Chapter 3
THREE
RORY
Bonnie Bay
I’m sitting at the edge of the world, looking out to sea.
Thinking about endings and beginnings and the way life always flows and changes, whether you want it to or not.
The setting sun is glinting on the water, gulls are circling overhead, and the waves are rolling peacefully onto the sand.
It’s so beautiful I can’t tear my eyes away.
A balm for the soul that always soothes me, rouses me, inspires me. Makes me think and feel and remember.
I try to imagine it as a painting or a sketch, or even an especially good photograph, but as ever I end up realising nothing would do it justice.
No artist, no matter how good, could capture the glory of this ever-changing horizon.
It stretches off into infinity, and although I know it’s not really the edge of the world, it feels like it.
Further north there are wild, wonderful islands, the Orkneys and the Shetlands, and beyond that are the mysterious Faroes, and the fjords of Norway. I wonder how it must have felt back in the day, when Viking invaders crossed the water. How this coast must have looked to them as they spied land.
It would still have been beautiful, rugged, a shore dotted with red sandstone, surrounded by towering cliffs.
A green place with rich soil and fierce people and legends to compete with their own sagas.
Shapeshifting selkies and kelpies and giant sea-serpents doing battle with gods of thunder and mischief.
The images blossom in my mind, so real I can almost see them rolling and writhing out in the swell.
It would have been amazing, I decide, just like it is today.
Probably, though, it wouldn’t have come complete with a Moira McLeod back then.
If it did, then the history of this corner of the world might have been very different.
The Vikings might have taken one look at her, and decided that the peaceful life back in Scandinavia might be more suited to them after all, even if the winters were fierce cold.
Moira is eighty-four years old, and still has the energy of a teenager. She also has a voice that can put a foghorn to shame, which she’s using to full effect right now. It ruins the serenity of the moment, but it makes me smile as I listen to her harangue her poor downtrodden servants.
Hearing her in full bossy flow is almost as much of a balm to the soul as the view.
This time last year, my friend Moira was on the verge of giving up on life.
She’d had a bad fall, was in a wheelchair, and the bookshop she’d always loved was in as rotten a state as her.
Almost derelict, unloved and unwanted, destined to be sold to a property developer and turned into a hotel.
What a difference a year makes, I think, grinning as I listen in. It’s hard not to. I suspect there are people in Oslo listening in as well.
‘Och now, what did I say about the tables? Did I say to put them in the middle of the room, or did I say to put them around the sides?’
‘The sides,’ replies her stressed-sounding grandson, Robbie.
‘The middle,’ says Jimmy Campbell, at exactly the same time.
‘Lord, give me strength…’ Moira mutters. ‘When is Brody back? Rory! Rory Callaghan, I’m talking to you, man!’
I grimace at the tone in her voice, and drag myself to my feet.
Looks like it’s my turn to be harangued.
I’m lurking a little distance off, by the sea wall, and she is all the way back on the cobbled road that runs through the centre of the village – but there’s still no way to ignore her.
Anyway, I wouldn’t want to. Moira is one of the loves of my life – everything that’s good about the world in one fiery octogenarian bundle.
I find her standing in the street, outside the bookshop. It’s officially called the Edge of the World, but recently, people have taken to calling it the Hopeful Hearts bookshop. I like both names. They sum the place up.
The door to the next building is wide open, as are the huge floor-to-ceiling windows that flood the place with glorious natural light, and let in the sound of the sea.
She’s staring in at the hapless Jimmy and Robbie, then shakes her head and looks back at me.
Her hands are on her hips, her wild silver curls straying from a loose bun.
I marvel yet again at the fact that she is standing at all, that she is out in the world again, bossing us all around. Bonnie Bay wasn’t the same without her.
I eat up the distance between us, galloping towards her, and scoop her up in a big hug, lifting her so her feet are off the ground. I twirl her around like she’s a little girl, not a granny sergeant major, and only stop when she starts slapping the side of my head.
‘Put me down, you loon!’ she says, laughing too much for the words to sting. ‘You’ll have me all dizzy, and I’ll be falling on my bonny backside! What’s up with you, anyway? Are you drunk again?’
