Rora

1999

An Aberdonian, frostbitten winter storm pushes me through the door into a Spartan public bar. Before I can ram the door home a vengeful blast of icy rain hits my face. Damn this hellish climate. My Gran, who emigrated to Australia with two of her many Orcadian brothers, specifically (or so she always says) to get away from the wind and the rain, would say it’s not weather to be out, not fit for a dog to be out in. 

I turn gratefully in to the relative warmth, the stale smoke fug, of the Valhalla Inn. Jaded decor. Ripped and worn tartan wallpaper, old red lino floor, worn through to the boards along the customers’ favourite two paths, one to the dart board the other to the loos, both meeting back at the bar. 

Bullseye. Only one person in and just the one I’m looking for. She’s at the juke box, her back to me, rocking to the classic rhythm of Led Zeppelin, full volume. Her oil-slick of black hair falls straight over a supple black leather jacket to her jeans-clad skinny bum-line. Her battered, down-at-heel riding boots shuffle back and forth, knawing away at the lino holes. All in black, she’s like a silhouette, a negative image, a puppet master. Rora.

“God’sake Rora, where’ve you been?”

She swings round, panic swiftly mastered by amusement in her mad eyes. I’ve never known how to describe Rora’s eyes. They change with her moods, with the weather, with the seasons, with her surroundings. I’ve known Rora since the night I arrived in Aberdeen, yet never known her at all, really. Tonight I see a surprisingly calm velvet brown. The calm of someone relaxing after a mission accomplished.

“Had to head north for a while. Some stuff to sort out. How’s you gorgeous?”

She’s across the room and stroking me like a cat before I can shift my frozen stance. Her touch sends an electric shock of heat through my drenched body. Blinded by my steamed-up glasses, I’m a helpless victim to her ministrations. She steers me to the bar and jabs a nail-bitten finger at the Bakelite bar bell.

“Fuck’n iced over mate. What’s the deal with this Scottish weather? I’ll never get used to it.” But even as I speak the agony of cold is becoming ancient history, such are Rora’s powers of rejuvenation.

“Really As, a wee breeze and you crumble! Where’s the macho explorer, the cool-dude traveller with the golden curls that I met two years ago? And you’re using all the wrong words. It’s not cool to swear these days. What’ll you have?” She holds me at arm’s length to look me over and I see myself reflected in her mirror eyes. I’m not looking my best. My surfer’s golden mane of hair is lank and mankey with city pollution, my face gaunt and grey with lack of the endless sunshine of the Brisbane beach life. Hooded lids protect my lacklustre, resigned tawny eyes. I’ve hunched my shoulders into the only coat I own – a cracked and yellowing leather trench coat, a sad parody of its erstwhile magnificence. My underfed torso huddles within a thinning, greying t-shirt. Army issue sand cargo pants bulge at the pockets with my meagre worldly possessions and wrunkle over muddy desert boots. Muddy desert boots – ha! Surely an oxymoron? I probably smell too. The sweaty aura of defeat and exile and fear.

“Whit r’ you wantin’?” The barman echoes Rora’s question as he appears from through the back, laconically drops his B&H butt into the dregs of a beer, wipes his hands down his jeans and eyes Rora expectantly. 

“Ye Gads! They don’t make pubs like this any more do they? I’m surprised Health and Safety haven’t closed you down yet” This is one of Rora’s regular haunts. She joshes with Donnie as he pulls us a couple of pints of Dark Island then pushes tumblers up at the inversely suspended bottle of Highland Park for a double measure each. Chasers.

We settle in a dingy, cosy corner of the bar. And I settle in to my usual tale of woes – boring job, too little money, too drunk again last weekend, what’s the meaning of life. Hell, that’s what we always talk about isn’t it? Rora’s a great listener. I always feel better after an evening with Rora. Sometimes we play a bit of fiddle together – that’s how we met, in the pub here on a Friday night fiddle sess’ – but mostly we just natter.

But I’m dimly aware that there’s a different light in her eyes. She’s not indulging me with her usual placatory remarks, not joining in with our normal “isn’t life a bore” repertoire. She listens and nods and smiles wee reassuring smiles and fetches more drinks. Coming back from the bar her expression is changed. She takes a big deep breath and with a momentary apologetic smile, starts.

