The following morning, as daybreak lifts the hem of night, every islander—no matter how infirm after the Hogmanay excesses—makes his or her way to Lusnaharra Strand for the annual Ne’erday Ba’—a communal game of shinty. The ball made from hazel root, carved and boiled, and the curved caman sticks, whittled from willow, can inflict serious injury but, heroically disregarding the physical risks and the exertions of the previous evening, players and supporters hurl themselves into the game with a degree of boisterousness that is almost suicidal.
Injuries have been sustained—broken bones, sprained ankles, blackened eyes—but no fatalities have been recorded so far. Naturally such valour must be rewarded and the quantity of drink taken through the afternoon and into the evening has ensured that the day is known as the Wee Hogmanay. That is, of course, unless it is a Sabbath, in which case the good Presbyterian members of the community stay away, stoically nursing their hangovers in silence over the family Bible while the papists battle it out at strand and inn.
—Grigor McWatt, 24 December 1955, The Fascaray Compendium
25 December 2014
I’m woken on Christmas morning by a howling wind and by Agnes, who stands by my bed, eyes bright with excitement. Outside, black clouds scud across a grey sky. The sea, battered by relentless rain, looks as bilious as I feel.
“Happy Christmas, Mom!”
“You too, sweetheart!”
This Christmas business must be got through.
Agnes is holding the stocking I left at the foot of her bed at midnight and settles next to me to open it. She’s an instinctive conservative, like all kids. Tradition is everything. There’s been a stocking, in some form or another, every Christmas of her life. This one’s red felt, decorated with plastic holly leaves, bought on my behalf by Margaret in Auchwinnie, and filled by me late last night with an assortment of plastic trinkets, fruit and candies, also bought by Margaret.
Agnes squeals with pleasure over every small item—a tube of pink glitter, a miniature disco ball, a set of tiny clockwork chattering teeth, a red balloon, gummy bears, some bright popper beads (way too young for her new pre-teen tastes), a foil-wrapped chocolate Santa, a tiny diary, a magnifying glass—“Perfect for examining my shells!” she exclaims—and a little red-and-white packet stamped with the words “Fortune Teller—Miracle Fish” above a cartoon of a sassy salmon, or possibly a cod, thrashing about in high seas. Agnes maintains the fiction, for my benefit I’m sure, that this cheap novelty is entirely new to her, despite the fact that she has found one in her stocking every year for the past seven years.
She takes out the fish-shaped strip of cellophane and reads out the instructions.
“ ‘Place fish in palm of hand and its movements will tell your fortune…’ Look, its head and tail are moving. It means I’m in love! Ewww. Gross! I don’t think so…”
She places it in my palm and it curls up and turns over. She frowns over the instructions on the packet.
“It says you’re false! What does that mean?”
“Telling lies.”
“Crazy fish,” she says, slipping it back in its envelope. She is done with the fortune teller for another year.
Before we go downstairs she has a surprise for me: a small stocking, one of her own red-striped socks, heavy and carbuncular with gifts.
“From Santa,” she says, handing it to me.
In it are some of her treasures—a pink scallop shell and a nugget of fool’s gold—as well as six wrapped Christmas cookies, shaped like snowmen and snowflakes, made with Margaret, a small bottle of the perfume she and Ailsa made from broom flowers under Johanna’s supervision, and one of the neon friendship bracelets she also made with Ailsa and her mother. How did Johanna find the time and patience to make all this stuff with the girls? Against my thoughtless shop-bought offerings, this stocking and its contents seem a rebuke to a mother who makes nothing but trouble.
We go down for breakfast—those home-made cookies—then turn to the presents under the tree. More exclamations of delight from Agnes as she opens the asked-for flower press, two grown-up field guides to the flowers and birds of Scotland, a field guide to shells from Margaret, a box of coloured nail polish and stickers, and a pair of red roller skates, which she insists on putting on straight away. From Canada, my parents and Aidan have sent her glow-in-the-dark gloves and a selfie stick. She immediately clamps her cell phone on to it, loops her arm round my neck and tells me to say Happy Christmas to the camera. I oblige, my cagey smirk upstaged by her full-beam smile. She immediately sends it to her father, who instantly pings a reply, which I don’t ask to see. What time is it there? What’s he doing up at this hour? Where is he anyway? Agnes saves Marco’s present to last. Carefully wrapped in purple paper and green ribbons it was delivered a month ago. It’s an expensive kids’ smartwatch, with games and a camera. Her evident pleasure seems muted for my benefit.
