2004 - The Reunion

by Sue Walker

  THIRTY-FIVE

  He knew he would still have recognized her had she been ninety. Although there were several women of the right age disembarking, his eyes could settle on only one. She’d always been, and would always be, beautiful. He felt his stare on her to be as piercing and unwavering as if it had been a laser.

  He’d had three weeks of sleepless nights since getting in touch with her, and now here she was. She walked slowly, tentatively, across the tarmac to what passed as an arrivals lounge in the tiny, oblong-shaped building that was Stornoway Airport. Apart from her looks, the second most obvious thing about her was that she had the air of affluence. Presumably quite a few rich women passed through this airport. Local politicians’ wives, landowners’ wives, the occasional minor celebrity. But she was London rich. The confidence, the bearing, said as much. The impeccably tailored trousers and soft buckskin three-quarters-length coat reeked of class. He suddenly felt woefully inadequate in his faded jeans and ancient leather biker’s jacket. In the remaining two minutes that he judged it would take for her to reach the lounge, he pondered the letter he’d sent her. Word for word, he knew it by rote. It had taken ten hours, a billion drafts and bottle of the hard stuff to compose…

  Dear Isabella,

  I imagine I am the last person on earth that you would expect to hear from. The days of The Unit are so long ago and I am sorry if this upsets you or makes you feel down. I got your name and address from a list I have seen. A list of everyone in The Unit in 1977. Simon Calder has it. You remember Simon? I had to write to you, as this affects us all…

  His head jerked up, and involuntarily he stood to attention as he became aware of a movement a few yards to his right. She’d come through into the terminal building more quickly than he thought she would. Without hesitation he was moving towards her. What a moment! And there she was, flesh and blood, standing five feet from him. A clearer vision of loveliness than the one just glimpsed through plate glass. There were a few crow’s feet around the chestnut-coloured eyes. A very attractive feature. Skin—smooth, tanned. Hair—still blackest black. He tried to check this unbidden sexual assessment, but it was difficult. She was, quite simply, lovely. He watched her scan the handful of meeters and greeters, her gaze stopping on him. There was no smile. Just the faintest nod as she searched his face, making sure.

  He stopped in his tracks but, after a moment, took a shaky step forward. “Hello, Abby. Let me take that.” He knew his voice sounded hoarse, rough.

  And he could kick himself! The old-fashioned, chivalrous act of offering to take her bag made him feel even more inadequate than ever. He must seem like a bloody caveman! Her unspoken refusal with a casual flick of die hand was tantamount to a physical blow. He’d better shape up. Behave like a grown-up, modern man. Not the love-struck fifteen-year-old he had once been. But her first utterance to him in twenty-odd years turned him over, his heart hammering.

  Her voice was deep, still distinctly middle-class Edinburgh, with very clear diction. A sexy voice. Of course. “Is there anywhere else we can go or is this it? The place is even smaller than I expected.”

  The implied disapproval of her surroundings momentarily threw him. She hates the place. She hates me. She’s regretting coming here.

  He made a clumsy attempt at taking control. “Well, it’s just that I thought you’d want a rest after all that travelling. There’s actually a very quiet area round the corner here. See that table there? What can I get you? Eh…they do alcohol too, if you want it?”

  “Coffee. Black.”

  He parked her and her bag in the quiet corner and walked briskly away to the drinks counter. Her back was facing three quarters towards him, and she was partly obliterated by a pillar. But, just as he joined the queue and turned to look at her, he saw her whip her head back round and look down at her hands resting on the table.. She’d been watching him. Assessing him.

  He watched her back rise and fall in one wave. She seemed to be giving a sigh of relief. At the long cafe queue? Maybe she was thankful for the few minutes she now had to compose herself. Despite her apparent coolness, surely there was no way that this couldn’t be a huge moment for her too? She’d come all this way, hadn’t she? Yes, she must be apprehensive, at the very least.

