The Wicker Man: A Novel

by Robin Hardy

  As his plane flew over the island of Iona he could see below the restored monastery from which much of the Celtic West had been first brought the news of Christ reborn. Howie was proud, as a Scottish Celt, that this church had long preceded Rome in converting the heathen English. He consulted his map and set his course for the Outer Hebrides and beyond them, towards the island of Summerisle, named, he had heard, for the warm currents of the Gulf Stream that eddied around it.

  Sergeant Howie was glad, at last, to have a chance to visit this most distant island in his precinct. You could, in the police, not afford to pay much attention to the gossip of travellers or the tall tales of fishermen and sailors. But the island certainly had a bad reputation. He didn’t like the fact that the whole place was owned by Lord Summerisle. Howie disapproved of private islands. A laxness and untidyness in their relationship to the law tended to develop. That Summerisle needed the firm slap of a bit of rigorous police work, he had little doubt.

  Nothing in the stories he had heard of the island adequately prepared him for his first glimpses of it from the air. That apples were grown there in great abundance, Howie, of course, knew, although it was surprising how many people didn’t.

  Most folk, elsewhere in the world, who had, at one time or another, tasted the ‘Summerisle Famous’ or the incomparable ‘Summerisle Delicious’, believed the name to be an ‘advertising invention’, probably the work of the Brothers Lever or some such marketing conglomerate. The islanders were glad that this should be so. They had no wish for celebrity for their island, only fame for their apples.

  The serried ranks of fruit trees on the eastern side of Summerisle were not entirely unexpected to Neil Howie, seeing them for the first time. But the beauty of the multicoloured blossoms standing out against the rich green of the orchard meadows seemed quite stunningly beautiful and reminded Howie, ever ready with biblical images, of a true land of ‘milk and honey’.

  This was an impression first gained as he flew over the cliffs that towered like the walls of an endless Gothic cathedral supported by hundreds of giant buttresses, some flying as they arched down into the turbulent Atlantic. Howie could see puffins, in their thousands on the cliffs, and gannets plummeting into the ocean, diving for their lunch.

  The orchards themselves soon gave way to undulating hills, softly rounded and ancient and largely terraced with vines. As he flew over these hills and the neatly spaced white houses, many of them having extensive greenhouses and richly caparisoned kitchen and flower gardens, he could suddenly see the ocean once more and the entire west coast of the island, set like a crescent of emeralds at the centre of which nestled the pearly white, gabled houses of Summerisle Township. To his utter astonishment, the sergeant now saw that the whole of this curved, natural habour was lined with palm trees blowing gently in the warm wind from the far-off Gulf of Mexico. A haze of soft rain sheened the cobbles of the township while the sea still glittered in the afternoon sun. No greater contrast could be imagined than between this fruitful island and the other sad, ghost-ridden Hebridean isles he had left behind him.

  It was as if he had flown off the edge of his ‘known’ world to some enchanted Arcadia.

  He brought his single-engined seaplane in a long arc until, finding himself over an isthmus in the northern part of the island, he could see what his chart called Summerisle Castle, an impressive pile of Scottish baronial architecture whose coppered towers glinted a tropical green against the blue-grey ocean that besieged the isthmus. Then Howie turned his plane, banking fairly sharply into the wind, and made for the comparative calm of the leeward harbour. His aircraft’s smooth, boat-shaped hull skimmed the choppy harbour waters like a big seabird, and then suddenly it settled, so that one almost expected it to furl its aluminium wings as it passed the three-masted schooner Summerisle riding at anchor.

  Sergeant Howie peered out through the salt-sprayed perspex of his windows and could make out a main jetty with a neat white house marked HARBOUR MASTER. His view of the jetty was, for an instant, disturbed by a seabird taking off across his line of vision. It was a black-browed albatross. Quite rare in the Northern Hemisphere, it made him remember The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. How terribly unlucky it would have been for his plane to collide with and kill the albatross. He shivered at the thought, and then chided himself for his superstition.

  A few men, fishermen certainly, stood quite immobile, staring at him from the quay. The chart had indicated the harbour to be heavily tidal, and he didn’t dare bring the plane closer into the jetty. Howie switched off his engine, unlatched the cockpit roof so that he could stand straight, and dropped his anchor. Taking a loud hailer, he shouted at the motionless fishermen.