“Ok. You’ve said all these things to me every time we meet. Nothing has changed in two years, or rather, over two years you have settled in to become your own worst fears. A whingeing pomme! Or should I call you a whingeing Bruce? Now I’ve had enough. I’m going to take you to task.”

“It’s easy to get lost these days. The pace of life and a wage in our pockets and the ease of travel make us all feel busy and fulfilled on some shallow, materialistic level. But I think we’ve all lost the meaning of life, lost sight of our roots, lost sight of our personal quest:  to find out who we are should be our life mission. Lost the plot. That’s the whole point and yet so many people miss it entirely.” 

“The saddest sight to me, and I see it all the time up at the hospital, is the loss and resignation in the eyes of the old. You know why? They have finally realised that they haven’t achieved what they wanted to in life, haven’t got to the nub of their reason for being. More than likely haven’t even begun the journey and yet here they are at the end of their allotted time span, out of puff, knackered. Missed the boat. Through fear of the unknown or lassitude or reactive, wrong priorities they’ve run out of time. Too busy being careful and sensible or scared of failure or snobbish or too busy battling about some daft injustice between relatives or maybe even just too busy making money and spending it on drink. And I, the kind listening ear of the nurse, get to hear their stories, their cries of “if only” and “perhaps” and “but then again” and “with hindsight” – their list of regrets at opportunities missed, chances passed by, endeavours shirked. Oh, the reasoning all comes tumbling out as well, but you can see that they no longer believe in all the reasons why. Why they didn’t do such and such, didn’t make a leap for that missed boat, didn’t grasp the nettle. All the excuses they came up with and stuck to at the time. I tell you something, it’s a very very rare person who lies in my ward saying they’ve done everything they wanted to in life, that they’ve lived life to the full, to the best of their abilities, to the hilt of their dreams.”

“I wish I may, I wish I might….” Rora murmurs in my ear as she gets up to go to the loo.

“You need to recognise right now the LTS rule: life is too short.” She’s back before I can gather my thoughts; never known a woman who could pee so fast. “It also means ‘Lost To Sight’ to birdy folk recording the movements of birds, and your life might be if you don’t keep an eye on it, it might fly away.” She mimics a bird in flight and swoops round the table to sit down again.

 “Here’s me. I’m born and bred Scottish and yet my hair is equatorial black and my skin nut brown. Folklore says I’ve got “a touch of the tar”. I’ve never felt entirely at home here. Logic tells me to look south for my origins. But I don’t feel Mediterranean or Asian. My heart pulls to the north. The myths lurking in my soul are Nordic. My body seeks the colder, wetter, oceanic climes of the northern maritime countries. I need to be by the sea. And then I find out that I’ve got an Orcadian granny – or I had. I find out because she mentions me in her Will, leaves me her wee Orkney island! And I didn’t even know about her! There’s roots pulling you back, for sure.” She arches her black brows and her eyes blaze with mirth as she hops up to feed the juke box.

“Now in you I see a lost soul. Here’s you, born and bred to the beach-bum life of Australia, but don’t be fooled by that. You have completely different origins. Why did your Mum drag you along to fiddle lessons from the age of nought? Why d’you say, ‘fine that’ instead of ‘OK’ and why do you call everyone and their dog your ‘buddy’? Look at you, frozen to the bone, don’t like getting your feet cold, seasick. Logic should be telling you to head south and warm up your miserable bones again. Get back to Australia PDQ. But you didn’t go back. You set off on your grand “tour of Europe” came to Scotland and got stuck here. Something holds you in Scotland. Your flight home is long gone. You could join in the chorus with all those old biddies who know they’ve missed the boat. Ha ha! But this place isn’t right for you. Look at you, you’re miserable. I’d say go the last mile, seek out your roots, complete your quest to take a look at your grandmother’s homelands.” She takes a long draught of her pint.

“Let’s go there together. That’s where I’m off to tonight. Come with me. You’ll probably hate it, but you never know.”

“Rora! I can’t! I’ve got work tomorrow, need to be on site by 8am or I’ll catch it from the foreman.” I nervously flip a beer mat, over and over, between hand and edge of table. “And there’s the boys to meet up with later tonight for a blast.”

She abruptly stands and looms over me, hands gesticulating wildly. 

