Entry Island

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

I have floored the beams now in the pitch of my cabin roof to make an attic. I have built a spare room and indoor toilet at the back, and a covered porch with fly screens at the front. I often sit on the porch at the end of the day and watch the sun set over the trees, and I dream about how things might have been had I not been separated from Ciorstaidh on the quay at Glasgow that fateful day.

I have cleared and ploughed most of my land, and grow enough to feed myself with some left over to sell. At certain times of the year, myself and a few of the other men from Gould walk across the border to earn a bit of cash on the bigger farms at Vermont in the United States. At others I am busy enough on my own land. Especially at harvest time when I have to rush to bring in the crops before the first frosts, which can come as early as September.

Recently I have obtained part-time work teaching English to the Gaelic-speaking children at Gould school. Most of them arrive having spoken only Gaelic in the home, but when it comes to learning to read and write, it’s in English that they must do it.

The reason I write about this today is that a remarkable thing happened at the school just yesterday morning.

There is a new teacher this year, Jean Macritchie. She’s married to Angus Macritchie, the mayor of the Lingwick municipality. She’s a very genteel sort of lady. In her mid-forties, I would say. No airs and graces about her, but polite and softly spoken. She wears print cotton dresses and silk shawls and has a sort of artistic air about her. In fact, art is her great passion, and she has instituted a new art class for the children.

It was lunchtime yesterday when I finally finished marking some papers and I wandered into her classroom. Everyone had gone to eat, but the still-life that Mrs Macritchie had set up for the children to draw was still there. Just a jug and a glass of water and some fruit. And the efforts of the children themselves were still lying on their desks.

I wandered around looking at them. Most were pretty awful. Some of them even made me laugh. And one or two were quite good. I have no idea what impelled me to do it, for I have never drawn anything in my life, but I had a sudden fancy to see what kind of a fist I could make of it myself. So I got a fresh sheet of paper and some charcoal from Mrs Macritchie’s desk, and sat down to draw.

It’s amazing how I got sucked into it. I don’t know how long I sat there following the lines that my eye guided me to draw, using the flat of the charcoal to create the light and the shade, but I didn’t hear Mrs Macritchie coming in until she spoke. I just about jumped out of my skin. I looked up and there she was peering down at my sketch. ‘How long have you been drawing, Sime?’

‘I’ve no idea,’ I said. ‘About half an hour, maybe.’

She laughed then. ‘No, I mean, is drawing something you’ve been doing for a long time?’

It was my turn to laugh. ‘No, not at all. This is the first I’ve ever done.’

Her smile faded. ‘You’re joking, aren’t you?’

‘Well … no,’ I said, and glanced at my drawing. ‘Is it that bad?’ I was hoping to make her laugh again, but she remained quite serious.

‘I don’t know if you realise it, Sime, but you have a very real talent.’ It was news to me. She clasped her hands thoughtfully in front of her face, resting her fingertips on her lips. ‘What would you say if I offered to give you lessons?’

I looked at her in astonishment. ‘Seriously?’

‘Seriously.’

I thought about it for all of two seconds then nodded my head vigorously. ‘I’d like that.’

Today was the last day of the school term, and the start of the holidays for the children. Of course, it means that my teaching income will dry up till September, and I’ll have to put in a hard summer shift on the land.

It also means putting aside my painting until the start of the new term when I will have time once again. I have taken so much pleasure in the discovery of this unexpected talent. Mrs Macritchie has been very patient this last year, painstaking in teaching me good technique. First in drawing, and then in painting. But it is in the painting that I have found my greatest pleasure. At first I painted the things I saw around me. People and places. And then at some point, I’m not sure exactly when, I began to paint the landscapes that I remembered from home. Baile Mhanais, the castle at Ard Mor. Seascapes, mountains, the bare windswept peat bogs of the Hebrides. These past months I have spent most of my money on materials. Canvas and paints and brushes. I fear it is becoming something of an addiction.

At any rate, I was just packing up my things when Mrs Macritchie came into my classroom. Her behaviour seemed oddly casual, a little unnatural.

‘Sime,’ she said, ‘you remember that painting you gave me? The landscape with the stag, and the hunters shooting at it from behind the rocks.’

‘Yes.’ I remembered it only too well. The painting of it had taken me right back to the day of my father’s funeral when I had hunted down the wounded stag to put it out of its misery. I had taken pleasure in giving it to her as a gift, a small return for all the time she’d invested in me.

‘Mr Morrison and his wife from Red Mountain were at our house for dinner last night. He’s established a sawmill over there.’

I nodded, a little puzzled. I couldn’t imagine where this was leading.

‘Mr Morrison is from the Isle of Lewis himself. He saw your painting before dinner, when we were in the drawing room. It hangs above the fireplace there. He was so taken by it that after dinner he went back through to stand and look at it for a very long time. When I asked him what it was that drew him to it, he said simply that it took him home. He said he could almost touch the heather, and smell the peat smoke blowing in the wind.’ She hesitated. ‘He asked me if he could buy it.’

‘Well, he can’t,’ I said indignantly. ‘It was a present to you.’

She smiled. ‘Sime, I’d be very happy to hang any one of your paintings on my wall in its place. Besides which, Mr Morrison said he would happily pay five dollars for it.’

I felt my jaw slacken and my mouth fell open in surprise. Five dollars was a small fortune. ‘Really?’

‘He wants that painting, Sime.’

I didn’t know what to say.

‘I suggest, if you agree, that I sell it to him for the amount mentioned and hand the money straight over to you.’

‘Less a percentage for yourself,’ I said quickly. ‘Since I would never be doing this at all if it wasn’t for you.’

But she just laughed. ‘Sime, Sime … I didn’t give you your talent. God did that. I just helped you harness it. The money is yours. You’ve earned it. But I have a further suggestion.’

I couldn’t for the life of me imagine what that might be.

‘I think it’s time you held a wee exhibition of your work. You’ve got enough now to make a sizeable presentation. The church hall would be a good venue for it, and if we advertise it properly, it should draw a sizeable crowd. Most folk around here still remember the islands. And you capture the very essence of them in your paintings. You could sell a fair few.’

I am so excited that I know there is no point in even trying to sleep. I have no idea what time it is, nor do I care. I have been sitting out here on the porch ever since I got back from town, and I watched the sun go down over the trees a long time ago now.

We held the exhibition of my work in the church hall today, and there must have been two hundred folk or more went round looking at my pictures during the course of the afternoon. And not just from Lingwick. From all over. From as far away as Tolsta in the east and Bury in the west. I had thirty paintings and drawings on display. And we sold every single one of them. Everyone from the old country, it seems, wants a piece of home hanging in their house.

I am sitting here now with nearly forty dollars in my pocket and a list of folk who have commissioned me to do paintings specially for them. It’s a small bloody fortune, and more than I could ever have expected to make doing almost anything else. And there is nothing else that I love doing quite as much as this.

For the first time in my whole life I know what it is that I want to do with it.