The Blackhouse l-1

by Peter May

  ‘Angel?’ Gigs asked.

  Fin nodded. ‘I mean, you all hated him, didn’t you? I haven’t come across a single person since I got here who’s had one good word to say for him.’

  The comedian with the ginger hair said, ‘Angel was the cook. He was good at it.’ And there was a mumble of accord.

  ‘So who have you asked to stand in for him?’ Fin said.

  ‘Asterix.’ Gigs nodded towards a wee man with a big, whiskery moustache. ‘But we didn’t ask him. We never ask anyone, Fin. We let it be known that there’s a place available, and if someone wants to go, then they come and ask us.’ He paused, a sack of salt weighing heavily in his arms. But he didn’t seem to notice. ‘That way no one can lay the blame at our door if anything goes wrong.’

  When they had finished loading the lorry, they took a break for a smoke, a quiet moment together before this unlikely assembly of weavers and crofters, electricians, joiners and builders, headed off to crofts and work places. Fin wandered away along the jetty, past rusting capstans and tangles of green fishing net. There was fresh concrete around the walkway and the wall where work had recently been carried out to repair the damage caused by ferocious seas. A great grassy rock rose from the water in the inner harbour. As a boy, Fin had gone out to it at low tide and climbed up to the top, sitting there to survey all around him. King of the harbour. Until the tide came in and trapped him there. He’d had to wait until the tide went out again before he could get off the rock. For like most island boys of his generation, he had never learned to swim. There had been hell to pay when eventually he got home.

  ‘You know, we’ve never spoken properly about what happened that year.’ Gigs’s voice close at his shoulder startled him. Fin turned and saw that the others were still gathered around the lorry at the far end of the jetty, smoking and talking. ‘When we got back, you were in no condition to talk. Didn’t remember much, anyway. And then you left for the university and never came back.’

  ‘I don’t know that there was anything much for us to say,’ Fin said.

  Gigs leaned against the lifebelt hanging from the harbour wall and gazed across at the breakwater quay, smashed now by the sea, where the trawler used to berth to land the harvest from An Sgeir. ‘In the old days, hundreds of people gathered on the quay there, queuing up the road to the village, just to be sure of at least one guga.’ The wind whipped the smoke of his cigarette from his mouth.

  ‘I remember it,’ Fin said, ‘from when I was a boy.’

  Gigs tilted his head and cast him a searching look. ‘What else do you remember, Fin — from the year you came with us?’

  ‘I remember that I nearly died. It’s not something I’m likely to forget.’ He felt Gigs’s eyes piercing him, like searchlights seeking illumination in some dark place deep inside, and he was discomfited by it.

  ‘A man did die.’

  ‘I’m hardly likely to forget that either.’ Emotion welled up in Fin like water in a spring. ‘There’s hardly a day goes by that I don’t think about it.’

  Gigs held his eye for a moment then looked away again towards the shattered quay. ‘I’ve been out to the rock more than thirty times, Fin. And I remember every single trip. Like songs in a hymn book, they’re all different.’

  ‘I suppose they are.’

  ‘You’d think maybe one year would begin to seem like all the others after thirty-odd years, but I can recall every detail of every one like it was the last.’ His pause was laden. ‘I remember the year you came with us as if it was yesterday.’ He hesitated, seeming to consider his words carefully. ‘But outside of those of us who were there, it’s never been discussed.’

  Fin shuffled uncomfortably. ‘It was hardly a secret, Gigs.’

  Gigs’s head swivelled again in his direction, the same look in his eyes. Searching. And then he said, ‘Just so you know, Fin. It’s an unwritten rule. Whatever happens on the rock stays on the rock. Always did, always will.’

  ELEVEN

  The news that Artair and I were to join that year’s team going out to An Sgeir ruined my last summer on the island. It came out of the blue, literally, and sent me into a deep, black depression.

