I'll Keep You Safe

by Peter May

  “Like Ruairidh.”

  “Aye. And others.” His own gaze turned reflective as he panned it across the beach and cemetery below. “The brother that Niamh Macfarlane has gone to meet off the ferry. Uilleam . . .” He drew a deep breath. “There was no love lost between him and Ruairidh Macfarlane.”

  Braque frowned. “Love lost?”

  He smiled. “Sorry. They didn’t like one another very much. And that would be an understatement.” He snorted. “Not that there was much contact between them. Not for a long time, anyway. Uilleam’s been away from the island for years. Based in Dundee, on the east coast of Scotland. A software developer, I’m told, for one of the big online games companies.”

  She frowned again. “I’m not sure I understand.”

  “Computer games. You know, things like Grand Theft Auto and World of Warcraft. Stuff like that. I’m no expert myself.” He turned to look at her. “I wouldn’t even know what they called Grand Theft Auto in France.”

  She shrugged and smiled. “Grand Theft Auto, I believe.”

  He grinned. “Oh, well, that’s original, then.” The grin faded. “The thing is, Ma’am, I heard this morning that Uilleam was on the island himself earlier this month. It never came to my attention officially at the time, but I understand that he and Ruairidh had a confrontation in McNeill’s bar in Stornoway. A chance meeting apparently, that ended in fists and flying beer glasses. No complaints made, and no arrests, but I gather that Uilleam took a bit of a beating. Ruairidh was a big lad. But it was Uilleam that picked the fight.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  “Well, like I said, Ma’am, there was no love lost.” He turned his eyes back towards the beach. “And the seeds of it were sown right here on these sands. Something that happened twenty-five years ago now. And there’s probably not anyone on the island who doesn’t know the story.”

  Braque looked at him, intrigued. “Tell me.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Niamh had arrived in Stornoway far too early for the ferry, and spent her time wandering aimlessly around the town, remembering places she had been with Ruairidh, things they had done together. A drunken meal at Digby Chick that had left neither of them in a fit state to drive home. The night subsequently spent at the Royal, making love noisily and keeping the people in the next room awake until they banged on the wall. The day that Ruairidh dropped his iPhone into the inner harbour, trying to photograph curious seals which had swum right up to the pontoons. A first night spent in a room at the luxuriously refurbished Lews Castle that sat up on the hill overlooking the town and harbour below. A new perspective on a familiar place.

  The times they had attended HebCelt, drifting from tent to tent in the castle grounds, listening to some of the best Celtic music to be heard anywhere. Or Rock Night in the theatre at the An Lanntair arts centre, a tribute by local musicians to a long line of rock classics.

  Moments spent together. Lost now for ever. For while they remained still strong in her recollection, what were memories if not to be shared?

  Finally, it was at An Lanntair that she ended up, nursing a coffee at a table with a view over the outer harbour where she could see the ferry as it rounded the point and ploughed its passage across the bay to the pier. The angled silver roof of the terminal building caught moments of fleeting sunshine and more resembled a flying saucer than a ferry terminal.

  She could see the Jeep from here, too, where she had left it in the car park, its white roof, like that of the terminal building, flashing intermittently in the sporadic sunlight.

  As the time passed so her dread grew. She could not remember now the last time that she had seen Uilleam. Probably at some family funeral, or wedding, where they would not have spoken or even caught each other’s eye. She would have loved him to be the happy-go-lucky protective big brother she remembered from childhood, awkward with girls, taking delight in tormenting his wee sister, along with Anndra. But those memories were tainted now by animus, and the innocents they had once been were long lost.

  When the MV Loch Seaforth finally powered her way around the headland Niamh’s heart pushed up into her throat. The Loch Seaforth was a big, luxurious ferry compared with her predecessors, the Isle of Lewis and the Suilven. It was the Suilven that had ferried Niamh back and forth to the mainland in her early student days, sailing right up until the mid-Nineties, when the boat was sold into service between the North and South Islands of New Zealand, only to capsize and sink in Fiji twenty years later.

