Seasons on Harris (17 page)

We finally compromised with platters of sizzling roast duck, Singapore noodles, General Tsao's chicken, mushrooms in oyster sauce, and a mountain of prawn crackers at the Golden Ocean Chinese Restaurant.

“Shame about Digby Chick…,” said Anne gloomily, but apparently not gloomy enough to dampen her appetite.

“But we don't have that much time and you can't rush that kind of place. It's too romantic…”

In hindsight it would have been better if we'd just enjoyed that leisurely romantic dinner at Digby Chick and forgotten the rest of the evening. Because that's what we tried to do on the drive back to Harris: forget everything that occurred after the last delicious slice of roast duck was devoured. By Anne, of course.

It was not so easy. Memories of that series of five one-act plays at the Town Hall Theater will be hard to eradicate. In fact, we only managed three. Actually two and a bit. The first was, I guess, intended as some kind of intellectually challenging meditation on fire. At least, we think that's what it was. There was certainly an awful lot of rhetoric about fire and burning witches and incendiary biblical characters and holocausts—all delivered in chanting and unison dancing by six zombie-faced, black-clad youngsters. To be honest, the youngsters were the best part—they had learned their movements well. Unfortunately, we could hardly make out their words due to a drummer at the side of the stage whose spirited accompaniment was distinctly overspirited (in more ways than one). And then there was this extremely anxious prompter who mistook the cast's subtle silences and pauses for forgetfulness and ended up delivering two-thirds of the entire script herself, much to the frustration and embarrassment of the hardworking young actors.

The second playlet was a comedy piece with potential. Set on the deck of a cruise ship, it involved two middle-aged ladies, both trying, in the course of some clever wordplay, role reversal, and maintenance of polite facades, to escape from each other. The only problem, once again, was the prompter's dominance, but this time not as a result of anxiety but simply because the two actors, who actually seemed to be enjoying themselves immensely, had obviously not been able to learn their lines in time for the performance.

The interval came not a moment too soon and we could see the small audience of fifty or so locals unwrap themselves out of their nervous tangles and rush off for instant liquid relief.

“Y'see, darlin',” I whispered to Anne, “this is why I can't go to theaters. I should have known it was a lousy idea. I'm a jangling wreck, dreading the next botched cue and prompter's prompt.”

Anne smiled understandingly. It was an enduring bone of con
tention, my dread of live theater. I'd tried to explain that ever since my ill-fated efforts at amateur dramatics as a youth in Yorkshire, I've not been able to sit through a performance, even by fully fledged professionals on national stages, without fearing a recurrence of the traumas that once beset our game little troupe at the Oulton-cum-Woodlesford Amateur Dramatic and Operatic Society. It was there backstage that I saw grown men weep at the fear of “freeze-up”; women ashen-faced and almost fainting before their cues to enter stage left (especially if they were on the right—actually wrong—side of the stage); directors biting fingernails down to knuckles trying to patch up subpar performances (“No, darling—y'see, you were supposed to be laughing at that point, not screaming with terror…”), and audiences wiggling like worms on sharp hooks when lines were flubbed or whole pages of dialogue skipped as some panic-driven character rushed prematurely into the comforting shadows of the wings.

And so it was on this night. I knew I shouldn't have come. And as the whole prompting thing began again with the third offering, I could only nudge Anne and whisper, “I'll see you outside.”

But outside was no better.

The second performance of our evening of local culture and creative uplift was supposed to be a solo bagpipe recital held directly above the town hall in the arts center. Now, I'm not sure I've ever listened at any great length to a solo bagpipe player. I'm much more used to seeing them en masse in gloriously bedecked bands complete with tartan kilts and sporrans and white socks and perky little hats and backed by drummers. Lots of drummers. So that the occasional missed or cracked note would not be noticed in the martial-marching beat. But a solo bagpipe is different. Very different. You tend to notice every note, and as I stood in the street below an open window in the recital room, I was indeed all too painfully aware of each and every single cracked, missed, off-key, offbeat, and off-the-map note, along with a few extraneous squeaks, growls, and whispery susurrus sounds thrown in for good measure. Anne then joined me. Obviously the third playlet had not done the trick and she was ready for the next exciting escapade of the evening.

“So—where's this bagpipe concert?” she asked.

Tarbert Stores, Tarbert

All I did was point upward at the open window. Anne stood stock-still for quite a while, listening intently. And then, in a small plaintive voice, she inquired: “So what now?”

“Well,” I said, “there's a couple of fishing boats over by the harbor and they look like they've just docked…. Why don't we go and see if we can buy ourselves a pound or two of those beautiful prawns they keep bringing in?”

So that's what we did. The fishermen had just finished unloading their boxes of large langoustines and must have taken pity on our somewhat stress-striated faces. (It had not been an easy night.)

“Aye, why don'ya gi'em some from y'sack there, Donald,” said one of the fishermen. And Donald, God bless his cheerful, smiling face, needed
no further prompting as he filled a small supermarket bag for us with those delectable little morsels. “Bit of a racket goin' on over there, eh?” he asked, pointing toward the arts center.

