Chapter 5: The Ghillie's Dhu
The rain was a fine, persistent mist, softening the edges of the stadium. Murrayfield was empty, silent but for the distant grind of a groundskeeping vehicle. Roz stood on the touchline, her small figure dwarfed by the vast, empty stands, feeling the chill seep through her boots. This was her idea. To see the geometry without the noise, the human architecture without the sweat and roar.
Ally emerged from the tunnel, alone, dressed in training kit, a hoodie pulled up against the damp. He carried a ball under one arm. "You picked a romantic spot," he called, his voice bouncing off the tiers of seats.
"It's honest," she replied, her breath a pale cloud. "No illusions in this light."
He dropped the ball, let it rest on the perfect grass. "So this is the 'natural habitat' without the animals."
"Just the terrain." She pulled her sketchbook from her bag, the cover already speckled with rain. "I want to understand the space you occupy. The distances. The lines."
He watched her, amused. "You're going to draw empty grass?"
"I'm going to draw potential." She opened to a fresh page, her charcoal ready. "Show me."
"Show you what?"
"Where you stand during a lineout. Where you run from a scrum. The places on the pitch that feel different."
He gave a slow nod, understanding. For the next twenty minutes, he was a ghost player, tracing patterns across the turf. He jogged to the 22-meter line, turned, walked the path of a kick-chase. He stood at the exact spot of his match-saving tackle, planting his feet. "Here," he said, his voice low. "The angle cuts off the wing. You have to commit fully, no second thoughts."
Roz sketched the angles, the perspective lines radiating from his boots. She drew the empty stands as a looming, blurred presence. "And the try line? What does it feel like when you're over it?"
He walked to the end zone, a few feet of in-goal area. He turned, looking back up the pitch. "Relief," he said after a moment. "Then immediately, emptiness. The reason for running is gone. You're just... there."
She drew a single, dark line across the page. The try line. Then, on the other side, she left the space empty, a void. "What about the other side? Defending your own?"
"That's different." He walked back, stood between the posts facing the pitch. "That's a fortress. Every inch matters. It's claustrophobic. The pressure comes in waves."
She drew the posts as two slender, tense lines, a narrow gate. The wind picked up, fluttering the pages of her book. A strand of wet hair stuck to her cheek. She ignored it.
"You're shivering," he said.
"I'm working."
"You can work from the stands. Under cover."
She shook her head, her eyes still on the page. "The light's different down here. It's flat. True."
He walked over, stopping a few feet away. "Can I see?"
She hesitated. This wasn't the gash. This was the skeleton, the blueprint. She turned the book. He studied the stark lines, the notations of distance, the emotional labels: relief/emptiness, fortress/claustrophobia.
"It's like a battle map," he said.
"It is a battle map."
He met her eyes. "And where am I on it?"
"Everywhere." She closed the book. "And nowhere. It's just the theory. The person is what makes it real."
The silence stretched, filled only by the whisper of rain on grass. The professional distance she’d vowed to maintain felt thin, permeable in the grey vastness.
"You never answered," he said quietly. "About letting me see the rest. The work with the... gash."
"I turned down the buyer," she said, the words out before she could weigh them. "Mr. Kincaid. He wanted the seascape. He called the sketch with the broken line 'gossip.'"
Ally’s expression stilled. "What did you say?"
"I said no." She shrugged, a tight, defensive movement. "He didn't get it. So he doesn't get the painting."
A slow smile touched his lips, a real one, reaching his eyes. "Good."
"It wasn't 'good.' It was probably stupid. Lena hasn't stopped texting."
"It was essential," he corrected, his voice firm. "Otherwise, what's the point of any of it?" He nudged the rugby ball with his foot. "Otherwise, it's just a job. And this is just a game. And we're all just meat in a jersey."
The phrase, her own brutal reduction thrown back with understanding, undid something in her chest. She looked away, across the acres of perfect, empty grass. "It's just a painting."
"It's not, though. Is it?"
She didn't answer. The truth was too large, too dangerous.
