The Blackhouse (31 page)

Because of his poor results at Crobost, Artair had been sent to the Lews Castle for vocational studies, and found himself in the delightful company of such old friends as Murdo Ruadh and his big brother, Angel. Calum had the good fortune to be sent to the Nicholson. He never said anything, but it must have been a huge relief for him to escape the endless bullying and beatings he had suffered through all the years at Crobost.

I never had very much time for Calum at school. He sort of tagged around after us, I think in the hope that he might pick up some of our cast-off girlfriends. Calum wasn’t very good with girls. He was crushingly shy and would blush to the roots of his ginger curls if one even spoke to him. The only way he would get to meet any girls was if he was part of a crowd. And that way he would never have to make a fool of himself by making his own introductions. It’s hard for teenage boys. Girls don’t realize it. You have to put yourself out there, vulnerable to rejection if a girl turns you down when you ask for a dance, or offer to buy her a fish supper in The Narrows. All those hormones that flood a teenage boy’s system force him into risking such rejection, then leave him frustrated as well as humiliated when it comes. I am happy not to be fifteen any more.

We were all at the St Valentine’s Day dance that year in Stornoway town hall. Usually we would go back to Ness for the weekend, but because of the dance everyone was staying over at the hostels. There was a band playing the latest songs from the charts. It’s funny how at that age music provides your memory markers. Usually it’s olfactory, a scent associated with some place or moment in your life, that catches you by surprise and transports you back through space and time, evoking with startling resonance a memory you had all but forgotten. But it’s mostly music that takes you back to your teens. I have always associated certain songs with certain girls. I remember a girl called Sine (her name was pronounced like the English
Sheena
). It was Sine I took to the dance that February. Whenever I hear the Foreigner single ‘Waiting for a Girl Like You’, maybe just a fragment of it caught on some golden oldies show on the car radio, or some TV repeat of an old
Top of the Pops
, I think of Sine. She was a pretty wee girl, but a bit too keen. I can remember jumping about at the dance like an idiot to XTC’s ‘Senses Working Overtime’, and Meat Loaf’s ‘Dead Ringer for Love’. But ‘Waiting for a Girl Like You’ was the Sine song. As I recall, that night I didn’t wait for her at all. I abandoned her and left early with Calum to get back to the hostel before they closed the doors. That was my excuse, anyway.

Artair was still going out with Marsaili at the time, and they went to the St Valentine’s dance together. There was a song in the charts then called ‘Arthur’s Theme (Best That You Can Do)’. I thought it was really weird, because the lyrics seemed to fit Artair so well. All about just having a good time and not caring about other people’s aspirations for you. Artair’s Song, I called it. When they played it that night, Artair and Marsaili were dancing together, kind of close and smoochy. I was dancing with Sine, but I couldn’t help watching them over her head. I hadn’t listened to the first verse before, which wasn’t the verse about Arthur. But I caught it that time. It was about finding a girl who turns your heart around, and then losing her and not really knowing quite how you managed it. And those words stirred something inside me, some latent sense of jealousy or regret, and I found myself dancing with Sine and wishing it was Marsaili. Of course, it passed. Hormones again. They played havoc with my head in those days.

Calum was having a frustrating night. He’d been dancing with a demure little dark-haired girl called Anna. But only when it suited her. He asked her for every dance. Sometimes she would say yes. Other times she turned him down. He was completely smitten, and she knew it and was playing games with him.

About halfway through the night, a group of us was standing shivering out in the street, smoking, and drinking from cans of beer that someone had planked outside. The thump of music and the rabble of voices from the dance followed us out into the wet February night, along with Calum. Murdo Ruadh and Angel were there in the crowd and saw an opportunity to do a little Calum-baiting.

‘Aye, you’re on for a bit of nookie the night, son,’ Murdo said, leering at the miserable Calum.

‘That’ll be fucking right,’ Angel said. ‘She’s a wee prick-teaser that one.’

‘What would you know about her?’ Calum said moodily.

‘What do I know about her?’ Angel guffawed. ‘Everything, boy. Been there, done it.’

‘Liar!’ Calum shouted. In other circumstances, Angel might have taken offence and given Calum a doing, but for some reason he was in a benevolent mood that night and seemed more intent on taking Calum under his wing than doing him any harm. I know now, of course, that he had already formed a plan.

