The Cursing Stone: a gripping mystery and family saga

by Adrian Harvey

  Leaving his bike by the wall, Fergus headed straight to the shed: Duncannon would in any case be out along the coast, seeing what the sea had brought to the island. Fergus had come here to work at his carving, not to make awkward conversation with an unwilling interlocutor. He had a couple of hours before McCredie’s boat was due once more and in that time he had to bring the finishing touches to the piece he had been crafting to mark Shona’s 18th birthday.

  The air inside the shed was dusty and slow. It was as if the place had been undisturbed for years, yet Fergus himself had spent an hour here only the day before: the chisel he had been using still lay on the bench, alongside the fine rasp and curved file. Fergus drew deeply on the scent of wood and mildew before reaching up to the high shelf, his heels barely rising from the beaten earth of the floor. He pulled down a sizeable parcel wrapped in a heavy, supple canvas, the stiffness twisted and bent out of it through years of use and reuse, its original white made dirty grey by the hands of many men over many decades.

  Fergus placed the package on the workbench and unwrapped it reverently. He pealed back each petal until the canvas was flat on the bench and the carving was revealed. It was a likeness of Shona, made from memory, a perfect rendering of her face. The work was still rough in parts, unfinished, but it was unmistakably her, unmistakably beautiful. The head was maybe five inches high, with the wood stopping abruptly at her throat on the right hand side, but continuing just beyond the curve of her shoulder on the left. He had found the knotted tree branch, from which he had fashioned the sculpture over the course of months, on the beach at the western end of the island and he had known, simply known, immediately that this timber contained the likeness of his heart’s love. He had carved from memory, half-consciously, and had produced a semblance so exact that had he worked from photographs he could not have been more faithful to the real Shona.

  Now he had only to file and sand the features and contours to match the softness of her porcelain skin, the lustre of her hair. He pulled the stool closer to the bench and perched on its edge. Delicately, he turned the carving in his hands, inspecting it closely, then began to smooth away at the coarseness of the surface with steadily finer sandpapers. For maybe forty five minutes, Fergus worked at the wood until every trace of imperfection was removed. Satisfied, he chased away every particle of dust with a paint brush before applying a blend of beeswax and linseed oil until the whole took on a warm sheen. For some time, Fergus stared at the face looking out from his cupped hands, lost.

  The cry of a tern wheeling in the sky outside brought him back to himself. Looking at his watch, Fergus repackaged the gift, this time in a piece of clean muslin, and stowed it carefully in his empty shoulder bag. He bustled into the bright daylight, but instead of going immediately to his bicycle and the lane back down to the village, he set off across the coarse field, up the incline to where the land fell suddenly away.

  There was no fence here at the cliff ’s edge. Only the sheep and Duncannon, and sometimes Fergus, came here. None needed restraint to keep them from falling. At the brink Fergus paused. The wide sea stretched far and calm beneath the startling blue arc of the cloudless sky. It was a fine and peaceful day. Sometimes summer brought such days to the island, but it was auspicious weather for March. Fergus stared out across the shimmering blue, his hand shielding his eyes against the late-morning glare. The purple bulk of Rum and, in the distance, the grey stroke of Skye obscured the mainland from view. Under the mountains of Rum, Fergus could make out the wake line of the Tern cutting across the placid sea on its return from Mallaig, maybe half an hour out. He had a little time yet before McCredie reached the harbour.

  The only sounds were the sounds of the birds above him and the perpetual rush of the sea below. In all his years, he had never strayed too far from that sound. Even during the five years he had spent at school in Mallaig, sleeping on the mainland during the week, he had been able to hear the same sea nudging into the shoreline, or tearing through the night in the frequent storms of winter. He loved the sound, the lullaby and the scream, and could not imagine its absence.

  On the mainland, the storms were less urgent than here. Only five miles long and a mile across, Hinba lay in the open sea, beyond the shelter of Rum and Eigg, facing the full force of the south westerly winds, the relentless roar of the Atlantic gales. Even back from the shore, the sea could be deafening for days, an unavoidable reminder that you stood on the very edge of things: precarious and resilient. The sea’s rage could not displace the men and women of the island, and Fergus felt his pride swell with each winter spent there.

