Lets go Loolala with Lily Anne
A fun trip a while ago.
Three women, two of them nuns and one a ‘recently separated’, me, boarded the ferry for Scotland. We were dressed in doody frocks all three of us. Nuns aren’t into fashion and I had no money to spend on it. The two nuns were going to have a week’s holiday in another convent and I was going to visit a relation I liked. Janet, one of the nuns, was afraid for me after the long days in court and asked me if I knew anybody in Glasgow or Edinburgh I could stay with for three or four days. Yes. Tootie. She was widowed and childless but warm and kind. I called her Auntie Tootie though she wasn’t really. She was my father’s second cousin.
The reason I was free just then was because the kids were with their father for a month each summer from then on. Neither the two kids nor I were happy about that but the court had ruled it so we had no choice until they were grown up. Their father was Dickensien, clever but strict and frightening. Janet, the nun, knew I needed her support.
As we boarded, I was excited and alert. I noticed a priest on the left aisle tucked heavily into a middle seat and reading his breviary. I wondered if he was heading back to work after his holiday. The three of us sat mid-way down the right aisle. The boat was so smooth I wouldn’t have noticed if I wasn’t looking out. Gradually I relaxed. One of the nuns started to read her prayer book. Janet made herself comfortable to have a nap. We’d have about four hours to Stranraer, a bus to Glasgow then a short taxi drive. I would use the subway. I knew it from years before. That would be part of the adventure.
I couldn’t relax yet and was organising my purse when I noticed a bit of drama up near the front. I saw a young son with an elderly mother standing up, very agitated, looking down with their hands moving up and down their hair and faces. They were looking at the face of a balding head I could see. It was unmoving. I remembered that the man in black whom I had seen reading his breviary was in fact wearing a priest’s colour. I excused myself and shuffled past Janet.
‘Excuse me Father, but I think you are needed at the top of the boat.’
He sighed and closed his prayer book. Up close he looked very young. He saw what I meant immediately. I would take a walk on deck. My holiday could start. His would end.
Later that priest was on the same bus to Glasgow.“You were sent”, was all he said to me before he moved to a seat in the rear of the bus.
The money in my purse would have to be kitchened from the start. However the one trip I wanted to make was to Inversnaid. Before we three women hugged goodbye, meeting times and phone numbers were exchanged
Tootie had a real welcome for me and we sat up late with a gas fire on and off, with tea and biscuits twice and grown up chat. I was a child when I was last in her company She now had cancer but with treatment she was managing. She slept long and often in the day.
Next day I headed for the bus station to inquire about a bus to Inversnaid. It was included alright in a few of the tours but for over a hundred pounds.
“ Any public transport?” I asked. “I suppose” said one driver. There was the normal day return on the Fortwilliam bus. I made a note of the times and enjoyed the rest of the day looking around Argyll Street and Sauchiehall Street and brought back flowers and a cake to Tootie. She had the table set for a tasty tea and we had more talk.
I told her where I was going next day and Tootie was welcome to join me. No, she had an appointment and would rather not leave town for the present. I bought my return ticket for Inversnaid and asked the driver to let me know when we would get there.
Two hours later he called out loudly for the whole bus to hear ”Inversnaid”
“ Where is it?”
“Where’s what?” he asked, handing me a time- table.“Inversnaid”, I called back up the steps.
“Over there!” he said pointing across Loch Lomond and drove off .
I stood baffled on a busy road with grass mounds high on either side. I could see water. Just off the road, a stall had tartan hats and scarves and another was selling coffee and tea. Several cars were parked in a little sandy recess behind the stalls and a valley led down to the water beyond. I was glad I had a hood on my anorak. I looked across Loch Lomond and sighed.
“I want to go over to Inversnaid” I told the young fellow behind the tartan show. He laughed.
“Are you a good swimmer?”. He was from Ireland, in fact near where I grew up. He wasn’t wanted at home just then because of his political views. I learned this as I sipped a hot tea over immediate trust. It was getting breezy and there was a bit of a chill now.
“O aye there’s bus loads ‘a ones go over every day……you might get a place on one of them….an’ there’s the skipper of the cruiser that takes them round the loch….”
He was waiting for his tea at the stall we’d just left.
“Hello. I wonder would let me join the next bus group you have to travel across as far as Inversnaid please and I’ll pay you? I asked.
“I’m sorry, Hen. But I’m over booked as it is. This next lot are due here in the next half hour. They’re coming down from Fortwilliam. In fact, look, that’s them now.” He took a gulp of his tea and threw the rest on to the grass and binned the plastic cup as he walked over to meet the guide who was stepping down off the bus.
Nobody moved in the coach. The travellers mostly from the East who weren’t asleep looked out at me with mild interest. The Guide and the Skipper exchanged papers and each used a pen. Then he shook her hand and waved as the bus drove on back to Glasgow.
“You’re in luck. They had an early start and given the uncertain weather they all opted to head on back to the hotel. You can have the boat all to yourself across .”
My tartan friend was thrilled for me and wished me well. The smart cruiser was great fun. The team of two asked me why I was so keen to visit the place. They had never heard of Gerard Manley Hopkins. I read them the sonnet. Then they told me how Rob Roy probably used that same stream or “burn” in the poem to ensure the soldiers’ dogs lost track of him and his horse so he could go on home – home to Queen Anne, his wife. She lived there in the middle of the loch on a small forested island we were just passing. They were keen to show how Rob Roy far outshone Robin Hood. Had I ever heard how when “the romantic old fool lay exhausted on his death bed he called Little John and with his last breath he said:
“Hand me my Black Bess (his favorite bow). John did so. ”Now bury me wherever the arrow lands”.
“So they buried him on top of the wardrobe.” And the three of us laughed a good while.
Loch Lomand was grey but the hills around were purple and dark green and the squawking birds followed the boat. “This is you,” said the skipper reversing in towards the wooden platform.“What time are you back?”“We’re not back, but I dare say one of these men will give you a lift back” nodding towards the builders up on scaffolding on the side of the huge hotel .To the boatmen it was all one big laugh. But the foreman had a lift arranged for me in the wink of an eye. They’d be going back over at five. Plenty of time. Where was the burn?
In I went to the expensive hotel. Reception had not heard of any famous poet who used to live there in that area a hundred and fifty years previously. And the only stream was the one over to the side of the west wing.
No sound emerged until I was right around the gable end, clear of the hotel. Then I heard it:
“That darksome burn, lowback brown,
His rollrock highroad roaring down,
In coop and in comb the fleece of his foam
Flutes and low to the lake falls home”…….
I was not disappointed. I sat and read it over and over:
“What would the world be once bereft
Of wet and wildness? Let them be left,
O let them be left, wildness and wet:
Long live the wild and the wilderness yet.”*
After a time, I re-entered the hotel, had a coffee and asked the polite young girl if I might leave a copy of the poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins . She said the manager might frame it.
In no time I was standing back on the other side of the lough at the bus stop. The same driver from earlier on was driving the return bus . He remembered me and enjoyed hearing how I managed. We laughed so much the Chinese family in the next seat were curious. They had come to see where “The Highlander” was set. It was popular in China.
Later that night Tootie and I had lots to talk about and Tootie had a favorite poem too.
*Inversnaid by Gerard Manley Hopkins