Naked on the Beach

©Julia Welstead 2020

“The best fiction is mostly true”

“Why let facts get in the way of a good story?”

“If in doubt make it up”

For Smaddles RIP 2017

Chapter One ~ Mr. M

The first thing I noticed was the sheer size of his head – though of course at the time I didn’t know he was a he. I only knew there was a huge white headed ‘something’ frantically swimming toward our rather small boat. Oonagh, engaged in the physicality of raising a lobster creel from the seabed portside, hadn’t yet become aware of the small – but increasingly large – drama unfolding to her starboard bow.

~~~

“Oonagh what the hell’s this?” I seem to be shouting, though there’s no need in this calm. I’m intruiged but also panicked as it becomes all too clear that the animal intends to land on our boat – on us. Pot aboard, Oonagh turns, “What the….shite…an albino seal?” but there’s altogether too much splashing – this is no sea mammal, this is someone out of their comfort zone, “it’s a fucking dog!”

Suddenly we both know we’re in trouble. The dog hoving into view is near damnit half the length of our little row boat. There’s no way we can speed away from him – even if we wanted to – and there’s going to be one helluva stramash when this giant comes aboard – as he most assuredly is going to….any moment now…

“Right” some old emergency mindset surfaces from the murky depths of my A&E nursing days, and takes command, “the danger to us is going to be when he’s halfway in and the boat’s tipping, so let’s get him in quick, then I’ll floor him while you steady the boat” 

I’ve overlooked the fact that he’s about twice my size and weight, but it’s too late for further thought and a good dose of adreniline works wonders as two massive paws push down on the gunnel, almost tipping us out. We take a side each, our arms under his oxters, and heave. Hind legs scrabble on the side, then slip, then scrabble again, then slip. We’ve almost lost, are almost all three in the icy Hebridean water, but we are a united and determined trio, not to be beaten by mere logisitics.

By some miracle Oonagh manages to reach for a hind leg at the same moment that I figure out that pushing the massive head down into the boat will effectively alter this beast’s tipping point. A deluge of water accompanies the dog into the boat like some kind of weird reversal of birth, and now we have a whole new problem – big dog, lots of water, small boat, and we’re almost a mile offshore….

One anticipated problem we don’t have is a scrabbling dog to hold down – this guy is done in, knackered, almost dead. His legs fold under him and his huge carcass flops lifelessly over the plank of seat, then slithers to the flooded floor. I rush to hold his head out of the water.

“Right” my commanding voice says again, as if I’ve done this a million times, “you steer, get us home Oonagh. I’ll bale and nurse the dog”.

And from chaos, comes calm. Oonagh takes the helm, revs up the little outboard, and steers us all the way home, back into Skippinis Harbour. I bale water and check the all-but-dead dog for breathing, pretty much lying on top of him in an effort to warm him up. I hear Oonagh radio’ing ashore and by the time we reach shallow waters Donald himself is wading in to help and Mary is emerging from the tractor cab laden with old towels.

It’s amazing what you don’t notice. On my hunkers next to ‘our prize catch’ as we are now calling the dog, who we have lain on blankets next to the Rayburn, I notice that he’s wearing a thick leather collar. I revolve it around his slumped neck, feeling through an unruly tangle of creamy white hair so thick you could mistake it for a fur ruff. No tag, damn. No clues there then. 

Stretched out on the kitchen floor, this dog is truly huge.

“If he raised his leg he wouldn’t wet your ankle or calf, he’d piss on your hip!”

“What d’you reckon – a Great Dane crossed with a Deerhound?”

“But his head is all Labby – a giant breed of Labrador?”

“But what about the rough coat, and white, isn’t there a white sheep dog breed somewhere in Eastern Europe?”

In the good old days this kind of conversation could take up a whole evening and still be unresolved. But with the power of modern technology Donald is browsing dog breeds on his manky old screen-shattered laptop as we ponder, and within seconds has pulled up photos of Italian and Slovakian sheep guard dogs.

“Maremma, Abruzzo, Cuvac…” he mumbles and we all gather round to squint through the crazed screen at large white furry dogs.

“But he’s leggier that all of those. Perhaps that crossed with Great Dane?”

And that’s as far as we can get. Tag, Donald’s collie, heralds the arrival of a car and moments later the vet pops her head around the kitchen door and kneels down next to our sleeping beauty.

“He’s gorgeous, what a find! No broken limbs…. no cuts…. gums pink…heart pumping away fine……lungs clear….eyes bright…..thin…but fit” Maggie murmurs as she examines him, lifting limbs, opening eyelids and mouth, pressing stethoscope drum to chest. “He’s a fine specimen” she rocks back on her hunkers to take in the whole mammoth, looks up at us with a grin, “I wonder where he came from!”

“We were thinking he must have swum from Gunna or Coll,” I venture, “unless he fell off another boat – but then why wouldn’t he swim back to that, to his owner?”

“Yup”

“I guess someone will be in touch with you Maggie, as you’re the vet for Coll and Tiree. Shall we keep him here meantime?”

“Well there’s no point moving him, he’s pretty much comatose and a helluva weight. If you’re ok to keep him?”

I’m staying with Mary and Donald – that’s a whole nother story – and they’re the kind of folk who never turn anyone away from their door, even if he is huge and hairy. And fast asleep. There’s no doubt in anyone’s mind that this dog will stay right here on the warm hearth until an owner collects him.