"Come on," he said, his tone shifting, becoming lighter. "You've mapped the crime scene. Now see how the ghost moves." He picked up the ball. "Give me a play. Draw me a scenario."
She blinked. "What?"
"On your map. Pick two points. A place to start, a place to finish. I'll show you the route."
A challenge. A collaboration. She opened the book again, her heart beating a little faster. She pointed to a spot near the halfway line. "Start here. They've broken through. You're the last defender." Her finger swept to the try line between the posts. "Stop them there."
He looked at the imaginary distance, his eyes calculating. He handed her the ball. "Throw it. High. Give me something to chase."
She took the cold, leather ball, its pebbled surface unfamiliar in her hands. She stepped back, drew her arm awkwardly, and launched it. It spiraled, a clumsy, wobbling arc that fell short.
He was already moving. Not at full pace, but with a fluid, explosive acceleration that was shocking in its silent power. He gathered the ball on the bounce, tucked it, and changed direction without breaking stride. He wasn't running to the line she’d indicated. He was running a diagonal, intercepting an invisible, faster opponent, his path a sharp, intelligent angle that cut the space in half. He crossed the try line and stopped, turning back, his chest rising and falling steadily.
"The shortest distance isn't always a straight line," he called. "You have to predict where the threat will be."
She had stopped breathing. It was one thing to watch the chaos from above. It was another to stand on the green and see that controlled violence unleashed toward a point she had chosen. The intelligence of it. The terrifying beauty.
She lifted her charcoal, but didn't draw. She just watched him walk back through the mist, the ball under his arm, a man completely at home in this empty, pressured space.
"Your turn," he said, stopping before her.
"My turn to what?"
"To show me your run. Your geometry." He gestured to the pitch. "Pick a destination."
"I'm not a runner."
"Everyone's running somewhere, Roz. Even if they're standing still."
She hugged her sketchbook to her chest. The stadium felt like a confessional. She looked from the tunnel, to the stands, to the distant try line. Her life felt like those three points, pulling her in different directions. She simply pointed to where she stood. "Here. I'm just trying to stand here. On my own terms."
He studied her face, the rain beading on her lashes. He understood. He didn't smile. He just gave a single, solemn nod. "That's the hardest run of all. Holding your ground."
A shout echoed from the tunnel. "Fraser! Is that you? We've got video in five!" A coach stood under the awning, waving.
The spell broke. The professional world reasserted itself. Ally raised a hand in acknowledgment. "Duty calls."
Roz nodded, stuffing her book into her bag. "I should go too."
"Wait." He reached out, then checked the motion, his hand falling back to his side. "The official portrait sittings start next week. They've booked a room at the museum. Natural light, serious business."
"Right."
"It'll be formal. Structured. Nothing like this." He glanced around at the empty, rain-swept pitch. "So. Would you... before that... would you let me buy you a coffee? Somewhere with no grass and no tactics boards? I'd like to see the work. The real work. The gossip."
The question hung in the damp air. It was a line crossed, an acknowledgement that the map had been redrawn. She thought of Kincaid's sneer, Lena's pressure, the safe, solitary confinement of her studio. She thought of the gash on the page, and the man who saw it not as a flaw, but as truth.
"Yes," she said, the word a small, definitive sound against the vast silence. "I'd like that."
"Tomorrow? I'm free after ten."
"Tomorrow." She turned to leave, then paused. "Ally?"
"Yeah?"
"Thank you. For the lesson in angles."
He hefted the ball, a faint smile returning. "Any time, artist. Any time."
She walked back towards the tunnel, feeling the weight of the empty stands watching her go. Her boots left dark prints on the pristine track. In her bag, the sketchbook was full of ghosts and lines and potential. For the first time, the thought of filling them with color, with the specific, complicated truth of a person, didn't feel like a terrifying commission. It felt like the next, inevitable, and absolutely essential point on the map.
The coffee shop was all warm wood and the sharp, forgiving scent of roasted beans. Roz arrived first, claiming a small table in the back where the light from the front window diffused into something soft and indirect. She placed her satchel carefully on the empty chair, a sentinel for the work inside.
