Holy Terror in the Hebrides

by Jeanne M. Dams

  Teresa’s face shut against me; she muttered something and turned to go back into the cabin. I caught her sleeve.

  “Teresa, wait!” I said, a little desperately. “I’m sorry if I keep annoying everyone, but I do wish you’d tell me what’s going on so I won’t put my foot in my mouth every time I open it!”

  She looked at me for a long moment, then her face softened and she sat down beside me along the starboard rail. “That’s fair,” she acknowledged finally. “Our arguments are our own business, but you’ve been nice to us. You deserve to know enough to keep out of trouble.”

  I waited while she organized her thoughts.

  “It’s Bob,” she said after a while, keeping her voice low. Well, that came as no surprise after the way she and Grace had acted.

  “He’s a bit over-pious, certainly,” I said. “I can see how he might get on people’s nerves.”

  “Yes, but it’s a lot more than that. He—he keeps picking at us. You know we’re all from different religious backgrounds.”

  I nodded, with a little grimace.

  “I know,” said Teresa. “There’s a lot of room for hostility there, but we’re all civilized. And we all more or less know each other. Even in a city the size of Chicago, there are few enough people who are really active in their churches that we meet now and then. So most of us have a speaking acquaintance. We could deal with our differences if Bob would just leave us alone. But he keeps trying to talk us around to his way of thinking. And he’s so obnoxious about it, we get pushed into defending our beliefs more aggressively than we would otherwise. I don’t belong to the ‘If you’re not a Catholic, you’re going straight to hell’ school of thought—except when Bob’s been talking to me. Besides that, he’s such a—such a wuss. I don’t know how he ever got selected for this trip, unless he’s managed to convince people he’s as wonderful as he thinks he is.”

  “I understand he works with young people?”

  “Well—he talks a lot about it, anyway.”

  “And what does Jake think about all this bickering?” I had some idea, but I wanted to hear Teresa’s take on it.

  “Oh, Jake.” She smiled; for a moment she was beautiful. “He’s a really nice man, you know? And he can be funny. He tries to laugh us out of it sometimes, but mostly he keeps to himself.”

  “He’s funny? I caught a touch of humor last night, certainly, but I thought he looked basically like a sad sort of man.”

  Teresa looked at me with something like respect in her eyes, but the smile was gone. “You saw that, did you? He is. It’s sort of the ‘Laugh, clown, laugh’ bit. He’s—well, you’d better know this, too, or you might say something wrong again. Jake’s life has been pretty tough. He lost his whole family to death, and the last one was a real tragedy. His grandson—he lived with Jake—found out he was HIV positive and killed himself. He was only thirteen.”

  I drew in my breath.

  “Yeah. Don’t talk about it, okay? I don’t think the others know; I only do because I work with AIDS mothers and their babies, and I hear a lot.” She paused. “Makes you wonder sometimes if God really does know what he’s doing.”

  “Teresa,” I blurted out, “you are absolutely unlike any other nun I’ve ever known.”

  She shrugged. “I’m not a very good one. I got into it mostly because I wanted to do something about society, but the rules are pretty frustrating, and the Pope . . .” She rolled her eyes, looking a lot like Jake. “I’m thinking of getting out, if you want to know. Hey, look!”

  I had been watching her, not the scenery, but when she pointed I turned and looked, and my mouth dropped open. Nothing I had read, not even the pictures I had seen, had prepared me for this. Staffa is almost impossible to describe, or (as I found out when I had my film developed) to photograph properly.

  A small, uninhabited volcanic island, Staffa is made of basalt in the most astounding formations. The top half or so of the island, looking at sheer cliffs rising on the south and east, is made of a higgledy-piggledy mass of curly black rock, exactly like gigantic poodle fur. But about halfway down, there is a line of demarcation so sharp it might have been made by a surveyor. Below it the rock drops to the sea in massive black columns as straight and even as corrugated cardboard. The whole island tilts a bit, as if some giant sea creature were trying to nudge the southern end up out of the water. As we drew closer and could see the mathematical regularity of the columns, perfectly hexagonal in cross section, it became even harder to believe that no human hand had played a part in their shaping. Here were crystals with a vengeance; I could see why the New Agers might be interested.