“He liked my movies and wants me to make more,” she says, fastening it to her wrist.
She wants to road-test her roller skates but first she has a special present for me. It’s a tissue-wrapped lozenge of frosted turquoise sea glass, pierced and threaded with leather.
“I found the glass on the beach at Lusnaharra. It’s just like a jewel made from frozen waves. Mr. Kennedy drilled a hole in it for me and put in the lace.”
“It’s beautiful,” I say, putting it on. She carefully adjusts it at my throat.
Outside, the rain has eased but we’re buffeted by the wind. Agnes grips my hand and propels herself unsteadily in her skates along the deserted street. We walk past my office, and the museum, which rebukes me with its spruceness. It’s ready for business. The Silver Darling is emerging from her canvas chrysalis, too. Eck has been busy. By the time we turn along the road to Finnverinnity House she’s mastered the skates, lets go of my hand and races past me. This is how it’s going to be, I reflect, standing alone and shivering in the cold, left with the receding echo of my daughter’s laughter as she speeds towards the horizon. The rain rescues me, bringing her scooting back and we hurry home, holding hands again.
—
In the evening, she Skypes my parents and Aidan in Canada, waving her gloves at the screen, showing off the selfie stick and her other presents. My mother, who seems suddenly frail, asks me how my work is going. “Fine,” I say, and ask her how she’s feeling. “Fine,” she says. I’m not so sure. My father tells me: “You know your grandfather would be awful proud of you…and we’re awful proud of you too.”
Agnes Skypes Marco next and I skirt the room, glimpsing his face on the screen. He’s grown a beard, I notice. I also notice, to my irritation, that it suits him. He leans in to tell Agnes some inconsequential story about a neighbour’s pet poodles. She shrieks appreciatively at the punchline, which involves some vigilante action over dog mess. I diplomatically retreat upstairs, out of range.
She seems sheepish when she comes to get me once they finish their call and is guarded when I ask her how her father is.
“He’s good. He had Christmas with Nonna Lucia and cousin Enzo yesterday. You know, Christmas Eve is their Christmas. They ate fish.”
We eat nut roast with carrots and Brussels sprouts, though we both loathe Brussels sprouts.
“We’ve got to have them,” she’d insisted. “It’s traditional.”
So are the shiny Christmas crackers she bought from Finnverinnity store, and the plastic toys and terrible jokes and paper hats inside them. We sit there wearing our flimsy coloured crowns and on this family day in our little cottage on this northern isle lashed by wind and rain, we make lonely, dispossessed monarchs far from home.
In the evening we watch television—a cartoon about insufferably cute snow creatures. I keep my reservations to myself. Later, she paints my nails turquoise with frowning concentration; an artist at work.
“It’s the colour of the sea, in summer,” she says. “To remind you.”
On her way to bed she has another regressive turn and asks me to read
her a bedtime story.
She chooses The Treasure Seekers again.
“From the beginning. Please!”
This time there is no escape.
“ ‘There are six of us besides Father,’ ” I read. “ ‘Our Mother is dead, and if you think we don’t care because I don’t tell you much about her you only show that you do not understand people at all.’ ”
Did Marco ever pause to read this stuff before he gave it to our daughter?
I read on and her eyelids grow heavy as she drifts towards sleep.
“Thanks, Mom,” she whispers. “That was a brilliant Christmas.”
The Herkeners…
…anely a thrang o bogle herkeners
That bided in the lane hoose then
Stuid leetin in the saucht o the muinlicht
Tae thon vyce frae the warld o men:
Stuid croudin the shilpit muinbeams on the daurk stair,
That gangs doon tae the tuimt haw,
Leetin in an air steert an shoogelt
By the lanely Traiveler’s caw.
