The Blackhouse l-1

by Peter May

  He looked at her for a long time. ‘Maybe that would be best.’

  The two-engined, thirty-seven-seater aircraft shuddered in the wind as it tilted to circle Loch a Tuath in preparation for landing on the short, windswept runway at Stornoway airport. As they emerged from thick, low cloud, Fin looked down at a slate-grey sea breaking white over the fingers of black rock that reached out from the Eye Peninsula, the ragged scrap of land they called Point. He saw the familiar patterns carved into the landscape, like the trenches which had so characterized the Great War, though men had dug these ditches not for war but for warmth. Centuries of peat cutting had left their distinctive scarring on the endless acres of otherwise featureless bogland. The water in the bay below looked cold, ridged by the wind that blew uninterrupted across it. Fin had forgotten about the wind, that tireless assault blowing in across three thousand miles of Atlantic. Beyond the shelter of Stornoway harbour there was barely a tree on the island.

  On the hour-long flight, he had tried not to think. Neither to anticipate his return to the island of his birth, nor to replay the dreadful silence which had accompanied his departure from home. Mona had spent the night in Robbie’s room. He had heard her crying from the other end of the hall as he packed. In the morning he had left without a word, and as he pulled the front door shut behind him knew that he had closed it not only on Mona, but on a chapter of his life he wished had never been written.

  Now, seeing the familiar Nissen huts on the airfield below, and the unfamiliar new ferry terminal shining in the distance, Fin felt a rush of emotion. It had been so very long, and he was unprepared for the sudden flood of memories that almost overwhelmed him.

  TWO

  I have heard people who were born in the fifties describe their childhood in shades of brown. A sepia world. I grew up in the sixties and seventies, and my childhood was purple.

  We lived in what was known as a whitehouse, about half a mile outside the village of Crobost. It was part of the community they called Ness, on the extreme northern tip of the Isle of Lewis, the most northerly island in the archipelago of the Outer Hebrides of Scotland. The whitehouses were built in the twenties of stone and lime, or concrete block, and roofed with slate, or corrugated iron, or tarred felt. They were built to replace the old blackhouses. The blackhouses had dry-stone walls with thatched roofs and gave shelter to both man and beast. A peat fire burned day and night in the centre of the stone floor of the main room. It was called the fire room. There were no chimneys, and smoke was supposed to escape through a hole in the roof. Of course, it wasn’t very efficient, and the houses were always full of the stuff. It was little wonder that life-expectancy was short.

  The remains of the blackhouse where my paternal grandparents lived stood in our garden, a stone’s throw from the house. It had no roof, and its walls had mostly fallen down, but it was a great place to play hide and seek.

  My father was a practical man, with a shock of thick black hair and sharp blue eyes. He had skin like leather that went the colour of tar in the summer, when he spent most of his waking hours outdoors. When I was still very young, before I went to school, he used to take me beachcombing. I didn’t understand it then, but I learned later that he was unemployed at that time. There had been a contraction in the fishing industry, and the boat he skippered was sold for scrap. So he had time on his hands, and we were up at first light scouring the beaches for whatever might have washed up in the night. Timber. Lots of timber. He once told me he knew a man who had built his whole house from timber washed up on the shore. He himself had got most of the timber for building our attic rooms from the sea. The sea gave us plenty. It also took plenty. There was barely a month went by when we didn’t hear of some poor soul drowning. A fishing accident. Someone in bathing and dragged out by the undertow. Someone falling from the cliffs.

  We dragged all manner of stuff home from those trips to the beach. Rope, fishing net, aluminium buoys that my father sold to the tinkers. Pickings were even better after a storm. And it was after one that we found the big forty-five-gallon drum. Although the storm itself had subsided, the wind was still blowing a gale, the sea still high and angry, and thrashing at the coast. Great ragged clumps of broken cloud blew overhead at sixty miles an hour or more. And in between them, the sun coloured the land in bright, shifting patches of green and purple and brown.

  Although the drum was unmarked, it was full and heavy, and my father was excited by our find. But it was too heavy for us to move on our own, leaning at an angle and half buried in the sand. So he organized a tractor and a trailer and some men to help, and by the afternoon we had it safely standing in an outbuilding on the croft. It didn’t take him long to open it and discover that it was full of paint. Bright purple gloss paint. Which is how it came to be that in our house every door and cupboard and shelf, every window and floorboard was painted purple. For all the years that I lived there.

