by Peter May
Niamh washed down her bolognese with a mouthful of clear sparkling water. “Years ago Ruairidh took me out on to the cliffs at Mangersta. You know how exposed it is down there. Those amazing sheer rock faces, stacked up in layers, as if they were God’s archives, a geological history of the Hebrides. Seams of rock like the rings of a tree, but taking you right back to the very beginnings of time.”
“Hard to believe, but I’ve never been as far south as Mangersta. Uig Beach is about my limit.” Seonag sipped her wine.
“Really?” Niamh was surprised. “I must take you some time. There are rock stacks in the ocean all around the cliffs. The sea just breaks white all along that stretch of coast. Anyway, there’s a bothy there, built just below the lip of one of the cliffs about thirty years ago by a couple living in the area. It was their daughter that died in Afghanistan, remember? She was an aid worker kidnapped by the Taliban, and then killed during an attempt by American marines to rescue her.”
“Linda Norgrove,” Seonag said. “I remember the funeral. The procession was miles long.”
“Well, it was her folks who built the bothy. No idea why, but Ruairidh knew about it. He’d been out there a few times and wanted to show me it.” She smiled, remembering the trek across the cliffs, almost getting lost before finding it, suddenly, tucked away on a hidden shelf below a tumble of broken rock. “It sits perched up there, almost invisible, built right into the wall of the cliff. There’s a couple of windows, with the most amazing views, and skylights. In clear weather you can see all the way out to the Flannan Isles, and St. Kilda. We got there at sunset, and honest to God, Seonag, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen anything so beautiful. Like looking out from the roof of the world. We set a fire and made love, and spent the night.” A tear came with the memory and rolled slowly down her cheek. She wiped it away and forced a laugh. “It wasn’t the most comfortable place I’ve ever been made love to, or slept in. But it was magical.”
Seonag gazed at her in the semi-darkness, then rose to lean into the centre of the table and light candles. As she settled in her seat again she said, “So that’s what inspired the building of the bothy here?”
Niamh nodded. “It’s not as good as the one the Norgroves built, but we sort of borrowed their design, and the stone was all there from Iain Fiosaich’s first house. We made a half-decent job of it, I think, and in the beginning we used to go there quite a lot.”
“Does anyone ever make use of it?”
“The occasional hiker, I think. And some people seem to seek it out, just for the novelty value. To be honest I haven’t actually been in it for ages. A year or two, maybe. Ruairidh kept an eye on it and took care of any maintenance that was required.” And almost as she said it, Niamh realized that he would never be out there again, and that in all likelihood it would fall into desuetude, a ruin, like the life she saw stretching ahead of her.
Seonag finished the Amarone and opened another bottle. Niamh watched, concerned. She tried to make a joke of it and told Seonag she was drinking too much. But Seonag was dismissive and refilled her glass, slurring her words slightly for the first time.
They talked about childhood, recalling the days when they had played “house” in the shed in Niamh’s back garden and caught crabs on the shore, and cycled miles on disused single-track roads without ever seeing another soul. Pre-adolescent days when they had still been the best of friends, before hormones and adulthood had complicated simple lives.
Niamh got to her feet, finally, if only to stop Seonag from finishing another bottle. “I’ve got to go to bed, Seonag. And you’ve drunk far too much to drive.”
Seonag smiled. “It’s okay. I told Martin I might not be back tonight anyway.”
She remained sitting at the table as Niamh made her way towards the hall and her bedroom door, calling back over her shoulder as she went, “Don’t worry about the dishes. I’ll do all that in the morning.”
“Oidhche mhath,” she heard Seonag whisper as she shut the door.
For the second night she felt lost in this big, sprawling bed that she had once shared with Ruairidh. It seemed so empty without him. She remembered how he had insisted that they buy the biggest and the best, and she still cringed when she thought about the cost of it. But he had said, “We spend a third of our lives in bed, why would we skimp on it?” And she couldn’t argue with that.
