The Blackhouse l-1

by Peter May

  ‘They think if we knew about it we’d be jealous and try to sabotage them.’

  I was starting to get cold now. ‘Well, we do know about it. But I don’t see how the hell we could sabotage a tractor tyre.’

  ‘That’s just it, we’re not going to sabotage it.’ Artair’s excitement was glistening in his eyes. ‘We’re going to steal it.’

  Which took me completely by surprise. ‘Says who?’

  ‘Donald Murray,’ Artair said. ‘He’s got a plan.’

  The frost was still lying thick on the ground at playtime the next day. Everyone was out in the playground. There were half a dozen slides going. The best of them was at the end farthest from the gate, where the tarmac sloped away towards a drainage ditch. It was a good fifteen feet long. A short run-up, and gravity did the rest. But you had to jump off quick at the end or you would finish in the ditch.

  I was itching to take my place in line and have a go, but Donald Murray had called a meeting of the Crobost boys and we were gathered in a huddle by the technical block, and I could only watch enviously from afar.

  Donald was a tall, angular, good-looking boy, with a fine head of sandy hair that flopped down over his brow. All the girls fancied him, but he was dead casual about it. He was a boy’s boy, a leader of men, and if you were with Donald you felt safe from the Macritchie brothers. Angel had left Crobost School by that time and gone to pursue vocational studies at the Lews Castle. But Murdo Ruadh was still an ever-present threat.

  Initially Donald had drawn his power from the fact that everyone was afraid of his father. Everyone, that is, except Donald himself. The minister, then, was still a very powerful figure in the community, and Coinneach Murray was a fearsome man. Coinneach is the Gaelic for Kenneth, and although it was Kenneth Murray on the board outside the church, everyone knew him as Coinneach. Although not to his face. You would only ever refer to him in person as Mister or Reverend Murray. We always imagined that his wife called him Reverend, too. Even in bed.

  Donald, however, always referred to his father as the old bastard. He defied him at every turn, refused to go to church on a Sunday and, as a result, was confined to the manse every Sabbath.

  There was one Saturday night we were having a party at someone’s house. The parents were at a wedding in Stornoway, and had decided to stay overnight rather than risk the drive back after drinking. It wasn’t terribly late, ten thirty maybe, when the door burst open and Coinneach Murray stood there like some avenging angel sent by the Lord to punish us for our sins. Of course, half the kids were smoking and drinking. And there were girls there, too. Coinneach roared his disapproval at us, and told us he would be sure to speak to every one of our parents. Did we not know it was the eve of the Lord’s Day, and that children of our age should be home in bed? We were all terrified. Except for Donald. He stayed where he was, lounging on the sofa, a can of beer in his hand. And, of course, it was Donald he had come for really. He pointed a trembling finger of accusation at his son and told him to get out. But Donald just sat there, a sullen look of defiance on his face, and shocked us all by telling his father to fuck off. You could have heard a pin drop in Stornoway.

  Red-faced with anger and humiliation, Coinneach Murray strode into the room and knocked the can from Donald’s hand. The beer went everywhere. But nobody moved. And nobody spoke. Not even Coinneach. He had a powerful physical presence beyond anything that the dog collar gave him. He was just a big, strong man. He physically lifted Donald out of the settee by the scruff of his neck before frog-marching him out into the night. It was an awesome display of power in the face of defiance, and there was not one of us who would have wanted to be in Donald’s shoes when his father got him home.

  And true to his word, the Reverend Coinneach Murray visited the parents of every boy and girl who was in the house that night, and there was hell to pay. Although not in my house. My aunt was nothing if not eccentric, and in a God-fearing community it was somehow only natural that she would be a devout atheist. She told the minister in no uncertain terms, although not as colourfully as Donald, where he could stick his self-righteous indignation. He told her she was certain to go to Hell. ‘I’ll see you there, then,’ she said as she slammed the door on his back. I suppose I learned my contempt for the Church from my aunt.

  So Donald had gained a kind of legendary status in his own right. Not because of who his father was, but because of the way he defied him and went against everything he stood for. Donald was the first in our year to smoke. The first to drink. He was the first of my contemporaries whom I ever saw drunk. But there was a positive side to him, too. He was good at sports. He was second-top of our class. And although he was no match, physically, for Murdo Ruadh, intellectually he could run rings around him. And Murdo knew it. So by and large he gave him a wide berth.

