The next day, I got up early and left the house as quietly as I could. It was a brisk, fresh morning, with harsh sunlight. My hangover was gone the moment I set foot on the path. I hopped resolutely on my bike. With the wind in my back, I rode over to Callanish. I didn’t come here very often these days, not since they’d put up a fence round the stones, paid for with European tourist money, and a hideous restaurant-and-information centre had arisen at the bottom of the hill. It was so early, luckily, that the large car park was still completely empty.
Leaning my bicycle against the fence, I gazed up at the giants of my childhood, my sneakers and trouser legs soaking up the dew. Saying goodbye to them had seemed the right thing to do, but now that we were eyeball to eyeball, I got that hollowed-out feeling that usually came over me whenever I thought about the child I once was. There was no point in looking back; my mother had definitely been right about that. All in all, there was only one childhood memory I was unreservedly proud of. And with that idle thought, I climbed back on my bike and, with the giants staring impassively at my receding back, headed straight for Uig.
When we had first came to live on the island, I’d been too young to appreciate the mesmerizing beauty of the Uig Sands: the grains of sand on the wide beach as white and fine as freshly milled flour, the indifferent sea a deep emerald green, the twisted rock formations sharply silhouetted against the sky. It had to be one of the most beautiful and widest beaches in all of Europe. Because it was so immense, one had the impression that there was more sky over Uig than anywhere else.
I cycled across the blooming machair; its honeyed fragrance cancelled out the seashore’s salty aridity. I dismounted where the carpet of vegetation ended and the beach began. I took off my socks and shoes and rolled up my damp pant legs.
The sea was at low tide, so that the floor of the bay was nearly completely dry. The deserted stretch of sand was radiant; it seemed to be giving off light. It would have been a magnificent morning for crossing the seabed on foot, from one side of the bay to the other. The walk took a couple of hours and was never boring. Except that it was best not to attempt it unless you’d consulted the tide chart first.
I walked to the spot where our fort used to be. It had been swallowed by the elements some time ago. I sat down on the sand and reflected back on that summer, six years ago, when it had suddenly looked as if I was going to be designated the scapegoat by everyone under the age of sixteen—all over again.
After Gavin had suffered such a humiliating loss of face, all because of me, I had kept away for days. Sitting on the edge of my bed, I stared at the toes of my shoes. Filling those shoes were the feet of someone who was about to get the chop. Under my T-shirt, my heart was still beating—a bit erratically and worried stiff, but for how much longer? They were all out to get me, and they weren’t wusses. They smelled blood.
My mother and the Luducos were starting to give me funny looks, because my sudden interest in staying home roused their suspicion. All three of them tried to interrogate me whenever I returned from the loo or made myself a sandwich in the kitchen. ‘Lucy, why are you hanging round the house, is something wrong?’
Sunday morning, cornered, I fled. It was a safe time to be out; my former mates were all in church with their parents. On Lewis, Sunday was truly holy. The island’s numerous churches and their hard pews were always packed. So as not to give offence, even the tourists kept themselves out of the way—with a good book, or perhaps a day trip to a livelier spot in the archipelago, where at least the pubs were open at the usual hour. On the Sabbath, the entire island of Lewis was a wasteland.
The weather that morning was so nasty and grey that even the unbelievers (or unenlightened), few as they were, preferred to stay indoors. I didn’t meet a soul on the way to Uig, and the beach, too, was completely empty. The tide was out.
I couldn’t think of anything to do all by myself. I’d always been pretty good at finding ways to amuse myself, but over the past several weeks I had begun to rely on the companionship of other children again. In the end, I decided to go sit inside the fort. It was just as chilly in there as it was outside. I wrapped myself in a piece of fishing net to ward off the cold and finally, shivering, took the extreme measure of crawling inside the oil barrel in the corner. I began biting my nails. I couldn’t stay in Lewis, I couldn’t! Maybe I should simply disappear off the face of the earth. I was desperate. Why wasn’t there anyone I could turn to for advice? Why wasn’t there anyone to come to my aid?
And, as if for once God finally decided to hear my prayer, I suddenly heard voices outside.