Niver the least steer made the herkeners,
Though ivery wird he spake
Fell echoin through the sheedaeness o the lown hoose
Frae the wan man left awake:
Aye, they heard his foot onwart the stirrup,
An the soond o airn on stane,
An hou the seelence plyped saftly backlins
When the breengin hooves were gane.
—Grigor McWatt, efter Walter de la Mare, 2013*
* * *
* That’s Me Awa, Smeddum Beuks, 2013.
26 December 2014
“So today is St. Stephen’s Day—that’s what some people call Boxing Day. Tomorrow is St. Fabiola’s Day and then there is the feast day of the Massacre of the Holy Innocents,” Agnes informs me.
Is this new fad for the lives of saints the influence of Catholic Oonagh? I wonder. I caught them giggling and cooing over photographs of Oonagh’s first communion dress last week.
“The 28th of December is the day,” Agnes continues, “when Herod heard about the Baby Jesus and sent his army out to murder all the baby boys.”
I don’t know whether to be worried about religious indoctrination or pleased at her retentive memory.
“This isn’t necessarily historical fact…” I caution.
Agnes rolls her eyes.
“Mom! It’s folklore! It has value too!”
I postpone a definitive view. I have my own Massacre of Innocence to address.
It’s a calm, cold day of silvery-blue skies and high thin cloud when we set out on the quad bike. It’s taken me this long to master driving the thing, just as we’re about to leave, and there won’t be many opportunities for all-terrain biking once we’re back in Brooklyn, or whichever blighted North American industrial town I wind up working in; running automotive industry heritage tours in Detroit, perhaps, or managing the gift shop in the Baltimore Babe Ruth Interactive Museum.
We’re heading for Calasay to check that An Tobar and the library have survived the storm. I want to bid a private farewell to the house, to McWatt and the whole venture, as well as to my professional credibility, and ensure that I am leaving it in good shape before breaking the news to Gordon Nesbitt and giving in my notice on Monday. I can’t postpone it any longer. The opening celebration on Wednesday will have to be cancelled. The Fascaradians can still have their Hogmanay ceilidh but the museum is finished. And so am I. The ceilidh will soften the blow for Agnes, who is going to find it hard to leave the island. Though she doesn’t know it, this is her farewell to Calasay too.
“This is so fun,” she squeals, as we ride up Finnverinnity Glen towards the Calasay Strand. The tide is out when we get to Ruh and it’s a dry run across the sand with the wind behind us and the sea, under the winter sun, a distant harebell meadow. We leave the bike on the machair and while Agnes admires the worm casts in the sand I set out a picnic—bread, cheese, apples, a flask of hot broth and Christmas cake, made by Margaret.
“We’re so lucky,” says Agnes, watching two red-beaked oystercatchers patrolling the shore.
“Why’s that?”
“We live in the most beautiful place in the world.”
After lunch we walk up to An Tobar—“The Source,” as I now know, of the myth of Grigor McWatt. Against the brilliant blue backdrop of sky and sea it looks absurdly picturesque. Whatever else can be said against the old fraud, he chose well. Suburban Surrey or this place? I know what I’d choose. For him, as well as exceptional natural beauty, the island must have offered escape and peace, the chance to shake off his past for whatever reason, to reinvent himself and be a better, cleverer, stronger man. It took grit to withstand those many, many bleak days when the wind and rain and battering sea conspired to enact a clearance of their own and drive the faint-hearted from the land. Whoever he was, there was no denying Grigor McWatt loved the place, respected it and gave something back to it and its people.
While I linger, taking in each room for the last time, Agnes dashes round the cottage taking pictures.
“It was creepy when we first came,” she says. “But it’s kind of grown on me. Papa would really love this place.”
I go to the desk, waiting for her to finish, and idly lift the lid. There, where McWatt left them before he died, are the fountain pen, ink, pencils, eraser, sharpener and felt-tip pens; the tools he used to dig his way out of his drab past and, over seventy years, build a bold and brilliant story for himself. Who wouldn’t, given the same options and opportunity?
