Sun Dance (7 page)

What force unravelled time and place, stirred imprinted memory?

Though a thousand years had passed,

Yet beat the pulse of true affinity.

The image faded as the ferry manoeuvered alongside. It left me deeply concerned by these repeated glimpses of past events. Did they somehow emerge from a cosmic interface where past, present and future exist locked together as an indestructible wavelength imprinted on the process of particle annihilation and recreation. After all wavelengths form our reality, must reach into the neural connections between our brain cells. The hypothesis of parallel universes has been suggested, why not a form of parallel consciousness?

Outlandish speculation, I shook it off by concentrating on first impressions. Some of the folk in the saloon had conversed in Gaelic, their rising and falling voices reminding me of the few Irish I knew. A surprising contrast to the strident tones I’d left behind fighting the decibels of a different culture often harsh and loud with assertive conversation. Other contrasts stood out voices apart, facial and in their manner, the gulf appeared vastly wider than that dividing the revolving mix of people on a London bus.

Unsteady and exhausted, I was last down the gang plank. One of the young men working on the pier smiled a greeting. Tall with deep straight eyes, the face tanned and relaxed, I was aware of a like kind. He spoke to me, his voice soft and expressive, “How are you tonight?” I took it as more of a pleasantry towards a stranger than a question.

“Fine, fine,” I forced a grin, aware I must appear a poor wretch, “a lovely evening.”

His eyes went to the horizon, “Yes, it’s set fair,” He reached for the ships bow rope, then paused, and turning back to me without curiosity, “Are you needing a hand?”

“No, no thanks, I, I’ll find, er, go to the hotel shortly, the Castleton, but thanks again.”

“No problem, just head up the street,” and grinning to me he watched for a signal from the ships bridge. “The boys up there’ll look after you all right, there’s a few characters amongst them.”

The gang plank rattled clear and ropes were slipped. I envied hands that could coil and handle the heavy mooring ropes so deftly without any hurry. Greetings had come, farewells gone with the last wave from deck to pier. The few people and cars had left. Loading ramps clanged shut, water churned and the ship drew away. Engines throbbed into the approach of evening quiet. Cabin lights wove amongst departing ripples and into the mauve of an easterly headland the dot of her red port light vanished.

I couldn’t leave the sunset. Although my legs still felt the motion of the ship I swayed unsteadily to the end of the pier and on the point of collapse, sat on a bollard. Lights dotted a single row of houses curving up from the harbour. A shop front shone onto the road. High above the bay, a steeple clock reflected the hour of sunset. The fresh breeze of a Minch crossing died to nothing. Somewhere above me on a hillside lost to sunlight, a sheep called. A single bleat. Its clarity surprised me, the only sound to encroach on the stillness. Drained of energy, I sat alone. The sun grew large. Its orange strands fell across the bay and slowly they darkened.

Outlines fell into sharp detail imparting form and feeling to the glimmer of transient light. On a blood red sea a boat lay motionless, perfect to the curve of her anchor rope. I saw her, a maiden long and slim, shapely on the water. In her lines was the beauty of youth, born by the freedom of tide and shore.

The bonniest girl, she came running and laughing, sunshine streaming through flaxen curls.

A reverie of infinite sadness engulfed me, the weeping of a dying melody.

The last roundness of the sun was taken by the sea.

Varnished planking shone in a moment of crimson.

I read her name, and spoke it softly,

‘Hilda’.

Sturdy feet brown with sun, no shoes that summer day.

Hardship, poverty, a child deprived?

Those children of the tide had a wealth abounding,

Countless as the grains of sand,

On the beaches of their childhood.

