The Lewis Man

SIXTEEN

Who is it now? I’m not budging. They can all go to hell.

The door opens and there is a young man standing there. I’ve seen him before somewhere. Does he work here?

‘Hello, Mr Macdonald,’ he says, and there is something comforting in his voice. Familiar.

‘Do I know you?’

‘It’s Fin.’

Fin. Fin. Strange name. Shark’s fin. Tail fin. French fin. ‘What kind of name’s that?’

‘Short for Finlay. I was Fionnlagh till I went to school, then they gave me my English name. Finlay. It was Marsaili who called me Fin.’ He sits down beside me on the bed.

I feel hope lifting me. ‘Marsaili? Is she here?’

‘No, but she asked me if I would take you out for a wee run in the car. She said you would like that.’

I am disappointed. But it would be nice to get out for a bit. I’ve been stuck in here for a while now. ‘I would.’

‘And I see you’re all dressed up and ready to go.’

‘Always.’ I can feel a smile creeping up on me. ‘You’re a good lad, Fin. You always were. But you shouldn’t have been coming round the farm when your folks had forbidden it.’

Fin is smiling, too, now. ‘You remember that, do you?’

‘I do. Your mother was furious. Mary was scared she’d think we’d been encouraging it. How are your folks, by the way?’

He doesn’t answer. He’s looking at my hands, and lifts my right forearm. ‘They tell me you cut yourself, Mr Macdonald.’

‘Did I?’ I look at my hands and see white bandages wrapped around them. Oh! What the hell happened? I feel a spike of fear. ‘God,’ I say, quite shaken. ‘You’d think it would hurt. But I don’t feel anything. Is it bad?’

‘They gave you some stitches, apparently. Up at the hospital. You were trying to escape.’

‘Escape?’ The very word lifts my spirits.

‘Yes. But, you know, Mr Macdonald, you’re not locked in here. You can come and go when you like. Just like a hotel. As long as you let people know.’

‘I want to go home,’ I say.

‘Well, you know what they say, Mr Macdonald. Home is where your hat is.’

‘Do they?’ Who the hell are they?

‘Yes, they do.’

‘Well, where’s my hat?’

Fin grins at me. ‘It’s on your head.’

I can feel my own surprise, and put my hand up to find my hat there right enough. I take it off and look at it. Good old hat. It’s been with me for many a long year. I laugh now. ‘So it is. I didn’t realize.’

He helps me gently to my feet.

‘Wait, I’ll have to get my bag.’

‘No, you’d best leave it here, Mr Macdonald. You’ll need your things when you get back.’

‘I’m coming back?’

‘Of course. You’ll need to come back to hang up your hat. Remember? Home is where your hat is.’

I look at the hat, still held in my bandaged hands, and laugh again. I put it firmly back on my head. ‘You’re right. I’d almost forgotten.’

I love to see the sun on the ocean, like this. You know that it’s deep out there, because it’s such a dark blue. It’s only in the sandy shallows that it’s green, or turquoise. None of that here, though. The sand shelves away almost immediately. It’s the undertow that does it. You always hear stories of folk drowning here. Incomers or visitors, mostly. The sand fools them, because it’s so soft, and fine, and yellow, and safe. The locals wouldn’t dream of going in the water, except in a boat. Most of them can’t swim, anyway. Dammit, what’s the name of this beach again?

‘Dalmore,’ Fin says.

I didn’t realize I’d said that out loud. But, aye. Dalmore beach, that’s right. I recognized it as soon as we turned down on the shore road, past the cottages and the wheelie bins to the cemetery. Poor souls laid to rest up there on the machair, the sea eating away at them.

These damn pebbles are big. Hard to walk on. But the sand’s easier. Fin helps me take off my shoes and socks, and I feel the sand now between my toes. Soft, and warmed by the sun. ‘Makes me think of Charlie’s beach,’ I say.

Fin stops and gives me an odd look. ‘Who’s Charlie?’

‘Oh, no one you’d know. He’s a long time dead.’ And I laugh and laugh.

On the sand below the reinforcements at the cemetery wall, he spreads the travelling rug he took from the boot of the car, and we sit down. He has some bottles of beer. Cold, but not chilled. All right, though. He opens a couple and passes me one, and I enjoy that stuff foaming in my mouth, just like the very first time on the roof of The Dean.

The sea’s a bit wild out there in the wind, breaking white all around those rock stacks. I can even feel a hint of spray on my face. Light, like the touch of a feather. Wind’s blown all the clouds away now. There were days out on the moor I’d have killed for a piece of blue sky like that.

Fin’s taking something out of his bag to show me. A photograph, he says. It’s quite big. I bury the base of my beer bottle in the sand to keep it upright, and take the photograph. It’s a bit awkward with my hands bandaged like this.

