Page 59 of Little Wing
Eventually, the road ran out at Hushinish. Nell stilled the engine and said oh my God over and over again. A swooping and deep bay where the beach was of the whitest shell sand and the sea was in bands rippling from deep navy to indigo through to ultramarine and finally a dazzling cerulean close to the shore. Nell thought it could well be mistaken for the Caribbean were it not for the wind that rocked her car and wailed through invisible gaps in the windows.
The beach was empty, not a footprint to be seen, and with her anorak inflating and her hands cupped over her ears, Nell tracked a ragged line to the shore. All her senses were accosted. The feel of the sand beneath her feet, the wind rocking her this way and that, messing with her hair, eliciting tears from her eyes and snot from her nose, the taste of salt on her lips, the sounds of water and air, the views of Taransay and South Harris over the water. Please let Florence have been here. Please let her have stood here and felt what I’m feeling now.
The sands stretched inland and she followed them through the machair to the other side of the peninsula where she stood and looked out over a deluge of tumbled pink granite to the island of Scarp. To her right, a trail led on and a couple with a dog walked towards her. This was her chance, just as Al had predicted.
‘Hi! I like your dog.’
‘Hello!’ they said. ‘You walking to Crabhadail?’
‘Er – should I be?’
‘You’ll want to get going if you are. Bit of weather coming in.’
‘What’s there? How long does it take?’
‘Three hours. Views. And the best beach. That’s what’s there.’
‘Actually, I’m looking for someone.’
‘Oh? We haven’t seen a soul, have we, Steven? Not a soul.’
‘No – I mean, I’ve come here to see if I can find out what happened to someone.’
‘A missing person, you say?’
‘Well, yes. Florence Lawson – that was her name. She came here in 1969. From England. She was sixteen. She was pregnant – with me.’
‘Oh! Oh, now there’s a thing! Oh my!’
‘You wouldn’t have known her, would you? Might it ring a bell?’
‘Oh, but we’re from Aberdeen, darling. We’re just here on our holidays. But out here back then! Outhere? Sixteenyou say she was? And pregnant? Oh my.’
Nell waited for the couple to disappear from sight. She had no intention of walking for three hours, no matter how beautiful some bloody beach might be. A beach is a beach is a bloody beach, she thought to herself and the black wingtips of the gannets seemed to echo the darkening of her mood. Sand and more sand and all that sea. She laughed harshly at herself. It struck her that any clues would have been washed away years ago. In its place, just sand and sea. Had Florence wanted to be found, she could have ensured it. Instead, her mother had given her secrets to the tide to carry away and her story, like footsteps in the sand, she’d left to the waves.
Dougie
It took three nights for Dougie to know exactly where he was on waking and for thoughts of his life in London to settle dreamlike, only mistily flitting across the back of his mind’s eye silently and without drama. On the third morning he woke up early yet rested and felt no need to leap up, grab his trainers and pound miles. Instead, he lay in bed staring at the ceiling and felt sweeping gratitude that, no matter how often it had been repainted, the same crack always reappeared. Lazily, he followed its passage, knowing the route by heart. Just then, Dougie decided he wouldn’t see cracks as something to gloss over; instead he’d find comfort in their continuity and determination. This crack never reached anywhere. It just stopped, took a little fork off towards the centre of the ceiling and then stopped again. That was its journey.
Dougie looked at his clock and said fuck me! forty minutes philosophizing about a crack along the ceiling! He told himself to haul his arse out of bed and go for a run now. But ten minutes later he was still lying there as it slowly occurred to him how he hadn’t so much forgotten the pace of life here as he had actively denigrated it over the last few years. Slowly, he sat up, swung his legs out of bed and looked down at his toes scrunching into the rug. He remained doing so for quite some time, contemplating how he’d trained his brain to think that life lacked meaning if it lacked pace. He knew he’d conditioned himself to believe that to be busy was to be productive. He’d spent the last few years chasing the same goal each day: to not have the time to think. But actually, just then, it felt good to be just a little more still. His feet on the sheepskin rug. One hand on the edge of the bed, the other loosely across his knee. He tuned in to the sound of his breathing, the sensation of air in his nostrils warm cold warm cold warm. He noticed the feeling of his leg hair being pulled just slightly by his hand. Fingernails. His heartbeat. The scorch to his eye on casting a glance straight to the daylight streaming in through the window. Birdsong beyond. A creak somewhere in the house. Above his head, his lifelong friend, the ceiling crack.
Amadan gòrach, he said to himself.Daft bugger. Get up.
Gordon liked a hearty whistle in the mornings; it seemed to him that whistling could spin a positive note to the start of any day. And Ben seemed to enjoy it as much as he did, the dog turning circles and skittering around on the flagstones. Gordon had whistled brightly on noting Dougie’s trainers were gone from the front door the first two mornings his son was home. But today they were there and there was silence upstairs and he and Ben looked at each other and agreed that they’d keep the house soundless for a wee while longer.
Footsteps across the landing. The clunk of the door. The flush of the loo. The sound of the shower. Gordon wet his lips and puckered them and found his tune. Ben found his dance. And that’s what Dougie heard as he came down the stairs.
‘Morning.’
‘Morning.’
‘Porridge?’
‘Aye – thanks, Da.’
‘You not off running?’
Dougie looked deep into the porridge as a fortune teller might read tea leaves. He gave a stir. Stilled the spoon. How long had he conditioned himself to believe it was better to run than to walk? To start or end the day with his heart racing? He looked across the table to Gordon. His father was wearing his mother’s pinny – he always did in the kitchen, even though he was the tidiest man Dougie knew.