Heading towards eighty, tall and angular, Eachan MacKenzie’s features carried the distinction of his forebears. Passing generations reduced the hooked nose to a degree, but his genes had not relinquished the penetrating blueness of deep set eyes, judge of man and oncoming wave alike. Physical and facial hardiness marked an outdoor man. His pink cheeks, though furrowed by a lifetime of drawing his eyes against the light, still carried the freshness of spring. Hands without flesh were shaped and bent by the tools of crofting. Old by the measure of years, hardened by the elements whose power and vagaries he’d good reason to respect, MacKenzie had the wisdom to work in tandem with their moods.

A life spent in an open landscape, land, sea and weather, space and distance always the setting. Westwards the curving earth vanished over Atlantic’s rim, eastwards on days of sharp light were the low outlines of mainland peaks; how often he looked south across a narrow sound to the headland of an island empty of people, the isle of Sandray, for it was from there his grandfather had moved family and the chattels of subsistence to make a home here on the Halasay croft of Ach-na-Mara, the ‘Field of the Sea.’ Upper most in MacKenzie’s make up was an abiding reverence for the hardiness of his distant forebears. “They came by the sea, on a wind from the north. Chancers of the first order,” and looking at his wife, Ella, he would laugh, “in search of women.”

Instinct told Eachan the weather. A glance at the clouds, a shift in the wind, the feel of the air on his face, they formed the barometer by which he read the signs that shaped each day’s work. His intimacy with land, livestock and the producing of food imparted a sense of values beyond the jargon of modern living. In keeping with a fierce independence which bowed only to the demands of weather and season, he treated all people equally. To strangers who met Eachan working about the croft, his easy manner and sparse appearance seemed part of the landscape, almost as though he were moulded by his surroundings. Quiet spoken, unhurrying and practical, about him was a manner which merged without effort into the attraction of the island. Time was not his master, he’d never possessed a watch. Instead the immutable rhythms which govern places of solitude were his timepiece and the sedateness of passing hours allowed for a spread of thoughts wide as the circle of his daily horizon.

Confidence comes to those who know their origins. Eachan knew his roots, they spread through many, many island generations. Moreover the old man well appreciated the toil of his ancestors. When the grey lines of winter sea had tops blown to the clouds and waves trembled the shore, frothing torrents surged into the dunes, rolling massive stones, grinding them storm after storm until clean and round they lay awaiting the labour of carting. Heavy hammer and skill had cracked them and built what was now Eachan’s barn and byre. Hand on its wall he was given to saying, “Only those with the knack to split a stone and know the aching bones can give credit to the art of placing stone on stone.”

The original homestead had been a Viking longhouse, its gable towards the mild sou-westerlies a byre whose connecting door had brought warmth from wintering cattle. At the farthest end the gable facing the chill of nor-east winds kept freshness to the hay barn. Between byre and barn the house was snug from the elements. Salt brown and weathered, low of eve and squat, defying the onslaughts of January longer than memory could extend, nature tucked the buildings with little effort into the vast empty scenery, nor did the house which Eachan’s father added to the old Norse design encroach on the harmony of a wind carved scenery.

Each day the old man saw a need for a job about the croft as befitted his years. That day he’d worked down at the shore, re-stringing lobster creels in the lee of his boat. Ninety-one seasons of sowing, fishing and harvest. The March wind was from the east. It sought him out. He came back to the house, ice in his bones. No, nor hot stones from the fire wrapped in towels could warm him. A young doctor stood beside his bed, hesitating. After a little the old man turned his eyes, “I’ve never known the need of a doctor in my life, and I won’t be needing you now, but thank you for troubling to come.” He made to shake the doctor’s hand but the pain took him. In his eyes were summer days, terns fishing the bay and with his children’s laughter he crossed the sea. At the bedside his son Eachan bent and closed the lids.

A cold spring it was. With more years to count than his appearance belied, Eachan took on the croft of Ach na Mara and put his father’s plough to work. The land still lay under the bleakness of winter, its stubbles gleaned bare by the passing geese. Harness and traces, his pony put her head down and leaned shoulders to the collar. Callused hands gave a lift of the shafts and the plough point slid into sandy ground. Eachan strode the furrows of another season.

