I'll Keep You Safe Read online

  Stupid! But that’s how it was.

  The boys would usually manage to steal anything up to a dozen gates before darkness brought an end to the game. That night, watching from the hill behind the church, I saw them take five gates before they reached Yankee Eachan’s place.

  Ruairidh was with the gate stealers, about six or seven of them, and I saw them crouching behind the remains of an old blackhouse as the distraction team moved towards Yankee Eachan’s front door. Most of them huddled by the fence as one brave soul crept up on the house to plant and light a banger at the front door. It went off with a crack that resonated around the hills, even before the boy who had lit the fuse was able to rejoin the others.

  The door flew open almost at once, and Yankee Eachan stood there, a thick leather belt with a heavy buckle dangling from his hand. This year he was ready for them.

  “Gorram sumbitch!” he roared into the night. He was a big man. Built, as they say, like a brick shit house after years of manual labour. There was no doubting that if he caught you he would do you some damage. He dragged his old tweed bunnet over his bald head, and charged down the steps towards the boys by the fence. Their initial laughter dissolved quickly into alarm, and they hared off around the side of his house. The old man chased after them, swinging the belt around his head.

  When they had disappeared from view, I saw the stealers slip out from the cover of the ruined blackhouse and run across the field to lift Yankee Eachan’s gate from its hinges. It was a galvanized tube gate, filled in with wire, so there wasn’t much weight in it. But no sooner had they removed it from its gate post, than Yankee Eachan reappeared from behind the house. He had only pretended to give chase to the distractors, waiting instead until the gate thieves showed themselves. Now he came charging towards them, cursing and swearing in Gaelic, still swinging his belt through the air.

  I stood up, startled, thinking he was going to catch them.

  There was blind panic among the boys. A bunch of them detached from the others and took off across the croft, heading down towards the shore. There were only two boys left with the gate. Ruairidh, and a lad with acne that everyone called Spotty. Carrying it between them, they starting running along the road towards the Free Church.

  But even as they reached it I saw Ruairidh stumble and fall. He had gone over on his ankle. And although he was up again in a flash, I could see that he was limping heavily.

  They ran around the side of the church, out of sight of their pursuer, stopping only briefly to heft the gate up on to the roof of a workers’ Portakabin where construction was under way on a new toilet block for the church. And then they split up. Spotty sprinted away past the lights of the community hall, where the girls were still inside playing music and fantasizing about boys, while Ruairidh limped around the back of the Church of Scotland next door and headed off down a path that would take him past my house.

  I could see he was in distress, almost dragging his twisted ankle behind him. His stertorous breathing seemed to fill the night air. I saw Yankee Eachan come around the church, and knew he could see Spotty disappearing beyond the curve of the road. There was no chance that he would ever catch him.

  Then he came round the back and saw Ruairidh hirpling away down the path. It was no stretch of the imagination to think that the old man might catch him quite easily. But he hesitated, looking around for a moment, and I knew that he was wondering where the gate had gone. But it was quite safely out of sight on top of the Portakabin. So he started after Ruairidh with another mouthful of profanity.

  That’s when I had an idea, and went hurtling down the hillside, arms windmilling to stop me from falling. Coming from the hill I could cut across the curve of the path and get to my house before either of them.

  I reached the gate just as Ruairidh was approaching, and I waved to him from behind the caravan, calling his name as loudly as I dared without alerting my folks inside the house. He seemed startled to see me, and stopped dead, glancing back to see Yankee Eachan approaching as fast as a man in his late sixties could. “Come on!” I urged him, and signalled him to follow me around the back of the house. I was at the peat stack before he turned the corner, pulling out peats as fast as I could to open up the entrance to my secret place. “Get in!”

  He looked at me as if I was mad. “In where?”

  “The peat stack. There’s a wee den inside.”

