Sun Dance (30 page)

A shocked Ella, “Yes he’s on the island. Eachan’s in the village,” Eilidh broke in, “Ella, Ella, I know it’s bad. Can you get Eachan?” “Yes, Eilidh, I can phone down and get him home.” “Oh thanks, thanks Ella, I’m in London, I’ll phone you back in five minutes.”

The tractor rattled into the yard. Eachan strode in without smile. “Is there a problem?” Somehow he knew before Ella replied, “Eilidh’s been on the phone, really, really upset. She’s certain something has happened to Hector but she’s in London.” Eachan, saying nothing, went to the porch door and walked a few steps down the croft. Out on Sandray, the dense white sheets of cloud were trailed by the wind across The Hill of the Shroud. He listened for the sea. Its faint rumble told him the set of waves. A rising tide would mean wind over current, it could be rough.

“Tide’s on the turn, I’ll head across before it gets dark. Look for a torch at five’o’clock.” Ella knew by the brusqueness of his tone to say nothing. Instead she filled a thermos of coffee, packed bread, a bottle of whisky and watched him, waterproof jacket and leggings, head down to the jetty.

That Eilidh’s concern would prove correct was without doubt. Too often he’d known the passing of emotions between people far apart, their warnings, the prior knowledge of happenings, no matter the distance. He was too much a Highlander to scoff at Eilidh’s premonition.

The Hilda boat lay ready. Eachan slipped her ropes, jumped aboard and about to cast off, he stopped. Was it memories? An inner prompting came to him too strong to be ignored.

Back to his shed, a little searching and he found the safety harness a yachtsman had left on the jetty many years back. Adding a couple of pulleys and a heavy coil of rope, the old man lugged it aboard. Loosing all but one of the sail ties, he made the sheets ready for a quick hoist and started the outboard engine.

Pausing only to glance at a cloud tearing cloudscape, Eachan swung the stern of his boat before a rising sea.

My last thoughts were with Eilidh, somehow I knew they reached her, telling her all I felt. Music ran through my head, melodies of unsurpassed beauty. I listened entranced, as I had as a child, to the sublime Mozart, the swelling choruses of his great Mass, a legacy to mankind outshining all forms of human conception; its message beyond our arrogant invention of a divinity. Simple, an encapsulation of beauty, direct to our sense of the ultimate indestructible eternity.

It prepared me. I was ready to jump. Leap out as far as possible. Take my chance with the sea. Pulling my legs under me, I got onto hands and knees. Stiffly, cautiously, I stood up. Unafraid now, breathing deeply, I started a count, ten, nine, eight, seven…… I stopped.

Against the fading outline of Halasay, a shower of spray rose from the bow of a plunging boat. Instantly life returned, the beating of hope, care my only thought, no false moves now.

The Hilda, I knew, it had to be. She was running a beam sea. I watched her helmsman bring her nose into the wave peaks, a burst of spray. Through them she rode, into the trough, running the trough, over the next peak. Oh boy, it had to be Eachan, handling his boat, fearless, dancing with the sea, a master. Would he see me, dark against the rock? He had to round the cliff to make it into the bay. Dare he chance coming in close?

Hilda riding it, great little sea boat, yes, he was running the headland close, what a heave on the sea, what a risk, lose control, matchwood on the shelf? Man and boat close in. Eachan seemed to be looking at me. Had he spotted me? Would I jump? Would I jump? Eachan lifted his hand. He’d seen me, must have read my mind. He stood up, swaying with his boat’s rolls, waved both hands, sideways, negative. He veered off and making for the bay, out of my sight. I fought to stop the shuddering. On wings of happiness in an unbelievable uplift of euphoria, I shouted to Eilidh.

Half an hour’s light left, maybe. Time stretched. Waiting, waiting. How long till he’d reach me? I was shaking quite violently, dangerously so, my back against the cliff, totally numb.

