Seasons on Harris (34 page)

Nothing was wasted here.

Seabird eggs—preserved in the
cleits
under peat ash for up to eight months to heighten their flavor—formed a major component of the local diet. Lamp oil was extracted from the birds, their bones were carved into useful tools and implements, and their skins—particularly the throat skins—were made into shoes.

“It really was what my great-grandfather said—‘a land apart,'” our old man in the trilby hat told us as we sprawled once again on the deck. “Bit like the Galapagos, I suppose, a Darwinian place with its own type of sheep, its own type of wren—bigger than those on the mainland—even its own type of mice.”

“And the people too—the
Hiortaich
—they were almost like a separate species,” I suggested. “They created their own form of traditional dress—crude tweeds made from the brown wool of the Soay sheep. And they had no priests or ministers in the formal sense, so they even invented their own spiritual culture.” I told him the tale of Roderick the Imposter, who had imposed his unique form of “religion” on the islanders.

“That's fascinating,” he responded. “Bit like Golding's
Lord of the Flies
.”

“And also like that film—
The Wicker Man
. You remember that?” said Anne. “Christopher Lee and Britt Ekland. Some kind of thriller about human sacrifices on a remote ‘pagan' island way out off the Scottish coast…an island like St. Kilda!”

“I remember the title—but I don't think I've ever seen it…”

“Wasn't there another film loosely based on St. Kilda?” I asked Anne, whose memory of films made during Hollywood's Golden Age is bizarrely extensive. “Something like
The Land at the Edge of the World
?”

“Actually it was
The Edge of the World
—made in the thirties I think, with John Laurie. Very powerful film. Beautiful black-and-white images of a ‘lost world.' Based on St. Kilda but they had to use some other island
up in the Shetlands. Foula, I think. Apparently even then, after the people left in 1930, the laird owner wanted it preserved as a bird sanctuary.”

“And just look at the place,” I said, pointing at the islands, now much closer and even more dramatically distinct in character. “This is pure ‘edge of the world' territory! I bet in a dark winter storm, this would seem like the end of all things—a black, lost world of loneliness and desolation…”

“Oh—very cheerful!” was Anne's dismissive response.

Ahead of us, at the end of a mile-long, dragon's back–profiled peninsula of bare black rock peaks and arêtes—a series of mini Matterhorns along the ridge of the ancient caldera wall—rose the formidable bulk of An Dun. One writer described it as “the least plausible place on Earth”—an otherworldly tower of striated, storm-gashed volcanic basalt. And it stands—or, rather, leans in a wearied way—as the guardian of the bay. A breakwater supreme. Yet it's strangely, almost sadly, so gouged and holed and hollowed and pocked that you wonder how much longer this immense creaturelike pinnacle, hundreds of fragmented feet high, can withstand the ferociously destructive power of those Atlantic storms for which St. Kilda is renowned. In fact, folklore has it that the islanders suffered regular bouts of collective deafness due to the incredible sound and fury of the gales here and the chaotic smashing and crashing of the man-sized boulders that constitute the Village Bay “beach.”

Fortunately, on the day of our arrival, all was calm and benign as a duck pond. But those of us who had done a little reading about the island knew that such a deceiving tranquility could be eradicated in minutes by sudden force-12 hurricanes seemingly conjured up by their own sneaky malicious volition. Angus was fully aware of the fickleness of climatic quirks here and had already suggested to the group that weather conditions had changed dramatically to the south and a storm was forming and heading straight for the island. Not a concern at the moment, he emphasized. It was slow-moving and likely would not arrive until early morning, but he suggested, to our mutual disappointment, that an overnight camp would be “tempting fate a wee bit too much, I'm thinking.”

So we had no choice but to accept his decision, focus on our slow
entry into Village Bay, and make the most of the few hours we could spend here exploring the mysteries and moods of the island.

