Swim the Moon

part one
THE CALLING
In dreams begins responsibility.
--William Butler Yeats, Old Play, Epigraph, Responsibilities


I saw the new moon late yestreen Wi' the auld moon in her arm; And if we gang to sea, master, I fear we'll come to harm.
--Anonymous
1
SCOTLAND, LAST JULY


Sorrow washed over me completely, like a flood-fueled winter tide.
There's been so much loss in my family that I think the death of my father had come as no true surprise. I had been mournful at first, conveniently far away, but once I'd arrived here, one sadness had been replaced by another. I was beyond tears, and although his absence left a hollow place inside of me, I knew I would not cry.
I would grieve later, on my own, like I had before.
Shrugging the unaccustomed weight of my black coat slightly, I slipped through the impressive crowd to where the front doors stood open. The church hall was old, and smelled strongly of smoke, old ladies' perfume, and varnish, but once on the threshold, my senses broke through the cacophony of noise and aroma. I could hear the distant thunder of the waves breaking on the fractured cliffs and the squabbling gulls fighting over the scraps thrown to them by the net menders. I was aware of the salty tang of the sea breeze, tainted only slightly by the smell from thefishing boats, and of the damp, heady fragrance of the purple heather that collared the hill behind the church.
I took a deep breath, and a hundred scenes flashed through my mind like someone flicking the pages of a journal, the faces and scenes blurring into a collage of memory, sorrow, and dream. My father acted through some of them, but most were of another, even dearer person that I'd also lost to the water. The images were fierce in their poignancy, complex and overwhelming. I'd shut them away, guarded and secure for six years, but here, in this small Scottish village just about as far north as I could possibly get from the place I had grudgingly called home, they had found a key, and were returning triumphant. I lowered my head a little, trying to submerge them in a lake of the mundane, the commonplace, but it was no use. They had been awoken, and I thought that perhaps this time it would not be so easy to run.
Sniffing slightly from the cold air, and absently trying to warm the ache from my chilled hands, I once again ran over my last few days, trying to pick out moments from within the chaos my father's death had created.
Most of the twenty-seven-hour flight passed as a gray, timeless haze interrupted only by meals, the snoring of the man next to me, and the complaints of children too long bored. I spent much of the journey just gazing through the thick square of window at the clouds so far below; the rolling sea of white occasionally punctuated by the sharp gray peak of an unknown mountain or the shining blue of a distant sea. I pointedly ignored the in-flight movie--my mind being too prepossessed by other thoughts.
At last I departed the controlled climate of the aircraft into the waning light of a Glaswegian summer evening. Itwas supposed to be a lucky time of year to cross the world. I had left Brisbane on a cool winter morning, so the change of temperature was not as sudden as it might have been. In fact, I think Glasgow was the warmer of the two, but then that might have just been my imagination. I stopped for a moment at the top of the mobile stairs and stood, eyes closed, just breathing the air and remembering. I didn't know Glasgow that well, but it was the thought of returning to the Isles after so long. The years had passed as suddenly as the flash from a camera, but it felt like it had been in another life that I had lived here last.
It seemed to me almost as if I had been another man, living a different time that was now forever denied me.
I opened up my eyes, returning resentfully to the granite reality of the funeral. For a moment, the images I had released were so overwhelming that I didn't realize my sister was leaning against the jamb next to me. Short, rounded, and fair-haired, she appeared the complete antithesis to my rangy, dark form, but although we looked at the world through different pairs, we shared the same eyes.
Those that knew recognized us as kin, and once, we had been inseparable, but now we were more like cousins that are reunited only for weddings, or funerals. She too lived in Brisbane, but still, we hardly ever spoke; only the occasional Christmas or birthday, or the odd time when she would turn up wherever I happened to be playing. Florence was the strong one.
"What is it about the men in this family and water?" she asked heavily. Her large blue eyes were ringed from crying and tiredness, and I noticed the clump of tissues she clutched in her small hand. I shook my head and shrugged, not really knowing what to say. She saw my reaction andpressed on. "I mean, I could understand them drowning if they were all fishermen or something, but they weren't--Dad was an architect, for Christ's sake."
Habitually, I removed my glasses and rubbed them clean, my fingers tracing the round metal of the rims through the cloth as I absently listened to her. After a moment, she looked up at me critically, brushing a few strands of gray-coursed, dark curling hair away from my face. I might be nearing forty, but she'll always be my older sister.
"How are you doing?" she asked softly, her gentle eyes searching my downcast face. I just shrugged, pushing my glasses back on.
