Peter May - The Blackhouse

‘Who will?’

‘The Indians.’

I sighed and waited. And waited. My legs were beginning to seize up now, and I couldn’t straighten them out. I wriggled to try to shift my position, and rustled the hay.

‘Shhhhh!’ Marsaili’s voice came again.

Now I heard her moving, circling around me in her secret straw room. And then more silence, before suddenly I could feel her breath hot on my face. I had not realized she was so close. I almost jumped. I could smell the sweetness of the lemonade still on it. And then soft, wet lips pressed themselves against mine, and I could taste it, too. But I was so startled, I pulled my head back sharply and banged it against the bale at my back. I heard Marsaili giggling. ‘Stop it!’ I shouted. ‘Untie me now!’ But she just kept giggling. ‘Marsaili, I mean it. Untie me. Untie me!’ I was close to tears.

A voice came from somewhere down below. ‘Hello-o … Everything alright up there?’ It was Marsaili’s mum.

Marsaili’s voice thundered in my ear as she bellowed back, ‘Everything’s fine, Mum. We’re just playing.’ And she started untying me quickly. As soon as my hands were free I pulled off the blindfold and scrambled to my feet, trying to recover as much of my dignity as I could.

‘I think you’d better come down for a minute,’ Marsaili’s mum called.

‘Okay,’ Marsaili shouted back. She bent down to untie my feet. ‘Just coming.’

I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand and glared at her. But she just smiled sweetly back at me. ‘That was fun, wasn’t it? Pity the Indians woke up.’ And she went leaping off down the bales to where her mother was waiting for us below. I dusted the hay out of my hair and followed.

I knew immediately from the look on Marsaili’s mum’s face that something was wrong. She seemed a little flushed. ‘I think, perhaps, I’ve rather given the game away,’ she said, looking at me with something like an apology in her chocolate-brown eyes.

Marsaili frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

But her mum kept her eyes on me as she spoke. ‘I’m afraid I phoned your folks to ask if you could stay for lunch, and to tell them I’d run you back home afterwards.’ My heart sank, and I felt Marsaili turn a look of consternation in my direction. Her mum said, ‘You didn’t tell us that your folks had forbidden you to come to the farm on your own, Fin.’ Aw, hell, I thought. The ba’s in the slates! ‘Your father’s on his way over now to pick you up.’

The problem with telling plausible lies, is that when you do get caught, after that nobody believes you, even when you’re telling the truth. My mother sat me down and told me the story about the boy who cried wolf. It was the first time I had heard it. And she had a talent for embellishment, my mother. She could have been a writer. I didn’t really know what woods were then, because there weren’t any trees where we lived. But she made them sound dark and scary, with wolves lurking behind every tree. I didn’t know what wolves were either. But I knew Artair’s neighbour’s Alsatian dog, Seoras. It was a huge beast. Bigger than me. And my mother made me imagine what would happen if Seoras went wild and attacked me. That’s what wolves are like, she told me. I had a vivid imagination, so I could picture the boy being told to be careful of the wolves in the woods and then shouting ‘Wolf! Wolf!’ as a joke and bringing everyone running. I could even imagine him doing it a second time, because of the reaction he’d got the first time around. I couldn’t really believe he’d do it a third time, but I figured that, if he did, those who had come running the previous times would think he was just playing games again. And of course, my mother said, that was when there really were wolves. And they ate him.

My father was more disappointed than angry. Disappointed that I should have chosen to sneak off to see some girl on a farm, rather than take the boat we had worked on together all summer out on her maiden voyage. But he didn’t take his belt to me because of his disappointment. It was for the lie. And the sting of leather on the backs of my thighs, and my mother’s story about the wolves, led me to decide there and then never to lie again.

Except, of course, by omission.

My father took the Eilidh out on his own that day, while I was sent to my room to cry myself dry and think about what it was I’d done. And I was grounded every Saturday for a month. I could play in the house, or the garden, but was not allowed to venture beyond. Artair was permitted to come to our house, but I couldn’t go to his. And I had no pocket money for four whole weeks. At first Artair thought it was hilarious, and gloated over my misfortune — particularly because it involved Marsaili. But he soon got fed up. If he wanted to play with me, then he was restricted to my house and garden just the same as I was. And eventually he turned his annoyance on me and lectured me about being more careful next time. I told him there wasn’t going to be a next time.

I stopped walking Marsaili home from school. Artair and I went with her only as far as the Mealanais road end, and then we left her to go the rest of the way on her own, and we took the single-track up the hill to Crobost. I was wary of Marsaili, too, since the incident with the rope and the blindfold, so usually I avoided her in the playground at playtimes and lunch breaks. I lived in terror that someone would find out about the kiss in the straw room. I could just imagine what fun the other boys would have at my expense.

It was some time after Christmas that I came down with the flu. The first time ever. And I thought I was going to die. I think, perhaps, my mother did, too. Because all I can really remember about that week was that every time I opened my eyes she was there, a cool, damp facecloth in her hand to lay across my forehead, whispering words of love and encouragement. Every muscle in my body was aching, and I seemed to flit between burning fevers, with temperatures running at a hundred and six, and spells of uncontrollable shivering. My seventh birthday came and went that week, and I barely noticed. At first I had nausea and vomiting and couldn’t eat. It was nearly a week before my mother was able to persuade me to take some arrowroot mixed with milk and a little sugar. I liked the taste of it, and every time I have tasted it since, I think of my mother and her ever-present comfort during those dreadful days and nights of my first flu.

In fact it was, I think, the first time I had ever been ill. And it took it out of me. I lost weight and felt weak, and it was a full fortnight before I was fit enough to return to school. It was raining the day I went back, and my mother was concerned that I would get chilled and wanted to take me in the car. But I insisted on walking, and met Artair at the top of the path to his bungalow. He hadn’t been allowed near while I was ill, and he peered at me now, warily.

‘Are you sure you’re okay?’

‘Sure I’m sure.’

‘You’re not infectious or anything?’

‘Of course not. Why?’

‘Because you look bloody terrible.’

‘Thank you. That makes me feel a whole lot better.’

It was early February. The rain was really no more than a smirr, so light you could hardly see it. But it made us very wet, blowing in on the edge of an icy north wind. It got in around my neck and my collar so that the fabric rubbed my skin, my cheeks were burning and my knees were red raw. I loved it. For the first time in two whole weeks I felt alive again.

‘So, what’s been happening while I was off?’

Artair waved a hand vaguely in the air. ‘Not much. You haven’t missed anything, if that’s what you’re worried about. Oh, except the times tables.’