“Haven’t you understood anything? You tell me you’re feeling lost and directionless. You bend my ear for a couple of hours about your problems at the end of which you feel better and ready to put your head right back in that sandpit of ignorance and evasion. Meanwhile I’m left burdened with all your little worries and frustrations. Get real As. Take it on. Stop whingeing and hiding.  Stop feeling lost, stop trying to find yourself through your drugs and your navel gazing, your self-pity. Start searching for where you belong, by travelling, by looking, by feeling. Wake up! Feel the warmth of the earth beneath your feet rather than the numbness of concrete.”

It seems eras later that we emerge into the sodden night of Aberdeen’s docklands, Rora hugging her worn leather fiddle case, but it’s only 5pm. Such is the reality of Scotland’s meagre winter daylight hours. Ferry traffic wheels tidal waves of dirty city pothole water over us but this time I’m fortified by the Valhalla’s magic dram and I’m impervious to the trickles of ice-water down my spine. Over the road loom the characterless modern buildings of the Northlink Ferry Company. Through the steamed windows people mill and queue, lug luggage and tend to squalling children. I square my shoulders, prepare to take them on.

“Ach no, we’ll not take the ferryboat. Too slow. Too many folk in yer way. I know a man with a fast wee boat.” 

Damn woman. Always one step ahead of me (if not several). Always the leader. Faster, quicker to think laterally and come up with the unexpected. Better at multi-tasking, juggling, problem solving. I could go on.

Within half an hour we’re in the cosy cabin of a fast trawler chugging out through the narrow entrance of Aberdeen harbour.

“The ferry’ll be setting off late tonight” offers our otherwise taciturn skipper, “ebb tide’s too low around the equinox for these big girls to get over the bar.” He contemplates this snippet of wisdom for a moment then, “Aye” he sighs and returns to his own preoccupations.

After an age of chugging past inshore lights, beacons and other boats we swing abruptly left and go full throttle. I lurch to grasp the torn fabric back of the skipper’s chair but the turn and shift of the boat is too much for me. Before I know it I’m crumpled in the back right corner of the cab. Rora, of course, has anticipated this moment and is swinging gracefully on the steadying handle front left of the dash. Cool as a cucumber she turns to offer me a wicked grin before I can regain my composure. Damn woman.

~~~

I’m preoccupied with my feet, skipping daintily between puddles, trying to land on lugworm casts in the futile hope that they’ll hold me up out of the water. Rora looks back.

“Ha! Don’t like getting you feet wet? Stop being a scaredee cat-wooss! You’ve got boots on!”

“That’s the point. They’re the only pair I own and they leak. I don’t want them wrecked. And this water’s freezing my toes off every time it seeps through the cracks.” But she’s off, way ahead of me, no longer listening to my whinges and whimpers.

We were on that wee boat half the damn night, growling and bumping our way through the waves, salt spray filling our eyes, nostrils, ears. I was frozen to the bone until the skipper lent me a jumper, a lumpy, matted old blue thing, but it had an oily warmth to it that I didn’t want to give up when we finally spotted the contours of our destination looming through the wet night. I reckoned I might die of exposure if I had to take that jumper off. So I dug in a pocket and pulled out a crumpled fiver. He accepted with uncharacteristic alacrity and said his mum was knitting them all the time. 

That made me take a better look. Not fifties but thirties. A young salt, a man my age. The outdoor life had made him prematurely swarthy. 

Then he landed us on this island, took us in through a scary, narrow passage of rock – they called it a geo – and when he said “aye” we had to jump for the shore. By the time I’d righted myself he and his boat were back out in open water and swinging round to the north. He must have slammed into reverse and gunned the engine like a madman.

“You have to get out quick before a wave whips your boat onto the rocks.” said Rora by way of explanation for his rapid exit. Then she led me up the steep grass slope above the geo until the ground levelled out. I glanced at my watch: midnight. The rain was unremitting, the darkness complete. Rora took my hand and I allowed myself to be led like a child. For several long minutes we strode through the darkness, over slippery rocks and through tussocky grasses until we arrived at a rain-soaked wooden door.

“This was granny’s house. Come on in.” Rora stooped through the low wooden door jamb then turned and closed the door behind me. We stood together in the sudden silence for a moment, just breathing. Just glad to be out of the weather. I could hear Rora fumble with something then she struck a match and held it to the wick of a Tilley lamp. The lamp glowed and my world rocked on its footings.

I’d never seen anything like it. Wood panelled rooms, stone-flagged floors, a white enamel stove with a pulley above. In one wall was a kind of built in cupboard which, when I opened the doors, turned out to have a bed in it. A “cot bed” Rora called it. Through another door wooden steps led over the cot bed cupboard and into an attic. From the top step I could make out a futon bed, a pile of books, a basket overflowing with clothes.

“This is where I sleep. I find the cot bed too claustrophobic. D’you want some tea?” Rora skipped back down the wee stairs and I followed to find her filling a great metal kettle from a tap at the bottom of a plastic barrel. 

“There’s no running water in the house, we fill this” she tapped the barrel “from a natural spring half way down the hill. There’s no electricity, no loo, definitely no telly! No pavements, no pubs, no pushers. What d’you make of that, city boy?”

“Awesome!”

“We pee outside for now. And please vanish to the southern shoreline for anything smellier” she gestured vaguely out of the window. “I’m organising some plumbing work in the spring-time. And I’m getting my very own windmill for electricity, how about that! This’ll be the most 21^st century house in Orkney by the time I’m finished.” Rora struck another match and held it to the ready-laid paper and sticks in the stove.

