fighting his way back to the shores of the living.
As the storm began to abate and a grey dawn broke – at last – over the hills, Flora and Mairi climbed wearily back up the cliff path, following the stretcher-bearers carrying the last of the survivors. There weren’t many – only a scant dozen of the crew of over seventy had managed to live through the brutal onslaught of the storm-whipped sea. The girls were soaked to the skin, shivering with shock and cold that they scarcely registered. Through the dark hours of that February morning, they had made the journey back and forth to the hospital at Gairloch three times, carrying survivors, each one a miracle pulled from the black water. The first of them had been Roy Gustavsen.
At the near end of the beach a long row of bodies had been laid on the damp sand, their limbs gently straightened as they were set down carefully one alongside the other. Some were heart-achingly young, boys who’d joined the Merchant Marine as they were not yet old enough for military service. In that row, Hal Gustavsen lay beside his fellow crew members, and Flora had wept hot salt tears over him, her heart leaden at the thought of having to break the news to Bridie, and of Mairi having to tell Roy. And as the feeble winter daylight won the struggle to push the night westwards, it revealed the broken carcass of the William H. Welch, impaled on the rocks where the hungry, scavenging waves continued to pick clean its bones.
The entire community gathered in the kirk that Sunday to say prayers and sing hymns for the souls lost in the wreck the previous day. They mourned those sons of other mothers and fathers as though they were their own, as they would wish their men to be mourned should they fall in far-off lands: because humanity has no borders.
Moira Carmichael held her head high, although strands of grey hair escaped from under her Sunday hat. Her deep contralto underpinned Lady Helen’s more fragile, wavering soprano and Flora’s voice that soared like the lark’s, rising to the rafters above the crammed pews. And as the congregation joined in the final chorus, a shaft of February sunlight slanted in through the window, blinding her eyes with tears of molten gold as she glanced over at Bridie who sat with her head bowed by the weight of her grief, unable to stand, unable to sing, unable to speak.
Lexie, 1978
So many of the old songs from these parts tell stories of the sea taking loved ones. I suppose that’s inevitable in a community of fishermen, whose womenfolk watch and wait for those who might never return. As Mairi and I park the car and walk along the track to the headland, the words of one such song play in a loop in my head.
‘Hushed be thy moaning, lone bird of the sea
Thy home on the rocks is a shelter to thee
Thy home is the angry wave,
Mine but the lonely grave
Horo, Mhairi dhu, turn ye to me.’
We’ve come for a walk to Black Bay, where a few pitiful remnants from the wreck of the William H. Welch still lie scattered and rusting. The carcass of the ship itself has gone, lying submerged beneath the waters surrounding the rocks of Furadh Mor. But when we pick our way down the cliffs to the beach, I spot the twisted and broken remains of a lifeboat among the rocks. As we start to walk across the stones, I hum the plaintive tune under my breath and the wind catches the notes and flings them across the stretch of water to the treacherous, craggy island that marks the ship’s grave. Here and there, scraps of rusted metal torn from the ship by the fury of the storm that night in 1944 are still visible where they have washed up among the stones. I stoop to pick one up – a bolt of some kind – and it is heavy in the palm of my hand. I rub my thumb over its salt-roughened surface and it leaves a stain of blood-brown rust on my skin. Carefully, I replace the bolt in its bed of stones. This whole beach feels like a grave, and I have the sense that nothing should be disturbed.
I dropped Daisy off at Bridie’s this morning when I picked Mairi up for our drive out to the point. As we were leaving, Bridie thrust a