I'll Keep You Safe

by Peter May

  “You’ve certainly come equipped,” I said. “Do you do this often?”

  He grinned. “First time. But I have been planning it.”

  “Oh have you?”

  He shrugged. “Well, one should always be prepared.”

  I smiled. “Oh, should one?”

  “I was a Boy Scout.”

  “That would explain it, then.” I tilted my head towards him. “I suppose your pal and his girlfriend, and the cook, were all well primed to leave us on our own at the fire.”

  He just smiled.

  When he gauged that the fish was ready, he scooped it out of the ashes with a couple of sticks and opened up the tinfoil between us. The smell that rose up with the steam was delicious. He unfolded a knife from his pocket and carefully separated the fillet from the bone, before lifting up the tail and delicately removing the whole spine and head. “Just fingers, I’m afraid.” He glanced up at me. “Is that okay?”

  “I never use anything else.” He laughed, and I discovered that I liked to make him laugh. He poured us each a glass of wine. We chinked plastic and I took a mouthful of soft, fruity Chardonnay that tasted like the best thing that had ever passed my lips. Until we turned our attention to the trout. There was not the slightest smell of fish rising from the firm, succulent flesh, slick with butter and lemon juice. It was, quite simply, the best fish I had ever tasted. If I could recreate that moment, I would relive it a thousand times.

  When we had finished it we washed our hands in the loch, freshening our mouths with more wine, and settling in close together on the outspread sleeping bags.

  “Did it live up to expectations?” I said.

  He looked at me, surprised. “What?”

  “That first kiss you’d been dreaming about all those years.”

  He was very serious. “More than.”

  “I don’t suppose you’d like to try it again? Just to make sure.”

  He ran the backs of his fingers down my cheek, and then his thumb gently across my lips. I kissed it, before he leaned in to find my lips with his. Soft and warm, the taste of Chardonnay still on his tongue. The butterflies in my tummy went into hyperdrive as I felt his hands on my shoulders, gently laying me down on the softness of the sleeping bags. There was no invitation required. Neither did he seek or need permission.

  Within minutes we were naked under the moon, making love for the very first time, and I knew that what I had taken for love on the beach at Linshader Lodge had not deceived me.

  It was my first time, and although I wasn’t going to tell him that, I think he’d probably worked it out. They say the first time can be the worst time. For me it was amazing, and only ever got better. I never, from that moment, wanted anyone else in my life.

  When we were finished and lying breathless on our backs gazing up at the faintest of stars in a sky that was as dark as it would get, he turned his head to gaze at me with an intensity that was almost frightening. Then he said, “Well, I’m glad to see that the hunter–gatherer approach still works.”

  And I clattered him as he burst out laughing.

  We got back just as the day was beginning at the lodge. The cook was already in the kitchen, and I hurried up to my room to change. Seonag was awake, but still lying in bed without any intention of getting out of it that day. Her eyes and nose were still streaming, and her voice had almost gone. It was obvious that my bed had not been slept in.

  “Been out all night, then,” she said. A statement, not a question.

  I wasn’t feeling particularly well disposed to her after Ruairidh’s revelations about what she had said to him at the disco. “None of your business,” I said curtly, and I saw her face flush with anger, and maybe hurt.

  “Finally got it together, then, you two?”

  I slipped into clean underwear and pulled on fresh jeans and a T-shirt. I could shower later. “No thanks to you.”

  She had gathered her composure again, and drew it around her like the sheets on the bed. “I wonder what your folks are going to say when they find out that you’re going out with Ruairidh Macfarlane.”

  I turned to glare at her angrily. If she was trying to puncture my happiness, she was succeeding. But I didn’t want to let it show. “I don’t care what they say. I know they’ve always blamed Ruairidh for what happened, but they’re wrong.” And I stomped out of the room. We never spoke about it again. But Seonag was in a huff with me, and I couldn’t be doing with it. Within a week I had swapped rooms with another of the girls who seemed happy to share with Seonag, and I barely spoke to her for the rest of the summer.

