by Peter May
We got on to our backsides and began inching our way down the steep, grassy slope. I went first, clutching the sack, and Artair followed, and then acted as a kind of anchor, digging his heels into the crumbling earth and holding me with both hands by my left forearm, so that I could lean out and try to catch a glimpse of the girls. We had to go almost all of the way down to the final drop before I caught sight of four pairs of heels lying in a row. They were a little over to our left, and I signed to Artair that we had to move across a bit. As we did, some loose earth and pebbles freed themselves from the fringes and dropped on to the beach. The chatter stopped.
‘What was that?’ I heard one of them ask.
‘A hundred million years of erosion.’ It was Marsaili’s voice. ‘You don’t think it’s going to stop just because we’re sunbathing below it?’
The heels were immediately beneath me now, like four sets of feet set out on a mortuary slab. I leaned out as far as I dared and saw that they were all lying on their fronts, bikini tops undone to avoid that tell-tale white line across the back. Perfect. I was probably twelve or fifteen feet above them. I grinned at Artair and nodded. I took the sack in my free hand, loosening the top, before shaking it out over the edge. Two dozen crabs went flying through space and out of sight. But their effect was immediate. Great shrieks of terror split the air, rising to us from below like rapturous applause for the success of our venture. Barely able to control our laughter, we inched a little lower, and I craned to catch a sight of the mayhem on the beach.
It was at that moment a great sod of dry earth chose to detach itself from the crumbling rock and send me sliding down the slope and over the edge, in spite of Artair’s best efforts to hold on. Like the crabs before me, I hurtled through space, dropping the last ten feet to the beach and landing, fortunately enough, on my feet, although gravity promptly induced me to sit down heavily.
Panicked crabs were scuttling in every direction. I found myself looking up at four startled girls looking down at me. Four pairs of naked breasts bobbing in the sunlight. We all stared at each other for a moment, all of us speechless, frozen in a moment of mutual disbelief. Then one of the girls screamed, and three of them crossed their arms over their chests in extravagant gestures of false modesty, giggling now and feigning coyness. In truth, I think they were not entirely dismayed by my sudden and unexpected appearance.
Marsaili, however, made no attempt to cover herself up. She stood for several moments with her hands on her hips, breasts thrust out defiantly. Firm, pert breasts, I couldn’t help noticing, with large, erect and very pink nipples. She took two steps forward and slapped me so hard across the face that I saw lights flashing. ‘Pervert!’ she spat contemptuously. And she bent down to retrieve her bikini top and strode away across the sand.
I didn’t see Marsaili again for almost a month. We were into August now, and my exam results had come through. As Mr Macinnes had predicted, I got straight ‘A’s in English, art, history, French and Spanish. I had given up maths and science after my O grades. It was strange. I had an aptitude for languages, but never any inclination to use it. My acceptance for Glasgow University had been confirmed, and I was going to do an MA. I wasn’t quite sure what that was, but anything to do with the arts interested me, and I never seemed to have to work as hard as I did with the more academic subjects.
I had long since recovered from Marsaili’s slap, but it had left red weals on my face that I wore like a badge of honour for several days after. Artair had made me describe in great detail to him what I had seen when I landed on the beach. For his part, he had scrambled back up to the top of the cliff and not caught sight of so much as a nipple. The story spread like wildfire through the neighbouring villages, and I enjoyed a brief status as a cult hero among a whole generation of pubescent boys in Ness. But like the summer itself, the recollection was waning, and the day when Artair would clock in for the first time was approaching with unwelcome haste. He was becoming increasingly morose.
I found him in a black mood the day I called at his bungalow to tell him about the party on Eilean Beag. It was a tiny island just a few hundred yards off the north shore of Great Bernera, which was like the fire in a dragon’s mouth just to the west of Calanais, where the sea had eaten deep into the south-west coastline of Lewis. I don’t know who had organized it, but a friend of Donald Murray had invited him, and he invited us. There were to be bonfires and a barbecue, and if the weather was fine we would sleep on the beach under the stars. If it was wet, there was an old shieling where we could shelter. All we had to do was bring our own drink.
