Coming Home to Winter Island

by Jo Thomas

‘So at this rate,’ says Lachlan, picking out a tree near the one with the engraving on it, ‘we’ll soon have all the ingredients for the gin and you’ll be on your way. He places the ladder against the trunk of the tree, just below the first of the branches. ‘Like I say, this would be better done in the spring, but no, some of us can’t wait until then. Need to be on your way. Have everything done and dusted and neatly tied up by the end of the month.’ He looks at me and I know he’s teasing, but still I respond.

  ‘I can’t stay here until the spring. I need to get back to work!’

  ‘Well hopefully this will be good enough for the first batch. But it’s always better to pick when there’s plenty of new growth around. And not take too much from any particular area. Leave enough so it will grow back.’

  He looks up, his big canvas bag slung across his body. His swag bag, as I like to think of it. Only now I know he’s not stealing from the house, but foraging from the woods and grounds. I’m fascinated watching him. He takes so much pride in collecting and cooking food from the island, and I really admire his skill, though I know that when I get home it’ll probably be back to packet soup, pasta and toast.

  ‘And when it’s done and Hector’s place at the care home is secured, you’ll be free to move on too,’ I say tentatively, wondering if he’ll tell me about Isla. ‘Where will you go?’

  He shrugs, giving nothing away. ‘Look around for jobs on the mainland, I suppose,’ he says. ‘Hold the ladder, will you?’ I step forward. He tests it against the tree to check it’s firm and then I reach around him and hold it as he climbs up and into the lower branches of the tree. ‘I’ll take anything as long as it’s working outdoors. Couldn’t bear to be inside again all day. But just being away from here will be enough.’

  ‘So you want to go?’ I ask, curious.

  ‘Can’t wait! It’s time I moved on,’ he says, making me wonder anew about what happened. ‘There’s nothing for me here now.’ I’m surprised. I thought he wanted to stay. To my shame, I thought he was freeloading. But I realise he’s doing this just for Hector.

  Hector is sitting on a fallen tree trunk, the dogs by his side keeping him warm and safe, and looking into the forest in deep, contented thought.

  ‘And what happens at this retreat of yours that you’re on your way to? What magic powers will they have . . . what special spells?’ Lachlan laughs as he climbs higher into the tree, then reaches out and cuts a sprig of pine with his penknife.

  ‘Err . . .’ I put my hands on my hips. ‘It’s a healing retreat. We’ll spend time outdoors, getting in touch with nature, away from the outside world.’

  ‘Bit like here then really!’ He reaches up for another deep green shiny sprig and puts it in his bag. ‘I’ll take some from another tree now,’ he says, climbing and then jumping down.

  ‘Well, no . . . it’s different,’ I tell him, stepping back as he lands on both feet in front of me.

  He studies me for a moment. ‘Of course, what would I know? I’m just some forager bloke, living off your grandfather, hiding away from the world,’ he teases, and yet there’s a glint of challenge in his eyes, like the stags staring each other out. He turns and moves the ladder and starts to climb a neighbouring tree, then stops and looks down at me. ‘Come up!’ he says with a nod of his head.

  ‘Oh no, it’s fine. I’m okay here.’ I wave a gloved hand.

  ‘Come on,’ he says. ‘We’re making this gin together, remember.’ He holds out his hand to me, challenging me once again, and I can’t walk away. But I have no idea when I last climbed a tree . . . if ever, in fact! There weren’t many trees to climb where I grew up.

  ‘Um . . . I don’t think . . . I haven’t climbed a tree before,’ I confess.

  ‘You haven’t climbed a tree?! Jeez, no wonder you’re as het up as you are! What, never? Even as a child?’

  ‘No,’ I say flatly. ‘I didn’t have somewhere like this to grow up and run around in, remember?’

  ‘Come on . . . climbing a tree is something everyone should do at least once in their life.’

  I look at the hand stretched out towards me. Then I look up at his face. He tilts his head. He’s right. Maybe climbing a tree is something everyone should try once. I stand on the bottom rung of the ladder, and look at his outstretched hand. Then I start to climb until I reach his hand and take it and grab a low branch with the other and follow his instructions and I pull myself off the ladder, and move up the tree. Until I can’t.

