I'll Keep You Safe

Chapter Fifteen

Her father fetched a trolley and lifted the two suitcases Niamh had brought back with her on to it. And then, with evident reluctance, as if it might somehow be contaminated, retrieved the plain cardboard box with the shipping straps from the carousel and placed it on top of them.

As they stepped from the terminal building, the wind blew Niamh’s hair into her eyes. She swept it back with both hands to scan the car park. It was less than a week since they had flown out, and yet she had no recollection of where Ruairidh had left the Jeep.

Then she spotted it. He had parked the 4×4 two rows back. As they reached the vehicle, sunlight chased the shadow of a broken cloud across the tarmac and then vanished again in a moment. It felt strange to be opening up the SUV without him. Her father lifted everything from the trolley into the boot, and Niamh slipped into the driver’s seat. She had to slide it forward to reach the pedals, and bring the back more upright. A change of the settings Ruairidh had needed for his longer legs. She adjusted the mirror. And every little thing she changed felt like losing one more piece of him.

Her parents stood by the open door and her mother said, ‘You’ll just follow us back to Balanish, then? Or would you like me to come with you?’

Niamh shook her head. ‘I’m going home, Mum.’

Her mother looked surprised. ‘Balanish is your home.’

‘No. Taigh ’an Fiosaich is my home. The house Ruairidh and I built.’

Her mother drew in her chin, disapproval colouring her face. ‘I still don’t understand why he made you build a house way out there on the edge of the earth.’

‘Maybe it was to get away from you.’ The words were out of Niamh’s mouth before she could stop herself, and she immediately regretted them. She added quickly, ‘When it feels like the whole world is against you — my family, his family — you retreat into each other. We found peace at Taigh ’an Fiosaich. All our memories are there. And that’s all I have left of him.’

The drive up the west coast to Ness in the north was a painful one. It was a journey she and Ruairidh had made together countless times since building their house out on the remote headland of Cellar Head, beyond the old ruined settlement of Bilascleiter.

The success of Ranish had put money in their hands for the first time, and they had decided to build their home in one of the remotest corners of the island. There had been more than a little truth in the words Niamh had spoken in haste to her mother. Maybe it was to get away from you. In fact it had been to get away from everyone. From the claustrophobic family atmosphere of the Macfarlane croft where the house they had restored in the early years of their marriage was now the headquarters of the company. To avoid the disapproval of Niamh’s parents. And the gossip, sometimes malicious, that so characterized the community of Balanish. And although never acknowledged, it was also an attempt to escape the event that had driven so sharp a wedge between their two families. An event they had not once discussed in all their years together.

A hardcore track, pitted and scarred by time and weather, had already led south across the moor, along the east coast to the gathering of shielings at Cuishader. They had repaired and extended it, providing access to the headland for the building of the house.

So what if it was a fifty-minute commute south to Balanish? Folk on the mainland would think nothing of that. And while they would sit in lines of traffic, breathing in the pollution that belched from countless exhausts, Niamh and Ruairidh would see the sun rising pale in the east, or setting blood-red in the west. In all the summer daylight hours, when the sun barely ever set, the vistas offered by the drive up and down the west coast were incomparable. The mountains of Uig and Harris as they headed south. The Northern Lights as they returned late to Ness. The spring and summer flowers that turned the winter-dead moor into a sea of shimmering colour. Sunshine and rain spawning rainbows in profusion. On some days, it seemed, there was one around every curve of the road. Even in winter, under angry skies, Atlantic gales battered the cliffs which had stood resolute against the forces of the ocean since the beginning of time. Spume rising hundreds of feet into the air, white against leaden cloud. Before dispersing in a moment to salt the machair and saturate the bog.

