Star Gazing

by Linda Gillard

  Keir said water was supplied to the house from a tank filled by a spring which never dried up. Dead and dying trees provided a constant supply of fuel, as did the sea, turning up all manner of combustible material and even some of the furniture. He was now regenerating the woodland, systematically planting trees – fastgrowing birch alongside slow-growing oak. His planting had now reached the stage where thinning was required and the trees planted as shelter for slower-growing specimens now had to be felled to provide more light and space for larger, longer-lived varieties. I knew Keir wouldn’t live to see many of his trees reach maturity, so I’d asked him about his motives.

  * * * * *

  ‘I want to put something back.’

  ‘Back?’

  ‘Give back to the Earth. In recompense for what I’ve taken out.’

  ‘Your “carbon footprint”, you mean?’

  ‘Partly. But I work in the oil industry. I’ve spent my whole working life screwing the planet for resources so that oilgreedy Westerners can live in mindless comfort. It’s ecological rape and pillage. And I’m not, as you may have gathered, one of life’s Vikings. By the time I woke up to the mess we were making of the world, I could see the oil industry itself was an endangered species and there weren’t going to be too many job options for me. It’s not a career path young folk pursue any more. When I went into it, the money was good and there was the lure of travel. There’s no security, but you don’t think about that when you’re young. It seemed like a good idea at the time for a geologist who didn’t know what the hell he wanted to do with his life. But there’s no future in oil. It’s dead. It’s an industry full of guys in their forties, like me.’

  ‘If there’s no future in oil, what will you do?’

  ‘Good question. There’s still work in my field – oil and gas exploration. The oil is almost gone and there’s now an undignified scramble to find and grab what little is left. And one of the effects of global warming is that hazard prediction has become something of a growth area. That’s my field too. That could be the way I go, but it would mean spending even more time abroad.’

  ‘And you don’t want to?’

  ‘Och no, I’ve had enough! I get homesick on the other side of the Skye Bridge. If I had my way I’d live here year-round, but I don’t know what I’d do to pay the bills. There’s very little work on Skye apart from the tourist industry, and that’s not yearround anyway. A lot of folk who live here are retired incomers or elderly natives. The young move away to the mainland for work. They have to. I had to.’

  ‘What about ecological tourism? Teaching people about wildlife, woodland management, living a greener life? That’s a growth area too, isn’t it? There must be lots of townies who’d like to create the sort of idyll you have here. Couldn’t you exploit that?’

  ‘Aye, I’ve thought about that… It’s tempting. But this place would be no good as a base. It’s inaccessible and it’s not big enough. I’d need to provide some sort of residential facility and it would need to be on a good road. It’s something I think about. But I can’t see it happening.’

  ‘Wouldn’t it be marvellous if children could come here – school parties, I mean – and stay for a week and learn about wildlife. And the stars… And wouldn’t they just adore the treehouse!’

  ‘Aye, I’ve had similar thoughts myself. This place would be an excellent teaching resource because of the variety of habitats.’

  ‘And you wouldn’t mind sharing it? Having noisy teenagers tramping through your personal Garden of Eden?’

  ‘I was a noisy teenager once. Kids wouldn’t be noisy if they had a reason to be quiet. Silence, watchfulness is a natural response to wildlife. It’s man’s hunting instinct. It’s a survival instinct too. You can run, or you can be still and silent. If city kids could see the stars here on a clear winter’s night, they’d be struck dumb. Anybody would. Stars forbid you to speak… Och, I have my dreams, but not the resources or the will to live them. But I’ve made a start.’

  ‘Regenerating the woodland, you mean?’

  ‘No, bringing you here. It’s enabled me to see what I could do. What I probably should do…’

  * * * * *

  Marianne

  A fluttering at my feet told me some birds had braved my unfamiliar presence. I sat completely still, my hands cradling the warm coffee mug. Behind me I could hear a constant drip from the gutter as the sun melted the snow on the roof. With a noisy flapping of wings, the birds suddenly took flight, even though I hadn’t moved a muscle and there had been no sound to disturb them. Had a weasel appeared? I felt nervous and wanted to withdraw my feet, place them under the bench, out of the way of small mammals, but I sat still and tried to imagine – as best I could – their ‘bonny wee faces’. But it was Keir’s face with its angular, slab-like planes that came to mind; his face I remembered in the tips of my fingers.

