Before leaving we mentioned that we hoped to visit the ruined Slaines castle just along the coast. This time a different expression took a grip. Nostalgia mixed with lust as he smiled into the distance at a much, much younger version of himself enjoying adolescent fumbles in the ruins. ‘It was dark and scary mind, and the girls needed to be held.’ Strangely I found myself wondering if the castle would have the same effect on David.
We followed the dreamer’s advice but not before a health-and-safety orientated discussion about the likelihood of drowning if we hired an ancient mariner who presumably spends every waking hour stopping at least one in three and extracting drink with menaces.
Although our fears were unfounded our hopes were equally unmet. The Boatman, visibly pleased to be so called, and indeed dressed as if he had just returned from a major war, explained that sadly he had recently sold his boat.
On the way down to the harbour David suggested borrowing a large vessel parked in someone’s drive. He thought he could start the outboard motor if I was prepared to kill anyone who asked what we were doing. Hastening on, a quick tour of both the inner and outer harbours revealed not a boat in the water or indeed a single human being to accost. Out of the water a flat-bottomed vessel with strange metal arms rested against a wall. It had been liberated from a boating pond and its paddles brutally hacked off, a wingless dragon fly.
As Boswell and Johnson must have done on many occasions when neither a chaise nor horses were at hand, we walked.
Slaines Castle is a deeply disconcerting ruin. Only the cellars remain from the original building where the urbane Earl of Errol and his brother entertained the travellers. The whole castle was demolished, rebuilt and partially demolished again. From a distance it looks one dimensional, a ransacked, roofless, black silhouette; the charred backcloth to a child’s worst nightmare. On approach, innumerable doorways and window spaces beckon into an eerie inner labyrinth of small interconnected rooms. The brickwork was reminiscent of Second World War newsreels featuring images of the blitz, ovens and camps. The graffitied walls were charred from fires; there were indecipherable hieroglyphics everywhere. Spiral staircases that seemed to be climbing with a purpose unexpectedly opened onto precipitous nothingness above a boiling sea. Steps disappeared into dark holes. It is easy to see why Bram Stoker stayed and was inspired to write Dracula. The guest list also features in no particular order: Hitler, Beelzebub, Vlad the Impaler and Margaret Thatcher.
It was difficult to stand on the twice ruined site of the original drawing-room previously hung with portraits by Reynolds and Hogarth and recreate the urbane, philosophical discussion between the travellers and the Earl of Errol. Johnson talked of corporal punishment – a pleasure always dear to his heart. Boswell refrained from comment on the view that beating children is ultimately good for them. Boswell’s complex relationship with his own father had its origins in frequent childhood chastisement.
Johnson stared out to sea and half apologised for wishing he could witness a storm. The Earl chipped in with a lugubrious anecdote about a convicted murderer obliged to lie in a wood until a stronger rope could be found to hang him with. The Earl’s brother pointed out the narrowest of ledges outside the window where a would-be intruder once plunged to a nasty death.
It was no surprise that Boswell recorded a troubled night. ‘I had a most elegant room. But there was a fire in it which blazed, and the sea, to which my windows looked, roared, and the pillows were made of some sea-fowl’s feathers which had to me a disagreeable smell. So that by all these causes, I was kept awake a good time. I began to think that Lord Errol’s father, Lord Kilmarnock (who was beheaded on Tower Hill in 1746), might appear to me, and I was somewhat dreary.’
Birkbeck Hill records how in more recent times the castle’s servants were petrified by ghostly moans emanating from the fireplace only to find in the morning that a ship had foundered on the rocks and the entire crew had drowned.
The next morning, feeling obliged to play the willing tourists, Johnson and Boswell let themselves be bundled into a coach and driven a short way along the coast to inspect a rock formation covered in guano. Neither of them was very impressed though Johnson tried on the mantle of eighteenth century ornithologist ‘One of the birds that frequent this rock has, as we were told, its body not larger than a duck’s, and yet lays eggs as large as those of a goose.’ He was already hankering for a slab of mutton and a couple of fried goose eggs.