  There were six of us gathered there in the playground that day. Donald, me and Artair, a couple of boys from the bottom end of the village, Iain and Seonaidh, and Calum Macdonald. I always felt sorry for Calum. He was smaller than the rest of us, and there was something soft about him. He was good at art, he liked Celtic music and played the clarsach, a small Celtic harp, in the school orchestra. He was also mercilessly bullied by Murdo Ruadh and his gang. He never told, and he never complained, but I always imagined him crying himself to sleep at nights. I dragged my eyes away from the slide at the far side of the playground to focus on the plan for tonight’s raid on Swainbost.

  ‘Okay,’ Donald was saying, ‘we’ll meet up at the cemetery road end at Swainbost, one o’clock tomorrow morning.’

  ‘How will we get out of the house without being caught?’ Calum was wide-eyed and full of trepidation.

  ‘That’s your problem.’ Donald was unsympathetic. ‘Anyone doesn’t want to come, that’s up to them.’ He paused to give anyone who wanted to a chance to back out. No one did. ‘Okay, about a hundred yards down the road to the cemetery there’s the remains of an old blackhouse with a tin roof on it. It’s used mainly for storing agricultural equipment, and it’s got a padlock on the door. That’s where they’ve hidden the tyre.’

  ‘How do you know all this?’ Seonaidh said.

  Donald smirked. ‘I know a girl in Swainbost. She and her brother don’t get on.’ We all nodded, none of us surprised that Donald knew a girl in Swainbost, each of us thinking there was a good chance he knew her in the biblical sense as well.

  ‘What the fuck’s going on here, then?’ Murdo Ruadh forced his way into the group, flanked by the same two boys who’d fallen in with him that first day at school all those years before. One of them had developed terrible acne, and you would find your eyes drawn to the clusters of suppurating, yellow-headed spots around his nose and mouth. Our circle quickly widened out away from him.

  ‘Nothing to do with you,’ Donald said.

  ‘Aye, it is.’ Murdo seemed unusually sure of himself in Donald’s presence. ‘You’re going to steal the tyre the Swainbost boys have got stashed away up there.’

  We were all shocked that he knew. Then beyond that initial shock came the realization that one of us must have told him. All eyes turned towards Calum. He squirmed uncomfortably.

  ‘I didn’t tell, honest.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter how I know,’ Murdo Ruadh growled. ‘I know. Alright? And we want in. Me and Angel and the boys. After all, we’re all Crobost boys. That right?’

  ‘No.’ Donald was defiant. ‘There’s enough of us as it is.’

  But Murdo was quite relaxed. ‘It’s a big tyre. It’s gonna weigh a ton. Gonna take a lot to carry it.’

  ‘We’re not going to carry it,’ Donald said.

  Which knocked Murdo momentarily off-balance. ‘How’re you gonna get it back to Crobost then?’

  ‘We’re going to roll it, stupid.’

  ‘Oh.’ Murdo Ruadh clearly hadn’t thought of that. ‘Well, it’s still gonna take a lot of hands to get it upright and keep it that way.’

  ‘I told you.’ Donald stood his ground. ‘We don’t nee
d you.’

  ‘Look!’ Murdo jabbed a finger in his chest. ‘I don’t give a shit what you told me. Either we’re in, or we blow the whistle on you.’ He’d played his trump card and stood back triumphantly. ‘What’s it to be?’

  I could tell by the slump of Donald’s shoulders that for once he was beaten. None of us wanted the Macritchie brothers and their pals along. But, then, neither did we want the Swainbost boys to have the best bonfire on Guy Fawkes night. ‘Okay,’ Donald sighed. And Murdo Ruadh beamed his satisfaction.