‘Oh.’ I turn to Fin. ‘Is this a coloured man?’

‘No, Mr Macdonald. I thought it might be someone you know.’

‘Is he sleeping?’

‘No, he’s dead.’ He seems to wait, while I look at it. Expecting me to say something. ‘Is that Charlie, Mr Macdonald?’

I look at him and laugh out loud. ‘No, it’s not Charlie. How would I know what Charlie looks like? You daft balach!’

He smiles, but he looks a bit uncertain. I can’t think why. ‘Take a good look at the face, Mr Macdonald.’

So I look at it, carefully, like he asks. And now that I see beyond the colour of the skin, there is something familiar about those features. Strange. That slight turn of the nose. Just like Peter’s. And the tiny scar on his upper lip, at the right-hand corner of the mouth. Peter had a little scar like that. Cut himself on a chipped water glass once when he was about four. And, oh … that scar on his left temple. Didn’t notice that before.

Suddenly it dawns on me who it is, and I lay the photo in my lap. I can’t bear to look at it any more. I promised! I turn to Fin. ‘He’s dead?’

Fin nods, looking at me so strangely. ‘Why are you crying, Mr Macdonald?’

Peter asked me that same thing, too, once.

Saturdays were the best. Free of school, free of God, free of Mr Anderson. If we had some money we could go up into the town to spend it. Not that we had money very often, but that wouldn’t stop us going. Just a fifteen-minute walk and you were in another world.

The castle dominated the town, sitting up there on that big black rock, casting its shadow on the gardens below. And people all along the whole length of the street, in and out of shops and cafes, motor cars and buses belching great clouds of exhaust fumes into the air.

We had a wee scam going, me and Peter. We would sometimes go up into town on a Saturday morning, wearing our oldest clothes and our scruffiest shoes with the soles flapping away from the uppers, and we hung a little cardboard sign around Peter’s neck, with the word BLIND scrawled on it. It’s a good job we had a half-decent education and knew how to spell it. Of course, we had no idea then how hanging a cardboard notice around our necks would come back to haunt us.

Peter closed his eyes, and put his left hand on my right forearm, and we would move slowly among the weekend shoppers, Peter with his cap in his hand held out in front of him.

It was always the good ladies of the town who would take pity on us. ‘Awww, poor wee laddie,’ they would say, and if we were lucky drop a shilling in the cap. That’s how we got enough money together to pay for Peter’s tattoo. And it took all our ill-gotten weekend gains for a month or more to do it.

Peter was Elvis-daft. All the newspapers and magazines were full of him in those days. It was hard to miss the man, or the music. Everything back then, in the years after the war, had to be American, and before we started saving up for the tattoo, we used to go to the Manhattan Cafe next door to the Monseigneur News Theatre. It was long and narrow, with booths that you slid into, like an American diner. The walls were lined by mirrors etched with New York skylines. Considering how we spent the other six days of the week, it was like escape to paradise. A tantalising glimpse of how life might have been. A coffee or a Coke would use up all our cash, but we would make it last and sit listening to Elvis belting out on the jukebox.

Heartbreak Hotel. It conjured up such romantic images. New York city streets, flashing neon lights, steam rising from manhole covers. That slow walking bass, the jazz piano tinkling away in the background. And that moody, mouthy voice.

The tattoo shop was in Rose Street, next door to a working man’s pub. It was a pretty seedy single room, with a space off the back separated by a vomit-green curtain with shredded hems. It smelled of ink and old blood. There were brittle and faded sketches and photographs pinned around the walls, of designs and tattooed arms and backs. The tattoo artist himself had tattoos on both forearms. A broken heart with an arrow through it, an anchor, Popeye. A girl’s name, Angie, in fancy curlicued lettering.

He had a mean, underfed face, with fusewire sideburns. The last shreds of head hair were scraped back from a receded hairline across a shiny, almost bald, pate, to a luxuriant gathering of Brylcreemed curls around his neck. I noticed the dirt beneath his fingernails, and worried that Peter would catch some horrible infection. But perhaps it was just ink.

I don’t know how much regulation there was in those days, or if it was even legal to tattoo a boy of Peter’s age, but the Rose Street tattoo artist didn’t care much about it if there was. He was taken aback when we said we wanted a tattoo of Elvis Presley. He’d never done one before, he said, and I think he saw it as a sort of challenge. He gave us a price: £2, which was a fortune in those days. I think he thought there was no way we could afford it, but if he was surprised when we turned up with the money nearly six weeks later he never showed it. He had prepared a sketch, from a photograph in a magazine, and worked the lettering below it, Heartbreak Hotel, into something like a banner blowing in the breeze.