‘Do you think there’s anyone in there today?’
‘Not by the looks of it. Come on, let’s go inside.’
‘But they’re always in there. Those wankers who think the whole beach belongs to them.’
‘Here, here’s the entrance.’
‘Maybe they’re all inside.’
‘Don’t worry, I’ll go in first.’
‘Or maybe the place is crawling with creepy insects. I bet it’s pitch-dark in there.’
Dutch voices. I immediately knew who it was. My throat was parched with fear. I ducked down in my oil barrel, pulling the fishing net over my head.
There was the sound of knees scraping through sand. Then: ‘Come on. It really isn’t that creepy.’
‘Can you see anything, then?’ Vanessa called from outside. In Mr Turk’s class, she’d been bragging for weeks about the great adventure they were going on in the summer hols, on some rugged Scottish island. But when it came right down to it, she wasn’t very adventurous.
‘Yes, I can. Come on, have a look, Vaness. It’s all furnished in here.’
Her curiosity apparently got the better of her, and she crawled inside. ‘Can’t we stand up in here at all? What kind of shithole is this?’
Huddled inside my barrel, I died a thousand deaths. One of my legs started tingling, as if it would cramp up at any moment.
Vanessa screamed. ‘What’s that over there?’
‘Where?’
‘There, in the corner. There’s something staring at us.’
‘That? That’s a jerrycan,’ said Thomas. He crawled over to it and unscrewed the cap. ‘Petrol. For arson, I’ll bet.’
There was a brief silence. Then Vanessa said, ‘Do you have a lighter on you?’
‘Sure, here. But if you’re gonna smoke, you’d better stay away from that petrol.’
The raspy click of a lighter. She chuckled softly. ‘It works. Hey, let’s set fire to the joint, shall we?’
‘Come on, that’s a shitty thing to do, Vaness.’
‘So? Then they shouldn’t have been so shitty to us. My mum says they should be grateful for every tourist that comes here. Why should we let a bunch of lowlifes chase us off the beach?’
I could just picture what had happened. Verity and Struan, the new leaders, had run the foreigners off the beach. I broke out in a sweat.
‘They’ll just build another one,’ said Vanessa. ‘Those shitheads deserve to be taught a lesson, that’s all. Tell me I’m wrong.’
Thomas was silent. He’d always been good at keeping quiet, in this kind of situation.
‘We’re going home tomorrow,’ she said. ‘It’s now or never.’
‘Let’s have a look round first and see if they’ve left anything of value lying around.’
‘You want to steal their stuff?’
‘No, I just want to take it outside, to save it,’ he explained.
‘Jesus, you wimp. Come on, give me the petrol. I’ll have to do it myself, as usual.’
I heard her shaking Gavin’s jerrycan around. The petrol sloshed against the tin walls. From the dull sound it made, you could tell it was full. Then I heard the glug-glug of liquid pouring out. There was a strong smell of fuel.
‘Out of my way,’ she said brusquely, ‘let me get to that barrel in the back, there.’ The next thing I knew, my hair was dripping with petrol. I had no time to think. I shot up out of the barrel, instinctively trying to spread my arms, but the fishing net hampered my movements. I think I screamed. But I’m not sure I did. Memories aren’t always a hundred per cent reliable. In a life-or-death situation there isn’t usually time for thoughtful, in-depth analysis.
For a moment, it felt as if I were hurtling back in time, and Thomas and I were thrashing about in a ditch by a new housing estate, like two leaping trouts … Did he ever think about that time, I wondered? Did he remember the rat? Or the ark?
Vanessa started screeching. She dropped the jerrycan.
I didn’t know what set her off—the terrifying sight I must have presented at that moment: a squirming creature from the deep, tangled in a fishing net—or the fact that she recognized me. Did she think I was one of the ghosts that were widely believed to haunt these islands, or had she seen at once that it was her former BFF and Thomas’s ex-fiancée who’d suddenly leaped up out of nowhere? Ah well, in either case it must have been a terrifying apparition.
