I Am an Island Read online

  ‘What the fuck!’ he roars, jumping up. He stands shouting and furiously waving his arms and then I watch him sprint naked after the intruder, feet thundering on the stairs and away down the street. I wrap myself up and run after him, shaking, some minutes behind. I do not want Rab to meet that man alone. I do not feel safe in my home, or anywhere that I know.

  We stare at each other. My hand covers my mouth, and I start to shake again.

  ‘It’s OK,’ he says, ‘I’ll change the locks.’

  I think of those bright little fish.

  ‘I can’t do this any more,’ I say.

  We got married. We spent our weekends by the reservoir, gulls crying, glittering clinks of metal and sails flapping in the wind. We started planning our move to a new place, where our life and work might be more in balance, and home a safe, quieter haven. I set my dreams on a space to raise a family. Already there had been losses and disappointments, and I was touching thirty-four years old.

  2

  Atlantic

  As you drive north of the London Westway, you soon hit a sprawling urban wasteland of smoking industrial sites and desolate concrete forecourts, all framed by a neon luminescence that glows so aggressively it is hard to see the first flickering light of the natural dawn sky. Above, black-backed gulls fly mostly silent, landlocked, occasionally keening. It is a bleak, forlorn cry. I imagine they are bereft.

  Travelling this route in darkness into work each day, I am aware of an unsettling, restless feeling. Slogging away day after day can make you ask all kinds of open-ended questions. Sometimes you get to a point when you look to the sky for answers, your shoulders bracing, always loaded with fresh angst.

  And then one day we make the decision to take a few weeks to go on a prospecting road trip up north to Scotland, looking at places we might like to live. We leave in darkness so that we will miss the traffic and arrive around lunchtime, and won’t waste our first day on the road. With your destination determined, you know not to stop when you reach the start of the soft greening. You fix your eyes on the road, your foot on the pedal and keep on flooring it, heading north. And the wild beauty is shocking – if you keep driving out of the darkness and into its sunrise, straight as the crow flies, slowly the sky opens, lifts, and the light becomes porous. Here there are only the mountains, heather and fresh rain-spattering drifts of air. For a few hours, the horizon is sheared steep, precipitous, punctuated by the slick swish of wipers and steady fall of rain, so you have to tilt your head back to view its summit. The long drive is exhausting, but we are fired up.

  As I get out of the car and stretch, I hold my breath. Over the bay, the geese are flying straight as an arrow into the heart of that fragile light, a smirr of squalling slate wash just where the horizon falls into the sea. As soon as I hear the geese calling, their voices breaking those skies, that’s when I know to start to breathe again. The air in Scotland is different from the stale air in London. I inhale great lungfuls of that clean, sweet, fresh wet breeze.

  ‘This is wonderful,’ I say, turning to Rab. Only he does not hear me, because the wind tears the words from my mouth, and cuts my voice away. It is a relief not to say anything. There is no point fighting the elements. I turn my face into the wind and I just breathe.

  A few days later, Oban is empty in the rain. Only the estate agent remains to give us directions. ‘You won’t get your car on the ferry at such short notice, so be ready to go on foot,’ she informs us.

  ‘So if we get off the ferry, and then walk three miles, someone will meet us there?’

  She shrugs. ‘But if they’re not there, it won’t matter. The door will be open. Don’t expect much. No one has lived there for five years.’

  As I am leaving, she stares at me, a cool detached once-over. ‘You’re not from these parts. Sure you don’t want to think about it before going all the way over? Best not to get your hopes up. It’s a different world out there, just sheep and farmers, one small store and nothing but sea all about.’

  ‘It’s OK,’ I say. ‘We’ll go.’

  ‘Island life, it’s different. It’s not for everyone.’ She flings these words after me as the door slammed shut behind us.

  Maybe not, but maybe it would be our slice of heaven. A tiny rock of an island, cut adrift from the rest of the world. Just a long horizon, empty skies, and a beautiful blue sea. In my heart, I hoped it would be for me.

