by Anne Cholawo
It was a particularly dreary February with relentless wind and rain. Along with others, I helped Jill get her possessions into the house. All her household furniture including crockery, pots and pans were waiting in the Arisaig Marina, for the Sheerwater. I remembered this phase only too well but the Fitzgeralds were already far further ahead with their planning than I had been. Luckily, Leac Mhor still had enough chairs, pots, pans, crockery and beds to make a start. But for heating there was only an old Calor gas heater in the kitchen and an open fireplace in the sitting room. Devoid of grate or fire-surround, it was really just a hole in the wall. Undeterred, Jill had brought a few sacks of coal and there was more to come on the Sheerwater. (Arisaig Marine had agreed to make a one-off delivery for the Fitzgeralds.)
The house had lain unoccupied over the winter and I, probably more than anyone else on the island, knew just how cold and damp it would feel. A few days later, I called to see how Jill was doing. She had already made the kitchen cosy, keeping the two-ringed cooker on at a low heat, along with the gas heater. The atmosphere was a little moist, but it was warm. She was also trying to keep the fire going in the sitting room (where she was sleeping) to help the house dry out. On several occasions, usually during the night, rain washed down the chimney putting out the fire and continuing in a steady stream across the floor, where she lay hunched up in her sleeping bag. This might have defeated some folk, but Jill made a joke of it.
It rained for weeks, until one day in March when I went outside to find the air clear and dry and saw Jill standing outside her garden gate staring around in wonder. ‘Look at that!’ she exclaimed happily. ‘That’s the first time I’ve seen the mountains since I got here, I’d forgotten they were there. Fantastic!’ She was quite a tonic.
In contrast to Jill – large, gregarious and full of fun – Peter was small, quiet and serious-minded. He was a kind man and always tried to do his best. He was confident his job as signalman for British Rail would soon come to an end, not only because of impending privatisation, but because most signal boxes were destined for automation. Pete had been told that he would very likely be made redundant. This boded well. He had worked on the railways a long time and would qualify for a good payoff. Rightly or wrongly, the Fitzgeralds had gone ahead with early retirement before Peter’s redundancy was officially confirmed.
They soon made their house feel like home. Two wood-burning stoves arrived on the mailboat and Peter installed them in the kitchen and sitting room. Next came a brand new gas cooker and over the following months the rest of their possessions were retrieved. All, that is, except for Jill’s two armchairs. They seemed to be jinxed. She talked endlessly about them. There were no soft seats in the house and she longed to lounge in comfort by the stove. Each month she enquired in a good- natured way about her chairs and each month it seemed that somebody had forgotten to get them out of the shed. A month can feel a long time. Finally, she telephoned Arisaig ferry office the day before the boat was due and was assured the chairs would be on board. They certainly were on board when the boat left Arisaig. Unfortunately, they were offloaded at Eigg to allow other freight to be taken out of the hold but they were not loaded back on board and the boat departed leaving them on the quay. With many apologies, the crew promised to retrieve them on the next trip. Meanwhile somebody moved the armchairs into the tearoom and it was a whole year later before the mailboat finally delivered them to Soay. By now one of them had a nest-like dip in the seat covered with dog hairs. Never mind, Jill was over the moon. She cleaned them up, put on the loose covers she had made and placed her armchairs either side of the stove in the sitting room. All without one word of complaint.
In June I headed for the four-week artist residency at Gordonstoun School with Robert. We were given a room alongside the art department where we set up our exhibition pieces as we had on Muck. It was a very different experience. Gordonstoun is an imposing place. The house is a grand building which dates back to the sixteenth century though the main part was designed in 1775. It is set in beautiful gardens and the school, owning much of the surrounding countryside, seemed very self-contained with its own theatre, chapel and even a fully equipped fire station manned and run by the pupils. With homes for most of the tutors within the grounds it was almost a village – or a kind of island perhaps – in itself and the pupils exuded a cheerful confidence which was very refreshing.
