Writing for Fun
Winter - Pete Norman
December 2014
Winter is coming . . . and it will be the death of me.
The days are growing darker and the nights are drawing in fast. There are barely five hours of daylight each day now, and with the heavy clouds that hang over the island like a shroud it seems as if the sun is nothing more than a distant memory.
The ice is spreading across the burn. You can watch it creeping, insidious, inevitable across the sluggish water; in a few days it will be crusted over completely and I will struggle to keep a small hole clear. A man can survive for days without food, but water is fundamental to life.
The hills are capped with white now, spreading downwards day on day and when the snows finally come in earnest, the rest of the island will quickly follow. It always used to look so pretty, so pristine, so pure, like the icing on a wedding cake, but this year it will carry down with it the shadow of the Reaper.
You have to be tough to survive in the more remote parts of the Shetlands, especially when they are as isolated as it is here, on the very tip of Britain. The nearest land north of here is Greenland. Me? I used to be tough . . . but all that has changed now.
I don't really know why I am writing this, because in the end it is not going to help me one bit – the fact that you are reading this will mean that my suffering has finally ended – I just hope it might help you to understand what happened to me here, what happened to the last sad resident of North Euwick.
I was born here, 72 years ago, in this very cottage, the youngest of three sons of Douglas and Rhone Buchanan. The Great War took the other two – on the bloody sands of Dunkirk – I was too young to join them. Mother never recovered from the terrible loss and father followed soon after . . . and then I was alone.
At that time the three other cottages had been occupied; eight lost souls all struggling to scrape an existence from three square miles of almost barren rock in the furthest reaches of the North Sea with a handful of skittish ponies who would run if you encroached within a hundred yards, a few small patches of tatties, cabbages and neeps and a communal shed to smoke the mackerel.
But as each of their bairns grew to adulthood, they drifted away, migrating to the mainland and a better life. And then one by one their parents succumbed to the rigours and hardships of the life, making their own inevitable migration, until there was just one idiot remaining . . . me . . . Alastair Buchanan.
I should have left when old Gordon was carried off – he was the last of the others – God knows Angus at the little Post Office on Unst did his level best to persuade me. When I rejected his entreaties he called me a stubborn, obstinate old fool and I laughed in his face. Angus, the bugger, just laughed back at me. He is a good man, a good friend, my point of contact with the real world beyond this rock. Once a month I take my small boat the forty minute trip across to Unst and draw from Angus the pittance of a pension that Her Majesty's government considers sufficient to keep a soul alive and then we share a wee dram and the latest gossip before I fill the boat with sacks and tins from Mrs McCredy's General Store – enough to keep me from starving until the next trip.
You will think the same as Angus, I am sure, that I must be truly mad to remain here, but what else am I to do? I have no money, no employment, all I have to my name is this crumbling stone cottage which is worthless, a little boat that is as old and tired as me, and the rest of my possessions would barely fill a handcart.
Stop it now, I'm getting maudlin . . . I was born here and I belong here. This is my life; this is me; this is what I was born to do; I have known nothing else.
But that was before that Thursday. My life changed forever on that damnable Thursday.
The day started much as it usually does around here: the sea was easy and quiet, my little Bonny Mary chugged contentedly around the pots while a lone Sea Eagle cruised effortlessly overhead searching for his supper. For my own efforts I collected a small box of crabs and a sizeable lobster. The nets yielded precious little, but there was a token catch for me, one for my ever present eagle shadow and a few tiddlers to share with the otter family that play in the burn. I was happy and relaxed – maybe I was a little too relaxed, for I never caught the signs. A faint metallic tang in the air, a softening of the breeze; almost imperceptible, but when you know them they are certain warning of an oncoming storm. But on that Thursday I missed them until it was too late; my usually keen senses had abandoned me. The wind whipped up in an instant, clutching death in its icy fingers and fanning the waves backwards from the shore, directly into me, rising higher and higher. I turned the Bonny Mary into the wind, into the waves, and prayed for deliverance . . . but the Gods of the storm had decided otherwise.
