I'll Keep You Safe

by Peter May

  “You stupid fucking boys just don’t care, do you?” He stabbed a finger into Ruairidh’s chest. “And you, you wee fucker, you’ve been nothing but trouble your whole life.”

  “Oh don’t be such an arse,” I told my big brother, but he wasn’t listening.

  Ruairidh was bristling with anger. He had apologized for what was obviously an accident, but he wasn’t about to stand down when it came to taking abuse from Uilleam. He looked at my aunt. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Murray. It was an accident. Is there any chance we could get our ball back?” His friends were gathered watching from a discreet distance.

  “No fucking way,” Uilleam shouted in his face, and I saw Ruairidh clench his teeth, and his fists.

  “Aw grow up, Uilleam,” Anndra said. “Give them their ball.” He and Ruairidh were around the same age and had long been friends.

  “I’ll give them their fucking ball,” Uilleam hissed, and he stuck it firmly under his arm and went marching off towards the water.

  Aunt Rita called after him, “Uilleam, don’t be silly. Let it pass now.” She had no idea just how strong the language was, but the tone of it was a powerful clue. Me and Seonag and Anndra jumped to our feet and went chasing after him. Ruairidh stood seething for a moment, before turning and running past us to try to wrestle the ball away from Uilleam. But Uilleam put a hand in his face, for all the world as if fending off a tackle on the rugby field, and ran on right up to the water’s edge. There he released the ball from his hands and kicked it with all his might. Caught by the wind, it went sailing over the incoming waves to land with a splash in the bay, a good thirty yards out.

  I remember groaning at the stupidity of it. “Uilleam. Jesus, what an idiot!”

  One of the other boys detached himself from the group and came running up to the rest of us. “That’s my ball!”

  Uilleam turned on him, and I remember thinking he was old enough to know better than this. “Go and get it, then.”

  “I can’t swim!”

  “Awww, that’s a shame. Looks like the game’s a bogey.” This in English. Pure Glasgow slang that he must have picked up at university.

  I glanced towards the ball. It was riding the incoming swell, and seemed to be drifting even further out, drawn by the currents.

  Aunt Rita joined us at the water’s edge, then, hands on hips. “Well, that’s just the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen.” She turned to the group of village boys. “Whose ball is it?”

  The boy put his hand up.

  “I’ll buy you another one,” Aunt Rita said.

  Uilleam snorted his disapproval. “It’s not that far out. Any decent swimmer could go and get it.”

  “Aye, like you?” Ruairidh said. He knew perfectly well that Uilleam couldn’t swim.

  Uilleam bridled. “Why don’t you go and get it, then, big-mouth? You won the swimming championship at the Nicolson, didn’t you? Or maybe you’re a chicken.”

  Ruairidh glared at him, and I saw his eyes flicker just for a fraction of a second in my direction, before he turned and without another word went plunging out into the water.

  “For God’s sake, lad, what are you doing?” Aunt Rita shouted after him, and was almost drowned out by a chorus of voices imploring Ruairidh not to do it.

  “Stop it!” I screamed after him. “Stop it!”

  But by now he was already out of his depth and windmilling his arms in strong steady strokes to break through the incoming swell and set a course for the ever-diminishing ball.

  We all watched, then, in silence, barely daring to breathe, as he got further and further away. It took an interminable time for him, finally, to reach the ball. I don’t think any of us had realized just how far out it really was.

  Even from where we stood on the edge of the water we could hear him fighting for breath. Big, deep, barking gasps. Having reached the ball, he clung on to it now to keep himself afloat as he tried to control his breathing, but we could see that all the time the current was drawing them both further out.

  Real fear stalked among us then, and I could see from his face that even Uilleam was starting to panic.

  For two or maybe three very long minutes Ruairidh clutched the ball to his chest, floating on his back as he slowly regained his breath. Then, without letting it go, he started kicking with his legs and setting a course back towards the beach. But even as we watched, he seemed to make no progress at all. The pull of the current was stronger than the kick of his legs. If anything, it seemed to me, the swell was growing, the waves breaking a good twenty yards out where the seabed fell away and the undertow dragged everything down.