  ‘I want a dinghy, please,’ came Howie’s voice, echoing and metallic.

  No one moved on the jetty.

  ‘Did you hear me?’ he shouted, louder. ‘I want a dinghy … please.’

  At this moment the harbour master emerged from his house and ran to join the fishermen, doing up his jacket as he ran. At first he seemed, to Howie, to be consulting with the other men but then he faced the plane and, cupping his hands, shouted back.

  ‘Hullo, sir. Lost your bearing?’ His hoarse voice had the lilting accent of the islands.

  ‘I don’t think so. This is Summerisle, is it not?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ shouted the harbour master, and the seemingly bewildered old fishermen nodded their agreement.

  ‘Well, I’m right then,’ yelled Howie. ‘Send out a dinghy, please.’

  ‘I’m afraid it can’t be done, sir,’ shouted the harbour master. ‘This is private property. You can’t land here without written permission.’

  ‘I am a police officer,’ said Howie, realizing they could hear him perfectly well and indicating his sergeant’s stripes on his arm. ‘A complaint has been received from a resident of this island that needs to be investigated.’

  ‘A complaint, you say?’ The harbour master’s voice was disbelieving.

  ‘About a missing child,’ said Howie. ‘That makes it a police matter. Private property or not. Send a boat, please.’

  There was a brief colloquy on the jetty, then a single figure detached itself from the group and descended the steps to a boat moored to the wall. He cast off and headed towards the seaplane. Howie grinned mirthlessly and turned to replace the loud hailer in the seaplane and to collect his overnight bag. He was dressed as always for his visits to the islands in his blue serge sergeant’s uniform with his peaked hat bearing the badge of the West Highland Constabulary topped by the crown, symbol that he acted in the Queen of Scotland’s name.

  The sergeant, while waiting for the dinghy to arrive, started to observe his surroundings. The extraordinary subtropical trees and shrubs he had already taken in. There was something else that was strange about the place but he was annoyed that, although sensing it, he still could not pin down what it was. Only as the dinghy carried him towards a growing crowd of fishermen on the jetty did it come to him. Beyond the noise of the sculls lapping in the water, beyond the cry of the gulls and the murmuring of the fishermen, there was no sound of twentieth-century life. No motor, no distant buzz saw; nothing of the sounds that emanate from modern man’s machines, so that he is conscious of them only when they are suddenly altogether absent. Howie disembarked from the rowboat and ascended the steps towards the top of the jetty. The group of fishermen waited for him in a kind of phalanx, the harbour master at their head. Their weathered faces had, many of them, the flushed look of men through whom rivers of good whisky had flowed.

  ‘Good day, sir,’ said their leader, ‘I’m the harbour master!’

  Howie kept his distance from the contagiously liquored breath of the harbour master, but smiled at them all reassuringly. Seeing policemen so rarely, he thought, the very sight of one probably makes them nervous.

  ‘Sergeant Howie,’ he identified himself cheerfully, ‘West Highland Police!’ His attention was suddenly taken by something on the main harbour notice board. Bes
ide the usual tide schedules and so on, there were some rather unusual posters. Well designed typographically, they appeared to be–if the copy was to be believed–encouraging travel or emigration. Two of them were respectively headlined, ‘WANT TO TRAVEL TO THE WORLD OUTSIDE?’ and ‘WANT TO EMIGRATE TO THE USA OR CANADA LIKE YOUR FOREFATHERS?’ But the ‘travel’ picture showed a Glasgow slum on a rainy day. The ‘emigration’ poster depicted a particularly insalubrious section of the Bowery in New York. In both cases the subheading was: ‘Consult Lord Summerisle for free advice.’

  Sergeant Howie could not resist looking at these posters in puzzled fascination for a while and then, hearing the habour master’s voice, turned his full attention back to him.

  ‘A missing child is always trouble,’ the harbour master was saying.

  ‘Yes. For everybody,’ said Howie as they inspected each other again levelly.

