The Island at the End of the World (i)

After his wife died, Finn MacLeod decided on a complete change of life. At fifty-eight, he knew that it was his last chance. One Friday night, he typed in a search: 'remote houses for sale UK'. He wasn't sure what to expect, and didn't think it would be anything right or affordable. The usual tumble-down ruins or vast mansions.

But then he saw it. The house. The wild, lonely coast. And the price. He poured himself a stiff scotch and clicked the link.

 

So it was that he bought the old croft on Bardo Island for a song, and escaped there later that summer to start again. The place had been empty for years, so needed work. Walls to repair and render. Slates to replace. The guttering and pipes to clear and refix. And all of that before he could even think of the interior. But it was sound enough. And he had the time and, thanks to the house sale and a pension, enough funds to keep him going. He worked with patient skill, and in peace - just his hammering and sawing above the cries of the seabirds, the wash of the waves in the cove below the head. Fine days would see him out there, a cigarette poking from his beard, red tufts springing at the edge of his cap, the sweat on his arms. His heart was buoyed by the course of his life now. This place - his. A place of solitude, removed from the clamour of the world, the hatred and fighting. And the people. Not that he disliked people. He just preferred not to be around them so much any more.

The island, though stark, had a rare beauty, and Finn took good time to acquaint himself. The scrubby hummocks and pathways; the outcrops of granite poking up like ancient monuments. From the air it resembled a giant whale, half-a-mile wide and three times that from snout to flukes. The tail at the southern end, at sea level, with the strand surrounding it - the shed there at the dock, housing the cuddy boat. From there, the land rising - shallowly at first, then steeper as it reached towards the house, tucked in a cleft near the top, like a grey stone box on a shelf. Above that, the high head at the northern end reaching over the cove, like a mouth wide to swallow the sea. There had once been some bothies on the top, he knew, before a landslip took them decades before. Just the house there now, settled and secure in its niche. The land was good - the grass lush and tussocky - and that was a part of his long-term plan for his plot. Grazing for sheep and goats. Some basic crops. A wind turbine and solar panels, in time. A greater measure of self-sufficiency. He already had the batteries and generator for power, and water pumped up from the well.

 

Once a week, he'd take the boat for the short trip across the Sound to the town on the mainland for supplies. Fresh vegetables and milk. Meat and fish for the freezer, if needed. Fuel for the generator and oil for the lamps. Tea-bags and coffee beans. The carton of ordered-in Capstan Full-Strengths. And whisky for the evenings, when he'd sit with a book, comforted by the distant rush of wind and waves. He didn't have or want a TV or internet now. But he had the radio for the occasional programme or afternoon play, and the shipping forecast. He listened to the news through the day - an old habit - but increasingly found himself switching it off. The worsening wars. The tensions and divisions. It was like hearing about life on another planet. He assured himself it was less about cutting himself off and more about restoring his hope again. He had a phone and kept it charged, but mainly used it for the time. There was no one really left to speak to any more. It was handy to have for emergencies, though. It was all he needed.

 

He came to know the other visitors to the island. The corncrakes and terns and gannets. The puffins, with their cheerful harlequin faces. And the grey seals that would bask on the tooth-stubs of rock close by - like cadavers laid out on blocks for the mortician. Their cries sometimes carried into the night. But he slept soundly, and wasn't disturbed by them in the way he once had been with the city noise.

Some nights, he'd hike up above the house to the cliff-top and lie on the grass to consider the prospect. The faint twinkling lights of the town across the Sound. The blue and gold afterburn along the horizon, and the starscape above like scattered glitter on a velvet canvas. A waning crescent moon there - a ghost ship anchored in a shallow of cloud. He'd watch satellites make their silent way across, the blinking lights of high jets. An occasional shooting star would drop, like a dying firefly. On one special night, too, the aurora’s purple-green spectral curtain swept down and shimmered across the firmament. At such times, he felt more keenly alive than he'd ever known - recharged and rejuvenated by the spectacle. The miracle of it all would hold him in silent awe. He'd think about the moment of the primal spark - the vast explosion that created it all from nothing, the continent of night above, its galaxies and stars, the moons and planets and cosmic dust. And he'd reflect on the delicious isolation of his vantage: this rock he was on, in this ocean, on this planet, and the dome of heaven above. At the same time, he'd be gratified to know that everyone who once had mattered was still sharing it, too - whether in body or ash, or simply memory. He'd no time now for bitterness or regret. This was consolation enough.

 

Then came the night of the first storm, with the wind hounding around the eaves and corners and the rain like gravel on the slates. He sat by the bedroom window, watching the lightning arc across the sky, feeling the thunder like mortar fire - setting the light fittings swinging and the crockery rattling in the cabinet.

