by Valpy, Fiona
‘Flora Gordon, are you a woman or a mouse? You’ve never been afraid to sing before. And with your voice, it’d be a crime not to share it with those poor men and women who are stuck here so far from their homes and longing for a little entertainment of an evening.’
Flora laughed. ‘Are you daring me, Mairi Macleod? Because you know fine that you have a perfectly good singing voice, too, so I could say the same to you.’
‘I most certainly am daring you if that’s what it takes! But YOU know fine that I don’t have your voice. Although I suppose Bridie and I could back you, if you’re really not sure about singing on your own in front of such a big audience. In fact, Bridie would love that! Go on, let’s give it a try.’
And so it was that the trio of friends became the Aultbea Songbirds, a regular and very popular act at the weekly concerts in the hall. Surely Alec couldn’t object, Flora told herself, if she was part of a group, doing her bit to keep morale high. And if she began to imagine where her singing might take her, she never shared those dreams with anyone, not even Mairi and Bridie, despite being told on many an occasion that she had a voice anyone would pay good money to hear.
Away from the fun and the laughter and the applause of the concert hall, on the long summer evenings once supper was cleared away and she was free, Flora would hike on her own up the hill to the lochan. Sometimes she’d fish for the brown trout that glided between the stems of the waterlilies; but more often she would sit, lost in her thoughts as she gazed out at the distant sea, imagining Alec away there, somewhere, and wondering whether the waves that met the rocks at the mouth of the loch might have encountered his ship as they rolled towards Scotland’s northern shores. As she sat beside the silvered pool cupped in the palm of the hills, the deer kept watch, silent and still, from the heights above her and, higher still, the song of the skylarks floated on the evening air.
At last, in late August, the fronds of bracken began to turn to bronze and the branches of the rowans hung heavy with clusters of scarlet berries. When the first skeins of geese appeared in the skies above the loch, their hoarse cries announcing the end of summer, the boom nets were drawn aside to allow three merchant ships through as the next Arctic convoy began to muster. Ruaridh was a useful source of information, monitoring the latest arrivals from his post at the signal station on the hill, and he kept Flora, Mairi and Bridie informed.
‘They’re British ships so far, come up the east coast from Tilbury and Hull. But they say there’s another Atlantic convoy on the way and some of the American Merchant Marine are carrying supplies for Russia. So we may well see Roy and Hal before too long.’
Bridie and Mairi had received no postcards from the brothers for a couple of weeks now. They had a feeling that this was either very good news or very bad, and so they scanned the horizon even more frequently than usual with a mixture of anticipation and dread. Flora had heard from Alec that he was still on patrolling duties off the coast of Iceland, but she, too, waited impatiently for the Isla to return.
As the sun rose above the hills, Flora and Mairi were preparing their ambulance for the day, going through their routine checks. Mairi made sure they had the necessary supplies in the first-aid kit, while Flora wiped away the heavy condensation that the chill of the night had deposited on the windscreen. They had orders to run a patient over to the hospital and to pick up two soldiers who were being discharged, dropping them back at their camp on the return journey.
It was one of those calm days of early autumn when the land and sea seemed to have been given a fresh coat of paint: the water was the purest aquamarine and the green of the hills was splashed here and there with the gold of turning larches. Even so, the two soldiers – who had turned out to be from the Indian regiment encamped above Mellangaun – looked a little miserable as the girls dropped them off.
‘I feel so sorry for them,’ Mairi said. ‘It must be a terrible shock to their systems, having to live in tents up here in the wilds. They’ll be used to the heat and the dust, not the rain and the mud. And as for the food – well, it’s no wonder that pair ended up with such bad stomach pains. Not that the hospital food will have made them feel any better.’
‘I know,’ Flora agreed. ‘But even so, their spirits haven’t been crushed enough to stop them proposing to us on the drive back from Gairloch.’
‘Right enough,’ conceded Mairi. ‘The weather doesn’t seem to have dampened their romantic notions. But they’re probably just lonely . . .’ She broke off abruptly, distracted by the sight of a ship that had just appeared around the point. Shielding her eyes against the sunlight, she leaned forward in her seat, straining to make out the ensign being raised above the deck. It unfurled itself slowly in the insistent tugging of the light breeze, revealing the unmistakable stars and stripes of the American flag.
