by Mary Stewart
‘Actually, no, not this time.’ The usual casual answer. ‘She doesn’t like the Highlands, you know that, and she’s got rather a lot on just at present. She’s planning to take a holiday abroad later on, after John and Julie go back to school. But if you can get this place … It could be really good. Most of the young birds will still be at the nest, and if the weather lets up, we might get across to the Treshnish Isles as well. Look, Rose, why not? It sounds great. Why don’t you go right ahead and get the details, and then we’ll be in touch again?’
And so it was arranged. I wrote that night to the box number.
And got my ivory tower.
2
The Isle of Moila is the first stop past Tobermory. It is not a large island, perhaps nine miles by five, with formidable cliffs to the north-west that face the weather rather like the prow of a ship. From the steep sheep-bitten turf at the head of these cliffs the land slopes gently down towards a glen where the island’s only sizeable river runs seawards out of a loch cupped in a shallow basin among low hills. Presumably the loch – lochan, rather, for it is not large – is fed by springs eternally replenished by the rain, for nothing flows into it except small burns seeping through rush and bog myrtle, which spread after storms into sodden quagmires of moss. But the outflow is perennially full, white water pouring down to where the moor cleaves open and lets it fall to the sea.
The island’s coast is mainly rocky, but, except for the northerly crags, the coastal cliffs are low, thrusting out here and there into the sea to enclose small curved beaches. Most of these are shingle beaches, but those facing west are sandy, the white shell sand of the Atlantic shore, backed by the machair, that wonderful wild grassland of the west coast, which in May and June is filled with flowers and all the nesting birds that any photographer could wish for.
When I first saw Moila it was on a beautiful day in the last week of June. My term had ended a few days before the start of Crispin’s leave, so we had agreed to travel up separately, and meet on Moila itself. The island ferry, as I had discovered, sailed three times a week, on Mondays, Wednesdays and Saturdays; it went from Oban to Tobermory on the Isle of Mull, and then called at Moila on its way to Coll and Tiree. I had also discovered that there would be little, if any, use for a car on Moila, so both my brother and I had arranged to travel up by train.
It was a pleasant journey. I took the night train for Fort William, which stops at Crianlarich at seven in the morning. With a three-hour wait there, I ate a large breakfast, did a quarter of the day’s crossword, then boarded the little local train that runs through Glen Lochy and past the northern end of Loch Awe, to finish at Oban on the west coast. The ferry for the outer isles was due to leave at six on the following morning, so I checked into the waterfront hotel where I had booked, then spent the day exploring Oban, and went to bed early. At half past five next morning I boarded the ferry, and was on the final stage of my journey.
The sea was calm, and Oban, caught in the clear light of a summer morning, looked charming and toylike, as we sailed sedately out between the islets and castle-crowned rocks, with seabirds drifting in our wake, and everywhere, even over the smell of salt and wind, the scents of summer. Idyllic. Just the setting for an ivory tower.
Or so I still hoped. Nobody I had spoken to in the train, or on the ferry, had ever visited Moila, which must support, so I was told by one slow-spoken Highlander, no more than thirty folk in all.
‘So you’ll be right back to nature, and let us hope that the natives are friendly.’ The twinkle in his eye was reassuring, but when we tied up at Tobermory and the purser pointed out to sea where a group of small rocks (or so it seemed) showed strung out on the horizon like a mother duck with her ducklings after her, I felt a cowardly twinge, and found myself wondering what the ‘relatively mod cons’ could be.
‘Yon big island, see? That’s Moila,’ said my guide.
‘And the others?’
‘Och, they’ve all got names, but I could not tell you what they are. There’s no folk there, only the birds.’
‘Can you get to them?’
‘Oh, aye, with a bit of luck, On a fine day. Parties do go out, folks with cameras to film the birds. You’re one of these bird watchers, are you?’
‘Not really. But my brother’s very keen. He’s coming to join me later this week. Do you know if we’ll be able to hire a boat in Moila?’
But here he had to leave me to attend to stores which were being brought on board, and some twenty minutes later I could see the place for myself.
The ferry was not big, but she dwarfed the harbour – she had to stand off from the jetty and land us by boat – and indeed the village. As far as I could see, there were some eight or nine cottages strung out on a narrow road which circled the bay. The building nearest the jetty was the post office-cum-shop. A home-made notice informed me that it was kept by M. McDougall, who also did bed and breakfasts. Some fifty yards away was a white-washed building surrounded by a stretch of asphalt; the village school, I was to discover, where on alternate Sundays the minister from Tobermory came over to hold a service. A narrow river, little more than a stream, lapsed gently over its stones past the post office. It was spanned by a narrow humpbacked bridge of the picturesque variety that is guaranteed to damage any car that uses it. But, as I had been warned, there were no cars. One battered Land Rover stood outside the post office, and leaning against the schoolhouse wall were a couple of bicycles. No other forms of transport. Nor, as far as I could see, did the road continue beyond the end of the village.
