Thursday, February 14, 2019
Maybe it will be all right. Maybe I’ve just become too used to it never being all right. It’s possible. That the angry, fearful dread living inside my stomach for the last three months is less an ill omen than old ballast that’s just become too familiar. Maybe.
The pub is busy. Absolutely packed. And loud. Way busier and louder than I’d been expecting; it makes me feel more anxious. More off-balance.
“You’ve missed the riveting monthly meeting, at least,” Jaz says, with a smile.
Ever since he greeted me at Stornoway Ferry Terminal—You must be Maggie, I’m Ejaz Mahmood—Jaz—welcome to the Isle of Lewis and Harris!—tall and slim, with a round face, neat goatee, soft Scottish accent, and a wide grin, he’s treated me like a lifelong friend instead of a complete stranger. Throughout the following forty-mile car ride, he kept up an endless scattergun commentary that was at first unnerving and then a welcome distraction. There’s actually a pretty big Pakistani community around here—always surprises folk. Kelly says you’re from down south? I’m English too, Berwick, but keep that to yourself— think I’ve got away with it so far. Word is you don’t know how long you’ll be staying? Best thing about this place is it’s home to anyone just as long as they want it to be.
We traveled south along a coastal road of occasional hamlets—white houses with twin dormers and slate roofs—and then west across flat empty lowland that made me shiver in the gold dusk, the Range Rover buffeted by whistling winds. On into claustrophobic corridors of flanking rock walls, and then a landscape of green hills and glassy lochans; moorlands of fiery heather and moss framed by high craggy mountains.
And every change, from main road to side road to single-track with the occasional passing place and few if any houses, made me feel farther and farther away from the bustle of Stornoway, never mind London. That was when the weight inside my stomach began to get heavier. Even before we reached the west coast and I heard the roar of the Atlantic. Before we crossed the last loch and were rattling over the cattle grid and then the causeway across the sound. Before the last fans of sunlight lit up the sign on the other side:
Fàilte gu Eilean Cill Maraigh
Welcome to the Isle of Kilmeray
My teeth started to chatter as Jaz drove us west along the only road. Away from the lights of Urbost on the southeast coast, population sixty-six, and towards the only other village on this island of two and a half by one and a half-miles. Older and smaller, and on a windy headland called Longness, population fewer than twenty: Blairmore. Goose bumps broke out on my skin as we turned into its only street, Jaz finally stopping outside this pub—long and white with black-painted eaves strung with fairy lights. Too many people moving around inside its bright windows. Its white sign gray in the rapidly fading light: Am Blàr Mòr.
“Blàr means ‘battle’ and mòr means ‘big.’ No one knows much more than that, but that’s the islands for you. Mystery is the mother of exaggeration.” His grin was as oblivious to my chattering teeth and the weight in my stomach as my sudden and desperate urge to say, I know. Because I haven’t just been here before, I’ve been having nightmares about this place my whole life.
And that was when I stopped trying to distract myself with what little I actually knew about the island—its geography and demography—and started trying to tell myself instead that maybe it’d be all right. Maybe no one would remember me. Maybe I could somehow do what I was here to do without them finding out. I didn’t believe it for a second then, either.
The crowded bar lounge is a cozy space with a vast open fire, red walls, dark wood tables, and cushioned stools. I feel both weary and uneasy as I look around, trying to avoid catching anyone’s gaze. Jaz nudges my elbow, making me jump. He nods towards a large group of people on the other side of the room. Most are young, the tables around them crowded with half-empty glasses and crisp packets.
“Archaeologists from Glasgow Uni,” he says. “That was me many moons ago. Came over as a student to work on the Cladh Dubh burial site out near West Point. Was only supposed to be there six months, and here I still am.” He laughs, shakes his head. “They’re reopening the dig. So you’re not the only newbie.” Another grin. “Why don’t you have a drink while I go get Kelly? She’ll be upstairs in her flat.”
I don’t want a drink. After three train journeys, a delayed flight from Stansted, an eleven-hour bus ride from Glasgow, and a ferry from Ullapool, I’m so knackered I feel like I could sleep standing up. Drinking, never mind socializing, feels completely beyond me.
“Thanks for picking me up, it was really kind of you.”
“No worries. A taxi would’ve skinned you alive.”
He gives me one last smile before he heads towards a door marked staff only. I turn around reluctantly. The bar itself is relatively empty. Two men in fishing gear—yellow bib-and-brace trousers over thermal vests and safety boots—sit hunched on stools at its other end.
“Hello. I’m Gillian MacKenzie,” the woman behind the bar says. Her face is tanned and freckled, her smile warm, her accent local but with the faint traces, perhaps, of something else. She tucks long dark-blond hair streaked with silver behind her ears before reaching out a hand to shake mine. “And you must be Maggie.”
“How—”
“Oh, everyone knows about you.” A barman turns from the bottles at the other end of the bar. Until I see his easy smile, I take him literally, and my heart briefly gallops. Just like it did when Jaz asked me if I’d ever been to the islands before and I left too long a pause before shaking my head.
The barman sets two whiskies down in front of the fishermen before turning back to me. He’s short and lean, his eyes a startling dark brown. “You’re Kelly’s first booking. She danced about this place like the Road Runner on speed when she got your email.”
“My husband, Bruce,” Gillian says. “Ignore him. Anyway, what can I get you? First one’s on the house. We’re doing strawberry daiquiris and pink G and Ts in honor of Valentine’s Day.” She pauses for a moment, and then leans towards me. “Are you okay?”
No, I abruptly want to say. My mum just died. It’s like a very specific and sudden form of Tourette’s. I lasted less than ten minutes on that Stansted plane before saying it to the poor woman sitting next to me, soaking up her sympathy for the whole journey to Glasgow. Where presumably she imagined my mum had just died. Three months ago isn’t just, even if it feels like it is. And no matter how much I’d like it to be true, Mum not being here anymore isn’t the cause for that ballast in my stomach, the nightmares I can’t stop having, all those maybe-it’ll-be-all-rights. It’s not the reason, less than two weeks after being discharged from the Maudsley, I’ve traveled seven hundred miles to this place—this village—in the middle of nowhere. Even if it’s easier to pretend that it is.
“Sorry. I’m just tired,” I say. And try to smile. “Could I have a white wine, please? Whatever you have. And thank you.”
I pretend to be interested in the photos crowding the red wall next to the bar as Gillian takes a bottle of pinot grigio out of a fridge and starts pouring. Some photos are framed, some laminated; color, sepia, and black-and-white landscapes of sea and cliff and beach; portraits of men and women and children. Above them is a mounted piece of varnished driftwood carved with black-painted words, The sheep will spend its life in fear of the wolf, and then be eaten by the shepherd.
“A cheery sentiment.” Gillian smiles, handing me the wine. “But it’s been here longer than I have; bit like most of those pictures. Lot of the folk in them are here tonight.”
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