Hebridean Sharker E-Book

Tex Geddes

• Herausgeber: Birlinn
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Seitenzahl: 337

Beschreibung

In 'Hebridean Sharker' Tex Geddes describes his exploits during the 1950s as a hunter of basking sharks in the waters of the Minch, between the Inner and Outer Hebrides. Using an adapted whaling harpoon, he and his crew stalked these huge fish often in perilous conditions, the liver of which is a valuable source of oil. Always a maverick, before World War Two Geddes had been a boxer and a rumrunner to Newfoundland. During the war he established a reputation as an expert knife-thrower and bayonet fencer and served in the Special Forces with Gavin Maxwell (author of Ring of Bright Water). He combined the hazardous pursuit of sharks with crewing the local lifeboat, ring-net fishing, lobstering, deer-stalking and salmon poaching. He went on to purchase the tiny island of Soay, where he lived with his wife Jeanne, continued to hunt sharks and became the Laird. His story is full of adventures and fantastic descriptions of a seagoing life in the islands. It has become a Hebridean classic.

Leseprobe

Joseph ‘Tex’ Geddes was born in 1919 in Peterhead, Aberdeenshire, and is believed to have been brought up in Canada. Expelled from school at the age of 12, he tried his hand at various jobs, including boxing and rum-smuggling. During the Second World War he served with the Seaforth Highlanders and the Special Forces, and after the war became a shark fisherman, at first working with Gavin Maxwell, author of the bestselling Ring of Bright Water. Tex Geddes went on to purchase the tiny island of Soay, near Skye, where he lived with his wife Jeanne, continued to hunt sharks and became the Laird. He died in 1998.

To

JIM BORDERS

who believed I could do it

This eBook edition published in 2013 by Birlinn Limited West Newington House Newington Road Edinburgh EH9 1QSwww.birlinn.co.uk

First published in 1960 by Herbert Jenkins Ltd, London

This edition first published by Birlinn Ltd, 2013

Copyright © The Estate of Tex Geddes

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.

eBook ISBN: 978-0-85790-643-4 ISBN: 978-1-78027-034-0

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter One

This begins as most stories end: ‘And so they were married and lived happily ever after.’ We were married in London, at Christchurch, Ealing, just before Christmas 1948. I shall never forget the pep talk the young Canadian minister gave Jeanne and me the day before the ceremony. ‘If you have any ideas that this marrying business is only to try, and if it does not work out can be dissolved, don’t come here tomorrow!’ Nevertheless we did arrive on the morrow, where my wife’s brother, who was to give her away, met for the first time my friend, Hugh MacDonnell. He had been shipmates with me during the war in a most peculiar army then training in the Highlands, and he had come down (or up) from Scotland to act as best man and give me moral support. It was funny to see them eyeing each other, two men who had never met before, standing at the altar steps taking part in a wedding ceremony. I was amazed how quickly it was over and all that remained was the signing of the register. I had crossed my Rubicon.

Although I had spent in all eight years in the Army, self-discipline was never my strong point, probably due to my free and easy early years. To quote from Tangye, who put it so neatly when he wrote: ‘They say that the average Newfoundlander just hasn’t any sense of citizenship; that he is a freedom-loving individualist who is determined to do exactly as he wants according to the narrow limits of his life, and for this state of mind they blame the sea.’ My life had not been devoted entirely to the sea, for strangely enough I had a great love for the Scottish Highlands, and in particular for deer and deer-stalking. Every spare moment of my time, when not actually fishing, I spent in the hills with the stalkers. In retrospect I could, and most probably should, have made more money if I had stayed out of the hills, but money-making was never my aim. Suffice it to say that I liked the sea, but loved the mountains. There was nothing worthwhile to be earned deer-stalking, so I compromised and went to sea for bread and butter.

I had first met Jeanne in 1944, in Meoble, a deer forest of some 30,000 acres of mountain in the southern shore of Loch Morar in Inverness-shire. At that time Meoble Forest was one of many special training schools established in the Highlands where men from all over the world were taught sabotage and espionage. In these schools I made many friends among the gamekeepers and stalkers, and returned to live permanently in the area after my discharge.

