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21. To the Skirts of the Sea.
'My dad would be amazed at where we've been.'
'I thought I heard him call last night,' Roberta murmured.
'Do you suppose he expected you to walk this far?' Wiggy asked them.
'Well wait until he hears I've climbed the Pinnacle... He'll have such a surprise,' she answered quietly. The three of them continued down the hill towards the road. It was a beautiful morning : warmth and sunlight, but a welcome fresher breeze. And lower down, sporadic birdsong encroaching in the air around them.
'Do you miss your dad?' Wiggy enquired, a little further on. His knee was delaying him again on the downhill slopes, and the two children were keeping him company.
'Of course,' said Alasdair, after a cautious pause for thought. 'But the good thing is - not hearing them argue all the time...'
'The good thing for dad,' Roberta replied, 'is not hearing you argue all the time!'
'Me? I never argue!' His high-pitched boy's complaint. They carried on until they reached the others, who were waiting at the next bend of the burn. Andrew Douglas smiled cheerily as they arrived.
'I will keep Mr Wiggy company, if you kids want to go ahead with Harry.' They had taken it in turns. First of all Gordon had waited back, because without a map - Wiggy had lost two maps the previous day - they depended on Douglas to recall the trail. The large American had come this way, fifteen years before, and it was strange how the intervening years receded, and here he was again, somehow the same. Wiggy and Gordon followed him westwards over some hills from the cave, past a small lochan, until the Ardnish peninsula lay below them.
The teacher and friend had found, on the hillside, that they were conversing subconsciously again - the unspoken language of mood, imagination, feeling - each in sympathy and quietly attuned with the same reality : the natural world around them, their environment, and beyond it the presence of the wilder beauty they could only feel. Aligned to this over the days, the two men had grown close in understanding : a friendship formed without much fuss and bother.
Now, with the road in sight as they descended, Wiggy and the American lay back and watched as the teacher and his protégés set off once more, small figures striding and sliding down sunlit slopes. You could almost touch the silence.
'I had such a dream last night!' said Andrew Douglas in the end. 'About Prince Charlie... so vivid! It seemed so real!'
'I thought I heard you muttering.'
The two men had slept on the open hill and woken, dew-moist, to the early morning heather.
'I guess it's just a summer spell, weaving us in its fabric! If I'd awoken sooner, I swear I would have found myself back in 1746, with Charlie's friends on that desolate hillside, hiding in the diluted darkness before dawn. Perhaps it was the whisky?'
'We said that dreams open strange doors' said Wiggy earnestly, 'like gateways to another world...' His thoughts drifted to that place of peace...
'Ah! Dreams! Dreams! We seem to spend our lives chasing them,' the American sighed, with a smile. 'What do you reckon? Shall we catch up the kids?'
'Soon, soon,' said Wiggy, stretching.
Strange how tangibly dreams can touch you, Douglas thought. Opening up feelings that bring you alive. It had seemed so real : had left him feeling exalted, joyful. What strange inversion of reality! He shook his head and lumbered up.
As they neared the road, and railway line beyond, cutting between the wilderness and the sea, they gathered together by a large boulder. Gordon looked at the other men. As they watched, from the side of the rocks, below them an army convoy of twenty vehicles was winding its way towards Mallaig. They could hear the churning grumble of their engines.
The little group was faced with a problem. If Wiggy was right, and Murdo Macleod had a boat which could carry them over to Skye, then they needed to get to Arisaig. They needed to anyway : they'd run out of food. But the road to Arisaig was clearly unsafe.
'Are they redcoats?' asked Harry, checking his facts.
'I'm afraid they are,' his teacher replied. The cordon was tightening.
'We used to stay' - Douglas's deep, almost ponderous voice - 'at a nice little bothy on the edge of the ocean. Do you see over there?' He pointed beyond the intrusive railway line. 'That land beyond? It's the Ardnish peninsula.'
'And the bothy?' asked Gordon.
'Peanmeanach bothy. Gribbon and I had some good times there. One evening, Ledingham arrived with his accordion, and we got so drunk...'
They day-dreamed, moodily, in the summer breeze as the column of lorries passed out of sight.
'I suppose,' said Gordon, 'we could hole up there, while one of us went on to Murdo Macleod?'
'My thoughts exactly.'
'But it must be ten miles to Arisaig, and people may want to know what we're doing?'
'Just what we've done all along,' said Wiggy. 'Minding our own business.'
They tramped on through the cheerful gorse, and the mellifluous sounds and odours of the valley, toward the road that could so soon return them... to the towns and turmoil of that other world. But in their hearts they knew it wasn't over yet.
They hit the road where it emerged under a railway bridge, and it seemed peculiar to be standing there on tarmac, in a stillness and silence, broken only by insects and occasional birds. The sunlight on gorse seemed jaunty and gay.
It was a wild little road - the wilderness almost spilling across its surface - but it was no place to tarry. Any moment, an incursion of hostile authority could shatter the solitude of their carefree days. They quickly passed under the railway bridge, beginning to break into a run in their urgency, with one intent of leaving behind both road and rail, and losing themselves again in the country beyond.
But with sudden alarm, they discovered that they were not alone.
A hundred yards further along the road was a car, and behind it, a man... pushing. Perhaps it had broken down. He didn't seem to have spotted them yet.
They ran on through the heather, trying to find cover, but Wiggy kept on looking back and at length he stopped.
'We can't just leave him' he exclaimed with a sigh, expressing the lurking conscience of them all. 'It doesn't seem kind.'
They knew he was right. 'Come on then, kids' said Douglas with a grin. 'Let's go and see if we can give him a push!'
'Oh-ho!' said Gordon drily. 'What will be, will be...'