  My mother was a lovely woman with tight blond curls that she dragged back in a ponytail. She had pale, freckled skin, and liquid brown eyes, and I can’t ever remember seeing her wear make-up. She was a gentle person with a sunny disposition, but a fiery temper if you got on the wrong side of her. She worked the croft. It was only about six acres, and it ran in a long, narrow strip from the house down to the shore. Fertile machair land that was good grazing for the sheep that brought in most of the croft’s income from government subsidies. She also grew potatoes and turnips and some cereals, and grass for hay and silage. My lasting image of her is seated on our tractor in her blue overalls and black wellies, smiling self-consciously for a photographer from the local paper because she had won some prize at the Ness show.

  By the time I came to start school, my father had got a job in the new oil-fabrication yard at Arnish Point in Stornoway, and he and a bunch of men from the village left early every morning in a white van on the long drive to town. So it was my mother who was to run me to school in our rusted old Ford Anglia on my first day. I was excited. My best friend was Artair Macinnes, and he was as eager to start school as I was. We were born only a month apart, and his folks’ bungalow was the nearest house to our croft. So we spent a lot of time together in those days before we started school. His parents and mine were never the best of friends, though. There was, I suppose, something of a class difference. Artair’s father was a teacher at Crobost School, where they not only took the seven years of primary, but also the first two years of secondary. He was a secondary teacher and taught maths and English.

  I remember it was a blustery September day, low cloud bumping and bruising the land. You could smell the rain coming on the edge of the wind. I had a brown anorak with a hood, and wore short trousers that I knew would chafe if they got wet. My black wellies clopped against my calves, and I swung my stiff new canvas schoolbag over my shoulder, sandshoes and a packed lunch inside. I was keen to be off.

  My mother was backing the Anglia out of the wooden shed that served as a garage, when a horn sounded over the noise of the wind. I turned to see Artair and his dad pulling up in their bright orange Hillman Avenger. It was second-hand, but it looked almost new, and put our old Anglia to shame. Mr Macinnes left the engine running and got out of the car and crossed to speak to my mother. After a moment, he came and put a hand on my shoulder and said I was to get a lift to the school with him and Artair. It wasn’t until the car was drawing away, and I turned to see my mother standing waving, that I realized I hadn’t said goodbye.

  I know now how it feels on the day your child goes to school for the first time. There is an odd sense of loss, of irrevocable change. And, looking back, I know that’s what my mother felt. It was there in her face, along with the regret that she had somehow missed the moment.

  Crobost School sat in a hollow below the village, facing north towards the Port of Ness, in the shadow of the church that dominated the village skyline on the hill above. The school was surrounded by open grazing, and in the distance you could just see the tower of the lighthouse at the Butt. On some
days you could see all the way across the Minch to the mainland, the faintest outline of the mountains visible on the distant horizon. They always said if you could see the mainland the weather was going to turn bad. And they were always right.

  There were a hundred and three kids in Crobost primary, and eighty-eight in the secondary. Another eleven fresh-faced kids started school with me that day, and we sat in class at two rows of six desks, one behind the other.

  Our teacher was Mrs Mackay, a thin, grey-haired lady who was probably a lot younger than she seemed. I thought she was ancient. She was a gentle lady really, Mrs Mackay, but strict, and she had a caustic tongue on her at times. The first thing she asked the class was if anyone couldn’t speak English. Of course, I had heard English spoken, but at home we had only ever used the Gaelic, and my father wouldn’t have a television in the house, so I had no idea what she’d said. Artair put his hand up, a knowing smirk on his face. I heard my name, and all eyes in the class turned towards me. It didn’t take a genius to work out what Artair had told her. I felt my face going red.

  ‘Well, Fionnlagh,’ Mrs Mackay said in Gaelic, ‘it seems your parents didn’t have the good sense to teach you English before you came to school.’ My immediate reaction was anger at my mother and father. Why couldn’t I speak English? Didn’t they know how humiliating this was? ‘You should know that we only speak English in this class. Not that there’s anything wrong with the Gaelic, but that’s just how it is. And we’ll find out soon enough how quick a learner you are.’ I couldn’t raise my eyes from the desk. ‘We’ll start by giving you your English name. Do you know what that is?’

