#Western Isles | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

reekierevelator · 1 year

Text

The Rescue of the Gaelic Ghost Dance

A Short Story

The once a year traditional event rolled round again. The ceilidh with ‘the 1950s’ as its theme would be held in the community hall that night. Somhairle Mhic Leòid - Sorley McLeod - had been looking forward to it for weeks. There was a lot going on in Stornoway these days but the 1950s ceilidh was a real horo-gheallaidh – shindig, still his favourite day on Leòdhais - Lewis.

The long mirror on the bedroom wall of his small flat reflected a satisfactory image. It was the way he saw himself, the way he wanted to be, his soul made manifest. The fair Viking hair dyed black and brylcreemed into a DA, the powder blue drape jacket with its black velvet collar, the drainpipe trousers and black brothel creepers. He would have tied a bootlace tie to complete the image but it hadn’t arrived in time. Otherwise, what was not to like about this gloriously authentic outfit, assembled from car-boot sales and online auctions, other than his own thin and wiry twenty year old frame on which the dazzling jacket hung a little too loosely? He smiled widely, preening himself, turned his head left and right in narcissistc admiration. In his mind he was already jiving, birling round the hall with local lassies, twirling and throwing them while Chuck Berry skipped addictvely through the verses of the black boy reaching the Promised Land, Buddy Holly joyful with Oh Boy!, and Eddie Cochran insisting on Somethin Else. It struck him that too many great rock ‘n’ rollers died young, Buddy in an aeroplane and Eddie in a car, but at least none had died at sea.

Finally forcing his gaze away from the mirror and thinking of preparing a some sgadan – herring / black pudding - for tea Sorley glanced out of the bedroom window. It was late afternoon and already getting dark. He saw the usual end of winter winds were getting higher. Black clouds scudded across the dull sky. He heard the squawking of the gulls as they scurried inland ahead of bad weather. He bit his lip, suddenly seized with fear that the dance might be cancelled, and just then his phone rang. Scowling apprehensively, he hurried into his tiny living-room and grabbed the handset.

“Hallo,” he barked.

“Sorley, there’s a shout,” a rough voice spoke urgently. “Get down to the quay. Five minutes.” And the caller hung up, gone before Sorley had any chance to reply. The Coxswain, Captain McLeod, never wasted words.

Sorley was out of his front door and onto his motorbike in a flash. Reaching the station house he saw the rest of the crew hastily donning their bright yellow kit and checking their equipment. No-one but his friend Uilleam had time to comment briefly on the bizarrely attired apparition that was Sorley. Concentration and effective preparation were all. Sorley was soon in full waterproofs and at his allotted station onboard the Lord of the Isles as it ran down the slipway and splashed into the choppy grey swell of the North Minch.

“A mayday?”

“Only two crew,” his friend Uilleam - William, an older family man, replied.

“Not quite the Iolaire cò-dhiù - anyway.”

“Don’t joke Sorley. Every life matters.”

“Ochone - sorry, of course Uilly. But why were they on the water?” shouted Sorley, the smell of brine in his nose and taste of salt water in his mouth as the lifeboat skipped across the towering waves like a flat stone sent skiffing across a pond.

“History re-enactment,” the older man shouted back, showers of spray washing over them both each time the high speed boat bumped over the next big wave.

“History re-enactment?” puzzled Sorley.

“Academic – mad scientist - wants to test old sea routes - historical text in some library - Bishop of Man and Sodor. Aimed to follow the wake of longships from Islay to the Battle of Largs - but coastguard forbade it. Ended up opting for Loch Broom to Stornoway. Engines failed halfway across.”

“Radio working though.”

“Luckily - emergency call. Pump failed – not checked properly beforehand either. Taking on water fast. Blown well off course – drifting south near Na h-Eileanan Seunta - The Enchanted Isles / The Shiant Isles. Captain will have us there no no time.”

“Surprised they got past the Summer Isles.”

