Peter May - The Chessmen

You could just see the beach from here, and beyond it a tendril of headland at the south end of the bay, slabs of cliffs rising out of the ocean where they had stood firm for eons against the onslaught of the Atlantic. This was green, rolling machair land, peppered with occasional crofts and meandering drystone dykes that had long since tumbled into desuetude. To the south and east, the mountains rose up into a gathering of clouds. To the west, the sea lay shimmering in sunshine. The young couple had been lucky with the weather.

In the crowd at the church I had only caught the briefest glimpse of Mairead. I had arrived in a white minibus with a group of guests from Ness, and was tied to them for my lift to the house. By the time I got there, Mairead was with all the Uig women in the kitchen preparing the meal.

They had set out two long tables in the house. One in the sitting room, another in the dining room. But it still wasn’t enough to seat all the guests at once. We knew we would be called in to eat in shifts, and so contented ourselves with hanging about outside, smoking and laughing and drinking beer from big casks that they’d brought down from Stornoway. It was a long wait.

A number of guests had arrived with chickens and rabbits for the meal. You never took a dead animal to a wedding, so they had to be killed, and plucked or skinned, then gutted and cooked. But there was no hurry, since no one would be leaving until the following morning.

I saw Whistler once or twice, but he was busy with the Uig crowd. You hung about in your own village groups, like factions at a tribal gathering. The real mixing wouldn’t start till the music kicked off and the dancing began. Then the beer, and the whisky which had come in half-bottles in the back pockets of most of the men, would have loosened inhibitions, and a good time would be had by all.

By the time the Niseachs had been called in to eat it was late, and the light was fading. I’d had quite a few beers already, and was flushed and a little unsteady on my feet. A lot of the men were dressed in kilts. But I didn’t have one and was wearing my good suit, which was shiny around the arse and the elbows. My conservative dark-blue tie was pulled loose at the open collar of my white shirt. I could barely eat for nerves, because I knew that sooner rather than later I was going to have to face Mairead with the big question.

Girls have no idea how hard it is for a teenage boy to pluck up the courage to ask for a date or a dance. They must always take the initiative, with the ever-attendant risk of refusal, and therefore humiliation. And so I found myself putting off the moment.

When I had finished eating, I sought out the Ness boys who were out back, and we stood talking and smoking, and watching the sea turn from dimpled copper to blood red before fading to a dark-blue haze, the smudge on the horizon that was St Kilda vanishing in the dusk. I heard the music starting up in the barn. An accordionist and a fiddler. I had kept an eye out for Whistler, but had only caught the occasional glimpse of him. It seemed like a long time since he had winked at me and given me the thumbs up across the heads of the other guests before disappearing into the barn.

Now I saw him coming out, head down, hands thrust deep into his pockets. He pushed past us and wandered off towards the old cart track that ran down to the beach. I stamped out my cigarette and hurried after him. ‘What’s wrong?’

He didn’t even turn his head. ‘Fuck off,’ he said in a low growl.

I tried to grab his arm to stop him walking, but he shook it free of my grasp. ‘What happened, Whistler?’

‘She wouldn’t dance with me.’ He turned to look at me, his eyes lost below a gathering of his brows. ‘Nearly six years I went with her at primary, and she just blew me off. Said she was waiting for someone else.’ He looked away again. ‘I suppose that would be you.’

‘No way!’

‘Well, who else, then? Roddy’s sitting in there smooching in a corner with that Cairistiona. Strings is with some girl from third year. And Mairead would never even look at Skins or Rambo, I can guarantee you that.’ He turned a contemptuous sneer in my direction. ‘It can only be you. Why else would she have asked you for that ride back to Stornoway?’

I could scarcely believe it. Could Mairead Morrison really be waiting in the barn for me to ask her to dance?

‘Go on, you daft bastard. Better get in there before she gets fed up and says yes to someone else.’

The barn had felt huge when I looked in earlier and it was still empty. Now it was filled to the gunwales and appeared tiny. Folk stood two or three deep around the walls, the Drops of Brandy being danced with great relish in the centre of a mud floor strewn with hay. Couples spun up and down the lines of facing men and women waiting for their turn to go birling along the aisle arm-in-arm with their partners.

There were storm lamps hanging from the rafters, and smoke rose into the roof space along with the music and laughter. I spotted Mairead standing on her own at the far end of the barn, peering anxiously over the heads of the dancers as if looking for someone. I took a deep breath and pushed my way through the crowd. She saw me coming at the last, and gave me one of her smiles. ‘Hi Fin. Having a good time?’

‘Sure,’ I said, suddenly uncertain, and having to shout above the noise. But it was now or never. ‘Would you like to dance?’

She grinned. ‘I’d love to.’ And for just a moment my whole world stood still. ‘But I came with someone, and I don’t think he’d be very happy if I did.’

It was as if she had stuck a pin in me and I had just burst, like the balloon that I was. ‘Who?’ I couldn’t help myself.

‘Whistler, of course.’ And she smiled past me as Whistler appeared out of the crowd to take her hand and lead her away to the floor. I stood gaping after them in disbelief, and Whistler half turned to glance back in my direction, his face split by the widest of grins. He winked at me and slipped his arm around Mairead’s waist.

The worst thing about it, I think, was that I was trapped there with my humiliation. All I wanted to do was go home. But I couldn’t. I had to endure a long night of male company, cigarettes and beer, catching all too frequent glimpses of Whistler and Mairead in and out of the barn.

When finally we nursed our hangovers through breakfast the following morning and got into the minibus for the long drive home, my humiliation had been replaced by anger. I realized then that Whistler’s jealousy had been aroused the day Mairead rode back to town with me, and this whole elaborate charade at the wedding had been his way of warning me off. It took me a long time to get over it. I don’t think I spoke to him again until after the holidays.

It is clear to me now, though, that he must have been trying desperately to win her back. That he had always been in love with her and always would be. And that all through her on-off relationship with Roddy, he had harboured the hope that one day she would come back to him. A hope that he had recognized, finally, in fifth year, was a forlorn one. That she was embarking on a journey he couldn’t make, on a road he could never follow.

Which is why he took the decision to stay at home while the rest of us left for Glasgow. He had lost her, and wasn’t about to play the role of rejected lovesick puppy through all the university years. And when I look back now, with the understanding of hindsight, I feel no anger. Only sadness.

What I could never have dreamed back then was that my fantasy of a relationship with Mairead would finally be realized three years later during my second, ill-fated year at university in Glasgow.

I had been roadying for the band for nearly a year and a half by then, paying less and less attention to my studies, and growing increasingly unhappy with my life and myself. I had fallen into a sort of tailspin in the wake of my final split with Marsaili. Driving for Amran was a mindless activity that earned me much-needed cash and gave me access to a succession of groupies who would sleep with the driver if that was the closest they could get to the band. A sordid and unsatisfying succession of sexual encounters that did nothing to increase my self-esteem.