religion on the lighthouses,’ Finlay Watchorn continued Ronnie’s remarks, scratching his bearded chin with the stem of his pipe. I remember the taxi driver who took me across Arran had compared him to Eric Sykes, but to me he looked more like Captain Haddock from the Tin Tin books. ‘You’ll soon discover that we make fun of just about everything else, but no’ a man’s religion. Now let’s think about some lunch,’ and he rubbed his hands together. ‘I’m on lunches this week.’
Ronnie was bouncing a red ball for Comet, and as I turned round to see the dog jump and catch it between his teeth Finlay turned on the television set.
‘Let’s see what’s happening in the great outdoors. We aye watch the one o’ clock news before we settle down for lunch,’ he explained.
This was a novelty for me. During my two years as an art student I don’t think I’d bought a single newspaper and never possessed a television set. My recent television diet had been my weekly trip with my mates Lincoln, Albi, and Jogg to watch Colditz in the flat of Marion and Fionna, two good friends in third year who lived above a fish-and-chip shop on Dundee’s Peddie Street. Like many of my generation the war in Vietnam had weighed so heavily on my mind and disillusioned us about the ‘straight’ world that we’d sought to form an alternative world of our own. During my months on the lighthouses I found I was rejoining a shared reality, filling in the many gaps in recent history and what was soon to be called ‘popular culture’, an overly-academic term for entertainment, I’ve always thought.
The set took a few minutes to warm up, as they did in those days. Then immediately we were beamed live by satellite to the Watergate hearings in Washington.
‘Och, it’s no John Dean again?’ Finlay feigned dismay. ‘Bring on Tricky Dicky and yon Kissinger. Let’s hear what they have to say. Nail the bastards.’
I suddenly experienced the bizarre image of lighthouse keepers all around the globe, thanks to recent satellite technology, from Tierra del Feugo to Nova Scotia, being able to tune in on a daily basis to the world’s biggest political circus. It was rather cumbersomely known as The Senate Select Committee on Presidential Practices, but school kids and their grandparents from Paris to Peru knew it simply by its rather poetic tag of ‘Watergate’.
And as we tuned in Ronnie shouted advice, admonition and encouragement back at the main players on the black-and-white television set. Over the next few days I witnessed how Ronnie interacted with the television in this way no matter what was on. It didn’t matter if it was Emmerdale Farm, The Generation Game, Star Trek, or his favourite Skippy the Bush Kangaroo – they all got Ronnie’s wisdom or rebuke.
As we joined them from Pladda, John Wesley Dean III was getting the third degree from Sam Ervin Jr, chair of the committee. The camera closed in on Dean who was saying, ‘I do not know whether Attorney General John Mitchell approved the Watergate wiretapping operation.’
‘Pull the other one,’ Ronnie told him, wagging his finger at the screen. ‘Of course ye knew about it. You all did. You were up to your armpits in it.’
‘Now, now,’ Finlay admonished, ‘What about the presumption of innocence?’
I listened agog as Dean continued dropping metaphorical bombshells from another time zone with the same easy manner that Kissinger dropped real ones on the peasants of Cambodia. ‘It was the President who ordered the 1971 burglary of the psychiatrist’s office in Los Angeles,’ Dean protested. ‘They were looking for information about Daniel Ellsberg in relation to the Pentagon papers.’
At this point Duncan rejoined us from ‘doing the weather’, whatever that meant. John Dean was babbling on about Egil Krogh and the Plumbers, which I thought sounded like an ace name for a rock band or a James Bond villain. ‘Switch that rubbish off,’ Duncan commanded like an old testament prophet. ‘It is time to eat the food that the Good Lord has provided for us, courtesy of 84 George Street.’
‘Purvey time,’ Finlay Watchorn winked at me. ‘You sit yourself there, Peter. Our first course today is vegetable soup.’
Half a gallon of soup divided between four people is still about a pint each, and that is what we consumed along with a whole loaf of sliced white bread.
Mind you, the sea air had given me an appetite, and although I finished last, I did finish.
As I was licking my soup spoon clean and thinking to myself that that would keep me going nicely until tea time, Finlay was lifting what turned out to be a huge lamb casserole from the oven.
‘I’ll give you a hand with the rice,’ Ronnie offered, and before I knew it I was tucking into a meal that would have easily fed me for a week back in my student bedsit in Greenfield House.
As we ate, the wit and wisdom of my three new friends increasingly reduced me to tears of laughter as they ribbed each other on every aspect of their lives and coaxed me to join in.
‘Ronnie comes from just outside Perth, Peter,’ Finlay Watchorn told me. ‘But we dinnae hold that against him. What do they call it Ronnie, the Carse o’ Gowrie? They tell me Perthshire is a great place for growing mushrooms. They seem to respond well to the dampness and the lack of sunlight. I’ve never been there myself, thank God.’
‘Don’t you listen to him, Peter,’ Ronnie replied. ‘It’s a wonderful place, and not a lighthouse for miles. But of course you’re from the big city of Dundee, you must know Perth well.’
Finlay excused himself to check on the apple crumble as I squeezed in another mouthful of the most exquisite braised lamb.
‘Some more bread, laddie?’ Duncan inquired, opening another loaf while Ronnie gave us a run-down on yesterday’s edition of Skippy and his mates in the bush.
‘If you stay in the service long enough,’ Ronnie continued the Australian theme, ‘you’ll meet Ozzie MacGregor. He’s on Corsewall just now. Amazing set of boomerangs he’s carved from driftwood. Chucks them at the gannets and lets them float back to the beach.’
Over the coming days I witnessed how these three wonderful men could simultaneously carry out three separate conversations for sustained periods of time. Occasionally their quite discrete stories would converge and embrace before going their different ways, only to meet again half an hour down the track.
‘Time to do the dishes,’ Duncan eventually announced. ‘Then we’ll have our tea and biscuits.’
I was bloated, the only word for it. I’d managed a small serve of apple crumble and custard, but it seemed a reckless act.
Washing dishes immediately after eating a meal was another novelty to me. Normally I could go days without washing up, occasionally doing the whole lot in the bath in Greenfield House, one of many tricks I’d learned from Lincoln, my closest art school friend.
We moved to the sink where Finlay washed in what must have been near boiling water while Duncan and I dried. Ronnie put away.
‘Watch where he puts them,’ Duncan advised. ‘We all take turns at doing everything here.’
As we washed and dried they taught me about ‘the routine’.
‘Normally there’s only three of us on a lighthouse,’ Duncan spoke slowly and clearly. ‘So all lighthouse routines are built around the work being shared between three people. It’s very democratic.’
