The Blackhouse

At the foot of the stairs, a voice called faintly from the far end of the hall. ‘Artair … Artair is that you?’ The feeble, tremulous voice of an old woman.

Artair closed his eyes, taking a deep breath, and Fin saw the muscles in his jaw working. Then he opened his eyes. ‘Just coming, mamaidh.’ And, under his breath, ‘Shit! She always knows when I’m fucking home.’ He pushed brusquely past Fin and headed towards the room at the end of the hall. Fin went into the living room to retrieve his glass, and then into the kitchen. Marsaili was sitting at a gateleg table she had opened up from the wall. There were three plates of quiche and potato, and three chairs pulled up around them.

‘Has he gone to see her?’

Fin nodded and saw that there was just a trace of red on her lips now, and colour around her eyes. She had released her hair from its clasp and taken a brush through it. It had changed her. Not enough for comment, but enough to be noticed. She indicated the chair opposite and he sat down. ‘So how have you been?’

There was a weariness in her smile. ‘As you see.’ She began eating. ‘Don’t bother waiting for Artair. He could be long enough.’ She watched him take a mouthful of quiche. ‘And you?’

Fin shrugged. ‘Things could have been worse.’

She shook her head sadly. ‘And we were going to change the world.’

‘The world’s like the weather, Marsaili. You can’t change it. And you can’t shape it. But it’ll shape you.’

‘Ah, yes, always the philosopher.’ And unexpectedly she reached across the table and ran the tips of her fingers lightly down his cheek. ‘You’re still very beautiful.’

In spite of himself, Fin blushed. He half-laughed to cover his embarrassment. ‘Isn’t that what I’m supposed to say to you?’

‘But you never could lie convincingly. And, anyway, you were always the beautiful one. I remember seeing you that first day at school and thinking I’d never seen anyone so beautiful. Why do you think I wanted to sit beside you in class? You’ve no idea how jealous the other girls were.’

And he hadn’t. He had only ever had eyes for Marsaili.

‘If only I’d known then what a shit you were, I could have saved us all a lot of heartache.’ She popped another piece of quiche in her mouth and grinned, the same upward curl of her mouth at the corners that he remembered so well. The deep dimples in either cheek. The same mischief in her eyes.

‘I was right,’ Fin said. ‘You haven’t changed.’

‘Oh, but I have. In more ways than you could ever know. Than you would ever want to know.’ She seemed lost in contemplation of her quiche. ‘I’ve thought about you often over the years. How you were. How we were, as kids.’

‘Me, too.’ Fin inclined his head, a tiny smile on his lips. ‘I’ve still got that note you sent me.’ She frowned, not remembering what note. ‘Before the final year primary dance. You signed it, The Girl from the Farm.’

‘Oh, my God.’ Her hand shot to her mouth as the memory came back from someplace she had buried it long ago to save herself the embarrassment of remembering. ‘You’ve still got that?’

‘It’s a bit grubby, and torn around the folds. But, yes, I’ve still got it.’

‘What have you still got?’ Artair came into the kitchen and dropped himself heavily into his chair. The mood between Fin and Marsaili was broken immediately. Artair shoved a mouthful of food in his face and looked at Fin. ‘Well?’

Fin summoned the strength for another lie. ‘An old school photograph from primary seven.’ He glanced up to find Marsaili avoiding his eye.

‘I remember that one,’ Artair said. ‘It’s the only one I wasn’t in. I was sick that year.’

‘Yeh, that’s right. You had a really bad asthma attack the night before.’

Artair shovelled more food into his mouth. ‘Nearly died that time. Close-run fucking thing.’ He glanced up from one to the other and grinned. ‘Might have been better for all of us if I had, eh?’ He washed his food down with whisky. Fin noticed that he had topped it up again. ‘What? Nobody going to say, naw, Artair, it’d have been a terrible thing if you’d died back then. Life just wouldn’t have been the same.’

‘Well, that’s true,’ Marsaili said, and he shot her a look.

