The Chessmen (8 page)

It was less than an hour later that Fin turned off the road and drove up the pebble track to park at the door of Whistler’s blackhouse, even though all his instincts told him that Whistler would not be here. Tall grasses growing all around it bowed in the wind. He stepped down from the Suzuki and looked out over the sands. From this elevated position he could see across the bay beyond the vast expanse of beach to the islands of Tolm and Triassamol, which were almost lost in the oblique evening light.

The door to the house stood ajar, a door of unpainted weathered wood, grey and grainy. The latch and lock were rust-red, brown-staining the wood in streaks below them. Fin was certain that even if a key existed for the lock it would not turn in it. No one locked their doors on the island, and anyway, who would steal from a man with nothing?

Fin placed the flat of his hand on the door and pushed it into the gloom. It creaked loudly in the silence within, and as he stepped inside, the thickness of the walls immediately diminished the howling of the wind on the hill outside.

‘Who the fuck are you?’ The voice came from beyond the veiled sunlight that slanted in from the west through one of the tiny windows at the back of the house. It was shrill and demanding, but with a hint of alarm in it. Fin stepped to one side so that he had a view deeper into the house, and saw Anna Bheag, perched on the edge of an armchair by the ashes of a dead fire. Her hands were pressed flat on each arm, and she was tensed, ready to move in an instant, like a cat. But an ill-fed cat, skinny and mean, with eyes blazing resentment. The pink side of her head caught the light from the window and glowed in the gloom like neon.

‘Fin Macleod. I’m a friend of your father’s.’

‘My father doesn’t have friends.’ She spat the words back at him.

‘He used to.’

She was still on her guard and tipped her head to one side, squinting at him through the dust that hung in motes in the still light from the windows. ‘You’re that creepy guy that was watching us from the window at Suaineabhal day before yesterday.’

Fin smiled. ‘I’m that guy, yes. But it’s the first time anyone’s called me creepy.’

‘What were you looking at, then?’

‘You.’

She seemed surprised by his directness. ‘Why?’

‘I wanted to see what the daughter of my old friend looked like.’

‘I told you, the fucker doesn’t have any friends.’

Fin took a couple of cautious steps further into the house and saw her tense. ‘I was at school with him.’

‘I never heard him talk about you.’

‘I’ve been away from the island for a long time.’

‘Why would you come back to a shit-hole like this?’

Fin shrugged and wondered why himself. ‘Because it’s home. And because I have a son here I didn’t know I had for nearly eighteen years.’

For the first time he saw curiosity in her eyes. ‘Here in Uig?’

‘No, in Ness. He’s just left for university.’

‘He must have been at the Nicolson, then. Maybe I know him.’

‘Maybe you do. Fionnlagh Macinnes.’

And now she relaxed a little. ‘You’re Fionnlagh’s dad?’

Fin nodded.

‘All the girls had a crush on Fionnlagh.’

And Fin remembered Marsaili saying the same thing about him. ‘You, too?’

The appearance of something like a smile brought a little light to her face and she offered a noncommittal, ‘Maybe.’ Then it clouded again. ‘You said your name was Macleod.’

‘It’s a long story, Anna. He and I thought he was someone else’s boy for most of his life.’

‘So where were you all these years?’

‘On the mainland. Glasgow, then Edinburgh.’

‘Married?’

He nodded.

‘So what did your wife think when she found out you’d had a kid by someone else?’

‘She didn’t come with me.’

‘Why not?’

He had dealt patiently with her relentless questions, but now she was delving into a dark corner of his life where his soul was still exposed and raw. He hesitated.

‘You left her?’

Fin pulled up a chair at the table. The sound of its legs scraping across the wooden boards felt inordinately loud. He sat down. ‘Not that simple.’

‘Well either you left her or she left you.’

Fin gazed at his hands in front of him. Is that how it had been? He didn’t think so. A loveless marriage of sixteen years had simply dissolved when the only thing which had held it together was taken away. He shook his head slowly. ‘We had a son. Robbie. He was barely eight years old.’ He couldn’t bring himself to raise his eyes to meet hers, but detected the change in her voice immediately. There was a kind of hush in it. Intelligent anticipation.

‘What happened?’

For a moment he couldn’t trust himself to speak. Why was it so difficult for him to tell this girl that he didn’t even know? ‘He was killed in a hit-and-run accident in Edinburgh.’ And if he closed his eyes he could see the police photographs of the street, kept still in a folder he couldn’t bring himself to throw away.