  It was a bleak March day, leaden overcast skies, and the wind was up. The crossing over had been difficult, and the skipper warned us that the return ferry might not run. The forecast was wind over tide and some fierce squalls. In the end, we had decided to risk it. If we had to, we reasoned, we could try to stay at a bed and breakfast. We did not know that there was only one and that it was closed in March.

  As predicted, the vehicle deck was already fully loaded, a large agricultural lorry stacked high with hay taking up three spaces of the available four still remaining. Two cars queuing on standby were left behind as the ramp was raised up off the slip.

  The island was barely fifteen miles long, its narrow girth tightening to just half a mile, with close to 120 residents, another ten or so renting temporarily. The skipper assured us that if we walked the three miles from the ferry, up an empty single-track road with deep potholes, we could be there and back in just a few hours. He cautioned us not to miss the last boat. It felt momentous watching that bright ferry bounce away over the waves, across that fast channel and back to the mainland, as we set off along the track.

  ‘I guess this is the main road,’ Rab mused, looking back over his shoulder. ‘More like a backwater than the main drag.’

  ‘I wonder how they cope in the rush hour.’ I smiled, thinking of London. There is nowhere to pass or turn. ‘Still, far better to walk.’

  Every now and again we would quickly step on to the mud-spattered verges as a battered car or rusted, vintage tractor rattled past. The road was so narrow you couldn’t fail to catch a glimpse of the occupants. The vehicle would slow down, faces inside closely scrutinising us through steamed-up windows before slowly driving on. Sometimes we came across passing cars that had just stopped dead in the road. Windows rolled down, cigarettes lit, the news of the day shared as the cars’ engines ticked over. On one halt, a bottle is passed between cars. Lilting, cadenced voices talking the day through. All eyes stare at us curiously as we walk past. And on one occasion, someone says, ‘Incomers.’ I listen to its sound, like a piece of litter thrown on to the road. Yes, I think, but hopefully not for long. I pick that word up and feel its tone and resonance. One day I hope that it will sound different, as we become familiar and known.

  The wind cut bitterly through our coats; even through gloves and fleece-lined hats. Gulls huddled by waterlogged sheep-feeders, the ground covered in rushes and old windblown hay. On the high beinns and hills, snow still lay thick, the steep corries glistening, waterfalls roaring off the high tops from the first snowmelt.

  We found the small cottage set back a few minutes’ walk down a rough track that ran from a slope and curved behind an ancient stone barn, still showing its original thatching posts. There was no door on the barn. Underfoot were smooth cobbles and flagstones, the only contents decades of muck, straw and empty swallows’ nests. The uninhabited stone cottage was rundown, grey-walled, damp and desolate-looking. There was no lock on the front door, and it opened on the first try. We hesitantly knocked and walked in. There was nobody here. The interior seemed even smaller: just four bare rooms with three-foot-thick stone walls made of rocks dug up from the ground. There was no sound of traffic, or neighbours. Our eyes darted searchingly.

  It was the fall of silence that struck me. It had a porous feel to it, as if the whole sky had been spilled into it until there was room for little else. No raised voices, no bricks through the window. No rattling of sticks on a metal grille, or buses thundering past. Inside, there was a stillness like cool, clear water. And I knew that it was this quiet I had been seeking for so long. It did not matte
r that the cottage had no water, electricity, outside drains or paint on its walls. It did not matter that there was no heating or insulation. Nor that it was as freezing cold inside as it was outside, with just a single stone grate in one end wall. It did not matter that it was unloved and had not been lived in for over five years, nor that there were signs of mice, birds’ nests and rats in the roof.

  There was an antique leaking caravan outside that would do to sleep in, for however many months it would take to make the place habitable. And a freshwater loch at the bottom of the croft, from which pails of water could be brought up to wash. Outside, an unheated corrugated-iron lean-to was propped up against the north gable, where the lambing help had once bedded down. The dirt floor was complemented by walls carefully papered with sheets of 1950s Oban Times. I was struck by the care that had been taken to do this. I picked up a tiny housekeeper’s book sitting on a wooden kist, with shillings and pence noted in the margin. Beside the thin, damp mattress was a King James Bible with minuscule print and a small Tilley lamp with a lint wick. When I stood outside, all I could see were hills and mountains.