When Ally pushed through the door, he brought a draft of cool, outside air with him. He’d changed into civilian clothes—dark jeans, a simple navy jumper that made his eyes seem brighter. He scanned the room, found her, and the slight tension in his shoulders relaxed. “You found a corner,” he said, sliding into the seat opposite. “Strategic.”
“I like to see the whole room,” she admitted. “Old habit.”
A server appeared. He ordered a black Americano. She asked for a pot of Earl Grey. The ordinary ritual was a strange, quiet counterpoint to the echoing stadium of the day before. “So,” he said, after the server left. “How’s the fallout from the art world?”
“Lena is professionally disappointed but personally fascinated,” Roz said, managing a small smile. “She thinks my ‘stubborn streak’ is marketable if we can find the right narrative. She’s now calling the seascape ‘an act of defiant preservation.’”
Ally laughed, a genuine, warm sound. “See? Even your no has layers. She’s not wrong.” He leaned forward, his elbows on the table. “Can I see it? The gossip.”
Her pulse jumped. She unzipped her bag, pulled out the large sketchbook. She opened it not to the gash, but to the storm and the bothy. She turned it towards him. “This is what he wanted. But he wanted it without the shelter. Just the punishing sublime.”
Ally studied it quietly. His gaze was different from Kincaid’s—slower, less acquisitive, more experiential. He traced a finger over the tiny, dark square she’d carved into the cliff. “This is the point, isn’t it? It’s not about the storm. It’s about surviving it. Watching it from a place of safety.”
The simple accuracy of it unlocked something in her throat. She just nodded.
“Can I see the other one?” His voice was gentle.
She flipped back a page. There it was. The complex web of the tackle, the beautiful, converging lines of force, all violently severed by the thick, jagged black mark. He didn’t speak for a long time. His expression was unreadable.
“When I look at this,” he said finally, tapping the gash, “I don’t see a jersey. I see the moment I realized he’d made you a target. I see my own anger. It’s not gossip. It’s a witness statement.”
Roz’s teacup rattled in its saucer as she lifted it. She hadn’t expected him to see himself in the mark. She’d only meant to capture the violation. “It’s just a feeling,” she whispered.
“Feelings are data,” he said, echoing her own words from the pub back to her. “You told Grezza that. This is the data from my side of the glass.” He looked up, holding her gaze. “It’s better than any action shot they’ll ever use for promotion. It’s the cost of the action.”
Their drinks arrived, providing a moment of fractured silence. He stirred his coffee, though it was black. “The official sittings will be rubbish,” he said, changing tack. “They’ll want me in a clean jersey, looking noble against a dark background. It’ll look like a bank advert.”
“What would you want?” she asked.
He didn’t hesitate. “Something like this.” He pointed again at the disrupted sketch. “Not the mess, but the truth. The concentration before the collision. The quiet in the head before everything erupts. Can you paint that?”
“I can try.” She closed the book. “But they’re paying for the bank advert.”
“I’m paying for the portrait,” he corrected softly. “With my time. My face. I get a say.” He took a sip of his coffee. “I have an idea. Come to training.”
“I’ve seen you train. On my laptop. Video analysis.”
“Not like that. Not edited. Come to a live session. A full-contact drills day. Stand on the sidelines, inside the fence. Hear the impacts. Listen to the language. See what we do when we think no one’s really looking.”
The idea was terrifying and irresistible. “The coaches would allow that?”
“I’ll square it with the performance director. Tell him it’s for ‘authentic representation.’ He’ll love that. He’s a romantic about the ‘warrior spirit’ or some such.” Ally’s smile was wry. “It’ll be ugly. And boring. And brutal. And if you can find the quiet in that, you’ll have your portrait.”
Roz felt the map inside her re-drawing itself again. This wasn’t a point she had plotted. This was uncharted territory. “When?”
“Thursday. Morning. It’ll be cold.” He watched her, reading the conflict on her face. “You don’t have to decide now.”
But she did. The momentum from the pitch, from his understanding of the gash, was carrying her forward. She was tired of drawing from the outside. “I’ll be there,” she said. “What do I wear?”
