by Anne Cholawo
It seemed that I had managed to adapt to the rocky and uncertain directions of life on the island. I had learned so much from Jeanne and Tex and I had imbibed, voluntarily or otherwise, resilience from islanders past and present. It was enough to keep me going, but I was still living on the edge and on my own. Or so it seemed.
PART THREE
Chapter Twenty-Three
An end and a beginning
I need to go back in time to the summer of 1996. Since the Gordonstoun exhibition, Robert and I had kept in fairly regular contact. He and his family started coming regularly to Soay for summer holidays and stayed with me at Glenfield. After a few years, I got to know them all very well. Robert’s two children, Jemma and Luke, really seemed to enjoy being on the island; you could just see it in their faces.
However I was completely oblivious of the effect my friendship with Robert was beginning to have on his marriage. There were other major strains on the relationship that I knew nothing of, but I was too self-interested to consider my personal contribution to their problems. I had grown used to Robert’s reliability and his willingness to get involved in my projects. Without thinking, I would lean on him for support or practical assistance whenever I needed it.
We shared the same sense of humour and love of wildlife, and we were both totally enraptured by the beauty and uniqueness of Soay. We had so many interests in common and we were a good working team. Robert made me laugh all the time, just by being himself. He never let me down or made a false promise. We got on far too well. Our situation was becoming untenable and that summer of 1996 we had to face reality. During their holiday we came to a mutual agreement that it would be better for everyone if we broke contact with each other completely. Before the family left for the last time, Robert asked me to let him know if ever a property came up for sale on the island. Like me, he had been enthralled by Soay since the moment he first set foot on it and he could not bear the thought of never being part of it again. I promised I would but I did not expect to hear from him again.
About eight months later, I received a letter from Robert telling me the very sad news that his wife had left him and their two children at the beginning of the year. He was going through a difficult time emotionally, taking care of the children as well as his work commitments. He needed a supportive friend, which is not easy when you are seven hundred miles apart. However, we started a regular correspondence and made the occasional telephone call. Even then our relationship was hard to pin down. It was closer and deeper than an ordinary friendship, but that seemed to be it. Neither of us knew where it was going. We were like two boxers skipping around the ring, waiting for the other to make the first move and not knowing whether to duck, dive or throw the first punch. It carried on like this into the autumn during the year that Jill had to be airlifted off the island.
I was too preoccupied with buying my boat to think very deeply about what would happen to Leac Mhor or the future plans of the Fitzgeralds. I just assumed that they would put their house on the market in the usual way by advertising through an estate agency. However, they were in a hurry to sell and wanted to avoid the agency fee. The asking price of £29,000 was not high by normal standards; it still had no proper water supply, flushing toilet or bathroom. There was one improvement: a rudimentary electricity supply from a Lister generator Peter had installed a few years earlier, but that was the only modern convenience added since they had moved into the property in 1992.
Jill telephoned me one day on the off chance. Did I know anyone interested in buying Leac Mhor? There were only two people I could think of: DJ and Robert. DJ was keen at first but her partner David was not interested. I telephoned Robert. As soon as he learnt that Leac Mhor was for sale, he cashed in his entire savings, sold off some personal items, and borrowed the last few thousand from his mother. All I knew was that he had telephoned the Fitzgeralds and offered them the full asking price. Jill contacted me while I was storm-bound in Mallaig with Sally B to tell me the news. By late summer of 1998, Robert was the proud new proprietor of Leac Mhor, though it could only be used as a holiday home while he still worked for the Ministry of Defence and the children were still at school.
It does not take long for a house to deteriorate once it is left empty, particularly an old house. Jill and Peter’s absence had taken its toll on Leac Mhor. The garden, once the pride of Laurance Reed, and a well-ordered vegetable plot in Jill’s care, soon became rampant with weeds and overgrown grass. Jill’s two polytunnels were warped and ripped by the winter gales. The house looked tired, grubby and sad.
