Rumours that Elizabeth hired this hit-man at a cut-price, cut-throat rate are hotly denied by the family, who claim to be instead in mourning and shock over the loss of such a well-regarded husband and father. Allegations, too, that the sound of hysterical laughter has emerged time and time again at indecent intervals from the household have also been utterly refuted by all concerned …’
When Alexander read this note, he crumpled, remembering that Elizabeth had been going on for ages about visiting her long-lost relatives in Northern Ireland. She had also been talking for even longer about going to see the Cliffs of Moher.
7
In his rage,
he spat out plumage,
disgorging feathers
that had nested deep inside
gut and nerve for decades,
lining lips with down,
the gaps between his teeth
wedged and filled
with the fine frill of wing or tail
those who’d provided food had failed
to strip clean from a carcass.
And the flight of words
he’d swallowed;
the quills he might have used to scribe
thoughts that clouded mood
and obscured the signals of distress
sent out
while sorrows flocked around him.
The talons, beaks
which he weighed on tips of fingers
and imagined he were using
to wreak revenge on enemies
and tear at souls and flesh.
8
Not long before his final day,
language deserted him,
the meaning of vocabulary
flocking like a host of seabirds
from his head’s vacant nest.
The word for ‘wall’
blending with the term they used for ‘cliff’.
A fireside ‘chair’
referred to as a ‘skerry’.
His children becoming ‘cormorants’
diving on a ‘carpet’
transformed into the ‘sea’.
His shoes
became the ‘gannet’s skin’.
His ‘food’ confused
with ‘fulmar’.
And in his dying moments,
he yelled and ranted
at his bedside light,
calling them to douse
the ‘cruisgean’,
preserve their precious oil,
wondering why they wasted it
when they could sit in darkness,
welcome the gathering night.
Alexander’s Father
Alexander’s father could not bear life away from the sea. He wanted to be surrounded by it, the way it had been during his early years on the islands, to wake in the morning and be aware that the waves were trying to tunnel and grind through the long stretch of Dun before him or lash their spray against the heights of Conachair that stood tall behind his back.
Alexander’s father could not bear life away from the sea. Not even the long stretch of a peninsula could compensate for the thought of it circling all around him with its tides. He woke up each morning considering the absence of the ocean from one side of his being, feeling a dull ache that whichever way his feet pointed, there was a thin stretch of land still at his back.
Alexander’s father could not bear life away from the sea, failing to settle anywhere in the mainland of Scotland, England or Wales. Neither the Ardnamurchan Peninsula nor the Norfolk Broads left him feeling contented. One was bordered by too many hills and mountains; the other too flat and dull. At the same time, he resented the pull that the sea had on him, its endless spell. It distracted his thoughts as forcefully and punctually as the coming of the tide. He would spend endless hours hating the effect it had on him, how the swell and fall of its currents would not let him go.
Alexander’s father could not bear life away from the sea. It was for this reason that he began to hate his country, remembering how a boat had taken him and his belongings from its shoreline many years before. He began to spend his time with men called Antony, Kim, George and Donald who had also learned to dislike the nation to which they belonged. He would talk to them about life on the island, how the people there had shared their worldly goods together, how no man had lorded over all.
Alexander’s father could not bear life away from the sea. One September morning, he stepped on a boat that took him across the sea to Hamburg. From there, with forged papers in his inside pocket, he took a long train journey across the continent of Europe, through Warsaw and Minsk, across bridges and mountains. Eventually it took him far away from Kronstadt and the Neva, St Petersburg and Moscow, locations where the existence of the sea was sometimes talked about or whispered and into the bleak, flat taiga where no one knew about the existence of the tide. He learned in that place how to brew cinnamon flavoured tea, warm chilled fingers on a samovar and to relish the taste of huckleberry or blackberry jam on his tongue. He discovered, too, that if you looked hard into the eyes of those he encountered, he could see all the sorrow and melancholy that was part of their being, recognising a sadness similar to his own, of being one doomed not to be surrounded by the tides any more, being miles away from the ocean they wanted to wash round their entire being…
Alexander’s father could not bear life away from the sea. It was why he began a new life out on the taiga.
Everyone he came across shared a similar story there…
Exile II / Fogarraich II
The St Kildan Circus
1
Some never felt at ease among the mainland trees,
setting up, instead, a travelling circus, mastering the high trapeze,
silks, aerial hoops and tumbling; one spinster even began
unpinning her bun’s cluster to be dangled by a hair-hang
rig as she twisted in her leotard high above all those
who came to watch and cheer them in Montreal, New York, Montrose…
An amazing array of acrobats, they astonished spectators, too,
with the tight-rope and lasso, imagining they were whirling tight loops through
storms gusting across Conachair, fastening knots
taut around a promontory, each jutting slab of rock,
while juggling a clutch of fulmar eggs, aware that if they fell
there would be so much more splattered than just yolks and shells.