It took hours, and a lot of blood, and Peter bore it without a single word of complaint. I could see in his face how painful it was, but he was never going to admit it. Stoic, he was. A martyr to his dream.

I sat with him the whole afternoon, listening to the whine of the tattoo gun, watching the needles engraving flesh, and admired my brother’s fortitude as ink and blood got wiped away with every other stroke.

I would have done anything for Peter. I knew how frustrated he got sometimes, aware of his limitations. But he never got angry, or swore, or had a bad word for anyone. He was a good soul, my brother. Better than me. I never had any illusions about that. And he deserved better in life.

By the end of the afternoon, his arm was a mess. It was impossible to see the tattoo for the blood, which was already starting to dry in a patchwork of scabs. The tattoo man washed it with soapy water and dried it off with paper towels before wrapping it in a lint bandage which he fixed in place with a safety pin.

‘Take this off in a couple of hours,’ he said, ‘and wash the tattoo regularly. Always pat it dry and don’t rub it. You need air for the wound to heal properly, so don’t cover it up.’ He handed me a small jar with a yellow lid. ‘Tattoo Goo. Rub this into the wound after every washing. Just enough to keep it moist. You don’t want a scab to form. But if it does, don’t peel it off, you’ll pull the ink out. As the skin heals it will form a membrane. And eventually that will flake off. If you look after it carefully it should be fully healed in about two weeks.’

He knew his stuff that man. It took about twelve days to heal, and it was only then that we saw what a good job he had done. There was no doubting that it was Elvis Presley on Peter’s right forearm, and the way he’d worked in the banner lettering of Heartbreak Hotel it looked like the collar of his shirt. Very clever.

Of course, we had to go to some lengths to keep it hidden during that time. Peter always wore long sleeves around The Dean, and at school, even though it was still summer. On bath night he bandaged it up again and kept it out of the water. I told the other boys that he was suffering from psoriasis, a skin condition that I’d read about somewhere in a magazine, so the tattoo remained our secret.

Until that fateful day in late October.

Peter’s problem was that just as a leaky bucket can’t hold water, he couldn’t keep a secret. So open was he, so incapable of dishonesty or concealment, that sooner or later he was bound to tell someone about the tattoo. If only for the pleasure he would derive from showing it off.

He used to sit sometimes just looking at it. Holding his arm in different positions, twisting his head this way and that to see it from various angles. The biggest kick he got was from gazing at his reflection in the mirror. Seeing it in full context, as if it were someone else, someone worthy of admiration and respect. There was a tiny broken heart between the Heartbreak and Hotel. Red. The only colour in the whole tattoo. He loved that tiny splash of crimson, and I sometimes found him touching it, almost stroking it. But most of all he loved the sense that, somehow, Elvis belonged to him, and would always be with him. A constant companion for the rest of what turned out to be his short life.

There was early snow that year. Not a lot of it. But it lay on the roofs, and in ledges along the walls, and dusted the branches of trees newly naked after unusually strong autumn winds. Everything else seemed darker, blacker, in contrast. The fast-flowing water of the river, the soot-blackened stone of the old mills, and the workers’ tenements in the village. There was a leaden quality about the sky, but a glow in it, too. Like a natural lightbox diffusing sunshine. It cast no shadows. The air was crisp and cold and stung your nostrils. The snow had frozen and it crunched underfoot.

It was morning break at the school, and our voices rang out, sharp and brittle in the icy air, breath billowing about our heads like dragon smoke. I saw Peter at the centre of a small clutch of boys near the gate. But by the time I got there it was too late. He could hardly have chosen to show off Elvis in more dangerous company. They were the three Kelly brothers, and a couple of their friends. Equally unsavoury. We only ever hung out with the Kellys because they were Catholics, too, and we were all made to stand out in the cold waiting for the Proddies to finish their morning service. It bred a sort of camaraderie, even among enemies.

The Kellys were a bad lot. There were four boys. One much younger, who wasn’t at our school yet. The two middle boys, Daniel and Thomas, were about my age, with a year between them. And Patrick was a year older. People said their father was involved with some notorious Edinburgh gang, and that he’d spent time in prison. He was rumoured to have a scar that ran in an arc from the left-hand corner of his mouth to the lobe of his left ear, like an extension of his lower lip. I never saw him, but the image conjured by that description always stayed with me.

Catherine got there before I did, because even then she’d become protective towards Peter. Although she was younger than me, and just about the same age as Peter, she fussed and mothered us both. Not in any sentimental kind of way. Hers was a bossy, almost brutal kind of mothering, perhaps born of experience. No gentle warnings, or loving pats on the head. A kick in the arse and a mouthful of abuse was much more Catherine’s style.