They ate, then, in silence until Artair had cleared his plate and pushed it away. His eyes fell on Fin’s empty glass. ‘You need topped up, son.’

‘Actually, I’d better be going.’ Fin stood up, wiping his mouth on the paper napkin Marsaili had laid out.

‘Going where?’

‘Back to Stornoway.’

‘How?’

‘I’ll call a taxi.’

‘Don’t be fucking stupid, man. It’ll cost you a bloody fortune You’ll stay over with us tonight, and I’ll give you a lift to town in the morning.’

Marsaili stood up and lifted the empty plates away from the table. ‘I’ll get the bed in the spare room ready.’

By the time Marsaili came back in from the spare room, Artair had installed Fin and himself in the sitting room, glasses refilled, a football match playing on the television, the sound still down. Artair was well gone now, his eyes glazed and half-shut, slurring his words, relating some story from childhood about a bike accident of which Fin had no recollection. Fin had said he’d needed water in his whisky, and when he’d gone into the kitchen to get it, poured half of the whisky down the sink. Now he was sitting nursing his glass uneasily, wishing he had not given in so easily to Artair’s insistence that he stay over. He looked up eagerly, hoping for rescue, when Marsaili came in. But she looked tired. She glanced at Artair, a strange, passive expression on her face. Resignation, perhaps. And then she went into the kitchen to turn off the lights. ‘I’m going to bed. I’ll clear up in the morning.’

Fin stood up, disappointed, as she left the room. ‘Goodnight.’

She paused for just a moment in the doorway and their eyes met fleetingly. ‘Goodnight, Fin.’

As the door closed, Artair said, ‘And good fucking riddance.’ He tried to focus on Fin. ‘You know, I’d never have fucking married her if it hadn’t been for you.’

Fin was stung by the vitriol in his voice. ‘Don’t be daft! You were chasing Marsaili from that first week at school.’

‘I’d never even have fucking noticed her if she hadn’t got her claws into you. I was never after her. I was only ever trying to keep her away from you. You were my pal, Fin Macleod. We were friends, you and me, from just about the time we could walk. And from that first fucking day, there she was trying to take you away from me. Driving a wedge between us.’ He laughed. A laugh without humour, corrosive and bitter. ‘And fuck me if she isn’t still doing it. Think I didn’t notice the lipstick, eh? Or the mascara? You think that was for your benefit? Naw. It was her way of raising two fingers at me. ’Cos she knew I’d see it, and know why she’d done it. She’s not wanted to make herself attractive to me for a very long time.’

Fin was shocked. He had no idea what to say. So he just sat clutching his watered-down whisky, feeling the glass warm in his hands, watching the peat embers dying in the hearth. The air in the room seemed suddenly to have chilled, and he reached a decision. He knocked back the remains of his whisky and stood up. ‘I think maybe I’d better go to bed.’

But Artair wasn’t looking at him. He was gazing off into some distant place in a whisky-fogged mind. ‘And d’you know what the real fucking irony is?’

Fin didn’t know, and didn’t want to. ‘I’ll see you in the morning.’

Artair tilted his head up to squint at him. ‘He’s not even mine.’

Fin felt his stomach lurch. He stood frozen in suspended animation. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Fionnlagh,’ Artair slurred. ‘He’s your fucking kid, not mine.’

The anaglypta wallpaper had been painted sometime recently. One of those whites with a hint of peach, or pink maybe. There were new curtains and a new carpet. And the ceiling had been painted, a plain matt white. But the water stain in the corner had come through it, insidious, invasive, and still in the shape of a gannet in flight. The crack was still there, too, in the plaster, running through the gannet and across the cornice. The cracked window pane had been replaced by double glazing, and a double bed was pushed against the wall where Mr Macinnes had had his desk. The shelves of the bookcase opposite still groaned with the same books Fin remembered from those long evenings of maths and English and geography. Books with exotic, distracting titles: Eyeless in