Robert's Preposterous

Sophie drove the crazy twisted road across the bolder-strewn East side of the island. It took all her concentration to stay on the tarmac strip — just wide enough and no wider. One moment of distraction and they could slip into the peat bogs, smash into a roadside bolder or crush one of the thin sheep that confidently meandered across the road or even lay down on the warm tarmac watching her headlights approach unmoved and unmovable.

Thirty minutes drive felt like an hour and Tim didn’t make it any easier sitting bolt upright willing her round every bend and remarking on every hazard — just in case she hadn’t noticed it.

“Whoah! Nasty bend!”

 “Do it yourself if you think you can do it better.”

 “Sorry, just a bit nervous.”

 “What have you got to be nervous about? I do all the talking. You just have to look interested and try to be gracious. Just pretend you’re Mr. Sociable for a change and you might find you can be polite for a whole evening.”

Satnav Jane announced, “Left turn in 50 yards.”

They turned off the narrow tarmac to a narrower dirt road signposted Craibheard and after a few hundred yards then took a left down a steep hill towards Flodabay.

 “You have reached your destination.”

Tim said, “Thanks Jane”.

The Prius glided quietly into the tiny yard and stopped beside a VW Camper – one of the old split screen models, brightly painted with daisies.

 “You sure this is right?” Sophie asked.

 “Jane is never wrong.” Tim smiled.

“Sometimes I think you’ve got something going with that satnav.”

The car doors closed behind them with a soft click. Outside the darkness was deep and endless. No house lights, no streetlights, no moon, no stars. Nothing to prick the deep blackness of the island except their headlights. They peered through the windows of the little white crofter’s cottage. Inside the lights were bright. The little dining room was nearly full and they could see the chatter was warm. A tall young man appeared at the door.

 “Good evening?”

 “Hi, I’m Sophie. My husband, Tim.”

 “Well, hello. I’m Angus Morrison.”

 “We’ve come to join you for the meal.”

Angus looked surprised for an instant and then regained his Harris composure.

"Really? Well… er… you’d better come in.”

Sophie waved the key towards the car. The car beeped, the doors locked and the headlights faded. Angus looked puzzled but impressed.

 “Hi, what a place. So remote. So quiet.” Sophie said.

 “Lovely to meet you both. Do come in. Meet Emma.”

Emma was every inch a wee Harris lassie. Compact in every dimension, with long dark hair and big black eyes. She wore a long flowery frock dribbled with strings of hippie beads. Angus stood beside her, an earnest-looking young man, in his mid-thirties. He had long legs, made longer by his flared jeans and he seemed to tower above Emma who only came about halfway up his paisley shirt. Then Angus called into the back room and a little boy came out.

“This is our boy Donald. Say hello, Donny.”

 “Hello Miss.”

 “Hello Donald”. Sophie smiled warmly and stroked the little boys hair.

 “So nice of you to come to see us.” Emma said.

“They told us about you in the tourist office in Talbert.” Sophie said.

 “So Hamish sent you. Do you like the traditional music then?”

 “Oh yes we love it.”

 “Well, you’re very welcome to join us.”

Angus was anxious that the visitors should experience good Harris hospitality. He took their coats and passing them to Emma, carefully steered them to vacant seats beside a couple he introduced as Ella and Bryce. It was a wise choice. Ella immediately engaged them in conversation although it started with a barrage of questions.

 “When did you arrive? Only today? So you’ve been lucky with the weather. It’s just turned. Do you like our island? The beaches are beautiful aren’t they? How long will you stay? Going back so soon?  Oh such a shame.”

 “We first came here twenty years ago.” Sophie said, “Did Lewis, the Uists and Harris. For our honeymoon. We thought it would be nice to do it all again."

 “You can’t be serious.” Ella said.

Bryce turned to Tim, “So you were a bit of a cradle snatcher.”

 “Why you can’t have been more than… fifteen!” Ella said.

 “No, I was thirty when we met – second marriage.” Sophie said.

 “So you’re…”

 “I’m fifty-five, Tim’s sixty.”

 “No way!” said Ella and Bryce almost in unison. “You really don’t look such an age. I suppose we age quickly here and then we live long, so everyone seems old.”

She turned to the old folk at the far end of the table and chattered in Gaelic.

Bryce looked at the ceiling and sighed. “I don’t speak a word of it. When they get going I just shut off — go into a sort of trance, like I’m not here. What else can I do? You play golf?”

