Migrations

Like a lot of folk on this planet I owe my existence to herring. That and the Ross and Cromarty Council points system for allocating new council houses. The market for abundant herring brought the trade which created rafts of black small ships across bays and harbours, following the routes of the migrating fish. Stornoway was a main port. You could smell the scales along with the cotton nets and the burning coal. Diesel was in the air too but all the boats, with their slanting or rounding sterns, had chimneys. They all had black ranges then, though the Calor Gas shop was open on the pier. There was usually a smell of chops and bacon, from the boats.

When we visited The Broch, I knew that smell. But there was a different one, too. Some days there would be a tearing, sour stink behind the general mix. If the wind was blowing in from the outskirts, out Rosehearty way, you’d get a whiff of the gut factory. We used the same name in SY. Ours was out Seaforth Road. It wasn’t just guts went there. Scad and mackerel, caught amongst the herring – there was no market for them. And if the herring catch missed its own market, sometimes you’d see the baskets getting tipped into lorries.

When you see fish in that amount you don’t really notice the details of the species. The Arthur Mee books also had colour plates with different fish and the herring looked like a tropical species. All sorts of colours. I don’t know why, but I got interested in fish. All these single herring swam in shoals which could keep the boats chasing them for days on end.

I think the gut factory smell was stronger in The Broch than it was at home.

But in SY or The Broch they had curing and kippering and commerce. So a Broch quine could typewrite her way into the ironclad hexagon that was Stornoway fishmart. She could chaave awa wi the merchants o th borough. She might hear a hame voice on the quay. ‘Na ye’re nivver Sandy Sim’s quine, Andra’s sister?’

Maybe her own pedigree would show in a foxtrot. And her sure sense of rhythm would find the equally certain timing of the Lewis weaver. The relationships of the day were built on dancing as much as conversation.

Once I heard my mother, back in the voice of her hometown, I realised how her language was never really flowing, when she was on the Island. The Morris Traveller got us to The Broch more than once. That’s where I heard the olaid clacking away, steady as the olman’s Hattersley loom. It all happened in the pre-cast walls of the pre-fab house. The buildings that were only going to have to stand for ten years, as an answer to the post-war housing shortage. When she got home to SY, I think she might have typed out her story, right away, before going back to work. This is it.

I’d ging aff tae a dance wi ten Woodbine in a Players packet. Aa the quines did. The few men still hingin aroon likely didna hae tae bather. A lot o them didna bather muckle aboot learning tae dance aither. Ane o the qiunes quid get the works truck, nae the bus like. Jist the richt size to tak the sax or seevin o’s, fae The Broch tae Peterheid. Aa aboot the toon. Ane o oor crood fae Inverallochy, anither fae Cairnbulg, ane fae Rosehearty if I mind richt. Syne ane awa oot in New Aberdour.

The time we spent gettin deen up for the Peterheid dance. You’d tae get the big reid lips richt and syne the thin black line doon the back o yer legs tae mak it look like proper stockins. Heels an aa. They aye had a real swing band in the blue toon – trombones, the lot.

Ae wye it was the loons in uniform you went for. Anither wye ye kent they were aa gettin ready tae ging awa, an there was a fair chance they widna be comin back. Us quines wid agree tae shy clear o the navy types if ye quid. The odds werena jist that great for thon puir loons. An the Merchant Navy loons might get a hard time o it ashore, in their civies but we kent they’d likely nivver be comin hame. The convoys wid sail gey close in, past us.

Fair gettin the sangs goin on the drive there. Best time I ivver hid, in a wye, if that disna soun terrible. Working aa thae oors at the Toolies, gettin a wage and kine o pleasin yersel.

But the claik atween us wis the thing. We fixed the van oorselves ae nicht. That quine that drove kent fit she wis aboot, so fan the thing dees on us, the lichts gingin doon, she kens it’s the fan-belt. An she heard someplace or ither a stockin’s the thing for a temporary repair. Only thing is naebody’s wintin tae admit they’ve a real pair o stockings on because they ken they’ll lose them. So we’re aa grabbin at each ither’s legs, sayin tae come clean – and sure enough ane o the crood has the real MacCoy. So we gie her a good slug fae the half-bottle o gin as compensation, like. That driver o oors ties a gweed ticht knot and we’re aff again. Took us there, got us hame again.

The crack wisna quite the same though efter that puir loon in Orkney wis kilt. D’ye ken aboot that? Think he’s in the history books as the first civilian casualty. Plinty eftir him. The Broch got hit mair than aince. Some fowk said it wis the defences they were aifter, ithers the fishing industry, feeding the country. Ithers again said na, na, they werena targeting The Broch, like, we shouldna flatter wirsells. They were jist dumpin their boombs if they hidna seen a Convoy i the North Sea. Bofors guns were getting made i the toon but we were makin Merlin engines for Rolls Royce. We coulna admit til wersels that we were the targets. There wis ane or twa terrible nichts. The fifth o November, 1940, that wis ane.

Souns bloody terrible to say it, like, but it wis gweed times for us workin quines. Tell ye a funny thing, though. Some nichts, dance or no, we’d tak that van, us aa packed in, jist for a spin, like. Richt there on the back road, oot the wye o the lichthoose, Kinnaird Heid, there. It’s my shotty up front, ridin shotgun and I think I’m seeing this aafa dim licht up aheid.

There’s a lot o gigglin gaun on as per usual, but I’m telling aabody tae shoosh, as if that’s goin tae mak me see better. Slow it richt doon, noo, slow. It wis a tail licht on a bicycle run affy a dynamo. So of coorse it’s helluva dim there, wi the slope gaun uphill. We damn near ran that puir lassie doon.