Sun Dance (6 page)

She never stooped to calling the defeat of her people, the Battle of Culloden. That was the name the English put on it, she said and speaking as though it were yesterday, she put a hand on my head, “My great, great grandfather’s elder brother fell on the field, east wind and sleet in his face, a musket ball through the chest, so they told. And fat, gloating Cumberland standing on a high stone at the back, waving and cheering. The Butcher they called him. The younger brother of that dead relation and some of the boys from the Ross-shire crofts took to the hill, hunted down like foxes, den to den.”

It was my childhood lesson in lingering Highland bitterness, “A friend from Wester Ross had a fishing boat and put that relation ashore in the Outer Hebrides. Over the side at night and swim. It was on a lonely island, I don’t remember the name. Anyway, the people hid and fed him. They took a great risk. They could have been shot too, a gunboat was cruising and stopping and searching every boat they came upon. Plenty that were shot out of hand.”

Oblivious of train and surroundings, I remembered so clearly her long silence and the childhood tension of awaiting a stories ending. Eventually she whispered, “Well, a’bhalaich, that man was your great, great, great, grandfather.” How little it meant to me then, how precious now.

I’d viewed the plodding tameness of feudal class divisions and its reverential bowing to superiors; how different from the voices which sprang into a sudden craving. Words came flowing, song and poetry, long forgotten lines arose in my head, ‘Scots wha hae, Sound the Pibroch,’ great songs, melodies that wept tears in the lost tides of defeat, bold words that waved the banners of victory, and sang the tunes of glory.

My father came strongly to me; ‘A Man’s a Man for a’ that,’ the line he stressed in a poem he loved. I heard him again, playing the piano, the songs of Old Scotia, he called them, melodies that lived in haunting times, stirring times, the poetry of a nation with the undying emotions of love, battle, and sacrifice in its soul. Out of lament for the old ways I learnt at granny’s knee, there came a lift in my heart.

Exaltation sang to the vaulted generations of awaiting spirits. Scotland. For the first time in my life, I was in Scotland. And beating a pulse in my head, my father’s deep voice;

‘From the lone shieling of the misty island,

Mountains divide us, and the wastes of seas,

Yet still the blood is strong, the heart is Highland,

And we in dreams behold the Hebrides.’

My eyes filled with the tears of joy and sadness.

Nobody in the compartment looked up from their magazines. Crossing the border- no more than crossing a street. Apart from that humiliating outburst of shouting, I had not spoken to anybody, nor anybody to me. The seat beside me remained vacant, Maybe my hollow, wet cough sounded like T.B. or cancer? Not that I wanted company, conversations raged in my head.

Crossing the border, I felt conscious of the stirrings of an ethnic divide.

Where was I going, and why?

The rail line twisted amongst soft and rounded contours. Border hills, grass to their tops and dotted like daisies with sheep. Sheep! I’d never before seen so many ranging the open hills, subject to wind, weather and a shepherd’s skill. The empathy between a man with his working foot on the hill and the animals which daily depended on its pasture occurred to me.

Out of the shadows of evening light the burns overflowed, white and creamy from gullies cut by ten thousand storms. Here was I, a scientist grappling with the calculations of the sub-atomic particles which govern existence and there on a passing hillside a system dealing with a purpose, tangible and simple. A distant flock of sheep appeared as an undulating white canopy flowing down the hill. I spotted a striding man and with a stab of pleasure I caught sight of two dogs.

An image of busy city millions superimposed itself, the trap of civilisation hurtled into my picture. Taxis, tube trains and forced body contact became the cannibalistic screaming of rats fighting in a cage. How to heal with this erratic mind racing, stop these bouts of recurring horror? I wrung my hands and groaned aloud, aware passengers were glancing at me. Gradually my thoughts steadied, became lucid as hills gave way to ploughed land and fields of dairy cattle. On the horizon I glimpsed the skyscraper tenements of Glasgow and again I was assailed by this morbid dread of confinement.

Access to land as the basic requirement of survival was denied to countless by force, yet to millions of western consumers it was discounted by choice and certainly had no bearing on their daily activities. Perhaps I was being too simplistic in believing the sun and soil to be the fundamental requirements if civilization began to crack. What else counted in a final reckoning?

From fields and hillsides to high rise flats my I saw the land in a totally different context. No longer just a weekend playground, I wanted land sufficient to live on, to live by, to care for, be part of its cycles with the intimacy of belonging; hold my head high with the pride and satisfaction of working in harness with its natural forces. I needed the solace of the elements, and happiness.

Ideas and inspiration churned with the fury of a riptide. My head throbbed, bursting to be released from a body weak and sick, be able to stride like the shepherd I’d watched on that Border hillside. I must find health, land, and independence.

Why in the world had I traveled north, any direction, but north? Yet I felt drawn as if by a magnet, a helpless compass needle swinging true. Some force seemed in control of this diabolically stupid breakout. Barely fit to walk fifty yards without a coughing fit, I groaned aloud. Was I ditching a field of research which might break the stranglehold of Einstein’s lordly equation? Fool, you fool! What madness drove me?

A phone sat on the bedside table of a Glasgow Hotel.

For the first time since ‘escaping’ from the hospital, an incident I preferred to regard as leaving of my own accord, I stared at the card with a handwritten phone number. Never mind clothes, money, how or why had it all happened? Somebody must have slipped this card into my wallet. The number meant nothing to me.

