She handed Taylor a piece of paper which he took gratefully.
Donnchadh MacDhòmhnaill Huisinis
He could feel Becca looking at him, sensed it was some kind of test. He took a breath and put his tongue around the words in quick, quiet phonetics which gave Becca a laugh.
‘Duncan MacDonald to you,’ Becca said. ‘Hushinish.’
Taylor was chopping onions, his eyes streaming. Drew had opened two tins of tomatoes and sliced all the mushrooms. He was now guestimating how much dried pasta per person. They were studiously applying themselves to their tasks but all the while eavesdropping on JB’s phone call with his father. They’d been party to this before, their erstwhile cocksure pal now verbally standing to attention while some reprimand or rebuke was making its way down the line to him. Taylor thought about his dad just then. Pops. Pa. The Dadster. He must try to remember to message him later.
He had commented once to Drew, he’d said JB doesn’t have a dad, he has afather. And Drew had said to Taylor, hey I don’t have either. How lucky Taylor had felt just then.
They listened to JB playing it all down – he’d tripped, he’d be fine. Then he played it up – he’d fallen heavily, really badly, he wasn’t sure what damage had been done under all the swelling. Then he embellished it with geology and drama – a peatbog, a freak outcrop of Gneiss (that’s G.N.E.I.S.S, Sir), a red stag bolting across his path, a tangle of bracken and a hidden branch. And then he implicated the others. Drew and Taylor – the shortcut had been their idea.I told them – I did try.
Yes, I understand. Yes Sir, I completely agree.
And then – the bombshell.
Of course I’m going to run! No question – that’s why I am here and I have three sixteen to beat.
Over in the kitchen, Taylor and Drew did not need to glance at each other to sense their shared response. Taylor’s chopping simply slowed down while Drew forgot he was holding the spaghetti which starburst itself around the pan in a satisfyingclatter. Sometimes, JB just needed not to tell the truth. He knew that they knew this. Some of his untruths were preposterous but there existed an unspoken agreement never to pick him up on it. He’d finished the call now anyway. He’d opened the potato chips and was cramming handfuls into his mouth.
‘Don’t fill up on junk!’ Taylor, playing mom, trilled over to him. ‘Dinner’s almost ready, hon!’
But JB ignored him and Drew didn’t join in so Taylor’s falsetto hung in the air like a bad odour. And he thought then how much he’d like to see that girl from the store again, perhaps take a walk or just hang out some place. There were too many guys in this small cottage, there was no space; they were filling it with their bodies, their moods, the smell of them. He stirred at the sauce. Tomato. Mushroom. Onion. Garlic. Minced beef. He’d add a bunch of cheese to it and grate more for serving. He needed to load up for the run.
JB, still half naked, was flicking through channels on the TV saying there was nothing to watch and the signal was a pile of shit. Drew was nibbling on stalks of raw spaghetti, staring intently at a dead bug on the windowsill. Taylor wanted to hit them, both of them. The sauce smelled cloyingly sweet. He went upstairs and sat on the bed. He went to the bathroom and stared hard at the mirror. He went back into the bedroom and grabbed a fleece. Downstairs, he found JB and Drew still busy doing whatever it was they were doing, so he slipped out without either of them noticing.
Taylor walked along the road, away from the cottage this time; a new direction to take. It was dusk now. A lone sheep bleated and soon others called out to her before they all fell silent. The houses, and there were only a few, were scattered about irregularly along the single-track lane. There was no unifyingstyle. A couple were modern, over-designed, looked out of place; some were similar to Flora’s House, very old and appearing to grow right out of the ground. Others were sensibly-built houses and bungalows ready for the weather, homes to those who lived here year round. Taylor flinched from a sudden image of his own home. His family had lived in that house for fifteen years; it was where he’d done his growing from little kid through teens until college. He thought of their front door which he knew off by heart whatever colour it had been painted. Behind it his home flowed through room after warmly lit room. Soon, that front door would open into empty space and, sometime after that, it would become the portal into a different family’s safe little world.
