Ruby
September’s a busy month with the sheep, and now it’s time for what Isobel calls caa’ing the hill.
After the animals have been grazing on the scattald all through the summer, we need to bring them in for checking and sort out the ones to be sold at market.
We pull on our boots, and Hanna whistles for Pip, who wags his tail eagerly as we set off up the path to the common grazing land.
Geordie and Isobel are already at the walled fank with their quadbike and their own pair of dogs, and Jamie’s there to lend a hand, too.
“It’s a fine day for it,” says Geordie, who appears to be in his element up here among the purple-clad hills.
He gives us our instructions, and Jamie and I set off toward the ridgeline on the lookout for any stragglers.
Hanna and Isobel keep to the lower slopes, calling commands to the dogs as they sweep wide to keep the sheep moving in the right direction, while Geordie takes the far side of the hill on the quad.
We work as a team, gradually herding the scattered sheep together until they begin to flow in a woolly stream toward the fank, where Isobel now stands ready beside the gate.
I puff my way up the ridge, trying to keep up with Jamie, whose long legs make it easier for him to stride across the tussocks of heather.
As I scramble up the final stretch, he offers me a hand, pulling me onto the rocky summit.
The view from the top is breathtaking. From up here, we have an uninterrupted panorama in every direction, and I’m struck again by the vulnerability of these fragmented islands, moored between two oceans.
He grins at me briefly as I press a fist into my side to ease the stitch that’s nagging there after the effort of the climb.
But when he turns away, gazing out across the sun-spangled water, I catch another glimpse of the sadness behind his smile.
We’re silent as we scan the moorland, and then we set off again, ushering a single stray ewe before us.
It’s easier going on the way down, so I try to make a little conversation.
“Your Shetland accent isn’t as strong as Geordie and Isobel’s.
Were you born here, or did you move up more recently? ”
“I was born in a little town near Aberdeen,” he replies.
When he doesn’t elaborate further, I try again. “What originally made you come to Shetland? Do you have family here, Jamie?”
He doesn’t reply straightaway, and I get the impression he’s considering carefully how to reply.
“No,” he says at last. “I’ve no family here. My older brother and I were put in foster care when we were very young. I never knew our birth mother. And I never had any idea who my father may have been.”
It takes me a moment to digest what he’s just told me. It’s a lot to take in.
“And your foster parents…?”
“Well, there were quite a few, and I’ve lost touch with most of them now.
Our childhood was chaotic, although I’ll always be grateful to the last ones I was with for giving me a start in life.
I left home at seventeen. I knew I had to get away, and Shetland seemed as good a place as any.
My brother…well, he was an addict, you see, like our mum had been.
With her it was drink. With him it was drugs.
He died the year after I left. I came here because I needed to get away from all of that. ”
I don’t know how to respond. All I can say is, “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” he replies, even though I know it isn’t, because how could it ever be?
Then he goes on, “Actually, saying I have no family here isn’t true.
Before I came to Igdrasil, family wasn’t something I’d ever really had, but I’ve sort of been able to make one for myself here.
Hanna, Geordie, Isobel…the community has a way of weaving itself around you.
If you’re resilient enough to stay on these islands, that is. ”
Then he points across the moor, spotting another ewe with a pair of lambs. “I’d better go wide so she doesn’t bolt. You wait here until she moves off, keep her heading downhill toward the others, okay?”
He’s clearly relieved to change the subject from his painful past, but I’m glad he’s opened up that little bit, giving me a better understanding of the sadness I’ve glimpsed in him from time to time. Perhaps he can understand my sadness, too, since we’ve both lost a sibling.
I’m deep in thought, absorbing what he’s told me as we walk more miles, making sure we don’t miss a single animal.
I wonder what it must have been like for Jamie, growing up in a series of temporary households, never knowing his birth parents.
It’s no surprise his brother turned to drugs to numb the pain of losing their mother like that—he must have been a bit more aware than Jamie of what was going on.