We had arranged to spend part of our honeymoon in Meoble with Hugh’s parents. This would give him the opportunity to spend a really long holiday in London free from any fear that his old father would have to manage the boats alone, for I knew Loch Morar like the back of my hand. Many a dark and stormy winter’s night had Hugh and I battled our way up and down its fourteen treacherous miles, where the wind seems to gather velocity as it funnels through the mountains. There is no road to Meoble unless you climb over the mountains from Loch Ailort, and therefore everything and everyone must be ferried the nine miles from Morar.

After the formalities were over and Hugh had deafened the neighbours with his bagpipes we caught the night train for Scotland – or, to be more exact, we caught a night train, having missed the one on which we had our sleeper reservations. The farther north we travelled the more seasonable became the weather and when we reached Mallaig there was a blizzard of driving snow, with a full gale of wind.

We quickly installed ourselves in the West Highland Hotel where we booked a room for the night, having phoned Duncan, Hugh’s father, and arranged for him to meet us at Morar pier in the morning should the weather permit. Mallaig (with the accent on the first syllable and not the last, as the lady announcer at King’s Cross would have you believe) is the end of the line and the jumping-off place for the Hebrides, but it would only take us five minutes in the train to cover the three miles back to Morar.

I had been fishing out of Mallaig since I left the forces and had not told anyone where I was going or why, when I left for London, specifically to escape the ragging there invariably is when a fisherman is fool enough to admit that he is to be married.

After we had had our meal we put on our duffel coats and, braving the snow, made for the harbour and the pub, to introduce Jeanne to some of what she then referred to as ‘my fishy friends’. Just as we were going into the first bar I was hailed by Dan MacGillevray, an old shipmate of mine.

‘God, Tex, where have you been? I’ve been searching all over the village for you. Didn’t you see the mustering rocket go off? Come on, there’s a call for the lifeboat and you are the only member of the crew I’ve found so far.’

It transpired that the coxswain was out of the village and most of the regular crew had gone home for the New Year. Most of Mallaig’s fishermen come of east-coast stock and they like to go ‘home’ as they call it, to spend the festive season with their relatives, even though they may have lived in Mallaig for twenty years.

At first I did not want to go; it was after all, in effect, my wedding night. ‘Surely you can get someone to take my place tonight of all nights?’ I pleaded.

Muttering under his breath, Dan hurried away to collect a crew as best he could, leaving Jeanne and me to make for the lounge bar. We didn’t go in, for, as I watched his retreating figure, I was torn between my natural desire to stay and the knowledge that I ought to be at my place in the lifeboat. The idea that men might lose their lives because the boat had only an inexperienced crew on such a night haunted me. Jeanne must have read my thoughts. ‘Do you want to go, Tex?’ she said.

This solved my dilemma and, leaving her to go back alone to the hotel, I raced down the road after Dan and caught up with him on the pier head. There we found that Jackie Kennedy, the engineer and wireless operator, had brought the lifeboat alongside the fishquay.

‘How many men have you got so far, Dan?’ I asked.

‘Just you and me and Jackie,’ Dan replied, having drawn the right conclusion from my reappearance. ‘I never believed you’d let the boat sail without you!’

They quickly made up the crew from volunteers on the pier while I went and got my seaboots (the oilskins are kept in the lifeboat and today boots as well are provided by the R.N.L.I.). Jumping aboard I dressed myself in oilskins and buckled on my lifejacket. Before we were under way Jeanne had joined the crowd on the pier; she did not look particularly happy. She was hatless and, the gale having blown off the hood of her duffel coat, her long hair was flying in all directions; yet she managed a cheerful wave as we drew away from the pier.

In the entrance to Mallaig harbour there is a reef with a small automatic lighthouse on it and just as we drew abreast a huge sea broke aboard us from our port beam and flung us, I felt sure, right on to the reef; whenever that night is discussed by the boys who made up the crew, there is still argument as to whether we were on it or tossed clean over it. Anyway, we were never nearer to losing the lifeboat, and perhaps some of our lives, than we were then, and in full view of the people watching us put to sea from the pier head. Clear of the harbour we met following sea heavy enough to break over her aft and roll right forward over her nose. As bowman I had to get to my station right forward where there is a sort of bo’sun’s locker, actually a small hold protected by a very strong mahogany hood. All sorts of ropes, a breeches buoy, lifelines, axes, sheath knives and a couple of oil tanks with hand pumps to calm the sea in the immediate vicinity of a wreck, are kept there. The gun for firing the lifeline is kept in the little wireless room just aft of my wee den of ropes, and I had to get down there to prepare a lifeline and check over the gun. I was wearing long thigh boots and before I could get to the wireless room they were full up to the top, my legs being carried from under me several times by the weight of water which constantly broke over the boat. We are used to that and know how to hang on and, more important, where to hang on, for even the finest seaman, unless he knows his boat well enough to find handholds in the dark, is liable to go over the side. I was damn glad to get down into the wireless room and get the hatch sealed behind me, having let down half the Minch with me, at least that was how Jackie described it. Pulling off my seaboots and emptying them out, I replied that in that case a wee drop more would not hurt.