Tim said he’d only played once with Sophie’s son. “I did OK. I hit the ball every time, and it went roughly in the right direction. But when we’d done nine holes I asked Michael ‘How did I do?’ He said ‘Great Dad’. I asked if he would take me to play again. He said ‘No way!”

 “I love it,” Bryce said, “I play down at Scarista every Sunday. Annoys the hell out of Ella. She thinks I should stay home and be there for the children. They all come around. She’s right. I should. But why waste a whole day’s golf! She’s a Harris woman all the way through even though she’s been away to university and come back to be a teacher. Ask her if she’d put the washing out on Sunday.”

 “Would you?” Tim asked, turning to Ella.

“I would not!’ Ella said, switching effortlessly from the Gallic, “It’s a mark of respect. The Sabbath is not for the daily toil. It’s for talking to God and being with the family. Mind, I don’t blame those who do. It’s a choice. He chooses to go chase a silly ball round a hill.”

It was 30 minutes before the soup arrived and then another 20 minutes waiting for the main course, but Ella and Bryce kept the visitors well entertained. Sophie took the opportunity to indulge her inquisitiveness.

 “Do the young people keep up the old religion?”

 “No. It’s like everywhere. They watch Sky and dream of another life. They all want to get away. They have to — no work here for them. Some come back to retire, buy a piece of land next to their parents. That’s what I did when I finished teaching. My grandfather made me a feu, you know, as in ‘feudal’? It’s how we pass down land or sell it. We built a house right next door to his.”

 “Why are there so many derelict houses?”

 “There’s no one to live in them and it’s too expensive to renovate.” Bryce said, “Much cheaper to let them fall down and start from scratch with a kit house. The whole thing comes on a lorry. Once you’ve got the slab down, drains and such, they whip them up in a couple of days. All wood sections with the windows ready fitted. Then they throw up the blocks and tile the roof and you’ve a weatherproof house in a week. Most of the new houses here are kits.”

 “So… how do people make a living on the island? What does the future hold for little Donny?”

 “There’s nothing. Only the old age pension for the ancients, and the welfare for the younger ones!” Ella said.

 “We’ve heard about the fishing and the tweed?”

Bryce sat up straight.

 “Oh, now you’ll set him off!” Ella said.

 “Well there’s a few still make a living from fishing, but not like in the past. There were big fleets when the herring was plentiful. But the herring come and go — you might not see them for two years — can’t run an island on that. They built a huge fish factory at Scalpay. Some big multinational. Idea was to do all the processing here. There were jobs for everyone who wanted one. But suddenly they decided they didn’t need it and just closed it down. Now we’ve got this huge empty factory.“

"There’s a few fish farms — you’ll see them in the locks. Used to be owned by Harris men. But all you need is a bad storm and the cages break open and a year’s rearing goes swimming out to sea. No small concern can take losses like that. Now it’s all owned by the big boys Marine Harvest — you’ll see them all over the island. There’s jobs, but not so many as before and if the wind changes and they find they can do it cheaper elsewhere, they’ll be gone.”

"The tweed is dying out fast — in a few years it’ll all be gone – maybe just a few weavers left."

 “What do you do in the winter — those long dark days and nights?” Sophie asked.

 “He tried playing golf once with a torch! Twisted his ankle in a rabbit hole. Now he watches daytime TV. I read a lot, go visit friends. It’s OK. Some people let it get them down, but it’s not depressing — just different. In a way I look forward to it.”

 “Is the weather really wild? We were told to expect storms this week.” Sophie asked.

 “We never believe the weather reports.” Bryce said, “It changes so fast. It never gets really cold, like you might expect this far north, maybe a day or two of snow in a bad winter, but it melts the next day It’s the Gulf Stream, keeps the island warm. But the wind can whip up a gale in a few minutes without warning. We get real hurricanes — ripped my shed off the hill and blew it out to sea. Did me a favour it was falling to bits — all rusty galvanized and patched up with pallets. I told the insurance it was new. Used the money for a new boiler.”

 “We were told to make contact with the McLeods?”

 “Oh my.” Ella said, “Nearly everyone on the island is a McLeod or related. I’m a McLeod. When I do the register at school all the kids are McLeod, McCauley, Morrison or McKinnon and just one little Akra Patel from the General Store."

She gestured to the older folk. “Iain’s a McLeod. Pat’s a McKinnon, Angus and Duncan are both McLeods. In fact, there are so many Duncan and Angus McLeods all over the island, we all have nicknames to tell us apart. So I’m called Ella Head-the-Bay because that’s where I live. We’ve got Angus – our lovely host, and Angus the Piper and Duncan the Post. There’s a lot more to life on this island than you’d ever guess.”

