Back Currents E-Book

alastair macleod

• Herausgeber: BookRix
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

A young doctor arrives from the sea to take up post in a remote island in the Orkney Archipelago. Escaping city life, he encounters a new reality - the powerful surge of  elemental forces.

Leseprobe

Alastair Macleod

Back Currents

Dedicated to The Elemental and to the Finn Man and the Mermaid.... When a Mermaid marries a mortal man, even a Finn Man, she loses her tail and becomes a mortal woman. ...................................................................................... All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. BookRix GmbH & Co. KG81371 Munich

Back Currents

It was a back current, an “efya,” that caught the kayak and swirled it round and into the surge that sucked him out from the coast.

Kayaking along the north coast of mainland Orkney before starting work had been his holiday break.

The last months had been stressful working as a registrar at a London hospital. He had seen new life, illness and death close up; the sudden death and the slow burn end.

He needed this now, the natural world; the fine salt perfume of the waves, the tang of seaweed and the sharp note of bird guano above him on the ragged cliffs.

Soon the current had him in its grip, propelling him away from the looming rock walls.

Out here the rhythm changed, the waves rose and fell in slow beat.

The current drove him outwards to the west.

At first he paddled with strong strokes to try to return to the land but now he paddled to keep the kayak upright. He drifted through other paddlers; a raft of Guillemots, black and white, at home on the rising and falling skin of the surface.

Fulmars skimmed close, casting an inspecting eye over him.

Slowly his body chilled and his arms tired. He slumped, sea water washing over the spraydeck threatening to penetrate the interior. The horizon came and went as the kayak crested the waves and he glimpsed a watery vastness. Where the sky met the sea the atmosphere began to shimmer. He felt himself leave his body, rise up and look back down at his form slumped in the kayak. He began to talk to the sea, first repeating his name then he began to tell it the confidences, the secrets he had to hold onto on his clients.

He did not know how long he talked. A thing arose on the horizon, a thin smudge, at first dark then green, then a white tower - a lighthouse.

As the kayak grounded on the white sand, waves thrust it forward, up the beach. Three seals, dry from basking on the beach turned their heads to watch this new creature. In his stupor Bilhuis thought he could hear the wild cries of banshees; arctic terns skrekked above him.

A man and a thin girl came towards the kayak from the flat links above the tide line and grabbed the bow pulling it further in.

“Are you the new doctor?” said the girl.

“I..I..” he could not get out the words from his cold lips.

“It’s him alright,” said her father, “look, his name is sewn onto his jacket.”

Sure enough, there it was on the green fluorescent jacket, "Jon Bilhuis, Doctor.”

“Why this way? When you could have flown in.”

“I.. I ..”

“Faither can’t you see he’s frozen stiff. He’ll speak once we get him out of this thing and warmed up.”

Lifted from his kayak, Bilhuis at first stumbled then, supported, he gradually gained movement in his legs.

“Beat flukes,” said the father demonstrating by widening his arms and then flapping them round himself vigorously. The doctor followed suit.

Colour began to return to his face.

“Lean,” thought Bella, “a sports type. He’ll be jogging too.”

Father and daughter lifted the Doctors kayak well up the

beach: it could be seen to after.

They walked him to a nearby flagged roofed, low stone house; here smoke curled away inland from the stiff breeze.

Shortly after, in response to a telephone call, the “old Doctor,” appeared.

So this was his replacement. Young, too young for an island posting.

What experience had he? How would he cope with the range of things you might encounter here?

And arriving as he did, that did not inspire confidence - ignorance of hypothermia, and of the sea which he presumed to float upon. Dr Summers was friendly and affable, for now he could leave - just the handover. He watched Dr Bilhuis suck on the soup offered by Mrs Clouston; good chicken broth.

The family here were “old” island people; several generations had tended the lighthouse, gone to creels, rooed sheep. Dr Summers had helped deliver the girl now hovering round the “new” doctor.

Bilhuis said he was caught unawares by the back current.

“Aye the Efya is bad just off the cliffs.” said Clouston.

The new doctor was helped out of his various layers; the life jacket, then the fluorescent jacket. Beneath this he wore a bright yellow jumper and red trousers.

At least, thought Summers, if he had ended up on the surface he would have been clearly spotted.

Did he realise that he nearly did not make it.

A little to the left or right and the current would have carried him past out into the Atlantic. Since they barely knew he was coming it would be days before he was found.

But Bilhuis now, from an interior pocket, whipped out a smart phone and tapped out a message.

“Safely arrived.”

So, he was connected – a man of the new age of electronic communication.

The old doctor sighed – what had he hoped? That the new doctor would be like himself or like his era, a stayer not ephemeral, a generalist not a specialist?

Later Summers piled Bilhuis into the Health Board Landrover and drove the two kms to Grimness, the Doctors “hoose,” a two storey austere harled manse type dwelling.

“Where were you before?”

“Originally Zutvers – a small town on the north Dutch/German border- more recently London.”

They swung into the drive.

The Health Board provided the island doctor with a house; the surgery was integral; the large front room sufficed. An anti- room doubled as a dispensary and an office for the nurse.

Entering through the front door of the doctor’s house they passed three people sitting on dining room chairs in the hall. A young woman, an elderly man, and a young fisherman still in his yellow wellington boots and boiler suit.

In the kitchen Summers said,

“Make yourself comfortable for a moment.” He indicated a large high backed chair by the Rayburn in the kitchen. “Later I’ll show you the spare room; you can have it till I leave. Evening surgery is starting soon.” Then he went into the dispensary.

He returned saying,

“Follow me.”

Once in the surgery Dr Summers said in a low voice,

“The first patient is Karen. Took an overdose two nights ago. I’ve put her on anti depressants.”

Summers brought the girl in.

She was in an outdoor jacket, jeans, and trainers and a green top that said in big letters GAP. The hair was long, a straggly light brown.

Summers introduced Bilhuis.

Karen’s eyes flickered to Bilhuis then to Summers.

In that look was a vacancy, remoteness as this island.

“How powerful are these drugs,” thought Bilhuis.

“How are you feeling today?” asked Summers.”

“Okay,” said Karen

Summers took her blood pressure and pulse, surely unnecessary.

Summers asked after Bobby.

“Bobby’s the dog,” he said to Bilhuis.

“He’s outside,” said Karen in flat tones.

“Yes, of course,” said Summers.

Karen always went everywhere with Bobby.

“Any bleeding?” said Summers.

“No,” said Karen.

“If there is let me know. OK come to surgery on Thursday, two days time.”

After she left Summers turned to Bilhuis.

“Miscarriage, not married.”

Knocking and entering was an older whiskered man, his hair long and uncombed, likewise the beard. The red face told the story; excess alcohol.

Summers introduced Bilhuis. The old man grunted.

Summers checked his pulse and blood pressure – again unnecessary.

As the man bent forward a guff of fumes took Bilhuis aback.

The older man’s hands were cracked and weather beaten.

“I am going to prescribe some vitamin E for you. Take one a day.”

Summers continued,

“How are the sheep?”

“Middlin,” said Willie for that was his name, Willie Rendall, fisherman, crofter, - bachelor, 79.

“Dey ye hive ony more o’ those painkillers doctor?”

“Well,” said Summers examining Willie’s leg, “they were just temporary, you should be OK now.”