There were still three matches left and it did not take Murdo long to get a good fire going. The wood he had broken in the house was finished, but there was no need for more destruction since he had discovered some ready sawn logs and the remains of a small peat stack in the barn. He brought a couple of armfuls indoors and piled them at the side of the hearth, then lay back on the sofa to wait until the fire had built up enough heat to grill the meat.
An hour later the peat and spitting logs had laid a foundation of ash, and the heart of the fire glowed white and crimson. Carefully Murdo adjusted the small logs and flaming cinders to expose the heat. He skewered a thick slice of mutton on a length of fence wire which he had twisted off to use as a poker, and gingerly laid it across the gap. Almost at once the smoke blackened it, but slow- ly the juices ran down and droplets of fat hissed and flared in the flames. The smell was good and his mouth watered so much that he had to keep swallowing. Time and again he turned the meat, doing his best to ensure that it was cooked right through.
At last it seemed to be ready. He laid the hot mutton in his lap on a corner of his shirt, then skewered another slice and set it on top of the fire. Ravenously he bit into the meat. The taste was smoky, but it was very good. The middle was still pink and largely uncooked, so he ate all the edges and threw the remainder into the back of the fire.
Twenty minutes later he started on the second slice, but after a few mouthfuls his appetite deserted him. He wanted no more. Never- theless, he knew that he needed the food and forced himself to take a few more bites. Mechanically he chewed on the roast mutton but it was tasteless, and he was hardly able to swallow it. He regarded the third slice, oozing its juices into the fire. It nauseated him, and pulling out the wire he dropped the meat into the flames along with the piece he had been eating. Slowly the red-brown slices curled up and fizzled among the burning logs.
For a while he thought he would be sick again, then the feeling passed and the strengthening warmth of the food began to radiate from his stomach. He set a good log on the fire and packed the edges with scraps of peat. Then he pulled off his boots, unfastened his jacket and stretched out on the sofa.
He did not sleep at once, and as he gazed at the ceiling he thought of nothing – just drifted in the still aftermath of the fever and slaughtering the sheep. Now and again he seemed to feel the animal buck beneath him and saw the rolling eyes and dead mouth. Then from the mist of a thousand dormant memories, prompted possibly by some pattern in the plaster, he remembered his old schoolroom, the carved brown desks and curling maps, the sharp smell of the chalk dust, the voice of the dominie as he rapped on the table and thrust the pointer like a billiard cue in his own direction. How familiar it all was, how comfortable and secure, yet how far away those days of childish jokes and irresponsibility. Wryly he half smiled, wondering what the dominie would have to say about his present predicament. His smile broadened as the thought expanded to include his Aunt Winifred. ‘I knew, Murdo; I knew where you would end up one of these days. Chased by Germans! The idea! Well, you’ve only got yourself to blame, you and that father of yours.’ He slipped a hand into his pocket and pulled out the black and white knife. He had scrubbed the blood away in the snow. Holding it in his palm he wondered, as he had been wondering since he woke three hours earlier, what the Germans were doing. Were troops still gathering on the coasts of France and Belgium? Were the British forces still moving south? Had Operation Flood-Tide already begun? There was no way of knowing. And if it had not, what of Henry Smith and his men? He recalled the figures clustered at the bridge below Carn Mor; one of them, he was sure, had been the German leader, and another was Gunner. But he could have been wrong, the memory was vague.
And slowly all his memories became vague. His eyes closed, his breathing was deep and even. He fell asleep.
It was the coldness that woke him. A concave shell and a dust of grey ash were all that remained of the big log. The room was in shadow. Going to the window, Murdo saw that the sun had swung far round in the sky. He estimated that it was mid afternoon, probably about two-thirty. With distaste he surveyed the slabs of red meat, laid out in wet piles at one side of the window ledge. A pool of blood had dribbled over and made a dark patch on the floorboards. Though his stomach called out for food again, he thought he would postpone cooking more until later in the day.
