Torcuil

Glasgow Airport doesn’t run to recycled paper, yet. At least WH bloody Smith’s doesn’t. You couldn’t fail to find the stuff in Germany. Either end of the process. Putting your shit down on paper or wiping it off you. Maybe it’s all that guilt. Maybe now that there’s signs of a lasting downturn in the industrial world over on the continent, things might change. Still plenty of new Mercs and BMs. It’s getting difficult to find used cars because everyone sells them for silly money to the East. And they say there isn’t a border any more.

There’s an abundance of borders still to be clearly defined and agreed. Constitutional Questions.

The Independent, picked up from the vacant business class seats of this aircraft, quotes the revamped Cecil Parkinson, adding to his serious target, right from his conscience, going for three per cent less emissions from exhausts this very year. Cool. Until you find his footnote which says this means we can now increase production of cars by, wait for it, three per cent.

Public transport went up in price as The Wall came down. Even the bloody wall itself is now packaged in wee bits for sale. Of course that’s only right. Since that system over the other side eventually corrupted itself to death, it naturally follows that the wonderful one, West of it, is necessarily correct in all its aspects. Course it does.

These wee bottles on the flight. Could they not just give you a slug from a litre into a glass? No, they’ve done the time and motion study. Modern Times in the air. The designer labels. I’m seated beside a young kid, going to Scotland, fed up with history. Fed up of all that money going to the East whether they work for it or not.

‘We worked for it. They want it right away.’

‘Hold on, you’re still going to school, as the Yanks say. You’re a college girl.’

‘Well, my father worked for it,’ she said.

Here’s a seismic sensing opportunity. A sign of a backlash. Two generations on, a move to emerge from the guilty period. Mind you, let us remember this is a random sample of one kid on one plane.

Even with a couple of the complimentary (i.e. you’ve paid for as much as you can drink on your ticket already) wee bottles inside me, I can sense that my effort at finding common ground, a propos The Tin Drum isn’t going to work. OK, there was the Independent but it seems to be all about food and where to eat it. I have another try at conversation, citing Effie Brest though I’m on the point of saying Marie Braun. The former is far enough back to be OK. She’s had it up to here with National Guilt and asking whys. Or maybe I’m just forgetting I’m pretty well an old bastard myself and there’s no reason this kid should respond to attempts at conversation just cause she’s drawn the seat next to me.

I settle in the chair and think of Gabriele and Anna who have a couple more days in Bonn while I’m back at work. At least one Lewisman is flying Tornados in Germany. That’s up the road a bit. Closer to Düsseldorf. The pilot cove was a bit vague about the location. Might soon get taken over by a budget airline anyway. It might be the Tornados which migrate norwest to plague us for a designated number of weeks in the year. That’s OK really, to justify the forty million pounds sterling Nato spent on our airport. What’s that in Deutschmarks? DMs rule these days and I don’t mean Doc Marten boots though they’re back in fashion again. That German lassie maybe has a pair though I can’t see for all the folding tables and plastic cups and stuff.

In the olden days, I remember it was four to a pound. Mention Germany to old soldiers – ones who’d come through it – and they’d tell you anything and they meant anything – cost ten cigarettes in Germany. Amongst the rubble.

I’m off the plane and I’m realising that I’m not going to get home tonight. It’s the old story of a slight delay and the Stornoway plane not waiting for two passengers. OK, I can understand that, what’s the arrangement? So the car arrives to take me and one other guy from one other flight they didn’t wait for.

I should phone back to Germany to catch Gabriele before she phones home and gets worried that I’ve not arrived. Which bloody way does this hour go? I always get it wrong.

First, the stairs. A better bet than lifts full of tired people, spilled from bus-tours. Forty-eight pounds a night to stay here, without breakfast, if you were paying for it. I remembered the asparagus, the pale shoots we bought direct from the farm, not the flashy green ones. There was no fridge in the room but I filled the sink with cold water. Eased them in there and hoped for the best.