~~~

Tired now, with the effort of sand hopping, I turn for the higher dunes and drop down into a sheltered sand bank. Out of the cutting breeze, this is the perfect place to bask in the sun. After that midnight cup of scalding tea Rora had piled me bodily into the cot bed, still dressed in the damp woolly jumper. Next thing I knew she was hoiking me out again, proffering another cup of tea. But this time sun was streaming in through the cottage windows. My watch said twelve again – had I slept for twelve hours?

“Come on sleepy head, let’s sit outside”, I had followed her through the doorway again and there, laid out before us like a paper maché map, was this beautiful, vivid green island, basking in the midday sun. For a moment I was warmed through just by the thrill of it all.

Across the island I could see several houses, cottages I suppose, all built of a rosy coloured stone but none sporting roofs except the closest, ours, which had a new one of green corrugation. A long, straight, oddly smooth grass track ran the length of the island, connecting up the homesteads. 

“The grass road” Rora offered, “after the war each island was offered something by the government to help boost its economy. Most islands chose a new pier, but the folk here wanted a tarmac road. Big mistake! While the “other islands prospered by trading their crops and stock to the mainland, this place was left behind. Eventually the population fizzled out. We’re just left with a scattering of ruined farmsteads and a perfect, grassed over, tarmac road. Sad but rather beautiful, don’t you think?”

After tea Rora had insisted we take a round-island tour. We needed to gather fire wood, she said, and on this treeless island that meant scouring the beaches for driftwood.