  On days like this, the sea’s soft shushing was a reassurance, a keepsake, a promise that everything was right in the world. Down by the harbour, or along the rock pools that cratered the north shore, the water would be gulping and gurgling to itself as the waves arrived and departed. It was a more intimate sound, the sweet nothings of deep connection, the small change of mutual love and respect; the ocean sharing its whimsy with the islanders, all of whom delighted in this quiet communion.

  It was maybe odd then that neither Fergus nor his fellows on Hinba had ever, in their five thousand years on the island, been keen seafarers. The earliest inhabitants had built their settlements in the middle of the island, farming the land rather than harvesting the sea. When the Norse men came, with their ships and sagas of faraway lands, the island had turned itself out towards the world: the main settlement was refounded by the landing place on the shore and the interior was left to the sheep and the ruins of churches and hill forts. But even to this day, the boat belonged to the mainland; McCredie himself was not of the island, born and raised in that other world, returning to it each night. The few vessels that remained on Hinba were like lifeboats, an insurance against disaster.

  But today, there was no threat from the ocean or sky. The warmth of the air and the sun’s brightness fed his contentment. In this light, Fergus knew that Hinba was the most beautiful place in the world: that he had seen so little of anywhere else did not diminish this conviction. An important, beautiful day. Fergus allowed himself to daydream about what Shona would be doing right then, and to think of her mouth, of the bow of her lips. He stroked his shoulder bag and through its nylon wall, and the muslin taken from his mother’s sewing box, he stroked the carving as if it were Shona’s own cheek.

  Slowly, he felt eyes upon him. Duncannon was on the beach, motionless, staring. Over his right shoulder, he had a tyre and knot of orange rope; his left hand was raised to shield his eyes against the sunlight. Fergus waved to his absent host and, sure enough, Duncannon returned the gesture, raising his left arm in a broad sweep. He was maybe 500 yards away, and Fergus could not make out his features, could not tell if he was smiling or scowling.

  The sun prickled the skin under his hair. It was almost too warm, as it had been throughout the summer holidays. With his exertions, Fergus’s hands were slick on the basalt. He could feel the tearing of his trainers against the rocks below and he felt his courage flow out through the ragged apertures rent in their fibres. He no longer knew why he was here.

  The day had seemed obvious; another in a line of new adventures. Soon he would be old enough for big school and be sent across the sea to study, but for these few, endless weeks his world was only Hinba and he was free to revel in its possibilities. Morag and Davey, Fingal even, had known that this was his last weightless time and so Fergus had been excused of his chores, such as they were, and set loose upon the island.

  His companion in these adventures was Jamie McCulloch, a classmate. His father had the farm at Tarbet. The relative seclusion of the farm, some two miles out of the village, and the absence of a mother had left in Jamie a coarseness that Morag Buchanan felt inappropriate for a friend of Fergus. Father and grandfather had waved away such concerns. Today, however, Fergus felt that his mother may have been proven right.

  At first, they confined themselves to the gentle bow of the cliff ’s upper reaches, where the slope provided tufts of gra
ss for hand holds, and old nest platforms gave stable footings. But there were only puffins here and their eggs were not so well prized. Jamie had urged them on, to descend further, beyond the point where the exponential curve became irrevocable, to where the guillemots made their nests.

  Some fifteen feet below the lip of the cliff, Fergus had all but lost his nerve. Below him, white tailed eagles patrolled the shoreline, sliding effortlessly through the thick air, building the courage to set off in search of silver-backed fish. The boy longed to be able to glide above the surface, to be free of this insistent gravity. He felt tears burn behind his eyes, but smothered them through force of will. He would not, could not, cry if there were witnesses, especially if that witness was the fearless Jamie McCulloch.

  ‘Hey Fergus! Down here! There’s a whole clutch. Enough to take a few, for sure. Fetch that knapsack down, will you?’

