I'll Keep You Safe

by Peter May

The cook knew what was coming, and there was a grin all over her face when the ghillies and watchers came trooping into the kitchen. “Come on then, Niamh,” the gamekeeper said to me. He was an older man, a face like leather after years at sea. They called him Staines after a character in a TV series called Captain Pugwash that was years before my time.

  “Come on where?” I said.

  “It’s bath time.” One of the boys grinned at me, and the others had trouble stifling their laughter. I was not getting a good feeling about this.

  I tutted and shook my head. “I’m busy.”

  “Told you she might take a bit of persuasion,” the gamekeeper said. “Right, then, boys.” And to my absolute indignation they marched right in and swept me off my feet.

  Big strong boys’ hands all over me hoisting me into the air and carrying me shouting and kicking all the way down the hall and out of the front door. The other girls were gathered there, and some of the guests, all smiling in anticipation.

  “Put me down,” I screamed, trying to wriggle free of their grasp. But it was hopeless. And they marched me over the gravel to the slipway and down to the water’s edge. I realized suddenly what was coming and struggled even harder to free myself. To no avail. They swung me once, twice, three times through the air, before launching me out over the water.

  I landed with a smack on its still surface, and the cold nearly took my breath away as I went under. It wasn’t deep here, so I was able to scramble quickly to my feet, rising up out of the water like Aphrodite to stand waist-deep, drenched, my hair hanging in a sodden web all over my face. Everyone began singing “Happy Birthday.”

  It was only as I scrambled up out of the water, to a chorus of laughter and cheers, that I saw Ruairidh standing there for the first time. Grinning. My white T-shirt was virtually see-through when wet. Fortunately I was wearing a bra. But I felt as if I was standing in my underwear, exposed and humiliated.

  I ran off into the house, gales of laughter following in my wake.

  I didn’t see much of him over the next few days as I settled into the routine of the lodge. They were long, hard days, but sleeping in the afternoon meant that we were all wide awake once dinner had been served, the tables cleared and the dishes done.

  The weather was pretty lousy that first week, wet and blustery, which none of the fishermen seemed to mind. But it meant we were stuck in the lodge at night, either the girls in their tiny lounge off the kitchen, or all of us together in the boys’ green shed, talking, smoking, listening to music. Ruairidh had been assigned to train up the new watchers, so he wasn’t often there.

  Then suddenly, the following week, summer arrived, and as soon as we were able to escape our duties in the lodge, we would all troop down to a tiny beach hidden beyond the headland, where we were out of sight and hearing of the guests.

  We lit fires from driftwood to keep the midges at bay, and sat around in the flickering glow of the flames, talking and laughing, drinking beer and vodka, and sometimes one of the boys would produce a chunk of cannabis resin that we would break up and “cook” in silver paper to smoke with tobacco in rolled-up joints.

  It was about halfway through that week that Ruairidh first showed up with his guitar. He was finished training the new boys, and he sat cross-legged with his back to the dunes serenading us with ballads and rock classics, and pop songs that everyone knew and sang along to.

  I remember those nights as being special. I didn’t participate much in the singing, or the craic, but sat there with the fire in my eyes watching Ruairidh as he played and sang, and I think perhaps that’s when I realized that I was in love with him. Not some childhood infatuation, or passing fancy, or even gratitude for the moment when he had saved my life all those years before. But with an ache somewhere very deep inside me, and a longing that I could barely contain.

  Seonag, by contrast, was the life and soul of the party. Every fancy-dress night and silly escapade was her idea. She joked and flirted with the boys and was the envy of all the other girls. I watched how she eyed up Ruairidh in a sleekit sort of way, green watchful eyes peering out from behind her fringe. But whatever had happened between them that night after the disco, he showed no interest in her whatsoever. Neither, it has to be said, did he demonstrate the least interest in me.

  Until the night that Seonag retired early to her bed, suffering from a streaming summer cold. There were only a handful of us down at the beach that evening. Ruairidh and his guitar, another of the ghillies with one of the housemaids who had become an item, and the cook.

