Sea horses

Sea horses

Tom spooned the broth into the bowls, one for him, one for his mother.
He paused a moment to warm himself in front of the stove giving his
weathered face a ruddy glow. He carried the broth over to the fire
where his mother sat. Just as Tom had left her this morning. The
woollen shawl tightly wrapped around her drooping shoulders and a
blanket tucked around her useless legs. She looked up at Tom her eyes
were silent and watery blue. 'Here we are ma, this will warm you
through' Tom held a spoon full of broth up to her thin pale lips. She
sipped and sucked until the bowl was empty, her gnarled hands lying
dormant on her lap.

Fed and warmed Tom returned outside. He stood with his back to the wind
viewing his pile of turnips. His calculations told him they would not
last the winter. In the grey half-light of midday, his memory recalled
the toil of past winters on the croft. For all of his twenty-two years,
this had been a season of bleakness, in which for many days the sun
would fail to rise. Tom always rose. In the bitter darkness of the
winter and in the endless sunlight of the summer he began and ended his
days with the tending of his livestock and his mother.

He thought of his father buried in the churchyard overlooking the sea.
How his mother had stood straight backed and declared to the mourners
that she and her boy would manage. Yes, they had managed; they had
worked the land together, fighting against the elements in this harsh
damp place.

Entering the barn, he unhooked a rope halter from the wooden beam. The
warm air was immediately filled with the sound of his animal's hopeful
welcome. The diminishing pile of turnips spurred Tom forward ignoring
the hungry calls.

He placed the halter on the old grey mare and stroking her gently urged
her forward, past his collection of hungry beasts and out into the
bitter air beyond. Her huge frame lumbered along behind him. Twenty
years of cutting peat, ploughing and reaping had left her work-worn and
barren.

Following a sheep track they left the solitary croft behind and headed
out over a vast area of maritime heath, a desolate wilderness
stretching out into the Atlantic Ocean. Ever dominating the ocean had
claimed the land as its own, dousing the cliff tops in sheets of salt
spray. Tom could feel the spray on his face and hear the crashing waves
breaking below.

He trudged through the boggy heather she plodded behind. There was no
need for the rope halter to pull her along, despite her weariness she
followed obediently, a lifetime of faithful compliance. When
occasionally she floundered in the sodden earth he would stop and
turning, rub his hand between her eyes 'erd a gal, easy does it.'

As he neared the gloup, he looked up at the broad sky, a wash of pearly
pewter reflecting the angry ocean below. The air was filled with the
sound of crashing waves and the booming of boulders bashing away at the
cliffs like huge hammers seeking weakness, consuming.

As he reached the edge of the gloup, he turned to face the old mare. 'G
back' 'G back'. As she inhaled and lifted her body to move backwards,
Tom's stocky frame pressed against her chest, he pushed. The old mare's
hind legs stepped into the nothingness of the gloup. Tom heard her
final gasp for air, a grasp at life as she momentarily struggled and
then fell deep into the chasm to the rumbling ocean below. With a
mighty roar the ocean caught the old mare and sucked her through the
darkness of the cave and into the depths of the ocean below. He thought
of his mother.

Tom strolled across the parched salt dried heath until he reached the
churchyard. The small church mottled in saffron lichen shimmered in the
evening sunlight. He climbed up onto the stone wall, high up on the
edge of the cliffs. He gazed far out to the horizon, following the huge
rollers as they surged towards the cliffs. Suddenly out of the foaming
ocean they appeared, majestic, scrambling in their magnificence to the
height of the rollers. Then coasting triumphant a splendid shimmering
pageant. Free from halter and harness. Then plunging in a foamy rush,
they vanished.

Notes for the reader

Gloup - a deep fissure with a bridge of rock still connecting the sides
at the seaward edge, thus creating a natural chimney/vertical shaft in
a sea-cave that communicates with the surface at some distance inland
from the edge of the cliff.

Legend has it that in parts of the Orkney Islands it was the tradition
to dispose of old and injured horses by means of backing them off the
gloup. The structure of the gloup confusing the animal - as they
believed that they were farther away from the sea than they actually
were.