Anndra came and joined us splashing about in the sea for a while before Aunt Rita called us back to eat, and we all sat around the travelling rugs, Uilleam still fully dressed, and tucked into the grub that was laid out on plates. There was cheese and pickle, and bread and cold meats. Egg sandwiches, cucumber sandwiches. Flasks of tea and coffee, and bottles of lemonade in a cold bag.
The ball came out of the blue, from somewhere on the other side of the windbreak. It landed smack in the middle of our lunch, upsetting plates of food and tipping over an open flask to spill still piping hot coffee all over the rug.
Seonag and I screamed, startled, and Uilleam roared with anger, jumping immediately to his feet to hurl Gaelic abuse over the windbreak at the culprits. Aunt Rita remained remarkably unperturbed. ‘Alright, keep calm, it’s not the end of the world,’ she said. Nothing if not practical, she handed the ball to Anndra and began rearranging the plates and food, taking napkins from the hamper to mop up the spillage.
But Uilleam was not so easily mollified. He snatched the ball from Anndra as Ruairidh came running up, panting, from beyond the windbreak. He regarded the chaos of food and plates with dismay. ‘I’m so sorry,’ he said. ‘The wind caught the ball, and...’
‘You fucking idiot!’ Uilleam shouted at him.
‘Uilleam, please, it was an accident,’ Aunt Rita said, retaining her accustomed calm. But Uilleam wasn’t about to let it go, and he knew that Rita wouldn’t understand him if he stuck to Gaelic.
‘You stupid fucking boys just don’t care, do you?’ He stabbed a finger into Ruairidh’s chest. ‘And you, you wee fucker, you’ve been nothing but trouble your whole life.’
‘Oh don’t be such an arse,’ I told my big brother, but he wasn’t listening.
Ruairidh was bristling with anger. He had apologized for what was obviously an accident, but he wasn’t about to stand down when it came to taking abuse from Uilleam. He looked at my aunt. ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Murray. It was an accident. Is there any chance we could get our ball back?’ His friends were gathered watching from a discreet distance.
‘No fucking way,’ Uilleam shouted in his face, and I saw Ruairidh clench his teeth, and his fists.
‘Aw grow up, Uilleam,’ Anndra said. ‘Give them their ball.’ He and Ruairidh were around the same age and had long been friends.
‘I’ll give them their fucking ball,’ Uilleam hissed, and he stuck it firmly under his arm and went marching off towards the water.
Aunt Rita called after him, ‘Uilleam, don’t be silly. Let it pass now.’ She had no idea just how strong the language was, but the tone of it was a powerful clue. Me and Seonag and Anndra jumped to our feet and went chasing after him. Ruairidh stood seething for a moment, before turning and running past us to try to wrestle the ball away from Uilleam. But Uilleam put a hand in his face, for all the world as if fending off a tackle on the rugby field, and ran on right up to the water’s edge. There he released the ball from his hands and kicked it with all his might. Caught by the wind, it went sailing over the incoming waves to land with a splash in the bay, a good thirty yards out.
I remember groaning at the stupidity of it. ‘Uilleam. Jesus, what an idiot!’
One of the other boys detached himself from the group and came running up to the rest of us. ‘That’s my ball!’
Uilleam turned on him, and I remember thinking he was old enough to know better than this. ‘Go and get it, then.’
‘I can’t swim!’
‘Awww, that’s a shame. Looks like the game’s a bogey.’ This in English. Pure Glasgow slang that he must have picked up at university.
I glanced towards the ball. It was riding the incoming swell, and seemed to be drifting even further out, drawn by the currents.
Aunt Rita joined us at the water’s edge, then, hands on hips. ‘Well, that’s just the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen.’ She turned to the group of village boys. ‘Whose ball is it?’
The boy put his hand up.
‘I’ll buy you another one,’ Aunt Rita said.
Uilleam snorted his disapproval. ‘It’s not that far out. Any decent swimmer could go and get it.’
‘Aye, like you?’ Ruairidh said. He knew perfectly well that Uilleam couldn’t swim.
Uilleam bridled. ‘Why don’t you go and get it, then, big-mouth? You won the swimming championship at the Nicolson, didn’t you? Or maybe you’re a chicken.’
Ruairidh glared at him, and I saw his eyes flicker just for a fraction of a second in my direction, before he turned and without another word went plunging out into the water.
‘For God’s sake, lad, what are you doing?’ Aunt Rita shouted after him, and was almost drowned out by a chorus of voices imploring Ruairidh not to do it.
‘Stop it!’ I screamed after him. ‘Stop it!’
But by now he was already out of his depth and windmilling his arms in strong steady strokes to break through the incoming swell and set a course for the ever-diminishing ball.
We all watched, then, in silence, barely daring to breathe, as he got further and further away. It took an interminable time for him, finally, to reach the ball. I don’t think any of us had realized just how far out it really was.
Even from where we stood on the edge of the water we could hear him fighting for breath. Big, deep, barking gasps. Having reached the ball, he clung on to it now to keep himself afloat as he tried to control his breathing, but we could see that all the time the current was drawing them both further out.
Real fear stalked among us then, and I could see from his face that even Uilleam was starting to panic.
For two or maybe three very long minutes Ruairidh clutched the ball to his chest, floating on his back as he slowly regained his breath. Then, without letting it go, he started kicking with his legs and setting a course back towards the beach. But even as we watched, he seemed to make no progress at all. The pull of the current was stronger than the kick of his legs. If anything, it seemed to me, the swell was growing, the waves breaking a good twenty yards out where the seabed fell away and the undertow dragged everything down.
Ruairidh’s friends were screaming encouragement at him, but not one of them could swim, or at least weren’t admitting to it.
‘You idiot! You stupid idiot!’ Aunt Rita shouted at Uilleam. I had never seen her so angry. She hoisted up her skirts and went wading off into the water, waist-deep, as if by somehow getting closer to him she could reel him in. But she must have realized the futility of it and stopped, her dress floating on the surface of the sea, and spreading out all around her like ink from a squid.
Suddenly, Anndra went sprinting past me, legs pumping as he pulled them up out of the water to plunge forward, and then launch himself past Aunt Rita and into the sea. Everyone, almost in unison, called him back. But Anndra had made up his mind and nothing was going to change it. He was a strong boy, my brother, with muscular shoulders and a ripped chest and stomach. A good swimmer, too, and the courage of a lion.
Our protests tailed off as we watched him power his way through the incoming waves, fear nearly choking us. For a moment he vanished, and no one dared breathe until we saw him again breaking the surface of the water beyond the swell. Long, elegant strokes of his arms took him quickly out towards Ruairidh, and he reached him much more quickly, it seemed, than it had taken Ruairidh to get out there himself.
Now we could hear him gasping for breath, too, and both boys clung to the ball, dipping beneath the surface then emerging again with water streaming down their faces. Anndra was shouting something to Ruairidh, but it was impossible to make out what. Then, of a sudden, they both struck out for home. Ruairidh was still on his back, one arm crooked around the ball for buoyancy, the other arcing through the water as he kicked frantically with his feet. Anndra remained on his belly, his left arm making arcs through the water in sync with Ruairidh’s, the other hooked around the arm that held the ball.