Artair shook his head grimly and told me he couldn’t go. His father was away on the mainland for a few days, and his mother was not well. He was going to have to stay in with her. She’d had chest pains, he said, and her blood pressure was through the roof. The doctor thought perhaps she was suffering from angina. I had never heard of angina, but it didn’t sound very pleasant. I was disappointed that Artair couldn’t go. Disappointed for him. He needed cheering up.
But my concern for Artair didn’t stay long in my mind. By the Friday it was already fading, and when Donald Murray arrived at my aunt’s house to pick me up on that afternoon, all thoughts of Artair were blown away by the roar of Donald’s exhaust, and the sulphurous cloud it emitted. From somewhere he had managed to acquire a red, soft-top Peugeot. It was old, and somewhat the worse for wear, but it was a wonderful, vivid red, and the roof was down, and Donald lounged behind the wheel looking like a film star with his bleached hair and his tanned face and his sunglasses.
‘Hey, bro,’ he drawled. ‘Wanna ride?’
And I certainly did. I wasn’t interested in where he had got it, or how. I just wanted to sit up there in the front beside him and cruise the island, and see the jealous looks on all the other kids’ faces. An open-topped car on the Isle of Lewis was almost unheard-of. After all, when would you ever be able to use it with the roof down? On a handful of days in any given year, if you were lucky. Well, that year we were big-time lucky. The good weather had scorched the island brown through July, and it was still holding.
We loaded four boxes of beer into the boot from my aunt’s lean-to, where I had been storing it. Donald’s father would not have permitted such contraband to be kept at the manse. My aunt came out to see us off. When I think back now, I can see that perhaps she was not well, even then. Though she never said a word to me about it. But she was pale, and thinner than she had been. Her henna-dyed hair was wispy and sparse, with half an inch of white at the roots. Her make-up was caked and pasty, crumbling in the creases of her over-rouged cheeks. Mascara was clogged in her lashes, and her mouth was a slash of pale pink. She was wearing one of her diaphanous creations, layers of different-coloured chiffon pinned into something resembling a cape, over cut-off jeans and pink open sandals. Her toenails were painted pink, too. Thick, horny nails in feet made ugly by arthritis.
She had been my mum’s big sister. Ten years older than her. And two more different people it would be hard to imagine. She must have been in her thirties during the hippy days of the 1960s, but that was her defining era. She’d spent time in London and San Francisco and New York, the only person I ever met who had actually been at Woodstock. It’s strange how little I know about her, really. The young are not curious about their elders, they just accept them for what they are. But I wish now I could go back and ask her about her life, fill in all those gaps. But, of course, you can’t go back. She had never been married, I knew that, but there had been some big relationship with someone famous. And wealthy. And married. When she returned to the island she bought the old whitehouse overlooking Crobost harbour and lived there on her own. As far as I knew she never told anyone what happened. Perhaps she confided in my mother, but I would have been too young for my mother to have told me. I think there was only ever one great love in her life, a life on which she seemed simply to close the door when she moved into the old whitehouse. I have no idea how she lived, where her money came from. We co
uld never afford the luxuries, but I never wanted for food or clothes, or anything that I really desired. When she died there was ten pounds in her bank account.
My aunt was an enigma, one of the great unexplored mysteries of my life. I lived with her for nine years, and yet I cannot say that I ever knew her. She didn’t love me, I can say with some certainty. Nor I her. I would say she tolerated me. But she never had a harsh word. And she always took my part when the world was against me. There was — how can I put it? — a kind of unspoken, almost reluctant, affection between us. I don’t think I ever kissed her, and the only time I can remember her holding me was the night my parents died.