  He looked more closely at her. He saw her fiddling with the salt and pepper pots, as if unable to keep still. Sure enough, her hands were shaking. She’d had what? A couple of weeks to think about this meeting—if not twenty-six years, if she’d fantasized about it as much as he had—and maybe she realized that still she’d fucked it up. Was this her in her usual defensive mode—remote and snooty? She’d had a bit of that attitude in the Unit, usually when she was depressed or tense. Or was she genuinely regretting her arrival here? What did she think of him? He’d obviously changed radically in a physical way. He looked what he now was: a toiler on the land. Gone was the puny, awkward adolescent of old. Instead, she’d been confronted by a physically strong man of the soil. He didn’t think too much about his looks, as a rule, whether he was handsome, rugged, and all that. But he’d never had any trouble in attracting women. Even on a remote island. So, he reckoned he must look okay. Did the way he’d changed surprise her, disturb her? No man looked quite like him in any city, let alone the chichi parts of London that were hers. He watched as she straightened her back and flicked her hair behind her ears. Suddenly he felt disappointed. It was going to be hard to read her. Know what she was feeling, guess what she was thinking.

  He caught her taking a final, deep, calming breath before he returned to the table, coffee cups clinking in his trembling hands. The space was more cramped than he’d like, the proximity of bodies unavoidable. He slid his roll-up tin out of his breast pocket, noticed the NO SMOKING sign on the wall beside them and shrugged.

  She was trying out her first smile. “Go on, they’ll never notice round here.”

  He was enjoying her smile, and her encouragement to break the rules. It was a promising sign. He shook his head and nudged the tin box to one side. “Nah. Don’t want to attract attention. This place, the whole island’s a very small place. I really don’t want to bump into anyone who knows me today. I don’t feel sociable.”

  The hiatus was momentary but enough. The laser look again—blue eyes to brown, brown to blue—took only a split-second, but it had blasted him—and her?—back to those long-ago shared times. To his disappointment she was first to look away. In consolation, she was the first to speak again.

  “Danny? Tell me more about Simon. What’s going on with him?”

  Her directness took him by surprise. He thought there’d be a preamble, with him thanking her for making the trip and…and…and what, for God’s sake? Abby had never been one to beat about the bush. He seemed unable to stop himself twisting in the too-small seat. The fidgeting reflected his unease about the…half-truths…no…the outright lies he’d concocted in his letter to get her here. If Simon knew what excuse he was using. Still, he couldn’t tell her the truth.

  As he thought through how he was going to get things going, he began a mesmeric ritual of slowly rolling tobacco between fingers and thumbs. It was a kind of therapeutic necessity for him in non-smoking places. The act was almost as good as lighting up. He knew she was trying not to stare as he licked the sliver of rice paper with a delicacy that obviously fascinated her. And, instead of lighting up, he placed the perfect tube in front of him and swivelled it round and round on the table as he talked on in a low voice.

  “Look at these.” He reached into the inside pocket of his jacket. “This is what I told you about in the letter.” He scrutinized her changing expressions as she began reading the two newspaper articles.

  She had bent her head to look at the photocopied stories. He wanted to stroke that glossy hair, with its perfect middle parting, touch those hands with their three silver rings, none on her wedding finger. Suddenly, her head shot up. “Good God! Simon’s daughter abducted? And…oh, God, assaulted. But the whole thing’s dreadful. Appallin
g. And…oh, right, she was returned, alive. Thank goodness. But this is just any parent’s worst nightmare.”

  Paradoxically his voice was rising as he leaned closer to her, issuing his carefully prepared combination of lies and half-truths. “I know. It if the worst. But listen, I told you in my letter that we might be in danger because of this. Simon’s crazy. I told you, he’s kept this list of us all, where we live, if we’re married, kids, our jobs. Everything! Here, have a look. I added Simon’s details to it myself, so I’d have a complete list of everyone together.” He flashed her the list quickly and then retrieved it, slipping it inside his jacket, before going on, leaving her staring in obvious concern and shock at the newspaper cuttings.

