The Earl of Dalhousie, whose family had owned or still owned the land that most of them farmed, was injured by a bursting shell while he saw action with the Scots Guards.
‘Aye, his legs and arms both hit by shrapnel,’ was the chatter in the bothies. ‘He’s a good man and our own. We wish him well.’
Every Friday the muster roll of those who had answered the call grew longer and longer in the pages of the Herald, among them the names of the one or two who thought that a certain young lady’s eyes might light up with pleasure at the sight of a young man who sported a shiny new medal. For different reasons they went. But not Ian McGloughlin.
And, night after night, Ian lay awake and worried, for he knew that farming would not keep him safe much longer. He had never believed that the war would be over quickly. In fact he could not see how it would ever end. What would he say when the letter came, this year, next year, for the huge open maw of the great war machine would never close and would devour more and more of Scotland’s finest and, one day, one day very soon, there would be conscription?
‘I cannot agree that the way to solve our problems is to take up arms against some other farmer’s son.’
Wars should be fought around a table, with these great powerful men sitting there and arguing until they agreed on what was right for all. What good did blowing a country to bits, destroying cities, farms, rivers do? He could not believe that French farmers wanted to fight. He shuddered at the thought of the devastation of the land. How long would it take the fields, that were today running with blood, to recover? Where would next year’s wheat grow? What about the Germans? Did they like fighting? He had never met a German but in the paper they looked much like him. The Dominie had told him of great poets who spoke German, of great musicians who spoke German. There had to be farmers among these Germans too.
‘Fightin’s no the way to handle this,’ he said again into the silence.
‘You’d better no let anybody in the village hear you talk like that, Ian. They’ll be calling you a coward.’
Ian looked at his father in surprise. He had never considered that. A coward? Was he a coward?
He felt an icy hand clutch his heart. ‘You don’t think I’m frightened?’
Colin looked up at him. ‘No, laddie,’ he said and his voice was sincere, ‘but then, I’m your daddy.’
Mairi threw her mending down on the rag rug before the fire. ‘Enough,’ she said. ‘It’s Christmas, the birthday of the Prince of Peace. There’s hypocrisy for you. Now, we’ll have no more talk of war, or cowards or anything else in this house. The war is nothing to do with us.’
Ian smiled sadly at her. ‘Not talking about it won’t make it go away, Mairi. Sinclair’s joined up; his mother’s devastated. And we’ll have Robin in afore too long.’
Robin. Mairi deliberately kept her face turned to the fire. Robin. How little they had seen of him since his mother’s death. He had gained a second degree at Oxford University and was now teaching in Rome. The Dominie had gone with him for a holiday and had returned, refreshed but alone, to the schoolhouse. Robin’s letters to Ian arrived religiously and so she supposed that his father must hear often too. And Edith, did she receive letters from Italy? Now that she was no longer walking out with Jack, Mairi’s path seldom crossed Edith’s. Both young women were polite to one another but at a distance.
‘I don’t care if he’s writing to her,’ Mairi thought while she made herself pretend an interest in the minister’s son. ‘Sinclair Sutherland in the army? But Sinclair wouldn’t hurt a fly.’
‘It’ll be men not flies he’ll be hurtin’,’ said Colin but Ian said nothing at all.
He did not know that that very year, a no-conscription fellowship had been formed and that there were already 16,000 members. He did not hear that the Anabaptists and the Quakers had adopted a completely Pacifist Doctrine. Had Robin been at home, no doubt he would have told him and they would have discussed and argued as they had done all their lives, but Robin was not at home.
*
When he did come home, the young men did not debate pacifism.
The first they knew that Robin was back was when Colin went to answer a knocking at the door and found the young schoolmaster on his step. He had not seen Robin for some time and was surprised at how the boy had grown, filled out, matured. He was as handsome as ever, his dark hair falling untidily about his lean, scholarly face.
‘Can’t I come in, Mr McGloughlin?’ said Robin at last into the silence.
Colin grabbed him. ‘Laddie, laddie, I near didn’t recognise you. Come away in. Goodness, you’re near as big as my Ian.’