“Oh, yes, y'could say that,” said Anne.

And very faintly, on the night breeze, we could just hear that bagpipe still wailing plaintively—and even more discordantly.

Our secluded cottage back in Harris suddenly seemed like a very pleasant prospect.

H
E WAS SITTING ON HIS
front porch when I was on my way out to Scalpay Island. I was enjoying one of my “randoming” drives around Harris and found myself heading on the switchback road east from Tarbert to this little appendage, once the center of a prosperous fishing fleet when the herring were running eons ago. Today the vast shoals are long gone, but Scalpay still possesses a more demure and prosperous aura than Harris and is now linked by an impressive modern bridge opened by Britain's prime minister, Tony Blair, in 1998 (an occasion remembered more for the horrendous onslaught of midges that day rather than his flamboyantly political rhetoric). Some of the Scalpay residents welcome it; others prefer the old days when they were linked to Harris by an infrequent ferry and enjoyed their prosperous isolation.

He was still sitting on his porch when I returned an hour or so later: an elderly man, puffing on his pipe and staring out across The Minch to the soaring cliffs of Skye, twenty miles or so to the east.

I pulled the car over to the side of the road and just watched him. And I thought over all the events, all the changes and traumas he must have witnessed in his lifetime here. Not quite old enough to know the famines and the clearances firsthand, but certainly wise enough to sense their impact on the land and the people who loved the land and their crofts, and their lazybeds, and their tiny crops of hay, oats, and “taties and neeps” (potatos and turnips). Doubtless there had once been great anger
at the indifference of absentee lairds, the greedy factors and tacksmen demanding ever-increasing rents for their “six acres and a black house”—the stumpy stone remnants of which melded with the earth like the bones of some ancient creature, long dead. Anger too at the wasted utopian dreams and schemes of the visionary—and very wealthy—incomers, The Dunmores, Mathesons, and Leverhulmes, whose “improvement projects” for fisheries, forests, new ports, and tweed weaving, are now mere skeletal remnants. Rust-bound piers at Leverburgh, a collapsing “castle” in Stornoway, forests that never grew beyond mere saplings, and of course, the erratic history of the great Harris Tweed itself.

And sorrow. He must have known the sorrow of the endless immigrations to the New World—the final decimation of tight-knit clans and kinfolk, and that terrible loss of two hundred and forty island boys on HMS
Iolaire
, returning from years away in the bloody First World War trenches of Europe and drowned as the ship struck the Beasts of Holm rocks, just outside Stornoway harbor on New Year's Eve in 1919.

The
Stornoway Gazette
gave a horrific description of the catastrophe:

Black House Interior

That kind of event you never forget. And maybe you never forgive or understand. For yes, Calvinistically speaking, “The Lord is a vengeful Lord,” but surely not to his believers who have already suffered so much and are buoyed only by an enduring faith in the mercies and ultimate bounties of a “just” God.

Finally, I stopped watching him from the car and strolled across the road. I think I may have made some rather flippant comment like, “Well, you certainly look very comfortable.”

The old man smiled and nodded. Knowingly. “Ah weel, tha's m'be the secret of it all now, d'y'ken.”

“The secret of what?”

“Of being alive…”

“Oh—right. Yes. Definitely.”

“Y'know, being comfortable—and conscious.”

“Right, conscious. Very important.”

“Like being…well, like being the eyes of the Creator sort a' thing.”

Now, that was a new concept. For me at least. Or maybe just an old idea expressed in a new way. And I couldn't think of anything to say for a moment. It was almost as if he'd been sitting waiting for someone to come along to continue a dialogue that had been going on in his head long before my arrival.

“D'y'mind m'meanin'?”

“Yes…I guess so. The eyes of the Creator. A nice way of putting it.”

“Well, don't y'think that's what we all are? Givin' the Creator a bit of a boost by seein' and enjoyin' all the things He's created?” Then he chuckled—“'Course I'm talkin'at ye with m'old Gaelic mind now—an' m'Gaelic eyes. Very diff'rent from today. Even though us pensioners still use the old tongue every day, it's not like it was. Y'get to feel a wee bit ‘historic' at times, y'ken? 'Specially with all the incomers 'n' such. Too much stuff written down now too…nothing much remembered anymore…like in times past when y'memorized most everythin' almost like music. Everythin' seemed to have a song in it…jus' in the way the words were said. The lovely sounds…and all those different meanings. One word could have so many meanings dependin'on how it was said—or sung—och, it's a fine, beautiful language.”

“And is it really dying out? I keep hearing so many different opinions.”

