Their mother, Auntie Tam, on the other hand, was perfectly normal and respectable, though it was said that MacEwan Black Rock’s second-sight had been inherited from his mother’s father, who had also been a carpenter-undertaker in her native Barra. Once, when he had been about five years old, MacEwan Black Rock had been taken to see a neighbour who was at last on the road to recovery after a long illness, and the boy had looked at her in bed and asked who the baby was. ‘What baby?’ his mother asked. ‘The one lying beside her,’ he had replied, only there was no baby there. ‘And what’s that tapping?’ he demanded; only there was no tapping. Almost a year to the day later the neighbour had died in childbirth with her baby, and when MacEwan Black Rock had been taken to pay his last respects, he had looked at the child in the coffin beside the neighbour and said, ‘There it is. That’s the baby that was in bed with her.’
After that he always heard the noise of a hammer tapping nails into wood if someone had died or was about to die, as long it was no one of his own blood, and these days he started making a coffin as soon as he heard it and before being told there had been a death. No one in those parts questioned it, they had seen it often enough to know that he simply heard something they didn’t; they saw nothing supernaturally spookie in it. ‘I heard MacEwan Black Rock tapping away as I passed by,’ they’d say conversationally to each other. ‘I wonder who it will be?’, and sure enough in due course Haffa would be seen digging in the cemetery high above the village.
10
There were many other MacEwans in Acarsaid: MacEwan My Haven, a trio of them at High Trees, Green Trees and Monkey Puzzle, and, of course, MacEwan Clinker Dell, who considered himself a bit of a wag, even if no one else did. However many MacEwans there were in the vicinity, though, it was traditionally accepted that there could be only one Sorley Mor and Sorley Og at a time, and thus far fate had fallen in with convention to make sure there always was. The present Sorley Mor, teller of tall tales to innocent tourists, had carried the name for a long time, after his father had died in his forties, at least breathing his last in his own bed in his own house, whereas his father had been lost at sea. So it was that Sorley Og had become Sorley Mor a quarter of a century ago when he had been in his early twenties. But it sat easily on him from the start. He was the most respected man in the village, and being the senior living Sorley was only one reason that he was called Sorley Mor; it was a measure of his standing, too, because he was a big man in every respect, apart from height, of course. He would do anyone a good turn without waiting to be asked, even those who might have done him a bad turn in the past, everyone knew that (apart from tipping them off when he was catching serious amounts of fish, of course, only a fool would do that), not only in his home village but in further away ports, too. He was, as the villagers said with proprietorial pride ‘always spoken well of’.
For him being the skipper meant more than owning a boat and sitting in the big swivel chair in the wheelhouse. It meant doing the job properly. He was safety conscious: the accident that had killed his friend, Quintin Nicolson, had seen to that. It had been bad luck, unavoidable, a random occurrence, nothing anyone could have done about it; all these things were said whenever the terrible tale of Quintin’s death was recounted, but Sorley Mor had taken the view that if simple bad luck could kill a man, then you had to eliminate every known risk to keep bad luck at bay. Aboard the Wanderer he enforced strict discipline; the sea was not to be treated lightly, he would say. Regardless of how long they had been fishing or how many generations of their families had been fishermen, the sea wasn’t interested in family histories and it owed them nothing, and he would point to a framed tract on the wall of his house on MacEwan’s Row, as well as the wheelhouse of the Wanderer.
The Sea
I don’t want your manmade ships defiling my undying beauty,
But if you must, then the effort must be of your best;
Nothing else will serve.
If you build a ship there must be no error,
Or I will find it out and will punish.
Or the men who serve there must be no error,
Or I will find it out and will punish.
