Island on the Edge

by Anne Cholawo

  Other big changes were on the horizon much closer to home. Island life had not turned out in the way Jill and Peter had hoped. Peter was not going to be made redundant after all. Instead, once the railways were privatised, he was relocated to a different station as stationmaster. This new move brought all sorts of new problems. Peter would obviously not be able move to Soay permanently for the foreseeable future. Before either of them could come to a practical solution to this dilemma, fate decided it for them.

  Jill had to go to hospital for an operation related to surgery she had undergone some years before she came to live on Soay. She was off the island for several weeks, but eventually came home to finish her convalescence. She returned with strict instructions from her doctor. She was not to lift anything for at least a month. Anywhere else and this could have been achieved fairly easily, but Soay is a very demanding environment. Even though I lit her stoves, brought coal in and put buckets of hot water on the stoves before she got home, it was going to be impossible for Jill to avoid having to lift something. Peter was away working and not able to be around. If I’d had any idea of the consequences, or just a little more forethought, I might have realised that the best solution would be for Jill to move in with me for the month. I was just too inexperienced to think of it. I don’t believe even Jill had considered how much lifting and carrying was essential in her general lifestyle. There was no running hot water in Leac Mhor; it had to be heated in enamel buckets on top of the stove and the stove needed to be kept going with hods of coal. Jill had a garden full of vegetables that desperately needed harvesting. With no flushing toilet, the Elsan had to be emptied and cleaned out every day. The Aladdin and Tilley lamps needed constant topping up with paraffin. All these chores required lifting and they were all essential jobs for general day-to-day comfort.

  The first two days after Jill got home were not too bad, but on the third day, I came out of my house to see Jill in her garden trying to dig potatoes. This was to be discouraged and I went across to help immediately. I could see by the careful way she was moving that Jill was not comfortable. We had a cup of tea and I went off to do my own chores. Later in the day I came back to tell her that we had been invited for a meal by a couple visiting the island on holiday. She said she would come, but had not eaten much that day because she was feeling a bit unwell. If she had a lie down, she thought, she would feel up to visiting later. When I went to pick her up that evening I knocked on the door but there was no immediate answer. I went inside and heard Jill calling from upstairs. I found her in bed evidently in pain. She told me that the pain came in regular waves and that she had eaten and drunk nothing since we shared tea and toast earlier that morning. I was pretty worried. Even I could see that this was not just an ordinary stomach upset. I went down to the holiday couple to explain that Jill was ill and we would not be able to make the meal. When I got back to Leac Mhor I saw that Jill was even worse than before. She knew she was in a serious state too and we both agreed to ring her doctor. It was about half past seven in the evening and he was off-duty. It took several phone calls but I finally tracked him down and described Jill’s symptoms over the phone. Meanwhile the holiday couple had come to the house to see if they could help in any way. The doctor finally agreed that it sounded serious enough to call out a helicopter. By now it was past ten at night and very dark. The only helicopter equipped for a night flight to Soay was the Sea King coastguard helicopter based in Stornoway. It would be a few more hours before it arrived as the men had be mobilised and briefed first. I was asked to stay by the phone in Jill’s house to liaise between the base and the crew when they arrived.

  It was nearly eleven o’clock before we heard the helicopter approaching. A searchlight from the Sea King suddenly pierced the pitch dark of the night outside Jill’s bedroom window. At one point it shone into the bedroom where Jill lay creating an eerie atmosphere as if a UFO were about to land. Anne and Gordon, alerted by the sound of the helicopter, came to offer their assistance. Initially, the helicopter landed in the meadow behind Glenfield House and Leac Mhor. A paramedic arrived at the house and took a look at Jill. He decided it was too far and too treacherous to carry Jill back to the helicopter (I think he had fallen into a deep ditch on his way to the house). It would be safer if she were airlifted to the Sea King now hovering overhead. Jill was carefully strapped into a stretcher, and then she and the paramedic were winched up into the Sea King only a few feet above Leac Mhor. The downdraught sent empty silage barrels scudding dangerously close to the little group waiting on the ground. Then Jill was up and away. Soon the lights and the sound of the Sea King faded beyond the darkened mountains as it headed toward the hospital in Inverness.