Today there was very little sun to light Niamh’s heart on this drive north. The equinoctial gales were late this year and the sky lay low on the island, grey and featureless. In this light, every village on the road seemed drab and depressing. Harled houses huddled together in treeless clusters, exposed to the full force of the weather. A profusion of Protestant churches feeding the faith of a hardy people who had put down their roots in this desolate place thousands of years before. And although it was always the desire of the young to leave, to get away, it seemed programmed somehow into their DNA that in time they would come back. If not them, then their children, or their children’s children. In truth, there was no escaping the island. It was in your blood.

At Cross, in the shadow of the church that dominated the skyline, Niamh turned on to the road to Skigersta, cutting off the northern tip of the island and heading east. From Skigersta the track south bumped and rolled its way across several miles of peat-scarred bog to the retreat she had built with her dead husband.

There was a spattering of rain as she drove down the slope past the old tin huts and caravans at Cuishader where crofters used to bring their beasts to graze during the summer months, allowing crops to grow on the crofts back home. Someone had even brought an old bus out here as shelter against the elements. Maclennan Coaches was barely visible now in red lettering along one side of it, almost obliterated by the weather. One wheel, still visible, lay at an odd angle. Beyond the shielings, to the east, a deep cleft in the cliffs cut right down to the shore, where a small sandy cove was hidden from view.

Niamh was forced to slow down to traverse the concrete slab laid over the stream that ran down from the Galson moor. In heavy rain the bridge would be submerged by this tiny waterway in spate, and crossing it could be treacherous.

On the other side the track rose steeply again, until Niamh had a clear, unobstructed view south across the moor towards the great fingers of gneiss that reached out into the Minch, as if holding on to it for dear life.

Her Jeep lurched and rattled over the rutted hardcore, swinging around the ancient village of Bilascleiter. All that remained of it now were the footings of a dozen old blackhouses, and a solitary shieling of green-painted corrugated iron with a rust-red and silver tin roof.

Now she could see, sitting out on the promontory ahead, the ruins of the house built there more than a century before by a man from Ness, John Nicolson — or Iain Fiosaich in Gaelic. Known simply as Taigh ’an Fiosaich, the house of Nicolson, only the gable ends still stood. The broken-down remnants of side walls revealed empty spaces where windows had once looked out over the edge of the cliffs. Two hundred feet of granite and gneiss that gave on to one of the most spectacular views anywhere on the island.

It was the remote beauty of this place that had tempted Niamh and Ruairidh to make their home here. They had built a state-of-the-art house on the near promontory, looking across towards Taigh ’an Fiosaich. Beyond it stood the ruined church where Nicolson had once preached his own brand of baptist theology to the crofters who came out here for the summer.

The house that she and Ruairidh built had been designed to withstand the gales that blew in off the Minch or down from the Arctic. Stone and brick, thickly insulated to retain the warmth from a geothermal ground source heat pump sunk deep into the nearby bog. Windows were triple-glazed, cutting down on noise as well as keeping in heat. The whole house was finished to a high anti-corrosion spec, to counteract the constant assault of the sea that would rise on stormy days in salt-filled spray from the waves that broke over the rocks below.

There were freshwater springs all around, and so supplying water to the house had not been a problem. Electricity had presented a greater challenge. They had been forced to pay for the laying of a cable from Skigersta, providing a power supply that proved unreliable in stormy weather. It had been Ruairidh’s idea to install their own wind turbines as a backup. There were two of them at the far side of the house. They were supposed to kick in when the mains power failed, but it rarely worked out like that. The power supply was, at best, erratic. Television, internet and mobile-phone signals were provided by satellite, a huge dish firmly bolted to a concrete platform behind the house.

Beyond that was Ruairidh’s workshop, where he had installed his own Hattersley loom, spending hours in there, weaving, thinking, singing along to the music he loved to listen to as he worked.

Both buildings were single-storey, presenting a low profile and minimum resistance to the incoming weather.