She loved the car. I suppose it must have appealed to that long-lost free spirit in her. She asked Donald if he would take her for a ride, and he told her to jump in. I sat in the back as he tore up the cliff road and over to Skigersta, sparks flying from the cigarette my aunt insisted on trying to smoke. Her hair blew back from her face to reveal its fragile, bony structure, crepe-like skin stretched tight over all its slopes and angles, like a death mask. And yet I don’t think I had ever seen her so happy. When we got back to the house there was a radiance about her, and I think she almost wished she was going with us. When I looked back as the car slipped over the brow of the hill towards Crobost she was still standing watching us go.
We picked up Iain and Seonaidh and some more beer at the bottom of the hill and set off south for Great Bernera. It was a glorious drive down the west coast, with the warm wind battering our faces and the sun burning our skin. I had never seen the ocean so calm, glittering away towards a hazy horizon. A gentle swell, as if it were breathing slow and steady, was the only perceptible movement. Kids waved to us in village after village. Siadar, Barvas, Shawbost, Carloway, and some of the older folk stood and watched in amazement, figuring no doubt that we were tourists from the mainland, mad folk brought across the water in the belly of the Suilven. The standing stones at Calanais ranged in silent silhouette against the western sky, another of life’s mysteries that we were unlikely ever to unravel.
By the time we found the jetty at the north-east point of Great Bernera, the sun was sinking lower in the sky and flooding the ocean with its dazzling liquid gold. We could see Eilean Beag sitting low in the water just a couple of hundred yards from the shore. It was no more than half a mile long, and maybe three or four hundred yards wide. The shieling sat close to the shore and there were several fires already burning at various points around it and along the beach, smoke hanging above the island in the still air. We could see figures moving about, and the sound of music carried as clear as a bell across the strait.
We unloaded the beer from the car and Donald parked it on the bank beside several dozen others. Seonaidh rang the bell on the jetty, and a few minutes later someone began rowing a boat across to fetch us.
Eilean Beag was fairly flat and featureless, summer grazing for sheep, but it had a fine, sandy beach along its southern fringe, and another shingle beach along the north-west flank. There must have been nearly a hundred people on the island that night. I knew hardly any of them. I supposed a lot of them must have come from the mainland. They were gathering in animated groups of those who knew one another, each with their own fire, each with their own music pounding out from their own ghetto blasters. The smell of barbecued meat and fish filled the air. Girls were wrapping food in tinfoil parcels to bury in the embers. Although I had no idea whose party it was, it did seem remarkably well organized. When we first got ashore, Donald slapped me on the back and said he’d catch me later. He had a rendezvous with a quarter-ounce of dope. Me and Iain and Seonaidh stacked the beer with the rest of the booze at the shieling, and opened ourselves some cans. We found some kids we knew from school and spent the next couple of hours drinking and talking and eating fish and chicken straight from the fire.
Night seemed to fall suddenly, darkness catching us unawares. The sky still glowed red in the west and fires were stoked and refuelled with driftwood to give more light. I don’t know why, but a certain melancholy descended on me with the dark. Perhaps I was too happy and knew it couldn’t last. Maybe it was because it was my last summer on Lewis, although I had no idea then that I would only ever return once, for a funeral. I opened a fresh can and wandered off among the fires strung out along the shore, animated faces gathered around them reflecting their light, laughing, drinking, smoking. Mixed now with the smell of woodsmoke and barbecue was the sweet, woody perfume of marijuana. From the water’s edge, I looked up at a sky free from any light pollution, and felt myself filled with a sense of wonder at its vast, inky, starlit span. There are moments when you look at the sky and you feel that everything revolves around you, and other times when you just feel infinitesimally small. That night I felt like the merest speck of dust in the history of infinity.
‘Hey, Fin!’ I turned at the sound of my name to see Donald at the nearest fire with some other kids. He had his arm around a girl, and they appeared mostly to be paired off in couples. ‘What the hell are you doing out there on your own in the dark? Come and join us.’