First impressions are magnificent. A great arc of grass-sheened hills—part of the ancient caldera wall—rose up from the curved beach. Their slopes were dotted with those strange stone-built remnants of traditional
cleit
drying structures. Then came the long semicircular enclosure wall, or “head dyke,” that once defined the village pasture “boundary,” and below that were more
cleits
, larger and more substantial, with many still supporting thick, turf-topped roofs. Here the pasture grasses became greener—ideal grazing land for the Soay sheep still running semiwild on the island. And then came the remains of the village itself, its arc of dwellings echoing both the arc of the bay and the boundary wall. Radiating “wheel-spoke” fragments of walls linking the beach with the dyke indicated an almost medieval pattern of “long fields”—one for each croft. The old windowless, chimneyless, and round-cornered black houses, many built in the early 1800s and shared by the resident family's livestock, had lost their ponderous, knobbled permanence and were now rubbled skeletons of huge rocks with foundation walls over four feet thick. Between these stood the roofless shells of the more recent stone “white houses” funded in the 1860s largely by the Royal Highland Agricultural Society of Scotland, which insisted that islanders deserved “more decent and civilized dwellings.”

Unfortunately, the use of windows, square-cornered and thinner walls, and less sturdy roofing materials meant that these well-intentioned structures often failed to offer the same solid protection as the black houses against those furious island storms. We could see that five of the newer dwellings had been reroofed. One of them, so Angus told us as we edged our way toward the shore, was now a small museum. The remainder provided accommodation for the National Trust warden and itinerant researchers who had spent years visiting here and studying the breeding patterns, survival abilities, and other quirks of the unique Soay sheep.

At the western end of the old village is the more substantial Factor's House, once home to the laird's tax collector when he came over on his annual summer trip to collect the rent from the crofters. As money was
virtually unknown on the island, this was usually paid in the form of bird feathers (for bedding and ladies' hat decorations), bird oil, and bolts of homemade brown “murrit” tweed that were kept in the store, still standing today at the top of the landing jetty. Close by we could see the small austere stone church built in the late 1820s, the adjoining school room and minister's manse, and something else that caused a sudden gasp of surprise among the passengers.

“I thought this was supposed to be a peaceful little community,” one young man called out to Angus. “What the heck is that great cannon doing here over by the store? It's enormous!”

It did look rather idiosyncratic—a huge, twenty-foot-long, black artillery gun pointing directly toward our gently wallowing boat that Angus was in the process of anchoring prior to our disembarking by inflatable dinghy.

Angus laughed. “That's no old cannon. It was put there in 1918 after a German submarine had shelled the village to destroy a radio mast used to guide our Atlantic ships.”

“The Germans came all this way just to attack little St. Kilda!?” asked the young man.

“Aye—but they were lousy shots. Used up seventy-two shells trying to hit it and damaged the church and the manse—but they were very polite about it all. They explained to the villagers why they'd come and suggested they find shelter well away from where they were going to shoot! And look—we're safe now too! We've got the army here,” said Angus, pointing to an aesthetically discordant huddle of gray-painted Portakabin-type structures by the jetty.

“Those buildings really spoil the place,” said another passenger. “What are they here for?”

“Ah well, they're a bit secretive about it all,” said Angus, “but it's got to do with tracking missiles from the rocket range on South Uist. Oh—and maintaining that early warning station or something like that way up there on top of the ridge.”

We all looked, and there indeed, hundreds of feet above the arc of the desolate village, was a cluster of aerials and radar devices perched all too obviously on Hirta's highest point. Despite its splendid isolation, the
island is now irrevocably a part of Britain's ultra-sophisticated national defense network.

“Why would they come and spoil such a beautiful place like this,” asked one young girl sadly.

“Well”—Angus was obviously going to have to answer this question on each one of his
Interceptor
voyages, and he seemed to be trying to find a reply that would restore a little levity to his obviously disappointed audience—“at least they've got a pub here!”

“A pub!” Eyes widened, smiles appeared, and salty lips were licked.

“Yeah, tha's right. A nice little pub—the Puff-Inn, where drinks cost half price and they've got darts and billiards and—”

“What time's it open?” asked another young man, obviously delighted by the prospect of a long liquid interlude.

Angus decided honesty was the only policy.

“Well, now, if we'd been camping here, which we can't do now because of that storm that's coming up, we'd have been havin' a fine old time there…this evening.”

