still, haunted by the ghosts of guilt and despair.
He sat down beside Donald without a word, and the minister cast him a silent glance before returning to contemplate the emptiness in his heart. Finally Donald said, ‘She’s moving out.’
‘I know.’
Donald turned towards him, surprised.
‘I saw her in the car park.’
Disappointment settled on Donald like snow. Perhaps he had hoped she might have a change of heart. ‘She’s gone, then?’
Fin nodded. And they sat without a word passing between them for five minutes or more. Then Fin broke their silence. ‘What happened to us, Donald?’ He thought about his own question. ‘I mean, all that hope and expectation. When we were just kids and life was nothing but potential. Everything we wanted to be, everything we could have been.’ And he added quickly, before Donald could speak, ‘And don’t talk to me about God’s grand plan. It’ll only make me more pissed off with Him than I already am.’
He was aware of Donald’s head dropping a little.
‘Remember that beach party we had the summer before we left for university? On that wee island somewhere off the coast of Great Bearnaraigh.’ It had seemed idyllic. Camp-fires and barbecues on the beach, drinking beer and smoking dope beneath a firmament filled with bright stars shining like the hopes they’d all had for themselves. ‘Our whole lives ahead of us, and nothing to lose but our virginity.’
Donald turned a wry smile in his direction. ‘Some of us had already lost that, Fin.’
And Fin smiled, remembering how gauche he had been that night, making love for the first time to Marsaili, only to discover that Donald had already taken her virginity. His smile faded. ‘And look at us now. Trapped in this narrow corner of the world. Nursing our pain and our guilt. We look back with disappointment, and forward with fear.’ He turned towards Donald. ‘Does none of this test your faith, Donald?’
Donald shrugged. ‘It is the nature of faith that it is constantly being tested. Complacency means taking it for granted. And if you do that, you lose touch with God.’
Fin blew contempt through pursed lips. ‘Too easy.’
Donald leaned forward, his arms folded across his thighs and swung his head slowly towards him. ‘Nothing easy about it, Fin. Believe me, there is nothing simple or easy about faith when your life is turning to shit.’
‘So why do you bother?’
Donald thought about it for a long time. Then he said, ‘Maybe it’s the feeling that you’re never alone.’ He met Fin’s eye. ‘But you won’t know what that’s like, Fin. Being always alone with your grief and your hatred.’
And for the second time that night Fin felt a knowing mind reach into his soul to touch the rawness there. He said, ‘Have you heard about the plane?’
‘What plane?’
‘Roddy’s plane. The Piper Comanche. You remember? Call-sign G-RUAI.’
Donald sat up, then, frowning. ‘It’s been found?’
‘It has.’
‘How? Where?’
‘At the bottom of a loch in Uig.’
Wrinkles creased around Donald’s eyes in incredulity. ‘How in the name of God did it get there?’
Fin shrugged.
‘Bloody hell!’ It sounded just like the old Donald. And then he smiled suddenly. ‘I always thought that Roddy would come waltzing through the door one day, grinning all over his stupid face and telling us it had all been an elaborate joke.’
‘It’s no joke, Donald. Roddy was murdered.’
The smile vanished. Shock was writ large all over Donald’s face. He sat bolt upright, staring at Fin in disbelief. ‘Tell me.’ Then he thought better of it, as if remembering suddenly where they were. ‘No, not here.’ He stood up. ‘Let’s get some air.’
And as they stepped out into the blustery night, Fin remembered how it was Donald who had set Solas on the road to success, until his spectacular fall-out with Roddy.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
I suppose the band’s real rise to fame began with a bet.
Roddy and Strings had written most of the original material that Solas was playing at its gigs during fifth year at school. Like Lennon and McCartney, they were a formidable creative duo. But like the visionary force behind the Beatles, they didn’t much like one another.
There was an artistic jealousy, a constant competition to prove who was the more creative. And, of course, there was Mairead. Somehow she was at the centre of every conflict in the band, if not the cause of it. In this case she had engaged in a three-month fling with Strings during a period of fall-out with Roddy. The atmosphere both on and off stage had been horrendous.
But by June of that final year at the Nicolson the brief liaison with Strings was over, and Mairead was back with Roddy. Everything in the universe was in its proper place again. Except that Roddy and Strings could barely speak to one another without breaking into an argument.
The bet came about because although everyone agreed that the band needed a change of name before going to Glasgow, it was impossible to reach unanimity on what it should be.
Solas was too comfortable, too soft. They wanted something more edgy, that would reflect the unique blend of Celtic folk and rock that was their hallmark.
In the end there were two front-runners. One Roddy’s, the other Strings’s. But no one was going to choose between them because it would have been like taking sides.
Roddy’s preference was Amran, old Irish for song. He felt it would take the band out of what he called the Gaelic ghetto and into the wider Celtic world. Strings hated it. His choice was Caoran, the Gaelic for those little pieces of peat that are the hardest and blackest, and burn the hottest. Roddy ridiculed it by saying its pronunciation —
The solution to the impasse came during the first week in June. We had all sat our Highers by then and were just treading water till the end of the school term, so nobody was bothered about going to classes.
Since the revelations about the
It was one of those rare, delicious, early summer days when the wind was soft out of the south-west and the sky was broken by high white clouds that only occasionally masked the sun. Spring flowers shimmered yellow and purple and white across the moor, and the midges were kept at bay by the breeze. Of course, there was always something to spoil a perfect day, and in this case it was the cleggs. The little biting bastards were out in force among the long grasses. Horseflies the English call them, and they give you a real dirty bite, even through clothes if they’re tight-fitting.
We were all gathered on the bridge. About a dozen of us, drinking beer, scraping our names in the concrete, or just lying along the parapet sunning ourselves, fearless of the drop into the gorge below. The sun washed across the golden sands of Garry beach and out over the Minch, and I remember thinking there was something almost idyllic about it. The exams were by us, and a new, exciting future lay ahead. Escape from the island, the first chance any of us had had to spread our wings and fly. At that moment, anything seemed possible.
I lay with my eyes closed, my head resting on my folded blazer, drifting away into an imagined future. Which was when angry voices crashed into my idyll.