But halfway along the road, Andrew Douglas stopped short.
'Tarnation!' he groaned, putting hand upon head. 'I don't believe it... Wilskit!'
'You know him?' asked the teacher.
'Wilskit!' he shouted. The old man looked up and waved cheerily.
'Ach! It's yourself!' he laughed, as Andrew arrived.
'Why Wilskit, you old rogue! You owe me ten pounds sixty pence : you never paid up for the beer!'
'Did I not!' he whinnied. 'Are ye sure about that?'
He had the most wonderful shining eyes, both of them, and they sparkled in the warm sunlight. The two men grinned. The others approached, inspecting the rusted purple car, which had pieces of metal almost held in place with what looked like adhesive tape. Then they turned to the frail apparition before them : the itinerant side-burns, his tea-cosy hat, a grubby sweatshirt and unseasonal scarf; dangling like his leathery sun-tanned arms... and those eyes, veering obtusely, to left and to right, at the strangers ahead.
They were introduced... 'and this is Wiggy...'
Wilskit's eyes did a little dance, swerving, converging then looking away. 'I'll be jiggered!' he said, grasping hold of his arm. 'Well...' he exclaimed... 'It's a fine day to be out, is it not?' And he laughed, a quavering sad kind of cry in the stillness and emptiness of the lovely glen.
Behind him, the children were crossing their eyes, holding two fore-fingers ahead of their noses, then drawing them apart, trying to manage the trick. How did he do that? They grinned to each other.
He turned to Douglas. 'I'm thinking ye might just give me a push?'
'Maybe push this old scrap-heap right over a cliff?'
'Ach! ye'd no be wanting to treat her like that! She's got a good few years of life in her yet!' He patted the roof, and a hub-cap dropped off.
'Well come on, Wilskit. Are you sure that she'll start?'
'To be sure!' he beamed, and clambered inside. Two chickens which he had bought for his daughter got in a flap and bucked in the back.
They pushed slowly along the road, and under the bridge, occasionally looking up to see the colourful tea-cosy and the man's thin wrists gripping the wheel. 'Oh Danny Boy' he sang. The Volkswagen swung to the left and the right. Finally the car picked up a little speed as it neared the burn which they had descended. They pulled back and watched. A recurring squeak sounded down the quiet road, but apart from that there was silence, as the vehicle slowed to a dismal halt at the bottom.
'What now?' asked Alasdair, as they caught up with it.
Wilskit climbed out, quite untroubled, and smiled. He was holding a flask of tea, and unscrewed the top.
'Well...' he said, as he poured out a cup. 'Ye couldn't ask for a lovelier place for a break-down. Would ye care for a sangwich?' Wiggy, who seemed relaxed and calm himself, accepted at once. Wilskit passed him the flask. Gordon looked edgily up and down the road.
'Perhaps I could take a look at the engine?' he said to the man.
'Be my guest,' Liam answered. Reaching through the door, he continued 'I've a stick I use to prop up the lid.' He passed it to him. Gordon lifted the bonnet, at the rear of the car, and peered - horrified - at the makeshift chaos and rusted haphazard repairs spread out before his blinking eyes. He heard the others talk on in the sleepy sunshine, as he polished his glasses and started checking the engine.
'So I was going to pick up me wife at Loch Shiel' Wilskit recounted, leaning against the car. He sipped at his tea. 'At the monument to Bonnie Prince Charlie. Have ye been there?'
'I saw it the other day' Douglas replied.
'But a man comes runnin' up and says, ach, he says, are ye lookin' for your wife. She hitched a lift in a van and told me to tell you...'
He looked into his cup, with a sadness.
'Aye, but she gets a bit absent, that Alma... one of life's outsiders, I suppose ye could say...' he stared up at the men '... still I dare say they all felt like that, when the clans gathered there at Glenfinnan... life's outsiders brought together under one man's banner...'
'He raised his standard there,' said Alasdair, from across the stream with Roberta and Harry.
'And the Cameron men came over the hill' his sister recalled 'and the pibroch sounded.'
Wilskit whinnied. 'Jings!' he said. 'Who taught ye all that?'
Gordon was not listening. He had found a few tools in a carrier-bag and was sorting them out.
'But the view down the Loch,' Wilskit continued. 'Oh what a view ye get!' He grabbed Wiggy's fingers. 'D'ye know, ye can see that far down, I thought to meself, why Liam I thought, on a clear day ye might see right to heaven!' His eyes stared either side of Wiggy and twinkled sadly.Harry shouted out 'Redcoats' and they paused, as a car drove past towards Mallaig. Wiggy knelt down behind the Volkswagen to tie up a lace. Then he smiled at the man.
'Is there any more tea?' he enquired with a grin. Then engaging the Irishman further, he asked 'So what are you doing up here? On a holiday?'
'Well,' said Wilskit. 'It's me daughter's wedding. Her second marriage, ye understand? The first one didn't seem to work.' He sighed. 'Ah, they grow up so soon' - he glanced at Roberta - 'and Alma, I says, we must come and give her our support.' His eyes shone fondly. 'Well, you never stop loving them, do you?' He felt in his trouser pockets.
'Here!' he called to the children, pulling out a scrumpled bag of sweets. 'Would ye fancy a toffee?' They gathered around. He chuckled kindly.
'Never had a regret,' he said to the men, as the children ambled off again. 'Forty years of marriage and we never had the money we needed, but...' he grasped Wiggy... 'I still love her as I did from the start. She gets absent now and again, and it makes her upset but' - he had his arm round Wiggy's shoulder - 'de ye know the lines from the poet Yeats?' There was a moment's silence, as if he expected Wiggy to answer. ' "Did you see an old woman going down the path?" the man was asked - and he answered "I did not, but I saw a young girl, and she had the walk of a queen." '
His eyes sparkled and he had laughter like tears. He got out a dirty handkerchief and wiped his eyes, blew his nose : his wife, the same woman he had loved for so long, though time had stolen on. One person, one loveliness in the continuing present. And the glen was empty.
