Rhanna at War

by Christine Marion Fraser

  ‘I was goin’ to tell you, lads,’ Tam assured them plausibly. ‘What way would I be wantin’ all that whisky to myself? There’s more than enough and I was just thinkin’ comin’ over the track that a shilling a pint wouldny be too much to ask—’

  ‘Sixpence!’ cried a hard-bitten old sailor. Tam looked sad but he was already leading the way to his house followed by an eager, thirsty mob.

  ‘The minister will be down on your heads!’ Ranald called piously.

  ‘Ach, him, is he no’ after sayin’ he is holdin’ a ceilidh tonight for the Germans . . . and on the Sabbath too!’ Tam returned placidly.

  ‘A ceilidh . . . for Germans?’ Niall asked incredulously.

  ‘Ay, to give them a taste o’ Scottish hospitality afore they leave,’ Ranald imparted, scratching his head absentmindedly with his tar-stained fingers. ‘The Commandos have still to find one big Jerry who got away from the Manse on Friday morning but they have narrowed the search down enough to think they’ll get him today. The German officer o’ the plane was torn to ribbons on the mountain comin’ down an’ damt near dead when we found him. Your father had to sew his stomach back in but some o’ his fingers were rotting away wi’ frostbite an’ had to be cut off. The lads are guardin’ him day an’ night for you never know wi’ Jerries . . . stayin’ at your house he is.’

  ‘My house?’

  ‘Ay, he couldny be moved for fear he would die,’ Ranald nodded eagerly, poking his fingers further into his thatch of brown hair.

  ‘The airy-plane came over from blitzed places near Glasgow,’ Canty Tam beamed. ‘Everyone was sayin’ they likely killed a lot o’ people before endin’ up here!’

  ‘Be quiet, you glaikit bugger!’ Erchy warned, coming from the boat with a creel of enormous crabs.

  Niall had turned white at the news. The memory of his landlady with the teapot clutched in her hands and her dead eyes staring was extremely vivid. And Iain Brodie, smoke-grimed and red-eyed after endless hours battling with endless fires, his face empty and hopeless on learning the news. Niall felt the bitterness surging through him again, taking away some of the joy he’d felt at coming home. It seemed after all that the scourge of war had touched Rhanna. The thought of a German under the roof of Slochmhor made him feel sick with anger. How could his father calmly have taken the enemy into his home? Hot tears of rage pricked his eyes and he turned quickly away, his blurred gaze coming to rest at the Smiddy where a much-recovered Todd the Shod was sitting outside enjoying the spring sunshine. Beside him Biddy reclined on a wooden bench padded with cushions. They were both waving at him frantically and he raised his arm to wave back.

  ‘Dear old Biddy,’ he breathed thankfully. ‘It will be good to have her moaning and fussing around me.’

  Erchy shook his sandy head ruefully. ‘Ach, not yet for a whily. The cailleach hurt her ankle and is stayin’ at the McDonalds’ till she is better. Todd had his appendix out and the pair o’ them are driving each other daft.’ A gleam of mischief came into his eyes. ‘We had a fine young nurse lookin’ after us for a whily. A right nice bum and bosoms she has too. We were all thinkin’ up ways to see will she come and cure us . . . My ulcer has been bad this last day or two,’ he finished, suddenly rubbing at his middle.

  ‘But it’s better you are now.’ Jim Jim removed his pipe and spat malevolently on to the cobbled pier. ‘They are after sendin’ over a spare nurse . . . came on the boat yesterday afternoon . . . like a gallopin’ hairpin she is wi’ a face like a forgotten prune! There she is now, goin’ up to the Smiddy. Todd has not moved since his operation, though Mollie has been givin’ him enough liquorice powder to shift a horse. He will be gettin’ soapy water through a tube now – I forget what they calls it but I am hearing it does queer things to the bowels – makes them squeal like the bagpipes tunin’ up.’

  Todd watched the lanky figure of the ‘spare’ nurse coming towards his house and he squirmed with apprehension. Biddy watched also and her lips folded into a thin line of disapproval. Babbie had been to see her twice, and like everyone else she had fallen under the girl’s infectious charm, but now she wished she hadn’t been so persistent about a spare nurse . . .

  ‘My God!’ Todd gulped, his round face crimson. ‘She is comin’ this way!’

