Nurse, Come You Here!

by Mary J. Macleod

  Grabbing my coat and dragging on my damp wellies (wellies never seemed to dry thoroughly), I picked up my own torch and hurried towards the agitated lights. As I drew near, Fergie hailed me in stentorian tones.

  ‘You’ll be here to help, Nurse.’

  ‘What’s it all about, Fergie?’ I asked.

  ‘Do you not know? ’Tis wee Timmy has gone missin’.’

  I was horrified! Timmy McInnes was only three years old. A strong, healthy, lovable child, he was nevertheless a constant worry to his mother, Shona, as his well-developed taste for adventure led him into all sorts of trouble.

  ‘How long has he been gone and where was he last seen?’ I puffed as I tried to keep up with Fergie’s long strides.

  ‘Ach, he gave her the slip while she was milking the cow in the byre. ’Twould be about four of the clock, foreby. He has only a wee jumper on, too—no coat.’

  ‘Do we have any idea where to look? And where are we going at such a pace, Fergie?’

  ‘I’ve a mind to look on the shore,’ he paused, ‘before the tide comes in.’

  ‘Oh my God! The shore!’ We both began to run as the full horror of the situation sank in.

  Many others had the same idea and were searching about among the boulders, calling and flashing their torches. Shona was running to and fro, quite frantic with worry. She raced towards me.

  ‘Oh, Nurse! I’m that glad you’re here. Where is he? What will I do? I only took my eyes from him to milk Dollach. I did, Nurse! That was all.’

  She swayed as she wailed, blaming herself. But we all knew what a little monster Timmy could be. I put my arm round her shivering shoulders.

  ‘Can you think of anywhere or anyone that he might have talked about or shown some sort of interest in recently? Or perhaps somewhere that you have told him not to go?’

  ‘No, no. I canna think. He’d been playing near the byre when I went to milk the cow, and when I came out he’d gone. I looked in the house, all over the croft—nothing. So I ran to get everybody.’

  ‘Where is Jacky? Does he know?’

  ‘He’s away at the fishin’. On yon Klondiker that was here a week gone. He’s not had work for a whiley so he tried would they have him.’

  Archie shouted to everyone to say that some of the men were going up ‘the hill’ and we were to carry on searching the shore and nearby rocks. Of course, there were many hills around Dhubaig, but we all knew which one Archie meant: the steep, heather-clad, boulder-strewn area behind Shona’s croft, where the pastureland gave way to the open moor. On this moonless night, the windswept miles of high ground were only slightly less dangerous than the shore to a small child. The uneven surface was littered with deep holes full of peaty water and the wind would be biting.

  Mary and I decided to search through the various crofts, looking in byres and chicken runs and anywhere else we could think of. We had been over two crofts, when Mary suddenly stopped.

  ‘Hush,’ she whispered.

  Hardly breathing, we listened. We could hear the voices of the men on the hill and the sigh of the wind, but between these sounds, there was another that was only just this side of silence.

  ‘Timmy, Timmy. Where are you?’ We yelled again and again. Then we listened. Not a sound!

  ‘Where did it come from, do you think, Mary?’

  ‘I’m not knowin’, but I’m thinkin’ he must be in the village somewhere, or we’d no be hearing anything at all.’ She paused. ‘That’s if it was Timmy and not just the call of an animal or the squeak of a byre door … The Lord help us!’ she added somewhere between prayer and despair.

  Just then old Dolleena came bustling up.

  ‘Did you hear yon … ?’ She paused for breath: she was not built for rushing about looking for small boys.

  ‘Did you hear aught?’ she repeated.

  ‘Aye,’ said Mary, ‘But I don’t know where ’twas comin’ from.’

  ‘I think it was from the Kirk.’ Dolleena was already puffing her way up the muddy path, which led to a miserable tin hut, which stood on the outskirts of Dhubaig. She was referring to the squalid building which had once been a place of worship for Free Kirk folk, its doors having closed some years ago. Its roof was full of holes and the only visitors now were mice and birds. Could he be in that? What a grim, filthy place for a little boy! But I supposed that it was marginally warmer and safer than the open hillside.

