Ardnish Was Home

by Angus MacDonald

  ‘Tearlach on the isle of Canna needs a hand,’ my father suggested. ‘He’s getting old. Cutting the peat and carrying the bags of barley about is difficult for him. And there’s so much demand for his whisky he can’t make it fast enough. You would have a good time too, I think. It’s a great island, not quiet like home.’

  It was settled. After the hay was made in July, I would be off.

  There was a load of hay being shipped to Tarbert in Loch Nevis from Canna, and I could get a lift on the returning boat. I’d been told to be there by the end of the month. And so, with a pack on my back, I headed off to Morar, where I stayed with some friends on the first day, and then continued along the lochside and over the hill to Donald Macdonald, a kinsman of ours in Tarbert.

  A few days later, a small steam launch stacked high with good dry hay and towing a big rowing boat came around the corner and into the bay. At high tide she was pulled up as far as she would go, and a long day was spent loading the hay onto a cart and unloading it again into the byre. The next day we were off, with me in the rowing boat along with Iain Mackinnon and two heifers. They just stood chewing the cud as the boat rocked from side to side. I would never have believed this could happen.

  ‘It’s how it’s always done on the islands,’ said Iain. ‘They never jump overboard.’

  We stopped at Mallaig overnight so Iain could pick up supplies. Box after box was loaded on, with a couple of scythes, a wheelbarrow, some brandy for the laird and several bags of seed. The steam launch was well laden as we set off for the ten-mile trip to Canna.

  Tearlach was at the jetty when we arrived, talking in English to Mr Thom, the laird.

  ‘Here you are, young Donald! Let’s be off. We’ll spend the night with a lady friend of mine, get my messages in the shop first thing and go to the Nunnery tomorrow.’

  He was a big, strong man, with greying red hair and a thick beard. He must have been seventy years old, but I had to step out to keep up with him. As we walked he pointed things out to me. Canna was a lovely island, very fertile, with lots of people living on it. Tearlach said there must be half a dozen my age – including the Mackinnon girls.

  ‘Look, Donald Peter, that’s our new Catholic church – St Edward’s – built by the Marquess of Bute for us. He’s the richest man in Britain, they say. And over there are two carved crosses over a thousand years old.’

  I was impressed.

  ‘And look at these cattle, fantastic bulls. The best Highland cattle in the world are on this wee island.’

  It was clear he was very proud of his home.

  ‘Why is your home called the Nunnery, Uncle Tearlach?’

  ‘Well, at the same time as Saint Columba got to Iona some nuns came to Canna and decided this was the place to build their convent.’

  This all seemed fairly logical until I saw what a difficult place they had chosen for their home.

  We got there about midday. ‘Here we are,’ Tearlach announced as we reached the top of a rise.

  There was nothing. No wall or building, and a cliff plummeting down to the sea on the left. He guided me to a rope to hang on to, and we climbed down 200 feet to the shore. There, right against the rocks, was a house, and a couple of outbuildings which must have been the distillery.

  ‘Home sweet home, DP. You’ll be a grand help to me. I haven’t made a drop of uisge beatha in six months,’ he said regretfullly.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘We’re waiting for the bere from Tiree and a few bags of malt, too. It will come as soon as their harvest is finished, in a month or so. But there’s lots to be done before then.’

  I carried pail after pail of water from the place where it tumbled down the cliff, to be heated up, and then with the pony ‘up top’ fetched a good ton of peat to where we could lower it in buckets down the cliff. We scrubbed the floor of the barn that was used to ferment the barley, cleaned the tuns and the copper still, and scrubbed the five-gallon milk pails that were used to transport the whisky. Then the boat was sanded and repainted, and finally all was set for the start of the distilling.

  Tearlach was a keen teacher. ‘The first thing you need to know, lad, is that the less people know what we’re doing the better. Now islanders, they know, and we swap our whisky for their peat, food, help with transport and such like. The laird never mentions it, but he knows fine and benefits from our good work. He’s a good sort. Outwith the island, you need to keep it in the family! We have Hector, my cousin from Tiree, who brings in the bere and the malt, and Angus John in Kinlochmoidart and Ruaridh in Arisaig who sell it. Nobody else knows. If you’re asked, I’m crofting – and poorly – and you’re helping out.’

