Chapter 18
ochd-deug / eighteen
The bus travelled slowly round An Cliseam.
The scabbed mountain was bright with young green.
The men sat in the back row, feeling free, a little giddy, half-cut before lunchtime.
Doll had bought a bottle of pineappleade from Beady’s which he had diluted with vodka until it looked as insipid as sugary piss.
He held the punt and tipped the drink into Cal’s mouth.
Cal swallowed as much as he could before he choked and sputtered and the drink poured down his chin.
The driver shouted a warning at them but Doll merely snickered. He wiped the bottle mouth, then he drank the remainder. When the vodka was finished, he pushed the bottle out the vent window and the pair slid down in their seats and giggled as it smashed onto the road behind them.
Cal had lain in bed late that morning. He could hear his father in the weaving shed, practising for the Sabbath.
John was singing, Be merciful unto me, O God, be merciful unto me.
For my soul trusteth in thee: Yea, in the shadow of thy wings will I make my refuge, until these calamities be overpast .
. . He didn’t leave any space for a reply, but Cal hummed along with him while stretching his toes and enjoying the warmth.
As he made his way downstairs, he was thinking about a hearty breakfast, hoping that Ella would fry some black pudding, but when he rounded the corner, she was perched on the arm of a chair and Doll was standing in the middle of the room, hands clasped before him as though he’d been hauled in front of the headmistress.
“Hey,” he said, like an American. “The boat’s in the dock.
I’ve the day off.” He was wearing a denim jacket and a matching pair of jeans, cut from the same light rinse cloth.
They looked like they’d just arrived from the catalogue.
His mother had ironed a crease into the legs. “Tormod’s having a cèilidh. Fancy it?”
Ella read the shock on Cal’s face and pursed her lips as if to say just go with it. Rooting in her pocket, she produced two twenty-pound notes which she pushed into his fist.
On the bus, up in the hills, the daylight was so clear, so pure, that everything felt like it was behind polished glass. Doll was resting against the opposite window, staring out at the land.
“Doll. Look. I just wanted to say I’m sorry—”
“Don’t,” he said, without taking his eyes from the hillsides. “Don’t make a big womanly thing out of it.”
It would be a long drive to the west coast of Lewis.
They grew bored of staring out the window, so they opened some cans and played a game where they started shunting each other in a reverse tug of war, trying to press the weaker man against his window until he submitted.
Doll was stronger, heavier, and he bested Cal easily.
He pushed until Cal was crushed against the window, then he pushed some more until the glass throbbed with the force.
When no submission came, he drew back slowly, his round face flushed with the effort.
Cal grinned up at him, smoothed his hair back in place.
“It’s strangely comforting. Having a fat fuck sit on you like that.
” He rammed his shoulder into Doll and barely moved him an inch.
They alighted on the west coast. Doll ran ahead of him, spun and walked backwards with his arms outstretched, easy as a floating Jesus. “I hate that bus.”
How easily they had fallen out.
How easily they had made up with no explanation offered.
They walked across the moor until they came to a small settlement and a familiar dun-coloured house. The proud garden was bordered with fussy annuals and a painted sign that proclaimed: Dunmarriet. Cal groaned as he read it.
Cal chapped the front door as Doll leant against the harling. “Y’know, I’ve pulled one off for Siobhan afore.” Doll worked his hand in mime and made a squelching sound in the pocket of his cheek.
“She’s fifty if she’s a day.”
“Like a fine wine.”
“What do you know about fine wine?”
Cal stepped back as the door opened.
Shiv Malone had her face painted at any hour of the day.
Her lips were always well-framed and it was Ella’s opinion that she’d had it all tattooed on.
Even for the islands, the electric-blue eyeliner was such an outdated colour that Cal wondered if it might be true.
He liked to stare at her when she was not looking. “Halò, Missus Malone.”
“Oh my God!” said the Irishwoman. “Have you no turned into a right smasher. And if it’s not yer man Macdonald.” She clasped her hands to her chest. “One of my biggest regrets is letting your father get away. But I raced on the wrong horse, sure.”
“You can race on me anytime, Missus Malone.” Doll had his arms open as though to embrace her. The older woman giggled and waved him off.
“I think what he means to say is: thank you for having us.”
