Boswell's Bus Pass (18 page)

‘… and then we mounted up to the top of Duncaan, where we sat down, ate cold mutton and bread and cheese and drank brandy and punch. Then we had a Highland song from Malcolm; then we danced a reel …’ Boswell’s shell shocked companions may have been the same retainers who were bribed to mime to the tape of Gaelic stomping songs when the visitors first arrived. As tour guides their behaviour was exemplary; if in doubt tout the tartan, flog the plaid, bring out the shortbread and if all else fails, stick an arm in the air, hop on one leg and dance with the client irrespective of gender.

The Victorian Birkbeck Hill, struggling to justify this unseemly outburst of male dancing, sought refuge in a quote from a
contemporary
traveller. Edward Topham declared that ‘In most countries the men have a partiality for dancing with a woman: but here I have frequently seen four gentlemen perform one of these reels seemingly with the same pleasure as if they had the most sprightly girl for a partner. They give you the idea that they could with equal glee cast off round a joint-stool or set to a corner cupboard.’

David and I peered into the mist but failing to locate either a
joint-stool
or a corner cupboard settled for each other and shared a manly reel. The gulp of brandy on an empty and dehydrated stomach was massively welcome but equally unwise. David led me gently back from the precipitous edge to the safe path we had climbed earlier. I felt the self-righteous disappointment of a failed lemming.

It was the first time I had used a mountain bike to bike down a mountain. The photographer would have captured two black figures in a sedate, slow motion 45 degree descent silhouetted against the reddening sky. We could have been Home Guard cyclists in a Hovis advertisement. The inner projector screened a different show.
Vegetation
, hidden trunks, rocks, stones and black bog rushed towards me. There was no consciousness but this. Initially the thin frame interceded as a thousand small bargains were struck with gravity, probability and foolhardiness. A constant compulsive, wheedling monologue; accelerate, take the risk, ride hard into it … I told you so, you didn’t listen. The front wheel stuck fast, concreted into a plinth while the back end rose and threatened to toss me arse over tip. There followed a short reconciliation based on the promise to learn. Trust the bike, trust the bike. The mantra instantly neutralised by the
punitive whelp of pain as leg muscle scraped against rock. Go again. Go again. The gouts of adrenalin no longer masking the peaks of fear and cowardice on the tacograph. A final tumble, sitting up, heart thumping with a close up view of a wire fence and a wood beyond. Finally an endorphin-driven sense of total stillness and an enhanced sense of each pale lichened tree.

God only knew where David had got to. He was probably stuck up to his neck in a bog somewhere. Not to worry.

Once back on tarmac I freewheeled at ridiculous speed towards the Raasay Hotel pursued not only by Lance Armstrong but also Graeme Obree, Bernard Hinault, Eddie Merckx and that cartoon character from
Bellville Rendez-vous
David was more cautious but only because he had frequently dropped out of the sky on the end of a parachute and had seen some horrible things on oil rigs. Indeed he once had a particularly nasty experience with a second year class in a Fife school that he still won’t talk about.

On the descent I tried to be mindful of every physical sensation, bottling it so that I could uncork the experience at a future time when unable to sleep. I would scour the insomniac’s library for the video marked
Fast Cycle Ride
hopeful that it would distract demons and sooth unwanted worry.

Boswell recorded ‘the plenty and elegance, beauty and gaiety, the song and the dance’ that characterised their four nights on the island. That was nothing compared to the potent ambrosial impact of our first pint in the hotel. As we eat our fish and chips the barman kept offering additional unsolicited dishes: another bucket of chips, a blue cheese salad, a cow pie, savoury dips, curry. The kitchen was closing and the chef saw us as an acceptable alternative to the waste bin. Happy to oblige we stuffed ourselves: Gargantua and Pantagruel, Falstaff and Billy Bunter, before offering the leftovers to our fellow drinkers all of whom made odd feinting movements when they picked at the dishes to avoid being disemboweled by the snooker cues lancing all available space.

We endured a final unsteady uphill ride to the youth hostel where we were welcomed by a delightful couple in their seventies who worked as summer volunteers for the SYHA. They ministered to our modest needs while helping a party of French students cope with the complexity of Monopoly. I felt I had parents again. We shared the bunkhouse with the couple’s 16 year old grandson who had
apparently
decided to emerge from his chrysalis bed in the top right hand corner only when his adolescence had passed. In two years time he will burst through the wooden roof and soar – arms outstretched and now a properly formed well-mannered young man – towards the mainland.

