Chapter 1
JB was on bended knee. He was on bended knee on top of a table in the cafeteria of the ferry which was sailing on unseasonably calm waters across the Minch from the Isle of Skye to the Isle of Harris. And, on bended knee, with one hand clasped to his heart and the other outstretched, JB sang operatically utilising his substantial lung capacity. He was tuneless at the best of times but, when drunk, as he was now, his voice hollered and bawled like an alley cat. On the floor lay Drew and, were it not for him rolling about laughing so hard, he could easily be mistaken for one of their flung rucksacks. Finally there was Taylor, arrhythmically drumming the surface of the table with a knife and fork, wondering when it would be that JB fell and joined Drew.
Taylor thought, jeesh, lucky we’re on a boat. He thought, if we were in a bar on dry land we’d surely be thrown out. Always a badge of honour, that.
But this was their song. They’d sung it on take-off from St. Louis and on landing in Paris on April Fools’ Day over three weeks ago. They’d sung it daily ever since: sober, drunk, to themselves, to an unwitting audience. If folk wanted to stare – let them. If they wanted to join in, that was fine too. The lyricswere hardly complex and the melody, what there was of it, was simple enough.
From Paris to Harris, JB chanted.
Paris Harris. Pa-ha-haaa-risss.Run run run run run.
They did not have much of an audience here on the CalMac ferry, just the catering crew plus an elderly couple enjoying a cup of tea with a piece of shortbread, a family tucking into a hearty Scottish breakfast. It was a mild day for April, more a prelude to May than a look back to March, and the majority of passengers were out on deck. They were half an hour into the crossing but JB was still singing, albeit from a chair and with less gusto. Drew was now sound asleep on the floor and Taylor was deep in a world of his own; a place to which he’d given very few people the directions to visit. His mother called this place of hisInbetweenand he’d been ducking away there since he was just a kid. When he was young, when he blinked himself back to the day in hand, she’d ruffle his hair and say to him, she’d say, so how was your trip? Sometimes he’d tell her, sometimes not, but one thing Taylor knew was that she’d be there, ready to listen. He revealed less and less of his thoughts as he grew and these days he told her very little. But there again, he lived in Missouri now, a long way from his parents in Colorado Springs. And anyway he was twenty-three years old and likely to think on things no mother should be party to. Was she still there, ready to listen? He wasn’t so sure about that. But she knew where he was headed today. And she’d told him, before he’d left, that she had no idea why he’d want to go. There’s nothing there, she’d said to him. There’s nothing there at all.
‘I’m going to get some air – you coming?’
JB paused his singing to regard Taylor. ‘Yeah sure. What about Dee-dog?’ He nudged Drew with his foot. ‘Yo! Drewboy!’
‘Let sleeping dogs lie and all,’ Taylor laughed, but still he tucked a rucksack protectively against Drew’s back before he walked away. They were here because of him; JB hadn’t heard of the Outer Hebrides, Drew had vaguely – but that wasn’t a problem, this was their way. If one of them said come, the other two would say sure thing. So here they were, sailing towards wherever.
Up on deck, some passengers were watching Skye retreat but most were focused on the shape-shifting at the horizon. What could at first be mistaken for low lying cloud slowly assumed form and bulk as the Outer Hebrides came into view. To Taylor’s eyes, the long stretch of emerging land resembled a visual pattern of soundwaves, a song. Uist steady and low, then the rise and soar of the Harris hills and finally the roll and reach of Lewis. There’s nothing there, his mother had claimed but something was certainly emerging from the sea. The water was calm, the sky was cloudless, the sun warmed Taylor’s face. A wily wind buffeted the deck, making mischief with the passengers; puffing up their jackets, flicking hair into eyes, spearing down into their ears, whipping away their voices and frisbeeing their words this way and that.
‘Beer?’ JB said. He was sobering up in all this fresh air and this needed to be redressed.
‘Sure,’ Taylor said though he’d be just as happy to stay right here, watching mountains rise right out of the sea. A run of islands strung out in the Atlantic with nothing but ocean for three thousand miles until North America. Their home for the next week.
‘Paris to Harris, man,’ JB put his arm around Taylor’s neck in a friendly lock while he punched him lightly. ‘Par-ee to fucken Har-ee.’
‘You’re such a dick,’ Taylor laughed and he put out his foot and tripped JB over and they romped and wrestled and people had to dodge around or step right over them.
