Ardnish Was Home E-Book

Angus MacDonald

• Herausgeber: Birlinn
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Serie: The Ardnish Saga
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 341

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

Young Donald Peter Gillies, a Lovat scout soldier lies in hospital in Gallipoli in 1916, blinded by the Turks. There he falls in love with his Queen Alexandra Corps nurse, Louise, and she with him. The story moves back and forth from their time at the field hospital to the west highlands of Scotland where Donald grew up. As they talk in the quiet hours he tells her the stories of the coast and glens, how his family lived and the fascinating life of a century ago: bagpiping, sheep shearing, celidhs, illegal distilling, his mother saving the life of the people of St Kilda, the navvies building the west highland railway and the relationship between the lairds and the people. Louise in turn tells her own story of growing up in the Welsh valley: coal mining, a harsh and unforgiving upbringing. They get cut off from the allied troops and with another nurse are forced to make their escape through Turkey to Greece, getting rescued by a Coptic priest and ending up in Malta. By this time their love is out in the open, but there is still another tragic twist to their story waiting on the way back to Donald's beloved highland home . . .

Leseprobe

Angus MacDonald has lived all his life in the Highlands. He served in the local regiment, the Queen’s Own Highlanders, before building a financial publishing company that was sold in 2007. He now has businesses in recycling, renewables and education, and runs the Moidart Trust, a charitable organisation that helps people to develop companies in the West Highlands. He is married to Michie and has four sons – Archie, Jack, Jamie and Donald.

First published in 2016 byBirlinn LimitedWest Newington House10 Newington RoadEdinburghEH9 1QS

www.birlinn.co.uk

Copyright © Angus MacDonald 2016

The moral right of Angus MacDonald to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form without the express written permission of the publisher.

ISBN: 978 1 78027 426 3eISBN: 978 0 85790 335 8

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication DataA catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Typeset by Hewer Text UK Ltd, EdinburghPrinted and bound by Bell & Bain Ltd, Glasgow

Acknowledgements and Dedication

Ardnish Was Home started as a short story and grew and grew. Holidays, starting at the millennium and for the next sixteen years, saw me rise ridiculously early and write for a few hours until we headed out to play. In between I would be collecting and collating the stories.

As my siblings and I were being reared in the West Highlands, our father was the non-stop fount of these anecdotes, and we participated in the old ways of clipping the sheep, the gathering, stalking deer and building hay stacks. My grandfather would regale us with stories of his father, Colonel Willie, who plays a key role. It was my father too, who on reading the first few thousand words, encouraged me to persevere and complete the book.

So, thanks to my father, Rory MacDonald, to whom I dedicate Ardnish Was Home, for providing both the tales and the inspiration to write it.

AM

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Author’s Note

Ardnish is where God was born. Anyone who has been there on a day in early May, as the sun sets over Goat Isle, would see why it is a certainty.

The peninsula is the most beautiful place on earth: the gentle hills behind the village; the towering mountains of An Stac and Roshven facing us, reflected in the sea on a calm day; the curve of the beach in front; and the islands of Eigg and Rum beyond. The clear air makes it feel as if the two islands are within reach although in fact it is a full day’s rowing to get to Eigg. Ardnish was home – it is where I belong – and every day I am away I yearn to return.

Chapter 1

WARGALLIPOLI, OCTOBER 1915

My eyes won’t open. My head is throbbing, and my wail of pain and fear brings running footsteps. There’s a girl, speaking in a language similar to Gaelic. I struggle desperately to get up – one arm is useless – and I hear the words, ‘You just lie there, boyo. We’ll get the doctor and get some morphine inside you.’

My first spell of consciousness is agony. Flashing memories of the Turks’ brutality; my helplessness and inability to move. I hear a man’s voice as he takes my arm, then there’s a sharp jab and a soft cool cloth caresses my sweat-drenched face. A girl’s murmurings, like a lullaby, calm my anxiety, and I drift off to sleep . . .