Here, in the shelter of the wireless room, I could fix up my lifelines and check over the gun, which is kept here because, with the exception of the engine room, this is the only really dry place in the boat. I intended to stay down in the wireless room until we got to the Narrows of Kyle Rhea, where I knew we would get some shelter, at least enough to make it safe to move about on deck. As I worked on the lines I was able to listen to Jackie’s spasmodic bursts of conversation with Oban radio station and the radio at Erraid, but their messages appeared to be rather vague. All they were able to tell him was that a Fleetwood trawler was ashore somewhere in the vicinity of Kyle of Lochalsh and that the Kyle telephone lines were now out of order, probably blown down. We were to get there and ascertain from the Harbour Master or Coastguard where the trawler actually was.

Eventually the boat stopped her antics, having done everything but loop the loop, and I was as pleased to open the hatch as I had been to close it, for the wireless room is minute. At this juncture Jackie began to swear like a trooper.

‘What’s up?’ I asked him.

‘The bloody wireless is dead,’ he replied. ‘Not one cheep out of it since we entered the Narrows at Kyle Rhea.’ This intelligence I brought aft, leaving Jackie to twist knobs, pull switches and curse, or whatever one does to make wireless sets work. By the time we reached Kyle he had given it up and joined us aft at the cockpit, busying himself preparing a powerful searchlight. As we drew abreast of the pier we turned the searchlight on it, and there within a couple of hundred yards of the pier head was our trawler – a great ugly, rusty bitch, high and dry and still on an even keel, mocking us, and apparently not a thing wrong with her. She had been coming in round the end of the quay to the sheltered side and had carried her way too long, or her engine had stuck in gear, and she had run ashore at the top of high water in the quietest place she could possibly have found.

All the shipwrecked mariners we had come to rescue had to do to save themselves was step off the trawler’s stem almost on to the main road; to add insult to injury, these same ship-wrecked mariners caught our ropes for us when we came in alongside the pier. Dan and I at once got in touch with the station-master, whose office was about a hundred yards from the pierhead. He told us that the telephone was now in working order and that they had phoned the radio station at Oban to have us turned back. They did not require a lifeboat in the first place and had only been reporting that a trawler had overshot the pier and run aground when their telephone had gone on the bum; they also told us that Oban radio had been trying to get us all night to tell us this. You can well imagine how we felt. There we were, all soaked to the skin, having risked our necks getting there on a night of this sort and all for nothing. Of all the many occasions that I have been with the lifeboat when she has gone out to a boat reported in distress, this was the first and only time it proved a false alarm.

We were all invited aboard the Lochmor, one of MacBrayne’s inter-island mail and passenger steamers, a squat wee ship of about 500 tons, which was lying stormbound at the pier. The late Captain Robertson was then in command. A well-known character, liked by everyone, he had a ready wit and some of his anecdotes have become almost legendary. His high, reedy voice issuing so surprisingly from his portly figure had earned him the nickname ‘Squeaky’, and bellowing above the wind as it shrieked through the rigging, he bade us, ‘Come aboard, boys, and we’ll dig out the steward. He’ll find something to warm you up and the lads on watch will have a roaring fire going.’

Soon we were all grouped round the roaring fire, each with a mug of hot rum.

‘Surely you’re not going to batter her back to Mallaig tonight? Why not stay aboard here?’ he suggested. ‘It would have been bad enough running before the wind but you’ll get your bellyful if you batter her back against it.’

The majority of the crew were more than willing to stay where they were, but Jackie and I were for home, and I quoted from the orders: ‘. . . a lifeboat on completion of a mission must return to her base with all speed, refuel, and put the boat in order for the next call.’ The only man who knew about my marriage was Dan and I had asked him to say nothing.

