Питер Мэй - I'll Keep You Safe

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.