Flora pulled the truck to a halt on the roadside above the bay where the British merchantmen lay at anchor. The girls watched as the tugs manoeuvred to open the boom nets, allowing the ship to slip into the safe haven of Loch Ewe.
And then all at once Mairi leapt from the cab, waving her WRNS cap above her head. And the autumn sunlight glinted on the blond hair of the two sailors who waved back at her, equally enthusiastically, from their stations on deck beside the flagstaff.
The far side of the loch was crowded with merchant ships now, and the naval escort had gathered in the bay at Mellon Charles. Next week, the first convoy of the season would depart from Loch Ewe, but for now the water could hardly be seen between the vessels of the densely packed flotilla.
The hall at Aultbea was equally packed out for the Friday night dance when Flora, Mairi and Bridie walked in with their own escorts, Alec, Roy and Hal. By popular demand, the Aultbea Songbirds would be singing a couple of numbers later on, but first they took to the floor as the band struck up, determined to make the most of their few days together.
When Alec had arrived back from his duties, Flora had felt awkward in his company. The flash of temper she’d witnessed in him – so unlike his usual gentleness – had continued to unnerve her. She’d tried to put it out of her mind, telling herself it was just the stress of the convoys and the thought of being away at sea again for so many. But she’d come to realise that in the moment when he’d smashed his fist into the wall she’d recognised something else in him, something that made her physically recoil: a likeness to his father. She couldn’t push the thought away, nor the memory of the bruises that she’d glimpsed on the underside of Lady Helen’s wrist that evening when she’d helped with the dinner.
His absence had left a vacuum that doubts and fears could easily fill. And perhaps that was why she’d purposely kept herself so busy. As well as the evening concerts, she’d thrown herself into her work by day, taking on extra duties by volunteering to help maintain the engines on the smaller boats in addition to the ambulances at the base. She’d quickly discovered an aptitude for coaxing even the most reluctant of salt-scoured, waterlogged motors back into life. The distractions of her singing and her work – and the camaraderie of the other Wrens as well as the naval ratings she worked alongside – had helped the time to pass while Alec was away. More than that, she was also developing a new sense of fulfilment: a sense of her own self and her own voice. But would Alec like this new side to her? Flora thought of Lady Helen, who always seemed such a shadow of the woman she might really be. Would Flora, too, begin to disappear if she married Alec?
Despite her worries, when he appeared in the doorway of Keeper’s Cottage again she had the sense that Alec had grown more tentative, had lost something of his old self-assurance, just as she had become stronger, more confident in her work. He’d hesitated, as if unsure of his welcome, and she had quickly reached out and put her arms around him, closing the distance between them, reassuring him with her kiss that all was well and that she still loved him. It just needed a bit of time for them both to readjust to being back together, she’d told herself. She tried again to brush aside the image of his face darkened with a
nger when he’d punched the stable wall. Whenever she thought of it now, it was Sir Charles’s face she pictured, and that image unsettled her more than Alec’s rage.
Their old closeness came flooding back, though, as they spent time together walking along the shore or into the hills above Ardtuath House. It was easier, too, when they were with Mairi and Roy and Bridie and Hal, whose happiness was infectious.
Earlier that day, before the dance, the three couples had hiked over the hills to Slaggan Bay and sprawled on picnic rugs spread over the hummocks of marram grass at the edge of the crescent of golden sand. From that angle, the ships moored in the loch were hidden by the shoulder of land that enclosed the beach, allowing them to forget the convoy’s impending departure for an hour or two.
Roy and Hal told stories of the Atlantic crossings they’d taken part in since they were last at Aultbea, which had taken them to Portsmouth and Liverpool.
‘It was kinda frustrating being so near and yet so far,’ Roy said.
Hal grinned. ‘We tried to get a shore pass and see if we could jump on a train to get up here, even just for a day. But we didn’t have any travel papers so we got turned back before we’d even managed to get out of the port.’
