Питер Мэй - I'll Keep You Safe

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.

‘You’ve certainly come equipped,’ I said. ‘Do you do this often?’

He grinned. ‘First time. But I have been planning it.’

‘Oh have you?’

He shrugged. ‘Well, one should always be prepared.’

I smiled. ‘Oh, should one?’

‘I was a Boy Scout.’

‘That would explain it, then.’ I tilted my head towards him. ‘I suppose your pal and his girlfriend, and the cook, were all well primed to leave us on our own at the fire.’

He just smiled.

When he gauged that the fish was ready, he scooped it out of the ashes with a couple of sticks and opened up the tinfoil between us. The smell that rose up with the steam was delicious. He unfolded a knife from his pocket and carefully separated the fillet from the bone, before lifting up the tail and delicately removing the whole spine and head. ‘Just fingers, I’m afraid.’ He glanced up at me. ‘Is that okay?’

‘I never use anything else.’ He laughed, and I discovered that I liked to make him laugh. He poured us each a glass of wine. We chinked plastic and I took a mouthful of soft, fruity Chardonnay that tasted like the best thing that had ever passed my lips. Until we turned our attention to the trout. There was not the slightest smell of fish rising from the firm, succulent flesh, slick with butter and lemon juice. It was, quite simply, the best fish I had ever tasted. If I could recreate that moment, I would relive it a thousand times.

When we had finished it we washed our hands in the loch, freshening our mouths with more wine, and settling in close together on the outspread sleeping bags.

‘Did it live up to expectations?’ I said.

He looked at me, surprised. ‘What?’

‘That first kiss you’d been dreaming about all those years.’

He was very serious. ‘More than.’

‘I don’t suppose you’d like to try it again? Just to make sure.’

He ran the backs of his fingers down my cheek, and then his thumb gently across my lips. I kissed it, before he leaned in to find my lips with his. Soft and warm, the taste of Chardonnay still on his tongue. The butterflies in my tummy went into hyperdrive as I felt his hands on my shoulders, gently laying me down on the softness of the sleeping bags. There was no invitation required. Neither did he seek or need permission.

Within minutes we were naked under the moon, making love for the very first time, and I knew that what I had taken for love on the beach at Linshader Lodge had not deceived me.

It was my first time, and although I wasn’t going to tell him that, I think he’d probably worked it out. They say the first time can be the worst time. For me it was amazing, and only ever got better. I never, from that moment, wanted anyone else in my life.

When we were finished and lying breathless on our backs gazing up at the faintest of stars in a sky that was as dark as it would get, he turned his head to gaze at me with an intensity that was almost frightening. Then he said, ‘Well, I’m glad to see that the hunter — gatherer approach still works.’

And I clattered him as he burst out laughing.

We got back just as the day was beginning at the lodge. The cook was already in the kitchen, and I hurried up to my room to change. Seonag was awake, but still lying in bed without any intention of getting out of it that day. Her eyes and nose were still streaming, and her voice had almost gone. It was obvious that my bed had not been slept in.

‘Been out all night, then,’ she said. A statement, not a question.

I wasn’t feeling particularly well disposed to her after Ruairidh’s revelations about what she had said to him at the disco. ‘None of your business,’ I said curtly, and I saw her face flush with anger, and maybe hurt.

‘Finally got it together, then, you two?’

I slipped into clean underwear and pulled on fresh jeans and a T-shirt. I could shower later. ‘No thanks to you.’

She had gathered her composure again, and drew it around her like the sheets on the bed. ‘I wonder what your folks are going to say when they find out that you’re going out with Ruairidh Macfarlane.’

I turned to glare at her angrily. If she was trying to puncture my happiness, she was succeeding. But I didn’t want to let it show. ‘I don’t care what they say. I know they’ve always blamed Ruairidh for what happened, but they’re wrong.’ And I stomped out of the room. We never spoke about it again. But Seonag was in a huff with me, and I couldn’t be doing with it. Within a week I had swapped rooms with another of the girls who seemed happy to share with Seonag, and I barely spoke to her for the rest of the summer.

Seonag aside, the next few weeks passed in a dream. I couldn’t wait to finish work each night to spend the rest of it with Ruairidh. Sometimes we sat down at the beach with the others, weather permitting, singing around the fire. Some nights we wandered off along the shore. We found a tiny island that was only accessible at low tide. There were the remains of an old blackhouse on it and we would light a fire among the ruins and Ruairidh would sing and play just for me. We had our own name for it, Eilean Teine , or Fire Island. More than once we were caught out by the incoming tide, having to pull up our breeks to wade back across to the mainland.

When the weather was fine we made the return trek up to Macphail’s Island and the tiny shingle cove where we’d first made love. There we explored each other’s bodies and lives and got to know each other as well as two young people could. For the longest time, Ruairidh told me, he had been planning a career as a gamekeeper, working at Linshader Lodge every summer, with the intention of taking a gamekeeping and wildlife management course at an early incarnation of the University of the Highlands. Then, at the last minute, his brother Donald had persuaded him to follow in his footsteps, taking a business studies course at Aberdeen University, with the prospect of a job afterwards in the oil industry. I got the strong impression, even then, that it was a decision he regretted. We take these decisions that will forever change the course of our lives at an age when we are least qualified to make them. Ruairidh was born for a life out here in the wilderness, but it was destined never to be.