It was after seven o’clock by the time they reached the supplied co-ordinates and the sky was black, the squall now in full storm mode, water battering down on them from above and crashing up over them from below, no moonlight and minimal visibility. But the radar had returned a signal and, while hoping to sight a distress flare, Captain Mcleod switched on the searchlight and screwed up his eyes. He managed to pick out a tiny flickering light and hoped to find a small boat adrift, bobbing like a cork tossing around in the wild sea. But as the lifeboat bounced up as near as possible alongside he saw the hull of the boat was under water.

Sorley could make out a young woman, anorak and jeans, drenched to the bone, hair glued to her scalp, up to her waist in water, a small torch waving from a trembling hand. Waves now crashing over the boat’s gunwales which occasionally glistening above water. Only the boat’s small cabin, rocked left and right by the gales whipping round it, still protruded much above the surf.

“Throwing a lifebelt” Sorley yelled. But even as he threw it with all his might he saw the gale simply send it back again.

“Never work - winds too high,” the Captain bellowed, “and that boat’s too far sunk for a tow rope.”

“Launch the inflatable?” Uilleam roared into the gale, though it was obvious the sea swell was now probibitively high for this suggestion.

Captain McLeod gripped the loud-hailer, pressed it to his salt and pepper beard and pointed it at the crew of the wreck, even though his words were distorted by the storm, carried away in the gale, he announced that he would attempt an immediate rescue. He then gave the command “Fire the breeches buoy - Aim for the cabin wall.”

Almost immediately Sorley heard the explosion as the line was fired, but the crunch as it made made contact could not be heard above the roar of the storm. Still, the line held.

Yet still the woman stood swaying against the gumwale, petrified, scared to move lest she would be washed away, despite knowing she was only a short prayer from drowning anyway, and oblivious to the line’s purpose even as the breeches buoy swung close behind her, twisting in the gale.

“I’ll go,” shouted Sorley immediately, and began winching the harness back towards the lifeboat, hauling maniacally, and quickly tied himself in, letting Uilleam release him back out over the violent sea raging between the boats. Reaching the sinking vessel he released himself from the harness and found his feet no longer reached a solid surface. He had only trained in rescue swimming in a wet suit, not in full kit. Fortunately, a couple of strong strokes between the biggest waves and gusts of wind allowed him to grab the now floating wonan by the arm and drag her back to the harness.

Only then did the terrified woman attempt to speak, shouting almost hysterically. “My father, Professor Fraser, in the cabin. Save him. You must save him.”

Sorley grabbed the rope hanging from the end of the breeches buoy and tied it round the woman’s waist to anchor her, all the time talking to calm her, mentioning the dance he’d be missing. She said her name was Peggy. He could hear the Captain shouting through the short wave radio unit built into his kit “Load her up fast, let’s get her over,” but for this the woman’s co-operation was essential and she refused to move until her father was dealt with first. “He’s injured – flung down as the boat bounced and twisted in the storm,” she shouted.

“This is some merry dance you’re leading me,” Sorley complained.

“That’s what my father says. But it was him called me Peggy Sue, taught me to jive. Old rock ‘n’ roll. I love to jive.”

Sorley smiled at her hysterical ramblings despite the devastation around him, and found it impossible to refuse a favour for a woman with such an evocative name and impeccable musical taste. As the Captain bawled over the radio “Get her into the harness, there’s no time” he instead swam to the cabin entry and saw a half-dead man at the helm, eyes closed, white hands gripping the wheel, blood washing down the side of his face from a gash in his temple. With difficulty he pulled the fingers from the wheel, put one arm round the man’s waist and, gripping the wood of the cabin wall with the other, he floated himself round to the outside again where the woman was able to grasp her father’s arm and hold him.

Together, Sorley and the woman managed to hoist the Professor into the buoy, and then, after necessarily untying her from the breeches buoy rope, Sorley circled his arm, gesturing to Uilleam to start winching. He yelled “Haul away now,” just as the cabin was sinking below the waterline and Professor Fraser’s short journey began.

