Welcoming lights from village windows loom in the distance. It’s only just past noon, but it’s one of those dark-grey days that never seem to get properly light, a ‘close the doors and build up the fire’ kind of day. Not that I could do that at Otter Lodge; Cleo and I have taken to prowling around each other like wary animals since the other night. It’s a relief to be out of there.
I lost track of time filling my eyes and my camera with countless shots around the village, my imagination caught by foundation stones with dates running back hundreds of years, by the sureness that my ancestors walked these same streets, touched these same stones. But now I’m suddenly aware that it’s two in the afternoon and I haven’t eaten, and the illuminated windows of the Salvation Arms beckon to me like a sea siren to a sailor. I don’t try to resist. The warm welcome of strangers beats a frosty reception from Cleo. Sometimes a man needs a drink.
I nudge the pub’s heavy old black door open and find it packed, as if most of the island’s residents have taken refuge from the weather here too. I’ve already been in once or twice for a beer on quiet weekday afternoons, lucky enough both times to take a stool at the bar and bend the ear of Rafferty, the owner – Raff, as everyone calls him – about the island’s history. He’s a man of indeterminate age; the lines on his features suggest seventies, but he’s quick to laugh and has a jaunty glint in his eye that lends him an air of youth.
‘Mack, my man! Come on in and take a load off, why don’t you?’ Raff stands up from a table in the corner by the fire and gestures his hand towards me. ‘Over here. Budge up, people, we’ve a guest.’
‘Leave your stuff by the door, Mack, you’ll have someone’s eye out if you don’t.’
I follow the voice and find its source: Ailsa with her wife, Julia, working their way through heaped roast beef dinners. Ailsa raises her glass at me as I unzip my admittedly massive jacket. She’s right; there isn’t room to navigate the pub in it without sending pints flying. I leave everything but my camera by the door and thread my way across to Raff.
‘Hungry?’ Raff says, his hand on my shoulder as I sit down. Out of nowhere it touches me, a more fatherly gesture than I can ever recall from my own dad.
‘You read my mind,’ I say.
‘It’s beef or beef,’ Raff says. ‘Or there’s beef if you prefer.’
A bubble of laughter slides up my windpipe. ‘Beef sounds good.’
Raff catches the eye of the girl behind the bar. ‘Bring Mack a plate of food over, Tara, will you?’
I appreciate the simplicity of not having a choice, the way he’s drawn me in and made a place for me among the locals. He makes it look effortless but beneath his natural bonhomie I sense a person who’s spent his life putting others at ease. It’s not a skill you can learn.
A pint of Guinness and a plate of good roast beef arrives in short order, and I find myself relaxing into the ebb and flow of chatter as people speak across tables to each other and Raff introduces me to people I haven’t yet met on my travels around the island.
‘So you’re a photographer, then?’ Julia says, eyeing my camera. ‘I take a few pictures myself. You’ll have to call in.’
‘I’d like that,’ I say. I warm to Julia straight away, just as I did to Ailsa. She has a splatter of pale-green paint in her dark hair and traces of different colours on her hands, as if she just put down her brushes and wandered over to the pub for food. I like that kind of casual.
‘Watch her, she’ll have you on her home-made wine,’ Ailsa warns.
‘Hell, I’d like that too,’ I grin.
‘You won’t,’ Raff says. ‘It’s like boiled goat’s piss.’
Julia doesn’t look particularly offended. ‘It all goes down the same way, eh?’
‘Careful, Mack. I only had her stuff once. I couldn’t feel my legs for two days afterwards.’ Delta leans in from the far end of the table, a feat given the size of her bump. ‘And I was only sixteen or so, I don’t know what they were thinking giving that kind of rocket fuel to a kid.’
‘You helped yourself, as I recall. My niece was the most badly behaved teenager this island has ever seen,’ Raff says to me, nodding towards Delta. ‘Julia’s moonshine was the least of your stunts, child. You ran poor Dolores ragged.’
The look on his face tells me that he didn’t actually feel the slightest bit sorry for his sister, and the laughter in Delta’s eye suggests that she and Raff are probably even more trouble together than apart. I’ve only met Dolores in passing, but Cleo tells me she’s a tough nut to crack. I’m reserving judgement. I know from experience that there needs to be a few straight men around, the designated driver, the safe pair of hands. It’s not always a choice to be cast in that role. It’s much easier to be the one who skips through life responsibility free, right? My father strolls into my head and I wilfully shove him to the back because he’s getting way too much airtime lately.