What’s wrong withthem? a child asked. They’re fromAmerica, her father said, as if it both explained the situation and was a misfortune to be deeply pitied.
Back in the cafeteria, JB and Taylor found Drew no longer resembling a rucksack but up off the floor and sitting at the table tucking into a plate heaped high with all things fried.
‘This is called Stornoway Black Pudding,’ he said, spearing a thick black disc with his fork. ‘It tastes more like sausage than pudding but itslaps.’
Haggis and peppercorn loaded fries. Black pudding pizza. A whole lot of beer. And, all the while, three young Americans in various stages of inebriation provided entertainment to the crew and to various passengers who came in simply to watch. And that’s where JB, Drew and Taylor spent the remainder of the passage to the westernmost isles of the United Kingdom. Three amenable men-boys, twenty-three years of age, taking a few months out in the world before grad school back in Missouri in the fall. JB with his swash and his charm and a hefty allowance from his family enabling him to go wherever the other two wanted. Drew, quietly accounting for every cent, calling home every few days to check in on his mom, to make sure she was doing okay. And Taylor, who’d said let’s go to Harris from Paris, who hadn’t said that much aboutwhy, but that didn’t matter to the other two. They were happy enough to be together. And Taylor was always content to be Inbetween.
Chapter 2
Tarbert is a small town situated on an isthmus, a cinched-in waistband of land between two bodies of water. It sits snug between North and South Harris as if invigilating between the theatre of the mountainous north, the romance and breadth of the fertile west and the charged drama of the pocked and cragged east. Founded as a small fishing settlement in the eighteenth century, Tarbert became a port for the mail steamer in the nineteenth century and, by the turn of the twentieth, it was home to a thriving Harris Tweed mill. Its wooden pier became a concrete dock and, by 1963, a harbour to serve the new vehicle ferry service which opened up the Outer Hebrides to visitors from far and wide.
JB, Drew and Taylor weren’t remotely bothered with the history of the place and the single guidebook between the three of them lay at the bottom of Taylor’s luggage. Their priority on docking was to hit up the first local hostelry they could find and, with a sway and perceptible wobble as they disembarked and found terra firma, off they went. They’d forgotten all about picking up the hire car, which was no bad thing since none was in a fit state to drive.
At the Harris Hotel, Morag Mackenzie started her shift. She’d been up since the crack, cleaning a holiday home in Finsbay and another in Manish then picking up milk, eggs and bread for the new guests at Flora’s House, the tiny holiday cottage, in Luskentyre. Now she was busy at the bar of the hotel; wiping surfaces, polishing glasses and dispersing coasters to the tables like a croupier dealing cards at a casino, all the while listening to Old Campbell moan about the price of this and the state of that. Here she was covering the shift for Mairi who was on holiday, on holiday in Tenerife no less, in the sunshine and the warmth, sipping cocktails and relaxing and no doubt chatting up waiters half her age. Meanwhile Morag was having her ear chewed by Old Campbell and his interminable dissatisfaction with the world. It was her sixty-first birthday tomorrow and what she wanted most was a day off with no bathrooms to scrub, no beds to make up and nodaoine gruamach– grumpy sods – sullying the air. And it was at this point, when feeling most sorry for herself, that three huge rucksacks with three young men attached to them, tumbled into her bar in full song.
‘Bonny Lassie!’ cried out the tallest; cinema-handsome in that clean-cut all-American college-boy way. ‘Whisky for three weary travellers!’
Morag assessed them levelly; cartoon-perfect the three of them with their cheekbones and smooth jawlines and fit physiques and great teeth; but they were absolutelysteaming. They’d be better off with pints of water. She raised an eyebrow. ‘Are you staying here at the hotel?’
‘No, My Lady Loch Nessie!’ he continued. ‘But drink we shall! Aye! Aye! For the love of Scotland,aye!’
‘Alright alright, Braveheart,’ she said before adding, as if to children, ‘now away with you and ask Sarah at the front desk if she’ll take those backpacks andthenI’ll think about serving you.’ Morag regarded the other two. ‘And you,’ she said. ‘Andyou.’
And, obediently, off they went.
‘Anyway,’ Old Campbell said. ‘My feet – I’ve a mind to cut those corns off myself. Och and my guts Mrs Mackenzie. Feels like I’ve kelp beds filling my guts, I’m telling you.’
‘I’d rather you didn’t,’ Morag said under her breath knowing Old Campbell would anyway.