  There was a change in the quality of the silence. Without knowing why, I reached for my cane, then remembered I’d left it indoors because my hands were full and I wouldn’t need it – I was only going to sit on the bench.

  I’ll never know if I actually heard something before the grating noise above my head or whether I just sensed movement. Was there a creak? Did the dripping accelerate? I don’t know, but when I heard the strange grinding noise above and behind me, I was already anxious. It’s not often I hear a noise I can’t identify and I stood up, ready to go back indoors. As I turned towards the back door there was an almighty rushing sound and I sensed a current of cold air on my face and pressure moving towards me. Terrified, I turned and ran, my arms extended in front of me.

  I hadn’t moved far when the noise resolved itself into a long hiss, a thump and a wet splashing sound. Snow from the roof. There had been an avalanche of snow falling from the roof above the bench where I’d been sitting. The bench was probably covered in snow now. I laughed at myself a little nervously and walked back the way I’d run.

  Except that I didn’t. I can’t have, for my hands met a tree I hadn’t encountered when I’d fled from the bench. I stood still and took stock for a moment, cursing myself for not bringing my cane out. I must have lost my sense of direction after running. I’d panicked and stupidly lost my bearings. Now I didn’t know if I was facing the house, so I would just have to find my footprints in the snow and trace them back to the bench.

  I bent and felt the ground with my bare hands, tracing the depressions. I followed these carefully but, after a minute or two, it dawned on me that these weren’t my footprints. They were too large, too deep and too widely spaced. These were Keir’s. I’d been following Keir’s footprints, not mine, and I had no idea where they’d led me. Feeling in the snow, I could detect only one set of footprints. An outward journey, no return. So these would probably lead to the steps down which Keir had carried me when we arrived, or they might lead to the winding path that he’d said led down to the house. Either way, this set of footprints was not going to take me back the way I’d come.

  The sun went in and I felt the temperature drop several degrees. I was beginning to feel a little concerned, but not frightened. How could I lose a house? It couldn’t be far. I turned round and re-traced my steps to the tree. My extended hands found it and I told myself I couldn’t be far from the house and my bench, I just didn’t know in what direction they lay.

  I bent down and felt in the snow for something to throw. My fingers were practically numb now with exploring the snow and my legs were damp where I’d kneeled to read the footprints. I tried to ignore the uncomfortable fact that I was very cold and getting colder. My frozen fingers found a stone. I clasped it and stood up, trying to work out in which direction I thought the house lay. I hesitated before throwing, wondering if I might smash a window. Aiming low, I hurled the stone, hoping that the sound of it hitting something would tell me if it was a wall, a door or just a tree.

  Nothing. I heard the stone land with a distant sigh in the snow. It must have missed the house altogether. I found another
stone and threw that in a different direction. There was a dull thud. Not the crack of the stone hitting a wall. Perhaps the bench? Or maybe just another tree? I set off in the direction of the sound, striding purposefully in an attempt to get my circulation moving again. My foot slipped on something smooth. Arms flailing, I skidded and lost my balance. There was a hideous crack as the ground gave way beneath me, plunging me to my knees into icy water.

  I’d walked into a frozen pond. The cold was so intense, I screamed. I stepped back out of the pond and stood still, shivering convulsively, furious with myself, but now frightened as well. My feet and legs were soaked up to my knees. My hands were numb. I had no hat, no coat. I was wearing a woollen jumper, not even a sensible, wind-proof fleece. And I was lost. I might be a matter of metres from the house and a wood-burning stove but, to all intents and purposes, I was lost. Keir had said there were no boundary hedges or fences here. The garden blended into its woodland surroundings, so I had nothing at all to navigate by, nothing to contain me.

