The Blackhouse
THE BLACKHOUSE
Carole Johnstone
Copyright
The Borough Press
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
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London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk
HarperCollinsPublishers
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First published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2022
Copyright © Carole Johnstone 2022
Carole Johnstone asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780008361433
Ebook Edition © 2022 ISBN: 9780008361457
Version: 2022-07-13
Dedication
For Iain
Epigraph
‘No man chooses evil because it is evil;
he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks.’
Mary Wollstonecraft
‘Whisper her name,
she is island,
sheep-littered, stone-wracked
she cries the wild Atlantic
to her door;’
‘Na Hearadh’ (Harris)
Shirley Wright
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Maps
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
Cast of Characters
Glossary of Terms and Places
About the Author
Also by Carole Johnstone
About the Publisher
Maps
PROLOGUE
It wasn’t the screams he remembered most, although they crashed to shore inside the howling, furious wind and ricocheted for hours around the high cliffs above the beach. It wasn’t the storm or the roaring, foaming waves that carved great snaking wounds through the wet sand and stole its shape from under his feet.
It wasn’t the dark or the flashing torchlight. Or the frantic hours of men pushing boats into the wild surf: motorboats, fishing boats, even old wooden sgoths. All to be smashed into the bay’s high headlands or hurled back onto the shore like stones from a slingshot.
It wasn’t the long, tired wails of the women whose silhouettes stood in a clifftop vanguard ahead of the silver-starred inland sky. Nor those waving white arms out on the rocks, which became slower and less frequent as the screamed chorus grew quieter. And it wasn’t the wondering about which of those arms, those bobbing heads that disappeared and sometimes reappeared, belonged to his father.
It wasn’t even the eerie silence that came after. The exhaustion of energy and grief and hope. The exhaustion of wind and rain and thunder and sea.
It was the tide bell out on those rocks. Its low, heavy ring growing ever more muffled under the weight of water and all that time.
And it was the black tower casting an invisible shadow over the sand and bay and calming waves.
They were always what he remembered the most. Sometimes they were all he could think about.
The tide bell. And the black tower.
And knowing that every man on those rocks would never come back. Because of him.
Because of what he’d wanted. Because of what he’d done.
CHAPTER 1
Thursday, 14th February 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 round 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 travelled 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 A road to B road to single-track with the occasional passing place and few if any houses, made me feel further and further 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 less than twenty. Blairmore. Goosebumps 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 grey 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 cosy 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 of them 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 socialising, 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-blonde 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 optics 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 honour 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 any more 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 why, less than two weeks after being discharged from the Maudsley, I’ve travelled 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; colour, 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.’
‘Maggie!’
I recognize Kelly’s gap-toothed smile and sleek brown bob from her online photo. She rounds the bar, throws her arms around my shoulders and squeezes hard.
‘I’m so glad you’re here.’ She lets me go just long enough to flash another big grin before hugging me again. ‘I was beginning to think I’d imagined you. How was your journey? Awful, I’ll bet. It’s probably easier to get to the North Pole. Gillian, can I have my usual?’
Kelly climbs onto a stool next to me and turns to face the lounge. ‘Ah, I missed the monthly mass moan,’ she says. ‘What a shame. Complaining is a full-time job to some folk around here.’ She hands over a fiver as Gillian sets another large glass of wine down on the bar. ‘Thanks.’ She looks at me and winks. ‘So. Would you like a quick rundown of the great and the good since you’re going to be living amongst them for the foreseeable?’
‘Sure.’
‘Okay.’ Kelly leans her elbows back against the bar, crosses her legs, and then points to four men squeezed around a small table. ‘Wank, Wank, Good Guy, Wank.’
When I start to laugh, she squeezes my arm. ‘Oh, thank God. Someone who finally gets my jokes. Please tell me you’re under thirty. That’s probably really rude. I mean, you look under thirty, obviously. It’s just that people around here have a habit of buggering off as soon as they leave school, and they don’t come back until they’re about ready to draw their pensions. Personally, I’m all for an invasion of archaeology students.’
I laugh again. She’s pretty much exactly how I imagined her. ‘I’m almost twenty-five,’ I say. ‘You didn’t leave?’
‘Mum and Dad moved to North Uist when I was like three, so I never really lived here at all until now. Most folk here tonight are from Urbost for the meeting, and in the summer, there’s always tourists. But the population of Blairmore is, like, seventeen. A grand total of seven are under thirty – and three of those are under ten. Including my five-year-old son.’
‘You have a son?’
‘Fraser.’ Her smile returns. ‘He’s partly why I came here. I left the islands when I was eighteen, met his dad in Glasgow. We had a pretty ugly break-up just over three years ago.’ The shadow that crosses her face is so brief I almost miss it. ‘A very long, very depressing story that would require more than one glass of vino to tell. But I’m going to go back. To Glasgow, I mean. Just as soon as I’ve got enough money to rent a flat, restart my training. I want to be a paediatric nurse. Oh my God, that’s such a fab necklace. Where did you get it?’
I look down, realise that I’ve pulled the long silver chain out of my jumper to rub the cool quartz of its pendant between finger and thumb. A nervous tic that I’ve never managed to shake. I think of Mum’s big open smile, the light in her eyes that always scared me. And how much I missed both the minute they were gone; the day she found me in the garden to tell me it was time to take her to the hospital. She’d have told me not to come here. That light in her eyes would have told me too. I know you can see the darkness. I know you can.