Peter May - The Lewis Man

There was still glass in the windows, and the doors were locked. But once-white walls ran black with damp, and door and window frames were rusted or rotten. Below it, on the stretch of grass along the clifftops, the deserted stone house where he had played forlornly at happy families as a boy still stood as it had then, two gable ends, two walls. No roof. No doors. No windows. Whoever had once called it home had built it for its view, but abandoned it long ago to the cruel arctic gales that assaulted this coast in winter. Long, hard winters that he remembered well.

A grassy path led down to a shingle beach. The black rocks around the cliffs had turned orange, crusted with the tiny shells of long-dead sea creatures, stained by the seaweed that rotted all along the shore. On the far headland stood three solitary cairns that had been there for as long as Fin could remember.

Nothing changed really, except for the people who came and went and left their evanescent traces.

He heard the rumbling of a car’s engine above the roar of the wind, and turned to see Marsaili pulling in at the side of the road in Artair’s old Astra. She got out and slammed the door, thrust hands deep into her jacket pockets, and walked slowly along the path to join him. They stood in a comfortable silence for some moments, looking at the DAF houses strung out along the cliffs on the west side of the bay, before she turned to look at the abandoned house above the harbour.

‘Why don’t you restore your aunt’s house? It’s in much better condition than your parents’ place.’

‘Because I don’t own it.’ Fin cast sad eyes over the neglected building. ‘She left it to some animal charity. Typical of her, really. They couldn’t sell it, so they just left it to rot.’ He turned his gaze back out over the ocean. ‘Anyway, I wouldn’t set foot in it again, even if it was mine.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because it’s haunted, Marsaili.’ He turned to see her frowning.

‘Haunted?’

‘By the young Fin, and all his unhappiness. The night before my aunt’s funeral was the last time I slept in the place. And I swore I never would again.’

She raised a hand to touch his cheek with feather-light fingertips. ‘The young Fin,’ she said. ‘I remember him. I loved him from the first moment I set eyes on him. And never forgave him for breaking my heart.’

He met her eye, Gunn’s question still ringing in his ears. The wind pulled her hair back from her face in long silken strands, flying out behind her like a flag of freedom. It coloured her skin pink, fine features hardened a little by time and pain, but still strong, attractive. The little girl of his childhood, the burgeoning woman of his adolescence, both still there in this cynical, funny, intelligent woman he had hurt so carelessly. But you could never go back.

‘I showed your dad a photograph of the man they took from the bog,’ he said. ‘I’m pretty certain he recognized him.’

She took her hand away, as if from an electric shock. ‘So it’s true.’

‘Seems like it.’

‘I kept hoping they had made a mistake. Mixed up the DNA samples or something. Your parents are the rock you build your life on. It’s a bit of a shock to find that rock is just an illusion.’

‘I showed him the Saint Christopher’s medal and he threw it in the sea.’ Her consternation was apparent in the creasing of her eyes. ‘He said someone called Ceit had given it to him, and that they were all Catholics.’

Now disbelief pushed her eyebrows up on her forehead. ‘He’s demented, Fin. Literally. He doesn’t know what he’s saying.’

Fin shrugged, not so sure. But he kept his misgivings to himself. He said, ‘George Gunn is going down to Harris tomorrow to check out your dad’s family. He said I could go along. Should I?’

She nodded. ‘Yes.’ Then added quickly, ‘But only if you want to, Fin. If you feel you can spare the time. I have to go back to Glasgow for a few days. Exams to sit. Although, God knows, I’m hardly in the right frame of mind for it.’ She hesitated. ‘I’d appreciate it if you would keep an eye on Fionnlagh for me.’

He nodded, and the wind filled the silence between them. It blew among the grasses, forced the sea against the rocks all along the northern cliffs, carried the cries of distant seagulls as they fought to master its gusts and currents. Fin and Marsaili were mercilessly battered by it as they stood on the clifftop, feeling it drag at their clothes, rushing into their mouths when they spoke, snatching their words away. Marsaili put an arm on his to steady herself, and he reached out to slip his fingers through her hair, feeling the soft, cool skin of her neck. She took an almost imperceptible step closer. He could very nearly feel her warmth. How easy it would be to kiss her.

A car horn sounded in the distance, and they turned to see a hand waving from the driver’s window. Marsaili waved back. ‘Mrs Macritchie,’ she said, and the moment was gone, carried off in the wind with their words.

Although they are called the Isle of Lewis and the Isle of Harris, the two are in fact one island separated by a mountain range and a narrow neck of land.

The drive south, across the flat boglands of the northern half of the island, quickly becomes tortuous, a single-track road winding down among the lochs carved out of the rock by the last retreating ice sheets.

Fin and Gunn drove through the gloom of gathering storm clouds, wind and rain sweeping down off the ragged mountain slopes, and crossed into Harris just before Ardvourlie, where a solitary house stands out on the broken shores of Loch Seaforth.

From there the road rose steeply, carved out of the mountainside, a spectacular view opening out below them of the black, scattered waters of the loch. Snowpoles lined the road, and the mountains folded around them, swooping and soaring on all sides, peaks lost in cloud that tumbled down the scree slopes like lava.

The wipers on Fin’s car could barely handle the rain that blew across the windscreen obscuring the road ahead. Sheep huddled in silent groups at the roadside, picking desultorily at the thin patches of grass and heather that somehow survived among the rocks.

And then, suddenly, as they squeezed through a narrow mountain pass, a line of golden light somewhere far below dimpled the underside of the purple-black clouds that surrounded them. A tattered demarcation between one weather front and another. The grim gathering of cloud among the peaks fell away as the road descended south, and the southern uplands of Harris opened out ahead.

The road skirted the port of Tarbert, where the ferries came in from the Isle of Skye and Lochmaddy, and climbed again to crest the cliffs that overlooked Loch Tarbert and the tiny clutch of houses huddled around the harbour. Sheltered from the prevailing westerlies, the water here was like glass, darkly reflecting the masts of sailing boats at anchor in the bay. Further out, sunlight coruscated across silvered waters to the east, and it was impossible to say where the sky ended and the sea began.

As they reached the summit of Uabhal Beag, the landscape changed again. Granite rock broke up green-covered hills that swooped down in folds and gullies through a wash of pale spring sunlight to the fabulous golden sands and turquoise sea of Luskentyre. The storm-gripped, glowering mountain ranges of the north had receded out of sight and mind, and their spirits lifted.

The road circumnavigated the beach, curving around a length of causeway, towards the collection of houses and crofts that made up the tiny community of Seilebost. Fin turned right on to the narrow school road, past the decaying remains of a red truck that had once belonged to Wm Mackenzie (contrs) Ltd of Laxay. A flaking wooden sign propped between two decaying fenceposts warned that no dogs were allowed on the common grazing.