I arrived among the group just in time to see her shock at the tattoo on Peter’s arm. We had never told her about it, and the look she flashed me conveyed all the hurt she felt at not having been included.

Peter had his jacket off and his sleeve rolled up. Even the Kelly boys, who were not impressed by much, were wide-mouthed in admiration. But Patrick was the one to see mileage in the situation.

‘You’re going to be in trouble when they find out about that, Daftie,’ he said. ‘Who did it?’

‘It’s a secret,’ Peter said defensively. He started rolling down his sleeve. But Patrick grabbed his arm.

‘That’s a pro job, init? Bet that guy could be in big trouble for scarring a boy your age. What are you, fifteen? I’d say you’d need parents’ permission for something like that.’ He laughed then, and there was a cruelty in his voice. ‘Course, since you don’t have any, that would make it a wee bit difficult.’

‘Better to have no parents than a father who’s been in the fucking jail.’ Catherine’s voice cut through the laughter of the boys, and Patrick turned a dangerous look in her direction.

‘You shut your mouth ya wee shite.’ He took a step towards her and I moved smartly between them.

‘And you watch yours, Kelly.’

Patrick Kelly’s pale green eyes met mine. He had ginger hair and a face the colour of porridge. It was spattered with freckles. He was an ugly boy. I could see the calculation in his gaze. He was a big lad, but so was I. ‘What’s it to you?’

‘I’m a bit sensitive to bad language.’

There was some laughter, and the eldest Kelly boy didn’t like that. He glared at his brothers. ‘Shut the fuck up.’ Then he turned back to me. ‘So they let kids at The Dean get tattoos if they want, do they?’ he said. And when I didn’t reply, he grinned. ‘Why do I get the feeling that Daftie’ll be in deep shit if they ever find out?’

‘Why would they ever find out?’

‘Someone might tell them.’ Patrick Kelly smiled disingenuously.

‘Like who?’

His smile vanished and he leaned his face into mine. ‘Like me.’

I stood my ground, flinching only from the stink of decaying teeth that he breathed in my face. ‘Only cowards tell tales.’

‘Are you calling me a fucking coward?’

‘I’m not calling you anything. Cowards reveal themselves by their own actions.’

The anger and humiliation of someone showing themselves to be smarter than him combined to make him brave. He stabbed my chest with his finger. ‘We’ll see who’s a fucking coward.’ He nodded his head towards the road bridge that soared overhead, connecting the city to the western suburbs. Thomas Telford’s second-last, I would learn much later in life. ‘There’s a ledge runs along the outside of the bridge, just below the parapet. It’s about nine inches wide. Up there tonight. Midnight. You and me. We’ll see who can walk it.’

I glanced up at the bridge. Even from here I could see the snow crusted along the length of the ledge. ‘No way.’

‘Scared, are you?’

‘He’s a fucking coward,’ said one of the younger brothers.

‘I’m not stupid,’ I said.

‘Shame about your brother, then, eh? Guess they might even kick him out. Put him in a hostel. A load of shit like that on his arm. Guess you wouldn’t be too happy about being separated.’

It was a real possibility. I felt the net of inevitability closing around me. ‘And if I do it?’

‘Elvis’ll be our secret. Unless, of course, you chicken out halfway. In which case I’ll tell.’

‘And you’re going to do this walk, too?’

‘Sure I am.’

‘And what do I get out of that?’

‘The pleasure of calling me a coward if I chicken out.’

‘And if you don’t?’

‘I get the pleasure of proving you wrong.’

‘Don’t do it.’ Catherine’s voice came from behind me, low and laden with warning.

‘Shut up, slag!’

I felt Kelly’s spittle in my face and glanced towards Peter. I wasn’t sure if he understood the gravity of his situation, or the trouble he’d got me into by showing off like this. ‘I’ll come with you,’ he said earnestly.

‘See? Even Daftie’s got more balls than you.’ Kelly was gloating now. He knew he had me cornered.

I shrugged. Trying to be dead casual. ‘Okay. But let’s make it a little more interesting. I’ll go first. We’ll time it. And whoever is slower has to do it again.’

And for the first time I saw Patrick Kelly’s confidence waver. It was his turn to be trapped. ‘No problem.’

What stupid boys we were! As Catherine was quick enough to point out to me when I pulled Peter away across the playground to give him a piece of my mind.

‘You’re insane,’ she said. ‘It’s about a hundred foot fucking high, that bridge. If you fall you’re dead. Nothing surer.’

‘I won’t fall.’

‘Well, I hope you don’t. Cos if you do, I won’t have the chance to say I told you so.’ She paused. ‘How are you going to get out of The Dean?’

