by Matt Hilton
Once over it had been the anchorage of Vikings, later on a stronghold of the eighteenth century pirates and smugglers who plied these waters, most notably the notorious John Fullerton - ironically dubbed The Pirate of Orkney - who once sheltered there when evading capture by the Royal Navy. As recent as the early twentieth century the island had become the domain of farmers and fishermen, who made a living bartering their produce of eggs and butter for the more potent gin of French and Dutch sailors. However, come the advent of the two great wars, and the intervening sixty-odd years since, Connor deliberately faded into obscurity and was purposefully left off maps. The fact that a secret nuclear submarine tracking station took up a formidable northern chunk of the island had nothing to do with it. Allegedly.
I scrutinised my watch, had to brush away beads of moisture. It was barely after six in the evening. The sky was telling lies. Again I searched out the captain at the helm. His jaw was set in a rictus grin. Nothing in his face gave any hint that we were nearing our destination. Finally I could hold it in no longer. I groaned.
“First timer, huh?”
It wasn’t admonishment. More a statement of fact.
I swivelled to look at the woman sitting to my left. It was the first occasion I’d acknowledged another’s presence in hours.
I gave a strained laugh. “Does it show?”
A smile fluttered at the corners of her mouth.
I nodded sagely. “I suppose it does.”
She looked to be in her mid-thirties, small within her quilted parka. She had dark hair pushed behind her ears and held back from her forehead with one of those multi-coloured scrunchie things that had been popular two decades ago. Her face, highly coloured about the cheeks, was what may be called handsome in some circles, or simply plain in others. Either description would have done her a disservice; I saw a face of intelligence and character, and, yes, a step above the average in the pretty stakes. Out of these grim surroundings un-assaulted by brine and buffeting winds, I guessed she could turn many a man’s head.
“I do this trip twice a month and it still manages to turn my stomach,” she said. Her voice held the soft burr of a Scottish ancestry, but I didn’t believe it was of this locale. More cosmopolitan. Edinburgh, perhaps.
“Do you live on Connor’s Island?” I asked.
The woman cocked her head to one side, watching me with eyes the colour of Lakeland slate. Apparently, striking up conversation with a stranger wasn’t the norm for her. She studied my face, decided that my question was innocent enough, that I wasn’t a crazed stalker who’d pursue her for the remainder of her days.
“No. I just work on Conn.”
I nodded. As though her answer was obvious. Conn? Local colloquialism, I decided.
“What about you?” she prompted. “Why are you doing this journey? It can only be for one of two reasons; either you work there and have to get on this excuse for a ferry, or you’re insane.”
I couldn’t very well admit to the second option, could I? “I’m looking for someone.”
She shrugged her shoulders. “If they’re on Conn, they shouldn’t be too difficult to find. There are barely a couple thousand people there at the best of times. This late in the year, figure drops to below a thousand resident islanders.”
“Should make things a little easier.” I must have said it with little conviction, considering what she said next.
“Who is it you’re looking for? Family member? Old friend.” Her eyelids flickered, hinting at subdued humour. “Lover?”
My smile was sad. “An old acquaintance.”
“What’s their name? Who knows, I might know them. Could maybe even point you in the right direction.”
I did a quick mind spin. Did I tell her his name? Would it hint at my reason for coming all this way to the island? Did it really matter that I told her? Considering I didn’t fully understand why I was here, it didn’t make sense to lie to her. “He’s called Paul Broom. Ever heard of him?”
A small click in her throat. “Can’t say I have, no.”
I was stuck as what to say next. I hadn’t actually talked with a woman for a long time. Wasn’t good at making polite conversation with the opposite sex. But I had to say something if I wanted to keep the conversation going. Maybe I should have told a little white lie, said I was here on an impromptu visit of the island. Maybe she’d have offered to be my tour guide, show me the sights. That was a distraction I couldn’t possibly afford. “He’s just an old friend. A writer. He’s come up here to write a novel. To get away from it all, so to speak.”
