Angus, from South Lochs, and my uncle Ruaraidh were the best of mates. That’s what they called each other – a mhate. The Gaelic version. I knew Angus first as my pal Kenny’s uncle. He became our skipper but he never talked about being in the war, with my uncle Ruaraidh.
There were whispers of what they’d been through. Something in the war, for sure, but neither of them ever talked about it. I think I asked if they’d been in the air force or the navy or in tanks like my own olman but I think they just said they were foot soldiers. Common foot soldiers.
When they got going, one story sparked off the next. I couldn’t say now which one of them told me this one. I heard it when I was a student, back home visiting. It was my first time out of town for long enough. Angus had his own stock on the croft at Griomsiadair now. Ruaraidh didn’t have much stomach for it, these days. They were pleased to see I could still get my hands dirty even if I wasn’t eating properly.
By God when you’d had nothing but one slice of bread with jam and the other with spam and you put the two bits together right away before the flies got to them and got it down you when you could, you wouldn’t turn your nose up at food after that. But that’s about the only detail you would get. Same with my father. It was as if the three of them had got together and made a pact. But their non-talking pact held up a lot longer than Adolf and Joe’s non-aggression agreement. I can only remember a couple of hints that maybe Ruaraidh was almost ready to tell it as it was.
‘A good job the Nazi-Soviet agreement fell apart. Do you think the Allies could have defeated the Nazis if Hitler hadn’t taken on that mad assault into Russia? Aye and what if there had been no attack on Pearl Harbour? Would the Yanks have been in on it then?’
They’d talk out these issues all right but it was late on in their lives, when these men knew their number was coming up sooner rather than later. It was only then they’d drop their guard. You’d get a memory, from either of them, sharp and tight enough to steal the wind out of you.
Maybe some of the experience was in the choice of stories. There were funny ones all right but then you’d get something like the one I’m going to try to tell you. I couldn’t say which one of them told me this. They were like twins when they got going.
So you walked over the moor today, Peter? You didn’t take the short cut in by the loch? No? Aye, it was probably safer to hug the coast, in case the mist came down.
Well, you wouldn’t be the first student to take that route to Lochs. There were two students, one time. And they were out gathering birds’ eggs when they should have been studying. Out the Arnish moor, just the way you’ve come. One of them gets to an eyrie first and he’s in luck, he takes the egg. The other is mad because he saw the nest first, and he thought they should share it, there were collectors would pay good money for that. So there was a quarrel. And the one that took the egg smashed it right against the forehead of the other. It didn’t hurt him but he saw red and reached for a stone. His friend had turned round so he went at his head with the stone and that was that.
He got hold of what he could lay his hands on, some old bleached animal bones, lying there and used them to dig a crude, shallow grave.
No-one knew they’d gone out there together so the lad that did the deed, he made good his escape. He probably took a berth on a boat and one ship led to another and the years passed.
But after all that time he thought it was safe to return to Stornoway. Maybe he said they’d run away to sea together but then lost touch when they were put on different ships. Sure enough, everything was forgotten. Maybe they all thought the missing lad was making his fortune in the colonies. Or maybe he’d just turn up when his ship berthed in SY.
And the fellow who did that terrible deed, he was not long back, looking for work and visiting the relatives. Out here like yourself today, out from the town. Some things haven’t changed. They’d make sure and serve up the best they had. And then they’d look to a story from the young man who’d run off to see a bit of the world. They’d want to hear about his travels.
Except that these people were as poor as you could get. You made use of what you could find. But there was usually fish anyway and maybe some meal. They’d have shown hospitality to their cousin some way. So the former student is sitting and eating and being back in the family. Usually you’d just eat with your fingers but they had a few simple spoons and knives made from staghorn and bone.
And this rough knife of bone slipped and made a small cut in the young man’s thumb. It started to bleed and it just didn’t stop. Now a rough blade can cut worse than a sharp one and that blood just kept on flowing. They wrapped it as best they could, in this and that, trying to stop it. But the blood came seeping through everything. That night, the cut became infected. By the morning, the hand was looking terrible.
They sent word and eventually the doctor rode out to them. But the infection had taken a hold. The doctor asked how it all happened. They told him about the bleeding. He asked to see the knife.
‘Where did you find this?’ the doctor asked.
They told the doctor they’d just come across a pile of old antlers and deer bones, when they were out at the sheep, out the Arnish moor. All just bleached clean. So one of the boys had just passed the time carving out the spoons and knives from what he found.
‘Well,’ said the doctor, ‘I’ll need to take these utensils back with me and any others you may have. We have to trace where an infection like that comes from.’
The returning traveller never recovered from that infection. When the results came back, the doctor came to see the family again. Most of the spoons and knives were made from the antlers and bones of a large red deer. But the knife that did the damage was whittled out of a human bone.
But if it was Angus who told that one, it was his sidekick who chipped in the next bit.
Remember I told you, you’d never stay a night out at Creag a’ Bhodaich. Even if you got caught out in the mist. Most folk said they’d hear the voice of an old man with a story he had to tell to someone. Up until very recently there’d be sightings out that way, near where our road meets the main one. Other folk said it wasn’t an old man at all. One fellow described a young man wearing something like a long woollen covering, not from our times.
Well, they found something when they were peat-cutting. They had to call in the museums people. They thought it was a preserved body from Neolithic times. But it wasn’t that old. It was the remains of a lad in his mid-teens. His woven long socks and long plaid thing were pretty much intact. He’d been killed by a crushing blow to the back of the head.
See the appetite we’ve got for stories like that, on Lewis. We’re insatiable. Once one cove or cailleach gets started, it prompts another and it could go on all night. Sometimes does. Same with songs. Only they’re worse. We like them a few shades below the mì-chàilear, when it comes to grief. And people will be cheery as you like, in between the songs or yarns. Smiling away and teasing each other. The very dab, as we used to say. You don’t hear that now and I’ve no idea where the phrase comes from. But you can bet someone will say, ‘O shut up.’ Which of course means, ‘Please continue.’
Now, I ask you, do you find that one plausible? I wouldn’t like to make a religion out of being sceptical – isn’t that what that Krishnamurti guy did? But I’m not going to buy that yarn. Doesn’t matter. You still want to hear them told.
The brass buttons on the dripping sailor’s jacket. Only it turns out he was lost some weeks before he was sighted. He says something which helps to find his body on the sand. You’ll meet him all the way from Sandwood Bay to the Ross of Mull. And there will be an Irish connection – either where his ship sank, or the origins of the mate who became the ghost.
Then there’s the fine boots which you know will be stolen from the drowned seaman, whether you’re in Uist or Shetland. You also know that they will be reclaimed by their dead owner.