I'll Keep You Safe Read online

  The coffin sat in the front porch for two days, and a procession of villagers came to see him lying in it and pay their last respects. Then the minister came and held a brief service in the back room, before the men closed up the coffin and carried it out to the waiting hearse. The days were long gone when they would have carried the coffin down to the slipway at the foot of our croft to sail him across to the island. And Dalmore was much too far to walk. So a hearse it was. But it was only the men who got into their cars to follow it.

  “Are we not going, too?” I asked my mother.

  “Women don’t go to the grave,” she said simply.

  “Why?”

  “They just don’t.” And to my knowledge, she never once went to visit him.

  She left me, then, sitting in the front room, gazing out across the bay. It had been a miserable morning, the shadow of death reflected in the clouds that obscured the sun. Suddenly there was a break in the sky out over the bay, and sunlight fell in rings of silver on to the dull pewter of the sea, and with the rain that fell a rainbow arced itself perfectly across the harbour. To this day I like to think that was Grampa saying goodbye.

  Even then it struck me as strange that I had not spilled a tear over the passing of the old man. Perhaps I didn’t really understand the finality of death, or maybe it was just some kind of self-protection mechanism kicking in. But that was when I heard a soft sobbing coming from the back of the house, and I tiptoed out of the front room and down the hall. My mother was standing in the open door of my grampa’s room, and beyond her I could see his bunnet and his stick laid out on the bed. It was the first time I had ever seen her cry. It wouldn’t be the last.

  That night I slept in his bed for the first time. His room was now mine. When I look back I think about how it might have spooked me to sleep where a dead man had lain. But I derived an odd comfort from it, and somehow felt that he was still and always there, looking out for me.

  In my fancy, I might have imagined that it was Grampa doing just that when I nearly drowned a few months later. But, actually, it was Ruairidh who saved me.

  It was the end of August, and nearly the whole village was up on the Pentland Road to bring home the peats that had been left to dry out there over the summer.

  It is usual for the peats to be cut in the month of May, which is traditionally one of the driest of the year. Although in the Hebrides dry is a relative term. The peat is cut into slabs from a long bank of it, using a special spade or tairsgear, and tossed over on to the bog to dry. Every family has its own peat bank, established sometimes over generations. The deeper it is, and the blacker the peat you cut from the bottom of it, the hotter it burns. It costs nothing, except the blood, sweat and tears you spill to dig it out. This was how islanders had heated their homes for centuries, though these days it is more likely to be oil-fired central heating.

  Some weeks after the first cutting you would go back to lift the peats, which had dried on the top side, and build them into tiny stacks. Two or three on the sides and one on the top, to let the air around them. Then before the end of the summer you would harvest the hard dry peats to take them home and build your big stack for the winter.

  It had been a wet summer that year, though up on the moor the wind always does a good job of drying the peat. Finally, the clouds had blown off to the east, and there was a break in the weather. It was still and warm. A fine window for fetching the peats. We had one lorry in the village, a sort of communal vehicle that everyone shared, and this was its busiest time of year. Back and forth between Balanish and the peat banks up on the Pentland Road.

  The Pentland is a single-track road that follows the contours of the moor all the way across from Stornoway to Carloway. At one point it divides, and a spur of it winds down the hill to Breasclete. It was originally intended as the route of a railway line that was never built, and it got its name from Lord Pentland, the Secretary of State for Scotland, who secured the funding for it. But it’s not a road you would want to take if you were ever in a hurry to get anywhere.

  I had rarely witnessed a sky so clear. You could see all the way down to the mountains of Harris in the south, cutting sharp purple contours against the blue. And to the west the Atlantic shimmered off into some impossibly distant horizon, beyond which lay Canada and America many thousands of miles away. But with the wind dropping, the midges were out in force, and so everyone was working hard and fast to get away from the wee biting beasts as fast as they could.

  Seonag and I were still too young to be involved in the heavy work, and so we were running around like mad things making a nuisance of ourselves.

