The Girl on the Ferryboat Read online

  Her mother had a beautiful gold watch with Roman dials which Helen loved. She’d remove it and leave it behind on the dresser any time she went out to work in the fields and Helen would then always try it on. It was too big, but if she wound the leather strap twice round it fitted halfway up her arm perfectly. The numerals were diamond studded and luminous and Helen would crawl into the cupboard beneath the stairs where they would shine green in the darkness.

  She remembered going into the old clockmaker’s shop in Tobermory where time was completely fluid. Archie had dozens of clocks on the walls, all showing different times. A handwritten sign under each one taught you that while it was 12 noon in Tobermory it was 2pm in Berlin, 7pm in Kuala Lumpur, and 6am in New York.

  Numerous clocks and watches lay open on the long wooden work bench that ran all the way beneath the windows. ‘Would you like a look?’ Archie asked her and she nodded, and he handed her the magnifying glass he used himself and she disappeared into a gigantic world of wheels and spokes and hooks and wires.

  ‘See,’ Archie said, ‘if you do this – see what happens,’ and he touched the edge of a wheel with a needle and it moved, catching the wheel next to it until it locked and the two wheels spun, dancing. ‘Try it.’ And she touched this and that moved, and touched that and the other thing and another thing and another thing moved.

  ‘We’ll make a watch,’ her mother said to her on the way back home and they went down to the shore to gather shells. Tiny little corals of all shapes and sizes which the two of them then strung together once they got back home and tied together with a thin thread of lace. ‘There,’ her mother said to her. ‘Now it can be any time for you.’ And of course like all of us she made daisy watches and blew the seeds off a dandelion to find the right time: blow hard and it was early, soft and it would be late.

  I must have travelled on the earlier train, otherwise I would have seen her then. She was very beautiful, with natural auburn hair and freckles, though that’s only a haphazard brushstroke. She was studying Ecology, doing her thesis on the nature of the native woodlands of the south-west of Mull.

  This was a familiar journey. Once off the train, the left turn down by the shellfish stall across the wooden pier, then the sail out past Kerrera with the Lynn of Lorne and Lismore to the starboard side, Kingairloch and Morvern ahead. Kingairloch from Ceann Geàrr Loch, the head of the half-loch.

  As she sat sunglassed on deck I must have been below in the steerage, drinking. It was all whisky in those days, with accordion music and yelping dogs and returning sailors singing about South Georgia, though some of the drovers on their way to the South Uist cattle sales sang their own songs:

  ‘O, gin I were far Gaudie rins, far Gaudie rins, far Gaudie rins, O gin I were far Gaudie rins at the back o Bennachie,’ and up the Sound of Mull with a drunkard standing on one of the tables crying, ‘Fareweel tae Tarwathie, adieu Mormond Hill, And the dear land o Crimmond I bid thee fareweel, I am bound now for Greenland and ready to sail, In the hopes I’ll find riches a-hunting the whale…’

  I needed air. Fresh air. Up on deck the heather on Mam Chullaich was still singed from the muirburning and the sky a clear blue to the north-west, where everything lay. I was hungry and made for the restaurant downstairs.

  She was at the bottom of the steps as I descended. Dark curly hair and freckles and a smile that split the skies. We looked at each other as she climbed and I descended.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said to her, trying to stand to one side, and she smiled and said, ‘O, don’t worry – I’ll get by.’

  I wanted to touch her arm as she passed, but I stayed my hand and she left.

  I think I just had soup, though I can’t really remember. I may have gone to the bar afterwards, or reclimbed the stairs up to the deck area to look for her, but she wasn’t there. The boat berthed first at Tobermory where hundreds of passengers, mostly tourists, disembarked. Others disembarked at Coll and Tiree and Castlebay and of course she must have come off with the crowd at one of these ports for I never saw her again.

  I remember a girl carrying a bicycle over her shoulder at one of the ports, descending the ramp cautiously then jumping swiftly on to the bike at the bottom of the gangway and heading off across the pier, dodging round the porters.

  Once she left the pier she ascended the hill past the hotel and out the old mill road past the brewery which took her to the single-track road to Dervaig and on to Calgary. It was a May morning and the ditches overflowed with buttercups and primroses. The sounds of birds filled the air: she knew them all by note. Thrushes and willow warblers and linnets and goldencrests. The finches high overhead. The plovers swooping up and down beside her through the glen. The smell of wild garlic filled her nostrils. O God, the glorious days before traffic.

