Sun Dance (61 page)

Instead of resolute action, I ranted to the ever patient Eilidh. The most deadly force known to the universe placed in the hands of greed and religious violence. Set that folly against burgeoning energy usage and the stresses of climate change, add in the escalating race towards control of global resources, and then rest fully assured no safeguard exists against human error, political insanity or the forces of nature. Succeeding generations were being handed a lethal inheritance from which there would be no reprieve. On that note my diatribes invariably ended; Eilidh would take my hand and hope the creaking old stairs didn’t waken Ella.

Young Eachan was beginning to crawl about the house and pull things out of cupboards. By the following year he’d follow me about the croft and at summer haymaking, dungarees and bare feet, he’d play amongst the coilacks with his pal Muille. The house could not contain him, beach or field- the boy was happiest in the open. Modern living rumbled on without us, a tumbrel beyond our horizon. We were able to feed ourselves at small expense, our needs were few, the ‘have everything ‘ ethos had yet to permeate Halasay living. Little did we appreciate the difficulties of those who faced the concerns of a society grappling with unemployment and the financial chaos driven by greed; to us it appeared in turmoil. Only the breaking into unscarred landscape across on Sandray and the smashing of natural systems by brute force brought us face to face with the unmasked hunger of a single species under pressure.

The years were to bring about dramatic change. Vested interests of planners and Government agencies fanned the wind of economic forces blowing from the south. A new housing estate built outside Castleton saw the precious arable of several crofts planted with eighty homes. Population was on the move, mostly from the industrial conurbations and fuelled by a property boom. Furniture vans from far a field struggled with single track roads whilst house prices soared out of reach of local pockets.

Strange names, different customs and manners, Iain and I noted the change, especially at the bar counter of the Castleton Hotel on a sale day. Due to complaints sheep had been barred from wandering through the village, cattle kept off the roads; we, along with the few crofters who’d stuck with it, provided photograph opportunities for passing tourists as we unloaded sheep from trailers at the local auction mart. After the auctioneer’s hammer fell to a dealers last nod and the livestock sold and loaded aboard the steamer, we stood at the counter enjoying a dram and admiring the cheque for a year’s work. As oilskin oddities smelling of sheep we were ignored by a congregation at one end of the bar, symbolic of two cultures drawing apart.

One escalating aspect of the crofting scene I had not considered, until an avalanche of brown envelopes and swarms of visiting inspectors became a regular feature. They arrived from the mainland, spent a pleasant night on expenses at the Castleton Hotel and by coffee time an expenses fuelled car would arrive at Ach na Mara. Many of the old timers packed up in disgust, and the islands livestock number fell in step with the increase in form filling. The big picture on the mainland was the rapid advance of factory farming, we still milked a house cow and Eilidh made butter; by contrast the consumers’ sugar pops enjoyed milk from the eight thousand head dairy herds of cloned indoor cattle. Price pressure from multinational operations and an avalanche of regulation- the family farmer’s role would soon be that of servant to a bureaucratic control. Sadly we faced the reality that our dash for freedom on Sandray had little chance of long term success. Remote as the island seemed to us, it could not hold out against the escalation of deleterious human activity.

In day to day life at Ach na Mara, Ella lacked her old vigour, she seemed happy to be sitting all day, when of old she would be up and busy. In evenings through in the room, young Eachan sat at her knee and listened to stories of her youth. A doctor was out of the question and any hint that she might be tired was brushed off with a flurry of activity. Beneath her cheerful self we knew she missed her own Eachan and although we had no TV maybe the news filtered through. The radio reports would leave her in no doubt we were headed into a world of which she wanted no part.

The following summer witnessed the building of pylons. The blades of one- legged giants captured the winds which swept hill and peatland on islands far to the north of Halasay. The same breezes which dried our hay became the energy to light an office and power the factory; a green disguise for the footprints of economic development. By the time I had the hayfields cleared and another winter’s feed safe in the barn, across the land which bordered Ach na Mara, loops of cable drooped between gangling steeples. Scenery made way for saving the planet, maybe a small price to pay in an attempt to defeat a two degree temperature rise and protect western consumerism.

