Chapter 1 #3
Innes looked to the Shawbost woman and then back to Cal, worried that he had interrupted some private joke. He couldn’t understand why Cal was grinning, yet the woman was upright and unblinking.
“I saw your father on Thursday. Aidh—he never said you were coming back.”
Innes had a singular way of speaking, a sharp intake of breath at the exact moment he began to expel words, a pulmonic ingression of sorts: the Harris gasp.
And although he didn’t say ‘aye’, preferring the proper ‘yes’, his gasp made it seem like he was constantly agreeing with himself and gave his speech a cautious, halting quality.
“Aidh—are you all right? You don’t seem like your usual self? ”
This man who had known him his whole life had no idea about his usual self.
His tongue felt swollen. He pushed it into his bottom lip. “I took a seasickness pill. It’s made me feel weird.”
“Well, is this a visit, or are you back with us for good?”
“For a wee while anyway.”
Innes exhaled like he could not believe it. “Thought you would be away conquering the world. Aidh—big university graduate and all that.”
Innes’s younger brother Sorley had gone away to study, a luxury that Innes Crùbaidh had not allowed his eldest son.
Sorley had gone to Glasgow but came back to the island all the same.
It was unfair to Innes, who had missed out on the opportunity on the understanding that being the eldest he would manage the land, look after their father, and eventually the croft would be his alone.
A PhD in French History was a useless thing for an agricultural life – it must have been a useless thing to study altogether because Sorley, bow-chested but penniless, washed up at home.
Any opportunity he got, he used his education to criticise his docile, methodical brother, and when he failed to get his way in practical matters, he peppered his arguments with big ‘university words’.
He tried to incorporate socialist systems better suited for running Chinese factories than organising the spreading of kelp.
More than once, he’d sat down and sketched a new process for digging and turning the ancient peat beds – lining up the islanders in an efficient factory line and disregarding three thousand years of community.
Through all of Sorley’s lording, Innes had developed a suspicion of higher education.
He saw it to be nothing better than a class con to separate them ‘that could’ from them that ‘had-read-about-how-to-do-it-and-so-thought-they-could-but-were-now-too-educated-to-bother-and-should-therefore-manage-those-who-did’.
Cal considered the Shawbost woman. He didn’t want to feel like a failure, but they wouldn’t appreciate him being bragail. “I still have plans. But there’s plenty of time for that.”
“Doll Macdonald will be happy to see you. And young Isla will be over the moon.”
“Do bhràmair?” asked the Shawbost woman.
Cal had no idea why he cared what this woman thought but he blurted out a correction. “No, we weren’t sweethearts. Not really.”
Innes turned back to Cal. “Aidh—well, I’ll give you a run down the road, sure.”
From the harbour in town it was still a long journey home.
If he accepted the lift, Innes would drive him to the door and he would arrive home too soon.
Cal needed time to adjust, to be amongst strangers a little longer, to drink more cider, to let the ecstasy ebb away.
The quietness of the long walk at the end was a good place to resign himself to his fate.
“Thanks all the same. But I’ve got some things to do. I’m meeting a friend.”
“Who?”
“Och, nobody you know.”
Innes smirked at the absurd statement. “Sure you’re all right? You look a bit lost.”
“Yeah. Fine.” What skinned him was that the closer he got to home, the more lost he felt.
He got up, fearful he might utter his thoughts out loud.
He gathered his loose wits and clapped Innes on the shoulder, then before he realised what he was doing he hugged him.
Innes went rigid in his arms and Cal thought it was possible that he had not been hugged since he was a boy.
“Look. I fancy one last pint before I head home. You know my father likes a dry house.”
“As he should!” said the Shawbost woman.
Cal moved away from Innes. “I’ll come round and see you when I’m settled. OK?”
It was an abrupt way to dismiss a man he had known his entire life. He shouldered the backpack and, cradling the bin bag in his arms, he scuttled back out into the rain.
The ferry rocked as its wake hit the jetty. The tourists tottered, delighted to be thrown about one last time. The ramblers were shivering. They pulled their anoraks tight, their wind-scalded faces peering through elasticated peepholes.
The boat docked and the lorries came off first. Cal hung back to be sure Innes had driven away before he disembarked.
Being unable to swim, he never felt completely safe until his feet were back on solid ground and he tapped his heels on the seafront in the island tradition.
When he was in school, the children were taught the horror of the Iolaire disaster and every New Year’s Day, his grandmother baked a Bundt cake in the shape of a life ring to remember the 205 souls who had perished so close to home.
He was marching behind the passenger cars when a strong hand clapped his shoulder. He knew the man only vaguely, a broad, affable, fish farmer from Seilebost. “Any chance you brought some fresh fanny with you?”
Cal chuckled half-heartedly. “Any chance you’re headed up the road? I could use a lift.”
The man explained how his car was off the road, needing repairs he couldn’t afford.
He was spending the afternoon in Tarbert with his aunt, and his brother would drive up from Seilebost and collect him later that night.
Without any hesitation he extended both his aunt’s hospitality and his brother’s service, but Cal declined both and thanked the man whose name he was still unsure of.
He waited for the man to walk away before he sloped over to the bus shelter. He missed the first bus on purpose, knowing that if he did not catch the next he would be stranded for the night.
He took his time and finished the last can of cider.
Crouching inside the shelter, he unpacked his backpack and then repacked it carefully.
At the bottom he hid his Walkman and the dubbed cassettes, then he covered them with old copies of The Face magazine.
There was a free gay newspaper in the front pocket – why he still had it, he didn’t know – but when he thought about putting it in the bin, he was gripped with a fear that the wind would catch it and blow it across the island.
He folded the newspaper and tucked it beneath the lining of his bag, thinking it would be safer to burn it at home.
On top of all this he stuffed his dirty laundry and then crowned it, proudly, with his mother’s discarded Bible.