I mumbled some reply, my voice thick, then in a clearer tone, said, "I know I should be here for Dad, but ... I see her everywhere, Florence. I can't help it. I don't think I should have come back."
She took my arm and steered me down the slick steps and out into the graveyard. The tombstones reared around us like old, decaying teeth, and the bell tolled mournfully. To one side of the church, almost as big and certainly as ancient, a massive, red-berried yew tree stood, wide and spreading, its dark green foliage a stark contrast to the pale stone of the building.
"Perhaps you shouldn't have come," she agreed quietly.
I shrugged again, the gesture barely perceptible under the thick woolen coat. The wind chased the leaves around us, sculpturing them against the headstones like snow. The clouds were rolling in from the sea, and from the leaden, almost metallic feeling in the air, I knew there was rain coming.
I drew a slow breath and looked around. Below us, houses dotted over the gentle slope of the hill like milling sheep, the village of Kinlochbervie lay silent, most of thevillagers being inside the church. Beyond the harbor the water stretched away like a rumpled gray blanket, and even from this distance I could see the white flecks of foam as the wind brushed against the tips of the waves, coaxing them higher up the rough beach. To the south, glittering a vivid sapphire blue on the clearest of days, sat Loch Inchard. A few indistinct triangles of white cloth floated across it, and I smiled slightly as memories of a hundred sailing trips with Dad scuttled through my mind, then felt bitter tears gathering as I remembered the last.
Forcibly, my view traveled back over the untidy straggle of the village, and I followed the single road out across the low, cliff-faced glen that sheltered the tiny bay. It carried along another four or so miles, toward the remote outpost of Blairmore that was nothing more than a collection of three or four buildings, then on as a naked track toward Sandwood Bay, and the tiny bothy.
Our ancestral home.
Local tales tell of how Padraig Brennan, a young Irish fisherman from a small village in County Donegal, set out early one morning, intent on hauling in a record catch. He rowed for most of the day and half of the night, then cast his nets when he reached still waters. The story continues on about how, when he pulled in the fish, the boat was so full that the water was lapping about his ankles. He struck out in what he thought was the direction home, but instead landed in the most beautiful bay he had ever seen. Liking the feel of the place, and having enough fish to last him a lifetime, he built himself a crofter's cottage--a bothy--and fell in love with a local lass of breathtaking beauty. Apparently he never realized he was in Scotland. The story was affectionately known as the Brennan Voyage, in obvious reference to the incredible journey made hundreds ofyears ago by the legendary St. Brendan, the unofficial Irish discoverer of America.
The tale was often told in the pubs and inns around these parts, and it changed with each telling. I don't know what really happened, all those years past, but somehow, an Irish fisherman did build a cottage, and Brennans have been here since.
Until now.
I'd lived there for a time, sharing the peace and wonder with my beloved wife, Elisabeth, but then she'd been lost in a boating accident, and my world had died around me. I'd been forced away, driven, if you like.
There were just too many ghosts.
And now the pain was there once more, as raw and aching as the last time I'd walked this graveyard, those six years past.
Within two months of her funeral, I'd packed and moved as far south as was possible, following the trail of my mother and only sister, who had both emigrated, separately, to Australia.
But I had returned, and a wound that I realize now had never really been healed was open again, and once more raw and bleeding.
Treading through the wet-bladed moor grass with my sister, the sorrow nearly choked me. It seemed a lifetime since I'd looked upon Kinlochbervie, but nothing had changed, not even me.
I suppose in a place like this, nothing ever does.
Her gravestone was here--somewhere underneath the spreading canopy of the old tree, but I'd only ever visited it once. To see it was to admit she was really gone.
The people were beginning to file out of the church, a black-clad line of somber-faced Scots, hard and resistantoutside, shelling warm and passionate interiors that glowed like the coals under an old fire. It was this land that cultivated my love of folk music--taught by a stone-faced man who only came to life when his bow ignited fire along his fiddle strings. As they passed us, each offered their condolences; a prayer, a word, sometimes only a nod. How different we must've seemed--the pair of quasi Australians complete with tans and fledgling accents--but we were embraced all the same, like children come home.
With the funeral over, and the body laid within the damp earth, the wake was to take place in the Compass, the local inn: a low-ceilinged, smoke-walled place that was older than the country where I now made my home. For a time, when life was perfect, it had been my second favorite place in the world after the bothy, and the memories of the late night lock-ins were some of my most treasured. The music flowed as easily as the rich, dark beer, and despite the heavy hearts, I knew that once they all got inside, the merriment would ring forth again as they celebrated Dad's life. Although his death had been an accident, Dad had lived to a ripe old age, and those who knew him would mourn his loss, but not grieve.
