Marram

by Leonie Charlton

‘We are so completely jammy,’ Shuna said, flinging her arms out wide.

  A second later I adjusted my foot mid-stride above two Oystercatcher eggs. The shells were sienna – a shade darker than the blonde hill grass they lay on – and splattered in inky squiggles. ‘Shuna, come and see this!’ We looked at the eggs in delight and, without thinking, I bent down and touched one. It was warm. ‘Quick, we’d better get out of here.’ We hurried down towards the shore, Oystercatcher alarm calls zigzagging behind us.

  At the faerie milk holes I unzipped the purse. I needed to leave a bead here for Dad too. Lapis lazuli, a stone that historically was used to make ultramarine pigment, which I rolled in beside Mum’s bead. Perfect. Double perfect.

  ‘How’s your trip going so far? I heard they nearly didn’t let you on the Eriskay crossing.’ The ticket collector on the MV Loch Portain crinkled his eyes against the sun. ‘What are you doing once you get to Leverburgh?’

  ‘Someone called Kathryn has a field at Strond that the ponies can use,’ Shuna answered, handing our tickets through the window.

  ‘I know exactly where you are. Not far for you to go at all.’

  We sat up on deck during the sixty-minute sailing. As the ferry changed course between clusters of islets we moved to keep out of the wind. Binoculars, and seabirds, were out in force, and for the first time I had lens envy. Maybe I should look into buying a really good pair of small binoculars. Once again, I wished I was better able to distinguish between all these magnificent diving gliding seabirds. One woman said to another, ‘There is no such thing as a gull.’ Once in a while we stood and looked down on the vehicle deck. All seemed quiet. An indigo camper van was parked close behind the horsebox, Living the Dream emblazoned in white cursive letters above the windscreen. Watching the low sand-lipped islands of Berneray and North Uist slipping away, I was already missing the beaches and the machair. Our planning for the next bit of the trip was virtually non-existent, and the rock-scarred hills of Harris looked dark and foreboding beyond the ferry’s bow. What if the best of the trip is already past?

  We followed Kathryn’s car along the single-track road to Strond where the croft was. Her two youngest children, still in their navy primary school uniforms, had ear-to-ear grins when we introduced them to Ross and Chief, before racing off to prepare milk for the three pet lambs. Gruffalo, Sparky and Floppy would be the ponies’ companions for the next couple of nights.

  ‘Will that be okay for them?’ asked Kathryn. ‘The field?’

  ‘It’s perfect,’ we answered. Kathryn explained that the lambs were from Pabbay. She pointed to an island in the far distance where her husband was farm manager, and where he spent weeks at a time completely alone.

  ‘It’s a beautiful place,’ she said. ‘We go over when we can, but there are no ferries.’ A car stopped beside us on the road, and two teenage girls started talking in Gaelic. Kathryn turned and introduced them to us in English, friends of her eldest daughter who was away. ‘She’ll be mad to miss you, she has a Highland pony herself.’ The girls drove off and we chatted while the lambs vigorously drained their bottles. Kathryn recommended dinner at the Anchorage Restaurant. ‘It’s fabulous but you’ll need to phone ahead for a table. It’s very popular these days.’ By the time we headed back to Leverburgh, and the Bunkhouse, the sky had clouded over and the sea was darkening to deep slate.

  The Anchorage was a busy place and everything was delicious, oysters and hand-dived scallops and the tastiest monkfish either of us had ever eaten. We finished off with a malt whisky: Poit Dubh 8yr (Island). A blended malt from Skye, peaty, earthynose, spicy with maritime salinity on the palate; a finish of depth with some heat. We recognised the two young Irish men from our room at the hostel, heads close, hands on glasses of wine, deep in conversation and love. We were sharing our room with a fifth person, a heavy-voiced woman from Fife. She’d also eaten at the Anchorage, and later, back at the hostel as the Irish couple and ourselves were raving about our meals, she told us that she’d ‘made the wrong choice.’ I sensed that may have been a habit of hers. Her bed in the hostel was also a wrong choice, and her length of stay, and the weather too. My heart went out to her, for all her moaning she was hardy. She’d always wanted to travel the Hebrides, she said, and now that her husband was dead she was fulfilling her dream.

  ‘If you eat at the Anchorage again try the scallops,’ I suggested, thinking she could do with a few radial blessings. And a nice dram might help too.

