As we got into the tent I was aware of the hot sting on my face and lips from a day spent in the wind, and the warm inner buzz of wine. I felt glad of so many things: glad of Shuna’s company, our sharing; glad as I got into my sleeping bag with all my clothes on, including coat and buff, of the runrig providing a smidgen of shelter from the easterly; glad of that same cold easterly keeping the midges away. Listening to the wind soughing in the treetops, I reached my hand down to my left ankle, pictured the small tattoo there, a Scots Pine cone. That mighty pioneer tree which thrives in inhospitable environments and provides habitat for a myriad of other species. Yes, I thought as I was falling asleep, those enduring pines out there are a good sign.
DAY SEVENTEEN
Horgabost to Aird Asaig
Lifting up onto my elbows I moved aside the tent flap. There was no sight or sound of Shuna. The turf outside was bone dry. Tufts of wool lay caught on the grass sward. Over the lip of the runrig Ross and Chief were standing nose to tail under a bright blue sky. Behind them on the hillside Iain’s cream-painted croft house was lit up in early sun. Even the black tin sheds on the roadside had a lustre to them this morning. I stood up and stretched, feeling refreshed. Peter’s car was coming down the road, off to catch the early boat to Uist for his monthly poetry class. I stood watching until it turned onto the main road by the house we’d stopped at the night before. He had told us that Mary and Donald MacDonald at the bottom of the road had been very good to him, and suggested we stop off and say a proper hello, and that we were to have a look at the standing stones in their garden.
There was something about his involvement in the world that reminded me of Mum, but without her hardened edges. I remembered a conversation I’d had that January with my school friends, Tiffy and Ros. We’d been on our way back from a few days in Sutherland and stopped at Ardvreck Castle. We’d lain on the bleached winter grass above Loch Assynt, tucking ourselves out of the bitter wind.
‘I remember your mum’s beauty and glamour,’ said Tiffy, ‘and her quickness. Her intellectual ability and how she was so connected to the world.’
‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘all that travelling, reading, all that listening to Radio 4, she was on it.’
‘But she didn’t like me,’ said Tiffy. ‘She didn’t seem to like anyone. She was always so…defiant!’
‘She was much braver than I am,’ I said, putting my hand on the trunk of a tiny Rowan growing out of the rock face below me.
‘Why do the trees like to grow on the steep bit like that?’ asked Tiffy.
‘It’s just that the Sheep and Deer can’t eat them there, it’s the only place they can survive.’
‘Defiance isn’t the same as courage,’ said Ros from her spot along the bank. ‘Whether you’re compliant or defiant you’re still in thrall. It might look like courage but you’re in something’s power.’
‘That sort of makes sense,’ said Tiffy. ‘There was a giggly girlishness to Kathryn, wasn’t there? And she was so petulant sometimes, childish, always had to sit at the head of the table, make other people do things for her. Do you remember the teaspoon thing?’ Tiffy burst out laughing. ‘She’d make you or Tom get up and walk all the way round to the drawer to get her a teaspoon when the drawer was right beside her!’
‘From what you’ve told us, Beady, she never had her needs met as a little girl. If you let go of being a child, you’re letting go of ever being parented,’ said Ros.
I felt an ache in my chest as I watched wind-dolphins skim across the loch.
‘I read an article about taking all the good things you got from your parents and laying down the rest,’ Ros said.
‘Sound advice,’ replied Tiffy. ‘Sometimes it’s not easy though.’
Wind-ruffled Chickens scattered across the field outside No 6 Horgabost, Mary and Donald’s house. Donald was delighted to show us the standing stones. Shuna and I took it in turns to go and look, while the other held the ponies and chatted with Mary. The garden was a mass of colour. Tiny Lettuces grew in neat rows, Lupins reached tall in crimsons and pinks and yellows. There were banks of wild Geraniums, and half-feral Cats appearing and disappearing so shyly, silently, you wondered if they were real.
