*
It was not summer then, with the birdsong and the sun to soften the horror, but a cold, harsh winter’s night with snow on the ground and a bitter wind screaming in from the sea, bringing ever more snow. Most of the men were away, as the fishing boat had not made harbour that day; it was sheltering in a cove many miles distant.
Suddenly, the hills were alive with soldiers armed with guns and clubs. They rushed down into the sleeping village, wrenched open doors and hauled the terrified inhabitants out into the snow. Babies were torn from their mother’s arms, old women dragged from their beds and dumped outside, while children ran, shrieking into the night. With no hint of mercy, the soldiers threw the meagre possessions outside and set fire to the houses. In spite of the snow, the brittle old thatch soon caught light and within minutes the people were homeless.
The soldiers had long gone when dawn broke and the fishing boat slid into the bay. Huddled on the beach were the fishermen’s families, while in the background smoke rose from the blackened ruins of their homes. The men knew why this had happened. They had heard from other boats about townships demolished and families left destitute up and down the coast. They knew that their landlords, Scottish and English alike, had discovered that sheep were more profitable than tenants. With the huge mills of the south demanding more and more wool to feed the hungry looms, and prices rising steadily, the landlords had decided to buy in thousands of sheep. They would roam the hills in the summer, but when winter closed in they would need the shelter of the glens. But the people, paying only a tiny rent, were in the way. So they had to go! Thousands were driven out over the hills or away by sea to who knows where. Some went to the cities, some to far countries, many dying on the way. No one cared what became of them so long as the millions of sheep had room to grow their valuable wool to line the pockets of the wealthy lairds.
What had they thought as they looked back from that tiny fishing boat on all that remained of their lives? I know that life was hard, often lived at subsistence level, but they had a spirit, a determination that took no account of the bare feet and the ragged clothes.
In this denuded glen, there is nothing but silence now, as the sheep, too, have gone.
*
I was brought back from these sad thoughts by a sudden bite on my face. The wind had dropped, so I knew that the ravenous hordes of midges would shortly descend on me in the still air. The midges are the only things about the Hebrides that I detested and resented. We were stoic in rain, resigned in gales, excited in snow and ecstatic in sunshine. But midges . . .
After rising from my seat on the ruined croft wall, I took one last look around, and while glancing towards the tiny graveyard I was amazed to see that I was not alone! A man in a fawn raincoat was standing beside one of the graves. I started to walk towards him to speak, and, in my hurry, stumbled and fell on the uneven ground. I scrambled up, smiling in embarrassment, as I looked once more towards the man.
There was no one there! The graveyard, the village, the entire glen was empty! With shaking knees, I sat down again. Had he been a figment of my imagination? Or a trick of the light? Or . . .? He had been wearing modern clothes (albeit a mackintosh on a hot day). I could describe his dark hair, his moustache, his down-at-heel appearance and sloping shoulders. I even knew that, in the manner of many raincoats, a fold of material hid the buttons.
After a while, I walked over to the grave at which he had been standing. I looked at the faded and lichened inscription on the rough-hewn granite stone. The sentiment was in Gaelic, which meant nothing to me, but the name gave me quite a jolt.
‘Mary Flora Cameron.1804–1840.’
George’s mother’s family name! I found it all very strange, worrying – frightening even. Was he a lost soul, caught between heaven and earth?
I was suddenly very anxious to leave! My little craft seemed inviting, wholesome, and I chugged gratefully across the sea loch to tie up at Alistair’s jetty.
‘And where have you been?’ The voice was followed by a grubby-looking Alistair, who emerged from a small stone shed.
‘Are you all right?’ he asked through clenched teeth that were clamped around his ever-present unlit pipe full of dead matches. He peered into my face. He was not a particularly sympathetic person, but now he looked concerned.
‘You look as if you have seen a ghost!’ he said, with unintentional but staggering accuracy.
At last, I managed to speak. ‘Yes, I think you may be right.’
He looked at me with penetrating intensity for a moment and then gazed out to sea.
Finally, he said, ‘You have been to Kilcraigie, I gather.’
I stared at him.
‘Come on up and have some tea. Alice is in the garden.’
‘Yes. Thank you. But how . . .? Who was . . .?’
‘Not now. Tea first.’
Taking a firm hold on my arm, he propelled me up the 30-odd steps to where Alice was sitting in the garden, wearing her old straw hat and some bright gardening gloves.
‘Hello, Mary-J. My word! You look a bit white.’ She patted the seat beside her.
Alistair went into the house to make some tea, and I tentatively began to tell Alice about ‘the man in the mac’, as I thought of him. Sitting in this cheerful, sunny garden beside a friend, I found myself wondering if it all sounded ridiculous. But Alice did not seem surprised or sceptical and nodded sympathetically.
‘We have heard about this man before, Mary-J, and many people believe that they know who he is – or was.’
I looked at them. These were two sophisticated, educated people – not some elderly crofters, already steeped in folklore and tales of the supernatural. But they were accepting as fact the appearance of . . . what? A ghost, I suppose.
