Peter Irvine is very much known as the writer of the bestselling guide to Scotland, Scotland the Best, as well as other travel guides. He now turns his hand to fiction, with his debut novel, Crossing the Sound, taking place in the music scene of the 1980s. In the extract below, jaded ad-man Thom Kane meet the people who are going to change his life.

Crossing the Sound
By Peter Irvine
Published by Luath Press

The firebreak veered in the wrong direction and Thom, trying to make for the music, got snarled up in the dense shrubbery between the older trees. By the time he stamped onto the soft grass around the Ironworks again, Eliot had vanished. The place was deserted and, in the darkening light, had an air of desolation – as if the whole idea of an industry here had been a violation, a contravention of nature’s terms. He left quickly and, though he looked for Eliot on the road, there was no sign of him. 

He got back to the hotel as the rain came on. The bar, the only one on the island, inexplicably remained closed until after dinner, so he mooched around the lounge where games of chess and scrabble were in progress, then repaired to his room with Tom Wolfe’s The Bonfire of the Vanities, his ‘must read’. Normally an insatiable consumer of news and views and information, he was happy here and with no TV to watch, he could keep the world at bay. Wolfe’s tome of the times was sufficient, and right on.  

As he’d promised to write some copy for the language school campaign, he ought to sit down at the postcard writing table and send it off tomorrow. It was supposed to encourage businessmen to learn a foreign language. ‘When Words Fail You’ was the agreed strapline, above a picture of an exasperated man remonstrating with an uncomprehending Italian traffic cop. At the bottom, the same guy in a business suit was having a tête-à-tête with his obviously European counterpart. It was marginally more interesting than Thom’s usual assignments and ‘ought to get those under-stimulated creative juices flowing,’ as Harry, his creative director, had dryly put it. The job had come through one of Thom’s corporate clients, who’d just taken over the company, and perhaps he should be grateful, but, in his fragmented state, he couldn’t address himself to it at all. ‘When words fail you’ – it was too apt.  

By the time he’d had his dinner in the whispery dining room he was more than ready for the bar, a box-like room stuck onto the end of the hotel, as if a reluctant concession to the locals. Most of the hotel guests had drifted back to their parlour games. There wasn’t anywhere to sit, and Thom found himself squeezed into a corner without much hope of release.  

He brightened up when he saw Eliot come in. The boy was wearing another worn-out T-shirt – obviously clothes didn’t matter. He nodded to several people as he thrust his way to the bar, including Thom, who made a face to comment on the crush. 

Eliot ordered up a tray of drinks and carried it over to a table by the window where several other young lads were sitting with a woman who had an understated but remarkably stylish look for around here, Thom thought, and what sounded like a ready laugh. He tried not to stare. The room was small, and though there wasn’t a lot to look at, this woman had an aura that would have beamed from a hillside. To Thom, in need of conversation, connection and perhaps even conquest, she was an intriguing prospect, though she seemed to have no shortage of acolytes. They made room for Eliot, and when he said something briefly in her ear, she glanced over. Thom wanted to go across and introduce himself, but they seemed a tightly knit group and he, presumably exuding London from his haircut to the red socks and Associates T-shirt, was an interloper who might as well talk in a foreign language. He’d returned to the uneasy contemplation of his pint when Eliot appeared at his side. 

‘Did you get caught in the rain, then?’ 

‘No, I just made it,’ Thom laughed. ‘How about you? You didn’t have a case for that thing, did you?’ He was going to add that he’d heard him playing and must have just missed him, but Eliot interjected. 

‘No, I saw it coming.’ He gulped from his glass. ‘You’re here on the island for a few days, then?’ 

‘Not sure.’ Thom tipped the last few drops from his glass. ‘Not a lot of lagers to choose from!’  

‘Ach, we make do.’ 

‘Will you have a drink? If I can attract her attention,’ Thom said, nodding towards the barmaid. 

‘I’ll get Jenna for you, then I’m heading for the cludgie.’ 

Thom smiled at the Scottish word he’d heard only once before. 

‘If you’re getting a round in, it’s five pints and a vodka tonic,’ Eliot said. ‘Rhona says to join us.’  

Thom duly headed for the bar. 

‘Who’s Rhona?’ he asked as they made their way to the table. He liked to be briefed.  

‘Lives nearby,’ Eliot said, leaning back. ‘She’s the painter on the island.’ 

The ‘painter’ – quaint, as if every island should have one. Maybe that’s what he meant, that she was a painter and decorator, though he couldn’t quite imagine it. She was wearing a clutch of silver bangles that jangled as she indicated an empty chair at the crowded table. Late 30s, Thom thought, maybe older than he was, with refined features, a noticing look, a line of blue under her dark eyes – certainly an unexpected find in a roomful of workie T-shirts and careless mullets. She was taking him in. Thom decided that she must regularly have the lads enthralled and their mothers riled.  

‘You looked lost,’ she said, and before he could proclaim himself to the contrary, she introduced everyone. 

‘I’m Rhona, and this is David and Chris from the adventure school in the big house and Adam from Canada who’s staying there and Niall from the ferry.’ Thom remembered the stocky, quietly spoken boy guiding him on board. ‘Eliot you’ve met. Boys, this is the guy with the lovely car.’  

He soon settled in, feeling easily included, and asked Niall about the ferry, so he’d know how the timetable worked. It ran three or four times a day, and, although it only took six cars at a time, they’d come back and get you if it was full – it all seemed so obliging. Niall, still in orange overalls, with the same lulling voice as the hotel staff, seemed like an easy-going guy. While David and Chris were talking about sailing across to a party on the mainland at the weekend, Eliot and Rhona seemed to be having a sotto voce discussion of their own. When Eliot announced that he was going for more drinks, Niall drifted off, and Rhona leaned over and smiled.  

‘And what brings you to our outpost, Thom Lloyd?’ 

‘I see you know a bit about me already.’ 

‘Oh, word gets round.’ 

They exchanged pleasantries. Thom was curious that she described herself as a painter rather than ‘an artist’. She said nothing to refute his assumption that her reputation was only local. She had the most entrancing and expressive lips, and the way she scooped her hair back when it fell over her face was meaningful body language, Thom decided. 

He leaned forward to speak it too. 

Crossing the Sound by Peter Irvine is published by Luath Press, priced £10.99.