Eachan’s voice came first, calling, trying to locate me. I shouted. Turning to look upwards could easily unbalance me. Head to the side, I squinted up, his face looked down, unperturbed and steady. Relief gushed through me. “Here’s a harness, put it over----,” the updraft of wind took his voice. Two minutes and the safety harness dangled beside me on the end of a rope. Putting it on, could be the most dangerous move. Holding the rope in one hand, I wriggled an arm through the straps. The other arm…. clips came together round my chest.

A pulley block came down, clanking against the rock, “Hook it onto the har----”, words blown away. I was swaying now, managed to hook it on the ring, chanced to look up, he was watching. “Loose off the first rope.” It vanished up the cliff. Eachan was out of sight. He reappeared, “I’ll lower you down to that bottom shelf, the tide’s rising. When I have the strain let yourself…” I guessed the rest.

The rope tightened, almost lifting me. I held it, stepped off the ledge, feet against the rock, out into space, waves pounding below. I pushed myself to an angle with the cliff face. Faith in Eachan and the rope harness chokingly tight.

I descended, foot by foot, the sea closer, frothing over the shelf, my feet slithering off the rock. I hung, fighting for breath, harness cutting into my chest. Down again, able to contact rock, lean back, push with my feet. I glanced behind me. Black- backed waves licked across the shelf, booming into spray against the rock face. A moment’s ominous lull before they poured back down in white streaks, to wait the next onrush.

Two more drops. I touched the shelf, water swirling to my waist. The rope went slack. A surge lifted me, sweeping me off the ledge into the sea. Frantically I clung onto the rope. It came. The wave sucked off the shelf, taking me with it. Gulping and spluttering, I fought drowning.

The rope tightened, I dangled over the sheer under water face of the shelf. On three yards of slack rope, I hung in the sea, up to my chest. Was I to be pounded senseless against the rock? To a shivering body, the water seemed strangely warm. The next wave rose below me. It lifted, I clawed up the rope. Back on the shelf, holding loops of rope, I hung on.

Buffeting seas dragged me off my feet, washing me to the end of the rope until the swamping passed and my feet found rock again. Cut hands burnt with salt, eyes stinging, side of my head painful. I fought each swirl. Twice, they completely submerged me. Green light closed above. I surfaced, choking and coughing water.

Weakness was taking over. My arms ached. A fast rising tide. Another immersion? I counted the surges, the next big one? Drowning was close.

Sound of an outboard. Round the headland, The Hilda, heaving and bursting spray.

Eachan brought her nose near to the shelf. He stood in her stern, calm and unflustered. For a moment he left the helm. A coil of rope snaked out. I floundered, grabbing at it, mouth full of water. Got it! “Tie it round your waist,” I thought him almost laughing. “Tie a bowline.”

I fumbled with the knot, “Let off the pulley. Hector.” The Hilda surged in, he backed off, a wave passed under her. Eachan came ahead again, two yards off, a yard,

“Now boy!” I launched myself at the bow, half aboard, a hand grabbed my collar, hauled me the rest. He stepped swiftly back to the stern. Her bow dipped, a wave was taking her stern. Lying on the bottom boards, I waited for the splintering crash. It would tell the drowning of two men.

The engine revved, she hung, stern in the air. I heard the propeller spinning clear of the water. Forward she went, the prop dug. Slowly she pulled astern. I clung to the gunnels, looked to Eachan. He watched the next curling top, swung her off into the trough. Boat and judgment.

The headland of Sandray, close and perilous, reared above us. I looked fearfully from its merciless grandeur to Eachan. His face spoke his thoughts. Hilda, his lost daughter… it was on his face, the vision, her broken body lying, the self same shelf, the same forsaken place…. it was in his eyes. Such the sadness in his expression, were we to be lost, swept and drowned from a splintered boat which bore her name, so be it.

