Raw Spirit (29 page)

Ken shook his head. ‘No, seriously.’

‘You’re kidding,’ I said, glancing at Ken to see whether he was or not. ‘He really didn’t have any shoes?’

‘Shoes were for Sunday, for church.’

‘Dear God. What happened in the winter?’

‘It got colder,’ Ken said, straight faced.

‘And a fucking
turnip
?’ I couldn’t help laughing. ‘For lunch? Come on, that’s got to be a joke, Ken.’

‘It wasn’t his own lunch,’ Ken explained patiently. ‘It was for the pot. All the pupils brought something to make a stew and he usually contributed a turnip.’ He shrugged.

I shook my head. ‘Good grief.’ I thought I’d had it tough because we had slates and chalk for the first year at North Queensferry Primary School, back in 1959 (slates and chalk and a wee sponge, for clearing the slate. If you were good you were allowed a damp sponge because you could be trusted not to throw it at anybody. My sponge, I am ashamed to say, was dry after day one).

We find the house where Ken’s dad lived when he was a boy; Ken takes a photo and we continue south along the A863 – Talisker distillery and Carbost visible across the loch – then retrace our route of yesterday along the grandly scenic coastal road, heading on to the turn-off for the narrow, twisty roller-coaster of a single-track road down to the small but perfectly formed ferry at Kylerhea.

The good ship
Glenachulish
is a micro car ferry; you could squeeze maybe half a dozen vehicles onto it. If two of them were motor bikes. It used to be the Ballachulish ferry until 1975 when the bridge was opened there. When it glides up to the slipway at Kylerhea the two guys operating it use leg power
to
turn the whole car deck round to face the right way so the cars can exit ahead; we clatter on along with one other vehicle. There’s a dog that seems to be part of the crew too. It looks a lot like one of those slightly mad black-and-white collies that hides by farm gateways in the outer isles and jumps out to chase unsuspecting tourists and their cars, but proves friendly, before exhausting itself being patted and going for a lie down in the shade of the loading ramp. It barely gets its head down when we bump gently against the slipway on the far side and its time for the hound to resume its duties, carefully watching the unloading and loading.

The Kyle here is very narrow indeed and the tide can surge through like a broad rushing river. My dad has tales of his old Admiralty boat, the
Mandarin
, making full speed ahead in the straits but nevertheless – the timing not being quite right and the ship encountering the still increasing force of the tide – finding herself going slowly backwards.

In the old days they swam their cattle over here before setting off on the long journey south via the droving roads to the cattle markets in Falkirk. You imagine they paid close attention to the state of the tide.

As the ferry ties up and nestles closer to the slipway, I watch the mooring rope as it straightens, tightening, quivering briefly with tension that wrings the water from it, drops spotting the ramp’s pale slope of concrete.

From Glen Elg – ignoring the GWR round the coast to Arnisdale and Corran, and the route to the fine broch in Gleann Beag – the road twists and turns energetically up to the Bealach Ratagan – Ratagan Pass – to reveal one of the finest views in Scotland: Loch Duich and the Five Sisters of Kintail. As if hypnotised with the scenery, the road goes a bit mad after this, looping and writhing and swooping through the forest in a series of wild curves and heroically pitched gradients down towards the loch and the main road at Shiel Bridge. It’s a tight, constrained wee drive; fun but a bit slow (it’s more challenging as a hill climb going the opposite direction). The A87 from Shiel Bridge to Invergarry on the other hand is, as mentioned in
Chapter 7
, just superb.

It’s the usual route after that on the way south to South and then North Queensferry, via Spean Bridge and Dalwhinnie, then the Trinafour cut-off and – appropriately, given that we’ve been to Ken’s nominal ancestral home at Dunvegan this morning – Castle Menzies near Weem, which is mine. That is, if you believe at all in all this clan stuff.

On the A86, passing the Fersit sign, I point out where the P-reg 911 came to grief. No, let’s be honest; where I brought it to grief.

What Happened to My Car
.