One evening I received a phone call from Robert. He was coming to the west coast on another military exercise. Now that Tex had passed away there would be no more manoeuvres on Soay, but he had been offered the chance to have some gear dropped off by helicopter. It would be passing the island en route to the Cuillin Mountains.
‘It’s not much,’ he said. ‘I probably won’t be coming myself, so could you just pop the stuff into the house for me?’
‘Sure, no problem,’ I foolishly chirped.
Robert wasn’t sure when this event would happen, as he would be spending two days at sea with a raid in-between. I just had to listen out for the helicopter. Sure enough, about three days later there was the familiar sound of approaching rotor-blades. Tork, always the first to know where free food was to be had, was off before I could jam my boots on. By the time I headed up the hill, I saw the helicopter lift off and wheel away. It hadn’t even landed, so I imagined a single large over-packed Bergen or some such thing had been tossed out of the open doorway. On the way toward the old hay meadow, I noticed what looked like a small but substantial green pyramid of boxes. Not just small boxes. From several metres away I could see that each wooden box was about three-foot square. I could count at least half a dozen in the front pile alone. I was fuming! How was I going to shift all of these by myself? The boxes were sixty-odd metres uphill from Leac Mhor, and over very rough ground. I was not going to be able to lift them let alone carry them. I imagined the only way to move the stuff would be to open the boxes and take out the contents. Unprintable words filled my head as I stomped toward the pile that grew larger and larger the nearer I got. I stood in front of the looming pyramid, my head filled with very black thoughts. Then I noticed a slight movement in the middle of the pile of camouflage-green boxes (I’m a bit short sighted). Sitting on one of them, hardly distinguishable because he was in camouflage and smeared in cam-cream was Robert, looking a bit sheepish, with a very hopeful, tail-wagging dog next to him.
Everything but the kitchen-sink was in those boxes including one folded-up double-bed mattress: tools, tins of food, paint and tar, paraffin, oil lamps, spare parts for oil lamps, candles, pots and pans, assorted cutlery, bedding, clothes, dish cloths, washing up liquid, household cleaners, toilet rolls and even pre-chopped kindling for the stoves. It was probably the neatest, fastest moving-in job anyone had achieved in the history of the island, and done with perfect military efficiency. Luckily there was still plenty of furniture in the house; Jill had even left her posh (by Soay standards) Calor gas cooker and her precious armchairs. In a few hours the house was stacked with boxes too. Robert just had time for a cup of tea and lunch with me in Glenfield before the helicopter returned. It hovered low to the ground, he hopped in and was gone.
One way or another that summer was a busy one. I had plenty of friends and family coming to stay and I also helped Robert transport more household goods over to the island in Sally B, including a new Belfast sink and flushing toilet. There was not much time to think about the coming winter. I had decided that I would be spending winters on Soay from now on. I had the new responsibility of looking after Sally B, she was quite a commitment and I had to stay on the island to look after her. I would not be going off for Christmas and New Year as I had got into the habit of doing recently. I had spent plenty of winters on Soay, but it was the first occasion without close neighbours or the omnipresent Tex Geddes for company. Jill had often
been on her own when Peter was away working, so we had naturally teamed up to socialise. Tex too was always coming and going, usually to snaffle my matches, drink tea or get me involved in some project that needed a spare pair of hands. I had never felt lonely, or found the dark winter days and nights depressing before.
The winter of 1998 was predominantly wet and dark. As days and weeks went by I had little to do beyond my daily chores, reading, picking winkles and the odd visit to see Donita or chat with Anne as she walked her dog. Without close companionship, I found that Soay in winter could be a grim place. On walks I passed the empty properties where once had been warm lights, late night drams and spontaneous ceilidhs. I had thought of myself as a self-sufficient person content with my own company. Discovering that I was nothing of the kind came as a bit of a shock. Still, I gritted it out and spring finally arrived, taking a lot longer than I liked.