“Well, I don'know about numbers and the like. They tell me there're schools now all over in the big cities that use it all the time and that y'need it to get a good government job. I hear all that but I'm wonderin' that it won't be the old way…the sounds…the rhythms…the real power of love and livin'…livin' hard, livin' like gardeners—gardeners of our own lives—the way all those old bards and poets and blind harpists and travelin' storytellers would tell it. Y'could once make a good livin' y'know just wanderin' from
ceilidh
to
ceilidh
. Some could stretch out one
of those Gaelic ‘long-songs' on f'more 'n' a week of nights—and all us sittin' round the pit fire in the black-house floor and the smoke driftin' up into the thatch where haunches of lamb and split-fish were hung from the rafters and smoke cured, and the warmth of the cows comin' through from the byre in the next room—an' those lovely smells of salt herring roastin' in oatmeal…och, soo…soo ver' gude! An' no midges or mossies—the peat-reek kept all those creatures well away…oh—and the cattle piss an' all, that outsiders said was so unhealthy. Well—it turns out that the ammonia fumes and whatnot kept down diseases—TB 'specially. We had the lowest outbreaks of anywhere in Britain!”

Another pause. Not uncomfortable. But maybe with just a touch of melancholy as the old man let his memories flow on and I sat quietly. Waiting.

“Y'see,” he began again thoughtfully, “in the past it was the young ones that we needed t'keep the life in the language…just like a blacksmith-poet of ours, I've forgotten his name, us'ta sing:

It was ironic that we were having this sudden impromptu conversation about Gaelic because earlier on that day I'd visited Morag MacLeod on Scalpay. This delightful, soft-spoken, silver-haired lady, full of grace and sensitivity, is one of Scotland's leading experts in the use, preservation, and expansion of the Gaelic language. She is particularly noted for her collections of the martial-rhythmed Hebridean “waulking songs” that once accompanied all those odd tweed-shrinking rituals. But even she, for all her years of efforts and her many publications, seemed as concerned as my elderly companion on his front porch about the future of the Gaelic language and the lack of “new” men to ensure its artistic—as opposed to merely academic—continuity.

“Well—y'ask me a direct question about what will happen but—lucky for me—Gaelic has no real words for ‘yes' or ‘no,' so I can kind of dodge the answer a bit!” Morag chuckled, but her eyes were sad. “But it's obvious, the real challenge is the loss of our young people. Once they leave the island they stay away. There's always talk 'bout ways of keepin' 'em here but it doesn't seem to be helpin' very much…and I wish I could honestly say that wasn't so.”

I could sense a distinct lack of “new men” and “blazing lanterns” in her response.

Then it was back to my friend on the porch.

“Now, would y'fancy a wee cup a' tea, laddie?”

And how could a wee laddie like me of sixty-two years of age resist?

And so we sat sipping his strong brew, for how long I'm not sure. Chatting occasionally, sometimes just watching eagles and feeling the soft, sea-scented breezes on our faces. Then he rose abruptly and vanished into the house.

I wondered if I'd outstayed my welcome.

After a couple of minutes he returned with a book. “This is one of my favorites—Fiona MacDonald's
Island Voices
. Would y'mind if I read you something? Might give you a better idea about all us strange island folk.”

“I'd like that,” I said.

He shuffled through the pages, looking for the right passage. Then he sighed softly and began reading:

When I finally left, there he still sat, smoking his cracked walnut pipe, staring with fading eyes over the cliffs and bays and out across The
Minch to the huge, hazy crags of Skye. And he smiled with a frownless face—a sort of Siddhartha smile—as if somehow everything that he'd experienced in his life all made perfect sense in the Creator's grand scheme of things.

 

D
ONALD
M
AC
D
ONALD, RENOWNED ISLAND
G
AELIC
songwriter and singer, was, like Morag MacLeod, wary of the future. He and his wife lived in a large house (by island standards) that doubled as a bed-and-breakfast and was set on a bluff in the tiny community of Horgabost, overlooking the vast shell-sand expanses of Scarista, Seilibost, and Luskentyre. Donald John MacKaye, during one of our many conversations on the state of the tweed industry, had suggested I meet him. “He's what you might call a local icon—holding on to the Gaelic heritage for all of us. Remindin' us of how things used to be…”

Donald, an elderly and extremely modest man, was reluctant to accept such accolades. “Oh—it's my late brother who was the one. He wrote most of the songs—fifty or more. Beautiful words. I could never compose the poetry like he could. I could sing them at
ceilidhs
and suchlike but composin' came hard f'me. My daughters have written them all down, though. Before that we jus' remembered 'em in the old ‘oral tradition' way—y'know, what we call ‘folk memory.' One is teachin' Gaelic on Barra now and the other is doin' Gaelic at Glasgow University. But y'see the problem today is that if you're not speakin' Gaelic in the home, it's not so good. Here we spoke Gaelic all the time with our three daughters. Without the home it can die away so quickly. The problem is so many of the old Gaelic words and expressions have been forgotten—you can't find 'em even in dictionaries. Also different places use different words. Lewis Gaelic is not so good because they're terrible for mixing Gaelic and English together—y'know—that ‘ganglish' way of speakin' y'hear so much up there. Barra Gaelic is perhaps the most pure. They didn't stop teachin' it in schools like we did. Here they said it was old-fashioned…didn't have any use off-island…that kind of nonsense—”