Next morning – the air charged, the grass sparkling after the wash of rain - he was up early to inspect everything. He was gratified to see that his work had held well, with no damage save a flapping sheet of corrugated on the outhouse roof - soon refastened with a handful of nails. He grilled herrings for breakfast, and afterwards hiked down to the cuddy-shed, where all was good. He skirted the strand and made his way up the eastern pathway, at the head of which the steps took him down and around to the cove under the cliff.

There, he was surprised to see - pulled up on the beach and roped to a rock - an old clinker-built skiff. It was sea-battered, but sound enough. A pair of oars rested inboard across the thwarts. Some old fishing nets and a wicker creel were crammed under the sternsheets. The name, in faded white cursive, was just discernable on the paint-flaked transom.

Augury.

He scanned the cove for evidence of the owner, and at the farther end spied the figure of a man, dressed in dark oilskins, crouching over something between the rocks.

"Hello there," he called out.

The man stood up and turned his way, raising his hand quickly before returning to his task, as if he was simply acknowledging the greeting from a passing fellow. Finn stepped across the sand closer to him. He could see now that he was an old man - eighties, maybe. The skin of his face under his woollen cap was loose and runnelled, tanned the colour of strong tea, and framed with a beard and whiskers as fine and white as cotton. He was a thickset man, though seemed nimble enough in his movements. His oilskins were cracked and ancient, patched over in places. He wore galoshes tied at his knees with leather cords of similar colour and appearance to the skin of his hands. He had a tin pail with him, into which he was putting whatever it was he was collecting.

He stopped what he was doing and straightened again as Finn approached. There was a steely glint in his grey eyes, but his expression was congenial.

"Fair day, sir," the man said. "You're well."

It wasn't a question, and Finn sensed it didn't simply refer to his state of health.

"I am, thank you," Finn said. "I live up top on the old croft now. Just checking for any storm damage. Didn't expect to find anyone else here."

He made it sound friendly. He didn't own the island after all - only his own small part of it. Even so, he felt a small pang of intrusion.

The man held out his hand for Finn to shake. The grip was surprisingly soft and light for the obvious strength behind it.

"Aye, sir. Thought there was someone up there," the man said. "Good to know. Been a fair while empty now. I would have come up and called in. I generally come by after a squall like that. See what's been stirred up and washed in. This cove is like a pan that way, see... way the currents can run. No trouble to you, I hope."

"Of course not. You're welcome." He looked down at the man's pail. "What is it you collect? Shellfish?"

The man lifted the pail and proffered it towards him. Inside was a trinket-box collection of items. Tooth-shards of broken crockery. A caddy spoon, salted to a rind. The white shrimp of a cup handle. A few bone buttons of varying sizes. A copper coin so rinsed by the sands and currents that no minting was visible.

"The last remains," the man said. "From the old bothies that were washed away. Some bits from passing ships, too, no doubt. But mainly the old stuff. I collect them up. Keep them safe at home."

He swirled the pail a couple of times - the pieces clinking and scraping in the brine dregs. A silver hoop earring, thick as a curtain ring. The fob end of a key - rusted black, with a piece of chain still looped through the hole.

"Belongings of my kin," the man went on. "The folk who once tended this jag of land, way back." He dipped his head then - his features darkening. "Found other remnants than this over time, too. Parts I bury, as is only right. Bones and things, you know. Teeth. The earthly remains. Sacred to me, though, as you'd imagine."

"Of course," Finn said. "It's the sort of thing I'd do myself. If I knew where to look, mind."

It was an off-hand remark, jokingly meant. But the man considered him with an understanding eye.

"Flock scattered now, is it?" he said. "Yourself alone?"

Finn nodded. "A flock I was never much a part of, anyway. The lone gull, me... flying my own patch of sky, you could say."

"Aye, I reckon I know about that," the man said. "I keeps a lone hearth myself now.”

Finn was warming to him - feeling his own sense of kinship.

"Where are you from?" he asked, guessing the town across the Sound.

Incongruously, the man looked up at the sky first, then out to the sea behind him - his eyes seeming to fix on the horizon.

"Along the coast away. You'll see me a'times."

He glanced down into his pail.

"I reckon this'll do for this visit," he said. "A few more bits for the chest."

Finn looked up at the cliff, where some guillemots were swooping and lifting.

"You're welcome to come up for a hot drink before you go."

The man nodded. A smile cracked at the corners of his eyes.

"Something cold might be nice… if it's not a presumption."

Finn chuckled. "Not at all. I'll join you."

 

Finn was surprised at how swiftly the man ascended the steps and path back to the house. When they got to the door, the man sat himself on the stone bench outside.