HOME

I need to remember home; like me it is dying. My death knell is its death knell; a village that has been inhabited by my family for thousands of years is down to seven people, all of whom are over fifty. People don’t visit, the fields are deteriorating and a slow unhappy decline seems inevitable.

*

I see my parents outside; my mother’s knitting a pale blue woollen shawl and my father’s scraping down a reed for his bagpipes. They’re both laughing, and I remember why: we had two pet orphaned lambs and my brother and I were playing with them. I can picture my mother now, reaching out, drawing me to her, holding me tight.

The journey to the place where I was born – and where my heart will go when I die – begins with the puffer from Oban to Mallaig. The boat visits a host of places that were visited by Bonnie Prince Charlie in 1745, before calling at the pier in front of Inverailort Castle.

As the boat steams up Loch Ailort, a finger of land some five miles long emerges, poking into the Atlantic. On the largest of its beaches, catching all the sun, wisps of smoke from a couple of the houses draw the gaze closer still. In front of the house on the left sits an old lady on a chair – my mother.

The tide is high. The captain will run the boat up against the shore until stones scrape against the metal hull. In the next wee while, the boat will lie uncomfortably on her side as the water recedes and the crew help the passengers down a ladder and onto the seaweed-covered shore.

The boat will be met by the laird, Mr Cameron-Head, and a couple of others, no doubt. Aboard will be a friend or two coming to stay for the summer and maybe a returning local who has been away at the university or working. Calum the Post will be there to collect the mail and put some parcels on the boat to be taken away. People will materialise from all over and coal, timber, wooden boxes of food and cloth, maybe a chest of drawers or some other furniture will be lifted over the side and carried, with difficulty, to the shore.

The craic is good, with Mrs Cameron-Head appearing with tea for everyone, and when all is done, the crew and others head up to the inn for some food and to wait for the tide to come back in and refloat the boat. Then it will turn west and continue its voyage.

It is a two-hour walk along the ridge, with the heather-covered land sloping down to the sea on each side. There will be a stag or two, I would warrant, and certainly some cattle. A plethora of birds will fly up from their nests, luring danger away from their nesting chicks. The path peters out on the hill above the village of Peanmeanach, where there is nothing to be done but soak in the magnificence of the setting.

As the evening sun sets over the islands there is a warm glow over the crescent of houses; some just ruins now. One of the women, probably my mother, will have gone into the house to put the kettle on as she knows she has visitors.

WAR

‘Now then, how are you feeling?’ A cool hand touches my forehead.

‘I’m thirsty. My eyes won’t open. Can you help me?’

She returns with some water and props me up while I drink. Collapsing back onto the camp bed, I feel her take my hand. She bathes my sore eyes and tells me in as gentle a way as you can imagine that I have been blinded and my eyes had to be bandaged up to stop the sand getting in and to keep the flies away. She tells me my shoulder has taken a bullet, and they need to take a good look at it later, maybe on the hospital ship.

As I lie in pain, in darkness, I can hear the rustle of her clothes and smell her scent. Her murmuring voice is so reassuring and comforting. The smell of cordite, the taste of tea being held to my lips, the noise of the battle all fade into the background when she is near. I feel as if I am in my mother’s arms again, and my muscles relax. The shivering subsides and the tension slips from my body as this extraordinary girl nurses me back from hell. I know she wants me to live and I am determined to do so – for her, for Louise.

As the minutes and hours tick past, the boom of the naval shelling from the shore where the engagement continues is carried up by the wind. There are a great many of us here, lying in rows in tents along the beach.

I sense I am close to death, I am in so much pain, and I need to rely on senses other than eyesight. I pray to God that I will get better and that Louise and I will go to Ardnish and home.

As dawn breaks, I listen to the groans of the injured and the agitated sounds of the nurses and medics moving wounded soldiers in and dead bodies out. We are given bread and strong coffee that makes us wince. The coffee has an unusual taste, but I am growing to like it. After the freezing cold of the night, the heat of the day penetrates the tents and I lie helpless, raking my hand back and forth on the sand.

