By Allan Massie

Published 27th Jun 2024, 16:36 BST

At the heart of this delightful short novel there is a mystery concerning a treasure which may have been left some centuries ago on a small Scottish island by a certain Olghair MacKenzie. He may have been a pirate looting Spanish gold from the Americas or, alternatively, an alchemist studying the dark arts in Egypt, but really it doesn't matter. Though an attempt to solve the mystery and find the treasure occupies the later stages of the novel, it is a bit like what Hitchcock called a “McGuffin”, though not quite a red herring. The inquiry draws on the memories of the last native speakers of Gaelic on the island, all old women, all charming. This is nice, light entertainment, but the novel is more interesting than the quest.

The narrator, Jack Mackenzie, comes to the island from Glasgow as a boy in his last year of primary school, his father having been appointed headmaster of the island school. Childhood on the island, where Jack's best friend is an athletic and beautiful girl called Sally, is a delight and an education. Later, at the secondary on the mainland across the Bridge (reputedly built by General Wade) he shines at football, is spotted by a scout and goes south to Chelsea. A short time in the limelight there deflects him from a career in the game and, remaining in London, he goes to college to study chemistry.

He is fascinated by scents and smells – someone once told him he has a nose like a dog. Graduating, he starts a cosmetics firm with a fellow student, Charlotte. Strange choice? Since our remote ancestors started painting themselves, cosmetics, he says, “was the first language.” However, he doesn't care for the commercialism when a large multinational takes over the company. Then, with Charlotte having drink trouble and with his father dead, he returns to the island to become its postman. Walking every day to deliver the mail, he lives an open air life, knowing and caring for all the locals, even picking up a little Gaelic. It reads like Eden recaptured, with echoes of the poetry of Edwin Muir, but then comes the quest which is triggered by the need to repair – actually dismantle and restore – the bridge to the mainland, and its supposed connection to old Olghair’s treasure. There is comedy about this, but gentle comedy.

This is a charming novel, a kind one too, because Angus Peter Campbell believes in kindness just as Alexander McCall Smith does, and kindness in a novel is rare enough there days to be cherished. Charm and kindness in fiction too easily give way to sentimentality, something Scottish novelists have been suspiciously aware of since the days of the Kailyard, but Campbell never gives way to that temptation. This is a sensuous novel with much beauty, lovely evocations of the land and sea, but it is never sentimental. There is always the awareness of death, the unstoppable march of change, but at the same time it is so beautifully and tenderly written so as to offer delight on every page. A lesser writer would have stretched it out to three or four times the length. As it is, it’s a book that you will surely, on reaching the end, turn back to read again; a truly delightful piece of work made by a fine craftsman.

Eighth Moon Bridge, by Angus Peter Campbell, Luath Press, £7.99

Eighth Moon Bridge by Angus Peter Campbell review - 'a delightful piece of work made by a fine craftsman’