The Blackhouse

FOUR

Guy Fawkes night was just three days away. We had collected a huge stash of old rubber tyres and were looking forward to the biggest bonfire in Ness. Every village had one, and every village wanted theirs to be the best. It was a competition we took very seriously in those days. I was thirteen, and in my second year of secondary school at Crobost. The exams I would sit at the end of that year would pretty much determine my future. And the rest of your life is a lot of responsibility to carry when you’re thirteen.

If I did well I would go to the Nicholson in Stornoway and sit my Highers, maybe Sixth Year Studies, even A levels. I would have a chance of going to university, the opportunity to escape.

If I did badly I would go to the Lews Castle School, still at that time in the castle itself. But there my education would be vocational. The school had a proud tradition of turning out first-rate mariners, but I didn’t want to go to sea, and I didn’t want to learn a trade and be stuck in some building yard like my father when the fishing no longer offered him a living.

The trouble was, I hadn’t been doing too well. The life of a thirteen-year-old is full of distractions. Like bonfire night. I had also been living with my aunt for five years by then, and she kept me busy on the croft, cutting peats, dipping the sheep, tupping, lambing, bringing in the hay. She wasn’t interested in how well or badly I was doing at school. And it is not easy at that age to motivate yourself to burn the midnight oil over some dry history book, or mathematical equation.

That was when Artair’s dad first came to see my aunt and offered to tutor me. She told him he was daft. How could she afford a private tutor? He said she didn’t have to. He was already tutoring Artair, and it would be no more bother to tutor me as well. Besides, he told her (and I know this because she relayed it to me later, word for word, and with no little amount of scepticism in her voice), he believed that I was a smart boy who was underachieving. And that with a little push in the right direction he was sure I could pass my exams at the end of the year and graduate to the Nicholson. And, who knows, maybe even university.

Which is how I came to be sitting at a table that night in the little back room of Artair’s bungalow that his dad liked to call his study. One whole wall was lined with shelves that sagged under the weight of books stacked along their length. Hundreds of books. I remembered wondering how it was possible for one person to read so many books in a lifetime. Mr Macinnes had a mahogany desk with a green leather-tooled top and a matching captain’s chair. It was pushed against the wall opposite the bookshelves. There was a big, comfortable armchair where he sat to read, a coffee table beside it with an Anglepoise lamp. If he cared to look up, he would have a view out of the window to the sea. Artair and I were tutored at a fold-up card table that Mr Macinnes placed in the middle of the room. We sat in hard chairs facing away from the window, in case we would be distracted by the world outside. Sometimes he would take us together, usually for maths. But more often he took us separately. Boys together have a habit of encouraging each other to a failure in concentration.

I don’t remember much, now, of those long tutoring sessions through dark winter nights and early spring light, except that I didn’t enjoy them. Funny, though, the things I do remember. Like the chocolate-brown colour of the felt-topped card table, and the pale, sharply defined coffee stain that marred it and looked like a map of Cyprus. I remember an old brown water stain on the ceiling in the corner of the room that made me think of a gannet in flight, and the crack in the plaster which transected it, running at an angle through the cornice before disappearing behind cream-coloured anaglypta wallpaper. I remember, too, a crack in a window pane, seen during stolen glances to that other world out there, and the smell of stale pipe smoke that always seemed to hang about Artair’s dad. Although I don’t ever remember seeing him smoking.

Mr Macinnes was a tall, thin man, a good ten years older than my father had been. I suppose the seventies were the decade when he probably finally admitted to himself that he was no longer a young man. But he clung on to a hairstyle well into the eighties that was longer than fashionable then. It’s odd how people can get locked into a kind of timewarp. There’s a time in their lives that defines them, and they hang on to it for all the subsequent decades; the same hair, the same style of clothes, the same music, even though the world around them has changed beyond recognition. My aunt was locked in the sixties. Teak furniture, purple carpets, orange paint, The Beatles. Mr Macinnes listened to The Eagles. I recall tequila sunrises and new kids in town, and life in the fast lane.