  Seonag aside, the next few weeks passed in a dream. I couldn’t wait to finish work each night to spend the rest of it with Ruairidh. Sometimes we sat down at the beach with the others, weather permitting, singing around the fire. Some nights we wandered off along the shore. We found a tiny island that was only accessible at low tide. There were the remains of an old blackhouse on it and we would light a fire among the ruins and Ruairidh would sing and play just for me. We had our own name for it, Eilean Teine, or Fire Island. More than once we were caught out by the incoming tide, having to pull up our breeks to wade back across to the mainland.

  When the weather was fine we made the return trek up to Macphail’s Island and the tiny shingle cove where we’d first made love. There we explored each other’s bodies and lives and got to know each other as well as two young people could. For the longest time, Ruairidh told me, he had been planning a career as a gamekeeper, working at Linshader Lodge every summer, with the intention of taking a gamekeeping and wildlife management course at an early incarnation of the University of the Highlands. Then, at the last minute, his brother Donald had persuaded him to follow in his footsteps, taking a business studies course at Aberdeen University, with the prospect of a job afterwards in the oil industry. I got the strong impression, even then, that it was a decision he regretted. We take these decisions that will forever change the course of our lives at an age when we are least qualified to make them. Ruairidh was born for a life out here in the wilderness, but it was destined never to be.

  I told him all about my ambitions to work in the clothing industry. But also of my unhappiness, even after just a few days, with my choice of textile college at Galashiels, in the Scottish Borders. Too far from home without friends. Forced to remain in the student halls of residence while the girls from Glasgow or Edinburgh went home at weekends. I was dreading going back for another year.

  For both of us the summer at Linshader was an escape from all that. An idyll that we could never have imagined in the months preceding it. But happiness so intense can’t last. And it was mid-August when an incident on the water system changed everything.

  It was one of those perfect summer nights. The world had turned a little by now, and it was getting darker earlier. Though there was still light in the sky, the stars stood out like crystal studs. The Milky Way was like breath misting on glass. A gibbous moon shed its colourless light across the hills, and almost everyone was gathered around the fire on the beach.

  Our sing-song was interrupted by Staines, the gamekeeper, and one of the watchers, a sixteen-year-old lad called Calum. Calum had spotted a party of poachers out on the top loch, not far from Macphail’s Island, in the basin where the Langavat River ran into the loch, opposite a rock called Gibraltar.

  “If we’re quick we’ll catch them,” Staines said breathlessly. “They’re laying nets. I want all the ghillies with me. The rest of the watchers are waiting for us up there.”

  To my disappointment, Ruairidh was on his feet in an instant and heading off with the rest of the boys. They were quickly swallowed up by the night. I had grown so used to spending my nights with him and sleeping all afternoon that I was at a complete loss. The prospect of passing the rest of the evening round the fire with the girls was less than appealing, particularly in the company of Seonag, whom I had been assiduously avoiding. So I got up and said, “Might as well have an early night, then.” I didn’t wait to
see if anyone else was going to join me, hurrying off back up the path to the lodge.

  My body clock was not accustomed to my being in bed this early, and I lay awake in the dark for what seemed like hours. I was aware of my roommate coming to bed around midnight, but didn’t let on I was awake. Within minutes I heard her slow, steady breathing as she slipped off to sleep long before me.

  I had a tortured night, tossing and turning, drifting in and out of dreams until the alarm went at six.

  I saw Ruairidh briefly after breakfast, when we were handing out the packed lunches to the guests. He looked grey and tired and just shook his head when I raised an eyebrow in query. I was anxious to hear what had happened.

  There were rumours among the girls, of course, during the day. About some kind of violent confrontation and arrests by the police. But it wasn’t until that night that I got the full story. As soon as we could, Ruairidh and I slipped off along the shore and made the slippery crossing over seaweed and stones to Eilean Teine. The night was still warm, but midges swarming around the old ruin forced us to light a fire. By its flame I watched Ruairidh’s face as he recounted what had happened the previous night.

