by Morris West
I found myself wondering what kind of woman he would wed to breed the wolf-sons he wanted, how Dr Kathleen McNeil would react if ever he set his roving sights on her. I wondered how he would handle a rival in business, or in love, and how far his ambition had or would set him outside the law. He had hinted at violence in the past, and the wolf pennant said that he took some pride in it. Then the wind began to freshen, coming in gusts and squalls out of the western fjords of Lewis. After that it was sail work and helm work and gunwales under, until we came to Stornoway.
It was near seven in the evening when we picked up our mooring in the inner pool. There was still light: a clear, cold light, alien and unwelcoming to a Mediterranean man. The water was grey as old pewter, the cliffs were black, the hills green and gold and purple, yet strangely melancholy in the waning day. The little town with its black roofs and its stuccoed walls, white and brown and yellow, seemed to huddle for protection under the battlements of a very Victorian castle. The whole place was wrapped in a suppertime quiet, broken only by the plaintive crying of the late gulls. The high ferry dock was deserted, and the sea-scarred trawlers moored around the basin were empty of men. The few folk on the streets had a closed, uninterested air, as if they had turned their backs on the sea and wanted no more of it for a while.
‘You’re thinking it’s a sad place,’ said Ruarri the Mactire.
‘Something like that.’
‘Well, it is. You look at the sea and you remember the lives it has taken and the lives it has left. Over there’s the lifeboat, which is a reminder that other lives will be taken tomorrow. Look at the hills and they’re lonely for people, for the lost ones and the gone-away ones as well.’
‘The Happy Isles?’
‘Aye, in spite of it all. Now we’ll have the sails off, if you don’t mind. We’ll fold ’em and bag ’em, so they can be dried ashore. Then I’ll show you where some of the happiness is to be found.’
I was bone-weary and beginning to be cold, but at least the work was a respite from my brooding. As I hurried through the last tasks, I heard Ruarri curse explosively. I looked up and saw a Customs cutter putting out from the dock and heading towards us. I asked him what was the matter. He did not answer, but stood braced against the rigging, angry and hostile until the cutter came alongside. I went on folding the sails, ears cocked to catch the dialogue.
‘I’d like to come aboard, Ruarri.’
‘Why?’
‘Routine inspection.’
‘The hell it’s routine, Duggie! It’s harassment and discrimination and you bloody well know it. I’ve been in home waters since I left here yesterday.’
‘I’d still like to come aboard. Don’t be difficult now, Ruarri.’
‘I’d still like to know why?’
‘Routine inspection. And you don’t come ashore till I’ve made it. What happened to your arm?’
‘I broke it.’
‘Who’s that on board with you?’
‘Fellow I picked up at Uig. A tourist. He sailed me back here.’
‘I’d like to talk to him too.’
I judged it was time to intervene, so I stowed the last sails in the bag and stepped down into the cockpit. The Customs man, a dark, narrow-faced fellow with a knowing eye, gave me a professional smile and a sloppy salute.
‘Sorry to bother you, sir. May I see your papers?’
‘They’re in my bag, in the cabin. I’ll get them for you.’
As I went below, the argument began again, low-toned now, but still vehement.
I am a wandering man and I have learned to travel light. I carry only a single suitcase which is never locked, because I lose keys and cigarette lighters and fountain pens with equal facility. I lifted the suitcase onto the bunk and snapped it open. The satchel which Ruarri had brought back from the trawler was lying on top of my folded clothes. I was startled and then angry. I unzipped the satchel and found it full of bank notes, English sterling and American dollars. Immediate dilemma: should I toss it onto the bunk and let Ruarri make his own explanations, or should I claim ownership and commit myself to a lie if the Customs man demanded to inspect my luggage?
I decided on a bluff, which might save face for both of us. I took the wallet containing my documents, shoved it into the satchel and clambered up on the deck. I made a small play of fumbling inside the satchel and presented the documents to the Customs man: passport, air ticket, contract for the hire of my car, a receipted bill from the hotel in Fort Augustus. For good measure I gave him the name of my host at Laxay. He allowed himself a grin at the completeness of the dossier, then handed the papers back to me.
‘Everything in order, sir. Hope you have a pleasant stay in the Isles.’ To Ruarri he offered only a curt command. ‘Now, laddie, let’s get this over with.’