  Jamie was perhaps two body lengths below him, precarious on a ledge and surrounded by shrieking seabirds. For all his irreverent bluster, he was a farmer’s son and knew not to take more than nature would allow. But whatever respect this evoked in Fergus was lost in the prospect of a further descent. The breath juddered out of him as he ran through the options available to him. The least acceptable, staying where he was and clinging to the rocks around him, was the most appealing; down or up, both held their own terrors, but up would be surrender, even if it took him back to the soft, firm grassland above. Fergus opened his eyes, looked down to Jamie to smile and nod, and to seek out some foothold that would make his task possible.

  It was then that Jamie lost his own footing. His grin melted into wide-eyed stupefaction as his body slid from the ledge and accelerated downwards. His flailing arms did not prevent his descent and this puzzled Jamie, who’s body had until that moment been a reliable anchor in the world. Above him Fergus was surprised to see that the cliff was not in fact perpendicular to the sea, but fell away in a long slope. Jamie’s drop released a cloud of loose earth and gravel, but there was friction enough to prevent it becoming freefall. When he struck the outcrop, his leg crumpled and there was a small bounce, but at least he did not continue to fall.

  Time restarted with Jamie’s wail. From the top of the narrow basalt column, the boy clutched his leg and screamed primal sounds to compete with the cries of the startled guillemots and kittiwakes that span and circled his plinth. His eyes were balled tight shut but Fergus could only see the top of his head and the outstretched good leg, the hands clasped to the bad.

  ‘Jamie, hold on, yeah? I’m coming down. I’ll fetch you, don’t worry!’

  All his own fear had fallen with Jamie. It had clattered onto the rocks that backed the beach and lay there impotent, spent.

  Instead, Fergus was gripped by purpose and no more able to resist the impulse to climb down the cliff than he had been to cling to it moments earlier. He was swiftly down to the ledge where the eggs lay yet, undisturbed; ignoring the direct path carved by Jamie’s falling form, he picked out a more stable route that led via a series of broad ledges down to his friend’s perch.

  ‘It’s my ankle. I think I’ve turned it. Can’t put any weight on it. God, it hurts. I’m sorry Fergus, I shouldn’t have made you.’

  Jamie’s eyes were open now but red-rimmed; mucus bubbled from his nose with each heavy, halting breath. His back was jammed against the cliff wall and still he clasped his ankle, his knuckles whitening. He blinked his fear at Fergus.

  ‘It’s OK. I can help you. It’s easy: look, there’s quite a path if you follow these ledges. We’ve got all day, we can take it slow as you like. From there, we can get up to that crag without much bother, and then it’s easy street. See?’

  Fergus led the line they would take with his outstretched arm, up towards a rocky point just below the grassy slope. And he took Jamie’s hand and led him off the column that had saved him. They picked their way slowly up the cliff, inching over suspect rock and unreliable grit. All the while, Fergus supported as much of Jamie’s weight as he could within the confines of the slender space they had. Later, on account of Jamie’s fear of what might occur should his father find out that he had disobeyed a direct and strict instruction not to venture onto the cliffs, Fergus would tell his parents that they had been out to the ruins, where they had played on the low stones, leaping one to the other, and where Jamie had mistimed a leap and landed awkwardly, twisting his ankle. Later still he would repeat this version of events with Mr McCulloch and in school in front of Mr Galbraith and all the children, including Shona MacLeod. Neither he, nor Jamie McCulloch would ever say where they had really been, nor what had really happened. Fergus’s courage and Jamie’s gratitude remained a secret between themselves, even after they had drifted apart in the school at Mallaig.

  As the pair crested the outcrop just below the safety of the turf, Fergus looked back down to where they had been and to where they might have ended. There, below on the beach, a figure stood watching them. It had to be the strange man his grandfather warned him against, the man that lived alone out on the cliff top, collecting the rubbish rejected by the sea. He was maybe 500 yards away, and Fergus could not make out his features, could not tell that he was smiling, did not know that he had watched the fall and the rescue transfixed in his own private terror.