  This new ferry seemed huge, with her three levels of passenger deck above a vast hull that carried the cars of the tourists and the trucks that supplied the islands with most of their provisions. Niamh waited until the very last minute, when she could see passengers streaming off the boat, before abandoning the remains of her coffee and crossing the road to the car park.

  She was shocked by how much Uilleam had aged since the last time she had seen him. His once black hair brushed through with steel and thinning a little. He had developed the stoop that so many taller people adopt as they grow older, as if bowed by years of leaning down to hear the chatter of all those smaller people around them.

  He was wheeling a suitcase and she stood waiting by the car as he approached her across the tarmac. To her astonishment, when he reached her, he released the suitcase and folded his arms around her, with all the protective big brother love she remembered from when they were children. She buried her face in his chest and wished away all the miserable years between then and now. Remembering how it had been, and what it was that had caused the rift.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  I turned fifteen not long before it happened.

  They say that your teens are a difficult time, and that your mid-teens are the worst. But for the most part I enjoyed my teenage years. That transition from childhood to womanhood was so full of discovery and pleasure that I revelled in it—apart from its one obvious downside. I embraced the changes that were moulding me, growing into the young woman I was to become. Secondary school gave way to further education and then to real life beyond. But right then, it was the Nicolson that was stretching my mind and my imagination. I was enjoying the challenge. The world seemed full of possibilities. The sun shone endlessly that summer, at least in my recollection, and the freedom I enjoyed in finding myself was simply delicious.

  The cares of the world had not yet descended on my young shoulders, my independence unfettered by adult prohibition, and if I could have lived the rest of my life in that state of uncomplicated serenity I would have made that choice without a second thought. But as summer inevitably fades to autumn and then winter, such happiness could not be sustained, and I could never have foreseen the tragedy that brought it to an end.

  Every other summer my uncle Hector would arrive from his home in the south of England with his exotic English wife, Rita. At least, exotic is how she seemed to us. She spoke with a creamy posh accent, a large-bosomed, bountiful lady whose perfume smelled of flowers. She wore glamorous clothes that looked as if they were just off the peg, and extravagant hats that she always had trouble keeping on her head in the wind.

  My uncle, who was my father’s brother, was a doctor, and to us seemed fabulously wealthy. He and Rita lived in a big house in a picturesque village somewhere in the county of Hampshire. We had never been, mainly I think because my father could not afford the cost of travel for the whole family. But we had seen plenty of photographs, and to me it was like another world. A place you might read about in books.

  Although my uncle was just an islander like us, he seemed different somehow. Better. He had ironed out his island accent, the blas he had acquired from speaking Gaelic as he grew up, and had made a success of his life in a bigger pond. It is a character trait of islanders to believe that they have to go away to better themselves, and perhaps the mainland offers more opportunity. But, in truth, I think that we are who we will be regardless of where we might end up. And most islanders, in the final event, come back. Or, at least,
want to.

  Visitors to our house slept in the caravan that we kept in the garden. But Uncle Hector and Aunt Rita always got my room. Not that they thought they were above sleeping in the caravan. It was my mother who thought that.

  I was always delighted when they came to stay, because I was the one who got to be in the caravan. I loved it. My own little world, quite separate from the house and the rest of the family. As if I was all grown up and on holiday by myself.

  It was usually August that they came to stay, when my uncle could get a locum to look after his surgery. They took three or four days to motor up, normally via Skye, taking the car ferry from Uig over to Tarbert in Harris, and driving up through Lochs. Uncle Hector liked his cars, and they always arrived in something big and shiny and expensive that made our wee Ford Fiesta seem dowdy and old. This particular year they turned up in a car the likes of which none of us had ever seen before. And not just us. It turned heads everywhere it went on the island, and I’m sure on the mainland, too.