Anyone with a sloppy attitude would not have been invited to work on the Wanderer, and he made sure that safety requirements were met by both the boat and his crew; even though he already knew they were the best available without the certificates, he made sure every man had them. Drink was never a problem on the Wanderer: Sorley Mor had never allowed even the smell of it on board, a rule that was never broken, however merry a time he and the men had in the Inn when they came ashore. Every piece of equipment was regularly inspected, and at sea the Wanderer’s two-hourly look-outs were exactly that – they stayed awake on watch and they had the knowledge and experience to know what they were looking for. When Sorley Mor had first started fishing at the age of fifteen there were few men who carried life insurance because the big companies loaded the premiums against them, citing their hazardous occupation. As the men never knew how much they would take home, or in some cases how long they would be employed, many did without. Without making any announcement about it, Sorley Mor, being the man he was, arranged accident and life insurance each year for his crew through the local fishermen’s association. A responsible skipper might have done the same and deducted it from the wages of his crew, but Sorley Mor chose instead to absorb it into the running costs of the boat rather than ask his crew to pay for their own insurance. These were some of the reasons why he was acknowledged as the best skipper, and why his men stayed with him over the years – though they never mentioned the insurance arrangement, because they knew he would have found that embarrassing; after all, it was his feeling that he wasn’t doing anyone any favours, he was only doing what he knew to be right.
But Sorley Mor was more than a good skipper; he had the kind of personality that lit up company. He was full of humour, always ready with a wisecrack or a tale, and, truth to tell, when he was away fishing, the village seemed quieter without him. In conversations about the place gossip would be exchanged, opinions aired, then at some point someone would be sure to ask when Ocean Wanderer was due in. When she arrived and the catch had been sent to its various destinations, he and Gannet would make their way to the Inn before going home, as fishermen had done for generations. As they entered a chorus would shout out gleefully, ‘The Wanderer has returned!’ It was a silly thing to do, but over the years it had become a tradition, and then it had taken on all the connotations of a superstition, and no one would risk stopping it. Not that anyone believed any of the old tales any longer, of course, and especially not Sorley Mor himself, but on the other hand, it did no harm to touch every base, did it? And over the years Sorley Mor had tried every way to beat them at their own game, coming in by the back door, sending Gannet in on his own, even bursting in and shouting it out first himself, but the others had always found out what he was up to and lay in wait anyway, and in his heart he knew there was no way of avoiding that welcoming cliché – nor did he really wish to.
He was the very man to ridicule the hundreds of fishing superstitions, like never turning a boat in harbour against the sun, or always turning it sun-ways when first leaving shore. There were endless beliefs and all of them had adherents, even if they didn’t like to admit it. When going to collect a new boat it was lucky to start the journey when the tide was flowing, and unlucky if any unforeseen hitch meant returning without her. The making of a new fishing line had to begin on the outgoing tide and be finished without interruption, and meeting a red-haired woman or one who looked like a witch were bad enough portents of doom for a fisherman to turn and go back home instead of to sea. Some words were such bad luck that they couldn’t be said; rats were called ‘long tails’, for instance, pigs were ‘curly tails’, and salmon were ‘red fish’. Above all, whistling aboard a boat was forbidden, because it was sure to whistle up a wind.
Most of the reasons behind the superstitions and the forbidden words were lost in time, but
if any of them were inadvertently uttered on board, there were still those who would shout ‘Cauld iron!’ before grabbing the nearest piece of metal. In modern times they did it for a laugh, they said, but there was still an underlying relief that someone had said the words of absolution, if truth were told. Not Sorley Mor, though; superstitions were all nonsense, he would say, ways for bad fishermen to blame something else. His great delight was to visit a wheelhouse where the clock was on the left and the barometer on the right. ‘I’ve never seen that before,’ he would say, whistling quietly to himself, ‘they’re usually the other way about. But no matter, I’m sure you know best,’ knowing full well that, as soon as he left, the skipper would swap the positions of the clock and barometer. Then he would go to the next boat and say the opposite, just for the fun of it.