  “See, Abby, he’s got a notion into his mind that we are somehow responsible for what happened to his daughter. Not like, directly, but in some kind of…crazy…mad supernatural way, he says his time in the Unit brought this on his head. And that we’re all to blame for being so horrible to him then. I don’t think we were any more horrible to him than anyone else actually. We all took our knocks from the others, depending on how the group was feeling. Anyway, I didn’t expect this. I thought he was quite sane. Thing is, I do think he’s sick in the head now, really sick. A—”

  But she was interrupting him. “Then go to the police about him, Danny! They need to know.”

  He shook his head, hands upturned in dismay. “Look, Simon’s a fuckin’ clinical psychologist! D’you think if he’s a danger and losing it he won’t be able to hide it from most people? Of course he will. Christ! Alex and I had one hell of a night with him when we got together. She says that this thing with his daughter and that bitch of a wife going to live with his bitch of a mother has really done for him. You must remember about his mother, surely? A dangerous woman then, still is now by all accounts.”

  He held his breath as he dared to touch her for the first time in twenty-six years. Three fingertips to the back of her cool, soft hand. “Abby, I’m only telling you all this to protect you. Just in case Simon really goes off the rails. Just to warn you.”

  She was kiting his fingers stay! Thank God. “I know that, Danny. And I’m grateful. I just don’t see why he should take against us all. Maybe I should go and see him myself.”

  This wasn’t what he needed to hear. He sat back now, fingers and body withdrawn from her. He was beginning to feel frightened. Her request was a reasonable one. He hadn’t thought this through properly. He had to get her out of this line of thinking. “No, don’t do that. It might set him off more. He met with me and Alex, which I’m glad about. It let us see just what a state he’s in. But I think we should keep it at that. I mean jf he does get in touch with you now, don’t talk to him. Don’t get involved. Tell me and I’ll deal with it.”

  He had to keep her away from Simon. And yet, what he was doing was, in effect, a pre-emptive strike, in case Simon did exactly that and approached her. And, of course, there was the other reason for wanting to keep her close. He just couldn’t help himself.

  He watched her with a mixture of joy, relief and some guilt. She’d believed, his story. Of course. Why shouldn’t she? It looked like she thought he’d finished his tale and she was about to say something. Instead, he pressed both hands to his temples. It was a dramatic gesture but genuine, as he pulled the worried features of his face taut. “Just always remember, I’m trying to help you, Abby. That’s all that matters to me.”

  And despite what other lies he’d told her, that was largely true.

  THIRTY-SIX

  “How much longer can you stay up here?”

  He knew his tone was beseeching, pleading. He was transfixed on her as she touched and caressed the pale slivers of stone pointing to the sky.

  “These are amazing, Dan. I’d never even heard of the Callanish Stones. It’s just like a mini-Stonehenge! This place. It’s beautiful. The whole island’s beautiful. I can see why you’ve been very happy here.”

  It was incredible. The speed with which they had been swept up into each other’s lives had surprised him. Surprised them both. All in just a handful of weeks, what, two short months only? She’d initially been toing and froing from London as much as work would allow. But these last few weeks, she’d practically been living with him, spending more and more time away from work, away from her other life. The intensity of what had been happening between them had shocked him initially. And yet now, it didn’t. Their circumstances were, after all, unique. The intensity had come from that. Not subject to so many other lovers’ rules of involvement. There had been little or no caution after the first sexual encounter. Both had plunged in. What had continued to surprise him was that she seemed to feel the same. It was she who was making more of the sacrifices, staying up here longer and longer, putting her life back in London on semi-permanent hold. Adjusting to his way of life, which was undoubtedly far less comfortable and far more primitive than her own. But that didn’t matter. They both knew what they were doing. Making up for lost time. Twenty-six years of it.