HOME

My parents, Donald John and Morag Gillies, are the glue of the village. They are involved in everything. If they were to leave, so would everyone else. But they won’t.

Then there is the old woman – or cailleach in the Gaelic – Eilidh Cameron. She must be about eighty, though she wouldn’t know for sure herself. Her husband never returned from the army when she was young and she never met anyone else. The whaler, because he was one once, is John Macdonald, and he and his wife Aggie are in their sixties. Quiet, gentle people. Their daughters emigrated to Australia some years ago and they haven’t seen them since. There is Mairi Ferguson, Sandy’s mother and great friend of my mother, and Johnny ‘the Bochan’, a bachelor who lives for his collie dogs. He must be in his seventies now. He has a house at Peanmeanach but prefers to stay in a bothy at Sloch at the west of the peninsula. The postie, in the smart new post office house, is John MacEachan, a local man, and handy at fixing anything at all.

Mairi is a character like my mother, full of energy and go. Always a smile on her face, even when washing clothes in the burn in driving rain. Short and stocky, she’s permanently dressed from head to foot in tweed woven by herself, with a grey shawl over her shoulders, even on the hottest August day. She is a kindly woman who collects wood or peat for the old, and when someone is feeling poorly she’d have a poultice or herbal remedy made up to help them.

I recall the wee wood about two hundred yards behind the village, not far off the path that takes you to the mainland. Whenever other children were around, Sandy and I would drag them off to our den by the burn in the wood. There was an oak with branches hanging over the burn with an excellent tree house that my father had helped build when we were wee, just as his father had done for him on the same branches thirty years before. The moss underneath was so deep that it came up to your ankles and was excellent for using as ammunition, and we had an old plough that we had dragged in, to use as a barricade. Often, whenever our mothers wanted to find a pan, or my father a tool, this is where they would come and look first.

We didn’t learn for many years that my father was able to keep an eye on us by taking his old stalker’s telescope from behind the door, steadying it against the corner of the house and observing exactly what we were up to. So when we had promised to do our schoolwork in the tree house he knew with certainty that we were building a dam instead.

WAR

As I lie here my hand can reach down to touch the drones of the bagpipes that I know so well. If I die, will they be taken back to my family? Or buried beside me? I would like somebody to take them home. Maybe my commanding officer would; he knows how famous these pipes are. When Louise comes to my bed I tell her these pipes are important to the Highlands, would she get a message to Colonel Macdonald to ask him if he could get them back to my father?

‘No, DP. You’ll be carrying them back yourself and playing a tune as you do so,’ she replied, giving my shoulder a squeeze. This was typical of Louise. Although I couldn’t see her smile, I could sense it.

Our family are the hereditary pipers to the Chieftains of the Macdonalds of Clanranald, with the bagpipes not so much an instrument of pleasure as a way of life. As I grew up it often seemed as though the sound of the chanter or the pipes themselves would fill the air, rebounding from the hills around the village. It was said that the Blackburns decided to build the great house of Roshven when they heard the pipers of Peanmeanach playing across the water after anchoring their yacht in the bay.

These very pipes were played when Prince Charlie landed at Glenfinnan in 1745. They served with the 79th in Balaclava during the Crimean war and were in my father’s hands when my regiment, the Lovat Scouts, was raised to fight the Boers in South Africa in 1901. At least two of my ancestors were killed playing them, including my great-grandfather who was hacked to death with knives during the Indian mutiny. It seems I may well be the third.

‘Donald Peter?’ Louise’s voice. ‘The doctor’s here to look at you.’

To look at me. That’s all he does, really.

‘Am I beyond saving?’ I ask him.

He takes the bandage off my shoulder and mutters as he probes with his fingers, prising my glued eyes open. It hurts me, and I twist away from him and cry out.

I hear a gasp from Louise. ‘Doctor Sheridan, the patient is in real pain!’