  ‘What do you think?’ Rab asks me as we walk back to the ferry.

  I do not hesitate. I just look at him, and smile.

  As soon as I get two bars of reception on my phone, I make an offer. Six weeks later, the island croft is our home.

  The day we moved to the island, the most terrifying challenge was finding myself standing on the deck alone as the ferry pulled away. There had been a problem. The tailgate of our lorry was too low to board the antiquated boat, despite assurances from the booking team when we’d purchased the tickets six weeks earlier. On the quayside, Rab lifted up his arms in resigned surrender to the unexpected turn of events of the last hour.

  ‘Don’t worry, I’ll come find you,’ he shouted. ‘I’ll get a boat and get over some other way.’

  ‘How?’ I yelled back. ‘There are no other boats. This is the last sailing today.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he shrugged. ‘But I’ll find a way.’

  As the skies cleared, I sat on the deck and watched Rab and the mainland disappear into the distance and my previous life drift away from me. I had no food in the car. The only possessions I carried were the clothes I stood in. And my elderly cat, in her basket, staring wide-eyed as the ferry juddered into the channel, the waves building into a stronger swell.

  Driving off the ramp and up the island was a strange, unsettling feeling. We had planned this day meticulously together and now I was arriving alone. I found the croft again, and the cottage, sitting in its own beautiful wilderness. The yard was conspicuously more overgrown with brambles, and any semblance of a path to the house was covered in an abundance of wild flowers – bright aconites, foxgloves, marsh marigolds, flag iris and wild orchids growing with abandon.

  As I pushed open the door, I sighed with relief. It was just as I remembered. With no water or electricity in the house, nothing was plumbed, and the floor and walls were filthy, covered in dust and what looked like a nest of birds or mice. But it didn’t matter. It was home. And before I started sweeping away the debris of generations of wild creatures living inside its fabric, I placed my hands flat on the thick, bare stone walls and whispered, ‘I am here now. I don’t know who you are and I know you don’t know me. But I know we’re going to get on together. I’m here to stay. You are my home.’

  Afterwards, I lit a few twigs and burned the sweepings and the rubbish on a small grate out the back. I listened to the crackling flames licking the dust and dirt of those small offerings alight. I turned my face to the wind and the now deepening blue sky, and watched the Evening Star brighten as the skies turned from dusk to the island gloaming time, and on into a hazy, luminous night sky. I listened to the silence and felt the breath of solitude wrap about me. And for a few hours, the silence transformed into unfamiliar wild sounds – of owls, bats, buzzards and geese calling out of that darkening sky. Those moments were so precious. They felt saturated with a limitless potential.

  I will never forget that day I travelled to start my life on the island. Arriving alone, as a stranger, was one of those unnerving twists of fate that only holds a deeper resonance in later years. I like to think it was my first test of facing my fears and putting my trust in the unknown.

  Looking back, I had no idea that those early years would only be the start of a fiercer, wilder, intensely difficult period that would tax my courage, resilience and endurance to breaking point and beyond. Growth is not always easy, and sometimes a new seed has to be encouraged, even forced, to grow.

  3

  Island

  Even before I open my eyes, I know it is too early. A fragile lunar light streams through the cracked caravan windows, some of which are stuck half open, and condensation shines clear on the glass. Limp tea towels, strung over a nylon fishing wire fixed to the thin walls, gently flutter in the breeze. Drowsily, I blink at the tiny croft house crouched low in open fields, the mountains deep in shadow behind. I watch the wild grasses flowing. And suddenly, I remember where I am.

  ‘There you are,’ I whisper. I trace the cottage with my eyes. Its low outline glows ghostly pale, like a will-o’-the-wisp flickering in the gloaming. I love to see it there waking with me, waiting for the sun to rise. I am counting down the days until we can finally move inside. It is a longing, a deep ache that I have never felt for any other place before. When we first saw the cottage, it felt so abandoned and unloved. It matters fiercely to me that it is loved and lived in, after so many years left untended, unkempt and alone. I am longing to make it a home, and for those solid walls to hold me. And one day, I hope to fill it with small running feet and laughter.

