Chapter 2: Watercolour Tensions
The chlorine hit the back of Roz’s throat the moment she pushed through the heavy doors. The Murrayfield rehab pool was a cathedral of harsh, echoing noise and antiseptic light. Fluorescent tubes reflected off vast expanses of white tile and the agitated, turquoise water of the hydrotherapy pool. The air was warm and thick, carrying the low thrum of pumps and the distorted echo of voices.
Jenni had given her a lanyard and a brisk, “They’re in active recovery today. It’s less structured. Good for capturing the… the informal dynamics.”
Informal was one word for it.
About ten players were in the water, submerged to their waists or chests, moving through slow, exaggerated exercises under the watchful eye of a physiotherapist. Their bodies, usually engines of explosive power, were here rendered slow and heavy, pushing against the water’s resistance. It was a study in counterpoint. Roz found a plastic chair near a stack of blue foam rollers, her sketchpad already open on her knees.
She started with the water itself—the way it fractured light, the concentric rings that pulsed out from a moving limb, the strange, weightless drag on muscle. She drew the physio, a woman with a clipboard and a patient expression, and the way the players listened to her with a focus that was different from the coach’s bark. This was intimate, vulnerable. Shoulders that could bench-press a small car were being meticulously put through their paces like delicate machinery.
“Aye aye, lads, we’re on display,” a familiar voice boomed, bouncing off the tiles. Gregor McTavish was at the far end, leaning back against the pool edge, his arms spread wide. “Better suck in those guts.”
A few chuckles. A plastic bottle was lobbed at his head. He ducked, splashing.
Roz kept her eyes on her paper, her hand moving in quick, sure arcs to capture the slump of a back, the ripple of tension across a neck. She was a fixture now, part of the scenery. The initial novelty had worn off, which suited her.
“So, Roz,” Gregor called out, his voice carrying. “How’s the masterpiece coming? Captured my good side yet?”
She didn’t look up. “I’m focusing on the water today, Gregor.”
“The water? Boring. We’re the interesting bit!” He heaved himself out of the pool in a cascade of water, padding on bare feet towards the hotter plunge pool. His route took him past her chair. He stopped, dripping on the tiles, a mountain of pinkening flesh and faded tattoos. “Seriously, though. You gonna get in with us? For, like, authenticity? Hands-on research?”
The chuckle that rippled through the nearby players was warmer this time, complicit. It was the sound of a joke the group was in on. Roz felt her cheeks ignite. She focused on blending a shadow on her page, the charcoal gritty under her finger.
“I think my research is just fine from here, thanks.”
“Suit yourself. But the offer’s open. For academic purposes, like.” He winked, a gross, exaggerated gesture, and took another step towards the plunge pool.
The water at the centre of the main pool erupted.
Ally Fraser surfaced like he’d been launched from below. He didn’t climb out. He simply put his hands on the edge and vaulted up and out in one fluid, powerful motion, water sheeting off him. He landed on his feet between Roz’s chair and Gregor, bare-chested and dripping, his swimming trunks dark and clinging.
The room didn’t go silent—the pumps still hummed, the physio still called instructions—but the quality of the air changed. It tightened.
Ally didn’t shout. His voice was a low, controlled blade, all the more cutting for its lack of volume. “Grezza.”
Gregor turned, his smirk faltering at the edges. “What? It’s a joke, mate. She knows it’s a joke.”
“It’s shite.” Ally took a half-step forward, closing the distance. Water dripped from his hair onto his shoulders, tracing paths over the defined planes of his chest and the dark ink of a tribal band around his bicep. He was utterly still, a statue of coiled tension. “You’re in a room with a professional doing her job, and you’re acting like a lad on a stag do who’s had too much WKD. Give it a rest. Show some fucking respect.”
The vulgarity hung in the moist air, stark and definitive. It wasn’t banter. It was a boundary, drawn in steel.
Gregor’s face flushed a deeper red. “Christ, Ally, lighten up. I’m just having a laugh. No harm meant.” He looked past Ally to Roz, seeking an ally, a way out. “You’re not offended, are you?”
Every eye in the room was on her. The physio had stopped talking. The players in the water were still. Roz’s heart hammered against her ribs. She saw the rigid line of Ally’s back, the water droplets catching the light like scattered diamonds. She saw the embarrassed defiance on Gregor’s face. This was her fault. Again. Her presence was a disruption, a stone thrown into their pond.
She opened her mouth, a placating, professional lie on her tongue—It’s fine, really—but Ally spoke first, not turning to look at her.