  I couldn’t have slept that night, even if I’d wanted to. I sat up late doing my next week’s homework for Mr Macinnes. There was a small two-bar electric heater with a concave reflector in my room, but it made no impact on the cold, unless you were six inches from it, and then it would burn you. I had two pairs of socks on, and my big crofter’s leather boots. I wore a pair of jeans, a T-shirt, a shirt, a heavy woollen jumper and a donkey jacket. And still I was cold. It was a big, cheerless house this, built in the 1920s, and when the wind gusted in off the sea the windows and doors rattled and let it blow through at will. There was no wind tonight, but the temperature had dropped below twenty degrees, and the peat fire in the living room seemed a long way away. At least if my aunt looked in on me before she went to bed I would have an excuse for wearing all these clothes. But, of course, I knew she wouldn’t. She never did.

  I heard her coming upstairs about ten-thirty. Normally she was a late bird, but tonight it was too cold even for her. And bed, along with a hot water bottle, offered the only prospect of warmth. I worked on by the light of my bedside lamp for another hour and a half before finally closing my study books and listening at the door for any sign of life. I heard nothing, so I crept out into the darkness of the hall. To my horror I saw a line of light under my aunt’s bedroom door. She must have been reading. I slipped quickly back into my bedroom. The wooden staircase was old and creaky, and I knew there was no way I could negotiate it without being heard. The only alternative was to climb out of the window on to the roof and slither down the rone pipe. I had done it before, but with the frost lying thick on the slates tonight it would be a treacherous undertaking.

  I eased the rusted metal window frame off its latch and swung it open. The hinge screeched horribly, and I froze, waiting for the call of my aunt’s voice. But all I could hear was the constant rhythm of the sea washing up on the shingle beach fifty feet below. The cold air pinched my face and penetrated my fingers as I held on to the window frame to lever myself out on to the roof. The tiles dropped away steeply from the dormer to the gutter below. I found it with my feet and inched my way along it to the gable, where I was able to hold on to the coping and lower myself until my boots found a grip on the rone. And it was with a huge sense of relief that I let myself slide down the cold metal pipe to the ground. I was out.

  The air smelled of winter frost and peat smoke. My aunt’s old car stood on the tarmac apron in front of the house. Beyond the shadow of the ruins of an older dwelling, the shingle shore below was lit as bright as day by the moon. I looked up and saw the light still burning in my aunt’s window, and hurried to the concrete shed that abutted the east gable of the house. I retrieved my bicycle, and with a glance at my watch, pedalled hard off along the single-track road towards Crobost, the moor sparkling darkly on my left, the ocean shimmering on my right. It was just on half-past midnight.

  My aunt’s house was about a mile south of the village itself, standing on its own on the cliffs near the tiny Crobost harbour cut into a deep cleft in the rock. I covered the distance back to the village in a matter of minutes, passing my old home, dark and empty, closed up now and falling into sad disrepair. I always tried not to look at it. It was an almost unbearable reminder of how my life once was, and how it might still have been.

  Artair’s bungalow sat down below the level of the road, the shadowy mound of its peatstack silhouetted against the silver ocean, moonlight picking out the carefully constructed herringbone pattern of the peats. I pulled up at the gate and peered into the shadows that pooled around the house. Artair had long ago been nicknamed Wheezy, but I could never bring myself to call him that. ‘Artair!’ My whispered call seemed awfully loud. But there was no sign of him. I waited more than five minutes, becoming increasingly agitated, glancing time and again at my watch, as if by doing so I could slow the progress of time. We were going to be late. I was on the point of giving up, when I heard a loud clatter from the side of the house next to the peat stack. Artair came wheezing out of the darkness, shaking off a plastic bucket whose handle had managed to attach itself around his ankle. He ran across the grass and almost somersaulted over the fence, propelled by the tension of the top wire which he had somehow failed to see. He landed on his backside at my feet, grinning up at me in the moonlight.

  ‘That was subtle,’ I said. ‘What the hell kept you?’

  ‘My old man only went to bed about half an hour ago. He’s got ears like a bloody rabbit. I had to wait till I could hear him snoring before I was sure he was asleep.’ He scrambled to his feet and cursed. ‘Oh, Jesus! I’ve got sheep shit all over me.’

  My heart sank. I was giving him a backie, and he’d have his shitty breeks on my saddle and his shitty hands around my waist. ‘Get on!’ He swung a leg over the saddle, still grinning idiotically. And I could smell the shite off him. ‘And don’t get that stuff on me!’

  ‘What are friends for, if not for sharing.’ Artair grabbed hold of my donkey jacket. I gritted my teeth and pushed off down the single-track towards the main road, Artair’s legs shoved out wide on either side of the bike for balance.