We waited an hour or so in order to be in the Narrows at slack water, for an eight-knot current runs through there and this, added to the strength of the wind, might make a passage through impossible. It was decided that we should take turns at the wheel because on such a night, with its stinging, blinding sleet, no man could face into the wind for long. The most dangerous part of our journey home was going through the Narrows. Two miles long and only a few hundred yards wide, the towering mountains on either side turned them into a funnel for the wind, which tore at everything and screamed through the rigging, making a fearful din. When I had my first trick at the wheel I found it almost impossible to keep my eyes open; I certainly could not see the seas until they were on us, for the mountains which shut us in made the darkness seem impenetrable.

As we neared the mouth of the Narrows I realized that with that strength of wind there would be some very heavy seas piling up, but at least we would have searoom, although I had no delusions as to the hammering in store for us. As we emerged a huge sea hit us, lifting her up and up until she almost stood on end; and the engines were immediately eased to dead slow. It seemed ages before she straightened out, only to fall at once almost vertically down into the trough on the other side. The immensity of the hole we dived into made me wonder momentarily how much water remained between us and the bottom. She shook herself and began to climb out again when a terrific sea broke aboard her and for a moment or two she must have been completely submerged. The cockpit filled with water and we were up to our waists holding on for dear life, while she reared up and flung most of the water over her stern. Quite a number of such waves broke aboard us while we were down in a trough, but we just kept on going through them. I remember Jim Henderson, a Mallaig lobster fisherman who was at the wheel at that time, shouting cheerily to no one in particular: ‘Over or under boys, she must go now!’ and feeling sure that he was enjoying his battle with the elements, safe in the knowledge that the little boat was the best that money could buy. So long as her head kept up to the sea and her engines were eased at the right moment, to keep her from boring in too hard at the bottom of a trough, she would always come through on the other side. During this time it was quite impossible to move about on deck. Jackie was stuck in his wee wireless den and I wondered how he was getting on. Anyone who tried to leave the cockpit then would have been blown away like a feather or washed over the side like a spent match.

Clear of the Narrows the seas grew farther apart, giving us a better chance to handle the boat. I am not quite sure where we were when the sleet stopped, for there was plenty of water about all the time and we were being continuously drenched with spray. Despite this, I made my way cautiously forward to see how Jackie was making out. He was still alive, sitting on the floor with his back braced against the seat locker and his feet hard against the other, with his headphones in place over his ears, although he later admitted to taking them off during the worst of it in case he should break the cable. He was by then in touch with Oban radio and told me that there was nothing wrong with his wireless sets but, when he had entered the Narrows on the way up to Kyle, the mountains had blotted us out. He also told me that news of our position would be in Mallaig by now, for he had ordered fuel as was our normal procedure. This message was relayed to Mallaig by telephone from Oban radio. We arrived in Mallaig about 6.30 a.m. and finding the oil merchant waiting with his tanker we refuelled at once, put the boat to anchor and beat it for our respective homes.

We had each earned £1 for the first two hours at sea and 5s. an hour thereafter; in summer it would have been 15s. and 4s. thereafter.

Before leaving the lifeboat I would like to describe her, for she is no longer in Mallaig, having been replaced by a larger and faster boat. A Watson-type deep-water boat, she was forty-six feet nine inches by twelve feet nine inches with a displacement of twenty-two and a half tons. She was powered by a pair of forty hp diesels, giving her a maximum speed of eight and a quarter knots, and her fuel capacity gave her a safe range of sixty miles.

There are many different types of lifeboat, for a boat suitable for service in one coastal area may be the wrong type for another. Even so they can be roughly divided into two classes, deep- and shallow-water boats. Shallow-water boats are invariably used in areas where there are estuaries or where they have to be launched from a beach; there are no shallow-water boats in the north-west of Scotland. It has been found that a well-built boat of double-skinned diagonal planking of Honduras mahogany on straightgrained Canadian rock elm or oak frames will come through her rigorous trials better than one of steel construction, the possibly superior strength of the steel being offset by the much greater weight for equal buoyancy. It is not uncommon for a lifeboat’s bottom to be damaged in service, and one or more of her holds to become flooded; this condition is not, however, serious, for not only are all the bulkheads watertight, but every available space below decks is filled with small portable wooden buoyancy tanks, each constructed to fit its own particular place in the boat. Built in this way, a lifeboat is as nearly unsinkable as a boat can be made. There has been at least one case where the hull of a lifeboat has been damaged beyond repair and yet she floated safely.