  It transpired a few days later that Jill had suffered a twisted bowel probably caused by scar tissue from her recent operation. She was in hospital for weeks and for a while her recovery was uncertain. Jill’s health was not the only problem facing the Fitzgeralds. The strain of living two lives was beginning to tell on Peter. He had never really spent more than a couple of weeks at a stretch on the island, making it very difficult for him to settle down. They decided to put the house up for sale and leave that year. It was another big wrench for me. Quite apart from the loss of good neighbours, I realised that the days of having unlimited use of the Heron were over. Peter would be taking her down south when they left Soay.

  I had become accustomed to the independence and freedom of the Heron. It was going to be hard to see her go. There were far fewer boats going to and from Elgol now that Duncan’s Barnacle III had gone and Tex was no longer fishing with Petros. This was also in the days when there was only one tour boat operating sightseeing trips between Elgol and Coruisk and it was prohibitively expensive to hire for Soay. I decided that it was time to look for a boat of my own.

  That winter I was going to spend Christmas and see in the New Year of 1998 with DJ and her partner David Hollingsworth in Cumbria. David had access to the Internet that I had heard so much about but knew very little of. After New Year we scoured the Internet until I finally saw a boat that looked about right. By a combination of heavy persuasion and persistent wheedling I got DJ and David to drive me all the way from the west coast of Cumbria to Whitby harbour in east Yorkshire, where the boat was moored. I had telephoned the owner beforehand to tell him that we would be coming over to look at his boat. This may or may not have been a good idea as it gave him ample opportunity to do some extensive pumping before I turned up. I saw almost immediately that she was not going to be the right boat for me and had already begun to prepare myself to think about having to start searching all over again. I was looking at buying a boat at the very bottom end of the market, so I knew that I couldn’t afford to be too fussy. The only good thing about this boat was her newly overhauled engine, though it might as well have been a vacuum cleaner for all I knew about diesel engines. The owner showed me some papers pertaining to a recent overhaul. I tried to appear knowledgeable, but the specifications were completely unintelligible to me, it was just a shiny metal box with pipes coming out of it as far as I was concerned.

  I came away feeling deflated. I had a limited amount of time and I couldn’t expect my friends to run me all around the country while I looked for the perfect boat. On the way past the harbour master’s office I saw in the window a handwritten notice saying ‘Boat for Sale’ with a local telephone number underneath. The price quoted was a third less than the boat I had just seen. I phoned the owner and arranged to meet him back at the marina. He took us to his miniature old-fashioned fishing boat of about twenty feet tied up to the pontoon. She had a good-sized wooden wheelhouse that looked like a recent addition. The owner was a small man, so the height of the wheelhouse was too low for anyone over five-foot nine inches to stand upright; he had built it himself and was very proud of it. Rightly so, as it was well made and attractive. I am five foot eight, so the wheelhouse was ideal for me. She was clinker built and solidly constructed. The boat was covered with tarpaulins, mostly to keep the sea
gulls off her and it was evident that she had not been used for some time. There were signs that she needed work: the gunwales were rotting and the beading around the edge of the decking had sprung away from her prow. However, her hull was in very good condition and when I looked into the bilge after lifting up a piece of marine-ply decking, there was very little water down there. I tasted it and found that it was fresh rainwater, with no trace of salt. She was broad too, about eight-foot wide at the waist. When we stepped aboard she hardly moved, and it felt almost as if we were still on the pontoon. There was plenty of room for stores on board. I fell instantly in love with her. I asked if we could take her out for a run. After the owner explained some preliminaries on how she worked, he took out a key, turned it and she fired on the first attempt. She was slow, only doing about six knots flat out, but she felt completely safe and dependable. I bought her right there and then. The name on her prow was Sally B.

