Page 65 of Little Wing
It was the last thing that Dougie wanted to do.
‘Even if it’s not your thing any more,’ Gordon said, ‘would you consider it today – here?’
Father and son had been cautious in each other’s company since the day on the hill, not wanting to continue the conversation, but not wanting an atmosphere either. Dougie had been out running. Gordon, walking or pottering. When they were together, they walked quietly around each other and into routine conversation. Dougie cooked and Gordon cleared the dishes. Gordon cooked, Dougie washed up. They watchedTaggart. They read peaceably in the sitting room, the tock of the clock, a wee dram, Ben’s eyebrows rising from one man to the other, as though the dog was umpiring a silent game of tennis. All the while, photos of Dougie’s mother on the shelves and the mantle, casting an eye.
Dougie was due home Wednesday. It hadn’t been mentioned.
‘Sure,’ he said. ‘I’ll come to church.’
Nell was not used to this type of Sunday. Sunday, for Nell, was a day for doing: washing, supermarket, bookshop, menu planning. The hotel was quiet when she went for breakfast and there was no sign of Al, only the young Australian waitress.
‘Gone to church, all of them,’ she told Nell. ‘I’m a Buddhist.’
In Tarbert, everything was shut. Nell had planned to buy the Harris Tweed cushion cover today, to pick up some souvenirs for the Chaffinch crew, whisky for Frank, some shortbread for Debbie, stock up on tablet for herself. All the while, she was going to ask about Florence, she was determined to ask anyone. Because someone somewhere must know something. But nowhere was open. The town was quiet; the sky was a still, uniform grey and the water hardly moved. Somehow it felt neither dead nor empty, just peaceful. Tomorrow was her last full day. She couldn’t afford for today to yield nothing and she cursed herself for her inactivity earlier on in her trip.
Maybe she’d find people enjoying a Sunday walk. Maybe they wouldn’t be from Aberdeen this time. They’d be local and, as luck would have it, maybe they’d know all about Florence. Danny’s voice piped up.Think positive. It was one of his sayings. Think positive, he’d say if something was dropped, if they ran out of tomatoes, if there were too many customers or too few. Think positive, he’d chant to himself going to clear tables, hoping for tips. Nell passed by the medical centre, closed Sundays. Dear Danny – how she missed him just then. How were they all, her motley and colourful little bunch, a world away on another island altogether?
The hire car, a nondescript hatchback, was now as familiar to Nell as her own car at home and she saw in its headlights and radiator grille a friendly face. Come on, it said. Hop in. Let’s go. She sat in the driver’s seat in the car park and just traced her finger over the badge on the steering wheel. Perhaps she’d go back to the Hushinish peninsula, sit by the busying burn next to the castle, maybe the shop would be open with its honesty box. If she left now, she’d have the time to hike to Crabhadail beach. Perhaps Sunday afternoons were when the locals did their long leisure walks and she’d meet them and they’d tell her all about Florence. She looked at the map. Leverburgh. She needed to go there and ask. She could take the road from Tarbert to the west. The infinitely scenic west with the views and the most famous stretches of white shell sand. Maybe everyone goes to those beaches on the west after church on Sundays.
This was the same route that had taken her to the Golden Road but today she didn’t turn off to the east, she drove on instead into a huge sky as the road burrowed along a route blasted through the colossal rock. And then into view came the unimagined beauty of the sands at Luskentyre and, beyond, the sound of Taransay. Following the sign, Nell took the single-track lane trailing the northern shore in rises and dips, bends and right angles, past the township, past a cemetery set peacefully on soft, rolling land and onwards to a car park. There were no cars. Think positive. There might be walkers.
Nell walked her way through the dunes and suddenly, stretching before her was a long and breathtaking beach. Over the water, Taransay. To the north, the Harris hills and the Hushinish peninsula. South, the sands ran on. However, apart from a convention of oystercatchers with their bright red bills and their tuxedos breaking the Sabbath busily working the shoreline, she found she was alone.
White white sand. The surface pinched by thousands of miniature pyramids sculpted by the wind. She’d walked far. And Nell wondered, why was there no one else around? She felt utterly fed up with all the wild beauty. Why was it that everywhere she’d been had been so empty? She’d travelled for miles; she’d travelled so far. She’d got bloody nowhere. Above, the sky was starting to bruise purple and a wind was whipping from the water; the marram grass on the dunes danced into and away from it while sand was blown along the surface of the beach like a fine rolling mist. The water was turning the colour of ink and the sea now slapped rather than lapped at the shore. It was orchestral. Nell looked around; she was in the midst of deepening drama and brooding.
And then the rain. Initially the drops fell so far apart that Nell could kid herself she was imagining it. Fat splashes put paid to that before the sky opened in slices and threw down walls of water, hard and fast.
Dougie didn’t mind the rain. In fact, he preferred running in the rain to harsh sunlight. And today, the wet would help wash away church. Church itself had been fine, comforting in some ways for its nostalgic scents and sounds. He’d smiled at faces known so well and not seen for so long; his favourite teacher these days stooped and grey, one of his classmates now gloriously rotund, those who had always seemed old suddenly positively ancient, those who’d been kids now grown and with families of their own. Hymns he thought he’d forgotten he found he sang word-perfect, his voice closed and reluctant at first, then shy, soon tuneful and strong. A smile from his father, watery-eyed. And on the way out, his mother’s best friend Peggy.
‘Is that you, Douglas?’
‘Aye, Peggy.’
‘Oh my! Gordon! Would you look at that! Oh my!’
And she stood on tiptoes to kiss Dougie; put her hand to his cheek and simply marvelled at the sight of him. He’d loved Peggy when he was young, with her vivaciousness that counterbalanced his mother’s calm. Always stories to tell and sweets in her pocket and her wee boy who looked up to Dougie as a superhero.
‘Are you here long? When did you come? Oh my! Douglas! Dougie! Angus is in Edinburgh these days – two little girls he has now!’
‘Send him my best.’ It was odd thinking of Angus as a father of two. And in Edinburgh too.
Peggy linked her arm through Dougie’s, squeezed him close against her, on her tiptoes again,sotto voce.
‘You here alone?’
‘Aye.’
‘No girl?’
‘No.’
Her grasp tightened.
‘Aw, Dougie!’
He knew what was coming.
‘Your mother, dear soul that she was, she wanted to see you settled more than anything in the world.’
