be the student lighthouse keeper,’ he said, picking up my rucksack and throwing it in the back of a very old Sunbeam Talbot. Even by 1970s standards it looked very old, like a black bug made out of very heavy metals. It even had orange indicators that flicked sideways out of the side of the chassis.
‘Come on then, son, let’s get you to the lighthouse. You’re the fifth student keeper I’ve taken there this year,’ he said with a mysterious glint in his eye, and I noticed he was about to drive in his worn carpet slippers. ‘And you know, I’ve never brought a single one back. They do say that the keepers on Pladda are cannibals and on a quiet night you can hear the tortured screams of the young relief keepers just before their throats are cut.’
I must have looked a bit pale, for he punched me on the shoulder and laughed long and hard. ‘Dinnae mind me,’ he went on. ‘They’re a fine lot on Pladda. I know them all. You won’t want to leave you’ll be having such fun. They’re real jokers so they are. Finlay Watchorn’s on there at the moment. He’s mad as a meat-axe. Funnier than Eric Sykes is Finlay. Then there’s Ronnie, he’s got another week to do. No’ got himsel’ a wife yet has Ronnie, but he’s got a fine wee spaniel for company. An’ when I bring Ronnie ashore next week for his holidays you’ll maybe get to meet the Professor. He’s a local gentleman, a retired school keeper. He’s English, but we’ll no’ hold that against him for he has a very fine manner. Mind you, Duncan the PLK has his religion. He’s a Wee Free and Sundays are pretty dull when Duncan’s around.’
‘What’s a PLK?’ I asked
‘Aye, I can see you’ve got a lot to learn. A PLK is a Principal Lighthouse Keeper. I’ve had at least a dozen PLKs in this cab in the past thirty years. If it wasn’t for the Northern Lighthouse Board I’d have gone bust years ago.’ And he blew his nose hard on a snotty rag.
‘That seems like a lot to me,’ I replied. ‘Why don’t they stay longer?’
‘Did they not tell you anything at George Street? I presume they gave you an interview, an’ a wee plate of biscuits and some tea? Bet you chatted about everything except how a lighthouse actually works. I know more aboot it than them, an’ I just drive a taxi,’ he said with a mixture of pride and frustration. ‘Civil bloody servants, I ask you. Scunners.’ I waited for more enlightenment and he soon continued.
‘Look laddie, if you were becoming a full-time keeper instead of being trained up as a student, they would send you to different lights all over Scotland for your first two years. You mightnae visit every light but you’d certainly spend a few weeks on a great many. You’d get to know the service and they’d get to know you.’
I appreciated what he was telling me and kept quiet. I was also trying to hold my breath as the cab smelled like a hamster cage.
‘Then you’d get your first real posting,’ and his hand swept low towards the horizon to add dramatic effect. ‘It might be to a rock, or an island or to a mainland coastal station. Aye, and you’d get a free house for your wife and family on the mainland and all your neighbours would be lighthouse families too.’
I tried to picture it. It seemed bizarre. At that point we were stuck behind a dozen large cows who were slowly being herded across the narrow country road from one field to another.
‘But the thing is,’ my wise informant told me, ‘you only ever spend about three years on the one light and then you are posted to another. Would you like an apple? There’s one in the glove box. They did tell you I hope that there is always three keepers on every light? I mean you willnae be there on your tod. In fact, I take it you are here for training since you seem to know sod all about the job?’
‘Aye, that’s right,’ I said, feeling like a real idiot. I dipped into my recent past and offered him a late teenage scowl.
‘Well then, there will be four of you, includin’ yoursel. The other three will work their normal watches through the night and you just have to watch what they do, learn how tae do it yoursel’ … Aye Archie, see you in the pub tonight. Set them up for me,’ he shouted after the farmer as the last cow disappeared into the field.
‘It keeps everybody sane. Three years on a rock off the East Coast, three years up in Shetland, then three on an island in the Hebrides, then doon the west coast. That’s the way it goes, something like that. Fine and dandy. And everyone else is changing at different times too. In some ways its toughest for the wives and kiddies. Different homes, new schools, father and husband gone half the year.’
‘Why have we stopped?’ I asked. We seemed to be in the middle of nowhere.
‘This is where you get out, son. There will be a tractor along to pick you up in a minute, or maybe in an hour or two. Hopefully before it gets dark. And watch out for the wolves. There’s a lot of sheep gone missing recently, and no one’s seen the minister’s boy since he went out collecting butterflies.’
He winked at me, and before he could drive off I asked, ‘What do you mean a tractor will be along?’
‘Tam Harris is your man. He owns all these sheep that ye see, and keeps a few more on Pladda itsel’. He’s done a deal with George Street. He’s your ferryman farmer and in return he gets the grazing rights to Pladda. Not that there’s much there, but enough to feed a few hungry sheep.’ And with that he was gone.
Suddenly there was a great silence around me, then gradually I heard the country sounds, the whirring of dragonflies, the cry of a lamb, and the distant sounds of the sea as an oyster catcher screamed.
I settled down for what might be a long wait, watching the tarmacadam road slowly blister in the heat. I was wearing jeans and a T-shirt and everything else was in my rucksack. The air smelled of summer. I leaned against the dry stone dyke and saw that a small burn was running through the field to the distant sea. It reminded me of a poem I knew I had with me in an anthology of American poetry. I’d brought a few poetry books with me, my current favourite being Poems from Poetry and Jazz in Concert which I had read at least a dozen times.
I rolled a cigarette and rummaged around for a Mars bar which I thought I’d better eat as it was beginning to liquefy in its wrapper. Still, it hadn’t leaked on to my poetry books. I pulled out the American anthology and found the poem I wanted. I had been planning this moment. It is something that artists seem to do. I remember a documentary about the painter David Hockney and his life in California. He talked about how when he drives from coast to desert he always plays a certain operatic tape in his car and times it so that the musical climax happens just as he is cresting the top of a hill and the desert landscape with setting sun is revealed below. In a similar vein I had been keeping my eyes peeled for anything that resembled a river. I hopped on to the wall and sitting above what was admittedly just a narrow stream, I began to read a poem by Langston Hughes called ‘The Negro Speaks of Rivers’.
I read it two or three times, pausing between each reading and surveying the land and the sea before me. At that age I didn’t know such moments were called sublime, but the experience was no less sublime for my ignorance. On my third reading I sounded the words out loud – ‘I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young. I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep … My soul has grown deep like the rivers’ – and was only dimly aware of the puttering of a tractor close by. This would be the terror element of the sublime just arriving. When the engine switched off I looked up. I saw before me a very big man, probably in his fifties, standing astride a Massey Ferguson tractor.
‘Don’t tell me they’ve sent another fucking hippy!’ were his first words to me. ‘Hop on then,
