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The Old Country I had awakened with hangovers before, but nothing remotely resembling the one that greeted me on the morning of Saturday, July 20, 1985. It was 8.00, two hours later than I had hoped to get up and half an hour after my train had pulled out of Waverley. The sunlight cut into my eyes like a scalpel. I stood up and groaned. Not only did I feel like a smashed squirrel, but I faced a Herculean task in packing my belongings and getting out of town. I stuffed everything I could into my bags, dirty laundry mingling with the clean, and found that to close up the cases I had to abandon all the newspapers and magazines I had collected since arriving, along with a few paperbacks. I settled my bill (£16 a night for a total of £80) and called for a cab. Waverley was calm this sunny Saturday morning, the cab lines gone, the station echoing with my footsteps. I caught the first train to Glasgow and cradled my head on the settee table, hoping against hope that an aneurysm would do me in soon. One of the books I had abandoned at the Arden was, unfortunately, my book of train and ferry schedules. The fact that I was undertaking this trip to a remote part of the country with no plan whatsoever did not help my headache any. Forty-five minutes later, I was at Glasgow Queen Street. Luckily, the train to Oban originated at Queen Street, so I didn't have to transfer stations again. Even more luckily, the last train for Oban, the 12.20, was leaving in 45 minutes. Queen Street, unlike Waverley, was swarming with people, mostly young and loud and deserving of instant death for making my head throb even harder. I found a quiet corner near the track listed for the Oban train and tried to sleep. The Oban train arrived, and quickly started to fill up. I was shouldering my bags when a beautiful young lady in shorts and a T-shirt stopped me. She was wheeling a bike and carrying a suitcase. "Excuse me please," she said in a faint German accent. "I need to purchase my ticket. You will please watch my bike for a moment?" I was in too much pain to refuse her ice-blue eyes. She smiled and ran for the ticket windows. I stood there holding the bike and watching the big clock over the train board. Ten minutes . . . five minutes . . . three minutes. I couldn't wait any longer. I stashed the bike behind a billboard and ran for the train, my spine thumping as if someone had removed all my discs. It was one of the old wood and brass trains, and as I ran alongside from car to car I could see that not only was every seat taken, but the aisles were filled also. Arriving at the last car, I wedged my way in the door and found a small space by the opposite door to put my luggage. Around me were knee-deep piles of other's luggage, people packed like Tokyo commuters around me. I looked around for a seat and finally realized that the only suitable place was my luggage. Hoping I wasn't crushing my cigars, I fell in a heap on my bags and waited for death. Unfortunately, it didn't come. The train rattled and swayed and banged its way out of Queen Street, each movement and sound pure torture. We trundled through grimy industrial suburbs. Just three feet away, two young boys had opened a window and were sticking their heads out, playing chicken with the utility poles and other obstructions hugging close to the tracks. Every time they saw someone walking the track, they would scream racial epithets at the top of their lungs. "Woggie!," they yelled. "Bloody woggie!" I was restrained from tossing them out the window by the thought of being held in this ugly town while Scottish policemen beat me with rubber hoses. But it was a tough choice. We crossed the Clyde and the landscape gradually grew greener. It started to rain, and I took the opportunity to fish out a pen and catch up on my journal. Around me a group of Boy Scouts (or whatever the British equivalent is) yelled and jostled and beat on each other. Just past me, the door to the loo opened and slammed and opened and slammed repeatedly. And on the slightest pretext, the ancient iron wheels beneath us let out a piercing squeal, like God's own fingernails on a giant blackboard. My hangover, instead of clearing up, was getting worse. I was reminded of the discussion of Faustus at Jackson's the night before, and remembered Mephistopheles's response when Faustus asked where Hell was. "Where we are is Hell," he said, "and where Hell is there must we ever be." Damn right. And who was it said that Hell is other people? Sarte? He must have taken this train at some point. Nausea and hunger fought it out in my stomach. I wanted to find the food car, but was afraid that someone else would sit on my luggage if I left. So I just sat for three solid hours as we jounced our way through the countryside, which grew prettier with each mile. We passed Loch Lomond, the most popular vacation spot for the Scots, pretty even through the rain and the encroaching fog. The hills grew higher and more jagged, the train chugging along hillside cuts hundreds of feet up. We passed though a number of little towns, stopping at each one despite the fact that no one waited on the platforms and no one got off the train. At Crianlarich (my favorite of all the town