“It’s Ms, and stop that having us nonsense. You’ll get me a name I’ll have to live up to.”
Shiv led them up the hallway and pointed them towards the lounge.
The bed and breakfast was overdecorated, Catholic, fussy in a way that made the men want to point out various knick-knacks and laugh.
A hoover hose was coiled on the settee and there was a pile of bedsheets in the middle of the floor.
“Ye’re a bit early, boys. I just turned out the last set.
” She fished around in her pocket and produced a single key attached to a red fob.
“We’re here for a great drinking bout,” said Doll as he took the key from her.
“Well I’m watching you, Macdonald. Don’t be getting banjaxed now. I remember your leavers’ do. And don’t be pissing in the sink this time.”
Despite the protests, it was clear to Cal that she was enamoured with his friend.
“So we’ll be away then and come back later,” said Cal. “If that’s all right?”
“Are you hungry? Sure, the Edinburgh pair never ate a thing. Solicitors, so they were.”
Doll dropped himself onto the settee and spread his thick thighs, looking entirely at home. “Go on then. Show us why my father should have married you.”
When the woman left the room, Cal spun on his heels. “Reel it in, would you?”
“Oh . . . what?”
“This . . . flirting with the poor woman.”
“You’re getting that granny-faced way I don’t like.”
“Last thing I need is her telling Ella you’ve been trying to ride the landlady.”
“Women of a certain age live for this, Cal.” He nodded to the door. “Bet you when she comes back into the room, she’ll have run a brush through her hair.”
Cal waited by the electric fire. It was roaring hot on a mild day. On either side were large ceramic pots holding the tallest, longest ears of wheat he had ever seen.
“Elephant grass,” said Shiv, returning with a tray.
“The man at the nursery says it’s imported from Africa but I think it’s from the side of the motorway somewhere.
The fight I had with my ex over that.” She put the tray on the low table.
She had applied some lipstick and she had indeed brushed her hair, which now sparkled with fresh hairspray.
She had been wearing tan-coloured tights under a black skirt, but now that she reappeared, Cal saw that she had changed the tan colour for a semi-sheer black pair.
Cal looked at Doll. Doll winked back at him.
There was a heap of floury rolls bursting with square sausage – a delicacy wasted on the Edinburgh solicitors – and two tins of Tennent’s, sweating cold from the fridge. Doll helped himself. Shiv moved the hoover and sat next to him on the settee. She lit a cigarette.
Cal listened in as Shiv asked Doll about his sisters, about the boat, and some men they both knew from the herring fleet.
She must have been a fine-looking woman once, confident and easy in conversation, not a believer in moderation.
The way she lacquered her blonde hair made it appear like sweet spun sugar, volume pulled out of nothing, and if you put your tongue to it, like it would shrink and stick like candy floss.
The outdated way she teased it told Cal she had liked herself best sometime around the summer of 1984.
There were women who wouldn’t acknowledge Shiv Malone if they met her on the road, but Ella liked Shiv.
They felt the kinship that newly-arriveds often felt on the islands.
Ella liked her mind. She took perverse joy in talking to her, because she never knew where a sentence might go.
She often told a story where Shiv started talking about a patch of cancer she had on her shoulder, before veering into the menopause, the Uist ferry, her nephew’s release from the jail, and the Iranian man her sister had married (beautiful penis/never lifted a finger to help her).
Doll finished his lager and started in on Cal’s.
“Here,” said Shiv, stubbing her dout and squinting up at the clock. “You’re not the only ones I’ve got on the night.”
“Are all the rooms taken?” asked Cal.
“Sure, you grab the money when you can get it,” she said. “I’ve even rented my own room. So don’t come chapping for a bedtime story.”
“We’re not making you homeless, are we?”
“Och no, I’ll stay down the road at my pal Georgina’s. If I buy the carry-out she lets me kip in her spare room. Her man works the early ferry. It’s good company for her, so.”
“Or you can sleep in with us,” said Doll.
“I’m not running a bawdy house, Mister Macdonald,” she clucked at Cal. “T’chut! Your man is a fright with the ladies, so. Has he been practising his lines on the sheep?”
“Yes,” said Cal. “He’s big on the practising.”
“You have to forgive me,” said Doll with an unsettling earnestness. “But we don’t have anything as lovely as you in Falabay.”