3
The Escape
One Saturday night during this half-life, as I sat watching Match of the Day, I heard the doorbell ring. At that time of night, I thought it was probably kids or pissheads, so I stayed put in my chair.
But then the bell sounds again, long and piercing, like it’s an emergency.
So, muttering curses, I drag myself out of the chair and shuffle down the hall. Now the doorbell is one continuous jarring ring.
“Who is it?” I call.
“It’s Scarlett Johansson,” comes a muffled, Scottish growl.
I open the door and Mac sweeps past me carrying a suitcase.
“Oh right, are you coming to stay then?”
“This suitcase is for you,” he says, as he heads for the kitchen. “I’ll make a cup of tea while you pack.”
“Pack?”
“Yeh, you need a break. Look at the state of you, what’s with the beard?”
“It stops people recognising me.”
“Oh, OK, I thought you were auditioning for Robinson Crusoe. Go on, just a few days’ stuff is all you need.”
He clanks the cupboard doors open and shut as he hunts for the tea.
“You’ve lost weight,” he says. “You look like a very ugly, hairy supermodel. Come on, don’t just stand there like a fucking statue, let’s hit the road.”
“And where are we going?”
“That’s a surprise.”
“Well, maybe I don’t want to go anywhere.”
“Why not? What, you want to stay here?” His eyes drift to the television in the kitchen. “Oh God no, Chelsea—Man City, two teams I loathe equally.”
Then he picks up the remote, turns off the TV.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” I exclaim.
“I’m being a friend. Come on, move, pack something warm.”
“I’m happy where I am.”
“Oh p-lease.”
“I don’t want to go anywhere…there’ll be people and…”
“Don’t worry, I’ve thought of that. This milk is on the turn.”
He stops sniffing the bottle and pours the contents down the sink.
“Come on, Kev, don’t be a tosser.”
I stand stock still, making a point.
“What? You’d rather sit around in here, picking away at all the wee scabs of self-pity?”
“You’ve no idea what it’s like.”
“I don’t care what it’s like, you don’t stop answering people’s calls. Now stop being such a girlie and let’s get moving.”
“It’s half-past eleven at night,” I point out.
His face lights with mischief.
“I know, exciting, isn’t it? It’s a full moon as well.” Then he howls like a werewolf as he fills the kettle. I head for the bedroom to pack.
We drove north, or rather he drove north, fast, treating most of the road marking as bourgeois suggestions. It took an hour or two to escape the outer tentacles of the suburbs, and then we travelled along dark motorways, following a river of red brake lights, as a river of white lights flowed towards us. I tried to stay awake, tried to keep chatting, to help him stay lively, but my heart wasn’t in it. I didn’t have enough to say, or the will to make small talk. So, eventually, I drifted off into a sleep of sorts.
When I woke up it was light. Mac turned down my offer to take over the driving – he said I wasn’t in a fit state to operate heavy machinery – so we hurtled on at full throttle until we decided we needed a pee and some food.
The roadside café was empty and basic, to put it at its kindest. Every surface was protected by plastic that was tacky to the touch. I had a light breakfast; Mac had almost every item on the sun-faded menu. We were somewhere near Berwick, but Mac refused to tell me our destination because he was enjoying being an arsehole. I kept asking and he kept cackling with amusement.
As the morning wore on, we continued through the borders, skimming Edinburgh, then north-west through the glens, where gleaming quilts of snow still lay in any dents near the peaks. I was quite enjoying being driven, watching the landscape unfold itself around us. I became a bundle of matter being transported to God-knows-where. Mac didn’t seem to mind that I was in no mood to talk.
Eventually, we arrived, in light, misty rain, at Ullapool, where Mac followed the signs to the ferry port.
“Wait a second, you’ve brought me to the back of beyond…and now that turns out to be phase one?”
“Well you said you didn’t want to see people so—”
“Bloo-dy hell, Mac.”
“And you’ve often said you’d like to visit the Outer Hebrides.”
“I’ve never said that.”
“You have.”
“Yeh, but it’s fucking freezing.”
“It’s a little brisk.”
“It’s freezing.”
“To a wee southern fairy-boy.”
“Look at the temperature, there, on the display.”
“You’re going to love it, nae sweat.”
“Look! Four degrees!”
“What are you? An orchid?”
“Four degrees.”
A man in a high-vis tabard (and an overcoat and gloves) taps on the window. Mac presents a pair of tickets. The cold air starts filling the car.
“We’ll load in a few minutes,” says the high-vis tabard. “Don’t go wandering off anywhere.”
Once he is gone, Mac starts giving me the hard sell on how good the food is in the ro-ro ferries.
“Also, they’re really stable. I’ve sailed through a force seven and not spilt a drop.”
“So will you tell me now?”
“We’re going to Harris. It’s stunning.”
“Harris?”
“Yeh…joins on with Lewis. Lewis is bleak. Moonscape. No trees. I think the Wee Free chopped them all down because they were green.” He chuckles at having stumbled on a joke. “Yeh, fucking bastard decadent trees…always rustling their leaves on the Sabbath. But Harris is beautiful and magnificent.”
The car in front of us starts its engine and the queue edges forward. Mac turns the key in the ignition.
“Wagons roll,” he cries, before humming the theme from Lonesome Dove.
“And what about your new love – ‘the one’ – how come you’ve abandoned her?”
“I made it clear at the outset that our relationship might involve unexplained absences. Besides, she’s in Munich on a course.”
The high-vis tabard motions for us to proceed up the ramp. There is an unsettling clunk as we lurch forward into the gaping maw of the car-deck. Another high-vis figure points to the lane nearest the side of the ship.
“What’s the weather forecast?” I ask.
Mac brings the car to a halt.
“Mixed,” he says.
“I don’t want to be recognised, Mac.”