They were proud to be crewing the Patrick Henry, one of the newly built Liberty ships, which the Americans were turning out in record time to replace vessels lost to enemy attacks.
‘She was launched by FDR himself,’ Hal told them.
‘It’s funny to call a ship “she” when it’s got a man’s name,’ Bridie said, picking a blade of grass and chewing on it thoughtfully. ‘Who is Patrick Henry, anyway?’
‘He was the guy who said, “Give me liberty or give me death.” These new-style ships are going to bring liberty to Europe.’ Hal reached over and handed her a sprig of sea thrift that he’d plucked from the machair that grew around the crescent of the beach. ‘For you, my lady.’
She laughed as she tucked the flower into her dark curls, the pink petals highlighting the rosiness of her cheeks, flushed by the wind and the sun.
She looks so pretty, Flora thought, because she’s so happy. We all are, today. But then she glanced down at Alec’s face. He lay sprawled beside her on the tartan rug, resting on his elbows as he watched the sunlight play on the water of the bay. Even at rest, there was a darkness in him, running like a deep current beneath the surface of his smile as he caught her watching him.
The destroyer he’d been on had just returned from patrolling the northern passage between the Orkneys and Shetland.
‘What was it like up there?’ Roy asked him.
Alec was silent for a few moments, reluctant to allow the reality of war to cast a shadow across their day. But then he described the otherworldly landscapes he’d seen: the scattered, low-lying Orkney Islands with their pale beaches and green fields; the rugged cliffs of the Shetlands that rose from the waves like a fortress, stark and forbidding; and of Iceland with its strange black sand beaches and ice-capped volcanoes. He spoke quietly of the last Arctic convoy that had sailed from Reykjavik in early summer. ‘It was huge, nearly forty ships, and the run was longer, too – all the way round to Archangel this time. We knew it was a risk, but we hoped the more northerly passage would make a difference.’ He fell silent for a moment, looking unseeingly at the waves washing gently on to the sand. ‘It was a disaster. The convoy was spotted and the Germans came at us in force. We were up for the fight, but then the command came through from the Admiralty in London, telling the naval escort to turn back. I still can’t fathom their reasoning. Every man out there was convinced it was the wrong decision. Abandoning those merchantmen was one of the worst moments of my life. We knew once we’d gone the U-Boats and the Luftwaffe would close in for the kill.’
His turned his head away from the others, but not before Flora noticed how his face contorted in pain, the memories too hard to bear. She reached for his hand and interwove her fingers with his, drawing him away from the darkness of his thoughts and back into the mellow autumn sunlight that bathed him with its healing glow.
With an effort, he pulled himself together, giving her hand a grateful squeeze. He shook his head, as though trying to rid it of images that had imprinted themselves in his mind’s eye. ‘We lost twenty-seven ships and hundreds of men to German planes and U-boats. In the end, only eleven made it to Archangel. That was when they decided to suspend the runs for the rest of the summer. So, instead, we’ve spent the last few months patrolling the westerly reaches of the Arctic Sea, trying to stop German vessels slipping through from the east to attack the Atlantic convoys. We know they have the Tirpitz hidden in one of the Norwegian fjords – she’s one of their biggest battleships – and we didn’t want to risk her getting through.’
‘Appreciate that, buddy,’ said Hal. ‘When we were out there on the crossing it was good to know you navy guys had got our backs.’
The others tactfully changed the subject, sensing Alec’s distress. But it seemed to Flora that the shadows around them had deepened and that if you listened carefully, the hush of the waves on the sand held mournful echoes of the cries of lost souls. She drew a little closer to Alec, trying to close the gulf that seemed to threaten to take him away from her again, and they sat in silence, letting the conversation ebb and flow around them.
