Campbell Eighth Moon Bridge

1. Auflage 2024
ISBN: 978-1-80425-178-2
Verlag: Luath Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 160 Seiten

'They say he brought back some Spanish gold and others say he didn't bring anything except the rags he was wearing but had the power to turn stone into gold and that the two stories somehow got mixed up.' Did Olghair MacKenzie steal alchemical secrets from the Egyptians? Or was he a rebel pirate who found refuge on a small Scottish island after the Armada? Does his treasure still lie hidden there?  Six hundred years after MacKenzie's death, an ex-footballer returns to the island where he spent his youth. As the first  frosts of winter arrive, Jack moves into a fisherman's cottage fragrant with the scent of the sea. After many restless years, it is a true homecoming. Delighting in his employment as postie, he starts to reconnect with himself, with his family and with this tiny community.  The tale of Olghair MacKenzie has fascinated Jack since childhood and he resolves to discover the truth behind the legend. To do so, he must unlock the secret of a bridge the shape of a perfect wave, understand the significance of stone number 759 and find out what is meant by the eighth moon. Can Jack trust the dreams of the local seer, or grasp the clue in the old Gaelic way of counting the months? Jack's quest is truly magical, for it will lead him into very personal territory, unveiling links that tied him to the island long before he ever set foot there.

ANGUS PETER CAMPBELL is an award-winning novelist, poet, journalist, broadcaster and actor. He was born and brought up on the islands of South Uist and Seil. He attended Oban High School where his English teacher was Iain Crichton Smith, then graduated with Honours in History and Politics from the University of Edinburgh. His novel, Memory and Straw, won the Saltire Society Fiction Book of the Year 2017, Electricity was shortlisted as the Saltire Society Fiction Book of the Year 2023, and his second crime novel, Constabal Murdo 2, won the Gaelic Literature Awards Fiction Book of the Year 2022.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Campbell, Angus Peter

Leseproben

1

I’M NOT EVEN sure it was an island, though everyone called it The Island. Of course, before the bridge was built it would have been, though there were some arguments over that too. Hadn’t the ancient tribes placed shoogly stones in the water so they could go across at low tide, and hear the stones moving when strangers – enemies – came calling? And didn’t the Romans build a stone path for their chariots, which the Vikings then destroyed because what need did they have for solid roads when the seas and the oceans and the lochs and rivers were their highways?

But the bridge is modern. Relatively new, anyway. Built by General Wade to garrison his troops in the old castle, but – more importantly – to open up the island to trade and commerce with the mainland. So the islanders would not be so insular and clannish and suspicious and bloody-minded, but would learn that the mainland merchants posed no danger to them. Dissolute mainlanders who had no strength because they didn’t eat enough fish and wore thin, useless clothing. Who carried no swords or flames of fire. They just wanted to make a bit of money and sell shoes and horses and nails to the islanders. And the mainland wives and women and girls could be as charming and able to bear as many heavy loads of peats on their backs, and as many children, as the island women. It’s a pretty, arched bridge. They say the rebel pirate Olghair MacKenzie hid his priceless Spanish treasure in it after the Armada, but only children and old people believed that story.

All that’s history. For the bridge now carries an endless stream of traffic across, day and night. The early morning school bus, and the forestry van and the fish-farm lorry and all the individual cars taking hotel and office and road workers into the nearest large town, and the bread van and the fish van and the library van and the coal lorry coming over the other way bringing sliced bread and filleted haddock and books and trebles to the island, and – of course – all the visitors and tourists coming over the bridge for the day, just to see what The Island is like. Is it as pretty as it looks in the pictures?

It’s bare and rocky on the north, towards the open sea. And green and lush on the south side, where the bridge and the firth and all the gardens are, smelling of lilac and wild garlic and buddleias. That’s where we came to stay.

My father was the schoolmaster. We’d always lived in the city, but this job came up. I didn’t know anything about it until the whole deal was done and Dad announced to me one night after supper that we’d be leaving and going north in a month’s time. North. There would probably be snow and lots of ice and we might even live in an igloo and wear furs and sealskins to bed, as in the books. Though it was never that far north. Just a hundred miles up the road.

‘It’s like Treasure Island,’ he said to me. ‘Loads of caves and coves and rocks and hills and hiding places.’

‘And pirates?’ I asked.

He laughed.

‘Not unless you and I become one!’

I don’t think Mum wanted to go. As I sat in my bedroom upstairs, reading, I could hear their voices. Dad calm and measured, in that quiet voice which I knew annoyed Mum so much. I heard her once saying,

‘Why don’t you speak normal? If you’re angry, just speak in an angry voice rather than in that sweet, puddingy way.’