'As for you!' he laughed, his mood changing. He pointed at Andrew. 'You sold me a dummy with that plane, so you did! I've a good mind to ask for me money back!'
'It does not' answered Wilskit, and lifted out a battered plane. 'Ten times I have crashed it! It never starts up!'
Douglas glanced at Gordon, with his head buried somewhere beneath the bonnet, and then took his plane - or, Wilskit's plane - and told Harry to carry it up the rise in the ground above.
'Now let her go!' he shouted to the boy. In a moment, the aircraft was flying free, floating high, and they peered in the sunshine, and shared its release. As Douglas handed the controls to Wiggy, he thought of Caroline, and how he longed for her to fly free, to fly far, to be joyful... and yet... and yet... he heard her children behind him, as they squealed with delight and clambered down to join him. Each of them took it in turn with the plane, raising it, wheeling it, watching it soar. But when Wilskit was finally given the controls, things immediately suffered a turn for the worst...
'Bejabers!' he complained. 'Why will the thing no do what I say?' The plane was rolling this way and that.
'Press the stick right!'
The Irishman peered and saw several planes, a number of sticks. Now the plane was descending.
'Push the stick forward!'
Now the plane was diving.
'What d'ye mean, forward! We want it to go back...'
Diving towards them. 'Duck!' shouted Harry, and all of them dropped, except Wilskit himself. The plane almost grazed the top of his car, passing inches away from his tea-cosy hat, then careered directly up the bright glen road.
From under the bridge, a car approached. 'Press the stick forward!' Andrew shouted.
'Do ye no mean back?' 'Press the stick forward!' Douglas grabbed the controls. At the same time the car, about fifty yards off, took avoiding action and crashed off the road. The plane lifted high to the left and flew on.
Douglas and the children ran up in concern, though the car had in fact only slowed to a halt. There was evidently no impact or injury at all.
A woman wound down the window and in the background crooning Jacobite ballads filtered out from a tape in the car. Douglas peered in, the controls in his hand. She looked at him with incredulity, and he at her.
'You!' she gasped. 'You!' she repeated.
It was Mrs MacKelvie, Caroline's erstwhile landlady. Douglas remembered her previous car, on the beach at St Andrews, and braced himself for what was to come. He had been through it all before : the tedious torrent of invective, and resort to the law, from this one-woman impersonation of a police-state.
'You!' she exploded. 'You madman! You vandal! You reekin' pile o' shit!'
Douglas found himself helplessly grinning.
'Lady, if you'll listen : I just saved your car...'
'Is thart a farct? Wull, ye can tull thart tae the polis, acos thart's hwere ye're gae'in!'
'I realise you shouldn't be forced to swerve off the road...'
'Ye're tellin' me... but ye'll no get away wi' all this hassle. Ah dinnae ken hwy ye're no locked up. Ye're an effin vandal, ye dirrty Yank!'
'But look : no damage has been done...' he reasoned.
'No damage! Ah cuid hae ben kulled! No damage? Guid Gord, ye hufnae git a leg tae stund on... Ah think ut's tayribble... ebsolyutely tayribble...' He lifted up his arms in despair.
'It was simply an accident,' he remonstrated.
'Well ye'll no get away wi' it this time, laddie!'
Douglas handed the controls to Harry, because the plane was receding out of sight. The boy eyed this woman with profound suspicion, and scowled at her fiercely, with deep unease. 'Ye cannae blame it on someone ulse! Ah'll huf the law on ye! Ah'll huf ye arrested. Ah'll huf ye cherged wi' attumpted murrder!'
All this time, the Jacobite music played on, and her husband sat, catatonic, in the passenger seat : looking directly in front of him out of the window.
Gordon, meanwhile, raised himself up and wiped his oily hands on his shirt.
'That might do the trick,' he declared with a look of pleasure on his perspiring face.
Mrs MacKelvie reversed and drove off, promising dark deeds of appalling revenge and, as she passed Gordon, she leaned out and yelled 'Ye're in ferrit tooo! Ye're as bad as the rest! That bastard! That madman...' the words drifted away, and the glen soon returned to its stillness and peace.
Wiggy had been seated, throughout this tirade, behind Wilskit's car with the flask of warm tea. 'Oh dear,' said Gordon. 'I guess you can't please all of the people all of the time.'
'Rather an interesting flavour, this sandwich,' sniffed Wiggy by the roadside in his dusty kilt. 'I wonder what fillings he put in this one?'
The others regathered around them, Douglas looking morosely over at Wilskit and his corroding car. The Irishman, oblivious to it all, was trying the controls out once again.
'I think I'm getting the hang of it now,' he said with a sideways glance towards Douglas. There was just the hint of a furtive humour.
In the end Roberta and Wilskit, together, landed the plane in safety nearby.
'So have ye found the treasure?' he asked shortly after, recalling the American's words in the bar. Harry showed him the coin and Alasdair answered.
'We've searched among boulders; we've searched in a cave; now we're here; goodness knows where it's all leading us...'
'Out to the islands next!' said Roberta.
'But first,' muttered Douglas, 'we need to get to Arisaig. Say, Wilskit, if we get this jalopy going, would you give us a lift?'
'You mean seven of us!' He stroked his sideburns. 'It will be a tight squeeze... but I reckon we could...'
'No, no - but say two of us. Harry and me. He's a resourceful lad, and between us I figure we could conjure up Murdo and get some supplies.'
