by Dan Boothby
After being mauled about, dynamited and concreted, Kyleakin Lighthouse Island was abandoned by the bridge builders. The lighthouse keepers’ cottage and the bothy deteriorated, the lighthouse remained unlit, obsolete. The Scottish Office found itself the owner of an island it didn’t want while the Northern Lighthouse Board retained a lighthouse it didn’t need. The island was put up for sale by public auction, valued at around £40,000 – cheap for a Hebridean almost-isle with million-pound views.
A local, perhaps it was Johnny Ach, contacted the actress Virginia McKenna and begged her to use her influence to save the island from becoming the possession of yet another absentee landlord. McKenna and her husband Bill Travers had connections to the area and had starred in the 1969 film version of Ring of Bright Water. And they had a charity, the Born Free Foundation, which campaigned on animal welfare issues. The day before the proposed sale at auction, William, the son of McKenna and Travers, and Director of the Born Free Foundation, faxed the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Scottish Office. Could the island be withdrawn from auction and instead be placed in the hands of a trust (the Kyleakin Lighthouse Island Trust) to be initiated by the Born Free Foundation? It could, and was.
Virginia McKenna’s fame and the Foundation’s influence attracted funding and support for the Trust and the ‘Kyleakin Lighthouse Island Project’. The Northern Lighthouse Board agreed to lease the lighthouse to the Trust for a pound a year, and the Scottish Office paid for the renovation and refurbishment of the lighthouse cottage and bothy.
A steering committee was formed. Johnny Ach was asked to be chairman and in October 1998 the keys to the island were handed to Virginia McKenna by a Scottish Office minister, and custody of the island (now a ‘community resource’) was given to the communities of Kyle and Kyleakin. A building was leased in Kyleakin to house an interpretation centre – the Bright Water Visitors’ Centre – and education packs and publicity material were produced. In 1999 the Trust confidently predicted (based on visitor numbers to tourist attractions on Skye and the number of vehicles using the bridge) that 50,000 tourists would pass through the Bright Water Visitors’ Centre in Kyleakin annually. The Kyleakin Lighthouse Island Project would soon be self-funding. A project manager, a centre manager and a warden were recruited.
There was a grand opening of the Visitors’ Centre and the island in May 2000 and all went well for two years. But instead of the 50,000 expected, approximately 6,000 people passed through the door of the Bright Water Visitors’ Centre each year, and only 600 wanted a guided tour of the island. The start-up funding ran out. Gregory and the centre manager left in 2002. Temporary wardens worked for a season or two and then quit. When Virginia McKenna resigned as a trustee in 2003, support and the fundraising nous of the Born Free Foundation went with her. Other trustees resigned. Susan Browning, a recent incomer to the area, took over the running of the Visitors’ Centre, and Johnny Ach took people on tours of the island during his lunch breaks.
In the spring of 2004 Johnny Ach resigned as chairman. A new chairman, John Adamson, and trustees including Pete Baggeley began to take a hand in the day-to-day running of the Centre and the island. A part of the lighthouse keepers’ cottage was made available to holidaymakers. A trickle of money from the letting of the cottage, shop sales and tours, and donations from visitors to the Centre flowed into the Trust’s deep-in-the-red bank account. By the time I walked into the Centre that rainy day in October 2004 the Trust’s fortunes were slightly better than they had been for a long time.
In 2004 the Scottish Executive bought the Skye Bridge from the consortium of private investors for £27 million. On Tuesday, 21 December 2004 the tolls were abolished and the twenty-one locals who had jobs running the bridge and the toll booths became unemployed. Almost everyone was happy, except those who had lost their jobs and those who still had a criminal record for non-payment of tolls.
