‘Here and there,’ Fin said uncomfortably.
‘There, maybe.’ Artair’s voice carried a tone. ‘Certainly not here.’ He looked at the remnants of Fin’s pint. ‘Let me fill that up for you.’
‘No, I’m fine, honest.’
Artair caught the barmaid’s eye. ‘Gimme another dram, Mairead.’ He turned back to Fin. ‘So what have you been up to?’
Fin could never have imagined how awkward this would be. He shrugged. What do you say? How do you fill in eighteen years in a sentence? ‘This and that,’ he said.
Artair smiled, but it was forced friendly, and he still couldn’t keep the tone out of his voice. ‘That must have kept you fully occupied.’ He snatched his whisky from the bar. ‘I hear you joined the polis.’ Fin nodded. ‘Hell, you could have done that here, man. We could still have been rock’n’rollin’ all these years, you and me. What happened to the big degree?’
‘I flunked out of university in second year.’
‘Shit. All that time my old man put in, getting you through your exams, and you blew it?’
Fin nodded. ‘Big time.’
‘Well, at least you’ve got the good grace to admit it.’ Artair coughed and found himself short of breath. He took an inhaler from his pocket and sucked on it twice. Phlegm rattled in his throat as he drew oxygen deeply through widening airways. ‘That’s better. Nothing changes, eh?’
Fin grinned. ‘Not much.’
Artair took Fin’s elbow and steered him towards a table in the far corner. He stumbled slightly, and Fin realized that there had been a few whiskies before this one. ‘We need to talk, you and me.’
‘Do we?’
Artair seemed surprised. ‘Of course we do. Eighteen fucking years to catch up on.’ They sat down opposite each other and Artair looked carefully into his face. ‘Jesus, it’s not fair. You don’t look any bloody older. Look at me. Big, fat, fucking porpoise. Must suit you, being a polisman.’
‘Not a lot. I’m trying to get out. Doing a degree in the Open University.’
Artair shook his head. ‘What a fucking waste. Me? Well, that was to be expected. But you, Fin. You were a cut above. Made for better things than the polis.’
‘So what have
Air exploded from Artair’s lips, an expression of self-contempt. ‘Finished my apprenticeship at Lewis Offshore just in time for them to shut the fucking place down. I suppose I was lucky to get back in when it reopened in ninety-one. Then it closed again in May, ninety-nine. Went into liquidation. Turfed us all on to the street again. Now it’s reopened making wind turbines. Can you imagine? They’re trying to persuade the government to plant big fucking windmills all over the island. It’ll make us self-sufficient in energy, they say. But it’d kill the tourist industry. I mean, who’s going to want to come to the fucking place to look at a lot of bloody windmills? Whole fucking forests of them.’ His grin was sour as he upended his glass and poured its liquid gold down his throat. ‘But Marsaili says I’m lucky they took me on. Again.’ The mention of her name gave Fin a tiny jolt. Artair’s smile was mirthless. ‘And you know what? I feel lucky, Fin. I really do. You have no idea how fucking lucky I feel. You want another drink?’
Fin shook his head, and Artair pushed back his chair wordlessly and headed off to the bar to get his glass refilled. Fin sat staring fixedly at the table. It was sad beyond words seeing his old childhood friend bitter like this. Life went past you in a flash, like a bus on a rainy night in Ness. You had to be sure it saw you and stopped to let you on, otherwise it was gone without you, and you would be left with a miserable walk home in the wind and the wet. He supposed that, in his own way, he was just like Artair, dogged by a sense of what might have been, of somehow having missed that bus, embittered by his failures and daunted by the weary trudge into an uncertain future. All those childhood dreams lost for ever, like tears in rain. They were not so different, really, he and Artair. In a way, looking at him now was like seeing a reflection of himself, and he did not much like what he saw.
Artair dropped back into his seat and Fin saw that he had got himself a double. They served quarter gills here. ‘You know, I was thinking, when I was up there at the bar. Just the mention of her. I saw that look in your face. That’s why you never came back all these years, isn’t it? Because of bloody Marsaili.’
Fin shook his head. ‘No.’ But he wasn’t certain that was the truth.
Artair leaned across the table, staring discomfitingly into Fin’s eyes. ‘Not a phone call, not a letter, nothing. You know, at first I was just hurt. And then I was angry. But you can’t keep stuff like that going. A flame always burns itself out in the end. That’s when I started feeling guilty. That maybe you thought I’d taken her away from you.’ He shrugged his shoulders helplessly, not knowing how else to express it. ‘You know?’
‘It wasn’t like that, Artair. It was over between me and Marsaili.’
Artair held the eye contact, like a hand held too long in a handshake, and Fin became self-conscious. ‘You know, I never believed that. Not really. I might have got her in the end, but you and Marsaili … well, that’s how it was supposed to be, wasn’t it? That’s what it should have been.’ Finally the eye contact was broken and Artair took a mouthful of whisky. ‘You married?’
His hesitation was imperceptible. ‘Yeh.’
‘Kids?’
A month ago the answer would have been, yes. But he could no longer lay claim to being a father, and it was not a story he was about to tell. Not here, not now. He shook his head.
‘We just got the one. Finished school this year. Takes after his old man. Not too bright. I’m trying to get him a job at Arnish.’ Artair tipped his head gently, smiling fondly now. ‘Good kid, though. He’s coming out to the rock with us this week to kill himself a few gugas. His first time.’ He chuckled. ‘Come to think of it, he’s just the same age as you and me when we went out there the first time.’ He emptied his glass and banged it on the table. Fin could see the effects of it dulling his eyes. He looked up at Fin, suddenly serious. ‘Is that why you never came back? Is it?’
In a way Fin had dreaded the moment. But it was a confrontation with the past he had known he could not avoid from the moment he set foot on the island. ‘What?’ he said, disingenuously.
‘What happened that year on An Sgeir.’
Fin couldn’t meet Artair’s eye. He shook his head. ‘I don’t know,’ he said, and meant it. ‘I really don’t know.’
‘Well, if it was, it was no fucking reason at all.’
‘If I hadn’t been so bloody careless …’ Fin realized he was wringing his hands on the table in front of him, and he laid them palms down to stop himself.
‘What happened, happened. It was an accident. Not anybody’s fault. Nobody ever blamed you, Fin.’
Fin looked up quickly to catch Artair’s eye, and wondered if he meant, nobody except Artair. But he saw no sign of hostility there, no indication that his old friend meant anything other than what he had said.
‘Are you ready for that refill now?’
There was an inch of beer left in Fin’s glass, but he shook his head. ‘I’ve had enough.’
‘Fin,’ Artair leaned confidentially across the table, ‘there’s never enough.’ And his face divided itself into a big infectious smile. ‘I’m for one for the road.’ And he headed off again to the bar.
Fin sat nursing his glass, memories crowding his thoughts. An Sgeir, Marsaili. The sound of voices calling across the bar made him look up. Artair’s workmates were leaving, shouting their goodbyes, waving from the door. Artair raised a cursory hand of acknowledgement and made his way unsteadily back to the table. The seat creaked as he dropped himself into it. He banged another double down on the table. There was a smile fluttering around his lips like a butterfly trying to find a place to settle. ‘I was thinking … You remember that history teacher we had in second year?’
‘Shed? William Shed?’
‘That’s him. Remember he had that gap between his front teeth, and every
Fin remembered very clearly, although he hadn’t thought about William Shed in more than twenty years. And the memory made him laugh. ‘He used to make us read paragraphs from our history book out loud around the class …’