“Well, you’re not allowed to stay in the car.”
“I don’t want to be gawped at.”
“There’s hardly anyone here. Come on, we’ll find a nice quiet corner.”
As we climb out of the car, I put on my woolly hat and pull my coat up around my ears. Mac tells me that my attempt to look inconspicuous just comes across as attention-seeking. I tell him to shut up.
As I squeeze my way between the parked cars a small yapping white dog throws itself against a window.
“Juno! Be quiet!” screams its owner. As she struggles to clamber out of the driver’s door, she apologises for the dog’s behaviour, but I ignore her and keep on walking.
We found a quiet corner, by the toilets – a seated area where I could sit with my back to everyone without it looking odd. I slept most of the way, not because I felt especially tired, more because I couldn’t be bothered to be awake. Mac went up on deck, briefly, to see if he could spot some whales, but the cold drove him back inside.
After three hours or so, an announcement asked us to please return to our cars. There was a momentary confusion when we went to the wrong vehicle deck, but then we managed to spot Mac’s car and were weaving between the bumpers when the small white dog threw himself against the glass again, barking at me as if I was Satan himself. It was startling enough to make me jump. Once more, the woman made her flustered apologies and, again, I ignored her. This time, Mac told her not to worry. Why did he feel the need to do that? Was it some kind of criticism of me?
We climb inside the car.
A klaxon sounds.
Some grey sky starts to appear, as the ferry’s visor slowly lifts, revealing the low stone frontages of Stornoway. Gulls surf the wind. A tattered Saltire flaps, lonely, on a flagpole next to a portakabin.
“Welcome to the Hebrides,” I mumble sourly.
Mac starts the engine and we follow a travelling home out of the ship’s belly on to the quayside.
“I’d forgotten just how miserable a fucker you can be,” he chirps. “You’ll see, this place is like Paradise, only windy.”
We join a one-way system as I adjust the settings on the heater.
“And where exactly are we staying?”
“My cousin’s got a place at the southern end of the island. Not far. An hour at most.”
“Your cousin? Is—”
“Don’t worry, he’s away, it’s empty. And it’s nice and secluded. There’s no mobile signal. No TV. Nothing. It’s perfect. Like stepping back in time.”
“Are you all right to drive? You’ve had no sleep.”
“Ach, I’ll sleep when I’m dead.”
I ease back in my seat and close my eyes. The dog thing? Was that criticism? For a moment, I consider asking him, but then I decide it doesn’t matter enough. You’re a passenger, Kevin. Just sit back and let it happen.
Getting to his cousin’s place took longer than Mac had predicted because we got stuck behind a herd of sheep. He seemed to regard it as quaint and rustic, but I was hungry, tired and pissed off, regally pissed off. Why had I been so passive? Now look where I was. Stuck in a car, looking out on a land shrouded in rain, being dictated to by sheep. I told him, several times, to honk on the horn, but he just laughed and said I had to get off “city-boy time”.
Eventually, we find ourselves bouncing up a steep, rutted track towards an off-white bungalow, with black clouds gathering behind it.
Mac gets out of the car with his face illuminated. I try to get out, but because I am on the windward side, I have to wait for a gap between the gusts before I can open my door. When I step out, the wind knifes me.
“They call this ‘a lazy wind’,” shouts Mac.
“‘Lazy’?”
“Yeh, ’cos it can’t be bothered to go round you.”
He heads for the doorstep where he finds the key beneath a flower pot. As we enter, Mac feels for a light switch.
“Ta-ra!”
The light comes on, watery and insipid.
“Home sweet home for the next few days.”
I look around me. It feels like I’ve stepped into the 1950s. There are swirling nylon carpets, straight-backed plastic chairs, a pouffe of indeterminate colour.
“You’re not impressed.”
“How long do you imagine us staying here?”
“I have to be back by the end of the week.”
“A week? Are you mad?”
But I’m talking to myself; he’s set off to fetch the suitcases out of the boot. There is a radio – a museum piece. I half-expect to hear the Goons coming out of it. Mac re-enters with the suitcases.
“We’d best decide who has which bedroom.”
“Mac…what the fuck are we going to do here?”
He plonks the suitcases on the ground.
“You are such a snob.”
“It’s…depressing.”
“Well, I’m sorry, Lady Penelope, but Balmoral was fully booked.”
“Seriously, Mac, what are we going to do?”
“We can go for nice walks.”
“If we can get out of the door.”
“There’s lots around here. And there’s a very good chance of seeing an otter.” He knows what I am about to say. “Once the weather eases off.”
“And if it doesn’t?”
“We put our feet up, read some books, get nice and cosy. Look, see, there’s a chess set. And we can chat, spend some time together, when did we last do that, eh? Just the two of us. It’ll be like old times, only without the moments of degeneracy.”
His shoulders droop slightly.
“Come on, Kevin. It’s a change of scenery. It’ll do you good. You were…” His voice fades away beneath the frustration.
“What was that with the dog-lady?” I ask.
“Eh?”
“You were all nice to her when her stupid dog barked at me.”
“I was just being polite.”
“What, and I wasn’t?”
“No, you were fucking rude if you must know. But you’re having a bad time of it, so…”
“Don’t apologise for me, OK?
I can hear a tremble in my voice. Mac stands very still.
“I have to say, Kevin, that if you’re thinking of starting a fist-fight, I don’t think that you’re in very good shape.”
He’s right. I’m being moody and absurd and the realisation makes me laugh.
“Let’s go see the bedrooms, wee man!”
Both bedrooms turn out to be extremely small, as are the beds.
“Well,” pronounces Mac, “if we pull any women, they’ll have to be midgets. This one’s slightly bigger, you can have it. You’ll need more room for your head.”