The short sleep had done him good, and though he could expect to be weak for some time, he was sufficiently recovered to start taking an interest in the world around him. He felt filthy. Going outside he pulled up his sleeves, turned down his collar, and scrubbed his face and arms vigorously in the icy melt-water that trickled from the drain-pipe. It was crystal clear. When he had finished he cupped his hands and took a long drink. The water was achingly cold against his teeth and in his throat, and chill in his stomach, but it made him feel clean.
After that, being naturally of a tidy disposition even though he was living roughly, he straightened up the room which he was using. He hung up the curtains again, so far as he could, and made a neater patch over the smashed window; stood the meat on a sheet of paper and rubbed the ledge clean with a rag; got rid of the broken glass and dried-out corpse of the rook; tidied the hearth and stack of fuel, and pushed the few sticks of furniture straight.
It occurred to him that if the Germans should come looking up the glen – assuming that ‘Operation Flood-Tide’ had not already commenced – it would be to his advantage to let them know as little as possible about the house. So he drew the faded curtains across the window, and did the same in the other downstairs room. The glass in the front door and the little back kitchen was already covered with old net curtain to above head height, and when he put his eyes to it from outside, he could not see through.
Finally he had to get rid of the sheep’s carcass. Lacing his boots he crossed the pasture, sending the sheep scurrying from their sunlit wall. Briefly he regarded the butchered animal. He was sorry he had killed it, and for so little – but it was no good being sentimental. Bracing himself, he grasped one of the front legs and began hauling the carcass behind him towards the river. It had stiffened, and the second front leg and already eyeless head kept catching the back of his knee, so that once he fell. The haunches, where he had removed the joints of meat, were dark and bright red against the snow. Grey links of intestines trailed behind. He reached the brink of the river and rested for a moment. The torrent of water had risen above the banks of ice and largely washed them away. Peat-dark and brimming it swam through the sheep pas- tures. Half a dozen gulls and a few crows that had been hopping about the sheep’s carcass when he came out, circled and crossed back and forth overhead. Standing back, he heaved the sheep the last couple of feet and let it fall into the river. The wool filled with water, the swollen current sucked it away in a trice. Jostling and swooping for some morsel of flesh as it washed to the surface, the wheeling gulls followed its progress downstream. Their cries grew fainter.
Murdo rinsed his hands at the bank, and taking a few deep breaths of the sweet air, retraced his steps to the house. Before he went indoors he lingered for a while in the last of the sunshine, looking up and down the glen. It was broad and bowl-shaped. Upstream the mountains gathered close, dominated by the great white flanks of Carn Mor, and another rugged mountain almost directly behind the cottage. Downstream, towards the coast, the land flattened, the moors rising no more than two or three hundred feet above the valley floor. Trees covered the opposite, southern slope. When he went down the next morning, that was the route he must take. The going would be harder, but the trees would give him protection.
High over the wooded ridge a large bird was circling, too large for a buzzard and to his sharp eyes with the wrong silhouette. It was joined by a second. They could only be eagles. For several minutes he watched as they passed slowly upstream, and vanished towards a high spur of the mountain.
The afternoon was drawing on. Already the sun was dipping behind the peaks of the moor and the glen was filling with b
lue shadows. The warmth that had been in the air was gone. A bank of rain clouds was gathering in the west. Murdo shivered, and turned indoors to warm himself at the fire.
It was an hour later that the thunderbolt fell.
Wild from the Hills
THE ROOM WAS DARK, though enough daylight still lingered to brighten the shabby curtains that Murdo had pulled across the window. The fire glowed hot, and yellow flames licked around the edges of a new log. The smell of burning mutton was in the air. A scrap of whittled wood, showing the rough outline of a deer in flight, lay broken in the hearth. Murdo had taken off his jacket and sweater and lounged on the sofa in grubby shirt sleeves. He felt dispirited and washed out, and thought gloomily of the long night ahead. Idly he scratched at the sheep-blood stains that had dried stiff down the leg of his trousers. If only it was morning, he hated hanging about; and sitting there in front of the fire made him feel worse, as if the fever was returning. Bleakly he regarded the half- eaten slice of meat that lay beside him on the arm of the sofa.
