Cymera Festival/
Shoreline of Infinity
Short Story Winner: 2019
Art: Mark Toner
Tigh Mor Beinn
Culnaglass
Coigach
12a West Heath Road
Broadmead
Hamps
26th April
Dear Megan,
Thanks so much for the photos you sent with your last letter! The girls are getting big now – it’s easy to forget how quickly they change at that age, when I only hear them on the phone. I don’t have any photos as we still can’t get hold of printer ink, but I still take lots in the hope I can send you some eventually!
Spring has finally arrived here, the land has started to turn green and I’m writing this on the slope above the house. Behind me is the immense silence of the hills and in front the silence of the sea, and my hand has already started to go numb because actually, it’s still cold.
The wind has dropped so I can hear water everywhere, and birds, and the whumph of the turbine in the distance. Along the road someone is herding their sheep and the boys are ‘helping’ turn over the veg garden with their usual shouting. But it’s all just layers on top of the silence. Even the cars were like that. It would be easy to pretend that nothing has changed, from here. Gives me a dizzy feeling remembering all the times we were up here before.
Yes, it’s all very idyllic today although it feels like spring has been a long time coming – maybe I’m getting old... Fortunately the house is pretty new and therefore well-insulated and draught-proof. The older cottages have mostly been abandoned now, or are being used as barns. There were still holiday homes being built here right up to the end, so folk have been able to move into them instead. Some of the more luxurious have hot tubs and so on, though as you can imagine it’s quite hard to justify heating that much water :-)
There are still houses that are empty, too.
Sorry to hear about your bin situation – sounds horrible. I hope they’ve been cleared now, at least it wasn’t too hot I guess. Would have been even worse in the middle of your summer heatwave. And I hope Dave has stopped being stressed about the electricity as it sounds like you’re managing fine! I can’t imagine why he is so desperate to keep his phone and tablet charged anyway since most of the time they’re not connected to anything ;-) At least he’s flying again now, even if he’s getting most of his work from the military. You’d think they’d have the equipment to do their own aerial surveys...
The boys are both fine, in fact doing really well. Luckily for us they were young enough when we came here that they don’t remember too much about the things they can no longer have. The teenagers and young adults are the worst – the ones that are left have a constant empty-handed look, as if they should be carrying something important. Actually, they are leaving here the same as they always did, looking for the future they should have had. The difference is that it no longer exists except inside their own heads. Hmm, maybe that’s not so different really.
Anyway it’s great for kids here: wandering unsupervised over the hills, catching hermit crabs in rockpools, flying kites on the big sand. So far we’ve managed to get hold of proper winter coats and hiking boots so they’ve been outside a lot right through the winters. I’ve lost count of how many old women have proudly informed me that the boys are having a ‘proper’ childhood, as if they are somehow responsible. And the boys are happy and healthy, and it’s all good, but—
You asked if I felt sad about leaving Edinburgh. Not as it was when we left, that’s for sure!
Mainly I regret not being able to give the boys the life I expected – all the things they could have done. Theatres, gigs, the madness of the Festival, cafe and restaurants, heated swimming pools with waves and flumes, football matches (though I’m quite relieved that I won’t have to take them to any!). They won’t even get to go to the cinema. I don’t think staying in the city would have changed that. I mean, your cinema and swimming pool shut down, right? Didn’t the cinema get bombed?
And coffee. You’d think I’d have got over it after this long.
Finlay’s arm has fully healed now, thanks for asking. Luckily it didn’t get infected although we do have a doctor here now and a pretty good stockpile of medicines. Seems like someone’s still pushing hard to get them manufactured and distributed as they are easily available at the markets in Inverness. I’m so glad you found a supply of inhalers for Rebecca – fairly legitimate this time too, by the sound of it. I was really worried when you told me about being burgled, though I tried to hide it at the time. And the people who robbed you, how desperate must they have been to steal medicine out of a child’s bedroom?
Another teacher arrived last month, which is great. She had cycled all the way from Dundee! She’s good with the kids, gets on well with Mrs Malcolm. The two of them have some grand plans apparently, but for now they can divide the school between them and focus on a smaller age-range. The problem will come when the first child reaches high school age – at the moment Magnus is the oldest so a few years yet to work out how we can send them to the school in Ullapool. If it’s still running by then. If there’s any point in educating our children by then.
I’ve been working on some practical stuff, partly for the school but hopefully for everyone. There was a tiny library in the village hall here, used to be open only a few hours a week. Well, I’ve been expanding it. It’s been very popular! Like you were saying there’s barely any tv channels running except the news, so folk here have started reading! A triumph of the power of words etc etc. Or just boredom and a limited number of dvds...
The bookshops in Inverness are running out of stock but there are loads of places to pick up books for free – abandoned charity shops and so on – so I’ve tagged along on the last couple of trips and now we have enough to fill a whole extra room. Lucky electric cars have that extra space under the bonnet :-)
Everyone else here is either too busy or not interested enough in the endless sorting and running of the library though. It’s a bit lonely wading through piles of books on my own. It would be good to have someone to work with.
Stewart and his dad have become totally obsessed with transport over the past few weeks. I know it’s really important but if I have to listen to any more dinner-table discussions about how to build a path I think I will go mad! Occasionally they branch out into flights of fantasy about attaching solar panels to aeroplanes or something equally far-fetched, which is even worse…
Actually the path plan, although boring me to tears, is a good one. There’s an old postie’s path round the cliffs to Ullapool, much shorter than the road. Stewart and I walked it once and it was totally terrifying seeing the gulls wheeling below us while we stumbled and slipped along a 50cm notch in the rock. If we could make it safe for a bike and trailer however, it would mean a lot more people could get off the peninsula a lot more easily.
It would take a stupendous amount of work of course, but there seems to be plenty of volunteers. The folk who lived here before feel trapped without their cars, I think, even though they chose to stay because the isolation makes us safe. We haven’t even seen any warships coming up the loch for almost a year. The ferry turned up last week though – who knows where they got hold of diesel! It was full of people leaving the outer islands. Must be hard there after this long. At least we can get hold of stuff from further inland when it’s available, but nothing is going across the Minch now.
At the other end of the scale, Stewart and Alex – well, the whole committee really – are desperate to get hold of a plane and a pilot. A small plane could land on the straight, flat part of the road apparently. I can see how being able to fly over the mountains would solve many problems, but I can’t imagine how any plane would get off the ground again once it was here with an empty fuel tank.
In the end though, I don’t really care what happens to a plane once it gets here, as long as it gets here with you on board. What do you say? I know Dave continues to be loyal to his company but we both know it’s only a matter of time before even their little planes are requisitioned. Nobody would come this far after you. How could they get the plane back down south from here?
I’ve had enough of worrying about you all, enough of being scared that every phone call and letter is the last.
There’s space to live here, space and peace. I miss you. I want my nieces to grow up here with us. I want them to grow up.
All my love,
Stella
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Beth grew up in northern England, but settled in Scotland a long time ago. She lives in Cramond, Edinburgh, with her husband and two boys. Despite talking about books for 20 years with the Edinburgh SF Book Group, this is the first time she has tried writing a story herself.