“It doesn’t matter if she’s offended or not,” he said, his gaze locked on Gregor. “It’s unprofessional. And it’s boring. Get in the plunge pool and cool your head down.”
For a long, charged second, they stared each other down. The hierarchy was invisible but palpable. Gregor was a key player, but Ally was something else—a leader, a standard-bearer. Finally, Gregor snorted, a deflating sound, and turned away, muttering, “Whatever. Captain Serious over here.”
He lumbered to the plunge pool and lowered himself in with a hiss.
Ally finally turned. His expression was unreadable, the anger banked but still glowing in his eyes. He looked at Roz, then down at her sketchpad. She instinctively angled it away, a futile gesture. Her hands were trembling faintly, leaving shaky smudges on the paper.
“You alright?” he asked. His voice was different now. The blade was sheathed.
She nodded, not trusting her own voice. She was acutely aware of his proximity, of the sheer physicality of him standing there, water pooling at his feet on the white tile. The chlorine smell was mixed with something else, something clean and male and overwhelmingly present.
“Don’t let him get a rise out of you,” Ally said, quieter. “That’s all he wants. He’s like a big, annoying puppy. Doesn’t know his own strength.”
“I’m not,” Roz managed to say. “Getting a rise.” It was a pathetic lie, and they both knew it.
A faint, almost imperceptible smile touched his lips. He glanced again at her sketchpad. “What are you drawing, if it’s not Grezza’s good side?”
She hesitated, then slowly turned the pad around. It wasn’t a person. It was an abstract swirl of dark and light, the chaotic refraction of light through moving water, with blurred, submerged shapes suggesting limbs and torsos. It was atmosphere, not portraiture.
Ally studied it for a long moment. His head tilted slightly. “It’s the noise,” he said.
Roz blinked. “What?”
“The noise in here. The echo. You’ve drawn the noise of it.” He looked from the drawing back to her face, his blue eyes piercing in the clinical light. “That’s clever.”
A warmth spread through her chest, distinct from the flush of embarrassment. He saw it. He genuinely saw it. Not just a picture, but the intention.
“Thanks,” she whispered.
The physio clapped her hands. “Right, Fraser. You’re not on holiday. Back in the water. Three more sets of the hip flexion, slow and controlled.”
Ally gave Roz a last, brief nod. “See you Wednesday.”
He walked back to the pool and slipped into the water without a splash, seamlessly rejoining the rhythm of the recovery session. The moment broke. The hum of conversation resumed, lower now. The physio’s voice took back control.
Roz looked down at her drawing. You’ve drawn the noise of it. Her hands had steadied. She took a fresh sheet of paper. This time, she didn’t draw the water, or the light, or the noise.
She drew the moment of emergence. The powerful arc of a body leaving one element for another. The defined musculature of a back, the droplets flying in a starburst pattern. She drew the tension in the shoulders, not from the water’s resistance, but from a different kind of strain. She drew the protective stance, the feet planted firmly on solid ground. She worked quickly, before the details could fade from her mind’s eye.
She was so absorbed she didn’t notice the session end. Players began hauling themselves out, grabbing towels, shuffling towards the showers with tired, heavy steps. The physio packed her clipboard away.
Gregor, wrapped in a towel, stopped a few feet from her chair. He rubbed a hand over his close-cropped hair. He looked awkward, a chastised giant.
“Listen, eh… Roz,” he said, not meeting her eyes. “Back there. Sorry, right? Just my rubbish patter. Didn’t mean nowt by it.”
She looked up at him. His embarrassment seemed genuine, the bluster completely gone. He was just a big, tired man who’d been told off. “It’s okay, Gregor.”
“Aye. Well.” He shifted his weight. “Ally’s right. I’m a knob sometimes. See you Wednesday.”
He lumbered off.
Roz packed her materials slowly, the encounter replaying in her mind. Ally’s intervention had been so immediate, so physical. It wasn’t just words this time. It was his whole being, placed as a shield. The memory of him standing there, water-glazed and furious on her behalf, sent a confusing jolt through her system. It was overwhelming. It was also, undeniably, thrilling.
As she left the humid, chlorine-scented air for the cool, sterile corridor of the training complex, her phone buzzed. A reminder, set last week: WELLBEING WORKSHOP – TOMORROW 6PM – CONFERENCE ROOM B.
The professional in her calculated the new dynamics. Gregor was apologetic. Ally was… an active variable. The group’s energy had shifted.
