The tide was full and the creel boat nudged against the low bridge spanning the Kyle between Tongue and Eastern Township bay. The skipper looped the mooring rope round an iron railing and pushed his red woollen hat off his forehead. The time was 5.18 in the evening. The hotel van was due at 5.30. He stretched and pushed back his shoulders. For a blissful moment the ache low in his back went away but when he bent to pick up the next box of lobsters it stabbed at him again and he screwed up his face. With a heave and another spasm he raised the box shoulder high and slid it on to the side of the road. Back pain ran in his family. His grandfather had it. His father had it. Now he had it. The other family legacy was his name, Hector MacKay, though he’d managed to rid himself of some of its burden of expectation. Everyone called him Red after his hat which he wore indoors and out, winter and summer. His surname and back pain had proved more dogged inheritances. When he got lonely, which was seldom, he consoled himself with the knowledge that he would pass on neither to a son.
He was childless and a widower and likely to remain so though he was 38 years old and good-looking. His hair under his red hat was blond and curly; his eyes were blue, his nose aquiline, his cheek bones prominent and his cheeks concave. The women of the crofting townships found two faults with him. One was forgivable: his height. He was five feet seven inches which was judged disappointing for a man with such fine features. The other was not. His young wife had killed herself, an overdose of pills. Some said his cruelty was to blame; others that he had administered the dose himself.
In the aftermath of her death, while he was still unwelcome in the community, he encountered God. He found him in nature, in the seas, the landscape, the birds, and the whales and dolphins which slipped like oil on late summer evenings across the bay by his home. Over time, he abandoned his Bible and stopped praying. The less he asked of God, the more he felt his presence. He was everywhere. Late one night he found a name for this type of religion. He was, according to ‘Amos’, an American internet chat room acquaintance and sometime evangelist, a pantheist.
Red looked up pantheism in a long undisturbed Oxford English Dictionary and found a definition to his liking: ‘The belief or theory that God and the universe are identical (implying a denial of the personality and transcendence of God); the doctrine that God is everything and everything is God.’
(If God is not transcendent, he thought, why had the OED written God with a capital G?)
By the time he had heaved the fourth and last of his shellfish boxes on to the roadside, Kenny, the driver of the van from the hotel, was opening the boot doors. ‘Good catch today Red?’
‘I can’t complain.’ Red pushed his shoulders back and pulled a face.
‘Back getting to you again?’ Kenny shook his head in amusement at Red’s contortions. For as long as he’d been collecting Red’s catch, seven months on and off, he’d been complaining about his back.
‘It’s been murder today.’
Kenny swivelled his San Francisco Giants baseball cap back to front, stuck his hands in the pockets of his blue overalls and spread his legs in an ‘I told you so’ stance. ‘Don’t blame me.’ Kenny, the hotel’s trainee chef, had offered to crew for Red three mornings a week when he wasn’t working in the kitchen.
‘Yeah, yeah …’
‘Just say when and I’ll do it.’ They both knew it wouldn’t happen. Red enjoyed fishing as much for the solitude as for the catch.
‘Chef’s looking for two boxes of prawn tomorrow, and a dozen crabs, good big ones. There’s a special do on.’
Red screwed up his face again. ‘I’ll see what I can do. I’ve got a physio appointment in the morning which’ll delay me no doubt.’
Kenny was accustomed to Red’s grumbles and pessimism. ‘Same time, same place tomorrow.’
‘If the body’s willing. The tide’ll be good for landing here for a few evenings yet, then it’ll be back to the old pier.’
‘Is the road fixed?’
‘They say it will be. They were working on it today.’
Kenny snorted. ‘Sure thing it won’t be. See ya tomorrow Red.’
Kenny turned the van in the middle of the bridge and sped away westwards. As the sound of its engine faded, squealing brakes from the other direction made Red turn. A lorry juddered twice before stopping. Bellows of distress came from the cattle it was carrying in the back. Their hooves slithered on the wet, dung-slicked corrugations of the floor as the animals fought to keep their balance. A youngish man with short dark hair and wearing jeans dropped to the road from the passenger door. He reached into the cab for a backpack, slammed the door and banged on it with the flat of his hand. The driver let out two loud blasts of the horn in answer before accelerating slowly away, the engine straining under its load, the cattle still bellowing.