But he wasn’t some soft academic. Mr Macinnes was a fit man. He liked to sail, and he was a regular on the annual trip to An Sgeir to harvest the guga. He was irritated with me that night, because my concentration was poor. Artair had been dying to tell me something when I arrived, but his dad had hustled me into the backroom and told Artair to keep his peace. Whatever it was could wait. But I could feel Artair’s impatience from the other side of the door, and eventually Mr Macinnes realized he was fighting a losing battle and told me to go.

Artair couldn’t wait to get me out of the house, and we hurried up the front path to the gate in the dark. It was a freezing cold night, the sky as black as you might ever see it, and inset with stars that seemed fixed like jewels. There was no wind, and a thick white frost was settling already, like dust, across the moor, slow sparkling as the moon lifted itself into its autumn elevation, casting its wonderful light on a rare, tranquil sea. There was a high-pressure zone sitting right over the Hebrides, and they said it was going to be there for a few days. Ideal weather for bonfire night. I could hear Artair’s excitement wheezing in his breath. He had developed into a big, strong lad, taller than me, but cursed still with the asthma that threatened at times to shut down his airways. He took a long pull on his puffer. ‘The Swainbost boys have got hold of an old tractor tyre. It’s more than six foot in diameter!’

‘Shit!’ I said. A tyre like that would burn better than anything we had. We had collected more than a dozen, but they were just car tyres, and bike tyres, and inner tubes. And no doubt the Swainbost boys would already have stockpiled something not dissimilar themselves. ‘Where did they get it?’

‘Does it matter? The fact is they’ve got it, and they’re going to have a much better bonfire than us.’ He paused, watching for my disappointment, and then smiled. ‘Maybe.’

I felt myself frowning. ‘What d’you mean, maybe?’

Artair became conspiratorial. ‘They don’t know we know they’ve got it. They have it stashed away somewhere, and they’re only going to wheel it out on bonfire night.’

Maybe it was the hour I’d spent cooped up in Mr Macinnes’s study, but I seemed to be missing his point. ‘So?’

‘They think if we knew about it we’d be jealous and try to sabotage them.’

I was starting to get cold now. ‘Well, we do know about it. But I don’t see how the hell we could sabotage a tractor tyre.’

‘That’s just it, we’re not going to sabotage it.’ Artair’s excitement was glistening in his eyes. ‘We’re going to steal it.’

Which took me completely by surprise. ‘Says who?’

‘Donald Murray,’ Artair said. ‘He’s got a plan.’

The frost was still lying thick on the ground at playtime the next day. Everyone was out in the playground. There were half a dozen slides going. The best of them was at the end farthest from the gate, where the tarmac sloped away towards a drainage ditch. It was a good fifteen feet long. A short run-up, and gravity did the rest. But you had to jump off quick at the end or you would finish in the ditch.

I was itching to take my place in line and have a go, but Donald Murray had called a meeting of the Crobost boys and we were gathered in a huddle by the technical block, and I could only watch enviously from afar.

Donald was a tall, angular, good-looking boy, with a fine head of sandy hair that flopped down over his brow. All the girls fancied him, but he was dead casual about it. He was a boy’s boy, a leader of men, and if you were with Donald you felt safe from the Macritchie brothers. Angel had left Crobost School by that time and gone to pursue vocational studies at the Lews Castle. But Murdo Ruadh was still an ever-present threat.

Initially Donald had drawn his power from the fact that everyone was afraid of his father. Everyone, that is, except Donald himself. The minister, then, was still a very powerful figure in the community, and Coinneach Murray was a fearsome man. Coinneach is the Gaelic for Kenneth, and although it was Kenneth Murray on the board outside the church, everyone knew him as Coinneach. Although not to his face. You would only ever refer to him in person as Mister or Reverend Murray. We always imagined that his wife called him Reverend, too. Even in bed.

Donald, however, always referred to his father as the old bastard. He defied him at every turn, refused to go to church on a Sunday and, as a result, was confined to the manse every Sabbath.