Steady and straight, light the touch of reins on his pony’s neck. His white pony, one ear forward, one ear back, the digging of her hooves marked the plough’s next round. Sunrise fell obliquely across the land. Brown crests glistened, new made, damp and fresh. In the quiet of morning the man, a stooping figure, watched the living soil curl away from the plough board, heard the crackle of their turning as they broke over in countless tiny veins. On the clean air, fulsome with the smell of his pony, a tilt of the shafts, a click of the tongue and Eachan turned his plough on the end rig. A polished mouldboard would shine, bright as the early sun that warmed the backs of man and beast. Gulls circled from the banks of winter seaweed to strut and squabble at his heel. Lapwing left their tumbling flight to settle on the new turned crests, the lustre of their dark wings green and bronze in the brittle light. Soon hollows scraped in the fresh soil would hold three mottled brown eggs. And far out, thin lines of geese marked the edge of the Atlantic, northbound to retreating snows their voices clamorous on a young morning.

Out of respect for the old ways Eachan sowed the corn with the slender moon of a Good Friday. A canvas sowing sheet hung across his shoulders, each handful of oats flew through his fingers in a curve of seeds at every measured stride. Ella, his wife, carried pails of grain to fill the sheet whenever he paused. By nightfall the field was sown and at first light his white pony would drag the harrows to cover the seed. Crying lapwing stooped, flapping wings beat about their heads. Sharp eyed as he walked the sowing, Eachan marked each clutch of eggs with a stick. A touch of the reins at the harrowing and each nest was safe. A month and green shoots of corn sheltered tiny, black legged chicks. Handfuls of crouching fluff, mottled as the shells from which they had broken.

When the golden heads of grain crackled with ripeness, mower blades were sharpened and with her ears back, the white pony pulled Eachan’s chattering iron reaper. Standing corn fell in thick rows. Ella bent and gathered. Her deft hands took a few straws and heads and with a quick twist which made the harvest knot, she bound each sheaf. Their children ran home from school, threw satchels into the kitchen and set up the stooks. If an evening breeze held off the dampness Eachan would cut on until the great round moon fell golden on the sheaves and laughing children would hide in stook huts and long to sleep the night in the smell of fresh straw.

By the moon of the returning geese, corn sheaves filled a neatly trimmed stackyard and hungry bills gleaned the stubbles. There was no grudging the feeding of other life about the croft whose worlds knew different bounds. Their arrival was greeted as naturally as the seasons. On a still February nights, Eachan, out at the byre to tend a calving cow, might catch the whistle of a dog otter. By May his cubs would be playing in the rock pools. By June, amongst the half grown oats the plover chicks could feed in safety. Seldom the loom of summer’s night without the grating notes of a corncrake, secretive bird, she hid amongst the beds of yellow iris and threw her voice with such skill few found her nest. The croft land reared many families, not least that of Eachan and his wife. They and their children in turn saw other life no differently.

The cobblestone byre remained little changed since Viking times. It wintered the croft’s eight cows. Each knew its own stall and they appeared at the door always in the same order. A fondness for cattle came naturally to Eachan, he enjoyed their smell, gave each a scratch as he worked about them and in the way of animals, they knew it. A wooden pen, snug below the hay loft, kept the calves in the warmth of the byre. Before and after school whilst Ella milked the house cow, the children let out calves bawling to suckle their mothers. Eachan shovelled out the dung, swept the cobbles and come April, he carted the winter midden to each field in turn. The yearly cycle put natural fertility on the land, gave back what had been taken out. Worms throve, bird life throve and his family ate an untainted diet. On occasion and in the right company, Eachan, always a master of the pithy statement, was wont to pronounce, “The folly of chemical farming is killing the mouths it feeds. Destroy the diversity of the living soil and you’ll destroy mankind and much else.” Needless to say, such observation called for a further libation.