I sat, and sat, alone with the sun in the silence of its rising. Alone? From the crags of the Hill of the Shroud there came a raucous call. I looked up. Fingered black wings spiralled high above me. A raven greeted the first warmth. Its single call, harsh and arresting.
The Viking saga, written by my great, grandfather, ranged through my head. The eye of wisdom pecked from the dead crone by a raven and fed to its nestling chick. In that acute awareness which defeats the passage of time nothing separated me from the generation which brought it here. The raven circled, cawed again. A greeting, a warning? In its wisdom, what did the raven foresee? Destruction, death?
Amidst the rising sun the story lived, banners unfurled, longboats crunched the sand. Bearded giants leapt gunnels, shrieking fiends, swords spilling guts, axes slashing limbs. I saw the clefted head bleeding on the sand, watched the kneeling, sobbing, women. From the encompassing elements of sea and fiord the longboat men had found a new home. Amidst the beauty of this island, they had bred my forebears. Intimate as the great orange orb of the sun will be to a man alone, I heard the laughter of children.
Down by the tiny fields of tumbled dyke I ran breathless, to the door of the old home, “Eilidh, Eilidh!” I called excitedly. Her bed was made. The room empty. A stab of concern ran through me. Back outside, I looked about urgently. There, in a bay of our own, a head bobbed out of the water. Not dark as the seal would be, but golden in the first rays of sunrise breaking free of the hill. And seeing me, she waved.
Waving both arms eagerly, happy at her in sudden appearance, I turned to the stone beside the door. Seat of many thoughts by Eachan’s telling. Maybe of the trance that relives yesterday. Perhaps of the gift of ‘sight’ that opens tomorrow. Naturally, as to a chair of long habit, I sat. The people were on the fields, bent to the cutting of their harvest, gathering it in hand bound sheaves. I could see them; scaling the bird cliffs, fishing the mackerel sea, pendant nets dripping the moonlight jewels of a cresent night. And the laughing children from the playground of a hill, long climbing days, collecting honey from the wild bees’ nests, how bright the bird song hill of summer flowers.
The peat hearth of winter, childbirth pain and firelight suckle. The driving rain on huddled thatch and the drum of a thunder sea that fed young hearts, glistening- eyed at granny’s knee, stout manhood tales of longboat morn, of crashing seas sunrise torn and Raven banners born.
I rose still bemused by the weirdness. Had the stimulation arisen from the force of my hilltop vision, the longboat, children’s laughter, or the raven’s croak? By what freak of inspiration could they summon up themes related to the island of a thousand years ago or insert themselves in to a train of thought? The speed of writing those few verses had imperative command of dictation. The thought came strongly to me; by some means I was a pawn of supernatural elements which lingered amongst the island’s feel of the natural and un-spoilt ways.
I watched Eilidh swimming amidst the colours which were transforming the day. The last sparkle of dew still on the green sward, white sand against the blackness of rock, a turquoise bay pouring itself into the ultra marine of the Atlantic and presently there was a woman running towards me, golden and beautiful.
Eilidh stood before me barefoot, a towel about her, laughing as she shook her hair. Shyness overcame me, embarrassment and excitement together. I blushed deeply, looking only into her merry eyes. “Eilidh,” was all I could muster. She laughed, “Hector, I presume?” and pretending to be serious, “one egg or two?” My tongue loosened, “two, please, if I may, one only, if they’re not from Ella’s hens.”
She skipped into the house. I could hear singing and laughing through in the bedroom. Before long the rattle of dishes sounded in the kitchen. Time I became useful. Putting my head in the door, “Anything I can do to help?” Eyes smiled from under arching eyebrows and handing me a galvanized pail, “Would you like to get more water, please?
Swinging the bucket, I made for the burn. Tucked a little from its bank I came upon the well, a neat circle of built stone. Water straight off the hill, filtered by the soil. I scooped a cupped handful. Cool and sweet, without any taint, fresh as the breezes on its source. I walked back to the house, my first steps towards remoteness living.