  By now it was March 1998 and the next few weeks were fraught, as Sally B had become my responsibility. I had to get her lifted out of the water at Whitby Marina and then find a haulage company to take her by road to Mallaig. No longer having a car, I had to follow by train, which broke down at Fort William and I missed Sally B’s vital slot for being craned into the water. When I finally got into Mallaig I found that she had been left by the haulier lying over on her side on the pier like a beached whale. She was lowered into the harbour the next morning. After nearly two weeks stranded in Mallaig waiting for the right weather window to get her to Soay, I finally chugged out of Mallaig Harbour, heading for the island and Sally B’s new home. I knew very little about this little boat or her engine, but I travelled the twenty sea miles to Soay trusting everything to Sally B and she didn’t let me down.

  I spent my long wait in Mallaig almost perpetually glued to the radio listening to the shipping forecast and willing a gap in the stormy weather. During this time I often wondered what Tex would make of this boat of mine once I finally managed to steam her into Soay bay. He would probably have something acerbic to say about it, I imagined. I had not seen or heard anything of Tex for months as I had been away over Christmas and into the early spring, boat hunting. I knew that he had been off the island for quite some time on one of his ‘walkabouts’. No one seemed to know exactly where he was.

  Just a few days before I was scheduled to leave Mallaig, I learnt that Tex had died in his sleep while on Skye. He had been heading to Soay and home, but never reached it. He was 79. Jeanne’s death and the stroke had both left their mark and it had been clear for a while that Text was failing, but even so it was hard to believe he had really gone. Tex was such a strong personality, so synonymous with the island. This was truly the end of an era for Soay.

  Obituaries drew heavily on Tex’s adventurous past and his relationship with Gavin Maxwell. But I had been lucky to get some insight into that relationship straight from Tex himself and I believe there was more to this venture than just making money from shark oil; it was about excitement and adventure, a way of postponing the dullness of an ordinary life after the adrenaline of commando activity. In this they shared a close understanding. However, Gavin Maxwell came from the privileged classes and Tex didn’t, which caused a lot of friction between them.

  Tex told me a revealing tale of a time when Gavin wanted Tex to take him in the Gannet, either from Fort William to Mallaig or vice versa (I can’t remember which). The Gannet was the smallest of the shark fishing fleet, an open boat with tiller steerage. Maxwell had a spaniel puppy with him and not long into the journey the weather deteriorated dramatically with strong winds, high seas and squally rain. Gavin retreated with his spaniel into the small cuddy in the prow of the boat to escape the worst of it. He held the puppy close, wrapping him in an oilskin to keep him dry, the pair of them tucked in away from the wind and rain. Meanwhile, Tex was out in the worst of the storm and, although he was wearing oilskins, he was soaked to the skin within minutes. The weather remained foul until they finally came into port. As soon as they pulled alongside the jetty Gavin leapt out of the boat with the spaniel puppy and rushed off to the nearest pub. Tex was left to tie up the Gannet and offload Maxwell’s gear. By the time Tex arrived at the pub, he found Gavin ensconced in the saloon with dry clothes and a hot toddy, the puppy warm by the fireside, both of them waited on hand and foot by the proprietors. Tex was dripping wet and mad as hell, even more so when Maxwell expected him to use the bar, the ‘proper’ place for fishermen and crofters. To add insult to injury, Gavin did not even offer him a dram.

  On the other hand, in his characteristic storytelling style, Tex acknowledged another side to Maxwell’s character. Living on Soay at the time of the shark fishing enterprise was a lady named Katy, whose eldest teenage son was both deaf and dumb. They lived in a cottage called The Carrie (just a pile of stones and old corrugated tin today). The lad had found an ingenious way of communicating; he carried a pad and pencil around with him at all times so he could draw pictures of whatever he was trying to say. He was so good that Gavin wanted to pay for him to go to art college and approached Katy to ask her permission to allow him to do it. She refused; she needed her son at home to help her. Tex said that the boy’s drawings were so accurate, he could draw a recognisable caricature of anyone on the island at speed.

