Peter May - The Chessmen

‘Where the hell did you come from?’ I shouted.

He shook his head and his confusion was clear. ‘Dunno what happened. Damn sheep came running on to the road. Next thing, I’m coming to in the ditch on the far side, and you lot are all gathered around the geodha .’

‘We thought you went over!’ I called back.

‘For Christ’s sake,’ he said. ‘Did no one think to look in the bloody ditch!’ He lifted his arms then dropped them to his side again. ‘Where’s Roddy?’

‘Fell in going after you!’ Whistler bellowed. It was obvious that he had little sympathy for Strings. He turned to me. ‘See if anyone up there’s got a rope in their saddlebag.’ And he swung himself over the edge, searching for Roddy’s foot-and handholds.

As I scrambled back up to the road, I wondered at Roddy’s desperation. Only fifteen minutes before he had been determined to beat and humiliate Strings in this foolish competition to decide the band’s new name. And now he had gone and risked his life, maybe even lost it, trying to save him.

Three of the boys had tow ropes. But none of them was long enough. To everyone’s surprise it was Mairead who knew how to tie the knots that would make them into one serviceable length. We shouldn’t have been, since her dad was a fisherman, but the speed and dexterity with which she knotted those lengths of rope together took us all aback. Strings just stood watching helplessly. No one was interested right then in how badly hurt or otherwise he might be. The focus was all on Roddy.

I ran down the slope with the rope and several other boys and inched carefully towards the edge of the drop to see if I could spot Whistler. There was no sign of him. I bellowed his name as loud as I could, and to my intense relief heard his voice echo back up at me.

‘Did you get a rope?’

‘We did.’

‘Chuck it down, then, and make sure it’s well anchored at the top.’

The only way to secure it was to wrap it around my waist and use me as the anchor, while ahead of me the other boys gripped it, hand over hand, like members of a tug-of-war team. I lay back, almost sitting, my heels dug hard and deep into the peat, and we threw the other end down into the geodha .

After a few minutes we felt a tug on it, and then what seemed like the full weight of two Whistlers testing our strength to hold it firm. It was touch and go whether we could. I shouted towards the road for more help, hoping that Mairead’s knots were going to hold. Several of the others came running down, girls too, everyone set to lend a hand, until finally we saw the giant form of Whistler pulling himself up over the edge, the apparently lifeless figure of Roddy slung over his shoulder.

As soon as he reached the grass he let go of the rope and dropped Roddy on to the turf. Roddy let out a yell of sheer bloody agony, his right leg twisted at a horribly unnatural angle. Whistler was pink-faced and sweating from his exertions. ‘Busted leg,’ he said unnecessarily.

Roddy was breathing stertorously and unscrewed his eyes for a moment to open them and look up. Strings leaned over him, his bloodied face a mask of concern. Roddy’s lips contorted into a sort of grimace, and he said, ‘So. Amran it is, then.’

I didn’t see Roddy again until after the start of the summer holidays. He had been rushed to hospital and undergone several hours of surgery on a shattered femur. Metal plates and screws inserted. The band’s summer gigs were cancelled, and it wasn’t until a meeting called to discuss their future that all the members of the band were reunited for the first time since the accident. I never knew what had passed between Strings and Roddy on the subject of the race, but the incident at the geodha was never referred to, not in my presence anyway. And in his own obdurate way, Roddy simply seemed happy that he had won the bet. His leg was plastered and in a brace, and he turned up in a wheelchair pushed by a private nurse paid for by his parents.

The meeting was held in the public bar at Scaliscro Lodge, which sat up on the west bank overlooking Little Loch Rog. Roddy looked terrible. But he had been determined to convene the meeting, to map out the future of the group once they went to Glasgow.

However, it was Mairead who provided the shock. To everyone’s astonishment she had cropped her hair to something not much longer than a crew-cut. Gone was the long, dark wavy hair that tumbled over angular shoulders. She looked stark and gaunt with this most macho of male cuts, although still strangely feminine. There were not many women who could wear their hair like that. But she had strong, striking features, and even the shape of her head, now fully revealed, was classically beautiful. I couldn’t take my eyes off her.

Roddy was oddly animated, as if he were on something. And maybe he was. A cocktail, perhaps, of painkillers and beer. Or maybe it was just that restless, relentless ambition that so drove him. But his face was flushed and there was a strange glow in his eyes.

‘Amran,’ he said, and he threw a little triumphant glance in Strings’ direction. ‘It’s got a good ring to it.’ Nobody was going to argue with him. ‘As soon as I’m back on my feet, Strings and I will go down to Glasgow to try to line up some gigs, and we’re probably going to need a management company.’

I caught a glimpse of Whistler out of the corner of my eye as he laid his pint glass down on the bar with an odd sense of finality. I knew what was coming. ‘I won’t be going to Glasgow,’ he said.

The thumping of the music playing over the stereo system only further emphasized the silence that followed.

Rambo said, ‘What. . you mean you’ve applied for Strathclyde, or Edinburgh, or somewhere?’ You could hear the disbelief in his voice.

‘I mean I won’t be going to any university. Glasgow, Edinburgh or anywhere else. I’m staying on the island.’

I almost held my breath.

‘What are you talking about?’ Roddy said. All the light had gone out of his eyes. ‘You can’t stay here and still be in the band.’

‘Congratulations. You just won a set of steak knives and a holiday for two in Torremolinos. You’d better look for another flute player when you’re down in Glasgow.’

Roddy looked as if the world had just fallen in on him.

Mairead said quietly, ‘When did you decide this?’

Whistler shrugged. ‘A while ago.’

‘And you never told us?’ Roddy was angry now.

The sound of Mairead’s open hand hitting the side of Whistler’s face was like the crack of a rifle. She hit him so hard that he had to put a hand on the bar to steady himself. She stared at him for a long, hard moment with something akin to loathing in her gaze, before turning to walk out of the bar.

Ironically Amran, as they became, achieved their greatest success post-Whistler, and the accident on the Road to Nowhere seemed, perversely, to have brought Strings and Roddy closer together.

But prime mover in their transition from island Celtic rock band to mainstream supergroup was Donald Murray. Big Kenny had gone to agricultural college in Inverness, leaving the band without a roadie. And it was after my final break-up with Marsaili that I got a call one day from Donald.

‘Hey man,’ he drawled. He was affecting a mid-Atlantic accent in those days, somewhere between Ness and New York. One of the brightest boys of his year at the Nicolson, he had come down to Glasgow University, carrying with him all the despairing hopes of his parents. His father, Coinneach Murray, was one of the most feared and respected men in Ness. Minister of the Crobost Free Church, a man of fire and brimstone, a relentless advocate of a harsh and unforgiving Christianity. A Christianity that his son had rejected from an early age, becoming the archetypal rebel without a cause, and defying his father at every turn. He drank, swore, slept with more girls than you could count, and seemed hell-bent on a road to self-destruction.