Putting the pail down in the kitchen and shaking with excitement I caught the woman around the waist. “Eilidh, I’m going to live here.” I whispered into her hair. She twisted to face me. Her arms went to my shoulders, “Oh, Hector” she breathed my name softly. Her arms circled my neck. I bent, our eyes joined. The depth of attraction reached my inner self as no emotion before. Our eyes closed and in the security of shared passion we kissed, the eager kiss of longing.
An outgoing tide left bare the stonework of the jetty, a tribute to hands that could cut and craft. Red and purple sea urchin inched their way across its rocks. Stranded starfish, orange bright on white sand awaited the sea’s return. Seals, dark and idle, hauled out on the sloping rock of the farthest headland and slept away the lull. Only the gulls busied themselves, strutting and probing the limpid pools which remained. From time to time a cloud would block the sun. A shadow would flit across the bay before sunlight returned and sand and sea glistened once more.
The boat lay heeled and safe and we sat on her gunnel, barefoot on the warmth of the sand. Content and relaxed, I watched the receding waters, conscious our bare arms were touching. The peace of the bay brought us close, nobody in the entire world to listen or intrude, the wildlife about us neither upset nor caring. We were accepted, a kindred life, part of their wide domain, its sun and cloud, the faint rumble of the uncurling Atlantic. Seclusion, absolute, and the slowness of time, servant only of a turning tide.
Gently, I put my arm round her waist, “You brought me here, Eilidh. I think my life is owed to you,” and very quietly, as I turned to look to the hill, “and I hope, my future.”
She rested her head on my shoulder, her deep, thick, golden hair against my face. “It wasn’t my usual train, I happened to be early but standing in the crush of that rush hour carriage seemed quite strange, almost like being in a trance. I didn’t will it to happen, but gradually the tube train didn’t exist. I was here on Sanday, seeing it all. I’ve known the island since childhood, walked the cliffs, watching the sea for a boat.”
She lifted her head, gazed away to the horizon and in a very distant voice, “A presence walked with me, along the cliffs, powerful, totally compelling… was walking with me on Sandray. There in London, amidst the City’s unending clatter, in that noisy, smelly train.”
I waited, stunned and silent. Her description mirrored the image which had come so emotively to me in the few seconds I’d gazed at her blonde hair across that fatal carriage.
Slowly her head rested back on my shoulder. That first sight of her returned as she spoke. I’d replayed its memory time and again these many months, remembered the thrill of its instant attraction, the vividness of the wild associations it aroused. Now at its recall, beyond reliving the passion of those dreaming moments there came a yearning
Silent with emotion, I pressed my lips to her head. My fingers tips caressed the golden hair, warm and downy. Words would be empty tokens, what need of uttered bond? For simple as nature abounding, happy as the sun is young, joy flowed between us.
She stirred a little, “I felt eyes were looking at me, I knew an intense presence was close,” and lifting her wondrous eyes to me, “the sensation forced me to turn. When I did, and we looked at each other, though we’d never met, I knew who you were and,” she whispered, burying her head in my arms, “I knew we would meet again,” and ever so quietly, “meet again, like this.”
Tears closed her eyes. She was crying. Gently lifting her chin, I brushed her wet cheeks and each in turn, I kissed her tears.
Tiny rolls of foam uncurled about our feet, spread their bubbling fans of clear water across the shelving sand. A delicate shade of turquoise returned to the bay. Summer was waning, the tang of autumn’s approach on the air but
still the midday sun reflected a warmth from the settled water. Those in a world without time are in the land where all that has gone before and all which may be of tomorrow, rest in one moment.
The boat stirred slightly. She lay in the shelter of the jetty, tucked behind its sturdy masonry. How imperceptible the quietness of her coming awake. Without our noticing the water stole below her keel. Suddenly jumping up from our seat on the boats gunnel and splashing out of the shallows before I could catch her, Eilidh was away, running, calling, “Come on, Hector, I’ll race you to the house.” Up the dunes, bare feet, sand flying, she arrived at the door yards ahead of me. I hung onto the door frame, panting, amazed both at her speed and the recovery of my lungs.