There was one Saturday night we were having a party at someone’s house. The parents were at a wedding in Stornoway, and had decided to stay overnight rather than risk the drive back after drinking. It wasn’t terribly late, ten thirty maybe, when the door burst open and Coinneach Murray stood there like some avenging angel sent by the Lord to punish us for our sins. Of course, half the kids were smoking and drinking. And there were girls there, too. Coinneach roared his disapproval at us, and told us he would be sure to speak to every one of our parents. Did we not know it was the eve of the Lord’s Day, and that children of our age should be home in bed? We were all terrified. Except for Donald. He stayed where he was, lounging on the sofa, a can of beer in his hand. And, of course, it was Donald he had come for really. He pointed a trembling finger of accusation at his son and told him to get out. But Donald just sat there, a sullen look of defiance on his face, and shocked us all by telling his father to fuck off. You could have heard a pin drop in Stornoway.

Red-faced with anger and humiliation, Coinneach Murray strode into the room and knocked the can from Donald’s hand. The beer went everywhere. But nobody moved. And nobody spoke. Not even Coinneach. He had a powerful physical presence beyond anything that the dog collar gave him. He was just a big, strong man. He physically lifted Donald out of the settee by the scruff of his neck before frog-marching him out into the night. It was an awesome display of power in the face of defiance, and there was not one of us who would have wanted to be in Donald’s shoes when his father got him home.

And true to his word, the Reverend Coinneach Murray visited the parents of every boy and girl who was in the house that night, and there was hell to pay. Although not in my house. My aunt was nothing if not eccentric, and in a God-fearing community it was somehow only natural that she would be a devout atheist. She told the minister in no uncertain terms, although not as colourfully as Donald, where he could stick his self-righteous indignation. He told her she was certain to go to Hell. ‘I’ll see you there, then,’ she said as she slammed the door on his back. I suppose I learned my contempt for the Church from my aunt.

So Donald had gained a kind of legendary status in his own right. Not because of who his father was, but because of the way he defied him and went against everything he stood for. Donald was the first in our year to smoke. The first to drink. He was the first of my contemporaries whom I ever saw drunk. But there was a positive side to him, too. He was good at sports. He was second-top of our class. And although he was no match, physically, for Murdo Ruadh, intellectually he could run rings around him. And Murdo knew it. So by and large he gave him a wide berth.

There were six of us gathered there in the playground that day. Donald, me and Artair, a couple of boys from the bottom end of the village, Iain and Seonaidh, and Calum Macdonald. I always felt sorry for Calum. He was smaller than the rest of us, and there was something soft about him. He was good at art, he liked Celtic music and played the clàrsach, a small Celtic harp, in the school orchestra. He was also mercilessly bullied by Murdo Ruadh and his gang. He never told, and he never complained, but I always imagined him crying himself to sleep at nights. I dragged my eyes away from the slide at the far side of the playground to focus on the plan for tonight’s raid on Swainbost.

‘Okay,’ Donald was saying, ‘we’ll meet up at the cemetery road end at Swainbost, one o’clock tomorrow morning.’

‘How will we get out of the house without being caught?’ Calum was wide-eyed and full of trepidation.

‘That’s your problem.’ Donald was unsympathetic. ‘Anyone doesn’t want to come, that’s up to them.’ He paused to give anyone who wanted to a chance to back out. No one did. ‘Okay, about a hundred yards down the road to the cemetery there’s the remains of an old blackhouse with a tin roof on it. It’s used mainly for storing agricultural equipment, and it’s got a padlock on the door. That’s where they’ve hidden the tyre.’

‘How do you know all this?’ Seonaidh said.

Donald smirked. ‘I know a girl in Swainbost. She and her brother don’t get on.’ We all nodded, none of us surprised that Donald knew a girl in Swainbost, each of us thinking there was a good chance he knew her in the biblical sense as well.

‘What the fuck’s going on here, then?’ Murdo Ruadh forced his way into the group, flanked by the same two boys who’d fallen in with him that first day at school all those years before. One of them had developed terrible acne, and you would find your eyes drawn to the clusters of suppurating, yellow-headed spots around his nose and mouth. Our circle quickly widened out away from him.

‘Nothing to do with you,’ Donald said.

‘Aye, it is.’ Murdo seemed unusually sure of himself in Donald’s presence. ‘You’re going to steal the tyre the Swainbost boys have got stashed away up there.’

We were all shocked that he knew. Then beyond that initial shock came the realization that one of us must have told him. All eyes turned towards Calum. He squirmed uncomfortably.

‘I didn’t tell, honest.’