  4

  An eagle wheeled above Fergus and its shriek startled him. He watched it arc out to sea, out to where the little boat was tugging gently at the current around the headland: McCredie would soon be at the pier and Fergus was anxious to greet him when he arrived. He waved once more towards the figure on the beach and turned back towards his bicycle, leant against the gatepost to Duncannon’s yard. He gave two or three heavy steps on the pedals, then let the hill carry him down. The lane raced back down to the village, squeezing between Galbraith’s and Mrs Robertson’s, then past the little school house where the five newest islanders were taught to read and to count, to paint bright houses and smiling families, to name animals and towns from far away; then through the glut of white-washed houses gathered on the rise above the little harbour, where the Harbour Bell and the Post Office faced each other across the curve of the old quay. Finally Fergus flew past the church, built to house the hopes of the herring curers who briefly made their homes here before the wandering fish moved on.

  The lane ended at the little hut that served as warehouse and waiting room for McCredie’s cargo, human or otherwise. Fergus rolled slowly to the end of the new concrete jetty just as the Tern was nudging into the tyres strung along its edge. Most days, McCredie came twice, once early and once in the afternoon, but he could be persuaded to make additional trips as needed and to make the crossing to Rum and Eigg, or even to Skye. The flat bare deck between the bow and wheel house was most often filled with barrels of beer for the Bell and the other bulky requisites for island life. Once a week, more often in the summer, the larger ferry that served Rum and Eigg would continue onto Hinba, but otherwise, McCredie was the only regular connection the island had with the mainland.

  When Fergus waved, McCredie’s face folded into a smile, his nose almost disappearing into his grey beard. He liked the young man: he was honest and decent, had respect for his elders. When he came to pick up the mail, he was always polite, always had time to talk, to ask after Mrs McCredie and the news from the mainland. And he was diligent, industrious. Punctual. He had grown into a fine young man. Tall and broad, but lean as well: not an ounce of wasted flesh. Too young for a beard yet, but that would come in time.

  ‘And how was the crossing? Did you see any dolphins this time?’

  Without waiting for the gangplank, Fergus hopped across the gap and onto the Tern, as McCredie shook his head. They had speculated about dolphins that morning when Fergus had collected the mail and now he picked up the conversation from where it had been left.

  ‘No, I think the calm has given them the courage to go further out, into deeper water, chasing the fish. Like a mill pond still.’ McCredie clasped the outstretched hand and shook it firmly
. Fergus looked at him expectantly.

  ‘Do you have it?’ His excitement drove him from pleasantries faster than would ordinarily be the case, and he felt a twinge of guilt. He hoped McCredie would understand his impatience.

  ‘Steady on, lad, no need to fret. I’ve got it. I stepped over to MacBride’s between runs and fished him out of his workshop. He’s done a grand job, I’d say. Looks perfect, like it’d never been any different.’

  McCredie took a wrap of paper, decorated with pink and grey flowers, from his jacket pocket and held it out towards Fergus. The tiny package was sealed with a swipe of Sellotape and held with gentle firmness between the old seafarer’s calloused thumb and forefinger. Gingerly, Fergus accepted the offering, squeezing it between his own thumb and forefinger. He could feel the ring’s smooth, cold hardness through the paper, and knew without looking that everything was in order. He hid the precious parcel in his jeans and took a roll of bank notes from the same pocket. Sliding out four twenty pound notes, he took McCredie’s wrist in his spare hand and pushed the crisp paper into the waiting palm. McCredie’s fingers folded tightly over the money; he held the notes up to his face and seemed for an instant to smell them, before burying them in the inside pocket of his jacket. A smile broke between his whiskers.

  Later now, and the sun had slipped low in the still cloudless sky. Soon it would bleed its colours across the island’s horizon and paint the mountains and the moorland black before their time. To the east, a whisper of darkness foretold was beginning to gather over Eigg. Fergus looked at Shona, and she back at him, and they smiled a secret smile each to the other. The little waves, barely ripples, dropped lethargically onto the very lip of the beach, their flat murmur wrapped tight around the lovers.