  ‘Ach, never mind,’ Biddy consoled. ‘If it’s an enema she’s come to give I’ll see she does it right. She has hands like frogs’ feets and will not be gentle wi’ the tubes like myself.’

  ‘Hell no!’ Todd couldn’t stop the protest. ‘Not two of you! I canny take any more o’ this! That wee Nurse Babbie would have done fine for a whily!’

  The nurse came through the gate, burying her long nose in the depths of a large hanky. ‘I have had nothing but sneezes since I came yesterday,’ she complained. ‘How are you today, Nurse McMillan?’

  ‘Fine – oh ay – much better, thankin’ you! It won’t be long till I am up on my feets!’

  ‘Good, then we will all be happy! How are you today, Mr McDonald?’

  ‘Never better, indeed no! I will be back at the Smiddy much sooner than I thought!’ Todd gabbled in agitated confusion.

  Biddy straightened her specs. ‘Where is the young nurse? She said she would be over to see how was I keeping.’

  The nurse sniffed disdainfully. ‘Too busy with that young German! Said something about changing his dressings. Well, she’s welcome. I wouldn’t touch him with a ten-foot pole. The child from the big farm was there too, the one with the long hair and innocent eyes.’ She sniffed again. ‘Looks like that are so deceiving. She and the nurse are fawning over him like sick kittens. Now . . .’ she became suddenly brisk, ‘will you come inside, Nurse McMillan – I’ll do your enema first.’ She smiled sourly. ‘Ladies before gentlemen.’

  ‘Me!’ Biddy’s yell of indignation sent a clutter of crows into the sky where they flapped angrily.

  ‘Yes, indeed, Nurse McMillan. I met Mrs McDonald last night and she told me that for days you haven’t been near the – er – toilet. She said you had only been passing water into the – hm – chamber pot.’

  ‘That Mollie!’ Biddy roared while Todd shook with delighted glee. ‘I’ll – I’ll never bandage her varicose veins again!’

  Niall managed a smile as Biddy’s indignant yells filled the harbour. ‘Well, she hasn’t changed anyway! Still the same grumbling Biddy!’ He began to move away and called back, ‘I’ll see you later, lads.’

  ‘Ay, come to the ceilidh tonight at the Manse. The minister said it was a praise meeting for teetotallers only but he’ll no’ find many of these around here!’ Ranald grinned. ‘You will likely get a try of Tam’s Uisge-beatha. Like nectar it is.’

  Niall nodded appreciatively, and walked towards Glen Fallan, lifting his face to breathe the wild, sweet scent of sun-warmed heather. In the high fields above Laigmhor, Fergus and Bob strode among the flocks of sheep; a few tiny early lambs wobbled unsteadily near their mothers, and the sheepdogs ran purposefully about their business, answering to the different whistles with an eager obedience that reflected Bob’s training. Fergus rarely went to kirk and shocked the minister and many of his neighbours by doing work on a Sunday, which normally was taboo. Bob was a regular kirkgoer but his work came first with him, especially at lambing time, so today he wore his best suit under baggy plus-fours and a roomy tweed jacket, ready to take off as soon as the kirk bell tolled over the island. Niall looked with delight at the familiar scene and he raised his arm. The men were engrossed in their work but a moment later they waved in response and Fergus’s voice drifted faintly but joyfully, ‘Hello there, Niall! We’ll see you later!’

  When Niall reached Slochmhor he found it quiet and deserted. For a moment he thought there was no one at home. He knew that Fiona would be outdoors, making the most of her time before getting ready for kirk, and that his father would be out on a call somewhere but, though he wasn’t expected, he had anticipated his mother’s welcome and felt unreasonably cheated. He had pictured her face on seeing him, the
surprise, then the gladness bringing the roses to her cheeks. If it hadn’t been for his arm he would have swept her up high and she would have giggled and spilled a tear or two, but as he couldn’t do that he had planned to chase her round the kitchen table till she clouted him with the dishcloth . . . Niall looked round the kitchen which was warm and homely with two cats sprawled by the fire, one of them using Lachlan’s slippers as a pillow. On the window ledge a vase of pussy willows managed to look graceful alongside a jar of frog spawn floating in obnoxious green water. Niall chuckled. Fiona was still pursuing her keen interest in all forms of insect and amphibious life. It was her favourite hobby. She was a child who kept pet spiders in jars and studied minute creatures with the aid of one of Lachlan’s old microscopes. After eight years of struggling to keep her tom-boy daughter’s room as feminine as possible, Phebie had gradually given up the fight and had ceased to be disgusted by the odd assortment of creepy pets she encountered while cleaning.