  I sat with my back to the sea, listening between songs to the sound of its breathing. I remember someone once telling me that the sound of the sea was like the sound we hear pre-birth, of our mother’s blood passing through us. And that’s why we are always drawn to the ocean. Like a return to the womb.

  I didn’t even notice the ghillie and his girl drifting off along the shore until the cook stood up and said, “Time for bed. An early rise in the morning.” As if it wasn’t always. And suddenly it was just me and Ruairidh sitting round the fire, looking at each other across the embers. He must have been twenty then. A young man. He had broadened out, and not having shaved for several days had the beginnings of a beard adding definition to a fine-featured face.

  He smiled, patting the sand on his right, and said, “Come and sit beside me.”

  My heart was very nearly in my mouth as I shuffled around the dying fire and squatted cross-legged in the sand beside him. I think it was the first time in our lives that we had ever been alone together.

  He had the most enigmatic smile on his face as he turned to look in my eyes. “Fancy a smoke?”

  “Sure.”

  He laid the guitar aside and delved into a pocket, producing a small silver tin box containing several roll-ups. But they were no ordinary roll-ups. He lifted one out and grinned. “Here’s one I made earlier.”

  I laughed. We had both watched Blue Peter as kids. Though I doubt if any of the presenters had made anything quite like these earlier. At least, not on screen. He lit it and took a long pull, drawing smoke deep into his lungs and holding it there for several moments before exhaling suddenly and handing me the roll-up. I saw the embers of the fire reflected in blue eyes that seemed so dark on this light night. I drew long and deep before handing it back.

  There was the faintest of breezes blowing in with the tide. An almost full moon gave inner light to the slow swell of dark green ocean as it broke white along the sand. I could feel the warmth of his body next to mine, and we sat there without a word, caressed by the half-dark, and smoking his joint until it was done. He threw the dout on the fire. It flared briefly in a fleeting, flickering flame, then vanished. Ruairidh reached then for his guitar and played me the most beautiful song I think I had ever heard. I found out only much later that it was an old Beatles song, “Here, There and Everywhere.”

  He sang it slow and soft, a voice like velvet, eyes sometimes closed, sometimes gazing dreamily out across the water. When he finished he turned to look at me for the first time. Our faces were very close, and he leaned over on one elbow to kiss me. Had we not been smoking earlier, I might have rushed it, or pulled back too soon. As it was I just closed my eyes and lost myself in it. In the softness of his lips, the warmth of his tongue, the not unpleasant jag of his whiskers. I tasted smoke on his breath, and the sweetness of alcohol. It all seemed like the most natural thing in the world. As if everything in my life up until then had only ever been to prepare me for this moment.

  When finally we drew back I saw that his pupils were dilated. He said, “I’ve wanted to do that ever since I saw you nearly drown up on the Pentland Moor.”

  I gazed at him in disbelief. “Liar.”

  “It’s true. I’d never even noticed you at school before then. I don’t know why. I remember lying along the plank and looking into your eyes. Feeling your total dependence on me in that moment. And it was the first time I’d ever felt the desire to kiss a girl.”

 
I felt indignation rising in my breast. “Well, I’d never have guessed it from the way you totally ignored me afterwards.”

  He shrugged and turned his eyes away towards the incoming swell. “That’s difficult to explain. I suppose I was a bit ashamed of the things I’d felt. Embarrassed. None of the other boys seemed remotely interested in girls. I didn’t want to be any different.”

  “And at the disco that time?”

  He turned, frowning. “What time?”

  “You don’t even remember, do you? About five years ago. We danced, and I was waiting for you to ask me for the last dance of the night. But you asked Seonag instead, and you both went off together at the end.” I had carried the hurt and humiliation of it somewhere deep inside for all these years.

  His eyes opened wide in amazement. “It was you that didn’t want to dance with me.”

  “Rubbish!”

  “That’s what Seonag said. That you fancied my friend Derek, and were hoping he’d ask you for the last dance. So he did.”

  I felt my jaw slacken.