  Her mother was milking Daisy down by the gate. She still looked like a young girl herself, her long hair, though now flecked with grey, blowing in the breeze. Helen stopped at the top of the brae listening to the scene: the endless songs of the birds, the wind in the silver birches, the sound of the milk squirting into the pail. Her mother sensed her there and turned, still sitting on her stool, and waved. She cycled down towards her and stroked Daisy as the milk continued to flow.

  Inside, they embraced.

  ‘It’s so lovely to see you, a ghràidh,’ her mother said, smiling. ‘You look wonderful.’

  ‘You too,’ said Helen. ‘All that fresh air.’

  They made tea and had some scones.

  ‘How’s Glasgow?’

  ‘Oh – so so. As you would expect. All noise and fun. And pollution.’

  ‘Studying hard? Not that it really matters.’

  ‘Yes. No. Not because it matters but… because it matters.’

  They both smiled.

  ‘So,’ her mother said, ‘you lost the fiddle.’

  ‘Yes. Sorry.’

  ‘As I said on the phone, it doesn’t matter. It’ll turn up. Someplace. Sometime.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Helen again. ‘It was just a moment. Seconds really and that was it.’

  ‘It always is.’

  ‘Shall we go outside?’ Helen asked. ‘Into the orchard?’

  She was talking about the death of her father. Helen was then only five. There was no reason for it really – just an ordinary day, no wind to speak of, but the line somehow got snagged on the winch and she went down in seconds according to the coastguards.

  ‘When we lose something,’ her mother was saying, ‘it always goes somewhere. Nothing ever just dissolves. You know the Gaelic saying?’ “Thig trì nithean gun iarraidh…?” ‘Three things come unsought – fear, jealousy and love.’

  ‘And which of these…?’ asked Helen.

  Her mother smiled.

  ‘All three, of course. Though not necessarily in that order.’ She stood up and plucked an apple from the tree. ‘I loved him immensely. And I feared for him immensely. And I jealously guarded him from himself. Though I failed. For we always fail.’

  She put the apple down with the others in the wooden press, and turned the handle to squeeze out the juice which trickled into the jar below.

  They walked arm in arm out through the willow arch and began climbing the brae at the back of the house. The collie dog, Glen, joined them, always hopeful. They rested at the top of the hill looking westwards towards Coll where the boat on which I stood was sailing, at that moment passing Rudha Sgùrr Innis and the Eilean Mòr, making for the open sea.

  3

  WHEN HE WAS nine, Alasdair’s grandfather took him out sea-fishing for the first time.

  It was the first Saturday of the summer holidays, and all the more glorious because he had no notion it was going to happen. The sound of the heavy rain on the zinc roof woke him and when he looked outside through the tiny attic window the sky was dank and heavy.

  He climbed back into his closet and lay on his back listening to the drumbeats of the rain. It rattled against the zinc, then if he listened really carefully he could hear it separatin
g at the ridges and running in streams down the vents to the eaves. He raced them against each other. There were five vents to each corrugated sheet. He focused on the one above his head. The outside vent was Paavo Nurmi. In vent two was Jesse Owens. Joie Ray in vent three. Jackson Scholz in four and the Albannach, Eric Liddell, in the inside lane.

  Off they went, Roy running so fast downhill but quickly overtaken by Scholz in lane four, and then came Owens and Liddell, each keeping pace with the other, step by step, but in the last sudden rush down to the eaves the great Paavo Nurmi won, once again, and the race started all over again.

  When he woke the second time all was quiet and still. He heard his grandfather’s voice downstairs so he immediately jumped out of bed, dressed in seconds, and was with him before his voice died away.

  ‘Alasdair!’ his grandfather said. ‘We thought the fairies had taken you away during the night! What kept you so long?’

  ‘The race,’ he said. ‘It was fantastic. Nurmi won again!’

  His grandfather smiled.

  ‘One day, Alasdair, you’ll run as fast as him too. Now – where’s your stuff?’

  ‘Stuff?’

  ‘Aye. Your stuff.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Alasdair, running out into the byre.

