The Ring of Bright Water Trilogy

by Gavin Maxwell

  Eiders are somehow more like animals than birds; perhaps it is this impression of weight and compressed bulk, or their peculiarly unavian voices, or the way their massive bills ascend in a straight line to the top of their skulls without any ‘scoop’ in between. Or perhaps it is their curious and very individual smell, which seems as if it could have nothing to do with a bird. They hold, anyway, some strange fascination for most people who have had anything to do with them.

  The drake in breeding plumage is a superb creation, suggesting the full dress uniform of some unknown navy’s admiral. The first impression is of black and white, but at close quarters the black-capped head that looked simply white from far off seems like the texture of white velvet and shows feathers of pale scintillating electric green on the rear half of the cheek and on the nape; the breast, above the sharp dividing line from a black abdomen, is a pale gamboge, almost peach. From the white back the secondary wing feathers of the same colour sweep down in perfect scimitar curves over the black sides, adding immensely to the effect of a uniform designed for pomp and panache. The whole finery looks so formal that one has the impression that it must be uncomfortable, restricting, and the sureness and grace of all movement that is not on land is disconcerting. One would expect, too, that this essentially massive and masculine image would be incapable of anything but gruff and curt utterance, yet the mating call, uttered as the drake flings his splendid head far back on to his shoulders, is a woodwind sound, something between the lowest note of a flute and the highest of an oboe, a serenade so sweet and pure that it seems to become a part of the smooth, blue sea and the small jewelled tumble of wavelets upon white sand under a summer sky.

  As with all the eiders, the female is dowdy by comparison, but in a way no less impressive. She is of a warm vermiculated brown all over, bulky and thick-necked, increasing the impression of lead-like weight; her voice is appropriately bass, whether in contentment or complaint. Above all she appears, with this voice and manner, competent to deal brusquely with any situation –but unfortunately this is not always true.

  Eiders breed at Camusfeàrna, and over much of the north-west coast of Scotland and its thousand islands. They do so, however, in the most disastrous conditions, almost as if inviting the destruction of the species. They choose to make their nests where there is the maximum commotion of other breeding species; and this most often means that they lay in the very midst of their worst enemies, the greater gulls. Thus at Camusfeàrna lighthouse island, where there are some two or three hundred pairs of nesting herring gulls and lesser black-backed gulls (to say nothing of a dozen pairs of that great vulture of the sea, the greater black-backed gull) some thirty or forty female eiders lay their eggs every year. One would say that on that island there could be nothing that they could desire – neither fresh water nor smooth beaches for their toddling young, nor safety for their unhatched eggs. It would appear a deliberately suicidal situation, since there are adjacent islands with none of these disadvantages or hazards. Yet the fact remains that they do limit their breeding territory to this and similar islands throughout the area, despite the destruction by predators of at least three-quarters of their potential offspring. Long before I had acquired Kyleakin Lighthouse this fact had puzzled me; there was an inescapable conclusion that the tumult and the shouting of other species, even if they were proven enemies, provided some necessary stimulus to the eiders’ reproduction.

  From the time that the female has completed her clutch of five eggs, laid in a carefully chosen site amongst heather, bracken, dwarf-willow or goose-grass, she begins to pluck her own breast of the fine down underlying the firm, springy feathers, and with this she surrounds her nest. The down serves a double purpose. When she leaves her nest to drink (she eats nothing during the four weeks of incubation) she arranges the down with her massive bill so that it covers the eggs; thus at the same time concealing them from robber gulls and maintaining their temperature until she returns. If unexpectedly disturbed from her nest she will (under extreme provocation, for female eiders are very tame while they are incubating, and will often allow themselves to be touched or even stroked) take off in a flurry, emitting as she does so a strong-smelling liquid which falls upon the eggs. This is not, as many people have thought, excreta; for, fasting, she has nothing to excrete. The inference is that when she has not time to cover her eggs she ejects this liquid as a deterrent to predators; to make the smell of her eggs noxious and unpalatable. It is a curious smell, very pungent, and resembling the smell of frying liver. For the few who may have smelled the cooking liver of a stag after the rut has begun the simile is almost exact. It is a warm, perhaps hot odour, suggesting its own colour of rich brown; most humans do not find it unpleasant, but feel that if it were increased to the least degree it would be nauseating.