  With something like defiance, I raised my head. ‘Finlay.’ I knew that because it’s what Artair’s parents called me.

  ‘Good. And since the first thing I’m going to do today is take the register, you can tell me what your second name is.’

  ‘Macleoid.’ I used the Gaelic pronunciation which, to an English ear, sounds something like Maclodge.

  ‘Macleod,’ she corrected me. ‘Finlay Macleod.’ And then she switched to English and ran through the other names. Macdonald, Macinnes, Maclean, Macritchie, Murray, Pickford … All eyes turned towards the boy called Pickford, and Mrs Mackay said something to him that made the class giggle. The boy blushed and muttered some incoherent response.

  ‘He’s English,’ a voice whispered to me in Gaelic from the next desk. I turned, surprised, to find myself looking at a pretty little girl with fair hair tied back in pleated pigtails, a blue bow at the end of each. ‘He’s the only one whose name doesn’t begin with m, you see. So he must be English. Mrs Mackay guessed that he’s the son of the lighthouse keeper, because they’re always English.’

  ‘What are you two whispering about?’ Mrs Mackay’s voice was sharp, and her Gaelic words made her even more intimidating to me because I could understand them.

  ‘Please, Mrs Mackay,’ pigtails said. ‘I’m just translating for Finlay.’

  ‘Oh, translating is it?’ There was mock wonder in Mrs Mackay’s voice. ‘That’s a big word for a little girl.’ She paused to consult the register. ‘I was going to re-seat you alphabetically, but perhaps since you are such a linguist, Marjorie, you’d better continue sitting next to Finlay and … translate for him.’

  Marjorie smiled, pleased with herself, missing the teacher’s tone. For my part, I was quite happy to be sitting next to a pretty girl with pigtails. I glanced across the class and saw Artair glaring at me. I thought then it was because he had wanted us to sit together. I know now it was because he was jealous.

  I took him to task in the playground at breaktime. ‘Why did you clype on me about not being able to speak the English?’

  But he was blase. ‘They were going to find out anyway, weren’t they?’ He slipped a small blue and silver inhaler from his pocket, shoved the nozzle in his mouth and sucked in a breath as he pressed down on the refill tube. I didn’t think anything of it. He’d had a puffer ever since I’d known him. He was asthmatic, my folks had said, which didn’t mean much to me then. I just knew that sometimes he found it difficult to breathe, and if he sucked on his puffer he would be okay.

  A big, red-haired boy snatched it from him. ‘What’s this?’ He held it up to the light as if he might be able to see through to its inner secrets. It was my first encounter with Murdo Macritchie. He was taller and heavier built than the other boys, and had a shock of distinctive, carrot-red hair. I found out later that they called him Murdo Ruadh. Ruadh is the Gaelic word for red. Literally, Red Murdo. It was to distinguish him from his father, who was also Murdo Macritchie. He had black hair, and was called Murdo Dubh. Everyone ended up with a nickname, because so many of the given and surnames were the same. Murdo Ruadh had a brother, Angus, a couple of years older than us. They called him Angel because he was the bully in his year, and Murdo Ruadh seemed set to follow in his footsteps.

  ‘Gimme it!’ Artair tried to snatch back his puffer, but Murdo Ruadh held it out of reach. Sturdy though Artair was, he was no match for big Murdo, who tossed it to another boy who threw it to another, who tossed it back to Murdo. Already Murdo Ruadh, like all bullies, had drawn followers, like flies to shit. Feeble-minded boys, but smart enough to avoid being victims.

  ‘Come and get it then, wheezy.’ Murdo Ruadh was taunting him. And as Artair grabbed for it, he threw it on to one of the flies.

  I could hear that distinctive rasping sound in Artair’s chest as he chased after his puffer, panic and humiliation rising together to block his airways. And I grabbed one of the acolytes and pulled the puffer from his hand. ‘Here.’ I handed it back to my friend. Artair sucked on it several times. I felt a hand on my collar, and an irresistible force propelled me up against the wall. Sharp roughcast drew blood from the back of my head. ‘What the hell do you think you’re playing at, Gaelic boy?’ Murdo Ruadh’s face was two inches from mine, and I could smell his rotten breath. ‘Can’t speak English. Can’t speak nothing.’ The irony, although it didn’t strike me at the time, was that his jibes were in Gaelic. It was the language of the playground. We only ever spoke English in class.

