Sun Dance (14 page)

Sheep, cattle, the quality of the hay crop, ‘the early ‘tatties’ lifted well this year’, a whole ability in dealing with fundamentals which passed beneath the concerns of a desk bound public sector juggling figures or the city whizz-kids alternately cheering or cursing their financial data. During these past weeks, I’d come to recognise the yawning gulf which exists between the artificial cleverness of a society that lacks the intelligence to spot its approaching buffers and the landbound skills of those few upon whom these sophisticated lemmings depend.

Crossing the Sound, sailing to Sandray, this could be the complete break. My departure from one intensely complex time and results controlled function to placing myself in a situation which would challenge my woefully inadequate abilities. An isolated island, forebears or no forebears, was I merely wallowing in nostalgia? I hadn’t mentioned my plans to Eachan.

“I’ll start the outboard if you like. There’ll be enough breeze to put us across once we’re out of the bay. How about trying the oars?” Eachan moved to the stern. I pulled away. The ‘Hilda’ moved easily after the first half dozen strokes. Already I had a fondness for her.

“Here’s the breeze, boy.” I shipped oars and watched Eachan hoist sail. The ‘Hilda’ sprang to life. He tightened the mainsheet. We headed out. Heeling slightly, the tap, tap on her planking began. Wavelets met us. She threw them aside in small flurries. Swooping over tops, dipping through the hollows she sailed with the ease of a tiny wave skimming stormy petrel. I revelled in the motion. Swaying forests were in her timbers, the tale of the old crone’s death and the larch tree’s spirit were in the boat they’d built. I vowed no freedom matched the open sea.

In the shallow waters of the bay, slim fork-tailed birds were touching the ripples and fluttering aloft. Their thin twittering cries reached us. Eachan noticed me watching them, “That’s the Arctic tern fishing for sprat. They nest on the beaches of Sandray, away from bird watchers and tourists. That’s changing fast, Hector boy. There’s a fancy new speed boat running out of Castleton. This Londoner built a huge house out from the village, just a couple of years ago, no word about the landscape, only planners needing more rates to pay their salaries would let it through. Anyhow, no doubt with a grant, he bought this craft, not a sea boat but twin forty horse power outboards. She’s roomy, does a twenty knot trip round the islands, a wake like a tidal wave to frighten the seals off the beach and you get a cup of tea in the cabin and can see your photos on a laptop.”

It was the first time I’d heard a note of bitterness in Eachan’s voice. Not truly one of their island fraternity and on many occasions a tourist myself, I said nothing. Cormorants sat silent, their wings outstretched to dry in the warm sun as we rounded the point and out of the bay. Gulls squabbled over a crab which one of them had dropped onto the rocks.

Suddenly, without warning, the ear shattering roar of a fighter jet hit us. I ducked instinctively. Its shadow flashed across the sea. The plane climbed steeply, pouring black exhaust. I’d barely looked up. A second deafening roar, another jet on its tail, in from the Atlantic. They skimmed over the hills of Halasay and banking steeply, headed north. The terns rose screeching and flew wildly in circles. Speechless, my ears ringing, I looked to Eachan.

He shook his head at the departing planes. “They’re away to blast rockets into a small island off Cape Wrath. It’ll be one of their sales pitches for flogging our latest weaponry round the world. Practise shoots for Afghanistan. Pakistan, maybe Libya or whoever’s the next in line for the installation of a puppet government in the guise of democracy.”

Quietness returned and the lap, lap at our bow. In sardonic tone his thoughts rumbled on, “Mind you those flying missionaries are already out of date; it’s far safer to blast the Taliban by sending in a drone controlled from a bunker under the Pentagon. But just you look at the faces of these Afghan hill men. Whatever their beliefs, right or wrong, these are real men. Compare them to the objects which pass for men and run our degenerate western society. The world is controlled by a collusion of egoistic politicians who’ve never ducked a bullet, military fools in the grip of a highly profitable arms industry and financiers with the greed of that cormorant over there with its gut crammed with fish.”

A dip in the swell exposed a line of rocks off the point. As the Atlantic swell curled over them, they vanished. Just below the surface; dark, vicious and dangerous. Keeping an eye on them, the old man broke into a grin. It better suited his usual easy style. “That’s the reef I told you about. It doesn’t show after the tide starts to rise. You don’t want to find it with the keel. Good spot for a lobster creel though, when you know were they are.”

