Not that they always agreed with each other – they were as likely as any other large family to be riven by disputes and feuds – but no one who wasn’t a MacEwan would ever get away with bad-mouthing anyone who was. There was always a Sorley, of course, just as there always had been. The name had lain in wait for the first son of the current Sorley Mor for generations. ‘Summer Wanderer’, that was what Sorley meant, more or less, which was why every boat had been called Ocean Wanderer, and as each senior Sorley died his son assumed the mantle of Sorley Mor, Big Sorley. At the same moment his son became Sorley Og, Young Sorley, regardless of how old or young they were. There was something of ‘the king is dead, long live the king’ about it, but the system had worked for as long as anyone could remember, and so no one had ever thought about it, far less questioned it.
There were no other Sorleys, there being a kind of unspoken contract that only the first family, the one that fell heir to the Ocean Wanderer, should carry the name, but there were so many MacEwans that ways had to be found to avoid confusion. There was MacEwan Sandy Bay, for instance, who took on the name of his house in nearby Keppaig, or the English version at any rate, to make life easier for the tourists who rented it during the summer months. MacEwan Sandy Bay was also the driver of the few trains that had escaped the Beeching axe in the 1960s, though his enthusiasm had waned somewhat since the end of the steam age. These days, he would say dismissively, he just drove ‘a big metal box with wheels on’, though he still remembered to sound the horn as he passed the local cemetery, to greet his parents, who had taken up residence there long ago. The tourists thought he was greeting them and waved back, giving them another story to tell their friends to prove how accepted they were in the area.
As many others did, MacEwan Sandy Bay kept a few sheep, a hangover from the days of his crofter forefathers that he could never quite shake off, and of course they provided him with a government subsidy. The necessary skills in looking after them had waned over the generations, though; you always knew, for instance, when shearing time was nigh, because the normally brainless sheep tried to hitchhike out of town, or so the locals said. MacEwan Sandy Bay didn’t much like shearing sheep and he didn’t have enough to employ professional shearing teams, so he did it himself, and he did it badly, giving the locals a stick to beat him with. A lost sheep was said to have spotted MacEwan Sandy Bay sharpening his shears and have run away, and a dead sheep by the side of the road had simply gone one further and committed suicide by jumping off the hill. He didn’t have any reason to feel ashamed, his friends would tell him kindly, any one of them would be happy to do it for him; after all, shearing a few sheep was such a simple task. If you knew how, that was.
MacEwan Sandy Bay ignored all the taunts with exaggerated dignity, but he needed a dram or two to fortify himself each time his sheep needed to be sheared. No one was quite sure if over-fortification was to blame for the odd nick the sheep got, or if MacEwan Sandy Bay was just a bad shearer made worse by a couple of drams, but what was certain was that the sheep liked the business considerably less than he did. MacEwan Sandy Bay’s sheep needed no single dab of colour to identify their owner; they carried so many brown antiseptic stains on their carcasses that they looked like a separate breed. Occasionally a couple from another flock would wander into his, only to end up decorated in the same manner, much to the annoyance of the true owner, who knew he would have to fend off taunts of ‘I see you have Sandy Bay doing your shearing for you these days,’ until some other diversion came along.
Across from MacEwan Sandy Bay was Gannet’s house, or as Chrissie MacEwan had dubbed it, his official residence; his unofficial residence, the one where he could usually be found when ashore, being her house on MacEwan’s Row. The little whitewashed cottage on the machair by the sea in Keppaig had been left to Gannet by his uncle, who had inherited it from Gannet’s grandfather, and once it had been separated from Sandy Bay by a field. When Gannet’s uncle had lived there, Keppaig inhabitants who did not wish to argue with their nearest and dearest over a visit to the local pub would ‘go for a walk along the shore’ instead, knowing – as did their nearest and dearest – that they would get no further than the cottage. The tradition had continued on the few, the very few occasions when Gannet had slept there, until the new road put an end to the skive by cutting straight across the field. That left the cottage to stand alone, looking even more isolated than Keppaig itself and, as Chrissie MacEwan never tired of pointing out, usually empty as well, since Gannet had never married.