High summer, 1998. You could tell that it was the weekend for the annual T in the Park music festival just up the road from us at Balado because it was bucketing with rain. We were the proud owners of two 911s at the time; the old blue K-reg we still have, and a dark blue Carrera 4 coupé which was Ann’s car. I was going up to Glenfinnan for the weekend and asked to take the coupé because the soft top has a bad and very un-Teutonic habit of leaking if left out in heavy rain. Ann was happy for me to take the coupé and the car and I had a grand old time even though it was raining so hard I almost thought I was in Glenfinnan already. Everything went fine until that bit of road approaching the sign for Fersit.

I’d been pressing the car fairly hard over the last few miles and couple of dozen bends or so, whenever I could see I had a whole clear road ahead to play with, and the car hadn’t shown any sign of going skittery at the back or anywhere else, but I just overcooked it totally on that curve; the rain was the heaviest it had been during the whole journey so far and there was a lot of standing water where the verges were struggling to clear the rain fast enough off the tarmac. A slight change of surface where one bit of road met another as I set the car up for the bend, and the back of the car spun away, sending the rear arcing round to my right.

What was really annoying was that I thought I’d caught it, twice; I opposite-locked, thought I’d got it straight, but then
it
went the other way, heading for the gentle slope of grass and heather on my own side of the road. I corrected again, still not braking, but the rear went whipping back to the direction it had first thought of and almost immediately we left the road and whumped up onto the very slightly uphill side of the road, connecting with a small raised ridge hanging a couple of metres over the tarmac. There was a very loud bang indeed and the airbag detonated. I think I must have closed my eyes at this point because when I got this terrific whack on the head it took me a moment or two to realise I’d rolled the car and I was now upside down, skidding along the road on the 911’s roof. I’d have been hanging by my seat belt if the roof hadn’t caved in to press on my head and the top of the driver’s seat, so keeping me wedged in.

The bang on my head transmitted itself down my spine and I felt something sort of click in the middle of my back. (This didn’t hurt at the time but gave me painfully sleepless nights a fortnight or so later when we were in South Africa, holidaying and doing publicity; I found the only way to alleviate the pain sufficiently to get to sleep was to lie in the bath.)

Round about here, sliding along the road upside down, I put my hands over my head (or under my head, if you want to be technical about it, given that I was inverted at this point). It did occur to me even at the time that this was a fairly pointless action, but I couldn’t really come up with much else to do. I remember thinking, quite clearly, Oh, bugger; I could die here, and being kind of annoyed with myself; somehow there still hadn’t been time to feel properly afraid. The sliding went on, then there was another not quite so dramatic impact, and then another thud, this time from beneath, and then silence.

I had, I realised,
smelled
the whole accident. There had been a damp, fresh, new-mown grass and earth odour as I’d slammed into the bank at the side of the road, then a sharp smell of something like flint, like rock when you strike it with another rock, then a scent of chalk, then burning, charring paint and hot oil.

I opened my eyes and looked around.

Well, I certainly appeared to be alive. The car was the right
way
up, sitting on what was left of its wheels just off my own side of the road on a patch of fairly level grass by a shallow slope of heather and fern. Definitely not poised rocking over a high cliff in an
Italian Job
kind of way. I moved my extremities, waggling fingers and toes, and everything seemed to be working. I couldn’t feel much pain; back and head a bit sore, ears ringing, and I guessed I was slightly in shock so might not be entirely aware of any other injuries I might have, but really this was quite a good result after thinking only a second or two ago that I might be about to die. And no fire; the car did not appear to be showing any signs of going up in flames. That had to be a good thing.

On the downside, I recall thinking, it is still raining.

There was a white car stopped almost opposite me on the far side of the road with two people in it; they must have seen the last part of the accident as the car sailed upside down across the road in front of them and then flipped the right way up just across from them. The driver’s side window was lowered and two pale young anxious faces, one male and one female, peered at me through the rain. I undid my seat belt, kicked at my door – it opened with only a minimum of complaint – got shakily to my feet on the grass, made a show of brushing myself down and said, ‘Aren’t airbags wonderful?’

My only excuse for this pathetic piece of sub-Bondian attempted drollery, miserably inadequate though it may be, is that I must indeed have been a bit in shock.

