Kids in gangs and couples and singles streamed down the hill towards the war monument, warmth and smoke rising from them like steam in the cold November air. It was a clear night, I remember, the blackest of skies studded with stars. There was, for once, no wind, and frost lay thick on the tarmac, glistening on every blade of grass.
I stood at the top of the hill, wrapping my coat around me for warmth, and scanned the bodies making their way carefully down the slope, everyone holding on to everyone else for fear of slipping on the frost. And there they were. Ruairidh and Seonag. Hand in hand, nearly at the bridge by now. Even from this distance I could hear them laughing, imagining that it was me they were laughing at. Or about. I cursed myself for being so damned cool during that first dance, and turned to head off in the other direction towards home. Only to find Uilleam walking gingerly by my side.
‘Where’s Seonag?’ he said.
‘In hell I hope,’ I growled at him. And in spite of the frost and the risk of slipping, I ran the rest of the way home, tears turning icy to burn my face as they tracked their way down my cheeks.
My folks were long in their beds by the time I got back, so at least I didn’t have to face them. I slammed my bedroom door and undressed quickly, slipping beneath the cold covers to curl up foetally on my side, sobbing my anger and hurt into the pillow.
Of course, I couldn’t sleep. Not before Seonag returned, and even then it was hours before I finally drifted off. I heard her coming in, softly shutting the door behind her. The rustle of clothes as she undressed before climbing into bed. I kept my back turned, fighting the urge either to cry or to punch her. Hopefully she thought I was asleep.
To my acute irritation I heard her breathing grow shallow, and then the soft purr of sleep as she drifted off long before I did.
When we got up in the morning not a word was said about the night before, and we never once discussed it in the weeks and months that followed. Though as far as I was aware nothing, in the end, ever came of it.
It was five years later that Seonag and I next came into conflict over Ruairidh. By then we had already started growing apart and had barely seen each other during our first year away from the island, studying at different colleges on the mainland. As it turned out, for me at least, this time provided the straw that well and truly broke the camel’s back.
Both of us were lucky enough to secure summer jobs at Linshader Fishing Lodge at the mouth of the river Grimersta on the south-west coast of Lewis. The lodge was just a few miles south of Balanish, but they were live-in jobs because of the unsocial hours we were forced to keep. Having won prizes in home economics in fourth and fifth years at the Nicolson, I was allocated the position of cook’s assistant. Seonag was put on the housekeeping rota, which was kept on its toes by a lady from nearby Linshader village who used to leave Pan Drops, a classic Free Church white mint sweetie, in hidden places around the lodge so she could check that the girls were cleaning everywhere.
I was lucky, working in the kitchen, that I could just wear jeans and T-shirts and an apron. The housemaids had to wear kilts and black blouses. Seonag hated it. We shared a room, but during the day had very little contact because of our very different duties.
The lodge was a grand old place dating back to Victorian times and built in the early 1870s. It sat right down on the shore of Loch Roag, at the mouth of the river, a long two-storey white building. The hill that rose behind it was covered in Scots pines planted in the nineteenth century by the island’s then owner, James Matheson, who’d made his fortune selling opium to the Chinese. What today we would probably call drug-running, but back then appeared to be the respectable pursuit of lords, admirals and prime ministers.
It had recently been extended at the north end, and against the south gable stood a long green-roofed shed that housed the ghillies and the watchers.
It had an atmosphere all of its own, that place. Sometimes mired in the mist that would drift in off the water on a still morning, or lost in the smirr that dropped down from the moor. I came into the loch once on a boat just as the sun was coming up, and mist like smoke rose up all around the lodge in the early-morning light, moving wraithlike among the trees. The water itself was alive with salmon breaking the still surface as they headed in from the sea on their journey upriver, and otters played around the stone slipway. It was magical.
Nothing magical about the hours I kept, though. Up at the crack of dawn, first to serve tea to the guests in their beds, then a cooked breakfast in the dining room before they headed off with packed lunches prepared by me and the cook to spend the day fishing somewhere up on the water system. The lodge accommodated sixteen guests, very often members of the syndicate that owned it, or their friends. Wealthy folk. Judges and newspaper editors, successful businessmen and Tory peers. Folk the like of which I had never come across before, but all of whom, nearly without exception, treated me with the greatest generosity and kindness.
I have very fond memories of the summer I spent at that lodge. I got my education there, too. I had known nothing of writing rooms and wine cellars. And although it seems hard to believe now, I had never even tasted wine. I remember one morning doing a nosey and wandering into what they called the writing room, thinking that all the guests were out fishing. To my surprise, there was an elderly gentleman sitting at the roll-top bureau scribbling in a large notebook. I apologized immediately and began to back out. But he insisted I stay, poured me a coffee from the pot, and asked me all about myself. At first I was shy, but he put me so much at my ease that before long we were sharing laughs and inconsequential secrets. At some point the housekeeper had come in to take away dirty cups, and afterwards she cornered me in the kitchen and said, ‘Do you know who you were talking to in there?’
‘Well, no,’ I said. And in truth I had never even thought to ask his name, although he seemed to know mine.
‘That was the poet laureate,’ she said in hushed tones. I later looked him up in an encyclopaedia to discover that he had been recommended for the job by the Prime Minister, and appointed by the Queen. These were circles I was not used to moving in at Balanish.
The girls all went to bed for a few hours in the afternoon, before getting up again to prepare afternoon tea when the ghillies brought the guests back from the fishing at five. And then we served dinner at seven-thirty following three loud strokes on the gong.
We were six girls in all, and the housekeeper, of course. Including the gamekeeper, there were four ghillies and four watchers. The watchers mostly slept during the day, and were out at night and the early morning keeping an eye open for poachers. When Seonag and I arrived there were only three ghillies. The fourth was yet to arrive. An experienced lad, they said, who had been coming for several years now.
He turned out to be Ruairidh Macfarlane.
I had only been there a few days when I discovered a lodge tradition. It was my birthday, and I suppose it was probably Seonag who told everyone, but that evening before dinner, the boys all came looking for me.
The cook knew what was coming, and there was a grin all over her face when the ghillies and watchers came trooping into the kitchen. ‘Come on then, Niamh,’ the gamekeeper said to me. He was an older man, a face like leather after years at sea. They called him Staines after a character in a TV series called Captain Pugwash that was years before my time.