While we were there, I learnt that one of the tutors owned a young collie bitch that had recently produced a litter of pups. Sadly, my old Taffy had died the previous autumn at the age of seventeen and I was missing the company of a dog very much. I was told the owner was keen to find homes for the pups, so I scurried along to see if there was one for me. To my surprise there were only two left and they were very distinctly black Labradors sitting beside their collie mother. I was only a little disappointed because they were right there in front of me and, more importantly, they were free. I chose the little male pup and carried him away. From the moment I picked him up he never pined or fretted.
Robert dropped me and my exuberant pup in Kyle of Lochalsh where I was to meet up with a friend I had made during our exhibition on Muck. My new friend, rather exotically named Dallas Jane Roodhyuzen, lived on Eigg during the summer months, painting silk scarves for the island craft shop and generally helping out in the tearoom. She and a few others from Eigg had come over for the Muck open day and to see what our exhibition was all about. Dallas Jane much preferred to be addressed simply as DJ. Having stayed with DJ for a while on Eigg the previous autumn, I invited her to Soay, as she had never been to the island. DJ and I took the ferry to Skye in her wonderful old cream Morris Minor, which unfortunately was liberally covered with puppy sick before we reached Broadford. Never one to hold a grudge, DJ took charge of cleaning up the mess and we continued on to Elgol arriving in time to catch a fishing boat to Soay.
DJ was the best of companions. Once we settled into Glenfield, she was straight into helping me improve the decor. I hated ladders and high places, but heights were no problem to DJ who scurried fearlessly up dodgy old ladders and tarred the front of the roof for me. She came to look on this as her personal responsibility and her visits to Soay became a yearly event. She would arrive armed with overalls and some new product she thought might solve the persistent leaks in my roof. (A gooey tape called mastic was king for a while though nothing seemed to fix the leaks for long.) We painted the tongue and groove in the kitchen with magnolia gloss – gloss paint is washable and resists mould stain, a common problem in old properties devoid of damp course or even proper foundations. Jill gave me some green gloss paint and matching undercoat that Laurance had left in his lean-to. She had no intention of using it, so DJ and I concocted artistic variants of gloss-and/or-undercoat for the furniture and exposed beams. With DJ’s help I felt that I had made my personal mark on the property at last.
Jill was often alone. Peter was working away and only coming to the island for five or six days at a time every other week or so, weather permitting. While DJ and I were busy working on Glenfield, Jill sometimes breezed in with a tasty lunch and on one particularly memorable evening she knocked at the door with a pile of battered cod and chips wrapped in newspaper. She had been given the cod by one of the Soay fishermen and cooked us a fantastic fish supper. She arrived at the front door declaring that she had just been down to the ‘chippy’. You have to live on a remote island far from any takeaway cafés to appreciate the pleasure of such a simple act of thoughtfulness.
* * *
I christened my new puppy Torquil, or Tork for short. Unfortunately, Tork had not inherited the loyalty gene of the collie breed. He was a friendly, gentle, imperturbable dog who very soon began to show an independent, happy-go-lucky nature. He was hardly out of puppy-hood before he began to disappear for hours. Somewhere in his wanderings he discovered how to swim. The nervous, hydrophobic bundle I brought home in the dinghy was transformed overnight into a belly-flopping water lover, throwing himself into sea, bog or
lochs with gay abandon. I had smugly assumed that the loyal obedience of my dear departed Taffy was due to my good training and firm, but kind hand. I was so, so wrong. Tork could obey commands if he wanted, but would decide for himself whether and when that was in his own interests. A collar and lead were no impediment. If inclined, he could give his neck a peculiar twist, change to rapid reverse and I would find myself standing alone with a lead attached to an empty collar. On the distant horizon, I would catch a glimpse of his pertly raised tail as it disappeared over a knoll. A few close encounters with Blackie the pet ewe had at least given him some respect for the local sheep, but he was a phenomenal rabbit hunter.