The pale young couple were from New Zealand. There was no mobile coverage on that stretch of road so they very kindly took me to the Stronlossit Hotel in Roybridge, left me their address in case I needed them as witnesses (though all they had really witnessed were the final stages of the result of my spectacular stupidity) then went on their way.

I phoned Ann and then the cops.

‘Hello. I’ve just had an accident on the A86 by the junction with the wee road to Fersit.’

The guy at the other end took my name and details and established that I basically had a few minor cuts and bruises and that there were no other vehicles or persons involved.
Then
he asked, ‘Was there damage to any road furniture, Mr Banks?’

In my slightly dizzy state, this question caused the sudden, bizarre image to come to mind of a remote Highland road buffeted by driving rain, with a nice easy chair and a standard lamp with tassels on the shade sitting in the middle of the tarmac.

‘Pardon?’

‘Were any signs or crash barriers affected, sir? Any fences, that sort of thing?’

‘Nothing. All the damage was to my car. Oh, and a dirty great rock about the size of a washing machine; think I hit that when I first left the road. It sort of tumbled into the ditch.’

(I had the firm intention of having a brass plaque made to stick on this rock, commemorating the death of the P-reg 911, but before I got round to this the council cleared and re-formed all the ditches on that stretch of road, and my boulder disappeared.)

‘But there’s nothing blocking the road, or any damage to anything else at the roadside?’

‘Nope.’

‘Well, you’re actually through to the Inverness control centre here, Mr Banks, because the officer who’d normally deal with this sort of thing in Fort William is away. If you’re sure you’re all right we’ll just leave it at that. Have you called anybody to remove the car from the roadside?’

‘I’m going to call the AA next.’

‘Well, that should be all right then. I don’t think we need take any further action.’

‘You mean you’re not sending anybody out?’

‘I don’t think it’s necessary if everything’s as you say.’

‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Okay then. Right. Bye then.’

I felt cheated. I called the AA. They said it’d be about an hour before they could get to me, and so, standing in the bar at the Stronlossit a little later, talking to the sympathetic young barman, I ordered a large glass of Laphroaig and a cigar. Might as well celebrate my narrow escape, I thought. I had the cigar between my fingers and the glass at my lips when the door
opened
and an AA man looked in. ‘There a Mr Banks here?’

I looked at the barman; he looked at me. I sighed and pushed the whisky over to him and left the cigar beside it. ‘Here; be my guest.’

The AA guy found he couldn’t tow the 911 on its undamaged wheels because it didn’t have any and so had to call a local breakdown company with a ramped flatbed truck and a winch. I got a lift into Fort William and then a taxi to Glenfinnan, carrying the stuff I’d rescued from the car. I finally did get a whisky, sitting in Les and Aileen’s house while Les answered a call from Ann, making sure I was still okay.

‘… aye, he mentioned he took a bump to the head,’ Les said, standing in the hall looking in at me. There was a pause while he listened to whatever Ann was saying in response to this, then he told her, ‘No, he’s telling the truth; no bleeding or anything.’ A further pause while Ann spoke, obviously asking another question, then Les nodded, looked at me in a serious, measured sort of way and said into the phone, ‘Well, no more oddly than usual.’

11: The Smell of a Full Scottish Breakfast in the Morning

THE FOLLOWING WEEK
we have a slightly delayed birthday celebration for my dad’s 85th. My dad is the most easy-going man I know and professes himself quite happy with either no celebration at all or the prospect of just going down the hill in the village to the Ferrybridge for a meal there. This is not to be sniffed at because they do very good food there these days and the wine list has got really interesting over the last year or so; they’ve got Chateau Musar on there for one thing, a wine I find it hard to see past (or, following a third bottle, after).

However, a fine and rich tradition has evolved in this family of remorselessly exploiting the birthdays of our elder-folk as excuses for slap-up nosh-fests, and Dad is rapidly persuaded that what he really wants is for Ann and me to take him and Mum to the Champanay Inn across the river in Linlithgow, for enormous steaks and, oh, maybe a bottle or two of something nice from a sunny continent of an antipodean persuasion.