Niamh drew her Jeep into the gravelled parking area at the front of the house. The main door was set into the south curve of the building, facing away from the prevailing weather, although out here the weather could come from anywhere at any time. She took her suitcase out of the back, and looked for a long time at Ruairidh’s case, and the brown cardboard box, before deciding that she would bring them in later. After closing the tailgate she carried her case to the front door. She paused for a moment before pushing down the handle and swinging the door into the house, knowing how painful it was going to be to walk in here without him. Of course, the door was not locked, just as they had left it. Just as they always left it. Most people on the island never thought to lock their doors. And out here there was even less reason to turn the key in the lock. Niamh smiled as she remembered Ruairidh telling her about an uncle who had sold his house after twenty-five years. When the new owners asked for the keys he realized he didn’t have any. He had never once locked the door in all that time.

She closed the door behind her, shutting out the sound of the wind. In here a thick silence permeated the house, a silence only invaded from the outside by the worst of storms. Light fell into a wide hallway from Velux windows set into the angle of the roof. Bedrooms to left and right were served by en suite bathrooms. At the far end, the hall opened out into the centrepiece of the house — a semicircular open-plan room built around a curvature of enormous windows that looked out over the cliffs to the ocean. The architect had been concerned by the size of the windows that Niamh and Ruairidh demanded. In the end he had come up with a design that divided the view into five still-life paintings which together framed the panorama. Except that these paintings were never still. They spooled an ever-changing movie of seascape illuminated by sunlight or moonlight, dramatized by a sky that sometimes raged, sometimes smiled, and often glowered. On clear days you could see the mountains of the mainland, so close you could almost touch them. Three layers of reinforced glass protected the interior from whatever the outside world might throw at it physically, but let in light and sea and sky to fill the eyes.

On one side, a long breakfast bar divided the living and dining areas from the kitchen. On the other, a settee and armchairs gathered themselves around two of the five windows, as if around giant TV screens. The dining table itself was set into a sunken area of floor, with a view straight out over the sea through two windows that rose from floor to ceiling.

To the side of the kitchen a passage led off to Niamh’s office. Her private and personal workspace, from which she conjured orders for Ranish from around the world, an arc of cluttered desk space with its own view south-east across the Minch.

Niamh took the suitcase into their bedroom and heaved it on to the bed. She would open it later. For now she looked around the plain white walls that they had hung with the paintings and framed photographs they had chosen together on jaunts around Lewis and Harris, chasing down tiny galleries at the end of impossibly narrow single-track roads.

She walked out into the big room and stood gazing for several long moments at the view that she and Ruairidh had so often shared, marvelling at the changing light and mood of the world beyond. His reading glasses sat on the coffee table where he’d left them. A scarf lay draped over one of the armchairs. Slippers were pushed beneath his seat at the dining table. He was everywhere in here. Even the familiar scent of his aftershave lingered faintly in the still air.

There was an ache in Niamh’s throat, her eyes dry and stinging. She went to the fridge and brought out a bottle of Olivier Leflaive burgundy, Les Sétilles, brought back from a visit to Puligny-Montrachet during a holiday the previous year, when they had met Olivier himself. The eighteenth generation of his family to make wine. They had savoured each of the bottles, and this was the last, destined to be drunk only by Niamh. But not now, she decided. She did not want to filter her memories through alcohol, and she poured herself, instead, a large tumbler of sparkling water.

It misted the glass as she poured, then she closed her eyes as she sipped it and remembered the touch of Ruairidh’s lips on hers. The thrill of that first time; the last time lost in a cloud of mourning and shattered memories. She had read in books, and heard people speak of breaking hearts. She’d always thought it a facile metaphor. Only now did she fully understand how it felt. As if a piece of her heart had been broken off. And even if she could find it knew she could never put it back. She recalled the awful image of Jackie Kennedy clawing her way across the rear of the car that fateful day in Dallas, trying to catch the pieces of her husband’s brain detached by Oswald’s bullet. As all the king’s horses and all the king’s men had found out, there were some things you could never put together again.