  ‘I’m stuck!’ I say.

  ‘You’re not,’ he says calmly. ‘You just think you are, and that’s made you panic and freeze.’

  I hold on to the branch for dear life. ‘I can’t move!’

  ‘You can. Don’t look down, or up. Just look out. Take in the other branches, the trees. Breathe them in. Don’t over-think it. Go with your instincts.’

  I take a deep breath, and the smell is just, well, glorious. It reminds me of Christmas. It’s making me feel reinvigorated. Free. I close my eyes and focus on the smell again, and remember those Christmases when Mum and Dad would get together and make it a brilliant day not just for me, but for all of us. They stayed great friends after they separated. They just weren’t right for each other when it came to marriage. Neither of them married again. Mum had various partners, but Dad stayed single until he died. A heart attack. Went to bed feeling unwell one night. And I was left with a huge Dad-shaped space in my life.

  But in the early days, I had the best Christmases. There would always be music in the house. Carols on the radio, or my dad’s record player, just like Hector’s. Or even Mum singing when she was in the mood, and me too. It’s where I started to sing in front of an audience. Well, that and school concerts. Mum and Dad always came together. I loved those concerts. I loved the looks on their faces when I sang. I think that’s why I went on to be a singer.

  I take another deep breath of the clear, crisp, pine-filled air. I move one foot, then a hand, and feel my way slowly up the tree to where Lachlan is sitting.

  ‘Okay?’ he asks.

  ‘Okay.’ I nod and smile, then follow his gaze as he looks around the forest from our treetop vantage point.

  ‘Here.’ He hands me a sprig of pine, and I take it and instinctively put it to my nose, letting its scent fill my senses and my head fill with carols all over again, lifting my spirits, my shoulders and my head. I breathe in deeply.

  ‘You could sing here if you wanted. No one would hear,’ he says. ‘Only me and Hector. But I’m tone deaf and wouldn’t know a good tune from a bad one, and . . .’ he looks down through the boughs, ‘and I think Hector’s asleep.’

  I look at him. Part of me wants to open my mouth and sing as loudly and joyously as I can. But part of me doesn’t want to even attempt it, just in case I open my mouth and nothing but a few crackly notes comes out.

  ‘You sang in the car, remember. Daisy, Daisy . . .’ He nods his head from side to side and I laugh.

  ‘And you growled!’

  ‘But you sang.’ He smiles.

  ‘That was . . . different,’ I say. And a voice says: You didn’t have to think about it.

  I close my eyes and breathe in again, this time from my buttocks, so the smell and the feeling fill my whole body. But just as my lips begin to part, my eyes ping open, and once again I am full of fear. It’s like getting stuck in the tree, only this time there’s no one to tell me how to get out of it. Not like at the healing retreat. They’ll be able to tell me how, I know it.

  ‘Okay, well, if we’re not singing, let’s get these pine needles back,’ Lachlan says briskly. ‘We’ll freeze these until we’ve got the other ingredients. I’ve started making trial batches of the mash, the clear spirit, and I’ve looked up the measurements of the dried ingredients online. So once we have the rest, we can get started.’

  ‘Yes, and now we know that Hector can remember them, we should be up
and running in no time.’

  ‘Agreed,’ he says. ‘Teach Mhor gin is on its way back!’ and he nods at me.

  ‘I couldn’t have worked out how to use the still,’ I say. ‘You did that.’

  ‘But you worked out how to find the recipe,’ he says.

  ‘And Hector had it all along.’

  ‘Teamwork. You, me and Hector.’ He smiles.

  ‘Teamwork.’ I find myself smiling back. ‘Hang on,’ I say, and I pull out my phone and photograph him in the tree. Then I photograph the other treetops and a sprig of pine in Lachlan’s big hand. ‘We’ll put it on the crowdfunding page.’

  ‘Okay, come on then, lots to do.’ He starts to climb down the tree. ‘Need a hand?’ he calls up.

  ‘No, I think I’m okay,’ I say, and smile, and then miss a branch and bounce off the next two. ‘I’m fine. Really fine.’