He climbed aboard and immediately went below, Ruarri grumbling and cursing at his heels, while I sat in the cockpit, shivering and ill-tempered, with the satchel clasped on my knees. He must have done a very thorough job of inspection because it was all of twenty minutes before he came on deck again, announced, without rancour, that we were free to go ashore and left us.
Ruarri, cocky as bedamned, offered no excuse, only a grin and an offhand word of thanks. ‘I read you right, seannachie. That was quick thinking.’
‘To hell with you, Matheson! You’re a bastard in any man’s language.’
‘I don’t like that name.’
‘I don’t give a damn whether you like it or not.’
‘I could break your neck!’
‘Not with one hand, Ruarri. So let’s get the dory overside and I’ll row you ashore.’
‘You wouldn’t hear an explanation?’
‘No.’
‘A drink then, to end the good day?’
‘No, thanks.’
We rowed ashore in silence. We parted without a handshake on the deserted dock. I trudged the town for half an hour before I found an indifferent room and a stodgy meal. I tumbled into bed, wishing the back of my hand to Ruarri the Mactire and thinking I should probably go stark raving mad in the Happy Isles.
I woke to a late, bright morning. Rested and bathed and fed, I strolled out to take another, less jaundiced look at this place of my unknowing.
The wind had blown itself out during the night and the sea was mirror calm. The first trawlers were heading out through the harbour mouth, a rusty freighter was discharging coal and there was life in the streets and round the docks: early housewives with their shopping baskets, a gaggle of gossips outside the harbour master’s office, truckers loading baled wool for the spinners and the cottage weavers, a flurry round the inner pool as another group of fishing boats made ready for the sea. A small boy fished from an idle dory. A seal poked an inquisitive snout out of the water. An old man sat on a bollard mending a net. A pair of husky fellows were polishing the brightwork on the lifeboat.
Slowly I began to see a pattern to it all, a cool, austere, unraucous pattern that demanded respect, even if it did not provoke the swift rush of affection that comes in sunnier places. The buildings were foursquare and drab, but they were solid against the gales and the spindrift. The people were drab, too, at first glance, tweedy and homespun in dress, the women apple-cheeked and sturdy, the men sea-scored and slow of speech. But when I asked a direction they smiled and spent time and ceremony to help me. They were very private and surprisingly incurious about the affairs of a stranger. And yet perhaps it was not surprising, for the men of the Lews had emigrated everywhere, and most had served time as merchant seamen, and the little port itself had given wartime haven to sailors from all over the world.
But the fear of the sea was here, too, nourished by the memory of old disasters and new risks. Five hundred yards from the harbour lurked the Beasts of Holm, where two hundred home-coming soldiers and sailors had drowned within sight of shore. Once the herring fleet had numbered a thousand vessels; now it was down to fifty, and never a season passed without a score of calls to man the lifeboat, for a coaster in
trouble off the Flannans or a drifter blown helpless towards Cape Wrath. Small wonder that the joys of these folk were sober joys and their humour wry; small wonder that they had a healthy disrespect for those who lived their lives by the rule and rote of city men.
In the crowded lands, in the ant-heap cities of our time, men are made and unmade by men. They are ground and frayed and polished and shaped, or misshaped, by contact with each other, like stones in a turbulent river. The past does not dominate them because they are whirled along in the torrent of now. The land does not dominate them because it is buried under asphalt and concrete and their feet never touch it. The sea does not rule them because they neither smell nor hear it, as they tread their corridors of bricks and mortar like mice in a maze.
But in primitive places, in islands and uplands, man must adapt himself to the elements, to earth and water and changing air, else he will surely die. His past is always present to him, because the sap of knowledge and endurance must be drawn from it every day. His community life is less abrasive because it is more distended. It is more fraternal, more tribal, because it is closer to the mother earth; unified, too, by the sense of common risk. Even the place-names tell the same story. They celebrate, no ancient tyrants, no fustian politicians, no irrelevant idols; they celebrate the earth and the sea, and the fruits thereof: Sheep Isles and Salmon Run and Seal Beach and Holding of the Herds.