  It was what my uncle called a vintage car. A Humber Hawk. A big black sleek American-looking thing with a green-leather bench seat in the front and a column gear change. My uncle was so proud of it. “They stopped making these in sixty-seven,” he told us, more than once. He frequently related the story of how Rita’s father had bought one of the last models off the production line, about the same time The Beatles were releasing Sgt. Pepper’s, but never registered it. He had kept it in his garage, wrapped almost literally in cotton wool. It was another thirteen years before he finally declared it to the authorities, registering it in 1980, and making it unique and very nearly priceless. He had gifted it to Hector and Rita as a wedding present.

  The couple had treasured it ever since, keeping it mostly in the garage and taking it out on only rare occasions. It was the first time they had brought it up to the Hebrides.

  Me and Anndra and Uilleam crowded into the back seat and rode like royalty around the island when my aunt and uncle took us shopping in Stornoway, or out for the day to Uig, or Luskentyre in Harris. It made you want to wave from the window, like the Queen, when people would turn their heads to watch us going by. Other motorists would slow almost to a stop in passing places so they could get a better look.

  From time to time Anndra got to sit up front. He must have been nearly seventeen by then, and desperate to learn to drive. But lessons cost money, and it was likely he couldn’t afford it until he was out working himself. Which would be some way off. Because he was anxious to go to university in Glasgow to study Gaelic.

  One day, on the road down to Uig, Uncle Hector turned off on to a disused stretch of single-track and got out of the car. He waved Anndra into the driver’s seat. “On you go, son,” he said. “Just a few hundred yards, mind. But it’ll be enough to give you a feel for it.” And my uncle slipped into the passenger seat beside him and gave him instructions. It was quite a sacrifice for Uncle Hector to take a risk like that, and I can remember him wincing as Anndra crunched into first gear. But once my brother got her running, it was a smooth drive in a straight line, and he actually managed to get into top gear before finally running out of road and slowing to a stop. We all clapped, and Anndra glowed with pleasure. Uncle Hector said, “One day maybe, Anndra, I’ll leave her to you in my will.” Me and Uilleam were dead jealous.

  That summer we had been enjoying one of the finest spells of weather that I could remember. The wind was soft from the south-west, bringing warm air with it, but for once no rain, and we had day after day of clear blue skies and baking hot sunshine. Even the midges got burned off in the heat, and we spent days on end on this beach or that, getting tans like none of us had ever had before.

  The day it happened, Dad and Uncle Hector were going fishing together. I don’t know where, and it probably wasn’t legal. They weren’t saying, and no one was asking. But they went off at first light with their sacks on their backs and their rods over the shoulders.

  Aunt Rita had decided that we should go to Dalmore Beach for the day, and she and Mum spent half the morning preparing a sumptuous pack lunch that we could take with us. In the end, Mum decided that she would stay home and cook, and that we would have a big family dinner that night, since my aunt and uncle were scheduled to leave the next day.

  We set off late in the morning, after Seonag’s mum had dropped her off, and we all squeezed into the car. Me and Seonag in the back with Uilleam, and Anndra up front with Aunt Rita.

  I’ll never forget driving down that road to the beach. The colour of the sea simmering between headlands, the painfully clear blue of the sky. And the hills rising on either side of us burned brown by all the weeks of sunshine. I have never driven down that same road since with anything other than lead in my heart.

  When we arrived at the metalled parking there were no other cars there, but I noticed half a dozen bikes leaning against the cemetery fence, and when we got out of the car the whoops and cries of their owners carried to us on the wind from the beach. Which was disappointing. Nine times out of ten we would have had the beach to ourselves.

  Seonag and I ran on ahead, carrying fold-up canvas chairs and travelling rugs, and Aunt Rita followed with the boys, carrying two big hampers. A veritable feast!

  When we got down to the beach, and picked our way over the stones to the sand, we saw that the bikers were in fact half a dozen lads from Balanish. And my heart skipped a beat when I saw that one of them was Ruairidh. They were playing football, stripped to the waist and wearing only shorts, kicking their ball about on the firm sand left by the receding tide. I heard Seonag beside me issuing a grunt of disapproval. “Bloody typical,” she said. “Why do boys have to go and ruin everything?”