Just looking out now and I’m glad of the height. Just as well I’ve been shuttled into this Stakis Glamourama. Looking out over the Renfrew boatyards. Pleasure yachts. Easier to come up the Clyde on a two-masted toothbrush than to have a ship built here now. Why exactly did we have to commit industrial suicide? Remind me.

Aye. The other guys were still massed the other side of the Steppes. Indo-China was getting weird. So it was better to build trade with our defeated enemies, Japan and Germany. And the fellows on the Clyde had created trouble before. These damned democratic socialists were all too close to the National sort of socialists. So Churchill said, in public, against advice. But he was only outvoted for a short time. He got back in office when times were hard.

Lest we forget, the technique was still worth trying again. After the Argentinians obliged with national distraction therapy, the focus shifted to the Yorkshire miners. There ain’t no enemy like an enemy within. Ask Trotsky. Did you know that Arthur Ransome, foreign correspondent for The Manchester Guardian, married Trotsky’s former secretary? Sailed her out of Russia in the Racundra, hastily launched in 1922.

Pity my old mate Kenny wasn’t still in Glasgow. Just as well he was back home. It might be me leading him astray tonight. But the conscious part of my Civil Service mentality was still sober. I couldn’t risk missing that flight, tomorrow. The whole reason I was travelling back without my family was to make that shift I couldn’t swap. So I couldn’t venture into Glasgow proper. I had to stay where I was put.

Here I was before the wide window of my room in the high-rise hotel. Observing the rise of the Ochils. The blip of Stirling Castle, the Wallace Monument. Startling visibility.

 

I could navigate to Coalsnaughton, Torcuil, if I had time and you can’t navigate without that. Doesn’t have to be a brass chronometer. A five-quid digital dial would do nicely, thanks. Mind that chapter in Swallows and Amazons, trying to get back in the dark. Trusting to counting. Dodgy. Without accurate assessment of how long you’ve been steering a given course, or a log to tell you that distance, you don’t know where you are. Simple as that.

But Torcuil’s mariner olman admitted to me once how he’d been caught out with a younger version of my pal aboard. Visibility was down so they couldn’t find the entrance to Little Loch Broom. The pair, father and son, had been out of the loch, fishing to the north, towards Priest Island. The ship’s master on leave naturally still had the compass bearing home, in his head, but you need to know how long you’ve travelled along it.

He told me they were caught north of Rubha na Cailleach, the wrong side of The Old Woman, you could say. Or was it a witch? No, that was Loch Maree. Witch’s Point. There surely had to be a Dubh somewhere, for a proper witch. Or was that a nun? Maybe there wasn’t much difference to a good Presbyterian.

That was the point in the story where Torcuil’s olman admitted, from under these eyebrows, that he hadn’t brought the watch. Something about being on holiday. But unforgivable for all that. A lesson he’d learned often enough not to have to learn it again.

They were well on course for the entrance. He didn’t know how far he would have trusted his own judgment if he’d had no other option. Dense low cloud and pawing drizzle started to shift. A bit of a breeze but nothing silly. As the temperatures of air and sea became more equal, they could see again, as far as the cliffs and the Summer Isles. There was the brown cloth skin of the Priest. Priest Island, that is, now well astern. Just where it should be. They now knew for sure they had plenty sea-room if they needed it. Then the distant shape was showing its rocky sides, a touch of pink in the granite in late light, as religious as Iona. That monk of a rock held on the quarter, a back-bearing and the Old Woman stood up, too tired to hide from them any longer, fed up of the game and letting them come home into Little Loch Broom.

So that’s another of your olman’s stories, Torcuil. And I’m remembering it, marooned in the Stakis hotel, just along a line from the rise to the Ochil Hills. Even if I could find my way back to your folks’ house in that street that isn’t new any longer, I might not recognise the particular box. Your father had his stroke in the house he’d commissioned. First occupant and first to die in it. He did it all quite tidily, during his leave. I don’t suppose there’s a chance that you’re in it now.