Robin laughed. ‘It’s the sun. It pulled me up.’
‘Aye,’ said Colin seriously. ‘I’ll bet it pulls the crops and all. Will you have had time to look at the fields?’
‘Rome’s not the best place to study agriculture, Mr McGloughlin, although I’ve seen oranges and lemons growing on trees, would you believe.’
Robin had taken off his coat and was seated at the fire when Mairi came in from the kitchen. She had been baking and her hair was escaping from its pins, her face was red from the heat of the ovens, and her hands were covered in flour. But this handsome man of the world was only Robin, the bane of her childhood. Impulsively she hurried forward and then when she went to touch him, she saw her flour-covered hands and drew back.
‘Robin,’ she said and was aware of her flying hair and her apron over her oldest, dullest dress.
‘Mairi, how good to see you. I hope you don’t mind my dropping in.’
‘No, no. You’ll stay to supper? You just missed Ian, but he’ll be back soon.’ She was sounding like all the dizzy girls she disliked; all of a flutter because a handsome man had come in – and Robin was handsome. He looked nothing at all like the boy she had quarrelled with all her life, but then he smiled at her, his shy sweet smile, and he was Robin, and she wondered why she had ever believed that she disliked him.
‘Gosh, it’s wonderful to see you, Mairi,’ he said. ‘You’re like a breath of fresh air.’
A breath of fresh air? Not very romantic but why on earth was she coupling Robin Morrison and romance? One had nothing to do with the other.
‘You’re home, Robin? We didn’t expect you until the summer. Do they take days off at Christmas in Italy?’
‘I’ve resigned. I came home to tell my father and then, of course, my oldest friend. I’m enlisting at the start of the year.’
‘Well done, lad,’ said Colin and he shook Robin’s hand.
Mairi stared at them, aghast. They were grinning, well pleased with one another. ‘I’ll go and finish my pie,’ she said and doubted that they had even noticed that she had left the room.
In the kitchen she put another plate to warm, and then finished her pastry. Her hands continued to perform their tasks automatically although her mind was busy with Robin and with what she had just learned as she had stood in that comfortable, friendly little room. No, not that Robin was going off to war. That was vitally important and would certainly affect her later. No, no. This was knowledge that was much more important in the great scheme of things, if indeed there was a Divine plan, and how could there be if selfish men were allowed to maim and mutilate all in the name of achieving a lasting peace?
‘I love him,’ said Mairi McGloughlin to the pie crust that hid the mortal remains of an old hen. ‘I have loved him all my life, and I have fought with him and driven him away and now he is going to war and it’s all such a stupid waste.’
She did not know that she was crying until she heard Ian’s gentle voice from the door. ‘Mairi, love, that’s not onions. What is it?’
She gulped and wiped her nose with her oven cloth. ‘Nothing,’ she said, opening the clothes boiler and throwing in the cloth. ‘Nothing except that stupid friend of yours coming just at dinner time.’
His eyes lit up. ‘Robin, you can’t mean Robin.’ He was already pulling off his wet clothes. ‘Don’t worry, Mairi, he can have half m
ine,’ he said and he was gone into the front room.
‘Stupid man,’ seethed Mairi. ‘Even the best of them, thick as a barn door. As if I couldn’t add a tattie or two, and look at me in my old frock and Robin’s been in Rome, Rome, the Eternal City, whatever that means, but Italian women are beautiful.’
Robin explained why Rome had been called the Eternal City as he devoured a plate of her chicken pie. ‘Boy, that was good,’ he said as he handed her his empty plate for a small second helping, the portion he did have to share with Ian. ‘I really liked Italian food but home food is better.’
‘Your father?’ asked Mairi, suddenly feeling guilty. ‘You should have brought him, Robin.’
‘He’s never been fussy about food. My mum wasn’t the best cook in the world and his mind is too full at the moment to be good company, but I’d appreciate it if you’d go to see him now and again while I’m away. You’re too necessary on the land, I suppose, Ian. Bad luck.’
‘Ian, don’t,’ said Mairi but Ian was too honest ever to dissemble.