It was the time I dreaded most.
As if reading my mind, Florence's hand slipped down my arm to grip mine, and she said, "Come on, let's go. I'm looking forward to this about as much as you are, but it's what Dad would've wanted."
"That's what I'm afraid of," I replied as we started off down the hill.
ii
The two small rooms that made up the drinking area of the Compass were full in regard to all five senses: the noise reminded me of the chatter of the seabirds, with only the occasional word ringing out clearly from amid the gabble. The weighty, opaque smell of tobacco, beer, and the sea clung everywhere, hanging like a miasma, visible as tenebrous, upswept currents above the orange-shaded lights and palatable, lying thick on my tongue as I breathed in; people pressed around us, and hands patted my shoulder or gripped my arm briefly as Florence and I battled our way through to one of the quieter tables against the far wall. Unconsciously I ducked beneath the low rafters: vast, pitch-painted spars that had been stolen from some beached ship centuries ago.
No sooner had we sat down than drinks were placed before us with a quiet word. I raised the dimpled pint glass to my lips, sipping slowly. The familiar, fruity bitter trickled down past my throat, evoking yet more memories, and I cast my eyes over the humming crowd as I drank. Music blossomed out from one corner; a trinity of flute, fiddle, and a melodeon, and the jaunty hornpipe struck a peculiar counterpoint with my own feelings.
Recognizable faces slipped in and out of view: worn, wrinkled countenances, most weathered to the color of old leather by a life working the ocean. Glasses were raised to purpled lips, and throats above starched and unused collars worked easily in their regular actions. The whole scene took on a surreal image to me, like an old photograph discovered behind a drawer. The subdued light cast a sepia tone over everything, and as I sat unobtrusively observing, I felt like I was watching an old movie.
I put down the glass and spoke with Florence; at first just general conversation, but eventually, it turned to Dad and the funeral. We shared old thoughts, images really, of the time when we had all been happy here, before the marriage had turned sour.
Our childhood.
But I was still reticent and a little withdrawn. We both danced around the subjects for a time--I think that Florence was wary of going into too much detail; I was so close to Elisabeth here, closer than I had been for a long time, and it was more difficult than I had ever imagined. With the exception of Dad's weekend visits, I had been the last to really live in the bothy. Florence knew of the pain, and tried to avoid it, but here ... questions and concerns were thick about her, like midges near a stream.
I asked suddenly, "Have you been up there?"
Florence shook her head, not having to ask where 'there' was, and caught my eyes with hers. "You?"
I grunted a negative, picking up the glass and taking a sip. Hiding behind the commonplace once more.
"Do you think you will?" she asked, and I shrugged. I think a small part of me wanted to see the bothy again, but had no desire to pour fuel on the fire. Someone shouted my sister's name, and Florence was drawn away by another woman, and taking her drink with her, she left me alone.
But not for long.
I sat with my head bowed, absently listening to the music while my fingers shredded a damp beer mat. A shadow fell across the table, and I looked up to see a face I most definitely did remember. Ruddy and burned by the wind, the man's features were dominated by a huge bulb of a nose that was crisscrossed with red and purple veins like the markings on a road map. Dark dead eyes looked out fromunder salt-white brows, and a thinning thatch of colorless hair sat, approximately combed, on his head. He was dressed in a heavy, moth-eaten tweed jacket, and without any preamble whatsoever, he sat down opposite me.
He was called MacKay--I don't know if anyone actually knew his first name--and he was as old as the hills hunched around the village. He lived down near the old harbor, in a ramshackle house that always looked about to collapse, but had stood firm for more years than anyone could remember. I had strong memories of being frightened of him as a child; God help any miscreant who would venture too far down the beach--MacKay's choloric shouting would strip the skin from a youngster's back as he ran in terror. But as I had grown, I had come to know him, although only slightly. I'd heard that as a boy, he had nearly drowned out near Cape Wrath, and since that episode, folk claimed, he had never been the same again.
Touched by the sea.
Or those within, they'd say.
He had an uncanny knack for knowing just where the best fishing was to be found from season to season, and despite their mistrust and, perhaps, fear of him, the locals heeded his predictions as a London city broker might the Financial Times.
He was at his worse when drunk, which, if I remember rightly, was fairly often, and then he would reek with stories of merrows, selkies, and mermaids with a disturbing feel of rightness that left his reluctant audience unwilling to travel the cold paths to home.