'Then let's be seeing if the old girl goes!' Wilskit got in and turned the ignition, but nothing happened. Gordon looked worried. Then the old man thumped the dashboard - 'Some of the wiring's a wee bit loose' he explained - and the engine was suddenly turning over with ease. The teacher laughed from sheer relief.
'What did ye do?' the Irishman asked.
'I'm blowed if I know!' came Gordon's reply.
Wilskit jumped out, as they gathered their packs, and Wiggy gave Douglas some final directions.
'Murdo Macleod! Murdo Macleod! Say, it's for someone who gave him a tow...'
Then Harry, half-dazed, climbed into the back, eyeing the chickens with the greatest mistrust, and Douglas got cautiously into his seat.
'Well,' said Wilskit to the other children, 'I hope we meet again one day.' Then he turned towards Wiggy.
'Midge-bites' he said, with a pointed finger. 'Will ye look at your legs! You'll find the best cure is Homoeopathy... Oh yes - I believe in all that sort of thing...'
The car-engine was turning and they were ready to move. He clasped Wiggy's hand and said cheerfully, 'God bless you! God bless you, Sir!' and laughed freely and kindly. 'Now let's see if we go...'
Gordon watched, and the others waved, shouting 'Good luck!' as Wilskit tooted the horn and the old car wandered down the narrow road, weaving and lurching, squeaking repeatedly from one of the axles, growing smaller and smaller beneath the mountains, until they were alone.
The journey with Wilskit was hair-raising, particularly as neither of his eyes seemed to be on the road, and as he was constantly looking around at the scenery. Several times, Douglas had to restrain himself severely, to resist the temptation to seize the wheel.
But nothing could detract from the bright loveliness of the day. Harry, for his part, had embraced the feeling that he was now on a secret mission of high drama. He felt alert and grimly resolved not to let the others down. On several occasions along the road, Wilskit invoked the Lady again : perhaps, thought Douglas, she would kindly ensure their preservation 'til they safely arrived. And as the old man was driving along, he recalled again his visions and visitations, enthusing gently and light-heartedly.
'I was at a prayer-meeting one evening,' he recollected, 'and someone had just been speaking in tongues. When I saw this vision before me, taken out of meself, of an overflowing cup. Well! I thought. Inside it was wine that welled up from nowhere. Though it poured from the top, yet it never went down. Jings, what a marvellous thing to behold. Then, from across the room, I hears a person repeating 'My cup overflows, my cup overflows.' Call it telepathy, if ye like...'
Douglas listened with an open mind. They swerved past a wether on the fringe of the road.
'The thing that impressed me so strongly, was this : was the physical presence of the things that I saw. It was not like a picture or a screen, do you know, but something so real I could touch with me hands, if only I'd been more substantial meself. The wine - such a perfect red wine - well it seemed... almost alive, almost violent with life... so powerfully foaming' he shook his frail head 'and it had a strange quality that made me believe no other wine tasted so real by compare. It seemed far more real than anything else I had ever known in me life before.'
He laughed and he smiled... 'Aye, and that was me first vision,' he nodded fondly.
'You've had others?' Douglas asked with some growing interest.
'Not just visions,' he answered, eyebrows raised. 'I awake one mornin' to a rushing wind. Would ye believe it? There was I in me bed, with the windows all closed, yet this wind it was blowing from somewhere below me. Upwards I sat. At first it was just like a gentle wee breeze, but it grew, and grew stronger, 'til it rushed with a quite unbelievable force, with more power than one of those rockets that go to the stars... Well! But the main thing was this...' He wiped his eye. 'You felt you could touch it, as if it was somehow a physical wind, and made out of matter... and then yet again, there was something else still, beyond feel, beyond touch... as if the wind roaring past was all love like a person, and I could not move for its force and its rushing, yet it seemed to me then - and I always recall it - like a gentle embrace, or like being wrapped up in a wondrous enfold : so real, aye substantial, I could never deny it. It jist came out o' nowhere and went back there again. I fell down on me bed when it stopped, and the room seemed flat and less real than before.'
He gazed at the mountains around him and smiled sadly. A chicken in the back grew restless and fretful. 'Settle down now ' said Wilskit.
Harry eyed him unsurely, but with cautious respect, and the car veered this way and that in the gorgeous sunshine, along the narrow meandering road.
His body seemed frail, strands of loose hair hanging down from his hat, his arms so thin and worn away. He appeared to shiver a little and clasp at his scarf : yet his human warmth and passionate feeling sparkled in bright disaffiliated eyes. 'Now I'll tell ye about a dream I once had, of the Kingdom of Heaven and the ancient land of rest. Oooh!' he whinnied. 'The beautiful country! That's where we're headin. Soon enough, soon enough. The beautiful land!'
Douglas found himself being drawn into the hope, involved and engaged, though a residual pragmatic awareness of the highway code made him wish they would not arrive at its borders too soon.
And Wilskit talked on.
On the outskirts of Arisaig, they were flagged down at a roadblock, and some bored soldiers asked them dull questions. They could make neither head nor tale of Wilskit, whose buoyant cheerfulness disarmed them all. When he started talking about the wedding presents he was giving his daughter, they waved him through in desperation. He turned to the American.
'Sure, and I usually find that being irrelevant works far better than being irreverent...' He drove on blithely. Douglas stared.
They pulled up in the Highland village, a yard or two from the kerb perhaps, but at least they'd arrived which was almost a miracle in itself. Now that it was time for them to depart, Wilskit seemed to grow dreamy and vague. He started talking about his flying career which, as he put it, just never took off.
'Listen' he muttered, as they stood by the car. 'Take the plane with ye. It's no use to me. I'm a blessed liability wi' it, so I am.' He pulled it out and gave it back to Douglas. There were tears in his eyes.