The rest of her, the part that lived in the quiet studio and saw the noise in things, simply replayed the look in his eyes when he’d understood her drawing. It felt like a door, previously locked, had clicked open a fraction. And she had no idea what was on the other side, only that she was now compelled to find out.
Walking to the bus stop, the Edinburgh wind biting her cheeks, she realized she wasn’t dreading the workshop anymore. A low, steady current of anticipation had taken its place. Tomorrow, she wouldn’t be a ghost on the sidelines. She’d be in the room with them. And he’d be there.
She tightened her scarf, a small, determined smile touching her lips. Let them bring their noise. She was starting to learn how to listen.
She was starting to learn how to listen. The echo of the pool room, the specific timbre of Ally Fraser’s voice when it dropped to that controlled, private register—these were details she catalogued now, storing them for later translation into line and shadow.
Her flat in Marchmont was a sanctuary of quiet clutter, smelling of turpentine and the chilli Darao had burned last night. Roz dumped her bag by the door, the sketchpad inside feeling suddenly heavy with significance.
“Well?” Hetty called from the sagging sofa, not looking up from her laptop. “How was the meat market?”
“It’s a national sports team, Het. Not a cattle auction.”
“Same difference. All those shoulders. You’re flushed.”
Roz touched her cheek, aware it was probably still pink from the wind, or the memory of the pool. “It was warm in the hydrotherapy suite.”
Darao emerged from the kitchen, wiping his hands on a tea towel. “Come on, details. Any divas? Any thrilling artistic breakthroughs?”
She shrugged, busying herself with filling the kettle. “It was fine. One of the props made a stupid comment. Another player told him to shut up. It was a whole thing.”
“Drama!” Hetty swung her legs around, interested now. “Which player told him to shut up? Was it the handsome one? The spokesperson guy from the posters?”
Roz concentrated on selecting a teabag. “Ally Fraser. And yes, presumably.”
Darao whistled. “My hero. And what did you do?”
“I drew the water. He said I’d drawn the noise.” The statement slipped out, too revealing.
The flat was quiet for a beat, save for the kettle’s growing rumble.
“Oh,” said Hetty, her voice softening. “He said that?”
“Yeah.”
“Right.” Darao leaned against the doorframe. “So, the workshop tomorrow. You’re basically going to be trapped in a conference room with this lot. How are you feeling about that?”
Roz let out a long breath, the professional anxiety returning in a cold wave. “Terrified. They’re a pack. A charming, massive, physically intimidating pack.”
Hetty snorted. “Can’t be any worse than when I teach the first-year art college students life drawing. That’s horrific. Last Thursday, Gary P. asked if the ‘organic forms of the human body’ included his mum’s meatloaf.”
“God, don’t remind me,” Roz murmured, a real smile breaking through. “You had to explain negative space to someone who thought it was a political concept.”
“See? You’ll be fine. These rugby guys are just life models who can talk back. And are, you know, conscious.”
The kettle clicked off. Roz poured the water, watching the steam billow. Hetty was right, in her way. This was just another dynamic to study, another set of relationships to map. The workshop was a formalized version of what she’d already been doing: observing, interpreting, capturing a group’s essence.
But Ally Fraser wasn’t just a model. He was an active participant. He changed the composition merely by entering it.
She took her tea to her bedroom, a small space dominated by a large north-facing window and canvases in various states of completion. The one on the easel was a swirl of Murrayfield grey and pitch green, with blurred shapes that were not yet men. She put her mug down and retrieved the sketchpad from her bag.
The page with the emergence drawing was still there. She hadn’t imagined the intensity of it. The lines were urgent, sure. She propped it on the easel beside the canvas, a sketch beside a painting, a mhoment beside a mood.
They were talking to each other.
Her phone buzzed on the desk. An email notification. The subject line read: SRU Wellbeing Workshop – Final Participant List & Agenda.
Her thumb hovered over the screen. This was it. The formal structure. The professional framework. She opened it.
A PDF listed names. Fraser, A. was third down. McTavish, G. was several below. The agenda was sterile: Introduction (10 mins), Exploring Identity Beyond Sport (40 mins), Guided Creative Exercise (60 mins), Group Reflection (20 mins).
Guided Creative Exercise. Her section. Sixty minutes in a room with them, asking them to access a part of themselves they usually channeled into pure physicality. To be vulnerable, on purpose. After today, she understood the currency of vulnerability here. It was earned, not given.
Gregor’s embarrassed apology in the pool room was a form of it. Ally’s defense was another. Both were powerful, both were revealing.
