The Island Nurse

by Mary J. Macleod

  He turned and was gone. I hastily boiled kettles, made thermoses of sweet tea, found some meat pies in the fridge and dumpling in the larder. I collected blankets, some towels and two eiderdowns, bundled it all into the car and made for the shore.

  Archie was there already with a fearsome-looking crowbar and some elderly tools. He took the goods from me and stowed them in the small forward cabin.

  ‘I’d like to come too, Archie, but Dr Mac is off and I . . .’

  ‘Aye, I know. [Of course he knew. How silly of me!] And Dr O’Donnell will no get here the night in this weather!’ (So he knew about Dr O’Donnell, too.)

  ‘Fergie’s comin.’ Sure enough, Fergie came running down the hill, coat flapping.

  We all pushed the boat down the rollers and into the heaving sea. The men jumped in and I watched until I could no longer see the masthead light that had been appearing and disappearing as the boat plunged and rolled on the tumultuous sea. I turned and drove over Ben Criel once more to see Dr Mac and open the surgery.

  Fiona told me that Dr O’Donnell had phoned to say that he was stuck on the mainland. Dr Mac was asleep, so I did not disturb him. Luckily the storm had meant that most people were happy to keep their ailments until the morning, so the surgery was very quiet.

  As I drove home past Loch Annan, I saw the large, muscular figure of Big Craig, our roadman, bent almost double as he battled his way towards Dhubaig and his fireside. I stopped and he climbed into the tiny car with difficulty.

  ‘Ach! It’s coarse, coarse weather, Nurse,’ he grumbled, good-naturedly. ‘And are your boys still on Isle Cruach?’

  I stared at him in amazement. Even for Papavray’s jungle telegraph, this was quick! He saw my look and chuckled. ‘Murdoch was with Fergie when Archie told him, and he told Postie.’

  I told him all I knew and he made me promise to ‘gie him a wee knock’ if I needed his help in any way.

  Mary arrived. ‘Will we sit together a whiley?’

  We sat until the small hours, drinking tea, until Mary went at about 4 a.m. I finally fell asleep in front of the Rayburn.

  ‘Hello, Mum!’

  ‘Hello, Mum!’

  I awoke with a start to see that it was daylight and there were my two shipwrecked mariners looking at me with wide grins on their grubby faces. With relief I saw that, although they were bedraggled and filthy, they were unharmed. Falling over each other to recount their adventures, they told me that the boat had lost power for some reason and they had drifted to the only beach on Isle Cruach. They had wisely turned the little craft upside down and crawled under it to obtain some shelter from the howling wind and horizontal rain. There they stayed for several hours, wet, cold and hungry.

  When Archie and Fergie arrived, the whole thing had turned into an adventure. The bothy door was prised open, enough driftwood was gathered to make a fire, the food and blankets brought in and . . .

  ‘I had some whisky, Mum,’ announced Andy with pride.

  I looked at him. ‘And did you like it?’

  ‘Um, no, it was horrible.’ (He doesn’t think so now!)

  ‘I liked it,’ said Nick. (He still does!)

  At about 7 a.m., Fergie realised that the storm had abated, so they scrambled into Archie’s boat and towed our little craft back. So here they were. Tired but feeling quite heroic. What a tale for school on Monday!

  I stoked the Rayburn, made a huge breakfast, which they ate with gusto, and chased them into a hot bath. I showered, changed, fed the animals again and set off for work. Just as I shut the door, George drove down the track!

  THIRTEEN

  ‘The terrible, terrible thing’

  One day towards the end of February I had a call from John, the policeman, swiftly followed by one from Dr Mac. Both were guarded and cryptic, but the three of us were to go to Chreileh, one of the smallest inhabited islands in the Hebrides. It was about three miles by two and even more remote than Papavray, as it was situated many miles farther out into the Atlantic. I had never been there.

  As I drove to the steamer ferry at Dalhavaig, where I was to meet the doctor and the policemen, I puzzled over the brief message.