Before a new lifeboat comes into service she undergoes a series of tests; for instance, to ensure that her buoyancy tanks will keep her up, all her holds are flooded, and in this state she must not only float but be stable. In addition, the engine room is flooded to ensure that the engines will still run when completely submerged; to make this possible lifeboat’s engines are so encased as to be completely watertight, but the air intakes are carried high up through the deck to the exhaust funnel. The unusual requirements imposed upon the construction of modern lifeboats by the stresses and strains inherent in their hazardous duties make them costly to build. The Mallaig lifeboat cost £12,000 when she was built in 1938, but the same type of boat today would cost £30,000. Further changes and improvements are constantly being effected: more shelter for the crew and rescued personnel; better radio communications, etc. Five international conferences have been held, the first in London in 1924, the next in Paris, a third in Holland, a fourth in Sweden and the latest in Oslo in 1947. At these conferences much has been done by interchange of ideas to improve both design and construction of the modern lifeboat.

The Royal National Lifeboat Institution came into being in 1824. Their first powered lifeboat was built in 1890, she had no propellers but was driven by a steam engine which worked a powerful pump, drawing in water through the bottom of the boat and discharging it at the sides – it could take in a ton of water in a second and drive the boat at nine knots. At that time propellers were thought to be vulnerable and the emphasis was on safety rather than efficiency, but nowadays all lifeboats are driven by twin screws in tunnels which are both safe and efficient.

The whole coastline north of Islay is served by four lifeboats operating from Islay, Mallaig, the island of Barra at the southern and Stornoway at the northern end of the Outer Hebrides. In my opinion there are still too few lifeboats in the north-west of Scotland.

The front door of the hotel had been left unlocked for me so I went straight up to our room. Switching on the light I found the carpet rolled back to the middle of the floor and the boards covered with sodden newspapers. My first thought was that I was in the wrong room, but the sight of my wife peacefully asleep reassured me. There was no sign of a leak in the ceiling and all the window panes were whole, so I could not understand where all the water had come from; I learned later that the wind was strong enough to drive the rain under the windows on that side of the hotel. Quietly picking up my bag, I tiptoed to the bathroom. A hot bath is a wonderful institution. I filled it up as far as I dared and just lay in the lap of luxury, thawing out, turning on the hot tap now and again until I was almost cooked. My wet clothes I left in the bath, having rinsed them out in fresh water to get rid of the salt. Dressing myself, I returned to our bedroom where even switching on the light for the second time did not waken Jeanne.

She finally awoke to find me sitting on the roll of carpet, a bottle of whisky in one hand and a glass in the other. Neither of us spoke for a full minute while Jeanne looked at me as if she thought I was a ghost. As I drained my glass her expression changed to relief. She told me that the hotel’s wireless had the trawler wave band and she was therefore able to listen to the first part of our conversation with Oban radio. Jack describing the kind of the night must have cheered her up no end; then she heard only: ‘Oban radio calling Mallaig lifeboat . . . calling Mallaig lifeboat . . . can you hear me? Over . . .’ but no reply from the Mallaig lifeboat, for we were then in the Narrows. She said that she had been terribly afraid when she saw the lifeboat meet the sea at the harbour mouth, for no reply from us convinced her that we were all drowned. Having accepted this she was able, so she said, to sleep peacefully for the remainder of the night! This characteristic acceptance of fate has amazed me more than once since then; when one thinks of it, to worry or lose sleep over probabilities which we have no power to alter is rather silly.

We were provided with a Highland breakfast such as one seldom sees elsewhere and I allowed none of it to go begging, for my night out had sharpened my appetite. Mrs MacLellan kindly dried out my clothes sufficiently for me to pack them, and we caught the midday train to Morar.

We were met at Morar station by Duncan, the best friend I ever had. He was then in his eightieth year, but looked the picture of health. His almost cherubic face wore its usual happy expression. Nothing was ever too much bother for him, nor have I ever heard of anyone who did not instantaneously like him. He always wore blue reefer jackets and a peaked cap which gave him a nautical air for all the world like a retired ship’s captain. Many happy hours have I spent at his fireside, gleaning all sorts of information from his lifetime’s experiences. He was a Gaelic scholar of no mean standard and had a library that would have done credit to many a stately home, with many of his books proclaiming on the flyleaf: ‘To Duncan, from the author.’