  A little laugh came from upstairs and Niall stiffened. The laugh was so familiar to him yet the unexpected sound of it made his heart race madly. ‘Shona . . . what the hell –’ he whispered and bounded upstairs. Even while he burst into the little guest room Niall realized this was where the wounded German lay, but on entering Niall got the impression that he had intruded into an intimate little world. Anton, pale but handsome, was laughing up at Shona whose hand was clasped in his, her blue eyes alight in her animated face.

  ‘Shona!’ Niall shouted her name in surprise.

  ‘Niall!’ She turned from the bed, to stare at him in joyous disbelief. ‘Oh, thank God!’ she said, rising to meet him. ‘I prayed and prayed you would come back to me soon! We could get no news of you! I didn’t know when you would be coming or I would have met you! You’re hurt, my darling, what have you done to your arm?’ She put out a hand to touch him but he pulled away.

  ‘I didn’t know you were back on Rhanna.’ His voice held a note of suspicion.

  ‘But – I wrote to you when I left Aberdeen! I told you I was coming to see you in Glasgow the minute I could. I’m home for a rest – I haven’t been too well.’

  He saw then her pale little face and her incredible eyes, smudged with a delicate blue-black under the lower lashes. He had forgotten how blue her eyes were, how beautifully shaped her small sensitive mouth. Her auburn hair was swept up from her face but gave it no maturity, instead it emphasized her cameo features and pointed chin. She looked like a little girl trying to appear grown up and the nearness of her overwhelmed him for a moment. He longed to crush her to him, to pour words of love into her ears but the picture of her with Anton had roused a stab of jealousy in his breast.

  ‘I didn’t get your letter,’ he said briefly and bitterly. ‘Mrs Brodie no longer has a letter box – it may still be attached to the door buried beneath the rubble of what was her home! Not that Mrs Brodie will worry about that now . . . she’s out of it all . . .’ He glanced at Anton accusingly. ‘Mrs Brodie doesn’t need her home now, but Iain Brodie needs it – and thousands more like him who lost everything in the raids last week!’ His voice rose menacingly. ‘Ask your German friend how he would go about helping the people he helped to kill . . . you might not find so much to laugh at then – Fräulein!’

  ‘Niall!’ She stared at him, shocked. ‘Stop that! You’re raving like a madman!’

  ‘Maybe I am mad – mad enough for a bit of revenge! I keep seeing corpses, they’re in my head and I can’t get rid of them! I go to bed at night and see my landlady – a tiny wee body who never harmed a soul – lying among the bloody tons of rubble that buried her alive!’

  ‘Niall.’ Her voice was gentle because she saw the terrible tension in him. ‘You’ll have to try and forget. The raids were horrible, we all know that . . .’

  ‘Do you! Were you there? Pray God you’ll be spared anything like it . . .’ He nodded towards Anton. ‘He’ll know, he was over the place! He must have seen the hell of it all. After all, he must have dropped some of the incendiaries that lit up Clydebank like a Christmas tree. Maybe his was one of the bombers that strafed the streets, splattering bullets about just for the fun of it! Ask him if he knows what it’s like to be holed up like a terrified rabbit waiting for a bomb to drop!’

  ‘Ask him yourself.’ Shona’s voice was barely audible. ‘He can speak English quite well.’

  ‘The intellectual type!’ Niall answered scathingly.

  Anton had struggled up in bed, his eyes meeting Niall’s angry gaze. ‘Niall.’ He spoke the name with respect. ‘Fräulein Shona tells me about you all day. We laugh just now about your times together as children.’

  To Niall the words were flippant, designed to get him off the subject of the raids. ‘So you know my name,’ he said sarcastically. ‘And you laugh. I wonder if we’ll laugh when we know the names of all the people killed in Clydebank and Glasgow – and all the other cities bombed by the Luftwaffe!’

  ‘Anton’s mother, father and sisters were killed by the British in an air raid over Berlin.’ Shona said the words quietly, her mouth frozen with dismay.