‘Anna works up at Lews Castle,’ he said. ‘She’s a maid at the school. Maid Anna, they call her.’

Murdo Ruadh slapped Calum on the back. ‘Aye, boy, and you’ve never lived until you’ve made Anna. Everyone else has.’ And he fell about laughing at his own joke.

Calum went for him. Like a cat. All claws and flailing arms. Murdo was so taken aback he dropped his can, and beer fizzed out of it all over the pavement. Artair and I pulled Calum off, and I really thought then that Murdo was going to kill him. But Angel stepped in, pushing a big hand into his wee brother’s chest. ‘Lay off, Ruadh. Can’t you see the boy’s smitten?’

Murdo was fuming. This was a serious loss of face. ‘I’ll fucking kill him.’

‘No, you won’t. The boy’s just not thinking right. I remember the first time you got all soppy over some lassie. God, it was pathetic.’ Murdo’s humiliation increased with every word his brother uttered. ‘You need to … what’s the word ...empathize.’ He grinned. ‘There’s maybe a wee favour we could do the boy.’

Murdo looked at Angel as if he thought he had lost his senses. ‘What’re you on about?’

‘Bath night.’

A look of complete incomprehension scrawled itself on Murdo’s face. ‘Bath night? For Christ’s sake, Angel, we’re not sharing that with a wee shite like him.’

Calum struggled to free himself from my grip and straighten his jacket. ‘What do you mean?’ Out in the bay a foghorn sounded, and we turned to see the lights of the
Suilven
as she ploughed her way out into the Minch on the start of her three-and-a-half hour crossing to Ullapool.

Angel said, ‘The staff at the school have got rooms up at the top of the castle. They share a bathroom up in the gods, and because the window looks out on to the roof, they never pull the blind. Wee Anna takes her bath every Sunday night, ten o’clock on the dot. I don’t think there’s a boy in the school who hasn’t been up there for a peek. She’s got a great wee body on her, that right, Murdo?’

Murdo just glowered at his brother.

‘We could arrange a private viewing for you if you want.’

‘That’s disgusting!’ Calum said.

Angel shrugged. ‘Suit yourself. We’ve made the offer. You don’t take us up on it, that’s your loss.’

I could see that Calum was torn, but I was relieved when at length he said, ‘No way,’ and went strutting off back into the dance.

‘That’s pretty shitty,’ I said, ‘winding him up like that.’

Angel made a great show of extravagant innocence. ‘Nobody’s winding him up, orphan boy. You get a view into that bathroom up there as clear as day. You fancy a wee peek yourself?’

‘Fuck off,’ I said. I was good at the witty comeback in those days. And I went back into the dance in search of Sine.

I was pleased to see that Calum was dancing with Anna when I went in, but over the next hour or so she must have knocked him back seven or eight times. On a couple of occasions I saw him sitting on one of the seats along the wall, all on his own, watching miserably as she danced with other boys. She even danced with Angel Macritchie, the two of them chatting animatedly and laughing together, and I saw her rubbing her body against him and glancing over to see if Calum was watching. Of course, he was. He was a poor soul, really, and I couldn’t help feeling sorry for him.

And then I forgot about him, and started working on how to extricate myself from the Sine situation. Every time I sat down she was all over me. She even put her tongue in my ear, which I thought was disgusting. Ironically, it was Calum who rescued me in the end. He came up to us with his hands thrust deep in his pockets. I remember the band was playing the Stranglers’ song ‘Golden Brown’.

‘I’m going.’

I made a great show of looking at my watch. ‘Oh, my God, is it that time already? We’ll never get back to the Gibson before they lock the doors.’ Calum opened his mouth to say something, but I cut him off before he got me into trouble. ‘We’re going to have to run.’ I jumped to my feet and turned to Sine. ‘Sorry, Sine. See you next week.’ I saw her jaw drop in amazement before I took Calum by the arm and hurried him away across the dance floor. ‘But not if I see you first,’ I muttered under my breath.

‘What’s going on?’ Calum said.

‘Just getting myself out of a tight corner.’

‘Lucky you. I can’t even get
into
a tight corner.’

The smell of the sea was strong on the wind that night. An icy February blast that would have cut you in two. The rain had stopped, but the streets were all shiny under the streetlamps, like wet paint. The Narrows were jammed, and Calum and I pushed our way through to the inner harbour and along Cromwell Street to Church Street, before climbing the hill to Matheson Road.