He laughs at his own joke as he bustles into the other room with his suitcase. Then he charges down the hall shouting that he’s going to buy some provisions. The front door slams and he’s gone.
I turn up the tiny radiator in my room. Thank fuck there’s central heating, a small concession to the march of progress. The wind starts to whistle through a weakness it has found. I head for the tiny lounge, get out the chess set and start laying out the pieces.
Come the next morning, the world could not look more different. The clouds have given way to a blaze of colour and as we sit in the tiny kitchen, eating a fried breakfast, we take in a panorama of blue sky, gleaming sands, lush green dunes and distant purple mountains.
“What’s this bay called?” I ask.
“Scarista. How did you sleep?”
“Surprisingly well. I had to curl up like a hedgehog, but…”
“Yeh, me too. I slept like a baby…woke with my pyjamas full of shit.” He laughs like a drain. “Sorry, that just came to me…maybe it’s funnier with ‘pyjamas soaked in piss’.”
“No,” I tell him, “it isn’t.”
Mac starts crunching through his toast. I had forgotten what a noisy eater he is.
“I’m sorry about yesterday, Mac…I was a bit wound up.”
“Forget about it.”
We eat on in silence – not awkward silence, but the silence where you know each other well enough not to have to speak. Down below us in the bay, breakers are rolling up the beach with steady grandeur. He was right. It is very beautiful here.
“That headland jutting out on the left there?” he says, sawing at some bacon. “That’s called Toe Head. We can walk to the end of that.”
“You know the area well then?”
“Been here a couple of times. Mostly when I was younger. Didn’t appreciate it then. You’re not easily impressed when you’re a kid, are you. Nature’s just something people drag you round. But now…well, you’ve got to admit, that’s a world-class view. Not seen much better than that. In New Zealand, maybe. Have you been to New Zealand?”
“No.”
“It’s like Scotland on steroids. Magnificent vistas in every direction. So magnificent, in fact, that it gets a bit boring. Perfection dulls the mind.”
“Is that a quote?”
“No, that’s me being poncy. The New Zealanders have this funny accent. Instead of ‘six’ they say ‘sex’.”
“Right.”
“Yeh…it can cause confusion when you’re trying to buy eggs.”
He then launches into a rambling, tangled anecdote involving a misunderstanding with a female shop assistant in Auckland. Like a lot of his stories, it is a maze of tangents and detail, although it does end with the two of them having sex in a cupboard. I am not totally sure if I believe it, but it’s a story, and he is trying to raise my morale.
“OK then,” he announces, wiping egg from his chin with the back of his hand, “shall we go walkies?”
“Um…yeh…all right.”
“Good, good, good.” He starts clearing plates and dumping them in the sink.
“I haven’t got boots,” I tell him.
“Neither have I. Come on, let’s get cracking before the weather changes.”
The shoes and coats go on and we head out the door, down the steep, loose-stoned track towards the honey-gold curve of the beach.
The wind feels like it is blowing every thought out of my head, buffeting and slapping my face, drumming on my ears. The colours seem to intensify by the minute in the slanting northern light. The blue of the water blends towards green, then back to brilliant blue again, then a mottled silver as some clouds hurry past. About twenty yards out, a squad of gannets arrow into the waves, white darts, catching the sun. We stop and watch them for a while, watch them circling into the wind before folding their wings to become missiles, piercing the water.
“They go blind in the end,” Mac shouts above the wind. “They’ve got this membrane-thing that protects the eye from the impact. But eventually it wears away, so…”
“That’s them finished, I suppose.”
“Well you can’t give one a guide dog.”
A gannet hits the water, smack, right in front of us.
“Whoa!” exclaims Mac. “That looks like fun, doesn’t it? It feels like they should be calling ‘wheeee’ on the way down.”
Mac’s face is lit up as he watches them. I had no idea he loved birds as much. When did that happen? Now he is pointing out some smaller birds, swooping in shorter, stabbier flights, further out above a foaming reef.
“Arctic Terns. But those two brown things over there, the ones that are sort of half-buzzard, half-gull, they’re skuas. They just steal fish from other birds. They’re opportunists. If they can catch a gannet when it’s still on the water, they’ll try and murder it. I’ve seen them do it. It’s horrific.”
Then he starts laughing. “Just like people, eh? Two types. One lot who work really hard just to survive, and the other bastards who steal it.”
That’s more like the Mac I know, the man who can turn any topic into a socialist commentary.
We turn and walk along the beach with the wind at our backs. The head of a seal pops out of a heaving wave and it tracks us, disappearing occasionally, but always resurfacing nearby, curious and watchful.
After a while, I decide now is the time to broach something.
“Why have you never asked me, Mac?”
“Asked you what?”
“You know perfectly well…why have you never asked me whether I hit her.”
“Well, I kind of assumed…from your demeanour, that you didn’t.”
“But you’ve never specifically asked.”
He stops to poke his toe into a dried-out jellyfish.
“Would you like me to specifically ask?”
“Were you frightened you might get the wrong answer?”
He tips his head back and laughs.
“God, you always have to torture yourself, don’t you?”
A few steps brings his face right in front of mine.
“OK now, pay attention. I assumed…that you would assume…that I had assumed…that you didn’t hit her…I took it as read.”
“And…supposing I had hit her?”
“Then I would feel you’d behaved like a total shit, but you would still be my friend. I’m lumbered with you now. That’s what friends are, lumber.”
The seal bobs up in front of us.
“They’re like marine Labradors, aren’t they,” he chuckles. “Who are you staring at, pal?”
There is a volley of screeches as the gannets escort a loitering skua off the premises. I stand and watch the aerial dogfight as Mac walks on ahead, calling back over his shoulder, “You need to get over yourself. All this angsty crap…waste of time and energy.”
He scurries to his right, as a longer wave chases him up the beach.