  Ruairidh’s friends were screaming encouragement at him, but not one of them could swim, or at least weren’t admitting to it.

  “You idiot! You stupid idiot!” Aunt Rita shouted at Uilleam. I had never seen her so angry. She hoisted up her skirts and went wading off into the water, waist-deep, as if by somehow getting closer to him she could reel him in. But she must have realized the futility of it and stopped, her dress floating on the surface of the sea, and spreading out all around her like ink from a squid.

  Suddenly, Anndra went sprinting past me, legs pumping as he pulled them up out of the water to plunge forward, and then launch himself past Aunt Rita and into the sea. Everyone, almost in unison, called him back. But Anndra had made up his mind and nothing was going to change it. He was a strong boy, my brother, with muscular shoulders and a ripped chest and stomach. A good swimmer, too, and the courage of a lion.

  Our protests tailed off as we watched him power his way through the incoming waves, fear nearly choking us. For a moment he vanished, and no one dared breathe until we saw him again breaking the surface of the water beyond the swell. Long, elegant strokes of his arms took him quickly out towards Ruairidh, and he reached him much more quickly, it seemed, than it had taken Ruairidh to get out there himself.

  Now we could hear him gasping for breath, too, and both boys clung to the ball, dipping beneath the surface then emerging again with water streaming down their faces. Anndra was shouting something to Ruairidh, but it was impossible to make out what. Then, of a sudden, they both struck out for home. Ruairidh was still on his back, one arm crooked around the ball for buoyancy, the other arcing through the water as he kicked frantically with his feet. Anndra remained on his belly, his left arm making arcs through the water in sync with Ruairidh’s, the other hooked around the arm that held the ball.

  With both sets of legs kicking against the current, it was with relief that I saw they were actually making progress towards the shore. Until they arrived at that point where the incoming swell reached its peak and broke in furious white foaming spume. Both boys vanished from view, and with a shock, like a punch to my chest, I saw the ball shoot up into the air and go skidding back across the surface of the water in the bay.

  Still no sign of either Ruairidh or Anndra.

  And now it was Aunt Rita who went plunging off into the ocean, still fully dressed, her hat whipped from her head to bob momentarily on the crest of a wave before being washed, spinning, back up on to the sand.

  I remember feeling immersed in the strangest silence. Even though the sound of the sea breaking all around us and the howl of the wind was very nearly deafening. It was as if time had stood still, or at least slowed to the merest crawl. Almost exactly as I would experience so many years later in the Place de la République.

  Aunt Rita had vanished now into white water, and I saw only a flailing arm, before she re-emerged, pulling one of the boys behind her, fighting to keep her head above water as she sought to find some kind of foothold below it. And then, when she touched down, emerging head and shoulders from the water, dragging Ruairidh in her wake. I heard him coughing and choking, gasping desperately for a breath that wouldn’t carry more water into his lungs. He was alive, and I almost collapsed with relief.

  All of the boys went wading then into the water to grab him from my aunt and pull him up on to the beach where he lay retching and vomiting se
awater. But there was no sign of Anndra.

  In the moment before she turned to go back for him, I saw the fear in Aunt Rita’s eyes, but also the courage that it took to risk your life for a loved one. Or maybe it takes no courage at all when you love a person. You just do what your heart demands, even though your head is calling you a fool.

  By this time I was in tears, howling uncontrollably as Seonag stood staring out to sea, her face whiter than I have ever seen it. Uilleam was rooted to the spot, his feet sunk in the soft wet sand, rabbit eyes scanning the waves as panic filled and emptied his chest in a series of rapid shallow breaths.

  Aunt Rita had vanished again from sight, and the horrible thought began to worm its way into my brain that neither she nor Anndra would ever be seen again. Not alive, anyway.

  And then there she was, on her back, arms around Anndra’s chest, kicking for shore, before turning to push her legs down in search of traction, finding it and pulling Anndra behind her.