I had never told anyone about my night-time jaunts to the village and the cemetery, and was a little reluctant now to reveal my secret. ‘Oh, there’s a way,’ I said casually.

‘Well, you’d better fucking tell me. Cos I’m coming, too.’

‘And me,’ Peter piped in.

I stopped and glared from one to the other. ‘No, you’re not. Either of you.’

‘And who’s going to fucking stop us?’ Catherine said.

‘Aye, who’s going to fucking stop us?’ Peter puffed up his chest defiantly. It was almost shocking to hear him swear like that. Catherine was a bad influence. But I knew I was beaten.

I said to Catherine, ‘Why would you want to come anyway?’

‘Well, if you’re going to do the walk against the clock, someone’s got to keep the time.’ She paused and sighed. ‘Besides, if you do fall, someone needs to be there to make sure Peter gets safely back to The Dean.’

I couldn’t have slept at lights out, even if I had wanted to. Three hours to go and I was feeling sick. What on earth had possessed me to get sucked into this stupid dare? Even more annoying, Peter had fallen asleep almost immediately, with an absolute confidence that I would wake him when it was time to go. I toyed with the idea of sneaking out without him, but knew that the uncertain nature of his response if waking to find me gone would only make it dangerous for both of us.

And so I lay beneath the blankets, unable for some reason, to get warm, and shivered from the cold and my own fear. Of course, word had spread like wildfire amongst the kids at school and everyone at The Dean that there was a dare between the Kellys and the McBrides. No one seemed to know why, but I knew it wouldn’t be long before Peter’s tattoo became public knowledge, and then only a matter of time before the powers that be got wind of it, too.

The future seemed a scary thing, then, obscured as it was by the darkness of unpredictability. I had the sense of my life, and Peter’s, slipping out of our hands. And while we’d had no control over our incarceration in The Dean, the place had provided, in that last year, a degree of comfort, if only in the brutal certainty of its routine.

Time passed both slowly and quickly. Every time I checked my watch it seemed only five minutes later. And then suddenly it was fifteen minutes to midnight. I wondered if, at the last, I had somehow dozed off without realising it. But now my heart was hammering away, beating right up into my throat, nearly choking me. It was time to go.

I slipped out from between the sheets, fully dressed, and pulled on my shoes. They had thick rubber soles that I hoped would give me some grip. I tied my laces with trembling fingers and jiggled Peter by the shoulder. To my irritation it took him some time to wake up. When finally he had shaken himself free of sleep and some undeservedly happy dream, the memory of what we were to be about that night returned to him, and his eyes shone with anticipation. ‘Time to go?’ he whispered loudly.

I put my finger to my lips and glared at him.

It wasn’t until we reached the door of the dormitory that I realized just how many others were awake, too. Voices whispered in the dark.

‘Good luck, Johnny.’

‘Show the fucker what the Dean boys are made of.’

I felt like saying, ‘You fucking show him!’

Catherine was waiting for us at the foot of the cellar stairs. She had a torch with her, and shone it in our faces as we came down. It almost blinded me.

‘For God’s sake put that away!’ I raised my hand to shade my eyes. And then, when the light went out, plunging us into darkness again, almost fell. ‘Jesus!’

‘You’re late!’ she whispered. ‘It’s scary as hell down here. Something keeps making strange clunking noises. And there are things scurrying about the floor. I’m sure it’s rats.’

I slid back the bolt to release the door, and felt the cold night air rush in as I opened it. There was a real smell of winter on its leading edge, and I could see stars, like pinholes in the black sheet that was the sky, revealing an imagined light that lay behind it. A light that was reflected in the frost that glistened all across the black of the tarmac. Heaven perfectly mirrored on earth. Or hell perfectly reflected above.

By the time we got down into the village we could hear a clock somewhere striking midnight. It pealed through the cold, clear night air, like a bell ringing for the dead, sonorous and deep and filled with a dreadful prescience. The hike up Bell’s Brae in the dark, past the silent mews houses, was slow and treacherous. Snow had fallen, then melted where the sun had touched it, then frozen. By the time we reached Kirkbrae House at the top of the hill we were, all three of us, sweating from the effort. They had told us at school that the turreted and step-gabled Kirkbrae House, half of which disappeared down below the bridge, had been a tavern in the seventeenth century. I’d have given anything right then for a glass of the fine fizzing ale they had drunk back in those days. Something to stop my tongue from sticking to the roof of my mouth, and restore the courage I felt deserting me as the bridge approached.

