Rough Island in April
Alison Munro
We scramble around a hillock, our feet slipping on the wet grass, and see a large round ewe lying on her back in front of us. Above her the steep grassy slope is dotted with silver boulders. Below the waves are crashing unseen against the black rocks of Garbh Eilean, the rough island. As we approach the ewe moves her legs in the air, as if trying to run. One eye is rolling hopelessly in her black face and a sticky white spittle dribbles from her mouth. She makes no sound.
She is upside down, wedged uncomfortably on a small stone platform. Chris hesitates then moves forward swiftly. With both hands he grips her woolly fleece just above the spine, and braces himself against the hill. I can see the soft pink flesh on her back where the rock has worn away the wool and I wonder how long she has struggled and suffered. Chris shoves, pulls, grunts and heaves her forward. Suddenly she is on her feet.
But she is awkward on the slope. Her legs are buckling and she is swaying like a drunk. Her head moves in tiny circles, eyes unfocused. We stand back and watch like anxious parents. Her swollen belly makes her seem ridiculous but her dark face is determined. Will she make it? She falls to her knees, struggles up again, stumbles forward a few steps, then begins to run randomly down the hill.
We watch hardly breathing. She is moving faster now, her body a ball below us. I can see her using her thin black legs to brake, see them splayed out on either side of her, and I know with a sickening certainty that she is out of control.
She trips and a second later she is on her side again, rolling down the hill in a slow rhythmic movement, speeding up as her legs become airborne above her, slowing down again as they drop. Over and over and over.
I can't watch any longer. I focus long-distance on the cool outline of Harris and follow the horizon to the south. In the pale April sky the last of the barnacle geese are floating up from Eilean an Taighe. Beneath them the sea is astonishingly calm and smooth. I think of my father in Canada and wonder whether he sailed through these waters all those years ago. I see him sitting quietly at the catamaran helm in his thick blue jersey, hair bleached white with salt. Maybe on a soft spring day like this he heard the geese overhead and felt compelled to follow them north.
Chris gasps next to me and I see that the ewe is caught again; a long way below us another rock has stopped her descent. She is still for only a second before she kicks out wildly, trying to find something to grip that isn't air. Somehow she manages to wriggle from her back to her side and then she's up again, momentarily balanced.
I see her turn her head up the slope. We look at each other for the briefest second and then, almost in slow motion, she falls backwards. This time she rolls faster than before, gathering speed with each revolution, her legs spinning up and under her like a sewing machine, until she disappears over the brow of the hill.
We stand high up on the edge of the island waiting. When I left my father this last time, I am thinking, he was like the ewe. I see him suddenly, his blue eyes vivid and enormous in the skeletal cancer face. He is falling, struggling to his feet, falling again. Fear shrouds him like a cloud.
Overhead six black-headed gulls are circling. A strange silence is hanging over the world. Beyond the Galtachan a lobster boat leaves a thin white trail in the Minch. I look at Chris and he takes my hand. We wait.
Below us, where the cold sea runs over the slippery wet tangle of the rocks, a dull thick-sounding crack echoes upwards.