names I encountered on my trip), we switched tracks and rattled off into what looked like the most uninhabited terrain on earth, vast unearthly stretches of green and grey. Every ten miles or so we would pass a small stone house, a thin curl of smoke rising from the chimney, nestled at the foot of another massive granite mountain or a shimmering white waterfall in calm indifference to the stark, terrible beauty of the land around it. The land was like nothing I'd ever seen before. Finally the sun broke through and we descended into Oban, a small resort town on the west coast. The train let us out at the station, next to the Caledonian McBrayne ferry terminal. My luck was holding, because the last ferry to Tobermory was leaving in a mere fifteen minutes. Oban, much like Gourock, was perched on the hills above the harbor. It was a town of contrasts, the houses made out of sturdy grey granite, grim as Calvin, but most painted in the oddest assortments of bright colors, the whole town adorned with brillant greens of moss and ferns. Oban looked more like a quilt than anything else. On a hilltop over the town center sat a very odd structure. My guidebook told me that around the turn of the century, a local banker named McCaig, worried about the town's dying economy and having read of Pericles and the success of public building projects during lean times in old Athens, enlisted subscriptions from the townfolk to build an exact replica of the Roman Coliseum. (Apparently one got subscripted a lot in those days, what with the Scottish War Memorial and Greyfrier Bobby's statue and McCaig's scheme.) For six years the town labored on top of the highest hill, struggling to finish the building. When it was nearly completed, the town found that far from enriching the city in some sort of trickle-down manner, it had bankrupted Oban. Today the Coliseum still stands, known to all as McCaig's Folly. I found it interesting that the Scots, who take such pride in their ancestries, end up calling all their monuments "disgraces" and "follies." God knows what it means. I could think of two American projects offhand -- the Washington Monument and the pedestal for the Statue of Liberty -- that were also stalled at some point due to apathy and lack of funds. The difference is, however, that the Americans eventually finished the damn things, while the Scots seem to take a perverse pleasure in the unfinishedness of their monuments ("Here's yer honor, now bugger off!"). Presently the ferry arrived, churning past the narrow harbor entrance and, using its cycloidal propellers, making a breathtaking run at the pier, veering off at the last second and twirling to a perfect stop in a wash of foam. It was big and red, 300 feet long, the company name in white letters the length of the ship. High on the bow, the name Caledonia looked majestic. It wasn't the Queen Mary, but it was the biggest ship I'd ever sailed on, and the prospect almost cleared up my headache. I was amazed again by the cheap transportation in Scotland as I paid a mere £2.50 for the hour-long trip. (Of course, most of the cost of all the transportation was subsidized by the government, which was one of the many reasons Britain has been dying a slow lingering death since the war.) I dumped my luggage in the hold and proceeded up on deck. The main deck was three stories above the dock and afforded a pretty view of Oban. Big steel lifeboats hung over my head. As we pulled out of the harbor, I noticed the Oban war memorial, a thin poignant obelisk planted on lonely Kererra Island at the harbor entrance. Dulce et decorum est. As we headed out into the Strait of Mull, a dense fog enveloped us and it started to drizzle. I went down to the snack bar and had a big milky-plastic cup of lager, which perked me up a bit. Back up on deck, nothing in sight through the fog in any direction, I watched as big white seagulls swooped and dived in our wake, occasionally landing on the mahogany railing and looking at me as if I had committed some kind of avian faux pas. I felt the engines slow and ahead of us, looming out of the fog, were the wild mountains of Mull and, off on a promontory to our left, the ramparts of Duart Castle, the home (still!) of the chieftain of the MacLean clan, who have ruled Mull, in varying degrees of legality, since the 1200s. The ferry terminal was at a town called Craignure, if you call two houses and a ferry terminal a town. We gathered our luggage and trekked out to waiting buses, one headed for the ancient Christian site on Iona and the other bound for Tobermory, 21 miles away. My luck had held for the final time that day: This was the last bus, and if I had missed it I would have been in dire straits. There was no place whatsoever to stay in Craignure. The road to Tobermory was a "B-road," which is a polite way of saying that it was a one- lane macadam strip barely wide enough to accommodate the bus' wheels. (I had always mystified by the strange pronunciation of "macadam" until I read, in one of my guide books, that macadam roads had been invented by a Scotsman named -- yes -- John MacAdam.) Every few hundred feet a small "lay-by," a little dirt area, had been built to allow cars to pull over and allow each other past. With the lay-bys and the twisting