  ‘Minister McDuff has called from Chreileh to say that there is a problem that needs the three of us immediately. He sounded very shaken and refused to say more, except that it concerned a neglected old lady who needed treatment and removal from the island, probably to Rachadal hospital.’ This was all that the doctor had been told, and John’s summons had been even less informative – just that a police presence was needed.

  A small fishing boat that did winter duty as an inter-island ferry was waiting at the pier. John and Dr Mac, with his ‘bag of tricks’ as he called it, were already there, and we boarded immediately. We were the only passengers, as people do not travel much in the wintertime. The larger ferries do not run then, so a couple of fishing vessels are the only means of transport between the small islands.

  Dougall was the owner of the Sprite, a pretty name for the squat, lumbering craft that smelled strongly of its primary function. Rugged and weatherbeaten like his boat, his blue jersey bespattered with fish scales, Dougall was well known to all of us. He was curious about our mission.

  ‘I took the minister over a few hours ago,’ he boomed above the noise of the engine and the howling of a force eight. The sea was rough, and we were tossed and battered as we rose onto the crests and thumped down into the troughs. The Sprite somehow managed to roll from side to side at the same time.

  ‘Aye,’ Dougall continued, fortissimo. ‘He was prayin the whole way over. I think he’s more faith when he’s on the sea than he has in the kirk.’

  Dougall’s remark reminded me of one of George’s sayings, harking back to his days in the Merchant Navy, namely that ‘everyone’s a Christian in a typhoon!’ He had never forgotten the sight of burly stokers on their knees while a mid-Atlantic storm sent 40-foot waves over the bow of the ship. The very men who an hour or two before had been swearing, gambling, drinking and fighting!

  At last we neared Chreileh and I had my first sight of the island. No pretty-pretty island this, but a stark, solitary rock rising from the vastness of the ocean. Sea girt with a restless skirt of white froth, its low hills of brown and purple slumbered beneath an angry sky full of dark scudding clouds. It looked solid: stubbornly resistant to the elements. Eternal. A testament to nature’s sovereignty. The constant pounding of the cliffs and the rattling of the pebbles as the waves retreated to gather themselves for the next onslaught added another fearsome noise to the roaring of wind and rain. Suddenly, however, we were rounding a headland and entering a large bay that was comparatively calm.

  The island had been home to a small whaling fleet, and the remains of the once-busy harbour could still be seen. Now it was badly silted up and there was only a narrow channel of deep water to the tiny pier. As we nosed our way in, I could see the ruins of vast sheds. Rusting roofs gaped and rattled in the wind, and bits of unidentifiable machinery stood about. The skeletons of two whalers, now half buried in the mud of the harbour, also told their sad story. Roofless houses were everywhere, while boulders and weeds littered the track leading up into the hills from the harbour. Not a tree softened the severity of the landscape, and yet there was a primitive grandeur, a glorious awareness of the forces of nature that had fashioned this little world. Only man’s additions had suffered in the passage of time: the rest would go on for ever.

  There was no sign of life, but we had been observed. An agitated figure rounded a far bend in the hill track and made its erratic course down to the pier as we carefully disembarked onto the slippery surface of the broken stones. A small private boat, as battered as the one that we had crossed in, was tied up alongside.

  ‘That’s Roddy’s boat,’ Dougall informed us. Roddy was the garage owner from Papavray who also doubled as the coal merchant and the undertaker. ‘He must be here for a corpus.’

  He saw my puzzled look.

  ‘Ach, well, y’see,’ h
e shouted. ‘Folk dinna like travelling with a corpus on the ferries, so Roddy has to fetch them over in his own boat.’

  I hadn’t given such things much thought, but I could now see the reasoning behind Roddy’s prudent decision. All the dead from the small surrounding islands were brought to Papavray for burial, so Roddy’s boat afforded some privacy for the deceased and their families. This was just one more example of the undreamed-of difficulties of living in remote places, and the ingenuity of the people who did so.

  The advancing minister flapped his scarecrow way along the pier to where we waited.

  ‘May God bless us this day,’ he intoned as he regained his breath. ‘This is a terrible, terrible thing that has been done here.’