“There should be plenty after the equinoctial storms.” She spoke like a native, as if she’d been living this life all her days.

~~~

Through one lazy-lidded eye I watch the seals playing in the inshore waters. Their sleek bodies arc gracefully back and forth, slip-sliding through the shallows, skimming the sandy sea bed, weaving through the kelp. Suddenly there’s a smaller, faster mover among them, whipping around and darting forward with altogether more predatory movements. A dark brown form, sleek and agile. An otter? The seals stop their mesmeric sea dance and re-group to take on the stranger. But they don’t seem threatened or wary but excited and curious.

I open both eyes to watch. I can see the entire depth of the crystal clear waters. The bodies swerve and curve around each other, gliding within inches yet never colliding. Heads surface momentarily to breathe and scan the shoreline before dipping under to rejoin the dance. Eventually the nut brown body separates from the grey of the seals and emerges from the ocean and I see that it is Rora, squeezing water from her hair as she lopes up the beach and vanishes through a gap in the dunes. Her holt, perhaps? She’s in her element here, a part of the landscape, although how she can brave the November sea temperature dumbfounds me. Envy creeps through my soul. I wonder why she doesn’t live here.

“I’m moving up here permanently in the New Year…or should we call it the new Millennium?”, she seems to read my mind as she plonks her freshly clad body next to me. Raggedy, soft emerald flannel shirt, many-holed old oily, white fisherman’s jumper, frayed blue canvas shorts and bare brown feet suit her better than her city black leather. 

“I just handed in my notice at the hospital yesterday. It feels like a dream. I’m beginning to live my dream.” She hugged her knees and scanned the horizon.

“My grandmother left this island to me three years ago. I was 27 years old and enjoying the bright lights of the city. I’d never been to Orkney, thought it must be some unholy rock or fickle spit of sand that might vanish on a high tide. Then I came up here to recover from a decade’s worth of a hughmungus hangover not to mention a tricky affaire or two. It was June. My first glimpse of the island was through binoculars from the Westray ferry boat. It was beautiful – all gentle grassy hills strewn with wildflowers, wide sweeps of golden beach and sheltered sandy coves. And the ruins of my forefathers – or I should say foremothers’ – homes. According to my granny’s diaries, which I found under the cot bed, our family was very much a matriarchy. They bore prolific numbers of babies but they always seemed to be girls. So they used to import men from the other islands – head over to the Harvest Hame dances every autumn and get fixed up, bring the poor smitten fellas back in their boats.” She offers me an elaborate wink. “I fell in love – but with an island instead of a person – came for a weekend and stayed for the rest of the summer.”  

“I didn’t consider moving here for a long time; just thought of it as a place to come on holiday, an escape from the grim realities of my life. But then I came to realise the nub of life, the reason for it, is to fulfil one’s dreams, not merely to exist, work, socialise, drink, slump. And I also suddenly wanted to fulfil my grandmother’s wish, which I’d chosen not to take too seriously when I first read it. What she had asked of me, through her will, was that I kept the island inhabited, carried on life here, didn’t let it lie empty. It was as if she thought of it as a big old house, resonant with the character of age and wisdom and echoing with the lives and loves of a thriving community. She couldn’t bear for it to lie empty, go to rack and ruin, be abandoned and lonesome.”

“To begin with I didn’t understand the enormity of her request, but now I do. She wasn’t just asking that I visit the island occasionally or even that I move here. She wanted me to really take the place on, look after it, farm it, fill it with life. D’you see? You can’t just light-heartedly decide to live on these remote islands and take what you want from them without giving as well. Giving of your time and effort and giving your love and, well, your life. My task is to re-populate it. Ha! Tricky business without a fella in tow!” Rora tips her head at me and winks again. Am I getting the message yet?

“Then I wondered why she chose me. She has other relatives who aren’t such lost causes. But it came to me recently. It’s always been a matriarchy, always been passed on from mother to daughter. Only my mum rebelled and left for the city when she was seventeen and pregnant by some unsuspecting Westrayman. Never spoke to any of her family again. Lost touch entirely even though she was only in Aberdeen. Not so far away that they couldn’t have found her – and me – if they’d wanted to. After all the solicitors found me easily enough once there was a Will to honour. I suppose I’m doing the reverse journey now, squaring the circle or whatever the expression is. Bringing those Orcadian genes back to base.”

I’m studying her face and trying to keep up with what she is telling me. Not the words of her explanation, which are plain enough, but the message in her eyes, which are boring into my very soul with their ferocity.

“Keep trying to find yourself As. Take on the quest. It’s not a singular event, it’s a constant process, a maturing, like cheese or wine. The best flavour and texture and aroma, the most fulfilling result, comes through the input of the best ingredients plus thought, time and effort. The sweetness of sunshine. The coolness of a cave. The honesty of an oak cask. The wholesome, full-bodied ripeness that only time can give. Please. Don’t just slink back to your unfulfilling life buffered by drink and drugs, which you don’t, by your own admission, even enjoy much.”

For a long moment we contemplate each other. Several lifetimes flit by. So we both had Orcadian grandmothers. Would they have been of similar age? Could they even have known each other? It dawns on me that she’s right. All the stuff she’s been saying over the last day and night – the strangest time of my hitherto predictable life – has finally struck a chord in my soul. Or maybe it’s just that I’ve finally been brave enough to listen.  

I suddenly know that I’m going to take her on. She must see a change in my eyes for she relaxes and starts to smile.  Then she smiles and smiles and her grin broadens and her eyes light up and fill with excitement and craziness and colour and light, as only Rora’s eyes can. She knows she’s got me. She laughs at me from afar and welcomes me into her heart. Into her…my…our homeland.

“Welcome to your roots, Mister Australia. Expect regular doses of cold feet!”

©Julia Welstead