Lord Kitchener’s body was never found. A recommended read on the subject is Donald McCormick’s The Mystery of Lord Kitchener’s Death published in 1958, but the contents of this fascinating book have little to do with what took place when my Scandinavian friends found themselves looking for accommodation in the coastal village of Birsay. Or do they?
Birgitta and Per, both keen bird-watchers, had flown across to Kirkwall from Oslo, and, while on an evening stroll on the cliffs beside the Brough Lighthouse, came across a small group of men who appeared lost. In their midst was a stout, medium height figure wrapped in a soiled trench coat.
‘They all looked as if they were soaked to the skin,’ said Per. ‘Yet it hadn’t been raining. In fact, it was a very pleasant evening. I thought that was very odd. Birgitta said they looked as if they had been in the sea, but under the circumstances it seemed very unlikely.’
‘The man we spoke to was definitely confused,’ added Birgitta. ‘When I asked him if they needed help, he just turned away and walked off without saying a word.’
Nearby was a stone tower which Per and Birgitta were later informed was a memorial to a famous British soldier who had died in the First World War. When Per mentioned their experience to their landlady, she laughed out loud.
‘That’ll be himself,’ she said. ‘Lord Kitchener. You’re not the first to have seen him.’
Neither Birgitta nor Per had any idea who Lord Kitchener was, but back in Norway Birgitta was busy Googling one night on the internet and, on a whim, typed in the name name, ‘Lord Kitchener’.
‘Come and look at this,’ she called out to Per in excitement.
Staring from the computer screen was the man with the moustache they had met on the clifftops at Birsay.
10
FOR THOSE IN PERIL ON THE SEA
They that go down to the sea in ships,
And occupy their business on the great waters;
These men see the works of the Lord,
and his wonders in the deep.
Book of Psalms
Psalm 106: 23–24
The sea is a hard taskmaster, and Scotland’s ragged coastline, with its harbours, beaches, secret inlets and hidden coves, has known more than its fair share of misfortune. It is a cruel and uncompromising existence and they who live by its shores to earn a living from its depths are invariably possessed with a deal of stoicism which the rest of us can only marvel at.
The Cowal Peninsula lodges between the mouth of the Firth of Clyde and Loch Fyne in southern Argyll, a coastal landscape punctuated by opulent Victorian villas and yachting marinas. Despite the half-hour ferries ploughing backwards and forwards between Gourock and Dunoon, Cowal can often feel strangely detached from the rest of Scotland.
South of Dunoon, on Loch Striven, is Inverchaolain Lodge, a former shooting lodge on the Knockdow estate which I visited in Chapter One. Richly forested, this hidden corner of Scotland played an important role in meeting the desperate demand for timber during the First World War. Over this difficult period, Inverchaolain Lodge was requisitioned for the Women’s Land Army Timber Corps and from 1941, some thirty or more patriotic young women were stationed here to fell trees and assist at the local sawmill.
And it was early in 1943 that one such recruit found herself returning from weekend leave a day early. Ordinarily, she would have stayed overnight in Dunoon, but despite knowing that she would be the first of her group to arrive, she decided instead to cycle the ten or more miles to the lodge.
The moon was rising as she set off, and its mellow light cast an eerie glow over the seascape. As she pedalled past Loch Striven, she heard the grey seals barking on the shoreline. Deep in the forest, the trees rustled and sighed. Small animals scurried into the undergrowth.
When she arrived, Inverchaolain Lodge was empty as she had expected. She briskly stored her bicycle in the shed and fetched the front-door key from its usual hiding place. Since the cook had not, as yet, returned, the lodge kitchen was chilly and bare, so she went straight to her bed. But as she lay warm beneath her blanket listening to the hush of the loch outside, she saw the bedroom door open and shut, and heard a soft swishing sound. ‘It sounded like fabric sweeping across the floor,’ she recalled.
Frozen stiff in her army cot, she could hear her heart pounding, all the more so when a dim, shadowy figure glided over to the window. It appeared to be a young woman, who stopped in front of the glass to gaze out towards the loch. She looked so sad and moaned unhappily before turning around to exit through the closed door.