It was late afternoon and the wind had dropped when Niamh crossed the gravel to Ruairidh’s loom shed. The cloud had thinned and was starting to break up, sending short and long shards of sunlight darting across the moor, lingering sometimes in pools and purple patches where the heather was still in bloom. The Minch seemed at peace with itself, eddying in a series of white rings around hidden rocks just below the cliffs.

Ruairidh had contrived his own view, looking south along the line of the coast, each successive promontory edged in the white foam that traced every contour. Two large windows facing his loom, so that he could sit and watch the sea in all its sulks and piques, its dark green anger and rolling liquid silver.

He had wanted to recreate the sense of a real loom shed, leaving the roof space open and divided by wooden beams. Buoys and green fishing net and loops of yarn hung from nails driven into the wood. There was a well-worn workbench set against the wall behind him, strewn with all manner of needles and cutting tools. The older pattern codes pinned to the wall above it had faded in the sunlight.

The computer where he worked on new designs, exchanging ideas with his mother, sat on a work station in the corner. From here, too, he managed the twenty or more weavers they now had working for them. A battery backup kept it running even during power cuts. A screensaver that bled shots of the island one into the other was still animating his screen.

Sunshine angling in the windows from the south-west fell on his scarred old acoustic guitar hanging on the wall. She had not heard him play it for such a long time, but still remembered with nostalgia those early days when he would serenade her on the beach, sparks rising into the night from the dying embers of a driftwood fire.

She could hardly bear to be here, his presence powerful and compelling. And she thought it extraordinary how people left traces, both physical and spiritual, so long after they had gone. She half-expected him to come through the door at any moment, full of excitement about a new pattern, or wanting her to listen to the latest download of a favourite musician. Ed Sheeran. John Mayer. Eric Clapton.

She crossed the room, squeezing past the loom where an unfinished length of cloth stretched across hundreds of threads, only waiting for the weaver to return to his pedals and send the shuttle carrying weft threads back and forth to finish the job. She switched on his sound system. And the shed was suddenly filled with the strains of a song that brought instant tears to her eyes. Strings holding a long, single note, then the repeated haunting refrain of piano and harp, before the pure falsetto voice of the singer raised goosebumps on her back and arms.

It was a song by a band called Sleeping at Last that they had listened to again and again. She recalled the night, not that long ago, when they had sat in the dark through in the well of the sitting room, watching a lightning storm perform for them out over the Minch. ‘I’ll Keep You Safe’ played at full volume, an accompaniment to the storm, and he had put his arm around her shoulder, drawing her close and whispering, ‘Whatever happens, my lovely girl, I’ll always be there for you. I’ll keep you safe, no matter what.’

Tears burned her cheeks. And she shouted at the empty loom seat, ‘You lied to me, Ruairidh. You lied! How can you keep me safe now?’ She switched it off, mid-refrain, and the silence that followed was almost startling.

She had no idea what to do. Now or ever. No idea how to survive in this world without him. She ran a finger across the strings on his guitar, but they sounded discordant, out of tune.

For the longest time she stood then, gazing from the window, before turning finally to sit down at his computer. She brushed the trackpad with her fingertips and banished the screensaver. His finder screen was a mess of icons. A reflection of the man. Somehow always able to contrive order from chaos. A red dot alerted her to the presence of fifty-six unread emails in his mailer. She opened it up to run an eye, almost unseeing, over a long list of emails from weavers and suppliers, a handful of spam circulars.

Then, from somewhere, came the memory of Ruairidh receiving an email on the RER as they travelled in a crowded coach from PV to Paris the day he died. Something in his face had made her ask him about it when finally they had reached their stop. He had dismissed it as ‘nothing’. And now she looked through his in-box. Mail was synchronized between his phone, iPad and computer. So it was bound to be here. She scrolled back to the previous Thursday. Was it really only three days? And there it was. An email received while they were still on the train. And her blood turned cold, as if someone had just injected ice into her veins. It was from well wisher, and titled simply, Goodbye. The message beneath it read, See you in hell.