‘Doesn’t matter how I know,’ Murdo Ruadh growled. ‘I know. Alright? And we want in. Me and Angel and the boys. After all, we’re all Crobost boys. That right?’

‘No.’ Donald was defiant. ‘There’s enough of us as it is.’

But Murdo was quite relaxed. ‘It’s a big tyre. It’s gonna weigh a ton. Gonna take a lot to carry it.’

‘We’re not going to carry it,’ Donald said.

Which knocked Murdo momentarily off-balance. ‘How’re you gonna get it back to Crobost then?’

‘We’re going to roll it, stupid.’

‘Oh.’ Murdo Ruadh clearly hadn’t thought of that. ‘Well, it’s still gonna take a lot of hands to get it upright and keep it that way.’

‘I told you.’ Donald stood his ground. ‘We don’t need you.’

‘Look!’ Murdo jabbed a finger in his chest. ‘I don’t give a shit what you told me. Either we’re in, or we blow the whistle on you.’ He’d played his trump card and stood back triumphantly. ‘What’s it to be?’

I could tell by the slump of Donald’s shoulders that for once he was beaten. None of us wanted the Macritchie brothers and their pals along. But, then, neither did we want the Swainbost boys to have the best bonfire on Guy Fawkes night. ‘Okay,’ Donald sighed. And Murdo Ruadh beamed his satisfaction.

I couldn’t have slept that night, even if I’d wanted to. I sat up late doing my next week’s homework for Mr Macinnes. There was a small two-bar electric heater with a concave reflector in my room, but it made no impact on the cold, unless you were six inches from it, and then it would burn you. I had two pairs of socks on, and my big crofter’s leather boots. I wore a pair of jeans, a T-shirt, a shirt, a heavy woollen jumper and a donkey jacket. And still I was cold. It was a big, cheerless house this, built in the 1920s, and when the wind gusted in off the sea the windows and doors rattled and let it blow through at will. There was no wind tonight, but the temperature had dropped below twenty degrees, and the peat fire in the living room seemed a long way away. At least if my aunt looked in on me before she went to bed I would have an excuse for wearing all these clothes. But, of course, I knew she wouldn’t. She never did.

I heard her coming upstairs about ten-thirty. Normally she was a late bird, but tonight it was too cold even for her. And bed, along with a hot water bottle, offered the only prospect of warmth. I worked on by the light of my bedside lamp for another hour and a half before finally closing my study books and listening at the door for any sign of life. I heard nothing, so I crept out into the darkness of the hall. To my horror I saw a line of light under my aunt’s bedroom door. She must have been reading. I slipped quickly back into my bedroom. The wooden staircase was old and creaky, and I knew there was no way I could negotiate it without being heard. The only alternative was to climb out of the window on to the roof and slither down the rone pipe. I had done it before, but with the frost lying thick on the slates tonight it would be a treacherous undertaking.

I eased the rusted metal window frame off its latch and swung it open. The hinge screeched horribly, and I froze, waiting for the call of my aunt’s voice. But all I could hear was the constant rhythm of the sea washing up on the shingle beach fifty feet below. The cold air pinched my face and penetrated my fingers as I held on to the window frame to lever myself out on to the roof. The tiles dropped away steeply from the dormer to the gutter below. I found it with my feet and inched my way along it to the gable, where I was able to hold on to the coping and lower myself until my boots found a grip on the rone. And it was with a huge sense of relief that I let myself slide down the cold metal pipe to the ground. I was out.

The air smelled of winter frost and peat smoke. My aunt’s old car stood on the tarmac apron in front of the house. Beyond the shadow of the ruins of an older dwelling, the shingle shore below was lit as bright as day by the moon. I looked up and saw the light still burning in my aunt’s window, and hurried to the concrete shed that abutted the east gable of the house. I retrieved my bicycle, and with a glance at my watch, pedalled hard off along the single-track road towards Crobost, the moor sparkling darkly on my left, the ocean shimmering on my right. It was just on half-past midnight.

My aunt’s house was about a mile south of the village itself, standing on its own on the cliffs near the tiny Crobost harbour cut into a deep cleft in the rock. I covered the distance back to the village in a matter of minutes, passing my old home, dark and empty, closed up now and falling into sad disrepair. I always tried not to look at it. It was an almost unbearable reminder of how my life once was, and how it might still have been.

