The Night Before Morning

by Alistair Moffat

  There was a pause.

  ‘Siol na h’Alba. S-I-O-L, N-A, H, apostrophe, A-L-B-A. Surely you must have heard of us?’

  Another pause.

  ‘Yes, well, I’m telephoning you to report suspicious behaviour at Darroch House, near Arisaig.’

  XIII

  Robert carefully loosened the frame of the dormer window so that it could be opened inwards rather than pushed up and down. The sashes were stiff and speed might be important. The smallest bedroom on the top floor of Darroch House had the best view. Not only did its window look north over the loch to Arisaig, anyone sitting on the left-hand side of the shelf-like seat in the dormer could also see to the east and the coast road after it turned towards the house at Morroch Point. Robert set down a pair of binoculars and a whistle he had found amongst the fishing tackle and went off to look for the Levinsons.

  Outside, Jamie and I were standing with Bradley Kaye on the shore at the farthest west end of the white sands, at least five hundred yards from the house.

  ‘Okay,’ said Brad. ‘I only have one sample. I definitely don’t want to waste the others. They were damn difficult to make.’ He held up the frame of an old tennis racquet with the strings replaced by a loosely fitted oval of canvas tacked onto the frame. ‘You heard of an atlatl? A spear-chucker? This is my equivalent. I need to get something in the air quickly and as far away from me as possible.’ He grinned at both of us. ‘Jeez, I hope this works.’

  Brad carefully took a tennis ball out of a bag. Looking like a cartoon version of a bomb, the ball had a white cotton fuse sticking out of it. Motioning for me and Jamie to move behind him, he placed the ball in the centre of the canvas tennis racquet. Then he lit the fuse and, as though he was serving for the match, he launched the ball high and far into the sky – where it exploded like a firework. Bradley whooped and danced around like a dervish.

  ‘What’s that rattling noise?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s the lead shot from your cartridges hitting those rocks. Shrapnel from the sky.’

  Rafael Levinson felt like applauding. Watching from the dormer window with Jane and Robert, he saw the bomb explode and, far from frightening him, it lifted his spirits. No longer would they be victims. It was good to fight back, good to resist the black tide of evil that seemed to be engulfing Scotland and, indeed, the whole world.

  Robert had swung open the window and, having advised the Levinsons to wear every scrap of clothing they could, he pointed out what to look out for. With the binoculars, it was possible to make out people moving on the quayside at Arisaig, MacCaig’s shop and the hotel. And where the road to Darroch House turned around the headland, its whole length to the cattle grid near the house could be seen.

  ‘If you spot anything – vehicles, walkers, anything coming our way – blow that whistle and one of us will come up immediately. The toilet is at the top of the stairs.’ Robert smiled. ‘And in two hours, two others will come to take your place so that you can come down and warm up.’

  Elsewhere, Alan and Katie had found six fence rails and a box of six-inch nails. Between two trestles, they were banging them through at two-inch intervals. When they flipped each one over, the nails bristled like the quills of a hedgehog – spikes like these, known as caltrops, had been used to disable charging horses and men since Roman times. The rails would be laid across the road beyond the cattle grid to puncture the tyres of approaching vehicles. But not yet.

  First, Jenny MacDonald was going to drive Millie Harbison and me into Arisaig. Millie needed to make a phone call.

  *

  It was a still day, the low sun bright in a blue sky and no breeze off the ocean to chill the bones. It was a good day for a walk, to get out to smell the clean air, not be cooped up all the time behind walls, not to be told where to go and where not to go.

  Bradley Kaye’s wife, Marilyn, had hated St Andrews. Even though it was possible to walk around the three streets, there were no open spaces, no greenery, only small patches of lawn. For a girl born in Wyoming, in the suburbs of Laramie, with the Rocky Mountains at her back and the great plains of Nebraska and Dakota to the east, she had been raised in the long vistas and the free air of the wide-open spaces.

  When they came to Darroch House, she saw the big skies once more, but almost immediately everything was shut down again. Marilyn knew that a fortress had to be built. Hell, she had been born not far from a US cavalry fort, but just for an hour or two she needed to get away. ‘Come on, honey,’ she said to their five-year-old daughter. ‘Come on, Lisa, let’s go hiking!’

