Stormy Petrel (3 page)

The track levelled out, the glen widened, and there below us was the bay.

Otters' Bay was very small, a pebbled crescent backed by a storm beach of smooth boulders. Thick black curves of dry seaweed marked the reach of the tides. To our left a high cliff cut off the view, and to the right a lowish headland jutted well out into the sea. Narrowing my eyes against the Atlantic glitter I could see the line of a path that climbed from the bay and on over the headland to the west. And beyond the crest of the headland, hazy with distance, the shape of a hill, smooth and symmetrical, like a drawn-up knee.

Then the Land Rover came to a halt beside a rough jetty made of stacked boulders tied down with fencing wire, and there, backed against the cliff a short way above us, was the cottage.

3

The cottage was bigger than I had expected. Originally it had been built on the usual pattern, a tiny square hallway, with doors to either side leading into the two ‘front' rooms, and a steep enclosed stair up to the twin bedrooms under the pitch of the roof. But someone, fairly recently, had done a job of conversion; the two downstairs rooms were thrown into one, with the staircase half dividing them. The sitting room, to the right, had a pleasant fireplace, and was adequately, if not well, furnished with a couple of easy chairs, a low table, and a doubtful-looking sofa pushed back against the staircase wall. The ‘kitchen-diner' on the other side boasted the usual cupboards and what looked like home-made worktops, and a table near the window with four chairs drawn up to it. On the worktop stood an electric kettle and a toaster, and these were the only ‘mod cons' to be seen.

A door at the rear led to a narrow room which ran the width of the cottage and had originally been the ‘back kitchen' or scullery and wash-house. Under one window was a modern sink and draining-board, with an electric water-heater fixed to the wall above it. Beside this stood the cooker, installed, apparently, by someone who distrusted the island's electricity supply; it was a gas cooker, and had been placed there to be within easy reach of the cylinders of Calor gas that stood just outside the window under a lean-to, beside a stack of peat. That was as far as modernisation had gone: the other end of the scullery was just as it had always been, with the old deep sink for laundry, served by a single, presumably cold tap, and in the corner beyond it the copper for ‘the boil'. A deep cupboard, clean and empty, would serve as a storeroom; another, beside the copper, held cleaning tools. No fridge, but the place would be cool even in summer; those windows never saw the sun. Peering out, I could see that there must once have been a garden or kail-yard between the cottage and the cliff; now the tumbledown wall enclosed nothing but a tangle of brambles and wild roses almost hiding a garden hut. Alongside the wall a narrow path wound between waist-high nettles to a small structure whose function one could guess at. The house agent had assured me that a bathroom and lavatory had been installed upstairs above the scullery; looking at those nettles, I hoped he had told the truth.

‘I will take your cases upstairs for you,' said Archie McLaren.

‘No, don't bother – well, thank you very much.'

I dumped the carrier bags of groceries on the kitchen table and started to unpack them. I heard him moving about upstairs, and it was a minute or two before he came down again.

‘I was just' – he pronounced it ‘chust' – ‘taking a look. She had Robert McDougall over from Mull last year to do the bedrooms up. That is Mary McDougall's cousin from Dervaig. He always does a good job. I had not seen the upstairs rooms since they were finished, but I remember the job they had with the bathroom, and with this.' He looked about him with interest. ‘It was very different here when the family had it. It was Alastair Mackay lived here, that was the gardener at the House. They only moved away two years ago, to the mainland, and then Mrs Hamilton did the place up for letting. When they took the old oven out, I brought the cooker down myself, and the fittings for the kitchen units. The timber and the bath and such came across by boat into the bay there, and a fine job they had dragging them up to the house.'

‘I hadn't realised that the cottage belongs – belonged? – to Mrs Hamilton. Mrs McDougall told me that she had died recently.'

‘That is so. She was a nice lady, and when her husband was alive he was a great one for the shooting and the fishing, though there is not much fishing here on Moila. He used to go north for the salmon every year, to the mainland, but she would stay here. She liked it, and then after Colonel Hamilton died she never went away at all, even in the winter. But this last winter was too much for her, poor lady.'