“To get away from it all,” she echoed. I detected a note of pathos. “Well, he has certainly come to the right place.”
Just at that, the sea, the wind, maybe even Charon’s hand at the wheel, conspired to throw us together. The woman reflexively gripped my forearm to stop her pitching all the way across my lap. Equally as reflexively, I glanced down at her slim fingers; saw the dull gleam of gold on her second finger. Inextricably, I felt a phantom knife wrenching my guts. Quickly, she retracted her hand, sucked the fingers up into the sleeves of her coat as deftly as any sleight-of-hand, leaving me to wonder if I had seen the wedding band or if it was merely a trick of the light.
“Sorry.”
“It’s okay,” I said. Awkward words between two strangers caught in an intimate moment with neither of them able to handle it, and perhaps reason for both to avoid it.
The woman cleared her throat. She straightened herself without any perceptible effect on the shape or dimensions of her over-sized coat. The silence between us became tangible. Uncomfortable. After a few more minutes, I excused myself, stood up and swayed and pitched my way to the prow of the boat. I could feel her eyes on me the entire way.
The sea was the shade of damp ashes, with splashes of phosphorous where the prow split the waves. The waves towered, folded and crashed all around us. It was an idiot’s folly to attempt the crossing from Yell to Connor’s Island in a boat as decrepit as this, and only the woman’s hint that there were only two reasons you would go there gave the voyage any credence. Either you had to do it because you lived there - there was no fancy helicopter or airplane shuttle to the island - or you were insane. I wasn’t seeking employment, so it didn’t say much for me. Though, I suppose, you could say I had work to do. Of course, considering the task I suspected waited for me, that also designated me insane.
The pain in my head wasn’t subsiding. I rubbed at my temples, alternating hands while I gripped the rail with the other. The boat shuddered and yawed to the left and I had to hold on with both hands to avoid tumbling into the Atlantic. Behind me, a chorus of cries went up. Even seasoned travellers to the island weren’t used to this hazardous a journey. The boat dived into a trough, blasted skyward the next instant as it crested the following swell. I tasted salt as seawater invaded my senses. An intelligent person would have decided that it would be best to return to the cabin. I stayed put, riding out the storm, feeling strangely invigorated in a weird masochistic sense.
Though it was barely evening, the heavy rain clouds, the autumn month and the northern latitude conspired against the day. Already the sky was the same hue as the sea, and if it hadn’t been for the whitecaps it would have been difficult differentiating one from the other. Something else caught my eye: a series of upright antennae reaching hundreds of feet into the air, their red blinking lights were a warning beacon to low flying aircraft. Had to be the masts of the submarine tracking station. Though I couldn’t swear to the fact, I guessed that the bulk of Connor’s Island now lay to the west of us, and we were in fact fast approaching the bay mid-way up the eastern side of the island. As if to applaud my deduction the captain gave a series of blasts on his horn, and then the boat slewed towards the harbour. The boat jounced and rocked over waves half-a-dozen times before I could pick out the darker bulk of the island against the twilit sky, then another half-dozen before the pinprick of lights betrayed the presence of Skelvoe, the settlement built around the har
bour.
“Home sweet home,” a voice breathed beside me.
I hadn’t been aware of her approach, but when I looked, the woman was beside me at the rail. She was standing with her legs braced against the pitch and roll, arms slack against the rail so that she rode each motion rather than fought against it. She was wearing a smile, one that was laden with as much sadness as relief at our impending landfall. I couldn’t help it: I wondered what her story was. I really should have cautioned myself, because I simply had no right to be thinking about her. I had enough reason to avoid making any contact with the islanders that went beyond superficial, but something about her intrigued me. Contrary to myself, I asked, “What is it you do on the island? Your work, I mean.”
She expelled air, eliciting a noise somewhere between a grunt and laughter.
“I dig holes.”
“What? Like an engineer or something?”
“Or something,” she said. “I’m with a team from Edinburgh University. We’re conducting an excavation of a Viking settlement over on the western side of the island.”