There is a silence. I can feel the tension between the two of them.

‘And how do you feel today?’ he asks me distractedly.

I feel a stethoscope against my chest. ‘The same, I think.’

‘It won’t be long before we have you on the hospital ship and back to Malta.’

‘Thank you, Doctor,’ I say, though I can hear that he has already hurried on. Louise goes, too, but not before giving my hand a reassuring pat.

We injured are in a field station, tucked under a cliff where the Turks cannot shell us. There are maybe a hundred of us here, I am told, waiting until we get word that there is space on a hospital ship for us. The Gloucester Castle has taken a run to Malta with the last cargo of wounded and is due back in a week, we are told. So we wait.

Every now and again someone slips away and the Turkish prisoners come and carry him out for burial. Like all my people, I am a Roman Catholic and I worry about not having a priest to hear my last confession, and being buried amongst non-believers. I hear that there is a priest amongst the injured but that he has a head wound and cannot talk or move. I would like to have him near me as I go.

I look forward to the long sleepless nights, when Louise comes to talk. I do feel spoilt. I monopolise her time, I’m demanding, and when she is nearby I can usually find an excuse to call her over. It usually works. I know I get much more attention than the other men. I am selfish, though, and a couple of times she has put me in my place.

One day had been particularly busy, with lots of casualties arriving.

‘Nurse, nurse,’ I had called out as I heard her pass, ‘would you help me sit up a bit?’

She did, but said firmly, ‘DP, we’ve been working flat out for fifteen hours. There are thirty men I need to look after urgently, and you’re not one of them today.’

An hour later, she came by with a bottle of water. ‘Have a sip, DP, and get some sleep. I’m off to get some rest myself.’

My heart lifted again. I’d been forgiven.

Tonight, though, things are quiet. Louise is on duty and comes to sit on my cot beside me. She is all mine. We talk about the scarce water supplies and how the hospital ships would be back from Malta with space for us injured.

‘But tell me how you came to be here,’ Louise says, her hand on my arm.

‘Louise, you won’t want to hear. It’s not exciting. My family lead a quiet life. It’s just us and a few others tucked away in the Highlands with our animals. I’ll bet you’ve had a much more interesting life with parties and everything.’

‘Not at all. Tell me about your life, DP. I want to know about your parents, your house and your animals.’

We have the time; there is no gunfire, and dawn is a long way off. I lie in silence with only the murmur of the waves a few feet from the tent. I can hear Louise breathing as she sits patiently, knowing I’m going to talk. I know that if I stretch out my hand it will touch her.

HOME

I am only twenty-one, although I have seen as much of the Great War as anyone. My brother had just been ordained as a priest, and he and I signed up in 1914; opting for the Scouts, of course.

Although only a year, it seems a lifetime ago that Colonel Willie MacDonald walked into Ardnish and declared that I was to join him to fight the Bosche. I was just back from two years on Canna and had no plans. To take the King’s shilling was the obvious thing to do; it was a tradition in the family.

The Colonel and my father had served together thirteen years before against the Boers in South Africa, and we knew, when war broke out, that we would join him; it was unthinkable that we would do otherwise. The Colonel’s brother, Father Andrew, was a monk at Fort Augustus Abbey and knew my family well; he came to stay with my father from time to time and loved to go and fish in the hill lochs above the village.

The Lovat Scouts had a great Boer War and were praised by everyone. The Highland men’s ability to spy the ground and report on troop movements saved countless lives. My father was proud of what they had achieved and valued highly the friendships he forged at that time.

I tell Louise that my father has a wooden leg, and she asks me how it happened . . .

*

Camped up overnight in South Africa, the Boers attacked in the darkness, filling the officers’ tent with a fusillade of fire before turning on the troops and horse lines. The commanding officer, Colonel Murray, ordered an immediate bayonet charge before himself being killed. There was chaos. Many men were killed as they fled to the safety of the other Lovat Scout camp nearby. My father, however, lay in the darkness with a bullet in his thigh thinking his time was up, as the Boers celebrated wildly all around.