It did not take us long to reach the loch where Duncan’s boat was waiting at the small wooden pier. We were quickly under way, heading out towards the lovely wooded islands between which we must pass. It was a beautifully calm day, so calm that with the mirroring effect you were hard put to see where the islands left off and the loch began. It is quite shallow for about a mile until one passes out clear of the islands. Beyond the islands the level drops abruptly, until, between Meoble on the south shore and Swordlands on the north, a depth of 1,017 feet has been recorded. When one considers that at this point the mountains rise almost sheer to over 1,200 feet on both sides and that the loch is only thirty feet above sea-level, the immensity of the hole is unique. It is deeper than any part of the North Sea and to find a comparable depth on the west coast you would have to steam over a hundred miles west until you reached a parallel west of St Kilda. According to Sir Archibald Geikie, Loch Morar is the deepest recorded hollow in the European plateau, with the exception of the submarine hollow fringing southern Scandinavia.

Duncan told me that it was from his boat that they had measured the depth of the loch at various places, and that there was a ridge of comparatively shallow water between the islands of Brinacory and Allimhara.

His boat was his pride and joy. He and Hugh had built her themselves. She was a lively clinker launch of over 30 feet, powered by an eighteen hp paraffin engine, and could do six or seven knots. She had a fine fo’c’sle cabin, an open hold amidships, a small engine room, and an open cockpit aft of this. She was always spick and span, despite the varied cargoes she carried, ranging from livestock to stores, including coal, for as the loch is fresh water Duncan could work up a wonderful lather when scrubbing down. I have never been able to get over the way he used to lean over the side and fill his kettle! To me, used to the sea, this was the height of luxury. Another thing I found wonderful was the lack of tide. He tied his boat tight to the jetty and she would be there in the morning just as he had left her the night before; no need to allow for rise and fall.

On arrival at Meoble pier we found John Macdonald the stalker, who had come to collect his groceries and any mail there might be. A tall, lean, handsome man with a fine head of snow-white hair, he had been a stalker in Meoble all his life, and his father and grandfather before him. We had spent many happy days in the hills together and I owe him a great deal, for he was an excellent master under whom to serve an apprenticeship in the art of deer-stalking. I have heard it called the sport of kings, and it is certainly a sport for richer men than I, but then I do not think that John would have bothered with me had I been one of the ‘gentlemen’ who came for a few days’ stalking. For the most part they caused him acute anguish, few of them seeming to realize the skill he had to exercise in his battle of wits with so wary an animal on its own ground. He had to know the ground and be able to make a very accurate guess as to what the stag might do. It is necessary to live in a deer forest and know the mountains in all their moods and climatic conditions before it is possible, in the first place, to judge in a given set of circumstances where the deer are likely to be. His diplomacy when restraining his ‘gentlemen’ from spoiling the whole effort by impatience during the actual approach to the stag was the result of innate Highland courtesy, and on many occasions I knew him to be inwardly seething. There is more in deer-stalking than the stalk: the forest has to be properly managed throughout the year; hinds have to be shot in winter; heather has to be burnt in a ten-to-fifteen-year rotation; and foxes have to be kept down because of the toll they take of the deer calves. Stalkers invariably have a pack of terriers which are put into the cairns to bolt the vixens and kill the cubs. Eagles, buzzards and falcons are usually encouraged, to keep down the grouse whose warning chatter has spoilt many a stalk.

John showed me many things that I, not of the hills, would not have seen for myself. For instance, he would watch a hind with his telescope then turn and say to me: ‘She has hidden her calf in that clump of bracken.’ I would search with my glass, but no calf would I see.

‘Neither can I see it, Tex,’ he would say, ‘but it’s there all right.’ And off we would go to make sure. While I watched, he would go in among the bracken and bring out the calf, talking to it in that soft, crooning Gaelic voice of his, until it followed him like a pet lamb. The hind meanwhile would have run a short way off and, having turned, would be standing watching us, always above us, stamping her front feet indignantly and barking as they do when alarmed.

‘She’s not mad at us,’ John would say, ‘it’s the calf she’s wild with.’ And he would shoo it towards her. The mother would nuzzle it for a moment before making off slowly up the hill. We would pretend to take no further interest by turning our backs and going in the opposite direction. Having picked a spot where we could spy on her with our glasses, we waited until she hid the calf again but, try as we would, we could never get near that calf again. We have often tried this and always with the same result, and I might add that we were only successful in the first place if it was a very young calf. John is convinced that the mother gives it such a wigging for fraternizing with the enemy that the calf ever after avoids all men like the plague.

