Chapter 36
Lesson 35: Sometimes it takes reading a book about loneliness to realize that you are no longer lonely.
Reading List: To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf (read)
Bridget Jones Tally:
friends—7
more than friends—1
sore hearts—0
After the giddy heights of postcoital mimosas, we headed north through the Trossachs National Park and Loch Lomond, making
several stops for photos, walks, and snacks along the way to take in the stunning scenery.
I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but Scotland had a different feel to it. We had been through some of the most beautiful
landscapes that I had ever seen in England and Wales, but somehow, in some ineffable way, Scotland simply sat differently
on the skin—or under the skin, in my case. It seeped gently into every pore and took hold of me in a possessive way that I
understood, even then, that I would never shake.
As we sat on the bank of Loch Lomond, Robbie discreetly took my hand, reminding my butterflies that they had something to flap about. After the night before, we weren’t trying to hide anything, but neither were we trying to make anyone feel shocked with an overexposure to canoodling. Instead we tried to lavish each other with tiny, careful moments of tenderness—a hand on the small of a back, a look prolonged for a second or two, a warm smile, a gentle joke, softly teasing rather than the sharp slice that was our usual custom. It felt private and intimate, and in the present atmosphere of unspeakable awe and beauty, the hurdles that my brain had constructed were being forcibly torn down, letting in the light.
That felt like something. It felt big. It felt like loosening my hold of the anchors I had clutched so tightly, even as they
sank. I was letting life happen and take me with it, even if it didn’t seem sensible. Even if it seemed contrary to my plans.
Even if it was scary as hell. At least for now. And, smart or not, it felt like living.
We carried on to Oban for a stopover on the way to Skye. It was such a gentle, coddling evening, perfect to smooth the sharp
edges of any lingering hangovers. We strolled along the strip between the pastel storefronts and the choppy bay and watched
the sun set. We treated ourselves to a long, languid dinner with a charming view, and perhaps a cheeky bottle of rosé or two,
for the table, of course. It felt like a cozy evening with family.
Through every elongated, treasured moment, I knew the evening was bringing me a second closer to going to bed with Robbie.
But instead of heading straight up to bed when we got in, Robbie turned to me after the others had said their good nights.
“Do you fancy a stroll in the moonlight, beautiful?”
“Are you trying to get rid of me? Dump my body in the bay?” I stepped into him and slid my arms around his waist.
“Nah. If I thought it was that easy to trick the devil, you would have been in my bed on day one.”
I sank into his arms and mumbled sweetly into his chest. “If you had tried it, I would have desexed you with one of Berrta’s
Birkenstocks.”
We walked softly along the shoreline, holding hands. When we took each other to bed later that night, the tenderness of the evening stayed at the forefront. He stared into my eyes like his heart was breaking and mending at the same time. We didn’t have time for jokes as we peeled each other’s clothes off, button by button, worshipping each touch of the lips, each inch of warm skin. The way he touched my body with his brushing fingertips made me shudder. Places that I hadn’t before thought of as particularly sensual—the side of my ribcage, the inside of my elbow, the ridge of my clavicle, the back of the knee—were suddenly erogenous. His hand slowly glided over every inch of me in feather-light deification. It made each nerve ending feel closer to the skin. By the time he got to my nipples, they seemed so much more sensitive. He was gentle when he stroked my breasts and rubbed his thumb over them. I panted and cried out. He worked his lips all the way down my torso, and I felt his warm breath on me for a moment, nothing else, then the softest brush of lips, and then his tongue. It sent me careening into waves of climax.
Later we made love gently, tauntingly slowly and perfectly in tune, a ballet that was somehow more passionate and more meaningful
than the night before, and then we fell asleep in each other’s arms.
We set out early in the morning. Robbie had pulled himself away from my sleepy embrace with an unwilling groan. It was well
worth getting up before the sun, I decided, as we made it to Glencoe for the sunrise. I am not sure that I had ever seen anything
so moving.