  The sound of old Yankee Eachan approaching on the path made his mind up for him, and he clambered quickly inside, squeezing himself into a space that I had made only for myself. It was a tight fit, and he couldn’t move once he was in. I quickly piled the peats I had pulled out back into the hole and sealed it up. And just for good measure swung an old gate lying at an angle against the gable of the house, to lean up against the end of the stack. I even had time to dwell, if only for a moment, on the irony of it.

  Yankee Eachan came puffing around the corner and stopped in his tracks when he saw me there. “Where’d that boy go!” he shouted.

  “What boy?” I said.

  “Don’t you play the innocent with me, young lady. I saw him come around the back of your house.”

  “The light’s not so good, Mr. Macrae,” I told him. “Your eyes must have deceived you.” I’d read that in a book at school—about eyes deceiving you—and it seemed like the perfect use of it.

  But it only seemed to infuriate him. He looked at me as if I were the devil incarnate. “Don’t mess with me, you wee bugger. You think I came up the Mississippi in a bubble? Where’d he go?”

  The back door of our house flew open, and a slab of yellow light fell out across the back garden, the shadow of my father standing right in the middle of it.

  “What’s going on here?” he bellowed.

  “Your wee girl’s hiding a boy who stole my gate,” Yankee Eachan said indignantly.

  “What boy?”

  “I’ve no idea what his name is.”

  My father gasped his irritation. “No I mean, where is he, this boy? Where’s the gate he took? And where would my wee lassie be hiding them?”

  Yankee Eachan was at a loss. He looked around. It was evident that there was no boy and no gate, except for the one leaning against the peat stack. My father looked at the belt dangling from the old man’s hand.

  “And what were you going to do with that, might I ask?”

  “Give the bugger a good leathering.”

  “Watch your language in front of the lassie. And you a church elder, too.” He snatched the belt from Eachan’s hand and examined it. “You’d do some damage with this. For heaven’s sake, man, it’s just a bit of fun. It happens every year. You know that!”

  “Aye, and I’ll be out half the night gathering my bloody sheep.” He snatched his belt back. “Gorram sumbitch!” And he stomped off.

  When he had gone my father turned and gave me a dangerous look. “Where is he?” he said.

  “Who?”

  “Don’t play the innocent with me, young lady!” The same expression that Yankee Eachan had used. I put on my most earnest face.

  “Honest, Dad, I’ve no idea. I’m just back from a walk up on the hill.”

  “I thought you were going to the Halloween party.”

  “Nah . . .” I scuffed my toe on the path. “Couldn’t be bothered this year.”

  He held the door wide. “Time you were in anyway. It’s getting dark.”

  I had no choice but to go inside. My father hesitated for a few moments on the step, casting an eagle eye all around the garden in the twilight, before banging the door shut.

  I spent a restless and frustrating evening then, trying to think of excuses why I should go out into the back garden. But I couldn’t think of any that wouldn’t arouse suspicion. We had plenty of peats in for the night, so that wasn’t an option.

  Ruairidh was jammed tight into the peat stack, and wouldn’t be able to get out without my help, and I couldn’t stop thinking of him stuck in there, and hating me for abandoning him. What if he neede
d the toilet? It didn’t bear thinking about.

  Eventually my folks packed me off to bed, and I lay wide awake in the dark, fully dressed beneath the covers. I heard Anndra and Uilleam coming back, and could hear my father cross-examining them about who it was who had stolen Yankee Eachan’s gate. But they were no clypes, my brothers, and so no one ever knew that it was Ruairidh.

  Eventually, my brothers went to bed. And I lay for what seemed like a further eternity before I heard my parents’ bedroom door shutting. I forced myself to wait a good fifteen or twenty minutes beyond that before I eased open my bedroom window and dropped down into the back garden.

  There was a good moon out, so I had plenty of light to see by as I carefully swung the gate off the stack and peeled away the peats one by one. I felt the heat of Ruairidh’s body in the air that greeted me as I opened up the hole to the hiding place inside.

