Free The Chessmen by Peter May Page B

the classroom.
    Kenny grinned. ‘Ignore him. He’s just pissed off because he saw you ogling Mairead.’
    I blushed again, this time to the roots of my hair, and saw Mairead grinning in my direction. I had no idea then how Whistler’s obsession with Mairead would shape his future. Kenny chucked me a cardboard box. ‘Cables go in there. All neatly wound and tied off.’
    I crossed the classroom and lowered my voice. ‘Are Whistler and Mairead . . . you know . . . ?’
    Kenny laughed. ‘He wishes.’ And under his breath, ‘Like the rest of us.’ He glanced towards the keyboard player. ‘She’s Roddy’s property.’ Then he looked at me again. ‘Are you going to give me a hand or not?’
    I nodded.
    Which is how I came to be a gear humpher for Sòlas for the rest of my time at the Nicolson.
    It is also how I came to be a member of the motorcycle group. I would say ‘gang’, but that has connotations which wouldn’t be right. We were just a group of kids who wanted motor-driven wheels beneath us as soon as we turned sixteen. Roddy was the first, which was not surprising, since his parents were better off than anyone else’s. He got a bright red shiny moped, and used to ride around town with Mairead sitting on the luggage rack at the back, her arms around him, and we all imagined what it must feel like to have her pressing herself up against you like that. I’m not sure how legal it was – having a passenger on the back, I mean – but the cops never stopped them.
    I suppose that’s what started the ambition in most of us. And one by one, those of us who could afford it got ourselves little 50cc mopeds, which in reality were not much more than motorized bicycles. The only money I had was whatever I earned humphing gear for Sòlas. By fifth year they were playing at dances and ceilidhs and pubs all over Lewis, and even down in Harris, and I was sharing a little in their success. But by the time I was able to afford a clapped-out old moped for myself, Roddy had already turned seventeen and graduated to a 125cc Vespa T5 Mk1. Classic blue. Secondhand, of course. It was only a scooter, and would have been scorned by real motorbike enthusiasts, but we thought it was solid gold.
    There had always been a rivalry in the band between Roddy and Strings. They were the two major creative forces behind the original music that Sòlas was starting to produce. But that rivalry spilled over into the bike group, too, and it wasn’t long before Strings appeared with his own 125cc machine. I can’t remember the make of it now, but I’ll never forget the colour. It was bright yellow. The same colour as the tormentil that grew among the coastal bracken in summer. You always saw Strings coming.
    I spent most of my spare time working on my moped just to keep it on the road. It was a Puch. A Dakota VZ50. It had a 50cc fan-cooled motor with a three-speed gearbox, and was on its last legs. I never took it back to Ness, not just because my aunt would have disapproved, but because I seriously doubted if it would ever have got me there.
    On fine spring afternoons, after school, we used to motor out on our bikes, past Engie’s and Kenneth Mackenzie’s mill, over Oliver’s Brae towards the airport and the turnoff to Holm Point. This was a finger of land that extended out into the bay just before the narrow neck of beach and causeway that led to the Eye Peninsula. The fields around us were fallow and shimmered yellow, full of dandelions. There was a cluster of buildings at Holm Farm, but we stayed away from there, and congregated just beyond the road end looking out over the rocks that were known as the Beasts of Holm.
    The oil-rig construction yard at Arnish was visible on the far side of the bay, as was the little squat lighthouse there on the rocks, and we had a splendid view back across thewhole of Stornoway, sitting low and catching the sunlight in the shelter of the trees that climbed the castle hill behind it. You could hear the