  The Macfarlane peat bank was on the other side of the road, and Ruairidh’s whole family was out carrying the peats to stack them at the roadside until they could load them on to the lorry when it was their turn. Ruairidh was a couple of years older than me, and although he was in my class—primary one to five—I had barely been aware of his existence. His big brother, Donald, had already gone to Shawbost. And the family lived at the north end of the village, so there wasn’t much contact with us southerners.

  It was our turn for the lorry, and Uilleam and Anndra were helping Mum and Dad pile on the peats while Seonag and I went running across the moor, jumping in puddles and getting ourselves soaked in spite of our wellies.

  We had gone some way from the road when I spotted a makeshift path of old wooden pallets that someone had laid in the long distant past to access a particularly rich bank of peat. The bog was eternally sodden here, and if you weren’t careful your wellies would get stuck and sucked into it and you’d lose them.

  If I hadn’t been so intoxicated by the childish pursuit of puddle jumping, it might have occurred to me that there was danger in leaping from pallet to pallet, feeling the rotten wood crack and break beneath my feet. But I was so intent on reaching the puddle at the end of it that I never stopped to think.

  Seonag was infinitely more cautious. She had stopped and was shouting at me to come back. Which only spurred me on. My cotton summer dress was already soaked and spattered with slurry, and I was aware of my blonde curls streaming out behind me as I ran. Two, three more pallets and I could take off and leap feet-first into that puddle, which was sure to make the biggest splash. Bigger than any splash Seonag had made. I could see the blue of the sky reflected in its mirrored surface. And the anticipation of shattering its stillness, like breaking glass, was almost breathtaking.

  I can still remember the thrill I felt as I launched myself off that final, disintegrating pallet, and then the shock of the cold as I dropped into the water like a stone, submerged right up to my neck. This was no puddle. It was a deep, water-filled trench, and immediately I could feel the mud beneath it claiming me.

  You never think you will die, especially when you are young, but with a sudden clarity I realized that’s exactly what was going to happen. It was all I could do to tip back my head and keep the water from going into my mouth.

  I heard Seonag screaming, and then the voices of men shouting. I strained to turn my head and look back along the path of rotting pallets as my father and brothers tried to follow in my footsteps. But they were so much heavier than I was. The pallets would not support their weight. All around me the bog was impassable. Waterlogged after months of rain. It would have dragged a man down and drawn him under before he even realized there was no way back.

  My father was up to his waist already and stuck fast. There was panic everywhere, more folk running from the adjoining peat banks. Someone threw a rope to my father and they managed to pull him out. But it was not long enough to reach me.

  That was when I saw Ruairidh for the first time, standing silhouetted against the sky on an old abandoned peat bank. He was closer to me there than my father had managed, but still not close enough to reach me with the rope. He turned and ran off, and I looked up at the sky then, feeling the irresistible force of the bog, and knew that I was going under, and that no one would reach me before I drowned. I saw my grampa’s
eyes, wide and lifeless, and wondered what it felt like to be dead.

  And then Ruairidh was back. He had Donald with him, and between them they were hefting three stout planks that they must have fetched from the back of the lorry. The rest of the men and several of the women appeared behind them. I could see my mother’s eyes filled with fear, and the grim expression on my father’s face as Ruairidh laid the first of the planks across the bog. I knew it would spread his weight, and that there was no one lighter who could do it except, perhaps, for Seonag. But she would have been hopeless.

  After he had crawled about halfway along that first plank, Ruairidh turned to get the next one from Donald and manoeuvre it ahead of himself to extend the bridge. And then another to slide even further ahead as he inched forward on his hands and knees.

  By the time he reached the end of the third plank he was within touching distance, lying flat on his belly. If he had slipped off, or if the plank had overturned, he’d have been sucked down into the bog himself. I felt his outstretched hands reach me below the water, slipping beneath my arms to stop me from going under. And I turned to look into his eyes. Deep blue Celtic eyes beneath a mop of black, curling hair. Eyes filled with concern. But if he was afraid, it was not evident. And for the first time I thought that maybe I wouldn’t die after all.

