Chapter 2
JB, Drew and Taylor weren’t remotely bothered with the history of the place and the single guidebook between the three of them lay at the bottom of Taylor’s luggage.
Their priority on docking was to hit up the first local hostelry they could find and, with a sway and perceptible wobble as they disembarked and found terra firma, off they went.
They’d forgotten all about picking up the hire car, which was no bad thing since none was in a fit state to drive.
At the Harris Hotel, Morag Mackenzie started her shift.
She’d been up since the crack, cleaning a holiday home in Finsbay and another in Manish then picking up milk, eggs and bread for the new guests at Flora’s House, the tiny holiday cottage, in Luskentyre.
Now she was busy at the bar of the hotel; wiping surfaces, polishing glasses and dispersing coasters to the tables like a croupier dealing cards at a casino, all the while listening to Old Campbell moan about the price of this and the state of that.
Here she was covering the shift for Mairi who was on holiday, on holiday in Tenerife no less, in the sunshine and the warmth, sipping cocktails and relaxing and no doubt chatting up waiters half her age.
Meanwhile Morag was having her ear chewed by Old Campbell and his interminable dissatisfaction with the world.
It was her sixty-first birthday tomorrow and what she wanted most was a day off with no bathrooms to scrub, no beds to make up and no daoine gruamach – grumpy sods – sullying the air.
And it was at this point, when feeling most sorry for herself, that three huge rucksacks with three young men attached to them, tumbled into her bar in full song.
‘Bonny Lassie!’ cried out the tallest; cinema-handsome in that clean-cut all-American college-boy way. ‘Whisky for three weary travellers!’
Morag assessed them levelly; cartoon-perfect the three of them with their cheekbones and smooth jawlines and fit physiques and great teeth; but they were absolutely steaming. They’d be better off with pints of water. She raised an eyebrow. ‘Are you staying here at the hotel?’
‘No, My Lady Loch Nessie!’ he continued. ‘But drink we shall! Aye! Aye! For the love of Scotland, aye!’
‘Alright alright, Braveheart,’ she said before adding, as if to children, ‘now away with you and ask Sarah at the front desk if she’ll take those backpacks and then I’ll think about serving you.’ Morag regarded the other two. ‘And you,’ she said. ‘And you.’
And, obediently, off they went.
‘Anyway,’ Old Campbell said. ‘My feet – I’ve a mind to cut those corns off myself. Och and my guts Mrs Mackenzie. Feels like I’ve kelp beds filling my guts, I’m telling you.’
‘I’d rather you didn’t,’ Morag said under her breath knowing Old Campbell would anyway.
‘Three drams!’ Braveheart reappeared and bellowed. ‘And one for Grandpa here.’ And with that, he clapped Old Campbell on the back and kissed his forehead. And, finally, the old man was speechless.
The bar at the Harris Hotel, cosy and warm in look and feel with shelf upon shelf of whisky bottles doing a far finer job than wallpaper ever could, began to fill.
Guests came in before and after their meals, locals came in from the cold and soon enough the tables and benches and stools were all taken.
Different tongues joined in chatter; English, French, Icelandic and native Gàidhlig and the American visitors charmed everyone.
They were the youngest there and there was a freshness to their energy which was welcome.
They reminded Morag of the sheepdog pups her father used to breed: playful and daft and engaging but amenable enough to be reminded of correct behaviour.
They were fun to watch, joshing with each other, open and friendly to everyone.
They called people Sir and Ma’am and Morag found she rather liked this, though she hadn’t really objected to Lady Loch Nessie either.
Braveheart, it turned out, was actually called JB. And this, it transpired, was short for John-Barrington.
‘John-Barrington Abernathy the Third,’ Taylor qualified.
‘The Fourth,’ JB corrected.
‘He’s a dick,’ Drew butted in.
‘The much-in-demand dick you wish you had in your pants,’ JB countered.
‘I’ll not have that mouth in my bar,’ said Morag.
‘That’s a Scottish name, Abernathy,’ said someone else but JB declared that his family were as deeply Midwest as it was possible to be.
‘Drew here is from Beaverton, Oregon,’ JB said. ‘And Taylor’s from Colorado Springs in the Centennial State.’
‘And you’re here on your holidays?’
The three glanced at each other, tapped their whisky glasses on the table and necked them back in unison.
‘Actually, we’re here to run a marathon.’
And Morag thought she’d heard it all now. These three were barely able to keep themselves upright and yet they were here to run a what? A marathon? Here? In April?