It was the beginning of May 1999, a big spring tide was due and the shipping forecast for Malin and Hebrides was set fair for the week. I decided it was time to anti-foul Sally B and perhaps do more work on her gunwales and other parts that needed attention. I had earmarked the perfect place for the job – the beach that lay at the top of the harbour beyond the old drystone jetty. The night before I set my alarm clock to wake me early so that I could move her on the top of the tide, which would be around 6 a.m. For some reason the alarm failed to go off. I woke with a start fifteen minutes after high tide and calculated that by the time I got dressed and walked to the harbour I would have missed the tide for that particular beach. I should have postponed the job until the next day, but I was in a hurry to get it done. I decided to beach her at the Hurricane Port instead, where Tex used to work on Petros and I had put Heron at one time. The tide would not be too low to put Sally B there.
Off I went and Sally B behaved admirably while I tied ropes all about her to keep her in place. The tide slowly dropped and she settled comfortably on the firm gravel patch, just below a jumble of rocks. The weather was perfect: dry, warm, calm and sunny. I managed to scrape and paint the first side of her hull in one tide. All I had to do was weight her so she lay over on her other bilge keel and I could finish the anti-fouling next day.
At that time the future of South Soay farm was uncertain. Duncan Geddes had inherited the farm from his parents, but as he was not intending to return to live on the island, he decided to put it up for sale. One day, he telephoned to say that he was considering offering the farm, which occupied over half the island, to the John Muir Trust. They were already proprietors of the Strathaird Estate on Skye, which also included Elgol, and he felt the Trust would be the most ethical option for Soay. They had purchased Strathaird from Ian Anderson (better known as lead singer of the 1970s rock band Jethro Tull). Someone from the Trust would make a visit to Soay very soon. I passed all this on to Robert, who thought that there might be an opportunity of employment for him if the John Muir Trust did decide to purchase the south part of the island. It was a slim chance, but he decided to take some leave and come up to Soay to find out.
I managed to finish the anti-fouling the following morning, and quickly checked all Sally B’s ropes before packing up. Robert was due sometime in the afternoon and he was bringing his sister Janet to show her his new property. As Sally B was on the beach, and the long-term weather forecast was calm, Robert brought Jan over in his recently purchased Avon Sportboat. They stayed with me because Leac Mhor was still in a primitive state and I stoked up the Rayburn so that there would be plenty of hot water for showers and cooking. All was well during the meal, but when Jan went to the bathroom she noticed the floor was very wet. If it had been raining I would have said that this was not at all unusual. However, we’d had a very dry few weeks. To my dismay I discovered the hot water tank was leaking, and quite badly too. As usual, Robert got straight to the problem. He rummaged through his tools and spare parts and found a kind of metal clamshell meant as an emergency patch for inflatable boats. Unfortunately as soon as he fixed that leak, another one sprang up. Basically the tank, now well over twenty years old, was disintegrating. In the end he ripped out my old tank and dismantled an immersion heater from Leac Mhor as a makeshift attempt to heat bath water with the generator. By one thirty in the morning he had done it. The bathroom was still swimming in water with bits of insulation and pipes all over the place, but the new improvised tank was in.
Both Robert and Jan must have been exhausted. They had left Devon at some ungodly hour the morning before to drive seven hundred miles to Elgol. While Robert was battling with my tank, I nipped over to the harbour at high tide to check on Sally B. I could only look from the shore, because we had decided earlier in the day to try to tackle the leaks in my Avon tender (the inflatable dinghy I used to get to and from Sally B). It was lying totally deflated on the beach and I had neither the energy nor time to pump it up. Sally B was floating high on the tide and I would have to row out to her to check all her ropes were secure. I decided to do a spot check from the shoreline. She looked all right from where I was standing, so I went back home to see how Robert was getting along.
Next day I did not get to check Sally B in the morning as I had planned. The John Muir Trust representative arrived later than anyone expected and when we eventually got to speak to him he did not seem sure that South Soay Farm would be suitable for the Trust after all. Although we were disappointed as far as future employment for Robert was concerned, I was anxious to check my boat. Robert offered to come with me so we headed for the harbour. What I found there was the stuff of my worst nightmares.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
The battle to save Sally B
I was numb with shock. Sally B was far up at the head of the beach, lying almost completely over on her side amongst the big boulders. Seawater was coming in over her gunwales and she was rapidly filling with water. My first reaction was that nothing could be done, but then I thought I should try to rescue electrical equipment such as the radio and depth sounder. Also, I wanted to remove the compass and get my tools out of the forward cuddy. It felt the only positive action I could take.
