The Skylark's Secret(30)
‘I was only planning on going as far as Firemore Bay,’ he says cheerfully. ‘Looks like you’re ready for an Atlantic crossing!’
The loch is calm beneath a wide blue sky, its shallows and depths casting shot-silk stripes of light and shade across its surface. Along the shore, oystercatchers step purposefully across the sand, intent on picking out cockles or searching for mussels among the rocks to feed their young. Davy points out a pair of red-throated divers, who lift their long beaks skywards as we pass, showing off the silvered patches on their snakelike necks that will turn to blazes of scarlet in the summer.
The Bonnie Stuart is already tied up alongside the jetty and Davy jumps on board first, reaching back to take Daisy from me and then offering me a steadying hand as I step on to the deck. ‘Here you go,’ he says, handing me a pair of life jackets, one small, one large. ‘You can sit over there, if you like, and I’ll get us underway.’
I perch on the wooden bench that runs along one side of the boat and fasten the clips on Daisy’s life jacket. She waves her starfish hands happily at the gulls that swoop and circle in the blue above us in anticipation of a feeding opportunity as Davy starts the engine.
‘I’ve a few lines of creels to check and then we’ll head for the western shore,’ Davy calls over his shoulder from the wheelhouse. I nod and give him the thumbs-up, settling Daisy in my lap and holding her safe in the circle of my arms as we pull away from the jetty. Her eyes grow big and round as she watches a broad stretch of water begin to unfurl between us and the land. I plant a reassuring kiss on her forehead and she turns to give me her biggest smile, happy to be exploring this new element. The Bonnie Stuart cuts an easy path through the water, leaving a ribbon of lace foaming in our wake.
First we head towards the southern end of the loch, where a high pier juts from the shore beneath the pine-clad hills. It’s one of the few wartime installations that’s still in use, Davy explains, as a refuelling point for naval vessels. He points out some of the other remnants of the war – the grey stumps of concrete lookout posts, a signalling station and the anti-aircraft positions that once ringed Loch Ewe, protecting the ships that gathered here as the convoys mustered. And he shows me the black tideline that rings the rocks of the loch shore, where a slick of oil that floated on the water’s surface from all those ships once painted an indelible Plimsoll line, separating the tufts of heather and lichen above from the bare grey rocks below. It’s hard to picture how it must have looked when the loch was jam-packed with ships. Nowadays the water is crystal clear again, and its mirror-like surface reflects the hills around us.
‘It’s fine and calm today,’ he remarks. ‘But we’ll still stick to the shelter of the loch. Even on a day like this, there’ll be more of a swell out there on the open water. The Blue Men of the Minch never rest for long.’
He notices my quizzical look. ‘Och, and you call yourself a local? Have you never heard that particular piece of folklore, Lexie Gordon? The Blue Men are storm kelpies, sea spirits who inhabit the stretch of water out there that separates us from the outer isles. They’re always up to no good, looking out for sailors to drown and ships to sink. They’re said to have the power to summon up storms. The waters of the Minch are some of the most treacherous in the world: I’ve seen currents in the sea out by the Shiant Isles that flow like raging rivers when the tide is running. The Blue Men are supposed to inhabit caves in the islands’ cliffs. It’s certainly no place to try to land a boat.’
But those spirits seem far away today. The water beneath us rolls as smooth as an unfurling bolt of silk as we glide through it, watched by a heron poised on one slender leg in the shallows.
Slipping the engine into neutral, Davy lets the momentum of the boat carry us alongside an orange float that bobs on the surface of the water near the entrance to a small rocky inlet. With a boathook he catches the rope attached beneath the float and runs it through a pulley. As he winches the handle, the rope begins to tighten and a creel emerges from the depths, black and dripping. He leans over the side to haul it on to the deck and shows us the catch. There are half a dozen squatties, a large crab and a small lobster. He keeps the crab and the squatties, sorting them into separate buckets filled with seawater, but returns the lobster. ‘It’s on the wee side, that one, so we’ll let it grow.’
Daisy is fascinated by the catch and I have to grab her hand as she attempts to give the crab an exploratory poke. ‘Oops! Careful, those claws can pinch,’ I explain.
Davy hauls in the rest of the line and declares it a satisfactory catch. He has two good-sized lobsters and a sizeable cluster of squatties to add to the buckets. Then he rebaits the creels with mackerel heads and sets the boat moving slowly forward again so that the line plays out. Each creel lands in the water with a splash that makes Daisy giggle and clap her hands together, until, sinking slowly, the line has been reset. As we set off again, only the orange float remains bobbing on the surface, marking the spot.
We carry on, following the sweep of the shore westwards until we reach the headland at Inverewe. The exotic trees planted in the gardens of the estate, which are able to flourish this far north in the milder air swept up here from lower latitudes by the Gulf Stream, stand out against the Forestry Commission plantations of dark pines and the bare hills that surround the rest of the loch. Towering rhododendrons paint the rocky promontory with splotches of deep crimson and brilliant scarlet.