Tallest of these
monuments to progress
was being erected on the south side of Halasay where the Sound of Sandray lay at its narrowest. From our kitchen window it towered above the horizon. “Atlantic gales will soon power the island, we left too soon,” Eilidh didn’t laugh, my cynicism wasn’t funny. Presently another gigantic structure built on Sandray became a feature of the skyline, legs akimbo, wide arms of steel struts, its massive cables conquered the Sound. Its feet straddled the headland, the Viking grave of Eachan’s resting lay ominously under concrete, so too the grave which he himself had covered those many years past beneath the walls of Tigh na Mara.

Ella viewed this scenic intrusion with considerable misgivings, perhaps with hidden fear. Its outline pierced the Hill of the Shroud and she would gaze from the window at the colossal triangle of girders and braces without speaking for long spells at a time. Each night when a dazzling brightness illuminated the hilltop it stood with arms outstretched, a skeleton cross against the faded starlight.

Not long after the pylon took over our southern view, we sat through in the room one evening as was our fashion. The boy had been told his bedtime story by Eilidh and I sat reading, to the click of knitting needles. Ella broke the quietness, her mind far from stitches, “I was with Eachan last night, on Sandray, just as we used to be.” I lifted my eyes from the page, Eilidh glanced at me. Ella’s words took us completely by surprise. She spoke with a dream like abstraction, “We talked and talked.” Her eyes were closed. Poor Ella, her heart had broken. “That steel statue was over us, over the stones, above everything, pointing at the sky,” she caught her breath, “and Eachan stood at the foot of that hideous cross, and looked up, ‘This will be the end,’ her voice broke down, “and he turned and stepped into a galley and sailed with the Raven,”

She looked down at her lap, “He gave me this golden disk,” and her knitting fell to the floor from empty hands.

There was no illness. On a night when the rain filled a solstice gale and the wild Atlantic beat its drum upon the shore, Ella died peacefully, her hands clasping the gift of her dream.

The headland that took her daughter had been her wish, beside the man whom she loved. It could not be. The community gathered, many joined by the bond of blood, and we laid her amidst the leaning crosses of her forebears, and the burying ground above the wide beaches at the edge of the Sound of Sandray looked to the island of their youth.

The people sang, but to me the psalm was in the voice of the sea, and the sky drew its lament from a cloud that darkened the sun.

For these were the unknown days.

“We understand that several years ago, Mr. MacKenzie you claimed salvage of an American registered yacht called ‘Valkyrie' and she's presently in your hands. Is that correct?” Two ordinary looking men stood at the croft house door, smart tweed jackets but unremarkable apart from the American accent and the nature of their query. “Come in, come in,” no stranger was ever left on the doorstep. “No thank kindly sir, we'd rather not,” replied the spokesman of the pair. I could see the other chap studying me. “If it's OK with you, we'd like to look over the boat.”

Last thing I wanted was any trouble over the yacht. Apart from sailing her round to the jetty here at Ach na Mara, I'd done no more than a little superficial maintenance. “By all means, whom I speaking to, please?” The spokesman passed me his card. I read first the name, Allan Cunningham, followed by a string of degrees, and then in complete disbelief, Chief Executive, Nuen, New York, USA.; a company I knew from research days in Geneva to be the biggest worldwide name in nuclear generation. The silent fellow chose not to reveal his particulars but I had an idea he was the reason behind whatever might be the purpose of the call.

During our walk to the jetty they both seemed markedly preoccupied, my bland comments went unheeded. I had heard sounds of a helicopter but the constant activity in connection with Sandray meant I'd paid little attention. However, crossing the dunes revealed their transport parked on the beach, they'd flown in. The executive chap hurried ahead to the chopper and rejoined us on the deck of the yacht carrying a small instrument, “Mind if we go below?”

