Ireland

Matt Bannerman

HENRY O'DONNELL, champion swimmer of all Donegal, took four hours to swim the ten miles to Tory Island, and six to swim back again, a disparity due more to the prevailing winds and currents of Tory Sound than to any weariness on the part of the great man. On winter days, with a big Atlantic swell running, the stubby little ferryboat Tor Mor is not much quicker, and when the gales come on to blow she does not go at all. Our sailing is the first for a week, a chink in the storms, and Tor Mar is low in the water, not from weight of passengers (we are four) but from the cargo lashed on deck: sheep-nuts, coal, UHT milk.

In 1974 Tory was cut off for two months. These days the Health Board helicopter brings essential supplies, but sheep-nuts must come in Tor Mir, and on the way out of the tricky harbour we alternately bump on the bottom and skid backwards in great green breakers.

'Forecast's bad,' says my neighbour at the rail, with glum satisfaction. We reach deep water, and Tor MO.r begins a solemn corkscrew.

'This helicopter,' I ask him, wedging myself behind a life-raft, 'how many seats does it have?'

'Six. But the old people have priority.'

Tory islanders are famous for their longevity. I can see myself battling with hordes of implacable Gaelic pensioners, Saigon-style, for a place on the last chopper out.

Unlike the fangs of the Skellig Rocks or the whale-humps of the Aran Islands, Tory lacks a distinct profile. Slipping in and out of the squalls on the northern horizon is a lumpy wedge, with the tower and the twinkle of the lighthouse at one end and a jumble of crags at the other.

'Elvis on his back,' says my neighbour. 'That's what they say it looks like. Though I never cared for him myself.'

Elvis would not be the first king to come out of Tory. In Celtic myth, the pirate chief Balor of the Baleful Eye held the whole of Ireland in thrall from his island stronghold. Balor's cy-clopic glance was fatal to his enemies, though like many islanders he was getting on a bit, and ropes and pulleys were required to raise the drooping eyelid. Balor was disposed of by his grandson, but the raiding and rustling continued into historical times, so that the rough men of the islands became the very type of rogues and thieves, and 'Tory' became a resonant insult to hurl at one's enemies in land disputes, in family feuds, and even, later still, across the floor of a distant parliament.

The present king of Tory is on the quay to meet us, a duty he performs whether the boat is bringing hordes of summer trippers or a bedraggled handful of winter flotsam like today. Indifferent to the course of events 'over in Ireland', as the islanders refer to the mainland, Tory has maintained its monarchy, though the succession, an 'appointment' from within the leading families, is as mysterious and Machiavellian a process as another, more familiar, Tory leadership contest. In the past, his role in apportioning the few acres of land for spuds and oats, and dividing the spoils of wrack washed up on the shore, gave the king real authority. Patsy Dan Rodgers, the present incumbent, is more of a roving ambassador, travelling to Gaelic gettogethers in Milwaukee and dispensing wise saws to the tourists.

We never know what the Atlantic will bring us next,' he says, meaning weather or strangers or perhaps both. As with all the islanders. English is his second language, and the words come out with a playful, rolling intonation. There is nothing especially regal in his bearing, a corduroy cap pulled down over his eyes and a battered leather coat buttoned up to his chin, with only a twinkling diamond stud in his ear to suggest kingly status. His reign has, however, seen a revival in the fortunes of the island. The renaissance of Gaelic culture, the advent of the helicopter, and perhaps even the offices of Patsy Dan himself, have stabilised Tory's population and put off the threat of evacuation.

One hundred and seventy-five,' he says, counting his subjects and adding proudly, 'two newborns over Christmas.' The plaster is barely dry on a day centre for the elderly, and construction has begun on a secondary school to cater for the island's handful of teenagers. Other amenities, the king admits, are still lacking. 'But sure they pay tax on the mainland, and still have holes in the road.'

Tory has been Europe's most unlikely tax haven since the Wasp, a 14-gun Admiralty sloop dispatched to encourage the islanders to file their returns, was wrecked off the lighthouse in 1884. The island's only road is nevertheless in pristine condition, and I walk its length untroubled by traffic, except for a venerable tractor that lurches by with a cargo of kids, dogs and a proud new refrigerator. Street-lighting now supplements the lighthouse for night strollers, and benches have been set into the exhausted bog that rises towards the cliffs. There is even a signpost of sorts: a second world war torpedo washed up on the island, defused and erected, rust-red and priapic, to mark the midpoint between West Town and East Town.

As the afternoon wears on, the wind drops and dies, and hazy sunshine spreads a strange halo on the northern sky. Perched on the crags of Bator's Castle, I can see the clouds swirling round the Donegal mountains, but the weather seems to have forgotten us, and the silence is broken only by the bark of the choughs and the distant boom of surf. The island has but a single tree, a battered shrub in the garden of Mrs Rodgers's B&B, and the exposure is heady and unsettling. Tory may not know what is coming next, but for the length of the long winter it has a fairly good idea, and under the flickering eye of the lighthouse and Balor's baleful gaze there are few hiding places. There is jam for tea in the prim chill of Mrs Rodgers's parlour, but she and her son argue in bitter Gaelic on the other side of the wall, supplemented by the English words their ancient language seems to lack: figures and curses. The barometer on the mantelpiece is stuck on Storms.

Sure enough, the next day dawns to howling wind, and the sight of Tor Mor battling across surprises everyone, not least the postmistress, who arrives on the quay in a fluster. After carefully stowing the mails, she is decorously ill for two crazily tilting hours. Why go to one of Europe's wildest outposts during its harshest season'? Because, as the postmistress's wan smile makes clear when we finally clamber ashore, survival is a fine thing — but book early for the helicopter.