  I may have misjudged it and bounced a bit, but I am fine, I think, and kick myself for not having attempted to sing when I felt I could at the top of the tree. It might have been a bit croaky, but like Lachlan said, who was there to hear it? Maybe I just need to remember the scent of the pine trees a little more often.

  We gather up Hector from where he’s been dozing, and pile him and the dogs back into the Land Rover, fired up to find the rest of the ingredients. Teach Mhor gin is back on!

  Chapter Twenty-six

  ‘Ready to go live?’ I ask.

  ‘Yup! Ready as I’ll ever be,’ Lachlan says with raised eyebrows.

  This is it. We’re bringing Teach Mhor gin back to the big hoose. And something inside me is suddenly really excited at the prospect. We’ve spent the last three days, getting set up to ‘go live’; together we’ve written the copy for the crowdfunding page and Lachlan has worked down at the distillery, getting the mash right, the basic clear alcohol to add the ingredients to and checking we have all the dried ingredients that Hector listed. And Lachlan has apparently seen Isla and Gordan at the café and talked to them about bottles and labels for the gin. Why we couldn’t have gone to the pub all together I have no idea!

  ‘Let’s just run over what we’ve got here,’ I say, sitting at the kitchen table with my back to the range, which is slowly warming me. The overhead lighting is weak this evening.

  ‘Hang on,’ says Lachlan. He puts a large storm candle on the table and lights it. The kitchen suddenly feels as welcoming and warm as anywhere I’ve been. Like it’s put its arms around me in a huge hug. I look at the screen again and try and concentrate on the job in hand.

  ‘“Have your own piece of Scottish history! We need investors to bring back Teach Mhor gin. You get an exclusive edition bottle of gin and an invitation to a special tea party on Winter Island to celebrate reaching our target”,’ I read from the screen. ‘You sure about this?’

  ‘Why not?’ He shrugs. ‘Invite them here. We’ll lay on scones and shortbread, like we discussed, and gin from the distillery to celebrate getting the financing we need to get the still up and running and the first batch out. After that, well, it’s up to the new owners how they run things.’

  ‘Okay, so a distillery tour and tea party here on the island. We need the funds to secure Hector’s place, so we should aim for Candlemas,’ I say, chewing my bottom lip. I need to leave here. We all do.

  ‘Candlemas it is!’ says Lachlan with gusto.

  ‘Are you sure we can do this? We need to find the other ingredients, make test batches and get it all made and bottled before then.’

  ‘Well if I’m not mistaken, you’ve not got a lot else going on, have you? Other than going to your healing retreat at some point.’

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘I’ve nothing else on.’ I take a deep breath. ‘Everyone back home thinks I’m at the retreat right now, on voice rest and with no electronic devices.’

  ‘Let’s hope you get your money back,’ he says.

  ‘And my singing voice. If I can’t sing again, I don’t know what I’ll do. I’ll have lost the lot.’

  ‘Not necessarily,’ says Lachlan. ‘Maybe what you need is some time not thinking about singing. Take the opportunity to look around you and enjoy what’s right in front of you.’

  I go to protest, but something stops me. It’s about the most I’ve heard him say in one go. Not right, but still, at least we’re talking and getting along.

  ‘So, Candlemas,’ he says, and nods. ‘Agreed?’

  ‘Agreed,’ I say. ‘But what if we don’t manage to do it; what if we don’t find the ingredients?’

  ‘We don’t have a choice. We can’t fail. We have to pull this off, otherwise we’re all stuck here. None of us will be able to move on.’

  I nod. We have to do this. We look at each other, and then I press the button, sending the crowdfunding page live.

  ‘Oh, and Ruby?’

  I look at him.

  ‘Happy Hogmanay!’ he says.

  It’s New Year’s Eve, I realise.

  ‘Happy New Year, Lachlan.’

  ‘Let’s hope we all get what we want.’

  And we raise our glasses over the table, the glow from the candle lighting up the amber liquid. ‘Here’s to Candlemas!’ A smile spreads across both our faces and I feel a bubble of excitement rise in me that I haven’t felt in a long time, and I have no idea why.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  The next morning I wake early and look out on the mist rolling in off the sea and almost obscuring the neighbouring islands in the distance. Something in me just wants to get outside on this first day of the new year, and without giving it too much thought, I pull on my yoga leggings, a couple of layers on the top half, gloves, trainers and a hat and make my way down the stairs through the sleeping house to the back door.

