Peter May - The Lewis Man

‘You and that bloody lamb,’ Ceit said to me one day. ‘I’m sick of it. Nobody has a pet lamb! A dog, maybe, but a lamb?’ It was well past the point where it needed me to feed it, but I was reluctant to let it go. We walked in silence up the track that led past Nicholson’s store. It was a fine spring day, a soft breeze blowing out of the south-west, the sky streaked with high cloud, like wisps of teased wool. The sun was warm on our skin, and winter seemed at last to have retreated to crouch in the dark, quietly awaiting the autumn equinox, when it would send word of its imminent return on the edge of savage equinoctial gales. But all that seemed a long way away during those optimistic days of late spring and early summer.

Most of the women were out on their doorsteps spinning and weaving. Most of the men were away at sea. The sound of voices raised in song drifted across the hills on the breeze, strangely affecting. It raised goose pimples all across my shoulders every time I heard it.

Ceit lowered her voice as if someone might overhear us. ‘Meet me tonight,’ she said. ‘I’ve got something I want to give you.’

‘Tonight?’ I was surprised. ‘When? After dinner?’

‘No. When it’s dark. When everyone else is sleeping. You can sneak out of your window at the back, can’t you?’

I was nonplussed. ‘Well, I could, I suppose. But why? Whatever it is, why can’t you just give me it now?’

‘Because I can’t, stupid!’

We stopped at the brow of the hill, looking down over the little bay, and out across the Sound, back towards Ludagh.

‘Meet me down at the quayside at eleven. The Gillies will be in bed by that time, won’t they?’

‘Of course.’

‘Good. No problem, then.’

‘I’m not sure that Peter’ll be up for it,’ I said.

‘For fuck’s sake, Johnny, can you not do something without Peter for once!’ Her face was flushed, and she had the strangest look in her eyes.

I was taken aback by her sudden passion. We always did things together, me and Ceit and Peter. ‘Of course I can.’ I was a bit defensive.

‘Good, just you and me, then. Eleven o’clock at the jetty.’ And she stomped off across the hill towards the O’Henley croft.

I don’t know why, but I was strangely excited by the idea of sneaking out at night in the dark to meet Ceit. And as evening fell, and the wind dropped, I could barely contain my impatience. Peter and I completed our evening chores and then ate with Mary-Anne and Donald Seamus in the silence that always followed grace. It wasn’t that they didn’t talk to us on purpose. They never had a word for each other either. In truth, none of us had anything to say to one another. What was there to talk about? The cycle of life hardly changed from day to day. From season to season, yes. But one thing followed another quite naturally and never required discussion. It wasn’t from Donald Seamus Gillies or his sister that we learned the Gaelic. Peter picked it up from the other kids at school. In the playground, of course, not in the classroom where only English was spoken. I picked it up from the other crofters, some of whom hardly spoke any English at all. Or if they did, they weren’t going to speak it to me.

Donald Seamus smoked his pipe for a while by the stove, reading the paper while Mary-Anne washed the dishes and I helped Peter do his homework. Then at ten on the dot it was off to bed. The fire was tamped down for the night, lamps extinguished, and we went to our rooms with the smell of peat smoke, tobacco and oilwick in our nostrils.

Peter and I shared a double bed in the back room. There was a wardrobe and a dresser, and hardly enough room to get the door open. Peter was asleep in minutes, as he always was, and I had no fears about disturbing him by getting dressed again and climbing out of the window. But I had no idea how well or badly Donald Seamus or Mary-Anne slept. And so just before the clock struck eleven and I had committed myself, I opened the door a crack and listened carefully in the dark of the hallway. Someone was snoring fit to register on the Richter Scale. Whether it was brother or sister I didn’t know, but after a while I became aware of another, higher-pitched, intermittent snoring that came from the throat rather than the nose. So, both were asleep.

I closed the door again and crossed to the window, drawing the curtain aside to unsnib the sash and slide it up as quietly as I could. Peter grunted and turned over, but didn’t wake. I saw his lips moving as if he were talking to himself, perhaps using up the words that were never required of him at mealtimes. I sat on the ledge, swinging my legs over to the other side, and dropped down into the grass.

It was still surprisingly light out, a faint glow dying in the west, the moon already spilling its colourless light across the hills. The sky was a dark blue rather than black. In full summer it would still be light at midnight and later, but we had some weeks to go before then. I reached back in to pull the curtains shut, and slid the window closed.

And then I was off down the hillside like a greyhound out of the trap, sprinting through the long grass, feet squelching in the bog, exhilarated by an extraordinary sense of freedom. I was out, and the night was mine. And Ceit’s.

She was waiting for me down at the jetty, nervous I thought, and a bit impatient. ‘What took you so long?’ Her whisper seemed excessively loud, and I realized that there was no wind, just the slow, steady breathing of the sea.

‘It must be all of five past,’ I said. But she just tutted and took my arm and led me up the track towards Rubha Ban. There wasn’t a single light burning in any of the crofts across the hillside, an entire island asleep, or so it appeared.

Visibility was no problem in the wash of moonlight, but it made us feel vulnerable, too. If anyone should venture out we would be clearly visible.

‘Where are we going?’ I asked her.

‘Charlie’s beach.’

‘Why?’

‘You’ll see.’

There was only one moment when it might all have gone wrong. Ceit yanked suddenly on my sleeve, and we flattened ourselves into the long grass at the side of the track as a light flared in an open doorway, and we saw an old man stepping out into the moonlight with a shovel and a newspaper in his hand. Most folk used a chanty during the night, which got emptied in the morning. But old Mr MacGinty must have thought it was a fine night to relieve himself out on the moor. And so we had to lie there, giggling in the grass, while he dug himself a shallow hole and crouched over it, with his nightgown up around his neck, grunting and groaning.

Ceit put a hand over my mouth to shut me up, but she could barely contain her own mirth, air escaping through tightly pressed lips in tiny explosions. So I put my hand over hers, and we lay like that, pressed together, for nearly ten minutes while Mr MacGinty did his business.

I suppose that must have been the first time I became aware of her body in a sexual way. Her warmth, the softness of her breasts pressed against my chest, one leg crooked over mine. And I felt the first stirrings of arousal, both surprising and scary. She was wearing a sort of pale print dress with a V-neck that showed her cleavage. And I remember she was barefoot that night. There was something sensuous and tempting in those bare legs exposed in the moonlight.

She wore her hair a lot longer now than she had at The Dean, and it fell in soft, chestnut curls over her shoulders, a too-long fringe constantly in her eyes.

I noticed, too, as we lay in the grass a faint smell of flowers about her, aromatic, with a low, musky note, different from the smell she’d had at The Dean. When Mr MacGinty had finally gone back to his bed and we took our hands from each other’s mouths, I sniffed and asked her what the scent was.