is easy from a distance of over a quarter of a century to forget what happened on which lighthouse, or who told what tale in the depths of the night. Perhaps it was because the keepers on Pladda made such an impression that recollections of the island itself, and of the light, are hazier. The next two islands I was posted to are far clearer, but on them I had less to learn. I seem to recall that there were actually two lighthouses on Pladda, immediately adjacent to each other. I think they belonged to different centuries and that it was the smaller of the two which was currently in use. I feel frustrated that I cannot remember such an obvious thing, while the outpourings of the television come with almost instant recall.
Then there were the fog signals. Again, I cannot remember which type of signal was on each island. And yet, as I type, gradually it is coming back. Some were massive steam driven things occupying whole sheds. They looked like a cross between a Tibetan horn (if you’ve read Tintin in Tibet you will be able to picture it) and a Tinguley sculpture. The older ones more than nodded in the direction of Heath Robinson’s quirky machines. Others were sleek and modern like a bank of fire sirens. Either way, they were hell to live with when in operation.
Memory is strange. Largely, it is my early days on Pladda that remain with me most vividly. Everything was new to me and I had to take copious notes to remind me what had to be switched on or off, when and how. I still have those notes in a kind of on-running diary I had been keeping since I was about sixteen. In those days, Woolworths in Byres Road, the main artery in the West End of Glasgow, sold packs of three spiral-bound yellow notebooks, each pack not much bigger than a packet of cigarettes and thin enough to slip in a shirt pocket. I must have gone through dozens of them, scribbling poetry, making sketches for paintings, jotting down daily events.
One such entry, for example, tells me that not long before leaving for Pladda I went to the art school film club. With all the bluntness of a Spectator film critic I wrote, and I can hardly believe it now: ‘Went with Lincoln, Albi and Jogg to see an Andy Warhol film called Chelsea Girls. It was the biggest load of rubbish I have ever had the misfortune to sit through in my entire nineteen years. Talk about boring!!!!!! We tried to get our money back. We did not succeed but went to the Tav instead. Glad I am a painter.’
When I returned to the living quarters that first afternoon I found Ronnie was already starting to prepare the evening meal. His watch was the otherwise invisible one from two in the afternoon till six in the evening. The only other duty in this period was to make a radio and weather check. I could not face even looking at food, so I disappeared to my room and immediately fell into a deep sleep. In that sleep I had the first of many dreams of being surrounded by a flat sea on a sunny summer’s day. The light is diamond hard and sharp as a lemon. Strange islands break the surface tension and occasional rowing boats drift past. I realise that my eyes are the eyes of the sea and I am looking all around me. I have no body. I sink to the ocean floor and linger there until the most godawful ringing noise wakes me up. There is a small bell in my room and its size is nowhere relative to its strength. It is of a similar type to the sort of maid’s bell found in Victorian terraced houses across what was once ignominiously called the Empire. I rub my eyes and my mouth has that horrible late afternoon post-sleep taste in it. The bell is still ringing but stops abruptly. I look at my watch. It is precisely five o’clock.
I pull on my trousers and shuffle through to the living area. It seems to be teeming with people and is heavy with pipe tobacco. No, there are only my three companions but they seem to be doing so many different things in such a small space that it appears more crowded than it actually is. Duncan is winding the grandfather clock with a large key. ‘Come in laddie, come in. I chust thought I’d let you hear what the bell sounds like that will wake you up when it is time for you to begin your watch. You’ve got a day’s work ahead of you before you go back to dreamland.’
‘Have you started dreaming about the sea yet?’ Finlay Watchorn asked, and I felt like my brain had been robbed. ‘It happens to all of us, some sooner than others,’ he continued. He was busy sorting through the newspapers and magazines that Harris the ferryman had brought across. ‘We all start to dream of the sea, and our dreams soon become like a second home.’
I noticed one copy of the Sunday Post, several of The Times, a People’s Friend, a small stack of The Daily Record from Glasgow, and a copy of Time magazine. ‘Harris aye brings across our reading material,’ Finlay explained. ‘His daughter works at the hotel and aye keeps what’s left at the end of the day. Once we’ve read them we use them to light the fire. Then there’s the Professor with his damn crosswords.’
Ronnie had obviously got the evening meal under control from the burbling and clicking sounds coming from the stove where several pots of different sizes simmered like a private percussion group. He was washing up the utensils at the sink and craning his head round in an attempt to watch Daktari on the BBC. ‘No’ the hypodermic!’ he shouted at the television vet who was in the process of operating on what looked like a baby giraffe. ‘You’re no’ going to stick that thing in the wee creature?’ and Comet, playing at his feet, barked along in sympathy.
I can’t remember the details of my second lighthouse meal with the same clarity as the first. There were three courses, as every meal seemed to have, and the middle one involved a lot of meat while the third was over-heavy on sugar. I do remember the novelty of the first course, though, which was freshly caught crab on Jacob’s Cream Crackers. Magic. I was beginning to worry about what I would prepare, or more precisely how I would prepare it, when my turn came around – which it would, with the cold inevitability of a revolving light.
‘Ronnie caught six of them in his creel,’ Finlay explained. ‘We’ll be eating crab for a few days yet.’ I had no problem with that. They were delicious.
Afterwards, with the dishes washed and the jokes all told, each seemed to go their separate way. Finlay was going to be on the watch which began at two in the morning, so he went to bed to get some sleep. Finlay, Duncan explained, would be woken by Ronnie around 1.45 a.m. Ronnie in turn would previously have got in an hour or two’s sleep himself and be woken by Duncan and myself around 9.45 p.m. It appeared that Duncan and I were already ‘on watch’ and he would devote the next few hours, until it was time to light the light, to going over ‘the routine’ with me in some detail. I excused myself momentarily and went to get one of my little yellow notebooks. I have it in front of me now. The blue ink has faded slightly. It is a little the worse for wear. But all the instructions are still there, as recorded at Duncan’s elbow. It begins:
Light Duties –
1) Turning on the light:
a) Go up to lightroom and light bunsens
b) Lift out stops
c) Let them soak
d) Turn round and light
e) Place under light at top between cross-sections (leave for ten minutes)
2) Raise the blinds
3) Go down and switch on pumps (turn on numbers 1 to 3 in any order)
4) Lighting the light
a) Light tapir (scribbled note in margin about South American mammal)
b) Turn dial to 20
c) Light fumes when they appear (above the light)
d) Remove pan from underneath and blow out flames
e) Empty pan
f) Go down and start turning
5) Fill in log books
6) Remember: When ‘off ’ gear handle is down
7) Oil generators and empty waste
All of these instructions became much clearer when Duncan eventually took me up the stairs of the lighthouse and turned the theory into practice. For the moment, I was still an armchair lighthouse keeper.
Duncan