The Blackhouse

TWO

I have heard people who were born in the fifties describe their childhood in shades of brown. A sepia world. I grew up in the sixties and seventies, and my childhood was purple.

We lived in what was known as a whitehouse, about half a mile outside the village of Crobost. It was part of the community they called Ness, on the extreme northern tip of the Isle of Lewis, the most northerly island in the archipelago of the Outer Hebrides of Scotland. The whitehouses were built in the twenties of stone and lime, or concrete block, and roofed with slate, or corrugated iron, or tarred felt. They were built to replace the old blackhouses. The blackhouses had dry-stone walls with thatched roofs and gave shelter to both man and beast. A peat fire burned day and night in the centre of the stone floor of the main room. It was called the fire room. There were no chimneys, and smoke was supposed to escape through a hole in the roof. Of course, it wasn’t very efficient, and the houses were always full of the stuff. It was little wonder that life-expectancy was short.

The remains of the blackhouse where my paternal grandparents lived stood in our garden, a stone’s throw from the house. It had no roof, and its walls had mostly fallen down, but it was a great place to play hide and seek.

My father was a practical man, with a shock of thick black hair and sharp blue eyes. He had skin like leather that went the colour of tar in the summer, when he spent most of his waking hours outdoors. When I was still very young, before I went to school, he used to take me beachcombing. I didn’t understand it then, but I learned later that he was unemployed at that time. There had been a contraction in the fishing industry, and the boat he skippered was sold for scrap. So he had time on his hands, and we were up at first light scouring the beaches for whatever might have washed up in the night. Timber. Lots of timber. He once told me he knew a man who had built his whole house from timber washed up on the shore. He himself had got most of the timber for building our attic rooms from the sea. The sea gave us plenty. It also took plenty. There was barely a month went by when we didn’t hear of some poor soul drowning. A fishing accident. Someone in bathing and dragged out by the undertow. Someone falling from the cliffs.

We dragged all manner of stuff home from those trips to the beach. Rope, fishing net, aluminium buoys that my father sold to the tinkers. Pickings were even better after a storm. And it was after one that we found the big forty-five-gallon drum. Although the storm itself had subsided, the wind was still blowing a gale, the sea still high and angry, and thrashing at the coast. Great ragged clumps of broken cloud blew overhead at sixty miles an hour or more. And in between them, the sun coloured the land in bright, shifting patches of green and purple and brown.

Although the drum was unmarked, it was full and heavy, and my father was excited by our find. But it was too heavy for us to move on our own, leaning at an angle and half buried in the sand. So he organized a tractor and a trailer and some men to help, and by the afternoon we had it safely standing in an outbuilding on the croft. It didn’t take him long to open it and discover that it was full of paint. Bright purple gloss paint. Which is how it came to be that in our house every door and cupboard and shelf, every window and floorboard was painted purple. For all the years that I lived there.

My mother was a lovely woman with tight blond curls that she dragged back in a ponytail. She had pale, freckled skin, and liquid brown eyes, and I can’t ever remember seeing her wear make-up. She was a gentle person with a sunny disposition, but a fiery temper if you got on the wrong side of her. She worked the croft. It was only about six acres, and it ran in a long, narrow strip from the house down to the shore. Fertile machair land that was good grazing for the sheep that brought in most of the croft’s income from government subsidies. She also grew potatoes and turnips and some cereals, and grass for hay and silage. My lasting image of her is seated on our tractor in her blue overalls and black wellies, smiling self-consciously for a photographer from the local paper because she had won some prize at the Ness show.

By the time I came to start school, my father had got a job in the new oil-fabrication yard at Arnish Point in Stornoway, and he and a bunch of men from the village left early every morning in a white van on the long drive to town. So it was my mother who was to run me to school in our rusted old Ford Anglia on my first day. I was excited. My best friend was Artair Macinnes, and he was as eager to start school as I was. We were born only a month apart, and his folks’ bungalow was the nearest house to our croft. So we spent a lot of time together in those days before we started school. His parents and mine were never the best of friends, though. There was, I suppose, something of a class difference. Artair’s father was a teacher at Crobost School, where they not only took the seven years of primary, but also the first two years of secondary. He was a secondary teacher and taught maths and English.