  From his high vantage point, Dr Levinson saw Marilyn Kaye walk down the paddock to the white sands, her little daughter skipping along beside her, but he was distracted by the ditch diggers. For some reason, they seemed to have filled it in. At least half of its length had been turfed over and Alan and Eileen Grant were emptying the sacks of leaves that he and the children had picked up. All very puzzling.

  A loud clank and a shout from the direction of the road attracted his attention. With Robert MacDonald’s help, two of the Americans had attached ropes to the cattle grid and managed to pull it up like a drawbridge. And then, bracing themselves, planting their feet in the grass, they lowered the metal grid back down to its original position.

  *

  ‘The ambassador is in Edinburgh!’ said Millie Harbison when she returned to the car. ‘Of course he is. I never thought of that. When London was bombed, our embassy was destroyed and all the poor people there were killed. There’s a new ambassador, John Booth, an associate of Harry Hopkins, Roosevelt’s man.’ Talking, as usual, very quickly, very excitedly, Millie exclaimed, ‘And he will see you. Right away. Or as soon as possible. Soon as you can get to Edinburgh!’

  Before she went into the phone box by the station, I had given Millie clear instructions on how the British system worked, and when to press Button B. I thought it important she made the call alone. Who knew who was watching? ‘Donald MacCaig, certainly,’ Jenny MacDonald had said. ‘He watches everything.’

  And Millie seemed to take an agonisingly long time before I could see her begin to talk. And then she talked, and talked. For at least ten minutes. I hoped she would remember to insert more coins. But when she climbed back into the Humber, breathless and excited with her news, she said several times that her brother, Averill Thomson, had made an important point. When I arrived at the consulate in Edinburgh, I should not only bring all my documents with me but I should get inside, out of sight, as quickly as possible. The building in the centre of Edinburgh, in one of the elegant terraces of the Georgian New Town, now had the status of an embassy and it was therefore sovereign US territory. ‘That was the last thing I heard Averill say. I promised to make a particular note of it and to tell you directly.’

  But when Millie ended her call there had been a second click as another receiver was put down.

  *

  After walking for only half an hour, Marilyn and Lisa came to the boggy shore of a small lochan on the fringes of a big pine wood, which seemed to stretch uphill like a dark green carpet. All the time they had been climbing up from the shore they could see the roof of Darroch House below them and Loch nan Ceall beyond.

  ‘Mom! Look!’ A red squirrel scuttered up one of the Scots pines and Lisa squealed with delight. The track they followed was sheltered, wide and with drainage ditches on either side. As they walked on, the quiet of the forest slowly closed around them. It seemed to become another world, natural, unfettered, free and full of life, even in midwinter. For the first time since she had arrived in Scotland, Marilyn felt her shoulders drop, she felt her limbs loosen as she filled her lungs with clear, clean air.

  Katie, meanwhile, was looking for paths. In the woods behind the house, she looked for trails of flattened grass where deer and other animals made their way through the trees. Creatures of habit, they rarely deviated, usually taking the most direct, least obstructed route into cover. And if anyone somehow managed to get through the blackthorn-filled ditches and o
ver the drystane dyke, it would be those paths they would take. With the help of the stake-sharpeners and the fishing line she and I had found in the house, Katie was tying tripwires.

  ‘Three feet beyond them, maybe four, it’s hard to judge. That’s where we set our short stakes in the ground,’ said Katie to the American scientist who was helping her.

  Her reasoning was that if a man of average height tripped over the tight and all-but-invisible fishing line, he would fall but his momentum would mean he would hit the ground about four feet further on. ‘The soft underbelly,’ she said with an uncharacteristic smile, ‘is where we want these vicious little stakes to hurt them.’

  Later, Katie joined Professor Feldman, Robert, Alan, Jamie, Millie, Bradley and me in the sitting room.

  ‘I have to go to Edinburgh as soon as possible,’ I said. ‘And we have to work out how it can be done.’

  ‘Don’t you worry,’ piped up Millie, ‘Averill will look after you. My brother is a big, stand-up guy, very smart, very determined. And he loathes the Nazis.’

  We discussed simply jumping in the Humber and taking the huge risk of driving all the way there.