From this height in a high-rise, time is variable. Maybe it’s the Saint Emillion, carried from the Carvery. Another glass. Pourquoi pas? I’m not going nowhere, tonight. Not in body. The mind is racing. Got to be backward. Only way to go. I’m going out of this window and along that motorway. The Stirling motorway was completed only the year before our small exodus from Lewis. My mother, the sister and myself were on the Loch Seaforth, calling at Kyle, breakfasting then disembarking at Mallaig. Our journey in hope to the Central Belt of Scotland. The scenic train run to Queen Street where the poor wee dog peed for half an hour solid. Half an hour liquid. Hell, you know what I mean.

My olman had a reconditioned motor fitted in the Morris Traveller and the new road was ready. The A series of Austin Morris engines went on with only minor modifications right up to the Metro. He was driving us to our own box. We were not the first owners but it was the first time they were paying a mortgage rather than rent. I can understand now, it was something for them to be proud of. It’s shuffled right up front of the memory now, that card to the front of the file. 1967.

Does everybody’s mind work this way or is this a leftover from that one damn microdot? The one that entered right into my own skull? All very virginal. Two cherries plucked in one week not so long after we’d moved back to the Island in 1970. My first fish, Salmo salar, spotted and snatched quietly, out on my own. Traded for the tab of acid. Full sex came a lot later.

I dropped the tab to the Yes album saying ‘Yours Is No Disgrace, silly human race.’ But all the daft stuff was everybody else. We really were the beautiful people. And at first all the scabby faces were the others. From Bayhead to Newton, the masks were melting. Then the buildings were shaking and the harl was peeling from the seaward walls. Bad trips only happened to other poor bastards. Couldn’t be that. But some of these weird faces stayed with me for a long time to come.

I escaped the long trip, helped out by a couple of mates. Forget the fucking chemicals and get some of this down your neck. And they tilted the Lanliq. Most of it dribbled down to add a layer to the tie-dye vest but I swallowed enough to get plastered on top of the acid. Good move. Got home, stinking of the Republic of South Africa. Got hell. Got to bed. Next day was interesting.

Herself was damn sure I was going to school, whatever state my head was in.

‘I dinna care fit you wear, loon,’ she said. ‘I’m jist past a that.’ Three mugs of tea and I faced the bright. But the trip didn’t stop. You’d get a bit of respite, think you were down and then the walls would move again. Fuck. Wasn’t all bad now but you just wanted off the rollercoaster.

The flashbacks went on for a couple of years. My voice joined the gathering consensus that repeated, ‘No chemicals, man.’ But some of the rest of the gang carried on with the stuff from the Mill. We called it The Weavers Answer and we sniffed it from a hankie. Guys were going seriously bananas. Don’t ask me how he found out but my olman was aware of what was going on. He just said to me, quietly, ‘Look son, tell the boys, I used to work with that stuff. You’re supposed to have a mask. A ventilated room. You’re risking lung damage, the lot. You boys are taking serious fucking poison.’

I think it was the only time he swore when he was talking to me. OK, you can say, don’t do it, to other guys. But that’s like your music teacher saying, don’t start smoking. They’ve already set the example. At least we stopped. It’s about then I was getting quite good at smoking. Holding a blast down long enough to let the dope work. The tobacco didn’t get me choking now. I was getting to like the mix of smells.

But I found that even the organic stuff was getting dodgy for me. Trouble was someone had got hold of some proper resin. Hell, this didn’t only smell of something. Maybe it was just that we had a bit of money now from the poaching or the Klondyking. There’s a lingering trace of alchemy in that trade. Minch herring sold to Faroese packers so providing us, the Hebridean labour force, with the ability to purchase some black Afghani.

We were blasting it from a hollowed out carrot but see some guys. Eating the fucking pipe. And then we reached a stage we hadn’t been at before. No more daft laughing, everyone going quiet. But for me it was another acid flashback and I wanted out.