She had left the door to the shed lying open, and was startled now to hear the crunch of tyres on gravel outside. She was still in shock over those words that someone had sent to Ruairidh just hours before he was killed. See you in hell. From well wisher. The same person who had warned Niamh that he was having an affair with Irina. The meaning, it seemed to her, was clear. Whoever had sent the mail knew he was going to die. Well wisher was his killer.

Her heart was pushing up into her throat, and she heard the blood pulsing in her ears like a speeded-up soundtrack of the sea.

‘Hello?’ A woman’s voice.

Niamh crossed quickly to the open door and saw a familiar red SUV parked next to the Jeep. Seonag had the door of the house open and was leaning in.

‘Niamh, are you there?’

‘Over here,’ Niamh called and Seonag turned, momentarily startled. Then she almost ran across the chippings to throw her arms around her oldest friend, face wet with tears before she even reached her. Niamh responded to the soft comfort and warmth of her friend’s embrace, dropping her head to Seonag’s shoulder to let her own tears flow. And they stood like that for a very long time, Seonag’s fingers spread across the back of Niamh’s head and neck, like a mother holding her child.

When finally they broke apart, Seonag’s face was shining wet. Forty years old and the years had been kind to her. She had never fully lost the weight put on during two pregnancies, and in a strange way it stood her in good stead now. Her face was full and soft and unlined, fresh and pretty as it had always been. Her hair was still as vibrantly red as in childhood, green eyes filled now with sadness and sympathy.

She shook her head. ‘There are no words, Niamh. I’m not even going to try. I just couldn’t bear the thought of you up here all on your own. I’ve brought wine and food. I’m going to cook for you, even if you don’t feel like eating. And we’re going to get a little drunk. And...’ She hesitated. ‘And if you can bear to talk, I’m here to listen.’

Niamh shut the door of Ruairidh’s shed behind her, and Seonag took her hand to lead her across the courtyard to the house. Inside, Seonag spotted the unopened bottle of wine on the breakfast bar. She forced a smile. ‘You must have known I was coming.’

Niamh said, ‘I thought I might get drunk on my own. But I’ve been avoiding that temptation. When I stop feeling the pain then I’ll know I’ve really lost him.’ She took out a corkscrew. ‘But feel free.’ She opened the bottle and poured a glass for Seonag, refilling her own with water. They slipped on to high stools at the breakfast bar and avoided a touching of glasses, which would have seemed inappropriate. And Niamh watched Seonag sip the wine that she and Ruairidh had always meant to share, realizing then that she could never have drunk it on her own anyway. ‘I suppose everyone knows what happened?’

Seonag nodded. ‘It’s been all over the papers, and the TV news. Folk have been talking about almost nothing else. You know how it is on the island.’

Niamh pressed her lips together in grim resignation.

‘When will you get the body back for burial?’

‘I brought him back with me.’ Niamh pushed her top teeth down on to her lower lip to stop from crying again. ‘What’s left of him. He’s in the back of the Jeep.’

‘Oh, my God!’ Seonag reached out and squeezed her hand. ‘I don’t know, I just thought... given that it was murder, they would have held on to the body.’

Niamh shrugged. ‘They carried out some kind of post-mortem. Presumably they took the samples they needed. Tissue. Blood.’ She paused a moment to collect herself. It was not easy to talk about such things as if they were the subject of everyday conversation. ‘But I’m glad they let him go so quickly. I can’t even start the process of closure or recovery until I’ve buried him.’ And despite her best efforts the tears came again. She looked at her friend through the blur that filled her eyes. ‘But to be honest, Seonag, I’m...’ She searched for the right word. ‘Broken. I’m not sure I can ever get past this.’

Seonag squeezed her hand again. ‘You will, Niamh. You were always the strong one.’

‘I don’t feel very strong.’