  And then we rounded a point and there was Fingal’s Cave, a huge, dark hallway leading into the heart of the island, its walls black columns like organ pipes, its floor the sea, its ceiling more of the columns, their lower reaches evidently broken off eons ago to create this massive formation.

  “. . . over sixty feet high and two hundred feet deep,” came the voice of David MacPherson over the boat’s loudspeaker. “Accessible by sea as well as from the island. lolaire willna go through the rocks, but wee boats sometimes go into the cave. If we’re able to land, ye can walk to the cave by following the path round to the left from the landing place.” The voice ceased.

  “What does he mean, if we land?” asked Teresa. She had recovered her normal belligerence. “I thought landing was the whole point of this godawful trip.”

  “Well, the sea’s pretty rough, and it looks like there are a lot of rocks,” I said dubiously. I would myself be just as happy if the skipper decided not to bring the boat anywhere near the nasty-looking chunks of basalt that came right down to the waterline.

  “We’ll land,” said Jake, coming up beside us quietly. “Look at that harbor.” He pointed.

  Sure enough, as the boat came around farther to the east and north, the water grew calm. A natural harbor, enhanced by a little pier, made a perfect landing place. Mr. MacPherson brought the Iolaire skillfully to a stop, his son tossed out the mooring lines, and we were ready to step ashore. There was one last announcement.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, I can give ye no more than an hour on the island. The wind is rising, and I want ye to be comforatable on the trip back to Iona. I’ll ask ye, then, to be back on board no later than three-thirty, if ye’ll check your watches, please. And if ye hear this signal”—there was a series of four long hoots from the boat’s horn—“return at once. Iolaire will move offshore, to let others land, but we will return here in aboot forty-five minutes. Enjoy yourselves.”

  Assisted by young MacPherson, the rest of them clambered up and over the gunwale. At the end of the pier, steep stone steps led up, up, endlessly up to the more-or-less flat surface of the island. I stayed for a little while in the boat, a trifle dismayed now that I had actually seen the terrain. Heights are not my best thing, and arthritic knees make steps, or climbing of any kind, painful and difficult. However, here I was, and here I was unlikely ever to be again. Girding my loins, I followed the rest of the passengers up the steps.

  At last, panting, I came to a stop on a little landing where the path divided. I could continue climbing the steps to reach the top of the island, from which there was undoubtedly a splendid view. But if I did that, at the slow pace my knees insisted on, I might not have time to see Fingal’s Cave properly, and more important, to hear it. All my life I’d known about the inspiration Mendelssohn had felt when he’d heard the waves booming into Fingal’s Cave and reverberating against the back wall. This was possibly my one and only chance ever to hear it for myself, and it was a perfect day for it, too, with high seas making waves that would surely be as impressive as any old Felix had ever encountered.

  I turned cautiously to the left and began to edge my way across the natural basalt paving stones that made a narrow, uneven path hugging the cliff.

  As I drew closer to my goal, I met some of the passengers coming back. Hattie Mae was clinging tightly to the railing attached to the face of the cliff
, and we had to wiggle past each other in a narrow spot. But Grace and Janet sauntered back easily on a lower route, disdaining the railing, and young Chris came along shortly after them, leaping like a gazelle from one rock to another. When Teresa breezed past, she was moving so fast she nearly ran into me at a particularly treacherous spot. I yelped and held on with both hands.

  “Oh, sorry,” she said, stopping to pant. “I was just letting off some steam.” She grinned suddenly. “This island is a great place, huh? I’m having a good time!”

  Other passengers I didn’t know straggled past as well; I heard one of them say, “We’re lucky we got a dry day this time. Last time, with all the mist, these rocks were like glass.” I seemed to be the only one still heading toward the cave. I glanced at my watch; I needed to hurry, and the other tourists were right. On the dry rocks, I could safely make a little more speed.

  And then suddenly I rounded a rather tricky little corner and there it was. I was at the entrance to the fabled Fingal’s Cave, and alone at that, free to gloat without other people’s intrusion.

  The boom of the water rushing in was all that I could have hoped for. The cave was very dark; a big cloud had moved over the sun. I moved farther into the cave to get the full effect of the sound, and realized there was someone else in there after all, about twenty feet away from me at the very end of the path. Climbing one more basalt step for a better look, I saw that it was Bob. He was looking down, watching the pattern of the waves as they rushed in, eddied, and pulled out again with a strong undertow that oddly left the surface water almost undisturbed; I could see a couple of pieces of wood and a plastic bottle floating in the same place, wave after wave.