She closed the email. The nervous flutter in her stomach was still there, but it had solidified into a kind of focus. She looked at the sketch, then at the blank, waiting canvas.
Tomorrow wasn’t about her fear. It was about doing the work she was commissioned to do. It was about seeing them, really seeing them, and having the courage to reflect that vision back, even if it made them—or her—uncomfortable.
She picked up a charcoal stick. The canvas awaited. For now, she had the noise of the water, the shock of cold air on wet skin, and the profound silence that followed a boundary being drawn. She began to block in a new form, letting the memory of the day guide her hand, the momentum carrying her forward into the unknown space of the next.
The charcoal was a live wire in her hand, transferring the kinetic memory of muscle through water onto the primed canvas. She worked until her shoulder burned and the streetlights outside her window cast long, skeletal shadows across the floor. The form emerging was not a portrait, but a force—a convergence of pressure and motion. She finally stopped when her eyes blurred, stripping off her paint-streaked sweater and falling into bed where the dark behind her eyelids still churned with turquoise light.
The next morning, the workshop loomed like a weather front. She dressed with deliberate neutrality: black trousers, a grey knitted jumper, boots. Armour for the artist. The SRU conference room was a bland, modern space smelling of stale coffee and lemon-scented cleaner. A large oval table dominated, surrounded by chairs that looked ergonomic and uncomfortable. Jenni was there, arranging name cards with a frantic efficiency.
“Roz, good, you’re early. They’ll filter in from morning weights. Probably be a bit restless.” She gestured to a trolley laden with art supplies—thick paper, pencils, charcoal, pastels. “This all look in order?”
“It’s perfect,” Roz said, her voice tight. She busied herself organizing the materials at one end of the table, creating islands of potential chaos.
The door banged open and Gregor shuffled in first, followed by two other players Roz recognized from the pitch. He was wearing team trackies and a hoodie, his hair damp from a shower. He clocked her and the art supplies, his expression flickering between apology and wariness.
“Alright, Roz? Brought my creative A-game.” He held up his hands, fingers splayed. “These are officially ready to express.”
“Just use them to hold a pencil, Grezza,” one of the others laughed, slumping into a chair. “That’ll be achievement enough.”
They filed in, a wave of subdued bulk and low chatter, filling the room with a different kind of density. They smelled of soap, deep heat, and fresh sweat. Ally entered near the back, deep in conversation with the team’s veteran fly-half. He was in plain dark jeans and a simple navy crewneck sweater that did nothing to disguise the athlete beneath. His eyes scanned the room, found her, and gave a brief, acknowledging nod that sent a calm, clear signal through her noise.
Jenni clapped her hands. “Right, gentlemen. This is Roz MacDonald, our artist in residence. She’s not just here to draw you lot looking pretty. This session is about exploring identity beyond the jersey. Play nice. Listen. And try to engage a muscle above your necks.”
A few good-natured groans answered her. Jenni left, and the door clicked shut with a terrible finality.
Roz was alone with them. Fifteen pairs of eyes, ranging from curious to bored to openly skeptical, settled on her. The air conditioner whirred. She placed her palms flat on the cool table.
“Thanks for coming,” she began, her voice surprisingly steady. “I know this might feel… adjacent to your real work. But it is work. The SRU didn’t commission a portrait of fifteen individual faces. They commissioned a portrait of a team. Your essence. That’s what I’m here to find, with your help.”
A lock named Euan raised a hand. “So, are you going to, like, psychoanalyse us?”
“No. I’m going to ask you to draw.”
A beat of silence was followed by a collective, low rustle of unease.
“Draw?” said the fly-half, Hamish, his eyebrow arched. “Love, I haven’t held a crayon since primary school.”
“That’s the point,” Roz said, a thread of her own conviction weaving through. “It’s not about skill. It’s about making a mark. A decision. I’ll give you a prompt. You’ll have twenty minutes. What you do with it is entirely up to you. No judgments. No right answers.”
Ally was watching her, his head slightly tilted as it had been by the pool. He hadn’t spoken yet. His quiet attention was an anchor.
“What’s the prompt, then?” Gregor asked, already fidgeting with a lump of charcoal, his fingers turning black.
Roz took a slow breath. “I want you to draw the source of your strength. Not your physical strength. The other kind. The kind that keeps you here when it’s raining sideways and you’ve lost three lineouts in a row. The kind you rely on when the crowd’s noise becomes a wall. Don’t overthink it. Just… respond.”
She set a timer on her phone. The click of it starting was deafening.
