Page 102 of Little Wing
‘That’s not the way it’s done,’ he muttered from the third floor down to Dougie. ‘Give her a kiss, you silly arse.’
Dougie called himself a lot worse during the drive home. Not least when he stopped at a garage, bought a disgusting meal deal and gulped it down while he drove. He could have been eating something lovely somewhere nice with Nell, as she’d suggested. It did his hunger no favours. And what Dougie realized as he drove was this: it would have been far simpler in Harris. In Harris the light is in its continual bounce between sky and sea and makes everything seem clear. In Harris it was just Dougie and Nell against a complicit backdrop of otherworldly scenery and shared history. In Harris, they were a world away from their everyday.
He didn’t go directly home. He drove to Soho, to Joe’s Basement, and had them develop his film and run off a contact sheet. When he arrived back at his flat, he beat himself up a little more then turned on his computer and uploaded his day’s work, scanning through frame after frame of medical gadgetry. Then he took a shower. Watched the ten o’clock news. Then he went to bed. Got up after ten minutes. Paced around his bedroom. But then, for two hours he studied the contact sheet of the photos taken at Frank’s. It was, he knew, a beautiful collection. Three or four of them were good, really good; they were exhibition good. And there was one of Nell that was so – so Nell.
Diabhlaidh amadan fuilteach. Bloody idiot.
When Nell’s phone rang so late she assumed it would be Philippa in New York. Last night they’d sat in their respective homes, in their discordant time zones, and looked on their laptops at the White Cottage on the rental website. Philippa had sobbed. ‘Oh, Nell,’ she’d cried, ‘little baby Nell.’
‘Yo, girl!’ Nell answered. But it wasn’t Philippa this time.
‘It’s Dougie.’
‘Oh – I thought—’
‘Listen,’ he said. ‘Listen.’
So Nell listened thoughtfully to the ensuing silence.
‘I don’t know,’ Dougie said. ‘But. Nell – it’s Dougie.’
Jesus Christ! he chided himself. I sound just like my father.
‘Nell.’ Come on, man! ‘It was so good to see you. Danny, Frank and the cake. Colchester.’
Nell just listened. What else could she do? She’d simply have to wait for something to make sense.
‘I’ve been kicking myself ever since,’ Dougie said and then he muttered something unintelligible in Gaelic at himself before continuing. ‘I would have loved dinner. But – I don’t know. I’ve spent years. Years! Defiantly on my own. You know? I’ve been single too long. I’ve forgotten the tune. The dance.’
‘I never realized there was a tune,’ Nell said quietly. ‘And I’ve got two left feet when it comes to dancing.’
‘Look,’ said Dougie, tugging his hair like an old-fashioned doorbell, as if hoping something would miraculously open before him. ‘Look. Can I – please – could I see you this weekend? Do it all a bit better.’ His mother would tell him to spit it out. ‘I’ve thought of you so much,’ he said. ‘I think of you all the time.’ And then he waited. He calibrated the weight of silence at the other end of the phone and however she responded would be OK because he’d stood up tall and he’d been truthful out loud. In his own clumsy, fearful way, he’d been honest.
‘I’d like that,’ said Nell.
Dougie’s sigh of relief was so audible it made her laugh.
‘For what it’s worth,’ she said. ‘I’ve thought about you too.’
And she didn’t know, just then, how much this was indeed worth to Dougie.
He looked over the room to the box he’d brought back from the depths of the cupboard in his childhood bedroom.
‘Good,’ he said to Nell. ‘All good, then.’
‘Goodnight –oidhche mhath,’ she said clumsily.
‘Aye, Nell,’ said Dougie. ‘Mo chridhe.’
Nell assumed it meant sweet dreams or something.
‘My heart,’ Dougie said quietly into the stillness of his room.
And in Colchester, in her bare little flat, Nell sat on her under-used love seat in pleasant surprise and hugged the Harris Tweed cushion she’d bought in Tarbert. It was pinks and purples and reds and browns and the yarn was not without the characteristic tickle. But that only made her hold it all the tighter.
Slàinte
While Nell paced around her bedroom, assessing the various outfits she’d draped across her bed, Dougie lay in his and allowed thoughts to meander through his mind like a stream in high summer. The flat above was playing reggae and the beat and the bass were akin to his heartbeat. He felt calm; calm about the day ahead and steady about Nell. She was connected to Harris and yet independent from it too; she’d appeared out of nowhere in a place that was everything to him and she’d arrived bearing this lifelong attachment, this intrinsic bond. And in Colchester, being with her again, he knew he wasn’t imagining it, he knew it wasn’t one-sided, he knew they both felt it. And he knew, after so long, it was time. There was an inevitability and, intriguingly, it was this that brought a sense of calm.