When they sailed back to Skye Boswell mentions passing by ‘a cave where Martin says fowls were catched by lighting fire in the mouth of it … We spoke of death.’

Our sail over to Sconser was so short as to preclude talk of any importance let alone death, although we did regret not catching sight of the fast-food outlet with the cave branding.

A smattering of school kids joined us on the CalMac ferry and then into the bus-shelter where we waited for the 916 to Portree. The father of one of the lads was on the bridge of the ferry still hovering in the harbour. His paranoid son was convinced that dad’s binoculars were trained on the shelter looking for tell-tale signs of smoke. He begged his peers to form a human barrier so that he could light up hidden from view. ‘Beat it!’ they replied with one beautifully accented voice.

There were similar signs of non-conformity on the bus. Each double seat was occupied by a sprawling adolescent, every square inch of upholstery monopolised by the talisman possessions that defined and protected them: mobile phone, schoolbag, handbag, magazines. The bubbles of solitude were burst in Portree where they
route-marched
towards the school in a shared community of silent gloom.

After travelling on the same bus Johnson wrote to the Skye and Lochalsh Area Education Office complaining that ‘the children are taught to read; but by the rule of their institution, they teach only English, so that the natives read a language which they may never use or understand.’

The early travellers dined at the Royal Hotel in Portree where they had a good dinner of porter, port and punch (a special offer on all drinks beginning with the letter P). We did the same and had a pie and a pint.

A queue was forming outsidef the hospice shop. Either a large number of the locals were on the point of death and the relatives
wished to show a lugubrious solidarity or else rumours had spread of an imminent delivery of second hand tea cosies, cracked willow pattern plates and a three year run of
Model Railway Magazine
. It could equally have been a case of simple expectation and pleasure thresholds not hyper-inflated by urban greed.

The pub in the square from which the bus left for Kingsburgh was challenging in its own way. The fact that one of the punters had established a complex relationship with the juke box should have been a clue; he alternately caressed it, fingered its buttons, whispered endearments and then gave it a good kicking. I hoped he wasn’t married. The effort of not staring at any of the drunken denizens meant that our cone of vision was restricted to beer mat and pint.

The 186 to Kingsburgh was driven by a petite, feisty cow girl with Alamo hat, sequined jeans and high heeled boots, one of which frequently rested in the dashboard tapping out the rhythm of a country and western number that only she could hear. She was more than a match for the miasma of kids who caterwauled aboard at the high school. The early morning moody self absorption had been replaced by a rampant rowdiness. The lad who had ruined every lesson of the day with cheeky non sequiteurs, irritating animal noises, loud farts and general belligerence was unable to switch off and continued to fight with phantoms and spout nonsense at no one in particular. ‘The bus is nice and clean!’ roared the cow girl. A quiet boy who had been teased and taunted at lunchtime walked slowly, his crest fallen, towards the back of the bus where two fat boys grabbed hold of him and tried hard to squeeze out any remaining life. A golden-tinged liquid flowed underfoot. It was probably Irn-Bru but there was just sufficient doubt for David to regret wearing sandals.

The bus seemed tied by an invisible thread to Portree Co-op which it visited several times. Just when the vehicle had got out of third gear a voice from the back shouted, ‘That woman wanted on.’ Surprisingly Cow Girl morphed into the Good Samaritan. The bus turned (via the Co-op) and stopped for the old woman who spent most of her days watching buses pass her by. The driver left her cab to pick up the woman’s bags. ‘Drive the bus away!’ shouted the back row.

Once settled the woman gripped her shopping trolley with tight liver-spotted hands and stared ahead. She needed to be rescued from much more than a nearly missed bus but there was no respite from her
intermittent dalliance with dementia or the frantic internal Mexican dance with the skeletons of dead relatives.

The bus stopped in the middle of the back of beyond and cow girl suggested we get off. Sensing that we felt we were being blamed for the golden liquid incident she patiently explained that this was as close to Kingsburgh as we could get by public transport.