As the pattern became clear to me, I saw Ruarri the Mactire as part of it, a man at risk with the rest of them. His small, insolent knavery took on another meaning: the rover cocking a snook at the stay-at-homes, the privateer signalling up-you-Jack to the shore-bound merchants. I was sorry I had refused his explanation and his offer of a drink to end a good day. It was a small moment missed. There were too many such in too transient a lifetime.
It was mid-morning now. Time to find a taxi to drive me south for my car; time to telephone Alastair Morrison and tell him to expect me at Laxay. When I walked back to the hotel to pay my bill and collect my bag, I found Ruarri waiting for me. He handed me a set of keys and a small package.
‘I’ve had your car brought up from Tarbert. It’s parked behind the pub. I’ve paid the hotel bill because you were supposed to be my guest. And the package is a kind of apology. I hope you’ll accept it.’
What could you do with a man like that? One minute he was at your throat, the next he was courteous as a prince. My own words sounded grudging and restrained.
‘There was no need for this. I mislaid my own sense of humour last night.’
‘So we’ll have that drink sometime, eh?’
‘I’d like that.’
‘And maybe you’ll come to a ceilidh at my house when you’re settled down.’
‘Any time you like.’
‘Enjoy yourself now.’
We shook hands and I stood watching him as he strode away, jaunty and swaggering as if he owned the town and all the fish in the sea. I sat in the car and unwrapped his gift. It was a chessman, four inches high, carved from walrus ivory in the semblance of a Viking warrior. There was a note with it, written in a bold but literate hand:
‘This I found on my own land. They tell me it’s nearly a thousand years old. If you feel we can be friends, keep it. If not, send it back. Old things, like bastards, need a gentling in the house. Ruarri.’
I have him still. He stands on my table as I write these words, an old, yellowing midget man, relic of a heroic age, reminder to me of a brief violence, a wild loving and a long regret.
Chapter 2
THE lodge of Alastair Morrison of the Morrison stands on a finger of land jutting into the waters of Loch Erisort, which is itself a long fjord opening into the North Minch.
To get there you take the road south from Stornoway – a single track of weathered bitumen, winding through peat lands and rare small crofts. On this road you keep your wits about you because there is no passing room, so that if you meet another car, or one of those big travelling shops of the Islands Co-operative, then one of you must pull into a lay-by to let the other go. Since the road is like a switchback, you must count on a slow progress. If the mist is down, then you don’t drive it at all, unless it’s a Saturday night, when God cocks a kindly eye on the men of the Outer Isles and keeps them safe for a tongue-lashing in kirk on the Sunday. When you come to Laxay, which is the Islet of Salmon, you turn east along a roughish track with dark water on one side and low heather hills on the other. It’s the sheep that will hold you on this road – shaggy, spindly flocks with painted horns and rumps dyed red or green or yellow, so that each crofter may know his own after the gathering-in. Finally you will see a small hump with two chimneys poking above it, as though there were a house buried under the ground. On the other side of the hump, face to the sunrise, you will find the lodge.
It is a lonely place at first look, built of grey stone, with sharp gables and narrow dormer windows, and a rock wall raised high against the sea winds. In front there is a beach of dark pebbles, spread with sea wrack, and beyond the beach there is grey water and the treeless headlands of the southern shore. But, once inside the wall, everything changes. There is a garden such as you might find in Kent or Surrey, with rhododendrons and azaleas and Dutch tulips and dahlias and a vegetable plot for the kitchen. Hannah welcomes you at the door, small, spry, and ageless, with a wintry smile and a summery twinkle in her black gypsy eyes. A dumpling maid takes your bag and leads you to an upstairs bedroom, warm as new toast, smelling of wax and fresh flowers. There is a Bible on the desk and a shelf of other books for the secular man. When the dust of the road is off you, then you are taken down to a big room panelled in oak, lined with books and old prints, to be received by the kilted laird of the domain. He gives you the greeting of the Isles: ‘Ceud Mile Failte’, the hundred thousand welcomes. He puts a glass of malt whisky in your hand, sits you down by the peat fire and then reads you what he calls ‘the hierarchy of the house’.
