I'll Keep You Safe

by Peter May

  “Have you ever seen her?”

  Niamh laughed, and realized it was the first time she had done so since Ruairidh’s death. Her smile faded quickly. “No,” she said. “I’ve never believed in that kind of thing. It seems a young man also fell from the cliffs while collecting eggs.” She pointed. “There’s a gravestone over there, near the remains of that old blackhouse beyond Taigh ’an Fiosaich. But it’s unmarked.”

  Seonag said, “Remember that time when we were kids? And we stole all the eggs from Mrs. Macdonald’s henhouse? Meaning to give them back, of course. But only after the old cailleach had found the henhouse empty. And then you slipped and dropped the basket and broke every single egg.”

  Niamh laughed in spite of herself. “We got into so much trouble.”

  Seonag slipped her arm through Niamh’s, and they walked in silence for some minutes along the cliff edge. Gannets and shags wheeled and swooped about their heads, cawing and shrieking in the soft evening air. Others were settling themselves for the night in nests they had contrived on impossible crags and ledges above the sheerest of drops. Far off to the west, the sky glowed gold along the horizon, rising through pink and purple to the darkest blue. There was every likelihood that the aurora borealis would put on a show tonight. Niamh breathed deeply and closed her eyes. She loved this place. But she didn’t know if she could stay here without Ruairidh.

  She opened her eyes to find Seonag looking at her. Seonag said, “I’ve got an overnight bag in the car. Martin is happy to look after the kids. I thought you could do with the company.”

  Niamh gazed out across the Minch and wondered if, beyond her need for sympathy and comfort, Seonag was really who she wanted to be with tonight.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Seonag and I had been inseparable as kids, but something changed between us the minute I’d shown an interest in Ruairidh. And it was a while before I figured out that she was after him herself.

  It wasn’t obvious at first. I’d thought that maybe she was just jealous, afraid of losing me to some boy. After all, at that age girls and boys kept themselves pretty much to themselves. The hormones hadn’t started playing havoc with our emotions just yet.

  But now that we were into our teens things were a little different. Ruairidh was fifteen and had already gone to the Nicolson where, by all accounts, he was the school heart-throb. I was frustrated to be stuck, still, at Shawbost.

  Gone was his mullet, replaced by a Rick Astley haircut, short back and sides with a thick quiff on top. He was still tall, but had filled out by now, and was playing for the school rugby team. He had acquired a leather bomber jacket from the army surplus store in Stornoway, which he wore to death, along with drainpipe jeans with the knees out. He was the epitome of cool.

  I had sprouted, too, and was taller than Seonag, and very proud of my budding breasts. My figure was still a bit too skinny and boyish for my liking, but there was a sense now of womanhood just around the corner. Clothes hung well on me, and I had let my blonde curls grow long, tying them back at times in a ponytail that hung halfway down my back, at other times leaving them to cascade freely over my shoulders.

  Seonag, to my annoyance, grew even more beautiful as we passed into our teens. She had one of those classic hourglass figures, with boobs that drew every boy’s eye, and a face that might easily have launched a thousand ships. Only on Lewis, they would have been fishing boats or trawlers, and the fishermen would have been interested in more than her face. She still looked much older than me, and although I was more confident within myself these days, in her company I definitely felt like the frumpy friend.

  Her plan to take Ruairidh away from me—although it has to be said that he was a long way from ever being mine—began with a process of running him down. Trying to diminish him in my eyes with a litany of half-truths and downright lies. Had I heard about him getting drunk in Stornoway and being driven home by the police in disgrace? Did I know that he was going out with the captain of the hockey team, and had allegedly been caught having sex with her in the locker room? And one time, when he showed up at the youth club with a split lip and two black eyes, she told me confidentially that he’d been in some kind of a fight at school. I later learned that he had acquired his injuries playing rugby against a team from Inverness. Which taught me to take everything Seonag told me about him with a pinch of salt.

  The community hall at Balanish was where the battle lines were first clearly drawn and the initial skirmish took place.