I carefully plant her back on her feet, keeping my hands on her shoulders to make sure she’s steady. I grin at her, and give her a kiss on the cheek.
‘I’m never drunk, you old hag, and you know that.’
‘You’re not Irish after all, then?’
‘Irish through and through. Which means I can take my ale better than any of you soft-arse Scottish lightweights can, to be sure, to be sure.’
I veer into comedy Irishman brogue for the last part, and she pretends to be offended.
‘That’s fighting talk, man. Maybe I’ll take you down to the Kestrel for a whisky or ten later, and we can see who’s left standing and who’s lying under the table singing “Danny Boy”…
seriously, though, not that I’m complaining at getting a hug from a hunky fellow like yourself, but what’s up?
What’s going on in that big brain of yours? ’
‘It’s a beautiful day, and I feel blessed,’ I reply simply, gazing down from the bookshop and out at the bay.
The fishing boats are back in, clanking and clinking up against my own boat, my little lady in the harbour.
Dolphins are playing in the distance, and the air is rich with salt and seaweed.
Yellow sand, blue skies, ever-changing turquoise water, colour so vivid it makes my eyes sing with joy…
so much to see, to hear, to smell. A feast for the senses.
It’s true. I do feel blessed. I also feel slightly lonely, because the only thing missing in my life is someone to share these blessings with.
There was someone, once, but it ended badly.
Now, I’m solitary by nature, and probably too set in my ways for that to ever change.
That’s not something to mention to Moira though.
She’d hate the thought of even an ounce of sadness touching one of her friends, because she is as kind as she is bossy.
‘Blessed? What by?’ she asks, head tilted on one side, genuinely inquisitive.
‘By this place. By this life. By this mad old woman I know… and to answer your question, Brody should be back in a couple of days, so all will soon be well.’
Brody moved to Bonnie Bay last summer. He’s American, built like a Navy SEAL, one of those hyper-practical guys who can restore motorbikes and plaster walls.
He’s become one of my best pals, and he’s helped me get my bikes into grand shape, as well as overhauling my boat’s engine.
A former cop from Chicago, he turned up here when Moira was at her absolute lowest. He and his now-partner, Kate, both found cards that she’d apparently sent out into the world hidden inside books, and ended up coming to visit. It was a very Moira thing to do.
Kate and Brody found each other, and they also found a way to save both the bookshop and Moira – giving her the hope and determination she needed to come back from the pit she’d found herself trapped in.
We’d all tried, but none of us could quite reach her, give her what she needed.
Until they turned up, and everything changed.
For that alone, I will always love them – they are the living embodiment of Hopeful Hearts.
Kate is now the manager of the shop, and Brody is supervising its extension through into next door. At least he was before he set off for Chicago, to introduce their baby to his family back home.
‘Can’t come a minute too soon,’ Moira says in a stage whisper. ‘These clowns are neither use nor ornament!’
She winks at me to show she’s joking, and then bobs her head into the new building.
It’s going to be a gallery and exhibition space, as well as having accommodation upstairs.
It’s a great thing to be happening here in our sleepy little village, and I’m excited to see how it all works out.
I’m also excited to see Moira so full of energy and ambition – she needs something to fight for, that woman.
The fact that the first exhibition will include Angus’s photos has given her extra determination.
‘Jimmy, Robbie… lads, time to call it a day, I think!’ she calls. ‘Thanks for all your help. Your wages are in the post.’
‘Oh aye?’ says Jimmy, emerging with a sheen of sweat on his weather-beaten face, grey hair sticking out at all angles beneath his cap. ‘You’ve been saying that a while, Moira. I think maybe you’ve got the wrong address.’
There are, of course, no wages. This whole project runs on a combination of investment from a local businessman, and the sheer goodwill that Moira has earned over the years.
If Moira McLeod asks for a favour, you don’t think twice.
We’re all willing to do what we can, but I know she’s worried about something – she’s made a few comments recently about the paperwork getting on top of her, about feeling a bit too stretched.
Like there aren’t enough hours in the day to achieve everything she wants to achieve.
‘Maybe I have, Jimmy. I’ll get right on that. See you tomorrow?’