I wandered around above the harbour, peered with hooded hands into the windows of the little museum, which was closed till spring, looked appreciatively at the view across the Pentland Firth to Stroma and the Old Man of Hoy, and then wandered back to the car. You probably know this already, but John O'Groats is not the northernmost point of the Scottish mainland. That distinction belongs to a spot called Dunnet Head, five or six miles away down a nearby singlelane road, so I went there now. Dunnet Head offers even less to the world in the way of diversions than John O'Groats, but it has a handsome unmanned lighthouse and sensational sea views, and a nice sense of being a long way from anywhere.
I stood on the gusty eminence gazing at the view for a long time, waiting for some profundity to steal over me, since this was the end of the line, as far as I was going. Part of me longed to catch a ferry to the outward islands, to follow the scattered outcrops of stone all the way up to distant Shetland, but I was out of time and anyway there didn't seem a great deal of need. Whatever its bleak and airy charms, Shetland would still be just another piece of Britain, with the same shops, the same television programmes, the same people in the same Marks & Spencer cardigans. I didn't find this depressing at all rather the contrary but I didn't feel any pressing need to see it just now. It would still be there next time.
I had one more port of call in my hired Ford. Six or seven miles south of Thurso lies the village of Halkirk, now forgotten but famous during the Second World War as a deeply, deeply unpopular posting for British soldiers on account of its remoteness and the reputed unfriendliness of the locals. The soldiers sang a charming little refrain that went
This fucking town's a fucking cuss No fucking trams, no fucking bus, Nobody cares for fucking us In fucking Halkirk
No fucking sport, no fucking games. No fucking fun. The fucking dames Won't even give their fucking names In fucking Halkirk and carries on in a similarly affectionate spirit for another ten stanzas. (In answer to the obvious question, I'd looked earlier and, no it wasn't one of Tommy Scott's standards.) So I went to Halkirk now, along the lonely B874. Well, there was nothing much to Halkirk just a couple of streets on a road to nowhere, with a butcher's, a builder's merchants, two pubs, a little grocery, and a village hall with a war memorial. There was no sign that Halkirk had ever been more than a dreary little interruption to the general emptiness around it, but the memorial contained the names of sixtythree dead from the First World War (nine of them named Sinclair and five named Sutherland) and eighteen from the Second World War.
You could see for miles across grassy plains from the edges of the village, but there was no sign anywhere of tumbledown army barracks. In fact, there was no sign that there had ever been anything in this district but endless grassy plains. I went into the grocery in investigative mood. It was the strangest grocery a large shedlike room, barely lit and nearly empty except for a couple of .racks of metal shelves near the door. These, too, were nearly empty but for a few scattered packets of odds and ends. There was a man on the till and an old guy ahead of me making some small purchase, so I asked them about the army camp.
'Oh, aye,' said the proprietor. 'Big POW camp. We had fourteen thousand Germans here at the end of the war. There's a book here all about it.' To my small astonishment, given the meagreness of the other stocks, he had a stack of picture books by the till called Caithness in the War or something like that and he handed me one to examine. It was full of the usual pictures of bombedout houses and pubs with people standing around scratching their heads in consternation or looking at the camera with those idiot grins that people in disaster pictures always wear, as if they're thinking, Well, at least we'll be in Picture Post. I didn't find any pictures of soldiers looking bored in Halkirk, and there wasn't any mention of the village in the index. The book was ambitiously priced at .15.95.
'Lovely book,' said the proprietor encouragingly. 'Good value.'
'We had fourteen thousand Germans here during the war,' said the old boy in a deaf bellow.
I couldn't think of a tactful way of asking about Halkirk's dire reputation. 'It must have been pretty lonely for the British soldiers, I bet,' I suggested speculatively.
'Oh, no, I don't think so,' disagreed the man. 'There's Thurso justdown the road, you see, and Wick if you fancy a change. There was dancing back then,' he added a trifle ambiguously, then nodded at the book in my hands. 'Good value, that.'
'Is there anything left of the old base?'
'Well, the buildings are gone, of course, but if you go out the back way' he gestured in the appropriate direction ' you can still see the foundations.' He was silent for a moment and then he said, 'So will you be having the book?'
'Oh well, I might come back for it,' I lied and handed it back.
'It's good value,' said the man.
'Fourteen thousand Germans there was,' called the older man as I left.
I had another look around the surrounding countryside on foot, and then drove around for a bit in the car, but I couldn't find any sign of a prison camp, and gradually it dawned on me that it hardly mattered, so in the end I drove back to Thurso and returned the car to the Ford dealer, to the frank surprise of the friendly fellow since it was only a little after two in the afternoon.
'Are you sure there isn't anywhere else you want to go?' he said. 'It seems a shame when you've hired the car for the day.'
'Where else could I go?' I asked.
He thought for a minute. 'Well, nowhere really.' He looked a little downcast.
'It's all right,' I said, 'I've seen plenty,' and I meant it in the broadest sense.
CHAPTER TWENTYEIGHT
NOW HERE IS WHY I WILL ALWAYS STAY AT THE PENTLAND HOTEL WHEN I am in Thurso. The night before I left I asked the kindly lady at the checkout desk for a wakeup call at 5 a.m. as I had to catch an early train south. And she said to me perhaps you should sit down if you are not sitting already she said, 'Would you like a cooked breakfast?' I thought she must be a bit dim, frankly, so I said: 'I'm sorry, I meant five a.m. I'll be leaving at halfpast five, you see. Halfpast five a.m. In the morning.'
'Yes, dear. Would you like a cooked breakfast?'
'At five a.m.?'
'It's included in the room rate.'
And damn me if this wonderful little establishment didn't fix me up with a handsome plate of fried food and a pot of hot coffee at 5.15 the following predawn.
And so I left the hotel a happy and fractionally fatter man, and waddled up the road in darkness to the station and there met my second surprise of the morning. The place was packed with women, all standing around on the platform in festive spirits, filling the chill, dark air with clouds of breath and happy Highland chatter, and waiting patiently for the guard to finish his fag and open the train doors.
I asked a lady what was up and she told me they were all off to Inverness to do their shopping. It was like this every Saturday. They would ride for the best part of four hours, stock up on Marks &c Spencer's knickers and plastic vomit and whatever else Invernesshad that Thurso hadn't, which was quite a lot, then catch the 6 p.m. train home, arriving back in time for bed.
And so we rode through the misty early morning, a great crowd of us, crammed snugly together on a twocarriage train, in happy, expectant mood. At Inverness the train terminated and we all piled off, the ladies to do their shopping, I to catch the 10.35 to Glasgow. As I watched them go, I found to my small surprise that I rather envied them. It seemed an extraordinary business, the idea of rising before dawn to do a little shopping in a place like Inverness and then not getting home till after ten, but on the other hand I don't think I had ever seen such a happy band of shoppers.