  We sat by the fire with the wind whistling down the chimney and the waves crashing on the rocks only feet away from us.

  He was in a talkative mood. ‘It’s a great time to be making whisky,’ he said, ‘as long as you don’t get caught. The prime minister just last year raised tax to fifteen shillings a gallon, so the big distillers are really suffering, and if wasn’t for us, ordinary people couldn’t afford their drams. We can get a grand price and we’re still a fraction of the money your father’s friend, Colonel Macdonald, sells his Long John for.’

  With a smile he raised his glass. ‘To Lloyd George, slainte.’

  He told me about the excise men. ‘They’re the gaugers and entitled to fifty per cent of the proceeds of what they seize. They have a dangerous man in Fort William, an outsider from Aberdeen called Andrew Leslie, and we’re in his area. He has spies who tip him off. I used to do a run into Mallaig, but there were a few close shaves and I’m certain Leslie was getting news. Even ten years ago there were three stills along Loch Shiel, but he raided them and smashed up the stills. Simon Fraser was caught and spent a year in jail. There was a convoy of six ponies with panniers of twenty-pint jars of whisky on its way to Glasgow, heading over the drove road above Spean Bridge in the dark one winter’s night, and he lay in wait with some soldiers and seized it. John Cameron was lucky and he managed to run off into the hill when he heard them coming.’

  Tearlach always enjoyed a story about daring exploits where the smugglers or illegal distillers had been tipped off about a raid, and a fool was made of the gauger.

  Just after dawn one early autumn morning there was a bang on the door.

  ‘Are you there, ye big hairy monster? It’s the hard-working Protestants delivering while you soft Catholics are still in your beds.’

  I was introduced, then watched as three men wolfed down bowls of porridge and tea while Hector and Tearlach caught up on the news. Then Hector and his three men unloaded the sacks of barley from the boat and headed off.

  ‘Not a moment to waste, DP,’ Tearlach explained. ‘We need to make a start straight away and get the whisky to the mainland before the winter storms start.’

  So, the first batch of barley, or bere as he called it, was mixed with water and put into a vast forty-gallon pot with a gentle fire below it, to ‘steep’ for three days and nights. Softened, it was then left to cool for a day and spread onto a floor for nine days to germinate. It was then shovelled into the kiln, where a good heat was given to it – hot work for me, as I had to turn it every hour until it was dry and keep the peat fire topped up too.

  Tearlach had a stone wheel and a bowl with a hole in it, and I would shovel the dried bere into it and he would turn the wheel, milling the grain into a flour. We then wheeled the bere across to a wee building right beside the waterfall where it was put into a vat and boiling water added to make a mash. I stirred it very carefully while Tearlach added just the right amount of malt for taste. We would let it bubble and boil, but gently so as not to spoil it.

  That done, the liquid would be drained off into a tank, leaving the draff which Iain Mackinnon was desperate to get his hands on to feed his beloved bulls. The liquid was then put into Tearlach’s pride and joy – his copper still.

  ‘It was used by my great-grandfather in South Uist,’ he said, patting it, ‘and it was
made in Glasgow.’

  A good fire would be going, and the vapour would go up the spout and down into a copper coil, where cold water would be run over it continuously to condense it, and with that, the first still of very rough uisge beatha was complete.

  ‘By God, Donald Peter, don’t you go drinking it! Your hair would fall out. You could strip the paint off the door with that stuff. Men die being too keen to get at the dram.’

  So we poured it back into the copper still twice more until it was just the thing.

  We did this again and again until we had five batches made and every barrel, milk pail and jar was full. It was funny how many visitors would ‘just happen to be passing’ from around the island, often carrying a stone jar – ‘by coincidence’.

  ‘Now,’ Tearlach explained, ‘the right thing to do is to sit and let it mature in wooden barrels for three years, but that’s not our job. We need to get it across to cousins Angus John and Ruaridh and get some money for it. Hector will be across with our second lot of bere for the winter’s work, and we need to have money to pay him and get our containers back.’