 “I bet there is!” Tim said.

 “What is that thing?” Ella asked, nodding towards Tim’s mobile, “You’ve been fiddling with it all evening.”

Sophie glared at Tim.

 “It’s the new iPhone,” he said, and he showed Ella and Bryce some of the features – he took their photo, played them a tune from the iPod and a snatch of the Jurassic Park movie. Then he wrote an email and sent it to Emma’s Blackberry. Ella the teacher seemed interested in the predictive text and multilingual spell checker.

 “It works in every major language in the world.” Tim said.

 “Does it know the Gaelic?” Ella asked.

 “Not yet,” Tim said, “Maybe that will come soon.”

All the islanders were paying close attention and they seemed to be very impressed. He showed them the cottage on Google Earth. That seemed to impress them most and they spoke earnestly amongst themselves.

 “You don’t have iPhones here yet?” Tim asked.

 “Er… no. Never seen anything like that.” Ella said.

Angus reappeared from the kitchen with a guitar in hand and the band extricated themselves from the group of diners. They made their way to the tiny stage, perched on their stools. Iain played an E and Pat, Angus and Duncan tuned up. Then away they flew into a lively jig that forced the foot to tap and promised a great night’s music.

Iain was a large soft man with large soft fingers that ambled over the accordion keys. The movement of the bellows was like his breathing — laboured and wheezy. His eyes were closed tight and his mind was floating somewhere over the lunar landscape of East Harris while he played in perfect rhythm and without fault. Pat the fiddler was a small tight-knit woman with graying brown hair in a schoolmarm bob, brown-rimmed glasses, brown eyes. She played everything at a regular measured pace without colour or emotion. Even when she played Danny Boy there was not a tearful eye in the house. Angus the Piper, a dark haired man, pumped his blue bladder and fingered all the tunes in unison with Pat and Iain, while guitar and base punctuated the rhythm.

Angus played guitar like an earnest beginner, straining to finger the harder chords. Those were his paintings on the wall behind the tiny stage — enthusiastic and naive, like his music and his cooking. He looked well-fed, like the lucky sheep on the rich Machair on the West side of the island. It was no mean feat to cook tomato and basil soup, skewered Harris salmon, boiled vegetables and two scoops of mash followed by carrot cake and custard with coffee for ten guests and then to take his part in the band between the main course and pudding.

Duncan the bassist was a thin wasted middle-aged man, more like the hungry sheep who scratched a living on the heather growing between the random boulder-fall of the East side.

Every tune seemed to have twenty verses — which would have been tolerable had one of the band been brave enough to sing the stories. But neither they nor the audience, whom they shyly cajoled, sang a note all evening. So we had twenty verses of fiddle, pipe and accordion playing in unison.

The audience of local East-side islanders didn’t seem to mind. They were probably used to long stretches of time with nothing much happening except the passing of the weather. They were used to space uninterrupted by people — long winding roads across endless bouldered hills, immense dark mountains stretching from sea to sea, long empty sandy beaches slowly changing hue. They were used to Presbytarian churches without decoration or colour and long dull Calvinist services focused on the very word of God without frills. So twenty verses of a fiddly reel or a jaunty jig were no challenge to their ability to appear interested.

After about 20 minutes, Tim kicked Sophie under the table.

 “Well, it has been so lovely, but we need to think of leaving. We’ve a long way to go.” Sophie Said.

Angus noticed them stand up and came down from the stage to say goodbye. Tim held out his credit card to Angus and said, “Can we settle up then?”

Angus stared at the card.

 “Can we pay you?”

“Oh goodness, no,” Angus said, “It has been our great pleasure and privilege to entertain you this evening. It is so good to meet visitors who love the music as much as we do. Will you come back and see us again soon?“

"Thank you, we certainly will.” Sophie said.

Angus and Emma escorted them to their car. Sophie flicked the key and the headlights flooded the yard. They settled into their seats. Sophie opened the driver's window, said, “Goodbye. We’ll take you up on that invitation and be back as soon as we can.”

Angus and Emma smiled and waved as the Prius silently glided away into the darkness.

 “Well what happened to Mr. Sociable?” Emma asked. “You showed no interest in them. In fact you were texting your precious mates most of the time and hardly spoke until they asked about your mobile and then you showed off like some teenage geek.”

 “Sorry, Em, but I do find old people a bit boring, and that interminable music!”

 “You could have made more of an effort.”