  ‘Leave him alone!’ It was just a small boy’s voice, but it carried such authority that it quieted the barracking of the boys who had gathered to see me get a doing from Murdo. A frown of incomprehension clouded Murdo Ruadh’s big, ugly face. Challenged twice in the space of a minute. He was going to have to put a stop to this. He let go of my collar and turned around. The boy was no bigger than me, but something in the way he held himself stopped Murdo Ruadh in his tracks. The only thing you could hear was the sound of the wind, and the laughter of the girls skipping on the other side of the playground. Everyone was watching Murdo. He knew his reputation was on the line.

  ‘Any trouble from you … and I’ll get my big brother.’

  I wanted to laugh.

  The other boy held Murdo Ruadh in his gaze, and you could see that Murdo was unnerved by it. ‘If you want to go running to your big brother …’ the boy spat out the words big and brother with something like contempt, ‘… then I’ll just have to tell my father.’

  Murdo paled beneath that shock of wiry, red hair. ‘Well, just … just stay out my way.’ It was a feeble comeback, and everyone knew it. He pushed away through the group and across the playground, his followers trotting after him, wondering if maybe they’d backed the wrong horse.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said to the boy as the group dispersed.

  But he just shrugged, like it was nothing. ‘Can’t stand fucking bullies.’ It was the first time I had ever heard anyone swear. He pushed his hands in his pockets and walked off towards the annexe.

  ‘Who is he?’ I asked Artair.

  ‘Don’t you know?’ Artair was amazed. I shook my head. ‘That’s Donald Murray.’ His tone was hushed and filled with awe. ‘He’s the minister’s son.’

  The bell rang then, and we all headed back to class. It was just chance, really, that I was passing the headmaster’s door when he opened it and scan
ned the flood of pupils in the corridor for a likely candidate. ‘You, boy.’ He pointed a finger at me. I stopped in my tracks and he thrust an envelope into my hand. I had no idea what he said next, and just stood there with growing panic.

  ‘He doesn’t speak English, and Mrs Mackay said I had to do the translating for him.’ Marjorie was hovering on my shoulder like a guardian angel. She gave me a winning smile as I turned to look at her.

  ‘Oh, did she now? Translating, eh?’ The headmaster surveyed us with interest, raising one eyebrow in mock severity. He was a tall, bald man with half-moon glasses, and always wore grey tweed suits a size too big for him. ‘Then you’d better go with him, young lady.’

  ‘Yes, Mr Macaulay.’ It was amazing how she seemed to know everybody’s name. ‘Come on, Finlay.’ She slipped her arm through mine and steered us back out to the playground.

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘That note you’re holding is an order for the Crobost Stores, to restock the tuck shop.’

  ‘The tuck shop?’ I had no idea what she was talking about.

  ‘Don’t you know anything, stupid? The tuck shop’s where we buy sweets and crisps and lemonade and stuff in school. So we won’t go traipsing up and down the road to the store and risk getting knocked down.’

  ‘Oh.’ I nodded and wondered how she knew all this. It wasn’t until some time later that I discovered she had a sister in primary six. ‘So it’s only us that’s to get knocked down?’

  She giggled. ‘Old Macaulay must have thought you looked like a sensible type.’

  ‘He got that wrong, then.’ I remembered my confrontation with Murdo Ruadh. She giggled again.

  The Crobost Stores was in an old stone barn about half a mile away at the road end. It stood on the corner by the main road. It had two small windows, which never seemed to have anything in them, and a narrow doorway between them that opened into the shop. We could see it in the distance, next to a stone shed with a rust-red corrugated roof. The single-track road was long and straight, without pavements, and delineated by rotting wooden fenceposts leaning at angles. The fence made a poor job of keeping the sheep off the road. The tall grasses along the ditch were burned brown and bowed by the wind, and the heather was all but dead. On the slope beyond, houses were strung along the main road like square beads on a string, no trees or bushes to soften their hard edges. Just a jumble of fences and the rotting carcasses of dead cars and broken tractors.