It was only when we turned into Robertson Road that Calum told me he was going to do it.

‘Do what?’

‘I’m going up to the castle tomorrow night.’

‘What?’ I couldn’t believe him. ‘You’re kidding.’

‘It’s all arranged. I spoke to Angel before we left the dance. He’s going to fix it for me.’

‘Why?’

‘Because Angel was right. She’s just a wee prick-teaser. It’ll be like getting my own back on her, getting to see her naked in the bath.’

‘No, I mean why would Angel fix it for you? All he’s ever done is beat the living crap out of you. Why would he suddenly be your best pal?’

Calum shrugged. ‘He’s not as bad as you think, you know.’

‘Aye, right.’ I was unable to conceal my scepticism.

‘Anyway, I was wondering …’ He hesitated. From up here we could just see, over the rooftops, the crenellated towers of the castle, floodlit on the hill across the bay.

‘What were you wondering, Calum?’

‘I was wondering if you would come with me?’

‘What? You’ve got to be joking! No way.’ Not only would it be a Sunday, and we’d get hell if we were caught sneaking out at that time of night, but I was highly suspicious of the whole thing. Calum was being set up. For what, I had no idea, but I was pretty sure that Angel had not suddenly discovered a philanthropic side to his nature.

‘Oh, please, Fin. I can’t do it on my own. You don’t have to go up on the roof or anything. Just come to the castle with me.’

‘No!’ But I already knew I would. Reluctantly. It was certain that they were planning something for the poor wee bugger. And someone had to look out for him. If I went along maybe I could stop him from getting into too much trouble. I wish now that I hadn’t. Maybe things would have turned out differently.

It was a bitterly cold night, a stiff wind sweeping frequent squally showers of sleet and hail in off the Minch. I really did not want to leave the dry, warm security of the hostel to embark on some insane adventure, nature unknown, outcome uncertain. But I had, in the end, promised Calum, and so we ducked out into the night just before nine-thirty, waterproofs turned up around our necks, and baseball caps pulled down low on our heads, peaks obscuring faces in case we were spotted. We had left a window open on a first-floor corridor at the back of the hostel, accessible by rone pipe, so that we could get back in. Although I did not relish the climb on a night like this.

Stornoway was like a ghost town, streetlamps casting feeble pools of light in dark, empty streets. The God-fearing people of the town were locked up cosy in their homes behind drawn curtains, watching TV and supping cups of hot cocoa before heading for bed. In the inner harbour, the rattle and creak of trawlers tied up at the quayside fought to be heard above the wind. The icy black waters were choppy, slapping against the concrete stanchions of the quay and breaking white on the shores of the Castle Green on the other side of the bay. We hurried along the deserted Bayhead, turning off at the Bridge Community Centre and scampering quickly over the bridge into the trees beyond. Up the hill, then, in a fearful sleety squall, and on to the road above the golf club. As we reached the road, the sky opened up, and the most extraordinary silver moonlight spilled down across the manicured expanse of golf course, so bright you might almost have expected to see golfers pitching up the hill to the fifth hole.

Lews Castle was built in the 1870s as a mansion house for Sir James Matheson. He bought the Isle of Lewis in 1844 with the proceeds from the opium he and his partner William Jardine had imported into China, turning six million Chinese into hopeless addicts in the process. It’s strange to think that the misery of millions led to the transformation of a tiny Hebridean island thousands of miles away on the other side of the world, or that people and their land can just be bought and sold. Matheson built a new harbour, and gas and waterworks in Stornoway, as well as a brickworks at Garrabost. He created a chemical factory to extract tar from peat, and a yard to build and repair ships. He transformed the forty-five miles of dirt tracks across the island into two hundred miles of coach-bearing roads. And, of course, he razed the old Seaforth Lodge on the hill overlooking the town, to build his mock-Tudor castle.

It is an extraordinary building of pink granite, with turrets and towers and crenellated battlements. It dominates the hill above the harbour, and is probably the most unlikely thing you will see on any of the islands that make up the Hebridean archipelago.

Of course, in those days, I didn’t know the full history. Lews Castle was just there, as if it had always been there. You accepted it, the same way you accepted the cliffs that ringed the Butt, or the fabulous beaches at Scarasta and Luskentyre.