Marram

by Leonie Charlton

  Will the owner of the pickup and horsebox please go to the front desk. The voice on the tannoy sounded serious.

  ‘Shit, hope they’re okay,’ I said loudly. Faces turned to look at us as we made our unsteady way back down the steep stairs.

  ‘It’s nothing to worry about,’ the steward said, ‘just thought you might like to check on the ponies, seeing as it’s such a long trip. It’s going to get a bit rougher for the next couple of hours.’

  ‘They’re so nice on this boat,’ Shuna said as we made our way down another two steep flights of stairs to the vehicle deck.

  ‘Look at that.’ I reached out and touched her arm. From where we stood we could see into the trailer. Chief had his head over in Ross’s side of the box. They were both resting, cheek to cheek, ears touching.

  I opened the side door and two sets of dark eyes looked down at us. It was warm in the box and the windows were steamed up, we breathed in the earth-sweet smell of horse and haylage. It struck us both then, that we were really doing this, we were on the boat out to Barra, the four of us. My eyes were swimming as I closed the drop-latches.

  Back at our table in the dining area I scanned the sea. I’d never seen so many Dolphins, lines and lines of them coming towards us in leaps of slate-dark joy. ‘A calf!’ I looked to where Shuna was pointing, her face showing pure delight. The calf was in a line of about ten adults, bounding towards us broadside to the boat. She was her mother’s half-size shadow, matching her fin for fin, eye for eye. Then they were almost beneath us and their underbellies glowed pale amber in the sunshine as they dived, backs shining in perfect arcing alignment.

  My heart raced. There we were, high above the plimsoll line, Ross and Chief below us in their tilting trailer, and these Dolphins swimming through the sea beneath them. I thought about horses that had travelled on other boats in past centuries, and remembered why horses in the Americas were so extraordinary. Because only the fittest had survived the gruelling sea voyage from Spain, suspended in slings, living on rancid water and weevil-infested feed. The trust of horses constantly astonishes me. They would have followed their handlers along gangplanks, down into a swaying dark hold where they would have sickened and often died. The survivors would have stepped out onto new land, probably emaciated, but alive and prepared to face whatever their handlers asked of them.

  Resting my chin on my hands, I remained without moving for a long time as the boat started to roll more steeply. Shuna, wisely, had already lain down on the dining area floor. Now I didn’t dare move. It was that critical stage where the slightest change can tip the balance of seasickness from uncomfortable to sick-bag stage. I’m a coward with nausea. My parents separated when I was two, and travel sickness was connected to high emotion from then onwards. I can still recall the nauseous feeling of being at the airport in Accra. I would have been three when Mum and my brothers and I left my father in Ghana where he worked at a veterinary aid project. Then there were long car trips with Dad when he was back on leave, and the sailing trips with him. I never did find my sea legs. When Dad came back from Africa for good there were car trips to the halfway meeting point between Argyll and Dumfries and Galloway, usually the car park outside the Little Chef at Dumbarton. I’d inherited travel sickness from Mum, who understood how being touched was the last thing you wanted when you were being sick. North of Dumbarton Dad would put his hand on my back when he stopped for me to be sick in this lay-by or that lay-by. I never asked him to take his hand away though.

  I heard a commotion of seabirds and opened my eyes. The surface of the sea was pixelated with silver Sprats and above was a stramash of feeding seabirds. Dad would know what those birds were. If he was here, he’d be out on the deck, binoculars up, watching intently. How many years had it been since I stood on a CalMac deck, or sat on a wet bench in his Drascombe Lugger, listening to him naming birds: ‘Kittiwake, fulmar, storm petrel.’ Hearing how his voice would lighten, understanding that birds made him happy, and knowing how happy that made me. I promised myself to make more of an effort to see him when I got back from this trip. Looking down at the shadows of the lifeboats in the surf below, I closed my eyes and squeezed my hands together, as if closing them around time itself, stopping the slippage. Surf bulged against the side of the ferry as nausea reeled through me.