  DAY FIFTEEN

  Getting Organised

  A man hoovered around us with high energy as we sat under an upturned boat hanging from the ceiling in the hostel’s common room. Our maps were laid out in front of us. Shuna and I had taken our time to get up, chatting from our bunk beds while we waited for the noise in the kitchen to subside. We weren’t in any hurry, having already decided to take today to get sorted with our route through Harris. To date we had the offer of a field for the ponies in Horgabost and a bed for us in Tarbert. After the safe and sandy feel of the southern Hebrides we had a growing sense of the inaccessibility of Harris and Lewis: the expansive bogs, high hills, shortage of good paths and fast busy roads. Anna-Wendy back at Baileshare had told us that Ruari, the owner of Am Bothan, had walked every inch of Harris and would be a great man to talk to. He’d promised to look at the maps with us that morning.

  ‘Should we move?’ we asked the hooverer, as he whipped the red Henry past us.

  ‘Nah, you’re fine,’ he said. ‘I’m nearly done.’

  ‘That’s how we get rid of people,’ Ruari said. ‘Sometimes Bennie just gets the hoover out for the hell of it, you know, to move people on if they’re getting a bit too comfortable.’ I didn’t think he was meaning us, but he might have been. Ruari was sharp, funny, attractive. He moved quickly, like a Peregrine. I felt dull-witted in his flickering gaze.

  ‘What’s this trip all about then?’

  ‘We’ve always wanted to ride up the Hebrides,’ I said tentatively.

  ‘We’ve got a Facebook page, 21 Pony Days in the Outer Hebrides, if you want to have a look,’ added Shuna.

  ‘You’re not fundraising, are you?’

  I felt myself blushing. We were, and the Facebook page was to let people who had sponsored us follow our progress. We’d decided not to bring that up as we went along, people out here were already doing enough to help us. Asking for money has never been a forte of mine, and Ruari had hit a nerve.

  ‘It’s a low-key bit of fundraising for Friends of Plockton Music School,’ I said. ‘My daughter’s there. It’s a magic place, for kids with a passion in traditional music.’ I kept talking, nervously. ‘It’s government funded, but it’s experiencing severe cutbacks, and this seemed like a good opportunity.’

  ‘I’m glad you haven’t asked for a free room. I get a lot of people who think that because they’re walking backwards with a wheelbarrow on their heads for charity they should get a free room.’ He smiled and his words rang in the sudden silence as somewhere, out of sight, the hoover was turned off.

  ‘So,’ said Shuna, ‘Anna-Wendy said you’ve done a lot of walking on Harris. Can we show you where we thought we’d ride? We’re a bit flummoxed, to be honest, Barra and the Uists have been so easy, all that machair, must be some of the best riding in the world. Harris looks more limited, we might even have to stick to the roads.’

  ‘Well, you could,’ said Ruari, looking at where we’d drawn a possible route, mostly along roads, on the map, ‘but that would be dull.’

  We agreed and with Ruari’s help came up with a new plan for the next four days. Shuna’s face was flushed with excitement and I could feel my own was the same. Three days from now, all being well, we’d be right in the heart of Harris, at a place only accessible by boat, or foot, and hopefully by pony, although Ruari was giving no assurances not being a pony-man himself.

  ‘If it’s too hard we can just turn back,’ Shuna and I agreed. We were both up for taking a chance.

  Bennie, the energetic hoov
erer, had just appeared back, jeans and T-shirt gone and now dressed head-to-toe in red and black Paramo gear. He was wearing barefoot running shoes, no socks and was chewing gum furiously.

  ‘These two are thinking of going into Kinloch Rèasort with their ponies. They should be able to pick a way through, shouldn’t they?’ Benny nodded. ‘You know the beehive dwellings,’ Ruari continued, pointing at the map, ‘whereabouts would you say they were?’ I’d been thrilled when he mentioned the beehive huts earlier. I’d wanted to see some ever since reading Alastair McIntosh’s descriptions of these ancient dwellings in Poacher’s Pilgrimage.

  Bennie was pointing to a different spot on the map from Ruari. To be safe I circled both.

  ‘Okay, that’s me off,’ Bennie said.

  ‘Where’s he going?’ we asked, watching through the window as he hoisted his pack onto his back.

  ‘Who knows?’ he said. ‘Could be anywhere, he’s hardcore.’

