Off The Croft Stories #019
Shonny's Share Pt.2: An old island short story in two parts.
Hello friend / Halò a charaid,
Last week I shared the opening half of an old short story called Shonny’s Share, written many years ago and rediscovered in a forgotten folder during a recent bout of procrastinatory archaeology.
A few people very kindly got in touch afterwards to say they’d enjoyed it, which was both lovely and slightly surprising given it had spent the best part of two decades quietly gathering digital dust.
So, as promised, here is the second and final part. Thanks for indulging this brief diversion from the usual Hebridean wanderings. Normal service, involving sea, weather, silence and overly long sentences about islands, will likely resume shortly.
Mike
Alright, my turn. I begin.
“Right then. There was once a bouncer by the name of Jumbo Morrison. Six foot three and built like the byre on a blackhouse, Jumbo was a giant of a fellow and a grumpy blaggard to boot. He was the roughest, toughest fellow you ever did meet and when he wasn’t on the boats he was working as a doorman of the local hostelry, famed both for ferocious fist fights and fine bands. Jumbo soon earned a reputation as the meanest bouncer in Stornoway, and nobody, not even the Klondykers1 bound for the seas of the north, sailors who’d been aboard ship for months without setting eyes on a lady, messed around more than once with Jumbo.
‘Course, there’s an exception to every rule.
One Saturday night a rigger2 just back from North Sea, just a runt of a fellow, skinny as a rake who couldn’t have weighed more than a hundred pounds, well this cove3 got himself so drunk on whisky that he started getting loud and obnoxious and pestering other customers drinking in the bar. So Jumbo marches over and lifts the tiny lad right off his feet and bounced him straight out the main door onto South Beach Street. A few minutes later, who should stroll in the side door of the bar but the same tiny little drunken man. He makes a beeline for the bar, and had almost reached it when Jumbo spots him, lifts him up again and bounces him right back outside a second time.
To Jumbo’s surprise, the guy was back again a few minutes later, this time walking through the back door on the far side of the room. ‘Course, he runs smack bang into Jumbo as he was crossing the floor and Jumbo, now losing his patience, sends the wee drunkard sailing A over T right back the way he came in. Well, Jumbo thought he’d got rid of that pesky cove at last, until five minutes later he sees the same boy roll into the saloon through a fire door that had been left ajar!
Jumbo went to meet him, shaking his head in admiration for the tiny lad’s stubborn persistence and lifting him off his feet for the fourth time sent him indecorously out of the establishment. This time Jumbo didn’t budge but stood looming over the wee man determined to watch him make his next move. There, sat on his arse in the middle of the road the drunken rigger rubbed his head, blinked blurrily up at big Jumbo and in dawning recognition says:
- “Aw here man, are you the bloody bouncer for every fleekin bar in this town!?”
We laughed again. Long and hard. Stupid stories but in our nick and way of tall tales telling they amused us no end. And so it goes on, drinking and yarning4, drinking and yarning. Everything becomes a bit of a blur after a point. Murdo is morose. Missing Peigi. Soon I hear snoring and look over to see Murdo has already gone through customs and is now happy to be in the Land of Nod, population him and that blone5 off BBC Alba news. I’m not far off myself.
I clear away the plates and make a half-hearted attempt at collecting the empty cans together. On the Formica table there’s a spiral-bound note pad, spattered with stains and blotches and dried ink puddles. As I peer in the half-light I can make out Murdo’s handwriting, like a meandering map of an alkie’s route home from his local. Like a big cleg6 had been tarred and tried to escape a feathering across the page. I didn’t even know he could write. Intrigued I tilt the page towards the stove-glow and read. A poem? Jeez-oh.
Peigi
Mar cìobair an taigh-sholais Flannan
as d’aonais
Tha mo loing a’ plumadaich
air creagan mo bheatha
Bewildered, I place his words back carefully and get back to dumping what I can of the rubbish into a black bin liner. I notice a mousetrap on the floor beside the bin. I always loved Tom and Jerry cartoons but always felt bad for Tom. Aw man, that poor piseag7 got a bad deal that’s for sure.