‘I don’t believe this is the right way to go about it, Robin. I wouldn’t go to war even if I could.’
Both young men had gone white and they avoided looking at one another.
‘He’ll see sense in a month or two,’ said Colin jovially, ‘if it’s not all over by then.’
‘I won’t see sense then, Dad, because I see it perfectly clearly now. You’re a scholar, Robin. You should be in your classroom teaching the bairns about the stupidity of war.’
‘There won’t be bairns anywhere in Europe for me to teach if I don’t go now. It won’t be over in a few months, Mr McGloughlin. It’ll take years, so the sooner I go and do my bit the better for everyone.’ He stood up. ‘Thank you for the pie, Mairi. It was delicious. Mr McGloughlin.’
He said nothing to Ian; he did not even look at him. He walked to the door, took his coat and hat from the peg and walked out into the night. When the door closed behind him the family sat still in their chairs at the table. At last Ian spoke. ‘He thinks I’m a shirker. He knows me better than anyone else in the entire world and he thinks I’m a shirker.’ He pushed back his chair so that its legs protested, shrieking along the floor, and then stumbled from the room.
‘Robin couldn’t think Ian’s scared, Dad. He couldn’t.’
‘ “There won’t be bairns anywhere in Europe to teach.” Did you hear him, lassie? Here was me thinking just of us, but there’s bairns all over Europe affected by this. If I wasn’t an old man, I’d away and fight with Robin. Ian’s not frightened. It’s all that poetry the Dominie stuffed in his head when he should have been working on the farm with me. What bloody good did education do my boy?’
Mairi found herself alone with the remains of the meal. She sat for a while looking at the gravy congealing on the plates and then she stood up stiffly, like an aged crone, and began to clear up.
‘Dear God, where is it written that women are doomed to do nothing but clean up the messes men leave behind them? It’s women who will clean up the mess from this war.’
She ran to the door, picked up her heavy old tweed coat and let herself out into the night after Robin. All evening she had been doing things automatically. Now, in the dark and the rain that lashed at her remorselessly, she found her way automatically to the schoolhouse.
Robin was sitting hunched over an excuse for a fire when he heard her knocking and he opened the door just as she realised what she was doing and was turning to run back to the farm.
‘Mairi, what on earth are you doing? You look like a drowned rat. Come on in,’ he finished, dragging her inside and closing the door behind her. ‘Damn it, you shouldn’t be here. My father has gone to bed. What will people think?’
‘I don’t care what people think. I care what you think about Ian.’
He took her wet coat and hung it up on a peg by the door. ‘Come and sit by the fire. Does your father know you’re here . . . no, he can’t know. This was silly, Mairi. What if anyone saw you? There are people in the village with nothing better to do than peep out from behind their curtains.’
She ignored that. It was unimportant. ‘Ian’s not a coward,’ she burst out.
He laughed. ‘God, will you ever grow up or are you going to spend your entire life fighting your brother’s battles, real and imaginary?’
She slapped him hard and they were children again. He grabbed her arms and shook her and looked down into her angry face. ‘I had almost forgotten how pretty you are,’ he said and kissed her.
For a lovely moment Mairi felt herself relax and the pressure on her lips became harder and then she remembered what he had just said and she pulled herself free and swung her arm back. He caught it easily before she could hit him.
‘Ian and I were always sure we would never make a lady out of you,’ he said and then was sorry when he saw the tears spring into her lovely eyes.
She turned and stumbled to the door, grabbed her wet coat and ran out. He followed her but slipped on wet moss that had been allowed to grow on the top step and hurtled ignominiously to the ground. Mairi heard him cry out and stopped for a moment in her pell-mell flight but when she turned round he was pulling himself to his feet and so she turned again and ran into the darkness.
Robin stood tentatively for a moment looking after her. He had to have broken something with a fall like that but although his right ankle hurt badly when he put his weight on his foot, he was able to walk. He stopped at the top of the short flight of stairs to ease the pain and suddenly he remembered standing there with his father half a lifetime ago, watching the stars.