nature of the road, it took over an hour to get to Tobermory. The sun was out again -- the kaleidoscope nature of the sky and the weather was unbelievable -- and Mull, the largest and "wildest" of the Inner Hebrides, lived up to its reputation. I could not imagine how someone could live in Western Scotland and these islands, surrounded day and night by such scenery, dark and light, friendly and lethal, beautiful and foreboding all at the same time. A man would have to believe in God out here, or curl up and die from his own insignificance. At 6 PM I finally made it to Tobermory. I had seen lots of pictures of it, a favorite of postcard photographers due to its quaint charm. The main street of town (which as far as I could tell had no name) ran along the semicircle of the harbor and was maybe a quarter of a mile long, from the Tobermory Distillery on the south end to the ferry terminal on the north. The harbor walls were granite boulders, as old as God. Along the street stood a number of cute buildings, hotels and stores and banks, their bold colors backed up against a sheer granite and moss cliff. Overhead, the rest of the town was out of sight. Tobermory was a thriving metropolis of less than 300 people -- and it was the largest town on the island! The bus let us out at the head of the stone
jetty, which stuck out into the placid harbor from the middle of the town's crescent. The
harbor was filled with an equal amount of pleasure and fishing boats, and prawn traps
crowded the jetty. Where the jetty met the shore was a stone clock tower with a gable
roof, which struck the hour as we disembarked. A plaque set halfway up read: ERECTED BY Months earlier, I had made reservations by phone at the Carnaberg Bed and Breakfast. When I asked directions, the owner had laughed as if I had told a great joke. Now I could see why. Altogether, there were maybe 20 buildings in lower Tobermory, and the Carnaberg, just a few steps from the bus, was newly painted a bright red. I couldn't miss it, even in my hungover, starving state. The Carnaberg was a common single-family stucco rowhouse, converted to a B&B when Tobermory became a resort. I knocked on the door and was greeted by a tall, shaggy-haired Scotsman who had obviously ran into his share of Americans in his time. "Hi!," he chirped, a word I had not heard since I got off the plane. "I'm Iain MacLean. C'mon in." Iain was a direct descendent of the same MacLean clan which had ruled Mull for 700 years. He showed me my room, number 4, at the end of the second-floor hall. It held a bed and a nightstand, with a wardrobe against the opposite wall. It was clean and spartan. Out the window was a narrow backyard and the huge, moss-covered wall of the cliff which cut the high street off from the rest of the town. The bathroom was down the hall and a television and reading lounge was at the head of the stairs. I unpacked my clothes, sorting the clean from the disreputable, and plugged in my clock radio. The numbers glowed with a fierce red, puzzling me, until I heard a soft pop and it died. I had plugged it in without the converter and it had paid for my sins. I felt an unreasoning sadness at its passing. I decided to drink a toast to its memory, and set out in the angled light of the Hebredes dusk to find a place to eat. The light had a quiet, smokey intimacy to it. Tobermory had only three restaurants, and for my first night I chose the Back Brae, situated on the only corner in town, where the road running up the cliff met the main road of the harbor. It was a tiny place, all red and white plaid, filled tonight with an immense French family who I gathered had just dropped anchor in the harbor. They were loud and snotty, and the waitress couldn't seem to get through to them even though her French sounded fine to me. I had fish and a prawn cocktail, which consisted of a wineglass full of cocktail sauce with four whole prawns, Tobermory's money catch, leering at me from the rim. I couldn't find much meat in the damn things. After dinner, I wandered up and down the harbor, just soaking in the quaintness and the calm of Tobermory, which is Gaelic for "Well of Mary." I came to the conclusion that I was the only American in Tobermory on this July evening. The few tourists about were either French or German, and like the family in the Back Brae the majority of them had arrived by boat. There were a number of beautiful private yachts in the harbor, the most impressive being the one the restaurant family had arrived on, a twin-masted mahogony yawl, the Tricolor fluttering at the stern. They contrasted sharply with the rough-hewn fishing fleet sharing the anchorage. I went back to the Carnaberg and waited in my room for 21.00, the time set for a call from my parents, back in Alexandria after their travels. I told Iain to yell when they called, but 21.00 came and went. Hmm. I sat in bed and finished up Mary, Queen of Scots. As I turned off the light at midnight, the overwhelming darkness of the Hebredean night fell on me. Looking out my window, I could only see the towering bulk of the cliff by the absence of stars. The Henrietta Amelia Bird clock tower chimed the hour, and it was the most lonesome sound I'd ever heard.
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