There was a long silence, then, in the old blackhouse, before finally he raised his head and met her eye. There was
a mix of emotions in her face. Sympathy, confusion, fear. But not of him. She took evasive action. ‘So you were at school with my dad?’

‘Yes.’

‘Was he as big an arsehole back then as he is now?’

And Fin couldn’t stop his lips from parting in a smile, or the laugh that came in a breath. ‘Yes, he was.’

And she laughed, too, and was transformed in a moment from an ugly teenage Goth into a pretty young girl with lights in her eyes. The change was almost shocking. But while the image might have changed, the mouth was just as foul. ‘So how the fuck did you become his friend?’

‘You’ve heard of the
Iolaire
?’

She shook her head, and Fin wondered at how quickly history got lost. But he shouldn’t have been surprised. He had known nothing about it himself until that day out at Holm Point.

I first met Whistler Macaskill when I left Crobost school in Ness to go into third year at the Nicolson Institute in Stornoway. We had a certain swagger, us Ness boys. Thought we were a bit special. Until we arrived at the Nicolson and found that everyone else had a swagger, too. The Uig crowd, the boys from Lochs, the wild westers from Carloway. But the big city soon knocked it out of us.

I can laugh now, but that’s what Stornoway felt like then. It was the only town on the island, with all its shops and cafes and restaurants, and its inner and outer harbour. It was home to the Hebridean fishing fleet and a population of eleven thousand. Sadly, there was no cinema in those days, since the Church had forced the Playhouse to close down following a showing of
Jesus Christ, Superstar
. At least, that was what they said, but it was before my time, so I don’t know if it’s true. The old cinema became the Royal British Legion Club, and still is.

The Church dominated life then, and in many ways still does. In all its various incarnations. But it was the presbyterian Church of Scotland and the breakaway Free Church that prevailed. They wouldn’t allow flights or ferries on the
Sabbath when I was a boy, and there was not a single shop, cafe, newsagent or chippie open. You read your Sunday newspapers on Monday, and if you forgot to buy your cigarettes on a Saturday you would have an even more miserable Sunday than usual.

But that particular year, there
was
something special about the kids from Uig. They arrived with their own band. Six kids who’d been playing music together since primary school. Sòlas, they called themselves, the Gaelic equivalent of
solace
or
comfort
, and they had already developed their own unique mix of traditional Celtic music and rock. An eclectic fusion that in a few years would make them the most commercially successful Celtic rock band of their generation.

I wasn’t really aware of them at first. I was too busy adapting to life away from home in the student lodgings at the Gibson Hostel in Ripley Place. We came down from Ness in a bus on the Monday morning, and back again on the Friday night. Not that I missed my life at Crobost. My folks had been dead for years by then, and existence with my aunt was spartan. My friend Artair had gone to the Lews Castle College because his grades hadn’t been good enough to get him into the Nicolson. They wouldn’t do that to kids these days in case it gave them low self-esteem. But it wasn’t a consideration back then. Relations with my primary school sweetheart, Marsaili Macdonald, were in temporary abeyance. So in those first few months I was busy trying to forget her and make myself new friends.

The first time I came across Sòlas was when it was
announced there was to be a ceilidh at the school. I’d heard that a group of kids from Uig was going to be playing at it and someone said they were rehearsing in one of the annexes, so I went along to see if it would be worth going to the ceilidh or not. It was a decision that changed the course of my life.

There were six in the band.

Roddy Mackenzie was the keyboard player and leader. What he said went. He had a synthesizer. A Yamaha DX-9. And I’d never heard anything like it. Strings, brass, grand piano, human voices. It could make any sound at all, apparently, and convince you it was the real thing. He was a good-looking boy, Roddy. A little under six foot, with a shock of blonde curls that tumbled around his head and a smile that, annoyingly, could charm you even when you didn’t want to be charmed.

The drummer, Murdo ‘Skins’ Mackinnon, had a high-hat and a snare drum when he arrived at the Nicolson. He used a packing case for a bass drum and biscuit tins for tomtoms. By the time he left he had a full Ludwig kit.

The guitarist, Uilleam Campbell, was a short, intense boy that everyone called Strings. Most people on the island had a nickname, because so many of the Christian names and surnames were the same. If you had sent a postcard from Australia to
Strings, Isle of Lewis, Scotland
, it would have reached him, no problem.

