The Homecoming: Hirta and the Harebell

I had no sooner thrown my wet rucksack on the stone floor and shaken off the rain from my Gore-Tex jacket, than I heard the door to which I had just entered the old St Kilda Black House open and close again behind me. I was no longer alone in the room. Unzipping and Velcro ripping, I removed my jacket, and turned around to welcome the incomer.

His silhouette filled the small door frame; backlit by the tiny windows which bookended the entrance to the house.  Now a museum dedicated to the people of the islands, it housed trestle storyboards depicting island life, glass cabinets of clothing, cooking utensils and bird fouling equipment. Day to day items used by the islanders to survive the harsh North Atlantic beatings this gnarled volcanic archipelago had endured, until their reluctant evacuation pleas were heard and granted in 1930. The National Trust had converted old Findlay Gillies’ house into a living history of island life; the others, still ruins, simply had a single painted slate acknowledging the names of the last occupants displayed in the open fire hearth. Old Findlay’s house was given a new roof, windows, and carefully concealed modern conveniences; lighting and heating which was at this moment most welcome. I dropped my wet jacket on the perimeter bench which skirted the substantial stone walls.

He was dressed authentically in traditional islanders clothing, a rehearsal for the next day’s re-enactment of the anniversary of the evacuation. His trousers hung heavy around his waist, ill-fitting and dragging over clumsy shoes. The rough knit jumper, sleeves torn and knotted was covered with the waistcoat favoured by the men of the island. A forerunner to my modern down gilet I thought. A bunnet hugged his head and he wore a bandolier of knotted ropes and a red beard which exploded from his rough, tired features. ‘Top marks to costume.’ I thought. The putrid stench of guano almost permeated.

‘Christ you’re keen,’ I said, scanning head to toe and back again. ‘looks the part, but in this weather?’

At first, I thought he hadn’t heard me, or taken objection to my tone. He fixed me with a stare which I held. Smiling, I awaited a response. He stepped towards me, emerging from the shadow of the door.

‘Did just fine for them,’ he said, glancing at the sepia image on the display beside me. ‘Coped with much worse than this wee drying shower.’

He measured my extents, fixing on the notepad which had fallen from my rucksack and the camera around my neck; his glare relaxed to a knowing grin. His grey eyes swam with mischief and cunning, like a fulmar ready to regurgitate on a nest thief.

‘And you,’ he said. ‘What brings you here this eve? Here to ‘celebrate’ the evacuation? To tell the story of how these poor islanders couldny take care of themselves any longer, had to cry for help? Here to tell their story and in doing so make a name with yours?’

‘Like you,’ I sighed. ‘I’ve got a job to do. Today I clambered the hills of Oesival and Connochair, photographed the Mistress and Lovers Stone, I ran from Dun to Soay and landed on neither, I got pictures of Soay Sheep, St Kilda Wren, Storm Petrels and Puffins till my memory card was full, I fought off at least a dozen attacks from wild bonxies. The rain pissed on me, my feet are soaking wet, my hands sore with hot aches and I’ll struggle tonight to write a piece which will be seen by fewer than five folk on Facebook and disappear never to be looked at again.’

He raised his eyebrows, a grimace graduating to a grin.

‘Well, you have had a tough day …..and for such scant reward! Have a seat ya poor soul ye, get those wet things off your feet and warm them by the fire.’ A flourished palm gestured to the display fireplace set with period ironmongery and fake flames.

Slowly, sheepishly, I gathered my damp notebook and packed my camera away in my rucksack. I walked over to the window to see if there was any sign of the weather clearing, the shallow beach was being swept with white crests, the dark rainclouds were moving quickly on a northerly across Connachair and the bright blue letterbox south of Dun would soon be smiling on the village slopes. The large boat which had brought the TV production team, cast and crew bobbed gently off the pier in the centre of the bay. The charter boat I had arrived on this morning had left to take some paying tourists around the sea stacks. I wanted to get ashore to get acquainted with the island before it filled the next day for the filming of the evacuation. The Elizabeth G would be back in Village Bay in an hour or so to collect me and tie up for the night.

‘I’m sorry for snapping just there,’ I said. ‘letting first world hassles get to me.’

‘Aye, this is nae place for rushing.’ He nodded, looking out the tiny window at the boat in the harbour. ‘worrying about a day that might never come; the gathering of birds, the filling of cleits for winter storage and hoping that it will come and go without loss, and in truth, in no time at all, you’re here and then you’re gone.’

He stared wistfully out at the boat; his chest rising and falling, a symbiosis with the swell of the sea; his monochrome complexion and well weathered face looked much older than I imagined his years. He must have been in his sixties at least.

‘I never saw a man who looked with such a wistful eye, upon that little tent of blue we prisoners call the sky,’ I thought, recalling Wilde’s Reading Gaol captive.

I broke the short silence to scatter his melancholy.

‘Looks like clearing soon, I’d give it an hour.’