  “And I asked Seonag instead. Then afterwards, when we’d left together, she didn’t really want to know. We hung about, talking, down at the bus shelter until I was freezing my bollocks off. Then it was a quick peck on the cheek and she was off.” He pursed his lips in regret. “I thought you hated me.”

  I felt the deepest, trembling sigh suck itself from my chest and closed my eyes. “That little bitch!” Then I looked at him very earnestly. “I told her nothing of the kind. It was you I wanted to dance with.”

  He started to laugh, then, and let his head fall back, directing his mirth at the vast firmament overhead. “Jesus. To think of all the wasted years!” He stood up suddenly and held out his hand to pull me to my feet. “Are you tired?”

  “Never been more awake in my life.”

  He grinned that infectious grin of his. “Want to go out in a boat?”

  “I’d love to.”

  “Better get some decent footwear, then, and a jacket in case it gets cold. I’ll meet you with the Land Rover at the back of the green shed.”

  Seonag was deep asleep, snoring like an old man, when I snuck into our room to fetch my Hunter’s green wellies and my parka. Ruairidh was waiting with the Land Rover, and didn’t seem concerned about waking anyone as he started up the motor and drove us off towards the gatehouse and the single track that led to the main road. We turned south-west, then, on the B8011 until we passed the Bernera turn-off on our right, then swung left on to a track that only a 4×4 could handle, heading due south along the west shore of Loch Ruadh Gheure. Moonlight reflecting on still, black water followed our lurching progress up the water system. Ruairidh laughed. “You know what this loch is called?”

  “Ruadh Gheure,” I said.

  “No, it’s Loch One. There are four lochs on the system, and they’re all called by their number. Every landmark on all the streams and lochs has its own English name. Daft things like Fish Bay, and Pyramid, and Alligator and Auburn Point. All because the English can’t pronounce the Gaelic.” He laughed again. “Mind you, most Scots couldn’t pronounce the Gaelic either.”

  It didn’t take us long to reach the end of the road, and the boathouse at the top of Loch Two. There, Ruairidh dragged a 15-foot wooden boat down a short slipway into the water and we both clambered in. He yanked twice on the starter cable of a Tohatsu outboard and the engine exploded noisily into life, the sound of it echoing away across the hills that grew out of the twilight.

  I cringed at the noise. “Won’t someone hear us?”

  “Who? There’s no one out here, except for maybe a couple of poachers, and you can bet your life the watchers are fast asleep in the bothy at Macleay’s Stream.”

  The initial roar of the motor settled down into a more gentle purr as Ruairidh guided us south along the loch, shattered moonlight dispersing in the luminescent wash we left in our wake. “Is it bad, the poaching?” I had heard stories.

  He nodded grimly. “At times, yes. Used to be that no one really minded the locals taking one for the pot, but it’s gone way beyond that now. Some of the poaching on the water up here is almost industrial. They’re casting nets across the waterways, catching dozens, if not hundreds of salmon. They have taxis waiting for them at road-ends, and the boots get packed with fish on ice and driven off to Stornoway. From there, who knows where it goes. But there’s a big international market for fresh-caught wild salmon.” He looked as if he might be about to spit his disgust out on to the water, then changed his mind. “Trouble is, at this rate there’ll not be any salmon left for anyone. The estate’s not far from all-out war with the locals.”

  “But the estate’s taking the fish, too. And charging big money for it. What gives them the right to fish the waters when the locals don’t?” I felt a certain indignation rising in my chest. I knew that my own father was not beyond a bit of poaching himself.

  “Aye, but the estate manages the water system, Niamh. They have a hatchery down on Loch Roag, and a policy now of returning caught fish to the water. The emphasis is more and more on conservation these days.”

  We motored the rest of the way in silence, then, and I watched in wonder as the landscape changed all around us, growing more rugged and mountainous. There was daylight still in the sky, with the moon washing its light across the land, scree slopes and rocky shorelines traced in silver. At this time of year it would never get fully dark, and I remembered being in Ness one June at a family wedding when I saw the sun rise in the east barely moments after it had set in the west.

