Читать книгу The Book of the Bothy онлайн

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When we opened the door to discover the source of the music a single man was sat on the chair. This close the radio sounded tinny and raw, bouncing off the walls in the darkened room; it was like standing in a kitchen and banging pots and pans together.

He didn’t smile at first, only stared; I guess we’d ruined his plans as much as he’d ruined ours. But after making introductions, offering him a coffee and sawing up some wood for the fire he’d started, he seemed to warm to us.

It turned out he worked with a lot of troubled youths, and the more he talked, the more it became apparent that he’d come to the bothy to escape the dramas, to just ’be’ without reference to the people who rely on him to offload their problems. Perhaps, I mused as he switched off the radio, the silence and the thinking space had become a little too loud with his own thoughts and he’d needed some noise to make them stop. Or maybe it was that he just liked music.

The welcome white-washed walls of Tunskeen rise above the heather