And my cottage, I had been informed, lay at the other side of the island.
Well, I had asked for it. I left my cases parked on the quay, and made my way into the post office.
Since the thrice-weekly visit of the ferry brought all the island’s mail and supplies, and the post office was very small, the place was crowded, and the postmistress, busily sorting through a pile of mail and newspapers, while exchanging two days’ news in Gaelic with the ferry’s master, had no glance to spare for me. The little shop had been arranged as what I have seen described as a mini-hypermarket, so I found a basket and busied myself with collecting what supplies I thought I might need for the next couple of days. I was called to myself by the echoing hoot of the ferry’s siren, to find that the shop had emptied of its crowd, and the postmistress, taking off her spectacles, was hurrying round to the store counter to look after the stranger.
‘You’ll be the young lady for Camus na Dobhrain? Miss Fenemore, was it?’
She was a thinnish woman of perhaps fifty, with greying hair carefully arranged, and very blue eyes. She wore a flowered smock, and her spectacles hung round her neck on a cord. She had the beautiful skin of the islands, with hardly a wrinkle, except near the eyes, where the smile lines puckered the corners. She was not smiling now, but her look was full of a benevolent curiosity, and the soft island voice, with the lilt of the Gaelic moving through it like a gentle sea-swell, warmed me as palpably as if the sun had come into the dim and cluttered little shop.
‘Yes, I’m Rose Fenemore. And you are Mrs McDougall? How do you do?’ We shook hands. ‘And yes, I’m for the cottage that the Harris Agency advertised. Is that the one? I don’t understand Gaelic, I’m afraid.’
‘And how should you? Yes, indeed, that is the one. The English for it is “Otters’ Bay”. It is the only place on Moila that is to let. We’re not just a metropolis, as you see.’ She smiled, busying herself with my purchases as she spoke. ‘You’ll not have been here before, then? Well, if the weather stays fine you’ll find plenty of nice walks, and I’m told that the house at Otters’ Bay is comfortable enough these days. But lonely. You are by yourself, are you?’
‘Till Wednesday, at least. My brother’s hoping to come then.’ I gave her all she wanted to know. I was part of the week’s news, after all. ‘He’s a doctor, from Hampshire. He couldn’t get away when I did, so I came up on my own. Does the Wednesday ferry come in at the same time?’
; ‘It does. You have not put any firelighters in. You will find it is much easier to get your fire going with one of those. Are you used to a peat fire?’
‘No, but I’m hoping I can learn. Mrs McDougall, how do I get from here to the cottage? I’m told it’s about two miles. I can easily walk to do shopping and so on, but I’ve got a couple of suitcases here now, and I certainly can’t manage those.’
‘No worry about that. I saw your cases there, and Archie McLaren will have them into the Land Rover by this time. So will you perhaps be wanting a couple of bags, say, of coal to help with the fire? The house will be dry enough; there was a couple in it through the middle of May, and we have had good weather, but you would be better to stock up now for what next week might bring.’
‘Yes, of course. Thank you very much. Two bags of coal, then, please, and the firelighters, and – yes, I think I’ve remembered everything else. Oh, about milk and bread. Can one only get it fresh when the ferry comes over?’
‘We have fresh milk here from the farm, but you would be better to take some of the long-life with you. It’s a long walk from Otters’ Bay in the bad weather. Here it is. Two cartons, and it will keep a long time, even with no fridge. I don’t know if you have one over there … The bread comes with the boat. Will I keep you a loaf on Wednesday? And another at the weekend, or two then, perhaps? Mostly we make our own if we want it fresh. There, is that everything?’
‘I think so, thank you. How much is that, Mrs McDougall?’
She told me, and I paid her. A young man, dark, short, burly, in a navy guernsey and jeans and gumboots, came in and lifted the coal bags into the Land Rover beside my cases. I picked up the carrier bag where the postmistress had packed my groceries.
‘I don’t imagine there’s a telephone at the cottage, is there?’
‘There is not. There is one here, and one at the House, and that is all there are. And the one at the House is cut off since the old lady died.’
‘The House?’ Somehow, the way she said it gave it a capital letter.