 “I suppose. I was a bit embarrassed when he wouldn’t take any money. Felt more like a private party than a real restaurant. Pretty amateur. Felt like we’d gate-crashed.”

 “We could go back tomorrow and offer to buy one of his pictures before we leave.?”

 “They’re a bit naff. Anyway have we got time?”

"Yes. The ferry’s not until eleven.”

When they returned the following morning, the drive seemed to pass much faster. In the daylight, the road didn’t seem so treacherous and the sheep were mostly content to graze off-road, on the grassy banks.

 “You have reached your destination” said Jane, as they pulled into the yard.

 “Wrong, know-all!” Sophie sang. “Wrong house Jane.”

This yard was half overgrow with weeds – waist high in gorse and brambles. There were no cars – just a rusting wreck half buried in the weeds. The cottage was certainly wrong. It was a derelict. Rose Bay Willow herb sprouted from what was left of the walls, the roof had completely caved in long ago, exposing some well-weathered beams. What was left of the window frames were without glass and the only curtains were long-undisturbed cobwebs.

They headed back to the Prius and were about to drive away, when Sophie shouted, “Wait!”

She left the car and carefully picked her way through the unforgiving brambles towards the wreck.

 “Look at this.” She said.

It was the very rusty hulk of a VW camper, almost completely buried in the brambles, with nettles growing up through what was left of the floor. Tim looked towards the windscreen. The two rubber-ridged panes had fallen out leaving just a rusty trace of the central spar.

Tim and Sophie looked at each other. They had no words. What could they say? What did it mean? Tim just shrugged and they walked to the car. They drove away in stunned silence, neither wanting to give words to the crazy thoughts racing around their skulls.

On the way back they saw a farmer working on a blue water pipe that snaked across the rocky hill. Sophie drew alongside and looked at Tim. He nodded and they both left the car and approached the man.

 “Excuse me,” Tim said, “That cottage just down the road.”

 “You mean the Morrison place?”

 “It’s derelict.”

 “Yes, has been for years."

 “But we were…” Sophie began, but Tim silenced here with a glare.

 “We were… interested in buying somewhere to do up.” Tim said.

 “Well I wouldn’t bother with that place. Been with the agents for years but no one will go anywhere near it.”

 “Why not?” Sophie asked.

 “Well it all happened thirty years ago. In fact thirty years to the day almost. 15th September 1977. I’ll never forget that day, nor will anyone on the island.”

Realizing he had a captive audience, he took a pipe and a box of matches from his jacket pocket, lit up and settled down on a grassy hummock. Sophie and Tim perched on a couple of boulders in front of him.

 “It was back in the seventies when there was all that talk of UFOs. They’d been seen over the islands. Lots of reports. Mostly rubbish of course – Northern Lights, planes, that kind of thing, but people were taking it seriously. We thought it was just a matter of time before one of them landed or crashed maybe and it would be proven true. Anyway it kept the visitors coming – hippies mostly, not big spenders, but no trouble – well, a bit of wacky-baccy sometimes.

 “Andy Morrison had a little group who got together to play the old music, a few friends from around the East side. He’d have them round to dinner and they’d play for hours into the night. Well this one night they were all together in the cottage when something strange happened. Ella McLeod told me all about it the day after. I’d never seen her so agitated and so excited.

 “She said they’d just sat down to dinner, when she saw some lights in the sky. Two really bright piercing bluish lights. She went to the window and watched this thing glide down and land on the road, way up the hill. Then the lights went out for a while and came on again right outside the cottage. She said it was just like the whole yard was floodlit.

 “She sent Angus to the door and he saw two figures walking out of those lights. As they got closer he saw it was a young man and a woman – both nice looking. He said hello. The woman waved her hand and there was a click from behind her and the floodlights went out. They said they’d come to listen to the music. He was a little taken aback, but he asked them in all the same and made them welcome.

 “Well it turns out they’d been to the islands twenty years before and the woman said she was fifty-something and he was sixty years old and they’d came back for his birthday. Well Ella couldn’t believe it. The woman looked no older than thirty five. She was pretty with beautiful long blond hair with not a trace of grey. Her skin was as smooth as a baby’s. He only looked about forty. He was trim and fit with a head full of brown hair, with just a touch of grey.

“Anyway they got talking and they asked lots of questions. They wanted to learn all about the island. She asked all the questions and he was tapping away on some little box he had – looked like a transistor radio or something. When Ella asked what it was, he showed her.