I thought it was funny. But that was the voice he was now using, and though I couldn’t hear what Mum was saying I knew by her higher pitch that she was annoyed. ‘Shop,’ I heard her say, and ‘flowers’, but then Dad’s soft, reasoned voice resumed again, then there was silence.

We arrived on The Island in early summer. Mum made all the arrangements, because she was the one who did that kind of work. I helped her a bit, putting books into boxes and cutlery and pictures and ornaments into crates and labelling them.

Especially labelling them, because I was good at writing and I liked using the non-smudge pens. Magazines, I wrote on one box. And Gardening Books on another. And Cooking. Knives. Forks. Spoons. Plates. Pots. Careful DO NOT SHAKE I wrote on the big box with Mum’s three small Delftware vases, well wrapped between tea towels and protected by brown wrapping paper. And they survived, taking pride of place on the dresser in the living room of our new home.

I was ten and just finishing Primary Six. Dad said he would have preferred to have moved a year later, when I finished Primary Seven. That would have been a cleaner break for me, without having to change from one primary school to another. But really he had little choice, because the job advert was one of those once-in-a-lifetime opportunities he didn’t want to miss. It was unlikely to happen again.

Term time finished on a Friday, so we moved the first weekend of the summer holidays. The removal men came in the morning while I was still at school and when I came back home at three o’ clock everything was already inside the van. It was strange seeing the house empty, except for the things we couldn’t take: the bath and fireplace and flooring and kitchen units. I could see all the scratches and marks and dust and drawings on the walls, no longer hidden by tables and chairs and dressers and cupboards.

My crayon drawing of a dinosaur with fifteen legs and bright orange scales decorated the wall where the mirror had been, and the pencil marks of me growing bigger every birthday stretched up the window frame. I stood by the marks and was already taller than I had been on my last birthday. I was a bit sad that I couldn’t add to it. Though the new people would probably paint over it anyway. And I would make new marks at the new house and see how high they would go.

Mum and I got a lift up to The Island in the removal van. It was amazing being so high up in the front of the lorry. We only had a small car, and I always sat in the back looking out at the traffic or playing some kind of game to pass the time. Green car blue car was one of my favourites, and the other one was counting the numbers on the buses that passed and adding all the numbers up to see if I could reach a thousand before we arrived at our destination. I never did, unless we drove out into the country and met a 916 or a couple of 502s.

But high up in the removal lorry I could see everything. The cars down below were like toys, and as soon as we left the city I could see for miles and miles across the fields and over the lochs and up into the sky where jet clouds crossed and passed each other. I sat between the driver and Mum, so I could watch him control the gears and the big driving wheel and the row of lights. He showed me how they changed from white to blue to orange at the flick of a switch.

‘Orange when it’s foggy,’ he said, ‘and blue when it’s frosty.’

The most fun I had was listening to the sound the lorry made as we drove up past Loch Lomond and over the hills. It had eight big wheels and every time they hit a hole or bump in the road it made us all bounce up and down. Same as the time Dad had taken me to the Fair and we sat together on the horse that went round and round the carousel. Dad sat behind me, holding my waist, and we shrieked and laughed every time the horse galloped up and down while the man who operated it turned the big green and yellow wheel.

‘This lorry has six gears,’ the driver said. ‘And they’re all animals!’ We were stopped at lights.

‘See,’ he said. ‘When the lights turn green I’ll put it into first gear. And that’s a bear! Hear – deep and growly.’

And as the lorry moved he pushed it into second gear.

‘A tiger,’ he said.

Then third.

‘Sounds like a lion,’ I said.

Fourth was a leopard and fifth a panther. We leapt along the road, rivers tumbling on one side and the hills getting higher and higher as we climbed up into the Highlands. Everything was connected to everything else and could become something new, I thought. Otherwise how could all those rivers turn into big lochs and the lorry into all those magic animals? You could invent anything.

Our new house was next to the school, 1889 carved on it above the main door. It had a long hallway and stairs with two bedrooms at the top, one mine and the other kept for visitors. Mum and Dad’s bedroom was downstairs at the back overlooking the garden. We had two big sitting rooms downstairs at the front, one where we all sat together to watch television and the other a ‘best room’ which we only used at Christmas or if some kind of special person like the minister or the school inspector came visiting. Then Dad lit the open fire and brought in the pine logs he kept in the shed to create the smell of Christmas for our guests.

I didn’t do much of the moving in. Just carried some of my clothes and books and my train set upstairs to my bedroom, and that was more or less it. The removal men did the rest, with Mum supervising and Dad shifting bits of furniture from here to there. He would position a chair in the corner, then stand looking at it for a moment, humming and hawing, then move it a few inches this way or that. Same with all the pictures. Mum dealt with the bedrooms and the kitchen, putting everything in order.

Once we settled into the house, Dad started to get up very early most Saturday mornings and head off with his rucksack, and sometimes his tent, to go walking for the day....