~~~

A week’s gone by and me and my new friend are gallumphing along Gott Bay in a fierce breeze. Terns and gulls swing and swoop above us, telling us to piss off from their breeding grounds. I shout cheerfully back at them, “your nests are on Soa – don’t try to tell me otherwise!”

For reasons I haven’t quite fathomed I’m calling him Mr M. Mister Marine perhaps, or Mythical Man? Something along those lines, but for whatever reason, Mister M has stuck.

And Mr M has become ‘mine’. Oonagh is uber busy on her croft whilst also running a business in America (technology wins again). Donald is out all hours on the widely dispersed family croft lands. Mary runs the homestead, with all the myriad things that that involves, and works at the island nursing home. I’m the obvious one, in a fallow patch of my life, kicking my heels a bit, with not a right lot to do, to look after our visitor.

The surprising thing is that no one has come forward to claim Mr M. It seems nobody is looking for him. Maggie has put out messages. The island policeman has circulated a photo. Everybody is talking about the big lost dog, but no one can solve the mystery, or even provide clues.

We spread the news further. Oonagh is great at all things social media – Facebook, Tweets, Instagrams and all those methods of communication that I avoid even learning about, grumpy old Luddite that I am. I stick to the old ways with an ad in the Oban Times.

Nada.

Meanwhile Mr M and I are bonding. I’m in love, and he seems pretty keen on me too. We’re an item. Walking out. Rapidly becoming inseperable. My desire to find his owner is diminishing.

And yet I must. It’s not that I’m being noble. There’s an instrinsic need to solve the mystery. Where did he come from? Who was he with? He must have been with someone – a massive white dog roaming the islands alone is very unlikely and he would have been caught, or shot, in short order.

Well, I think to myself as we gallop across white sands and leap through ice-blue surf together, if nobody’s coming looking for Mr M perhaps we had better go look for them. A trip! Already assuaged by the companionship of my new found friend, my stagnant doldrums are whipped away in an instant at the prospect of a journey with a purpose – what could be better?!

Where to begin? At the beginning. I close my eyes and picture that massive head bobbing toward our boat. Where from? It had to be Gunna. If he’d swum from Coll he’d surely have landed on Gunna. Unless the currents prevented that of course. But Gunna’s the obvious place to start. And easy – why haven’t we already done this?

We galumph, canter and trot our way back to Ruaig to track down a number for the family who have a house on Gunna. 