2
Of all the people in the world, there was little doubt that those who lived on the island were best at jumping.
This was due to their amazing techniques. These were mainly developed during their years of hunting seabirds on the island. There they learned to make a quick sideways dash for the cliff, stack or skerry where they hoped to catch their prey, running briefly on the side of the rock while plucking the pick of guillemots, fulmars or razorbills from their nests. Grabbing their necks, they would tuck them below their belts while they raced back to their vessels.
It was a skill that stood them in good stead. Once they had left the island, people began to hear of their ability to charge up the face of rock and employed them in various tasks to which their abilities were suited. Experts examined their physiology and sought to explain this, noting the size and density of their ankles. They believed they were spring-heeled, able to hurl and propel themselves further than others due to the strength and elasticity of this part of their foot.
As a result, they were often employed to clean the windows of tenements and other buildings in Scotland’s cities. They would place a toe or finger in the crucial spot if a crack ever appeared in a newly constructed Hydro dam, hanging there until their fellow-workers arrived with cement to fill in the hole. They also worked for the Northern Lighthouse Board, giving a swift but effective rub to the glass that surrounded and reflected their lights. Clearly there were advantages in using them in this way. As they did not require harnesses or any of the other paraphernalia normally needed for these tasks, they w
ere much less expensive than any of their competitors. They also had ingrained within them – since birth – an extraordinary tolerance for bird-shit.
Their legacy is still seen today, where young people sometimes indulge in parkour or free-running, vaulting or racing up the sides of buildings in our urban landscape.
There will be some who claim that this activity was invented in France.
They are wrong in this. It has its origins on the island…
3
Some of the islanders had a talent for sniffing the wind…
With one deep breath, they could tell the force of a wind that was about to arrive on their shores and in what direction it would be blowing. Such was its value that it was a skill a few islanders even pretended to possess, desperate to gain honour among their companions. Angus B, for instance, would sit in the Parliament and describe the arc of an imaginary storm blowing in from Iceland or Greenland and predict what benefit it would bring to the population of the island.
‘It will give us a little prosperity,’ he would declare, ‘if we take advantage of it.’
He, however, was invariably wrong. The next day would arrive and their world would be calm and peaceful. They would sit in their homes, reflecting that prosperity would not be arriving in their direction this particular morning. Unless they altered their attitudes and stopped listening to the likes of him, they decided, it would not be arriving on the island any particular morning in the near future.
Yet there were others who had a real gift. They knew when a good south-easterly or westerly wind was about to come. They would head out to the stacs on their boat then, hoping to reap a clutch of gannets, guillemots or fulmars from its cliffs. It was at moments like these, for instance, that all the talents of the islanders would combine. They would run the length of the boat before jumping, knowing fine that, coupled with their natural ability, the full force of the wind would lift them onto a ledge of a stac. When they were aloft, they would reach out and grab the necks of young seabirds, holding them in their hands as they landed in their vessel once again. Sometimes they would repeat this process with a rope in their grip, fastening this to a ledge of rock during their flight. This would be used to draw their vessel closer to the edge of the stac.
The greatest achievement of all in this field was the day that Ruaraidh Luath landed on top of Stac Lee while powered by a force eight wind. So astonished were the others by his accomplishment that not a single gannet was reaped from the rock that day…
4
‘We only used ropes to amuse and entertain our visitors,’ the old man cackled into the tape recorder. ‘It’s what they all expected, these idiotic circus tricks. After all, it’s what that damn fool historian, Donald Donald, led them to believe happened on the island. The truth is we rarely went over the cliffs that way. Only a complete clown would risk the likes of that.
‘No. Instead we caught seabirds in places like Oiseaval, Stac Lee, Conachair by using stepping stones that were fixed hard and firm into the cliff-face, leaping from one to another. Sometimes we’d walk down them, searching for shags, guillemots and razorbills found near the shoreline. At other times, we’d clamber up them to catch the birds – like the gannet or puffin – that nested near the top. The old men would spend every dry day in winter making sure these rocks were set right, that they hadn’t tumbled or given way through the force of wind or wave during the seasons they were lying idle.
‘We even had a song that used to be on our lips as we jumped from one stone to the next. It was to the tune of the Lewis Bridal Song or Mairi’s Wedding. Perhaps I can get the words right…’
‘Step we bravely, on we go,
Wide ankled and prehensile toed,
Up and down the stepping stones,
All for love of seabirds.
