Peter May - The Blackhouse

But that was no consolation to me during what seemed like an interminable afternoon. The five of us left in class were set the task of copying out words from the blackboard. Capital letters then small letters. I kept gazing from the window at the low cloud blowing in off the Atlantic, tearing itself ragged along the coastline and throwing out squally little showers in between very occasional blinks of sunlight. And Mrs Mackay gave me a right rollicking for not paying attention. That was my problem, she told me, I had no concentration. I was a dreamer. Plenty of ability, but no will to work. In truth, I had no will to do much of anything. I was like some sad, love-sick little puppy locked away on its own in a cupboard. It is strange, looking back, to remember how early I was afflicted by such emotions.

By the time the bell went I was almost suffocating. I couldn’t wait to get out into the blast of icy wind and fill my lungs with fresh salt air. I scuffed and dragged my feet all the way up the road and went into Crobost Stores to buy some tablet with the last of my pocket money. I felt the need of something sweet to comfort me. There is a gate there, just opposite the store, that takes you on to a tractor track leading up the hill to peat trenches which have been dug there by generations of Crobosters. I climbed over the gate and, with hands sunk deep in my pockets, trudged up the boggy track to the peat cuttings. From there I had a view of the school in the distance, and I could look down on both the Mealanais and Crobost single-tracks. You could see the main road all the way up to Swainbost and beyond, and I would be able to see the minibus returning from Stornoway. I had been up here the previous May, cutting peats with my father and mother; hard, back-breaking work slicing down into the soft peat with a special spade, and then stacking the turfs in groups of five along the top of the trench to dry in the warm spring winds. You had to go back later and turn them, and when they were properly dried, you went with a tractor and trailer and took them back to the croft to build your great, humpbacked peat stack, herringboned for drainage. Once properly dried, the peats became impervious to the rain, and would fuel your fire throughout the long winter. The cutting was the worst bit, though, especially if the wind dropped. Because then the midges would get you. Tiny biting flies. The Scottish curse. The single midge is so small you can hardly see it, but they gather together in clusters, great black clouds of them, getting in your hair and your clothes and feeding on your flesh. If you were to be locked in a room filled with midges you would go insane before the day was out. And sometimes that’s just how it was at the peat cutting.

There were no midges now, though, in the depths of a Hebridean winter. Just wind blowing through dead grass, and the sky spitting its anger. The light was going fast. I saw the headlights of the minibus coming over the rise from Cross before I realized that’s what it was. Where the road turned down to the school, it stopped, orange emergency lights flashing, to let off the kids from Crobost. It was just Marsaili, Artair and Calum. They stood talking for a moment after the minibus drove off, then Artair and Calum hurried off in the direction of the Crobost road, and Marsaili started up the farm road towards Mealanais. I sat on for a minute, sucking on the crumbling, sugary sweetness of my tablet, watching Marsaili on the single-track below. She looked tiny from here, lonely somehow in a way that it’s hard to explain. Something in her gait, something leaden in her steps that suggested unhappiness. I suddenly felt unaccountably sorry for her and wanted to run down the hill and give her a big hug, and tell her I was sorry. Sorry for being jealous, sorry for being hurtful. And yet something held me back. That reluctance to give expression to my feelings which has dogged me most of my life.

She was almost out of sight, lost in the winter dusk, when for once something overcame my natural reticence and propelled me down the hill after her, arms windmilling for balance as I stumbled clumsily in my wellies across the squelching moor. I snagged my trousers on the barbed wire as I fell over the fence, sending sheep running off in a panic. I clopped along the road after her at a half-run. By the time I caught her up, I was breathing hard, but she didn’t turn her head, and I wondered if she knew I had been on the hill watching her the whole time. I fell in beside her and we walked some way without a word. When, finally, I had got my breath back, I said, ‘So, how did it go?’

‘The dancing?’

‘Yeh.’

‘It was a disaster. Artair panicked when he saw all the people, and he had to keep puffing on his inhaler and couldn’t go on stage. We had to go on without him. But it was hopeless, because we’d practised with six and it just didn’t work with five. I’m never going to do it again!’

I couldn’t help feeling a sense of satisfaction that verged on elation. But I kept my tone sombre. ‘That’s a shame.’

She flicked me a quick look, perhaps suspecting sarcasm. But I looked suitably saddened by her news. ‘It’s not really. I didn’t like it, anyway. Dancing’s for daft girls and soft boys. I only joined because my mum said I should.’

We lapsed into silence again. I could see the lights of Mealanais farm ahead of us in the hollow. It would be pitch-black on the road home, but my mother always made me carry a small torch in my schoolbag because there was so little daylight in winter that you never knew when you would need it. We stopped at the white gate and stood for a moment.

Eventually she said, ‘Why have you stopped walking me up the road after school?’

I said, ‘I thought you preferred Artair’s company.’

She looked at me, blue eyes piercing the darkness, and I felt a sort of weakness in my legs. ‘Artair’s a pain in the neck. He follows me around everywhere. He even joined the dance class just because I was in it.’ I didn’t know what to say. Then she added, ‘He’s just a daft boy. It’s you I like, really, Fin.’ And she gave me a quick, soft kiss on the cheek, before turning and running down the track to the farmhouse.

I stood for a long time in the dark, feeling where her lips had touched my cheek. I could feel their softness and their warmth for a long time after she had gone, before putting my fingers up to touch my face and dispel the magic. I turned, then, and started running in the direction of the Cross-Skigersta road, happiness and pride swelling my chest with every breath. I was going to be in such trouble when I got home. But I couldn’t have cared less.

Marsaili turned from the sink as Artair came in the kitchen door. There was a simmering anger in her eyes, words of rebuke on her lips, before she saw that he had company. Fin had not come yet into the light off the top step, and so she had no idea who it was, just a shadow in Artair’s wake.

‘Sorry I’m late. Ran into an old friend in town. Gave me a lift back. Thought you might want to say hello.’

The shock on Marsaili’s face was clear for both men to see as Fin stepped into the harsh light of the kitchen. And beyond the shock was an immediate self-consciousness. She ran dishwater-red hands quickly down her apron, and one of them moved involuntarily to brush stray hairs away from her face. There was about her the sense of a young woman, not yet middle-aged, who had simply stopped caring about herself. Stopped caring, too, about what others might think. Until now.

‘Hello, Marsaili.’ Fin’s voice sounded very small.

‘Hello, Fin.’ Just hearing her speak the name she had given him all those years before filled him with sadness. At something precious lost and gone for ever. Marsaili’s self-consciousness was giving way to embarrassment. She leaned back against the sink and folded her arms across her chest, defensive. ‘What brings you to the island?’ There was none of Artair’s tone in a question that seemed prosaic in the circumstances.