I remember it was a blustery September day, low cloud bumping and bruising the land. You could smell the rain coming on the edge of the wind. I had a brown anorak with a hood, and wore short trousers that I knew would chafe if they got wet. My black wellies clopped against my calves, and I swung my stiff new canvas schoolbag over my shoulder, sandshoes and a packed lunch inside. I was keen to be off.

My mother was backing the Anglia out of the wooden shed that served as a garage, when a horn sounded over the noise of the wind. I turned to see Artair and his dad pulling up in their bright orange Hillman Avenger. It was second-hand, but it looked almost new, and put our old Anglia to shame. Mr Macinnes left the engine running and got out of the car and crossed to speak to my mother. After a moment, he came and put a hand on my shoulder and said I was to get a lift to the school with him and Artair. It wasn’t until the car was drawing away, and I turned to see my mother standing waving, that I realized I hadn’t said goodbye.

I know now how it feels on the day your child goes to school for the first time. There is an odd sense of loss, of irrevocable change. And, looking back, I know that’s what my mother felt. It was there in her face, along with the regret that she had somehow missed the moment.

Crobost School sat in a hollow below the village, facing north towards the Port of Ness, in the shadow of the church that dominated the village skyline on the hill above. The school was surrounded by open grazing, and in the distance you could just see the tower of the lighthouse at the Butt. On some days you could see all the way across the Minch to the mainland, the faintest outline of the mountains visible on the distant horizon. They always said if you could see the mainland the weather was going to turn bad. And they were always right.

There were a hundred and three kids in Crobost primary, and eighty-eight in the secondary. Another eleven fresh-faced kids started school with me that day, and we sat in class at two rows of six desks, one behind the other.

Our teacher was Mrs Mackay, a thin, grey-haired lady who was probably a lot younger than she seemed. I thought she was ancient. She was a gentle lady really, Mrs Mackay, but strict, and she had a caustic tongue on her at times. The first thing she asked the class was if anyone couldn’t speak English. Of course, I had heard English spoken, but at home we had only ever used the Gaelic, and my father wouldn’t have a television in the house, so I had no idea what she’d said. Artair put his hand up, a knowing smirk on his face. I heard my name, and all eyes in the class turned towards me. It didn’t take a genius to work out what Artair had told her. I felt my face going red.

‘Well, Fionnlagh,’ Mrs Mackay said in Gaelic, ‘it seems your parents didn’t have the good sense to teach you English before you came to school.’ My immediate reaction was anger at my mother and father. Why couldn’t I speak English? Didn’t they know how humiliating this was? ‘You should know that we only speak English in this class. Not that there’s anything wrong with the Gaelic, but that’s just how it is. And we’ll find out soon enough how quick a learner you are.’ I couldn’t raise my eyes from the desk. ‘We’ll start by giving you your English name. Do you know what that is?’

With something like defiance, I raised my head. ‘Finlay.’ I knew that because it’s what Artair’s parents called me.

‘Good. And since the first thing I’m going to do today is take the register, you can tell me what your second name is.’

‘Macleoid.’ I used the Gaelic pronunciation which, to an English ear, sounds something like Maclodge.

‘Macleod,’ she corrected me. ‘Finlay Macleod.’ And then she switched to English and ran through the other names. Macdonald, Macinnes, Maclean, Macritchie, Murray, Pickford … All eyes turned towards the boy called Pickford, and Mrs Mackay said something to him that made the class giggle. The boy blushed and muttered some incoherent response.

‘He’s English,’ a voice whispered to me in Gaelic from the next desk. I turned, surprised, to find myself looking at a pretty little girl with fair hair tied back in pleated pigtails, a blue bow at the end of each. ‘He’s the only one whose name doesn’t begin with m, you see. So he must be English. Mrs Mackay guessed that he’s the son of the lighthouse keeper, because they’re always English.’

‘What are you two whispering about?’ Mrs Mackay’s voice was sharp, and her Gaelic words made her even more intimidating to me because I could understand them.