‘And why the hell would he bother getting married?’ she would demand of no one in particular, looking the usually silent Gannet up and down as he gazed back at her amiably. ‘Sure, he gets looked after perfectly well here. The only service I don’t provide is sleeping with the man!’
‘Ach, Chrissie,’ Sorley Mor would protest with fake disapproval, ‘we don’t need any coarse talk, now.’
‘Crap,’ Chrissie would reply flatly. ‘Half of Acarsaid thinks I do anyway, and the other half pretends that they think I do. I know perfectly well that they gossip about us when they’re bored. There’s nothing like the prospect of illicit, sweaty sex to get their juices running.’ She stood back, looked Gannet up and down again and shook her head. ‘Look at the creature,’ she said, ‘super-stud himself! You can tell that he’s an unstoppable sex machine. Is it any wonder I can’t resist him?’
‘Ach, Chrissie,’ Sorley Og would wince theatrically, covering his tender, sensitive ears with his hands to protect them.
From Gannet there was never any reaction; he had heard the same remarks made for as many years as he could remember, and nothing had ever changed.
9
On the old road to Acarsaid, just past Mary, Star of the Sea Roman Catholic Church and its chapel house at the top of the Brae, lived MacEwan Black Rock. He was Sorley Mor’s cousin, son of his father’s brother who, like Sorley Mor’s father, had died young. MacEwan Black Rock was now the local carpenter and undertaker. He lived with his widowed mother, Thomasina, or Auntie Tam, as she was known, and his two spinster sisters and brother, a bachelor like himself, in the family home. The sisters suffered from religious mania, or rather the local priest, Father Mick Houlihan, suffered from their mania. The eldest was Bernadette Agnes Theresa who, thanks to a little clever wordplay on her initials, was otherwise known as Batty, while the youngest of the family, Madeleine Anne Dolores, rejoiced in the nickname of Maddy, though if either sister ever saw the joke they never showed it.
Even in her early sixties, Batty, the eldest, regarded herself as a virginal flower waiting to be plucked, so she had never stopped dressing to attract Mr Right. Her hair was hennarinsed, but badly, so that it stood above her increasingly wrinkled face and her thick, upswept, diamanté-studded glasses like a red warning flare. And not for Batty the comfortable clothes most women regarded as an advantage of getting on in years: she had somehow managed to lay hands on a constant supply of the kind of padded bra that had been popular in the 1950s among Hollywood ‘sweater girls’, an era Batty had always identified with and found difficult to move beyond on account of its undeniable glamour. As other women of her six decades had long since surrendered their pertness to gravity, the round-stitched, rigid, conical cups of Batty’s garments of torture ensured that her breasts remained in all their volcano-shaped glory, hoisted up and strapped into position just under each collarbone. Those of a robust disposition would occasionally wonder aloud what happened when the tortured breasts were set free at night, a thought usually banished with a slight shudder.
Batty’s dress sense had never changed, only the colour schemes: she sported a high-necked sweater, tightly worn, all the better to appreciate the twin peaks it strained over, a broad, tight, shiny black belt with a large buckle, and one of many skirts she had worn during the rock ‘n’ roll era. These were of a very full design and had been intended to be worn with numerous net underskirts, so that as a girl spun round while dancing to Bill Haley and his Comets, Eddie Cochran
and the Big Bopper, the skirt would reveal more than her parents would have wished but, because of the underskirts, look feminine at the same time. Then the 1960s had come along and Batty had made one of her few concessions to the age by drastically shortening her skirts so that they ended inadvisably and disturbingly on the wrong side of mid-thigh. Doing away with the length also meant losing the weight of the material that kept the skirts down, and in their minuscule incarnation they flounced and flew about in an alarming way that she was sure enhanced her allure. The effect was completed with black tights and very high black stiletto court shoes but, as had often been mentioned with another shudder, thanks to her occasional concession to fashions other than those of the 1950s, she at least spared the populace the sight of stockings and suspenders.