“I met that dog here last week” Magnus clearly hasn’t been looking at social media, “with an equally huge man. They’d swum ashore from a yacht. The chap said he’d just wanted to walk the dog and assured me his yachty friends would pick him up again and they’d be gone within the morning. I didn’t see the yacht, thought no more about it.”

We chat a bit more and, well, one thing leads to another, and he offers me a job painting his house – would I like to come out this morning? I look up at a blue, sun-filled sky and think, well that’s the best offer I’ve had in a long time, “yes please!” “I’ll pick you up off the Caolas beach in half an hour” he rings off abruptly, conversation over, things to do, places to be.

I have a Fiat Panda. I tell you that to help with the imagery here, of a massive white dog crammed into the front seat of my tiny car, head flat to the roof, ears catching on the sun visor. I tuck his tail in, push the door carefully home and scoot around to the driver’s side, not quite in time to stop him slumping his bulk across the full width of the interior. I back into the seat, pushing him upright again as I go. This, it turns out, is to be the way we get into the car every time from now on.

It’s sunnies weather – I put mine on, then scrabble in the side pocket for the roadtrip emergency pair I bought last year: Mr M might as well look the part too. He dons them without hesitation,

“Aha, used to this are you?” He yawns noncholantly and tilts up his nose by way of reply.

Spilling out at the beach, we can see a boat zooming so directly and swiftly toward us that I wonder if it will stop in time, and Magnus does pretty much drive it up the beach. 

“You OK Mr M?” I give my pal a sidelong glance, wondering if he’ll have an aversion to boats. But quite the opposite – he clearly sees the boat as his saviour and leaps on board with alacrity.

Mark, my painting buddy and strapping young man, who can reach the places my crooked old body cannot, has come too, laden with painting gear, and there’s also a posse of shearers over to clip the Gunna sheep, replete with collies, wide eyed at the sheer size of their canine co-traveller. “Is that a dog?” I can hear them thinking.

We make a merry crowd, scudding over the waves on a sunshiney morning.

Two long, hot-in-the-sun, cold-in-the-wind days later I scrape the last of the paint from the last of the tubs and declare the job done. Mike goes for a run along the beach while I lie full stretch on the machair, easing out my muscles one by one, and contemplate the energy of youth. Mr M gallops back and forth between us  – his flock has dispersed and he needs to keep check of both of them.

“Look” Mark’s voice snaps my dwam. I peer up but the sun is too bright, roll over and reach for the shiney thing he’s thrown to the grass beside me. It’s a disc of brass, worn thin and smooth. I rub the surface with my thumb and stare intently. Down the left hand edge is a faint M A and below it a firmer D. Nothing else.

“I bet it’s Mr M’s” says Mark, “it’s the right size and vintage to go with his collar and it was right there on the beach. If it had been there long someone else would have picked it up or the tides would have buried it”

“Ha! Could be. Hey Mr M is this yours?” his vast salty-wet hairiness collapses next to me and a big wet nose sniffs the disc, then my ear, then he rolls onto his back and lolls, limbs akimbo. 

“Well, who knows, but it’s worth hanging on to.” I pocket it.

It isn’t until we are landing back on Tiree that I think to ask, “what was the man’s accent Magnus?” “Irish” he shouts back as he reverses his boat off the beach, “west I’d say – Galway”. Magnus is a man who knows stuff. I don’t doubt for a moment that he’s right.

~~~

I’m at that age where I could still be bringing up children, might be caring for parents, or could even be helping with grandchildren. Fifty-something. But in fact I’m doing none of those things. My parents died, my children left home. I have a relationship list that could almost vie with Henry VIII: divorced, separated, died, divorced, deserted, desisted. I never know how to fill in that question – marital status – that seems to be asked whether one is applying for a council tax rebate or purchasing a washing machine. I usually tick “single” as it’s the truest of all the options (although perhaps I should start ticking them all).

The point is, I’m free. Free, in this instance, to head to Galway…