To be honest, I didn’t really want to. I was wallowing a little in my melancholy, enjoying my solitude. But I didn’t like to be rude. As I walked into the circle of light around the fire, Donald was snogging his girl, breaking off only as he became aware of me standing there. That was when I saw that the girl was Marsaili, and I felt a tiny jolt of jealousy, like electricity, passing through my body. I am sure my face must have flushed red, but the firelight disguised my embarrassment.
Marsaili smiled at me, superior, a look of cool calculation in her eyes. ‘Well, well, if it isn’t Peeping Tom.’
‘Peeping Tom?’ There was puzzlement in Donald’s half-smile. He must have been the only kid in Ness who hadn’t heard the story. Maybe he’d been away on the mainland fetching his red, soft-top Peugeot. So Marsaili told him, although not exactly the way I would have told it, and he laughed so much I thought he was going to choke.
‘Man, that’s priceless. Sit down for Chrissake. Have a joint with us and loosen up.’
I sat down, but waved aside the offer of a joint. ‘Naw, I’ll just stick with beer.’
Donald gave me a knowing look and cocked his head. ‘A dope virgin, are we?’
‘Every kind of virgin probably,’ Marsaili said.
I blushed again, thankful for the darkness and the fire. ‘Course not.’ But I was. And, as Marsaili suspected, in more ways than one.
‘So don’t give me any of this shit about beer,’ Donald said. ‘You’ll smoke with us, right?’
I shrugged. ‘Sure.’ And as I drank from my can I watched him carefully roll what these days they call a spliff, joining together four sheets of cigarette papers, sprinkling tobacco along the centre of the ‘skin’ and then crumbling the cooked resin along its length. He laid a strip of card at one end and rolled the joint around it into a long cigarette, licking along the sticky edge of the paper and then twisting the other end closed. That was the end he lit, taking a long pull on it, sucking a great cloud of smoke into his lungs and holding it there while he passed the joint to Marsaili. As Marsaili sucked on it, Donald exhaled deeply, smoke drifting into the night, and I could see the effect of it almost instantly, peace descending on him like a shroud out of the darkness. Marsaili passed it to me, its end wet with her saliva. I smoked the occasional cigarette, and so didn’t think I would disgrace myself by choking on the inhalation. But I wasn’t expecting the smoke to be so hot, and a fit of coughing exploded from my lungs into my throat. When I regained control, I found Donald and Marsaili looking at me with knowing little smiles. ‘Caught the back of my throat,’ I said.
‘You’d better take another drag, then,’ Donald told me, and I had no option but to try again. This time I managed to keep the smoke in my lungs for about ten seconds, passing the joint back to Donald, before exhaling slowly.
Of course, I should have known that I would give myself away as a first-timer by giggling. I spent the next fift
een minutes laughing at anything and everything. It’s amazing how funny things were. A comment, a look, a shriek of laughter from the neighbouring bonfire. Any one of these would set me off. Donald and Marsaili watched me with the laid-back detachment of experienced smokers, until finally my giggles subsided. By the time we had smoked a second joint I was feeling supremely mellow, staring into the flames and seeing all sorts of answers there to those questions about life that the young always like to ask. Answers that were as elusive as the flames themselves, and never there the next morning when you woke up.
I was only vaguely aware of someone calling from the beach and Donald getting to his feet and padding away across the sand. When I looked around, I saw that most of the other kids around our fire had drifted away too, and only Marsaili and I were left sitting there. We were not within touching distance, but she was looking at me with a very odd expression.
‘Come here.’ She patted the sand beside her.
Like an obedient little dog, I shuffled around until my backside filled the dent she had made in the beach with her hand. I felt my thigh touching hers, and the heat of her body next to mine.
‘You’re a complete bastard, you know that?’ But her voice was soft, and without rancour. Of course, I knew that I was, so I didn’t dare contradict her. ‘You stole my heart when I was too young to know any better, and then you dumped and humiliated me.’ I tried a smile, but I’m sure it must have come out like some ghastly grimace. She looked at me earnestly and shook her head. ‘I don’t know why I still have these feelings for you.’