Red looked at him with curiosity.
‘Hi, can you help me?’ the stranger said, politely.
‘I’ll do my best, I’m sure.’
‘I’m trying to get to Eilean Iasgaich tonight.’
Red was loosening the knot on the rope securing his boat. He studied the younger man’s face. ‘Are you now?’
Red didn’t need to ask the next question. His expression did it for him: why?
Cal shrugged. ‘I was wondering if you might be going that way.’
Red kept on staring, his eyes narrowing a fraction, his face giving nothing away. ‘Well that depends doesn’t it?’
‘On what?’
‘I guess on why you want to go there.’
Cal looked towards the island and back at Red. He recognised him from his first trip to the island. Red had been moored in the same place at the bridge when the Rib had gone past. He decided to take a chance.
‘Uilleam Sinclair was my grandfather.’
A look of understanding passed from Red to Cal, a silent acknowledgement of a shared heritage, of Cal’s right to visit the island without having to answer any more questions. Red said, ‘Aye, that’ll do. I’ve heard of him all right.’ He pulled on the rope and the boat nudged back against the bridge. ‘Jump in.’
‘Thank you.’ Cal handed down his backpack and Red winced at its weight. Inside it were Cal’s laptop and his grandmother’s diaries.
‘Bad back?’
‘Don’t get me started.’
Cal sat on the road bridge, his legs over the edge, reaching for a firm footing on the deck. He jumped and landed awkwardly.
Red grabbed him.
‘Ok?’
‘Thanks.’
‘I’m Red, by the way, after the hat. My other name’s MacKay.’
Cal said, ‘I know.’
‘And how would you know that?’
Cal told Red how Mike had pointed him out to the boat party.
‘Did he now?’ It seemed to tickle him, becoming a local tourist attraction. ‘So you’ve been out to the island before?’
Cal said he had. ‘A few days ago, my first visit …’
Red considered asking him another question but instead said ‘No, you’re fine’ and started the engine. He asked Cal to gather up the mooring rope and the boat nosed out into the tidal stream. Cal joined Red in the wheel house. ‘Nice old boat.’
‘She suits me.’
‘What’s her name?’
‘The Eilean Iasgaich …’
‘After the trawler that went down in the war …?’
Red nodded. ‘You know the story?’
‘Yes.’ Another look passed between them.
‘Tide’s turning,’ Red said and spun the wheel to starboard. The boat veered towards the wide mouth of the bay. ‘So you’ll know my grandfather was the skipper.’
‘Yes, of course.’ He hoped there wasn’t any animosity in his voice.
Red didn’t appear to detect any because he carried on, ‘After his death, my grandmother and father went to the new settlement.’ He pointed east, to the headland behind which was New Iasgaich township. ‘Over there, just beyond the point. The Norwegian government gave the land to
the surviving islanders.’
Cal said, ‘Does your father still live there?’
‘No, he’s long gone. He married an island girl and they lived there for a time, but he was a drinker and fell out with the neighbours, not to mention his wife, my mother,’ Red shrugged. ‘It can happen around here.’ He laughed. ‘And how. My grandmother was in her coffin by then and just as well for him, because he sold the house and his share of the island. He bought this boat with some of the cash. So the name is the only bit of the island we’ve still got. My grandfather’s descendants are the only ones allowed to name a boat The Eilean Iasgaich.’
‘Where’s your family now?’
‘My family’s me. I’m all that’s left.’ He glanced at Cal. ‘Me, the boat and the house my father built over there to the west. You’ll see it when we get to the island. There’s no road in or out, only the sea.’
‘Your father’s dead?’
‘The bottle did for him 17, 18 years ago.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘I was at university in Glasgow at the time. We’d been estranged because of his drinking. When I went to the house after the funeral there were empty bottles everywhere, sheep and hen muck in every room. God knows how he lived like that.’
Cal wondered what happened to his mother: it sounded as if she was dead too.