‘At one time there were seven stones around the main cap stone, two metres tall, they say.’ Donald was pointing to the remains of Coire na Feinne chambered cairn. The tumble of stones was encircled by hedges and flower beds. ‘They burned bodies and put the ashes inside. We had students out here, studying it all. Down the road is the MacLeod stone, it’s very large that one. At the equinox the sun sets directly in line with the stone and St Kilda. It was also a clock. At one time there were twelve stones around it, they say, and depending where the sun was the shadows would fall on the right time of day.’
After we’d both seen the stones the four of us stood chatting in the sunshine.
‘I remember all the working ponies at Sgarasta,’ said Donald, ‘there were lots of them at one time.’
‘Are you both from here?’
‘I’m from the east side,’ said Mary, ‘so is Donald originally but his parents came here in 1937.’
‘I was six and a half,’ he said. I did a quick sum in my head, that would put him in his eighties, hard to believe with his broad upright stance and more hair on his head than a lot of men half his age.
‘My father and my grandfather built this house together,’ he continued. ‘They took stones from the hill and built it. You see, crofts came available here, the Ministry of Agriculture bought land off what was then a single estate. You were awarded a croft, and a £150 loan, and were given one hundred years to pay it off at 300 per cent interest. See this road here?’ Donald pointed up the township road. ‘My father helped build it, he was paid £1.50 a week. He paid off every penny of that loan in a lot less than a hundred years. So, where are you two riding today?’
‘We’re going over the Coffin Route to the other side.’
‘That’s a good path. A strong path.’
‘They used to bring the bodies east to west,’ said Mary.
‘Why was that?’
She looked at me, a stir of humour in her eyes. ‘Because it’s hard to dig a grave in rock.’
We said our goodbyes and rode onto the machair, past a set of rusting harrows, and the campsite, and onto the beach. Both Peter last night, and the Macleods this morning, had bemoaned the existence of the campsite, how it had changed the place and was damaging the machair. ‘Our view’s a very different one nowadays to what it was,’ Mary had said.
We avoided the tents and rode onto pristine tide-swept sand. ‘We’re so lucky with the weather, seeing these beaches in this light,’ said Shuna. We carried on around the coast to Seilebost. The tide was well out and a vast triangle of rose-gold sand opened up to the east. To the north we could see a stripe of white that was Luskentyre beach, and between here and there foam-finned waves chased each other. Sheep were graze-drifting on the machair, their keel marks the same turquoise as the sea behind them. Further along we saw a metal trolley down by the shore. It had a wooden-handled rake and a green plastic bucket resting on it, and parked nearby, belly down, was a wheelbarrow.
Then we came to the orange and red netting bags, eight of them, there on the roadside, all full to bursting with freshly collected Cockles. Someone, or some few, had been busy this morning. All those sea creatures inside their hinged heart-shaped shells. I thought of Mum’s shell collection, still in boxes, each treasure wrapped carefully in newspaper: Wentletrap, Horse Conch, Scotch Bonnet, Moon Snail, Angel Wings. Many of these shells Mum had collected along tidelines in West Africa. Never buy shells, she used to say, people kill the creatures for their shells, only take what you find already empty on the beach.
We stopped to let the ponies graze by the wooden sign that said Frith-Rathad, The Harris walkway, at the start of the Coffin Route. A postie stopped in his van to say hello, he was delighted to see the ponies. Shortly afterwards two cyclists stopped, Highland pony enthusiasts form No
rfolk. We talked pony types and colours and feet and feed and miles and temperaments before carrying on, warmed by the chat but longing for quiet again. By a rusting tin sheep fank we ate our lunch, a Golden Eagle circling overhead, the first we’d seen on our trip. With the bright sea behind us, we were heading into rock and hill and cloud.
As the track rose higher the rain came on. It felt strange to be on a hill track after all that machair, to hear the scrabble of stone underfoot. Once through the pass the track began to descend. I put Ross’s rope over his saddle and let him follow me freely, that way he was better able to see where to put his feet. As Donnie had said, the track was good and strong. A lot of work had been put into it recently: new paving through boggy patches and stone bridges across ditches. It was a real pleasure to follow an ancient path that was still being maintained. Behind me Ross steadily picked his way, and behind him followed Shuna and Chief. Shuna was still riding, hands in pockets, chin tucked in, hood up against the rain and wind. A thin metallic measure of sea appeared through the cloud ahead. So many tones of grey in this place: the rocks ratcheting up the hillsides on either side of me; the layered sky; the pooling Lichens; the silver-grey deadwood of the Heather. And then a startle of deep red, a Wren, so close I could see the dark strip at its eye, the banded-ripple of its tiny tail. Then it was gone, a quivering figment in my mind’s eye.