For a moment, nothing happened. They stared at the blank paper as if it were a foreign object. Then, with a resigned shrug, Hamish picked up a pencil and began drawing what looked, from Roz’s angle, like a very detailed pint of beer. A few others followed with hesitant, childish sketches of family stick figures or the Scottish flag.
Gregor was scratching dark, furious spirals onto his page. Ally hadn’t moved. He was just looking at the paper, his brow faintly furrowed. Then, he reached not for a pencil, but for a charcoal stick. He broke it in two with a clean snap.
The sound made Roz jump. He picked up the smaller piece and began to work. His movements were not hesitant. They were deliberate, controlled, but urgent. He used the side of the charcoal, laying down broad, sweeping areas of dense black. He used his thumb to smudge, creating gradients of deep grey.
Roz moved quietly around the table, not looking at their work directly, but feeling the energy shift in the room. The initial reluctance was melting into a focused, almost meditative quiet. The scratch of graphite, the soft crush of pastel, became the room’s new language.
She paused behind Ally. Her breath caught.
He wasn’t drawing an object or a person. He’d created a landscape. It was a vast, dark sky pressing down on a narrow, sliver of rugged, textured land. The land wasn’t empty. In the very centre, minute but meticulously detailed, was a single, stone-built bothy, a faint smudge of light at its window. It wasn’t pretty. It was isolated, besieged by the elements, but enduring. The strength wasn’t in the sky or the storm. It was in the simple, tenacious fact of the light.
The rawness of it, the private geography, felt like an intrusion to witness. She moved away before he could feel her presence.
When the timer chimed, the men sat back as if waking up. Some looked embarrassed by their efforts, others vaguely surprised.
“Right,” Roz said, her heart pounding. “No one has to share. But if you want to, you can talk about what you drew, or why you drew it the way you did.”
Most shook their heads, closed their books. Hamish held up his pint. “Mine’s obvious. The post-match debrief. Sacred ritual.” Everyone laughed, the tension breaking.
Gregor looked at his violent spirals. “Mine’s… chaos. The noise in my head before a scrum. That’s where I go. Into the mess. It fuels me.” He said it quickly, then clamped his mouth shut, as if shocked by his own admission.
All eyes, inevitably, drifted to Ally. He hadn’t covered his drawing. He looked at it, then at the expectant faces around him. He gave a slight, almost imperceptible shrug.
“It’s a place,” he said, his voice quiet. “A real one. On Lewis. It’s where I go. In here.” He tapped his temple. “When it gets too loud. When the strength feels… external. That’s the source. The quiet inside the storm.”
The room was utterly still. The revelation was so antithetical to his public persona—the fierce, articulate spokesperson, the relentless engine on the pitch. This was something hidden and fortified.
He looked directly at Roz then, holding her gaze across the table. “The prompt worked.”
Something passed between them in that silent, charged space—a recognition, a transfer of understanding. He had shown her a corner of his map. She had given him the compass to find it.
The rest of the session passed in a blur of group reflection and loosening conversation. As they filed out, clapping each other on the back, the mood was lighter, the curiosity towards her now tinged with a new respect.
Ally lingered as the others left, rolling his charcoal-smudged drawing carefully into a tube.
“That was… insightful,” he said, approaching her where she was gathering abandoned pastels.
“It was brave,” she corrected softly, not looking up. “Thank you.”
He was close enough now that she could smell the clean, cotton scent of his sweater. “You asked a question that actually required an answer. Most people don’t.” He paused. “I’d like to see it. The painting, when it’s done.”
She finally met his eyes. The blue was less piercing today, more like a deep, still loch. “It might not be what you expect.”
“I’m counting on that.” A small, genuine smile touched his mouth. “See you at training, Roz.”
He left, the tube tucked under his arm, taking his secret landscape with him.
Roz stood alone in the silent, littered room. The papers left behind were scattered with fragments of inner worlds: shaky symbols, clumsy hearts, a surprisingly good drawing of a dog. Her earlier fear felt foolish now. They hadn’t been a pack. They were a collection of isolated landscapes, just like anyone else.
And she had just been given a key to the most compelling one.
She picked up her own sketchpad, the one she’d used to discreetly capture their focused expressions during the exercise. She flipped to a fresh page. This time, she didn’t draw a force or an emergence.
She drew a single, steadfast light in a vast, overwhelming dark. She drew it not as a beacon, but as a choice. The momentum was no longer carrying her forward into the unknown. It was pulling her in, deep and sure, towards a specific, quiet point of origin. The work had truly begun.