“Something you don’t mind getting muddy,” he said, his eyes crinkling at the corners. “And your rugby boots. Metaphorically speaking.”
They finished their drinks talking of easier things—a terrible film they’d both seen, a new restaurant, the relentless Edinburgh weather. It was easy. Alarmingly easy. When they stepped back out onto the street, the sky had cleared to a pale, watery blue.
“Thursday, then,” he said. “I’ll text you the details. Don’t be late. The coach hates lateness almost as much as he hates missed tackles.”
“I’m never late.”
“Good.” He shifted his weight, seemed to consider something, then simply nodded. “Thanks for the coffee. And the show.”
He turned and walked away, merging with the midday crowd. Roz stood holding her satchel, the sketchbook inside feeling heavier, more significant. The quiet inside the storm. He’d named it. Now he was inviting her into the squall to find it. It was the most terrifying commission of her life.
Back in her studio, she pinned the gash sketch to the wall. She looked from it to the stretched, blank canvas waiting for the official portrait. The safe, bank-advert background was already toned a neutral grey.
With a decisive flick of her wrist, she took a large brush and a bucket of raw umber wash. She swept it across the pristine grey in one broad, uneven arc, staining it, breaking its boring perfection. It was a start. It was an act of defiance against the empty line. She would go to that training ground and she would listen for the quiet. And whatever she found there, however brutal or boring or beautiful, would go onto this canvas. Bank advert be damned.
Bank advert be damned. The stain was a beginning, a tectonic shift beneath the surface. She cleaned her brush, the turpentine smell sharp and clarifying, and tried not to count the hours until Thursday.
Her phone buzzed on the paint-speckled table. Not Lena. Ally. Her stomach did a small, involuntary flip. She wiped her hands on a rag, leaving smears of umber.
The message was a block of text, uncharacteristically hesitant. I wanted to ask you face to face but I bottled it, he wrote. There’s a very official and very formal evening happening with some sponsors in a couple of weeks, black tie well kilts the shebang. I was wondering if you would like to be my guest. You can say no. If you want. It might be boring.
Roz read it twice. The punctuation was all wrong, the sentences running into each other. This wasn’t the confident player or the thoughtful collaborator. This was someone fumbling. She could see him typing it, deleting, typing again. Bottled it. The phrase made her smile.
She stared at the stained canvas. The formal world of kilts and sponsors was the antithesis of everything they’d just discussed. It was the bank advert, live and in person. A cage of expectation.
Yet his invitation felt like a different kind of line being crossed. This wasn’t research. This wasn’t for the portrait. This was him, asking her into his world’s version of the corporate box, but this time by his side. The risk of it was immense.
She picked up her phone, her thumb hovering. The truth was, she wanted to see him in a kilt. She wanted to see the man who understood the gash navigate a room of financiers. She wanted to map that contradiction, too.
A sponsor dinner sounds uniquely terrifying, she typed back, her pulse in her fingers. Will there be speeches?
His reply was almost instant. At least three. All of them will use the phrase “warrior spirit.” I’ll have to stand up and look humble.
In that case, I accept. Someone has to witness your humility firsthand. It’s for the archives.
You’re saving me from a night of tactical chat with a fund manager from London. I owe you.
No, you owe me a dance. To make up for the speeches.
The three dancing dots appeared. They lingered. One dance. Minimum. I’ll warn you, my footwork is better on grass.
She put the phone down, face-up, on the stained table. The screen went dark. Outside, the Edinburgh twilight was deepening into indigo. The room felt different. The stain on the canvas seemed to pulse with a new, low frequency. Thursday’s training ground now had a sequel, a destination draped in black tie and formality.
She picked up a fresh piece of charcoal, its potential now humming with a different energy. She didn’t draw the pitch or the storm. She sketched the swift, clean lines of a bow tie against a dark background. Then, with a few rough strokes, she fractured them with the textured grain of weathered wood. The formal and the raw, forced into the same frame.