  The Rev. McDuff was a pale, gaunt man and now the shock of whatever this ‘terrible thing’ was had made him look quite ill.

  Dr Mac grunted. He had no time for that ‘canting creature’, as he was apt to call the Reverend. I suddenly realised that these two were the ones whose opposing opinions about the deaths of Morag and Shona had caused so much trouble in Dhubaig eight or nine years ago. To a feuding Gael, that is no time at all!

  We followed the minister along the pier and began to ascend the track leading up the hill. Dougall tied the boat and ran to catch up, agog with curiosity. On our way, we met Roddy and an assistant coming down the hill bearing a rough wooden stretcher. On this was a rather dirty blanket, under which the shape of a body was clearly visible.

  ‘Ciamar a tha’ was the very subdued greeting. They did not linger but carried on towards Roddy’s boat. Even these two rugged individuals looked shocked, although they were well used to the paraphernalia of death.

  We tramped on past a group of houses showing signs of occupation, but there was no one about and we followed the silent black-clad minister out onto the open hillside. In the distance, we could see a larger than average house, more of a farm than a croft, and very isolated. As we approached this bleak house, we saw a knot of people near the door, whispering among themselves. What could have happened?

  The minister turned to us at the door and said, ‘Prepare yourselves! You will be deeply shocked.’

  I stared at him and almost found myself copying his plea to God to bless us. He led us through the kitchen and up the stairs, where he opened a latch door and stood to one side. The doctor and John entered first and stopped just inside. Peering between them, I gasped in horror.

  The smell was overpowering and I could see a figure huddled on a filthy bed. Dr Mac and I advanced cautiously, but John stayed back, barring the entry of Dougall and the minister. The figure was that of a woman, whose age I judged to be about 60. Her scanty clothes fell in grey rags, revealing a thin frame, while her white, tangled hair was in a kind of bird’s nest at the side of her head.

  I heard John move to open the window, but it had been nailed shut. The woman on the bed was looking at us with wary eyes, and her mouth was opening and closing, but no sound came. As I approached one side of the bed, I was again horrified as I saw that a length of chain was attached to the poor creature’s wrist, while the other end was secured to the bedpost. Dr Mac and I looked at each other in disbelief. Was she mad? Who had done this? It looked as though she had been here for years. Some dirty plates and a jug of cloudy water stood on a grubby table near the bed, and the final degradation was in the corner of the room where some newspapers, spread on the floor, held human excrement.

  Led by instinct only, the doctor and I began to murmur soothingly. I don’t think we actually said anything, just made consoling noises. She stared at us with frightened eyes.

  We could hear whispers on the stairs and Roddy crept into the room and went to John. In his hand was a sturdy pair of wire cutters and a small saw.

  ‘Chappie over the hill gave me these,’ he said, nodding towards the chain.

  Dr Mac pulled himself together and began to take charge. ‘The first thing is clean water for her to drink and something to eat . . . maybe soup would be best. Ask a neighbour.’ This was to John, who hurried off.

  I needed to do something. I held out my hand to her, murmuring, ‘Ciamar a tha.’

  She looked at my hand and appeared to hear my greeting, but still she said nothing. Slowly and diffidently, she touched me. I had never had to deal with anything like this before and was functioning purely on instinct and compassion as I patted her hand and gradually pressed the filthy little figure to me. She began to cry, but her weeping was strangely silent as huge tears flowed down the grimy cheeks. Not a sob or a moan.

  Dr Mac stood close but said nothing, motioning to John to start cutting the chain.

  I rocked the weeping woman as the sawing and cutting went on. They were afraid that they might hurt her if they cut too close, so a six-inch length of chain and the ‘bracelet’ had to remain for the time being.

  A worried-looking crofter woman came to the bedroom door and handed me a mug of warm soup.

  ‘Thank you,’ I whispered to the kindly soul. ‘Can you bring me some warm water, soap, a flannel and a towel so that I can wash her face and hands?’

  I held the mug towards the woman. She grabbed it and took it in great noisy, greedy gulps. How long, I wondered, had it been since she had eaten? It seemed likely that whoever had just been carried away had been responsible for this. Who? Why? The minister was right: it was a ‘terrible, terrible thing’ that had been done here.