We had made it to within fifty feet of the beach when the wind turned again, swirling like a hurricane. It picked up the Bonny Mary and spun her around and around, dashing her against the rocks; I was helpless to protect her. The boat filled with water through a large breach in her side . . . through which my day's catch disappeared; I abandoned her to her fate and swam like a madman for the shore, but the waves were monstrous and merciless. Time after time I was smashed against the rocks until finally I lost my reason and surrendered to the overwhelming power of the sea.
I have no idea how much later it was that I finally came round, but I was half up on the beach, savage foam scouring my body, filling my lungs with salt and sand. I retched back the foul muck and then I saw my Bonny Mary a little further along, a sad hulk part beached and rolling helpless in the surf.
I struggled to my feet, but a searing pain in my left ankle overtook me and I fell back into the roiling water. It took me an hour or more to drag my exhausted body back to the cottage with no help at all from my left leg. It was only when I had closed the door on the storm that the numbness began to fade and true pain took its place. Now, I am not a man given to self pity, but the reality was that although I had survived the storm, it stretched the definition of survival to the extreme. I had no means of summoning help and my poor Bonny Mary was shattered, damaged possibly beyond repair.
At first I was certain my ankle was broken – it was the purest agony – but after a careful and painful examination I had the temerity to hope that it was only a sprain and perhaps in a few days I might regain the use of it. I tipped the contents of the medical box onto the table and did what I could, but like the fool that I am I was never prepared for anything such as this. I broke a chair apart to splint the leg, tying it down with strong fishing twine, but whenever I tried to walk the slightest pressure brought me close to collapse. I could do no more; I sank exhausted onto the bed.
Now, Scottish weather is a strange creature, unique and completely unpredictable – four seasons in one day. The storm passed, the winds abated and a sunset of gold heralded in the night; if I was not seeing it with my own eyes and feeling it with my own leg I might have been able to believe that I had dreamed it all.
That was all of ten days ago and my ankle is still no better. I have sufficient pain killers to hold the worst of the pain at bay, but my supply is dwindling fast and I do not know how I will be able to move without them . . . and then I am truly lost. For the moment I am still able to struggle to the burn to collect water and to the shed for wood, but I can carry precious little each time and every day, every hour, winter is strengthening her grip and I know that my time is near. I am having to ration my food supplies which are almost out. I cannot survive more than a few days more.
Several times I have hobbled down to the beach and made futile attempts to repair the Bonny Mary, but she is too badly damaged. If my ankle was sound and if the ice and snow and biting wind would give me some respite then I might just have a hope of patching her up for one short trip, to get medical help, food, warmth and a little comfort, but that is all beyond me now. Winter is taking control. The Reaper is coming for me.
I am drifting through the hazy maelstrom of reality and hallucination and it is hard to separate the two. I hear my mother's voice calling me from my warm bed to a hot bowl of porridge by the fireside, but when I struggle to my feet the porridge and my dear mother has vanished and I am all alone once more. I see the huge face of a pony peering in through the window, misting the glass with its breath but the pane freezes over and I am too weak to seek the comfort of a fellow warm blooded creature even if it was really there at all, which I doubt. I hear the sound of my Bonny Mary chugging contentedly at the beach, ready to take me away to safety . . .
I am all in. Sleep . . . I must sleep. That is the only comfort I have left.
Angus leapt from the boat and hauled it up onto the sand. The wreck of the Bonny Mary gave substance to his worst fears. It was obvious now why Alastair Buchanan had been late collecting his pension. As his son secured the mooring he scanned the area for signs of life but could see none. He hurried up the beach towards the cottage but stopped at the door . . . it was open and a deep drift of snow had crept from the threshold into the room.
His heart sank; he was too late.
Inside, the fire was out; the cottage was freezing; icy tendrils smothered the windows in elaborate webs. In the bed set against the far wall a lifeless figure lay huddled beneath a thick mess of blankets. Angus felt his shoulders sag. As he crossed the room a single sheet of paper on the table caught his eye. The last words of his old friend.
He read slowly and painfully down the page to the bottom line on which were written just the date in the margin, which was today, and three words which filled him with despair . . .
. . . WINTER IS HERE.
A slight rustle came from behind him. He spun around and from within the heap of blankets two tired eyes were watching him.
A soft whisper, almost inaudible, 'If you're not a hallucination, you old bugger, then you'd better have a bottle in your pocket.'