'Ach well,' he said, their two hands clasped. 'Ah hope ye find what ye're lookin' for; sure, ah hope ye find what ye're lookin' for.' Eyes all a-squint, but direct to the heart.
'Thanks for the lift,' Andrew replied. 'It was nice bumping into you again.' Wilskit betrayed the glimmer of awareness. He suppressed a wee smile.
'The Lord keep ye, and hold ye' he said and walked away. Harry looked on, and watched him wander off, incongruous, human, through the Highland village. Standing, as they were, in 'the big city' after days in the wild, the presence of soldiers and noises around seemed, somehow, clamorous and out of key. Yet, in truth, it was not the metropolis.
It was Sunday, and the village was settled and quiet. Harry was sent off to look for a shop, with a list of items for later collection. Andrew Douglas then made his way to the boats. The high-tide was gently lap-lap-lapping against the jetty, and the smell of the sea was, once again, familiar. Breathing in the air, listening to the waves, he seemed to be crossing to another expression, a different one, of the slow deep rhythm he sensed in the hills. He found an old man, half-asleep on the wall : cap on his head, with a jacket that smelt. Perhaps he was dozing after a Sunday drink, or in a dream. Beside the small man, and crouched at his feet, was a pretty sheep-dog resting placidly. At length the man dropped down a hand, and gently stroked its slender neck.
'It's a fine, calm day' said Andrew Douglas.
'Aye, though I think the sun is gaein in.'
'My name's Douglas. I'm a visitor here.'
He knocked back his cap, and his face crinkled and looked somehow younger as it broke in a smile. 'And I'm Iain Mackinnon. Well - welcome tae Arisaig.' The dog whined and yawned, then placed its head in its paws.
'I'm looking for someone,' Andrew Douglas continued, 'called Murdo Macleod. Does he live around here?'
The old man chuckled. 'Aye, I ken Murdo : he's a guid man. Done me a favour many a time.' Then, after a silence like a quiet repose - 'Ah kin tak' ye tae him, right enough.'
So they set off at a stroll round the edge of the village. 'Mind, he lives ootside o' the toon.'
As they walked, Mackinnon was happy to talk. 'Ye look as if ye've been up in they hills?'
'Oh yes' said Andrew. 'Have you done much that way?'
'Well noo, ah've been up Nevis, dae ye ken?'
'Was there much snow?'
'Ach no! It was July!'
'Ben Nevis in the winter is a different matter.'
The little man bent, and picked up a cigarette end. He re-lit it as they walked along.
'So hwit like hae ye ben daein, mo bhalach?'
Douglas slapped him across the back. 'Searchin' for gold, Iain. Hunting for the treasure of Bonnie Prince Charlie.'
Mackinnon's eyes instantly lit up, enlivened. 'Charlie! I could tell ye a story or two!' He stopped and looked longingly out to the sea. 'My ancestor, John Mackinnon, he lived by Elgol on the Isle of Skye. Murdo and I are both Skye-folk, ye ken. Well, the Prince on his travels arrived at the hoose, and John entertained him and made sure he was safe. It was my kinsman who rowed him o'er here tae the mainland.'
He leant close and whispered. 'They had some adventures in a boat, I'll tell ye, and my kinsman - he carried out business for the Prince.'
'I seem to recall reading about him in the book by Bishop Forbes.'
Mackinnon shook his head. 'Ah dinnae ken the bishop, mind, but ah know in return, John an' the Chief o' Mackinnon were entrusted wi' a secret. So the story goes, as ma faither tellt it back tae me.'
'And when Charlie left them?'
'Och, they were arrested. But tae their honour, they never betrayed the Prince.'
The old man stopped and pointed along the road. 'Noo, if ye keep tae this track, and walk aboot half a mile, ye'll come tae Murdo's at the end o' the lane. Walk aye further an' ye'll be in the sea.'
Douglas waved farewell, and the strange wee man watched him for many minutes as he headed out of town : a strange little margin-dweller, relic of Charlie, part of the discarded flotsam of the old way of life. The American was glad to be wandering out. Already he longed for the silence and space.
Meanwhile, Harry took the opportunity to explore : nosing about, looking at himself in a shop window, walking past newspaper stands which were headlined : 'Parliament Recalled'. He eyed passing redcoats with overt suspicion and they, in turn, scowled back at him. Eventually he delivered his instructions to a perplexed shop-keeper, who he managed to arouse from a Sunday reverie. When he offered to pay for the goods with his single golden coin, produced with theatrical flourish from his trousers, he was told in no uncertain terms it was worthless; so he promised one of Andrew's credit cards instead, negotiated an ice-lolly, and sidled outside. Rounding a corner, he saw Wilskit again, with a group of police who seemed bothered and fussed. The place seemed hot with them, everywhere he looked : Wilskit in the midst of them, denying any knowledge or crime.
'Let me ask you again : have you seen the man?'
'No, not at all. Why should I have?' He laughed at the thought.
'You won't deny you're Irish though?'
'Ach! I'll not deny that. I come from the north of the island. Have ye been there yerself?'
'Never mind that, old man.'
'Oh you must.' Wilskit grabbed the policeman's arm. 'My, but it's such a beautiful country.'
They seemed to grow tired. 'Ach, Ferguson, he knows nothing...'
'Bejabers - then would ye let me pass?'
Just as they were about to let him go, however, Mrs MacKelvie appeared round the bend. 'Him!' she shouted. 'Guid Gord, arrest him!'
Harry slunk away, eyeing her warily : he didn't trust that one. She was a bad 'un, he thought, and sloped off prudently in search of Douglas.