  The crofter came back with the water. Indicating the figure on the bed, she whispered to me, ‘Her name is Biddy.’ I stared at her, but she shook her head and her eyes were wet. She was obviously deeply shocked.

  I lifted Biddy’s head and gently bathed her face and her claw-like hands. The dirt was unbelievable. At least I was able to address her as ‘Biddy’ now, and she seemed surprised to hear her name.

  Dr Mac stood by helplessly, probably for the first time in his long career, and I acted only through a fog of pity and disbelief.

  John motioned to Dr Mac and they went just outside the door to confer. I kept talking gently to Biddy, but, although she watched me carefully, she still made no reply.

  After a while, Dr Mac came back into the room and explained that we were going to wrap her in blankets and the men would carry her down the stairs and put her on the ‘stretcher’ that Roddy had brought back. She would be taken to the Sprite and tucked up in the tiny cabin for the journey back to Papavray. She gazed at us during all this, but we still could not tell if she understood.

  I began to wrap a blanket round her shoulders and another round her lower parts. It was very clear that neither her clothes nor her person had been washed for years, and my stomach heaved as I moved her.

  Roddy was at the front door with the stretcher, and she was made as cosy as possible, but that piece of equipment was not constructed for comfort, as its usual occupants were not likely to complain. The same crofter woman came forward and solicitously wrapped a waterproof coat around Biddy.

  ‘Do you know about all this?’ I asked her.

  ‘None of us did, but we do now and can guess the reason for it . . .’ She could not continue but began to shed tears of utter despair.

  I looked at her. If these kindly people had not known of Biddy’s plight, how must they be feeling now? To realise that this cruelty had been happening under their very noses as they went about their everyday tasks?

  John came over to the little group of crofters. ‘I’ll be back when we have got the lady on board, to find out what you know.’

  There were murmurs and sobs from the women while the men looked at their boots.

  The little procession set off along the track in the blustery wind; mercifully, the rain had stopped. I walked beside the stretcher as often as the width of the path would allow and kept talking to Biddy, using her name frequently in the hope of lessening the shock of all this activity. The poor lady was very frightened.

  John had contacted Papavray’s ambulance and it was waiting at Dalhavaig harbour to transport Biddy, the doctor and
myself to Rachadal hospital. As soon as we arrived there, my own involvement ended and I went home to bathe and wash my hair and clothes.

  But all this ‘washing away’ of the trauma was superficial. It was days before I recovered emotionally from the horror of Biddy’s plight and a week or so before I heard the whole dreadful story.

  FOURTEEN

  The terrible, terrible truth

  ‘Nurse? I’m just calling to say that Chrissie is here. The lady who got the soup?’

  ‘Yes, John.’

  ‘I had to ask her to come over to sign statements and stuff. We wondered if you might like to hear the story from her. She’s at her sister’s for a few days, so you could pop in some time. Maggie, Dalhavaig post office.’

  At about three the next day, I made my way to the post office as instructed. What was I about to hear?

  Chrissie and Maggie, both in their late 30s, ushered me into the back room, where a bright fire and warm colours created a cameo of comfort. Maggie departed to serve a few customers.

  ‘Oh, Chrissie. Do you know how Biddy is? I believe she is on Rhuna in Tarradon House.’ This was a bright, cheerful nursing home on the neighbouring island of Rhuna.

  ‘She’s getting better. Clean, hair cut and washed, decent food and so on, but . . .’ She paused and shook her head doubtfully.

  ‘Yes, yes, I can imagine. Please tell me how all this happened. It seems so unbelievable. It’s like something out of a horror story.’

  Smoothing her skirt in a nervous gesture, Chrissie began a tale that could have been set in the eighteenth century, it was so unbelievable. The first thing she said astounded me.

  ‘Biddy and I used to play together as children, and . . .’

  I interrupted, ‘But she’s 20 years older than you!’

  She shook her head sadly. ‘Oh no,’ she murmured. ‘Biddy is 36.’