We followed the path along the cliff edge and also talked of birds. David pointed out herring gulls, cormorants and kittiwakes. He remembered how many years back a racing pigeon, hopelessly off course had landed on the rigging of Piper Beta. A lonely roustabout had rescued the bird, nurtured it and when next on shore had attempted to return his new friend to its rightful owner. On opening the door of his Glasgow tenement the pigeon fancier mumbled ‘useless …’ and snapped the bird’s neck.
A solitary distant gull shrieked – a wet finger run around the glass rim of the horizon. Its nearer companions joined in a battle cry for the dispossessed; a raucous retching mechanical noise. One of their number lay dead at our feet, feather and rib, beak and blood, nothing inside. Those next in line stood at a safe distance, mad-eyed on yellow tapping stick legs sprouting from taut web-skin feet.
As we threaded our way along the serrated path I had the distinct feeling that we were being followed. In addition to the white van moving slowly on the parallel road there always seemed to be helicopters in the sky. Although they were probably ferrying drink-desperate rig workers back to the bars and stews of Aberdeen there was something menacing about their presence. I don’t think we looked like geriatric drug smugglers waiting to collect an illicit consignment of extra-strong Horlicks cut through with anthrax but I did glance behind me to check that David – a born naturist – had not on a whim decided to ramble in a state of nudity, thereby attracting the interest of the local coast guards. I thought of my medic nephew recently returned from operating at the back end of a helicopter in Helmand Province and hoped he was well.
Still thinking of birds David explained how for several successive years he has been menaced by the same monstrous seagull. Every time he left his Edinburgh flat he would hear the ominous flap of wings moments before the vicious demented bird launched its latest assault. This year would be different. He would stab its eggs. For a moment I tried to rid myself of the image of David, stark naked, crawling along the tenement slates a hundred feet above the ground with a Swiss army knife between his teeth.
We eventually found the guano-covered rock which was the size of a small island under siege without end from hissing and increasingly hysterical waves. We were fleetingly tempted to invade and establish a new state from which anyone under the age of sixty would be banned but we resolved not to be distracted from the main focus of our journey, the Bullers of Buchan.
At a distance I could see the same white van had continued to dog our steps and was parked on the main road. As we approached the Bullers we saw that two men had beaten us to it and were already staring into the natural cauldron. Did we have rivals? Would this recreated tour turn into a rerun of Scott and Amundsen en route to the South Pole? They looked like council employees with thick black phone cords protruding from under protective clothing. There was something life affirming about a middle-aged man showing his new van-sharing colleague the local sights during their lunch hour. It was better than leering at tits on page three with a Pot Noodle before falling asleep in the front seat.
The Bullers shocked Johnson out of his feigned disinterest in natural phenomena. ‘(It is a sight) which no man can see with indifference, who has either sense of danger or delight in rarity. It is a rock perpendicularly tabulated, united on one side with a high shore, and on the other rising steep to a great height, above the main sea. The top is open, from which may be seen a dark gulf of water which flows into a cavity … It has the appearance of a vast well bordered within a wall. The edge of the Buller is not wide, and to those that wa
lk around, appears very narrow. He that ventures to look downward sees, that if his foot should slip, he must fall from his dreadful elevation upon stones on one side, or into the water on the other. We however went round, and were glad when the circuit was completed.’
Seeing me turn ashen white after glancing over the edge David opened the hip flask and tried to distract me by explaining how to verify the curvature of the earth using a metre stick. His strategy failed as I remained catatonic with cowardice. I would have doffed my powdered wig had I possessed one to the earlier travellers teetering along the ridge. Boswell’s Life of Johnson might never have been written had the obesely unfit Great Cham of literature clutched at his sycophantic companion for support. I was surprised that Boswell doesn’t refer in his own account to his supreme act of bravery; it is not like him to miss such an opportunity.
A second swig of Dutch courage failed to induce me to the edge again. I found the excuse I needed in the gulls nesting just below the parapet on the opposite side. One angry chick-protecting flourish and we would have tumbled like Dante’s angels into the pit below, angel and gull feathers floating together on the incoming tide.