Artair’s bungalow sat down below the level of the road, the shadowy mound of its peatstack silhouetted against the silver ocean, moonlight picking out the carefully constructed herringbone pattern of the peats. I pulled up at the gate and peered into the shadows that pooled around the house. Artair had long ago been nicknamed Wheezy, but I could never bring myself to call him that. ‘Artair!’ My whispered call seemed awfully loud. But there was no sign of him. I waited more than five minutes, becoming increasingly agitated, glancing time and again at my watch, as if by doing so I could slow the progress of time. We were going to be late. I was on the point of giving up, when I heard a loud clatter from the side of the house next to the peat stack. Artair came wheezing out of the darkness, shaking off a plastic bucket whose handle had managed to attach itself around his ankle. He ran across the grass and almost somersaulted over the fence, propelled by the tension of the top wire which he had somehow failed to see. He landed on his backside at my feet, grinning up at me in the moonlight.

‘That was subtle,’ I said. ‘What the hell kept you?’

‘My old man only went to bed about half an hour ago. He’s got ears like a bloody rabbit. I had to wait till I could hear him snoring before I was sure he was asleep.’ He scrambled to his feet and cursed. ‘Oh, Jesus! I’ve got sheep shit all over me.’

My heart sank. I was giving him a backie, and he’d have his shitty breeks on my saddle and his shitty hands around my waist. ‘Get on!’ He swung a leg over the saddle, still grinning idiotically. And I could smell the shite off him. ‘And don’t get that stuff on me!’

‘What are friends for, if not for sharing.’ Artair grabbed hold of my donkey jacket. I gritted my teeth and pushed off down the single-track towards the main road, Artair’s legs shoved out wide on either side of the bike for balance.

We hid the bicycle in a ditch a couple of hundred yards from the cemetery road at Swainbost and ran the rest of the way. The others were waiting impatiently at the road end, huddled in the shadow of the old Co-op building which had been taken over by Ness Builders. ‘Where in God’s name have you been?’ Donald whispered.

Angel Macritchie ballooned out of the darkness and pushed me up against the wall. ‘You stupid wee bastard! The longer we’re hanging about here waiting for you, the more likely we are to get caught.’

‘Jeeesus!’ Murdo Ruadh’s voice fizzed in the shadows. ‘What the fuck is that smell?’

I glared at Artair, and Donald said, ‘Come on, let’s get on with it.’

Angel’s big hand released me, and I followed the others as we slipped out of the cover of Ness Builders and into the moonlight that slanted across the road. It seemed very exposed out here. Higgledy-piggledy fenceposts marked out the line of the road all the way to the cemetery itself, sparkling headstones on the distant headland. Our footsteps crunched on the frost beneath us and seemed inordinately loud as we hurried past the gardens of the houses on our left. Our breath condensed in the freezing air and billowed around our heads like smoke.

Donald stopped outside an old blackhouse with a corrugated-iron roof. It had stout wooden doors with a large padlock threaded through a sturdy iron clasp. A triangle of roof had been built up above the door to allow bigger agricultural machinery in and out. ‘This is it.’

Murdo Ruadh stepped forward and pulled a heavy-duty cutter from beneath his coat.

‘What the hell’s that for?’ Donald whispered.

‘You told us it was padlocked.’

‘We’re here to steal a tyre, Murdo, not go damaging people’s property.’

‘So how’re we gonna get the padlock open?’

‘Well, a key’s the usual way.’ Donald held up a big key on a leather tab.

‘Where the fuck’d he get that?’ This from Acne Boy, whose spots seemed to glow in the moonlight.

‘He knows a girl,’ Calum said, as if that explained everything.