MacKay shifted heavily in the chair and regarded me with his shark eyes. He looked the same as I remembered, as if he hadn't aged any in six years. His left hand was sheathed in a filthy woolen fisherman's mitten, and held atumbler half-filled with what looked like whisky, straight, while the other gripped the edge of the table like a vice. His nails were yellow and fractured like the veins of quartz in the mountains, and the skin of his hand as brown as an old nut except for his fingers, which looked chaffed and raw. For a long moment, he said nothing, and the creeping feeling I had always experienced increased tenfold. There was a moment's tension, like the space between the notes of a tune, then he nodded and said, "I'm nae sorry about your father."
It took a second for it to sink in, then, startled, with my cheeks flushing, I replied, "What?"
His voice was heavily accented, like the sea raking back across the shingle, and as he pinned me to the wall with his stare as easily as a butterfly in a child's collection, he continued, "'Twas what he wanted. He died a happy man. I'm nae sorry."
"But it was an accident," I managed to reply.
His wide-set shoulders raised a little--a gesture?--and he sipped at the drink, merely coating his lips. "P'raps."
There was the stink of both mystery and menace about him, and I found myself fearing once more. Like the deck of a ship in a storm, my mind rolled with a hundred questions, but before I could give voice to any of them, he waved a meaty hand, dismissing my curiosity.
"We'll talk o' it another time. Soon," he said, with an undertow of finality.
No, I wanted to say, tell me now, but all I could do was nod numbly, afraid.
"When are yeh coming back?" he asked, lowering the whisky.
I blinked as if struck. "I'm not."
He smiled then; a slight turning up of his chapped andsplit top lip, revealing stumps of teeth long since gone to rot. He raised the glass to his mouth one last time, finishing off the potent drink with a single, noiseless swallow that made me shudder. He looked at the tumbler regretfully, then discarded it onto the table.
Leaning forward, he inched his face closer to mine. His breath was fetid and ripe with the alcohol, but his eyes were as clear as a starless winter night. The noise around us dropped, as if the pub were suddenly a theater and the lights had dimmed, and in a sibilant voice, he whispered, "It's nae yet over. The son must finish what the great-grandfather began, lest none o' them find peace. You'll be back. Despite what yeh may think now. Yeh won't know why, but yeh will be back."
The silence that followed that statement was palpable and eerie. I heard myself breathing, heard the working of my throat as it strove to contain the saliva that was building in my mouth, heard the slight scuffing sound my boots made on the stone floor as I moved them uneasily.
MacKay rocked back and stood in one smooth motion, his eyes never leaving mine. He remained still for a moment, overbearing, powerful, and knowing, then, with a bare, almost mocking wink, he stepped away and was instantly swallowed by the crowd.
I sat there for an indeterminate time, my long fingers clenching and relaxing around the slick sides of the glass while my restless mind battled with what he had said. I felt coldly sick, and I knew I was sweating profusely despite being chilled by his words. I wanted to question him further, to take his heavy shoulders and wring some answers out of him, but I couldn't. Other people spoke to me, and I nodded and gestured like a marionette. It was the oddest sensation; I felt like my mind were a jammed clockworkmechanism, and he had somehow reached into me and shaken it free, releasing the cogs and gears so that they ticked over under their own will. I had no energy, and despite what he said, no desire to return to Sandwood Bay.




It all ended eventually, and Florence and I parted company with the villagers, promising to visit again before we went back to Australia.
We had just under a week left.
We were due at Inverness in a couple of days to discuss the will with the solicitors. Despite his frugal last years, Dad had been wealthy; and as well as the small bothy, there was another, much larger residence further to the south near Edinburgh, and a substantial sum distributed about the local banks.
We had both declined offers to stay at Kinlochbervie, and instead had rooms at a guest house in the village of Ullapool (at my request), a drive of a little over half an hour away. I tried to concentrate on the task at hand, but I found it difficult to focus. The bright beams of the headlights cut a bright swath through the black, and occasionally, glowing signposts would rise up out from the darkness like the dead from the grave. Rabbits ran across the road, their eyes wild and terrified, and several times I was forced to swerve hard as they doubled back into my path suddenly.
My mind was the sea, my thoughts bobbing like flotsam upon it, sinking, only to rise again moments later in a different place. I turned on the stereo, sifting through the stations and static until I found Atlantic 152. I wound down the window slightly, admitting a steady rush of cold air, but the music and breeze didn't help.
The cogs were still turning.

Copyright © 2001 by Paul Brandon