legends · 4 min read ·
The Ferry Is Always Late
A passenger's log shows a ferry that always arrives late, at the island he never left.
**Tuesday, 6 November.** The crossing to Skarra is supposed to take fifty minutes. I took the 09:10 out of Harbour Quay on a grey morning with a swell that rolled the boat enough to make the coffee slop. There were eleven of us in the lounge. A couple in matching rain jackets. A man with a crate of hens. A priest. A woman with a cello case, which is the sort of thing one notices on a ferry.
We left on time. At 09:50 I looked up and saw no island. The sea was flat now, the grey went on in every direction, and there was a smell I had not noticed at the pier, a smell like a cellar.
At 10:30 the purser came through and said they had run into a bank of fog and the captain was slowing. The fog was not outside the windows. The windows showed the same flat sea, in good light.
**Tuesday, later.** We docked at Skarra at 12:20, an hour and a half late. The harbour was exactly as the brochure describes. A white quay, a pub, a church on a rise. I got off with my bag and a feeling of enormous relief that I could not explain. The priest got off behind me. Neither the couple nor the cello player did. When I asked the purser about it, he said, "They're for the next stop."
There is no next stop. Skarra is the end of the line.
**Wednesday, 7 November.** I walked the island. It takes four hours. I met nine people in all, all pleasant, all very friendly, all exactly as slow as islanders are said to be. In the pub I asked a man about the ferry and he said: "It's always late. You'll get used to it."
"But it ran at ten past nine," I said. "I mean, it left on time."
"Aye," he said. "It leaves on time. It's the arriving."
**Saturday, 10 November.** My return was booked for the 14:30 boat. I stood at the quay in good time with my bag. The boat appeared at the harbour mouth at 14:25, and I felt another wave of relief, and we boarded, myself and six others, and we left on the dot.
The lounge. The swell. The coffee, which tasted of the same cellar. I looked at my watch at 15:20, when we should have been docking in Harbour Quay. No mainland. A grey sea going on and on. I did not panic. I have taken this route enough times to know that a delay is a delay.
By 16:00 the light had begun to go. By 17:30 it was dark, and the lights of the mainland had still not come up, and the purser, passing, told us in a flat voice that the captain was taking a longer course because of weather. There was no weather. It was a quiet night, black and glassy, and the only sound was the engine and the sea against the hull.
I went on deck, though they ask you not to. The wake stretched out behind us, white, and in the white were faces. I will not exaggerate. They were not faces. They were the pale shapes that water makes, the sort of shapes you see in the foam. But there were a great many of them, lying on their backs, in lines, as if the boat were towing a long procession of people who had decided to be carried.
**Sunday, 11 November.** We docked at 03:10. Not at Harbour Quay. At Skarra, the white quay, the pub, the church on the rise. I had never left it. The six who had boarded with me got off in silence, and the priest was there on the quay to say good evening to us each by name.
I have tried the ferry four more times. Each time it leaves on time. Each time it arrives late, always at Skarra, and each time I take a little longer to feel surprised.
**Thursday, 22 November.** I have stopped counting the crossings. I have a room over the pub now, rented by the week. The landlord says the ferry is always late, and that there is a trick to it, and that the trick is to stop expecting the other side.
I tried that. I boarded this morning without a bag. I sat in the lounge, in the grey light, and I did not look at my watch. The cellar smell came up, and then the swell dropped, and for the first time the ferry did not arrive anywhere. It simply went on. The couple in the rain jackets were in the corner. The woman with the cello was tuning.
She nodded to me. I took the seat next to her. And that is where I am writing this, with the pen balanced on my knee, and the sea outside the window so calm that it has stopped looking like a sea. The cello is beginning. I do not think I mind.