Donald unlocked the padlock and pushed one half of the door open. It creaked into the dark interior He pulled a torch from his pocket and we all crowded in behind him as he flashed its beam around an amazing accumulation of junk. There was the rusted shell of an old tractor, an ancient plough, a broken-down bailer, trowels, hoes, forks, spades, rope, fishing net suspended from the rafters, orange and yellow plastic buoys dangling just above our heads, the bench seat from the back of an old car. And there, leaning against the far wall, a huge old tractor tyre, bigger than any of us, and with a tread you could lose your fist in. It had a ten-inch gash on the side facing us, damage inflicted by a careless driver. Perhaps insurance had covered the cost of its replacement, but the tyre itself was no longer of any use to man nor beast. Just perfect fodder for a bonfire. We stared at it in hushed awe. ‘She’s a beauty,’ Artair whispered.

‘She’ll burn for fucking days,’ Angel said.

‘Let’s get her out of here.’ There was a sense of triumph in Donald’s voice.

She weighed a ton, that tyre, just as Murdo Ruadh had predicted. It took all of us just to keep her from falling over as we manoeuvred her out of the door and on to the road. Donald detached himself from the group, closed the door and refastened the padlock. He returned, grinning with anticipation. ‘They’ll not have a clue what happened. It’ll be just like she disappeared into thin air.’

‘Aye, until she goes up in smoke on our bonfire.’ Murdo was gleeful.

It was heavy going, pushing that tyre up the slope to the main road. And it wasn’t much of a slope either. It gave us a good idea of just how difficult it was going to be to get it up the hill to Crobost. A long night loomed ahead of us.

When we got to the road end, we leaned it up against the gable of the old Co-op building and took a break, panting and perspiring. We had generated enough of our own heat not to be bothered by the cold any more. Cigarettes got handed around, and we all puffed away in silent self-congratulation. We were pretty pleased with ourselves.

‘It’s going to get difficult from here,’ Donald said, cupping his hand around the glowing ember of his cigarette.

‘Whatdya mean?’ Murdo glowered at him. ‘It’s downhill from here to the Crobost turnoff.’

‘Exactly. Gravity’s going to increase the weight of that thing and we’re going to have a job keeping it from running away from us. We’ll need the biggest, strongest boys at the front to keep it under control.’

And so the Macritchie brothers, Acne Boy and his pal were delegated to control the tyre from the front, walking backwards down the hill. Me and Artair were at one side, Iain and Seonaidh at the other. And Donald and Calum took a rim each at the rear.

We had just wheeled it out into the main road, when car headlights appeared suddenly over a blind bend at the top of the hill. None of us had even heard it coming. There was panic. There wasn’t time to get the tyre back into the shadow of the building, and so Donald put his shoulder to it and pushed it over into the ditch. It took Murdo Ruadh with it. We heard the crack of thin ice breaking and, as we dived for cover, the muted cursing of the younger Macritchie. ‘Ya fucking bastard!’

The car flew past and its lights receded towards the distant turnoff to Fivepenny and the Butt of Lewis. A dripping Murdo Ruadh, his face streaked with mud and God knew what else, staggered out of the ditch, spluttering in the cold and still cursing. Of course, the rest of us were in stitches, until Murdo strode angrily across the metalled road and smacked me on the side of the head, making my ears ring. He’d never liked me much, Murdo Ruadh. ‘Think that’s fucking funny, ya wee shite?’ He glared around the other faces, their owners trying desperately to keep them straight. ‘Anyone else think it’s funny?’ No one else was willing to admit that they did.

‘Let’s get on with it,’ Donald Murray said.

It took us a full five minutes to get the tyre out of the ditch and upright again, my face stinging all the while. I was going to have a big bruise on my cheek tomorrow, I knew. We took up our positions again, and began slowly and carefully rolling the tyre down the hill towards the Crobost road end. At first it seemed easier than it had pushing it up the slope. Then, gradually, as the angle of descent increased, the tyre began to get heavier and gain a momentum of its own.

‘For Christ’s sake,’ Donald hissed, ‘slow it down!’

‘What d’you think we’re fucking trying to do?’ You could hear the beginnings of panic in Angel’s voice.

The tyre got heavier and faster, our hands burning on the rubber as we tried to hold it, trotting now alongside it as it gathered pace all the time. The Macritchie gang couldn’t hold it back any longer. Acne Boy fell and the tyre bumped over his leg. Calum tripped over Acne Boy and went sprawling in the road.

‘We can’t hold it, we can’t hold it!’ Murdo Ruadh was almost shouting.