She put an arm round my waist, “Poor Hector, that wasn’t kind, I’m sorry,” and giving me a squeeze, she whispered, “but I’m so happy.” We went inside. “Eilidh, with any luck I’ll catch you yet.” She laughed from the other side of the table as I dived round and lifted her off her feet. “That was just a test run, anyway I’m cured, no sign of a cough. Sea air and sunshine, it beats all the patent cough drops put together.”
Perhaps it was the mention of that wretched cough which had plagued me months past. Eilidh began to prepare some of the food we’d taken over the previous night, her face solemn and the tone cautious, “I’m afraid when I saw the rescue team cut that briefcase from your wrist to get you clear of the carnage, although you were still alive, I thought it was touch and go,”
She put some of Ella’s home baking on the table. We sat gazing at each other, two minds locked again in a horror transcending present time and place. Behind her head, through a window, the bay, the boat, our morning, were they all far in the future? Were they a fabrication of an imagination which, able to span the centuries gone by, could just as easily project the act of consciousness into the yet to be? How could one’s mind encompass this unending gallery of experiences, comprehend the dovetailing of sensations which were the living, dreaming, pulsating act of being? Through the open bedroom door, against the wall, lay the crumpled briefcase.
A catch came to Eilidh’s voice. I reached across and took her shaking hand in mine, “People fell against me, I got a bit of bruising that’s all; the blast had gone the other way. I struggled clear and made towards you. It’s funny now, the stretcher boys were commenting on your size, but they did a tremendous job, these men are some of life’s true heroes. In all the confusion I picked up the briefcase.” Its mention brought back the flashing explosion.
“The ambulance crew couldn’t have been more considerate. As they were loading you into the back, I said to one of them, ‘May I go with him’? Eilidh bent her head and dropping her eyes to the table, she gripped my hand quite tightly. There came a long pause. I saw her blush deepen, setting her face in a beautiful glow and I pressed her hand in reassurance.
“They were closing the door and he hesitated, so I just said to him,” I waited. Eilidh lifted her head and in a small voice, she went on, “I said to him, ‘It’s my husband.’ The man couldn’t have been more sympathetic, ‘Yes, of course you can,’ and he helped me aboard. I remember him saying, ‘He’ll be OK missus, he’s a big strong lad.’ I just held your hand until they wheeled you into the emergency. I stayed until a surgeon came out, hours later, to tell me he thought you’d pull through. I called to see you quite a few times but you always seemed to be sleeping. Finally I had to go away but I left your case and some things. Hector, I never opened the briefcase.”
I went to her. We clung together, shaking with distress. I stroked her lovely hair, “Eilidh, I’m here. I won’t leave you, if it’s what you want.” She nodded, and buried her head in my chest.
Afternoon’s warmth brought a breeze off an Atlantic whose vastness stretched away, blue upon blue. How many suns had painted it so, given life to the tiny scrolls of brightness which exist only moments on a day such as this. We walked the cliffs on a crest of happiness and the sea sparkled and amongst the Viking stones where the scarlet pimpernel bloomed, we sat. Shyness left me and with it all reluctance to speak and tell. I told of the drowning vision, an old white haired man in the coffin, his hands, his warning look, the funeral, my name on the coffin lid.
Eilidh spoke. And in the remoteness of her words it seemed she saw my image staring out of the swell which echoed in the caverns below our feet. “Since I was a child coming to the house of Ach na Mara, I’ve looked at that picture above the fireplace, the old man whose eyes follow you about the room. When I turned and saw you on the train, I knew who you were. Hector, it’s in our people, your people, you can live the past, you can see into the future. Poor Eachan, like his grandfather, he has the gift, or curse. He foresaw the death of Hilda, his daughter. It haunted him, he knew she was condemned. Had he destined her death?”
Eilidh’s eyes lost their brightness, “The scar is on his mind. Nor will it heal.” And she turned fully to me, “These are the cliffs of our past visions, today our happiness and,” her voice, a whisper, “they are the cliffs of sadness.”