  ‘Perhaps you’d be so good as to explain matters to His Lordship,’ said the harbour master nervously. ‘He’s most particular who lands here.’

  ‘All in good time,’ said Howie. ‘We too have our own particularities.’

  Howie produced the photograph of Rowan Morrison.

  ‘Do you know her?’ he asked. ‘Her name is Rowan Morrison.’

  The harbour master took the photograph and studied it.

  ‘No. I’ve never seen her before. Have you, Barley?’ he asked, passing it to one of the old fishermen, who shook his head, showing it to the others, craning their heads to see it.

  ‘No. I canna say I have,’ said Barley.

  The photograph was passed from hand to hand. Heads were shaken, and they finally chorused:

  ‘She’s not from here!’

  ‘What are you telling me?’ asked Howie suspiciously. ‘That this girl is not from this island?’

  Hostile and incurious stares greeted his penetrating gaze as he seemed to challenge them to admit the girl was one of their own.

  ‘That’s right,’ said the harbour master finally. ‘She’s not from here.’

  ‘You get Morrisons on Lewis and a few on Mull,’ said one old fisherman, trying to be helpful in suggesting the ancestral isles of the clan Morrison. ‘I’d try over there.’

  Puzzled but determined to test them further, Howie now produced the letter and, keeping his thumb over the absent signature, read the letter to them.

  None of us have seen May Morrison’s daughter, Rowan, since last year. She is only twelve and has been missing from her home for many months.

  ‘The mother’s name is … May Morrison.’

  ‘Oh, May!’ laughed the harbour master, wheezing. ‘She quite slipped my mind. Yes, we’ve got May here all right … keeps the sweetshop up the hill, just opposite the Green Man Inn.’

  ‘May Morrison,’ said Howie coldly. ‘You’re quite sure?’

  ‘Of course,’ agreed the harbour master jovially, and all the others smiled too, glad, at last, to have been of help.

  ‘I see. Thank you!’ said Howie still annoyed with them but reflecting that all this fruit and isolation probably addled their brains. He must be patient and not play the ‘big city cop’. He abruptly took back his photograph, which was being clutched by one of the fishermen, and put it, and the letter, back in his pocket. Then, turning his back on them, he started up the steeply graded High Street. They watched him go for perhaps ten yards. Then the harbour master shouted after him.

  ‘But that’s not her daughter!’

  Howie turned slowly, looking back at the group of men, puzzled.

  ‘No, that’s not May’s,’ added another fisherman.

  ‘Who is it then?’ he asked.

  Silence. Shrugs. Howie thought he heard a snicker, but it was just a man who was clearly the local halfwit, someone whom the others ignored. Howie turned away from them and continued up the steep High Street that led away from the jetty into the township. His face now was troubled.

  It was not, he supposed, surprising that people seemed to stare at him as he walked up the cobbled street that was innocent of any cars whatever. The very absence of cars was one reason he had never had occasion to come here. Nothing that required a police-supervised licence seemed to exist in the township. There were no television or radio aerials. No electric or telephone wires either. He ignored the opening windows and doors as the people came, discreetly enough, to stare at him. Some of them smiled as they gazed; a few bade him ‘Good afternoon.’ Some kids ran excitedly about shouting:

  ‘It’s a real copper!’

  Horse-drawn conveyances there were. Although Howie felt ashamed that he didn’t know a brougham from a governess cart as his predecessors in the police must have done. How embarrassing it would be (he almost laughed out loud at the thought) to find himself in front of the Justice of the Peace here, whom he knew to be Lord Summerisle himself, and not to be able adequately to describe a traffic accident should one occur. He fervently hoped it wouldn’t happen. Although in the broadening street in which he now found himself, there must have been fifteen horse-drawn vehicles either on the move or ‘parked’ (he wondered if that could be the right word).

  He couldn’t help stopping for a moment to admire the view that met his eyes as he reached the Green Man Inn. The remarkably well-proportioned buildings, all cleanly whitewashed, with window boxes brimming with flowers. The village green beyond, where daffodils and wild flowers grew in abundance. It was, for Howie, such an extraordinary contrast to the muted civic tidyness of his own native Portlochlie. Not even Howie, who loved his hometown with a fierce and proprietary pride, could have called Portlochlie anything but merely pretty, yet this town was, for him, uncomfortably, extravagantly beautiful! There was something sensual about the way the flowers and the buildings seemed to lavish their felicities on the visitor’s senses. It was unScottish. Howie found that disturbing and, in a way that he put down to the events of the night before, exciting. Perhaps, he thought, my love for Mary has heightened my senses. He blessed her for that.