‘Please, Mrs Mackay,’ pigtails said. ‘I’m just translating for Finlay.’

‘Oh, translating is it?’ There was mock wonder in Mrs Mackay’s voice. ‘That’s a big word for a little girl.’ She paused to consult the register. ‘I was going to re-seat you alphabetically, but perhaps since you are such a linguist, Marjorie, you’d better continue sitting next to Finlay and … translate for him.’

Marjorie smiled, pleased with herself, missing the teacher’s tone. For my part, I was quite happy to be sitting next to a pretty girl with pigtails. I glanced across the class and saw Artair glaring at me. I thought then it was because he had wanted us to sit together. I know now it was because he was jealous.

I took him to task in the playground at breaktime. ‘Why did you clype on me about not being able to speak the English?’

But he was blasé. ‘They were going to find out anyway, weren’t they?’ He slipped a small blue and silver inhaler from his pocket, shoved the nozzle in his mouth and sucked in a breath as he pressed down on the refill tube. I didn’t think anything of it. He’d had a puffer ever since I’d known him. He was asthmatic, my folks had said, which didn’t mean much to me then. I just knew that sometimes he found it difficult to breathe, and if he sucked on his puffer he would be okay.

A big, red-haired boy snatched it from him. ‘What’s this?’ He held it up to the light as if he might be able to see through to its inner secrets. It was my first encounter with Murdo Macritchie. He was taller and heavier built than the other boys, and had a shock of distinctive, carrot-red hair. I found out later that they called him Murdo Ruadh. Ruadh is the Gaelic word for red. Literally, Red Murdo. It was to distinguish him from his father, who was also Murdo Macritchie. He had black hair, and was called Murdo Dubh. Everyone ended up with a nickname, because so many of the given and surnames were the same. Murdo Ruadh had a brother, Angus, a couple of years older than us. They called him Angel because he was the bully in his year, and Murdo Ruadh seemed set to follow in his footsteps.

‘Gimme it!’ Artair tried to snatch back his puffer, but Murdo Ruadh held it out of reach. Sturdy though Artair was, he was no match for big Murdo, who tossed it to another boy who threw it to another, who tossed it back to Murdo. Already Murdo Ruadh, like all bullies, had drawn followers, like flies to shit. Feeble-minded boys, but smart enough to avoid being victims.

‘Come and get it then, wheezy.’ Murdo Ruadh was taunting him. And as Artair grabbed for it, he threw it on to one of the flies.

I could hear that distinctive rasping sound in Artair’s chest as he chased after his puffer, panic and humiliation rising together to block his airways. And I grabbed one of the acolytes and pulled the puffer from his hand. ‘Here.’ I handed it back to my friend. Artair sucked on it several times. I felt a hand on my collar, and an irresistible force propelled me up against the wall. Sharp roughcast drew blood from the back of my head. ‘What the hell do you think you’re playing at, Gaelic boy?’ Murdo Ruadh’s face was two inches from mine, and I could smell his rotten breath. ‘Can’t speak English. Can’t speak nothing.’ The irony, although it didn’t strike me at the time, was that his jibes were in Gaelic. It was the language of the playground. We only ever spoke English in class.

‘Leave him alone!’ It was just a small boy’s voice, but it carried such authority that it quieted the barracking of the boys who had gathered to see me get a doing from Murdo. A frown of incomprehension clouded Murdo Ruadh’s big, ugly face. Challenged twice in the space of a minute. He was going to have to put a stop to this. He let go of my collar and turned around. The boy was no bigger than me, but something in the way he held himself stopped Murdo Ruadh in his tracks. The only thing you could hear was the sound of the wind, and the laughter of the girls skipping on the other side of the playground. Everyone was watching Murdo. He knew his reputation was on the line.

‘Any trouble from you … and I’ll get my big brother.’

I wanted to laugh.

The other boy held Murdo Ruadh in his gaze, and you could see that Murdo was unnerved by it. ‘If you want to go running to your big brother …’ the boy spat out the words big and brother with something like contempt, ‘… then I’ll just have to tell my father.’