To atone for this failure of nerve and mindful that we had failed to procure a boat we climbed down the side of the Buller. It was possible to see into the one of the channels that rhythmically vacuum-sucked the sea and then let it out again. In a moment of stupidity that might just have been defensible if tucked between the pages of Five go to the Island I decided to clamber down the gully. Predictably I fell and gave myself a nasty but fully deserved fright. David showed a touching but non-judgemental concern as he hauled me out. The jolt to the spine and the shock to the self esteem were sufficiently severe to bring to mind Will, a dear young friend and experienced mountaineer, who slipped from an innocuous path in Spain and fell to his death six years previously.
On the road out we stopped and listened to the Icarus skylark soaring into the ether and the wind in the wires. Sitting against the fence on the other side of the ditch was an absurdly smiling child’s cuddly toy, half Eyeore and part Thumper the Rabbit. Next to it was a woman’s single blue shoe. The incongruity of both was unsettling, especially as someone had gone to the bother of arranging them next to each other in a shrine-like way. In the distance a white geodesic sphere squatted on the horizon.
As we waited for the bus back to Aberdeen we were joined by a young woman with startlingly red hair and high cheek bones. Her companion was a large elderly man who stared a lot. David said later he had assumed they were father and daughter but her endlessly patient demeanour and the subtle way she involved the man in her conversation without obliging him to say anything marked her out as a care worker, a foot soldier in the huge army of people who for minimum wages and little recognition make Scotland a better and a more compassionate place.
The downstairs front seat had been claimed by an old woman who clutched the hand rail with a look of transcendent pleasure in her eyes. In her twilight she was living the dream and careering round the countryside in comparative luxury, and for free.
Upstairs a white-hooded lad made noises into his mobile phone. Gradually his alien, atonal-nuanced grunts gained an evolutionary momentum until occasional sentences were just discernible. ‘But Christ, why dis she need five pair o knickers, an’ aa fae Ann Summers?’
The bus bucked its air-cushioned way through the late afternoon sun. On the low hills wind turbine blades cartwheeled in slow motion, graceful acrobats using their semaphored limbs to pass on a comforting karmic message which may have been ‘haste ye back.’
Aberdeen – Strichen – Macduff – Banff
While waiting for the fortnight to pass before I could resume the journey I felt a sense of betrayal. I had left Boswell and Johnson in limbo with little or no concern for their needs; they were stranded in the North East, unable to travel while I selfishly tried to go about my own life. Eventually I could stand it no longer, took time off work and, despite not being able to persuade anyone to accompany me, returned shamefacedly to Aberdeen. David had been too busy with his egg stabbing duties.
This time the bus took a different route out of the city. My purpose was to view the Druidical ruins at Strichen which had been a magnet for Boswell and Johnson when they left the Earl of Errol at Slaines Castle.
Despite my familiarity with the age profile of the average set of bus passengers the composition of the waiting queue was so astonishing I checked the destination board which confirmed my worst fears. ‘This bus will stop at Incontinence, Forgetfulness, and will terminate at Oblivion.’ The onboard recorded message reinforced my first impressions. ‘Please remember to leave all your personal possessions on the bus as you cannot take them with you. The company chaplain will hear confessions between Ellon and Strichen. Body bags are available in the overhead lockers and will fall automatically if needed.’
Before we drew away from the terminus several grim reapers showed their passes and gravitated towards the back where they rested their black, glinting scythes and chattered excitedly about the forthcoming cull. A small voice reminded me to be careful what I mocked.
In a cameo of our recession hit times a beggar slept outside Lloyd’s Register HQ. In a fit of retro programming His Majesty’s Theatre could offer both The Sound of Music and The Thirty Nine Steps. A billboard told me that an HIV MONSTER BIDS FOR FREEDOM. I don’t understand this system of penal bidding. It was easier in Barabbas’s day. A simple choice.
As we left the city a road sign lit up 20 WHEN LIGHTS FLASH. My fellow passengers wished it was that easy and waited excitedly for the sudden illumination that would peel back sixty years. Their conversations were underscored with schadenfreude, ‘when she woke she couldnae talk … and then her fingers went.’ There was though a comforting smell of talc and mothballs that again made me think of my mother.