‘But you are. Remember that time we were all driving back from a dance at Bragar and we hit a rabbit on the road. Stupid bloody thing just froze in the headlights. And you were the one that insisted we stop the car and make sure it was dead. And then when it wasn’t, and everyone was turning away, even the boys, you were the one to break its neck and put it out of its misery. There was no one else in the car that night who had the guts to do that.’

‘I wish I had the guts to put myself out of my own misery.’

‘Oh, Niamh, don’t talk like that, for Heaven’s sake.’ Seonag gazed at her with earnest concern. ‘We’ll all get through this. Together.’

And Niamh wondered who all these people were who had to get through it. Right now it felt like she was the only one suffering. But then she knew his parents, too, would be devastated by the loss of their son. And how thick Seonag was with Ruairidh’s mother.

Seonag took a mouthful of wine and slipped off the stool. ‘Right, now I’m going to make dinner. Lasagne.’ She smiled. ‘Well, I’m cheating a little. I made it earlier. All I have to do is heat it up in the oven. But I’ll make a salad to go with it.’ She nodded towards the door. ‘I’ll just get the stuff in from the car.’

When Seonag had gone, Niamh wondered if she really wanted her here at all. She had intended to spend this last night alone with Ruairidh. But maybe that would just have been mawkish, indulgent, wallowing in self-pity. Although she knew from bitter experience there were times when you simply had to let grief run its course.

Seonag prepared dinner and served up piping-hot lasagne with fresh salad smothered in a honey and mustard dressing. They sat at the table in the well of the room, looking out at the sea below, and Seonag polished off the better part of a bottle of Chianti as they ate their pasta. It wouldn’t start to get dark for an hour or two yet. As autumn progressed towards winter, and the sun began to slip below the equator, the days would quickly shorten, and the long dark nights that lay ahead filled Niamh with dread.

Miraculously the sky had cleared now. All that low-lying cloud dispersed by the wind and blown off to the mainland. The mountains of Sutherland were clearly visible, purple rising to pink in the reflected light of the sunset far to the west.

When they had eaten, Niamh and Seonag donned wellies and warm jackets, and went walking out from the house, around a gully that fell away steeply to a tiny rocky inlet two hundred feet below. Beyond it lay the headland where John Nicolson’s house stood in silhouette against the sky.

‘They say it’s haunted,’ Niamh said.

‘Who by?’

‘A young girl called Annie Campbell. She fell to her death from the cliffs while collecting grass for her cow. The best grass was closest to the edge, and apparently she thought it was too dangerous for the cow.’

‘Have you ever seen her?’

Niamh laughed, and realized it was the first time she had done so since Ruairidh’s death. Her smile faded quickly. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I’ve never believed in that kind of thing. It seems a young man also fell from the cliffs while collecting eggs.’ She pointed. ‘There’s a gravestone over there, near the remains of that old blackhouse beyond Taigh ’an Fiosaich. But it’s unmarked.’

Seonag said, ‘Remember that time when we were kids? And we stole all the eggs from Mrs Macdonald’s henhouse? Meaning to give them back, of course. But only after the old cailleach had found the henhouse empty. And then you slipped and dropped the basket and broke every single egg.’

Niamh laughed in spite of herself. ‘We got into so much trouble.’

Seonag slipped her arm through Niamh’s, and they walked in silence for some minutes along the cliff edge. Gannets and shags wheeled and swooped about their heads, cawing and shrieking in the soft evening air. Others were settling themselves for the night in nests they had contrived on impossible crags and ledges above the sheerest of drops. Far off to the west, the sky glowed gold along the horizon, rising through pink and purple to the darkest blue. There was every likelihood that the aurora borealis would put on a show tonight. Niamh breathed deeply and closed her eyes. She loved this place. But she didn’t know if she could stay here without Ruairidh.

She opened her eyes to find Seonag looking at her. Seonag said, ‘I’ve got an overnight bag in the car. Martin is happy to look after the kids. I thought you could do with the company.’

Niamh gazed out across the Minch and wondered if, beyond her need for sympathy and comfort, Seonag was really who she wanted to be with tonight.