It was just a quick study. A feeling. But it felt like the next point on the map, a coordinate she hadn’t known she was navigating towards. The quiet inside this new kind of storm. She left the sketch there, beside her phone, and went to wash the charcoal from her hands, the water turning grey as it swirled down the drain.
She left the sketch there, beside her phone, and went to wash the charcoal from her hands, the water turning grey as it swirled down the drain. The studio felt charged, the air thinner, as if the agreement to the dinner had opened a valve somewhere. She spent the next two days in a state of suspended animation, trying and failing to paint anything of substance on the official portrait’s now-stained canvas.
Thursday morning arrived, iron-grey and biting. The training ground was a fenced-in patch of misery on the city’s outskirts, the pitch churned to a brown glue by studded boots. Roz stood just inside the gate, exactly as Ally had instructed, her notebook zipped safely inside her waterproof jacket. The cold was a physical assault.
The players emerged from a low-slung building, a procession of enormous men in mud-smeared kit, breath pluming in the air. They ignored her, a collective focus settling over them like a hood. A coach’s whistle pierced the quiet, and the violence began. It wasn’t a game. It was a series of calculated, repetitive collisions.
She had expected noise, shouting. Instead, she heard the wind, the coach’s barked codes, and the sounds of impact. The thick, wet slap of body hitting body. The grunt of forced-out air. The sharp, alarming crack of a shoulder meeting a padded tackle bag. It was methodical, almost liturgical in its brutality.
Ally was in the thick of it. He hit a tackle sled, driving it backwards with a low, guttural roar that seemed to come from the earth itself. He popped up, jogged back into line, his expression vacant, conserving himself. This was the work. This was the unglamorous machinery of the spectacle she’d watched from the plush box.
During a water break, Grezza spotted her. He nudged a teammate, said something that made the man laugh. He started to amble over, a grin on his face. Ally intercepted him with a sharp word and a hand on his chest, steering him towards the drinks station. Ally didn’t even look at Roz. The protection was automatic, absolute, and it sent a different kind of heat through her core.
The session moved into a live drill, fifteen men against fifteen. The coach blew his whistle, and the chaos erupted. This was different from the match. There were no breaks, no set pieces to catch the breath. Just relentless, exhausting pressure. Roz saw the moment fatigue bred carelessness. A pass from a young back was slow, looping.
Ally read it a second before anyone. He surged forward, an explosive interception of space and intention. He took the pass cleanly, but the young back, desperate, dove at his legs. Ally twisted mid-air to avoid the dangerous contact, but his planted foot stuck in the mud. He went down, not with the clean geometry of a tackle, but with a heavy, crumpling awkwardness.
The sound was wrong. A dull, wet pop, swallowed by the squelch of the ground. He didn’t roar. He went very still, face down in the muck. A profound silence fell across the pitch, broken only by the wind.
Roz’s hand was at her mouth. She hadn’t realized she’d moved. The coaches sprinted over. Grezza was there first, rolling Ally onto his back. Ally’s face was a mask of clenched agony, his teeth bared, eyes screwed shut. He was saying one word, over and over, through gritted teeth. “Knee. Knee. Knee.”
The performance director, a lean man with a tablet, appeared and shooed everyone back. Roz stood frozen, a trespasser. Ally was sitting up now, supported, his leg held straight. He looked across the pitch, through the gathering men, and found her. His gaze locked onto hers. The pain in his eyes was sharp, bright, but beneath it was something worse: a cold, dawning calculation of ruin.
He looked away, his head dropping as the medics closed in with a stretcher. The spell broke. The players drifted, the energy sapped, talking in low, grave tones. Grezza walked towards the sideline, towards Roz. His usual bluster was gone. He stopped a few feet away, his face grim.
“He was avoiding the lad,” Grezza said, his voice rough. “Didn’t want to wreck his career. Now look.” He spat into the mud. “Always the fucking thinker.”
Roz couldn’t speak. She watched the stretcher carry Ally off the pitch, towards the medical room. The map in her mind, the one of potential and lines, was obliterated. Replaced by the single, stark image of a man falling into empty space where the ground should have been.