But then, at first light, Lord Lovat led a horse-mounted charge, and the Boers were routed.

By the time they got my father onto a ship, gangrene had set in, and so they took off the leg above the knee. He is now back at home – grateful for the War Office pension and the fact that he can still pipe. He can still ride a garron and hobble around the place on his false leg; in fact there is precious little he cannot do around the village. In some ways, he thinks it’s a blessing; they have plenty of money to buy what they need, and even if he had two sound legs he wouldn’t earn as much by a long shot on Ardnish.

*

‘And your brother?’ Louise prompts.

‘Father Angus is the divisional padre. He’s been sent off to the Western Front and I haven’t seen him for a year. I get the occasional letter but most of the factual information has been censored. I’d love to see him again and I hope he’s all right.

‘He’s small like our mother, with much of her about him. He’s quite serious, has a very strong understanding of what is right and wrong, and God help you if you cross him. I remember him catching me baiting a cat when I was about six, and he came at me so fast I didn’t know which way to turn. His fist hit me like a battering ram and I got a broken nose that’s still squint and no sympathy from our mother who I ran to.’

‘A priest in the family.’ I can tell Louise is impressed. ‘What’s that like?’ She shifts a bit, and I can feel her warmth against me. My pulse quickens.

‘I’ll tell you about him. I think you’d like him . . .’

*

The last great celebration in the village was when he was ordained. It happened in Glasgow, where we all went for a couple of days on the train.

There were about forty young men all joining the priest-hood on the same day, to be ordained by the Archbishop of Glasgow.

We were all in our finery. Father was wearing the beautiful kilt he was given by Clanranald, a long white horsehair sporran, the piper’s tartan plaid draped over his shoulder, his dirk hanging from his waist and the elegant Glengarry hat. There is not a head that doesn’t turn when he is in this kit. Mother had on a purple heather-coloured skirt that she had woven herself and Sir Arthur Astley-Nicholson, the laird of Arisaig estate, had had made into a skirt for her, and a mantilla, with her beautiful red hair almost glowing through it.

I was wearing a kilt that used to be Angus’s and was far too big for me. It was the first time I’d dressed up like this; my hair was smoothed down with Brylcreem, and my woollen stockings were scratchy in the heavy army shoes that my mother had borrowed for me. I was a terribly self-conscious fifteen-year-old.

Along with all the other families we were in a quiver of excitement, and fiercely proud of our priest-to-be. Most of them came from the Isles and Lochaber – the mainstay of Catholics in Scotland, or so I’d heard.

We stayed with Aunt Aggy, my Dad’s sister, and other friends and relations who had moved down to live in the big city. They all lived in tenements, on top of each other in wee rooms, sometimes two to a mattress – and toilets just a bucket in the corner. There was another family who had been great friends of my parents from Arisaig and had moved to the city a couple of years ago to find work. Cameron, the father, and his son Iain both worked in the Govan shipyards building battleships for the Royal Navy. And Aunt Aggy had a job as a cleaner in the Grand Central Hotel. They were much better off now, with enough money to be able to eat, and they were hoping to get a flat to themselves soon, in a better part of town.

It all seemed very rough to us, but they treated us like royalty and there was a tremendous party in a bar before the big day. We all went to the Barra Head, a pub frequented by those from the west and run by the redoubtable Mrs MacNeil who, it was said, had owned the place since Adam was a boy.

There was no nonsense about Protestants taking us on here, unlike in many parts of Glasgow where Catholics were given a hiding. The Catholics had been pouring into Glasgow from all over the West Highlands seeking work, and the locals feared for their jobs. The Irish, too, had come to Glasgow to seek work in the mighty industrial powerhouse that the city was. Old Mrs MacNeil didn’t hesitate to come bolting out from behind the bar with her shinty stick, cracking heads left, right and centre, if people got out of order.