‘First, there’s me. I collect the money, every Friday of every week, I listen to complaints, though I never do anything about them. I’m a mine of local history, mostly inaccurate. If I’m not fishing or sleeping or writing my memoirs, which no one will ever publish, I’m available for counsel, spiritual and temporal. If there’s anyone you yearn to meet, I’ll try to arrange it. If there’s anyone you want to avoid, I’ll do anything but lie for you, though I might interpret the truth slightly in favour of a paying guest. Then there’s Hannah, who swears she’s ten years younger than her birth certificate, which states she’s sixty-nine. Hannah runs the lodge and the kitchen with two girls, who will be of no interest to you whatsoever. She serves breakfast at eight and luncheon at twelve-thirty and dinner at seven, and if you’re not here, you don’t eat – though I have known her leave a sandwich and a bottle of beer in the room of a favoured guest. Also she has the second sight, which she doesn’t like to talk about. But if she does talk about it, you’d be wise to listen. For the fishing, there’s Fergus the gillie and his lads. He’ll buy your gear and make your flies and give you more advice than you need for nothing. A bottle of whisky occasionally will halve the advice and double the catch. If you fall sick or break a leg, I treat you for nothing. So long as you’re well, you treat me to a whisky every night before dinner. And if there’s anything you’re not happy about, tell me now, because tomorrow will be much too late.’
‘How long can I stay?’
‘As long as you please.’
‘Can I entertain guests?’
‘If I like ’em, you can. If I don’t, you take ’em to Stornoway or Tarbert. Life’s too short to be putting up with bores.’
‘I might be a bore myself.’
‘If you are I’ll tell you. Which reminds me, there’s a certain Dr Kathleen McNeil coming to dinner tomorrow – a beauty like her mother, whom I once wanted to marry. You know her, I believe.’
‘We’ve met. Small world, isn’t it?’
‘Smaller than you know in the Lews, laddie. I also had an inquiry about you fro
m one Duggie Donald of Her Majesty’s Customs and Excise.’
‘The hell you did!’
‘No need to worry. I gave you a character reference that belonged to a far better man, so you’re quite safe – so long as you mind the company you keep.’
‘Meaning Ruarri Matheson?’
‘Meaning you’re a stranger with things to learn. Nothing more.’
‘Therefore…’
‘Therefore you tread lightly and talk softly and say always a little less than you know.’
‘And what should I know about Red Ruarri?’
‘Nothing that can’t wait till the cheese and coffee. Come along now, else lunch will be cold and Hannah will be giving us the sharp edge of her tongue.’
Luncheon was a lordly meal, served with fussing reverence by Hannah herself. There was barley broth and salmon from the loch, a rack of lamb with a good Burgundy to match it, a raspberry tart with cream, and a tray of cheese to take away the last hunger pangs. There was time, too, to enjoy it and to savour the talk of a man happy in himself and in his heritage.
‘…The lodge belonged to my father, who was a doctor like myself – except that he never travelled much, but spent all his life in the Lews. He served the hospital in Stornoway and he died there one morning on his rounds, which is a good way for any man to go. The land is poor, as you see – only good for sheep and the digging of peat – but the fishing is some of the best on the island. All the good land is to the west, where the sands have piled up over the centuries and the grass of the machair is sweet. You can run cattle there and grow hay and clover and vegetables. You take a buffeting in the winter, but in the good times the rain is soft and the air is warm off the Gulf Stream… The people? Hard to know at first, because they hide behind the Gaelic and the clan life is tighter than you might imagine. You never have to lock a car or a house in the Isles, but you mind your manners on Sunday because they’re all Sabbatarians and it’s bad form to be seen fishing or driving while honest folk are walking to church in their best clothes… Religious they are, and mystical with it, though a funeral will shock you because they’re very matter-of-fact about dying; and, before the pill and sometimes after, a girl was apt to be pregnant at the wedding. The level of learning is high because there’s respect for it and it’s the only way to a job on the mainland, if you’ve a mind to go. Violence? None. It’s a safe place to be young in, a good place to be old in… None the less, there’s a sadness here because what we’re seeing is the slow dying of a whole Celtic culture. The dying began at Culloden and went on through the Clearances, but now there are other executioners: television and radio and tourism, and the brutal economics of the twentieth century. The small language has to die eventually. The small people has to be absorbed or shrink back and back into a sterile enclave. It’s no bad thing in the end, I suppose. Man has to adapt or lapse into extinction like the dinosaurs. But it’s still a sadness because there’s no one big enough to rally the Celts and give them an identity again, and the time is past, anyway.’