How simple life had been then: lessons, exploring the natural world with Ian, the unwanted Mairi constantly tagging along behind, reading poetry, trying to write some and discovering with excitement and pleasure that this was where Ian definitely had the greater gift. Mother had been here then with her inability to bake a cake and her ability to help with Latin homework when Dad wasn’t looking. Now she was gone, Dad was becoming more and more of a recluse. Mairi was a woman and one who disturbed him – he remembered the warm softness of her lips – and Ian. What was Ian?
‘He’s my friend,’ decided Robin as he hobbled into the house, ‘and that is all that matters.’
CHAPTER TEN
Early in January Robin went off to Dundee to join the army. He was, his father told Colin and Ian with a mixture of pride and sadness, officer material.
‘But that’s good, Dominie.’ Colin, with his own son safe beside him, tried to cheer him up. ‘They’ll get the best of everything, the officers.’
‘Certainly,’ agreed the Dominie. ‘Including the best chance of being shot.’
What could one say to a response like that? Colin, out of his depth, muttered something innocuous, and hurried off to look after his cattle.
‘He’ll be well trained, Dominie,’ said Ian.
‘Oh, aye, laddie, but read your history books; you always liked history, Ian. You’ll find it’s the boy officers who are first in the firing line. I shall trust in God, lad.’ He looked at Ian shrewdly. ‘He told me of your decision. He respects it, you know. Doesn’t understand it but he respects it. He’ll need letters from friends more than ever. Don’t let his initial reaction spoil a lifetime of friendship.’
Ian smiled. His heart felt lighter. It would have been unbearable to have Robin hate him. ‘Thanks, Dominie. I’ve promised my dad that I’ll keep my mouth shut for now, but if anyone asks me, I’ll have to say what I think.’
‘Don’t court disaster, lad. I’m glad you’ve never been one for the pub on a Saturday night; drink’s a sure fly way of loosening the tongue. Keep your own counsel and pray for a just ending to this war, for all our sakes.’
He turned and Ian watched him walk off to a house that would be cold and damp and empty. He could not remember that his home had been damp and cold and cheerless after the death of his mother but then his father was practical and there had been family and neighbours. Had the Dominie no
one now that his wife was dead and his son had gone to war? The minister, surely? They would be the same class. But Robin, his friend, the one person in the world who believed that Ian McGloughlin could become a writer, had gone off to war and wanted letters from his friends.
‘He doesn’t hate me; he respects my decision. I’ll write and tell him what that means to me.’
Then there was the Dominie. Robin would be concerned for his father’s well-being.
‘I’ll maybe ask Mairi to make him scones now and again and maybe some soup.’
Mairi had no objections to helping the schoolmaster. ‘But he doesn’t need charity, Ian. He won’t want me going in there with food and surely he can afford to get someone in from one of the cottages.’
‘He’d maybe never think on it.’
‘Well, if I talk to anyone who might do for him I’ll let you know,’ said Mairi and put the Dominie out of her head. Robin refused to leave her thoughts though. She was glad that his fall had not injured him but she regretted slapping him. Too often her mind seemed to dwell on that kiss. It had not been the same as a kiss from Jack which had excited and terrified at one and the same time. This had been gentle.
‘Oh, I will waste no more of my time on Robin Morrison. Goodness, I doubt we’ll see him here for a year or two and then it will be off again to Rome or Athens. He’ll have no time for a tiny village school in Scotland. And, besides, I have more than enough to worry about here.’
As the spring slowly pushed the winter away, the routine of the farmhouse followed what it had been for years and years, as long as anyone could remember. Up at first light, a full day of endless back-breaking chores, home with the setting sun for a meal and a wash, and then, if there was any energy left, reading and his almost secret writing for Ian, clerical chores for Colin, and the occasional visit to friends. For Mairi there was constant work to keep the family fed and clean. There was her garden to tend, and her chickens, and with the spring, a lamb, sometimes two, to bottle feed. She loved this time-consuming chore and enjoyed leaning back in an old chair while the small white bundle at her feet sucked vigorously from an old baby bottle.
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