His face grew serious again, “What’s an island off the tip of Scotland? Back of beyond, handy for training pilots, kill a few birds, neither here nor there. Eggs or chicks, lost when the parents panic. But it all adds up, Hector boy.”

I’d got used to this form of address, it certainly didn’t refer to my age. I took it more as a term of familiarity. He hauled the lugsail sheet and we rounded the headland, giving the reef a good offing. The fighter jets had clearly upset him.

“Pilots, trained by bombing an island. In the cross sights, press a button- it could be a school full of children. That’s happened. A mistake of course. Apologies; what the hell are apologies for a murder? Try replacing your dead child. What goes through a pilot’s tiny mind? Conditioned to kill, trained to protect a fallacy, attempting to continue the folly of believing we can maintain this form of civilisation. My father’s brother went over the top at the Somme, a bullet through his brain. That was kind compared to some poor devils. And still we haven’t learned, only getting more efficient at the job of killing our fellow man. No, Hector, I’ve seen the good times, producing food out here. My own boss”

The breeze shifted. I admired Eachan’s deft response. For a moment the tiller took care of itself. He hauled over the sail until it filled on the port side and we were heading our way across the Sound. “I’ll tell you this, boy,” For the first time I heard true anger in his tone. “My old brain has studied all that goes on around me, whether it’s the climate, or the croft, or what’s left of the bird life, or for that matter the effects I’ve noticed on the sea, even the beaches of Halasay. New types of seaweed are creeping in, taking over, the birds don’t get peace in the nest. Halasay’s turned into a playground. It used to produce food, wholesome food. Now it’s new houses are the main crop, and big ones too; wait you until they’re putting sandbags at the front door when the tide’s in.”

Obviously he handled the tiller instinctively for the outburst continued, “Climate change, they call it. Well, the oceans hold the trump card. The more carbon dioxide they dissolve from the atmospheric increases we’re busy making, the more acid they become and the less their ability to absorb this greenhouse gas. And once you warm the oceans a degree or two, they don’t cool down fast like the land does. There’s probably enough heat brewing in the sea right now to keep global warming on track supposing you dumped every damned car tomorrow.”

The foresight of his comments impressed me and from the look on his face the theme had still a bit to run. The flow of Eachan’s derisive observations I took as a mark of despair for the future of all he had known and not least for the desecration of the planet by human folly. “Make no mistake boy, the environment is shifting below our feet faster than many species can keep pace. The more spokes you knock out of a bicycle wheel, the greater the wobble. We’re racing down hill on a fixed wheel without brakes and they don’t realise just how fast. Talking jargon at a meeting, flown round the world to a conference in an air-conditioned hotel. Scientists,” he snorted, “they’d hear more common sense in an hour at the counter of the Castleton bar.”

It wasn’t the conversation I’d expected. Spanned by islands, the whole width of the Atlantic at my back, the vigour of salt air on my cheek, his words struck a hammer blow. Far from being incongruous, they twisted at my guts. How could we be such criminal perpetrators, helping to destroy the beauty about us, careless of the myriads of species involved; the utter ignorance. Through the passion of Eachan’s outburst, I recognised the love of a man for his natural world.

“You see those vapour trails?” Eachan indicated with a nod. I squinted against the light. The flight paths of two trans-Atlantic jets criss-crossed, tiny dots pouring fleecy streams onto a sky burnished by radiant sunlight. “One’s just crossed the North Pole, heading for Heathrow no doubt. Who knows where the other’s going?” And, looking to the horizon, “I’ll tell you boy, neither of them knows where they’re heading.”

The rumble of their engines floated down to us as he continued unabated, “And the rate of change we’re helping to creating is beyond many species’ ability to adapt, maybe ours too. Organic life, in some form, has knocked about this planet two or three billion years. It’s nearly run out of steam on half a dozen occasions, mass extinctions, cosmic tricks, volcanoes or whatever. Our few thousand years from cave painting to space shuttle, in the time span of this planet’s arrival in the solar system’s existence,” his voice fell away, “it’s just a flick of fag ash,” He glanced up. “No more than one puff of those jet fumes.”