The other fishermen got their own back in the Inn, though: baiting Sorley Mor had become as much a preoccupation with them as baiting them had with Sorley Mor. The opening gambit was always about Eric, the Wanderer’s Glaswegian engineer, a mere warm-up for another attempt at wrong-footing the skipper. The hope was that if they got him to open fire about Eric he might find it harder to defend himself against their accusations of being secretly superstitious, especially as by the time they got round to that topic the skipper would have thrown enough down his throat to nudge his thought processes off-balance.
‘So you still haven’t persuaded that big man to join us, then?’ a voice would ask mildly.
‘Now, now, lads,’ Sorley Mor would counter, ‘I’m sorry to hear that tone in your voice, mocking a man who is big enough to admit to his failings.’
‘Eric’s definitely big enough, Sorley Mor,’ another voice would add. ‘What we’re still wondering after all these years is if he’s man enough.’
‘Would you listen to that?’ Sorley Mor would say to Gannet, shocked to the core. ‘I’ll tell you this now, if you were to say such a thing in front of Eric himself you might never draw another breath!’
‘I suppose,’ another would join in, ‘there’s nothing wrong with a man dancing to his own tune right enough.’
Sorley Mor would sip his pint in quiet contemplation for a moment before replying, a moment that would fool only someone who didn’t know the skipper, and here everyone did. ‘In my book,’ he would say in a measured tone, ‘it says a lot for Eric that he avoids the drink when it does him nothing but harm. There’s a few of you here could benefit from his example.’
‘Aye, aye,’ someone else would remark, ‘I’ll say that about the big man, he’s never been tempted to take a drink ever since he joined the crew of the Wanderer. Never a lapse in all that time. You have to admire the man.’
‘True, true, Colin,’ Sorley Mor would reply solemnly. ‘My, but it’s good to find a sympathetic, intelligent soul like yourself in this den of thieves.’
‘Must’ve been hard for him,’ Colin would continue quietly, ‘never being tempted off the wagon, never falling into step with the rest of the crew.’
‘Now that’s a funny way to put it, Colin,’ Sorley Mor would reply amiably after another sip, ‘but I see what you mean all the same.’
‘Big Eric always walks a straight line, not like the way the rest of you stagger out of the Inn, that slow, slow, quick, quick slow way,’ the tormentor would continue.
From Sorley Mor there came not a squeak by way of reply.
‘And are you not superstitious about having a sober man aboard, then, Skipper?’
‘Now, you know perfectly well that I have only sober men on board the Wanderer, and I’m also the sanest man in this port,’ Sorley Mor would reply, quietly and deliberately sipping his pint. ‘I am a man of the world and a man of science. I believe in none of your old wives’ tales, as well you know!’
Amused glances would be exchanged around the bar, then someone would remind Sorley Mor that he did believe in one superstition at least, ‘the man in the black coat’.
‘There you go again,’ he’d say smugly. ‘Minister, man. Priest. Look, the sky’s still where it should be! My, but you’re like a bunch of bairns telling scary stories to see who’ll cry first!’
Well, call them what you will, they’d say, but wasn’t it true, and they all knew it was, that he wouldn’t let one set foot on his boat? Furthermore, wasn’t it the God’s honest truth that when a man in a black coat, usually Father Mick, the local Catholic priest, was rumoured to be in the vicinity, Sorley Mor had been known to dash down to his boat and to stand, arms crossed, blocking the way, just in case the religious fellow tried to hop aboard?
‘Now that has nothing to do with bad luck,’ Sorley Mor would say, sipping his pint and determinedly ignoring the catcalls. ‘That’s to do with Father Mick himself. You couldn’t let him on your boat, you know that fine, because he’s never sober, and he’s not altogether a bad wee man, you wouldn’t want him to fall overboard, now would you?’
At this the Inn would erupt in jeers, which Sorley Mor would ignore with exaggerated dignity.
‘And if you lost Father Mick,’ he’d continue seriously, ‘you’d be sure to be held responsible by Rome. The Pope himself would likely sue you for every penny you had.’
‘Well I’ve never seen any man in a black coat on your boat,’ MacEwan Sandy Bay would say slyly amid the laughter.