  This time we all ran into the water to help her. Everyone except Uilleam, whose abject fear of the stuff wouldn’t permit him to set so much as one foot in it. Anndra was a dead weight. Unlike Ruairidh before him, there was no coughing or gasping for breath.

  Panic propelled us up on to the firm sand left by the receding tide, and Anndra lay on his back, head tipped towards the water. His eyes were wide open, just like Grampa’s that time by the caravan. Except that water foamed backwards out of his mouth, washing over his open eyes as if trying to flush all the life out of them. But with a terrible constriction of my chest I knew that he was already gone.

  Aunt Rita, though, hadn’t given up hope just yet. Her sodden dress clung to every contour of her body, and I could see her underwear beneath it. Her usually coiffured hair hung down in rat’s tails over her face as she knelt down by the prone form of my brother and began pumping at his chest with both hands. Gouts of water spurted from his mouth, before she leaned over him to pinch his nostrils and breathe into his mouth. Then more pumping. I remembered that Rita had been a nurse before she married my uncle, which was how they had met, and I willed her to breathe life back into Anndra.

  She carried on long beyond the point where all of us knew there was no longer any hope. A desperate reluctance to accept that he was dead. Maybe because she was the only adult there, she felt in some way responsible for what had happened.

  Ruairidh, meantime, had struggled to his knees, still retching, tears streaming from his eyes, watching with horror as Rita pumped and pumped with despairing hands on Anndra’s chest.

  I understood even then that Ruairidh was going to get the blame. The fact that it was Uilleam who had kicked the ball into the water and goaded Ruairidh into going after it would get lost in the telling. All that anyone was going to remember was Ruairidh’s stupidity in going into the sea to get it, causing Anndra to risk and lose his life in the process of trying to rescue him.

  I glanced up at Uilleam. He was gazing in disbelief on his younger brother lying dead in the sand, and whatever guilt he was busy tucking away somewhere deep inside him, I knew he would never admit it to the world. His eyes flickered towards Ruairidh, and I saw hatred there. He sensed my eyes on him, and when he turned to look at me, I knew in that moment that I had lost not one brother, but two.

  Of course, there were no mobile phones in those days. No one to call for help, and no help to be given anyway. And so the boys carried Anndra up past the cemetery, where just a few days later we would put him in the ground. When I looked back I could still see the football being washed remorselessly out to sea. I was sobbing uncontrollably, Seonag with an arm around my shoulders, Aunt Rita following behind us, stooped with grief and crying silent tears. When we got to the car park, the boys laid Anndra out on the back seat of the Humber Hawk, while Seonag and I squeezed into the front with my aunt.

  There was no room in the car for Uilleam and he returned to the village with the other boys, one of them giving him a backie. But not before, I heard later, he had taken out his wrath on Ruairidh. Punching him into the long beach grass and kicking him until the others pulled him off. From all accounts Ruairidh didn’t lift a finger to defend himself, and in all the years that followed, not a word ever passed between him and me on the events of that day.

  I can’t even begin to describe how awful things were in our house over the next few days. I don’t think I have ever witnessed grief like it. Or anger. As I suspected, no blame was ever apportioned to Uilleam. Teflon Uilleam. All the shit stuck to Ruairidh.

  Anndra’s coffin was laid out in the front porch, just as our grandfather’s had been before him. Everyone in the village, and from a good way beyond, came to pay their respects. But when the Macfarlanes turned up, my mother wouldn’t even let them past the gate. She must have had her hate radar set, because somehow she sensed them coming before any of the rest of us.

  The first I knew about it was when I heard her screaming at them in Gaelic from the doorstep. They and their son would never be welcome in our house again. Not that they had ever been regular visitors anyway. She hoped that their God would forgive them, because she never would. That, in spite of the fact that while she blamed their son for the death of hers, it was Ruairidh who had saved my life all these years before. Which is when I first began to suspect that maybe my mother valued Anndra’s life above mine. The preference for a son over a daughter.