  ‘Too many places where you could be stopped,’ said Robert. ‘And too many single-track roads. What would happen if you met an army vehicle coming the other way?’

  ‘But we cannot waste time,’ I said, ‘I need to go now.’

  Katie interrupted: ‘We, David, we need to go now. I’m not letting you out of my sight. We will risk the train. There’s no other option.’

  In a fishing satchel, I packed my journal and the document Feldman had compiled. Jamie Griffith-Smith gave me his pistol and the ammunition. ‘It’s now or never,’ I said, and for some reason that prompted us all to shake hands.

  And then Rafael Levinson blew a loud blast on his whistle.

  *

  The bell above the shop door jangled. ‘I am Colonel Stengel of the Waffen SS. Was it you who telephoned?’

  MacCaig nodded, much taken aback at the sudden arrival of an abrupt, aggressive soldier in a black leather greatcoat and the death’s head insignia on his cap.

  ‘You will now tell me all that you know.’

  At that moment, Mrs MacCaig came though the doorway from her kitchen, wiping her floury hands on her apron.

  ‘Well, yes, it was me,’ said MacCaig. ‘But I would be wanting just now to discuss with you Siol na h’Alba and how you might be placed to help the cause.’

  Stengel leaned across the counter and smiled. ‘I know nothing of this and care even less. You will tell me all you know about these people. Now!’

  The shopkeeper jumped and, with his wife’s stare boring holes into his back, he edged around the counter towards the door. ‘I can show you if we go outside.’

  *

  Through binoculars, I could see the portly figure I took to be Donald MacCaig on the quayside talking to a tall German officer. He was pointing at Darroch House. Behind them I counted three trucks and what looked like two other army vehicles partly hidden behind them.

  ‘The bastard,’ said Robert MacDonald, ‘the miserable, money-grubbing bastard. MacCaig has betrayed us. I wonder what the Germans are paying him.’

  I ran downstairs with Jamie and set quickly in train all of our deterrents and defences. On the road beyond the cattle grid, Alan and Katie laid down their caltrops, the fence rails studded with six-inch nails. After they ran back over the cattle grid, it was pulled up and Rita Curtis distributed shotguns and boxes of cartridges to all who would shoot them.

  But I could not find Bradley Kaye anywhere. And then for the second time, Rafael Levinson blew his whistle.

  From the dormer window, I could see Brad on the beach and it looked as though he was calling, cupping his hands on either side of his mouth. By the time I reached him, I was panting so hard I could barely get any words out, and he spoke first.

  ‘I can’t find Marilyn and Lisa. Looked everywhere,’ said Brad.

  With great difficulty, I explained what had happened and why he had to come quickly back up to the house, reassuring him that his wife and daughter couldn’t have gone far. They would be found or appear. Soon. Just as urgent, I said, was the fact that the Germans had arrived, three trucks, maybe fifty, sixty soldiers and we needed to be ready.

  *

  ‘And so you gave them four shotguns and how much ammunition?’ asked Stengel. Much taller than the shopkeeper, the colonel had gripped him by the arm, tight.

  As the conversation went on, all one way, and MacCaig gave him an estimate of how many people were at Darroch House, he quickly began to wonder if he had acted rashly, made a bad mistake. Just as the Irish Republicans had sought German help in the First World War, so he and Siol na h’Alba were willing to bargain in this war for their independence. He was only following the lessons of history. And wasn’t that a central part of what the Nazis believed? That each race should have a right to self-determination, to their own identity and nationhood?

  ‘What is the range of the guns you gave them?’ MacCaig heard the German say.

  ‘Well, it is for shooting game birds they are used, you know.’

  ‘Yes, yes, I know what a shotgun is.’ Stengel was growing impatient with this little fat shopkeeper.

  ‘Well, it would be fifty yards, perhaps seventy, depending on the choke.’

  Stengel nodded, realising that, with his submachine guns and rifles, he would have an immediate advantage. ‘Now, Mr MacCaig, I want you to go over to the big house and talk to them.’