  Bennie was now facing away from us, his pack hiding his head, two paddles protruding from a side panel.

  ‘He’s got an inflatable paddle raft with him this time,’ Ruari said. ‘He’ll be off to some uninhabited island. He’s an adrenalin junkie.’ I felt nerves tighten across my stomach. Bennie was everything we weren’t. Prepared for any eventuality, every strap on his pack would be tensioned just right. He was the picture of taut travelling prowess: capable and able and absolutely on the case.

  It was early afternoon by the time we finished packing, emailing and phoning, looking at the maps. We decided to take the pickup north and leave it near Tarbert where we’d be in two days’ time. As we’d be riding up the west coast we decided to drive up the east side of Harris, on what they call ‘The Golden Road’, and stop at Rodel Church on the way. Rodel, like the beehive dwellings, had been brought to life for me in Poacher’s Pilgrimage. I’d bought a pile of books to read before this trip, but this was the only one I’d finished, and the only one I’d brought on the trip. Earlier that day we’d both read the chapter about ‘Saint Clement’s Church of Rodel’: Of all the island’s three dozen or so pre-Reformation chapels, only two have been restored, this is one of them (…) The church sits beneath the cloud-fringed summit of an iconic mountain, Roineabhal. It sits with its square lookout tower, tight-pressed into a rocky knoll with views down to the southern Hebrides. This, to my eye, in its setting on a rise above the sea, is quite the most exquisite little gem this side of Tuscany.

  We parked beside a deserted farmhouse and walked down to the church. The fields on either side were dotted with silver stones and white sheep and the grass was very green, evidence of the seam of limestone running through Rodel Glen. It was overcast but the light coming through the clouds was intense. The glossy leaves of the Flag Irises glinted bright as blades. Two vintage cars drove away from the church as we approached, wending their way northwards on The Golden Road. ‘Toad of Toad Hall cars,’ Shuna said.

  The place was other-worldly. We fell silent as we stepped amongst gravestones that spanned the centuries. There were the small unmarked stones that Alastair McIntosh calls ‘plainsong’ stones, and ancient hand-carved gravestones, the letters mere suggestions through aeons of lichen growth. There were newer stones too, black letters on white marble: In loving Memory of John MacDonald/DROWNED THROUGH THE ICE/24TH JANUARY 1917/AGED 11 YEARS.

  I moved towards the warm tones of a cast-iron tombstone, elaborate and crumbling, and then stopped by a shiny granite stone, its surface smooth and un-favoured by lichen, erected for Angus MacLeod who died at Quidinish, 20th March 1915 by his sorrowing widow. ‘Sorrowing’. How much rounder and fuller it was than the word ‘grieving’. I was drawn back, again and again, to the tiny leaning plainsong stones. One had a perfect hole through it. A bead-stone.

  I joined Shuna and we followed the curved path up to the church. Oak doors opened into an interior of archways within archways, of bands of light falling through leaded windows onto sole-shone flagstones. We were the only living people in that place.

  ‘I love it here,’ I said. So often I feel a sense of foreboding in churches, at times even terror, but I felt none of that in Rodel Church. We stood side by side in front of the stone-carved effigy of the ‘8th Chief of the Macleods’. He was being watched over by Angels and Dogs, strong-legged Deer and a birlinn in full sail. Shuna led the way up the steep stairway to the top of the tower. I was glad I wasn’t alone as I felt the air press against my back, the hairs on my nape stand up. It was just a moment, and then the feeling was gone. We stepped across the wooden floor towards a tall slim window.

  Silvered light fell over a pile of objects on the stone sill, hundreds of tiny gifts: a clove of garlic; twenty-pence pieces; a card which said Our Lady of Mt Carmel – pray for us; a bookmark with Italian words written across a snowy mountain scape; a garish pink plastic flower; a white shoelace; and shells, lots and lots of shells – mussels and limpits and cockles. There was also a silver charm bracelet, sweeties in wrappers, sheep’s wool fresh from the field or fence. I put my hand into my pocket, feeling for what I knew was there. Not beads, but two tiny yellow winkle shells from Vallay. Blowing off the grains of sand I placed them on top of a polished two-pence piece.