  Outside, I take a deep breath and do something I haven’t done in a very long time. I put one foot in front of the other and begin to run, breathing in deeply as I do. I head down the path towards the loch and then up to the outreach of rocks. I follow the cliff edge for a while, then stop for a moment and catch my breath. Hands on hips, I breathe in deeply, and within no time, I’m rewarded for my efforts by three little black heads, with huge black watery eyes, bobbing up to say good morning, making me smile. Feeling revived, I decide to run on, following the burn. After all, didn’t Fraser say I couldn’t get lost if I followed the burn? I turn and head for the road, and spot the little croft there. I slow down as I pass it. It looks totally abandoned; no sign of life there at all. Such a shame.

  I put my head down and carry on alongside the crystal-clear water, tumbling and hurrying to its destination over rocks and stones. As my feet pound along the single-track road, I can’t help looking around. Behind me the bay and the sea, around me open moorland, in front of me the hills, and in front of them, the forest of pine trees where I climbed my first tree. And now here I am . . . running! I take deep gulps of the air, filling my lungs with its cool freshness and a hint of sharp saltiness, reminding me of the gin we drank on the beach.

  Very quickly the sky starts to darken and spots of rain begin to fall. As I’ve realised here, the weather can change in an instant. I slow up and look around as the rain suddenly gets heavier. I’m halfway to the village. In front of me I can see the herd of deer, and if I’m not mistaken, the two stags in the road, having a stand-off. I look at the stags, then back at the lonely-looking croft. The rain is getting heavier, hitting my face. It’s ahead to the stags or run back to the croft and see if I can just sit it out. If there’s anyone there, I’ll just ask if I can shelter by the front door.

  I turn and run back. I open the little picket gate and run up to the front door.

  ‘Hello!’ I knock loudly, the rain now pelting down. ‘Hello!’ I call again, but there’s no reply. I try the latch, and it opens. I gently push the door. ‘Hello,’ I say, more quietly, not wanting to scare anyone. But I can see the place is empty, and by the looks of i
t has been for some time.

  The open fire at one end is full of embers. On the table, melted wax from half-burnt candles has dripped down and made hard puddles. It looks like someone has just shut the door on this place. A bit like the big house, like the clock has just stopped ticking. Time has stood still. I walk around the table as the rain throws itself against the small square windows. I wonder how long it will last. On the table are two plates, knives and forks and glasses, an unopened bottle and a small jug of very dead-looking flowers.

  There is also a record sleeve, and on top of it a record broken in pieces. I pick up the sleeve. The title is familiar and the tune is on the tip of my tongue. A tiny phrase suddenly pops into my head, and I can’t remember where I know it from. It’s right at the back of my memory bank. Something I heard as a child maybe. The same phrase keeps repeating itself, and I suddenly feel like I’m intruding on someone’s life here, their memories. I’m not going to hang around. It could be ages before the rain passes, and Lachlan’s expecting me to talk to Hector about the other ingredients. I put down the record as close as I can to where it was and step out of the croft, pulling the door shut behind me.

  Outside, the rain is easing. Thankfully the stags have moved off the road and are up on the hillside, still locking horns, neither of them prepared to walk away or back down. Why can’t they learn to live with each other?! I think of Lachlan and me working together to get the gin made, both travelling in the same direction finally, but for very different reasons.

  I set off again, the tune of the broken record running round my head, and I begin to hum it as my feet pound the road. And then the images start to follow. My father, singing the song at Christmas as his after-dinner turn. An old song of the island, he would say, about love, belonging, about home being a feeling that stays with you wherever you go. It was his one song. He’d sing it with tears in his eyes, and when he finished, it was as if he’d put the memories back in the box and closed the lid for another year.

  Despite being warm from the running, I can feel the sting of the salty sea air and flecks of rain on my cheeks. I run past the pub, and there outside is Isla, trying to secure the Christmas lights in the increasing wind. I slow down and catch my breath. The run has put me in good spirits.