‘I expect his mother remembers his first word,’ Tommy put in from behind the Clarion.
‘It seems that Tir nan Og is just one jump west from the singing sands.’
‘So is America,’ said Laura. ‘Which is much nearer the Islanders’ idea of Heaven than Tir nan Og is.’
Grant, repeating Mr Tallisker’s speech on comparative heavens, said that the Gaels were the only race who visualised Heaven as a country of the young; which was endearing of them.
‘They are the only known race who have no word for no,’ Laura said drily. ‘That is a much more revealing characteristic than their notions of eternity.’
Grant came back to the fire with an armful of books and began to go through them at leisure.
‘It is difficult to imagine a mind that has never evolved a word for no, isn’t it?’ Laura said musingly, and went back to The Times.
The books varied from the scientific, through the sentimental, to the purely fantastic. From kelp-burning to the saints and heroes. From bird-watching to soul’s pilgrimages. They varied, too, from the admirable but dull to the unbelievably bad. It seemed that no one who had ever visited the Islands had refrained from writing about them. The bibliographies at the end of the soberer books would have done justice to the Roman Empire. On one thing all were agreed, however: the Islands were magic. The Islands were the last refuge of civilisation in a world gone mad. The Islands were beautiful beyond imagining; a world carpeted with wild flowers and bounded by a sea that broke in sapphire on silver beaches. A land of brilliant sunlight; of good-looking people and heart-searching music. Wild, lovely music handed down from the beginning of time, from an age when the gods were young. And if you wanted to go there, see MacBrayne’s time-table on Page 3 of the Appendix.
The books lasted Grant very happily until bed-time. And while they drank their nightcaps he said: ‘I’d like to have a look at the Islands.’
‘Make a plan for next year,’ Tommy said, agreeing. ‘There’s quite good fishing on Lewis.’