Suddenly, on the edge of his awareness, there was a faint whisper of sound from outside. He sat bolt upright, and froze. Eyes wide, he stared at the window. His ears strained. Nothing was to be heard save the deep drumming of the river and tinkle of water from the drainpipe. Perhaps he had been mistaken. Then again there was a muffled sound, the soft swish and crunch of a boot in the melting snow. A moment later the footstep was plain and a dark shape passed across the light of the curtains. Murdo’s heart thudded. The silhouette returned and lingered at the window for two or three seconds, then passed on. There was silence. He waited. Abruptly there was a loud knocking at the front door.
For a moment Murdo could not move, then forcing himself to overcome the weakness of instant surrender, he rose and crept cautiously to the window. There was a little chink at the top of the curtains. Pulling himself to the broad window ledge, he peered along the side of the house. A man – at least he could only see one – stood at the front door, looking this way and that as he waited for an answer.
It was no good pretending there was no-one in the house, for there were his tracks criss-crossing the snow half a dozen times behind the man’s back, and he would have seen the smoke from the chimney too.
Again the man rapped on the door with his knuckles and the noise boomed in the empty house.
‘Hello!’ he called loudly. ‘Is there anybody there?’
For a desperate, confused moment Murdo could think only of escape, climbing from the little window at the back and running away across the snow. But he could scarcely have run a hundred yards, he had not the strength. There was no hope of escape that way. He climbed down from the window ledge, and as he stood he felt the panic ebb away, drain from his head and neck and arms, and he grew still. It was strange, something beyond determination: in that moment of crisis, though his heart still pounded, he found himself possessed of an icy inner calm. Quietly he crossed to the stack of wood beside the hearth and picked out a short branch the thickness of his arm. Then, pulling on his unlaced boots, he walked into the hallway and opened the front door.
A big man stood on the step. He was quite young and wore a heavy jacket and rubber boots. His hair was dark and cropped short. Clearly he was not a Highlander.
Murdo stood in the narrow gap of the doorway and grasped the hidden branch tightly in his hand. He was a wild sight, with burning black eyes and shaggy hair, his shirt crumpled, trousers torn and stained.
‘Yes?’ he said enquiringly.
The man regarded him closely. ‘I’m sorry to bother you,’ his English was very precise, ‘but can you tell me whether there is another house further up the valley?’
Murdo looked up the deserted, snowy glen to where it turned out of sight behind a long ridge of the hillside.
‘Just ours,’ he said, ‘and a couple of old ruins.’
‘Oh.’ The man seemed nonplussed. ‘You don’t live here, then?’
‘Hardly.’ Murdo opened the door a little wider so that he could see into the deserted hall.
‘I saw the smoke from the chimney and I thought…’ his words trailed away.
‘No, the place has been empty for years. Dad and me use it when we’re down at the sheep sometimes, that’s all.’ Amazed at the ease with which the lies were springing to his lips, Murdo waited for a moment. ‘Why? Are you looking for somebody?’
The man considered the tousled figure before him, trying to read the face that regarded him with such disconcerting frankness from the half-open doorway.
‘Yes, we are, as a matter of fact,’ he said at length. ‘There’s a boy missing. We think he might have been lost up this way in the snowstorm.’
Murdo shook his head. ‘We haven’t seen anybody at all,’ he said. ‘Not for a week or more. Not even Davie with the sheep.’ One of his legs was beginning to tremble. He fought to keep it still. ‘Who was it? No-one from around here?’
‘No, a boy from Berriedale.’
Murdo knew Berriedale, or at least he had been there a couple of times when his father’s regiment was on manoeuvres nearby.
‘Oh? Who?’ he said.
The man was taken aback momentarily. ‘Oh, well, he’s not a local lad. Up here on holiday.’
‘Ah!’ Murdo shifted his feet and cleared his throat. His voice felt none too steady.
‘Is your father about?’
‘Yes, somewhere. He went out the back a while ago. Do you want to see him?’
‘No... No, it’s all right.’