  I’d no idea how long Keir had been gone, nor when he would be back. But he would be back. Eventually. I was in for an uncomfortable couple of hours – no more than that, probably – but as long as the weather held, I told myself I couldn’t come to much harm. I turned my face upwards, hoping to feel once again the blessing of the weak February sun.

  Instead I felt flakes of snow as they drifted down and settled on my cheeks, like a chilly caress.

  I knew about hypothermia. Harvey, a Skye man, had been a keen hill-walker and climber and he’d accompanied me to the top of Ben Nevis on a sponsored walk to raise money for charity. This was not a particularly spectacular achievement, even for someone who was blind. Children and people with all manner of physical disabilities make the ascent every year, following a well-trodden path. But every year there are cases of hypothermia, walkers dressed inadequately for the altitude, tourists who get wet, cold and hungry and who, by doing so, put their lives in danger. Hypothermia is a killer and it can kill quite quickly.

  Without a hat I was losing one fifth of my precious body heat via my head. I could hardly feel my feet or hands. I was shivering uncontrollably but I knew that was a good sign. The body shivers to generate heat. If I stopped shivering, then I would really start to worry. To conserve energy the body stops shivering and goes into survival mode, then shutdown. I also knew that as I got colder, I would become confused, even more disorientated than I was now. I needed to find the house or, failing that, some shelter. And in a hurry.

  I stood still and listened, all my senses straining, but all I could hear was the convulsive chattering of my teeth. I thought longingly of the stove and wondered if I could smell the wood smoke and trace it back to the house? Then I recalled the sweetly perfumed daphne by the back door, but I imagined the sun’s warmth was no longer drawing scent from the shrub. I could smell nothing but the mud and stagnant pond-water that had drenched my clothes.

  I needed to move to keep warm but I was frightened to move until I knew I was going in the right direction, so I stood, stamping my feet, trying to think, becoming colder by the minute as I stood out in the open while it snowed. It was then that I conceded a kind of defeat and stopped trying to be brave. Something snapped and I yelled at the top of my voice, ‘Keir!’ It was a futile and quite hopeless gesture but it was easier to call out Keir’s name than the words I shouted next: ‘Help me! Somebody – please help me!’

  There was a flapping sound as a couple of birds took off above me. I knew I must be standing among trees. If I was among trees I probably wasn’t very near the house, so I decided to walk, to set off in a random direction. I told myself walking would not only keep me warm, it would help me think.

  I walked with my arms extended, my hands freezing in the cold air. I stumbled as my numb, wet feet failed to register variations in the terrain. As I made my slow progress, I listened out for the sound of the Land Rover but I knew Keir probably hadn’t even got as far as Broadford yet. Perhaps if I kept going I would hit the road and come across another vehicle? As I listened out for distant sounds of a car, I caught instead a cheerful, gurgling sound – literally music to my ears. The burn. At last something to navigate by, something that would give me a sense of direction! The burn flowed downhill, towards the sea, Keir had said. It also flowed around the house. Surely with all this information I could find my way back?

  The snow was heavier now. Large flakes had settled on my head and shoulders, wetting my hair, seeping into my clothes. I brushed it off, alarmed to feel how much there was. As I did so, I walked smack into a tree. Stunned, I sank down at the base of the tree, forgetting as I did so that this would soak one of the few parts of my body that was still dry, but I was tired and just wanted to curl up in a ball. Harvey had said something about that… Conserving core body heat… You should hug your knees, curl up in a foetal position and wait for rescue. Wandering around only wastes energy. That’s what he’d said… I hugged my wet knees and waited. I listened to the burn singing its aimless, endless song and waited for Harvey to come and find me.