  Someone had found another rope, tying the two together to make it long enough to reach me. I saw my father throw the end of it out towards Ruairidh. It landed on the water beside me. Ruairidh let go with one hand and stretched out to get it, very nearly tipping himself off the plank in the process. I watched the concentration on his face, and the relief as his fingers closed around it and he was able to feed it below the water, beneath my arms and across my chest to tie in a knot at my back.

  Then he let me go. I didn’t want him to leave me as he worked his way back along the bridge of planks. But I felt the tension in the rope and knew that I would not go under now.

  Slowly—it seemed interminable at the time—they pulled me from the water. The mud and peat beneath releasing me with great reluctance, but retaining my wellies for eternity. I clung to the rope with desperate muddy fingers as they hauled me finally to safety.

  I suppose I had been expecting angry words of admonition. Adults grabbing me by the arm to shake me and tell me how bloody stupid I had been. But all I felt were arms of love and gratitude around me. Kisses planted on my wet, mud-streaked face as I wept inconsolably, soaked through now and shivering, even though there was still warmth in the sunshine. My overwhelming emotion was one of humiliation. That I had been so foolish, and had to be rescued by some boy! I knew how I must look, too. Slathered in glaur, my hair a tangle of peat and mud and bog water. And I glanced around to search out what I was sure would be the smug face of my rescuer. But among all the adults crowding around me Ruairidh was nowhere to be seen, and I found myself deeply disappointed.

  “Come on, young lady,” my mother said, hoisting me up into her arms. “It’s home for you and into the bath.”

  I sat up in the front of the lorry, shivering and sobbing with embarrassment, my mother on one side of me, the driver on the other. Back at the house I was stripped of my clothes and plunged into a hot bath, which stopped my shivering but failed to dissipate my shame.

  Later, freshly dressed, my hair still wet and hanging in ropes, I stood at the front gate watching for the return of the lorry from the Pentland Moor. When finally it came, I saw Ruairidh and Donald sitting up in the back with the peats. As it passed our house I caught Ruairidh’s eye. He seemed oddly embarrassed. I waved and mouthed thank you, before it disappeared around the curve of the road, heading north towards the Macfarlane croft.

  School began again the following week for the autumn term, and that was the first time I had seen Ruairidh since he saved my life up at the peats. He was in primary five, and I was in three, so we were still in the same class. He sat at the foot of the row next to mine and I could barely concentrate on the lessons for watching him.

  In the playground, too, I was distracted from the girls’ games. Skipping and peever. Hardly able to tear my eyes away from the boys kicking their daft football around the playground.

  Seonag was annoyed with me. Unaccountably angry. And it was a while before I realized she was jealous. “Boys are so silly,” she said dismissively. “Big and clumsy and stupid.”

  As for Ruairidh, it was as if the incident on the Pentland Road had never happened. I never once caught him even glancing in my direction. And I began to think that perhaps he hated me.

  It was another three years before I had the chance to pay him back for saving my life, even if it was in just a very small way.

  He had paid me not the least attention in all that time, moving the following year into the class above mine, and the year after that to Shawbost. I caught the occasional glimpse of him getting on to the minibus that took the Balanish kids to secondary school, and from time to time at village functions, though I was still too young to go to the dances. When he had crawled out across those planks to rescue me from the bog up on the moor, he’d been quite a slight boy. Now he’d sprouted, and was taller than Anndra, who was a big lad himself.

  He’d have been twelve years old by that time, and conscious then of how he looked. Clothes, it seemed, were important to him, and he always had a certain style about him. Narrow jeans, and designer T-shirts and short jackets that sat well on his square shoulders. His hair was cut short at the sides, but left long at the back in a mullet—as well as on top, where it piled up in waves and curls. I’m sure he was using some kind of gel to keep it all in place. I didn’t know a single girl at school who didn’t think he was gorgeous. Except, of course, for Seonag, who had retained her jealous contempt for him all this time.