She turned over on to her side, facing away from where he had once lain, turning out the light and curling up in the foetal position, the duvet pulled tightly around her. Fatigue overwhelmed her after days of sleep deprivation. And she drifted off into the deepest of sleeps from almost the moment she closed her eyes.
She had no idea how long she slept before a strange awareness brought her drifting slowly back to the surface. Of warmth and human comfort, a body spooned into hers, just like Ruairidh after they had made love. For the longest time, floating still in that netherworld between sleep and consciousness, she believed that he was there in bed with her. Although some part of her knew that it was impossible, she didn’t want to let go of the illusion. That somehow he was still alive, his body moulded into all her curves and hollows. The comfort and happiness that accompanied it was almost too much to bear. If waking up would dispel the fantasy, then she never wanted to wake up again. Ever.
But, still, consciousness forced itself upon her, and as she rose up from the euphoric mists of delusion, she turned over to realize, with a sudden, waking clarity, that there really was someone there in the bed beside her.
She sat upright, heart hammering, reaching for the bedside light. And was shocked to see Seonag lying naked where Ruairidh had once slept. “For God’s sake, what are you doing?” Her voice sounded shrill, even to herself, and resounded around the room.
Seonag didn’t move. She reached for Niamh’s hand. “Don’t be angry with me.” But Niamh pulled her hand away.
“Seonag . . .” Niamh was at a loss.
Seonag said, “I only wanted to comfort you. I know what you’re going through. How lonely and lost you must be.”
“You have no idea how I’m feeling.” Anger replaced alarm.
Seonag sat up now, drawing the quilt self-consciously around. She reached for Niamh’s hand again, found it and held it tightly. “Niamh, there’s never been anyone else. You know that.”
“Jesus, Seonag, I thought you’d got over all this.” She shook her head. “That it was just some kind of teenage crush.” She forced her hand free of Seonag’s. “For heaven’s sake, you’re happily married. You’ve got two kids!”
Seonag sucked in her top lip, as if trying to hold back tears. “Marriage has never made me happy. It was only ever what was expected. I love my kids. But God forbid that I should also be in love with another woman.”
All the tension drained out of Niamh now, and she let her head drop. She felt Seonag’s pain, but knew there was nothing she could do to end it. And when next she looked at her saw the tears that Seonag had been unable to contain, running in big slow drops down her cheeks. She said, “I can’t help you, Seonag. I’m not ever going to be the person you want me to be. Not in that way.” She reached out to brush away the tears from her friend’s face. “You should go. You really should.” And when she didn’t move, “Please.”
The first sobs tore themselves from Seonag’s chest, and she slipped from the bed and ran naked from the room. The door slammed shut behind her, and Niamh closed her eyes in despair.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
It was with dread that I returned to Galashiels in the September following my summer at Linshader Lodge. A long demoralizing journey. Three-and-a-half hours across the Minch on the Suilven, from Stornoway to Ullapool. Then bus to Inverness, and on to Edinburgh. I recall what seemed like hours of waiting, stamping my feet in the cold of the old bus station at the St. James Centre, waiting for the bus to the Borders.
My first year at the Scottish College of Textiles had been profoundly lonely. My room in the halls of residence, at Netherdale on the outskir
ts of the town, was little better than a cell: painted brick walls, a single bed, a wardrobe, a desk, and a view on to the back of the halls. The merest glimpse of grass and the road beyond, where the bus would drop me on my return from trips home. I felt like I had stepped on to the set of Prisoner: Cell Block H.
Some of the girls had arrived with duvet covers and towels, stereo systems and posters, transforming their rooms into little dens. I came down from the islands with nothing more than a suitcase. My room was as cold and impersonal when I left it as when I arrived.
I had cianalas, what we Gaels call homesickness, within the first five minutes, and it never left me the whole year. I remember queuing up on bitter cold nights for my turn on the shared payphone to call my folks, with the hope of catching maybe a breath of the sea somewhere in the background. It all seems extraordinary to me now. In these days of iPhones and every other kind of smartphone, keeping in touch with friends and family could hardly be easier. Back then, I might as well have been on the moon.