‘Are you sure?’ Murdo drew a breath and gripped the branch tightly. ‘Come in for a minute, if you like, and I’ll see if I can find him.’ He opened the door a little wider.
‘No. I must be getting back. It’ll be dark soon.’
Murdo looked up at the sky. ‘Yes, it’s going to rain, too. It’s always bad when it comes in black like that over the hill – my father says.’ He bit the inside of his lip – he was overdoing it.
The young man followed his eyes and smiled wryly. ‘You’re probably right.’ He eased his cold feet in the snow.
Murdo waited and did not speak.
‘Well, thank you for your help.’
‘It’s no trouble,’ Murdo said. ‘I hope you don’t get too wet.’ The man nodded and made his way back between the house and shed towards the white track that ran down the side of the glen. Murdo raised a hand in farewell, and closed the door.
For a moment he slumped against it, too stunned to move. Then pulling himself together, he hurried into the back kitchen where there was a good view of that side of the valley. His visitor was stepping out as briskly as the ground permitted, moving from side to side as he picked his way through the melting drifts. But two hundred yards on he paused irresolutely and looked back. For long moments he stood there, then stepped off the track into deeper snow and began making his way towards the river, looking this way and that as if he was searching for somebody.
The view from the window was limited in that direction, and quickly he passed out of sight behind the end of the house. Murdo moved back into the room in which he had been living and pulled the curtain aside. A minute or so later the man reappeared, moving along the near bank of the river and heading towards the barn. Nervously Murdo passed his tongue across cracked lips. Another fifty yards and the stranger would see the track where he had dragged the sheep through the pasture, and the blood in the snow. He leaned across the window to see clearly, and the movement must have caught the man’s eye, because he stopped for a moment, then waved a casual arm and turned up towards the front door. As he came forward he felt unconsciously at the belt of his trousers, then pretended he was tucking in his shirt, but the movement was not lost upon Murdo. His heart began thudding once more, and there was a burning, sick feeling in his gullet. He took deep breaths to calm himself, and a few moments later opened the front door as the big man came up smiling.
‘I thought I had better have a word with your father after all,’ he explained. ‘But there seems to be no sign
of him.’
‘Oh, most likely he’ll be in one of the sheds,’ Murdo said as casually as he could, ‘or down behind the sheep fanks. Come in for a minute, and I’ll fetch him for you. Have a warm at the fire.’ Again he opened the door wide, and tightened his trembling grip on the rough club.
‘Well, I must say I could do with a sit-down,’ the young stranger admitted. ‘Thank you.’
Ducking his head in the low doorway, he stepped through into the dim hall. Even before he had a chance to turn, Murdo slammed the door behind him, and raising the heavy branch, thrashed it across the side of his dark head. And the German saw him – a glimpse, forever photographed into his memory, of the boy’s face, savage as an animal – fierce black eyes, bared teeth, his whole stocky body twisted with effort. His hands went up too late, and the vision shattered in a blinding explosion of red and black and a great pit down which he was falling, falling – and that was all.
Appalled at what he had done, Murdo looked down at the sprawled figure on the boards at his feet. The man seemed to take up the whole of the narrow hallway. He had fallen awkwardly across the foot of the stairs and his face was hidden against the bottom tread. Murdo bent and tried gently to turn him over, to see how badly he was hurt. But the limp German was a dead weight and he had to grasp the front of his jacket and use all of his strength to haul him on to his back. The man’s head knocked heavily against the bottom post of the bannisters. Anxiously Murdo examined the body for signs of life. He did not seem to be breathing. Perhaps he had killed him! Murdo pressed his ear against the German’s chest, but nothing was to be heard. He grabbed his wrist and searched for a pulse – and abruptly he found it, strong and steady, throbbing powerfully beneath his fingers. With a sigh of relief he sank back on his heels. Then suddenly he was frightened that the man might recover too quickly. He ran out to the barn for the length of cord he had used to tie up the joints of mutton. Dragging meat and all with him, he raced back to the house and bound the man’s wrists and ankles tightly.
Murdo's War Page 22