‘What do you suppose will happen to the House – the big house, I mean – now?'

‘I do not know. I think that there is a relation abroad somewhere, but that is all. It will be sold, I think, but who will buy it?'

‘Someone who loves peace and quiet, I expect.'

‘An ivory tower?'

I had been reaching up to put packets and tins into one of the wall cupboards, but this startled me into turning. ‘A what?'

‘Ivory tower. It was what Mrs Hamilton used to say. She was a writer, a real one who got books printed. When she was younger she used to write books for children. She said it was a poetic way of saying you wanted to be left alone.'

‘I see. Yes, I see. I did wonder. House agents aren't usually poets.'

‘What is that?'

‘Only that the house agents called it that when they advertised it. Rather clever of them. That's what caught my eye. I wonder if they'll try to sell the cottage too, or if they'll go on letting it?'

‘It has only ever been let in the summer, and no one has been here yet this year except the people last month, folk from Cornwall, I think. They came with a boat, and did all their shopping in Tobermory, so we did not see much of them at all.'

‘I suppose a boat would make sense if one was here for long. Do you have a boat?'

‘I do. If you should ever want to go fishing, or maybe to take a look at the bird islands, you will just let me know?'

‘I certainly will. Oh, I nearly forgot. Did you unload the coal?'

‘I did. It is out the back where the peat is kept. Just beside the door. Will I get some in for you now? No bother. Do you know how to make a fire with the peats?'

‘Mrs McDougall asked me that,' I said. ‘I don't know. I can but try. I might have to ask for help with that as well.'

‘You will be welcome. But you will find plenty of kindling and dry wood down on the beach. Then give the peats plenty of air. If once you get it going, it is a good fire.'

‘I'll do my best. Thanks very much, Archie. Now, what do I owe you?'

I paid him and he took his leave, but in the doorway he hesitated, then suddenly, as if the question had forced itself out in spite of good manners, asked: ‘Are you sure you will be all right here, all on your own? What are you going to do? It's a lonely spot, and if it's walking you want, Moila is such a small island, and once you have been round it, you have seen it all. There is nothing special about Moila, except maybe the birds on the outer islands, and they will be away soon.'

I smiled. ‘I wanted an ivory tower. I'm a writer, too, you see.'

‘Well, now . . . A writer, is it? Yes, I do see.' His tone and look said, clearly, that everything – any possibly lunacy – was now fully explained.

I laughed. ‘I don't intend to write all the time, though there is some work I want to do. But I'm not really planning to be a hermit; my brother's coming over soon, and I know he'll want to go to the islands, so we'll be in touch. Thanks again.'

I watched the Land Rover grind its way up the track till a turn of the glen hid it from sight, and in a few more moments the sound of its engine had faded to silence.

Silence? The wash of waves on the pebbled beach, the crying and calling of the wheeling gulls, the silver chain of sound from a lark above the clifftop, and, as a final coda, the distant, breathy note of the ferry's siren as she drew away towards the west. The last link gone. Solitude. Complete and unassailable solitude. The sported oak.

I shut the front door gently, a symbolic gesture which shut out what sounds there were, and went upstairs to see what that nice lady, Mrs Hamilton, had provided in the way of beds.

The beds were reasonable, the bedrooms tiny, tucked under the slope of the roof, and charming, with white paint, flowery wallpaper, a minimum of furniture, and of course that marvellous view right out to the south-west. Storm-direction, I supposed, and spared a thought for the winter; but in June, surely, all would be well? The windows were tightly shut, and the rooms smelled stuffy, but not damp, though the drawers of the chest stuck as I tried to pull them open. The solitary ornament in my room was a faded copy of a Biblical scene by Gustave Doré, sinners drowning in a rough sea. Rather too pertinent, I thought, for the place's original dweller, who must have gone down to the Atlantic in a small boat on many a stormy night. But today the real sea looked wonderful, silken, with a gentle running glitter where the tide moved, and here and there the tilt and flash of white wings in the sunlight as the gulls sailed out from the cliffs.