‘The big house. It’s not far from you, half a mile along the shore, maybe. Taigh na Tuir, they call it. That means House of the Tower. There is a small island off the coast just there, with the remains of a broch on it. I suppose that is the tower that the House was named for. It was built as a shooting lodge in the old days, and then the Hamiltons bought it, and lived there most summers, but old Mrs Hamilton, she was the last of them, died this February, so it’s empty now, and likely to stay so.’ She smiled. ‘It’s not everyone wants the kind of peace and quiet we have on Moila.’
‘I can imagine. Well, I’m all set to enjoy it, anyway. And I don’t really want a phone, except to make sure about my brother’s coming. So I’ll walk over here tomorrow and telephone him, if I may. What time do you shut?’
‘Half past five, but if you want the telephone, then come to the house door. No, it’s no trouble, it’s what everyone does, and the cheap calls are after six anyway. Just you come. That’s it, then.’ She picked up the second carrier bag and saw me to the door with it. ‘Archie will see you into the house, and if there’s anything more that you need, you will let him know. And I’ll look for you maybe tomorrow. Goodbye. Look after the lady, now, Archie.’
Archie was understood to say that he would. I got in beside him, and we set off. The Land Rover had seen better days, and once we had left the village street and taken to the track – it was little more – that wound up from the village towards the moorland, conversation was difficult. After one or two tries, met by a nod or a non-committal noise from Archie, I gave up, and looked about me.
I suppose that there are very few places on Moila from which one cannot see the sea. The track, rough and strewn with stones, climbed, at first gently, through sheep-cropped turf bristling with reeds and thistles and islanded with stretches of bracken. Once we were out of sight of the village there were no trees except, here and there, thorns dragged sideways by the wind and shorn close by the weather. The track grew steeper, and twisted. Now to either hand was heather, at this season still dark and flowerless, except where patches of the early bell heather splashed their vivid purple across grey rock. The whins, those perpetual wonders, were blazing gold, and everywhere over the stretches of grass between the bracken spread the tiny white and yellow flowers of lady’s bedstraw and tormentil. The very lichen patching the grey rocks was bright mustard-gold, like flowers. Away to the right I saw the flat gleam of the loch.
Nothing could be heard above the noise of the engine, but I saw a lark spring skywards out of the heather, and another, a few minutes later, sink to its rest. A pair of grey-backed crows – hooded crows – flew across the track, and then, as the Land Rover topped the rise and started down into a narrowing glen, a buzzard soared up in leisurely circles, to be lost over the crest of the moor.
Then we were running gently downhill beside a burn, towards the distant gleam of the sea. Here, in the shelter that the glen gave from the Atlantic gales, the trees crowded close, and reasonably tall. Oaks, mostly, but there were beeches and ash trees, with birch and hazel everywhere, tangled with brambles and wild honeysuckle. Along the edge of the burn were thickets of alder and hawthorn standing knee-deep in foxgloves.
The track levelled out, the glen widened, and there below us was the bay.
Otters’ Bay was very small, a pebbled crescent backed by a storm beach of smooth boulders. Thick black curves of dry seaweed marked the reach of the tides. To our left a high cliff cut off the view, and to the right a lowish headland jutted well out into the sea. Narrowing my eyes against the Atlantic glitter I could see the line of a path that climbed from the bay and on over the headland to the west. And beyond the crest of the headland, hazy with distance, the shape of a hill, smooth and symmetrical, like a drawn-up knee.
Then the Land Rover came to a halt beside a rough jetty made of stacked boulders tied down with fencing wire, and there, backed against the cliff a short way above us, was the cottage.
Also by Mary Stewart
Madam, Will You Talk?
Wildfire at Midnight
Thunder on the Right
Nine Coaches Waiting
My Brother Michael
The Ivy Tree
The Moonspinners
This Rough Magic
Airs Above the Ground
The Gabriel Hounds
Touch Not the Cat
Stormy Petrel
Rose Cottage
THE ARTHURIAN NOVELS
The Crystal Cave
The Hollow Hills
The Last Enchantment
The Wicked Day
The Prince and the Pilgrim
POEMS
Frost on the Window
FOR CHILDREN
The Little Broomstick
Ludo and the Star Horse
A Walk in Wolf Wood
Mary Stewart, one of the most popular novelists, was born in Sunderland, County Durham and lives in the West Highlands. Her first novel, Madam, Will You Talk? was published in 1955 and marked the beginning of a long and acclaimed writing career. All her novels have been bestsellers on both sides of the Atlantic. She was made a Doctor of Literature by Durham University in 2009.