  Remembering the little model of the Virgin Mary that had been on Mum’s bedside table while she was dying, I wondered what had happened to it. We wouldn’t have thrown it away, but it was all such a blur. The days after her death, emptying her room in the nursing home. My brothers and I couldn’t wait to get away from the smell of end-of-life that hit you when you were beeped in through the doors, the smell of urine and decline. We went down the tower’s stairway, feeling with our feet in the darkness, one stone step at a time, until we were back in the earthy smell of old stone, and then outside, breathing in the sea.

  ‘Let’s look for the naked lady,’ I said. Alastair McIntosh describes the ‘Sheila-na-Gig’ of Rodel as ‘an astonishing stone-crafted figure’ crouching on the south face of the church ‘as if she’s giving birth. Her womanhood is unconcealed in all its fullness. She nurses in her arms a heavily eroded figure that looks more like an animal, a lamb or seal, than the babe one might expect’.

  We walked around the church, looking upwards, eyes drawn to every detail; copper nails leaching verdigris into leadwork, the crenellated tower, the pink tones of the roofing slate. ‘Look at him,’ said Shuna, pointing upwards. A carving of a man wearing a shirt, but naked below, who appeared to be holding his penis in his two hands, above his perfectly round testicles.

  ‘Well, he wasn’t on the information board inside,’ I said. We read later that he is known as ‘Seumus a’ Bhuid – James the Willy’, or ‘The Lewd Man’. Further along we found the Sheila-na-Gig. She was high up and eroded by the weather, but there she was, nakedly squatting. Mum must have loved these two. I felt sure she would have come here on one of her trips.

  Anything to do with willies would have her giggling, her canines on show, eyes sparkling. I’d catch her looking at men’s crotches and later she’d pass comment. It wasn’t just willies she was fascinated by. It was bodies and nakedness in general. When I was at secondary school, I used to have baths with my best friend and she would sometimes come into the bathroom, ‘needing something from the cupboard’. No, Mum, that’s not okay, I’d scream inside. But I didn’t know how to deal with it. She and Paul fed off each other. They’d comment on my friend’s body, and on other peoples’ bodies. This provoked a prudishness in me. I’d rebel with my silent disapproval. They’d tell me not to be so ‘po-faced’ and laugh. They laughed a lot together. The more they laughed the more humourless I’d become, and the more I’d get it for being ‘a misery’.

  I looked up at Sheila-na-Gig, happy, naked, weather-worn. My hands had gone into hard fists at my sides. I unfurled them, smiled tentatively up at that lovely naked figure. ‘We better get going,’ said Shuna. I nodded and we walked away, leaving Seumus-the-Willy and Sheila-na-Gig to their sea and stargazing, to their slow erosion.

  On the way o
ut we passed a dead Rabbit, and another, an adult this time, and two more dead babies. It wasn’t myxomatosis, their eyes were perfect. I bent to turn one over, no bullet wounds either. They were just lying there on the cut grass between the gravestones. ‘That’s so weird,’ I said to Shuna, ‘do you think they’ve been poisoned?’

  I wished I hadn’t seen them, those silken dead Rabbits. I tried to shake off the strange feeling as we walked back towards the pickup. I opened the glove compartment and took out a dark chocolate mint Kit Kat, broke it in two and handed half to Shuna. ‘Let’s go and see what this Golden Road is all about then,’ she said, as the windscreen wipers cleared away rain that had just started to spit.

  ‘It’s more Heron Road than Golden Road,’ I said, half an hour later. They were everywhere on that grey afternoon, standing alongside slate-still pools, watching, timelessly. We drove up and down, round sharp bends, through a landscape of water and stone and sheet-metal sky. There were Sheep too, their lambs small. You wondered how they survived, grazing goodness from between the rocks. And you wondered about the people in the past, who, like the Herons, had sought a bellyful from the water, and who, like the Sheep, had made the most of the thin soil. They would have had to be as watchful and patient as the Herons, as enduring as these Sheep with their slow-burning amber eyes. There were glimpses of opulence in that landscape too: the sleekit Seals draped over the skerries, the daubs of turquoise and rose keel on the Ewes’ shoulders.

  Houses dotted the landscape: ruins with rusting tin roofs and rotting window frames; up-kept houses with whitewashed walls; brand-new ones with flashing glass fronts. We drove past signs to Lingerbay, Manish Town, Geocrab, and all the time the road twisted and turned through endless eddies of rock.

  ‘Do you know why it’s called The Golden Road?’ I asked.

  ‘I think because the locals had to fight so hard to get the money from the authorities to build it.’