“Evening?! What about now! It's getting on for eleven. Almost opening time…”

“Aye well, y'right. On Harris they'd be openin' up but here they don't start 'til five o'clock…long after we'll be gone.”

Murmurs of dissent and disappointment rumbled through the huddled passengers preparing to disembark.

“But,” continued Angus, “y'can still go in and see the place. It's a cozy little pub. It's just that you won't be gettin' any cheap beers today!”

Despite the disappointment, as soon as we'd made the brief crossing in the dinghy to the jetty, almost everyone in the group headed straight for the Puff-Inn, which was indeed quite cozy—almost clubby in its colorful informality. It possessed a distinct atmosphere of “eclectic mélange”: large, humorous murals of puffins; a couple of battered guitars and a tiny ukulele leaning by a massive speaker amp; two large TVs; memorabilia-strewn walls; a message board full of cryptically worded flyers and in-joke cards; photos of the spectacularly labyrinthine underwater tunnels and caves found all around the island; a large sign celebrating the fact that St. Kilda was now “twinned” with Australia's Great
Barrier Reef; a huge stuffed teddy bear sitting atop a miniature upright coffin labeled with some cryptic reference to island shenanigans; a handwritten menu for the evening dinner delights—steak Diane, honey-roasted ham, and pork stir-fry (not bad for a handful of residents here that barely exceeded twenty at any one time)—and, of course, the bar itself, grills down and locked, with its long, tantalizing list of alcoholic delights at 1960s prices.

Finally, Anne and I were on our own. Following a brief welcoming introduction by the National Trust warden, the group quickly dispersed to explore the strange skeletal remnants of this once almost utopian (according to some commentators) community. We watched as our elderly gentleman-friend, with his brown trilby hat and elegant cane, made straight for the stern little church and vanished inside to do whatever he had to do in memory of his great-grandfather's rescue and recuperation here.

We walked slowly together along the long grassy arc of the village “main street,” edged by the dual remnants of black and “white” houses. A dozen or so diminutive Soay sheep grazed on the long, narrow strips of arable land and pasture. Despite the generous land allocation for each croft, crop cultivation had invariably been meager here—oats, barley, hay, potatoes, and cabbages—with the gastronomic emphasis always on gannet and fulmar meat, lamb, and occasional fish.

Everywhere we looked were dozens of those sturdy stone drying-house
cleits
, once filled with dead birds morphing into wizened, jerkylike strips. Many of the thick turf roofs were occupied by nesting fulmars—noisily arrogant in their territorial declarations. If we came a little too close they would leap off their turf-perches, skim our heads with their broad white wings, drop gooey white discharges, and—so Angus had warned us—even spit at us if they felt threatened.

“Now tha's not a thing you'll enjoy ver' much,” he'd said. “An' you'd definitely not be welcomed back on this boat if you've been hit with a blast of fulmar vomit. It's terribly oily stuff, stinkin' of rotten fish and God knows what else, and if it hits y'clothes y'might as well burn 'em. You'll never get rid of the smell!”

So we heeded his advice, steered clear of the nesting fulmar families, and explored the ancient graveyard set in a circular enclosure behind the
houses. It was full of small, simple, and usually unmarked headstones. Apparently, the love and devotion of the last St. Kildans who left here in 1930 was such that many asked to be returned and buried in this quiet place, protected from the flurries of island storms by its sturdy stone walls.

Just above the graveyard we found the remnants of an underground house—the House of the Fairies—thought to date from around 500
BC
. This is just one of the many ancient remnants of subterranean (souterrain) dwellings, domed “beehive” houses, fanks, folds, and Iron Age circles scattered around the village and up the long slopes of the caldera.

A second ruined remnant nearby is claimed to be the site of “Lady Grange's House.” She was the wife of a prominent Scottish gentleman who exiled her here for eight years because of her suspected involvement in Jacobite plots at the time of Culloden, and other “activities of questionable propriety.” Her reputation prompted a famous remark from the ever-quotable Dr. Johnson that “if MacLeod would let it be known that he had such a place for naughty ladies, he might make his island a very profitable venue.”