  Oban was five and a half hours and ninety odd miles behind us. Shuna and I were back out on deck with the islands of Muldonaich and Vatersay on the portside and Barra on the starboard. As the ferry turned smoothly into Castlebay, three Arctic Terns serrated the air with their cries as they swooped to the sea, trailing their forked tails behind them. These three ‘sea swallows’ had just made it back from their wintering grounds in the Antarctic, ten thousand miles, now that was a journey.

  Kisimul Castle, on its rock in the bay, was lit up in sunshine. The hill behind it, Heaval, was black in cloud shadow. Not even the marble statue of the Madonna and child was visible today, but the Church of Our Lady of the Sea made up for it, resplendent in sunlight in the village below. I can’t see Roman Catholic icons and churches without thinking of Mum. She had burst out of a convent when she was eighteen and made up for a crushing and abusive education every second of the rest of her life. I’d set out on this trip with a purse full of beads and a belief that what I needed to do was make my peace with her, but I would come to realise that I’d already done that when she was dying from the brain tumour that slowly took everything away from her. Only the quick-fire in her eyes stayed until the very end. She had died on a night with a full moon that shone hard and bright as platinum, which was somehow fitting for a woman who was full-hearted and flinty-sharp in equal measure. Yes, I had made my peace with her in those terrible winter-thin months. It was myself I needed to make peace with now. The regrets around our relationship were still grabbing at the back of my throat, still making it hard for me to breathe sometimes.

  Scanning the darkened hillside for the white lady, I could hear Mum talking with passion about the Roman Catholic Church, the cruelty of the nuns, the hypocrisy of the priests. What else would you expect from a religion that believes animals don’t have souls, she’d say bitterly. I had taken this to heart and always felt uncomfortable around the rituals: the robes, mass, confession. I’d heard too many stories of what went on behind closed doors, the cruelty suffered by Mum in the convents she’d gone to, and by her two brothers in their boarding schools with the ‘brothers’. Yet, at the very end, she’d chosen to have a rosary on her bedside table. My mother, so full of contradictions, always surprising. I hope it brought her comfort but, for me, I carry a prejudice. I shiver at religious iconography. My chest tightens when I see a nun’s habit, a priest’s collar. I am an animist through and through. That is where I find my God, in the natural world. In the birds and animals and frosts and mosses, and in the humanity of our own animal being.

  Would owners of all vehicles please make their way to the vehicle deck.

  On the way down we stopped to take a photograph of a pinned notice: THE PEOPLE OF BARRA WELCOME ALL VISTORS. HOWEVER, THE FOLLOWING RULES WILL APPLY: Rule number four read: THE SPEED LIMIT IS 60mph NOT 30mph. Beneath our shared amusement we were both anxious, and worried about traffic. Chief was very inexperienced and, although Ross was fairly confident, I had my own issues around traffic. To be honest, I found riding on the roads terrifying. People had been warning us that this year the island roads were busier than ever, even this early in the season.

  As we drove up the hill I looked in the side mirror. The last vehicle to disembark was a red quad bike, the same colour as the funnels on the ferry towering above it, a raw brave red. In front of it was one of the classic Jaguars, azure and flawless as the sky overhead. That picture. Right there. Utter perfection. I turned to face forwards again and let out a ‘whoop’ as we drove past the sign Failte. Live it. Visit Hebrides.

  ‘You must be Shuna,’ said the woman standing at the driver’s window. ‘How was the crossing? How are the ponies?’ She rattled off questions
. Naomi had pulled over in front of us when we’d stopped to get our bearings. ‘I’ve been keeping an eye out for you. Not too many horseboxes come off this ferry.’ She was laughing and her ponytail whipped round in the wind. Naomi, a friend of a friend of a friend, had pre-arranged for us to camp on the common grazing at Tangasdale Machair in the south-west corner of the island.

  ‘Follow me, I’ll show you where to go.’

  When we took their halters off, both ponies lifted their heads and sniffed the air. Ross led Chief off to explore, swinging his head from side to side, the great pony explorer. In the evening light we agreed they looked magnificent, lit up from inside and out. We loved seeing them like this. Loose-limbed they set off, adventure and newness defined their muscles, altered the lift of their necks. We found a sheltered spot out of the wind and, after arranging to meet Naomi later, set up camp. Every now and again the ponies would come back to our camping spot, a hollow where the machair sward merged into marram grass, and grazed distractedly on the new grass that was just starting to show. Then they would canter off once more in wild mustang mode.

