock in one meal. He eat bones and beaks. Then he break wind and say Latin words. The master he hears that this island is home to black cocks and he ask for guns to shoot more to please the master. He still think he is soldier and marches up hill with big gun. No black cocks. Just rain and rain. The master he blame me for no black cocks. I so big I frighten birds he say. He so stupid. I nearly take gun and shoot him.(3)
Next day he want to be explorer and conquer island. We will climb high mountain say master. I wish to stay with the doctor and carry book from library when he wish but master say no, Joseph must carry gun in case of black cock, and bread and cheese and mutton and the brandy and the punch in case of hungry. This time we find small birds for shooting. They sitting on ground, Joseph could kill with stick but master he shoot and frighten birds that leave their feathers. Then we climb the hill by easy track but master think it is like walk on moon. On top of hill he want to make dance with the men from big house. In my country Margaret, man does not make dance with man. And Joseph never dance with man, I tell you Margaret. But master after he drink he dance with black cock if he find one.
Again at night Joseph ashamed of master who make eye at the house lady and take her arm. I tell you Margaret Joseph not make eyes at ladies and pinch arms with bad look of come to bed with me. My master think only of next brandy and next lady. Or he too sad to think, and just look eyes down at his life.(4)
Margaret, you wise woman but you never think so. Tell me why in Scotland everybody visit caves. My cave is biggest! In this cave you hear own voice speak like Englishman. In this cave you find monster. Joseph not want to see another cave.(5)
Boswell's Bus Pass Page 17