I realise I’m no longer angry with him. In fact I’m beginning to feel a sneaking admiration. Whoever he was, there’s no denying his achievement—the translations, “reimaginings,” whatever he called them, whatever tradition they were drawn from, still speak up for Scots as a vital and distinctive language, or dialect, or whatever you want to call it. Does anyone care that English wasn’t Nabokov’s first language? Or that Beckett chose to write in French? McWatt, or Watkins, mastered the Scots language, no question. And no one can deny that, as a comprehensive account of island culture and natural history across the twentieth century, The Fascaray Compendium has no rival. He was the ultimate self-made man. And he paid heavily for his deceit; the price of a lifetime secret is loneliness.
We lock up the house and I walk across the yard to check on the byre. Agnes goes off to look for wild flowers to press for her new collection.
“Maybe there’ll be some of those tufty sea pinks by the cliff?” she says.
In December? I doubt it, but I don’t want to spoil her fun. I’ll be doing plenty of that in the coming weeks.
I can hardly bear to look at the library, this impressive collection amassed and preserved so lovingly over a lifetime to bolster a lie he may even have come to believe himself.
The musty smell breaks the bad news. There’s been a leak. A small pool of water on the floor by the north wall confirms it. I look up to the rafters and see a ten-inch dark patch on the ceiling which has spread across the shelves all the way down to the floor. 821: English poetry. This is still my responsibility. I reach up and start to take out some of the casualties; their spines are wet to the touch. The Oxford Book of English Verse is saturated, as is Palgrave’s Golden Treasury. I spread them out on a dry area of the floor and try to mop them with my scarf. The Palgrave’s slips free from its boards and the thick wedge of pages lies there sodden as a bathroom sponge. I might as well chuck it. It wasn’t worth much before; it’s worthless now. I glance at the pale bookplate pasted to the endpaper. Printed below an elaborate coat of arms are the words: “Royal Grammar School, Surrey. June, 1935. School Prize for English.” The name of the recipient is written in copperplate: “Geoffrey Watkins.”
I can do no more here. I turn and leave, locking the door behind me for a final time.
It’s then that I hear a scream. The air vibrates with it. Agnes’s scream. I run towards it, scanning the cliff edge for sight of her. She’s not there. Stum
bling wildly I follow the fading echo and make a bargain with a god I don’t believe in.
“Let her be all right. Please. Let her be okay.”
Nothing in the world, no one, matters to me but my beautiful daughter, to whom I have been such a careless mother.
“Please let her be okay.”
I look out over the cliff to the waves crashing on the empty beach far below. Then I see her just beneath me, lying on a wide grassy ledge five feet down, her eyes closed, legs crooked. There’s no sign of blood. I scramble towards her and reach her in time to see her stir. Her eyes open and—here’s the miracle, the answered prayer—she is laughing. She is okay. Agnes is okay.
She sits up, rubbing her knee as I reach her.
“I’m fine. Mom, really I am. I was trying to pull up this pretty blue flower and I just tripped and fell. I saved myself by grabbing that stone sticking out of the side of the cliff.”
She points to a rectangular object, still partly wedged in the rock and soil.
“Can we bring it back with us?” She is on her feet, unscathed, reaching for the stone. “As a souvenir? I can show Papa when I tell him the story?”
“No,” I say firmly. “Let me.”
I help her back up to the cliff path then lower myself down again to examine the stone more carefully. It is, in fact, not a stone but a hinged box of wood and metal. I prise it carefully out of the cliff face. It’s about the size of a shoebox, shaped like a small roofed house and covered with what looks like hammered gold and silver plate, decorated with carved animals entwined in the Celtic fashion. There are three red enamelled studs on the lid. I put my ear to the box and shake it gently. There’s a muffled rattle; something’s in there but I know better than to force open the lid myself. I’ll leave that to the experts. The tide is coming in and we don’t want to spend the night in An Tobar. I wrap the box carefully in my spare fleece, put it in my backpack, rejoin my daughter on the cliff path and we hold hands as we hurry back to the quad bike. It’s time to say goodbye to Calasay.
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