All the poor bugger was doing was following his natural instincts for predation. He’s a cat for pity’s sake. He’s meant to chase mice, especially a cheeky blaggard like Jerry who spends most of his life eating other people’s food and inflicting GBH on poor Tom. The Looney Tunes logic of the moment decreed that I, in pro-cartoon cat spirit, take a wee bit of black pudding from my plate, lay the bait on the trap and set the hook to take the strain of the sprung tensioned wire. I lie it down again on the floor and slump back into the chair.
The shieling is still inside and the wind still whines outside. But it’s warm. This waterproof, peat-fired oasis in the middle of nowhere. Fixing my eyes on embers locked behind the stove’s glass doors I muse that you can keep your Beverly Hills mansions and your London apartments, this’ll do me man. Glowing pinpricks of carbon blur like tiny supernovas, lightyears from where I slip into sleep. My eyelids are heavier than a wet duffle coat. Murdo snuffles. I pull one of the old tweed blankets within arms reach over me and fade to black.
I’m standing on the machair, elevated high above the sands, lashed by wind-driven marram grass.
A million grains of silica, their colours unseen, hurl themselves at my exposed skin, micro pebble-dashing my ruined temple of a body. High above me the sky churns in blues and reds and ribbons of glorious green, God’s great electron collider, pulverising the upper atmosphere with His leftovers from the Big Bang, a ceilidh of quantum physics in the blackhouse dark night, whirling atomic partners to the pibroch8 of the universe. The heavens swell as if in reflection of the sea far below, I am inverted, looking down on an ocean as a gannet might, yearning to dive in, plunge myself into its heights, snatch precious nourishment for my soul.
Looking down I can see her, a hundred yards or more out to sea. People don’t drown like in the movies. There is no yelling and flailing of arms, no waving goodbye. Everything happens beneath the surface, legs bicycle madly, pushing pedals of brine, arms grasp at water-rungs of unclimbable ladders, the body twists vainly trying to corkscrew itself out of an eternal bottleneck. I can only see her head just above the surface of the sea, her long hair lashed across her eyes, her neck tilted backwards, her beautiful mouth gasping, urging for air as the surface slips repeatedly from her lips. She disappears only to rise seconds later still snatching at salt oxygen.
I scream at her, yelling at her to fight, to rise up and breathe and swim and reach shore. I try to run but my feet are bound in bladderwrack which weave warps and wefts of its weed around my ankles, tying me to where I stand. I fall to my knees, arms outstretched, willing myself forward begging for her saving. As I plead, I see her disappear under the waves. The aurora’s churning above continues and I close my eyes, fists gripping at the beach, cutting fingers on razor clams, being bitten by dog whelks, rubbing salt in old wounds.
I’m staggering now, it’s daylight, I can taste beer in my mouth. I leave the social club and walk along a long road, passing a bare football pitch and see a thousand rabbits fleeing to their multitude of warren holes. There are pristine white houses with childlike curls of smoke rising sleepily from their chimney pots, and I can hear the roar of the sea ahead. A silent play park. An expanse of sand. In my hand is a bottleful of cheap whisky.
Clutching it tight, I wade out into the sea as breakers crash through me waist high, soaking to the skin and I stand facing the horizon, steadfast as wave after wave pummels me, trying to break me, knock me down, over, under. But I stand firm, ignoring the cold and raise the bottle in a fist to the sky. Punching air, yelling so harshly my vocals chords rip themselves red raw I cry:
-“Seo ma tha Seonaidh9! Here’s your damn drink! Long may it slake your ravenous thirst, forever taking what is not yours and refusing to give back to those from whom you’ve taken! To the souls who have drank from you neat, this one’s on me and me alone…”
And with that I tip the bottle’s contents into the sea, a dram in the ocean, knowing she remains here, at the bottom of my mind leaving me ceaselessly hauling. Back on land I pick up a cockle shell and stick it in my pocket as payment and make my way home to bed. To sleep alone.
