Greenvoe (9781848549517) by Brown George MacKay

Author:Brown, George MacKay [George Mackay Brown]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hachette Book Group USA
Published: 2013-12-12T00:00:00+00:00

Five

Sometimes the fog thinned out and then Inga could see the loom of the lighthouse. The fog-horn blared from its base at half-minute intervals, like a bull in passion. Hellya was buried behind them in wet shifting silent masses, but the sea under the Black Head of Quoylay shone like scraped pewter. The lighthouse vanished again. Ivan Westray turned the wheel.

‘Don’t fret,’ he said, ‘I know this sea like the back of my hand.’

There was a different sound in the sea now, a plangent wash, a scurry of wave-drawn pebbles. A blackbird sang out of a bush.

‘That rock is called The Widow,’ said Ivan Westray. ‘You can ask yourself why.’

The Widow emerged athwart them, a black bowed mass. Ivan Westray shut off the engine. The Skua glided through a quiet stretch of water. He picked up a coil of rope and flung it into the blind morning. A hidden voice shouted, ‘Got her.’ A rubber-tyre fender on the Skua bumped against a wall of concrete. A young man stooped over them, lowered a knotted tattooed arm, swung first Ivan Westray on to the pier and then – with more difficulty, as if he was manoeuvring a heavy butterfly – Inga. She stood on the pier, gasping and laughing. Another older lighthouse-keeper joined them.

‘I didn’t think we’d see you today, Westray,’ he said. ‘Come up for a mug of coffee. Who’s the young lady?’

The lighthouse towered above them. How small it seemed from Hellya, like a stick of new chalk on the horizon. It was immense. It was a bit frightening.

The fog-horn blorted. It blocked out chunks of their conversation. A gull swung in a long plane athwart them, then its flight collapsed in screams over the lap of The Window.

‘Better get the stuff unloaded first,’ said Ivan Westray. ‘I don’t want to wait too long. The fog might thicken. Where iss Tonald?’

‘In his bunk,’ said the principal keeper. ‘He was on watch all night.’

Ivan Westray lowered himself down into the boat again and began to shift boxes and drums.

‘You come up to the kitchen,’ said the light-keeper with the tattooed arms to Inga. ‘You’re bound to be cold. There’s a cup of coffee.’

The fog-horn enveloped them in its blare.

At half-past eight, as every morning, a sudden hullabaloo broke out simultaneously in two Greenvoe houses: the Kerstons’ and the Voars’. The children were being got ready for school. There were smacks, screams, choruses of laughter, one aria of passionate rage.

‘You little bitch,’ cried Ellen Kerston, ‘that’s the second plate of porridge you’ve knocked over this week. Tom, you wash first – Judy, wash his knees for him. Ernie, you run round and ask Rachel can she spare a cup of milk. I told you the porridge was hot. Your sock’s inside out, Judy …’

Ellen stirred the black porridge pot with a wooden spoon.

‘Now them, Sidney,’ said Alice Voar, ‘button your coat up to the neck, it’s a damp day. No, it isn’t a ghost at the window at all, it’s fog – you bide in, peedie Skarf.

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