And, in truth, mentally, she was probably several years our senior, in the way that there is always a gap between teenage boys and girls of the same age. She made me think of a Beatles song that my aunt used to play, called ‘Girl’. All about a girl who would put you down because it amused her, who would take your adulation for granted, and hurt you because it gave her pleasure. Such poignant observations from the pen of a still-young John Lennon, so clearly born of experience. Another Mairead, no doubt.
Singing and playing with Solas set Mairead apart from the rest, placed her on a kind of pedestal. And she was afflicted by the star syndrome, even in those days. But none of that affected my ardour. The fact that she was so impossibly unattainable somehow made her all the more desirable.
It wasn’t until the following year that I had my first close encounter with her.
It was early summer, before the holidays, and the bike group had already upped sticks and moved away from Holm Point after discovering the history of the
Mairead’s on-off relationship with Roddy was in one of its frequent off periods, and she had ridden pillion out to Tolastadh that day with Whistler, I think to make both Roddy and Strings jealous.
What had started with the promise of a lazy afternoon in the summer sunshine quickly faded. Dark clouds rolled over the moor from the west, bringing with them a chill edge to the wind and a hint of rain somewhere in the not too distant future. There were a dozen or so of us, just fooling around, smoking, dipping our feet in the icy waters of the Minch and running shrieking up the beach as the waves broke over our calves.
We hung on as long as possible, not really wanting it to end. Then, with the first drops of rain, made the belated decision to head back to Stornoway.
Try as he might, Whistler couldn’t get his moped started. Some of the others had already gone, and those of us who were left didn’t relish hanging about in the rain.
I called to Whistler, grinning, ‘Enjoy the walk back.’ I had no doubt he would get her going in the end, but it was fun to annoy him.
He came back at me with his usual wit. ‘Get stuffed, Macleod.’
I gunned my motor and was about to head off when a voice called, ‘Fin, wait!’
I looked around and saw Mairead running across the sand. She had a magazine opened over her head, but it wasn’t going to keep her very dry. Her face was flushed and her eyes shining.
‘I need a lift.’
My heart was thumping. ‘Aren’t you going to wait with Whistler?’
She pulled a face. ‘I would like to get home
I laughed, a little nervously, and glanced around. There were several others that she could have asked for a lift, but she had chosen me. By now my mouth was dry. ‘Sure,’ I said. And I was about to tell her to hop on, but she had already swung a leg over the rear wheel to sit astride the luggage rack and slip her arms around my waist.
‘Come on then,’ she shouted above the racket of my little 50cc motor. ‘I’m getting wet.’
I revved and let out the clutch, and accelerated across the stony car park towards the road, back wheel spinning and skidding from side to side, trying to impress her. And I felt her arms tighten around me. A thrill went through my whole body, ending in a deep ache of desire in my loins. I glanced back and saw Whistler standing by his bike, glaring after us. The rain began in earnest then.
Usually it would take about twenty-five minutes to get back to Stornoway. It took me well over half an hour that day. You could say that I went more slowly because of the rain. But the truth was I didn’t ever want it to end. Even although we were both soaked to the skin within minutes. The feel of Mairead’s arms around me was intoxicating, her open palms spread across my chest, the softness of her body against mine, the hardness of her breasts pressed into my back. I could feel the warmth passing between our two bodies, and I was more aroused I think than I had ever been in my life.
At one point, I could feel her resting her head against my shoulder. I wanted so much to turn and look at her face, to find her eyes with mine, and her lips, and kiss her softly. But I daren’t take my eyes off the road.
My mind was seething with conflicting emotions. Desire, fear, and a thousand imagined possibilities. What was I going to say to her when we got back to town? How was I going to make the moment last? Was there even the slightest chance that she had asked me for a ride back because she had always secretly fancied me? I rehearsed a dozen lines in my head. ‘What are you doing tonight?’ ‘Fancy going for a coffee?’ Each of them utterly banal and lacking in wit or inspiration.
When we finally came over the top of Matheson Road and turned into Springfield Road, I pulled in at the pavement by the school gate. Most of the others had got there ahead of us. All soaked. But the rain had gone off by now, and they stood around in groups animated by conversation and laughter. Mairead swung her leg over my back wheel and smiled at me. Her hair was wet and smeared all over her face. She removed it from her eyes with elegant fingers, and I thought I had never seen her look more lovely.
My eyes were immediately drawn to the flash of white blouse below her blazer. Soaked and made see- through by the rain, I was shocked to see the outline of her breasts, and the darker circles of her areolae visible through the flimsiest of bras. She looked down to see what I was looking at, but just smiled and buttoned her blazer shut. Slowly, without haste or embarrassment, her eyes fixed on mine, only too aware of the effect she was having. I think I must have blushed like a girl. And all the lines I had been repeating in my head disappeared in a sea of hormones. I couldn’t find a single thing to say.
She said, ‘Thanks, Fin. See you later.’ And she hurried off to join her friends. It was one of those moments in my life that I have replayed many times. And each time I returned her smile, unblushing, and said something clever that won her over. How smart we can be after the event, how suave and sophisticated in our imaginations. Donald would have known what to say and do, and would no doubt have ended up sleeping with her. Not that night, perhaps, but sometime. And, who knows? Knowing Donald, maybe he did.
My close encounter of the second kind came not long after that. I was down at Uig the following weekend. The band wasn’t playing, and Whistler and I had decided to take the tent up into the mountains to do a little illicit fishing for brown trout. We pitched it on the shores of one of the myriad lochs west of Brinneabhal. The land there opened up below the mountains, with views across the moor and the machair towards the cliffs, the Atlantic breaking creamy white all along the shattered coastline.
The cloud was down so low you couldn’t see the tops of the mountains, and the rain drifted across the loch like a mist. We sat in our waterproofs and wellies among the rocks along the shore, rods raised, lines cast out across the dark, rippling water. Neither of us was in any great hurry to land a fish. That would come, we knew. The loch was teeming with them. As long as we had a couple of trout to roast on the fire by the time we were hungry we would be happy. Those are days in my life that I look back on with great nostalgia. Moments long gone, that I wish could be recaptured and lived again. Impossible, of course.
We hadn’t spoken for some time. But it was a comfortable silence. The best friendships are the ones that don’t need words to fill the silences.
Suddenly Whistler said, ‘How come you turn into such a bumbling idiot every time Mairead so much as looks at you?’
I was so shocked I swung my head around to look at him and couldn’t think of a single thing to say. Eventually I muttered, ‘Do I?’
Whistler gave me one of his looks. ‘Aye, you do.’
Which gave me time enough to recover my wits and issue a hot denial. ‘I do not!’
Now he laughed. ‘You fancy her, don’t you?’
I could hardly deny it. ‘Who doesn’t?’
He gazed out across the water. ‘She’s not like you think she is, you know.’
‘Isn’t she?’
He gave a little shrug of his shoulders. ‘Everyone thinks she’s super-cool, super-confident, arrogant even. Self-obsessed and full of herself.’
I didn’t say anything. I could hardly have summed her up better myself.
But Whistler shook his head. ‘Truth is, that underneath it all she’s really very insecure.’