The Kelly boys were waiting for us where the first arch of the bridge began, huddled in the shadow of Kirkbrae House. The town was deserted and as silent as Dean Cemetery. There wasn’t a car on the road, or a light in any of the windows of the stone terraces that marched up Queensferry Street towards the west-end. But the moon reflected off every snow-covered surface of the village below. Only the black waters of the river itself were completely lost in darkness.

‘You’re late!’ Patrick Kelly hissed from the shadows. ‘We’ve been waiting here for ages. And it’s fucking freezing!’

I could hear him stamping and clapping his gloved hands together, trying to keep warm, and I wished I had gloves, too.

‘Well, we’re here now,’ I said. ‘And we might as well get started. Me first.’ I moved towards the parapet, but felt Patrick’s big open hand pushing into my chest.

‘No. Me first. I’ve been hanging around here long enough. Who’s going to time it?’

‘I am.’ Catherine stepped forward into the pale yellow glow of an electric street lamp and opened her hand to reveal an engraved silver stopwatch with a pink ribbon attached to it.

One of the other Kelly boys grabbed her wrist to get a better look, and you could hear the envy in his voice. ‘Where’d you steal that?’

Catherine pulled her wrist free and closed protective fingers around it again. ‘I didn’t steal it. My dad gave me it.’

Patrick said, ‘Okay, Danny, you check she disnae cheat.’ And he reached up to grasp the wrought-iron spikes that ran along the curve of the parapet, to pull himself up and over, feet sliding and scraping on the ice, till he had lowered himself down to the ledge below.

I had crossed the bridge on many occasions, but it was the first time I had really examined the parapet. I learned later that they had raised it about fifty years before to stop people throwing themselves off. What is it about bridges that lures folk to kill themselves by jumping off them? Whatever it is, the only thing that concerned me then was not falling off.

The bridge was carried on four arches from Kirkbrae House at the south end to the towering Gothic presence of the Holy Trinity Church at the other. It was one hundred and six feet above the river at its highest point, and maybe one hundred and fifty yards across. The ledge was wide enough to walk on. Just. If you didn’t look down, or think too much about it. The problem came when it circumvented each of the vertical supports for the three columns. These were angled, and took you away from the safety of the parapet, where it was always possible to grab on to one of the spikes.

I felt my stomach flip over. It was madness. What in God’s name was I doing here? I could hardly breathe.

I could see from Patrick’s face that he was scared, too. But he was doing his best to hide it. ‘Okay, start the watch,’ he called, and we all leaned over as Catherine depressed the starter button, and Patrick Kelly set off across the bridge.

I was amazed at how quickly he moved, spreading himself wide, facing the parapet and moving sideways along the ledge, leaning in to let his hands guide him. He embraced each arch support, almost lying across the top of it, as he shuffled his feet around the ledge. Danny stayed at the Kirkbrae end, watching the stopwatch with Catherine, and me and Peter and Patrick’s other brother, Tam, followed him from the safety of the pavement.

I could hear Patrick’s breathing, laboured, from fear and effort. His breath exploded around him in the moonlight. I could just see the top of his head, and the concentration in his eyes. Peter hung on to my arm, absolutely focused on Patrick’s progress. Even though this was the boy who was threatening to give away the secret of his Elvis tattoo, Peter genuinely feared for his safety. Such was his empathy. Tam called out constant encouragement to his brother, and when finally Patrick reached the church and hauled himself back on to the road side with trembling arms, he let out loud whoops of triumphant joy.

Catherine and Danny came running across to join us.

‘Well?’ Patrick said, his face positively glowing now with jubilation.

‘Two minutes, twenty-three seconds,’ Danny said. ‘Straight up, Paddy.’

Patrick turned his jubilation on me. ‘Your turn.’

I glanced at Catherine and could see apprehension burning in her dark eyes. ‘How’s the ice on that side?’ I said to Patrick.

He grinned. ‘Slippy as fuck.’

I felt my heart sinking into my boots. Two minutes, twenty-three seconds seemed very fast. And I knew that if I couldn’t beat that time, then I would have to do it again. And Patrick’s whole demeanour oozed confidence. He didn’t believe for one moment that I would be faster than him. And, to be honest, neither did I. But there was no point in dwelling on it, to be defeated by my own fear.

I climbed up on to the parapet, and holding on to the top spikes, slid my feet down the other side of it until they reached the ledge. The iron of the spikes was icy cold, biting into already frozen hands. But I held on to them, testing the frosted snow beneath my feet. To my surprise, my rubber soles provided an amazing amount of grip. And I finally let go to find myself balanced on the curve of the ledge, with almost four hundred feet of it stretching ahead of me. If I crossed it using the same technique as Patrick, then whether or not I bettered his time was in the lap of the gods. But if I used my outstretched arms for balance and walked straight, as along a line of kerbstones, I was sure I could do it faster. As long as I didn’t slip. Only when I reached the arch supports would I have to resort to Patrick’s method of getting around them.