It would do. It would do very well. I would finish unpacking, have a look at the cooker and set things ready for supper, then I would take a walk out to look at the sea, and gather kindling in case the evening turned chilly enough for a fire.

There was, as Archie had promised, plenty of good kindling among the piled jetsam on the beach. I soon had an armful, then clambered up off the shingle to the better walking of the salt-washed turf where the burn, dividing into deep peaty runnels, cut its way to the shore. Sea-pinks were thick everywhere, with here and there patches of small shingle glistening with broken shells. An oystercatcher screamed from somewhere at the end of the beach, warning its young. Not far away I caught, from the corner of my eye, the flickering movement as a ringed plover scudded and ran among the sea-pinks. It went silently, dodging and hiding; it must have left its nest at my approach.

Any thought I may have had about finding the nest for Crispin's camera left me then. Gradually, over the last few minutes, I had become conscious of a growing discomfort, a tickling, burning sensation in the face and hands, and even in my hair a stinging sort of unpleasantness that suddenly became insupportable.

Midges. I had forgotten about the midges. The curse of the Highlands. The infinitesimal and unbeatable enemy. The serpent in paradise.

Tucking my load of sticks under one arm, and rubbing my free hand hard over face and hair, I scurried for the safety of the cottage.

After all, the evening stayed mild, so the fire never got lit. I made and ate supper, washed up, then watched the changing view of evening from the haven of the cottage window, and went early to bed.

4

I awoke next morning to a brilliant pearly light, but when I went to the window, no sea was visible. Nothing, in fact, was visible. The world was shrouded in a curtain of mist. This was not the sort of fog one is used to in towns, but a veil of salt-smelling white, damp and mild, with all the soft brilliance of a thin curtain drawn between earth and sun. But view there was none. I could not even see as far as the mouth of the burn. So, no walk today, until I was a little more certain of my way. Even the main track to the village could be treacherous in this blinding, moveless white.

I was not disappointed. I told myself so, firmly, several times. I had all that I had wanted, peace and privacy, a day to myself before Crispin came, and an absolute compulsion to stay indoors and take another look at the poem that had been broken into by the tutorial in Cambridge. I would look at it again, and see if it had been totally destroyed. At least no person from Porlock was likely to interrupt me today.

No one did. The day went by, still and silent but for the muted calling of the seabirds, and the sad little pipe of the ringed plover on the shingle. I sat at the kitchen table, staring at the blind white blankness in front of me, and slowly, like a clear spring welling up from the common earth, the poem rose and spread and filled me, unstoppable as flood water, technique unknotting even as it ran, like snags rolled away on the flood. When it comes, it is worth everything in the world. There is too much easy talk about ‘inspiration', but at such times one sees it exactly for what it is, a breathing in of all experience, all apprehension of beauty, all love. As a fire needs air to make it burn, so a poem needs to be fuelled by each one of these. And the greatest of these is love.

When I looked up at last, it was to see the near cliffs bright with the afternoon sun, and the sea creaming calmly against the storm beach in the gentlest of high tides. The horizon was still invisible, but above the line of mist that hid it the sky was clear, with the promise of a lovely evening. An evening with a breeze; I could see movement in the bracken that edged the track, and cloud-shadows moved from time to time over the sea-pinks. So much for the midges, and it would be better at the head of the track and over the central moors. I would make myself some tea, I decided as I packed away my papers, then walk over to the post office to make my call to Crispin.

My sister-in-law answered the telephone, in the voice which, whether she means it or not, always sounds abrasive and resentful when she speaks to me. She was sorry, but Crispin was out on call. No, she did not know when he would be home. When did she ever? His train? Well, it now seemed that there was someone he wanted to see in Glasgow, so he was taking this chance to fit that in. He had booked on tomorrow night's sleeper, and would head up to Oban on Friday. Then, she gathered, he would get the ferry the next morning, Saturday. Would that be right?