The following pieces are by Karin Slater, a creative writing graduate based on Lewis.

Stornoway Episodes 7 Dec 2006

The wee navy RSPCA van pulls up in front of the Big Co-op.  The back doors are opened, and a minute later a man and young lad appear from the store pushing a trolley.  A solid dog, off its chain, leans sideways in the child’s seat.  The black and white collie on his green base, tongue hanging out, is angled into the back of the van, broad daylight, and him all full of coppers.

At the Trading Post, cars reverse carrying lazy mothers.  The door that never quite shuts lets in welcome breezes under the woolly hats of those in the nine-deep queue for chickenpox and second-class stamps, for those in the Christmas way.  The older ladies are bent back or forwards into each other, giving and receiving tip-offs on those ill or already gone.  The intelligence herringbones down the line, the repeated words steadily passing the water biscuits, sultana cakes and sympathy cards.

Come night, it is funfair time for the dark town.  Not even the moon is out.  The yellow streetlights lead to Cairngorm reindeer and queuing teenagers for the waltzers, one hand in the air, and an old lady, in front of the raffle stall, holding a gorilla sideways on her hip, the animal bigger than herself, their hair getting wet. 

Red-faced

A neighbour found her dead in bed five days ago.  She was forty-seven.  I’d seen her two weeks earlier outside the jobcentre in a long, loose jumper, maybe not her own, her hair greying and about to choke her in the light breeze.  Her legs were slight in jeans, her feet flat to the tar in cold, old trainers.  Both of us had been queuing for the dole that day.

She was holding up Francis St., her arms bent and outstretched at the same time, surfing the alcoholic waves.  It was ten a.m.  As I walked past she’d steadied herself enough to start a conversation with a woman in a long coat across the road at the cash machine.

‘You’ve left your car running!’

The woman didn’t reply.

‘The keys are still in it!’

The woman turned.  ‘I know,’ she said, walking back to her car.

‘You’d better watch in case somebody steals it!  I was half-tempted myself!’ she laughed.

The street went silent.

The woman in the long coat got into her BMW and drove off.

That was the first time I’d seen her in years.  I didn’t know her like people round here will claim after someone dies.  A visual once is enough to mean you knew them – gets you the sympathy vote, and the details.

I remember her sitting in the Coffee Pot, three fags on the go and her two youngest slipping under the plastic white tables, now just adults.  Her forehead was inset with hard straight lines.  Her face said ninety and I’ve never known anyone aged ninety.  Eighty-six, that’s it, apart from a lady who was in the hospital bed across from my gran, who claimed she was ninety-five as if it was a competition, while her family round her bed smiled, embarrassed by her condition.