  There were only six weeks left before I was due to leave for university in Glasgow, and I wanted to spend them as I had the last two. Marsaili and I had passed nearly every day together since our encounter on Eilean Beag. I had begun to lose count of the number of times we had made love. Sometimes with the ferocity and passion of people who fear they might never have the chance again — it had been like that the time we made love in the barn, high up among the bales, where Marsaili had stolen that first kiss all those years before. Other times with a slow, languid indulgence, as if we believed that these idyllic days of summer, sun and sex would never end.

  It did not seem possible, then, that they would. Marsaili, too, had been accepted for Glasgow University, and four more years together stretched ahead of us. We had gone to Glasgow the previous week to search for digs. I told my aunt that I was going with Donald, not that she would have cared much who I went with. Marsaili’s folks thought she was going with a group of schoolfriends. We shared a B amp; B for two nights, lying in together all morning, wrapped around each other until the landlady threw us out. We imagined how each and every day would be like this once we started university, sharing the same bed, making love every night. Such happiness seemed almost impossible. Of course, I know now that it was.

  We trailed around the West End for hours, following up ads in the paper, working through a list we had been given by the university, checking out tip-offs from other students encountered in the bars of Byres Road the previous night. We struck lucky. A room of our own in a large Edwardian flat in Highburgh Road, sharing with six others. First floor, red sandstone tenement, stained glass, wood panelling. I had never seen anything like it. It was all so extraordinarily exotic. Late-opening pubs; Chinese, Italian, Indian restaurants; delicatessens open till midnight; mini-markets open twenty-four hours; shops, pubs, restaurants open on a Sunday. It hardly seemed credible. I could imagine how deliciously illicit it would feel to buy a Sunday newspaper on a Sunday and read it over a pint in a pub. Back then, back on the island, you never saw a Sunday newspaper before Monday.

  When we returned to Lewis the idyll continued, although now there was an edge of impatience to it. While both of us would have been happy for the summer to last for ever, we could hardly wait for the time to come when we would leave for Glasgow. Life’s great adventure lay ahead of us and we were almost wishing away our youth in our haste to embark upon it.

  The night before I received the news about An Sgeir, Marsaili and I went down to the beach at Port of Ness. We picked our way in the dark through the rocks at the south end of it, to a slab of black gneiss worn smooth by aeons, hidden away from the rest of the world by layers of rock that appeared to have been cut into giant slices, stood on end, then tipped over to lie in skewed stacks. Cliffs rose up above us to a night sky of infinite possibilities. The tide was out, but we could hear the sea breathing gently on the shore. A warm breeze rattled the sundried heather that grew in ragged, earthy clumps on shelves and ledges in the cliff. We laid out the sleeping bag we had brought with us and stripped naked to lie on it in the starlight and make love in long, slow strokes, in time with the beat of the ocean, in harmony with the night. It was the last time there was real love between us, and its sweet intensity was nearly overpowering, leaving us both limp and breathless. Afterwards we slipped naked over the rocks to the hard flat sand left by the receding tide, and ran across it to where the water spilled moonlight upon the shore, and we high-danced through the breaking waves, hand in hand, shrieking as the cold water burned our skin.

  When we got back to the sleeping bag, we rubbed each other down and got dressed, chittering in the cold. I took Marsaili’s head in my hands, her tangle of golden hair still dripping, and gave her a long, slow kiss. When we broke apart I looked deep into her eyes and frowned, noticing for the first time that th
ere was something missing.

  ‘Whatever happened to your glasses?’

  She smiled. ‘I got contacts.’

  It is hard to remember now just why I reacted so violently against the notion of joining the trip to An Sgeir to harvest the guga, although I can think of many reasons why I would not have wanted to go.

  I was not a particularly physical boy, and I knew that life on An Sgeir would be unremittingly hard, physically gruelling, full of danger and discomfort.

  I did not relish the prospect of slaughtering two thousand birds. Like most of my peers, I enjoyed the taste of the guga, but had no desire to see how it reached my plate.

  It would mean being separated from Marsaili for two whole weeks, or even longer. Sometimes the weather kept the hunters trapped on the rock for several more days than they intended.

  But there was more to it than that. It seemed somehow like falling back into that black hole from which I had only just emerged. I can’t really explain why. It’s just how it was.