Although there were drams a-plenty that night, Mother was keeping everyone under control – no one would have a hangover for Angus’s big day. Sandy and me she watched in particular. We had not seen much more than the odd dram before, and we were keen to live it up a bit.

The cathedral was packed with a thousand souls, we guessed. The whispering up and down the aisles was mainly in Gaelic; you could hear the soft lilt of Barra and Eriskay. My father said that were three men being made priests from the village of Invergarry alone. Here and there was the unmistakeable broad tone of Glasgow Scots.

The choir sang and we competed with them, nearly lifting the roof off. As you can imagine for a lad used to no more than fifty in our wee church at Polnish, it was quite the thing.

In came the procession: a dozen altar boys, then the same number of priests and, lastly, Archbishop Maguire wearing his tall mitre and carrying his crozier. The singing rose and fell, and the men were welcomed into the priest-hood. A circle of hair about four inches across was shaved from each of their heads, which my sister Sheena told me was called a ‘tonsure’.

Angus came and joined us before the service for a few moments. There was much hugging and kissing, shaking of hands, and then he was off again. We would see him later, on the train. My mother was sobbing like a baby. Our family had always been emotional; it was my mother who’d got that going, she couldn’t be doing with all that formality. I would wrestle and twist away as she clasped me to her at any time, even when my friends were watching.

After two hours, we were done, and there was a rush for the 4.10 train to Mallaig, so we could get home that night. MacBraynes had laid on a special steamer to take people from Glasgow to Barra and the other islands. There would be a lot of whisky and not much sleep on the boat that night.

The train was packed as we headed up north, where a huge party was planned. My brother looked funny in his new black habit. Sheena and I both felt his tonsure; as smooth as a baby’s bottom, she said, to her brother’s discomfort.

‘Not much of a halo on you yet,’ said his disrespectful sister. Mother preened and glowed as people came from all over the train to shake his hand and wish him well.

The train clattered and rocked up Loch Lomond and across Rannoch Moor. You could see the steam yacht on the loch that Sir John Maxwell had shipped up to Corrour in pieces from Glasgow by train. It was reassembled on the side of the loch and was used to ferry his guests the eight miles down to the new lodge he had built.

The spring sun made the hills glow orange and the rocky outcrops glisten like silver. The mountains of Glencoe had snow still in the gullies, and alongside the track the stags would gallop away from the train as it approached. Ben Nevis towered above us as we pulled into Fort William and many of the passengers disembarked. But just as many newcomers got on, most of whom would be joining us for the big celebration that night.

Bottles of Long John whisky were passed around as we set off for the final hour on the train, and three fiddlers – Alex Macdonald and his two brothers from Avoch – got the party off to a good start in the front carriage. They were coming to the village to provide a bit of music, having played at a wedding in the Fort the night before. Sleep was a thing that fiddlers never seemed to need. They simply curled up after the evening was finished, always the last to bed down, and were up and off to the next ceilidh the following morning.

We felt heady and excited as the train stopped especially for us at Polnish, and the procession headed off over the hill in single file towards Ardnish and home. My father was on the grey garron with his wooden leg sticking out at the side. Mother, Sheena, myself, Mairi and Sandy shot off ahead to get some fires going and water boiling before everyone else arrived.

It was all done, though. The neighbours from across the peninsula who hadn’t come down to the service had been hard at work.

Those from all over Ardnish and friends and cousins had arrived, armed with bottles of whisky, haunches of meat, and bread. There must have been a hundred people present, and almost all of them, it appeared, were at pains to point out their relationship to us.

‘I’m your grandfather’s sister’s daughter from Bohuntin,’ said a white-haired cailleach.

‘Your great-auntie Lexie had two boys, of which I am the youngest,’ declared a man whose name I never caught.

The whisky was opened, savoured and complimented; the smiles became broader and laughter louder. The Auch boys were urged to get their fiddles out and then the ceilidh was in full flow. Faces grew bright red from the exertions and the alcohol, and clothes were shed as the May warmth was exacerbated by the sheer number of us cramped in the front room. Children danced with grandparents, teenage boys tried to unbalance the girls as they spun round the room, and not a single person sat on the sidelines.

