A week in Orkney

By Tim Cooke:

One summer, my father took us, Rob and I, to the Orkney Islands, to see the Viking burial sites, Pictish and Neolithic ruins, and to do some fishing. I was still in primary school – year five, I think. The first evening we arrived, we watched three locals unload their catch from a small motorboat onto the boggy shore of the lake we were staying on. We ate dinner in a barn, or outbuilding, with stuffed fish mounted on the walls, gawping over our shoulders at our food. Dad drank Guinness, as he would each night for the coming week, while me and my brother sipped ice-cold cans of Irn-Bru. I don’t remember what we spoke about, just that Rob kept repeating Will Smith’s line from Independence Day – Let’s kick the tires and light the fires, Big Daddy.

We fished most mornings, Dad steering us out to the silky deep, but didn’t catch a thing. He’d choose a spot, kill the engine and cast our lines, then wait quietly for a bite. Every so often, one of our wires got snagged in the weeds. My lack of experience meant the first few times this happened, I flicked up my rod and shouted, I’ve got something, only to reel in handfuls of mulch. After every twenty minutes or so – not nearly long enough – Dad broke the silence by announcing we were to move on, because the fish were surely basking in that pool of sun over there, or whatever. Reflecting on our failure one night, he blamed the seal apparently stalking the boat and stealing our trout. He’s stuck to this story ever since.

We’d travelled to Scotland a number of times before our week in Orkney. I’m not sure how many trips we’d made, but they’ve all sort of amalgamated into one in my mind. I recall, for instance, a murder of crows alighting on the roof of Edinburgh Castle, and that very same day, as far as I can tell, driving beside Loch Ness. I was obsessed with the monster mythology and told everyone I was going to see it. And then I did. I had this pamphlet with a condensed history of the beast – a few grainy black and white shots dispersed between paragraphs – that I must have read a thousand times or more. I loved the ‘Surgeon’s Photograph’ – categorical proof, if any was needed, that some time-evading horror lurked below us and would, on occasion, rise to the surface. 

I held on tight to this leaflet as we drove along a narrow country road. There was a screen of lush green foliage to my left, beyond which the water bobbed and chopped. I longed for a breach, and sure enough it came. I’d only been looking at the loch for a matter of minutes – ten perhaps, without averting my eyes – when two humps broke the crest of a wave, followed by a third and fourth, and finally the pointed tail, the last bit to disappear back into the sloshing abyss. It was over in three seconds flat, only ripples remaining – working away from the site of incision like lights on a radar dial.

There – I saw it! Look, over there! Look at the water!

My parents were enjoying my burgeoning interest in cryptozoology and had told me they, too, believed in the creature.

Well there you go, Mum said, you’ve seen it now. You can tell Nan when we get back to the hotel.

Did you see it, though? I was bouncing in my seat.

They smiled at one another and Dad confirmed he had, indeed, seen something.

Nearing the end of our time in Orkney, we visited Maeshowe, a Neolithic cairn and passage grave constructed around 3000 BC. From the outside, it looked like a small hill, a place a hobbit might inhabit. The entrance tunnel, which runs to the central chamber, is only three feet tall, so we had to shuffle through on our hands and knees. As I crawled along, I was struck by the smell of the damp earth, far stronger than that I was familiar with. It left an almost bitter aftertaste. We’d been told there were bodies here and, despite the likelihood of this information being false, I could feel them. I paused in the passageway, unsure as to whether or not I should go any further, but Rob was gaining on me, so I had to keep moving. It was as if I was being sucked into the ground.

Stepping into the chamber was like stepping out of our world and into a different dimension, a time capsule. While the guide talked about dates and architecture, man-hours and angled buttresses, I zoned out and heard sounds and voices swirling in a maelstrom around me. I’d been thinking a lot, at night, about death and heaven. Dad tried to comfort me with words of God and eternal life, but to be honest the idea of forever scared me more than anything else. I couldn’t get my head around it.

I stood facing the wall, looking at an image of a dragon scratched into stone by a Norse graffiti artist in the twelfth century. As recounted in the Orkneyinga Saga, a group of Viking travellers broke into the tomb and left more than thirty runic inscriptions, the world’s largest collection of such engravings. It occurred to me that this dragon I was staring at might, in fact, be skulking in the depths of Loch Ness. Had they seen him too?

I flinched at something wet and warm moving along the back of my skull. I turned around to see Rob grinning. He’d taken, lately, to surreptitiously chewing a tuft of hair protruding from my crown – he loved that I hated it so much. What’s the matter with you? 

Back outside, in the fresh air, we walked along the coast. It could have been a different day, I don’t know. We paused by a farmer’s field and watched a woman delivering a foal, her arm inserted deep inside the back end of the horse. Rob touched the fence and jolted backwards. 

It’s electric. He touched it again. Whoa. That’s so weird. He turned to me. You have a go.

I placed my finger on the wire. Shit! It felt as though my bones were being pulled from their sockets. 

Dad caught up and joined us. 

It’s an electric fence, I explained.

Don’t be silly.

The woman in the field looked up. It is actually. I wouldn’t touch it if I were you.

His hands were already stretched out – it was too late to retract them. Strewth! Bloody hell. The woman shook her head.

We continued walking along the cliffs. The wind was blowing hard now and the sea writhed like a snake pit. Always full of energy, Rob ran on, sidestepping knots of couch grass, skipping over divots and molehills. He was straying dangerously close to the edge.

Robert, get away from there. Dad was holding my wrist ten or fifteen metres inland. Come back here with us. The wind is very strong. Rob strolled over, his mouth twisted into a smile.

What would you do if I fell?

I’d grab your brother and jump off too. The words startled me – I looked up to see if he was joking, but his face was stern, almost angry. I could never go back to your mother with just one. Where was she, anyway? Why hadn’t she come with us? I looked out at the ocean, at the thrashing waves, and felt unsafe.

***

Tim Cooke is a teacher, freelance writer and creative writing PhD student. His work has been published by the Guardian, Little White Lies, The Quietus, 3:AM Magazine, New Welsh Review and Ernest Journal. His creative work has appeared in various literary journals and magazines, including The Shadow Booth, Black Static, New Welsh Review, Foxhole Magazine, Prole, Porridge Magazine, The Nightwatchman, The Lampeter Review, Storgy, Litro Magazine and MIR Online. He recently had a piece of creative nonfiction published in a Dunlin Press anthology on the theme of ports and is currently working on a collection of short stories. You can follow him on Twitter @cooketim2