I waited by a burn for the others to catch up. It was an ideal place to fill water bottles; natural shelves in the hillside made a series of water fountains. Listening to the water chuntering its downward journey, I could see the path trickling like molten-solder towards the sea. It was a good spot, there was something about it. The ponies thought so too. When Chief arrived they both began eating the peat, great fibrous mouthfuls of it, that must have been rich in some mineral they were needing.
The path joined the road at the head of Loch Stockinish. We were on The Golden Road once again, and just a few hundred yards up the road was The Bays Café we’d driven past yesterday. Back in the hostel in Leverburgh the St Kilda couple had told us that we must stop off there for tea and cake. They described their long chats with the two ladies who worked there, Anne and Jessie, and the delicious baking for sale. The sign said ‘Closed’.
‘But it’s Saturday,’ said Shuna. We’d both been really looking forward to a cup of tea, some cake, and meeting those legendary ladies. The Bays Café was only open Monday to Friday it turned out, weekends off for Anne and Jessie, and who could blame them? Half an hour later, after a steep climb, we were within sight of the main road and the pickup. The sun came out and we stepped off the road onto a rise where there was a smattering of grass. Letting Chief and Ross graze we stood and stared out. The sun changed everything. Nearby hill lochs reflected blue between shivers of green reeds. Boat-sized boulders laid graphite shine across the landscape. A lamb, lying next to its mother, was impossibly white.
We loaded the ponies and drove towards Tarbert, having decided to avoid riding on the fast and busy main road unless we absolutely had to. We were staying with Katie Ann, Corina’s mum, in Tarbert that night. The ponies would stay further on in a small settlement called Aird Asaig on the west coast of North Harris. Ruari in Leverburgh had kindly put us in touch with his friend Kenny who had offered us a field. Kenny and his family gave us an enthusiastic welcome, and while Shuna was chatting to Kenny his daughter Bella took me to meet her pony ‘Laney’. We made plans for Bella and her friend and their two ponies to join us on the first part of the ride the next day.
‘It won’t do her any harm to miss church for once,’ Kenny said, ‘they’ve been following you on Facebook, it’s great for them to get a chance to ride with different folks.’
‘What lovely people,’ I said, as we drove away.
‘Kenny told me a terrible story,’ Shuna said, ‘about the last working horse being taken off the croft here. He was four years old, the horse belonged to his grandfather, but they’d got a tractor and the horse was no longer needed. He can remember them trying to put the horse in the trailer to go away. He remembers crying and that the horse didn’t want to go, that it took a long time to load him.’ Shuna paused. ‘God knows where it went, but that was the last time there was a horse on the croft. Until Bella got her ponies. He loves seeing horses back on the place.’
The minute we stepped into the house on MacQueen Street we were enveloped in warmth and laughter and non-stop chatter. It was wonderful to see Katie Ann. Corina was there too, back from Plockton on study leave, and her younger sister Lauren. We met ‘Jophes’, Corina’s chinchilla, who had the softest fur I’d ever felt.
‘Where does the name “Jophes” come from?’ I asked.
‘When I was wee my uncle had a hamster called Joseph. I couldn’t pronounce it and called him Jophes.’ Corina was always laughing. Her clàrsach, Celtic harp, was under the window. I felt a pang of longing to see my daughter, also a harp player. We’d been missing each other on the phone. Corina filled me in on how she was. Shuna and I had showers, and afterwards, feeling clean and happy, drank white wine and ate fish and chips. ‘We always eat takeaway on a Saturday,’ Katie Ann said.
I loved the idea of family rituals. Would it be too late for me to start some now, with the children all in their teens? This was a family’s family, and it made me long to see my own. Corina’s grandparents and uncles lived on the same street. Each other’s houses were treated as their own. Katie Ann told heart-warming stories about uncles and aunts and parents and grandparents. About helping the neighbours. About sometimes helping too much.