  He thought back to that awkward and frosty first meeting at the airport. His giving her his ‘story’. lies which he’d never yet righted…he shoved that part of their shared time away. Yes, he remembered that first visit so well. She’d been booked into the best hotel in Stornoway, reluctant to give up any comforts or city routine. But she’d accepted his invitation to show her around Lewis. And he’d saved here for last…

  She’d looked doubtful as they’d trudged along a hilly gravelled path, the odd stray sheep skittering away from their heels and back to its flock. The chilly wind had picked at the collar of her fleece, and turned his own face white with cold. Suddenly, to his surprise and joy, she was pointing back from where they’d come and was laughing a few words to him. Words that had been carried away on the wind and he’d missed them. But he’d watched as she made a playful sprint to catch up with him and what he’d wanted her to see. Then she’d stopped dead.

  The ground had levelled out. Atop a grassy plateau stood the stones. A mini-Stonehenge indeed. But, according to the engraved information plate, the Callanish Stones predated Stonehenge and the Pyramids. She wondered at the circle—surprisingly small, she’d said—with a few peripheral stones forming a kind of corridor or avenue leading to the centre of the collection. She went to each stone, a long grey finger pointing skywards. It seemed that she couldn’t help herself as she weaved in and out of them, touching, feeling each one…

  And here she was doing it again. She turned around, stood facing him, her back to the centre stone now. “This place feels so special. Spiritual. Peaceful. So peaceful, Dan. Perfect”

  He watched her pulling herself away from the stones and taking in her surroundings. To her right, down the hill, lay Loch Roag, with what must have been the ruins of an old croft. And, in the distance, she could see his own croft. What a place to live. “You’re lucky, Danny. So bloody lucky!”

  He was standing immobile, staring, as the wind attacked her hair, turning it wild and swirling it into a nest of Medusa tangles. After a minute he managed to move towards her. “How long? Tell me.”

  She reached both hands out to him in a languid, consciously flirtatious movement, and immediately he had her pressed against a stone. He lost count of the time it took for her to eventually push him gently away, to look into his eyes. “I’ll take a few more days off. And spend every minute of them with you. Every minute”

  He smiled at her, huddled into the duvet in the living room, staring at the log fire. He knew she was naked underneath. Still warm from their love-making. As he closed the door, he thought back to the first evening they’d been here together. He’d made her laugh when he’d brought her back from the stones, standing awkwardly in the hallway, until she managed to get it out of him. The bedroom was too cold for love-making! The chimney in there was blocked, and he couldn’t light a fire until he’d cleared it. She’d laughed at that and assured him she was neither too old nor too shy to do it on a mattress in front of the living-room fi
re.

  He knew that she hadto leave tomorrow. No more excuses left for bunking off work. And for old times’ sake, they’d settled down in the living room again. They always did this on the last night of her visits.

  He pulled his jacket tight to his throat and headed out to check the dogs and the outbuildings. All seemed well. He turned back and was walking to the side door of the croft and then stopped. The living-room curtains were only half shut. She was sitting up now, staring at something thoughtfully. What was she doing? He saw her reaching up above the mantelpiece and pulling a photograph from its Blu-Tacked place on the wall. It was that photograph. The Unit holiday snap. It had been stuck up there for ages, but was usually obscured by red bills, bank statements and the like.

  He’d shown it to her on the first day as he dropped her at her hotel. He’d slipped it out of his pocket, and they’d talked about it while sitting in his truck. She must have thought it was a funny thing for him to do. She’d forgotten that each of them had been given a copy of it. He’d asked her a lot of questions about that day. That time. It had seemed to break the ice for her, and she’d found a way to talk to him about the Unit. They’d talked about it for quite a long time, about the bad times, and then he knew it was all going to be okay. He could relax. Really loosen up. He’d even managed to crack a joke about Lydia and her bandaged knee.

  He peered through the curtains, a voyeur spying on his own home, his own lover. She was lying back on the cushions, looking at her image from the past. So young. Tracing a finger along them all, no doubt wondering at their fates. She had her eyes closed now, and he could hear the crackling of the fire, smell the pungent but comforting scent of peat smoke permeating the room and filtering from the chimney.

  A moment later, he deliberately banged the croft door too loudly. Pulling off jacket and shirt, he appeared in the living-room doorway. “Hi. Can’t say I’m sorry if I woke you. It’s our last night and I want it to go on for ever.”