  Once the tent was up, sleeping mats and bags in, we decided to have a look at the beach and walked with the ponies along sandy paths strewn with empty, sun-bleached snail shells. The air was a-spin with the chatter of Starlings. Ross’s mane and the marram were the same sun-on-straw colour, both being flicked seaward by the wind. On the beach the ponies’ soft footfall joined the soundscape of the Oystercatchers’ and Common Gulls’ commotion-at-dusk and, higher up, like a stitch being pulled in the evening sky, the call of Geese.

  A woman and a dog approached us from the north end of the bay. ‘Hello, do you mind if he meets the ponies? He’s just a pup, he’s interested…’ She told us he was a red and white setter. Not a breed either of us knew, he was stringy and windblown and all ears and tongue-lolling delight.

  ‘I’ve been here nearly a week,’ said the hatted and scarfed woman, her shoulders pulled up towards her ears, ‘and I’m shattered by the wind.’ I felt the sincerity of her words. Chief, like the clouds, was limned by the dropping sun. Silver strokes flashed along his top-line, the curve of his ear, tangled in his whiskers and tail. The rest of his body was in near-darkness, his sand-shadow stretched away from the sea back towards the dunes, the machair and the hill where a single salmon-pink roof stood out against the pearly rock.

  Later, in the warmth of Naomi’s house overlooking Castlebay, with mugs of strong tea in our hands, we heard a little of the life she shared with her son and husband, their multiple jobs including veterinary supplies dispenser and firefighter at the airport, and their many animals. Those animals were at the centre of their world. A Norwegian Forest Cat and Tibetan Mastiff puppy absorbed the living room in precious long-haired splendour, and over the fireplace was a picture of Naomi’s three horses, looking down at us from a rock on the hill, rulers of their world.

  That night we lay listening to Oystercatchers piping outside and the wind tugging at the tent as we passed the hip flask back and forth. We had a lot to celebrate. By dawn we’d put on every item of clothing we had with us, including coats, hats and buffs. It was Baltic, the tent and sleeping bags had come short of the mark. We’d bought the spring/summer range; autumn/winter would have been more suitable. It was the first of many uncomfortable nights, yet the magic of being there together was inextinguishable. In the night the ponies galloped by the tent and I wondered if I was dreaming, but the boran-beat of their hooves on the machair and the racket of disturbed Oystercatchers were more real than even my wildest, most vivid dreams.

  DAY TWO

  Tangasdale Machair to Eoligarry

  Packing away the tent was like trying to put a feral cat into a bag. The wind was sending the light fabric into a frenzy when I was ragged with lack of sleep. We worked quietly and quickly, spots of rain pinging our skin, that weighty grey sky was about to let rip.

  ‘Good job we’ve got the horsebox this morning,’ Shuna said with feeling. The rain pummelling on the metal roof syncopated with the soft hiss of the gas stove. Steam bloomed on the inside of the window while on the outside fat raindrops smeared the Marram Grass into a leaden sky. There was no sign of the ponies so we guessed they’d found a sandy hollow to shelter in and were standing side by side, heads down, bums to the rain and wind.

  Shuna carefully sliced a banana into our porridge. ‘Honey?’ she asked. I nodded and sat on a plastic-wrapped haylage bale. Luxury. Most nights, camping would be without the trailer. The rough plan as we rode up the islands was to drive the pickup and trailer to the next ferry crossing, leave it there and hitch a lift back to the ponies. Or ride first, and hitch back to collect the vehicle. Either way would require some leapfrogging and a willingness to go with the flow. On other trips we’d had everything organised in advance: daily itineraries; each night’s accommodation sorted; drop offs planned; and food parcels sent ahead. This time, since we needed the trailer to get the ponies onto each ferry, we’d decided to make the most of that extra space. We had a chest full of food: tins of sardines, smoked oysters and mussels, a few camping-ready meals, bags of couscous and pasta, dark chocolate, whisky, coffee, Earl Grey teabags, Nairn’s oatcakes, hunks of cheese, packets of Naked bars, porridge oats, honey and raisins, salted peanuts and cashews. We definitely wouldn’t starve. We also had a case of Prosecco and six half-bottles of Oban whisky to give as gifts.