‘I told her not to,’ said Corina.
‘But I had to,’ said Katie Ann.
Once I was in bed, away from the warm hullabaloo of this family, the worry I’d been keeping away all evening pressed in. Next day’s ride into Kinloch Rèasort. The weather wasn’t looking good, and there were so many unknowns regarding the route, and camping out there. I realised, being honest with myself, that I had a sense of dread, and there was something else: a niggling feeling that I’d forgotten something. The beads! I hadn’t left a bead for Mum today. How could I have forgotten? I thought back over the day. The burn where we filled our water bottles, that would have been the perfect place to leave a bead, dropped into one of those little peaty pools. Or perhaps left resting on top of one of the surrounding boulders hallmarked by glaciers and lichen. Had that burn been a Hebridean tributary of Lethe, the river of oblivion and forgetfulness in Greek mythology? I had forgotten to leave Mum a bead, crossing Harris, her favourite Hebridean island, from west to east. Forgetfulness. Oblivion.
How much of Mum was I forgetting? I could barely recall her voice now. When I heard her talking in my head sometimes the words and intonation were clear, but more often they were jumbled, faded. That intense laugh of hers that had been so ‘her’, even that I had trouble conjuring now. I thought about her last days of speaking, when the tumour had interrupted her speech and the words burbled incoherently, strange burbling like that burn on the hill today. I imagined what it must have been like for her, in that locked-in state, as language, her sharpest tool, abandoned her. It didn’t bear imagining. A fisted ache spread across my chest and I closed my eyes, assuring myself that things would feel better in the morning. Think of another song for her playlist! Hah, yes, ‘Suzanne’ by Leonard Cohen. She’d loved his music, as I did, and she feeds you tea and oranges that come all the way from China. I smiled, remembering the oranges. Mum had been so particular about peeling them, there was ‘a right way’. Just as there was ‘a right way’ of putting the ‘lavatory paper’ on the holder. One right way for each, and she knew both of them. I couldn’t remember either.
DAY EIGHTEEN
Aird Asaig to Kinloch Rèasort
Back at the field the next morning Ross and Chief stood looking down towards the other ponies. Kenny stood with his daughter, her friend Erin and their two ponies Laney and Gucci. The horsebox was already attached to Kenny’s black Mitsubishi and there was a whirl of preparation going on.
‘We’d better get a move on,’ I said to Shuna, ‘they look just about ready to go.’
‘Let’s not rush the packing, we don’t know when we’ll next meet the pickup. Can you go and get the electric tape out of the boot? We’ll cut off that length now.’
We didn’t know if there’d be any enclosure out at Kinloch Rèasort so were taking tape with us. Both ponies were wary enough of electric fencing for us not to need a battery pack. Sitting alongside our concerns was our mutual excitement about heading into the wilds to a place that was, by all accounts, ‘out of this world’. ‘Morning all,’ said Kenny, winding down his window and coming to a stop in front of us. ‘We’ll just go on ahead and get ourselves sorted out and see you over there. You know where you’re going don’t you? You’ll see the horsebox anyway. There’s a car park there for the birders so should be plenty of room to park. See you shortly then.’ We’d arranged to box the few road miles along the north side of Loch Siar to the start of the track towards Kinloch Rèasort.
‘You can feel the rain coming, can’t you?’ said Shuna as we pulled away.
‘That must be the old Whaling Station,’ I said, pointing to a brick chimney in the bay below us. ‘Maybe we can check it out when we come back to get the pickup.’ I shuddered, imagining the water below mordant red with Whale blood. I was also intrigued. At one time whaling had been an important part of the economy and culture here, and the slipway and a single brick chimney was all that was left. In Poacher’s Pilgrimage an aged local resident is quoted as remembering how in the 1920s ‘steam-powered whalers heaved into the bay with up to three carcasses at a time being towed behind (…) the smell was like the Devil’s kitchen; yet nothing could make leather softer, nothing burn a lamp’s flame brighter, than pure sperm oil’.
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