In those days the island was overrun with rabbits. Sometime in the 1940s a crofter had bought a pregnant rabbit with the idea of providing easy, sustainable meat. The rabbits multiplied, with no natural predators on Soay to keep them in check. Later, in an effort to reduce numbers, someone had introduced a mainland rabbit infected with mixomatosis. It did keep them in check after a fashion and every so often when the rabbit population increased above a certain number, the infection would reoccur. Still, they were an impediment to any attempt at growing vegetables so that meant secure fencing to keep out the rabbits as well as sheep and cattle. If my dog deigned to come with me on a walk or to the winkles, he would sometimes suddenly dive off into the heather and return with a rabbit. He was efficient at despatching them and often as not the rabbit was probably unaware of what had just happened. Tork was generosity itself, dropping a dead bunny at my feet before going back into the undergrowth to get one for himself. At one time I would have been horrified at his killing skills, but free fresh meat was a boon. As soon as I got home I would gut and skin the rabbit (sometimes more than one) and make a stew or casserole. Messy, but worth it.
* * *
My life was moving forward in fits and starts and the Fitzgeralds were just settling in when we learnt that Duncan and Dianne were planning to leave. Soay had been Duncan’s home since he was three years old but now his children were teenagers and he and Dianne felt it was time to move while they were young enough to adapt to a new way of life. It was sad, but understandable from their point of view. For the rest of us, it felt an enormous wrench; losing them would make a huge change to the island.
Burnside, their beautifully maintained house, and Duncan’s boat Barnacle III were put on the market. They soon found buyers for both, bought a shellfish business in Orkney and moved before the end of the summer of 1992. At around the same time Gordon and Anne Smith had purchased a small, modern fishing vessel called Sea Witch. She arrived on Soay almost immediately after Duncan and Dianne left. Then Peter Fitzgerald motored into the bay in his newly acquired thirty-foot Coble, a traditional fishing-boat design from the North-east of England. It was an open boat, broad in the beam and narrow at the stern, clinker built with tiller steerage and a large diesel engine. Pete intended to take up fishing once he retired. He put down a new mooring in the bay and purchased Duncan’s old mooring in the harbour. These were cheering signs of life, which helped soften the shock of the changes.
The new owners of Burnside were a mature couple who sailed extensively and owned a large yacht. They said they were intending to use Soay as a permanent base, keeping their yacht in the harbour. They arrived shortly after Duncan and Dianne left and – as always – we helped them ashore with their belongings. However, they had so few items of furniture it did not look as if they would be moving in immediately. After a short stay, the couple went away and we did not see them again for the rest of the year.
Duncan and Dianne had gone and now Tex finally gave up fishing. These days he rarely went to sea. He preferred to spend time with his two Highland ponies on the croft. Without an income from fishing, Biddy began winkling too and managed to pick twice as much as I could in a day.
There were other changes. When I returned from Gordonstoun, I began to notice that Jeanne’s speech was slightly slurred. She seemed to find walking difficult too, and her occasional excursions along the uneven track to get a book from the schoolroom library, were very slow and laboured. At first we put her mobility problems down to her weight and age, although she can’t have been more than sixty-five. Finally, she admitted even to herself that something was very wrong and went to the hospital in Broadford for tests. From there she was sent to a specialist in Glasgow where she was diagnosed with motor neurone disease.
Yet another knock came when Biddy decided she too would have to leave. With Tex no longer going to sea, she had no regular income; besides there was someone special in her life on Skye. Her time on Soay had come to its natural end. With Biddy going, someone else was needed to help with the many chores she had taken on. One day Jeanne asked me if I would milk the goats. Her hands could no longer grip and she had difficulty getting up from the low milking tool. I was only too pleased, even though I had never milked a goat in my life.