The American stood on the edge of the western sea, beyond the village, on the outskirts of everything, staring at a little unkempt cottage that tumbled virtually onto the beach : nets, creels, sea-weed, all washed up against weathered walls, the smell of salt... in a tangle of flotsam; a ramshackle home for the margin-dwellers, that seemed to merge with the high-tide waters. And beyond, in the shadows, by the ropes, and along the shore : the spirit of the sea, its slow and gradual rhythm and lilt, and come and go. There were no door-bells, so Douglas knocked and waited in a long, protracted silence. Looking around him, the shore itself seemed to tilt and rock like a boat... the dreaming motion of the water, sway of the sea-breeze, and wheel of the gull. He felt borne away. At length his attention was recalled by the sound of the latch, and the shrivelled face of a woman frowning through a chink in the door.
'Yes?'
'I was wondering. Does Murdo Macleod live here?' he asked in his calm American drawl.
'What d'ye want?' she demanded. Andrew smiled to himself at her effusive welcome.
'I'm looking for the use of a boat,' he explained.
'No, no. He disnae dae tourist trips any more.' She was going to close the door, at once, put off by the American's accent.
'Lady - it's not for a tourist...'
'Who is it?' a voice from another room.
'The answer's no, I told you.' She was closing the door.
'Who's there?' the voice approaching, cursing, grumbling to himself, and incoherent.
'I have a message for Murdo Macleod...'
The door swung open and a strong but aging man, clutching a bottle, leaned on the door-frame. Douglas looked at him : his face was weathered like his own, cheeks ruddy, hair as white as salt, in a windswept shock. 'What are ye wantin'?' he asked, inspecting the visitor, without hostility.
'Ah've tellt him already, tae gae awa'...' his mean-spirited wife complained.
'Will ye no quit yammering, Jeannie, and let the man speak?'
'Murdo Macleod? I've come to find you. I need the use of a boat.' He smiled.
The man from Skye looked at his bottle of whisky. It was almost empty. 'Nah, nah. We dinnae dae trips, nae more. The boat, ye ken? She's getting on...'
'It's for a man who gave you a tow. He said he needed some help himself.'
Murdo screwed his forehead in a frown, trying to push aside his whisky slumbers, and understand what he'd been told.
'He's in no state tae help himself, leave alone some ither. Have ye no' got eyes?'
'Will ye be quiet, woman!' He shook his bottle at the small and wizened wife. Then turning to Douglas. 'I dinnae dae the trips no longer, ye understand...'
The American produced the watch and held it, dangling there, before his eyes.
'He said you might remember this?'
The old man caught his breath and stared. He wiped his eye and stroked his chin, then set aside his bottle. Taking the watch, he opened it. Then all at once, a sea-change seemed to steal across him, like recollection of another world, and when he looked up, he seemed distant, fey. He watched a gull slice across the silent strand beyond.
'Ach! So it's himself.' He cleared his throat.
The air smelt fresh and salt, and the ocean called. 'Well I'll be buggered!' he said. 'He needs a boat, ye say?'
'He needs a friend, Murdo.'
'What's this aboot?' his wife complained.
'Well I'll be buggered! Aye, and I owe him one indeed...' His eyes shone, boyishly. 'Will ye come in?' he said, beckoning with his arm. 'Come in. Come in.'
When Andrew had set forth his proposition, over a dram or two, the other man fast sobered up, as if he had recalled himself, and his better nature. Murdo's loyalty was re-awakened, and he sensed flight and adventure once more; seemed glad at the thought of returning again to the edge of life and the days of youth.
His wife Jeannie, however, was contemptuous. 'Are ye oot ae yer heid?' she protested. 'D'ye ken hwat ye're daein'?'
'I ken fine, woman.'
'It's the whusky. It's sozzled your brains. Would ye ruin us all?' He had gone to the kitchen and she followed him there.
'There's a million poond that cuid be oors!' she whispered, shaking him. 'A million poond!'
'Are ye thinking I'll betray the man? Och woman, what price is friendship? What's money?' She looked around at her tiny kitchen and its crammed chattels. But he returned to Andrew Douglas.
'If ye come wi' me, I'll be showing ye the boat...'
'Ye're a fool, I tell ye!' yelled Jeannie Macleod.
Murdo lurched to the shelf by the fire and took the lid off a dusty pot. He brandished one hundred pounds in notes and shook them in front of his wife. 'Here woman!' he shouted. 'Go out and get pissed!'
Then he made for the door. 'Come, I'll show ye the boat...'
His wife inspected the money : her lips curled in scorn. Then she shut herself up.
Outside, beneath a greying sky, Andrew Douglas encountered Harry who had found his own way to Macleod's cottage.
The skipper laughed. 'So ye're going to Skye, young fella?'
Harry looked up in awe at the old sea-captain : his face set hard on the outside and weathered by equinoctial gales, but his heart still young and personal. They collected the provisions, and checked last details.
'I need to make a phone-call.'
'Ye can use the ship's radio, mo bhalach.'
Then later, when all was ready, and the engine turning, Mackinnon stood by.
'Cast off,' cried Murdo.
'Aye, aye, skipper' he replied, and the storm-scarred boat pulled gradually away. Mackinnon waved from the land, but the ship was in motion, and as Andrew and Harry stood together, already they were entering another element : the Highland village slipping away, the deeper churn of the engines, and the convoluted swell of the rolling waters. Murdo Macleod seemed in touch with it all : no longer washed up on the stranded beach, but attuned in relationship, part of the motion; the wind in his hair, and the land at his back. He stared at the sky and the boundless waters, and felt their deep presence : it was part of his being.
'What's the weather doing?' shouted Douglas.
'They said it's due to break today, but I'm thinking they may have got it wrong.' He looked across the waves instinctively. 'Tell the laddie he can take the wheel, if he'd like to try and steer the boat...'