“And I tell you something else. If you want people to accept that you’re an innocent man, you’d best start behaving like one.”
Of course, that is what friends are for – to give you patronising advice that you resent. So I let Mac walk well ahead of me, while I hang back to watch the seal. What the fuck did he mean by that?
I let the rhythm of the waves take me over. There is a kind of slow melody to them. But, every now and then, an incoming wave meets the gentle ripples of a receding one and creates a lateral explosive charge, accelerating across the shallows. I become hypnotised by this effect. One dying wave meets another fading one and produces this electrifying slash. How is that happening? And why not every time the waves meet? What energises it?
Mac is now a distant speck, so I set off to catch him up, jogging towards the looming form of Toe Head.
The walk was extremely enjoyable and perfectly timed. We spent a couple of hours walking through the machair, then round the back of Toe Head, past many small sandy coves to a ruined chapel, where we sat for a while as Mac pointed out curlews, redshanks and, at a very high altitude, a huge white-tailed sea eagle, sailing with barely a flap of its wings.
Then a few grey clouds began to sneak over the hills, so we headed back and by the time we reached the bungalow, the sky was a low ceiling of leaden cloud and the first fat raindrops were spotting the paving stones. As Mac shoved open the front door, the clouds burst and the bungalow was suddenly turned into a percussion instrument. We laughed at how lucky we had been and settled down, snug in our little bolt-hole as the storm raged around us. There was something very comforting about sitting quietly reading while rain and hail were thrown against the windows. This was something mankind had been doing since we were monkeys, waiting in a cave for Nature’s rage to pass. The various pitches of whistle we could hear, as the wind forced its way through cracks in the building’s fabric, somehow made the experience even cosier.
As evening arrived we started playing chess. The set was missing a few pieces, so Mac had a small pepper pot for a king and I had a matchbox for a rook and two pawns that were dice. The games tended to be short because Mac’s game was based on all-out attack with never a thought for any consequences.
“Are you sure you want to do that?” I ask him.
“Don’t patronise me.”
“Very well then.” I move my bishop. “Checkmate.”
“Oh f—! Why didn’t I see that?”
“Because you don’t stop and think.”
“I like to play off the cuff. You play the boring way.”
“The successful way.”
He starts laying out the pieces again.
“Come on then, one more, I’m getting the hang of this now.”
“I don’t think so.”
Soon, Mac is sending his first pawn on another suicide mission.
“So when did you go to New Zealand?” I ask.
“About eight years back. Touring a show about the Suffragettes.”
“Was it any good?”
“The material was good. The execution was abysmal.”
I feel a little embarrassed that there are big chunks of Mac’s professional life that I know nothing about. Obviously the periods where we had drifted out of touch were longer than I had realised.
Already, two of his pawns are back in the box. “What’s up next for you?” I ask.
“Well, there was supposed to be a gig doing Victorian factory work songs, but the money buggered off, so…”
“How can you stand it?”
“Eh?”
“Well…y’know, all the setbacks…the shows that collapse or–”
“I can’t give in to the disappointment. That’d be a victory for the Man.”
“Yeh, I know, but the – you can’t go there you’re moving into check – the vast majority of what you do is…well, no offence, but it’s crap, isn’t it, be honest.”
“When was the last time you saw a show I was in?”
“I saw the one about the sugar trade, at that place in Aldershot.”
“That was badly directed. He was a choreographer, had no stagecraft.”
“The piece was shit.”
Mac moves his rook the length of the board and I take it immediately.
“Well,” he mutters, “it may have been shit…but at least it was original shit. Everything I do is original.”
“And short-lived.”
“It’s better than just doing the same old shit over and over again, year after year.”
Mac gives me a smile, waiting to see if I’ll pick up the grenade he has lobbed. I smile back.
“Millions of people watch that shit.”
“Yeah, like you care about them.”
He taps away, looking for a nerve. “When was the last time you took a risk, professionally, well no, a risk of any kind?”
“When I sat in your passenger seat yesterday”, I reply, calmly.
“Seriously, you used to write stuff and be all experimental and you’d commit, you’d really commit and…”
“Jesus, Mac, that’s over twenty years ago. We grow up.”
Suddenly he lets rip with a maniacal laugh.
“You have walked into my little trap, Mr Bond.”
I move my Queen one square.
“Checkmate.”
“What? Oh for— you jammy fucker. This is a stupid game, anyway. The one with the most power and freedom is the woman! How’s that an accurate picture of society, eh? Politically, it’s a nonsense.”
Mac starts to yawn, long and slow, like a lion, so I start to pack the chess pieces away.
“Yup, bedtime for me. Could be a big day tomorrow”, he says, through the yawn.
“Big day?”
“Yup, depending on the weather.”
“Why, what are we doing?”
“That, Kevvy-boy” he proclaims with a wolfish grin, “will be a lovely surprise.”
Then he heads off to make alarming noises in the toilet. A squall batters on the windowpanes. We are safe in our cave. And London seems a million miles away.
The following morning I woke up feeling genuinely rested, a feeling I had almost forgotten. I lay curled in my bed for ten minutes or so, listening to the calls of the gulls. Why did I find them comforting? Perhaps they were a reminder of early holidays in B&Bs in Lowestoft and Yarmouth, back when the furniture looked huge, before I realised that Mum and Dad were unhappy. Eventually, I dragged myself out of my own thoughts and headed for the kitchen.
There is a note on the kitchen table from Mac – “Back in a Minute”. A wave of panic ripples through me. Nobody knows where I am. I ought to let someone know. It is Monday, the working week, I need to let them know.
The front door flies open and Mac blows in like a gale.
“Man, it is one beautiful day out there.”
“I need to let my solicitor know where I am. In case something comes up.”
