Then there was work. The pile of paper he knew would be waiting on his desk. Sandy Wilson’s expense forms, a day’s labour in themselves. A report to complete for the Procurator Fiscal about a serious assault in a bar in Lerwick.
And Fran. He’d arranged to pick her up at Ravenswick at seven-thirty. He’d need to get back to his house to grab a shower before then. This was a date, wasn’t it? The first real date. They’d been knocking around together for six months, friends, but now he felt giddy as a teenager.
He arrived at her house dead on time, his hair still wet, uncomfortable in a new shirt which had a starchy, stiff feel to it, faint creases down the front where it had been folded in the packet. He was always nervous around clothes. What did you wear to a party to celebrate the opening of an art exhibition? When the woman who haunted your dreams and distracted your days was one of the artists? When you hoped, that night, to take her to bed?
She was nervous too. He could tell that as soon as she climbed into the car. She was dressed up in something slinky and black, looking so sophisticated that he couldn’t believe he’d have a chance with her. Then she gave that quirky grin that always flipped his stomach, made him feel he’d just spent three hours in The Good Shepherd in a westerly gale. He squeezed her hand. He wanted to tell her how stunning she looked, but because he couldn’t think how without seeming crass or patronizing, they drove all the way to Biddista in silence.
The gallery was called the Herring House: once they had dried fish here. It was at the end of a low valley, right on the water, on the west coast. Further along the beach there was a small stone pier where the fishing boats had pulled up to unload their catch; a couple of men still kept boats on the beach. Walk out of the door and there’d be the smell of seaweed and salt. Bella Sinclair said that when she’d first taken over the place there was still a whiff of the herring in the walls.
Bella was the other artist exhibiting. Perez knew her, as almost everyone in Shetland knew her. To chat to at parties, but mostly second-hand, through the stories that were passed around about her. She was a Shetlander, Biddista-born and -bred. Wild in her youth, they said, but now rather unapproachable, intimidating. And rich.
He still felt flustered after the rush from the plane and by the sense that this was his one chance with Fran. He was so clumsy with people’s feelings. What if he got it wrong? When he held out his hand to shake Bella’s he saw that it was trembling. Perhaps too he’d picked up Fran’s anxiety about how her paintings would be received. When they began to circulate among the guests, to look at the work displayed on the bare walls, he felt the tension building even more. He could hardly take in what was happening around him. He talked to Fran, nodded to acquaintances, but there was no real engagement. He felt the pressure build against his forehead. It was like waiting for a thunderstorm on a warm, heavy day. It was only when Roddy Sinclair was brought on to play for them that he could begin to relax for the first time. As if the rain had finally come.
Roddy stood framed by light in the middle of the space. It was nine in the evening, but still sunshine came through the windows cut into the tall, sloping roof. It was reflected from the polished wooden floor and the whitewashed walls and lit his face. He stood still for a moment, grinning, waiting until the guests started to look at him, absolutely sure he would get their attention. Conversation faltered and the room grew quiet. He looked at his aunt, who gave him a smile which was at once indulgent and grateful. He lifted his fiddle, gripped it under his chin and waited again. There was a moment of silence and he began to play.
They had known what to expect and he didn’t disappoint them. He played like a madman. It was what he was known for. The show. That, and the music. Shetland fiddle music, which had somehow caught the popular imagination, was played on national radio, raved about by television chat-show hosts. Impossible to believe – a Shetland boy in the tabloids for drinking champagne and dating teenage actresses. He’d hit the big time suddenly. A rock star had named him as his favourite performer and then he was everywhere, in newspapers and on the television and in glossy celebrity magazines.
He hopped and jigged, and the respectable middle-aged people, the art critic from the south, the few great and good who’d driven north from Lerwick, set down their glasses and began to clap to the rhythm. He fell to his knees, lay back slowly so that he was flat on the floor and continued playing without missing a beat, then sprang to his feet and still the music continued. In one corner of the gallery an elderly couple were dancing, surprisingly light-footed, arms linked.
The playing was so furious that the watchers’ eyes couldn’t follow his fingers. Then suddenly the music stopped. The boy bowed. The people cheered. Perez had seen him play many times before, but was still moved by the performance, felt a jingoistic pride in it, which made him uncomfortable. He looked at Fran. Perhaps this was too sentimental for her. But she was cheering along with the rest.
Bella walked from the shadow into the light to join Roddy. She held out an arm, a self-consciously dramatic gesture to acknowledge the performance.
‘Roddy Sinclair,’ she said. ‘My nephew.’ She looked around her. ‘I’m just sorry that there weren’t more people here to see him.’ And in fact the room only contained a scattering of people. Her comment made it suddenly obvious. She must have realized that because she frowned again. Clearly she wished she hadn’t mentioned it.
The boy bowed again, grinned, raised his fiddle in one hand and his bow in another.
‘Just buy the paintings,’ he said. ‘That’s why you’re here. I’m only the warm-up act. The pictures are the main attraction.’
He turned away from them and took a glass of wine from a long trestle laid out against the one bare wall in the room.
Chapter Two
Fran had already drunk several glasses of wine. She was more nervous than she’d expected to be. When she’d worked on a London magazine she’d attended dozens of these events: first nights, openings, exhibitions. She’d circulated, chatted, remembered names and faces, hidden her boredom. But this was different. Some of the paintings on these walls were hers. She felt raw and exposed. If people rejected or dismissed her work, it would be as if they were dismissing her. She wanted to shout to the people who were catching up on island gossip, who stood with their back to the art: Look properly at the images on the walls. Take them seriously. I don’t care if you hate them, but please take them seriously.
And there were fewer people here than she’d expected there to be. Bella’s openings were always well attended, but even some of the people Fran had invited – people she’d considered friends – had failed to show. Perhaps they had only been polite when she’d mentioned the exhibition. They’d seen her art and didn’t care for it. At least not enough to turn out on a beautiful evening, when there were other things to do. This was the time of year for barbecues and being on the water. Fran took the poor turnout personally.
Perez came up behind her. She sensed the movement and turned. The first thought, as it always was when he caught her in an unguarded moment, was that she wanted to sketch him. Her fingers itched to be holding charcoal. It would be a fluid drawing, no hard edges. Very dark. Perez was a Shetlander. His family had lived in the islands since the sixteenth century, but there was no Viking blood in him. An ancestor had been washed ashore after the wreck of a ship from the Armada. At least that was the story he told. She wondered if he’d just bought into the myth because it was a way of explaining his difference. The strange name. There were a few people in the islands with his dark hair and olive skin – black Shetlanders, the locals called them – but in this gathering he stuck out, looked exotic and foreign.