I drew a deep breath, resisting the temptation to look down, and called out, ‘All right, start the watch.’ And I set off with my eyes firmly fixed on Kirkbrae House at the other end. I could feel the frozen snow creaking beneath my feet, my left arm raised higher than my right to avoid touching the parapet. The slightest miscalculation, even the smallest nudge of the parapet wall, would likely send me spinning off into space.

I reached the first arch support and flung my arms around it, sliding my feet sideways along the ledge, as I had seen Patrick do. Then steadied myself at the far side of it for the next length. I was filled with a strange sense of elation, feeling as if I could almost break into a run. Of course, that would have been impossible, but confidence surged through me now and I increased my speed, one careful foot in front of the other. From the far side of the parapet I could hear Tam’s voice. ‘Jesus, Paddy, he’s fast!’

And Peter. ‘Go, Johnny, go!’

By the time I reached Kirkbrae House, and pulled myself over the parapet to safety, I knew I’d done it faster. Patrick knew it too, and I could already see his apprehension growing as we waited for Catherine and Danny to run across the bridge to join us.

Danny’s face was a mask of trepidation. Catherine’s split by a triumphant smile.

‘Two minutes, five seconds,’ Danny said, his voice barely a whisper.

I didn’t care any more. I’d won the dare. And if Patrick Kelly was a boy of his word, then Peter’s secret was safe, at least for a while. ‘Let’s call it quits.’

Patrick’s mouth tightened into a bleak line. He shook his head. ‘No fucking way. Whoever was slower had to do it again. That was the deal.’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ I said.

I saw the jut of the older boy’s jaw. ‘It does to me.’ And he grabbed the spikes and pulled himself back on to the parapet.

Tam said, ‘Come on, Paddy, let’s just go home.’

Patrick dropped down on to the ledge. ‘Just start the fucking watch, will you?’

Danny looked at me as if there might be something I could do about it. I shrugged. I’d done my best. Catherine started the watch. ‘Go!’ she shouted, and Patrick set off, adopting my technique this time. But even from the start I could see that it wasn’t going to work for him. His shoes didn’t appear to be providing the same grip as mine. He stopped several times during the span of the first arch, fighting to regain his balance. Tam and Peter and I ran along beside him, jumping up every few feet to get a clearer view.

I could see the sweat beading across his forehead, catching the light of the moon, his freckles a dark splatter across the whiteness of his face. The fear in his eyes was clear, but displaced by his own desperate need for self-esteem. To prove himself not only to us, but to himself. I heard him gasp as he lost his footing, saw his hand grasping at fresh air, and thought for one awful moment that he was gone. But his hand found the curve of the parapet, and he steadied himself.

We were about halfway across when I heard Danny’s voice shouting from the Kirkbrae end. ‘Police!’ And almost at the same time I heard the sound of a car’s engine approaching from the direction of Randolph Place. He and Catherine ducked into the shadow of Kirkbrae House, but we were totally exposed out there on the bridge, me and Peter and Tam, with nowhere to hide.

‘Down!’ I shouted, and crouched against the wall, pulling Peter down with me. Tam dropped to his hunkers beside us. We could only hope that somehow the black patrol car would pass by without seeing us. For a moment we seemed caught in its headlights, before it appeared to accelerate past. I felt a huge wave of relief wash over me. And then there was a squeal of brakes, and the sound of tyres skidding on frosted tarmac. ‘Shit!’

‘Run for it!’ Tam shouted.

I could hear the whine of a car’s motor turning in reverse and didn’t need a second telling. I was on my feet in an instant and sprinting hard for Kirkbrae House and the escape route of Bell’s Brae. We hadn’t covered ten yards when I realized that Peter wasn’t with us. I heard Danny shouting from the far side. ‘What the fuck’s he doing?’ And Tam grabbed my arm.

We turned to see Peter crouched up on the parapet, hanging on to a spike with one hand, his other stretched out towards the panicked figure of Patrick Kelly, almost as if he had pushed him. Kelly’s arms were windmilling in a desperate attempt to retain his balance.

But it was already a lost cause. And without a sound he toppled into darkness. It was the silence of that moment that lives with me still. The boy never called out. Never cried, never screamed. Just fell soundlessly into the shadow of the bridge. Every fibre of me wanted to believe that somehow he would survive the fall. But I knew, beyond question, that he wouldn’t.

‘Fuck!’ I could feel Tam’s breath on my face. ‘He fucking pushed him!’

‘No!’ I knew how it looked. But I knew, too, that there was no way that Peter had done that.