  “It was a bunch of teenagers,” he said. “A couple of lads from Balanish and, we think, three from Bragar. But we only caught the one.” He shook his head. “They hadn’t a clue what they were doing. I think one of them had been out with some real poachers and thought he knew how it was done.” He blew air in frustration through pursed lips. “Their net was full of holes for a start, and they had no real idea how or where to lay it. Just lads out for a bit of a lark, really.”

  “What happened?”

  “They didn’t even know we were there until we jumped them. There was a bit of a rammy in the dark, and four of them went haring away across the hills. I caught the other one. I always wondered if my rugby days would serve any purpose in real life.” He smiled ruefully. “I brought him down with a beauty of a tackle, shoulder in behind the knees. He fell like a sack of tatties. It wasn’t until we got him to his feet that I realized who he was.” He dragged his eyes away from the flames where they had been replaying the events of the night before and looked at me. “You know him, too. He’d have been in your year. Iain Maciver. Lives just down the road from me.”

  I nodded. I knew exactly who he meant. A thickset boy, dark hair cut in the classic Lewis fringe, dividing his forehead laterally in half. Not the best-looking lad, but bright. My age. Just eighteen. I’d heard he’d got himself into Glasgow University, studying Gaelic. He was known universally as Peanut, because of his predilection for the Reese’s Peanut Cups they sold at Woolies in Stornoway. Which were the probable cause of the spots that had gathered themselves around his nose and mouth and forehead during his early teens, leaving him now with badly pockmarked skin.

  Ruairidh returned his eyes to the flames. “So Staines insists on calling the police. Peanut’s begging him not to. It’ll mean a criminal record, something that could affect him for the rest of his life. I pulled Staines to one side and said we could just give him a bollocking. Put the fear of God into him. He’d never do it again. But Staines didn’t want to know. He had a real ugly look on his face and he said to me, ‘These fuckers need taught a lesson!’ And that was it. We took the boy back down to the road and the cops were waiting for us.”

  “That’s pretty shitty,” I said.

  He nodded. “It was. And I’m sure Peanut blames me. I was the one that brought him down.” He shook his head then, frustration and anger etched all over his face. “And the worst of it is, I’ve been hearing all day how Staines himself is in with the real poachers. A lucrative wee sideline. Just rumours, mind. But it would explain why he was so keen to warn off anyone else.”

  “Jesus! Do you think that’s true?”

  “I don’t know.” He breathed his helplessness at the night. “But what I do know is that the boy’s been charged. He’ll appear at the Sheriff Court in Stornoway, and I’ll probably be called to give evidence. It’ll bring shame on his family. My neighbours. And could well ruin his chances of getting a job in the future. Employers don’t like kids with criminal records.”

  The whole incident cast a gloom over the lodge in the days that followed. Ruairidh was more subdued than I’d known him all summer, and I saw him on several occasions being short with Staines. Had he been able to verify the rumours I believe he might well have been tempted to put his fist in the man’s face. Then one evening he said to me, “Let’s go up to Macphail’s Island.” We hadn’t been for some time, and I think it was Ruairidh’s way of trying to break out of his depression.

  It was not the best of weather. There was low cloud, and a light smirr blowing down off the hills. We had to wear our waterproofs for the trip up the water system, and it was hard to see with rapidly fading light and no moon.

  It was too wet to sit out once we got to Macphail’s, and so we huddled together in the lunch hut, drinking wine and saying very little. A comfortable, comforting silence. A shared sadness that needed no words. Just understanding. We smoked a couple of joints, held hands and kissed, but sex was never on the agenda for either of us. And it was not long after midnight when we set off in the boat again to head back to the lodge.

  Ruairidh had to navigate us into the slipway at Skunk Point by the light of a torch. We had just clambered out of the boat and were pulling it out of the water when half a dozen shadows detached themselves from the darkness. A group of youths who had been waiting for us in the still of the night. I was knocked backwards into shallow water and screamed as the group of young men surrounded Ruairidh. I scrambled to my feet and saw him fighting like fury, but he was hopelessly outnumbered. They dragged him down to the ground, and boots went pounding into his stomach and chest and back as he curled up to try and protect himself. I screamed again, wading out of the water and throwing myself at his attackers. Punching, kicking, until an elbow in my face brought light flashing in my eyes and knocked me back off my feet.

