First Foot

The story I am about to tell you happened to me when I was about twelve – that awkward age between childhood and adolescence. It was a time before mobile phones or the internet, a simpler time, perhaps.

For many years my family had the tradition of driving to Scotland to see in the New Year, a journey that often took many hours. We would stay at my godfathers imposing Victorian house, that overlooked the salmon filled river Annan. However, this year he called to tell us that they had instead changed their plans and would be celebrating at a fisherman’s cottage that he had won in game of poker, located in a semi deserted village near the Western Isles in the Highlands. He asked us if we would we like to join them there instead and my mother, of course, jumped at the chance – she was a nut for New Year and the thought of not spending it with a large group of people filled her with dread. So, on the thirty-first of December my father dutifully packed up the car and drove the five of us; my mother and my two elder sisters all the way up the country to a tiny village called Applecross. From here we would make the perilous drive to the village of Lonbain, over a mountain the locals called the Pass of The Cattle.

Apart from my father none of us had ever visited the highlands before and though my sisters and I were at that age where we deemed anything our parents suggested utterly dull – after looking at where we were going on a map, we were suitably intrigued, for it seemed so remote.

It took hours to reach the cottage on a journey mainly without incident. One event however still sticks in my memory and that was during the ascent to Lonbain, over the mountain pass. This was a twisty journey of high crags and steep drops, on a road only wide enough for one car. We were sharing the road with a bright red mini that was speeding along in front of us. My father, a great lover of the strange and unexplained began to tell us about a highland phenomenon known as ghost cars; vehicles that appeared and then seemed to disappear. We all listened to him as he told a tall story of a haunted highland road he had travelled on as a child, but then as we turned a sharp corner, we saw with horror that the red mini in front us was no more – it had vanished. My father laughed, delighted, but my mother was unhappy, she was a superstitious woman. My sisters explained it away but I said nothing, the ghost car had left me with a terrible sense of forboding.

All thoughts of the vanishing car were soon forgotten however when we reached the top of the pass, where with awe, we witnessed a single ray of sunlight piercing the gun metal sky like a finger reaching down to the calm sea below.

We arrived to the village a little before dark, the setting sun turning everything to flame and silhouetting the Islands on the near horizon.

The cottage was a two storey whitewashed building with a peeling dark blue painted door in front of which stood an old man. He announced himself to be Mr Macdonald a near and ‘only’ neighbour and that as the sole owner of the villages telephone he had a message from our godfather, to say that he and his family had been delayed and was hoping to arrive later that night. Disappointed though they were, my parents bade the old man welcome, especially as he also produced a fresh fish that he told us he had caught that day and that he thought we might like for our supper. My parents, grateful and somewhat amused by him, with his white beard and fisherman’s cap, shared a dram or two of whiskey which seemed to cheer everyone up.

Once Mr Macdonald had wended his way home we inspected the cottage. It had been a holiday let since the nineteen seventies and it seemed nothing much had been updated from that era or even before. I was a melancholy child and the cottage with it small thickset windows and views out to the sea suited my mood. I chose a small room that had been decorated nautically with faded wallpaper, illustrated with small ships; obviously meant for a child that dreamed of being a sailor.

My mother began her usual delegation of chores as she prepared the fish for supper but we could all tell she was upset that my godfather and his family would be late, she was always in need of others, as if we were never enough for her. In a mood like this one it was best we left her alone.

The cottage was chilly but before he left, Mr Macdonald had helped us build up a small peat fire in the sitting room grate that soon started to produce some heat. He also warned us of an approaching storm. As darkness enveloped the little dwelling, my father cheerily opened some wine while my sisters and I sipped on coca-cola – a rare treat.

After dinner, and to pass the time we played games; Monopoly – which dragged on for ages, with one of my sisters getting upset at losing and then cards. My mother was determined to teach us poker and how to achieve what she called a perfect ‘poker face’. We played for matches as the rain began to throw itself against the window panes and the wind whistled around us.