‘It’s got a lot to answer for …’ Red nodded towards the island. ‘All those ruined houses. A broken human spirit in every fallen stone, I say.’
Cal kept his view to himself.
The island was close enough now for Cal to pick out the pier. Red was steering further to the west. ‘D’you mind if I drop you in Seal Bay?’
‘Anywhere’s fine.’
‘It’s on the north of the island, more sheltered when the wind’s blowing from the south-west. I’ve got some creels to drop along that shore this evening. You’ll find there’s a path up the back of the hill. It’s steep but the footholds are easy enough.’
The boat swung round the buttress of Cnoc a’ Mhonaidh and Cal searched the skyline for the site of his dismantled cairn. Red tapped him on the shoulder and pointed towards the mainland, at a small white house beside a banked crescent of grey sand. A high rampart of hills loomed behind it. ‘That’s where I live.’
‘It’s very pretty.’
‘I’ll be coming by first thing in the morning, an appointment with the physio.’ He rubbed at his back and pulled a face. ‘So if you’re at the old pier, eight-ish, I’ll take you into Eastern Township. Otherwise you can always catch the Rib later in the day.’
Cal said, ‘Appreciate it.’
Scores of kittiwakes and fulmars launched themselves off their nesting cliffs as the trespassing boat passed close by. Red pointed to a bay which was opening up. ‘Seal Bay,’ he shouted.
The boat slowed and Red said, ‘The path goes up that gully, do you see?’
Cal said he did.
Soon the boat, its sides protected by buffers of old tyres, was nudging against a natural rock breakwater. ‘See there, the mooring ring,’ Red shouted to Cal. ‘Put the rope through it.’
The ring was beside a line of footholds. Cal pulled the rope tight and knotted it. Red cut the idling engine. When Cal had scrambled out and was standing on top of the rock, Red squinted up at him. ‘It was the trawler that did for this island, the money it brought. Other islands had a sense of community. They needed it for survival. But Eilean Iasgaich was different. The boat made people greedy.’
Red paused. ‘It wasn’t right.’ Then he said, ‘We’re not all proud of our past, you know.’
Cal understood it as Red’s way of acknowledging his grandfather and the wrongs done to him. Cal inclined his head to signal his appreciation. ‘Thanks … and for the lift.’
Red shrugged again. ‘You’re welcome.’ He gestured for Cal to throw the rope back on to the deck. When he did, the boat drifted away from the rock. Red said, ‘Maybe pick you up tomorrow …’
Cal raised his right hand and turned towards Cnoc a’ Mhonaidh.
The path from the bay passed below an overhang before veering right and uphill. Cal followed it until he emerged on the north-west shoulder. From there he struck out across a grassy bank, taking care not to break the sky-line. After a hundred metres he settled into a patch of heather, hidden from the mainland, a place to watch the sun-set and to wait for night.
The sky to the west was tinged copper-pink when Cal stirred himself five hours later. Looking east, it was as if a sooty cloud had settled over the island, as dark as it got at this time of year, but sufficient in Cal’s view to render Douglas Rae’s telescope more or less blind. He stood, hooked his backpack over his left shoulder and climbed uphill through snagging stalks of heather. On the plateau of Cnoc a’ Mhonaidh he stopped, knelt and peered into the gloom until he was sure of his bearings. From there his descent to the westernmost of the ruined island houses took him no more than twenty minutes. He slipped a number of times on the steep gradient, finally reaching the bottom of the hill by sitting and sliding on the damp grass and bracken.
Once on the flat, he veered left along the bottom of the hill until he found the stone foundations of the grassed-over track. He followed it, passing the forlorn dark shapes of abandoned houses. At his family’s old home, he stopped and searched the debris by the doorway for a small stone. He found one which was rounded and rubbed it between his fingers before putting it in a pocket. Then he continued along the track, sometimes disturbing sheep which had taken night refuge in one of the ruins he was passing. Their hooves clattered against slate and corrugated iron as they ran off. Their lambs complained shrilly as they bolted after their escaping mothers.