  The hall, as we grew older, had become the centre of our limited lives. It was where we spent our Saturday nights, at a youth club run by some of the older village kids. When I say youth club, there was nothing formal or organized about it. It was usually one of my brothers who got the keys and opened up the hall for two or three hours on the Saturday evening. The boys played five-a-side football in the main hall, while the girls crowded into a room at the back, listening to music and gabbing about inconsequential things. Like clothes. And boys. And, more recently, make-up. We were always home by around eleven, and certainly before midnight. The sabbath, which began on the stroke of twelve, was inviolate. And any kind of activity beyond then, youthful or otherwise, was strictly forbidden.

  Which was why the discos were always held on the Friday. In fact, they didn’t usually start before midnight, after the older ones had got back from a night out in Stornoway.

  It was a funny thing, I’d noticed, that the closer a village was to Stornoway, the more worldly the kids seemed. As if proximity to the “big city” somehow bred sophistication. Way down in Balanish, we were like country yokels. And, then, when we were old enough to go to Stornoway with our friends on a Friday or Saturday night, we felt positively cosmopolitan, even if all we did was hang about the Narrows in the rain and drink beer.

  I was still just thirteen when my parents first allowed me to go to the Friday night discos, and only then because Uilleam and Anndra were going. Anndra, by now, was the DJ. And he was good at it. He was a handsome boy with a shock of sandy curls, and an easy way with him. His craic always got folk laughing. Girls like boys who make them laugh, so he was popular with the opposite sex.

  Any time I went, Seonag would go, too. She always stayed over at our house and shared my bed. The first few times we went, there was no sign of Ruairidh, and I began to think that he regarded the local disco as beneath him. I’d heard he went to Stornoway most Fridays with a group of older boys from Shawbost who had a car.

  Then one night in November there he was. He and a group of boys I didn’t know. Disco night usually wound up at around 3 a.m., and Ruairidh and his pals didn’t arrive until after 1:30. You sensed a frisson of excitement among the girls when they came in. But the boys were playing it very cool, standing along the back wall, smoking and drinking beer from cans.

  Anndra had recently acquired coloured lights that flashed in time with the music. And so blue, red and white light flashed intermittent accompaniment to the thump, thump of every track. Seonag and I had spent most of the night dancing with each other, handbags at our feet, in the absence of invitations from any of the boys. Now, along with all the other girls in the hall, we were anxious to be noticed by the newcomers.

  For the first time, it seemed to me, in all the years since he had rescued me from the bog, Ruairidh Macfarlane finally caught my eye. I looked away immediately, both embarrassed and anxious not to seem too keen. When I stole another glance I found his eyes still turned in my direction. To my astonishment he smiled, and I think my heart rate went off the scale. I snuck a quick look at Seonag and almost recoiled from the animosity in her glare. She had noticed Ruairidh and me making eye contact, and her nose was well and truly out of joint.

  I turned to look at Ruairidh again and very nearly fainted when I saw him pushing his way through the dancers in my direction. I’m sure I blushed bright red when he said, “Hi, Niamh, haven’t seen you for ages. Want to dance?” And I was grateful to Anndra and his coloured lights for hiding my embarrassment.<
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  I tried to sound as if I was doing him a favour. “Sure.” And made certain there was as little eye contact as possible during the dance itself. I was aware of him staring at me, and felt myself blush again each time I flicked a glance in his direction. I remember that the song Anndra played for that dance was Michael Jackson’s “Dirty Diana,” and I focused all my attention on singing along to it, in the certain knowledge that Ruairidh wouldn’t be able to hear me. Just see my lips moving. I didn’t have much of a voice.

  When it ended, I gave him a smile, almost relieved that it was over. He nodded and drifted off into the haze of cigarette smoke caught in the lights. I turned to find Seonag still giving me the evil eye. We resumed our dancing around the handbags for the next couple of songs. I recall Maxi Priest’s version of an old Cat Stevens song, “Wild World.” And Deacon Blue’s “Real Gone Kid,” with everyone pointing in the air and singing along with the “ooh-ooh” chorus. Strange how such things stay in the memory. But really I was just treading water till Anndra played the smoochy song at the end, and hoping that Ruairidh would ask me to dance for that one. I would have the chance at last to put my arms around him and feel his body next to mine.

