Peter May - The Blackhouse

‘No, you shouldn’t.’ Fin got to his feet. ‘You need the proper equipment and help for that kind of thing.’

‘Guess I know that now.’ Fionnlagh jumped lightly over the rocks and started up the gully. Fin followed him, feeling that somehow he had managed to sour things between them. But when they got to the top of the cliffs it was as if nothing had happened. Fionnlagh pointed towards the road. A silver Renault was making its way up the hill. ‘That’s Mrs Mackelvie. She gave mum a lift down to the store. Looks like that’s them back. Race you.’

Fin laughed. ‘What? I must be twice your age.’

‘I’ll give you a sixty-second start, then.’

Fin looked at him for a moment, and then grinned. ‘Okay.’ And he took off, sprinting along the edge of the cliff before turning up the hill towards the bungalow. That’s when it got hard, his legs becoming quickly leaden, lungs rasping in their attempt to drag in more oxygen. He could see the peat stack, and hear the engine of the Renault idling at the top of the path. He was nearly there. As he got to the peatstack, he saw Marsaili coming down the drive, bags of shopping in each arm, and the Renault pulling away up the hill. She saw him at almost the same moment, and stopped, staring in astonishment. He grinned. He was going to beat the boy. He was going to get to the house first. But at the last moment, Fionnlagh cantered past him, laughing, hardly out of breath, and turned on the path, as Fin had to stop and bend over to support himself on his thighs, gasping for breath.

‘Come on, old man. What kept you?’

Fin glared up at him, and saw Marsaili smiling. ‘Yes, old man. What kept you?’

‘About eighteen years,’ Fin said, panting.

The phone started ringing in the house. Marsaili glanced towards the kitchen door, and Fin saw concern in her eyes.

‘I’ll get it,’ Fionnlagh said. He ran to the kitchen door, mounting the steps in two leaps, and disappeared inside. After a moment the ringing stopped.

Fin found Marsaili looking at him. ‘What are you doing here?’

Fin shrugged, still trying to recover his breath. ‘Just passing. I was up seeing Calum.’

She nodded, as if that explained everything. ‘You’d better come in.’ He followed her down the path and up the steps to the kitchen. She put her bags on the kitchen table, and they could hear Fionnlagh’s voice from the sitting room, still talking on the phone. Marsaili filled the kettle. ‘Cup of tea?’

‘That would be nice.’ He stood awkwardly, watching her plug in the kettle and take two mugs down from a wall cabinet. His breathing was returning to something like normal.

‘Just teabags, if that’s okay.’

‘Fine.’

She dropped a bag in each cup and turned to look at him, leaning back against the worktop. They heard Fionnlagh hanging up the phone, and then his footsteps on the stairs up to his room. And still she kept looking at him, blue eyes searching, probing, violating. The kettle growled and hissed as its element began heating the water. The kitchen door was not properly closed, and Fin could hear the wind whistling around its edges.

‘Why didn’t you tell me you were pregnant?’ he said.

She closed her eyes, and for a moment he felt released from their hold. ‘Artair said he’d told you. He had no right.’

‘I had a right to know.’

‘You had no right to anything. Not after …’ She broke off, gathering her calm, drawing it in around her. ‘You weren’t here. Artair was.’ She fixed him with her eyes again, and he felt trapped by them, naked in their gaze. ‘I loved you, Fin Macleod. I loved you from that first day you sat next to me in school. I even loved you when you were being a bastard. I’ve loved you all the years you weren’t here. And I’ll still love you when you’re gone again.’

He shook his head, at a loss for what to say, until at length he asked lamely, ‘So what went wrong?’

‘You didn’t love me back enough. I’m not sure you ever loved me.’

‘And Artair did?’

Tears welled up in her eyes. ‘Don’t, Fin. Don’t even set foot on that road.’

He crossed the kitchen in three steps and put his hands on her shoulders. She turned her face away from him. ‘Marsaili …’

‘Please,’ she said, almost as if she knew that he was going to tell her he had always loved her, too. ‘I don’t want to hear it. Not now, Fin, not after all these wasted years.’ And she turned to meet his eye. Their faces were inches apart. ‘I couldn’t bear it.’

They had kissed before either of them realized it. There was no conscious decision behind it, just a reflex action. A small meeting of their lips before breaking apart again. A breath, and then something much more intense. The kettle was shaking and rattling in its holder as it brought the water to a boil.

The sound of Fionnlagh on the stairs forced them apart, recoiling as if from an electric shock. Marsaili turned quickly to the kettle, flushed and flustered, to pour boiling water into their mugs. Fin thrust his hands in his pockets and turned to stare, unseeing, from the window. Fionnlagh came through from the living room carrying a large holdall. He had changed out of his sweatshirt into a heavy woollen jumper and wore a thick, waterproof jacket. If their guilt made them self-conscious, Fin and Marsaili need not have feared that Fionnlagh would notice. He was in a black mood, preoccupied and agitated.

‘We’re going tonight.’

‘To the rock?’ Fin asked. Fionnlagh nodded.

‘Why so soon?’ All Marsaili’s embarrassment had been stripped away in a moment by a mother’s concern.

‘Gigs says there’s bad weather on the way. If we don’t go tonight it could be another week. Asterix is picking me up at the road end. We’re going in to Stornoway to load up the boat and leave from there.’ He opened the door, and Marsaili crossed the kitchen quickly to catch his arm.

‘Fionnlagh, you don’t have to go. You know that.’

He gave her a look layered with meaning which only his mother could interpret. ‘Yes, I do.’ And he pulled his arm away and slipped out the door without so much as a goodbye. Fin watched from the window as he hurried up the path, slinging his holdall over one shoulder. He turned to look at Marsaili. She stood, frozen, by the door, staring down at the floor, looking up only as she became aware of Fin’s eyes on her.

‘What happened on the rock the year you and Artair went?’

Fin frowned. It was the second time he had been asked that today. ‘You know what happened, Marsaili.’

She shook her head almost imperceptibly. ‘I know what you all said happened. But there had to be more to it than that. It changed you. Both of you. You and Artair. Things were never ever the same after that.’

Fin gasped his frustration. ‘Marsaili, there was no more to it. God, wasn’t it bad enough? Artair’s dad died. And I nearly died, too.’

She inclined her head to look at him. There was something like accusation in her eyes. As if she believed he was not telling her the whole truth. ‘There was more than Artair’s dad died. You and I died. And you and Artair died. It was like everything we’d all been before, died that summer.’

‘You think I’m lying to you?’

She closed her eyes. ‘I don’t know. I really don’t know.’

‘Well, what does Artair say?’

She opened her eyes and her voice dropped in pitch. ‘Artair doesn’t say anything. Artair hasn’t said anything in years.’

A voice called from somewhere in the depths of the house. Feeble, yet still imperative. ‘Marsaili! Marsaili!’ It was Artair’s mother.

Marsaili raised her eyes to the ceiling and let go of a deep, quivering sigh. ‘I’ll be there in a minute,’ she called.