  Ever since the Gallgaels and the Norsemen had colonized Iceland, even long before King Haco had come and left his name to Kyleakin, they had realized the immense value of the eiders which bred in fantastic numbers in their new land; and, probably without recognition of the reasons, they had sensed that movement, noise and colour had something to do with the eiders’ basic requirements. They lured the eiders away from the predator gull colonies, and for the wild white wings and raucous voices of the enemy they substituted an elaboration of fluttering flags, little wind-driven clacking propellers, and reeded wind instruments that would sigh, groan, or trumpet, according to the strength of the breeze. Over the centuries these traditional means became lore; and even without true scientific knowledge or controlled experiment they had been able to form colonies of several thousand pairs of eiders, and to harvest from the nests a great quantity of the down – at first only for local household use, but later as an important source of income from export.

  The island immediately adjoining Kyleakin Lighthouse island, separated from it at low tide by only a few yards of water, was rough and heathery, and despite the presence of breeding greater black-backed gulls and hooded crows, both the very worst enemies of the eiders, there were already some twenty or more pairs nesting there; each probably raising to maturity a fifth of their potential offspring. From the lighthouse cottage this island could be kept under perpetual observation, and it appeared the ideal site for experiment. It was the property of the National Trust for Scotland, who gave their immediate and unqualified approval to my project.

  Early in July 1965 Richard Frere had finished his massive work of conversion of the two Kyleakin cottages into one, his installation of a generator and the electric wiring of the whole premises, and he left, warning me that a certain amount of tidying up would be necessary before my guests arrived the following week. These had been invited for a week’s cruise on Polar Star, using first Isle Ornsay Lighthouse and then Kyleakin as a base. So the day after Richard’s departure I set out from Camusfeàrna in Polar Star, carrying a work party to spend a full day preparing the house for its very first residential occupancy since I had bought it.

  I was immensely proud of the house and its furnishings, for while the décor of Isle Ornsay had been largely the work of Richard’s wife Joan, Kyleakin had been my particular project, my own unaided concept. Against the advice of both architects and friends, I had created, on the southern side of the house, a single room more than forty feet long, its windows looking down the long reach of Lochalsh and Loch Duich to the distant peaks of The Five Sisters of Kintail. In that loch lay perhaps the most spectacular piece of architecture surviving in Scotland, the ancient island stronghold of the Clan MacRae, Eilleann Donan Castle.

  Because the room I planned would be little more than eleven feet wide, all my advisers were unanimous in saying that it would look disproportionate, like a corridor, and that, furthermore, it would be impossible to heat adequately. I believed that the corridor effect could be obviated by using neutral-coloured furniture against the inner wall, the only strong colours being bright cushions which would draw the eye away from the four large windows, and one large wall mirror would reflect the sea and the ruin
of Castle Moille. There were to be no pictures other than Michael Ayrton’s vast and splendid, almost colourless wax of the falling Icarus, dominating the far end of the room as one entered it from the kitchen–dining-room. The heating problem I proposed to solve by two very wide open fireplaces, one under the Icarus and one at the near end of the room, against the inner wall; these would be supplemented if necessary by electric heating from the generator we had installed. I had made watercolour sketches of this room as I visualized it, and hoped that it would become, and all the furniture had been chosen to correspond as exactly as possible with these drawings.

  The project had been entirely successful; I bought the furniture with great care in London and finally transhipped it to the island with a surprisingly small list of breakages. The house itself was now all and more than I had ever hoped for, and I had exact plans for the formation of a wild informal garden where flowering shrubs and rare honeysuckles would grow in the shelter of the rock crevices and buttresses on the northern side of the house.

  9

  The Struggle

  One day early in August, the local policeman called in the course of a routine check of firearms certificates. Any visit to Camusfeàrna from the outside world, no matter how official the visitor may be, becomes of necessity a social occasion, for the visitor has trudged all the weary distance down the hill from Druimfiaclach, and it would be inhospitable not to offer some refreshment before he starts the steep and boggy climb back to the road. So, our business done, we had a drink together, and sat talking for a while. After half an hour or so I was conscious of a pain in my stomach, but it was not a very severe pain, and I expected it to pass off. But by the time the constable had left it was steadily increasing in intensity, and it was something completely outside my personal experience. I had had a duodenal ulcer during the war, but it had never recurred, and it had not felt like this. I was alone in the house now, and I began to search with growing desperation for some antacid, but I could find nothing. It seemed the one item missing from the sizeable medicine chests I had carried with me in North Africa. I was determined to ride this out, because I was due in the very near future for a medical examination for life insurance, and if I were to call a doctor now I might as well forget the whole project. As well might a mouse determine to resist a tiger.