Through the dark spray Sorley made out the shadow of a figure being taken on to the bobbing lifeboat even as the cabin immediately behind him disappeared entirely beneath the waves, dragging the the breeches buoy down with it. Left floating in the raging sea Sorley held on tightly to the woman as if performing some grotesque modern dance, both now entirely reliant on Sorley’s lifejacket. Struggling desperately in the broiling sea he managed to tie the loose strings that hung from his lifejacket to the woman’s arms, preventing the waves from washing her apart from him.

Captain McLeod was desperately trying to discard the breeches buoy and manoevre the lifeboat round towards them when a massive swell rose up to drive Sorley and the woman much further away from the lifeboat, with the heavy tide pushing them rapidly towards the jagged outlying bare rocks of the Shiants.

Throughout the stormy night the lifeboat searched the darkness even after power for the searchlight gave out and only the beam from Scalpay’s lighthouse twinkled in the distance. Sorley’s radio had failed and the seas were too violent, the tides moving too fast for the floating bodies to be located. By the early hours Captain McLeod was forced to give the command to return to harbour.

The puffins had emerged grunting from their burrows and crevices on the uninhabited Shiants into the calm sunshine of the following day when the search helicopter spotted a yellow jacket at the foot of Garbh Eilean – Rough Island. It closed in on the battered bodies, still entwined, floating in a dark pool between deadly Shiant rocks.

The lifeboat reached Stornoway in the early morning, the crew devastated, having saved only one of the two in peril and having lost one of their own.

Uilleam was sombre as he trudged back to the family home. Not sure how to tell his sixteen year old daughter Eilidh what had happened he talked to her first of how a severe storm brewed up suddenly in the Minch, the weather at sea becoming horrendous. He was surprised when his daughter interrupted with her own exciting news that despite the storm she had been so very pleased because the ceilidh had gone ahead and that his friend Sorley had put in an appearance for half an hour or so. “But,” she complained, “he danced all the time with a girl I’ve never seen before and she hadn’t even got dressed up. And he didn’t talk to anyone - not even me,” she pouted.

Uilleam pulled his daughter towards him and said “Look, I’m sorry Eilidh, you’re mistaken. You see, Sorley was on the call with me last night and... well,... I’m afraid he never came back with us.”

But before the full implication of his words had time to register Eilidh insisted “But that can’t be right. He came in late and all the girls were watching him. He did fantastic jiving with that girl, swinging her back and forwards, twirling, sliding her through his legs, having so much fun. Everyone saw them.”

Uilleam’s face took on a very worried, perplexed expression. “What did the girl look like?”

“She was nothing special, just in an anorak and jeans, but she could really dance.”

“And Sorley – long blue jacket, narrow trousers, thick soled shoes?”

“Yes, that was him.”

“And tie?”

“Yes, he’d dyed his blonde hair black, combed back in that funny way, and he had a lovely matching bootlace tie.”

“I think maybe that girl was called Peggy Sue” Uilleam murmured under his breath”, incredulous, “and he even got his tie”. His face had turned ashen as he dropped to the sofa feeling he might otherwise collapse altogether, the tempest in his mind as hard to handle as the one so recently experienced at sea.

A couple of days later a grieving Professor Fraser insisted on funding the following year’s rock ‘n’ roll ceilidh in memory of his daughter. “It will be twice as good next time,” the organisers promised.

And indeed at the following year’s 1950s themed ceilidh in the dimly lit community hall many dancers swore that, when the DJ let Chuck Berry’s Promised Land rip, the glitter ball hanging from the ceiling sparkled, projecting a ghostly shadow image on the wall, the silhouette of a man in lifeboat gear. He was jiving with an unknown woman, both of them laughing, happy and carefree.

#reekie revelator #short story #ghost story #scotland #Western Isles #lifeboat

1 note · View note