  *

  Bradley Kaye was beside himself with worry. And I had the callous, calculating duty to keep him from leaving the perimeter to search for Marilyn and Lisa. ‘Look, Brad, if they have gone walking and got lost, they can’t have gone far. This is a small peninsula.’ That did not remotely convince me, far less him. Looking out of the dormer window, he once again picked up the binoculars and scanned the horizon.

  Around the house, there seemed to be a strange sense of calm. In the kitchen, the sitting rooms, no one had much to say. Outside, walking up and down the gravel forecourt, Rita Curtis, Katie and Alan Grant had broken but loaded shotguns folded over their arms, and they simply looked north to the loch and over to Arisaig. Cloud had blown in off the ocean and gloaming was gathering quickly.

  ‘David, David,’ Katie called to me. ‘There’s someone here to talk to you.’

  On the far side of the cattle grid, I could see Robert MacDonald talking animatedly to a small, portly individual.

  ‘This is MacCaig,’ Robert told me, ‘the man who is speaking to the Germans. A man who is frankly a disgrace to his country and to himself. And the Germans have asked him to speak to us.’

  Without once meeting my eye, he told me that if we gave up all the American scientists and their families, then the rest of us would be left in peace.

  ‘Do you believe that, MacCaig?’ said Robert.

  For the first time, he raised his head and looked directly at us both. ‘No, no, I do not think I believe it.’ And with that, he turned and began to walk slowly back to Arisaig.

  *

  ‘I don’t think they’ll attack us during the night,’ I said. ‘The risk of injuring or killing one or more of the scientists is too great.’

  Jamie, Robert and I agreed that a rota of watches ought to be set and that all had to be in readiness in case I was wrong.

  Bradley Kaye had sat in silence in the sitting room but just as we began to sort out a list, he began speaking quietly. ‘Why should we sit here and wait for them to come to us? So that I can find my wife and my baby, I need every last one of these bastards dead. Every one. And only when they are, can we all go find Marilyn and Lisa. We should go over there, late, when they’re asleep and kill them all. All of them.’

  *

  Deep in the darkness of the pine forest, Marilyn had long ago lost her way. Perhaps she had even been going around in circles. Lisa was exhausted. It was cold but the great trees meant that there was at least shelter. And fo
r some reason, she felt they were benign, guarding them both.

  ‘I’m thirsty, Mom,’ said a small voice.

  In her overcoat pocket, Marilyn had found part of an old bar of chocolate, but she had nothing for them to drink. The darkness, the blanket of the night was so dense that she did not want to go blundering around looking for a stream. ‘Suck this slowly, honey. You’ll feel better. And don’t worry. We’ll have this little adventure and tell Daddy all about it in the morning.’

  They had sat down in the bole of an old Scots pine and made a bed of all the shed needles from the larches around it. Opening her overcoat, she folded Lisa close inside it and hoped that at least her baby girl would find a little sleep.

  *

  With the box of incendiaries cradled on Brad’s lap in the passenger seat of the Humber, and Katie, Rita and me squashed in the back, Robert drove very slowly, with no headlights, along the coast road to Arisaig. I had told Jamie and Alan to be ready for an attack at first light if we did not return. The best thing was for them to go up to the dormer, the lookout post, and keep their eyes fixed on the village.

  ‘MacCaig! MacCaig! Get up!’

  Having broken in through the back door of his shop, Robert and I were by the shopkeeper’s bedside, surprised that Mrs MacCaig was not beside him.

  ‘They are in the village hall, most of them,’ he said. ‘And some in the hotel. But I don’t know how many.’

  Robert and I took some pleasure in tying him to the bed and wrapping a gag around his mouth. ‘Maybe this will teach you to keep your mouth shut,’ said Robert through gritted teeth.

  Brad, Katie and Rita had found the German trucks, staff car and armoured car parked opposite the hotel. The village had no street lights but nevertheless they hugged the shadows of the fishing sheds. When they were certain no sentries had been posted, they flitted like bats across the street to the nearest truck.

  But then Katie stopped suddenly and pointed at the cab of one of the trucks. The passenger window had been wound halfway down and what looked like cigarette smoke was drifting out of it. There were sentries, but they had taken refuge from the cold night. Putting her finger to her lips, Katie motioned for Brad to do what he had to do while she and Rita clicked their loaded shotguns closed in case any of the cab doors opened.