To complete the picture Batty had remained true to the make-up of 1950s Hollywood: dramatic black eyebrows, mascara so stiff that the lashes threatened to fracture with each blink of the eye, ruby-red lipstick, lashings of Max Factor pan-stick covered with face powder and rouged cheeks, all as precisely applied as the ravages of age would allow on her complexion. It was hardly surprising that Batty rarely failed to draw attention, even from those who saw her on a daily basis. Being pure of soul, however, she interpreted the looks of horror and astonishment as gazes of admiration, as tributes to her undoubted beauty and sex appeal, though she had to admit that that part of her allure was something over which she had no control: it was God-given, obviously, even if thus far there had been no takers. Whenever she noticed a look of bemusement she would pat her head, smile coquettishly while firing a glance in reply from the corner of her eye, and blush, giving the impression that, though she knew she was irresistibly attractive, this was both a great natural attribute and a great burden at the same time.
Her sister, Maddy, was entirely the opposite, in that she had been a younger version of her mother all her life. She had worn variations on the basic uniform for as long as anyone could remember: dark, pleated skirt, lace-trimmed blouse with Peter Pan collar, cardigan, single string of fake pearls and hair in a bun, even if it had once been known as a French Roll. Maddy had been one of nature’s maiden ladies since birth, as understated as her sister was overstated. No hint of Max Factor pan-stick had ever touched her features, no block of mascara had ever been worked into a frenzy with a little brush and spittle then applied like black cement to her lashes, no rouge had ever graced her cheeks.
The one thing they did share, however, was religion. Visitors were expected to cross themselves and genuflect as they entered the Black Rock house, making full use of the holy water conveniently situated at the front door, to cross themselves and genuflect whenever they passed a holy picture or statue within the house – and there were many of both – and cross themselves and genuflect as they left the house once more. There were other complicated rituals while inside, involving more crossing and kneeling, as well as bowing of the head when the name of some deceased member of the family was mentioned; the same motions had to be gone through on hearing the Lord’s name or those of the many saints who were regularly referred to in conversation. Prayers were, of course, said before as much as a glass of water could be consumed. The sisters and their antics ensured that few came to call without good and urgent reason, but Father Mick was at a distinct disadvantage. If the sisters weren’t chasing after him to bless some newly acquired religious medal, picture or rosary, they were reminding him of his duty to visit their mother regularly to hear her confession and give her the sacraments.
‘I’m there every few days. They hold me hostage till someone else comes to the door and I take the chance to bolt for freedom while the door’s open,’ he’d complain to Sorley Mor, demanding that he do something about his relatives. ‘I mean, what in hell can an old woman like that have to confess, tell me that? They’re your family, Sorley Mor, take pity on a man of God and crack the whip with them!’
‘What do you think I am?’ Sorley Mor demanded. ‘Ring-master of the whole MacEwan circus?’
‘You know damned well you are!’ the priest replied accusingly.
‘Language,’ Sorley Mor said in a hushed voice. It was a ploy he’d been using against his wife, Chrissie, for years and, though it had never worked with her, he still thought it might with the priest.
‘Language be buggered!’ protested Father Mick, proving him wrong. ‘By the time I escape from Black Rock my head’s spinning so much with all the crossing and kneeling that I can barely walk straight.’
‘Away with you, Father Mick,’ Sorley Mor replied calmly. ‘It’s the falling-down stuff does that to you. Everybody knows that.’
Batty and Maddy’s younger brother, Archie, a tall, thin chap with a shock of wiry red hair and an even redder complexion, was Acarsaid’s only roadman. His various duties entailed clearing drains, sweeping the seaweed and pebbles off the road after storms – and stones and mud when heavy rain had caused minor landslides – as well as patching the odd pothole. It was common knowledge that you could pass Archie, otherwise known as Haffa, leaning on his shovel as you drove past on the road to far-off Inverness, and come back three days later to find him in exactly the same position on exactly the same piece of road. He was, in his cousin Sorley Mor’s words ‘a professional and highly qualified shovel-leaner’, though he constantly protested that he had just been taking a rest when so-and-so happened to pass and came to a false conclusion.
‘You know fine, Sorley Mor,’ Haffa would complain, ‘that it’s my left knee.’
‘Your left knee be damned,’ Sorley Mor replied. ‘It’s a shovel! We all know a shovel when we see one, Haffa, you can’t fool us, man.’