  He climbed the wooden ladder up into the drying straw where the rod was hidden. His grandfather had made it for him last winter, just as the snow had settled in. They’d gone out rabbit hunting in the afternoon and instead of taking the usual shore road home had cut east through the only surviving wood in the area. ‘Birch or hazel would be best,’ his grandfather said, ‘but we’ll just make do with whatever has fallen.’

  They searched for ages, but each fallen branch that Alasdair brought back was somehow deficient – too small, or too thick, or too soft, or too brittle – but finally he found a long thin willow twig which his grandfather said was ‘perfect’.

  ‘You carry it home,’ his grandfather said, and no prouder soldier ever marched with his rifle held firmer over his shoulder. He was Alasdair MacColla and Gille-Pàdraig Dubh and Robin Hood and Daniel Boone all rolled into one.

  Back home, his grandfather took out his whittling knife and helped him shear off the sprigs and nodules.

  ‘Now let’s soak it in the old feeding tub overnight.’

  The old feeding tub was filled with sheep’s urine ready for softening the tweed.

  ‘It’ll make the wood nice and pliable.’

  And it did. By morning, Alasdair could bend and manipulate the willow rod any way he wanted.

  ‘You want it that way to bear all the salmon you’ll catch!’ his grandfather said to him.

  And then as the snow fell for days on end the two of them sat by the fire slitting the rod, fitting the thread, turning the weaving thrums into fishing spindles, and seasoning and polishing the rod.

  He now grabbed it out of the straw and jumped down from the byre ladder with it.

  ‘It’s only for show,’ his grandfather said. ‘We’re not going to the river today. But don’t tell your mother. We’ll keep it as a surprise for her later. Let’s eat first.’

  He walked with his grandfather down by the peat stack and across the moor road which took them by the river and the twin lochs. But once out of sight of the house his grandfather turned east and led him down through the small ravine which separated the moorland from the grazing slopes. They clambered over the rocks until they reached the heights of the bay overlooking the sea. It glittered silver far below them. To the far south they could see the small hills of Barra blue on the horizon. Out west all was ocean as far as America. Beyond the bay itself, the mountains of Skye ascended into the air.

  ‘Are we?’ Alasdair thought, but didn’t speak the words out loud. His grandfather – how nimbly he moved! – led the way downhill. Almost running, really. They reached the bay where his boat lay. Reul-na-Mara it was called – The Star of the Sea. The number of times Alasdair had dreamt of this moment: of standing here with his grampa beside the boat, ready to sail forth.

  ‘Up you go,’ he said, lifting Alasdair into the boat in one movement. ‘You hold that rope,’ he said, and the world began.

  His grandfather took to the oars while Alasdair sat in the stern at the imagined tiller. His grandfather rowed steadily, taking the wee boat out of the harbour, round the skerry on which the seals basked. Alasdair could see the sandy bottom through the strands of seaweed. Millions of tiny fish, no bigger than his own pinky, moved beneath the water.

  ‘They’re called sìolagain,’ his grandfather said. ‘Sand eels. Can you count them?’

  Alasdair tried.

  ‘A million,’ he said. ‘And one.’

  Once they’d cleared the skerries his grandfather offered him the oars.

  ‘Sit right there,’ he said. ‘Square-on in the middle. And hold this one like that – that’s it – right between the thumb and the palm, and I’ll row with the other one until you get used to it.’

  Alasdair splashed and thrashed the water pointlessly, but eventually got the hang of slicing the oar in at the backward angle until it furrowed in through the water then rose again.

  ‘Try this one as well,’ his grandfather said, handing him the other oar. It took even longer to coordinate the oars as they went round in tiny circles. But his grampa seemed quite relaxed about it all, lighting his pipe and sitting in the stern. Eventually Alasdair managed to move the boat forwards with balanced little strokes which stirred the water around them.

  ‘Keep your eye on that point over there,’ his grandfather said, ‘and row towards it. You can’t go wrong.’

  Alasdair kept his eye fixed on the landmark he had given him, the roof of the old church at Eolaigearraidh which stood on the highest hill in the distance. His arms and hands ached but he would never let his grandfather know. Paavo Nurmi never tired.