 “Ella said it was a kind of Everything Machine. He called it an Eye Phone. He waved his hands over it and it became a sort-of Polaroid camera. He took Ella’s picture and showed it straight away on the glass screen – but no film, no processing. She’d never seen anything like it. Then he waved his hands again and it turned into a record player. He asked what music she liked and she said the Beatles and he tapped the glass and it played “She Loves You Yeah Yeah Yeah”. Ella said it sounded like Bryce’s big hi-fi stereo stack system but it was only the size of a fag packet.

Then he waved his hands again it turned into a tiny television and he showed this film about dinosaurs. She said it wasn’t like normal tellys – no lines or nothing and it was a beautiful coloured picture. Even more strange, the film was of real dinosaurs – not cartoons or models like Godzilla, but perfect real moving living dinosaurs,. Ella said it must have somehow been taken back in prehistoric times – before films and cameras were invented.

 “He waved his hands once more and it turned into a tiny typewriter. He typed a tiny letter on the screen and then he said "Watch this". He tapped it and there was a swishing sound and the little letter disappeared. Then his wife took another Everything Machine from her bag. She was rattling on about fruit. She said his was an apple or an orange or something, but she preferred raspberry or a blackcurrent. Then she showed Ella her glass screen and the letter was there. It somehow got from one machine to the other without a postman. Ella said it would put Duncan the Post out of a job.

Then he showed Ella how it corrected his spelling when he typed and it somehow guessed what he wanted to write and wrote it for him and she said a telepathic typewriter would put her out of a job. He said it could speak all of Earth’s languages, but not Gaelic. He said that would come soon.

 “Then he said “Want to see how we found you?”

“He waved his fingers and it became some sort of space navigation device. He showed this picture of the Earth from space with the words "Goggle to Earth" under it. Then he tapped it and it showed a tiny film of his journey down from space into the Northern hemisphere, then it flew over Europe, then the North of Britain and it homed in on the Islands, dived down towards Harris and then they sped down and down until they hovered right above the cottage.

 “Ella said she was convinced they were space aliens from a planet called Goggle. They came to earth twenty years ago and took over those young bodies they were in. That’s why they hadn’t aged a day in twenty years. Now they were back to find out about the island and learn the Gaelic language, so they could steal more bodies, learn to speak our language and pass for humans.

 “Ella said, even though they were aliens, they were very pleasant and polite, so she couldn’t say anything to challenge them for fear of seeming inhospitable. Everyone in the cottage just hoped they would leave soon. When the band came on nobody felt like singing, and anyway they could see the man didn't like the music – he’d rather play on his Everything Machine. So they played the tunes over and over so he’d get bored and they hoped he’d leave sooner.

 “Eventually they got up to leave and he waved this little plastic card at Angus. He had no idea what it was.

 ‘Emma, Angus and Ella went outside and saw their vehicle. It was the size of a big car, but smooth, silver and sleek like a spaceship. The woman waved her hand the doors clicked and the floodlights came on. She got inside and Angus could see all these space-age lights and dials blinking on the control panel – like from a Buck Rogers film and there was an interplanetary navigation thing like he had on his Eye Phone. He tapped something on the screen and this woman said, "Straight ahead for a mile." or something and the man said. "Thanks Jane",  but there was no other woman there - just his wife.

"The young woman waved her hand and the window went down by itself – she didn’t have to wind it. She said goodbye and promised they would come back and then the window went up again all by itself.

“Ella said the machine didn’t have an engine. It just seemed to slip away without a sound. All they could see was these bright red after-burners as it glided away up the hill and then out of sight.

“Well,” the old farmer said, sucking on his pipe. “Emma was really spooked by all this. She refused to stay in the house. She said the aliens would come back and they’d all see they were really horrific space monsters underneath and they would try to steal our bodies and take Donny away for experiments.

 “They left the house that very night. Packed a bit of stuff into Emma’s little Anglia and they drove off as fast as they could. Not been seen since. I guess they went over to the mainland to some big city, London perhaps, where they could be surrounded by big solid buildings and street lights and lots of people.

 “Ever since then, no one’s been near the place, and I wouldn’t go near it if I were you. They might come back.

Tim and Sophie looked at each other dumbfounded.

Then  Sophie just said slowly, ”Oh… my… God!”

Tim said “So was there a restaurant at the cottage?”

 “Not at Angus’ house, no. Just a bit further down the road past Flodabay - Donnie McLeod’s. Next turning left in fact. If you're going that way, you could give me a lift."

"Oh, OK, fine, let's go" The old man slid on to the back seat.

When Sophie fired up the engine, SatNav Jane said "Straight on for one mile." and Tim said "Thanks Jane."