The tide was coming in fast, so while I was wading about in the wheelhouse grabbing my toolbox and some floating cans of oil, Robert quickly pumped up the deflated dinghy. By now, I was up to my waist in water. I found a screwdriver and was feverishly unscrewing the radio and any other electrical appliance I could get my hands on. The water was up to chest level and I was handing stuff to Robert through the wheelhouse door. He had waded out to me towing the dinghy behind him so he could load up the Avon with any items I managed to salvage. Finally, we swam away from Sally B to the shore and the pair of us sat on the beach side by side, soaking wet, watching her slowly submerge below the waterline. Eventually all that showed was a corner of the cabin roof and her aerial mast.
I was completely devastated. I felt as if I had just let my most loyal friend drown in front of me. Worst of all, I knew it was my own fault. I should have made the extra effort to get the dinghy out to check the ropes properly. I was really grieving; Sally B was my lifeline, my source of income and the symbol of my independence. Robert put his arm round me and said all kinds of comforting, encouraging things: she would soon be back working again, better than before; we would work on that together. What was really amazing was that he genuinely believed what he was saying. And because he believed it could be done, I believed it too.
Instead of walking away from the disaster in defeat and despair, we left energetically discussing what we could do next to get her upright. I had seen a boat righted once using a load of buoys, so we set off for home, planning to have something to eat and then grab as many floats, buoys and drums as we could. We would wait for low tide and then somehow (we hadn’t thought exactly how) get them under her. Back home while we were discussing our options over something to eat, there was a knock at the door. I opened it to find Anne, looking very concerned. She had taken her dog for a stroll to the harbour that evening and saw Sally B had sunk. I explained what
we were planning to do. She simply nodded and went away but I was very touched by her concern.
Ingenuity and teamwork are essential to island survival. I discovered that right from the beginning and I have kept on rediscovering it ever since. After the drama of getting my piano to Soay I had begun to wonder how on earth they got the steam engine to Gavin Maxwell’s shark factory, where it still stands rusting today. I asked Tex one day when we were down stacking creels with Biddy in the harbour. Tex showed me some bollards and iron posts cemented into rocks at various points around the shark station. He told me that an old sailing trawler Dove transported the engine to Soay on a very high spring tide. There had been built a short but sturdy wooden pier just in front of the shark station’s main building. The Dove was tied alongside this jetty; I believe she had a derrick on board to which the engine was hooked. Then, with a series of ropes, blocks and a lot of men, the engine was hoisted and swung over toward the shark station. Ropes or wire hawsers were run around the bollards and/or tied to posts pre-fixed on the shore. The complex block and tackle system reduced the load of the engine and she was heaved along mostly by manpower. Slowly, using blocks and rollers, the steam engine was manoeuvred carefully to its final resting-place. After that the building was erected around the engine and she was used for all types of work. I wouldn’t like to have been the one to transport the quantity of coal required to keep a steam engine running! The whole exercise needed not only money, but also an enormous amount of organisational ability.
Well, we didn’t have money or, just at that moment, the organisational inspiration, but we did have determination. Around midnight, armed with as many buoys as we could carry along with rope, Tilley lamps, a flask of hot tea and a couple of decent torches, Robert, Jan and I headed for the harbour. When we got there the tide still had a long way to go before we could start baling out Sally B. I didn’t even know what kind of damage the rocks had inflicted on her. Five minutes after we reached Sally B we heard the sound of approaching feet and voices. Gordon and Anne had arrived to see if they could help. I just couldn’t believe it. They were running boat trips between Elgol and Loch Coruisk regularly, so would have to make an early start the following morning for a full day’s work in Kaylee Jane. Yet here they were offering their support.