‘Oh, so you’re a weatherman then?’

‘I’m a photographer actually,’ I offered my hand. ‘Sorry, my names Fraser  – Fraser Macleod? from The Herald?’ I awaited a response. I got none.

‘I’m here to cover the story tomorrow, I’m from Glasgow. Never been here before, read a wee bit about it and seen a few programmes, I’d love to have lived here though eh?’

‘My family were from here.’ he said. ‘generations of them, until gradually like snow off McKay’s church roof they disappeared. Some went willingly overseas, some were taken by smallpox and flu, and those remaining boarded the Harebell and left all they knew to save themselves. I return every year to remember them and the others. Live here? would you? You wouldn’t last one winter.’

‘You’re awfy quick to judge. You don’t know anything about me.’

‘I call what I see, and I see a towny, you’ve never been unwrapped from the blanket ye were Christened in, assuming of course you were Christened? Think you could hang from the cliffs and snatch Guga’s from their nests, wring their necks and six at a time carry them back up the rock face with the tides tearing at your ankles below, could you do that son?’

‘Aye, I think I could actually, if I had to…’

‘… and live on porridge, rationed eggs and bird flesh, and what vegetables could be scraped from this barren soil?…’

‘Why would I have to?’ I interrupted. ‘no one has to live like that these days.’

He wasn’t hearing me.

‘… and when the long dark evenings arrive and the only heat from the lamps is sucked out through these doors and walls, and the weans huddle together with the beasts, and your never-ending struggle to feed them is second only to your struggle to keep the invading tuberculosis from their lungs, and their souls from their maker.’

He wrung his hands together as if washing them clean, then swept both palms down his face. His eyes swam.

‘You think you could live here? Pah!’

‘Was this his script?’ I thought. ‘had he invoked the character?’ I indulged him.

‘Under those conditions I’m not sure anyone would want to.’ I said, ‘but look at this place, unparalleled beauty and mystery. I walked for hours today and left everything from home behind, OK so it was wet, but no phone calls, no emails, no worries. I wasn’t tied to a schedule or a clock. I was in the moment, surrounded by this wild natural world. What was it the Vikings called it? Hilda  – the fresh spring goddess and source of everything. I was that Viking, and it was my source.’

The wind had chased the clouds and sunlight shone through the windows as the sky over Dun rolled back and the rain on the roof subsided.

‘I would have this in a minute.’ I whispered. ‘In a minute.’

“Aye, there’s none of us who wouldn’t have this in a minute, riches beyond trinkets from tourists and fortunes from Fulmar feathers. But there comes a point when the harsh reality takes its toll; and when Mary Gillies died of appendicitis and Nurse Barclay suggested that there was nothing else for it but evacuation, well there was no option. Even Neil Ferguson who was the only one against it to the bitter end knew it was a matter of survival when he got the sign.’

‘The sign? what sign?’

‘The day the beach was taken.’

‘The beach was taken. I never heard that story?’

‘It was the day after the Parliament had voted to request an evacuation, some of the men had been offered jobs in forestry and houses in Morven. Men who had never seen a tree before in their lives, would trade fulmar lures and hemp ropes for timber yards and fir felling to sustain them. Neil was totally against it.’

” God gave us this land and its beasts to live on and honour him, we will be rejecting the Lord himself if we flee.” were his words as he stormed off that night. And the night came and went, and with it the most brutal storm the islands had seen in years, wave upon wave lashed the shore, the winds ripping at the roofs and doors. And in the morning, when it had subsided, they saw him standing on the beach. But the beach was gone. The sand had been taken by the sea and deposited in its place, a sign straight from his maker, was a single washed up tree trunk. At that moment, Neil knew God had another purpose for him and wanted him to leave.’

He exhaled slowly and deliberately and looked at me, his eyes gentle and heavy, then he looked out again to Village Bay.

‘Well,’ he said ‘there’s work still to be done before tomorrow. I’ll see you then.’

He grabbed the forged latch of the door handle, swung the door open and stepped out into the overgrown narrow furrow that was once the High Street.

A warm breeze rushed through the doorway and the sunlight carpeted the floor, the fulmars cawed to the clear skies across on Dun. I gathered my bag and jacket and walked out into the glare.

I heard a motor start up and saw the orange rib cut a fresh white trail across the bay. On his way to pick me up and return me to the Elizabeth G was Rob, our skipper. I walked slowly down to the pier and arrived just as Rob was securing the inflatable for my boarding. I handed him my rucksack and stepped onto the rib.

‘Good day?’ he enquired.

‘Apart from the weather at times, but yes, a great day!’

‘Good to go then?’ he asked checking I was secured. ‘what are you looking for?’

I was staring back towards old Findlay’s Black House.

‘Aren’t we going to give the guy from the production unit a lift to his boat?’

‘What guy? You’ve had the island to yourself all day.’

• 

• 

• 

•