Having distributed the stores and mail for the other two families, we made our way up to ‘Rifern’, Duncan’s house, where we were to stay. It was a small cottage typical of the area, having three rooms downstairs and three bedrooms upstairs, but, luxury of luxuries, it also had an added bathroom. We were welcomed by Duncan’s wife, a most industrious soul, possessed of boundless energy that would have done credit to a woman of half her years. Her house was absolutely spotless, but not the sort of spotlessness that makes one afraid to sit down, for this was a happy, lived-in house.

We were hustled into the kitchen where we found the table set and three steaming bowls of soup already in their places. I can never yet think of ‘Rifern’ without associating it with good, wholesome food and plenty of it. No matter at what time of the day or night I arrived at Duncan’s house, his wife always had a meal prepared for us. Both he and his son, Hugh, had accompanied me up and down Loch Morar at all sorts of odd hours in the periods I spent there during the war. I was sent back once for a year owing to a game leg which made me grade C, but I eventually managed to convince the MO that I was fit again by racing him over the hills from Lochailort and getting down to the Lodge in time to have two pints of beer on the table before he put in an appearance.

My triumph at getting back into action again was short-lived, for just within the year I was back in hospital with my leg smashed up properly this time. They repaired it very well, but it was never again good enough for Commando work. When I could walk I returned to Meoble, remaining there until the German capitulation in Norway; then, as we were no longer needed, the school was closed and I was pensioned off. It is quite a good leg, except that it gets tired sooner than the other one, but if I wear an elastic device to keep the knee-joint in place I can do as much as the next man.

In addition to Duncan and John the only other family living in Meoble at that time was that of John’s late brother Sandy. For general purposes and to avoid confusion the two Mistresses MacDonald were called Mistress John and Mistress Sandy; similarly Mistress MacDonnell was called Mistress Duncan. Members of their families were known by their respective house-names when speaking in English. In Gaelic one distinguishes people by going well back into their genealogy, and at that time all the people in Meoble were fluent Gaelic speakers.

Mistress Sandy had a large family, seven girls and two boys. Theresa, the youngest, was a lovable little blonde elf whose first arrival in Meoble in 1941 coincided with my own. From the time she could walk she was always among the soldiers and quickly made friends with all who wore khaki. A precocious child, she soon built up a sizeable vocabulary of largely military origin; it was strange to hear such a tiny tot talking of bombs, ranges and detonators, and things that were ‘pukka’.

Later that evening we went to call on Mistress Sandy. She lived in a similar cottage to John and Duncan, just beyond the shooting lodge. Jeanne and I spent some time in the vicinity of the lodge trying to reconstruct the picture as it was during the war. The canteen, dining-hall and all the huts were gone; all that remained of the army was the wash-house and drying shed, which was built of brick. I’ll never forget the fug there used to be in that drying shed, with its two coal stoves going full blast and tier upon tier of wet socks, shirts, battledresses, etc., steaming away. There were always plenty of wet things after a day’s training in the hills. It was at the lodge that we had met just before the schools closed down.

When we arrived at Mistress Sandy’s house the children all came running to meet us, that is, all except Theresa. We were met at the bottom of the path by Mistress Sandy herself, a kindly, motherly soul. No one will ever know how many meals she gave to soldiers during the war, for hers was always open house. Never an evening passed without its crowd of soldiers round her fire. Theresa, it appeared, was in a huff and was not going to have anything more to do with me – I had let her down, everyone knew she was my sweet-heart and now I had gone off and married an English girl – but a box of chocolates and Rua, a book about a red deer calf, helped to convince her that Jeanne was not too bad after all.

In spite of the snow I enjoyed several days’ good hind shooting with John and sometimes, armed with nothing more lethal than a couple of telescopes, Jeanne and I stalked roedeer, the smallest and most beautiful of our native deer. They are always to be found in among birch scrub by the lochside where the feeding is better. Stalking them is not particularly easy, for their sight and hearing are much more highly developed than those of the red deer, although their powers of scent are vastly inferior. It has always been a source of amusement to me to see them glance back at the top of an extra big leap as they bound away and, seeing they are being followed, stop and stare as if inviting me to chase them. No one shot roedeer in Meoble; John’s stock answer, when taxed with this was: ‘Ach, man, they’re too nice!’