'I didn't know you smoked.'
'I don't,' she said. 'But I needed it. Want some coffee? The wind's chilly.' He took the plastic cup and drank. 'I tried to buy a map,' she said, 'but the ship kiosk's closed.'
'We'll get one on the island,' Will said. 'Speaking of which...' He got to his feet, and went to the railing. Their destination was in view. A line of land as unpromising as Coll, the waves breaking against its rocky shores. Frannie rose to stand beside him and together they watched as the island approached, The Claymore's engines slowing so that the vessel might be safely navigated through the shallow waters.
'It doesn't look very hospitable, does it?' Frannie remarked.
It was certainly spartan at this distance, the sea surging around dark spits of rock which rose to bleak headlands. But then the wind veered and carried the scent of flowers off the land, their honey fragrance mingled with the sharp scents of salt and kelp, and Frannie murmured: 'Oh Lord...' in appreciation.
The Claymore's approach had become a tentative crawl now, as the vessel made its cautious way to the jetty. And as it did so the charms of the island steadily became more apparent. The waters through which the vessel ploughed were no longer dark and deep, but as turquoise as any Caribbean bay, and swooned upon beaches of silver-white sand. There were a few cattle at the tides' edge, apparently grazing on seaweed, but the beaches were otherwise deserted. So too were the grassy dunes which rose from them, rolling away to meet the lush meadows of the island's interior. This was where the scent of vetch and sea-thrift and crimson clover originated: expanses of fertile pasture dotted here and there with modest houses, whitewashed and brightly roofed.
'I take it all back,' Frannie said. 'It's beautiful.'
The village of Scarinish, which was little more than a couple of rows of houses, was now in view. There was more activity on its pier than there'd been at Colclass="underline" fully twenty people waiting for The Claymore to dock, along with a lorry loaded with goods and a tractor with a cattle-pen in tow.
'I should probably go and fetch Rosa,' Will said.
'Give me the car-keys,' Frannie said. 'I'll meet you downstairs.'
Will headed back to the bow, where he found Rosa at the railing still, studying the scene ahead.
'Do you recognize anything?' he asked her.
'Not with my eyes,' she said. 'But ... I know this place.'
There was a gentle bump and creak as The Claymore nudged the pier, then the sound of welcoming shouts from both land and ship.
'Time to go,' Will said, and escorted Rosa down into the hold, where Frannie was already in the car. Will got into the passenger seat beside her, and Rosa slipped into the back. There was an uncomfortable silence while they waited for the ferry's door to be opened. They didn't have to wait long. After a couple of minutes, sunlight flooded the hold and one of the crew played at traffic control, signalling the half dozen vehicles alighting here out one by one. There was a second, longer delay on the pier itself, while the laden lorry moved out of the way of the exiting cars, this manoeuvre performed with great hullabaloo, but no sense of urgency. Finally, the congestion was cleared, and Frannie drove them down the pier into the village itself. It was no larger than it had appeared from the seaward side: just a few rows of small but well-kept houses with even smaller, well-kept walled gardens, all facing the water, and a scattering of older buildings, some in despair, several in ruin. There were also a few shops, amongst them a post office, and a small supermarket, its windows bannered with news of this week's bargains, their silent advertisements still too loud for the hush of the place.
'Do you want to go and get us a map?' Frannie suggested to Will, bringing the car to a halt outside the supermarket. 'And maybe some chocolate?' she called after him, 'and something to drink?'
He emerged a couple of minutes later with two bags of purchases, 'for the road', as he put it: biscuits, chocolate, bread, cheese, two large bottles of water and a small bottle of whisky.
'What about the map?' Frannie said, as he loaded the bags into the back seat beside Rosa.
'Voila,' he said, pulling a small folded map from his pocket, and along with it a twelvepage tourists' guide to the island, written by the local schoolmaster and crudely illustrated by the schoolmaster's wife. He passed the booklet back over his shoulder to Rosa, telling her to flip through it for any names or places that rang a bell. The map he opened on his lap. There wasn't much to study. The island was twelve miles long and at its broadest three miles wide. It had a trio of hills: Beinn Hough, Beinn Bheag Bhailemhuilinn and Ben Hynish, the summit of the latter the highest point on the island. It had several small lochs, and a handful of villages (described as townships on the map) around its coast. What few roads the island boasted simply joined these townships -the largest of which consisted of nine houses - by the most direct route, which, given the flatness of the terrain, was usually something approaching a straight line.
'Where the hell do we start?' Will wondered aloud. 'I can't even pronounce half these names.'
There was a glorious poetry in the words, however: Balephuil and Balephetrish, BaileMheadhonach and Cornaigmore; Vaul and Gott and Kenavara. And they lost little of their power in translation: Balephuil was the Town of the Marsh, Heylipoll, the Holy Town, Bail-Udhaig, the Town of Wolf Bay.
'If nobody's got any better ideas,' Will said, 'I suggest we start here.' He pointed to Baile-Mheadhonach.
'Any particular reason?' Frannie wanted to know.
'Well, it's almost in the middle of the island, for one thing-' In fact that was its unglamorous translation: Middle Town. 'And it's got its own cemetery, look.' There was a cross to the south of the village, and beside it the words Cnoc a' Chlaidh, translated as Christian burial ground. 'If Simeon was buried here, we may as well start out by looking for his grave.' He glanced over his shoulder at Rosa. She'd put down the booklet, and was staring out of the window, the fixedness of her expression such that Will looked away immediately so as not to disturb her meditations. 'Let's just go,' he said to Frannie. 'We can follow the coast road west as far as Crossapol. Then we make a right inland.'
Frannie eased the car out into what would have been the flow of traffic if there'd been any traffic, and within perhaps a minute they had passed
the outskirts of Scarinish, and were on the open road; a road so straight and empty she could have driven blindfolded and more than likely brought them to Crossapol. V
There were amongst the Western isles places of great historical and mythological significance; where battles had been fought and princes hid, and stories made that haunted listeners still. Tiree was not amongst them. The island had not passed an entirely uneventful life; but it had been at best a footnote to events that flowered in their full splendour in other places.
There was no more obvious example of this than the exploits of St Columba, who had in his time carried the Gospel throughout the Hebrides, founding seats of devotion and learning on a number of islands. Tiree was not thus blessed, however. The good man had lingered on the island only long enough to curse a rock in Gott Bay for the sin of letting his boat's mooring rope slip. It would be henceforth barren, he declared. The rock was dubbed Mallachdaig, or Little Cursed One, and no seaweed had grown on it since. Columba's associate St Brendan had been in a more benign mood during his fleeting visit, and had blessed a hill, but if the blessing had conferred some inspirational power on the place nobody had noticed: there had been no revelations or spontaneous healings on the spot. The third of these visiting mystics, St Kenneth, had caused a chapel to be built in the dunes near the township of Kilkenneth, which had been so named in the hope of persuading him to linger. The ruse had failed. Kenneth had gone on to greater things, and the dunes more persuaded by wind than metaphysics - had subsequently buried the chapel.