Despite myself, I was surprised. I studied her face. Again I decided she was in her mid-thirties. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but aren’t you a little old to be a student?”
She shook her head, amused at my ignorance. “You’re never too old to learn.”
“Oops!” I blew out my cheeks. “You did take it the wrong way. I didn’t mean that you were old, just that….”
She rocked to-and-fro with the motion of the sea. Again her eyes flared with humour as she tilted up her head to study me. “What about you? Aren’t you a little too young to be on a sabbatical?”
Sabbatical? I searched my memory for what she was referring to. Oh, yes: my story about searching for my author friend. “Hey! I’m only visiting. It isn’t me who’s put himself into self-imposed exile to find his muse.”
Her chuckle was like water over pebbles in a stream. Unconsciously she ran her tongue over her teeth. There was nothing lascivious about it, merely an unconscious quirk. One that I liked. It was as intriguing a detail as was her out of fashion scrunchie and her too-large coat. Before I could catch myself, I asked, “What’s your name?”
She shrugged. “Depends.”
“On what?”
“Whether we’re being formal or not.”
I looked down at my rain-drenched overcoat, my equally soaked chinos, the froth squelching out the tongue of my boots. “Do I look the formal type to you?”
She chuckled again. “Well, in that case, you’d best call me Janet.”
“Janet,” I echoed, tilting my head to one side. “And say I was the formal type, what would I call you then?”
Her lips crept up at the corners, giving her an elfin look. She winked. “Then you’d still call me Janet. But you’d have to be a whole lot more respectful about it.”
She left me pondering that one. She walked away. In fact, glided away would be a better description for the way she negotiated the surging deck. I considered following her, but that only lasted a second or two. Connor’s Island was a small place. Not that large a population. And - if you discounted the possibility of private charter - this ferry was the only way off the island. I didn’t doubt that I’d come across Janet before too long.
Satisfied with that, I concentrated on our approach to the harbour. The town of Skelvoe was built around an existing natural cove, the buildings hugging steep cliffs. At the furthest reaches of the cove, which to be more than fair was little over eight hundred metres in length, quarried rock fortified natural buttresses of stone to form a croissant-shaped harbour. The promontories of stone fought the angry seas, offering respite within. To my left, fishing boats and larger trawlers bobbed at their moorings, while smaller craft were drawn up on the pebble-strewn beach encompassing the remainder of the harbour. Beyond the beach was a single road, devoid at a glance of any traffic other than a lime-splashed police car that was parked with its two front tyres on the beach. Its headlights were dipped. I guessed a conscientious copper had been keeping vigil for the ferry’s arrival. As if on cue, the main beam flicked on and the car reversed onto the road, then crawled away, disappearing from sight beyond the houses built along the northern cliff. Vigil over, the police officer could get on with more pressing duties. Though, on so remote an outpost as this, what those duties could be was beyond me. Barring the reason I’d come here of course.
Within the harbour the sea was calm. Talk about sea legs. After riding the tumultuous waves on the way over from Yell, the relative stillness of this water made me feel queasy and unbalanced. Passengers were beginning to gather their belongings, excited now they’d survived all the hazards Charon had brought them through, full of chatter and relieved laughter. En mass they moved towards the disembarking point, anticipating blessed land even though we remained minutes away. The engine went into overdrive, the roar harsh against the night. An answering clamour went up as gulls and terns broke from their roosts and pin-wheeled into the sky in angry protest.
I didn’t have much luggage with me, only a single backpack I’d earlier secreted beneath my chair in the cabin. Pushing against the flow of exiting bodies, I returned to my seat, reached beneath it and pulled free my pack. It was damp and gritty with sea-spray. Standing, I swung it on to my shoulder. I considered following the flock to the off-boarding ramp, but decided I’d only have to stand in line with all the others. Instead, I sat down to wait the queue out.