Two uniformed police officers had jumped out of the patrol car now, and were running along the bridge towards us. I sprinted back to grab my brother and half drag him with me towards the others waiting at the south end. He was whimpering, desperate. His face wet and shining with tears. ‘He called for help,’ he said, gulping great lungfuls of air to feed his distress. ‘I tried to grab him, Johnny, honest I did.’

‘Hey!’ the voice of one of the police officers called out in the dark. ‘You boys! Stop! What are you doing out here on the bridge?’

It was the signal for us to scatter. I don’t know where the Kelly boys went, but me and Peter and Catherine went pellmell down Bell’s Brae, stumbling and sliding dangerously on the cobbles, hardly daring to look back. The darkness of the night, along with the shadows of buildings and trees, swallowed us into obscurity, and without a word spoken we climbed the hill at the other side towards the twin towers of The Dean.

I don’t know how, but everyone at The Dean seemed to know about Patrick Kelly’s fall from the bridge first thing the following morning. And then, when someone telephoned from the village to say that school had been cancelled for the day, everyone knew the worst. A boy had died falling from the bridge late the night before. None of the staff knew yet who it was. But there wasn’t a boy or girl at The Dean who didn’t.

Oddly, none of the others asked us what had happened. It was as if we were contaminated somehow, and no one wanted to catch what we had. All the inmates fell into their usual cliques, but gave Catherine, Peter and me a very wide berth.

We sat around in the dining room, the three of us, waiting for the inevitable. And it came just before midday.

A police car roared up the drive and pulled in at the foot of the steps. Two uniformed officers entered The Dean and were shown into Mr Anderson’s office. Only about ten minutes had passed before the janitor was sent to find us. He looked at us, concerned. ‘What have you kids been up to?’ he whispered.

Being the oldest, the others looked to me, but I just shrugged. ‘No idea,’ I said.

He marched us along the bottom corridor to Mr Anderson’s room, and we felt the eyes of all our peers upon us. It was as if time had stopped, standing still, like all the kids gathered in groups to watch the condemned going to meet their maker. Each and every one of them, no doubt, thanking the Lord that it wasn’t them.

Mr Anderson was standing behind his desk, his face as ashen as his hair. The jacket of his dark suit was all buttoned up, and he had his arms folded across his chest. The two officers, helmets in hand, stood to one side, Matron on the other. The three of us lined up in front of the desk. Mr Anderson glared at us. ‘I want one of you to speak for all of you.’

Catherine and Peter both looked at me.

‘All right, you, McBride.’ It was the first and only time I ever heard him call me by my name. He looked at the others. ‘If either of you disagree with anything he says, then speak up. Your silence will be taken as agreement.’ He drew a deep breath, then placed his fingertips on the desk in front of him, leaning slightly forward to let them take his weight. ‘You’re here because a boy died last night falling from the Dean Bridge. One Patrick Kelly. You know him?’

I nodded. ‘Yes, sir.’

‘It seems there were some shenanigans on the bridge around midnight. Several boys and a girl involved.’ He looked pointedly at Catherine. ‘And there are reports of two boys and a girl from The Dean being seen in the village shortly beforehand.’ He pulled himself up to his full height. ‘I don’t suppose you would have any idea who that was?’

‘No, sir.’ I knew there was no way they could prove it, unless they had eyewitnesses to come forward and identify us. And if they had, then surely they would have been there in Mr Anderson’s office to point their fingers. So I just denied everything. No, we hadn’t left The Dean. We had been in our beds all night. No, we hadn’t heard anything about Patrick Kelly’s fall until this morning. And no, we had no clue as to what he or anyone else might have been doing on the bridge at that time of night.

Of course, they knew I was lying. Someone must have told them something. One of the Kelly boys, perhaps. Or one of their friends.

Mr Anderson leaned forward on his knuckles now, and they glowed white, just like that first day almost a year before. ‘There is,’ he said, glancing at the two police officers, ‘some doubt about whether the boy fell, or was pushed. There will be an investigation, and anyone found guilty of pushing this boy to his death will be charged with murder. Manslaughter at the very least. This is a very, very grave matter indeed. And a dreadful blight on the reputation of The Dean, if any of its children are found to be involved. Do you understand?’

‘Yes, sir.’

Neither Peter nor Catherine had opened their mouths during the entire interview. Mr Anderson looked at them now. ‘Does either of you have anything to add?’

‘No, sir.’

It was half an hour after we had been ushered from the room that the police officers finally left, and Mr Anderson’s voice could be heard booming along the corridor. ‘Damned Catholics! I want them out of here.’

And finally Catherine’s prediction came true. The priest arrived to take us away the very next morning.