Uncertain what to do next, the recruit lay mesmerised under her covers until she eventually found the courage to rally herself. With a Tilley lamp to light her way, she cautiously ventured downstairs into the hallway below and, glancing out of the window onto a moonlit lawn, saw an extraordinary sight.
Where the bicycle shed normally stood was a thatched cottage covered in roses. The garden too was full of lovely flowers. In front of the cottage door stood the same woman she had seen upstairs. Beside her was a young man wearing knee-breeches and a cut-away jacket.
He was kissing her goodbye and the girl was sobbing. As the young man turned to walk towards the loch, a small fishing boat appeared on the horizon. As it drew close to the shore, the loch turned suddenly wild and stormy, with huge waves dashing onto the shingle.
As the recruit watched in astonishment, she could see the girl striding backwards and forwards along the shoreline, wringing her hands in sorrow. Then suddenly both she and the cottage faded away and the shed reappeared as if from nowhere.
When the other trainees arrived the following morning, their colleague gave them a full account of what she had witnessed and was told that it served her right for spending a night at the lodge on her own. Loch Striven, she learned, was infamous for its sudden storms and unpredictable currents. Nobody has ever kept track of the number of boats that have been lost in this solemn and unpredictable stretch of water.
Such anecdotes, of course, are replicated from the Solway Firth to Cape Wrath, from John O’ Groats to Dunbar, vivid accounts of fishing disasters, lost souls, piracy, brigandage and smuggling.
Before lighthouses were built, the deliberate wrecking of passing vessels was rife off the East Lothian coast. Cargoes of wine, brandy, wood, fruit, grain and coal regularly washed ashore, and it was the coastal dwellers’ attitude towards plunder that prompted the author Robert Louis Stevenson to collaborate with his stepson Lloyd Osbourne in writing his last novel, The Wrecker, in 1892. Stevenson’s childhood holidays were spent with relatives in North Berwick and Auldhame exploring the East Lothian coastline and he, more than anyone, understood how the past leaves its ever-present stamp on the future. Loss and the debris of human tragedy are timeless.
It was a summer’s afternoon in 2007 when Avril Kirk, whom we will encounter again in Chapter Thirteen, set off to explore Skateraw Harbour, south of Dunbar, where she came across the ruins of some old cottages and on an impulse followed the pathway to Chapel Point, which has a raised beach.
Rank forces were at work that day. On Chapel Point, Avril found herself pausing in front of an old stone step. ‘All of a sudden there was a loud booming noise,’ she remembered.
‘I was standing in front of a large wooden cross and all around me the light was dimming. There was a small church behind the cross and I could hear waves crashing and seagulls shrieking. On the pathway ahead of me I could see dark shapes carrying what looked like bodies up from the beach and into the church.’
In a flash, everything changed back to normal, and Avril stood where she was, stunned. ‘When I arrived home I didn’t want to tell anyone about what had happened in case they thought I’d lost my mind,’ she said. ‘It was very confusing.’
On a subsequent visit to Dunbar House Museum, however, all became clear. Quite by chance Avril found herself talking to a genealogist. It is always easier to confide in a stranger whom you are unlikely to see again and when she mentioned her visit to Skateraw, he confirmed
that there had once been an ancient chapel dedicated to St Dennis on Chapel Point.
‘It was there long before the cottages were built,’ he told her. ‘And the only thing left when it was demolished was a wooden cross which was later moved to the car park when a World War Two memorial to the Canongate Boys’ Club was erected.’
When Avril shyly recounted what had happened to her, he seemed unaffected. ‘Before the lighthouses were built, there were hundreds of ships wrecked on the offshore rocks,’ he explained. ‘A lot of bodies were washed ashore and brought up from the beach by the locals. The sad thing is that because nobody knew who they belonged to they were mostly buried in the surrounding fields and not the kirkyard. What you saw was very unusual, but perhaps the corpses were stored in the chapel until somewhere could be found for them.’