Murdo paled beneath that shock of wiry, red hair. ‘Well, just … just stay out my way.’ It was a feeble comeback, and everyone knew it. He pushed away through the group and across the playground, his followers trotting after him, wondering if maybe they’d backed the wrong horse.

‘Thanks,’ I said to the boy as the group dispersed.

But he just shrugged, like it was nothing. ‘Can’t stand fucking bullies.’ It was the first time I had ever heard anyone swear. He pushed his hands in his pockets and walked off towards the annexe.

‘Who is he?’ I asked Artair.

‘Don’t you know?’ Artair was amazed. I shook my head. ‘That’s Donald Murray.’ His tone was hushed and filled with awe. ‘He’s the minister’s son.’

The bell rang then, and we all headed back to class. It was just chance, really, that I was passing the headmaster’s door when he opened it and scanned the flood of pupils in the corridor for a likely candidate. ‘You, boy.’ He pointed a finger at me. I stopped in my tracks and he thrust an envelope into my hand. I had no idea what he said next, and just stood there with growing panic.

‘He doesn’t speak English, and Mrs Mackay said I had to do the translating for him.’ Marjorie was hovering on my shoulder like a guardian angel. She gave me a winning smile as I turned to look at her.

‘Oh, did she now? Translating, eh?’ The headmaster surveyed us with interest, raising one eyebrow in mock severity. He was a tall, bald man with half-moon glasses, and always wore grey tweed suits a size too big for him. ‘Then you’d better go with him, young lady.’

‘Yes, Mr Macaulay.’ It was amazing how she seemed to know everybody’s name. ‘Come on, Finlay.’ She slipped her arm through mine and steered us back out to the playground.

‘Where are we going?’

‘That note you’re holding is an order for the Crobost Stores, to restock the tuck shop.’

‘The tuck shop?’ I had no idea what she was talking about.

‘Don’t you know anything, stupid? The tuck shop’s where we buy sweets and crisps and lemonade and stuff in school. So we won’t go traipsing up and down the road to the store and risk getting knocked down.’

‘Oh.’ I nodded and wondered how she knew all this. It wasn’t until some time later that I discovered she had a sister in primary six. ‘So it’s only us that’s to get knocked down?’

She giggled. ‘Old Macaulay must have thought you looked like a sensible type.’

‘He got that wrong, then.’ I remembered my confrontation with Murdo Ruadh. She giggled again.

The Crobost Stores was in an old stone barn about half a mile away at the road end. It stood on the corner by the main road. It had two small windows, which never seemed to have anything in them, and a narrow doorway between them that opened into the shop. We could see it in the distance, next to a stone shed with a rust-red corrugated roof. The single-track road was long and straight, without pavements, and delineated by rotting wooden fenceposts leaning at angles. The fence made a poor job of keeping the sheep off the road. The tall grasses along the ditch were burned brown and bowed by the wind, and the heather was all but dead. On the slope beyond, houses were strung along the main road like square beads on a string, no trees or bushes to soften their hard edges. Just a jumble of fences and the rotting carcasses of dead cars and broken tractors.

‘So whereabouts in Crobost do you live?’ I said to Marjorie.

‘I don’t. I live on Mealanais Farm. It’s about two miles from Crobost.’ And she lowered her voice so that I could hardly hear it above the wind. ‘My mother’s English.’ It was like a secret she was telling me. ‘That’s why I can speak English without a Gaelic accent.’

I shrugged, wondering why she was telling me this. ‘I wouldn’t know.’

She laughed. ‘Of course not.’

It was cold and starting to rain, and I pulled up my hood, stealing a glance at the girl with the pigtails. They were blowing out behind her in the wind, and she seemed to be enjoying the sting of it in her face. Her cheeks had turned bright red. ‘Marjorie.’ I raised my voice above the wind. ‘That’s a nice name.’

‘I hate it.’ She glowered at me. ‘It’s my English name. But nobody calls me that. My real name’s Marsaili.’ Like Marjorie, she put the emphasis on the first syllable, with the s becoming a soft sh, as it always does in the Gaelic after an r, a Nordic inheritance from the two hundred years that the islands were ruled by the Vikings.