  Well, Bob was a thorn in everybody’s side, but I was a little alarmed for him, all the same. The path was narrow up there and the railing was on the cliff side, with nothing but a few pieces of basalt between the man and the treacherous water below. Not only that, the rocks he was standing on there were shiny and looked wet—and slippery.

  “Bob!” I yelled. “Bob, come back!”

  I wasn’t sure he heard me. The noise of the sea was deafening. I was taking a breath to try again when he looked toward me and I gestured. And then I gasped, as he backed away from me, closer to the edge—and, as I watched in a kind of helpless horror, his feet seemed to slip out from under him and he slithered to the rocky path.

  I don’t know if it happened in slow motion or if I will simply always see it that way in my nightmares. I do remember moving forward, thinking I could never reach him in time but having to try. He was on his knees. He was on his back, with his hand reaching frantically for the railing that was by now at least a yard away. He was slipping farther, farther over the edge—he was on a narrow rocky ledge far below—he was in the water—he was gone, vanished completely.

  I think I screamed. I know I turned to look frantically for help, and saw only a shadow, a flicker, as something—a bird?—moved around the pillars at the entrance to the cave and vanished. “Is anyone there? I need some help! Please!” I looked again, desperately, at the water, and saw only the floating debris, undisturbed even by the body that had fallen through it.

  And at that thought I came to my senses and was out of the cave and running for the boat as if all the hounds of hell were after me.

  IT’S A WONDER I didn’t kill myself on that wild dash. I took no care for my footing, spumed the handrail, and wobbled more than once as my foot landed on the edge of a rock and slipped off, but I kept on going, waving and shouting as I went.

  The Iolaire was just coming back in to the landing place; none of the other passengers were in sight. Young MacPherson looked up in astonishment as I skidded down the short pier and stopped, panting.

  “We need help!” I managed to say in short jerks. “A man—fallen—in the cave—drowned—”

  “Dad! Get the Coastguard!” the young man called before I had even finished. “There’s been an accident!” He turned to me. “Come aboard, ma’am, and tell Dad everything so he can report the details.”

  I was shaking now, so badly that I had to be practically lifted into the boat. A strong young arm supported me and guided me into the cockpit, where Mr. MacPherson took one look at me and pulled a flask from a locker. “Sit doon and drink this,” he commanded, his face set, and I obeyed. It was straight scotch, strong and peaty. I don’t especially like scotch, and I coughed and choked, but after a moment or two my teeth stopped chattering.

  Mr. MacPherson had jerked his head toward his son, who took off at a lope toward the cave, and had then turned his attention to the radio. Now he turned to me. “A helicopter and lifeboat will be here within the hour. Can ye tell me what’s happened, ma’am?”

  I pulled myself together, trying not to shiver. “A man, one of our party, fell into the sea in Fingal’s Cave, from the very top of the pathway. He hit a ledge on the way down, and then went into the water. It looked purely accidental—he just slipped and fell. I don’t think he can possibly be alive, and anyway he disappeared as soon as he hit the water—the undertow—” I closed my eyes for moment, and then went on. “I ran back to the boat as fast as I could, but . . .”

  “Never mind,” said Mr. MacPherson soothingly. “Did ye leave anyone to watch?”

  “There wasn’t anyone else. I was the only other one in the cave at the time, and I was way down at the entrance. And on the way back I didn’t think; I just ran.”

  My teeth were chattering even worse now, and MacPherson handed me a cup, spooned quite a lot of sugar into it, then poured strong tea from a thermos. It was black with tannin, but the sugar and the heat helped.

  “Well, I’ve sent wee Davie to have a look. He’ll see if there’s aught we can do before the rescue team comes.”

  I giggled just a little at the thought of “wee Davie,” who was probably in his early twenties and very nearly as brawny as his father; I wondered how he enjoyed his nickname. Anything to keep from thinking of . . .

  “Don’t be alarmed, but I’d best get my passengers back.” The boat’s horn sounded just over my head, making me jump a foot despite the warning. Four long hoots: return immediately.