So that’s a brief summary of the lowlights of what followed my Central Belt experience. My return to the gentle Isle of Lewis. Leaving Torcuil, my fellow teuchter, trapped down there, under the Ochils.

Let’s come closer to now. Back one week only, from this day of the flight that departed without me, leaving me stranded in this three-star box. We left Anna with the Bonn grannie and took a great train ride to Essen. The main mission was to see a gallery. ‘Never mind what’s on the display panels,’ she said. This building was designed by her father’s best friend. They’d been students of architecture together and were drafted together and they deserted together. And survived the war.

‘Is he still alive?’ I asked.

‘I think so,’ she said.

I already knew Gabriele’s father had gone missing in strange circumstances somewhere around Rügen Island, long after the war. But no-one in the family spoke about it much.

It seemed strange, not looking up his best friend. But of course that whole situation was so delicate. I didn’t ask any further. But we did see the big Magnum Photographers show. See that photo – you’ve seen it printed all over the place. It’s a billboard with the big Chevy or Buick or whatever it is, guzzling the gas with the happy white family that dreams are made of, driving into the sky, over the backs of the blacks looking at the poster from the street. We’re on the move, it says.

And we fucking were, that day. I’m back again to our family move to the better life on the Mainland. This Bordeaux beats shit. It’s transported me back to the new motorway. We’re right under this window but back about one quarter of one century. Along that tarmac or maybe a layer of it that’s now under a renewed surface. We were proceeding along the new road to the new life in the Central Belt. South to us. Maybe not a new Chevvy but a reconditioned ‘A series’, four-cylinder, 998cc design classic, under our green bonnet.

Torcuil, won’t you join me in a glass of this fine red, courtesy of BA, which we don’t own any more either. Wasn’t there some dirty tricks there too, by some former Cabinet member? BA were still managing to squeeze out that upstart entrepreneur from certain routes. Just look at that beard, these clothes. He may be a credible example of Thatcherite values but he had to learn it was to everyone’s advantage to operate on certain routes only. Lack of schooling, really. The things that shouldn’t need to be said.

Torcuil, a bhalaich, we bought our LPs off that guy Virgin Branson for a while. Before he got airborne. This is pretty smooth stuff, but we can handle it. I should call up the other guy who got stranded. Didn’t get a note of the number of the room he’s in. Thought I might see him in the Carvery. There was an American lady, a lecturer in literature, judging from the conversation you couldn’t help hearing, at the next table. She was talking to another lady. I was about to ask them if they wanted a glass and ask what she thought of this Bradley guy. Some writer, man.

I read his novel, on the holiday. Full of hot toddies and backwoods, trails and history – Civil War to Vietnam. Pointed out to me with missionary zeal by Mairi Bhan, my near-colleague in the Fisheries Office. She even trusted me with her library ticket. The most personal history, that’s what the novel’s about. What you’re carrying when you think you’re naked.

But I didn’t have the guts to move across and engage the professor in a literary discussion. I mean I don’t even have the terminology. I only did a module.

Feel bad about that stranded guy, though, Torcuil. People placed in situations, even in Stakis joints, should stick together. We were the two teuchters, stranded in the Central Belt. And you taught me how to cast a fly. Could go down and find what room he’s in but maybe he just wants to crash. Coming up from Sunderland. Tornabloodysunderland. Worse than the Clyde. It’s all dead sheds down his way so he thought he’d just take up the offer and visit his Island relatives. He hasn’t seen them since he was a kid.

And yourself? You don’t have anyone left, by Loch Broom. Shit, anyone would think you can hear me just because I’m up here, a few metres of altitude. You might be in London. You might be under the ground.

This Sunderland guy said he just mentioned it on the phone as a possibility, the idea of visiting the relatives on Lewis. Next thing these tickets arrived in the post. ‘They must be desperate to get their peats home,’ I’d told him. ‘Must be a bag-them-out job. Better than getting bogged down.’