  When Shuna handed me a cup of porridge, I noticed my resistance but was determined to be a porridge eater on this trip. Mum had loved her porridge, but she’d made hers with full-fat milk and lavished it with double cream and brown sugar. No salt and water for her. In the horsebox that morning I managed to eat almost all of my porridge before any thoughts of gagging snuck in. Perhaps the success was down to my spork. Having shopped, planned, prepared for this trip for a long time, we had all the camping gear. The tiny foldable gas stove was Shuna’s pride and joy, crouching steady on its stainless steel lobster legs on the sawdust-strewn floor. As well as being a professional horse trainer Shuna also works as a cook. Her organisation around food is fabulous. This is great for me, and for my food anxiety. The thought of running out has always sent me into a panic. I have no reason for this, I’ve never been food deprived. We may not have had treats when I was growing up, there was never any spare money, but there was always food. Mum did funny things around food though. She’d have butter that was only for her, the rest of us had margarine, and chocolate that was only for her. She had a good excuse, having been perpetually hungry in boarding school, in the convents in Wales, England and Belgium. Other children’s parents would send goody parcels. Hers hadn’t, I never asked why, but the result was that food, especially her own ‘special treats’, had been very important to her. Perhaps some of her anxiety had rubbed off on me.

  The strong aroma of coffee mingled with the fresh wood shavings and yesterday’s horse dung, three smells that filled me with a deep sense of well-being. The tiny new Bialetti was perfect for slipping into a saddlebag. Lifting its lid I saw the last of the coffee bubble up. Our hearts got lively with caffeine and the rain battered on. We weren’t in any hurry, having only seven miles to ride that day and were happy to wait and see if the rain would pass. We brought our gear in from the pickup, packed our saddlebags, looked at the map and folded it into the waterproof case, had another coffee. Then the sun pressed a golden light through the clouds which, from one moment to the next, transformed the morning.

  At the burn to wash the pots, I found each wet stem of marram grass was balancing light like a sword edge. A drake Mallard flew over, his head a startle of tourmaline. I cleaned the pots with strands of sheep’s wool that I found caught on the fence. Judging by the lines of dark Bladderwrack tangled along its base it got regular batterings by the sea. The fence was a work of art, patched with zigzags of baler twine holding the upper strand of barbed wire to the Rylock below. Some of the twine was orange, some was yellow, and the crisscrossing seemed perfectly symmetrical between the fence post
s that leant in all angles from their volatile sandy base. I have always had a thing about gate and fence repairs and my eye picks them out everywhere I go. I like to imagine the minds behind the hands that mended. I like to see the layers of time and weathering made visible by each twist of wire, knot of string, breadth of rope. The ingenuity and creativity always delights me, but I’d never seen such decisive zigzagging as this before. The colours were synthetic and strident, but even they weren’t resistant to the weathering. Fibres that had twisted awry of the main body of twine had faded to translucence. Mum would have appreciated this fence: its withstanding, its refusal to be beaten.

  I took the bead purse out of my pocket. It was wet. My Ebay-bought Gortex jacket hadn’t stood up to the drive of the rain earlier. I unzipped the purse and looked inside and the moment suddenly sat heavily on me. A memory of a morning in Oban and Islands District Hospital, turning to wave goodbye to Mum from the ward door, seeing her face brightening.

  ‘You said the words,’ she’d said, in a smalling voice from the bed.

  ‘What?’ I’d answered.

  ‘You said I love you.’

  I ran a hand through the water that flowed topaz-coloured down from Loch Tangasdale, and settled for two beads: a smooth oval wooden one and a second ceramic one that was irregularly shaped and glazed in a bold metallic bronze. Carefully threading them onto a length of the silk string, I twisted it onto the upper strand of wire, making sure a barb kept the two beads separate. The bronze bead rested beneath the wire next to a triangulated summit of orange baler twine. The wooden bead rested on top of the wire. I was satisfied, and wondered if the crofter would find them as he or she made their next round of repairs, or if they’d make it to the sea, or fall to the sand, before being seen by a human again.