Raven Black

Chapter Nineteen

At home that night, Sally kept thinking of the first time she'd met Robert. Really met him. Of course she'd known who he was and seen him about before that. Everyone knew who he was. His father was leader of the council and this year would be Guizer Jarl during the Up Helly Aa celebrations. Robert would be in his squad following close behind him in the procession. Everyone said Michael Isbister was a natural choice. A good man. Robert had talked about it and she knew he was proud of his father. Proud and a bit jealous. One day, he said, he'd be Jar!

himself. Imagine what it would be like, walking through the streets, all the folks looking at you.

She'd first met Robert to talk to, to touch, in the autumn at a dance in the hall to support some charity her father was working with. Something to do with rare plants. Or dolphins. It was always a cause like that where her father was concerned. She hadn't wanted to go. What would they say at school when they found out?

They didn't give her such a hard time now Catherine was on the scene, but even so, they could make her life pretty miserable. Her mother hadn't been keen either, but although you always thought of Margaret as being the strong one, when it came down to it her father usually got his way, and Margaret turned out anyway. In martyr mode.

Sally hadn't made much effort getting ready. She'd been wearing that dreadful dress her mother had bought her from the catalogue last Christmas. No make-up. She hadn't even bothered with concealer on her zits. And it had been as boring as she'd suspected it would be. A couple of old men sawing away on fiddles. A fat lass squeezing an accordion. The pooled supper. She'd eaten more than she should, couldn't help it. There'd been nothing else to do.

Then Robert had turned up. Slightly drunk obviously. Ready for a laugh. What would he have been doing there otherwise? It had been the first cold night of the season and every time the door of the hall opened a blast of cold air came in. And one of the blasts had blown in Robert, red-faced, laughing, with a couple of his mates. Big and beautiful like a huge Norse god. The old people hadn't liked it. She could hear them tutting about the state he was in, and what a shame it was letting his father down like that. But what could you expect, they said, the way his mother carried on.

She'd watched from her hard wooden chair, tilting it back to rest against the wall. Her parents were dancing, her mother enjoying herself despite all the moaning that had gone on beforehand, looking OK actually for her age. She was a good dancer, light on her feet, although she had a square, solid frame. A bar had been laid out at the end of the hall and that was where Robert ended up. Sally hadn't been drinking, though she'd been tempted to sneak one when her parents weren't looking. Her father looked over her mother's shoulder and smiled at her. Sally thought he seemed happy. She wished she understood him better and could tell what he was thinking. She smiled back briefly, but it was Robert she had her eyes on.

That was when he moved away from the bar, launched himself off from it and came across the floor to Sally.

He leaned against the wall beside her. Despite the draughts from the door she felt suddenly very warm, sweating even.

‘Do you want to dance?' And he'd reached down and taken her hand and pulled her to her feet, just as one of the fiddlers called folks up for an eightsome reel. She still remembered the feel of his hand, strong against her back, guiding her through the steps, though she knew the dance as well as he did. And seeing him so close, the heavy shoulders and the twist of muscle in his arms, his legs flexed slightly as if he were balancing on the deck of a ship, she'd thought he was what a man should look like, not like the skinny boys in the house room at school or the flabby teachers. Later, when her parents were caught up in a dance of their own, Robert had pulled her outside, and he'd kissed her, holding her buttocks and pressing her into him. She hadn't been able to enjoy it properly because she was worried that her mother would appear at the door and see her, and as the music slowed she'd hurried away inside, rubbing her lips with the back of her hand.

Since then Sally had dreamed of him. After a bad day at school it had only been the thoughts of him which kept her sane. And now the dreams returned. It didn't matter that in the pub she'd had doubts about him; she needed the fantasies more than ever. She arrived home at exactly the time she would have done if she'd caught the bus, drank tea with her mother as she did every afternoon. Then, when her mother marked primary six's arithmetic, she sat in her bedroom, pretending she was doing homework, and dreamed about Robert.

When she went through into the kitchen her father was home from work. He'd taken off his boots and stood just inside the door in his stockinged feet. Her mother was in the same room, but they weren't talking or even looking at each other. Perhaps they'd been arguing and had stopped when they heard her coming from her room, although that was unlikely. Sally had never heard them raise voices to each other. Usually her mother did as she pleased, but if Alex was insistent Margaret gave in quickly. She knew there was no point in putting up a fight. In matters which meant a lot to him he was stubborn, immovable as rock.

What meant most to him was his work. That was what Margaret said occasionally, muttering it under her breath like a defiant schoolgirl, not quite brave enough to say it out loud. Sally had heard her though. Perhaps Margaret had meant herself to be heard. Anyway, she sensed Alex's work as a presence, forcing her parents apart, like the experiment they'd done in physics in the first year, when the magnets couldn't come together no matter how hard you pushed them.

Now, Sally's mother was doing her best to be pleasant.

'Good day?' she asked, speaking to Alex, not to Sally. Sally had already had the questions about her day at school.

'All right,' he said. 'There's been some oil found on a beach near Haraldswick. Some skipper washing out his hold. You'd think by now they'd know..:

'This time of year, there's not much harm it can do. By the spring when the birds come back to nest, it'll all have gone: Margaret couldn't help herself. She thought he overreacted where his work was concerned. All those seabirds.

Did it really matter if one or two were lost?

'That's hardly the point: He scowled, shook himself out of his jacket, hung it on the hook in the porch. Sally wondered sometimes why he'd married at all. Without Margaret he'd be able to work all the time, glued to the computer in winter, out on the islands when the light days came.

She supposed they loved each other, or had done once. She didn't think they'd have sex now of course. At their age you wouldn't expect it. They probably hadn't done it since she was born. But she thought her father probably missed it. She saw the way he looked at women. Younger women. And sometimes he touched Margaret, slid his hand over her body, and Sally thought there was something desperate in the gesture. Desperate and a bit pathetic.

Her mother had cooked a chicken for tea, a treat midweek. 'Something to cheer us up a bit,' she'd said when Sally came in. Sally had smelled it cooking when she was in her bedroom, had been looking forward to it, but now she was sitting at the table she couldn't face it. Usually her mother would have made a fuss, spoken about good food going to waste, but today she just seemed concerned. Sally excused herself from the table and left her parents there, eating in silence.