'Thank you. Do you think I could make that phone-call now - to set a mother's mind at rest?'
'Och, well I've got a problem at the moment!' he shouted over the din of the engines. 'You see, I'm receiving but I'm no transmitting. I'll see if I can fix it when we anchor in the evening.'
Andrew nodded, and went to fetch the boy. The M.V.Isle of Eriskay skirted rocky islands, and Murdo thread a way through the narrow channels that led to the open sea.
'Well I'll be buggered!' he whispered to himself again, trying to shrug off all those half-lived whisky-slumbered years, and recall himself, recall the high dreams and laughter of long ago.
At the door of Peanmeanach Bothy, Gordon and Wiggy awaited their arrival, with no means of knowing if they'd arrive at all. The afternoon had turned to early evening and they watched Roberta and Alasdair down on the grey shore as the tide drew out. Along the coast, the eternal breaking of waves, scarce-changing, a rhythm : the tiny children, playing on the beach, seemed on the edge of another world, with its own images, legends, feelings... and the vast Atlantic beyond. Wiggy could see the scattered ruins of forsaken shielings, and it had a strange sense of place and lurking : this little bothy by the sea. So much seemed stolen, so much seemed lost.
'Oh, all these lands were emptied by the clearances,' Gordon murmured, 'when the Macdonald chiefs sold out. About the only man who left without dishonour was Glenaladale. When the lands were cleared, he went with his clansmen into exile in North America.'
The whole place echoed with parting, and departing. As the evening grew greyer and cooler, the emptiness and the desolate smell of blabberwrack, the sad cry of the gull, made the playing children seem - almost - tenuous along the narrow skirts and margin of the sea. There was a sense of loss and spoil, evoked by the fleeting presence of children, of childhood... Who had played before on this lonely beach? And where had they gone? Where had they all disappeared? 'Will ye no come back again?' Hughie had sung. But the return of childhood, the return of a younger world? No, they had crossed over the waters and gone... with sad farewells along the western shore. The evening had its own serenity, though grown quite sullen : the two men watching from a distance the beauty and intensity of the children. Observing the young inheritors on the beach, dancing, squealing and running; the past, the present, the future, all held in the eternal rock and swell of the sea; Roberta and her brother quite oblivious, small figures along the lonely shore - tiny by the great ocean - disappearing and reappearing among the rocks and stones.
It was lovely to see them just 'being children', crying 'Come and see, come and see' to each other. Wiggy looked on... and listened to their distant screams and laughter... with a private sadness of his own. They seemed so precious, so worthy of protection. All over the globe, massive cerebral structures, materialistic labyrinths, exploited people, exploited the world... while here, the fragile hope of grace...children on the sea-shore... the inheritors of all their futures, inheritors of all their past, inheritors of the ancient-dwellers by the sea who knew more harmony. The waves broke rhythmically on the shoals and, beyond : the deeper presence of the ocean's hush. Once more, he felt some visiting vibration rising from the deeps, returning to the deeps. The same low-murmuring present and still being, but a different resonance by the age-old sea.
'You've done well,' said Wiggy suddenly, turning to the teacher. 'They're fortunate children. I can sense they'll grow up with a love of History. You've given them that.' Gordon looked aside and blushed like a girl.
'With History, you have to engage the heart, as well as the head. They need to feel the living, not just recite the dead. The worst education is entirely rational. You have to get involvement and immersion.'
Wiggy nodded and agreed.
'So it's like art, really. It is the capacity to be immersed in the subconscious, and to raise one's consciousness up again.'
'Perhaps.'
'That's why I feel that Shakespeare should be taught : because familiarity with great works of art help us to identify in other artists where the same process of creation is starting to occur. It's not just cerebral : it's going under, being immersed...'
'Well that's how I view education. We're trained to convey objective certainties. But certainty, I fear, is the illusion.' Gordon winced sceptically. 'It is made out of a thousand uncertainties...'
The children were calling to the wind, not noticing the cold being borne inshore on the blown spray. It was growing dark : quite chill and blustery over the bleak coast. On an impulse, Wiggy ran out to play with them, to be immersed, to be with them. Gordon, who was used to being alone, heard their sounds of laughter; watched him giving Roberta a piggy-back on the beach, with Alasdair chasing them. He smiled a perplexed smile to himself.
At dusk, and low-tide, the M.V.Isle of Eriskay came round the headland from the Loch of the Cave and hove miraculously into sight. They were elated. Soon they could see its lights winking, where it had cast anchor off a nearby island, and watched as a dinghy approached in the greyness. Murdo had chosen to stay on board, and sleep things off, but they were greeted by Andrew's smiling face and Harry's familiar look of surprise. He was wearing the skipper's hat on his head. They brought much-awaited food and drink; and their share of news. Harry, his eyes aflame and feeling an integral part of a clandestine mission, announced the times and the arrangements.
'He says, can they wait 'til tomorrow afternoon?'
Andrew Douglas expanded the point.
'He's got some creels to put down in Loch nan Uamh.'
'It's a brilliant boat!' Harry exclaimed.
Douglas raised his eyebrows.
'So it's a lie-in tomorrow?' checked Wiggy.
'Yesss!' Roberta refrained.
They could wait : the pace of life slowed up now, to the quiet rhythm and wash of the sea, and the turning tides. Though, as Harry added, the whole place was crawling with redcoat soldiers.
Gordon and the children took him along the beach, while Andrew Douglas and Wiggy talked at the bothy door, as the last of the light lapped away; the dark encroaching from within the recesses behind them.
'This brings back memories,' said Douglas, tapping the lintel.
'Of course, you've been here before, haven't you?'