Of course, all of this was macabre, ancient history so far as Jack Shepherd from Bristol was concerned when he booked himself into a farmhouse B&B in the autumn of 2006. He had been heading south from Edinburgh, and decided to turn off the A1 just north of Dunbar on a whim. The sun was sinking in the west when he arrived in the farmyard and by eight o’clock it had become dark. Disinclined to go to bed so early, he set off for a stroll in the night air.
The wind was southerly and a full moon hung like a medallion over the North Sea. The moon path was effervescent as Jack followed the path along the clifftops. Entranced by the sheer drama of the scene, he somehow failed to notice the steep bank of mist building up, untouched by the moon’s reflection.
Immersed in the moment, Jack breathed in the spectacle, oblivious to the shadows that were swallowing the shoreline. ‘Nights like this should be cherished,’ he muttered to himself, regretful that he was on his own. Overhead, he could see Jupiter and Saturn. He wished that he knew more about astronomy. On a night such as this, it was as if every star in the sky had come out for his benefit alone.
As such thoughts preoccupied him, two large horses unexpectedly loomed out of the darkness, their necks held down with rope and flickering lanterns swinging seaward from their backs.
Jack stepped back open-mouthed as they lumbered past, accompanied by the heavy figure of a man. Out at sea yet another light soon appeared, faint then flaring sharply as it moved swiftly towards the coast.
The crash, when it came, was chilling; a huge, splintering blast accompanied by an eerie scream of voices. From the cliff edge, Jack momentarily caught a glimpse of the fractured hulk of a sailing ship. Deeply shaken by the sight, he turned on his heels and raced back to the farmhouse to summon help.
When at last he burst into the front parlour, he found the farmer and his wife ensconced in front of their television. They listened patiently as he outlined the full horror of what had occurred. ‘There’s been a terrible accident. I think it’s a shipwreck,’ he blurted out. ‘We’ve got to get help.’
The farmer’s wife glanced anxiously at her husband. ‘Best call the coastguard or best not?’ she murmured calmly, with a trace of resignation in her voice.
The farmer rose grudgingly from his comfy armchair and pulled on his jacket. ‘Best have a look first,’ he said grumpily.
As Jack retraced his movements it was clear the farmer was unimpressed. The mist had by now dispersed and in the moonlight it was once again possible to make out the features of the shoreline. Jack had expected to hear more cries for help but the only sound to be heard was the hush of the surf.
‘It was down there,’ he said excitedly, pointing towards the cove.
The farmer shook his head. ‘There’s nothing we can do about it tonight,’ he said.
Jack was speechless. ‘But it was terrible,’ he protested. ‘We’ve got to do something. People were drowning.’
‘What exactly did you see?’ asked the farmer, sharply rounding on him. ‘Was it a wee sailing yacht or one of those big cabin cruisers? Look away down there by the rocks. The tide’s gone way beyond them. There’s nothing there now. It’ll have been the Pagans you saw the night, and they’re long gone.’
Jack stared at him in bewilderment. ‘What do you mean, it was the Pagans I saw?’
‘Come away to the house, and I’ll explain,’ said the farmer.
On reaching the farmhouse, Jack reluctantly followed the old man into the kitchen where, not too reluctantly, he accepted a tumbler of single malt.
‘Long ago in the days of merchant shipping, the sea traffic from the trade routes of Scotland to England and the Low Countries – Holland and Belgium – all of it passed this way,’ the farmer began. ‘In that time there lived hereabouts a colony of ungodly souls. Fowk were feared of them and called them the Pagans of Scoughall. Land pirates they were. On stormy nights, when the haar rolled in, they preyed on passing ships.
‘On stormy nights, the men led their horses out onto the cliffs and marched them back and forth with lanterns tied to their necks. Ships far out on the ocean would catch sight of the lights and, thinking them boats at anchor, turn landward for shelter. Many a poor mariner came to grief on those rocks. Come the dawn, the Pagans claimed their spoils.’
‘But surely nothing like that goes on nowadays?’ said Jack, incredulous. The farmer and his wife looked at him in pity.
‘Not the now,’ said the farmer. ‘But you’ll no’ be the first to catch a sight of the Pagans of Scoughall, and you’ll no’ be the last.’
Jack stared at the couple in disbelief. ‘Are you telling me that what I saw tonight took place in another century?’ he gasped, incredulous.
