29

From the Deep to the Sky

OVER THE YEARS, I have often wondered just how much of Barney Scott’s life story was real and how much sheer fantasy.

He was a very English Englishman – tweedy, well-spoken – and he arrived on Papavray with a flourish. One day no-one had heard of him, the next, he had appeared with a young wife, a baby son, two fishing boats, bought a cottage by the harbour and was very much among us. He quickly made himself known in the pub where he regaled the locals with tales of his adventures.

Archie was sceptical. ‘He’s no had time in his life to do all these things.’

‘He’s no’ tellin’ the truth,’ added Mary severely. ‘I’m thinkin’ ’tis all fractions.’

What did she mean this time? We looked at her.

‘Well. ’Tis like books. Not true.’

‘Oh. Fiction!’

‘Aye,’ she murmured. ‘That’s what I said.’

But I think at least a ‘fraction’ of Barney’s tales were true. He was older than he looked, being about fifty, had been born into inherited wealth and so had had the time and the money to indulge his many hobbies. He had climbed in the Himalayas with Chris Bonnington, explored jungles and deserts and dived around the world with teams of naturalists taught by the great Jacques Cousteau.

Did we believe all this? Having travelled a bit ourselves and met such people before, we could see that it was all possible for someone with his personality and background.

I came to know the family because of the wife and little son. Penny, only twenty-one, lived in the shadow of her larger-than-life husband and was the scattiest young mum I had ever met. She had no idea about child care, cooking or looking after a home. She muddled through her days, learning nothing as she went, so yesterday’s mistakes were repeated again today, tomorrow and every day. Barney was vaguely aware of this and did some of the cooking but child care was a closed book to him. He had had nannies and maids when young!

So Jimmy’s welfare was a concern. He was undoubtedly loved but his nappies were often not changed for many hours and frequently fell off, having been inadequately pinned, he was in the same pullover for weeks, he spent all his time barefoot in a cold, damp cottage, was never bathed and had usually not been washed when I called in late morning. It was a miracle that he was a healthy, happy child!

I visited twice daily for many weeks, teaching Penny how to care for him, what to feed him and even how to wash his clothes. Evidently, her mother, a formidable lady whom I met later, had looked after the child before the family moved to Papavray while Penny completed her Art degree at Manchester University.

All this meant that I was often in the cottage and I wondered where all that Scott wealth had gone. There was precious little sign of it in their haphazard lifestyle and grubby surroundings.

I was there when a boat engine was brought into the living room and dumped in all its oily glory on the carpet. Another day saw Jimmy sitting beside Barney, who was holding forth to a visitor. Jimmy upset his cup of milk over the sofa. Barney’s reaction was to simply move to a dry seat and continue his conversation without a pause. The fact that Jimmy and the sofa were wet through escaped his notice.

Nick had always been fascinated by the sea and the underwater world and quickly got to know Barney, offering to help land the catches and make himself useful in the boat. Soon he was accompanying Barney and Doug, the mate, on their trips, watching and learning various aspects of seamanship.

This went on at weekends and in the holidays for some time and then Nick asked us if he could learn to dive. At that point we ascertained that Barney was a qualified diver and that he worked for a company based in Ullapool with a contract to supply scallops to the restaurants of the south. He came to see us and said that he was happy to teach Nick in return for his help on the boat. We were most concerned about safety, of course, but he assured us that rules were strictly adhered to – no unaccompanied diving: you always had a ‘buddy’ diving with you and you never strayed far from the boat where a careful watch was kept on the divers. With this, we had to be content and gave our consent. All seemed to be fine so far as we could tell.

The only way to get a wet suit in those days was to make your own from patterns supplied by the companies making neoprene, the fabric. A huge parcel arrived from Aberdeen and much cutting and gluing kept us busy for some time, but finally, we had a fully kitted-out Nick who made his first dive (a shallow one) with Barney during the summer holidays.

But fishing goes on all year round and one black evening in November with snow on the hills, rain in the glens and a bitterly cold wind blowing in from the Atlantic, we sat waiting for Barney to bring Nick the seven or eight miles home. They were usually in long before dark so we were already concerned when instead of the cheery ‘Hi’ as Nick breezed in, full of the day’s events, there was a scrabbling at the door and a muffled call ‘Mum. Dad.’

I rushed to open the door and in staggered Nick, still in his wet suit. He was shivering uncontrollably as I urged him into the warm living room.

‘Couldn’t get out of this… too cold… hands…’ came the croaking voice from between chattering teeth.

It took George and me nearly half an hour to extricate him from all the clinging neoprene. He was so cold that he could not help himself or stay rigid for us to pull the wetsuit off. Gradually, he emerged, almost navy blue with cold. I have rarely seen a living person that colour! Rubbed down with warm towels, wrapped in a blanket with a hot drink inside him, he began to look like Nicholas once more and was able to tell us what had happened.