Mac looks exasperated. “If you go to the end of the point there –” he gestures out of the window “– up there by that cairn, I found a signal up there.”
So I get dressed and haul myself up the steep rise, where rabbit holes lay hidden in the grass like traps, until, eventually, after much moving around, there are enough bars on my phone to contact the outside world.
I ring Graham, but he does not pick up. So I ring Nina Patel. I make a conscious attempt to sound casual.
“Hey, it’s Kevin, how’s things?”
“Graham just rang, he said your place is all locked up, where are you? We’ve been trying to contact you.”
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to frighten anyone. I’m with a friend. We’re on the island of Harris.”
Nina laughs. “Harris? Je-sus, Kevin. Oh well, ‘least you’re still on UK soil, Graham was worried you’d fled the country, joined the Foreign Legion or something.”
“I’ll be back in a few days, that’s OK, isn’t it?”
There is a slight delay and I hear my last few words being repeated back to me. She goes quiet for a few moments.
“Are you sure you’re all right, Kevin? You’re having a rough time, you need to take care of yourself.”
The kindness in her voice – even down a crackling line – makes me suddenly feel weepy. Where did that come from? Am I so fragile now that it only takes a few kind words to make my chin start to tremble? For Christ’s sake, Kev, get a grip.
“I’m fine,” I tell her, nice and loud.
“Who’s with you?”
“My friend Mac.”
“All right…well, take it easy.”
I could end the conversation right there, but the anxiety inside me jabs out a question.
“Any developments?”
Why is she hesitating? She doesn’t usually hesitate.
“Well, you’ll probably get to hear about it, so I might as well tell you.” My mind starts to race. New witnesses? More accusations?
“Don’t worry, Kevin”, she soothes, “we’ll get on top of it, but…um…some idiot has put up something on YouTube. It’s infantile nonsense, we’re getting them to take it down.”
Carefully and calmly, she describes the piece to me.
It seems some cybernerd-type has cut together lots of clips of me in character as Lenny. He has grabbed individual words from dozens of different episodes to create a monologue.
“What sort of monologue?” I ask.
“I think it’s supposed to be comic, but it isn’t.”
“And what do I – what does Lenny – say in this monologue?”
Another hesitation. I feel my stomach lighten in the few seconds it takes for her to answer.
“…he confesses to hitting women.”
“What?!”
“It’s a stupid piece, and we’re getting it taken down.”
“How many people have seen it?”
“Not that many. ’Least by YouTube standards.”
She talks me through the legal steps they’ve set in motion, but my mind is seething with half-completed thoughts, so I struggle to take any of it in. I’m spinning around, mentally and physically, trying not to be overwhelmed by a growing sense of impotent rage.
“That’s got to be defamatory, surely.”
“Yes, of course it is,” replies Nina Patel, “it’s outrageous.”
“So we can sue the bastard.”
“Well, if we can identify him, or her.”
“So, we identify…and then we sue.”
Yet another hesitation. “I’m not sure that would be my advice, Kevin. If we take legal action we just turn it into a much bigger story that will play out for a lot longer. Let us deal with it and we’ll make it go away quickly.”
For a few minutes, she allows me to let off steam. I rail and rant and swear about the sheer injustice of it all. She listens, patient and sympathetic, before convincing me that they have the situation under control.
“Do I need to come back?” I ask.
“No, no point,” she says. “We just need YouTube to accept it needs to be taken down. We’ll win that argument, trust me.”
Do I trust her? Do I trust anyone now? In the end, a kind of exhaustion sets in and I agree that she should handle it however she sees fit. I think I trust her.
I have to trust someone.
On returning to the cottage, I replay the whole conversation for Mac. He agrees with Nina Patel’s strategy. If you get too worked up, you start to look more guilty.
“Besides,” he says, “it’s YouTube, nobody takes anything they see on YouTube seriously.”
“You think so?”
“Definitely. Don’t waste any more brain-space worrying about something dreamt up by some sad wanker in his bedroom. You cannot let these people drag you down.”
I appreciate his efforts to buoy up my morale, but I can’t help feeling that the YouTube piece is just one more insidious accusation. The world seems to have made up its mind about me already, so what will happen if and when I get to court? Mac urges me to tackle things one step at a time.
“And the next-most-immediate step is…the surprise I promised.”
He starts breaking eggs into the frying pan.
“Make yourself useful, Kev, we’ll need to make ourselves some sandwiches for later. Come on, chop, chop. Stop moping.”
“I’m not moping,” I protest.
“Good, then get a move on. I promised the boatman we’d be there for ten-thirty.”
“Boatman?”
“Yeh, Calum he’s called. He said they’re expecting a bit of a swell, but we’re OK for the trip, so get some breakfast down you and we’ll head off.”
“Where’s this boat trip to? And if you say ‘it’s a surprise’ you’re getting this fork up your arse.”
Mac pauses for dramatic effect. “It’s to St. Kilda.”
“…St Kilda…the island?”
“Aye, how cool is that?”
“The abandoned island?”
“Yeh. Well, I think the RAF might be there and possibly some scientists but—”
“How long is this boat-trip?”
“Just three hours or so.”
“Three hours!”
“Three and a bit.”
“What, three hours out, three hours back?”
“Well, obviously, but—”
“Going west?”
“Yeh, but—”
“Three hours off the west coast off the Outer Hebrides? That’s the middle of the fucking Atlantic Ocean, Mac.”
“Well it’s hardly the middle, it—”
“What sort of boat is it?”
“A sturdy one. Calum does the trip all the time. He takes tourists to—”
“Tourists? I’m not spending hours being gawped at by tourists, that’s not—”
“Will you calm down, man.” He flaps his arms in exasperation. “There’ll be no-one else. I got chatting to Calum yesterday when I was getting the provisions. He’s running some supplies to the RAF boys, ’cos the helicopter’s kaput, and he wants to give the boat a wee run before the tourist season starts so…you won’t get recognised, I promise. You’ll not be bothered. And it’s a great chance to see something extraordinary.”