  Meanwhile, there would be a bit of socialising. Tearlach was a very popular guest, always with a wee bottle in his pocket for his host. There was a reel in the barn one night when the men returned with money in their pockets from the cattle sales on the mainland, and we were always visiting the people of the island, enjoying the craic and waiting for a calm spell when we could make our deliveries.

  I was sent to get Sean and Archie, two young men my age, and together we loaded up the boat and set off for Arisaig one cold winter’s day, well before daylight. It was a ten-mile row, and the boat was laden down, so we took it in turns.

  Tearlach was nervous. He knew that this was when the gaugers would be most likely to catch him. But we arrived safely at Rhu farm, where Ruaridh, with the help of Tearlach, tasted and approved the quality, and a large amount of money changed hands. My cousin was a happy man. We ate well and collapsed exhausted after the hard trip across. The next day we emptied all the containers into casks that he had stored in a wee cave in the hill above the house. Here, he had dozens and dozens of stone jars from the big legal distillers – Long John, Ben Nevis, Dewars, White Horse and many more. He would decant the whisky into these and the excise man would know no better when he saw the jars.

  Sandy was working at the hotel in Arisaig for the winter, so I took the other two lads and, armed with a bottle of our homemade Long John, we walked down to spend the evening with him. The talk that night was all about setting up our own wee distillery on Ardnish.

  Sandy was determined to get the business going. ‘What we need, DP, is a good water supply, a handy bank of peat, an inlet in the rocks where we can get a boat in easily and unload it, plus a few good buildings with rock behind so the smoke can’t be seen. The west end of the point it has to be, otherwise the gaugers would see everything with a telescope from Roshven.’ It seemed he had worked everything out. ‘The Bochan lives at Port an t-Sluichd – that’s just the place. There must be half a dozen derelict houses there!’ he added excitedly.

  My goodness, we were in some state as we hiccupped and staggered our way back after breakfast the next morning, not having had a wink of sleep following a steady night of downing the drams.

  Sandy was keen to come back to the Nunnery with me. ‘I need to learn,’ he said. ‘Whisky is the best chance we have to make a living in Peanmeanach.’

  I told him to stay there and figure out how we would sell it. We knew that’s where the money was.

  WAR

  ‘You must do it, DP,’ Prissie exclaims. ‘One day you could make it legal, and it would be the distillery everyone talked about.’

  ‘I’d name it “Sandy’s Whisky”,’ I say, ‘in his memory.’ I raise my glass of ouzo in a salute to him with a tear in my eye. ‘Slainte, Sandy.’

  *

  Louise and I had been the new loves, but we now feel like an old married couple with Prissie and Charlie’s raw passion. It is strange.

  In the evenings, Louise and Prissie go for a walk, down to the fishing port and along the shore. They see the occasional soldier but no one else other than children or the elderly.

  We still have no idea what the plan is, although we are fairly sure that we will be heading off on a fishing boat. We don’t even know the destination. Possibly up the coast, to neutral Greece?

  ‘Athens is meant to be beautiful,’ volunteers Charlie. ‘Lovely architecture, the centre of the world in days gone by. I’m sure we could manage a couple of weeks there for a holiday before we try to get back to Blighty.’

  We all agree that this would be perfect, though in truth I long more than anything in the world to return to Ardnish, as soon as humanly possible.

  Maria comes by late one night and tells us to pack up and be ready first thing. We have to prepare some food and leave the place immaculate. Our transport is ready. There is great excitement. Better times seem to lie ahead. Different times, anyway.

  At dawn, she returns. ‘Let’s go. Prissie, you and Charlie come first, and I’ll see you onto the boat. Fifteen minutes from now, Louise and DP, meet me at the port entrance.’

  We’d been in the safe cocoon of the house for so long – now we would be running the gauntlet. We embrace each other tightly before we depart.

  Louise and I hurry through Alexandroupolis to the port. Without a word, we are helped over the side and lowered down into the hold of a fishing boat. It stinks of fish, and we have only crates to sit on.