Jeanne had four white Saanan goats, housed with the hens in a stone shed a little way from the house. The door was normally left open and the goats wandered home in the evening of their own accord. They knew when it was milking time as they were fed whilst being milked. If they were not already waiting for me, a call was usually enough to bring them running down the hill. Before she left, Biddy gave me a brief lesson in the technique of hand milking. Surprisingly, I managed to produce milk from the teats on my very first attempt. However, there is more to it than just squeezing out few drops of milk. Every goat is an individual character and they are generally not particularly patient. They get bored quickly and I very soon discovered that it was a race against time between the food bucket, the goat and myself. If I were still trying to milk the goat after she had finished feeding, she would skitter and buck, invariably sticking a very dirty cloven hoof inside the bucket of milk, or kicking it over altogether.
At first, milking was very hard on my fingers, arms and back. It took at least forty-five minutes to milk all four goats and by the end of it we were all fed up, bad tempered and covered with milk. If there was anything left, I filtered the milk through a muslin cloth and poured it into jugs. Cloth and buckets were then thoroughly cleaned for the following day. Slowly, I became more efficient and eventually I could milk all four goats in fifteen minutes. I very much enjoyed being with the goats; they were affectionate, mischievous, amusing and loveable animals – and there are worse reasons for getting up early. I learnt from Jeanne how to make ice cream yoghurt and a soft curd cheese called crowdie and, to me, fresh goats’ milk still tastes better than pasteurised cows milk.
Jeanne had opted for goats when she arrived on the island because tuberculosis was rife amongst the Soay cattle. Many islanders had suffered and even died from TB and Jeanne was particularly concerned for the health of Duncan who was only a toddler at the time. Goats are highly resistant to tuberculosis and their milk is safer to drink. Fresh cows’ milk was impossible to obtain from any other source than local cattle in those days. Even today, fresh milk is not a daily option on Soay.
Very soon after her diagnosis, Jeanne realised that the cattle would have to be sold off. With fewer people on the island and her own deteriorating health, it was going to be almost impossible to manage the herd. In her usual pragmatic way, Jeanne hired a landing craft from Knoydart, the Spanish John, which was used for transporting livestock, building materials or any cargo that had to be delivered or picked up from remote locations without a jetty. Transporting cattle from a remote island was something that required careful co-ordination. Once Jeanne’s cattle had gone it would be too difficult and expensive for Oliver and Donita to keep their four or five cows – they relied on shared services of Reagan the bull and use of Petros to take cattle to market. They would have to give up keeping livestock too.
The final cattle round-up had to be meticulously planned. The landing craft had to come on exactly the right day and on a rising tide to avoid risk of becoming stranded. The weather had to be calm with an offshore wind, preferably from the west. The cattle had to be
waiting and ready for the landing craft when it arrived. The whole exercise had to be organised with military precision within a three-hour window. Jeanne managed it all from her chair in the kitchen.
With combined efforts of the remaining islanders, the cattle were duly rounded up and waiting in the bay. Getting the frightened, skittish and confused animals up the lowered ramp took a long time as they doubled-back or leapt over the side of the ramp, wading ashore again. We dragged them by horns or feet, waving our arms and shouting in an effort to get them to turn. We pushed and heaved from behind until finally, just before the tide began to turn, all the cattle, were safely aboard. Except two. At the very last minute, just before the doors closed, Reagan and Frosty made one last desperate charge through the closing doors. They rushed past us down the ramp, thundered over the hill and disappeared. The tide was on the turn, the Spanish John could wait no longer, it pulled away from the shore and headed for Armadale.
Reagan and Frosty roamed free for nearly a year before they too were finally rounded up and taken off.
So ended a cycle of crofting life that had lasted four decades. Without cattle, there was no need to make silage in the meadows. No need for islanders to join the annual task of rounding up young bulls for autumn market and herding them on to Petros waiting by the old stone pier. Communal work that marked the changing seasons now belonged to the past.
The good news was that all the cattle were purchased by local crofters on Skye and continued to roam the hills over there. Even so, it was a sad day for Soay.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
