Holy Terror in the Hebrides Read Free Page B

storms will be comin’ soon, now. There’s no’ a trace o’ land from here to Newfoundland, ye see, and the winds can get a wee bit strong when they’ve that many miles of sea to cross.”
    “I can well imagine. Hurricanes, do you mean?”
    “No’ hurricanes, quite, but gales, wi’ rain, an’ thunder. The seas rise, an’ ye canna see yer hand before yer face, it’s that dark. And wi’ no warnin’, oot of a clear blue sky, as they say.”
    I glanced out of the window at the clear, blue sky and the leaves moving lazily in the gentle breeze, and Maggie chuckled.
    “No, ye’ve no need to worry today. It’ll be a week or two, likely, before they start, though ye never know. But that’s why the tourist season here ends at the beginning of October. I mind one year, when the storms began airly, there was a couple oot in a dinghy. Germans, they were, good people, wi’ a pair o’ bairns waitin’ behind.” She sighed and paused, remembering, and then finished her coffee and stood up briskly. “’Twas the next mornin’ before the Coastguard could get their helicopters oot to search. The boat had fetched up on Ardnamurchan, twenty, twenty-five miles northeast o’ here. He was still alive, but they never found her. I canna offer ye more coffee, for I’ve drunk the last drop, but I’d be happy to make ye a cup of tea?”
    I can take a hint as well as anybody, and the gorgeous afternoon was beckoning. “No, thanks, but I’ll be back tomorrow, I expect. So nice to meet you, and we’ll hope the storms don’t come early this year.”
    I put the sad little story out of my mind and went exploring. The Heritage Centre itself I would save for another day; it was inside and I wanted to be out, out in the sunshine, out in the air that was reviving me with every breath. I wandered across the road to the very lovely ruins of the Nunnery.
    It may sound odd to refer to ruins as lovely, but the soft pink granite of the broken walls glowed in the afternoon sun, and the few arches that still remained had lost none of their delicate beauty. A well-tended garden nodded gently in what might have been the old cloister, and here and there tiny plants bloomed cheerfully in niches of the walls. I sat on a bench in the sun and watched as small birds flitted in and out of the empty windows or perched atop roofless walls. Bees and butterflies and large, beautiful dragonflies roamed among the flowers, and in one sunny corner a small black-and-white cat sat washing itself, now and then pausing, one paw in the air, to eye the birds. The Nunnery was, in its gentle way, a busy place, but utterly peaceful.
    I sat, drowsily trying to analyze the quiet. It wasn’t an absence of sound, exactly. I could hear the beat of wings when a bird flew overhead, the clop of a horse’s hooves as one of the wagons went down the village street. Somewhere people laughed, and a dog barked.
    It wasn’t until an ancient tractor chugged noisily past the Nunnery that I put my finger on it. There was, except for the odd car or farm vehicle, no traffic noise on Iona. I knew that residents could bring cars onto the island, but they seemed to use them mostly between home and the ferry landing. Otherwise, everyone cycled or walked, so the loudest noises were natural ones, and the occasional toot of the ferry.
    I stretched luxuriously in the sun. I could get used to this.
    However, I realized shortly, I could also get what my grandmother used to call “the dead sets” if I didn’t move soon. I rose reluctantly and headed on down to the village.
    The shop displaying Scottish crafts drew me, but I resisted temptation and went instead to the jetty, the heart of the village. Perching on a post, I watched for a while. The little ferry plied tirelessly back and forth, each time taking a few passengers and bringing a few back. On one trip a garbage truck, looking very much out of place, lumbered off the boat and groaned its way down the village street, emptying trash bins