THE WEDDING DRESS AND OTHER RELICS: Lessons on baggage allowance from Britain’s most remote island. Target publication: New York Times- Modern Love The wedding dress lies across the bed: a sea of white agitated by waves of tulle and appliqué roses crashing into each other. They issue from the heart-shaped neckline, moving across the bodice, onto the skirt. Around the hips, the organza sinks in chiffon, engulfing and dissolving like sea foam. It is the type of dress that has its own shape, without someone wearing it. The fabric lifts on the perky bust, caresses the waist and stretches around the hips of a body that was curvaceous, voluptuous, made of white cloth and polyester filling, headless. I shut the door in horror. “Drink up, lass!” exclaims Jimmy Stout, my neighbour, inundating my glass with Oxford Landing Shiraz. He has an amused smile on his face. Jimmy had prompted me to open the door, which it turned out was to Tommy Hyndman’s bedroom. Skerryholm, Jimmy’s croft, adjoins Auld Haa, a traditional cottage that Hyndman had turned into a guesthouse when he moved here from Saratoga, New York, 14 years ago. Both houses are battered by gusts in the south harbour of Fair Isle, Britain’s most remote island, which can only be reached by a 4 hour bumpy ride in a boat with seatbelts. “See, Tommy and I are neighbours, in an island with less than 40 residents, you are brought together by circumstances more than affinity. We play cards together. I don’t love cards, as he claims. It just frees me from really having to talk to him. Too many things he does don’t make sense to me. Take this dress thing”. Jimmy proceeds to tell me the story of the dress, now pillow dummy. The wedding dress landed in Fair Isle on a foggy September day, in the arms of its original owner, an English bride-to-be, who never became one. When her fiancé broke off their engagement, the young lady, as the 79-year-old Jimmy refers to her, or Bride Z, if you prefer Tommy’s alias, booked a one-night stay at the Auld Haa. Bride Z was determined to get her pictures taken in a “lonely landscape” in the most remote place she could reach during a pandemic, and a quick Google search pointed her to Fair Isle. She needed a makeup artist and a photographer, so Tommy, like all resourceful islanders, volunteered his skills. Bride Z had paid good money for the dress, and she wanted to wear it. Tommy, who is the less appreciated of the two island artists, portrayed Bride Z in a series of shots: standing on a cliff, her foam-like dress ruffled by the wind, her roughly lined eyes squinting as she gazed into the mist; dragging her dress’ train through the island’s dirty road; peering out of the church’s window, waving. The lack of artistic quality could not diminish the photoshoot’s cathartic value, culminating in a V sign portrait. Her palm facing inward to send an unequivocal message to her ex-lover, but the index and middle fingers parted to signify victory, and peace. The wedding dress laying in the bedroom had its happy day, regardless of the circumstances.
I am unsure of this clumsily immortalised ritual, but also admire the woman’s determination to make the best of her circumstances. She hadn’t just travelled to a remote places, she was also distancing herself from her pain and sublimating it into a positive memory. But Bride Z’s memories are now also Tommy’s, divorced and living in an island that, in his own words, has plenty of birds but not many women. He treasures every encounter, especially the ones that, at least in his fantasies, could be romantic. While she left the dress and her failed relationship behind her, he made her baggage his and is holding on to it. To Tommy, Bride Z’s wedding dress is another relic of unfulfilled hope. Unhappily single, he confessed his longing for a partner to Ben Fogle and the Daily Mail, mistakenly thinking it would not be long until his internationally broadcasted plight would bring his new bride to Fair Isle’s remote shores. Tommy’s hopes became oil on canvas. He started painting puffins, projected his aspirations onto the birds that fly to the island every summer to find their mate. He painted away his longings. His fear of solitude, his anger for his loveless life and expectations are everywhere in the house: in the paintings covering the walls, in the post-its in the kitchen, in the wedding dress in the bedroom. When his fantasies of a summer dim romance did not actualise, Tommy took what was left of that fleeting happiness and stuffed it with a pillow, trying to hold on to it. Even a guest like me, who only met Tommy virtually, can see that his emotional baggage is so cumbersome that it takes up physical space. Despite the strict 10 kilo luggage allowance imposed by Airtask to reach the island, we all carry baggage that cannot be weighted: in my case, an alcoholic ex-partner, the angst at the thought of a romantic relationship, a paralysing lack of enthusiasm for the future. I am as far away as I can possibly be from Australia, but, as the Atlantic waves break, so does my voice while I share my story with Jimmy. Why can’t some people free themselves from their painful memories? Why Bride Z could run away from her past while I am merely dragging myself? According to his neighbour, Tommy’s distance from his ex-wife, has not stopped him from becoming bitter and manic in his search for a soulmate. His wait for the tide to change and the wind to send him someone has become a cycle, disappointing and perpetual like the movement of the ocean. Clinging to memories of his fleeting, too often platonic, romances has watered down his judgment. I wonder if thinking about my past love condemns me to never find a new one. Perhaps a future, too, requires us to travel light. I voice my concerns to Jimmy, who is feeding my carbonara to his collie Glen, fifth sheep dog of his name at Skerryholm. Jimmy is an authority on romantic relationships and, in his days as skipper of the Good Shepherd, had seduced his fair share of summer visitors, including the millionaire author Ann Cleeves, who based on him her most famous character, Jimmy Perez. Jimmy Stout is not too dissimilar from his literary counterpart, with whom he shares great wisdom made more accessible by a lively sense of humour. He is quick to smile, tanned all year round and very healthy for an octogenarian, if it weren’t for his recent searches for company in whisky. His wife, Florrie, died within a couple of months of being diagnosed with cancer. But he has a different view on holding on to memories. “When you have known so much joy with someone, it is natural to seek it again. My marriage has left me many happy memories of winter nights that were too short for all we
had to share with each other, Octobers sunbathing in Cyprus, summers labouring side by side. Not wanting to add new ones would be betraying my wife’s memory and devaluing the importance of love that she showed me. Knowing, thanks to my wife, how much happiness there is in a relationship, why would I want to be single now? It is this realization that allowed me to be with my new “friend””. I scribble on a piece of paper stained with Shiraz, and some tears. Jimmy, the happiest man on the island, is guided by his past, it isn’t weighing him down like his neighbour, but giving a deliberate direction to his present. He could have held on to the pain of seeing Florrie dying, but cherishes their sunny days instead. I realised I could try that too. When memories rise in high tides washing into the present, I will ride them to bring me forward, I will not let them sink me. As overwhelming as the past can be, I could anchor my thoughts to the joy I experienced and let the rest drift away. As with my flight on Airtask, I will have to keep the necessities and abandon the rest. The dress that was a burden for Bride Z and now weights on Tommy is my reminder.