They were already long gone by the time I had the chance to recover from my own fright. I clambered out of the barrel, coughing and choking. I tore the net off my head and shook my sopping-wet hair. It was exactly what Mrs Iedema—and everyone else, in fact, who’d ever come into contact with me—wished: that they’d see me burn, burn, burn in hell.
The air inside the fort was unbreathable, but it took me a while to work up the nerve to crawl outside. I convinced myself, in the end, that whatever awaited me outside couldn’t possibly be any worse than the fate I had just narrowly escaped.
When I got outside, I saw the two of them racing off across the drying sand. Two tiny figures on the wide expanse of the flats, no longer frightening at all.
I flopped down in the sand. I suddenly got the giggles, from sheer nerves. I laughed because I was still alive, and every gulp of fresh air made me laugh even harder, even wilder and more frantically, because from the colour of the sand I could tell that the tide was about to come in, so that the flats would be at their most treacherous. It would soon start slowing Thomas and Vanessa down as they ran. Every step would take more and more effort.
Unbeknownst to them, the sea was already seeping into the outer channels of the bay. It always did that part in leisurely fashion, taking its time. But this wasn’t some safe beach at home in Holland. The shape of the bay, as well as the preponderance of salt marshes and lochs, meant that here the water didn’t sweep in gently, from one direction only. Sooner or later the sea ran out of patience and felt the need show its true face. Then it would come thundering in at such a clip that it had given rise to countless tragic ballads. High tide at Uig wasn’t merely a flood, it was a deluge. Even Iain himself, deemed by all to be the expert on the subject of silt and mud, admitted that he had once stared death in the face out here.
The grey sky that had kept the tourists indoors this morning hung low over the beach, which was now rapidly filling with water. It could start to rain at any moment. In church they’d have to raise their voices as they sang their hymns in order to hear themselves over the loud din of the heavenly waters. I jumped to my feet and stretched my arms toward the sea, the sea that for the moment still looked like an innocent, insignificant line on the horizon. ‘Hurry!’ I whispered to the tide, breathlessly. ‘Come on, come in quickly!’
Were they already starting to trip and stumble, those two out there? Were they sinking ankle-deep in the soft sand? And had it started to dawn on them yet? The realization that their time would soon be over?
Knowing that there’s no way out anymore is almost more unbearable than the inevitable outcome itself. I had always found that to be true, anyway. All the teasing and tormenting had been nothing compared with the harsh, relentless certainty that there was more of it to come, day in, day out. For no matter what I’d tried to do, no matter how I’d reacted, no matter how much I’d squirmed, there had been no escaping it. I had been like an egg, defenceless against the approaching rim of the frying pan. Or like some impotent maggot, unable to wriggle out of reach of the pecking beaks. Or like a big fat turd that has no choice but to be expelled from someone’s anus.
Tripping over my own two feet in my haste, I raced back to the fort to get the binoculars. It still stank to high heaven in there. The open jerrycan lay on its side next to the oil barrel, leaking its last drops into the sand. And suddenly I was floored by the sickening thought that I—yes, naturally, I—would be blamed for this. After all, I was the only other kid on the island who wasn’t in church. And even if I had been in church, in the first row, in plain sight, they would still find a way to blame me. It made no difference, once they’d decided you were the one that was gonna get it! ‘Och now, look here,’ they would piously exclaim this afternoon. ‘Someone was here! Our Luce, wantin’ to let us know we’d best no’ try anything with her! Shame she didna have matches on her. Aye, well, there’s weans for you; her ma won’t let her play with fire.’
I nearly choked on the thought that here was yet another problem for which I had Thomas and Vanessa to thank. I couldn’t breathe right, and I felt tears spurting from my eyes, actually spurting. Sobbing, I dragged myself back outside.
They were now just two little dots out there on a flat, shimmering mirror.
The tide that I hadn’t been able to turn, back home, had now turned for me. Only it was a real tide, this time.
Starting to feel frantic, I stood in the lee of the fort, shading my eyes with one shaking arm and holding the field glasses up to my eyes with the other.
