The Blackhouse (21 page)

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, crêpe-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 fifteen 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.’

‘What feelings?’

She leaned over, and with the same hand she had used to slap me, turned my face towards her and kissed me. A long, soft, open-mouthed kiss that sent tremors running through me, and blood rushing to my loins.

When finally she had finished with me, she said, ‘Those feelings.’ She sat for a minute looking at me, then stood up and reached for my hand. ‘Come on.’

We walked hand-in-hand among the fires, faces passing in a blur, music mixing one song into another, voices murmuring softly in the night, the occasional peal of laughter. I had a sense of heightened awareness of everything around me; the sound of the sea, the density of the night, the closeness of the stars, like the tips of white-hot needles that you could reach up and touch and prick your fingers. I was aware, too, of the warm touch of Marsaili’s hand in mine, the softness of her skin as we stopped repeatedly to kiss, her breasts pushing gently into my chest, my penis swelling now and straining at my jeans, pressing into her abdomen. I felt her hand slipping down to close itself around my hardness.

The main room in the shieling was empty when we got there, its earthen floor strewn with empty beer cans and stacked with boxes of booze and binbags filled with the detritus of the barbecue. Marsaili seemed to know where she was going, and led me to a door at the back of the room. As we reached it, the door opened and a couple, not much older than we were, came out giggling, brushing past us, oblivious to our presence. The back room was much smaller, lit by candles placed around the wall. The air was heavy with the scent of dope and burning wax and the smell of human bodies. A tarpaulin had been thrown across the floor and was covered with travelling rugs and cushions, and sleeping bags which had been unzipped and opened out like quilts.

Marsaili squatted down on one of the rugs, still holding my hand, and pulling on it so that I would sit beside her. Almost before my backside hit the floor, she had pushed me over, rolling on top of me, kissing me with a ferocity I had never experienced. Then she sat astride me, straightening up to pull off her top, and those fine, pink-nippled breasts I had seen on the beach swung free. I cupped their gentle firmness in my hands, and felt the nipples harden against my skin. She reached down and unzipped my jeans, releasing me from their constraint, and a tiny spike of fear shot through my dope-induced torpor.

‘Marsaili, you were right,’ I whispered.

She looked at me. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I’ve never done this before.’ It was not a confession I would ever have made in the cold light of day.

She laughed. ‘Don’t worry. I have.’

Unaccountably, I was filled with indignation and sat upright. ‘Who with?’

‘It’s none of your business.’

‘Was it Artair?’ Somehow it seemed very important to me that it shouldn’t have been Artair.

She sighed. ‘No, it wasn’t Artair. If you must know, it was Donald.’

Somehow I was both startled and relieved. Also confused. I suppose the beer and the dope, and everything else that was happening to me that night, had combined to rob me of my reason. Even my jealousy. And I submitted to Marsaili’s greater experience. I don’t really remember very much about that first time. Only that it seemed to be over very quickly. But, as it turned out, there were many more opportunities for us that summer to practise and perfect our technique.

As we struggled back into our clothes afterwards, the door suddenly burst open, and Donald was standing there grinning, a girl on each arm. ‘For Christ’s sake, have you two not finished yet? There’s a bloody queue out here.’

TEN

The clacking of the keyboard filled the silence in the darkened bedroom. The screen reflected its light on Fin’s pale face, concentration gathered in the frown around his eyes and across the bridge of his nose. These exams were so important. Everything depended on them. The rest of his life. Focus, focus. Concentrate. A movement in his peripheral vision made him turn, and he felt goosebumps raising themselves across his arms and shoulders. He was there again. That impossibly tall man in the hooded anorak, greasy hair dragged down over his ears. Just standing in the doorway, like before, head bowed against the ceiling, big hands hanging loosely at his sides. This time his lips were moving, as if he were trying to say something. Fin strained to hear, but there were no words coming from his mouth, just the rank, bitter smell of stale tobacco on a breath whose foulness seemed to fill the room.