My father, Father Angus and myself played eightsomes on the pipes; it would probably be the last time we would all play together, what with my brother heading off to the church.

My father was a doer, rather than a talker. My mother’s genes, on the other hand, had been inherited by Sheena, so without much persuasion she was up making a speech.

‘My goodness, isn’t the church lucky to have got Angus? There isn’t a girl in Lochaber who wouldn’t have him in a trice! I hope they care for him . . .’

And so on. There was much shushing from our brother and whoops from the audience as she recounted how his determination to join the clergy had been given a serious wobble when that brazen young hussy Maggie Wilson came up to stay with the Macphersons two or three years ago.

Anyway, her speech was well received, and after Angus stood up and said a few words of thanks to everyone, the party really buckled down into something quite serious.

Every stick of furniture had been removed from the croft house and still there wasn’t an inch of space. Food was handed out to a big table outside, while indoors, haunches of venison and mutton, piles of steaming potatoes and cabbage, and a big stack of herring rolled in oats lay beside a big salmon that had been caught on the Ailort in the nets only the day before and donated to the celebrations by the estate. Little did they know, but the rest of the fare probably came from their ground, too, not that anyone would have said anything.

The dance now was the Highland Schottische, where Jimmy and Hazel Macdonald always showed the way. And, with the exuberance and giddy excitement always encouraged by whisky and dancing, romance was in the air. Girls would be twirled off their feet and the lads would relish the chance to hold them tight. From time to time, a stealthy couple would slip off towards the cattle shed, always noticed by the grandparents sitting in benches along the wall.

As the evening wore on, the moon came out and bathed the shore with a light you could see to read by. My brother and I walked along the beach, talking as dawn broke; both of us were aware that it would never be the same again: us, the village, and the gathering of friends and kin like the night just gone.

‘What will you do for a job, Donald Peter?’ Angus asked.

I talked about getting a fishing boat; fishermen never starve.

‘There will always be plenty of fish around these waters,’ I said. ‘But I might join the army for a few years. I’ll know in a couple of years when I have finished my schooling. Mother wants me to go to university, to better myself, to move away.’

I sighed. ‘I’ll never be away from Ardnish for long, Angus, I’ll promise you that. Father says I should go and help out old Tearlach Maclean, our mother’s cousin on Canna. There is great demand for his whisky since Lloyd George put his tax up to fifteen shillings a gallon. He’s in his seventies now and is finding it difficult to manage.’

‘Aye, but it’ll be lonely for you, DP,’ said Angus.

‘I might just do it, though. It’ll be fun getting one over the excise men. Those Mackinnon girls on the island are easy on the eye too,’ I said, giving him a playful punch on the arm.

The hooded crows were cawing as they wheeled above us in the early morning. Gulls floated on the sea, and a seal poked its head up amongst them to survey the debris of the party. The village was full, with comatose bodies lying on the floor in every house. The whisky would surely help them sleep despite the hardness of the floor and the lack of a blanket or mattress.

I was sweet on a lass called Kirsty McAlistair from Glenuig at the time. Kirsty and I had danced like mad March hares; there was hardly a reel we’d missed apart from when I had had a spin with my mother, and Sandy’s, too. I felt the heat from Kirsty’s body through her cotton dress, but although I yearned to kiss her, I never had the chance.

That night, I pushed her boat off the beach and watched the McAlistairs row, unsteadily, the three miles across to their house. It was the last time I saw her. Her father worked for the estate, but it had laid him off, and the family moved to Glasgow shortly after.

WAR

Louise is silent for a long time. I wonder if my storytelling has sent her to sleep, but I feel her hand touch my arm.

‘Did you ever get that fishing boat?’ she whispers.