  Mr. MacPherson was very kind, and tried to comfort me, but my mind couldn’t seem to focus. I kept seeing the cave, with a man about to fall, a man too far away for me to help, too far even to hear me shout over the pounding of the waves, the relentless bass voice of Fingal’s Cave . . .

  “Dorothy, are you all right? What’s happening? No one will tell us.”

  The other passengers were coming back, and Grace was at my shoulder.

  “Dorothy, say something. Captain, this woman isn’t well. Someone must take care of her!”

  They were swarming into the cockpit, voices raising higher and higher, the Chicago group and the few other passengers. The skipper lost his temper.

  “Noo, then!” he roared, and his mariner’s voice carried over the nervous crowd and subdued them. “We’ve an emergency here, and I’ll ask ye tae keep your heads, and tae get oot o’ my way! Be off wi’ ye! Wee Davie has ye all to count. In the passenger cabin!” His son, returned from a fruitless search, began herding them out, but the skipper shook his head when I tottered to my feet. “Ye’d best stay. Ye’re none too steady on your feet, and I’d as soon you were where I could look after ye.”

  “They’re all accounted for.” Wee Davie poked his head in. “Except for—the one.”

  “Aye. Then ye’d best quiet them, and I’ll talk to them.” He turned to me. “And what’s the puir laddie’s name, then?”

  “Bob. Bob Williams.”

  “Ye’ll do for a bit?”

  “Yes. I’m fine, really.”

  The boat rocked, creaking a bit at her ropes with each rising swell. I sat and hugged myself and tried not to think of anything in particular while Mr. MacPherson gave the rest of the passengers the bad news.

  I don’t know if we had to wait a long time for the Coastguard to arrive. I seemed to have lost track of time. I know that Gra
ce came to keep me silent but supportive company, and eventually someone in uniform came to ask me a few questions, and then went away again.

  When the skipper came back into the cockpit cabin he looked at me, worried. “I’ll radio a doctor to check you over as soon as we make Fionnphort.”

  “No! No, please don’t. I’m all right. I’d just like to get back to solid ground.”

  Grace, with crisp efficiency, went out on deck, found my purse, and brought it in to me. “Perhaps you need another ginger capsule or two.”

  I took them gratefully. “Hand ’round the rest to anyone who wants them. I imagine we’ll be leaving soon, with the rescue people in charge now.”

  And indeed, in a few minutes Mr. MacPherson mustered wee Davie to action, and with no wasted words or motions they went into their accustomed departure routine, as if this were the ordinary return leg of a pleasure outing to Staffa. The skipper spoke one last comment into the radio.

  “Iolaire casting off from Staffa, making for Fionnphort and Iona. Over and oot.”

  The trip back was no pleasure. Clouds were beginning to mass, so the sunshine was fitful, and the wind and waves were higher, but not alarmingly so. And the ginger capsules worked every bit as well as they had on the way out. But my mind wouldn’t let me relax. What could I have done to save Bob? If I had called out earlier, if I had gone farther into the cave . . . I went over it again and again, and there was nothing, and I knew there was nothing, but still I worried.

  And when we got back to Iona, what then? What was going to happen? Would the police be involved? This was Scotland, with laws different from England’s. And with the missing person an American, everything was going to be very complicated.

  At last the boat slackened speed and I saw a pier looming ahead. Wee Davie appeared in the cabin. “Fionnphort,” he murmured. “The constable will likely be there to talk to you, ma’am.” He went up on deck to help the Mull passengers off the boat, and I waited, apprehensive.

  There was, after all, little enough to the interview. The constable from Bunessan asked only a few questions. I assured him that no one had been near Bob when he fell, and that he hadn’t jumped, but slipped. He expressed the proper regrets, talked to the other Chicagoans briefly, and then in a minute or two we were headed out again for the trip across Iona Sound. The sea was getting really rough now, and the ten minute trip seemed to last an hour, but eventually we were there, and with wee Davie’s help I climbed over the side and jumped down to the pier with rubbery legs. I could have kissed the salty planks, and as a matter of fact I almost did; I certainly couldn’t walk. Leaning against a piling, deeply thankful to have my feet on a stationary surface, I tried to recover my equilibrium.