'It was a long time.' He inspected the stonework. 'They re-built this cottage from ruins,' he added.
'Really?'
'Geoff Shaw. He was the leader of Strathclyde Council. He used to bring up children from the Gorbals.'
'That man?' said Wiggy. 'I remember him. He was respected by all quarters of community. An honest politician, if you believe in such a thing. He brought the children here, you say?'
'He believed in re-building society through little unseen acts of human love.' The strong voice of Douglas in the growing darkness.
'Re-building the ruins, eh?' murmured Wiggy. 'And the restoration of the human heart. This country needs people like him. Community is based, not on money, but on individuals giving themselves... the intangible fabric of community is built around people who get involved.' He gazed across at the empty de-populated glen. Then they went inside to prepare a meal.
Down on the beach, Roberta had broken away from the others, and lapsed out in the dying light. She rested still, and felt the sand on the boulder-tops, and the constant hush and roar of the coast. Gazing over the summer seas, she could almost hear the beckoning song of the Hebrides : legends begun before Ossian's time, echoing on waves and borne on the spray. She was in the mood for flights of romantic imagination, recalling lost dreams of passion and delight.
'It is dark and cool, and I lie on the rocks and wait for his words at a dropping pool. Chilly spray, lonely wilds, he's Lord of the Isles!' She was far away and felt it all.
Gordon came up in the half-light and smiled. 'On one of your romantic adventures, Roberta?'
'I was. But somehow you've broken the spell! Why are teachers so unromantic?'
'Come, come now. That's a sweeping statement. Take Charlie : when he was almost trapped in the outer isles it was a teacher, Neil MacEachain, who came to his rescue.' He grinned at her. 'I always rather like that bit.'
'Imagine yourself as him, do you sir?'
'Imagine yourself as Flora, at all?'
'Maybe.'
'Well, apart from the boatmen, it was only Flora and the teacher with Charlie when they rowed through a mist to the Isle of Skye. They landed to find the redcoats all around, but he evaded them, and eventually he skirted the Cuillins and reached the Mackinnons at Elgol.'
'Will we pass Elgol on our way to the Cuillin?'
'I believe we will.'
'What happened to MacEachain in the end?'
'He escaped to France, and his son became a Duke in Napoleon's army.'
'And Flora?'
'Oh, she ended up having ten children and died in 1790.'
Roberta looked appalled. 'Men!'
Gordon felt fondly disparaged, and drifted away down the shore by himself.
But tomorrow, they too would embark for Skye, head for a land in the blue beyond. 'Come away, come away' she felt the ocean whisper, and she returned once more to her wild-eve dreams. Her sensitivity to lurking memories was softly aroused by the turning tide : and those memories broke upon her, upon her transitory presence along the shore. Glenaladale and his heart of hope, his heart of youthful love and joy. 'Ah! By the flowing river, where the quiet waters meet with the grey waves of the ocean, and the tides of the centuries ebb and roll, there I wait for you, my love. There I wait for you to return once more.' A bird called out in the night-time stillness across the bay. She could see a candle-light shining in the darkness from a tiny window in the secluded bothy. And the soft shush of the tide, the cry of a gull, the fullest solitude. The coolness made them stir at length, and they each turned to go back to the cottage. Entering in, Andrew's kind and rugged face, accentuated by the candle, greeted them.
'We've got some supper ready,' he said. 'Mr Wiggy made most of it.'
'Oh no!' they chorused.
'Please Mr Gordon,' whimpered Roberta. 'Let me have a school dinner instead.' Wiggy scowled at her in delight.
She asked for seconds nevertheless and all of them ate voraciously in silent pleasure and deep content.
And after, when the rest had gone back down to the beach, Harry and Wiggy intending to swim, the other two men in conversation, Alasdair and his sister played games of pocket chess, then lying back in their sleeping-bags, watched the dying candle cast deep shadows everywhere. It was almost dark.
'Do you remember when we were little, and dad and mum took us out in the boat...?'
'Yes!' laughed Roberta. 'We were always going to Skye one day!'
'Well now we shall, with Murdo...'
'I'd rather go with dad...' she paused. 'I wonder if he's got my card from the Nudies...'
'Delivered by a nude postman, and a stamp with a nude queen on the front, and...'
'Whoops,' said Roberta.
Wiggy and Harry came in from their swim, naked except for the towels round their waists. 'That was a brilliant swim,' declared Harry. 'You ought to have come.'
'Fantastic!' said Wiggy. 'And did you enjoy that?'
'Mega!' he answered. 'Talk about cold...'
'It was certainly breathtaking' Wiggy agreed. 'Quite literally... breathtaking...' He was refreshed and felt wholly at one with himself.
He reached for the Aberlour on the shelf, and gulped the fierce spirit, the molten, golden water of life, 'til it seared his throat, and his stomach felt warm and on fire. 'Aaah!' he exclaimed, and they started to dry, rubbing themselves with their towels in the shade : unselfconscious and naked and quite unashamed. Roberta watched him, receptive, reflective : his limbs and his presence in the dark golden glow. She followed them both, and their flickering outlines, as they moved in the darkness in silence and calm. Their thighs and their bodies seemed almost unreal in the deep shadow of reclusive candlelight... seemed somehow separate and otherworldly : yet beautiful, natural, accepted as such.
Wiggy felt happy and joyful inside, released from restraint and set free for himself.
Later, much later, when the others had returned and talked and settled and fallen asleep, he stood by the door. The light in the bay winked over the waters. An oyster-catcher called out in the night. The salt-breeze touched his cheek with cool. Behind him he heard the comforting sound of children asleep - how he missed that sound - and Douglas gently snoring at rest.
He blew out the candle. He felt he belonged.
* * *
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