He steps towards me. “Come on, Kevin…you always used to be up for extraordinary. You’ve been holed up for ages, let’s get some air in your lungs.”
I glance out of the window. The sea does not look too rough, although there are the occasional flecks of white horses.
“Come on, man, there’s no need to be so anxious, it’s—”
“I’m not anxious.”
“What? You’ve marinated yourself in anxiety. Come on, let’s go have a bit of an adventure, eh? A three-hour boat-trip, what can be more fun than a boat trip?”
He’s right. I’m sick and tired of feeling anxious. Fuck it, why not? Three hours on a boat, that hardly turns us into buccaneers, what’s the matter with me? I refuse to be ruled by the knot in my stomach. A bit of an adventure, perhaps that’s just what I need.
After wolfing down a hearty breakfast, we drove for about fifteen minutes through a scraped, rock-littered moonscape, past a succession of narrow bays until we reached Leverburgh, a small port protected by an archipelago of low islands.
“How big is this boat?” I ask as Mac parks the car at a jaunty angle.
“Reasonably big. It’s a tourist boat.”
“How many people does it hold?”
“I dunno, I think Calum said ten, twelve.”
“That’s not a big boat, Mac.”
“It’ll be powerful.”
Then Mac opens the car door, which kicks a little in the wind.
“We should probably put on a few layers,” he says. So we put on our jumpers and jackets and go looking for the jetty, past some stinking lobster pots, beyond some empty skips. The jetty has one boat bobbing alongside it, not that small, but not massive either. But it has an enclosed cabin and looks reasonably modern. A young lad is winding ropes at the stern. He is tall, slender and his face suggests that he hasn’t seen a vitamin in years.
Mac walks towards the boat, giving the lad an over-cheery wave. For a moment, I’m standing alone at the edge of the jetty, staring down into the dark water. With a shudder, I catch myself thinking how easy it would be to take just one step forward and end all the chatter.
I hear Mac call “Calum!” and turn to see a leather-faced man emerging from inside the cabin. He is wearing waterproof over-trousers and a blue donkey jacket. He gestures for us to step aboard. Mac introduces us and Calum gives me the faintest of nods. He points at the pasty-faced lad.
“Fergus,” he informs us.
“Hi, Fergus” says Mac.
Fergus gives a thumbs-up, then carries on rope-winding. They clearly have no idea who I am, so I relax a little.
“Safety briefing,” announces Calum. “Life-jackets down there.” He points at a pile in the corner of the cabin. “Mind your head on this. You’re safer sitting down. Don’t wander around. Obey instructions. Don’t fall into the sea.”
So we sit down, just inside the entrance to the cabin, while Calum fires up the engine. He glances over his shoulder and gives Fergus a tiny nod, which is apparently the signal to cast off.
I lean closer to Mac. “A man of few words.”
“He loosens up after a bit,” whispers Mac. “Just don’t mention Alex Salmond.”
We start to chug out through the archipelago, where seals are reclining on rocks like sultans and cormorants sit drying their greeny-black wings. Then the boat starts to bounce a little as we head out into the open sea.
The first thirty minutes or so are moderately enjoyable. We watch the coastline of Harris retreat, with sunshine and shadow chasing each other across the hills. But then the sea grows livelier beneath us. Soon we are plunging into troughs and rising on the swell. From time to time, we hit the top of a wave and become airborne, hanging for a moment above the water, before coming down with a jolt. A jarring jolt. We start anticipating it, the weightless sensation of being in mid-air, followed by the spine-rattling crunch. It is a relentless and bruising repetition and, after a while, I start wondering how thick the hull is. Mac – who had been so full of the joys of spring – now sits quietly, with his gaze focused firmly on the distant horizon. Is he feeling sea-sick? Oh I do hope so.
To make matters even more uncomfortable, the sea has no real rhythm to it. It is a dirty mess of swells and cross-winds, a sprawl of lurches, pitches and rolls. Lurch, pitch, roll, pitch, lurch, lurch, roll, pitch, lurch. Am I going to be sick? I can feel a light-headedness creeping up on me. I slide from seat to seat towards the open back of the cabin where there is more fresh air. I really do not want to be sick. It’s a feeling I have dreaded ever since I was a child. I lean out into the elements and gulp down as much oxygen as I can. The sickly, sweet fumes from the diesel are not helping, but after a few minutes I feel my head clearing and my thoughts sharpen and I know that I’m going to be all right.
Fergus comes and stands behind me, bracing himself in the doorframe.
“Are you OK there?” he asks. I give the best smile I can manage in the circumstances.
“This is the choppiest bit. Well, apart from the bit around the island.”
“Right…so what is this, force four?”
He studies the churning of the waves for a second, grimacing as he peers beyond the stern.
“Maybe a five, possibly a six.”
Then a ve-ry big wave slaps us side-on and the boat rolls, and rolls, and keeps rolling, I am thrown on to the next seat, still we’re rolling, shit, are we going over?
A glance at Fergus’s impassive face tells me that we’re not. The boat rocks back towards an even keel and I feel ashamed of my fear. Did he see it? If he did, he has probably seen the same panic on the faces of countless tourists. Get over yourself, Kevin.
“How far is it to St. Kilda?”
Fergus puffs his pale cheeks. “From port? Ooh, about fifty-ish miles.”
“How long to go?” “We’ve done about, er…just under half of it.”
Great.
He glances over his shoulder deeper into the cabin, drawn by a straining, mechanical, ratcheting grunt that I know is the sound of Mac being sick.