  The funeral was held on the Saturday. A long procession that followed the hearse down that single-track road to Dalmore Beach and the cemetery that overlooked it. Still the good weather had not broken, and the sea in its innocent blue lay calm and still in the bay, breaking in only the gentlest of waves upon the sand.

  Things had changed somewhat since my grandfather’s funeral and the women came right down now to the car park, but remained on that side of the fence as the men carried Anndra across the machair, between the headstones of all the dead who had gone before him, to a freshly dug grave in a plot that commanded a view of the very spot in the bay where he had drowned.

  I stood by my mother’s side, Seonag holding my hand tightly, and let silent tears roll down my face as we said goodbye. Goodbye to the brother who had taunted and tormented me all through my childhood. What I wouldn’t have given in that moment to find one of his spiders in my pocket, and hear him stifling laughter from some hidden place as I screamed in panic.

  Which was when I noticed the lone figure silhouetted on the clifftops away to our right. Ruairidh, too, had come to pay his last respects. I’m sure he was riddled with all the guilt that everyone felt was justified. For he certainly knew that but for Anndra it would have been his funeral here today. And I couldn’t help feeling sorry for him, blamed and excluded, a pariah among his peers.

  At the far end of the cemetery the minister had delivered his final words, and the mourners were picking up spades to shovel the sandy soil over the coffin and fill the grave. The headstone was not raised for another six months, and although I am not sure if my mother ever visited his grave, I went to see Anndra often over the years, just to sit with him and pray that he would forgive me for marrying the man who everyone blamed for his death.

  Uncle Hector and Aunt Rita made their delayed departure on the Monday morning. A solemn affair, in which there were few words spoken and more tears spilled. Just before they left I noticed my aunt covering the back seat of the Humber with a tartan travelling rug. The leather had been ruined by the salt water from Anndra’s body, which had left its pale imprint in the green. A permanent reminder of the tragedy of that summer’s day on Dalmore Beach.

  They never came to stay with us again, and I heard much later that my uncle had put his beloved car up for sale as soon as they got home.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Niamh and Uilleam drove in silence along Bayhead, past the inner harbour, slowing over the speed bump and then accelerating up towards the roundabout. Trees in the golf course to their left were already taking on their autumn colours.

  The rain clouds that Br
aque and Gunn had seen earlier gathering out at sea off the west coast were now sweeping their way across the island, rain falling in dark, fast-moving patches that Niamh could see in the distance across the Barvas Moor. For the moment it was just spitting at their windscreen.

  “Nothing changes, does it?” Uilleam said.

  “That’s what I love about this place,” Niamh told him. “The world changes around us like a silent movie on speed, but the islands never do. They’re the one constant in my life.” She glanced at him across the Jeep. “Must be a while since you were last here.”

  She thought he looked fleetingly uncomfortable, but she had to turn away to focus on the road. “I was back seeing the folks earlier this month.”

  “Really?” She turned her head again in surprise. “They never mentioned it.”

  “Probably thought you wouldn’t be interested.” He could never resist the barb.

  She said, “Maybe they know me too well.” And she could tell from the colour that rose on his cheeks that her reciprocal retort had not missed its mark. Then immediately she regretted it. He was her brother, for God’s sake! Why did it always have to be like this?

  They drove on into the rain as it swept west across the moor, past the shieling with the green roof that sat away off to their right. Then up over the rise, and a misted view through the cloud and rain to the distant ocean washing up at Rubh’ a’ Bhiogair beyond Barvas itself.

  As they turned off towards Bru, Uilleam said, “I’m only here for you, you know.”

  “Mum told me.” Niamh paused. “I’m to be grateful, I suppose?”

  He bristled. “I’m not going to the funeral.”

  “Then you’re not here for me. If you were, you would.”

  “Mum and Dad aren’t going either.”

  She turned her head towards him sharply. “Really? They told you that?”

  He nodded.

  “Well, it’s more than they’ve told me.”

  “You can’t be surprised.”