Apparently, the engine of the small open boat had failed while the three of them were still a long way from the shore so they had taken it in turn to row – not easy in the cumbersome wetsuits of the time. Warm while rowing, but very cold while resting, they had taken about two hours to reach the shore. Doug immediately made for the pub and, because it was so late, Barney brought Nick straight home rather than changing in his harbour-side cottage. This was a very bad idea because the van had no heater!

However, Nick recovered well with no permanent ill-effects and the adventure grew in the telling.

Nick was not happy with Doug, who was a coarse man much given to swearing and excessive drinking. He was often not fit to dive, but just about able to man the boat. Unfortunately, on Papavray, together with most of the Western Isles, there were many drunken skippers and mates on the fishing vessels so we were thankful that Barney was virtually teetotal and was always in charge of the dive, only allowing Doug in the water if he was sober.

But, as we know, the best laid plans…

Nick had been diving for about a year now and was very useful to Barney: able to undertake the deeper dives to the sandy sea bed. Doug was getting more and more unreliable and rarely dived but still accompanied them to man the boat, often with a bottle of whisky beside him, leaving Barney and Nick to dive together.

But one day, Doug being sober and Barney having a severe cold that was making breathing difficult, Doug was preparing to dive.

Many years have passed since the incident that day, so I asked Nick to recall the event from his own perspective. This is what happened in his own words.

*  *  *

‘It was a Saturday morning when I embarked on Barney’s fishing boat. Doug was supposed to be the back-up diver as he was unusually sober. We sailed for about two hours to the dive site which, today, was over a sandy sea bed at the bottom of a steep reef near the mainland coast.

‘Doug and I had kitted up and completed all the usual safety checks – testing air supply and so on, when Barney announced that we were over the site. I entered the water backwards from the low part of the gunwale, gave the thumbs up and swam a few yards away to be clear of the props before duck diving beneath the swell. I thought I heard a splash as Doug, too, entered the water.

‘I always enjoyed this moment of the dive when everything suddenly became tranquil as, apart from the faint hum of the engine, the world that I had entered was silent and all embracing. I began my descent. Slowly the colour faded and the light became diffused as the depth increased. About a fathom above the sea bed, the details of the sandy expanse below me came into focus.

‘My first realisation that something was wrong was at this stage. I was still descending when I found that inhaling was becoming difficult – rather like trying to breathe with a pillow over your face. A few seconds later, I found that there was no air at all coming through. I remember looking at my contents gauge – it read over three quarters full so, thinking that the demand valve must be stuck, I exhaled sharply to clear it. This had no effect and as I attempted to take another breath, there was no response from the apparatus. By this time I had exhaled almost all the air in my lungs. As I looked up towards the faint light about eighty feet above, I think I had already started to strike out for the surface.

‘The physics of diving are that as you descend, the air that you are breathing has to be pressurised to match breathing at normal atmospheric pressure and the deeper you dive, the higher the air pressure that you require as the weight of the water above presses on your body. For every thirty feet that you descend, the pressure increases by one atmosphere (14.77 psi). On ascent, the reverse is the case and to compensate for this, you must exhale throughout an emergency ascent or risk the residual air in your lungs expanding as you rise towards the surface, possibly to such a degree that it causes ruptured lungs.

‘I recall a sudden and biting pain in my chest just before breaking the surface. The pain increased sharply as I took my first breath of fresh air. I remember looking towards the boat and seeing that Barney had spotted me. Then everything went black.

‘Evidently, Barney brought the boat round and he and Doug hauled me over the side, while radioing the coastguard for assistance. (Apparently, Doug had not dived at all as he had been violently sick when he hit the water.)

‘The next thing I remember was looking down from a great height on the ever-diminishing boat with faces staring up at me. I thought that I was already dead. Then I became aware of a throbbing, whirring noise above me and I realised that I was suspended beneath a helicopter. I must have passed out again – perhaps with relief at knowing that I was still alive! I came round briefly to hear a voice saying, “hang in there, Nick, we land in five minutes,” and then I passed out once more. I returned to a semblance of consciousness while being pushed at speed on a wheeled trolley along a brightly lit passageway with doors crashing open before us. I was rushed into an even brighter room where a hazy, white-coated person peered at me.

‘I finally came round properly in the recompression chamber: the pain had gone and I felt a great deal better. I believe I was in the chamber for about four hours.

‘I remained in Aberdeen Royal Infirmary for several days being cared for and bossed about by some very strict Royal Navy nurses. The doctor told me that I had ruptured my left lung, which had collapsed, filling the left chest cavity with air. The swift and efficient rescue and recompression treatment had ensured a quick recovery, but I remember a lot of very painful coughing for some time.

‘Had Doug dived as he should have done, I would have been able to take a breath from his apparatus, alternating with him, using the air from his tank for both of us. This is called “buddy breathing”. But he had not dived as planned, so I was alone.

‘Sadly, I was told never to dive again.’

*  *  *

So ended a career before it began! Although sorry for Nick’s dashed hopes, I was so relieved at the positive outcome of a dangerous accident that I could only be glad that his flirtations with a watery eternity were at an end.