The island, at the height of summer, with everything growing at full pelt, is awash with life, alive with sound. I found myself surrounded by birds: seed-feeder-hogging greenfinches, piping oystercatchers, chevron-winged guillemots, sauntering crows, shags standing with outstretched wings in the sun. I’d catch the multihued flash of a jay winging its way over to Skye, the flitting glide of a hurrying wagtail, a swallow; the screams of swifts careering high above. A wren would shout its head off, then dodge and hide mute among pink and white dog roses as I passed along the cobbled path. A robin often accompanied me, waiting for titbits, as I tended the paths, making my rounds with wheelbarrow, spade and trowel. And in the mornings the herons made their stately, rather sinister way over the island to the lagoon behind the community centre in Kyleakin, where they spent the days fishing and squabbling before flapping their slow, steady way back home to their heronry.
I bought books to identify what I was seeing: green, looping lacewing larvae and the hairy ‘woolly bear’ caterpillars of the garden tiger-moth, Scotch argus butterflies, Scotch burnet moths with their natty, crimson-and-green satin wings. Common Blue butterflies were . . . common. Psychedelic red admirals fluttered drunkenly over the old lawn. An invasion of bumblebees came to harvest the honeysuckle and heather that flourished along the bothy steps. On hot days, gangs of black robber flies, legs dangling like parachutists, hovered about and got themselves entangled in hair, zoomed into eyes and fell into cups of tea. And the seals, sluglike when hauled out lounging, galumphing and grunting on the skerries, became so sleek-skinned and doglike when they slithered into the sea and circled the island, their bullet heads bobbing on the surface, eyeing me on my perambulations along the network of paths.
Walking late one evening up the cobbled path from the lighthouse I stopped to lean on the wall to look at the bay below. The rumble of tyres over the bridge had died out hours ago and there was a quiet gentleness to the sea. I hadn’t been seduced by the otters in Maxwell’s books as so many others had been. His otters had seemed smelly, volatile, high-maintenance creatures – characteristics all too human.
It dived, the sleek black tip of its tail the last part of its anatomy to go under. Its head – that black-button nose, those appraising eyes – reappeared, soundlessly. It was calmly watchful, concentrating. It seemed to perceive all things. It dived again, surfaced and dived, moving silently away towards the rocks by the lighthouse gangway. I crept down the path and peered over the wall again. Nothing. I stole onto the gangway, looked down on either side of the railings, but it had gone. Such stealth. The flowing fluid motion of its body through the water. Such charisma. I was an immediate convert.
Two
HIDDEN ROOMS
Every other Wednesday during the summer, the Wednesday Workcrew – Marcus, a volunteer, and often John Adamson, the newly appointed chairman of the Trust – came to help with the maintenance of the island.
I had first met John one afternoon while I was in the lighthouse shed creating order out of chaos. Pulling out a cardboard box stuffed with car accessories from under the workbench I heard a gentle tap on the open doors and spun around to see a tall elderly man dressed in plus-fours, tweed jacket and brogues. On his head was a deerstalker hat and there was an amused expression on his delicately drawn face. John looked like what he was – a Highland gent. He put a fist to his mouth and gently coughed.
‘Hellooo!’ he said. ‘You must be Dan. I’ve already heard a lot about you.’ He had a soft Lowland accent. ‘I’ve been wanting to come across to the island to see you but sadly my time is rarely my own these days.’
We shook hands, John casting his eyes around the chaos. ‘You’ve already made a good start on things, I see.’
‘I want to sort it all out. It all feels . . . unloved.’
John tilted his head. ‘Well, there’s been no one living here for quite some time now. And we do what we can, the Wednesday Workcrew. But during the summer months with everything growing so fast we’re often a week behind. We don’t intend the island to look like Inverewe Gardens, but the paths do need keeping clear.’
We walked together to the WI Garden. Until his retirement, John had been the doctor in Kyle.
‘Did you ever treat Gavin Maxwell?’ I asked.
John paused before answering. ‘I attended him here on the island once, but his usual doctor was the Glenelg man. A young man – Andrew, was it? – came across in a dinghy to collect me. But Gavin wasn’t at all a well man by then.’
‘Donald Mitchell, I think it would have been,’ I said. ‘He was the last otter boy.’
‘No, I’m sure it was Andrew, but . . . Well, it was a long time ago now. How the memories fade.’