  After an hour all possible question of surviving this storm by myself had gone. I was in such acute pain that I could hardly drag myself to the telephone. The village doctor was a new arrival and I had not yet met him; it was going to be, I thought as I dialled his number, doubled up with pain, a curious introduction. A friendly, cheerful and essentially competent voice answered me, and I said (with difficulty) a rehearsed speech, ‘Doctor Dunlop? You don’t know me, but I’m in your practice – my name is Gavin Maxwell, and I live at Camusfeàrna, on the shore below Druimfiaclach.’ ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I know just where you are – what can I do for you?’

  I remember how long it seemed to take me to answer; I remember the litter of papers on the desk before me, which were all out of focus, because I am far-sighted, and during the past half hour I had somewhere lost my spectacles; I remember that through the window I could see against a blue sky a single raven circling high above the field, his guttural croaks timed to a rhythmic side-somersault. The pain seemed too great to speak.

  The doctor’s voice came again, calm but somehow unprofessional, as though we were old friends: ‘Take your time, but try and tell me what’s wrong.’

  I said, ‘I don’t know for certain, but I think I’ve perforated a duodenal ulcer. I’ve had nothing to eat for eighteen hours, so perhaps there’s no peritonitis – but I’m not thinking very clearly.’

  ‘I’ll be with you just as quick as I can. Lie down and try not to move until I get there.’ He spoke as though he had no other patient, no other responsibilities nor worries of his own; as though the five mile drive and the long walk down the hill did not exist.

  When he arrived he gave me morphia and said that he would return in four hours’ time. This was my first meeting with Doctor Tony Dunlop, a young man, married and with small children, who had practised medicine in challenging countries such as West Africa, and had finally chosen a remote country practice where his exceptional personality and understanding of individual patients gave full scope for his powers. This was a man of wide and varied interests and broad learning, and I wished even then that our first meeting had been in more fortunate circumstances.

  He returned at seven o’clock in the evening, and by then I was almost incapable of speech. The pain had become so acute that I was no longer a truly rational human being; the most I could summon up was ‘Doctor, I would like to know whether this is likely to prove fatal, because if it is there are things I must do first – signing documents and so on.’ He answered, ‘No, I don’t think so – at least I hope not, and I think I’m right. We’ve got to get you to hospital quickly. I’m going to give you some more morphia now, but that’s the last I can give you, because the doctors in Inverness couldn’t make a fair diagnosis if the symptoms were obliterated by pain-killers. Your staff has come home now, and they’re constructing a stretcher. You’ll go up the hill in your Land Rover on this stretcher, and at the village you’ll be transferred to my car, whose seats fold back to make a bed. We’ve got eighty miles to go, and I’ve telephoned for an ambulance to meet us halfway, or wherever we happen to meet on the road – if you’re lucky you’ll be in hospital by midnight.’

  So I was carried out on a home-made stretcher and driven – a journey I shall never forget – up the jolting jeep track to Druimfiaclach, empty and desolate then. At the village I was transferred as discreetly as possible from the Land Rover to the doctor’s car. It was a long drive through the night; either the pain or the morphia or the combination of the two made me garrulous; for I remember talking a lot. I remember that the doctor drove very fast and with great skill. We met the ambulance some few miles west of Invermoriston. I asked for more morphia for the last leg of the journey but was gently and firmly refused. I arrived in hospital at Inverness at one in the morning.

  Some thirty-six hours later the surgeon, a man of high reputation in his profession and great personal charm, showed me the X-ray plates. ‘This,’ he said, ‘is an acute exacerbation of an ulcer probably of long standing. I want to put the alternatives clearly before you. The first, which is what I recommend, is for you to remain here and for me to operate after a short time, a partial gastrectomy which I will explain to you. The second choice is for you to remain here under treatment for about two months, without surgery. As you’ve explained to me that your life is very heavily committed until November, there is of course a third possible course of action, and that is for you, being fully aware of all the risks involved, to go home after a day or two’s rest here, and to return and let me operate in November. If you choose this last course I should like to ask for your assurance that you really will come back in November.’