During the next hour and a half St. Kilda gradually took shape in front of us. It began as a ghostly, thrusting outline and then hardened into a grey-green tooth of a rock, with more teeth to either side. Then a second mass appeared from behind it. As we got closer, it started to look a little less relentlessly sheer and vertical. Shoulders of rock, long ledges and ragged promontories fell into focus. Vertical, brutal stacks stood guard, with foam boiling at their base. And, in the middle, a pyramid of rock, larger than the rest, rising out of the sea like a lost world of myth and monsters. St. Kilda.
Calum had given a tattered tourist guide to Mac, who kept trying to shout statistics and facts over the din of the wind, the sea and the seabirds thickening in the air around the rocks. A hundred miles from the mainland, he shouted. Tallest sea-cliffs in the British Isles! Thousand feet! Humans have lived here for three thousand years! Evacuated in 1930! The colour had returned to his face, now that he had got rid of his breakfast.
The closer we drew to St. Kilda the more intimidating it became. At least, that was how I felt, but Mac seemed enchanted, standing at the back of the boat with his jaw hanging open in wonder. Fergus suggested he close his mouth, with so many seabirds flying over our heads. The sea was becoming calmer as we rounded a jutting outthrust of rock and entered a small bay. Mac read more text out of the guidebook. We were looking at the remains of a volcano. The bowl-shaped bay in front of us – Village Bay – was part of a semi-submerged caldera. A little disappointingly, the first structure you noticed on the shore was a small, very functional-looking, squat, square power-generator. But to the right of that, at the foot of a steep slope, you could see the ghosts of settlement, small, ruined, roofless cottages, lined up in a short street, with a couple of restored ones in the middle.
Peppered randomly over the hills were hundreds of round stone storehouses – which Mac announced were called cleits – and which, at a glance, could pass for natural features of rock.
Calum slowly edged the boat into the bay and anchored about forty yards offshore. Then a small rib was lowered to ferry us to the stone pier. Apparently, the boat was not allowed to moor alongside the pier in case there were rats aboard, who might escape and decimate the seabird colonies. Gingerly, Mac and I clambered down to the bouncing rib, followed by Fergus, then Calum, who steered us steadily towards the stone pier. As we approached it, I noticed an exchange of apprehensive looks between the two crewmen. Rather solemnly, like some Presbyterian preacher, Calum announced that the swell was higher than had been forecast and we would have to do exactly as he instructed. Watching the waves, with intense concentration, he manoeuvred the rib till we were alongside the ledge of the pier. But then the swell would billow beneath us and carry us ten, fifteen yards too far.
There was another exchange of looks and Fergus was no longer so slow-pulsed, his movements quick, sharpened by adrenalin. Mac and I sat, poised, nervously waiting for our orders. After a few attempts, Fergus managed to hook a rope through a rusty, metal ring and tug us closer to the jetty. Now it was getting to be a question of timing. Calum looked over his shoulder at the surges of water rolling in, as he waited for a pause. He told me to get ready. When he said “jump” I was to jump.
I moved to the side of the rib. A wave grew beneath us, then faded, the rib settled for a beat, Fergus pulled the rope harder, the gap closed and I heard “jump”, so I put one foot on the rib’s edge and propelled myself on to the jetty.
I felt so pleased with myself. Why? It was hardly commando training. Now Mac was poised to jump. Calum told him to wait, and wait, and wait, and jump. With a tiny stumble, Mac scrambled on to the pier, clutching the backpack containing the sandwiches.
Then Calum gave us clear instructions that we should all meet back here at four and we set off, along the pier toward the corpse of the village.
We spent about two hours exploring the ruins. The only people we spoke to were a couple of academics – indomitable ladies in their fifties, the kind who built the empire – who were there studying rare plants. If they recognised me they didn’t let on. We saw a couple of uniformed figures, briefly, down by the little power station, but otherwise it felt like we had the place to ourselves. We strolled around the stone skeletons of dykes and pens behind the village and then we explored the ruined houses, with occasional commentary from Mac and the guidebook, trying to work out what the living arrangements would have been.
One of the tiny, restored cottages turned out to be a museum with displays describing how the St. Kildans survived for centuries against what, to modern eyes, seem like impossible odds.
When we come out of the gloom of the museum we are met by brilliant sunshine, so we sit and eat our sandwiches.
Mac’s empty stomach means he is bolting down his food like a prisoner-of-war. I can’t bear to watch.
“Did you read the display about the missionaries?” he asks, his cheeks bulging.
“Yup.”
“What bastards, eh? The poor fuckers survive perfectly well for centuries, eating puffins and playing their fiddles through the long, dark winters and along come some puritan fuckwits who say no dancing, you spend all your free time on your knees, in churches, crippled with fear, guilt and self-loathing.”
He starts to demolish a ham bap.
“Tell me, is there any culture in the entire world that has not eventually been fucked up by religious wankers?”
“And that was ‘Thought for the Day’.”
“Even out here, on the edge of nowhere.”
He exhales with annoyance. I feel a pang of envy at how fired up he can get.
“After this, we go up,” he says, offering me a Kit-Kat.
So, once lunch is devoured, we climb the curving ever-steepening slope behind the village. It is not a problem to start with, but the last hundred yards or so turns into a real struggle and I have to keep stopping to get my breath back. Have I really got so badly out of condition? Or is it anxiety? To my relief, Mac is also struggling.
“Je-sus, this is deceptive!”
He stops, with his hands on his knees. We both look like old men, which makes us laugh wheezy old-man laughs.
“One last push,,” he gasps.
As we slog to the top, we slowly realise that this cliff has been eaten in half by the elements. It has no back; and instead of a cliff-top ledge there is a nothingness, just an astonishing drop to the crawling waves. In fact, the razor’s edge is so intimidating that our bodies instinctively tell us to lie flat on our bellies so that we can look over the edge in safety. A thousand feet below us, gannets and fulmars float like tiny scraps of white paper. At least, Mac says they’re gannets and fulmars; they could be anything.