Soon he was at the bottom of the slope by the museum. He worked his way around the building, pulling at the padlock, rattling the door latch, testing the two front windows for movement. At the back he found a small window with pebbled glass which was open a few centimetres. He heaved at it with both hands until he’d forced it down. He took his backpack off his shoulder, rummaged inside and removed a carrier bag which he stuffed inside his jacket. Then he hauled himself on to the sill and put his right leg through the gap. The rest of his body squeezed after it.
Inside, by the faint glow of his mobile phone, he made out a toilet to his right. He jumped down, pitching forward when his feet hit the tiled floor sooner than he expected. He swore, picked himself up, and using his phone again fumbled for the door and the light switch beside it. He flicked it on. When he opened the door a few centimetres, a shaft of light fell across the museum’s counter, the two display cases in the centre of the room and the window beyond them. Immediately he switched off the light. In the dark he walked towards the right hand display case and lifted the lid. He used the light from his phone to locate the logbook which was in the centre of the cabinet. Cal put his phone on it and slid one of his hands underneath the book, supporting its open covers with his splayed fingers. He removed it, closed the lid and went back to the toilet. Shutting the door he turned on the light.
He read the entry at the open page – it was the one he had seen before. Then he teased at the unopened pages with the nail of his index finger until one sprang clear. He turned it slowly until he could see all the writing on it. The entry was for September 18, 1942. It recorded the Eilean Iasgaich’s position and progress but nothing about the crew, or their recent losses.
Cal separated the next page, the next and the next, turning each one slowly. The entries were similar in each case: Hector MacKay recorded more details about the boat’s position and the weather but like the September 18 entry none made mention of the crew. After 12 pages he came to 29 September 1942, the entry he wanted to see. It was different, as he expected.
The skipper had written, ‘Please God, when will this ordeal end? This forenoon at 72° 30′N, 18°03′E we lost young Sandy MacKay swept overboard in the westerly gale which has been blowing hard all day. May God be with him and bless him. Uilleam Sinclair went with him, also lost overboa
rd.’
Cal read it again, wondering why Hector MacKay had omitted to write ‘May God be with him and bless him’ after recording Uilleam’s loss when he had done so after Sandy’s.
The difference in the text struck him too. The writing recording Sandy’s death was large, as it had been in the earlier entries. But in the short final sentence, marking Uilleam’s, the writing was smaller; the ink blacker; as if it had been added later.
Cal photographed it with his mobile, checking it was in focus before returning the phone to his pocket. He lifted the next page which opened on to three short stubs. The neat edges suggested a knife or scissors had cut these pages away. After them were a dozen or more empty pages.
Cal turned them all before going back to the stubs. He ran his finger along their straight edges as if touching them might somehow reveal what Hector MacKay had written there and why they’d been removed. Then he closed the book slowly, trying not to force it. He took the carrier bag from his jacket and slid the book in, wrapping the plastic round it three times to protect it. He zipped the bag into his pocket and opened the toilet door wide letting the light flood across the room to the window which faced towards Douglas Rae’s telescope. Cal left the museum the way he had entered it.
Chapter 24
The last remnant of the sun’s pinkness has gone from the undersides of the clouds; it has become night. What is happening to me, Basanti asks. Why do I feel this vulnerability, this dread, now? Why, of all times, now?
She is sitting on the roof, her legs folded at her side, her body tilted, her weight resting on her right hand, her fingers pressed against the lead flashing of the roof’s gully.
Why is she here when she should be inside, searching for the hill and the tree, in Cal’s apartment, at his table, with the only man she has met in this frightening place who wants nothing from her and who doesn’t regard her in that lascivious male way. Why now? Has her escape from the dhanda, wearing new clothes (she feels the texture of her linen trousers) somehow weakened her?
She considers the possibility, a flush of shame making her face suddenly hot. It cannot be, she says. Isn’t she the daughter of warriors? Blood and honour demand retribution. Isn’t this her Bedia obligation? She goads herself with what she believes is her heritage. Yet she feels a debilitating weariness, a sense that this has gone on too long, even though she knows it cannot end until she has avenged her friend’s death and the many crimes she herself has endured.
The Sea Detective Page 23