Hadn’t he made this big thing out of going to college? He’d been all bluster telling his parents how going to collegeisleaving home and that he could notwait. He’d made out he was suffocating, living in the same old house on the same old street. How he had to get out of this place, this state! The day he left, he’d let his Dad’s overlong hug and his mother’s tears irritate him in his impatience to shake free from everything and just get on with his own life. That was four years ago. Grad school was starting this fall, time off now to run the marathons and see a little of the world. Then back to studies and a new apartment with the guys. But suddenly his mind’s eye was crammed with all those packing crates back in Colorado Springs, the sorting and sifting of what was to be kept, what was to be given away and what was destined for the dump. And Taylor thought to himself, he thought just because he’d physically left home didnotmean that home shouldn’t still be there, stay exactly as it was, ready and waiting for any return visit he chose to make at any given time. Nothing should change. Everything should be the same. Isn’t that the deal with family homes, with families in general?
Way too much to think about. It hurt his head, it even messed a little with his guts. It was better not to consider any of it all.
A dog was skipping along the lane towards him, it didn’t stop, kept going and darted uphill to a house. Taylor wondered if that was the famous weaver’s dog, if that was his house. Donald John. He’d have a look online for those Nike trainers with the tweed. He wondered if the famous weaver even had a dog. He thought of the name that Becca had written down for him, the other weaver; Duncan someone of somewhere. And he thought of Drew and JB, wondered what they were doing right this second. Did JB have clothes on? Was Drew still chomping on raw pasta? Taylor felt hungry but he didn’t want to go back just yet. On he walked. He had the road to himself.
In the gloaming, he made out rows of gravestones standing neat and quiet some way off on undulating tamed land which stretched to the edge of the dunes. What a place to be buried. He recalled something about a coffin trail on this island; he couldn’t remember what, but maybe he’d look it up in the guide book later. On he walked, right to where the road ran out. There was hillside and rock and sand and dunes and thick clouds were stuck to the sky. He could hear waves whacking the sand. Why did the sea never sleep? Imagine if one day the sea just took a break and the waves stopped for a rest and a reset. Would the fish be okay with that? It would probably be the humans who’d object, in fact it would probably be humans who’d cause it. This was precisely the type of thought that Taylor would suddenly express out loud, usually when in a sprawl on the sofa or after a few beers. Drew would then deconstruct and analyse it affably, explain why this was not possible and add to the physics some asides from Greek philosophers and First Nations mythology too. And JB, well, he’d just throw a shoe at Taylor and tell him he was a weird ass-wipe who talked a bunch of crap.
Taylor chuckled softly into the night. He walked through the grass-rucked sand and took a long look at the sea, at Taransay lumbering on the horizon slowly falling backwards into the night sky. The waves were doing their thing, the sea was in control. Whatever else was happening in the world, the bigger picture remained the same. He was pleased about that. He was also hungry now, really hungry. He had a marathon to run in three days. He needed to eat. And, after a fair spring day, it felt colder tonight. They’d be glad of that peat fire.
Chapter 8
Wednesday
By the next morning, JB was in a better mood. He could put a little weight on his foot now. He was also dressed. For breakfast, they all tucked into the leftover pasta from the night before, plus some porridge oats which they ate the Scottish way, according to the instructions on the box, with salt. In the twin beds last night, Taylor and Drew had messaged each other: JB may have told his father he’d be running – but what was that all about? There was no way he’d be able to. So who was going to tell him?! Neither wanted to reply to that one so they’d put their phones down and gone to sleep. But the question remained, carried around the little cottage that morning in the scent of burnt toast, in the steam puffing from the boiling kettle and the warmth still emanating from the peats. The issue was there, in the air, just hanging. Well, let it hang because neither Taylor nor Drew had worked out quite how to broach it out loud.
‘What’s the plan, Stan?’
‘I don’t know, bro.’
There was jovial silence during which they all tried to find other rhyming quips but they quickly gave up.
‘I have cabin fever,’ JB said. ‘Feels like I’ve been cooped up way too long. Andshekeeps staring at me.’ He gestured at the old framed photo on the wall which had continued to captivate Taylor since the first morning, but which Drew was only noticing for the first time. ‘Her eyes follow me, man. She’s freaking me out.’
‘I guess that’s Flora’s ma or grandma,’ Drew said.
‘Probably just some random picture from a magazine,’ said JB. ‘Whoever she is, she’s looking into my soul!’
‘What’s she found in there?’ Taylor laughed.