‘What did you make of him?’ I asked. ‘Gavin Maxwell?’
‘I think he was not a happy man, not in himself. There was something missing there. But I found him to be a very honest man, a very . . . interesting personality. And a brave man to face up to death as he did.’
‘Jimmy Watt called him a genius.’
‘I don’t doubt that he was,’ John said. ‘But a genius doesn’t necessarily make for an easy person to live with or to know.’
We reached the little rockery and John withdrew two potted nasturtiums from a knapsack. ‘They’ll look very well here, don’t you think? A little yellow among the purple and white of the heathers.’
I quickly came to look forward to Workcrew Wednesdays. Marcus had been helping with maintenance since the beginning and was always the first to arrive, marching across the bridge from Kyleakin roundabout where the Broadford bus dropped him. With his shaggy dark hair, black-framed spectacles and wispy beard, Marcus looked like the late novelist Iain Banks might have looked on a particularly bedraggled day. Like John Adamson, Marcus possessed a Lowland accent.
Marcus was always keen to get started. He donned overalls and wellington boots, grabbed a spade and a wheelbarrow, a pair of shears and the flamegun and set off along the paths, working until lunchtime. After exactly an hour’s break, he would resume his hacking and digging until 4.40 p.m., whereupon he would put away his tools, change out of his overalls and, waving a cheery goodbye, march over the bridge to catch the 5.10 p.m. bus back to Broadford, where he lived. It was rare for him to initiate conversation. He lived alone and he read a great deal – mainly history books, he told me once. Marcus had a mind for facts and he never missed his appointments with the island.
The first Wednesday that Marcus and John came to the island, the island’s paths were overgrown and raggedy still. I had made a start, but the network covered much of the island and the bracken, nettles and brambles were crowding out other plants trying to push through to the light. John spent the day swinging a scythe on the west of the island. Marcus attacked a clump of neck-high nettles in front of the house to reveal a flat area ringed with logs – a promontory overlooking the bay. ‘We used to call it Lookout Point,’ he said.
After Marcus left to catch his bus I showed John what Marcus had revealed. ‘He knows this island better than anyone,’ John said.
I returned to the harbourmaster’s office and Johnny Ach found me some tide tables. I didn’t mention my boat idea and neither did he. Back on the island I pinned the tide tables up on the lobby wall. I got hold of a copy of the Beaufort scale and pinned that up too.
An elderly English couple living in Kyleakin called by with some oak saplings for the island. Well-wishers often donated things – the cottage was furnished from cast-offs. I showed the couple around the island and we sought out suitable places to plant the trees. As we stood by the gate saying our goodbyes I mentioned I was looking for a boat.
‘It’s the one thing lacking,’ I said. ‘Every island needs one, don’t you think?’
The old man turned to his wife. They looked at me.
‘We’ve got one,’ he said. ‘A sailing dinghy.’
‘It’s just taking up space in the garden,’ she said.
‘We’ve all the bits and pieces to go with it,’ he said. ‘And there’s an outboard engine.’
‘If you’re selling!’ I said.
We smiled and made faces and blew. Some doors you can push on all you like but they’ll never open for you; others you only have to lean on and they fall open, no sweat.
I called on the couple the following day. A fibreglass dinghy rested upside down on the patio. Beside it lay coils of rope, a stick-thin mast, a boom, oars, a dagger board and a bright blue sail spotted with mildew.
The man staggered out of a shed with an ancient Seagull outboard engine. ‘Lovely old thing,’ he said proudly. ‘1956!’ He rested the outboard on the ground. ‘It’s a two-stroke, easy to maintain. It worked the last time we used it.
We sat at the kitchen table and haggled hardly at all. Afterwards the woman turned to me and said, ‘Guess how old he is.’
‘I can’t,’ I said.
‘I’m eighty-six,’ the man said.
His wife beamed.
‘My wife is much younger. I was lucky to catch her.’ They grinned.