“Jesus, look at that,” he says, with a whistle.
“Imagine this place in winter.” I look to my right, to another towering crag. “People have lived here for thousands of years, you say?”
“The book says there are Neolithic remains all over it.”
“Who in their right mind would opt to live here? Why did they come here?”
“I think it was attached to the mainland at one point.”
“Yeh but once it was an island.”
“Pretty in summer, I expect.”
“But a hell-hole most of the year, why would primitive human beings sail across miles of terrifying sea, in boats with no engines, to settle here?”
Mac gives it some thought.
“Fear. It has to be fear.”
“Fear?”
“Aye, fear and greed are the two great impelling forces and it is not going to be greed, there’s nothing here and it’s tiny…so it has to be fear. Look at Venice, right, that was malarial marshland, right, no one wanted to live there, but the tribes were running away from…the Lombards, was it? They thought, fuck it, we’ll go live out there, in Nature’s arsehole, they won’t follow us there.”
On a very clear day, I suppose, you probably can see St. Kilda from Harris, so he might be right. Frightened people might have thought – that weird little island, right out there, maybe there we’ll get to live in peace.
“Let’s face it, if it wasn’t for fear of our fellow human beings, we’d probably all still be living in Mesopotamia.” Mac ends his observation by spitting over the cliff like a schoolboy, but the wind whisks it sideways. “Fear…can drive us to great deeds, Kev…or it can make us curl up in a fucking ball.”
The journey back was memorable. The wind had dropped slightly so Calum headed out from the island and pottered around the base of the sea stacks, which loomed over us like dark skyscrapers. As we rocked in the troughs, seabirds swirled around us, some strafing the surf, others floating directly above our heads as if suspended on wires. Gannet after gannet moved in for a close-up, posing at head-height alongside us, catching the intermittent bursts of sunlight. When they glowed we could see the elegance of their lines, the perfect design of their long beaks, the tapered, black-tipped wings, the subtlety of their colouring as the white of their bodies shaded into a honeyed yellow around the head. On several occasions, they started feeding around us and torpedoed down into the water at startling speeds. Fulmars escorted us as well. Smaller, prim, almost ladylike. Less streamlined than the gannets, almost chubby in comparison, but still perfect and effortless in flight. It is hard to describe how exhilarated I felt, how thrilled I was to be bobbing around engulfed by wildness and ignored by Nature.
From time to time, Fergus pointed out features of the geology, or wave-lashed platforms of rock where the St. Kildans would land when they came to climb the stacks, hunting for birds. All the rock faces looked unclimbable to my eyes, but I suppose if you grow up climbing cliffs then you see every available hand-hold. All Mac and I saw was precipices and certain death.
The last rock is called Stac an Armin. It soars above us, as the boat edges closer.
Fergus shuffles across the deck to point something out. Disconcertingly, I notice that, in several places, the water seems to be bulging higher than we are.
“See right at the top there? That little dark patch?”
Mac squints and shakes his head.
“I see it. Is it a cave?” I ask.
“Sort of. It’s a shelter the fowlers hollowed out. A bothy. That’s where they’d sleep every night for a fortnight while they were catching birds.” A gannet spears into the water a few feet in front of us.
“In the early 1700s,” continues Fergus, “the boat dropped off twelve men. For two weeks, they caught birds…only the boat never came back. Virtually everyone on St. Kilda had died of smallpox inside a fortnight, so there was no one who could row the boat out to fetch them.”
Mac grimaces. “So they died?”
“No, they survived, nine months, I think, all through the winter, twelve of them in that wee cave. Until the rent collector from McLeod of McLeod came to fetch the rent, was told about the stranded men, and organised a rescue party.”
We both peer at the small, dark patch that looks like no more than a crack.
“Fuck me,” says Mac. “They must have been tough wee bastards.”
“What did they eat?” I ask.
“Birds. But they couldn’t drink the water off the rocks ’cos it would have been polluted with bird-shit, so they drank puffin-blood.”
“Jesus, I’ve drunk some horrible stuff in my time but…”
“We’re heading back now,” calls Calum.
The boat is turned towards Harris and the engine is freed to full throttle.
The trip back to Harris was much more comfortable. The wind was still high, but it was mostly behind us so we ploughed a clean furrow through the waves and the rolls were slow and steady. It sent me into a kind of trance.
I watched the grey peaks of St. Kilda fading slowly away into the ocean for over an hour. Somehow it seemed more beautiful than on our approach. Was that the light? Or was it me? Maybe something becomes more beautiful once you know it.
“Wasn’t that amazing?” says Mac as he slides in alongside me. He hands me a mug of hot tea. “Fergus made it. I’ve been thinking about those fellas in that hole for nine months…not knowing why no one had come for them…not knowing if anyone would ever come for them…all through the darkness of the winter and the storms…”
“Yeh, it’s incredible.”
“Just goes to show how adaptable people are, doesn’t it. How they can survive anything…even when the future’s scary and uncertain…they just hang on in there and wait for things to turn their way.”
“OK, Mac.” I look him in the eye. “I get the message.”
He sips his tea. “There is no message.” Then he puts on an American accent, “Messages are for Western Union.” He’s crap at accents.
As we pulled into the harbour, I felt calmer than I had felt for months. I knew the realities that were waiting for me in London, and my stomach still turned a little if I thought about them, but Mac’s highland adventure had given me some emotional distance – a sense that all things pass. Most of life is chatter, so don’t panic. That was how I felt as I stepped on to the quay at Leverburgh. It would be all right. Just drink up your puffin-blood. I was renewed.