  I had gone down to Artair’s to see how his mother was doing. I had seen very little of him in the last few weeks. And I found him sitting on an old tractor tyre out by the peat stack staring across the Minch towards the mainland. I hadn’t noticed before, but the mountains of Sutherland stood sharp and clear against the pastel blue of the sky, and I knew then that the weather was about to break. From the look on Artair’s face I feared the worst for his mother. I sat on the tyre beside him.

  ‘How’s your mum?’

  He turned and gave me a long, vacant look, as if he were staring clean through me.

  ‘Artair …?’

  ‘What?’ It was as though he had just woken up.

  ‘How’s your mum?’

  He shrugged dismissively. ‘Oh, she’s okay. Better than she was.’

  ‘That’s good.’ I waited, and when he said no more, added, ‘So what’s wrong?’

  He took his puffer from his pocket, clutching it in that distinctive way he had, half-covering his face, pressing down on the silver cartridge and sucking on the nozzle. But he had no time to tell me before I heard a door closing behind us and his dad’s voice calling from the step. ‘Fin, has Artair told you the good news yet?’

  I turned as Mr Macinnes approached. ‘What news?’

  ‘There are two vacancies on the trip to An Sgeir this year. I’ve persuaded Gigs MacAulay that you two should come with us.’

  If he had slapped my face with all the power he possessed, I doubt if I could have been more stunned. I didn’t know what to say.

  Mr Macinnes’s smile faded. ‘Well, you don’t look too pleased about it.’ He glanced at his son and sighed. ‘Just like Artair.’ And he shook his head in vigorous irritation. ‘I don’t understand you boys. Have you any idea what an honour it is to be allowed to go out to the rock? It’s a time of great comradeship and togetherness. You’ll go out there as boys and come back as men.’

  ‘I don’t want to go,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Fin!’ Artair’s dad was utterly dismissive. ‘The village elders have agreed, the team has accepted you. Of course you’re going. What kind of fool would I look if you cried off now? I went out on a limb to get you boys accepted. So, you’ll go. And that’s that.’ He turned and stormed off towards the house.

  Artair just looked at me, and there were no words needed to know that we shared the same feelings. Neither of us wanted to hang around, in case Mr Macinnes came out again, so we headed off up the road out of the village towards my aunt’s house, and the tiny harbour below it. It was a favourite spot, usually quiet, punts pulled up along one side of the steep slipway, the small jetty at the foot of it overlooking the clear green waters below the fold of cliffs that protected the harbour. We sat together on the edge of the jetty by the winching angle and watched the movement of the water distort the crabs in their creels, kept there underwater by the crabbers until the price picked up. I don’t know how long we sat in silence, just as we had after my tutoring sessions, listening to the rise and fall of the water sucking at the rocks that rose out of it, black and glistening, and the plaintive cries of the gulls on the clifftops. But, finally, I said, ‘I’m not going.’

  Artair turned to me, a look of pain in his eyes. ‘You can’t leave me to go on my own, Fin.’

  I shook my head. ‘I’m sorry, Artair, that’s up to you. But I’m not going, and no one can make me.’

  If I had expected an ally in Marsaili, then I was to be sorely disappointed.

  ‘Why don’t you want to go?’

  ‘I just don’t.’

  ‘Well, that’s not exactly a reason, is it?

  I hated the way Marsaili always applied logic to situations that were purely emotional. The fact that I didn’t want to go should have been reason enough. ‘I don’t need a reason.’

  We were in the barn, high up among the bales. There were blankets and a stash of beer, and we were expecting to make love again that night, haymites or not.

  ‘There are boys your age all over Ness who would kill for the chance to go out to the rock,’ she said. ‘The one thing everyone has for those guys is respect.’

  ‘Yeh, sure. Killing a lot of defenceless birds is a great way of earning respect.’

  ‘Are you scared?’

  I hotly denied it. ‘No, I’m not scared!’ Although that was not, perhaps, entirely true.

  ‘It’s what people will think.’

  ‘I don’t care what people think. I’m not going and that’s an end of it.’