I awake with a start. A snap cracking me from sleep and I look around, fuzzy as duck, to see Murdo still sleeping, a solitary drop of slaver drying on his agog gob. The gaping maw of a maw10. Attractive. I can literally see now what Peigi sees in you, I think to myself. But that noise? Aw no, man. Dully, I remember the marag mousetrap from hours ago. Flick no. Bracing myself I lean over, squeamish before I even clap eyes on the wee blighter. Sure enough, there it is, a real life Jerry, tiny skull pinned beneath sprung wire, crushed cleanly.
All for a bit of breakfast. I’m gutted like a kipper and begin to well up. Swimming with salt-water filled goggles I make my way over to the expired mouse and gently free him from the trap. The one I set. Its eyes are like perfect Indian ink drops, beads of purest onyx, shiningly empty. I cup the body in my hands, looking at my work, his broken wedge of a head, the rest in perfection, browns and pinks of such impeccable design. He is still warm as I inwardly crumple.
Gathering myself I lay the mite down on the counter top, amid baked bean tins and dirty dishes. I find a roll of kitchen foil and tear a long strip from it and with reverence begin to wrap the body in an aluminium winding sheet, morning light bouncing from the creases and pinches I form around him. Packaged, I pull on my stiff leather jacket and place him in one of the pockets. Then I quietly tear off the uppermost page of the notebook lying prone on the counter and place it in the other.
The shieling is brightening as morning sunlight beams through gaps in the green flowery curtains, cutting through the grey, put-out peat smoke that still hangs in the air. I tiptoe to the door, twist the handle and slip outside leaving Murdo to snore on.
The morning is fresh and composed, exhausted after the rains and winds of yesterday. An air, so clean and fresh it makes me ashamed, lightly buffets me and my finally delivered hangover. The bog-cotton looks bedraggled, hanging their sopping heads, waiting for the sun to dry their shaggy, white hair-don’ts back to life. Water drops are sown over the tobacco heather which stretches as far as the eye can see. Not a tree, not a shrub in sight. Greens and browns and greys, rocks and lichens and grasses, like me clinging on for dear life, eking out their lives where everything else with an ounce of sense has given up and moved on.
But look at that sky! Man, it’s three hundred and sixty degrees, panoramic, glorious Technicolor, high-definition-everywhere-you-damn-look sky. God’s great big blue and white umbrella. It’s like an advert for washing powder out here except the wind would whip any marketers pristine sheets from the brand line and send them Minch-ward in minutes. I inhale deeply, the whole island passing through me, its essence filling me as we exchange the most pleasant of pleasantries with each other. Nitrogen, oxygen, argon, helium, water, in. Carbon dioxide, hydrogen, carbon monoxide, ammonia, acetone, methanol, ethanol, out. A more than fair trade I think, let’s do this again, together, and for a long time.
It’s not cold here and the world smells divine, all sea-tang and ozone, burnt smoke and green grass. Murdo’s crappy mountain bike is lying against the airigh wall, a rusting heap of a contraption, slowly succumbing to the corroding elements. Everything I see is constant flux, our land and sea, the weak devoured by the strong, over and over and over. It’s relentless. We don’t stand a chance.
The bike is way too small for me, if I sit on the dewy saddle (I try not to) I bang my knees on the cross bar. So I stand and pump the pedals hard, my breathing now harder, hurriedly swapping precious gases and elements with my environment. The wind is behind me though, pushing me forward like a sgoth11 with its sail fat and billowed, cutting through waves of mud-track and swells of heather bank. Onwards, heart pounding now, hair ripped clear of my face, I’m inhaling hard, gulping, the bike rocking to my furious cadence, tyres staying true as I rattle across the sheep-grid, brrrraaaaaaaaap, legs poised like organic shock absorbers as I hit the road Jack.