‘Marsaili.’ I tried it out to see if it fitted my mouth, and I liked the sound of it fine. ‘That’s even nicer.’

She flicked me a coy look, soft blue eyes meeting mine for a moment then dancing away again. ‘So how do you like your English name?’

‘Finlay?’ She nodded. ‘I don’t.’

‘I’ll call you Fin, then. How’s that?’

‘Fin.’ Again, I tried it out for size. It was short, and to the point. ‘It’s okay.’

‘Good.’ Marsaili smiled. ‘Then that’s what you’ll be.’

And that’s how it happened that Marsaili Morrison gave me the name that stuck with me for the rest of my life.

In those days, for the first week, the new intake at the school only stayed until lunchtime. We had our lunch and then left. And although Artair and I had been given a lift to school that first morning, we were expected to walk home. It was only about a mile. Artair was waiting for me at the gate. I had been held up because Mrs Mackay had called me back to give me a note for my parents. I could see Marsaili up ahead on the road, walking on her own. We had got soaked on the walk back from the stores and had spent the rest of the morning sitting on a radiator together drying off. The rain had stopped for the moment.

‘Hurry up, I’ve been waiting for you.’ Artair was impatient to get home. He wanted us to go searching for crabs in the rock pools below his house.

‘I’m going back by Mealanais Farm,’ I told him. ‘It’s a shortcut.’

‘What?’ He looked at me as if I were mad. ‘That’ll take hours!’

‘No, it won’t. I can cut back by the Cross — Skigersta road.’ I had no idea where that was, but Marsaili had told me that was the quick way from Mealanais to Crobost.

I didn’t even wait for him to object, but took off at a sprint up the road after Marsaili. By the time I caught up with her I was out of puff. She gave me a knowing smile. ‘I thought you would be walking home with Artair.’

‘I thought I’d walk with you up by Mealanais.’ I was dead casual. ‘It’s a shortcut.’

She looked less than convinced. ‘It’s a long way for a shortcut.’ And she gave a little shrug. ‘But I can’t stop you walking with me, if that’s what you want.’

I smiled to myself, and restrained an urge to punch the air. I looked back and saw Artair glaring after us.

The road to the farm branched off the other side of the main road before the turnoff to Crobost. Punctuated by the occasional passing place, it wound its way south-east across acres of peatbog that stretched off to the far horizon. But the land was more elevated here, and if you looked back you could see the line of the road as far as Swainbost and Cross. Beyond that, the sea broke white along the west coast below a forest of gravestones standing bleak against the sky at Crobost cemetery. The northern part of Lewis was flat and unbroken by hills or mountains and the weather swept across it from the Atlantic to the Minch, always in a hurry. And so it was always changing. Light and dark in ever-shifting patterns, one set against the other, rain, sunshine, black sky, blue sky. And rainbows. My childhood seemed filled by them. Usually doublers. We watched one that day, forming fast over the peatbog, vivid against the blackest of blue-black skies. It took away the need for words.

The road tipped down a gentle slope then, to a cluster of farm buildings in a slight hollow. The fences were in better repair here, and there were cattle and sheep grazing in pasture. There was a tall, red-roofed barn, and a big white farmhouse surrounded by a clutch of stone outbuildings. We stopped at a white-painted gate at the opening to a dirt track that ran down to the house.

‘Do you want to come in for some lemonade?’ Marsaili asked.

But I was sick with worry by this time. I had no real idea where I was or how to get home. And I knew I was going to be very late. I could feel my mother’s anger already. ‘Better not.’ I looked at my watch trying not to seem concerned. ‘I’m going to be a bit late.’

Marsaili nodded. ‘That’s what happens with shortcuts. They always make you late.’ She smiled brightly. ‘You can come and play on Saturday morning if you want.’

I pushed at a clump of turf with the toe of my welly and shrugged, playing it cool. ‘I’ll think about it.’

‘Please yourself, then.’ And she turned and skipped off down the track towards the big white farmhouse.