  ‘The two brothers who own the boat speak no English,’ Maria informs us. ‘They will take you to Lemnos, where the Gallipoli fleet is based. It is a two-day trip. The first couple of hours will be the most dangerous, so stay down here until the skipper comes to get you. When you’re out of sight of land you’ll be quite safe. When you get to Lemnos, report immediately to the hospital. They’ll look after things from there. The Gloucester Castle will be there, girls.’

  We kiss Maria and gush with gratitude, telling her how kind she is, how wonderful. I invite her to visit me in Ardnish and she laughs.

  We are sorry not to see the town from the sea as we head off, with only the reek of diesel and fish to think about. The journey is dreadful: smelly, dirty, cold, and the brothers unfriendly. They have no interest in helping us or making us comfortable. Charlie asks them if he could boil some water for coffee and they reluctantly agree.

  During the day, we sit up top, but come night we shelter from the wind and cold below deck.

  ‘I wonder why they are doing this trip?’ Louise asks me in a low voice.

  ‘Maybe they have family on Lemnos, or perhaps they’re going to load up with guns for the partisans.’

  But in truth we have no idea.

  Louise becomes violently sick as the boat rises and falls in the swell, and eats next to nothing the whole way across. Prissie remains as chirpy as ever, and Charlie keeps us amused with jokes and stories, though they all seem to concern crashing planes and dead comrades.

  All of his fellow pilots seem to have ridiculous names – such as Bunter Benjie, so named because he was fat, or Tash, on account of the chap’s splendid moustache – and to live in stately homes. Several seem to be Lord something or other. Prissie teases him mercilessly and calls him ‘Champagne Charlie’, soon abbreviated to ‘Champagne’.

  ‘Can you see any ships, Champagne?’ she asks, eyes full of mischief.

  He adores her.

  *

  We arrive at last in Lemnos. All of us, apart from Charlie, had passed through here on the way to Gallipoli; Prissie and Louise had been three times. The bay has fewer ships; we count only eleven and not a single hospital ship among them.

  As we get off the fishing boat there is barely a grunt from our hosts despite our cheery farewells. ‘Damn rude,’ declares Charlie.

  ‘Let’s have a few moments to ourselves,’ I suggest. ‘The military will control our destiny the minute we walk into the hospital, and I’m not s
ure I’m ready.’

  So we sit on a wall in the harbour. Prissie bursts into tears. She knows that Charlie will be whisked off to an officers’ mess immediately. She’s inconsolable; they’d only had a week together. He promises to stay in touch with her and assures her that this isn’t the end of their friendship. Louise and I are doubtful; privately, we are convinced he’s married, perhaps with children.

  *

  We soon discover we are quite the heroes. No one has come across anybody who has escaped overland from Gallipoli.

  We are invited to meet the base commandant, an elderly naval officer, and his staff, who all want to hear our story. There are about a dozen senior ranks there, which is quite intimidating. We tell them about the Christians who were our saviours, the massacre of the Armenian Christians by the Turks, the support in the south of Bulgaria for the allies, and the splendid job done by the enigmatic Maria. They are fascinated by our account and take lots of notes.

  ‘We’ll send you back to Malta in a few days, Gillies, but in the meantime, you need to see a doctor. Girls, you need to report to the Queen Alexandra matron at the hospital. Charlie, there’s a ship going to Gibraltar tonight. You should take that. They’re desperately short of pilots and will be glad to see you.’

  It is so much quieter than when I was last here. Most of the injured are back in Malta or Egypt at the big hospitals there. We are told that almost everyone will be off Lemnos within a month. Louise and Prissie are put in a tent on their own, and I am billeted with some young naval conscripts who have been nowhere near the war yet. They treat me as if I am of their fathers’ generation, although I am not yet twenty-two.

  Prissie is despondent as Charlie climbs aboard the tender that will take him out to his ship. She talks about how precious those few days were, how she’ll never forget him.

  Louise and I know there is little chance of him seeing the war out; Prissie does too, I suspect. We don’t talk about it, of course. He will be sent to France, where every gun will be trained on his plane as he flies over the trenches with a cameraman hanging over the side to photograph the German lines.