  Seonag had disappeared off to the loo when Anndra announced the final song of the night. It was the Phil Collins hit, “A Groovy Kind of Love,” from the film Buster, and I just about melted at the thought of closing my eyes and surrendering myself to Ruairidh’s arms. I tried to catch sight of him, to meet his eye and convey somehow that I was ready for this. But to my dismay it was one of his friends that I saw approaching through the crowd. Not an ugly boy, but he had acne spots around his mouth, and greasy-looking hair, and he wasn’t Ruairidh.

  He smiled awkwardly. “Dance?”

  I had one frantic last look around for Ruairidh, but there was no sign of him, and I submitted to the inevitable. I shrugged as indifferently as I could. “Okay.” And to his disappointment immediately adopted the waltz position, keeping my body as far away from his as I could.

  It wasn’t until well into the song that I saw Seonag in Ruairidh’s arms, resting her head against his shoulder, for all the world as if they had been going out with one another for weeks. They swayed together in slow unison, and neither of them glanced once in my direction.

  I felt sick, and angry, and humiliated, and I have no idea how I managed to keep dancing until the end of the song. The lights came up, and amid a sprinkling of applause, those couples who had formed a union for the night headed quickly to the door, recovering coats and hats and scarves on the way out. I looked around for Seonag, but there was no sign of her. Her handbag had gone. No sign of Ruairidh either. His friend stood uncomfortably in front of me for a moment or two, as if he thought I might take his arm and head out with him. I threw him the most fleeting of smiles. “Thank you.” Then retrieved my handbag and hurried for the door.

  Kids in gangs and couples and singles streamed down the hill towards the war monument, warmth and smoke rising from them like steam in the cold November air. It was a clear night, I remember, the blackest of skies studded with stars. There was, for once, no wind, and frost lay thick on the tarmac, glistening on every blade of grass.

  I stood at the top of the hill, wrapping my coat around me for warmth, and scanned the bodies making their way carefully down the slope, everyone holding on to everyone else for fear of slipping on the frost. And there they were. Ruairidh and Seonag. Hand in hand, nearly at the bridge by now. Even from this distance I could hear them laughing, imagining that it was me they were laughing at. Or about. I cursed myself for being so damned cool during that first dance, and turned to head off in the other direction towards home. Only to find Uilleam walking gingerly by my side.

  “Where’s Seonag?” he said.

  “In hell I hope,” I growled at him. And in spite of the frost and the risk of slipping, I ran the rest of the way home, tears turning icy to burn my face as they tracked their way down my cheeks.

  My folks were long in their beds by the time I got back, so at least I didn’t have to face them. I slammed my bedroom door and undressed quickly, slipping beneath the cold covers to curl up foetally on my side, sobbing my anger and hurt into the pillow.

  Of course, I couldn’t sleep. Not before Seonag returned, and even then it was hours before I finally drifted off. I heard her coming in, softly shutting the door behind her. The rustle of clothes as she undressed before climbing into bed. I kept my back turned, fighting the urge either to cry or to punch her. Hopefully she thought I was asleep.

  To my acute irritation I heard her breathing grow shallow, and then the soft purr of sleep as she drifted off long before I did.

  When we got up in the morning not a word was said about the night before, and we never once discussed it in the weeks and months that followed. Though as far as I was aware nothing, in the end, ever came of it.

  It was five years later that Seonag and I next came into conflict over Ruairidh. By then we had already started growing apart and had barely seen each other during our first year away from the island, studying at different colleges on the mainland. As it turned out, for me at least, this time provided the straw that well and truly broke the camel’s back.