Alistair was speaking. ‘About ten or fifteen years ago, a Frank Cameron came to the island from Glasgow, looking for evidence that his forebears originated on Papavray. I met him once or twice. Scruffy-looking fellow. Stooping. Some sort of university professor. He often stayed at the Ardmartin Hotel, and this particular day he tramped over here to borrow old Ben’s boat to go to Kilcraigie. He had some maps and had done some research that suggested that his people might have come from there. The weather was appalling, and Ben was not inclined to let him have the boat. But this Frank Cameron fellow was determined. Said he had to get back the next day to give a lecture and this was the only opportunity he would have. So, much against his better judgement, Ben let him have his boat. Good strong boat. Nothing wrong with the boat.’
Alistair was very fond of the old sea dog who helped him so much with the cruiser. He continued, ‘Well, no sooner had this Frank fellow gone than the most atrocious storm broke. The visibility was so bad that we couldn’t see whether he reached the other side or not. Ben and I watched for a while, but then we called the coastguard. They couldn’t find him. It was three days later that bits of the boat started to come ashore and then they found him washed up on Gull Rock. He was very dead! Poor chap! Only 50!’
‘What a dreadful tale,’ I said. ‘Do you know if Mary Flora was his ancestor? He was standing by her grave when I saw him.’ I realised that I was speaking of him as though he were just another person, not an . . . an . . . apparition or whatever. And, indeed, my impression of him had been so vivid, even to those buttons and his tatty old city shoes. Why, I even knew that he had his hands in his pockets! He had been so real.
‘You are sure of all this? You’re not kidding?’ I was suddenly suspicious.
‘No, my dear. We can’t explain it any more than you can, but quite a few people have seen him standing in Kilcraigie graveyard. The description is always the same, and that is how he looked when he left here that day.’
Later, when I left for home, I felt depressed and sad, but my sensible side told me that the manifestation was just not possible. But it had happened, and my spiritual convictions were rocking. What could I think? Accept it, maybe, as one of many things that are unexplainable, and say, like Shakespeare�
��s Hamlet, ‘There are more things in Heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in our philosophy’? Perhaps our philosophy is too narrow. Maybe we will understand one day . . .
George was away, so several days went by before I could tell him about this strange experience. At first, he was inclined to scoff. ‘You have been with these crofters too long,’ he said. But gradually he began to pay more attention to crofters’ tales of weird happenings in general and decided that there ‘might be something in this Frank Cameron’ after all.
Many, many years later, when I mentioned the ‘man in the mac’ to him, he was convinced that he had actually seen him for himself. I am still not sure if he was teasing.
Of course, the boys were all too happy to believe me and begged to be taken to Kilcraigie in the hope of seeing ‘the man’. I did take them there on several occasions, but Frank Cameron never appeared. I wondered if the boys, for all their bravado, might have been a little relieved.
THIRTY-ONE
Helping hands
One day at the beginning of September, I decided to get the car ready for the winter. This involved packing a spade, a shovel, some sacks, an old piece of carpet and a can of petrol into the boot, while two or three blankets were popped onto the back seat.
September was the month when we began to say goodbye to the glowing green of the bright grass of summer, the joyful birdsong and the long hours of daylight, and anticipate the gale-swept hills and snowy peaks of winter, the big fires and the darker days.
September held the glow of the purple heather clothing the hills and moors: the final swansong before animals and plants closed down for the long dark winter. But some winter days could be beautiful, with glittering silvery sunlight picking out every corrie in the mountains, every white-water stream, and inviting the weary humans to lift their faces to the blessed warmth. Then there was the snow that transformed the winter-weary scene to a fairyland of sparkling majesty in sunshine or moonlight, and young folk screamed with delight as sledges slid and snowballs soared.
Of course we grumbled in the winter (it was too dark and wet) and in the spring (it came too late and was too cold) and in the summer (when there were too many midges) and then again in the autumn (when the gales began once more). But grumbling is a national pastime, and behind this pretended disaffection with our lot was a deep abiding love for the island, its life, its people and the all-embracing sea.
But we prepared well for the winter. The last of the peats were brought down from the hills and coal was hoarded, as the notoriously unreliable old coal boat began to wallow alarmingly in the heavier seas of autumn. Byre roofs were inspected and made safe, wind-loosened door hinges were strengthened; ditches were dug deeper to take the run-off from the winter rains and chimney cowls were mended or renewed. Without these cowls the down draughts in the beleaguered chimneys would send the thick peat smoke into the room below to kipper the fire-hugging family.
One Sunday morning, I was once again the only car on the road to ‘the other side’, in this case Cill Donnan. I had the usual daily insulin injection to give to old Christina, who was too arthritic to do it herself. I was sorry for her, but she was an unlikeable lady, being sharp-tongued and derisory, so she was avoided by most of the locals, who termed her ‘yon Christina woman’. A ferocious Amazon of a daughter called once weekly to ‘do for her’, as she put it.
So every morning I chugged up and over Loch Annan to Cill Donnan; I usually had plenty more visits to make but on Sundays she was often the only patient. A round trip of about eighteen miles for one two-minute injection! Not very cost effective, but this sort of thing was repeated all over the Highlands and Islands because our districts were geographically so large.
