Thicker Than Water: History, Secrets and Guilt: A Memoir. Cal Flyn

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Thicker Than Water: History, Secrets and Guilt: A Memoir - Cal  Flyn


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As a result Gaelic had begun to take on the quality of a spiritual mode of communication, a speaking in tongues. It was the vernacular of the church and the home, an unwritten language of confession, of conviction, of off-the-record conversation, while English became established as the language of the learned, the landed, the future.

      But only the old language has the vocabulary to describe that particular flavour of Highland melancholy. Edward Dwelly’s great dictionary, Faclair Gàidhlìg (1911), records forty-nine different words for sadness, each with its own special quality. Snigheadh sadness: also the act of falling in drops, the shedding of tears. Mùig sadness: darkness of mood, gloom, also snot, snivelling nose. Mì-fhuran: a churlish sadness, joylessness, a disinclination to welcome or congratulate. Aithridh: the sadness of repentance.

      Longing finds twenty-four ways of expressing itself. In fonn, a carnal longing, also land, earth, plain, the drone of a bagpipe. Leid: uncomfortable longing, also a shake-down or bed made on the floor, a temporary fireplace. Deòthas: the longing for a loved one, as of a calf for its mother.

      There are other words too, more subtle descriptions of a land that finds itself emptied of life.

      Aibheis (noun): An expanse of sea or air, an abyss; a place full of fairies, or in ruins or unkempt.

      Tannasgach (adjective): Abounding in spectres or ghosts.

      Sporthail (noun): A subdued rattling noise, such as is made by a stone wall about to fall.

       The Fever Ship

      A month passed. Time moved slowly.

      The Minerva was making heavy work of the voyage, and McMillan grew bored with watching sails appear on the horizon behind them only to speed by with demoralising ease, leaving the Minerva in their wake. He wished he had gone in another ship.

      Daily he stared out at the sea, calculating their progress, growing impatient in his impotence: Wind is fair this day, also E by S, steering SW, going about 5½ miles an hour. Lat 20 59 Long 22½º. Very warm. They were surrounded by ocean on all sides, with nothing but their own company as they chased the horizon across its infinite expanse. McMillan’s eyes raked the skyline as a man walking out at night casts around the circle of light given out by his lantern; he was watching for the coasts of new lands, the masts of strange ships that dipped in and out of sight on their unknown courses.

      Four days before, they’d seen the Canary Islands, specks of rock in the far distance, but they hadn’t sighted land since. Shoals of flying fish skimmed the surface of the waves, driving themselves into the air with slashing tails, then smoothly soaring on stained-glass wings. The heavily laden Minerva sat low in the water, and as the fish glided unseeingly forward they grazed the tops of the rails and came in to land, gasping, on the deck. They tasted like mullet, fat and sweet.

      The shores of Cape Verde lay still a few days to the south, somewhere over the horizon, unseen. The passengers were listless, settling heavy as sand into the rhythm of life on board: biscuit and salt pork, lime juice, the strictly rationed water grown stale in its barrels, inertia. The stutter and sigh of conversation drying up. A Sunday service in the German missionary’s stilted English marked off the weeks like the tally on a prison wall. But although his body was confined, McMillan’s mind roamed free across the ocean, coasting on the thermals like a seabird; forward into the unknown, then inevitably backwards, to the comforts and the consolations of home.

      He retreated to his cabin, braced himself against the rolling of the ocean, dipped a pen, and opened his journal. Bright fancy brings me to the distant shores of green Barra, for my heart will throb with warm affection at the mention of thy ever remembered name. Often do I think of thee amid this wilderness of water, when nothing is heard but the roar of the tempest and nothing visible beyond our back but the lowering heaven and the rolling sea. He knew that the lives of those he had left behind would still be rolling on without him as he trod water and stewed on his present condition: his past choices, his future chances, his lost love.

      For McMillan the journey was uneventful. But below him, in the hold, the mass of his fellow passengers ran the full gamut of human experience. A young man, in a poor state of health, disappeared from his bed one day and was never seen again; over the side, presumably, but who could say for sure? His poor wife, who had left his side only to prepare him a drink, would pass the rest of the journey scouring the ship in desperation. The German missionary held a funeral, in case. Afterwards, McMillan turned back to the ocean to regard the merciless wave afresh. He did not want to die, he thought, not without ever seeing his home again.

      The German held another ceremony, a wedding for a young couple from Kintyre. Afterwards, McMillan eyed the lovers fondly as they danced on deck long into the night. He envied them. They would arrive in the New World together, secured to each other, and linked too by the other to their former existence. As for him, he would have to face the future alone: I must own my weakness on thinking of dear — that loved me while I lived near her, and I hope will preserve my memory while in a foreign clime and under the heat of a tropical sun.

      He mourned the loss of his old life, with no aspect of the new one yet in view. He wrote to his brothers, his sisters, his mother, his father, his Miss Margaret, but the Minerva made no stop at any port, and the letters sat, unsent and unread, in his cabin. By the time they were sent, by the time he heard back, the news would be long out of date: they had been split apart like firewood, and there would be no putting them back together.

      Time passed in an interminable haze of sorrow and introspection. He resolved that on arrival at his destination he would be a better man, hereafter to do whatever I think to do my duty and work for the good and advantage of mankind. To be sweet and benevolent, quiet, peaceably contented, generous, easy company, humble, meek, diligent and industrious, charitable even of aliens. He cleaned and waxed his boots. He set himself arithmetic problems. He wished for a faster ship. He prayed.

      Though progress was slow, it was constant. Celestial signposts marked their advance: every day the sun rose higher in the sky; by now it was nearly directly overhead at midday. Constellations whirled in nightly dance, slipping down and down, taking their leave as they reached the edge of the dance floor, allowing new sets to take their places from the opposite horizon.

      He grieved for things it had not occurred to him that he would miss. Last night there was an eclipse of the moon. Totally eclipsed about 10 for it was quite dark then and the stars appeared beautifully, but I’ve almost lost sight of my friend the Great Bear. He took the time to examine every facet of the life he had left behind and store it carefully in a file marked home.

      It is not only distance that creates lags in communication. A gulf between my boyfriend and me had begun to grow even in the moments when we lay next to each other in bed. In the rush to clear our house and catch my plane, we had left important conversations unspoken and said a goodbye more ambiguous than I’d expected.

      It had been a sorry parting, and one that I felt guilty to be causing. Before we left the house I had pressed my forehead to his chest and promised everything I had, and made him promise too, again and again. But this much I knew: all our belongings were either in our backpacks or in the boxes stowed away in my childhood bedroom awaiting a plan of action, of which we had none.

      Still, I was on my way. And when I found myself safe in my seat on the first of several flights, uncontactable, in transit, my initial reaction was one of relief. Out of touch, out of office, out of sync with the world, I have always found the still point at my centre. My mind is always steadiest when my body is in motion.

      It was late morning when I took off from London, but there was barely time for lunch before the dark came upon us and we


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