  The sweetshop was exactly where the old man had said it would be. That was a relief to Howie as he peered in its window. An assortment of magnificent chocolate confections met his gaze, as well as curiously lifelike and distended sugar babies. Behind, in glass jars, he could see amazingly large gobstoppers and bullseyes (much more like real bulls-eyes than anything to be seen on the mainland). Howie entered the shop to the accompaniment of a tinkling bell and found a small, buxom woman facing him over a counter covered with lifelike chocolate creatures. She wore a flowered overall around her generous person and laughing eyes moved in a rosy face. Howie found the clearly homemade sweets and candy so unusual that he could not refrain from an admiring comment.

  ‘I like your chocolate rabbits!’ he said, looking at what, on the mainland, would have been described as Easter bunnies.

  ‘Those are hares,’ said the little woman in mock indignation, ‘not silly old rabbits. Lovely March hares. Can I help you?’

  ‘It’s Mrs Morrison, isn’t it? Mrs May Morrison?’ asked Howie. To his relief she nodded her assent. Perhaps this case was going to be a simple one after all.

  ‘Oh, Lord!’ she said excitedly. ‘Did you come over in that aeroplane I saw flying round?’

  ‘That’s right!’ smiled Howie.

  ‘What? Just to see me?’ She looked as if she wished she’d known he was coming and had not been caught in her second-best overall.

  ‘Well, to check up on your daughter actually,’ said Howie gently. ‘We understand she’s missing.’

  Mrs Morrison was clearly amazed.

  ‘Missing? My daughter?’

  ‘You do have a daughter, don’t you?’ said Howie patiently. ‘This is she?’

  He pushed the photograph across the counter towards Mrs Morrison. She only glanced at it before shaking her head.

  ‘Never!’ she exclaimed.

  Howie looked hard at her. Under his scrutiny she laughed suddenly, boisterously.

  ‘I tell you no!’ she added with emphasis. There was silen
ce. And in the silence came the sound of a child’s voice.

  ‘Mummy!’ called the voice, that of a little girl.

  Howie started towards the door leading to the parlour. Mrs Morrison, still laughing, put her bulk in front of him and led the way.

  ‘I think you’d better come with me,’ she said and opened the door that led the way into her parlour. Sitting at a table was a small girl of about six years old. She had a pad of drawing paper in front of her and a dozen pots of poster paint.

  ‘That’s our Myrtle,’ said Mrs Morrison to the confused sergeant. ‘She was six last birthday. Not a bit like the girl in your photograph. She must be at least twelve or thirteen surely?’

  ‘Yes, but … Is she your only child, Mrs Morrison?’ asked Howie.

  ‘Yes. Our only child I’m afraid. That’s sad for her, and sad for me, isn’t it?’ said Mrs Morrison giving Howie a sad-sweet smile.

  ‘Say hullo, Myrtle. This is Sergeant …’

  ‘Howie. Hullo, Myrtle,’ said the sergeant.

  ‘How do you do,’ replied Myrtle, in a piping voice. ‘Look, Mummy, I’m drawing a hare …’

  Then, they heard the bell tinkling from the shop. Howie held the door closed, keeping Mrs Morrison in the parlour.

  Howie had been trained to expect ‘lines of inquiry’ to sometimes lead to witnesses who told barefaced lies. More people told lies to the police than told the absolute truth. But the lies, in his experience, were not, as a rule, of the barefaced kind. More often the lie consisted of something being left unsaid. Here he felt sure that this was the case.

  ‘Mrs Morrison, from information that has come into my possession, I have reason to believe you have another daughter,’ he said, trying to see if that had been left unsaid.

  ‘Do you now?’ said Mrs Morrison, her laughing eyes hardening a little. ‘Well, I should know best about that, shouldn’t I?’