Page 52 of Little Wing
Her fellow traveller’s eyebrows rose then fell and he busied himself with his newspaper.
Know what? Dougie wondered. What does she just need to know?
He’d counted twenty-two people in departures. And that woman was the only one anxiously glancing at the board, picking at her nails and looking like she was embarking on an expedition she was both ill prepared for and dreading.
‘Get you a drink, Da? A snack?’
Gordon was thirsty. Irrationally, though, he didn’t want Dougie to wander off. He’d got him this far and felt compelled to keep him close. It was akin to the fear he’d felt when Dougie was just four, when they took him to visit family in Oban and the boy kept bee-lining into the roads. ‘I’ll get it,’ he said, refusing his son’s money with an expression of confusion and consternation.
Dougie watched Gordon at the vending machine, behind the girl who just needed to know. She’d dropped loose change all over the floor and his father was helping her gather it up. She went back to her seat with a packet of crisps she didn’t open and a bottle of water whose cap she simply twisted off and on.
Gordon returned with snacks and handed them out to Dougie like they were mid-picnic but Dougie found he was no longer hungry. He wasn’t so much ambivalent about this trip to his childhood home as he was apprehensive. What was it that awaited him – the island’s open arms or the proof that he no longer believed his home to be there?
To Stornoway, to Tarbert
Nell had never been on a plane so small. It was unnerving, it was noisy, they were still on the ground and she was wishing that she’d chosen Florence’s endless trudge of trains and buses and boats no matter how interminable. She felt fractious and emotional, scared of the plane, troubled by this distant land she was journeying to, burdened by the secrets it would either reveal or protect. But they lumbered into the sky and, across the aisle, Dougie chanced to see how the same girl who spoke to herself out loud and threw her money around the airport didn’t dare look out the window, staring instead at the seat back in front of her.
But it didn’t take long before the route headed for the Highlands and the plane felt stable and, at that point, Nell’s attention was drawn to the barren beauty of the hills, sunlight and shadows moving in swathes, the climb and the fall and the swoop down deep into ancient lochs. There was still snow on the highest ground and the westward-facing rock faces showed the scars of timeworn battles against the elements. There seemed to be a pervading sense of melancholy alongside the grandeur. Isolated dwellings clung to the hills or tiptoed to the edge of the water and Nell wondered who lived there and why.
And then they were flying out and over the sea, millpond calm, and the drama appeared to be behind them. She could breathe now. She could eat the crisps she’d bought at the airport.
And so here are the Outer Hebrides. And Nell thought, what kind of land is this? Torn and pocked like moth-eaten fabric, water water water commandeering all the spaces in between. She looked down on the frayed edge of Lewis’s coastline along which further small nuggets of land littered the sea, too small to be called islands. She watched how the land appeared to move when clouds cast mauve shadows while sunlight added clashes of gold and greens. The inland water shone still and violet but the sea coursed swathes of dull grey and bright silver, rich navy and, occasionally near the coast, turquoise too.
Descending, now, to Stornoway. Out of the window, down there, a small number of houses every now and then, lining up politely with their tended rectangles of a different green. And down. And down. An effortless landing. A smooth flight. And welcome. Steòrnabhaigh.
Gordon had his car and he and Dougie were making their way to it. He was careful not to make anything of how his son, on leaving the plane, had planted his feet for a long moment and just breathed, quietly but deeply. Dougie hadn’t brought much, just a rucksack light enough to be slung over one shoulder. His walking boots stayed at the house anyway and, between them and his trainers, what more did he need? He’d brought his camera. And he’d brought a lot of film. Perhaps he’d take photos once he’d helped his dad, if he found himself with the time, the inclination. It would depend on the weather, on how he felt, it would depend on so much.
‘Would you care to drive, Douglas?’
‘I don’t mind, Da.’
‘I’m tired, so I am.’
‘Let me drive then. How’s she going, the old girl?’
‘Temperamental. But I wouldn’t part with her for the world.’
‘Strange to be back.’
Gordon sensed that his son hadn’t intended to say so out loud. He’d make no mention of it. Strange, aye – but good.
Nell wasn’t sure how long she’d be staying so she had packed for all eventualities, which ultimately filled a sizeable suitcase. She’d wondered about the weather and decided to err on the side of caution and cliché and bring with her everything that she owned that was waterproof and everything she had that was sturdy in fabric or heel. She felt a bit stupid and self-conscious; it seemed everyone else on the flight had travelled light and here she was lugging her stuff in search of a car hire office that was so small she had missed it. She felt stressed and tired. She knew where she was heading and that she was unlikely to get lost, that there were only half a dozen public roads anyway. The drive was apparently straightforward with stupendous views, but Nell was overcome by an evaporating sense of why she needed to get there.
Through the relatively nondescript edge of town she drove until quite suddenly the bleak growl of sodden moors opened to either side, the road continued straight, unfurling for some way before it started to turn and bank and undulate, water to the left and the land ahead increasingly lumpy. Everyone must be at home, there were few cars on the road. Every now and then, simple plain houses nestled on a hillside or near the shore. But the hills of North Harris were coming and the views over Loch Seaforth were breathtaking. Two cyclists hunkered down over their handlebars as the vast hairpin bends hauled the road higher into the Harris hills, the upward drama of the land taunting while beckoning. Nell had never driven roads like this and she’d never seen a landscape like it either. She was mesmerized by it all, by how the heathery surface looked so soft, how the land soared and swooped, how some of the hills were finished with scone-like tops while the higher peaks exposed their slashed edges and monumental faces. And the water, always the water; navy silver black. She was but a tiny speck in a strange and ageless land; a place which seemed to be closer in time to the moment of its violent creation and yet felt more ancient than anywhere she’d ever been. She was traversing a land formed of Lewisian gneiss in melancholy grey streaked with darkness and light, folded, flawed and heaving, and three billion years old. It made Roman Colchester seem prosaically modern.
Back home could have been on the other side of the world and in another time zone. And Nell wondered, how were they all at the Chaffinch today? Did everything run smoothly? And will Frank be all right? Will there be walnuts for the birds, will Frank cook spaghetti and toast? It’s dustbin day tomorrow. And under her breath, glancing to her left and her right, at all this unimagined beauty and solemn, solitary strangeness, she murmured everything will be all right, everyone will be OK.
Finally, Tarbert, the town on the cinched waist of land between North and South Harris, nestling at the foot of Beinn na Teanga. Nell pulled in and re-read the directions to the hotel even though she’d already seen a sign for it and knew it was just ahead. For the first time now, there was a short run of pavement and a few people. Every time she saw anyone of a certain age she wondered, did you know Florence? Might you know what happened? And she wondered, did you ever seeme, as a baby? But she told herself to shut up. You sound ridiculous. Perhaps no one would remember anything. It was likely that Florence was forgotten.
It was normal for Gordon and Dougie to speak little in the car but it was an affable quiet rather than a loaded silence. Every now and then, Dougie would ask after some person or other and at irregular intervals Gordon would pass comment on a vista that was looking fine this afternoon, or a building that was for sale or that the car going the other way belonged to Old MacKenzie.
‘Your man MacKenzie,’ said Dougie. ‘He’s stillalive?’
‘Aye, son.’
‘He’s stilldriving?’
‘Aye.’
