Питер Мэй - I'll Keep You Safe

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.’