  “What the fuck?” I heard him whisper. “Where the hell have you been?”

  “I had to wait till everyone was in bed,” I whispered back at him. Surely he would understand?

  He scrambled out into the dark, stretching painfully stiff muscles that had all but gone into cramp. I saw the dark patch around the crotch of his jeans and realized he had wet himself. He turned and glared at me, humiliation writ large all over his face. “Find someone else to rescue next time,” he hissed. And I thought what an ungrateful pig he was.

  I had ruined any chance I might have had with him. But right then I didn’t care if I never saw him again for the rest of my life.

  It didn’t take long for word to spread around the village that Yankee Eachan had lost his gate and couldn’t find it anywhere. Over the next few days he was to be seen tramping around the village, and from croft to croft, searching for it. Stories of how he had pursued the boys with a belt and buckle, intent on doing them harm, meant that no one had much sympathy for him. As my dad had said, it was just a bit of fun after all.

  The story reached its conclusion on the sabbath.

  Yankee Eachan always sat up in the balcony during services at the Free Church, despite his position as an elder. It was a tradition. Or, at least, his tradition. Perhaps he felt closer to God up there. Nobody knew. But on his way down the stairs at the end of the service, he passed a window that looked out on to the building work for the new toilet block, and the roof of the workmen’s Portakabin. And there, plain as day, lay his gate. He stopped on the stairs and glared at it through the window. His voice reverberated all around the church. “Gorram sumbitch!”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Her father fetched a trolley and lifted the two suitcases Niamh had brought back with her on to it. And then, with evident reluctance, as if it might somehow be contaminated, retrieved the plain cardboard box with the shipping straps from the carousel and placed it on top of them.

  As they stepped from the terminal building, the wind blew Niamh’s hair into her eyes. She swept it back with both hands to scan the car park. It was less than a week since they had flown out, and yet she had no recollection of where Ruairidh had left the Jeep.

  Then she spotted it. He had parked the 4×4 two rows back. As they reached the vehicle, sunlight chased the shadow of a broken cloud across the tarmac and then vanished again in a moment. It felt strange to be opening up the SUV without him. Her father lifted everything from the trolley into the boot, and Niamh slipped into the driver’s seat. She had to slide it forward to reach the pedals, and bring the back more upright. A change of the settings Ruairidh had needed for his longer legs. She adjusted the mirror. And every little thing she changed felt like losing one more piece of him.

  Her parents stood by the open door and her mother said, “You’ll just follow us back to Balanish, then? Or would you like me to come with you?”

  Niamh shook her head. “I’m going home, Mum.”

  Her mother looked surprised. “Balanish is your home.”

  “No. Taigh ’an Fiosaich is my home. The house Ruairidh and I built.”

  Her mother drew in her chin, disapproval colouring her face. “I still don’t understand why he made you build a house way out there on the edge of the earth.”

  “Maybe it was to get away from you.” The words were out of Niamh’s mouth before she could stop herself, and she immediately regretted them. She added quickly, “When it feels like the whole world is against you—my family, his family—you retreat into each other. We found peace at Taigh ’an Fiosaich. All our memories are there. And that’s all I have left of him.”

  The drive up the west coast to Ness in the north was a painful one. It was a journey she and Ruairidh had made together countless times since building their house out on the remote headland of Cellar Head, beyond the old ruined settlement of Bilascleiter.

  The success of Ranish had put money in their hands for the first time, and they had decided to build their home in one of the remotest corners of the island. There had been more than a little truth in the words Niamh had spoken in haste to her mother. Maybe it was to get away from you. In fact it had been to get away from everyone. From the claustrophobic family atmosphere of the Macfarlane croft where the house they had restored in the early years of their marriage was now the headquarters of the company. To avoid the disapproval of Niamh’s parents. And the gossip, sometimes malicious, that so characterized the community of Balanish. And although never acknowledged, it was also an attempt to escape the event that had driven so sharp a wedge between their two families. An event they had not once discussed in all their years together.