An hour later, she was still there, waiting outside the treatment room in a sterile corridor that smelled of antiseptic and sweat. Lena had called twice. She let it go to voicemail. The door opened, and the team doctor, a woman in her fifties with a tired face, stepped out.
“You’re the artist?” she asked. Roz nodded. “He’s asking for you. Don’t be long. The ambulance is on its way for scans.”
The room was small, clinical. Ally was on a treatment bed, his leg encased in a bulky brace, his face pale. The mud was washed from his skin, which made him look younger, more exposed. He managed a ghost of a smile. “Sorry. Not much of a show today.”
She moved to the side of the bed, her words failing her. All she could do was look at the brace, the physical proof of the pop she’d heard.
“It’s the ACL,” he said, his voice flat. “I know the sound. I’ve heard it in others.” He stared at the ceiling. “Surgery. Nine months. Maybe more. Maybe never the same.”
The finality of it hung in the air. His career, his identity, his body’s language, all rewritten in a single, stuck moment. “The dinner,” she said softly, stupidly.
A bitter laugh escaped him. “Yeah. I’ll be a great date on crutches. A real warrior spirit.” He turned his head to look at her. “You should go. This… this changes the portrait. Changes everything.”
She looked at his face, the pain and the calculation still warring there. She saw the quiet now, but it was the terrible quiet of a suspended animation. This was the other side of the collision. Not the glory, but the wreckage.
“No,” Roz heard herself say, the word solid in the sterile air. “It doesn’t change a thing.” She reached out, hesitated, then placed her hand over his on the stiff sheets. His fingers were cold. “The portrait was never about the bank advert. It was about the quiet. This is just a different kind of quiet.”
He closed his eyes, his throat working. He turned his hand over, lacing his fingers through hers. His grip was fierce. “It hurts like a bastard.”
“I know.” She didn’t let go. “I’ll be at the hospital. If they let me.”
“They won’t. Family only.”
“Then I’ll be in the waiting room.” She squeezed his hand. “And I’m still going to that dinner. Even if I have to push your wheelchair myself.”
He opened his eyes. The calculation was still there, but it was re-focusing, finding a new point of reference. Her. “You’re stubborn.”
“You have no idea.”
The door opened, and two paramedics entered with a gurney. “Time to go, Ally.”
He reluctantly released her hand. As they transferred him, he looked back at her. “The sketchpad. In my bag. By the door. There’s something in it. For you.”
The paramedics wheeled him out. The room felt cavernous without him. She found his sports bag, unzipped the main compartment. On top of his clothes lay her sketchbook—the one she’d used at Murrayfield. He must have taken it from her bag at the coffee shop without her noticing.
She opened it. Flipped past the gash, past the storm. On the last page, on the clean paper she’d saved for the portrait studies, he had drawn something. It was in blunt pencil, the lines unsure but deliberate. It was a figure, small, viewed from behind, standing at the glass of the private box. The stadium was a mere suggestion below. He’d captured the curve of her spine, the intense focus of her posture looking down. He’d written beneath it, in his messy capitals: THE OBSERVER, OBSERVED.
He had drawn her. Not as a beautiful woman in a stand, but as a working artist, a integral part of the landscape. Her breath hitched. She closed the book, holding it tight against her chest.
Her phone buzzed. A text from an unknown number. It was the performance director. Miss MacDonald. Given the circumstances, the portrait sittings are of course postponed indefinitely. We will be in touch regarding the contract.
She stared at the screen. The official path was closing, a door swinging shut. Another text came through, this time from Ally’s phone. Probably Grezza, or his mother. It just read: Scan at 4. Western General.
Roz put her phone away, tucked the sketchbook into her bag, and walked out into the cold afternoon. The map was gone. There was no terrain. There was only the next right thing. She got into her car, turned the ignition, and pointed it towards the hospital. The blank, stained canvas in her studio waited. It no longer felt like a commission. It felt like a promise, and the stakes had just been torn up and rewritten in a language of pain and pencil lines. She drove, the observer, now irrevocably observed, moving steadily into the frame of the unfolding story.