It’s a miracle Jamie survived. I feel a pang of sorrow for the child he must have been, bewildered and lost. I guess getting away at the age of seventeen must have been what saved him.
I wish someone had been able to take him in, adopt him and his brother, perhaps, and give them the stability they must have longed for.
But I’m glad he’s managed to find a sense of family now, in this tiny, tight-knit community.
By the time the sheep have all been gathered in, and we arrive back at the fank with the others, I’m more than ready for the lunch we’ve brought with us. We sit beside the burn, eating doorstop-sized cheese and ham sandwiches, washed down with tea from a flask Isobel produces.
I notice how Jamie quietly takes care of Hanna, making sure she eats something and refilling her cup.
Given what he’s told me about his upbringing, it’s no wonder he and Hanna have bonded, I think.
Although their stories are very different, they share a profound understanding of what it is to lose someone you love.
He will have experienced trauma, too, so that must be why he understands hers.
Hanna almost seems to have a closer relationship with him than she does with her own son and daughter, who phone from time to time but haven’t been to visit.
She still seems a lot happier in his company than she does with me.
Mind you, she’s always on the best form when she’s busy with running the croft and has work to distract her.
Although she’s talking to me again, she’s remained a little wary since Donald Kilgour’s last appearance.
He hasn’t been back, however, and must now be in London.
It’s a relief to think he’ll be away for a few months.
I hope his absence will allow Hanna some peace of mind, too.
We sit in the autumn sunshine, the others chatting comfortably about the condition of the sheep, which of this year’s lambs to take to the market, and I lie back against a pillow of moss and close my eyes.
The wind whispers to the burn as it burbles quietly to itself on its way down the hill, the sounds mingling with the baaing of the sheep and the song of the skylarks that are abundant up here in the grazing lands.
Isobel calls them lavereks, because every bird seems to have a different local name on these islands.
“When do the sheep get shorn?” I ask, propping myself up on my elbows to rejoin the conversation.
“We don’t shear Shetland sheep the way they do other breeds,” Isobel replies.
“We roo them. They shed their fleece naturally, you see, so we just come and gather the wool. The very finest grows around their necks, and we pluck that off. I use the yarn to knit lace shawls for one of the shops in Da Street in Lerwick. Come over tomorrow and I’ll show you, if you like.
” I know the shops she means—the town’s central thoroughfare is officially called Commercial Street, but everyone refers to it as “Da Street.”
“I’d love that,” I say. It’s not just Isobel’s knitting I’m so keen to see, it’s also the thought of her company. Perhaps she senses I’m in need of a friend.
At last, our lunchtime rest is disturbed by a pair of crows that begin to caw a warning at a gull that’s strayed into their territory.
“Right, then, best be getting on,” Geordie says, hauling himself to his feet as we begin packing away the lunch things.
By the time we’ve finished, my back and legs ache from the day’s work, and I’m ready for a good long soak in the bath.
“See you tomorrow,” says Isobel. She turns to Hanna. “Send the lass over whenever you can spare her. She’s wanting to see the knitting.”
Hanna nods. “We’ve got the kale seeds to collect, but we should be done by mid-morning.”
*
Shetland kale is an extraordinary plant.
It has its own corner of the kailyard—growing sheltered within a stone circle that goes by the name of a plantie crub—surviving whatever extremes the weather throws its way, even when everything else has been battered or destroyed.
It’s a bit like a kind of loose-leaved cabbage, and Hanna tells me it’s used to feed animals and humans alike.
We’ve allowed some of the plants to go to seed, shooting spikes of yellow flowers skyward and turning the leaves bitter.
It’s these flowerheads we need to collect and hang to dry.
Once I’ve strung them up above the stove in the kitchen, wrapped in old pillowcases to catch every precious seed, Hanna sends me off to Isobel’s, bearing a bag of the last of our broad beans and a jar of raspberry jam.