  Above, scattered across a liminal emptiness, the Milky Way is a glittering, exploding phosphorescence. Fiery pinpricks of brilliance cluster, illuminating an iridescence of a myriad gleaming white lights. I have heard of these star-flecked, eerie lemon skies in the Highlands, but nothing prepares me for their startling luminescence. I have never witnessed such beauty before.

  ‘Are you awake?’ I whisper, as Rab stirs next to me.

  There is a long pause. So I try to lie still, watching his body breathing, willing him to open his eyes.

  I am amazed at the difference a few short weeks can make, free from the stresses of London. I can feel subtle changes in my body as my tight skin relaxes and starts to stretch, responding to the salt breeze and sunshine. My salt-tangled hair is tousled to a dark russet gold. We are getting fitter and leaner. I have not worn make-up in weeks. A small pocket mirror, stuffed hastily into the depths of my bag, has long since vanished. In the end I stop looking for it, and it is strangely liberating to feel unmoored from our old ways.

  The rough stone walls have white-flecked my hands with cuts and tiny pink hicks. When I turn them over, my knuckles are raw and reddened from scrubbing the dry, flaking render. When we have finished scrubbing, we splash brilliant-white masonry paint on to the weather-stained walls, and I paint the cracked door and windows a clear-sky blue. At sunrise, the glass panes refract a shimmering lazuline haze, until the light sinks below the horizon and the sky drifts into its gloaming again. At sunset, the bronze-fired skies burn themselves to oblivion from within. And that is another day passed. We are slowly making progress but already it is close to midsummer. There is no sign yet that the heatwave will break.

  ‘Never thought we’d do this, but here we are,’ Rab often muses. And I smile shyly as he gently twists my hand, because I am still pinching myself to see that ring on my finger. Its thin band is like a ray of hope. We are married just six months; already six short weeks, 600 miles and a stretch of water from our old London lives. It is striking how full our new life feels, stripped so far back to its essence. We are living with nothing apart from two bags crammed full of our small belongings, an old Vespa scooter, a barbecue rack and a tiny gas camping stove. Sometimes I laugh at how little we need. And at other times it feels precarious. I wonder if the land can really provide
us with our basic wants. I hope we can sustain this raw simplicity, our self-belief and determination. I know our life will not always be this smooth and uncomplicated, for all our free thinking and lack of clutter. I am conscious that we may not be sufficiently prepared for when the summer ends. And yet I am glad we have not held back out of an excess of caution. I tell myself it’s up to us to make this work. It feels like a gift, as if we have nothing at all to lose.

  Each morning, we are still holding hands under the covers. An unfamiliar landscape allows you to feel things differently so your eyes look out, clear and open. It instils calmness. Yet some days it stops me in my tracks. It is strange how a presence so quiet can draw you to it. Even with the taller grasses growing, sometimes that long horizon can feel disconcertingly bare. It is a space utterly devoid of the usual distractions. There are no shops on the island, except for a small post office that sells a few well-stocked groceries, or social hubs such as restaurants, hotels, cafés, pubs or places to meet. Services are limited. There is a small primary school, but no GP or police officer, only a part-time nurse and a fire brigade of volunteers but no other emergency services. The church provides occasional recreational activities for the small congregation, with cups of tea supplied by the Women’s Guild, yet with such an ageing population, most Sundays only a few hard pews are filled with the devout. A single-track road stretches north to south, with occasional splinters that all run aground on to shingle and rocks. Its land mass is small and restrictive, held by a fiercely tidal sea that washes off the wilder Atlantic. It is impossible to forget that you are surrounded by water. Wherever you stand, the salt-stung cold tides and clamouring of the gulls are felt. Sometimes, gazing out across the waving grasses to the restless sea, the view can feel strangely overwhelming.