  I grabbed on to the side of the boat and saw that Ruairidh’s torch was still lying inside it. I reached in to snatch it and fumble with the switch. Suddenly I was directing the glare of its light on to Ruairidh’s assailants, and they stepped back, arms half-raised to shadow their eyes. I recognized almost every one of them. Boys I had been at school with. Including Peanut. They seemed startled, and frozen in the cold light of my recognition. But Peanut stepped boldly forward. “Since when did you become a traitor to your class, Niamh Murray? Siding with the fucking toffs.”

  I felt anger spiking up my back. “Maybe about the same time you became a fucking thief, Iain Maciver.” I looked around the faces. “Don’t think I don’t know who you are. Every last one of you!” My voice was shrill, and I could hear it echoing back off the hills.

  Peanut said, “You breathe a fucking word of this to anyone . . .”

  “And you’ll what?” I screamed back at him. “Make things worse than they already are? You stupid bloody boys.”

  They almost seemed chastened, shrinking back from my anger. Except for Peanut himself. He turned to look at Ruairidh still curled up on the ground, and sank his boot in one last time. “That’s for ruining my life, you bastard!” he shouted, leaning right over him and spitting on his prone form. He nodded to the others and as they turned away they were absorbed by the night just as quickly as they had appeared.

  By the time Ruairidh got to his feet I could see blood on his face, and vomit on the ground where he had lain. He brushed aside my helping hand and marched off into the dark, following the well-worn track along the banks of the stream that led down to Loch Three. I struggled to keep up, and couldn’t get a word out of him all the way back to the lodge.

  Ruairidh wasn’t the same after that. He spent the remainder of our stay at Linshader Lodge, it seemed, trying to avoid me. I never knew whether it was the humiliation of taking a beating in front of me, or being branded a turncoat for siding with the toffs. Or maybe guilt at the part he had played in ruining Pe
anut’s future. Whatever was ailing him, he had no intention of sharing it with me. I almost started to believe that he blamed me for everything that had happened.

  The change in his mood and demeanour was marked. He would turn up sometimes at the bonfire on the beach without his guitar, the worse for drink. He was smoking a lot of dope, and went off quite often at night with the watchers. I think he spent most of the remaining weeks of the summer sleeping up at the bothy at Macleay’s Stream. We never passed another night together.

  Of course, Seonag could barely conceal her glee. She would make a point of sitting talking to him those evenings he turned up on the beach, glancing in my direction to make sure I was watching. And I remember her once coming into the kitchen to inform me that, anyway, I was better off without him. It was with clear satisfaction that she said, “My folks tell me that the Macfarlanes are outcasts in Balanish these days. No one’ll talk to them because of Ruairidh getting Peanut arrested.”

  I turned and almost spat in her face. “It wasn’t Ruairidh that got him arrested. It was that bastard Staines. And everyone knows he’s in with the poachers.”

  Seonag’s eyes narrowed and she lowered her voice. “You’d better watch yourself young lady. You could get into big trouble if people hear you talking like that.”

  “Oh, yes? And you’d be the one to tell them, I suppose.” I had long suspected that someone had tipped off Peanut and the Balanish boys that Ruairidh and I were up at Macphail’s Island that night. And I wouldn’t have put it past Seonag being the one to do it.

  She put on her hurt face and her little girl’s voice. “We used to be friends,” she said. “I don’t know what’s happened to you.”

  Me? I wanted to shout at her. Me? You’re the one that’s changed! But I said nothing as she turned and retreated into the lodge like some wounded animal.

  It was about a week before the end of our stay at Linshader that my mother took ill. A recurrence of shingles, that awful rash with its accompanying nerve pain and headaches. The doctor put her on antivirals and she retired to her bed. I had to excuse myself from duties at the lodge and return home for a couple of days to cook for my father and Uilleam, who was still at home then, and do their laundries. It never ceases to amaze me how hopeless men are at looking after themselves.