"Is it any wonder that some of them are poachers?" Doctor Pike said.
He was fairly passionate on the subject. He said the land ought to be nationalized and divided into smaller units. The land could be made productive — people would have jobs.
I said he was the first left-wing veterinarian I had ever met. He denied that he was left wing. He said most radicals were devils. Then he said, "Want to meet one of the victims of the clearances?"
We stopped at a small white cottage near the edge of the loch and were greeted by an old man. This was Davey McKenzie. He wore a tweed hat and a threadbare jacket and loose trousers. His shoes were cracked and broken. He had a healthy face and good color, and he was sinewy. He was about seventy or a bit more. He raised some sheep and he grew vegetables and he was always followed by a black terrier with a pleading face that lay down and snored whenever Mr. McKenzie sat down.
"We can't stay," Doctor Pike said.
"You'll have a cup of tea," Mr. McKenzie replied. He had the same Norse whirr in his accent that I had been hearing for days.
We entered the cottage and were introduced to Jessie Stewart, Mr. McKenzie's sister. She was perhaps a year or two younger than he, but she was pale and rather feeble. Doctor Pike whispered to me that she had recently had an operation, and he added, "She's far from well."
"Sit down in front of the fire," she said. "I'll put the tea on."
It was the end of June — a few days from July — and yet a fire burned in the cottage hearth, and the wind made the rosebushes scratch at the window.
Doctor Pike said, "Don't trouble yourself, Mrs. Stewart."
"It's no trouble," she said. "And don't call me Mrs. Stewart. No one calls me that. I'm Jessie."
The cottage was comfortable but austere — a few potted plants, pictures of children and grandchildren, a calendar from Thurso and some Scottish souvenirs, a glass paperweight showing Arthur's Seat, and a little doll in a tartan kilt.
Doctor Pike said his piece about sheep scab and then turned to me. "You know you're in the Highlands when people make you welcome like this. No one is sent away. If you come to the door of a Highlander, he lets you in."
"That's very true," Davey McKenzie said softly.
"I know a rune about that in Gaelic," Doctor Pike said. "Translated, it goes like this:
'I saw a stranger yestreen.
I put food in the eating place,
Drink in the drinking place,
Music in the listening place—
And the lark in its song sang!
'Often, often, often, often,
Comes the Christ in the stranger's guise.'"
"That's very beautiful," Davey said.
"Some people come," Jessie said. "But these days there are vandals about. We never locked our doors before, but now we lock them. People come — they look so strange, some of these hikers and campers, and the women are worse than the men."
She went for the tea. Doctor Pike said, "I was telling Paul about the crofters here, how they were moved from the other side — from that good land."
He did not say that it was over a century ago.
"It was unfair, aye," Davey said. He blinked at me. He had wet, red-rimmed eyes. "There's so much good land lying idle. Aye, it's hard land where we are."
He was a quiet man. He said no more. It seemed to me terrible that he had spent his whole life trying to feed his family by digging this stony ground, and always in sight of the green fields under Ben Arnaboll across the loch.
But the bad land had turned many people into wanderers. Jessie Stewart's life was proof of that.
"So you come from America," she said to me. "I've been to America myself. I spent eighteen years there."
I asked her where exactly.
She said, "In Long Island and Virginia. New York City. Bar Harbor, Maine."
"The best places."
"I was in service," she said. "The people were wealthy, you see."
Her employers had moved from house to house, according to the season, and she had moved with them. Perhaps she had been a cook. Her scones were wonderful — she had brought out a whole tray of scones and shortbread and sandwiches with the tea.
Why had she left America?
"I got very ill. For a while I couldn't work, and then I started getting doctors' bills. You know how expensive hospitals are in the United States. There's no National Health Service—"
And she had no insurance; and the family she worked for wouldn't pay; and she needed major surgery.
"— I could never have afforded it there," she said. "It would have taken all my savings. I came back home here and had my operation on the National Health. I'm feeling a wee bit better now."
So she had left the poverty trap in the Highlands and emigrated to the United States and become a servant and fallen into the American poverty trap. And now she was dying on the croft where she had been born. Most of the crofters here were old people whose children had moved away.
I continued to Caithness alone. The farther east I went, the greener it was, the more fertile the land. There were high mountains near the sea. The sheep were fat. They winced from the ditches where they crouched to get out of the wind. I went on to Coldbackie, Bettyhill, and Swordly. They were small cold places. I went to Brawl and Bighouse. The grass was better here. Caithness was a milder, more sheltered place, with sweet-smelling grass. But I liked it much less than Sutherland — its mountains streaming with pale scree, its black valleys of peat, its miles of moorland and bog, its narrow roads and surfy coast, and its caves. Tt was like a world apart, an unknown place in this the best-known country in the world. No sooner had I left it than I wanted to go back.
20. The 14:40 to Aberdeen
FROM THURSO I walked ten miles to Dunnet Head ("the most northerly point of mainland Britain"). On this sunny day its cliffs were a rich bronze-orange and the foam on the violent currents of the Pentland Firth was being whipped into peaks by the wind. The rest of the countryside was as flat and tame as the flagstones it had once produced. Only the place names were exciting — not just Buldoo and John O'Groats, but Hunspow and Ham, and Thrumster, Scrabster, Shebster, and Lybster. And who or what were the Hackle-makers of Buckies?
People had babies in Thurso and round about. That was unusual. It was a noticeable fact that in most places on the coast there were few small children being towed by parents — even on the sands. I saw big idle youths and middle-aged people and the very old. The very old, especially. They lived in the poorer, sorrier places. But Thurso had become prosperous from the offshore oil, and in the three or four towns on the British coast where there were jobs, there were also young families.
After a day and a night in Thurso I took the branch line down to Helmsdale, on the east coast. The summer brightness of the Scottish evenings made the flat brown moorland shimmer, and even the fissured bogs and sandpits did not seem so bad. We went along, stopping at ruined stations. THIS IS THE AGE OF THE TRAIN, the British Rail posters said, showing a man from a television show who was noted for his work on behalf of the handicapped people and incurables. He had been hired to promote British Rail. This branch line was certainly on its last legs. It was slow and dirty. But I liked it for being derelict and still stubbornly running across the moors. This was a little like being in Turkey.