  A hardcore track, pitted and scarred by time and weather, had already led south across the moor, along the east coast to the gathering of shielings at Cuishader. They had repaired and extended it, providing access to the headland for the building of the house.

  So what if it was a fifty-minute commute south to Balanish? Folk on the mainland would think nothing of that. And while they would sit in lines of traffic, breathing in the pollution that belched from countless exhausts, Niamh and Ruairidh would see the sun rising pale in the east, or setting blood-red in the west. In all the summer daylight hours, when the sun barely ever set, the vistas offered by the drive up and down the west coast were incomparable. The mountains of Uig and Harris as they headed south. The Northern Lights as they returned late to Ness. The spring and summer flowers that turned the winter-dead moor into a sea of shimmering colour. Sunshine and rain spawning rainbows in profusion. On some days, it seemed, there was one around every curve of the road. Even in winter, under angry skies, Atlantic gales battered the cliffs which had stood resolute against the forces of the ocean since the beginning of time. Spume rising hundreds of feet into the air, white against leaden cloud. Before dispersing in a moment to salt the machair and saturate the bog.

  Today there was very little sun to light Niamh’s heart on this drive north. The equinoctial gales were late this year and the sky lay low on the island, grey and featureless. In this light, every village on the road seemed drab and depressing. Harled houses huddled together in treeless clusters, exposed to the full force of the weather. A profusion of Protestant churches feeding the faith of a hardy people who had put down their roots in this desolate place thousands of years before. And although it was always the desire of the young to leave, to get away, it seemed programmed somehow into their DNA that in time they would come back. If not them, then their children, or their children’s children. In truth, there was no escaping the island. It was in your blood.

  At Cross, in the shadow of the church that dominated the skyline, Niamh turned on to the road to Skigersta, cutting off the northern tip of the island and heading east. From Skigersta the track south bumped and rolled its way across several miles of peat-scarred bog to the retreat she had built with her dead husband.

  There was a spattering of rain as she drove down the slope past the old tin huts and caravans at Cuishader where crofters used to bring their beasts to graze during the summer months, allowing crops to grow on the crofts back home. Someone had even brought an old
bus out here as shelter against the elements. Maclennan Coaches was barely visible now in red lettering along one side of it, almost obliterated by the weather. One wheel, still visible, lay at an odd angle. Beyond the shielings, to the east, a deep cleft in the cliffs cut right down to the shore, where a small sandy cove was hidden from view.

  Niamh was forced to slow down to traverse the concrete slab laid over the stream that ran down from the Galson moor. In heavy rain the bridge would be submerged by this tiny waterway in spate, and crossing it could be treacherous.

  On the other side the track rose steeply again, until Niamh had a clear, unobstructed view south across the moor towards the great fingers of gneiss that reached out into the Minch, as if holding on to it for dear life.

  Her Jeep lurched and rattled over the rutted hardcore, swinging around the ancient village of Bilascleiter. All that remained of it now were the footings of a dozen old blackhouses, and a solitary shieling of green-painted corrugated iron with a rust-red and silver tin roof.

  Now she could see, sitting out on the promontory ahead, the ruins of the house built there more than a century before by a man from Ness, John Nicolson—or Iain Fiosaich in Gaelic. Known simply as Taigh ’an Fiosaich, the house of Nicolson, only the gable ends still stood. The broken-down remnants of side walls revealed empty spaces where windows had once looked out over the edge of the cliffs. Two hundred feet of granite and gneiss that gave on to one of the most spectacular views anywhere on the island.

  It was the remote beauty of this place that had tempted Niamh and Ruairidh to make their home here. They had built a state-of-the-art house on the near promontory, looking across towards Taigh ’an Fiosaich. Beyond it stood the ruined church where Nicolson had once preached his own brand of baptist theology to the crofters who came out here for the summer.