"Do me fine here, sir," he said. "Good to sit outside. Have a smoke."

"Whisky?" Finn asked.

The man winked, fishing in an inner pocket for his pipe.

"Just a drop of water with it, if you please."

Finn brought out a stool and sat with him. He lit up a Capstan and they smoked and drank for a few moments in comfortable silence.

Finn was curious about something.

“What happened to the bothies?” he asked, at length. “The land agents said they were washed away in a landslip or something.”

The man puffed thoughtfully on his pipe before answering.

“Nineteen sixty-four, it was,” he said. “Six of them there were, up top there.”

He gestured with his pipe towards the cliff, high above the house.

“Been there generations. Folks who worked the croft. Sheepmen and suchlike. Fishermen. A small community, but tight. A tough life, but they made a sufficiency of it. Born and raised to it, see. Hardy folk, like. As you have to be.”

Finn wondered if there was an intended suggestion there - him sitting as he was in his jeans and Barbour jacket, his baseball cap, his hands more used to tapping a keyboard than wielding a wood-axe or building a wall. But the man would see the work he’d done, the things he’d achieved, the way he lived now. It should be clear he was no amateur custodian or dilettante. He’d lived and laboured on farms in his youth, learned some ways. He decided it was meant as an acknowledgement. An affirmation.

“It was a storm did it,” the man went on. “Not a blow of wind like last night, but biblical... form of which none had seen nor could remember. A great fury that struck one night and carried on the long day after. Took away part of the roof of this house, but it was solid and set enough, and sheltered some by the bluff. The bothies, though, were more exposed up there. Some fault must have lain underneath all the centuries - the rains and frosts getting in, no doubt, and loosening up. And that storm was the final hammer blow. Thunder like an armoury going up, so folks said, and the lightning there with it, striking the overhang. And away it went, like an axe cleaving wood. All those tons of rock, the dwellings, the souls in them, one and all, down to that cauldron below.” He took a sip of his drink, tapped his pipe on the side of the bench. “That was them gone, then. Every last sign. Excepting these bits I’ve gathered over the years. Hard to think that a few bare lives could leave so much behind to find. Like tiny clues to the mystery of it all, you could say.”

He tucked his pipe away again.

“There’s not been a storm quite that measure since,” he went on. Then he turned his head again, looking far off to where the sea met the sky. “One’s on it's way, though,” he said, his voice lowered, his face without expression now. “You’ll need to be ready for that one, I'd say. When it comes, it will hit with a force.”

Finn knew enough to take such tales for what they were, but also to respect the wisdom of those who knew their land and weathers through long living and seasoned instinct.

“Will I be secure enough, do you think?” he said.

The man jerked his head – a nod, it seemed.

“You’ll be, I should say," he said. It had a curious intonation, though. As if others might not be so lucky.

Drinking whisky that early had stirred Finn’s head. He got up.

“One for the waves?” he grinned.

The man raised his glass. He still had a finger-full.

“This will do me, sir. I thank you, though.”

Finn went indoors to refresh his own glass, but filled it with water instead and drank it down. The old man’s story, and his warning, was playing through his mind. He stood at the sink, looking out the back window and up to where those bothies had been. He tried to imagine the horror of it - of feeling the ground giving under your feet, of seeing everything you held dear and close go tumbling, and you with it, down to a dark and violent death. Knowing it was coming.

Those last few moments…

He jerked suddenly, realising he’d been lost in the daydream. He stepped back through the house and outside to where they’d been sitting.

“I wanted to ask…”

The words stopped in his throat. The old man was gone. In his place on the bench was the empty glass, upturned over something. Finn picked it up and examined it. It was a grey pebble, the size of a watch face. On one side there was a crude engraving - done long ago, worn by time and tide. It looked like a tall tree with three bare branches at the top. A rune, he knew - though he wasn’t sure which. He looked around, but there was no sign of the man now. Slipping the pebble into his pocket, he made his way back down the path to the cove. The skiff was gone, too. All trace it might have left in the sand had been washed away by the incoming tide. He looked out to sea, but could only see the half-submerged rocks further out, the seals basking, the gulls drifting on the air currents.

Back at the house, he rummaged through the boxes of books he still hadn't unpacked until he found his old volume on runes. He looked up the one on the pebble.

Algiz - the Elk.

Among other things, it symbolised sanctuary - a defence against potential threats and a reminder to stay vigilant to them. As well as a warning, it was an invitation to seek knowledge - to be aware of things that are happening, and to be prepared for them.

He thought again of the man’s presaging of a mighty storm.

It was then that he realised, for the first time, that he hadn’t asked the man’s name. Nor had it been given.

(continued) https://www.abctales.com/story/harryc/island-end-world-ii