‘Not yet, maybe I will yet, though,’ I say, although with my injuries we both know it is unlikely. ‘I went off to Canna for a couple of years to help Tearlach make whisky. It would take a bit of time to tell you about it, Louise, but I think you’d enjoy the story. It was illegal whisky, we were on an island, and we spent our time avoiding the Customs and Excise men. I’m tired now, so I’ll tell you another time if that’s all right.’

‘Of course, DP. I won’t let you forget . . . You’re not coarse like many of the other soldiers, DP. You know things, too. You’re an educated man.’

‘No, no. I’m not, I’m not,’ I insist. ‘But we did have a strict upbringing – no swearing in the house. My father treated my mother well, they respect each other, and there has always been a feeling that God is somewhere nearby. Grace before every meal and family prayers on our knees before bed. My parents were always teaching us things.’

‘Mmm,’ murmurs Louise. ‘It wasn’t like that in our house. Rest now, and I’ll be back to see you later.’

As she heads off, the patients come to life with groans and coughs. I can hear a man peeing into a glass jar. There are raised voices as a soldier is brought down from the lines, probably with dysentery. Gulls screech; plenty of pickings for them. I had heard that losing one of the senses made the others more alert, and I am aware of straining to hear and identify everything much more than I did before.

Outside, I hear female Turkish voices. There are a couple of women who come along the shore and sell cigarettes, coffee, bread and other things to the soldiers. They do a roaring trade, with troops queuing to buy everything. The women take anything as currency: army boots, pound notes and even the contents of our ration packs. The officers did their best at first to stop it, but the women would just appear somewhere else, and there was always a willing buyer. The officers are concerned that our secrets will get back to the Turks, as no doubt they do, but it seems to us that our shortage of water and the position of the casualty station are the only two things they have learned, which they were certain to know, anyway.

The men revel in having Turkish cigarettes, which are much stronger than those issued to us and rather more exotic.

Louise has a close friend, and when I had been in the clearing station for a few days she bought her over.

‘DP, this is Prissie, my best friend. She’s working with the doctors in the operating tent.’

Now and again, Prissie comes by and we have a wee chat; she is very amusing and I am delighted to listen to her. One day, she appeared with some dried green beans, which she’d bought from the Turkish women and had cooked.

She passed them around the tent. ‘Eat these,’ she encouraged the men, ‘they’re good for you.’

Not many vegetables come our way so we’re happy to comply.

Chapter 2

WAR

Louise is coming. I can hear her footsteps.

It must be late; there is only the snuffling from the man beside me. Beyond I hear the rhythmic crash of the waves on the rocky beach and the accompanying rumble of the stones as they shift with the water. An occasional rifle shot can be heard on the hills above – maybe some poor woman is a widow now.

Louise kneels beside the bed and takes my hand. ‘The sergeant’s just died.’

We don’t talk for a while. I think about him. He’d been shot in the thigh and had lost a lot of blood. His strong Lancashire accent was but a whisper, and although he must have been in terrible pain, he suffered it silently. More than half of those who make it as far as the field hospital end up dying – a limb blown off or a bullet hole, often in the head as that’s what the Turkish snipers can see sticking above the trench. When a big push happens, huge numbers of men spill in here. There are separate tents for those with dysentery, the most common ailment.

Louise clearly enjoys my stories and I look forward to our conversations.

As the days pass, I lie there and remind myself of things to tell her. Without the distractions of sight, I seem to possess an extraordinary ability to recollect the smallest things.

*

I remember an incident from almost ten years ago. Sheena and I were walking along Loch Eilt on the way home from spending a few days in Glenfinnan with friends of the family. Along came Mr Cameron-Head in his new car. It was the first car I’d seen, and we stepped out of the way to let him pass. My mouth was wide with wonder, apparently, and I was stuck for words when he stopped and offered us a lift.

He talked all the way home. ‘Real leather seats. It’s American,’ he said, ‘a Cadillac. They’re the best.’

Sheena wasn’t struck dumb like me and blethered away to him quite happily.

He offered her a cigarette – her first, she said unnecessarily, as she coughed and spluttered.