I’m flying now, rubber singing on the tarmac, the air roaring in my ears and my lungs, circular breathing my pipes. I swoop down a long hill past decomposing vans of rust and blackhouse ruins. A black and white dog comes careering out of a croft-house gateway and I swerve ridiculously past it. It gives chase but gravity gives me the upper hand and it gives up and goes back to whatever it does when it isn’t taking orders from an old boiler-suited bodach12.
Ahead is a small gate at the side of the road, and as the hill that carried me here levels out, I slow down and the wheels clickety-click to a stop outside it. The metallic package in my pocket is still there when I check and opening the gate with a sticky squeak I set off down a long damp path, straight and true to the small, stone church sat in the middle of surrounding crofts. There is a small wooden door which I push open and step inside.
The dry, dust air inside tastes a thousand year old, of monks’ habits, medieval crossed wood and kneel-worn flagstones. Sunlight pouring through the humble arched windows falls on rows of sparse oak pews, coloured by amber glass. As I look around, my eyes adjusting to the gloom I feel comforted, somehow I’m wrapped in the piety and guilt and love and joy of this temple to a God I never knew but who claims to know me. There are cloths of sky blue on a lectern and alter, two pendulous lanterns hang on long nooses from the wood gallows above my head. It is as quiet as a dead mouse.
From my pocket I pull the little tinfoil sarcophagus, holding it out in plain sight, mutter an apology to whoever might be listening, here in this ancient and holy place and turn to leave. Outside I scrape a small burrow into the pathway gravel, lay the rodent to rest and cover his wee grave with a flat stone fallen from the church wall. I walk back to the bike.
Wheeling this time, my legs wobbly at the thought of pushing pedals, I make my way, maybe a hundred steps further along the road, to Murdo’s house. A small tin mailbox is nailed to his gatepost with the name MACRITCHIE 4 daubed in green, fat-bristled brush strokes on the side. I lift the lid and place the scrap of spiral-torn notepad paper with the bard of Mordor’s battered gaelic poem inside. The bike I leave propped outside the gate to be windlashed by the blue knotted rope that hangs from the bars and turn towards the nearby bus stop.
Bus shelters here are more like bomb shelters. Concrete slabs stacked like drying peats on random corners of the roads through our community. Two old cailleachs13 stand blethering beside one as I approach and they give me the once over with a smile and a nod of recognition. Matching jackets, sparkling eyes, feet like four pans of baking bread, crammed into sensible shoes, swapping gossip in their own native tongue.
“Did you see the Northern Lights last night Kenneth?” one of them asks me. “As glorious a sight as I’ve seen over the village in years.”
“Last night?” I say.
But just then we hear the grumble of an engine cresting the hill and auroras are forgotten as purses are fished from bags and passes produced to be flashed earnestly for free passage into the big town. A yellow bus appears and we all clamber on board. I need to buy some food I think, as I’m driven from my village. Over the driver’s shoulder I watch a long road wind on ahead, cutting the sea from moor, stitching upper villages to lower, threading people together as they join our journey across the island.
Klondykers: Huge Soviet and Eastern Bloc factory ships that anchored off the west coast of Scotland from the 1960s onwards, buying and processing Scottish mackerel and herring at sea.
Rigger: Old North Sea shorthand for someone working offshore on the oil platforms.
Cove: Stornoway slang for a man or boy.
Yarning: An old word for lingering conversation, storytelling and gossip.
Blone: In the local dialect of Stornoway a colloquial Hebridean slang term meaning a woman or girl. It is the female equivalent of “cove”.
Cleg: Highland horsefly; a small airborne sadist whose entire evolutionary strategy appears to involve biting.
Piseag: The Scottish Gaelic word for "kitten" or a young cat. Pronounced roughly like "pish-ak"
Pibroch: The great classical music of the Highland bagpipes.
Maw: Island slang, someone from the countryside i.e. beyond the Stornoway city limits.
Sgoth: A traditional Hebridean fishing boat, sharp-prowed and beautifully balanced for Atlantic waters.
Bodach: An old man.
Cailleachs: Old women.
Thanks for reading if you made it this far!
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Until next time, tioraidh an dràsta!