  We toiled up the steep lane, calling as we went, but there was no repeat of that faint sound that we had heard. Had we heard anything? I was beginning to think that we had imagined it. As we came out onto the open moor, we could feel that the wind was strengthening. This would make the search more difficult, as voices would be carried away, and a little three-year-old’s cries might be drowned altogether. Drowned! Terrible thought! What was happening on the shore, I wondered?

  We approached the ramshackle building. It was in a worse state of repair than I remembered. Sheets of corrugated iron lay about, rattling as the wind caught them, and we could see the skeletal remains of the roof against the mottled sky. The door had gone altogether (it probably adorned someone’s byre now). There were creaking and whistling noises as we flashed our torches into all the wet, filthy corners and under the rotten pews.

  ‘All I can hear is the wind,’ I murmured. ‘There are so many holes.’

  Dolleena suddenly jumped as though shot. ‘Holes! Holes!’ she shouted.

  Mary and I looked at her in astonishment.

  ‘Of course! I know where he’ll be. Yes! Yes, I know.’ She began to run back down the path at a spanking pace for one so plump. Mary and I raced after her, not knowing in the least where we were going, but Dolleena had obviously had some sort of inspiration and I prayed that she really did know where Timmy would be.

  Back down in the village, we seemed to be going towards the Pritchard’s croft house.

  ‘But they aren’t there,’ puffed Mary to Dolleena’s back. ‘It will be bolted and barred like I don’t know what.’

  ‘Aye, I know,’ panted Dolleena. ‘Those folk are gey queer. Always locking doors!’

  The Pritchards were absent owners and we had only seen them about twice in three years, so it was perhaps not unreasonable to lock the door during these protracted absences. But it was a habit that was considered very odd.

  Over the low croft wall we tumbled and round to the back of the old house. There, low down in the wall, between the granite stones, was a little hole about a foot in diameter. It looked as though something (water perhaps?) had caused the collapse of some of the corner stones.

  ‘Here!’ shouted Dolleena. She bent down and called through the gap, ‘Timmy? Timmy? Are you in there?’

  To our immense relief, a little voice answered, ‘’Es. I’s here. I can’t get out.’ The sound of sobs reached us.

  Dolleena straightened up. ‘I’ll stay and talk to him to keep him from gettin’ feart. He must have got in through this hole and now he canna get himself out again. When you said something about “holes,” I suddenly remembered seeing him near that hole in the back wall this afternoon, and I know fine the place is near falling down. Run you both, and tell everyone that we have found him. The men will get him out.’

  Mary and I hurried away as Dolleena calmly sat herself down on the wet ground by the hole and began to chat to Timmy.

  Very soon Shona arrived, weak and wobbly with relief, and a small army of men marched up to the Pritchard’s house. Fergie had thought to bring a hefty-looking crowbar to prise the heavy old door open. Shona went inside and returned carrying a cold, tearful, but unscathed Timmy. Dolleena stood grinning from ear to ear, rightly pleased with herself.

  The next day, there was much activity at the Pritchard’s house, as the men mended the door and the hole in the wall. Dolleena was watching and turned to me as I slowed down in passing. She was indignant.

  ‘See, Nurse. If yon folk had not locked the door, the wee fellow could have got out no bother. Aye, the Pritchards are a weird lot, in
deed!’

  TWENTY-NINE

  From the Deep to the Sky

  Over the years, I have often wondered just how much of Barney Scott’s life story was real and how much sheer fantasy.

  He was a very English Englishman—tweedy, well-spoken—and he arrived on Papavray with a flourish. One day no one had heard of him, the next, he had appeared with a young wife, a baby son, two fishing boats, bought a cottage by the harbour, and was very much among us. He quickly made himself known in the pub where he regaled the locals with tales of his adventures.

  Archie was sceptical. ‘He’s no had time in his life to do all these things.’

  ‘He’s no tellin’ the truth,’ added Mary severely. ‘I’m thinkin’ ’tis all fractions.’