That evening, at the dance, Flora held Alec tight as the accordion played the last waltz. He’d applauded as enthusiastically as the rest of the audience when she’d sung ‘The Eriskay Love Lilt’. But still she could sense the toll that the losses were taking on him. She could only imagine the sights he’d witnessed during the time he’d spent with the convoys – ships set ablaze, the burned and drowned bodies they’d managed to pull from the water, the burials at sea as yet more young men were consigned to the cold, deep grave that would remain unmarked and unvisited. Even worse would have been those they’d had to leave behind in the water, sailing past the outstretched arms and the desperate, pleading cries, unable to help. And she pictured the latest wave of telegrams that would arrive at homes across Britain and America, the unwelcome knock at the door heralding the delivery of a slip of paper that was all those families had left of their fathers and their sons.
She wished with all her heart that the music would never end, that they could dance there, holding each other close, forever. Because then there would be no doubts and fears, no need for goodbyes. And she wouldn’t have to watch as his ship sailed away on the morning tide, tearing them apart once again as he faced the brutal cold and the relentless dread of the next Arctic run.
The rain was falling steadily and the larches wept golden tears on the day that Hamish McTaggart slowly cycled the short distance from the post office to the house at the end of the jetty once again. And this time the telegram he carried, addressed to Mr and Mrs Archibald Carmichael, weighed down his leather satchel more heavily than any other he’d had to deliver in the last year. He’d been there when Miss Cameron had carefully transcribed the words and handed it to him with a shake of her head.
DEEPLY REGRET TO INFORM YOU OF THE DEATHS OF YOUR SONS
JOHN ARCHIBALD CARMICHAEL AND JAMES ROSS CARMICHAEL
WHILE ON WAR SERVICE AT EL ALAMEIN. LETTER FOLLOWS.
Lexie, 1978
‘What was it like, being sent to Aultbea as an evacuee?’ I ask Davy.
He’s sitting in the kitchen, having accepted my offer of a cup of tea when he dropped by to see whether Daisy and I would like some of his day’s catch for our supper.
He spoons sugar into his mug and stirs, considering my question. ‘I was so wee, I don’t really have any clear memories of the day we arrived. I think I remember the bus journey a bit – the feeling of nerves at being sent away from our home, mixed with excitement at seeing the seaside. That’s where our mammy told us we were going, Stuart said. To live at the seaside. I remember my coat smelling of sick because I’d boaked and there was nothing on the bus to clean it up with. And I think I remember sitting at a trestle table with the other kids
and being given a dish of mince and tatties, but that might just be something Stuart told me about later on. The first things I definitely do remember are a starfish I found in a rock pool one day and the way the teacher’s chalk used to screech against the blackboard in the schoolroom. I must have been about six by then, I guess. And I remember the days the telegrams came for the Carmichaels. First the one saying Matthew was missing believed dead in the Far East, and then the one about Johnny and Jamie at El Alamein.’
He falls silent and turns his face towards the window, looking out at the loch. But I get the impression he doesn’t see the way the water gleams like molten silver in the sunshine against the backdrop of purple hills beyond, nor does he hear the calling of the gulls overhead. Instead, he’s seeing the pain contorting the face of Archie Carmichael and hearing Moira’s anguished, high-pitched scream of a single word, wrenched from the very core of her being: ‘No! ’
At last he looks down at the mug of tea clasped in his leathery, work-tanned fingers as if surprised to see it there. He takes a sip.
‘It must have been terrible for you and Stuart, witnessing that,’ I say gently.
‘It was awful being in the house, hearing the knock at the door, peering out of our bedroom window and seeing Mr McTaggart there. Knowing what he’d brought them.’ He nods. ‘But it was even worse afterwards. The Carmichaels were kind, but we always had the feeling that we shouldn’t have been there. That we were taking up the space where their own sons should have been. We hated being the reminders of what they’d lost, the wrong boys living beneath their roof, sleeping in the beds of their dead sons. Their boys’ things were everywhere: the shelves were full of their books about World War One flying aces and Boy’s Own annuals; their shinty sticks were in the porch at the front door; Matthew’s stamp collection . . . Jamie’s collection of sea glass . . . Johnny’s sketches of shore birds. Their photos were in frames on the mantelpiece, the Carmichaels’ pride and joy, and I could hardly bear to look at them. They seemed so full of vitality in those pictures – I couldn’t believe they had died.’