  There was an odd mix of sympathy and frustration in her eyes — sympathy, I think, at the clear strength of my feeling, frustration at my refusal to say why. She shook her head gently. ‘Artair’s dad …’

  ‘… is not my father.’ I cut her off. ‘He can’t make me go. I’ll find Gigs and tell him myself.’ I stood up, and she quickly grabbed my hand.

  ‘Fin, don’t. Please, sit down. Let’s talk about it.’

  ‘There’s nothing to talk about.’ The trip was only a matter of days away. I had thought to get moral support from Marsaili, to bolster me in a decision which would have repercussions. I knew what people would say. I knew that the other kids would whisper behind their hands that I was a coward, that I was betraying a proud tradition. If you had been accepted for An Sgeir, you had to have a damned good reason for backing out. But I didn’t care. I was leaving the island, escaping the claustrophobia of village life, the petulance and pettiness, the harbouring of grudges. I didn’t need a reason. But obviously Marsaili thought I did. I headed towards the gap in the bales, then stopped suddenly, struck by a thought. I turned. ‘Do you think I’m scared?’

  She hesitated a little too long before replying. ‘I don’t know. I only know that you’re behaving very strangely.’

  Which tipped me over the edge. ‘Well, fuck you, then.’ And I jumped down to the lower bales and hurried out of the barn into the gathering twilight.

  Gigs’s croft was one of several on the lower slopes below Crobost, a narrow strip of land running down to the cliffs. He kept sheep and hens, and a couple of cows, and planted root vegetables and barley. He did a bit of fishing, too, though more for personal consumption than any kind of commerce, and would not have made ends meet had it not been for his wife’s part-time job as a waitress at a hotel in Stornoway.

  Darkness had fallen by the time I got back from Mealanais, and I sat up on the hill above the MacAulay crofthouse looking down on the single light shining out from the kitchen window. It fell in a long slab across the yard, and I saw a cat moving through it, stalking something in the dark. Someone with a sledgehammer was trapped inside my chest and trying to break out. I felt physically sick.

  There was still light in the sky away to the west, long, pale strips of it between lines of purple-grey cloud. No red in it whatsoever, which was not a good sign. I turned and watched the light as it faded and felt cold for the first time in weeks. The wind had turned. The warm, almost balmy south-westerly had swung around and carried on
its edge now a chill straight down from the Arctic. The pace of the wind was picking up, and I could hear it whistling through the dry grasses. Change was on the way. When I looked down towards the crofthouse again, I could see the shadow of a figure in the kitchen window. It was Gigs. He was washing dishes at the sink. There was no car in the drive, which meant his wife was not yet back from town. I closed my eyes and clenched my fists and made my decision.

  It took me only a few minutes to get down the hill to the croft, but as I reached the road a pair of car headlights swung up suddenly over the rise and raked across the moor in my direction. I ducked down by the fence, crouching amongst the reeds, and watched as the car turned into the drive and parked outside the crofthouse. Gigs’s wife got out. She was young, maybe twenty-five. A pretty girl, still in her white blouse and black skirt. She looked tired, a drag in her gait, as she pushed open the kitchen door. Through the window I saw Gigs taking her in his arms and giving her a long hug and then a kiss. My disappointment was acute. This was not something I could discuss with Gigs when his wife was around. I stood up from the long grass, leaped over the fence and pushed my hands deep into my pockets, heading off then towards the bothan on the Habost road.

  There were very few bothans still operating after the big crackdown by the police. I never really saw what the problem was. They might have been unlicensed, but they were never run for profit. They were just places where men gathered together for a drink. But even though they were illegal, I was still underage, and would not be allowed in. There was an odd morality that still operated. Which did not mean, however, that I could not get my hands on a drink. I found a small gathering of my contemporaries in the stone shed behind the bothan, sitting around on the skeletons of old agricultural machinery, tipping cans of beer into their faces. For cash and cigarettes, some of the older boys would slip out from time to time with drink for the kids in the shed, turning it into a kind of baby bothan. Somebody had acquired half a dozen six-packs, and the air was thick with the smell of dope, and manure from the neighbouring byre. A tilley lamp hung from the rafters, so low that you would bang your head on it if you did not take care.