  What did she mean this time? We looked at her.

  ‘Well. ’Tis like books. Not true.’

  ‘Oh. Fiction!’

  ‘Aye,’ she murmured. ‘That’s what I said.’

  But I think at least a ‘fraction’ of Barney’s tales were true. He was older than he looked, being about fifty, had been born into inherited wealth and so had had the time and the money to indulge his many hobbies. He had climbed in the Himalayas with Chris Bonnington, explored jungles and deserts, and dived around the world with teams of naturalists taught by the great Jacques Cousteau.

  Did we believe all this? Having travelled a bit ourselves and met such people before, we could see that it was all possible for someone with his personality and background.

  I came to know the family because of the wife and little son. Penny, only twenty-one, lived in the shadow of her larger-than-life husband and was the scattiest young mum I had ever met. She had no idea about child care, cooking, or looking after a home. She muddled through her days, learning nothing as she went, so yesterday’s mistakes were repeated again today, tomorrow, and every day. Barney was vaguely aware of this and did some of the cooking but child care was a closed book to him. He had had nannies and maids when young!

  So Jimmy’s welfare was a concern. He was undoubtedly loved but his nappies were often not changed for many hours and frequently fell off, having been inadequately pinned; he was in the same pullover for weeks, he spent all his time barefoot in a cold, damp cottage, was never bathed, and had usually not been washed when I called in late morning. It was a miracle that he was a healthy, happy child!

  I visited twice daily for many weeks, teaching Penny how to care for him, what to feed him and even how to wash his clothes. Evidently, her mother, a formidable lady whom I met later, had looked after the child before the family moved to Papavray while Penny completed her Art degree at Manchester University.

  All this meant that I was often in the cottage and I wondered where all that Scott wealth had gone. There was precious little sign of it in their haphazard lifestyle and grubby surroundings.

  I was there when a boat engine was brought into the living room and dumped in all its oily glory on the carpet. Another day I saw Jimmy sitting beside Barney, who was holding forth to a visitor. Jimmy upset his cup of milk over the sofa. Barney’s reaction was to simply move to a dry seat and continue his conversation without a pause. The fact that Jimmy and the sofa were wet through escaped his notice.

  Nick had always been fascinated by the sea and the underwater world and quickly got to know Barney, offering to help land the catches and make himself useful in the boat. Soon he was accompanying Barney and Doug, the mate, on their trips, watching and learning various aspects of seamanship.

  This went on at weekends and in the holidays for some time and then Nick asked us if he could learn to dive. At that point we ascertained that Barney was a qualified diver and that he worked for a company based in Ullapool with a contract to supply scallops to the restaurants of the south. He came to see us and said that he was happy to teach Nick in return for his help on the boat. We were most concerned about safety, of course, but he assured us that rules were strictly adhered to—no unaccompanied diving: you always had a ‘buddy’ diving with you and you never strayed far from the boat where a careful watch was kept on the divers. With this, we had to be content and gave our consent. All seemed to be fine so far as we could tell.

  The only way to get a wet suit in those days was to make your own from patterns supplied by the companies making neoprene, the fabric. A huge parcel arrived from Aberdeen and much cutting and gluing kept us busy for some time, but finally, we had a fully kitted-out Nick who made his first dive (a shallow one) with Barney during the summer holidays.

  But fishing goes on all year round, and one black evening in November with snow on the hills, rain in the glens, and a bitterly cold wind blowing in from the Atlantic, we sat waiting for Barney to bring Nick the seven or eight miles home. They were usually in long before dark so we were already concerned when instead of the cheery ‘Hi’ as Nick breezed in, full of the day’s events, there was a scrabbling at the door and a muffled call ‘Mum. Dad.’

  I rushed to open the door and in staggered Nick, still in his wet suit. He was shivering uncontrollably as I urged him into the warm living room.

  ‘Couldn’t get out of this … too cold … hands … ’ came the croaking voice from between chattering teeth.

