The Blackhouse Read Online Free PDF Page A

mine for a moment then dancing away again. “So how do you like your English name?”
    â€œFinlay?” She nodded. “I don’t.”
    â€œI’ll call you Fin, then. How’s that?”
    â€œFin.” Again, I tried it out for size. It was short and to the point. “It’s okay.”
    â€œGood.” Marsaili smiled. “Then that’s what you’ll be.”
    And that’s how it happened that Marsaili Morrison gave me the name that stuck with me for the rest of my life.
    In those days, for the first week, the new intake at the school only stayed until lunchtime. We had our lunch and then left.
    And although Artair and I had been given a lift to school that first morning, we were expected to walk home. It was only about a mile. Artair was waiting for me at the gate. I had been held up because Mrs. Mackay had called me back to give me a note for my parents. I could see Marsaili up ahead on the road, walking on her own. We had got soaked on the walk back from the stores and had spent the rest of the morning sitting on a radiator together drying off. The rain had stopped for the moment.
    â€œHurry up. I’ve been waiting for you.” Artair was impatient to get home. He wanted us to go searching for crabs in the rock pools below his house.
    â€œI’m going back by Mealanais Farm,” I told him. “It’s a shortcut.”
    â€œWhat?” He looked at me as if I were mad. “That’ll take hours!”
    â€œNo, it won’t. I can cut back by the Cross–Skigersta road.” I had no idea where that was, but Marsaili had told me that was the quick way from Mealanais to Crobost.
    I didn’t even wait for him to object, but took off at a sprint up the road after Marsaili. By the time I caught up with her I was out of puff. She gave me a knowing smile. “I thought you would be walking home with Artair.”
    â€œI thought I’d walk with you up by Mealanais.” I was dead casual. “It’s a shortcut.”
    She looked less than convinced. “It’s a long way for a shortcut.” And she gave a little shrug. “But I can’t stop you walking with me, if that’s what you want.”
    I smiled to myself, and restrained an urge to punch the air. I looked back and saw Artair glaring after us.
    The road to the farm branched off the other side of the main road before the turnoff to Crobost. Punctuated by the occasional passing place, it wound its way southeast across acres of peatbog that stretched off to the far horizon. But the land was more elevated here, and if you looked back you could see the line of the road as far as Swainbost and Cross. Beyond that, the sea broke white along the west coast below a forest of gravestones standing bleak against the sky at Crobost cemetery. The northern part of Lewis was flat and unbroken by hills or mountains, and the weather swept across it from the Atlantic to the Minch, always in a hurry. And so it was always changing. Light and dark in ever-shifting patterns, one set against the other—rain, sunshine, black sky, blue sky. And rainbows. My childhood seemed filled by them. Usually doublers. We watched one that day, forming fast over the peatbog, vivid against the blackest of blue-black skies. It took away the need for words.
    The road tipped down a gentle slope then, to a cluster of farm buildings in a slight hollow. The fences were in better repair here, and there were cattle and sheep grazing in pasture. There was a tall, redroofed barn, and a big white farmhouse surrounded by a clutch of stone outbuildings. We stopped at a white-painted gate at the opening to a dirt track that ran down to the house.
    â€œDo you want to come in for some lemonade?” Marsaili asked.
    But I was sick with worry by this time. I had no real idea where I was or how to get home. And I knew I was going to be very late. I could feel my mother’s anger already. “Better not.” I