The Footprints We Leave

by Marsali Taylor

Marsali Taylor and her family are given the chance to return to the past – the little Highland cottage where they spent their childhood summers.

Launching the boat at the head of the remote Highland loch was like coming home. The hills rose above us, cradling the still water; the air was loud with the sound of burns tumbling to the sea. As I rowed over to the Barrisdale pier, with my grandchildren sitting just as my sister Joan and I used to sit when we went with Dad to meet the Invergarry shop van, the scenery suddenly clicked into its familiar position: the view straight down the loch, with the Devil’s Head, the lion’s paw cradling Runeval, the island, all backed by the pointed peak and ridge of Ladhr Behinn. The beloved names flooded back as we putted down the loch, and I told them to the children: Skiary, the Jumping Stone, the Rushing River, Tor-a-choit, see, there, tucked into its bay between the trees, that grey-stone cottage with the white porch. Ours again after forty years.

My dad cleared the landing place before I was born, rolling stray beach boulders into a line, and filling behind them with stones. Later this week, Joan and I would spend an hour repairing one tumbled section, and our brother Niall cleared the seaweed-covered rocks when the tide fell to its lowest. As soon as we arrived, the children headed straight for the rocks where we used to play, and started making a den, while we took the bags in.

Time fell away. That M shape cut into the doorstep, and the shelves under the porch window, still filled with midge-deterrent and rubber boots. The cracked white paint on the inner double door – and then we were inside, home again. My heart leapt to every forgotten familiar thing as I headed upstairs to take possession of my own room: the large coir mat in the hall, those black rubber treads on the cornered staircase, cut to fit from a roll of rubber matting, tacked down: Dad’s work too. The mass of trunks on the landing, to keep the bedding safe from mice over winter; the little door into the room where the Elsan toilet was. My bedroom, the skylight replaced by a metre-square dormer window looking straight across the loch - glorious. Hideous chintz curtains; two beds with sugar-pink counterpanes, facing longways in the room. I wondered for a moment if I should put one back to the ‘right’ place, but decided not to bother. I laid my clothes behind the ochre-striped curtain, on the shelves where I kept the striped shorts and faded t-shirts that appear in every childhood photo. In her room, Joan found a shelf with our Enid Blyton detective stories, and the 50s Agatha Christie novels. our dinner by firelight, then the children were coaxed to bed in what had been Mum and Dad’s room, lit by flickering tea-lights in scallop shells.

In Mum’s memory, Joan and I decided to have a morning swim, because that’s what always woke us: the sound of Mum splashing. We were first up the next morning. Joan put the kettle on, to fortify us, but I knew I’d never go in if I thought about it. We hauled on our swimsuits, slung our towels around our shoulders and scrunched down the garden path. The tide was just two yards from the gate. We laid the towels on the landing-place boulders and waded in. The sea was icy but we kept going – ankles, knees, thighs and start swimming. The cold stopped my breath for a second. Swim, swim, counting the strokes ... fifteen, twenty, thirty, turn round quick and pull hard for the shore. By the time we reached it we were gasping for breath; the morning air was blessedly warm by contrast. A quick towel dry, flapping the midges away, dress and then that cup of tea!

Kettle on. ‘Look,’ Joan said, ‘our heights are still behind the door.’ So they were, the yearly ritual of measuring, with the heights of the new tenant’s children and grandchildren on the neighbouring plank. Later in the week we added the next two generations, my daughter Marnie and nephew Iain, my grandchildren Maxie and Ava. The kitchen now boasted a four-ring cooker with an oven; the big fireplace was the same, with a laid fire ready: we got a match to it straight away. Niall’s little bedroom had become a functional bathroom, with a bath, and a large hot-water tank beside it (though in the end we didn’t use it; even handy-man Niall took one look at the boiler and said he wasn’t touching it). We ate

Being back brought our parents back: Dad, in his grey and white jumper and fawn shorts, striding over the hills with his horse’s-head stick, and Mum, young and tall, with her fall of dark hair held back by an Alice band, and her flared fifties skirt with the watermelon pattern. I made scones, just as she did, and the children helped make doll-sized pancakes for a teaparty, just as I helped her. We spread them with jam and ate them frying-pan hot.

We grew up with our rowing boat, taking the oars as soon as we were big enough to hold them. The cottage’s current boat was a plastic rowing boat, very stable but not great to row. I took Maxie out, trailing a darrow; he didn’t catch anything, but Iain did, four mackerel. The children were fascinated, going from fear of the way they flapped to ghoulish delight as the heads were cut off and the guts thrown to the seagulls. Ava wouldn’t eat any; Maxie reckoned they were delicious. Evenings by the fire got through the woodpile, but Joan Steve spotted a large log on the rocks, and Iain and I towed it back with the rowing boat. It was too heavy for four of us to lift high tide bring it up, and left it for the next visitor with a chainsaw.

There were two sit-on kayaks by the cottage. These were much easier to paddle than our old blow-up canoe. Maxie and I had first go, paddling along the shore to the point, where a basking seal was watching us with interest. Ava wasn’t impressed: ‘It’s cold. It’s wet. I don’t like it!’ By the time I came back from the fishing expedition with Iain, she was in her wetsuit, wielding her paddle confidently, dashing along the shoreline and making reckless sorties out to the edge of the seaweed line. I stood guard with the rowing boat, just as Dad used to, tanned, binoculars round his neck, resting on his oars.

The family divided into different combinations of generations. Niall’s girlfriend Lynne and Ava went up the hill and came back with a flower crown pleated into Ava’s hair: bog cotton, bog asphodel, a marsh orchid. Niall introduced Iain and Maxie to the boys’ peeing corner by the rushing river (Joan and I hadn’t even known it existed). Marnie, her husband Sam and the children tramped through the fairy wood to Smugglers’ Bay. Joan and I went kayak expeditions to the Devil’s Head and Runeval. Each evening, we sat by the wood-scented fire and enjoyed the silence.

The wild-life Dad had shown us was there still. Niall saw deer in the garden one night. Porpoises guided Iain and me to the fish. Joan saw an otter one morning, and a seal inspected our kayak paddling from ten yards away. We smelled Foxy’s den in a rock cave on one walk. I woke up to see bats blowing like dead leaves across my dormer window, on their way back into their roof roost. A palm wide dragonfly buzzed through the garden, and foxes dug up Steve’s rubbish pit. Sannie snake’s descendent popped his head out of the hole in the doorstep one sunny afternoon, and the cottage toad’s grandson crawled across the path on our last morning.

It was wonderful to take my daughter and grandchildren to the world of our childhood. The footprints we leave are memories handed on.

Images

1. Going back fifty years: my mother with Joan, Niall and I in our boat – I’m the one getting wet!

2. My parents at the cottage, back in the early sixties, with our Siamese cat Chula on Dad’s shoulders.

3. Looking down the loch in dramatic mood: the point, the island, and the peak of Ladhr Bheinn.

4. Granny on guard for Ava trying out the sit-on kayak.

5. My London grandchildren having fun in the country, just as we did.

6. Marsali having fun kayaking, with the cottage in the background.

Marsali Taylor grew up in Edinburgh, and studied English at Dundee University before teacher training college. She moved to the Shetland Isles for her first teaching post, and loved it so much that she’s stayed there ever since. She’s now the author of ten Shetland-set detective stories starring liveaboard sleuth Cass Lynch and her partner DI Gavin Macrae. She’s also published a history of women’s fight for the vote and articles for a local magazine Shetland Life . She has a monthly column in Practical Boat Owner. Apart from writing, she spends her summer messing around on the water in her 8m yacht Karima S, and her winters involved in the village pantomime.