I lifted the receiver. Should I dial? It could be a ridiculous folly.

“This is reception, how can I help you, Sir?” I relayed the number to a thick Scottish accent, “It’s ringing for you now, Sir.”

It rang and rang, would I put down the receiver?

“Hello, hello,” a mellow voice answered, relaxed, no practiced, ‘How may I help you?’. I waited, until eventually, “I’m in the bar just now, hang on.” I heard him speak to someone, but not in English. The clink of a glass followed by, “That’s for yourself, Iain,” then back to me, “Who’s calling please?”

“Is that the, the, er, er,” Taken aback to hear the strains of energetic fiddle playing, I faltered. Should I hang up? After all, I hadn’t the least idea whom I might be contacting. Lively music, laughter and voices, my hand stopped in mid-air.

“It’s the Castleton Hotel you’ve got,” the man had raised his voice above conversations which were certainly not in English. The strains of an accordion joined the fiddler. “Sorry about the noise. Are you hearing me.?”

“Yes, I’m hearing you. Er mm,” I cleared my throat, “is there any possibility of accommodation please. Have you a single room, I, er, maybe tomorrow?” This is ridiculous, tomorrow? I was in Glasgow, could be speaking to John o’Groats or Lands End. The code said it must be somewhere in U.K. “By the way,” I tried to sound casual, “where exactly are you?”

“Well now, you’ve reached the Isle of Halasay. If you’re coming over, just jump on the ferry from Oban. There’s plenty room here, no problem. In case you’re late, what name is it?”

The situation was gaining a compelling momentum, but did I want to give away any details? The implied threat at the Goldberg meeting concerned me. All too vividly I was aware of the case of scientist whose assessment perhaps didn’t fit the conclusion desired by his political masters, who as a prominent advisor to the Government on the issue of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq was found dead and some doctors were questioning the suicide verdict. Given the highly suspicious convenience of the hospital arrangements, clothes, wallet and cash but no briefcase, was I being set up? In spells of rational thought I’d planned to remain incognito and disappear.

I hesitated. John Smith sounded foolish. The background noise settled the matter and my name fitted the music. I plunged on, “This is, er, Hector MacKenzie.”

There was something of a pause, I guessed he relayed the information down a bar counter. I heard my name at the end of a sentence before the voice came again,

“No problem Mr.MacKenzie, just come across when it suits you. Don’t you be worrying, there’s plenty Mackenzies on this island already, another one won’t make any difference.”

Untwine the double helix,

Decode its formulae,

It will tell you home,

Explain affinity.

I winced at the lungfulls of salt air. They stung, sharp as iodine, tender lungs crackled like brown paper, smarting with each greedy breath. Sunlight reflected off the sea, burnt a face pale as a hot plant reared in an office. Wasted muscles, no better than a newly born kitten, weak eyes narrowed, overpowered by the brightness and though the spring hinted summer’s warmth I shivered. Clinging to the ship’s rail, swaying to each roll, I learnt what it was to be truly soft and I hated it. Somehow I’d beat it.

Trains or planes are dull, but putting to sea! Any ship, great or small, casting her ropes and pulling away from land has aboard the thrill of setting out, anticipation, perhaps adventure, leaving an old world, seeking a new. It coursed through me. Glorying to prospects I knew not, I stood on the upper deck and let a driving wind whipping my face carve the future.

Our dipping bows cut through the oncoming swell, hurled aside rhythmic sheets in fascinating cascades of light. The great sea, the ferocious sea, drowning, playing, pounding, singing. Don’t say it had no thought, nor its motion lacked an embracing feel. Rainbows shone in its spray, children of the sun, yellow red and green, in splendour the dark marine. Beside us sailed masters of the gale, gliding along each trough, tipping the surface, banking with the ease of upward sweep until they crossed the breaking tops of a world so dangerous and immense.

Away to the north a fishing boat was flinging spray, her bows gleaming broke each crest. Men on the winches handling nets, skipper at helm judging wind and weather, real men. Watching turned into craving. I’ll be part of this world of ‘doing’ Find a practical life, outdoors each day, live with the sun, the healing sun.

Hilltops grew from the sea, turned to islands, long and sleek, dark as a seal’s back. Travel the world here the tendrils that bound me were imprinted in the blood. How else their power to sway? Tears came, blinding and unashamed. Why, why? What were these shores to me?

Wave tops flecked with white, rocks and breaking swell. Ancient limbs reached into the sea, primal land to sky without bounds. No insipid shades- sounds and colour, strong and pure, vibrant as the energy of places wild which face the rolling sea. No weakness now would hold me back.

All doubts fled, a rough existence would be the making of me. Away with security, no conformity, my own master come what may, trim sail to gale, the fickle moods of sea, ride storm and danger; face the doom of Nordic myth,
what will be, will be
. The spirit of Viking days gripped my imagination, a psychic force driving my actions; the fatal power that bends us to its ends.

The island closed, ahead the pillard light. Skerries dark, white edged with the rising tide. A wild bird’s flight.black winged against the sea. The helm swung sharp a-starboard, turned the headland close. Beaches shelved to turquoise, a bay, a castle, sea girt on a rock and straggled crofts beneath a snaring peak. I stared in disbelief.

One island hill stood clear against the blue. Sunshine faded into night. I heard a new born cry upon an ice moon hill. A shadowed crone sat amid the frozen needles beneath a winter larch, till smiling through her dying groan she watched the raven galley sail to seek a freedom home.