  Not Harvey. Keir. Harvey was dead, long dead…

  The burn was singing to me now, constantly repeating a refrain: ‘Follow me down, see where I go… Follow me down, see where I go…’ In the end, the sound got on my nerves and I yelled, ‘For God’s sake, shut up!’ The burn took no notice but carried on burbling. I pressed my back against the tree trunk, trying to derive some comfort from its solidity. I thought of Keir again, the warmth of his big body, the strength. How he’d lifted me – as if I weighed no more than a heavy rucksack – and carried me across icy stepping-stones to the other side of the burn, on the way to the tree-house.

  The tree-house…

  Shelter. Blankets, Keir had said. And tablet in the tin. My mouth filled with saliva at the thought of the sugary fudge dissolving on my tongue. I struggled to my feet. If I could find the burn … If I could find the stepping-stones… It wasn’t far from the stones to the tree-house. We’d walked for only a minute or two and I remembered the route as a straight line. Keir had set me down on the other side of the burn, saying, ‘It’s straight ahead,’ and we were there in no time at all, standing at the foot of the ladder.

  But even if I could locate it, how could I follow the burn without falling into it? Supposing there was more than one set of steppingstones? What had Keir said about them?… They were flat. He’d said I could attempt them, so they couldn’t be that widely spaced. How many were there? Could I remember how many steps he’d taken? More than two… I remembered lurching through the air, clinging on round his neck. But not many more than two. He’d taken maybe three or four steps, but the last one would have been on to the opposite bank. So I was trying to find three flat steppingstones. Maybe.

  But how do you find stepping-stones in the middle of a burn when you’re blind? I started to laugh at my own idiocy, lost my balance and reeled into a low-hanging branch. It scratched my face and I seized hold of it angrily, yanking it down. To my surprise it came away from the trunk easily. I staggered back, almost falling, but regained my balance at the last moment, using the branch like a walking-stick.

  Now I had a cane.

  I could trail my branch through the burn without getting myself wet and it would tell me when it encountered obstacles. Like large, flat stones. Stepping-stones. Stones which would take me across the burn to the tree-house where I could lie down and rest, where I could curl up in an old eiderdown, with all the wooden animals, with the spotty giraffe and Mrs Noah. Poor, lonely Mrs Noah, waiting patiently for a husband who isn’t ever coming home because he burned in the fire…

  My face felt hot suddenly and I touched it with my fingertips. Warm water was running down my cheeks, cheeks that felt as cold and dead as stone. I rubbed my useless eyes with my sleeve and set off. Trailing my branch through the snow I walked towards the sound of the burn. I found it – as I’d feared – by walking into it. I heard a loud splashing noise but my feet felt nothing, nothing at all. I st
ood dripping on the bank, struggling to order my thoughts. The tree-house was on the other side. But where on the other side? Should I walk up- or downstream? I didn’t know. Keir knew, but he wasn’t here…

  Sod it.

  Sod it, sod it, sod it!

  My shivering seemed to have got much worse. I wrapped my arms around my shaking body and realised I was crying, my body racked with sobs. I heard it then: a shriek, a terrible animal cry. A name. Harvey? Keir? I don’t know. It didn’t matter, not any more. I lifted my branch and plunged it into the burn. Dragging it along beside me, I trudged upstream.

  After some time, I don’t know how long – it took all my concentration just to put one foot in front of the other and keep hold of a branch I could neither see nor feel – there was a jarring sensation in my arms and I knew the branch had struck an obstacle. My coordination was poor now. I bent over, then, stumbling, fell to my knees. Stretching my hands out over the water, I tried to find the obstruction. One flattish stone. Were there more? I poked with the branch. It felt as if there was another, but without my cane I could get no precise feedback.

  I stepped cautiously on to the first stone and used the branch to find the next. Stepping carefully again, my spirits lifted a little. Maybe this was where Keir and I had crossed? There was a third flat stone and that was the last. I could feel the expanse of ground on the other side of the burn. As I swept it with the branch it struck me that I was removing any trace of the footprints that would tell me if this was where we’d crossed. When I reached the other side, I dropped the branch, got down on my hands and knees and felt for depressions in the fresh snow. Perhaps they would have been filled in by now anyway? But surely not Keir’s? His would have been deep, especially while he was still carrying me.