The man pointed to a bottle of tablets on the table. ‘I swear by those.’ He passed me the bottle. ‘She gets them off the internet for me. They keep me youthful. I’ve lived three lives and I’m still going strong.’
The woman put a hand on my arm. ‘He was a policeman, then we moved up here and he became a baker.’
‘Now I’m a gardener,’ the man said.
‘I couldn’t be a baker,’ I said. ‘All those early morning starts.’
‘The bridge killed the bakery business,’ the man said.
‘Kyleakin’s dying,’ the woman said.
And it was true in a way. The bridge had taken all the business away from Kyleakin. Kyle had a bank, a greengrocer and a butcher, a hardware shop, a garage, two supermarkets and more. Tourists heading to Skye stopped and shopped in Kyle, then drove over the bridge and away. Kyleakin had become a cul-de-sac.
‘But I still bake once a week,’ the man said, ‘for friends.’
‘And we’ve got our dogs.’
‘And there’s always something to be getting on with in the garden.’
‘We’re all getting older.’
‘Don’t you miss England?’ I said.
‘We don’t miss England at all,’ the man said.
‘All that traffic!’ The woman shuddered. ‘No one has time for anyone there, and the huge long NHS waiting lists and the knife crime . . .’
‘It’s a different country to the one we left,’ the man said. ‘I don’t like going back.’
‘And our children and grandchildren come up to visit us at least once a year.’
The old man was away somewhere else.
‘No,’ he said, looking up, ‘I don’t expect I’ll ever go back.’
Marcus and John came to help me get the dinghy back to the island. We puttered across the bridge in my car and loaded up the boat bits. We heaved the dinghy down to Kyleakin Beach. John volunteered to drive the car back to the island. Marcus was keen to come in the boat with me.
We put the floorboards into the boat and slid it into the sea. It floated. I held it steady. As Marcus stepped in he caught one of his oversized wellies on the gunwale and crashed to the bottom of the boat.
‘I’m . . . I’m okay!’ he called, picking himself up.
‘Any water coming in anywhere?’
We examined the inside of the boat, lifted the floorboards to peer into the shallow bilge.
‘No . . . Don’t think so.’ Marcus looked at me. His natural anxiety was fading into boyish adventurousness. I was pleased.
I passed him the oars, pushed the dinghy further into the sea and leapt aboard. I surveyed the small expanse of water that lay between us and the island.
‘Hold on tight, Marcus,’ I said and rocked the boat from side to side.
What . . . What’re you doing?’ Adventurousness vanished. Alarm appeared. I sat dow
n on a thwart.
‘Seeing if she leaks. Any water anywhere?’
We sat in silence for a while. I savoured the promise of adventure and freedom. It was my first command. I could circumnavigate the island. I could start exploring the surrounding islands and skerries. I would learn to sail.
The sea sparkled. There was barely a ripple. The mid-morning sun was blasting through a clean dark-blue sky, heating up the cloth of our overalls. It was one of those boundlessly beautiful West Highland days, and I in my boat.
The bleeping safety signal of a reversing lorry sounded out somewhere behind us. The dinghy seemed comfortably afloat. I fitted the oars. I decided not to ask Marcus if he could swim.
I was aware that our progress was likely being followed by a few of the villagers. Both the island and the village were like stages where all our comings and goings were carried out in full view, our lives pieces of theatre, as all lives are. The inhabitants of the island observed and were in turn observed by the villagers. For the benefit of my audience I put some thought into my rowing technique, determined not to catch too many crabs. Marcus sat in the stern quietly marvelling, gripping the transom with one hand, indicating which way to steer with the other.
Halfway across I said, but shouldn’t have, ‘Don’t look down now, Marcus, but just here there’s a twenty-metre drop to the bottom of the sea.’
‘Right-O!’ He smiled grimly and tightened his grip, fixing his gaze on the island ahead.
‘Do you not think we should be wearing lifejackets? For health and safety?’
‘Nearly there!’ I called and rowed a little faster for him, as my car, driven by John, the end of a mast sticking out of a window, passed over the bridge high above us.