I knew about that.

Here’s the scenario. One tractor goes down to the axles with the last big load on it. You can’t budge it even when you get the load off. You can’t support the trailer to unhitch it. You have to send the young lads down the track for jacks and planks. These are brought to the scene of desolation by another tractor which gets bogged when it gets near. You risk a third, just skirting the danger area. That bit too close. Shit, another one down. Have you got the score so far? It’s not looking great. There’s one more neighbour and before you know where you are you’ve the Island record for the biggest number of tractors bogged down at the same time. Four down and resources are getting scarce. That was the last year we went over to Lochs to cut peats.

Gas central heating – the way of the town. Nearly as good as cooking on it, man.

Maybe all that kind of excitement has happened already and our Sunderland friend is on his way to help manhandle all these bags out of the wet area. After the monsoon. All these fertiliser bags. Now it’s fish farm bags. Fish farms – looks like we’ve blown that one too. A sound idea rushed to viability. There’s been a couple of scares with chemicals. So what do you do? Easy. Change the name of the chemical. Have you come across this way of dealing with a problem somewhere before? Windscale/Sellafield? Give it another year and there’ll be another layer in the design of piles of bagged peat. All these graphics, logos, colours getting bleached under the attack of ultra-violet. Most people don’t have a clue how strong the light can be, up our way, once it gets through the clouds. Rays of light, shooting like howitzers, over the Lewis moorland.

And you’d be amazed at all the houses getting built on the more stony areas. The ground might be hellish for any sort of production, barring sheep meat, but there was now one hell of a crop of houses on it. No bad thing, either.

Houses like the one your olman built, Torcuil. It’ll be your mother’s house now. It was out along the road, a bit nearer the Devon river, a bit more sheltered than most sites you’d get on Lewis or Dundonnell. Maybe your olman could have built his house up Loch Broom way if the ferry route hadn’t shifted to Ullapool and the road link to Inverauchtin-shoochtin-glockamorra hadn’t got so developed. Crofts became worth money. Buildings in need of total renovation sold at a wild price.

And the rest of the family wanted to sell when the price was so good. Easier to share cash than fall out over land. The share that got you the electric guitar and amp, when the windfall arrived. That got you into the band scene. That got you enough session work, to call yourself a musician. I listened to the tracks you specified and even I could hear you were better than most of the accredited guys. The way of the session musician. Studio to studio. I thought you were less screwed up too, until you found your way to Lewis.

Torcuil, the chronology’s gone completely to Hell, again. It’s just wine. I can’t be properly pissed. I’m not going to try to retrace steps, sort anything out. Maybe I can say something if I just maintain the course and speed.

It’s like we’re looking out further, from this high room, altering our course and our sightline to the northwest, right over the submarine pens up the Holy Loch. The whole way north. Focusing on Scoraig peninsula for now, just in from the Cailleach. We’re wondering where the hell everyone went to, hoping it wasn’t to Tasmania or some such place to do unto others worse than had been done to them.

Some days at work, I get an insight into the colonialists’ way of speaking to folk. Some guys go on about the Hebs – they seem to forget than I’m one of them – or a half-breed, anyway. Bit more complicated than that, of course. A fair bit of Norse bloodline in the east coast stock, too.

In Lewis and Dundonnell, Norse was filtered through Gaelic. Various systems of orthography until people like my old man gave up on the written form of his own first language as something only for those who’d been to Varsity. He accepted the majority verdict and clung only to the spoken word. He didn’t speak to me or the sister in Gaelic, though.

We’ve a few bearings, still, Torcuil, if you’re alive and awake. We’re not going back, either of us, you to Dundonnell or me to Griomsiadair. But bearings, Torcuil. Hell’s teeth, just having a few of the bastards to start with, that’s something. Let’s cross the Minch again, together, though you didn’t get much joy out of me, last time.