  The boys saw us arriving, and probably had very similar thoughts. But I noticed that Ruairidh had clocked who we were, and his eyes lingered just a little longer in our direction than the others’. This was after the incident at the village disco, and before Ruairidh and I finally connected during my first summer break at Linshader, so I was playing it cool and chose to ignore them entirely.

  I heard Uilleam cursing in Gaelic as he and Anndra and Aunt Rita appeared on the beach behind us. Rita would have lived with Hector long enough to recognize a few Gaelic oaths, and she shushed Uilleam and suggested we set up camp on the far side of the beach, just about as far away as we could get from the noisy, football-playing youths.

  She was wearing a beautiful blue print dress with flaring skirts that billowed in the wind as she strode off through the soft warm sand to pick a spot. Her wide-brimmed straw hat fibrillated in the breeze and stayed on her head thanks only to the ribbons tied in a bow beneath her chin.

  Uilleam growled at the footballers as we passed them. He had never liked Ruairidh, and I had always thought that maybe he was jealous that it was Ruairidh who’d had the initiative and courage to rescue me from the bog, when Uilleam was the older boy, and my brother to boot. As if Ruairidh had somehow done it just to show him up. By now Uilleam was already away from the island at university, and was only home for a couple of weeks following a summer job working at a hotel in Pitlochry.

  He and Anndra hammered stakes into the sand to stretch out a windbreak while Aunt Rita spread the travelling rugs and arranged the hampers and chairs. Seonag and I stripped off to the bathing costumes beneath our clothes and went splashing and shrieking into the water. Despite the heat of the summer, the sea was still ice-cold and a shock to the system.

  “Don’t go in too far,” Aunt Rita called after us. “You know how deep it gets.”

  I knew only too well from past experience. When the tide goes out it leaves a stretch of gently sloping wet sand, before suddenly shelving steeply away into deeper, darker water. You could tell from the way the waves broke as they came in and were quickly sucked out again by a powerful undertow. Sometimes you saw surfers out in the bay, but they would be strong swimmers, often with life vests. The waves weren’t big enough today to attract the surfers, but forceful enough to knock you over and dra
g you back out if you weren’t careful and strayed too far in.

  It’s true there was a time when most islanders couldn’t swim. In fact, fear of the water was almost instilled into us. If you had a healthy fear of it and couldn’t swim, then you wouldn’t be tempted to go into the sea. But a drowning tragedy at Uig had persuaded my parents that we should learn. Anndra and I were sent off to Stornoway for lessons, but Uilleam refused to go. I think his fear of the water was already too deeply ingrained.

  Anndra came and joined us splashing about in the sea for a while before Aunt Rita called us back to eat, and we all sat around the travelling rugs, Uilleam still fully dressed, and tucked into the grub that was laid out on plates. There was cheese and pickle, and bread and cold meats. Egg sandwiches, cucumber sandwiches. Flasks of tea and coffee, and bottles of lemonade in a cold bag.

  The ball came out of the blue, from somewhere on the other side of the windbreak. It landed smack in the middle of our lunch, upsetting plates of food and tipping over an open flask to spill still piping hot coffee all over the rug.

  Seonag and I screamed, startled, and Uilleam roared with anger, jumping immediately to his feet to hurl Gaelic abuse over the windbreak at the culprits. Aunt Rita remained remarkably unperturbed. “Alright, keep calm, it’s not the end of the world,” she said. Nothing if not practical, she handed the ball to Anndra and began rearranging the plates and food, taking napkins from the hamper to mop up the spillage.

  But Uilleam was not so easily mollified. He snatched the ball from Anndra as Ruairidh came running up, panting, from beyond the windbreak. He regarded the chaos of food and plates with dismay. “I’m so sorry,” he said. “The wind caught the ball, and . . .”

  “You fucking idiot!” Uilleam shouted at him.

  “Uilleam, please, it was an accident,” Aunt Rita said, retaining her accustomed calm. But Uilleam wasn’t about to let it go, and he knew that Rita wouldn’t understand him if he stuck to Gaelic.