Remember I gave you a bit of the history of the pram. Here’s a bit of an update.
The pram is now outside the workshop on Leverhulme Drive. Why is it not inside the workshop designed for the purpose of protecting vehicles (of land or sea) from the assaults of weather? Other people had other priorities for covered storage. It was a bit of a mistake to build that structure on land you were going to leave. But I had not yet admitted that there was a need to leave, not even to myself.
All the seams are now epoxy-taped, to strengthen ageing joints. The plan is to put lighter, whitewood thwarts in place – well, bits of a staircase to be precise. We don’t have an America’s Cup budget. I don’t really have any budget. The outside of the pram’s been painted already, to protect the epoxy which, though a miraculous material, is subject to UV degradation, if not coated. The hull is no longer black but another shade of blue. Looking at the inside, I’m fair tempted to go back to black and signal red.
But the frost got into the transom, last winter. That’s the board which forms the back of this boat, a vital part of the structure. So the pram built by the co-operative of two Lochies is in a critical condition. It’s borderline. She’s a life and death case but the operating theatre is still occupied with other people’s projects. If I could step back a few yards I could tell you she’s dying gracefully, fading into the grass. But a certain builder thought that, of a certain Type 2 VW, which lived to go ‘put-put’ again. For a time.
Shit, boats. What are they like? Stories are just as bad. Tangents are the main issue of West-Coast storytelling. This is like we’re standing at the door. We’re up from the table. The yarns ain’t over yet and we’re standing at the gate outside. It’s a fair night. It’s time for the purpose of the visit. You never hear it till folk are just about at the gate.
Now I need to describe a dream. Not last night but the night before. No, none of that, foot in the rope stuff. A weight falling through water and a line rasping out behind it, as far as its length can go. That’s a waking dream. So it should be. This was different. I woke up sweating. I have to tell you why.
The dream is, I’m on Isle of Skye. The neighbouring island has got a few decent hills, it’s got be said. And a couple of impressive sections of spate river. I’m casting a fly. Maybe that’s why I’m there. The adrenalin surges when you see a fin in the water. Just like when you lean back and brace with your boots against the cliff, trusting the rope. There’s tension involved. But now it’s a rod and line, cutting through the water and a shape you can’t see powers up below the surface. It’s so strong it’s got to be a salmon.
But it’s the Norwegian pram that comes up from the vortex under the fall. With her trim in signal red again. How could she be under the water? But the transom – the back bit – is missing. Just gone. Nothing makes sense. How she got across the North or the Little Minch. How she got up a river. How she’s back to the pale blue that’s close to silver, under the black water.
A boat has a pattern, whether it’s built from plans or not. It’s got to be symmetrical at least, for fuck’s sake. But I don’t see any pattern to this story. Why she should come up in my dreams, with her stern ripped apart. It’s more like a story my mother once wrote down. A Land Girl following a memory of the loom of a lighthouse.
I’m awake and shaking and just about to get into the van. I want to get up the road and make sure she’s still settled into the grass, by the workshop. Not a smart idea. That would go down really well. Arriving in the middle of the night at the building I’ve signed over, with everything else. So my wife will agree to transfer her half-share of the olaid’s house, to me. So I can buy another roof, a few more streets away. No-one is going to give me a mortgage on the strength of my business record or my cooking abilities. Slightly better chance on the second of these.
There’s something else behind the dream of the pram in the limbo of turbulence. It’s another story. I heard it from one of the cleaners at Uig School in north Skye, from the grannie of one of the pupils. Not yesterday. A Coastguard liaison visit. Some guy had the crazy idea that there could be a bit more dialogue between staff on different Scottish islands.
So here is the story, the way I remember it told to me. In the interest of historical accuracy, I did some research in Portree Library and found a contemporary account of the same incident. I photocopied that and you can find it somewhere amongst these papers, as a comparison. But this is the way I remember one woman telling it.
In the 1870s there was a big flood in Uig. It had been a dry year from the start. Then, late autumn, all down the north coast, the rain fell and fell and there was no stopping it. Portree Square was flooded. Everything was.
Up the hill from Uig, the two burns were rising – the Rha and the Conon. There was a graveyard there, near the Conon, above the bridge. It was flooded too, of course but not just under a shallow covering of water. The drive of the flood took the turfs off and boulders and soil were tumbled with it. Soon the coffins were disturbed. Some were driven against the stones and splintered. The recent ones floated and these were carried below, on the torrent.
Well, the two burns joined up, right behind the bridge, making a loch where there wasn’t one before. The last man who got across safe and sound, well, he was a relative of ours and he went on to become a missionary, so maybe there was a reason he was spared. I think he went to the Andes. They called him ‘the man of the mountains’ when he came back to Skye.
Anyway, there was a proper stone house down where the wood is now. The factor lived there. He was the one who collected the rents. He’d been none too kind about it, either. But still they warned him to leave. His house was on an island, between the lines of the burns. But he wouldn’t budge while he had the chance. He’d weathered worse, he said.
When the bridge broke, the weight of the two waters swept down, bursting through the factor’s back door and out the front. That man who’d caused so much misery was swept out of his own house to meet his end. Some say that the coffins from up the hill went floating through his house with him. This was the home of the man who was partly to blame for putting folk to rest there, a while before their time.