  It took George and me nearly half an hour to extricate him from all the clinging neoprene. He was so cold that he could not help himself or stay rigid for us to pull the wet suit off. Gradually, he emerged, almost navy blue with cold. I have rarely seen a living person that colour! Rubbed down with warm towels, wrapped in a blanket with a hot drink inside him, he began to look like Nicholas once more and was able to tell us what had happened.

  Apparently, the engine of the small open boat had failed while the three of them were still a long way from the shore so they had taken it in turn to row—not easy in the cumbersome wet suits of the time. Warm while rowing, but very cold while resting, they had taken about two hours to reach the shore. Doug immediately made for the pub and, because it was so late, Barney brought Nick straight home rather than changing in his harbour-side cottage. This was a very bad idea because the van had no heater!

  However, Nick recovered well with no permanent ill-effects, and the adventure grew in the telling.

  Nick was not happy with Doug, who was a coarse man much given to swearing and excessive drinking. He was often not fit to dive, but just about able to man the boat. Unfortunately, on Papavray, together with most of the Western Isles, there were many drunken skippers and mates on the fishing vessels, so we were thankful that Barney was virtually teetotal and was always in charge of the dive, only allowing Doug in the water if he was sober.

  But, as we know, the best laid plans …

  Nick had been diving for about a year now and was very useful to Barney, able to undertake the deeper dives to the sandy sea bed. Doug was getting more and more unreliable and rarely dived but still accompanied them to man the boat, often with a bottle of whisky beside him, leaving Barney and Nick to dive together.

  But one day, Doug being sober and Barney having a severe cold that was making breathing difficult, Doug was preparing to dive.

  Many years have passed since the incident that day, so I asked Nick to recall the event from his own perspective. This is what happened in his own words.

  * * *

  ‘It was a Saturday morning when I embarked on Barney’s fishing boat. Doug was supposed to be the back-up diver, as he was unusually sober. We sailed for about two hours to the dive site which, today, was over a sandy sea bed at the bottom of a steep reef near the mainland coast.

  ‘Doug and I had kitted up and completed all the usual safety checks—testing air supply and so on—when Barney announced that we were over the site. I entered the water backwards from the low part of the gunwale, gave the thumbs up, and swam a few yards away to be clear of the props before duck diving beneath the swell. I thought I heard a splash as Doug, too, entered the water.

  ‘I always enjoyed this moment of the dive when everything suddenly became tranquil as, apart from the faint hum
of the engine, the world that I had entered was silent and all embracing. I began my descent. Slowly the colour faded and the light became diffused as the depth increased. About a fathom above the sea bed, the details of the sandy expanse below me came into focus.

  ‘My first realisation that something was wrong was at this stage. I was still descending when I found that inhaling was becoming difficult—rather like trying to breathe with a pillow over your face. A few seconds later, I found that there was no air at all coming through. I remember looking at my contents gauge—it read over three quarters full, so, thinking that the demand valve must be stuck, I exhaled sharply to clear it. This had no effect and as I attempted to take another breath, there was no response from the apparatus. By this time I had exhaled almost all the air in my lungs. As I looked up towards the faint light about eighty feet above, I think I had already started to strike out for the surface.

  ‘The physics of diving are that as you descend, the air that you are breathing has to be pressurised to match breathing at normal atmospheric pressure, and the deeper you dive, the higher the air pressure that you require as the weight of the water above presses on your body. For every thirty feet that you descend, the pressure increases by one atmosphere (14.77 psi). On ascent, the reverse is the case, and to compensate for this you must exhale throughout an emergency ascent or risk the residual air in your lungs expanding as you rise towards the surface, possibly to such a degree that it causes ruptured lungs.

  ‘I recall a sudden and biting pain in my chest just before breaking the surface. The pain increased sharply as I took my first breath of fresh air. I remember looking towards the boat and seeing that Barney had spotted me. Then everything went black.

  ‘Evidently, Barney brought the boat round and he and Doug hauled me over the side while radioing the coastguard for assistance. (Apparently, Doug had not dived at all, as he had been violently sick when he hit the water.)