Peter May - The Chessmen

My eyes were immediately drawn to the flash of white blouse below her blazer. Soaked and made see-through by the rain, I was shocked to see the outline of her breasts, and the darker circles of her areolae visible through the flimsiest of bras. She looked down to see what I was looking at, but just smiled and buttoned her blazer shut. Slowly, without haste or embarrassment, her eyes fixed on mine, only too aware of the effect she was having. I think I must have blushed like a girl. And all the lines I had been repeating in my head disappeared in a sea of hormones. I couldn’t find a single thing to say.

She said, ‘Thanks, Fin. See you later.’ And she hurried off to join her friends. It was one of those moments in my life that I have replayed many times. And each time I returned her smile, unblushing, and said something clever that won her over. How smart we can be after the event, how suave and sophisticated in our imaginations. Donald would have known what to say and do, and would no doubt have ended up sleeping with her. Not that night, perhaps, but sometime. And, who knows? Knowing Donald, maybe he did.

My close encounter of the second kind came not long after that. I was down at Uig the following weekend. The band wasn’t playing, and Whistler and I had decided to take the tent up into the mountains to do a little illicit fishing for brown trout. We pitched it on the shores of one of the myriad lochs west of Brinneabhal. The land there opened up below the mountains, with views across the moor and the machair towards the cliffs, the Atlantic breaking creamy white all along the shattered coastline.

The cloud was down so low you couldn’t see the tops of the mountains, and the rain drifted across the loch like a mist. We sat in our waterproofs and wellies among the rocks along the shore, rods raised, lines cast out across the dark, rippling water. Neither of us was in any great hurry to land a fish. That would come, we knew. The loch was teeming with them. As long as we had a couple of trout to roast on the fire by the time we were hungry we would be happy. Those are days in my life that I look back on with great nostalgia. Moments long gone, that I wish could be recaptured and lived again. Impossible, of course.

We hadn’t spoken for some time. But it was a comfortable silence. The best friendships are the ones that don’t need words to fill the silences.

Suddenly Whistler said, ‘How come you turn into such a bumbling idiot every time Mairead so much as looks at you?’

I was so shocked I swung my head around to look at him and couldn’t think of a single thing to say. Eventually I muttered, ‘Do I?’

Whistler gave me one of his looks. ‘Aye, you do.’

Which gave me time enough to recover my wits and issue a hot denial. ‘I do not!’

Now he laughed. ‘You fancy her, don’t you?’

I could hardly deny it. ‘Who doesn’t?’

He gazed out across the water. ‘She’s not like you think she is, you know.’

‘Isn’t she?’

He gave a little shrug of his shoulders. ‘Everyone thinks she’s super-cool, super-confident, arrogant even. Self-obsessed and full of herself.’

I didn’t say anything. I could hardly have summed her up better myself.

But Whistler shook his head. ‘Truth is, that underneath it all she’s really very insecure.’

‘How would you know?’

He kept his eyes on the point where his line entered the water and its reflection made an oblique angle with it. ‘Me and Mairead were together through most of primary school. I even took her to the qually dance in primary seven.’

That was the first time I had heard about their past relationship and I looked at him with jealous awe. ‘Wow. What happened? I mean, why aren’t you still together?’

He pushed out his lower jaw and cocked his head to one side. ‘All good things come to an end.’

Of course, Kenny told me later that it was Roddy coming between them that brought about the end. But Whistler wasn’t about to confess that then.

‘The thing is, I know her. Grew up with her. She’s not really like that. She’s confused and mixed up, and. . well, trying to be something she’s not.’ He glanced at Fin. ‘That’s why she and Roddy are off and on like a hot-water tap. Roddy’s girl is who she’d like to be. The image, I mean. But it’s not really her.’ He grinned then. ‘I think maybe she’s got a wee bit of a fancy for you.’

I felt myself blushing to the roots of my hair. ‘Crap!’

‘Is it? She could have picked anyone for the ride back to Stornoway the other day. But she chose you, Fin. And I’ve seen the way she looks at you.’

‘Aw, give it a break!’ I stopped being embarrassed and figured he was just winding me up now.

He shrugged. ‘Suit yourself.’ And he turned his eyes back to the loch. ‘Just thought you should be aware of it, so you don’t miss your big chance next Friday.’

I frowned. ‘What’s happening next Friday?’

‘Big Donald Ruadh and Ceit “Cat” Mackinnon are getting married over at Mangurstadh. You’ve been invited, haven’t you?’

‘Oh. Yes.’ I’d forgotten all about it. Donald Ruadh was from Ness, a second cousin or something. I never quite knew. It was not uncommon to be related to folk without knowing it. He was ten years older than all of us, of course, and a bit of a Jack the Lad. The last thing anyone expected was that he would get married. Least of all to a lassie from Uig that he hadn’t even got pregnant. The marriage was to be conducted at the church at Baile na Cille, and the celebrations held afterwards at Ceit’s house at Mangurstadh. One of those weddings that would go on all through the night and end up with breakfast the following morning. Which is why it was on the Friday, and not the Saturday. Because then the party would have had to end at midnight with the coming of the Sabbath.

Whistler said, ‘Well, me and Roddy and Mairead are invited, too. And no doubt Roddy’ll be taking Cairistiona.’ Cairistiona was Roddy’s latest flame. A flame that would flicker and die the moment Mairead wanted him back again. But for the moment Mairead was unattached, and Whistler added, ‘Which means that Mairead’ll be available to whichever of us is the first to ask her to dance.’ His eyes were gleaming now, his smile mischievous. ‘Are you up to the challenge, boy?’

‘Challenge?’

‘Aye. To the victor the spoils. Or maybe you don’t have the balls to ask her.’

It was easy, sitting up there, to enter into the spirit of the dare, imagining myself walking up to Mairead and asking for a dance. And, even better, the thought of her saying yes, and me holding her close and feeling the heat of her body against mine and the softness of her breasts pressing into my chest as I held her in my arms. Easy to dream when you are a million miles from the reality. But the memory of her sitting behind me on the bike, her arms around me, was still fresh in my mind, and for a moment I believed that anything was possible.

I grinned back at Whistler. He’d had her and lost her. Maybe it was my turn.

The little church at Baile na Cille sat up on the hill above the machair and had panoramic views out over Uig sands. It was packed for the ceremony. Standing room only. It was late on the Friday afternoon, and by the time everyone got back to the house at Mangurstadh it was almost seven. Broad daylight, of course, since midsummer was only just by, and it would be hours before the sun dipped into the ocean beyond the far horizon. And even then it would never get fully dark.

Ceit Mackinnon’s parents lived in a whitehouse at the end of a rough track heading out towards Mangurstadh beach. There had been two extensions built on to it, front and back, and there was a large stone barn with a rustred corrugated roof where the dance would be held. There were cars parked everywhere along the track, as far up as the road, and in the field next to a disused sheep fank.