From a side window I saw a strange white blot on the hillside and could not decide if it was manmade or not. Who in their right mind would spend time chiselling a monster cockroach or dung beetle from the scarp?
The woman across the aisle paid reluctant obeisance to her obsessive compulsive disorder, neatly folding a tissue into four before repeatedly wiping the hand rail on the back of the seat in front. How many other endless small rituals had she surrendered to before plucking up the courage to stand at a bus stop?
*
On the route of the old Formartine railway track the deep green woods were under a laser attack from sharp edged quartz pillars of sunlight. Single trees dripped with lichen and the brown peat burn ran fast.
As I rejoiced at the wide sky and the sharp breeze I was observed with total indifference by two buzzards each floating on the updraft in adjacent fields, minuscule adjustments to wing tips enabling them to wallow indefinitely. I experienced a sudden burst of physical pleasure as I savoured the sheer folly and serendipitous delight of embarking on this venture. The moment of epiphany passed but left me feeling good.
Had Boswell seen the buzzards he would have shot them. In a very early letter to his mother he confesses; ‘I sometimes try the shooting, and have shot two sparrows, which I know will disoblige my Lord, but I am sorry for my fault and am henceforth to shoot at other birds, such as magpies and crows, I hope his Lordship will pardon me.’
The Undiscovered Scotland website had warned that the stones were protected by several bulls. Keeping a wary eye generally cocked and alert to the threat posed by centaurs, minotaurs, priapic goats or whatever mythic push-me pull-me creatures guarded druidical stones, I did calculate the nearest distance to the perimeter fence and dropped my bag behind a bush in case I had to run.
Samuel Johnson would have roared at any charging bull which would in any case have been stopped in its tracks by the overwhelming stench of erudition and old wig. Boswell would have attempted a matadorial flourish with a perfectly timed aphorism before being gored up the arse and left impaled on the fence.
The stones themselves have had a hard time down the centuries. Indeed
on occasions there was hardly a stone left standing. They have been variously modified, plundered, romanticised, put back in the wrong place, destroyed again and finally reerected in the 1970s. The guilty parties include a tenant farmer with a grudge against archaeologists, an outraged landowner with a grudge against his tenant and several council workers with a bulldozer who generally just couldn’t be bothered. The official term for the current but probably temporary configuration of the stones is a Recumbent with two Flankers. This may of course be rhyming slang. In any case Johnson was totally underwhelmed and commented pithily and with scholarly insight, on ‘some stones yet standing’. He was much more whelmed to see ‘some forest trees of full growth’.
As I missed the bus and had an hour to wait I retired to the only pub in the village, the name of which provided an answer to the mystery of the chalk shape on the hill. According to the tired leaflets glued to the wall the white horse, for such it allegedly was, had been hacked from the hillside some years after Boswell and Johnson passed.
It was a guilt-inspired tribute from the local laird, Captain Fraser, to his loyal serf who donated his own horse when his master’s was killed from under him in battle. ‘Never mind Sir ‘quoth the minion, ‘I shall soon find another’ whereupon he was promptly shot by the enemy. As Captain Fraser returned to the heat of battle he was heard to mutter something about gift horses.
Ten years later a downtrodden local peasant eyed the heap of quartz, tugged his cap, doffed his forelock and muttered to his neighbour ‘Jesus Christ! No another effin’ white horse!’
One hundred and fifty five years later in 1955, volunteers cleaning the monument evidently found a parchment containing the names of twenty members of the Fraserburgh Rotary Club. It certainly puts Sutton Hoo and the Staffordshire Gold into perspective.
Any further reading was made difficult by a loud southern voice telling rancid racist jokes to the bar’s other inhabitant who forced an ambiguously complicit smile. He fell instantly silent and stared into his beer when the black manageress lifted the hatch. I considered engineering a life ban and a fight outside but Boswell wasn’t the only coward.
Boswell's Bus Pass Page 8