We sat on, amidst the stones of past hope, amidst the frailty of tiny flowers. Quietly, I read her the poems I’d written. She listened. As though in a trance, she looked away to the faint trail of islands which vanished to an incalculable distance.
“Oh Hector, Hector,” was all she said.
From the little kitchen window I watched the land growing into shadows, only the sea preserved the radiance of the day. Fragments of cloud, slender skiffs of purple far beyond the horizon, marked the sun’s last rays with their crimson edges. Without stars, the transparency of the sky had only distance, the opening to some endless unknown, a void unfettered by dimension. Was there a crossing, a boat to sail the waves of imagination?
Darkening headlands, unpretentious outlines of rock, cut and tossed, ground and broken into the soil of our existence. Simple and unadorned works of art, neither bleak nor austere, did they point towards some great indefinable force? Perhaps a solitary Anchorite in his stone cell journeyed as far as is possible? I saw the people of old watching that same setting sun. Its rays governed their survival, from its tranquility came their peace.
I dreamed and Eilidh, quiet and thoughtful, lit the candles. Summer had passed its zenith, and nights without darkness were becoming the evenings of the long gloaming. The whistling calls of birdlife feeding along the shoreline, faint but clear enough, emphasized the quietness of the room. I turned from the window, out of sunset thoughts and into the flicker of candlelight.
The serenity of the place, the nearness of the woman, no tension, no stress, the harmony of being alone together, in a place of natures making, “Eilidh, this is home. I want to make it home.”
She came to me, wide arms and bright eyes. “Hector, you of all people have the right to this island, a thousand years of right. Whatever you were born, whatever your life before now, this place is in you, deep in you as the Atlantic sunset.”
Her words, slow and foreshadowing, “My people knew the north wind that brought you here. Like the tunes of yesterday, the feelings are buried beneath their notes. This island is a hidden melody. Take it, hold it. It won’t deceive you, nor leave you.”
Her arms were about me, “Eilidh,” I spoke into her hair, “I hear the music. Perhaps it’s a lament for what has been. Perhaps I’m searching within its notes for the secret of its expression, the mystery of a beauty that haunts me. It’s in everything about us. It’s in what I write, in all I want that melody to be.”
Our arms entwined. It was difficult to speak, “Eilidh, there is no melody, without you.”
The candles wavered, burnt low. Eilidh moved away slightly and spoke in a tiny voice. I could barely hear her, “Hector, I have to go down to London. Tomorrow.” And after a little, “The tide is early.”
I rolled in the old blankets on the floor, beside her bed. I stared out of the tiny window. The island, the world, dropped into an empty pit of despair. And tipping the topmost window pane appeared a moon without sleep, full a
nd alone.
A hand reached down, stroked my cheek. “Hector. My Hector, don’t fret. Wait for me. I’ll come back. When the tide is high and moon is full again, I’ll come back to you.”
Dawn was without a breath. In half light a fog hung on the sea, a narrow band of mist that lay on the Sound at the meeting of the waters, twixt ebb and flood. Out of its cloying white vapour floated the headland, a black embodiment of some archaic upheaval without solid foundation. We rounded it close in. The bird life was silent. Fingers of mist clawed up deep crevices. It needed little to conjure the grinding eons which deify our illusion of constancy.
Eilidh had taken the helm, confident and capable, her eye on a compass box at the foot of the mast. “A bearing of twenty five degrees avoids the reef and puts us to the landing at Eachan’s croft.” Droplets of mist settled on her hair. With a laugh she shook them off. Glum as I felt,
“Look here woman,” in mock annoyance I brushed them off my jacket and we laughed together.
Ella had breakfast on the stove. Its welcome reached us on the lifting fog. Out at the sheep fank, Eachan loaded lambs into a trailer. I went over to him. “Well boy, you’re back. How’s the old grandfather’s house?” he winked, “Needing a nail or two?” “Wind and water tight, it’ll do fine,” I smiled, no longer surprised at his quickness of insight, nor his ability to express thoughts by inference. Unlike the directness of the culture I’d left, the Highland style of leaving the listener to read between the words suited me fine.
Sun Dance Page 15