  Macleay’s Stream was a short stretch of managed white water between Loch Two and Loch Three. There was no sign of life in the bothy, a stone-built dwelling with a tin roof that sat in the cradle of the mountains rising steeply now out of the valley. Ruairidh said, “Either they are sleeping or out patrolling. Whichever it is, we don’t want to disturb them.”

  We berthed the boat at the mouth of the stream and followed a track on foot that led us along the path of Macleay’s to the foot of Loch Three, where we clambered into another boat and headed deeper into the wilderness. Past landmarks to which Ruairidh attached names like McKillop’s Point and Braithwait’s Cairn.

  We changed boats again at Skunk Point, and motored south in splendid isolation, beyond Summer House and Cheese Rock, into some of the most inaccessible wilderness in the whole of Scotland. The air was cooler now, and I was starting to feel the chill. So I sat at the back of the boat, leaning in to Ruairidh, who had one hand on the tiller and the other around my shoulder.

  I realized how completely I had surrendered everything to him. Out here I was so far beyond my comfort zone, or ken, that all I could do was put my trust in him. And to me he seemed strong and knowledgeable and wholly at ease in his environment. So surrender felt good. I knew he would keep me safe, as all these years later he promised me he would.

  He pointed towards the dark shape of an island looming ahead in the water. “That’s Macphail’s Island. There’s a lunch hut there. We’ll stop for a bit, and light a fire if you’re cold.” We could see the mountains of North Harris cutting jagged lines against the sky in the distance. Tomnaval. The Clisham. Ruairidh said, “There are two rivers that run into the head of Loch Four here, both from Loch Langabhat. One day I’ll take you up there. It must be the most beautiful spot on earth, Niamh. You can see pairs of golden eagles circling way up above the mountain tops, and red deer that come right down to the water’s edge. And if you ever want to feel like there’s no other human being on this earth, then that’s the place you need to go.”

  I wasn’t sure why I would ever want to feel so alone, but I would happily have gone there with Ruairidh any time he wanted.

  The lunch hut was half wood, half stone, with a sloping leaded roof. It sat on a rocky outcrop, with steps cut into the rock leading up from a tiny jetty where Ruairidh tied up our boat. With so much moonlight reflecting off water, and so much daylight still in the sky, it felt more like day than night.
/>   Ruairidh pushed open a wooden door with a leaping salmon painted beneath a small square of window. The hut smelled damp and fusty, intended only as a shelter for fishermen to eat their packed lunches while out fishing the system. Ruairidh said, “Sometimes a watcher will overnight here.” And he stooped to open up a cupboard and take out a couple of rolled-up sleeping bags. “We’ll take these to keep us warm.”

  We trekked across the tiny island then, to a sheltered inlet with a pocket-handkerchief patch of fine shingle, and he laid out the sleeping bags before gathering wood to light a fire.

  “Back in a few minutes,” he said. And I saw him in silhouette returning to the hut, before emerging with a rod and a bag and vanishing across the island.

  I sat for what felt like a very long time, watching fish out on the loch jumping clear of the water to catch insects, leaving rings that circled endlessly outward, cutting and cross-cutting each other until they broke upon the shore. If there were midges around, then the heat and flames of the fire kept them away. The air felt soft to me, and I took off my parka and kicked off my wellies. I had the strangest feeling in my belly, and a kaleidoscope of butterflies animating it. I pulled my knees up to my chest and wrapped my arms around my shins, rocking slightly back and forth. There was the strongest sense permeating every part of me that my life was about to change for ever. And I was, at the same time, both scared of it, and desperate to embrace it.

  Ruairidh returned with a live trout. He killed it with a sharp blow to the head then crouched to gut it on a rock. From his sack he took a roll of tinfoil, a lemon and two portions of wrapped butter. He parcelled the trout up in the tinfoil with a slice of lemon and a portion of butter, and wedged it carefully among the embers of the fire. He sat down beside me. “A few minutes. I hope you’re hungry.”

  “Starving.” And I was.

  He reached for his sack and pulled out a bottle of white wine and two plastic cups. “Not as chilled as it might be, but it’ll do.” He took out a corkscrew and opened the bottle.