It could claim us yet. Jagged rocks ahead, breaking, black teeth fallen from the chimney shaft. We clawed off, running the troughs. Eachan nursed his boat, daren’t force her. Waves climbed the headland, burst and fell back into jostling white foam. Slowly we pulled clear.

I lurched down to the centre thwart. Stern seas, the worst, swept us to the point. He ran out, swung beam to the swell, before taking it head on to make the rounding. Spray lashed us until gradually, the wind off the land, we were into the shelter of the bay. Eachan grinned at me, “Hoch, hoch, boy, you’ve had a close one.”

Ten minutes brought us alongside the Sandray jetty. True to Highland good manners, no comment, no questions, his only observation, “Well, Hector boy, you’ll be needing a dram.”

I sank down on the stones. A thermos cup was put in my hand, warm coffee and whisky. Sip at a time, before the pain of returning warmth. I staggered up to the house. Eachan busied about, the kitchen, tea, another dram. “It’ll be about five o’clock, I said I would wave a torch at five o’clock, Ella will be watching and she’ll know we’re fine.” He took the torch and went out.

Warmth from the calor stove, an inner glow from Eachan’s bottle of cure all and I wakened to find my head down on the table and the room in darkness. Regaining a vague awareness and believing Eilidh through in her bedroom, I spoke quietly, “Eilidh, are you alright?” No reply, and more urgently, “Eilidh.” For a second in the darkness she stood over me. I reached out to her hand, the vision faded. Only then I realised she wasn’t physically in the house, yet the feeling she was beside me remained.

Gradually the recent events reshaped themselves and for the first time I ran fingers warily over the side of my head, now smarting unpleasantly. A warm oozing smeared my hand. Blood. The realisation, neither a shock nor relief, just more disorientated thinking. The crack of a pistol shot, real enough, a bullet through the brain, instead, alive by a fraction of an inch. The unexplained appearance of Eachan, impossible he’d have come across on chance, not on such a day.

Never more strongly did I feel a pawn in some torturously predetermined sequence of events. In truth I could offer no rationale for my chosen direction. Why these uncanny circumstances, these apparitions, this harking back to Viking days, ancestral graves, drownings, were they real? The explosion ---was it real? It had to be. I remembered Eilidh’s eyes, the flash, the screams.

Perhaps I was no more than a vegetable in a wheelchair viewing some incredible phantasm being played inside my brain, a conscious mind existing only at the mercy of its imagination; a brain oblivious to physical incapacity, being fed a holographic image by some external force? I dreaded slipping back into spasms of mental anguish, struggling to separate the threads of sanity and insanity. Sensory perceptions objectively presented, their cause physical or psychological, a game play of virtual reality beyond my control?

A stirring across the table, I could make out Eachan coming awake from the opposite chair, “Madainn mhath,” he yawned and stretching, “Ah Dia, I’ve slept on softer chairs.” Immediately alert, I got up and lit the camping light. An empty bottle stood on the table. Half dry clothes, my back needing a dry shirt, our stomachs, solid food. It must be the early hours. The impact of the ordeal still so numbing I couldn’t speak, instead I went to the cooker and got busy.

Porridge with honey on it, two plates steamed under the hanging lamp. Eachan made no comment about my departure from his customary salt. Looking over the last spoonful, “I heard you calling to Eilidh when I wakened,” and in a serious tone, “you were calling to the right person. If she hadn’t phoned yesterday morning with a message you were in some sort of trouble, I wouldn’t be eating sweet porridge,” adding a great deal more seriously, “and neither would you.”

“Eilidh phoned?” “Yes she did and she was in some state of upset.” “She phoned?” I stammered, staring at her bedroom door, incredulous, “From London?” “Yes and I came across straight away.” “How could she know?” my words trailed off. On the cliff, never before had I thought of her so passionately. I faced falling to my death and she filled every corner of my mind. “What time did she phone?” “It was quite sharp, I was down the village, maybe half ten, eleven o’clock time.”