I’ve never really been sure how I managed to find my way home that first day, because after Mealanais the road petered out to a stony track. I had been walking along it for some time with a growing sense of despair when I saw the top of a car flashing past along the near horizon. I ran up the slope and found myself on what must have been the Cross — Skigersta road that Marsaili had talked about. Looking both ways along it, the road seemed to disappear into the peatbog. I didn’t know which way to turn. I was scared and close to tears. Some guiding hand must have prompted me to go left, because if I had turned right I would never have got home.

Even so, it was more than twenty minutes before I came to a turnoff where a crooked black and white signpost pointed uncertainly towards Crobost. I was running now, the tears burning my cheeks, the rims of my wellies rubbing my calves raw. I smelled the sea, and heard it before I saw it. And then as I came over the rise, there was the familiar silhouette of the Crobost Free Church looming over the disparate collection of houses and crofts that huddled around it on the cliff road.

As I reached our house my mother was pulling up outside it in the Ford Anglia. Artair was in the back seat. She jumped out of the car and grabbed me as if I might blow away in the wind. But her relief turned quickly to anger.

‘For God’s sake, Fionnlagh, where have you been? I’ve been up and down that road to the school twice looking for you. I’m just about demented.’ She brushed away tears from my face as I tried to stop more of them leaking from my eyes. Artair had got out of the car and was standing watching with interest. My mother glanced at him. ‘Artair came looking for you after school and didn’t know where you were.’

I gave him a look, and made a mental note that where girls were concerned he was not to be trusted.

I said, ‘I walked the girl from Mealanais Farm home. I didn’t know it would take so long.’

My mother was aghast. ‘Mealanais? Fionnlagh, what were you thinking? Don’t you ever do that again!’

‘But Marsaili wants me to go and play there on Saturday morning.’

‘Well, I forbid it!’ My mother had turned steely. ‘It’s far too far, and neither your father or me have the time to run you there and back. Do you understand?’

I nodded, trying not to cry, and she suddenly took pity on me, giving me the warmest of hugs, soft lips brushing my burning cheeks. That was when I remembered the note that Mrs Mackay had given me. I fumbled for it in my pocket and held it out.

‘What’s this?’

‘A note from the teacher.’

My mother frowned and took it and ripped it open. I watched her face flush, and she folded it quickly and stuffed it in the pocket of her overalls. I never knew what the note said, but from that day on we only ever spoke English in the house.

Artair and I walked to school the next morning. Artair’s dad had to go to Stornoway for some education meeting, and my mother was having a problem with one of her ewes. We walked most of the way in silence, battered by the wind, and in turn warmed by brief scraps of sunshine. The sea was throwing white-tops over the sand on the beach below. We were nearly at the bottom of the hill when I said, ‘Why did you pretend to my mother you didn’t know I’d gone to Mealanais?’

Artair puffed his indignation. ‘I’m older than you. I’d have got the blame for letting you go.’

‘Older? Four weeks!’

Artair cocked his head and shook it with great solemnity, like the old men who stood around the Crobost Stores on a Saturday morning. ‘That’s a lot.’

I was less than convinced. ‘Well, I told my mother I was going to your house to play after school. So you’d better back me up.’

He looked at me, surprised. ‘You mean, you’re not?’ I shook my head. ‘Where are you going, then?’

‘I’m going to walk Marsaili home.’ And I gave him a look that defied him to object.

We walked in more silence until we reached the main road. ‘I don’t know what you want to go walking girls home for.’ Artair was not pleased. ‘It’s sissy.’ I said nothing, and we crossed the main road and on to the single track that ran down to the school. There were other kids now, converging from all directions, and walking in groups of two and three towards the little clutch of school buildings in the distance. And suddenly Artair said, ‘Okay, then.’

‘Okay what?’

‘If she asks, I’ll tell your mum you were playing at ours.’

I stole a glance at him, but he was avoiding my eye. ‘Thanks.’

‘On one condition.’

‘What’s that?’

‘That I get to walk Marsaili home with you.’

I frowned my consternation, and gave him a long, hard look. But he was still avoiding my eye. Why, I wondered, would he want to walk Marsaili home if it was so sissy?

Of course, all these years later I know why. But I had no idea then that our conversation that morning marked the beginning of a competition between us for Marsaili’s affections that would last through all our schooldays, and beyond.