  It seemed to me that this was the only possible thing to do, and I said so, though I cringed before the idea of further abdominal surgery.

  It was only a few hours after this conversation, and while I was still in hospital that I received a telephone call from London. There had been a board meeting of the company which had been formed to manage my affairs, a meeting which I had been due to attend. The caller, a co-director, was bleakly informative. It had come to light that owing to faulty internal accounting the company’s finances were far from what we had imagined. The assets covered the liabilities, but little more, and at this meeting it was demonstrated that the maintenance of Camusfeàrna cottage and its otters was costing £7,000 a year. A new director, a retired businessman, recommended the immediate sale of all the company’s assets, including the two lighthouses, and even – owing to a misconception of what was whose – some of my own.

  This policy seemed to me to lack finesse; and, moreover, to be abandoning the battle before a blow had been struck, because the enemy’s strength had been
found to be almost equal to our own. For example, neither of the lighthouses, upon which we had lavished so much money, were mortgaged, and we had succeeded in letting them to holiday parties for as much as £65 a week each. (This sum may sound excessive, but it usually amounted to less than £10 a head each, with the use of boats and engines and a private island.) These were the things uppermost in my mind; though no doubt at a lower level of consciousness lay the realization that the loss of the lighthouses would mean the end of my cherished eider project, and at that time it seemed to me that my life held nothing to replace it.

  So I replied that I was not in agreement; that I would return to Camusfeàrna the next day, and temporarily assume the function of managing director, in an effort to restore financial stability. The mouse and the tiger again.

  When I came back and told the local doctor of my decision he said, ‘Well, it’s a novel treatment for a duodenal ulcer, certainly, but I’ve had ulcers myself and I found they did best on a diet of hot curries and plenty of alcohol, which is hardly the conventional treatment. I wish you good luck.’

  It was in a spirit of challenge that I re-entered Camusfeàrna on 4 August – a double challenge, mental and physical. I was determined both to solve the company’s finances while at the same time finishing my book Lords of the Atlas on schedule, and to regain the state of physical health and activity that I had possessed before the Land Rover accident. It was an ambitious programme, and one with obviously conflicting time-factors.

  My first action as managing director was to try to raise mortgages on the lighthouses. Everyone with whom I spoke assured me that this would be easy, but it was not. Time and time again negotiations seemed to be almost complete when they fell through, and there were so many intermediaries that I could never satisfy myself as to which link in the chain had broken. The heart of the matter seemed to be that the houses, however solid and magnificently built, were on islands, and this, despite their desirability as holiday homes, was a major deterrent to any prospective mortgagee. Meanwhile I found that, bad though the position discovered at the board meeting had been, there was worse to come, for the list of creditors had been far from complete. More and more bills, of which the directors had then been ignorant, began to pour into Camusfeàrna, but even with this new avalanche the assets still held the balance on paper. I closed entirely the small office in London, which, however incredibly, had been revealed as responsible for an annual debit of £3,000. This gigantically disproportionate debit was transformed, by letting the premises for a few pounds a week, into a minor source of income. Having done this, and in order to gain time, I did an extremely foolish thing; I devoted the whole of my mother’s legacy to the payment of pressing company creditors. I was in fact a minority shareholder in the company, and this was the very first capital I had owned since the demise of the Island of Soay Shark Fisheries eighteen years earlier. Ever since then I had been a hand-to-mouth earner, first as a portrait painter and then as a writer, unable to budget because there had been no fixed income. But now, because the company was registered in my own name rather than in the decent obscurity and anonymity of some word unconnected with me, I felt that I had no alternative but to use my own money to pay its debts. I have since been told that this action demonstrated a lack of rudimentary business sense, but I can only repeat that I felt, and still feel, that I had no choice. The result, however, was to add personal poverty to company difficulties; nor did the company creditors appear to appreciate that I had acted from a sense of moral responsibility. For the greater part of them money was all that counted, and where it came from was immaterial. I know for a fact that many believed my personal resources to be almost inexhaustible, and that my failure to pay every company creditor immediately was wilful parsimony on my part. Thus, anyway, I lost the last capital that I am ever likely to possess, and the fault was nobody’s but my own.