  We hid the bicycle in a ditch a couple of hundred yards from the cemetery road at Swainbost and ran the rest of the way. The others were waiting impatiently at the road end, huddled in the shadow of the old Co-op building which had been taken over by Ness Builders. ‘Where in God’s name have you been?’ Donald whispered.

  Angel Macritchie ballooned out of the darkness and pushed me up against the wall. ‘You stupid wee bastard! The longer we’re hanging about here waiting for you, the more likely we are to get caught.’

  ‘Jeeesus!’ Murdo Ruadh’s voice fizzed in the shadows. ‘What the fuck is that smell?’

  I glared at Artair, and Donald said, ‘Come on, let’s get on with it.’

  Angel’s big hand released me, and I followed the others as we slipped out of the cover of Ness Builders and into the moonlight that slanted across the road. It seemed very exposed out here. Higgledy-piggledy fenceposts marked out the line of the road all the way to the cemetery itself, sparkling headstones on the distant headland. Our footsteps crunched on the frost beneath us and seemed inordinately loud as we hurried past the gardens of the houses on our left. Our breath condensed in the freezing air and billowed around our heads like smoke.

  Donald stopped outside an old blackhouse with a corrugated-iron roof. It had stout wooden doors with a large padlock threaded through a sturdy iron clasp. A triangle of roof had been built up above the door to allow bigger agricultural machinery in and out. ‘This is it.’

  Murdo Ruadh stepped forward and pulled a heavy-duty cutter from beneath his coat.

  ‘What the hell’s that for?’ Donald whispered.

  ‘You told us it was padlocked.’

  ‘We’re here to steal a tyre, Murdo, not go damaging people’s property.’

  ‘So how’re we gonna get the padlock open?’

  ‘Well, a key’s the usual way.’ Donald held up a big key on a leather tab.

  ‘Where the fuck’d he get that?’ This from Acne Boy, whose spots seemed to glow in the moonlight.

  ‘He knows a girl,’ Calum said, as if that explained everything.

  Donald unlocked the padlock and pushed one half of the door open. It creaked into the dark interior He pulled a torch from his pocket and we all crowded in behind him as he flashed its beam around an amazing accumulation of junk. There was the rusted shell of an old tractor, an ancient plough, a broken-down baile
r, trowels, hoes, forks, spades, rope, fishing net suspended from the rafters, orange and yellow plastic buoys dangling just above our heads, the bench seat from the back of an old car. And there, leaning against the far wall, a huge old tractor tyre, bigger than any of us, and with a tread you could lose your fist in. It had a ten-inch gash on the side facing us, damage inflicted by a careless driver. Perhaps insurance had covered the cost of its replacement, but the tyre itself was no longer of any use to man nor beast. Just perfect fodder for a bonfire. We stared at it in hushed awe. ‘She’s a beauty,’ Artair whispered.

  ‘She’ll burn for fucking days,’ Angel said.

  ‘Let’s get her out of here.’ There was a sense of triumph in Donald’s voice.

  She weighed a ton, that tyre, just as Murdo Ruadh had predicted. It took all of us just to keep her from falling over as we manoeuvred her out of the door and on to the road. Donald detached himself from the group, closed the door and refastened the padlock. He returned, grinning with anticipation. ‘They’ll not have a clue what happened. It’ll be just like she disappeared into thin air.’

  ‘Aye, until she goes up in smoke on our bonfire.’ Murdo was gleeful.

  It was heavy going, pushing that tyre up the slope to the main road. And it wasn’t much of a slope either. It gave us a good idea of just how difficult it was going to be to get it up the hill to Crobost. A long night loomed ahead of us.

  When we got to the road end, we leaned it up against the gable of the old Co-op building and took a break, panting and perspiring. We had generated enough of our own heat not to be bothered by the cold any more. Cigarettes got handed around, and we all puffed away in silent self-congratulation. We were pretty pleased with ourselves.

  ‘It’s going to get difficult from here,’ Donald said, cupping his hand around the glowing ember of his cigarette.

  ‘Whatdya mean?’ Murdo glowered at him. ‘It’s downhill from here to the Crobost turnoff.’