Robbie told the heart-wrenching story of the Massacre of Glencoe, and we felt more grounded in this unreal landscape, as the
air bit at us with its frosty teeth, and we thought how lucky we all were to be there. Then we packed up, wrapped ourselves
in Rosie’s woolen blankets, and set off for Skye.
If fairies exist, they are forged in Skye. Skye: where the wind had whipped the mountains into stiff meringue peaks that rose and curled back on themselves in a garden of uncanny vistas and hallows. Hearty, sure-footed sheep dotted the slopes and danced along craggy cliffs, looking wise and capable with thick, curling horns. Dense clouds rode quickly on the back of wind and painted the emerald green land below in shadow and light, rippling like water while crystalline shards of sun pierced through and stretched down to meet cold earth.
We started with warm, strong cups of tea and sat on the cold rocks by the churning sea. Birds sang and swooped in gray salt
air not yet yellowed by the heat of the afternoon sun. There we talked about Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse , which was set in Skye. We discussed its feelings of solitude and how it tied itself to the landscape, emotions that I would
have embodied weeks ago, but now, I reflected, could not feel more foreign to me as I sat hip-to-hip with my friends for heat
while listening to the warming cadence of Robbie’s voice.
“‘It was odd, she thought, how if one was alone, one leant to inanimate things; trees, streams, flowers; felt they expressed
one; felt they became one; felt they knew one, in a sense were one; felt an irrational tenderness thus (she looked at that
long steady light) as for oneself.’”
Robbie read from the book, but the full-mouthed roaring of the wind and the waves demanded that he deliver a performance,
head and voice raised to conquer the wild space. I gazed at him, and my heart beat a little louder.
Many of us took the hike up the Old Man of Storr. From that height, mountains, waterfalls, lochs, and cerulean sea spread
out in such unreserved beauty that my breath caught, and my cheeks grew cold with freshly sprung tears. Next to me something
stirred, and a familiar hand threaded its fingers with mine, warm and generous.
“You alright, darlin’?”
I breathed out slowly. “Oh yes. I’m just happy.”
That night after Robbie had fallen asleep, I lifted his book from his chest: The Shadow of the Wind , one of my recommendations. I slipped the bookmark into place and moved it to the bedside table. Something slid out from
between the pages. It was the light blue string that I had used to pull back my hair on the punting trip in Cambridge. It
still had the bow that I had hastily tied. My heart squeezed in my chest. He had saved it and pressed it into his book as
a keepsake.
We went to the Fairy Glen our second day on Skye. It was a valley of strange, miniature emerald hills, nearly conical in shape,
clustered charmingly around the sheep whose ancestors had explored the grassy dunes so often that they had worn little levels
and steps in hoof-size rings around the sides of them. There was a proportionately small loch and some craggy cliffs and outcroppings,
which might have looked dramatic and foreboding had they not been so adorably Lilliputian. We wandered around, cradling hot
cups and leaving trails of pastry crumbs, releasing puffs of tea-warmed ghosts into the crisp air as we laughed, absorbing
what sun we could, and having a minikin adventure in a Hobbiton landscape where even Doris could climb to the top and loom
large as king of the mountain.
Next we took a break from the wind at Talisker Distillery. The warm honey of its whisky burned down my throat. I took a moment
to remember the flavor, so that the next time I tasted it, I could close my eyes for a moment and be transported back to that
most magical of islands, where I had been so very happy.
The last hour of sunshine was enjoyed at the Fairy Pools. We followed along a hidden hollow, where a seam of water cascaded down one small waterfall into another, collecting in little turquoise pools, rounding and polishing smooth arches and basins in the stone. When it began to drizzle, a rainbow unfurled in front of our eyes for a brief, wet moment, arcing gracefully over the jewel-colored Fairy Pools before fading away again. It was the third rainbow I’d seen that day. Who could complain about a bit of rain when it put on such a show? When we turned around, the sun had begun to set, and we walked back through the golden glow under a raspberry sky.
Never was a bed more comfortable, more warm, nor more welcoming than our bed that night.