Expertly the captain guided the boat one hundred and eighty degrees, and the engine thrummed into reverse, then silenced. The boat slid smoothly into dock with only the faintest thump against the pilings. Next instant there was the clatter of feet down the ramp and on to the dock. As the line diminished I stood up and tagged on the rear. Shuffling forward, I realised that my headache was gone. Just like that. Perhaps stress induced by the fraught boat ride had triggered it. And now that the trip had ended, then the headache had no place in my psyche. Or, maybe, like my other supposed psychological problems, the headache had been nothing more than a figment of my imagination. Either way, I was glad it was gone. I required a clear mind for what I suspected was waiting for me on Connor’s Island.
As I approached the gangplank, I noticed that the captain had come down to see his passengers off the boat. He was a short, fat man, florid-faced below a flat cap. Nothing like the ferryman of ancient legend. I snorted derision at myself, even as I handed him a five pound note gratuity. He nodded, smiled at my generosity: it wasn’t payment in silver, but it would do.
I clumped down the ramp onto the dockside. In mass ensemble the other passengers were moving to the left and I followed suit. They had an immediate destination in mind. I didn’t. But left was as good a direction as any.
The dock led up a ramp onto the road. I saw Janet at the head of a group of perhaps five others, faces I recognised from the boat trip. Now, they did look like archaeological students. I wondered why - considering she’d had colleagues on board - she’d bothered to strike up a conversation with me instead of spending time with them. Or why she was apparently waiting for me to catch up to their group. Another woman, this one red-haired and no more than twenty years old, said something to her, and I saw Janet flutter her hands, beckoning the group on. I continued towards Janet and our gazes met and stuck.
I lifted my chin.
“I feel like I’m at a disadvantage,” she said.
“How’s that?”
“You know my name.”
“Only your informal one,” I teased. “For when I’m not being respectful enough.”
She laughed through her nose. “So what do I call you?”
“Carter.”
“First or last name?”
Lifting my shoulders, I said, “It’s the only one I answer to.”
“Carter,” she said, as though tasting my name on her tongue. “Sounds very formal to me. What about your family, your friends, what do they call you?”
“Carter.”
Again her slate grey eyes turned effervescent. “Oh…Kay. So what about your enemies?”
“Enemies? Who says I have enemies?”
“Carter,” she said. “Everyone has at least one enemy.”
“I suppose you’re right.”
“So? What does your enemy call you?”
Oh, that was easy. Though I couldn’t tell her. My enemy calls me Brother.
FOUR
Skelvoe, Connor’s island
The Sailor’s Hold was one of those establishments that cater not for tourists, but rough, hard-working labourers who rent the small billets above the common room by the season. There was nothing fancy, none of the mod cons you’d expect in hostels catering for the refined traveller, but what there was on offer was serviceable. I had no foreknowledge of how long I’d need the room, so I paid a week up front with a promise to the landlord that I’d inform him should I require the room any longer. My room was at the top of a narrow flight of stairs, way up in the roof gable of the house. Above my sagging ceiling were only timber and slate, and the occasional rattle of gulls’ feet. A small gas heater fed from an unsightly red canister barely made the room comfortable. I dare say, come the onset of winter, only the toughest and most weather-bitten seadog would be snug in there. The bed was originally designed for someone shorter than my six feet one, but it was as welcoming as the soft hiss of the heater. I kicked off my sodden boots and lay back, linking my hands behind my head.
Studying the room, I noted the uneven plaster on the walls, the slightly warped doorframe, the nicotine-stained curtains over the single window. It was basic, sure enough, but I felt right at home. Once I’d been used to better things. But this room served my present disposition nicely. Also, I reminded myself, it was probably all I deserved.
I’d watched as Janet climbed aboard a mini-bus with her small entourage of colleagues. I didn’t say goodbye as such, but we’d both waved as the van drove away, a big man with a matted beard at the wheel. I watched as the van picked its way past stragglers from the ferry. Janet also watched me, her gaze on mine until distance and the curve of the road intervened. When I’d nothing further to look at, I spied out the first building offering accommodation. For no other reason than the Sailor’s Hold was the nearest, that was why I found myself lying on a rickety bed in an attic crawl space. Thinking about Janet.