  Anton had fallen back on the pillows, his eyes gazing unseeingly at the wall and he raised his bandaged right hand to pass it over his brow in a defeated, strangely touching little gesture. ‘I hate the war as much as you do,’ he said wearily. He reached to the dresser and picked up an Iron Cross which he dangled idly in his fingers. ‘This little decoration is meant to signify bravery – all it means is I have killed a lot of people. I am not really proud of it – but I wear it – in the same way the British wear their medals.’ He laughed without humour. ‘I am very relieved that I do not have to pin it to my pyjamas – I can forget it for a while.’

  Niall suddenly felt deflated and uneasy. He hadn’t expected to come face to face with an entirely whole German, and on the other hand he hadn’t been prepared for one so obviously badly injured. Restricted though Anton’s recent efforts at mobility had been, they had left him sweating and exhausted, and his rapid breathing filled the room.

  A shower of sparks exploded from the coals in the grate and the clear, fluted call of a curlew came sweetly from the glen. Shona felt her heart beating swiftly. She could feel the tension spewing from Niall. It showed in his white young face, the clenching of his fist. He looked so forlorn, so unlike the loving, carefree Niall of her memories, that for a moment she was afraid. He’d come through the horrific experiences of Dunkirk, scarred but still buoyant of spirit. The war had wounded him yet again but she knew it wasn’t that which had so crushed him: the first time he had gone to war expecting to meet death and destruction, but the second time war had come to him and she realized he hadn’t been prepared for it.

  ‘Niall . . .’ she began huskily just as footsteps clattered and Babbie arrived breathlessly into the room.

  ‘Oh – sorry.’ She drew back at the sight of Niall. He turned and her hand flew to her mouth. ‘Niall!’ The cry was one of disbelief.

  He stared at her. ‘Babbie! What on earth – how did you get here?’ They gaped at each other till Babbie finally stuttered, ‘Shona brought me – at least she asked me to come back with her to Rhanna for a holiday . . . I’m in Aberdeenshire now . . . you know me, always jumping around! Pastures new all the time. Your name has been mentioned here constantly but I never dreamt – I never connected . . . I saw the picture of you downstairs and I thought the resemblance to you was uncanny though of course you’ve changed since then – amazing the difference a few years and a little moustache can make to a boy. It’s such a coincidence . . .’ She was unable to go on.

  Shona looked from one to the other. ‘It would be silly to ask if you know one another.’ She laughed as lightly as she could. ‘It seems you certainly do!’

  Niall pulled himself together with an effort. ‘Only vaguely,’ he said briefly. ‘Isn’t that right, Babbie?’

  ‘Oh yes, hardly at all. I didn’t even know your surname – till now.’

  From the collar of her dress, Shona pulled out
the little locket that Niall had given to her as an engagement present. She snapped it open and said to Babbie, ‘I should have shown you this sooner, Babbie, then you might not have been surprised to see Niall here on Rhanna.’

  Babbie looked in some confusion at the little heart-shaped photos of Niall and Shona fitted into the locket and forced a smile. ‘I wish you had, Shona. It would certainly have put me in the picture, as it were.’

  Despite the careless words, Shona sensed unspoken questions bouncing between the two. They were trying too hard to be casual, Babbie fussing with Anton’s bedclothes, Niall paying a great deal of attention to a loose thread on his sling. He looked up and caught Babbie’s eye. She seemed flustered, with a pink tinge staining her pale face and her green eyes unnaturally bright.

  ‘Your walk has given the roses to your cheeks,’ Anton commented carefully, sensing that a situation had arisen which needed some delicate handling. ‘It gives the sparkle to your eyes.’

  ‘Yes, I went over by the cliffs at Aosdana Bay – the Bay of the Poet,’ Babbie said. ‘It was lovely there – peaceful – a good place to think. I didn’t mean to go so far but I forgot time. I am finding that this island does that to one – time begins to mean nothing.’

  She was chattering too much, too nervously. Shona held her breath but no matter how hard she tried she couldn’t stop the suspicions crowding into her mind. Niall and Babbie! There was something between them, something they were trying very hard to hide. Her heart beat swiftly in her throat. She felt weak with emotion but she forced her head high. ‘I’ll have to go now. Father will be in soon from the fields and I promised Kirsteen to lay the table before kirk. I’ll see you – Niall.’

  ‘Wait!’ Niall stayed her hasty flight. ‘When will I see you – Ni-Cridhe?’