‘For Christ’s sake keep the volume down,’ Donald hissed. There were houses on either side of the road. But, in truth, volume was the least of our problems. The tyre was already out of our control. Angel and Murdo leapt out of the way, and it finally ripped itself free of Donald’s last desperate attempts to stop it.

Off it went, with a life and direction of its own. We, all of us, went chasing after it, helter-skelter down the hill. But it just got faster and faster, and further and further away. ‘Oh, God …’ I heard Donald groan, and I realized what he realized. The tyre was heading straight for the Crobost Stores, which stood face-on at the bend in the main road at the bottom of the hill. What with its weight and speed, it was going to do a lot of damage. And there was not a single thing we could do about it.

The sound of breaking glass sent shards of shockwaves through the night air. The tyre had gone straight into the window to the left of the door. I swear the whole building shook. And then nothing. The tyre remained standing upright, wedged solidly in the window opening like some bizarre modern sculpture. We arrived, gasping for air and shocked to silence, about thirty seconds after impact, and just stood there looking at it in abject horror. Lights went on in the nearest houses, about a hundred and fifty yards away.

Donald was shaking his head in disbelief. ‘I don’t believe it,’ he kept saying. ‘I don’t believe it.’

‘Got to get the fuck out of here,’ Murdo Ruadh gasped.

‘Naw.’ Angel put a hand on his brother’s chest to stop him going anywhere. ‘We just run off, they’re never going to give up till they find out who it was.’

‘What’re you talking about?’ Murdo looked as if he thought his big brother had lost his mind.

‘I’m talking about a scapegoat. Someone to take the fall and not rat on the rest of us. They’ll be happy as long as they’ve got someone to blame.’

Donald shook his head. ‘That’s crazy. Let’s just go.’ We could hear voices now in the distance. Voices raised in query, wondering what on earth had happened.

But Angel stood his ground. ‘Naw. I’m right on this. Trust me. We need a volunteer.’ His gaze fell on each of us in turn. And then stopped on me. ‘You, orphan boy. You’ve got least to lose.’ I didn’t even have time to object before a big fist hit me full in the face and my legs folded under me. I hit the ground with such force it knocked all the wind out of me. Then his boot in my stomach curled me up into a helpless foetal position and I vomited on the gravel.

I heard Donald shouting, ‘Stop it! Fucking stop it!’

And then Angel’s low, threatening tone. ‘You gonna make me, God boy? Two’s better than one. It could be you next.’

There was a moment’s silence, and then Calum wailing, ‘We gotta go!’

I heard footsteps running off into the distance, and then an odd peace settled on the night along with the frost. I couldn’t move, did not even have the strength to roll over. I was vaguely aware of more lights coming on in nearby houses. I heard someone shouting, ‘The store! There’s a break-in at the store!’ The beams of torches pricked the night air. Then hands pulled me roughly to my feet. I could barely stand. I felt a shoulder support me under each oxter, then Donald’s voice.

‘You got him, Artair?’

And Artair’s familiar wheeze. ‘Aye.’

And they dragged me, running, across the road and into the ditch.

I’m not sure how long we lay there in the ice and mud, hidden by the long grass, but it seemed like an eternity. We saw the locals arriving in their dressing gowns and wellies, beams of light flashing around the road and the shopfront. And we heard their consternation. A six-foot tractor tyre embedded in the shop window and not a soul around. They decided that no one had actually broken into the shop, but that they had better call the police, and as they headed back towards their houses, Donald and Artair got me to my feet and we staggered off across the frozen peatbog. At a gate in the shadow of the hill, Donald waited with me while Artair went off to retrieve my bike. I felt like hell, and worse. But I knew that Donald and Artair had risked being caught by coming back to get me.

‘Why’d you come back?’

‘Och, it was my stupid idea in the first place,’ Donald sighed. ‘I wasn’t going to let you take the blame for it.’ And then he paused. I couldn’t see his face, but I heard the anger and frustration in his voice. ‘One day I’m going to rip that fucking Angel Macritchie’s wings off.’

They never did find out who had run the Swainbost tyre through the window of Crobost Stores. But they weren’t about to give it back to the Swainbost boys. The police impounded it, and Crobost had the best bonfire in Ness that year.