Peter May - The Lewis Man

When I reached it, there was no sign of Ceit. It looked as if the tide was in, and neither the quay nor the lie of the land afforded much protection against the sea. It drove in, wave after wave breaking on the rocks all around the shore. The roar of it was deafening. The spray thrown up by the sea thrashing against the stone of the jetty combined with the rain to soak me through. I could feel my clothes wet beneath my oilskins. I peered around me in the dark, wondering how long I should stay. It was madness to have come out at all. I should have known that Ceit would not have expected me on a night like tonight.

And then I saw a tiny figure darting from the shadow of the hill. Ceit, in floppy green wellies, sizes too big for her, and wrapped in a coat that must have belonged to Mrs O’Henley. I took her into my arms and crushed her against me. ‘I didn’t want to not come in case you did,’ I shouted above the roar of the night.

‘Me too.’ She grinned up at me, and I kissed her. ‘But I’m glad you did. Even if it was just to tell me that you couldn’t come.’

I grinned back at her. ‘No pun intended, I guess.’

She laughed. ‘One-track mind, you have.’

We kissed again, and I held her tight against the battering of the wind and the rain, the storm crashing all around us. Then she broke away.

‘I’d better go. God knows how I’m going to explain all this wet stuff.’

She gave me one last quick kiss, and then she was off, swallowed up by the storm and disappearing into the night. I stood for a moment catching my breath, then found my way back on to the track, to head up the hill towards the Gillies croft. I hadn’t gone more than ten yards when a figure emerged out of the dark. I got one hell of a fright, and nearly cried out, before I realized it was Peter. He was wearing no waterproofs, just his dungarees and his worn old tweed jacket, a hand-me-down from Donald Seamus. He was soaked through already, his hair smeared over his face, his expression of abject misery visible to me even in the darkness. He must have got up and dressed himself and come after me as soon as I had gone.

‘For God’s sake, Peter, what are you doing?’

‘You were with Ceit,’ he said.

I couldn’t deny it. He had obviously seen us.

‘Yes.’ ‘Behind my back.’

‘No, Peter.’

‘Yes, Johnny. It’s always you, me and Ceit. Always. The three of us, ever since The Dean.’ His eyes burned with a strange intensity. ‘I saw you kissing her.’

I took his arm. ‘Come on, Peter, let’s just go home.’

But he pulled himself free. ‘No!’ He stared at me out of the storm. ‘You’ve been lying to me.’

‘No, I haven’t.’ I was starting to get angry now. ‘For fuck’s sake, Peter, Ceit and I are in love, okay? It’s got nothing to do with you.’

He stood for a moment staring at me, and I’ll never forget the look of complete betrayal in his eyes. Then he was off, into the night at a run. I was so surprised it took me several seconds to react, in which time he had already vanished from sight.

‘Peter!’ I shouted after him. He had run off in the opposite direction from the croft, towards the shore. I gasped in frustration and ran after him.

Mountainous seas were breaking all along the jagged northern coastline, where giant rocks lay in blocks and shards all along the foot of the low-rise cliffs. I could see Peter now, the merest shadow of a dark figure, scrambling over them. It was insanity. Any moment the sea could reach in and take him, dragging him out into the Sound and certain death. I cursed the day he’d ever been born, and started off over the rocks in pursuit.

I shouted after him several times, but my voice was drowned by the sound of the sea and whipped away by the angry bellow of the wind. All I could do was try to keep him in my sights and endeavour to catch him up. I got to within fifteen or twenty feet of him when he started to climb. In normal circumstances not a difficult climb, but tonight in these impossible conditions it was nothing short of madness. The machair dipped down to within twenty feet or so of the shore before dropping sheer to the rocks below, and a deep crack ran back from it, for all the world as if someone had taken a giant wedge and a big mell and split it open.

Peter was almost at the top when he fell. If he called out, I never heard it. He just vanished into the black chasm of that crack in the earth. I abandoned all caution and climbed up the rock in a panic to where I had last seen him. The darkness below me, as I peered into the chasm, was absolute.

‘Peter!’ I screamed his name and heard it echoing back at me out of the ground. And to my relief I heard a faint call in return.

‘Johnny! Johnny, help me!’

It was lunacy what I did. If I had stopped to think, I would have run back to the croft and roused Donald Seamus. No matter how much trouble we would have been in, I should have gone for help. But I didn’t stop, and I didn’t think, and within moments I was as much in need of help as Peter.

I started to climb down into the crack, attempting to brace myself between the two walls of it, when the rock simply crumbled away beneath my left foot, and I fell into the blackness.

At some point during my fall I struck my head, and I lost consciousness even before I reached the bottom. I have no idea how long I was out, but the first thing I became aware of was Peter’s voice, very close to my ear, repeating my name again and again, like some mindless mantra.

And then awareness brought pain. A searing pain in my left arm that took my breath away. I was lying spreadeagled on a bed of rock and shingle, my arm twisted under me in an unnatural way. I knew at once that it was broken. It cost me dear to turn myself over and haul myself into a sitting position against the rock, and I yelled my imprecations at the night, cursing God and the Holy Mother, and Peter and anyone else who came to mind. I couldn’t see a thing, but the roar of the ocean was quite deafening. The shingle beneath me was wet with seaweed and sand, and I realized that the only reason we were not under water was that the tide must have turned.

At high tide, in a storm like this, the sea would rush into this crack in the earth in a fury of boiling, foaming water, and we would both have been drowned. Peter was wailing, and I could hear his teeth chattering. He pressed himself up against me, and now I could feel his shivering.

‘You’ve got to go and get help,’ I shouted.

‘I’m not leaving you, Johnny.’ I felt his breath in my face.

‘Peter, if you’ve got nothing broken, you’ve got to climb out of here and go get Donald Seamus. My arm’s broken.’

But he just clung on to me all the more tightly, sobbing and shaking, and I let my head fall back against the rock and closed my eyes.

When I opened them again, the first grey light of dawn was angling into the crevice from above. Peter was curled up beside me on the shingle, and he wasn’t moving. I panicked and started shouting for help. Crazy! Who was going to hear me?

I was hoarse and had all but given up, when a shadow leaned over the opening fifteen feet above us, and a familiar voice called down. ‘Holy Mary Mother of God, what are you doing down there, boys?’ It was our neighbour, Roderick MacIntyre. I discovered later that he had found sheep missing first thing after the storm, and had come down along the cliffs looking for them. Had it not been for that serendipitous piece of good luck, we might both have died down there. As it was, I still feared for Peter’s life. He hadn’t moved since I regained consciousness.

The men who weren’t away with the fishing fleet assembled on the clifftop and one of them was lowered down on a rope to pull us up. The storm had abated by now, but there was still a strong wind, and I’ll never forget the look on Donald Seamus’s face in that yellow-grey dawn light as they brought me up. He never said a word, but lifted me into his arms and carried me down to the jetty where a boat was waiting to take us over to Ludagh. Peter was still unconscious, and in the crowd of men huddled around us at the boat I heard someone say he was suffering from exposure. ‘Hypothermia,’ someone else said. ‘He’ll be lucky if he survives.’ And I felt a terrible pang of guilt. None of this would have happened if it hadn’t been for me sneaking out to meet Ceit. How could I ever face my mother in the next life if I let anything happen to Peter? I had promised her!