Suddenly, on a very steep, narrow section of the hill with a drop of many feet to the rocky stream at the side, there was a bang and the little car slewed about, heading for the burn far below. Wrenching the steering wheel over with all my strength, I managed to make her turn within inches of the edge, and she juddered to a halt, broadside in the lane. I sank back in my seat with relief. And then jerked forward again. The steering wheel and the entire steering column had come off in my hands! I sat there for a moment with all this equipment on my lap, utterly astounded.
It was fairly obvious that I had suffered a burst tyre, and I could only suppose that the strain I had imposed on the steering had broken something in the column. So I had a burst tyre and no steering.
Time was passing and I had been late already so the injection was now urgent. This was Sunday, the day when everyone seemed to stay late in bed, so I could not expect help. I decided to leave the car and walk the remaining three or four miles, attend my patient and then look around for some assistance. Leaving a car with a burst tyre and no steering broadside-on in a narrow, steep lane might seem an odd thing to do, but I knew that someone would be along later and would change the tyre and perhaps do something about the steering (I didn’t know what was possible), and somehow move it to the side. Such was my faith in the crofters by then!
When I emerged from Christina’s dark and depressing croft house in Cill Donnan, there was a dilapidated old car waiting at the gate. A red face beneath the inevitable flat cap grinned at me from the driver’s window.
‘My, my. You’ll be needin a lift then, Nurse.’
‘Yes, thank you. You see, I had to leave my car . . .’
‘Aye, I know. I saw Dougall, who’d been talkin with Donald, and he’d seen Fergie sortin it. So I came to see were you finished with yon Christina woman and were you wantin a ride.’
‘Why, Murdoch! Do you mean that you’ve come especially?’
‘Ach. Tis nothin! No, no, not at all.’
‘And you say Fergie has fixed the car?’
‘I’m no knowin if it’s all right, but we’ll see.’
I climbed in and we rattled off in a puff of black smoke.
Murdoch’s old car groaned and panted up the steep side of Ben Criel, and there was my little vehicle. The tyre had been changed and the car parked neatly in a passing place.
On inspection, we discovered that Fergie had ‘sorted’ the steering column back into its housing, found a roll of my sticking plaster and secured it. He had also found a piece of paper and a pen and left a note stuck onto the dashboard with more sticking plaster to say that it should hold to get me home if I was careful.
Murdoch was laughing at the sticking plaster.
‘My word! Isn’t he clever, just?’ After a moment, he added, ‘Will I follow you home just in case then, Nurse?’
‘Well . . .’ The sticking plaster did not inspire confidence, so I was glad of Murdoch’s offer. But Fergie was right. It did get me home, and Murdoch came in for a dram, as did Fergie later, and another adventure was over thanks to helpful people.
The more usual companion on my travels on Papavray, however, was Big Craig, Dhubaig’s roadman. We were lucky indeed to have such a caring, conscientious man to keep our steep, narrow roads open and the ditches clear. Everyone had reason to be glad of his help at some time. Perhaps none so much as the district nurse.
‘Gie me a wee knock if the snow’s down,’ he’d say. Or if there was a chance of a night call, ‘If yon road’s bad, gie me a wee knock, or if tis in the night, Nurse.’
Whenever I was called out at night, Big Craig appeared as if by magic. The phone would ring, I would dress hurriedly and, depending on the nature of the call, perhaps ring Dr Mac. Big Craig’s croft was near ours, and I didn’t even get as far as the ‘wee knock’. He would be standing by my car by the time I emerged.
‘I saw the lights, Nurse, and I guessed twould be . . .’ (Annie/Johnny/Donald/Moira – whoever was expected to die or give birth.)
He’d squeeze his great bulk into the passenger seat, with his shovel and spade between his knees, and off we’d go. Often in snow or ice his weight alone would be enough to enable the car to adhere to the slippery surface and the shovel and spade were not needed.
But it was not only in my
capacity as district nurse that I relied on Big Craig. On Monday mornings in the winter, when I had to take the scholars to the steamer for the journey to school, he would be waiting beside the road where it left the village and, with three teenagers in the back, with their week’s luggage and books, we would somehow get Big Craig into the front and grind our way up and over the top. He loved these mornings, as he would chat with the boys and tell them about his early life. In company with many of the older islanders, he was intensely interested in the boys’ education and plans for the future. Scotland has always worshipped at the altar of education, and the rather exalted title of ‘scholar’ seemed to me to epitomise this reverence.
Sometimes, it was strangers who helped.
One day, with ice on the road, I turned into a passing place to allow a lorry coming towards me to pass by. I hit a slippery patch and slid gently forwards, straight into a ditch! The lorry stopped and four large workmen, over from the mainland to resurface some roads, came towards me.
Grinning in at the window, the ‘gaffer’ was laughing. ‘Taking a short cut, are you then, Nurse?’
Chuckling heartily, the men placed themselves one at each corner of the Mini and, without waiting for me to get out, lifted the car, with a very startled nurse inside, out of the ditch and onto the road. I thanked them and continued my rounds, feeling as though I had entered some cartoon world.
The Island Nurse Page 19