The girls on my floor shared a toilet and shower at the end of the hall, as well as a communal sitting room with a single TV set and fights every night over which channel we would watch.
The halls of residence were catered, which meant that we had to queue (again) with a tray in the canteen, and carry our food to shared melamine tables. Cell Block H (again). I was utterly miserable.
Gala, as everyone called it, was a friendly enough place, but on the downward slide after years of decline in the textile industry. It had once been a prosperous little mill town. But most of the mills were gone, and it felt seedy now, grey and depressed.
The college itself had retained its reputation, and most of the designers, salespeople and mill managers in the Scottish textile industry went there. It was the career I wanted, but as I returned for that second year, I was not at all sure that I could stay the course.
It was doubly depressing going back to Gala after events at Linshader. I was still hurting, and haunted by the memories of the halcyon summer I had passed in the weeks before the poaching incident on Loch Four.
I had, however, brought numerous personal items to dress up my cell for this second year, and was in the process of pinning posters of Runrig and Deacon Blue to the wall when there was a knock on the open door. I turned to see Seonag standing grinning in the doorway. I’ve often heard the phrase You could knock me down with a feather. But if anyone had so much as breathed on me in that moment I’d have fallen over.
“Surprise,” she said. And if she saw my dismay she gave no outward sign of it.
“What are you doing here?”
“Switched courses. Joined the second year at Gala. The Dough School in Glasgow was a drag. And, anyway, I didn’t really make any friends there.” She jerked her thumb over her shoulder. “I’ve got the room right opposite.”
In other circumstances I might have been glad of the company, but right now Seonag was just about the last person in the world I wanted to see.
“Oh,” I said, without the least enthusiasm.
She retained her cheerful façade. “So we’ll have lots of time to spend together. I know how fed up you were here last year.” She sauntered into the room, folding her arms and casting eyes over Donnie Munro and Ricky Ross. “Cool posters.” And without taking her eyes off them, “I don’t suppose you’ve heard anything from Ruairidh.”
“No.”
“Good riddance, eh?” She turned towards me. “So are there any decent pubs in Galashiels?”
I don’t know how much she was aware of it, but I spent the next few weeks doing my best to avoid her. I took up running so that I had an excuse to get out on my own. Or I would simply tell her that I was studying and couldn’t be disturbed, shutting myself away in my cell. Of course, I couldn’t avoid her in class, or in the canteen, when she would invariably come and sit beside me. In a crowd, when a bunch of us would go to the student union, I would involve myself in conversation with one of the other girls as a discouragement to Seonag, and happily chat to any of the young rugby players who would come into the bar after matches at weekends.
Seonag was, as usual, Miss Personality superplus. The best-looking girl on the course. There were very few boys at the college, but I noticed how their eyes always seemed drawn in her direction. And the Gala boys would fall over themselves to buy her drinks in the pub, in return for which she seemed happy to flirt outrageously.
More than all that, I noticed how popular she was with the other girls. There would always be gatherings of them congregating around her in the common room, laughing and whispering. Or walking together across campus in giggling groups. Squeezing into a booth at the pub. A sisterhood from which I felt excluded. It seemed then that she was the one avoiding me, rather than the other way around.
We were two months into the term before I got my first real insight into something I had never even suspected. And when I look back on it now, I realize how naive and innocent I must have been.
At the weekends, when a lot of the girls went home, those of us left would often go to a pub called The Salmon. There was a rumoured connection between the owner and Linshader Lodge, where it was said he had once worked as a ghillie. Whether or not that was true I couldn’t say, since I never met the man. But it was a comforting sort of link with the island.
It was one of those bright, cold November Saturdays, with a haze of frost on the grass and a mist on the hills. A group of us had gone to the pub after lunch and sat there drinking all afternoon. There was an international rugby match on the telly. Scotland versus someone or other. I didn’t know, or care. I had never been turned on by rugby, but wouldn’t have dared give voice to my indifference here, of all places. It would have been like denouncing God from the pulpit of the Free Church.