At about eleven-thirty my mother asked if my father would be the ‘first foot’ – an old Gaelic new year tradition whereby a man, tall and preferably dark, would knock on the door at midnight demanding admittance. He should be holding a black bun, a lump of coal and some whiskey. The gifts were important symbols of food, warmth and joy for the coming year. My mothers maternal grandmother, who she had loved deeply, had been born in Scotland before moving south as a child and my mother liked to keep the traditions of Hogmanay, the name for the Scottish new year celebrations alive, in her memory. The idea was that the ‘first foot’ and his gifts would be bringing the family luck. But my father refused, he had no desire to go out in the rain and they began to argue. My sisters and I grew silent, this often happened, especially if they had been drinking. My father incensed at a cruel barb from my mother, swore loudly at her and left the room, we could hear his feet stamping up the stairs.

We all sat in silence, my mother with a set and angry expression on her face. I remember that there was a carriage clock on the mantelpiece whose ticking seemed to magnify as the hands moved toward midnight, then just as it began to chime there was a sudden, loud, urgent knocking on the front door.

My mother jumped up – “your godfather at last!” she exclaimed and went out into the hall. The knocking stopped as she opened the door and we heard her voice and then she came back in with a man none of us had ever seen before. He was tall and broad, wearing one of those duffle coats that you only ever saw people wear in old films. His dark hair, cut very short was plastered over his forehead and I was struck by how pale he was, his lips almost blue. We had all stood up when they came in and I recall it was if he had brought the sea in with him, as the room suddenly filled up with the strong smell of brine and also faintly another odour, pungent and acrid, like engine oil. It was cold too – icy – even though the fire was roaring in the grate. My elder sister gestured to him toward the fire and he walked heavily across the room leaving wet footprints on the rug that bloomed like bloodstains. He said nothing to any of us, his dark eyes fixed onto something distant that none of us could see but as he sat in the chair I noticed a small tear falling from his eye and tracking down his waxen cheek.

My mother asked us to follow her into the kitchen and we duly did so – no one wanted to be alone with him. She told us that he had asked to come in. Because he was soaking wet she thought there may have been an accident - he seemed to be in shock. My sisters busied about making sweet tea and I tried vainly to find some biscuits. Presently, tea tray in hand, we returned to the sitting room but the man was gone, the fire gone out too. The only evidence of him ever being there were the wet footprints on the rug and a damp impression on the cushion on the fireside chair.

As we surveyed the room there was another knock on the door– we all started up and I thought maybe he had come back – but it was only our father, a lump of coal in his hand and a half drunk bottle of whiskey under his arm; his laughter died when he saw our stricken expressions.

None of us could make sense of that night. My sisters rationalised it, as they are wont to do, and my father, not having witnessed anything, thought the man had been just a drunk wandered in from the road – a relation of Mr Macdonald perhaps.

We went home soon after, as my godfather and his family never made it. Also, the cottage seemed to have lost its initial cosines, the sitting room kept a pervading smell of the brackish sea that no amount of airing could get rid of and the rug and cushion on the chair remained damp and slimy to the touch.

My mother never spoke of that night and would shut down any conversation pertaining to it, but she was never the same again, my parents marriage soon deteriorated, my father lost his job and she was later diagnosed with early onstage Alzheimers.

In her latter days, having been moved to a care home, I would visit her, sitting with her in comfortable silence - but one time, not long before the closing of the year, as we sat together quietly, it was perhaps the rain outside battering against the glass that trigged in her a memory because she looked up at me, her usual cloudy eyes sharp and clutched at my hand and with urgency said – “My grandmother always warned me to never let in a first foot if he wasn’t carrying a gift!”

She said no more, and we sat like that, until it grew dark and she loosened my hand and it was time for me to go. But as I walked out into the rain I was sure I could hear the sound of a clock somewhere, chiming the midnight hour.