‘Go down to the bay on the morrow to see for yourself,’ said the old man. ‘In the meantime, get yourself a good night’s sleep. There’s nothing you can do for those poor lost wretches the night.’
Upstairs, enveloped in his duvet, Jack slept fitfully. As soon as daybreak penetrated the curtains of his room, he was up and out of the farmhouse door. Outside, the air was fresh and dry and it hit him like a tonic as he strode along the pathway. On the beach below, he found the usual litter of driftwood, domestic refuse and plastic containers. Seagulls circled high above. There was no sign of a wrecked ship. Everything appeared to be as it should be, calm and undisturbed.
Over breakfast, the voice of the farmer’s wife was sympathetic. ‘Consider what you saw last night to be a privilege, son,’ she said in a kindly voice. ‘It’s a rare treat for an outsider to be given a sight of auld lang syne.’
11
VISIONS FROM THE PAST
Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality.
Emily Dickinson, ‘The Chariot’ (1890)
Domestic objects are as prone to conundrum as flesh and blood. Have you ever wondered about those who previously slept in an antique bed, coveted an Old Master hanging on a wall, or made showy use of a fine china tea service? Whose hands were they that once lovingly caressed that piece of fine Georgian silver? How many centuries have been chimed into oblivion by that grandfather clock?
Angus Laurie has been in the antiques trade for over thirty-five years and known both good times and bad. ‘I’ve picked up some strange items and a bargain or two in my time, I can tell you,’ he told me, ‘but nothing quite like the high-backed Orkney chair I found way back at Kerr & McAllister’s. I wasn’t really that interested in it when I first saw it, but then something made me look again and I thought, why not?’
The chair was knocked down for remarkably little and Angus removed it to the shop he was then occupying on Great Western Road. ‘It was a bit like a cocoon,’ he said. ‘It had the usual straw back. I dated it as Victorian although maybe it was a bit later, around the turn of the century. On inspection, I have to say it was a bit worn and scruffy-looking, but I reckoned it’d look good on display once I’d patched it up a bit.’
Sales of antiques took off during the late 1990s, and Angus soon found himself making a tidy profit as Glasgow homeowners became more period conscious. However, an Orkney chair, despite i
ts visual compatibility with the designs of Charles Rennie Mackintosh, was not considered a particularly desirable item, at least not at the price Angus had placed on it. ‘I didn’t want it to end up in some student flat,’ he explained. ‘It was too good for that.’
As the weeks passed, the chair remained in the corner of the shop and although the occasional customer commented upon it, nobody made Angus an offer. That was until one Thursday evening when just as he was on the point of closing up, an old man wearing a cloth cap and a heavy tweed overcoat entered the emporium and strode directly over to the chair.
‘That’s it,’ he said in a lilting northern accent. ‘That’s my chair.’
Angus smiled to himself. ‘Your chair?’ he asked. ‘How come?’
‘I wove that straw my very self when I was a lad,’ the man informed him.
Angus studied the stranger more closely, attempting a guess at his age. His skin, he saw, resembled wrinkled parchment. A salt-and-pepper stubble framed his cheeks. He must be seventy? Eighty perhaps? No, he could not possibly be old enough to have made the chair. On the other hand, if he was genuinely intent on buying it, who was he, Angus, to argue?
‘How much?’ asked the man.
‘£350,’ said Angus.
The old man chuckled. ‘I’ll take it,’ he said.
Angus could barely conceal his amazement. ‘Do you have transport?’ he asked. ‘If you live nearby I could have it delivered.’
‘Nae problem,’ replied the man. ‘I’ll leave it until the morrow.’
Angus wondered about that. He had lost sales before when folk had promised to return, but under the circumstances there seemed to be no alternative.
‘OK. I open at 11 a.m.,’ he said. ‘But I’ll need a deposit if you’re serious.’
‘You can have the lot,’ said the old man, extracting a wad of well-worn Scottish bank notes from his overcoat pocket. ‘You’ll find it all there,’ he added, handing him the money with a wrinkled hand.
Haunted Scotland Page 7