I remember that Seonag had been there when we arrived, but she was gone by the time we left. I hadn’t noticed her leaving. I had been feeling sorry for myself, with the prospect of another month before the Christmas break and the chance, finally, to go home. As a result of which I had drunk more than was good for me and was almost overcome by melancholy. The prospect of another Saturday night sitting reading alone in my cell was very nearly unbearable, and I decided that maybe it was time I gave Seonag another chance. In truth, although I was the one who had started out avoiding her, it was me who was now feeling excluded. Time to address all those things that had come between us. The misunderstandings and petty jealousies.
So it was with an alcohol-fuelled courage and determination that I climbed the stairs to the girls’ floor and walked along the hall to Seonag’s door. I hesitated, resolution deserting me only for a moment, before I knocked once and walked in.
At first, I didn’t really understand what I was seeing. And the moment passed so quickly I couldn’t be sure in the immediate aftermath that my eyes had not deceived me. An English girl called Jane, who had also been with us earlier in the pub, was lying naked on Seonag’s bed, dark hair splashed across the pillow. Seonag, too, was naked, lying on her belly between the other girl’s legs, Jane’s fists tightly clasped around bunches of Seonag’s burnished red hair. Milky white bodies impossibly conjoined.
They broke apart immediately, startled by my sudden appearance, and sat up, grasping at sheets to cover their nakedness. I was so taken aback I had no idea what to say. I felt the colour rising on my cheeks, and stammered something stupid like “Sorry. Didn’t mean to interrupt.” And closed the door quickly as I stepped back into the corridor.
I stood breathing hard for a moment, trying to process what I had just seen. Then hurried back along the hall to the common room, and slipped inside, shutting the door behind me. The other girls had not yet returned, and I stood there trembling and dreading the thought of having to face Seonag alone. How naive had I been never even to suspect? And, yet, nothing in my God-fearing sheltered island upbringing had prepared me for such a moment. I had no idea how to deal with it. It seems ridiculous to me now, in the wake of all the years of experience I have clocked up
since. But I was shaken to my core.
I heard a door opening and then closing further down the hall. A knock. And then silence. Before soft footsteps came hurrying along the linoleum. I stepped away from the door as it opened, and Seonag stood there with her dressing gown wrapped around her. Bare feet, tousled hair, bright spots of red high on her porcelain cheeks. She pushed the door shut behind her and her green eyes sought mine, imploring, filled with fear and longing. I found it impossible to maintain eye contact and looked away towards the floor. She reached out to grab both of my arms. “You really didn’t know?”
I forced myself to look at her. “No.”
She sighed heavily and seemed distraught. “My poor, innocent Niamh.”
“It’s disgusting!”
She let me go and stepped back, almost recoiling, as if from a slap. “No, it’s not! It’s the most natural thing in the world if that’s how you feel.” I could see the emotion bubbling up inside her. “All those times cuddling together in the bothag with the dollies, playing mums and dads. All those nights in the same bed, sharing the heat of our bodies, arms around each other for comfort.”
“Like sisters!” I was horrified that she could ever have seen it as anything else. “I never thought . . .”
“I’ve had a crush on you, Niamh, ever since we were little. Just wanted to be with you. You and nobody else. I looked up to you. I loved you.” She sighed. “As far back as I can remember, I was hoping that one day you would feel this way, too.”
“Well, I don’t.”
It was as if she didn’t hear me. She stepped towards me again and took both of my hands. I was too distracted to resist. “It wasn’t until we were teenagers that I realized why. What it was I wanted from you. That no boy could give me. I can’t tell you how disappointed I was by your infatuation with Ruairidh. How much it hurt me.” She turned her head back towards the door. “There’ve been other girls like Jane. But that was just physical. Satisfying a need. I don’t care about her. Or any of the others. Only you, Niamh. Just you.”