Iain MacCuish was the bass player. They called him Rambo, because anyone less like Sylvester Stallone would be hard to imagine.

And then there was Whistler. So-called because he played the Celtic flute as if he’d been born with it at his lips. Pure, haunting liquid music it was that poured from that flute of his. Sounds that swooped and soared with a flick of his finger, or a curl of his mouth. Strange somehow, coming from such a big brute of a boy whose temper and black moods would become so familiar to me. A boy so clever that while I spent untold hours studying for end-of-term exams, Whistler was off trapping rabbits, or pulling trout from the Red River, and still got the best grades in the school. I didn’t know what autistic was in those days. But if you were to ask me now, I’d say that’s what Whistler Macaskill was. Or something close to it.

And then there was Mairead Morrison, who played the fiddle and sang. She had the voice of an angel, a body that would arouse any teenage boy’s passion, and a smile that would break your heart. Long dark hair falling around square shoulders, and startling Celtic blue eyes. I fell in love with her the first moment I saw her. Me and every other boy in the school.

I was standing in the annexe as the band started to pack up at the end of their rehearsal, drooling like an idiot as Mairead put away her violin, and didn’t realize at first that the voice shouting ‘Hey!’ was being directed at me. It was a big, ginger-haired boy with a livid two-inch scar on his left cheek. He stood at the far side of the classroom. I looked at him. ‘What’s your name?’ he said.

‘Fin. Fin Macleod.’

‘Where are you from, Fin?’

‘Crobost.’

‘Aw hell, another Niseach!’ It was the Gaelic name for someone from the district of Ness, which was in the far north-west corner of the island where I lived. It drew a laugh from the members of the band. I saw Mairead looking at me and blushed. ‘Well, I suppose you’ll have to do,’ carrot-top said. ‘I’m Kenny John, but everyone calls me Kenny Mòr.’ Which was Big Kenny. ‘I’ll need a hand to shift all this stuff over to the hall.’

‘What do you need a hand for? You’ve always managed before.’ Whistler was addressing himself to Kenny, but glaring at me.

‘There’s the new PA, Whistler, and Roddy’s stack. I can’t handle that on my own.’

‘Crap! We’ve got enough hangers-on as it is!’ Whistler stomped out of the classroom.

Kenny grinned. ‘Ignore him. He’s just pissed off because he saw you ogling Mairead.’

I blushed again, this time to the roots of my hair, and saw Mairead grinning in my direction. I had no idea then how Whistler’s obsession with Mairead would shape his future. Kenny chucked me a cardboard box. ‘Cables go in there. All neatly wound and tied off.’

I crossed the classroom and lowered my voice. ‘Are Whistler and Mairead . . . you know . . . ?’

Kenny laughed. ‘He wishes.’ And under his breath, ‘Like the rest of us.’ He glanced towards the keyboard player. ‘She’s Roddy’s property.’ Then he looked at me again. ‘Are you going to give me a hand or not?’

I nodded.

Which is how I came to be a gear humpher for Sòlas for the rest of my time at the Nicolson.

It is also how I came to be a member of the motorcycle group. I would say ‘gang’, but that has connotations which wouldn’t be right. We were just a group of kids who wanted motor-driven wheels beneath us as soon as we turned sixteen. Roddy was the first, which was not surprising, since his parents were better off than anyone else’s. He got a bright red shiny moped, and used to ride around town with Mairead sitting on the luggage rack at the back, her arms around him, and we all imagined what it must feel like to have her pressing herself up against you like that. I’m not sure how legal it was – having a passenger on the back, I mean – but the cops never stopped them.

I suppose that’s what started the ambition in most of us. And one by one, those of us who could afford it got ourselves little 50cc mopeds, which in reality were not much more than motorized bicycles. The only money I had was whatever I earned humphing gear for Sòlas. By fifth year they were playing at dances and ceilidhs and pubs all over Lewis, and even down in Harris, and I was sharing a little in their success. But by the time I was able to afford a clapped-out old moped for myself, Roddy had already turned seventeen and graduated to a 125cc Vespa T5 Mk1. Classic blue. Secondhand, of course. It was only a scooter, and would have been scorned by real motorbike enthusiasts, but we thought it was solid gold.