‘That’s why I occasionally have to lean on my shovel,’ Haffa explained patiently, ‘because I hurt my knee in the line of duty years ago and I need to rest it.’
‘First I’ve heard of it,’ Sorley Mor replied.
‘That’s because you never listen,’ said his cousin peevishly. ‘I hurt it, then the years of standing in ditches full of water—’
‘You stand in ditches of water over your knee?’ demanded Sorley Mor incredulously. ‘Well I’ve never seen that.’
‘You’ve never looked,’ said Haffa. ‘As far as you’re concerned, Sorley Mor, the only job in the world is the one fishermen do.’
‘True, true,’ Sorley Mor said, nodding to Gannet.
‘But other people work as well, and it’s possible to get injured in ways that don’t involve catching fish. Well, that’s what happened to me, and if I was the type to sue I could be rolling in money by now, but I’m just a decent, hard-working roadman.’
‘And fully paid-up shovel-leaner,’ Sorley Mor added.
Haffa gave up. There was no reasoning with Sorley Mor when he was in that mood and, come to think of it, he always was. Not only did he have to stand above knee-deep in water-filled ditches, but he also had to use the shovel occasionally for another part of his duties. Haffa was also the local gravedigger. This auxiliary occupation had earned him the nickname Digger for a time, until an unfortunate occurrence in his youth. Digger had had a heavy night in the Inn and next day felt particularly unwell and in just the right state of fragility for a spot of serious and uninterrupted shovel-leaning. As luck would have it, though, an elderly local man had died that morning and Digger was called upon to dig a grave. To make matters considerably worse he was faced with making room for the burial by first removing an older coffin from the grave and digging a deeper hole before replacing it, thereby making room for the latest dearly departed to be buried on top.
Feeling somewhat the worse for wear, and necessity being the mother of invention, Digger had come up with a solution that he promised himself would be a one-off. The coffin he had to remove was very old; therefore, he reckoned, there would be little left inside, so to save time and effort he hit on the brilliant idea of collapsing it in on itself and heaving it over the wall that ran along the back of the cemetery. For now, he promised, till later. Behind the wall was the scrub of the hillsid
e and nothing else, so no one ever went there because there was nothing to do or see. He would, he told himself, rectify the situation at a later date by reburying the flattened coffin in the plot that, after the forthcoming burial, would be full anyway and would never be reopened. So what would be the harm and, more importantly, who would know?
But in his youth Digger had a few such heavy nights at the Inn, and not only did he keep putting off the reburying of that first old coffin, but he resorted to the same shortcut more times than he chose to remember. It all came to a head the day a dog was spotted running through the village carrying a human skull in its mouth, and when followed went immediately back for more. The results of Digger’s handiwork were soon discovered behind the wall. Digger was penitent and probably more shocked than the other villagers by the pile of ancient bones he had consigned to their second resting place; in his mind he had decided that he had only heaved one or two old boxes over the wall. ‘He’s not a proper digger at all,’ said one wag. ‘He’s damned well only half a digger!’ and thereafter Digger was renamed Half a Digger, a name that had become corrupted over the years to Haffa.
Haffa continued as the local gravedigger, though. For a start no one else wanted the job, and besides, he and his brother, MacEwan Black Rock, the carpenter and undertaker, made an undeniably good team in the task of burying the dead. They worked hand-in-hand, so to speak, and it would take years for another gravedigger to build up such a seamless partnership with Black Rock. The only remnant of the hangover lapses of his youth were his nickname and Sorley Mor’s occasional demand that, when his time came, Haffa should dig him a hole decently deep enough to constitute value for money or face Chrissie’s wrath – and no sane man, Sorley Mor told his cousin, wanted to do that.
The eldest son, Black Rock himself, was a lesser version of Sorley Mor in every way. Smaller in height and build, he had dark hair, though not as dark as his cousin’s, the same blue eyes only less so, and mainly he had so little conversation that he simply nodded or shook his head when the need arose. He was, as even Gannet had been moved to observe, ‘a bit like the skipper with the sound turned off’; until that was, he had something specific to say, when he would indulge in so many niceties before getting to the point that people would run off screaming rather than listen to the end. The four Black Rocks were separated from each other by a year, and they were all eccentric.
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