‘We ran the Paris marathon a few weeks back,’ Taylor told the room as if it was nothing more than having strolled up and down the Champs-élysées.
‘Three hours sixteen minutes,’ JB proclaimed with a proud punch at his heart.
‘Three sixteen,’ said Taylor, raising a glass to himself.
‘Three twelve,’ Drew said awkwardly, anticipating the cuff around the head and the friendly abuse immediately dished up by the other two.
‘But there isn’t a Harris marathon,’ someone said.
‘There’s a half marathon – but that’s not until early July,’ said someone else.
‘You’re in the wrong place,’ laughed another.
‘Took the wrong boat, did you?’
‘Numpties, the lot of you!’
A marathon?! Here in Harris?! In April?! Oh aye – someone bring out the medals! We’ll have the podium up in no time! Can you laddies even put one foot in front of another?!
‘Taylor’s idea,’ JB said, hands held in surrender as if none of it had anything to do with him and he was simply doing his buddy a favour.
‘He’s from here,’ Drew said, taking off his glasses but still seeing double.
All eyes were on Taylor, the kid with blue eyes peeping from shaggy blonde curls and the fresh sweet face at odds with the strong athletic body it belonged to.
‘You’re from here?’
‘Oh way back,’ Taylor mumbled. ‘Distant relatives.’
Someone asked Taylor who, but JB launched into song once more and everything else was drowned out.
The bar is closed now. The hotel guests have retired and one by one the locals have stepped out into the cold night.
Even Old Campbell has disappeared, no one remembers when, but his stool at the corner of the bar seems strangely forlorn now bereft of him.
The American lads are very, very drunk but no amount of charm, of calling Morag Lady Loch Nessie or Ma’am, will persuade her to serve them one for the road.
Drew, the studious-looking one, is either asleep or comatose, his spectacles awry as if they’re trying to sneak away from his face.
JB, finally drained of song, is trying very hard to work out how the peanut on the table in front of him is mutating into two, into four, before his eyes and why the pincer-action between his thumb and finger is not working.
As for Taylor, he is not quite here and not quite there, he is Inbetween.
He has made it to this island, he is here in Harris but still he is unsure why.
Because hadn’t his mother said to him openly, dispassionately, that there’s nothing here – there’s nothing here at all?
Yes there’s a marathon to run but for Taylor, unlike Drew and JB, that’s not the point. There must be more than nothing here.
Murdo tells Morag he will drive the visitors to Flora’s House, that the amadain—the silly sods—can find their own way back to the car hire office in the morning.
He loads the boys into his car much like he did his own children when they were little and sleepy.
He heaves each rucksack onto each lap so the lads have something to cling on to.
It’s a hilly, twisty ten mile drive up and out of Tarbert and down and along to Luskentyre.
JB starts singing again but drifts off into a quiet burble.
Drew cuddles his rucksack and quietly chants Parish Harrish Parish Harrish and Taylor says nothing at all.
He looks out of Murdo’s car at the nightscape, it is dreamlike and strange; the land lumbers in the shadows and the moonlight spotlights water – water all around.
Ghost-sheep appear at the side of the road, their eyes luminous.
It’s started to rain and the rhythmic swish of the windscreen-wipers lulls JB and Drew to sleep.
Not Taylor; he’s beguiled by the night in this unknown place, the island he’s travelled all these miles to see.
At Flora’s House, Murdo eases the three of them out of his car and sets them as upright as possible.
He guides them along the path with encouraging words and kindly shoving and he opens the front door to the wee white cottage.
Morag had set a peat fire earlier in the afternoon and the interior is warm and welcoming.
Murdo pushes and pulls the three marathon-drinking marathon runners inside and tells them to sleep well.
As he heads away home, he chuckles at the thought of them navigating the steep stairs up to the two small bedrooms; imagines a rucksack tipping one of the lads backwards sending them all the way down to a crumple at the bottom.
He thinks about parched throats and sore heads in the morning, wonders whether he should have ensured they’d all had a good long drink of water.
Murdo man, he laughs at himself, they’re twenty-three years old!
And it strikes him that he was married with a child on the way at that age.
And then he thinks how he could still outrun all three up to the summit of the Clisham without even breaking a sweat.
At Flora’s House, in their stupor, Drew, JB and Taylor could be any place that has four walls and a roof. Apart from twenty minutes on deck and the short staggering distance from harbour to hotel, they’ve been indoors the entire day. This could be anywhere, really.