  Suddenly they appeared on the near horizon, leaping high out of the ocean.

  ‘Whales!’ he cried. ‘Grampa – look! Whales!’

  A whole school of them lay ahead making rainbows in the sky.

  ‘Mucan-biorach, a’ bhalaich,’ his grandfather said, smiling. ‘Dolphins, lad. Though we have dozens of different names for them in our tongue – leumadairean, deilfean, bèistean-ghorm, peallaichean… depending on which kind they are.’

  He cupped his old hands round his eyes.

  ‘These look like mucan-biorach to me. Aren’t they beautiful? An giomach, an rionnach ‘s an ròn – trì seòid a’ chuain! The lobster, the mackerel and the seal – the three heroes of the ocean! Whoever spoke such nonsense! You’ll never see a more beautiful sight on all the earth than these dolphins leaping before you.’

  Alasdair wanted to hear his stories again, and grandfather knew it.

  ‘Innis dhomh mun deidhinn – tell me about them. Please.’ said Alasdair, and his grandfather once again began telling of how he’d sailed round Cape Horn in the sailing ship.

  ‘I was fifteen days up there, in the crow’s nest, icicles hanging from my beard.’

  Alasdair knew that the icicles grew longer each time he told the story.

  ‘How long were they?’

  ‘Oh,’ said his grampa, ‘this long.’ And he stretched his arms out as wide as he could. ‘They were hanging from my chin down to below my knees,’ he said. ‘The ship’s master had to saw them off with heated shears.’

  Nearer, Alasdair could clearly see that the dolphins were not black at all, as they first appeared, but grey and blue. It was impossible to count how many there were, for each time two or three dived, another two or three surfaced. At any given time seven or eight of them leapt high into the air in semicircles.

  ‘Wow!’ he said to himself, under his breath. ‘Wait till I tell this to Donald and Seumas.’

  ‘It’s also a good sign,’ his grandfather said, ‘that there’s plenty of fish around.’ He lifted the sacking which lay at his feet and there, hidden beneath, were the handlines.

  ‘One for you, and one for the bodach,’ his gra
ndfather said, giving one of the handlines to Alasdair. It was an empty rectangle of wood encased in hooked twine.

  ‘Careful as you release that twine,’ he said, and the two of them sat side by side, unwinding the twine which had a hook attached every foot or so. Grandfather raised the other bit of sacking at his feet and revealed the enclosed box of bait.

  ‘Plenty there to keep us going all day,’ he said, and the two of them began to place the herring heads and livers and worms on the hooks. ‘You never know,’ his grandfather said, ‘what they’ll bite, so for this first cast we’ll put different bait on different hooks.’

  He taught Alasdair how to safely release the line into the water and let it drift.

  ‘The sea itself will do the work for you. You’ll feel the tugs,’ he said, ‘and when you do, just start hauling in.’

  Alasdair watched as baited hook after baited hook disappeared behind them into the blue sea. For the first haul, grandfather allowed him to hold the wood.

  ‘Just roll it clockwise,’ he told Alasdair, and as he did so the line began to rise up. They took a few mackerel on that first cast, all on the worm. ‘Ah!’ his grampa said, ‘Latha nam Boiteagan – a day for the worms.’

  It was the greatest day of Alasdair’s life. The day which measured everything else. Some years later, when he married Katell at St Mary’s Star of the Sea, those blue dolphins danced behind the altar. He saw them again the day King George launched the great ship he’d helped to build, the beautiful Queen Mary. They were there leaping high into the sky the day he was released from Stalag 383 and that amazing day in 1953 when they were ashore for a week at the Portland Docks and managed to get a ticket for Wembley to see Ferenc Puskas and the Magyar Magicians. And now that he was here, finally retired, with his beloved Katell the dream was coming alive again.

  He would have his own boat, just like grandfather once had his. And it would be like Grampa’s, though larger. Not ostentatiously so – there was no desire for any of that, but larger so that he could go further out with it, into the deeper waters where the best sea bass could be found. And it would be a thing of beauty too, as well as a joy forever: it would be clinker-built, like the old sgothan. A proper thing, not like these modern fibreglass toys. It would move like Ferenc Puskas did that other day. And he had finally persuaded Roderick to sober up long enough to build it, so here we were engaged in the great dream.