  As for me, I hated how I looked. I had freckles, and hair that I spent hours trying to straighten. It’s funny how people with straight hair always want curls, and those with curly hair want it straight. I was never satisfied. I hadn’t started my periods yet, and still had a boyish figure, and not even the beginnings of breasts. Unlike Seonag, who had already begun to develop hips and boobs, and looked years older than me. She had the most stunning red hair with a porcelain complexion, and was morphing into the kind of beauty that was starting to turn heads in the playground.

  So if I was going to attract Ruairidh’s attention at all, I was going to have to find other ways of doing it.

  It was approaching Halloween. Kids on the mainland, on October 31st, would dress up as pirates and fairies and Obi-Wan Kenobi and go out guising. But Lewis boys were up to something quite different. While the girls would gather in community and village halls, dancing and playing music and dooking for apples, the boys were out stealing gates.

  I have no idea how it all started, but it was and is an island tradition. The boys would go out in gangs on Halloween to steal and hide as many croft gates as they could. The object of the exercise, it appeared, was to amuse the boys and annoy the owners. And if sheep got out, so much the better.

  Of course, the boys got hell each year from their fathers. Fathers who had done the selfsame thing when they were young. And it would always be the same victims, too. Those crofters who reacted the most, shouting and chasing the boys. That, apparently, made it all much more fun.

  There was one eccentric old bodach in Balanish who never failed to rise to the bait, and he had became the focus of attention every Halloween. His was the prize gate. His name was spelled E-a-c-h-a-n. But you have to know how that is pronounced in Gaelic to understand his nickname. The ea is pronounced ya, so the name is pronounced yachan. And everyone knew him as Yankee Eachan.

  In the late Forties, after the war, Yankee Eachan had gone off to America in search of work. He left the island speaking only Gaelic, and when he returned a few years later, having picked up only a few words of English, he pronounced them with a broad American accent. Hence the nickname.

  Now in his late sixties, he had a short temper and a foul mouth, despite being a res
pected elder of the church. Each year, as soon as he realized what was happening, he would be at his front door, spittle gathering about his lips as he shouted, “Gorram sumbitch!” Followed by the Gaelic, “Fhalbh a thigh an Diabhaill!” Which translated literally as “Go to the Devil’s house!” Or in the vernacular as “Go to hell!” And it never failed to amuse the boys, invariably producing the biggest laugh of the night. All the more because Yankee Eachan never seemed to have any recollection of the exact same thing happening the year before. He always gave chase, and on those rare occasions when he actually caught one of the boys he would give him a good smack round the side of the head for his trouble.

  Both Anndra and Uilleam were now old enough to join the other village boys on the annual gate-stealing escapade, and that year I begged them to take me along because I knew that Ruairidh would be among them.

  But they were scornful. Girls didn’t go stealing gates. That was boys’ work. Why didn’t I go to the Halloween party in the community hall with the rest of the lassies? But I was determined not to. And if I couldn’t actually tag along with the boys, then I was going to find myself a good vantage point and watch it all from a discreet distance.

  The land rose quite steeply behind the church, before levelling out across the moor, and so I climbed up on to the hill that Halloween in order to see what was going on, and maybe catch a glimpse of Ruairidh.

  It was a fine dry night, with a stiff breeze blowing in off the loch, and I sat cross-legged up there on my own with the wind tugging at my hair and my anorak, and watched as the drama of the evening unfolded below.

  The boys divided themselves into two groups. One was to provide a distraction, while the other moved in to steal the gates. The distraction usually comprised a banger stuffed into the lock of a croft-house door. Once lit, the distraction team retreated to watch from a position of safety as the banger exploded and the startled crofter appeared in his doorway. The boys would then run off, encouraging the crofter to give chase. Which is when the second team would move in to lift the croft gate from its hinges and smuggle it away to hide someplace where it wouldn’t immediately be found.