Above us, vapour trails melted into the brilliance of the stratosphere. Down at sea level its same brilliance reflected on wavelets whose glitter vanished under Sandray’s headland cliff and into the gloom of storm burrowed caves. Rock falls, cut and carved into statues, were scattered at random. Some smooth, worn fangs, others with jagged, freshly broken edges had their strata exposed, as the purple veins of an old body. In a jet- roaring twenty-first century, the earth felt very ancient. I looked about for reassurance. The terns had gone.

‘Hilda’ rippled along to the bubbling sounds of a wake which made tiny eddies on the slack waters that come before the turn of the tide. A happy boat, in tune with her element, she restored Eachan’s good humour. He held a course for the west side of Sandray, balancing sail and tiller to the least shift of the breeze.

Admiring his skill, I realised that a deep bond existed between the man and his boat. In Eachan’s hands she became animate. I saw he treated his boat with the same affection and trust as one of the family. Man and boat complimented each other, the one varnished and trim, the other, bronzed faced and steady, a blending of will powers and both at home on the sea.

The cliff of Sandray’s north west headland fell shear to the sea. Eachan ran in close, a couple of boat lengths clear. It loomed over our masthead, a mighty promontory breasting the Atlantic’s fury in the tussle between the bastion of the land and the greed of an ocean. Dark gashes drove deep into its bare rock face, the wave riven throat of a storm. Spindly pillars reared, ledge after ledge, climbing into salt green turf. The ocean’s tranquility swilled over their boulder strewn feet with barely a murmur.

From ledges streaked by a season’s nesting, fulmar peered down, squawking and complaining. Others rode the air on motionless wings. Cormorant flapped off the lowest shelf, swimming, diving, up and over. They popped up ahead of us like corks and took off, beating the surface with hefty splashes. A tight formation of puffins shot from behind the headland, red feet trailing, stubby wings burring like a windup toy.

The intimacy of this self-contained domain, locked in the basics of survival, astonished me. Easy to understand, they had not the means by which to offset the mass intrusion of that exploitive species, the human being. Several smallish birds, black plumaged and dainty, swam a little way off from us. One surfaced with tiny silver fish hanging either side in its sharp pointed bill. I pointed as it flew past us. “That’s the guillemot, hardy wee birds. They nest further round the headland. Always lay two eggs. The island folk used to take one and leave one, good for baking scones they said. It’s sand eels that one’s carrying. It’ll be feeding a chick. Guillemots are scarce now and the razorbill too- it’s a similar bird.”

So far I hadn’t heard Eachan even suggest he might be old. “In my young days, this point would be alive with them but these many years the fishing boats have been clearing the waters of their feed stock. Sand eels hoovered up by the thousand tons, ground into protein for these damned salmon farms. One species valueless to us puts smoked salmon on your party menu and in between their fish cages and your dining fork, not a word about the coastal pollution and who in a fancy restaurant cares a damn about that bird’s supper?” Contempt rang in Eachan’s voice.

I’d made no reply, for in spite of the day’s brilliance, studying the cliff tower above our masthead provoked a somber feeling. It hung on the air, infecting the atmosphere with a chilling dankness. Although each rock platform was home to so many young chicks, the place had a gloomy bleakness, a profound sense of dejection. Was it the cries of the bird life? The piteous note of their incessant wailing that rose above the hiss of a swell which rolled slowly over the dark slab of rock at its foot and just as deliberately fell away into the sunless shadow? Grey pillars rose above the ledge, I saw them as melancholy portals to some abiding tragedy. A feeling of grief surrounded me and I turned to Eachan, “There’s something inconsolably sad about this place.”

He turned sharply. His blue eyes searching my face before nodding, the old man turned to look steadily at the forbidding crevices, “Don’t be surprised,” he said quietly. “Our daughter, Hilda, fell from that cliff,” adding, “It’s a long time ago, but it could be yesterday. She was nine.”

Shades of indescribable sadness coloured his voice. Time retreated. The cry of birds drifted from my hearing. Only the gurgle of the swell, far away in cavernous hollows, reached us. Perhaps he too heard it as a voice. “I carried her off that bottom ledge,” he gazed at it, black, sloping and gale worn, “before the tide would take her.”

Utterly shaken by my prescient feelings giving rise to such a grievous revelation, I ran my hand along the boat’s gunnel and the headland slipped past.