‘Ach, you must’ve been looking in the other direction all your life!’ Sorley Mor would reply, his clear blue eyes staring straight ahead, two pools of total innocence. ‘Sure Gannet here has seen them himself, we’ve had enough ministers and the like aboard over the years to start a whole new religion all of our own!’ At that a huge shout of laughter would go around the Inn, as Sorley Mor sipped on, smiling to himself.
‘And I’m surprised at you, Sandy Bay,’ he would say, glancing at him, his blue eyes almost brimming over with hurt, ‘attacking a kinsman from behind. Aye, betrayal within the family is a hard cross for a man to bear, right enough. And what’s more, would you ever allow a minister to sit beside you in your engine?’
‘I don’t think one’s ever asked, Sorley Mor,’ replied the train driver, laughing.
‘Aye, well, there you go then!’ Sorley Mor said triumphantly. ‘A likely story if ever I heard one. And what are you doing in here anyway? Don’t you have any sheep to shear?’
‘And so, Sorley Mor,’ someone else would suggest quietly, ‘you’re saying you’d be happy to let one, apart from Father Mick, on the boat?’
Sorley Mor would take another sip of his pint, trying to convey an air of calm logic. ‘Put it this way,’ he’d say. Sip. ‘That’s something I’d have to decide at the time.’ Sip. ‘Depending on the cut of the man himself, you understand, and whether he was sober.’ At that another huge snort of derisive laughter would run around the company. ‘Now,’ Sorley Mor would demand, looking around as severely as he could and shaking his finger at them, ‘the question you have to ask yourselves is this, boys: how many sober men of the cloth have you seen?’
All around him the Inn would shake with laughter, some of it Sorley Mor’s own.
‘No, boys, I’m telling you.’ Sip. ‘Take my advice, steer well clear of religious men, they’re a risk you can never take.’
Whatever his views on letting him on board his boat, it was the priest’s name and telephone number that Sorley Mor gave in case of an emergency at sea. If something happened to a boat, the emergency beacon would activate and one of the coastguard stations would pick up the signal, identify the boat and call the emergency contact. Some skippers left the name of the local agent, Dougie Nicolson, with his home and office numbers, others wanted the Seaman’s Mission informed, but some wanted their wives to be contacted first. Nine times out of ten activated beacons proved to be false alarms and a wife would say wearily over the phone that the bugger wasn’t even at sea; he was sleeping by the fireside after coming home from the Inn.
‘I’ve given them your number,’ Sorley Mor told Father Mick one day, as they bounced about in his ancient Land Rover on the way to the In
n.
‘Well that’s helluva nice of you!’ said the little priest sarcastically. ‘And will you slow down? You didn’t think of asking me first?’
‘No,’ said Sorley Mor, screeching around a corner. ‘Sure, why would I do that? Would you have refused, and you a man of the church?’
‘I’m a man of enough responsibilities, that’s what I am,’ Father Mick grumbled. ‘I have your mad cousins at Black Rock to contend with night and day for a start!’
‘Ach, away with you,’ Sorley Mor laughed, changing gears so clumsily that Gannet groaned in the back. ‘Sure, what do you do with your time anyway? Say a few masses, drink too much communion wine, visit poor sick bodies that would rather be left alone, and listen to loads of codswallop that you call confession.’
‘I’ll have you know, Sorley Mor,’ said the priest, ‘that there’s quite a bit of serious sin in this village.’
‘They make it up to keep you amused!’ Sorley Mor retorted. ‘If they’ve got serious sin they go to confession in some other port. You know every voice in this place and they don’t want you staring at them with your wee beady eyes as they’re buying their papers from Hamish Dubh.’
‘I resent that,’ Father Mick said primly. ‘So. If someone calls and says you’ve disappeared, what am I expected to do? Row out and save you?’
‘My God, if I was depending on you saving me I’d have a long wait,’ said Sorley Mor. ‘Did you hear that, Gannet? Is the man not a comedian?’
The Last Wanderer Page 13