  Both of us were lucky enough to secure summer jobs at Linshader Fishing Lodge at the mouth of the river Grimersta on the south-west coast of Lewis. The lodge was just a few miles south of Balanish, but they were live-in jobs because of the unsocial hours we were forced to keep. Having won prizes in home economics in fourth and fifth years at the Nicolson, I was allocated the position of cook’s assistant. Seonag was put on the housekeeping rota, which was kept on its toes by a lady from nearby Linshader village who used to leave Pan Drops, a classic Free Church white mint sweetie, in hidden places around the lodge so she could check that the girls were cleaning everywhere.

  I was lucky, working in the kitchen, that I could just wear jeans and T-shirts and an apron. The housemaids had to wear kilts and black blouses. Seonag hated it. We shared a room, but during the day had very little contact because of our very different duties.

  The lodge was a grand old place dating back to Victorian times and built in the early 1870s. It sat right down on the shore of Loch Roag, at the mouth of the river, a long two-storey white building. The hill that rose behind it was covered in Scots pines planted in the nineteenth century by the island’s then owner, James Matheson, who’d made his fortune selling opium to the Chinese. What today we would probably call drug-running, but back then appeared to be the respectable pursuit of lords, admirals and prime ministers.

  It had recently been extended at the north end, and against the south gable stood a long green-roofed shed that housed the ghillies and the watchers.

  It had an atmosphere all of its own, that place. Sometimes mired in the mist that would drift in off the water on a still morning, or lost in the smirr that dropped down from the moor. I came into the loch once on a boat just as the sun was coming up, and mist like smoke rose up all around the lodge in the early-morning light, moving wraithlike among the trees. The water itself was alive with salmon breaking the still surface as they headed in from the sea on their journey upriver, and otters played around the stone slipway. It was magical.

  Nothing magical about the hours I kept, though. Up at the crack of dawn, first to serve tea to the guests in their beds, then a cooked breakfast in the dining room before they headed off with packed lunches prepared by me and the cook to spend the day fishing somewhere up on the water system. The lodge accommodated sixteen guests, very often members of the syndicate that owned it, or their friends. Wealthy folk. Judges and newspaper editors, successful businessmen and Tory peers. Folk the like of which I had never come across before, but all of whom, nearly without exception, treated me with the greatest generosity and kindness.

  I have very fond memories of the summer I spent at that lodge. I got my education there, too. I had known nothing of writing rooms and wine cellars. And although it seems hard to believe now, I had never
even tasted wine. I remember one morning doing a nosey and wandering into what they called the writing room, thinking that all the guests were out fishing. To my surprise, there was an elderly gentleman sitting at the roll-top bureau scribbling in a large notebook. I apologized immediately and began to back out. But he insisted I stay, poured me a coffee from the pot, and asked me all about myself. At first I was shy, but he put me so much at my ease that before long we were sharing laughs and inconsequential secrets. At some point the housekeeper had come in to take away dirty cups, and afterwards she cornered me in the kitchen and said, “Do you know who you were talking to in there?”

  “Well, no,” I said. And in truth I had never even thought to ask his name, although he seemed to know mine.

  “That was the poet laureate,” she said in hushed tones. I later looked him up in an encyclopaedia to discover that he had been recommended for the job by the Prime Minister, and appointed by the Queen. These were circles I was not used to moving in at Balanish.

  The girls all went to bed for a few hours in the afternoon, before getting up again to prepare afternoon tea when the ghillies brought the guests back from the fishing at five. And then we served dinner at seven-thirty following three loud strokes on the gong.

  We were six girls in all, and the housekeeper, of course. Including the gamekeeper, there were four ghillies and four watchers. The watchers mostly slept during the day, and were out at night and the early morning keeping an eye open for poachers. When Seonag and I arrived there were only three ghillies. The fourth was yet to arrive. An experienced lad, they said, who had been coming for several years now.

  He turned out to be Ruairidh Macfarlane.

  I had only been there a few days when I discovered a lodge tradition. It was my birthday, and I suppose it was probably Seonag who told everyone, but that evening before dinner, the boys all came looking for me.