The Blackhouse

‘Well, I wouldn’t really call it going out. We had a kind of thing between us. Had done ever since we started school. I used to walk her home to the farm. Are her folks still there?’

‘Oh, sure. But we don’t see very much of them these days.’ Fin was surprised and waited for Fionnlagh to elucidate, but he didn’t. Instead, he said, ‘So why did you break up when you were eight?’

‘Oh, it was all my fault. Your mum turned up at school one day wearing glasses. Awful things. Blue, with wings, and lenses so thick they made her eyes look like golf balls.’

Fionnlagh laughed at the image Fin had conjured up. ‘Jees, that must have made her attractive.’

‘Well, exactly. And, of course, everyone in the class made fun of her. Four eyes, and goggle eyes, all that kind of stuff. You know how merciless kids can be.’ His smile faded into sadness. ‘And I wasn’t any better. I was embarrassed to be seen with her. Avoided her in the playground, stopped walking her home from school. I think she was devastated, the wee soul. Because she was a pretty little girl, your mum. Very self-confident. And a lot of the boys in the class were dead jealous of me. But all that went when she got the glasses.’ And even as he remembered it, he felt a stab of guilt and melancholy. Poor Marsaili had gone through hell. And he had been so cruel. ‘Kids. They have no idea how hurtful they can be.’

‘And that was it? You just stopped being an item?’

‘More or less. Your mum pursued me for a while. But if I saw her coming towards me in the playground, I made sure I was suddenly involved in a conversation with someone or joining in a game of football. I was always out of the school gate ahead of her so I wouldn’t have to walk her up the road. Sometimes I would turn around in class and find her just looking at me with big doe eyes, glasses discarded on the desk in front or her. But I always pretended I didn’t notice, And Jesus …’ Suddenly something came back to him that he hadn’t thought about in nearly thirty years. ‘There was that time in church.’ The memory returned in unexpectedly vivid detail.

Fionnlagh was intrigued. ‘What? What happened in church?’

‘Oh, God …’ Fin shook his head, smiling remorsefully. ‘Except, I’m sure God didn’t have much to do with it.’ The incoming tide forced them to step smartly up the beach to avoid getting their feet wet. ‘In those days my parents were still alive, and I had to go to church every Sunday. Twice. I always used to take a tube of sweets with me. Polo Fruits or something. It was a kind of game to relieve the boredom. To see if I could get them out of the packet and into my mouth without being caught, and then suck them away to nothing without being seen. I suppose it was a kind of small, secret victory against the power of religious oppression if I could work my way through a whole packet without them ever knowing. Although I doubt if I thought about it quite like that at the time.’

Fionnlagh grinned. ‘Couldn’t have been too good for the teeth.’

‘It wasn’t.’ Fin ran his tongue ruefully around his fillings. ‘I’m sure the minister knew what I was up to, he just never caught me. There were times he would fix me with a steely eye, and I would just about choke on the saliva gathering in my mouth as I tried not to swallow until he looked away. Anyway, there was this one Sunday when I was trying to slip a sweet in my mouth during a prayer. You know, one of those long, maundering prayers that the elders deliver from the front of the church. And I dropped the tube of sweets on the floor. Bare floorboards, loud clatter, and the bloody thing rolled right out into the middle of the aisle. Of course, everyone in the church heard it, including all those up in the gallery, which used to be full in those days. And everyone opened their eyes. And there was hardly a soul in the church who didn’t see that tube of Polo Fruits lying there. Including the elders, and the minister. The prayer stopped mid-sentence, and hung there like a big question mark. You know, I’ve never known a silence to last as long in my life. And I knew that there was no way I could get those sweets back without admitting to them being mine. That’s when a little figure darted out from the pews on the other side of the aisle and snatched them up.’

‘My mum?’

‘Your mum. Wee Marsaili took those sweets in full view of the entire congregation so that she would get the blame instead of me. She must have known the trouble she would be in. I caught her eye about ten minutes later. Big, golf-ball eyes peering at me through those awful lenses, looking for some hint of gratitude, some recognition from me for what she had done. But I was just so relieved to have escaped a leathering, I looked away as quickly as I could. I didn’t even want to be associated with her.’

‘What a bastard.’

Fin turned to find Fionnlagh looking at him, half serious, whole in earnest. ‘Yes, I suppose I was. I’m ashamed to admit it, but I can’t deny it. And I can’t go back and change it, or do anything different. It’s just how it was. Poor Marsaili. She must really have been in love with me, that wee girl.’ Unaccountably, and to his acute embarrassment, the world became suddenly blurred. He turned away quickly to look out over the bay, furiously blinking away the beginnings of tears.

‘It’s a sad story.’

Fin took a moment or two to recover himself. ‘I spent the next four years more or less ignoring her.’ He was lost now in a childhood world he had all but buried. ‘To the point where I’d almost forgotten that there had ever been anything between us. Then there was a dance at the end of our last year of primary, and I asked a girl from the lighthouse called Irene Davis to go. I was at an age when I wasn’t that interested in girls, but I had to ask someone, so I asked Irene. It never even occurred to me to ask your mum, until I got a letter from her. It arrived in the post a couple of days before the dance.’ He could still see the big, sad scrawl, dark blue pen on pale blue paper. ‘She couldn’t understand why I had asked Irene instead of her. She suggested it wasn’t too late to change my mind and ask her instead. Her solution to the problem of Irene was that your dad could take her. She signed it, The Girl from the Farm. But, of course, it was too late. I couldn’t unask Irene, even if I’d wanted to. In the final event it was your dad who took your mum.’

They had reached the end of the beach, standing almost in the shadow of the boatshed where Angel had been murdered.

‘Which only goes to show how much you know when you’re eleven years old. Just five years later your mum and I were madly in love and going to spend the rest of our lives together.’

‘So what happened that time?’

Fin smiled and shook his head. ‘Enough. You’ve got to leave us a few secrets.’

‘Aw, come on. You can’t let it go at that.’

‘Yes, I can.’ Fin turned around and started heading back along the sand towards the rocks. Fionnlagh hurried to catch him up, falling in step beside him, following the footsteps they had left on the way out. Fin said, ‘So what are your plans, Fionnlagh? Are you finished with school?’

Fionnlagh nodded glumly, kicking a shell along the compacted sand. ‘My dad’s trying to get me a job at the yard.’

‘You don’t sound very enthusiastic.’

‘I’m not.’

‘So what do you want to do?’

‘I want to get off this bloody island.’

‘Then why don’t you?’

‘Where would I go? What would I do? I don’t know anyone on the mainland.’

‘You know me.’

Fionnlagh glanced at him. ‘Aye, for five minutes.’

‘Listen, Fionnlagh. You might not think so now, but this is a magical place.’ And when Fionnlagh gave Fin a look, he said, ‘The thing is, you don’t appreciate that until you’ve been away.’ It was something he was only just beginning to realize himself. ‘And if you don’t go, if you stay here all your life, sometimes your view of the world gets skewed. I’ve seen it in a lot of people here.’

‘Like my dad?’

Fin glanced at the boy, but Fionnlagh was keeping his eyes facing front. ‘Some people just never get the chance to go, or don’t take it if it comes.’

‘You did.’

‘I couldn’t wait to get away.’ Fin chuckled. ‘I won’t deny it, it’s a great place to get away from. But it’s good to come back to.’

Fionnlagh turned to examine him closely. ‘So you’re coming back, are you?’

Fin smiled and shook his head. ‘Probably not. But that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t want to.’

‘So, if I went to the mainland, what would I do?’

‘You could go to college. If you get the qualifications you could go to university.’