Having read that no vestige of Flora Macdonald’s house remains we had no great hopes of seeing anything of significance. On reflection the bull blocking our path was at least significant. It was the size of a First World War tank with a saliva and snot covered ring through its steaming nose, a clichéd fashion statement that imparted a sort of bohemian insouciance to its malevolent demeanor. Since I had read a whole childhood of
Beanos
and
Dandys
, alarm bells sounded, sirens went off and my head clouded with images of red rags, china shops, the annual bull-running in Pamplona and general goring. David
unhelpfully
observed that it had an injured leg. A cursory count suggested five limbs. A randy bull nursing not only lust for anything that moved but also a sense of grievance because of whatever it was that had happened to its injured leg was too much to bear. Astonishingly David reminded me that bulls are vegetarians and sauntered past its rancid stare without a second thought. I repeated the eye contact avoidance strategy that had stood us in good stead in Portree and shuffled after him. The bull hobbled world-wearily away.

The hamlet of Kingsburgh consisted of two bungalows, one of which was called Flora’s Field. This was a good omen. When the long-retired owner eventually appeared he answered our query with a warning look that would have done credit to Aunt Ada Doom from
Cold Comfort Farm
. After due deliberation he pointed us in the direction not of the wood shed but of a large property at the end of the track. ‘The original house was in there but the woman who lives there hates prowlers, she won’t let anyone in. You could always smile and hope for the best. She’ll see you before you see her.’

I persuaded David to look less menacing by removing his
camouflaged
jungle hat and clutching a map … I armed myself with my bus pass and an inane smile. Within seconds a super charged Betsy Trotwood figure stormed over the lawn. By way of greeting she bellowed, ‘No one gets to see the building!’ I explained that we were recreating Boswell and Johnson’s journey using our bus passes. She paused, mentally noting that it was perhaps the least likely excuse she
had heard from any of the stalkers, hawkers, mendicants, intruders, trespassers, vagrants and busybodies who had made her life a misery down the years. ‘You can have a quick look as I’m expecting visitors, but no photographs.’ With that she disappeared whence she had come.

We stood on the lawn where Flora’s husband Kingsburgh had welcomed the visitors and looked across Loch Snizort at the distant mountains of Lewis.

Boswell, in his new role as a cub reporter for
Hello
magazine drooled over his host’s outfit; ‘He had his tartan plaid thrown about him, a large blue bonnet with a knot of black ribbon like a cockade, a brown short coat of a kind of duffle, a tartan vest with gold buttons and gold buttonholes, a bluish filibeg, and tartan hose. He had
jet-black
hair tied behind and with screwed ringlets on each side …’ Whenever Boswell subsequently dressed his fantasy Barbie doll it was always the screwed ringlets he kept until last.

They sat in front of the fire in the parlour, ‘a dram of admirable Holland’s gin went round. Flora joined them and promptly mixed up her guests saying she had heard that ‘Mr Boswell was coming to Skye, and one Mr Johnson, a young English buck, with him. This confusion provided incontrovertible evidence that Holland’s gin, like meths, attacks the eyesight. There followed ‘an excellent roasted turkey, porter to drink at table, and after supper claret and punch’. Johnson got bored and went to bed early leaving Boswell to down three ‘superexcellent’ bowls of punch. Drunk as several lords with screwed ringlets he eventually climbed to the upper chamber where ‘I slept in the same room with Mr Johnson.’

The following day, in the grip of
Delirium Tremens
with the associated symptoms of diarrhoea, agitation, catatonia, palpitations, irritability and tachycardia, he wrote, ‘Last night’s jovial bout
disturbed
me somewhat.’

Sacked by
Hello
magazine he then made his debut with
Adventures for Boys
and transcribed at breakneck speed second and third hand accounts of Prince Charlie’s adventures. He excitedly interpolated an entire picaresque novella into his narrative. The Wanderer himself became a cross dressing transsexual called Betty who was given to hoisting her linen whenever he/she had to cross a river. She
eventually
swapped her dress for ‘a tartan short coat and waistcoat, with filibeg and short hose, a plaid, and a wig and bonnet’. His
coup de grace
was being able to refer to an eye witness whom he subsequently met
on Raasay, John Mackenzie who ‘eighteen years before, he hurt one of his legs when dancing, and being obliged to have it cut off, he now was going about with a wooden leg.’