As in a hazy TV picture, Vanessa’s blond hair and Thomas’s big round head came wavering into view. Pff, what a loyal friend she had proved to be, and he, what a faithful fiancé! I focused the binoculars. Now I could see their faces. They were looking round, panicked, scouring the beach for a dry stretch of sand. Their eyes were bulging. They galloped from here to there, desperate, pleading. That’s what I must have looked like to them so many times, for six long years. Like a cornered rat caught in a trap.
You’d better believe I felt for them. I knew exactly what they were going through. What it was like to be sold down the river. To be impotent, helpless, and lost from the word go, and yet still hoping against hope that you’d be rescued.
Thomas took off his jacket with jerky movements and began waving it over his head. Through the binoculars I saw his mouth open and close, shouting for help. The sound was drowned out by the roar of the wind and the constant screeching of the gulls. How deserted the beach must look to him.
The channel that always filled up first was already full of water. It was so wide across that it was practically a lake. On fine days we used to go swimming in it.
What else could they do now except what I’d always been forced to do too: accept the inevitable? At least they didn’t have a whole lot of eyes leering at them; at least they were spared the torment of ridicule. There was nobody egging anybody on, no jeering and yelling to give it to them good, harder, longer, nastier. There was no circle of viciously hooting and cheering onlookers, betting on their chances of survival. No one had ambushed them and forced them into this tight spot. They couldn’t blame it on anything or anyone except themselves.
And suddenly the field glasses almost fell out of my hands. Because—could I, for that matter? Could I have blamed anybody else? Could I, really? True, I could never have run home and told anyone about the bullying. Ludo and Duco would immediately have wanted to go to bat for me. If they’d ever had the chance … I shuddered. But surely I could have made up a story, or found some way to draw attention to my plight? I could simply have attracted notice by screaming bloody murder as soon as the others started ganging up on me, instead of always gritting my teeth and bearing it. I could have burst into tears, or gone into hysterics. I could have shown the school nurse my bruises. I could have ratted on my classmates to the teacher, or come up with some clever ruse that would have exposed what they were doing.
I could have done all kinds of things. And I had done nothing. Nothing at all. Because all that time I had known, deep inside, that I deserved every beating, every bit of it and more, because I was bad—so bad that sometimes it made my heart sink right down into my shoes; how could the score ever be settled any other way than by continual punishment and humiliation?
Bewildered, I stared at the two dots out on the mudflats that were my ex-fiancé and my former best friend. I had allowed them to terrorize me—them and all the others. I had brought it all on myself. Because if I hadn’t, I’d without a doubt have wound up burning, burning, burning, in hell.
I dropped the binoculars in the sand. The burden of being a thoroughly bad person was suddenly so intolerable that I was close to tears again.
The sea, meanwhile, was in so close that I could hear it roar.
Blindly, I started running. If only I could perform one good deed, just once, if only I knew how to do it! Something selfless, something kind and forgiving, something noble, something honest and true! It could never make up for the other thing, but at least it might make me feel less like a rotten apple. But I didn’t have the time to sit and think it over right now. It was time for action.
I splashed into the channel, sprinting toward the mudflats. The current was already so strong that my legs were almost immediately yanked out from under me. I fell forward in the water, and instinctively started thrashing my arms and legs. My clothes and shoes were slowing me down. It seemed to take ages to reach the first sandbank. Or was it was taking so long because the sandbank was already underwater?
Whimpering, I flipped myself over on my back and swam to dry land, doing the backstroke. Nothing, nothing I did was ever right! Idiot—I should have run for help straight away. I should have raced to the telephone booth down the road, next to Uig’s postboxes, all tethered down with rope against the wind. Maybe I’d even have met the postman on the way.
But it was Sunday! The postman was in church! Everyone was in church.
Everyone, except Iain.
When, soaked to the skin and bawling my head off, I’d crossed the machair and finally reached the dirt road, he was just riding up on his bicycle. He didn’t see me at first—he was too busy thinking about my mother, of course. Worse, he’d probably sneaked out of church for a secret assignation. Rowan was still seated in her pew on the right side of the aisle, praising God with all her heart, but on the left, where the men sat, her husband’s seat was empty.
‘Iain! There are two kids out on the flats!’ I screamed. ‘Iain! Iain! There are kids on the flats and the tide’s coming in! Help, Iain, help!’