  Tex and Maxwell had kept in contact for a number of years after the demise of the shark factory, so their relationship wasn’t acrimonious as far as I could tell (though Tex still thought he was a snob). Both men were larger than life and left their mark on the island. Maxwell’s legacy is not only the ruined shark station, but also Shetland sheep that were once held to one half of the island by the ‘Maxwell fence’, and his yellow azalea bushes. And if you look inside the old factory on the ground floor to the right, you will see that two walls have been plastered. This is where I believe Maxwell once had his office. To me the place still feels thick with the atmosphere of those times.

  Tex left his mark in other ways. In the late 1960s and 70s, Tex built a tank and adapted some of the old shark fishery buildings in the harbour to create a lobster farm. From observation and extensive study he found a way to breed lobsters in tanks. I understand Tex was one of the first to farm lobsters successfully in the UK but despite his success he abandoned the venture after a few years. This was probably because once Tex had proved to himself it could be done he lost interest. He was not particularly interested in making money for money’s sake. The water tank and ponds can be seen today.

  When he passed away in April 1998 there were eleven Highland ponies on Soay that I knew of. Some were lost one way or another and it was a relief and a pleasure to discover that his son Duncan had offered them to Lawrence and Jenny MacEwen on Muck. When the Wave arrived in Soay harbour with Lawrence MacEwen, his son Colin and a few other Muck residents, the ponies were gathered up and put on board pretty successfully, considering that most of the younger ponies had not been handled before. It was sad to see them leave, but they would be infinitely better off on Muck. I was asked by someone to write down which mare I thought might be in foal. I made a record to the best of my ability providing the name and description of each mare, and a rough calculation of when they might foal. (I do not think that flimsy bit of paper ever made the journey back to Muck; there was a lot going on.) Not having a television, it was much later that I learnt little Aileidh had featured in a BBC ‘reality’ series Castaway where she inadvertently produced her first foal.

  That was the end of Tex’s dream pedigree herd. However, Seumas is still on Muck, old but game I understand, along with a handful of the original Soay mares too, which is a great comfort and a kind of happy ending too. I like to think Tex would approve.

  * * *

  In that same sad year the island was left without the Fitzgeralds and Tex Geddes. It was now a much-depleted population. Oliver and Donita were on the northern side of the bay, but only Gordon and Anne Smith lived full time on my half of the island. They were now my nearest neighbours. The Soay school also clos
ed that year as Peter Davies left to attend the high school in Portree. He was the very last pupil ever to be taught in the schoolroom. Gordon and Anne stayed on in the living-quarters of the schoolhouse. Now that Gordon had retired from teaching they intended to run tourist trips from Elgol to Loch Coruisk in their newly acquired tour-boat Kalee Jane.

  Despite the sense of loss I was buoyed up by the hope that I could continue to live on Soay with the help of my new boat. She was the new symbol of my independence. Or so I imagined, and for a time she did achieve that for me. I had some early problems with her electrics, basically because I knew very little about wiring or how it worked. However, new boats are notorious for testing their owners and she was no exception.

  Once, I made a very stupid trip from Loch Slapin to Elgol in the pitch dark and no moon, just when the boat’s battery decided to die on me. With the support of Golden Isles, I got home to Soay safely but with no radio, depth sounder or navigation lights. I never attempted a trip like that in the dark again.

  Sally B steamed backwards and forwards to Elgol at her own peculiar and elderly pace, dropping off winkles, picking up coal, wood, hen food or visitors, with dependable regularity. She was even used for pleasure trips, taking friends and family to Loch Coruisk. I steamed her around the island and anchored her off at various points along Soay’s coastline while I rowed in to gather up my winkles. She was absolutely the right kind of boat for me.

  My first attempt at beaching Sally B on my own for painting, basic repairs and anti-fouling went very smoothly. She proved an easy boat to handle by myself in fair weather. I was woefully lacking in tools though, and slowly started to try to build up a toolbox for the boat, although at the time I imagined it would only be for very minor jobs.