I followed them down into the cabin and sat at the navigating table. A chart of the Indian Ocean remained spread out, just as Anderson had left it. I hadn't needed nor indeed cared to go below decks since bringing Valkyrie round to the Ach na Mara jetty. Graceful yacht though she was, many times I'd wished her elsewhere. Something about the boat, no more than a nagging unease, lacking any rational explanation. I'd passed it off as superstition rather than face the possibility that, lurking in subconscious memories, Anderson's corpse, throttled and gaping, haunted me.

The cabin smelt damp. Mould had grown over the bunks and bedding. The yacht listed slightly, the merest stir as an incoming tide crept around her keel. The air had the mustiness of decay. I shuddered. This yacht was cursed. She'd already led to a strangled corpse. My eye rested on the chart and a circle drawn around Diego Garcia, an American base, I knew the reports of alleged rendition of terror suspects. What else? Anderson's drunken threat and its menacing, ‘I have a job to do' was somewhere here.

The Nuen executive swept his monitor carefully across the bulkheads, the cabin sole, into the fo'c'sle. The gadget hovered over each surface, a sentient robot delighting in profound evil. It emitted a faint ticking. A louder click, click, I recognised the sound, my flesh prickled. The Chief Executive piped in a shrill voice, “I told you, now d'you believe me?” He held the sensor poised over a section of the fo'c'sle flooring. Totally ignoring me, two heads intent on reading the dial bumped together. The rate of ticking warned me, a high level of radiation, tick, tick, tick, the clicking of a dice which only fools throw.

I stood on the jetty in the midday light of early June, glad of sunshine. They offered no explanation and, a shade flustered, Nuen's man confronted me,” We've established that the owner of this yacht was a past chairman of my company, she will require to be returned to his dependents.” I almost laughed in his face, he might have thought up a more convincing excuse.

Privately relief was overwhelming, “By all means, today if you wish.” The silent man gave me a curious look. “Thanks for your help,” and with an easy style which hardly disguised a threat, he added, “Maybe you recall your experience when you found this yacht. You won't be recalling this visit to anyone, that sure would be an unhealthy memory.” They left abruptly.

I jumped aboard the Hilda and moved her clear of the Valkyrie. The pair walked smartly back to their helicopter unaware that voices carry over water. The Nuen Chief sounded to be almost pleading, “Believe me it was entirely Anderson's own arrangement, you saw the chart, Diego Garcia circled. I'd no part in it, no more part than I've had in any of J.G.'s schemes, I always follow his instructions, I'm only responsible for overseeing the handling of the material.” I heard the second man grunt, but didn't catch what he'd said as they climbed aboard. A sand cloud lifted from the dunes and the chopper headed towards Sandray. I repeated the initials aloud, “J.G.” and then slowly, “Joshua Goldberg.”

Screeching terns had divebombed me early that morning on my visit to check the boats. A shingle area along the beach from the jetty was the bird's communal nesting site and they returned each April to the scrape of pebbles amongst which they were born, the bay where they fished. More people now strolled the beach; holiday makers came with tents, teams of kayakers swarmed into the bay, all innocent folk not realising that for the birdlife it was home. Over the years the numbers of terns dwindled and on my daily visits I took care to avoid disturbing their pebble nest in which they laid three olive eggs.

As the racket of the helicopter died away, I walked home across a beach devoid of bird life. No sharp high pitched alarm cries, the bay was eerily silent. The helicopter had landed amidst the terns breeding site. I picked my way carefully over to the shingle. Several birds who'd sat their eggs to the last moment were pulp. Scattered about were the yellow splashes of smashed eggs where the parent bird had risen in panic. Here and there a few hatched chicks crouched in the pebble hollows as my shadow fell on them. Most fledglings had been blown about the stones to their death. Other chicks far from their nests lay panting, their newly feathered wings spread out in the heat. Hoping to catch sight of the parents return, I stood for a long time looking out to sea, and an empty horizon.