To make sure our feet don’t step
On scree or scarp or edge of cliff,
There’s one fixed in each rise and dip,
Just to harvest seabirds…’
Gastronome in Exile
That gourmet savours gannet,
relishing the salt meat and juice
of the fabled solan goose.
He’s fond, too, of the fulmar,
finding in its fulsome flavours
much that is familiar
when he dines out at the Dorchester,
dipping crackers into dishes filled
with Imperial Beluga Caviar.
And he wants his fill
of flambéed razorbill,
to see it flame
beside him on a plate,
ringed by a nest of saffron rice,
asparagus,
some slices of braised puffin,
guillemot glazed with claret,
washed down by a magnum
of Bollinger Blanc de Noirs ’97 or ’98…
Bon-vivant who loves cormorant.
An epicure in exile whose taste-buds
restore his joie de vivre
each time that he settles down
to a well-served spread of birds.
An Exiled St Kildan Observes
Cormorants and Shags
On Sunday he watched his former prey
prepare themselves for Sunday prayer,
rattling their ancient joints,
shaking out their sodden coats,
letting the blast of morning air
blow through invisible umbrellas,
making sure their dark crests
were set just right for kirk,
after a quick dive through the mirk
and swirl of salt.
They’d come a long way to spend time
clinging to the old rock,
attending weddings, funerals,
baptisms where a chick is dipped
in water, braving storm and wave
for praise and worship
while most who live here wouldn’t step
across the nearest road.
St Kildan at the Zoo
When he steps near the aviary, he wonders
at the scarlet ibis, Eurasian eagle owl,
delights in the kookaburra,
crowned crane, vulturine guinea-fowl,
the rock-hopper penguins, too, which he compares
to seabirds flicking plumage dry on boulders
near his old home, stretching wings like feather boas
wrapped coquettishly round bare shoulders.
He also longs to set them free,
see sirocco doves flap high above
their cage, the black stork mingle with the business-crowd
stepping out to work. Yet most of all he’d love
to see these rainbow lorikeets claim for their own
each window-ledge and roof-top on these streets
and summon him to breakfast with the songs he’s missed,
a symphony accompanied by a chorus
of bright and luminous wing-beats.
St Kildan Exiles Observe Mainland Birds
When they saw their first crow,
they thought some birds had borrowed
the minister’s dark coat
and closed its final button
to allow no narrow slash of white
to choke them at the throat.
When they saw their first eagle,
they presumed that seagulls
had mastered the art of disguise,
clipped on a small hooked beak,
another set of malevolent eyes,
and worn a brown and russet coat
to conceal itself in heather,
before hovering high above them
within a clouded sky.
When they saw their first starlings,
they believed the birds
had smeared themselves with fulmar oil
to allow galaxies to glimmer and
to make up for the way they never soared
too far away from soil.
A miracle these early months in Morven,
where every nigh
t and day
seemed to fly up small reminders
of their lost lives in Village Bay.
Flight I / Sgaoth I
St Kildan Flight
Marissa thought Domhnall was no longer eating because Gormel had been whisked away by a great skua while her two children played in Village Bay.
‘It’s grief,’ she said, ‘Sorrow.’
He was refusing food he normally gorged upon, his round features becoming hollow. She frowned, thinking of how the bird passed over Domhnall that afternoon, choosing his smaller sister for prey.
‘A terrible ordeal…’
But then came the morning the skua returned, its wings hovering over the now slender, spindly boy before lifting him high.
‘Great!’ Domhnall shouted. ‘The bird can manage me now!’
Flight II
When the islanders heard about the plane crash, Iain recalled how old Fergus reacted when told of Lindbergh’s Atlantic flight. He had stood on the cliffs, looking beyond Stac Lee towards America, imagining the pilot’s slow progress through birds and clouds.
‘Madness! Men aren’t meant to be up there.’
Iain thought how right he was the night they heard of the Sunderland crashing into Gleann Mhor. The crew might have been saved if people were still on the island; their screams, seabirds and flames alerting the islanders to what had occurred.
‘Madness!’ he said, ‘We should be there still!’
Airmen
1
In years of conflict aircraft flew
higher than the angels,
bright ranks of planes
surging above seabirds,
circling clouds in halos
as they guarded friendly ships,
straining weather-eyes
for steel leviathans.
Rising in their black bulk
out from depths,
scanning seas for sight of Lucifer,
their dark and evil adversary,
searching for his prey;
The Guga Stone Page 5