The Crofter's Daughter

by Eileen Ramsay

  ‘I won’t think about it. The war will be over, it will, and Arabella Huntingdon has given Ian her scarf.’

  Arabella. What a beautiful name, so much more glamorous and sophisticated than Mairi. Could she mention the scarf to Ian? The days when she could tease him and worry him like an annoying fly that buzzed constantly just out of reach were over.

  ‘Here’s Dad. And by the look on his face, he knows.’

  ‘I hear you won the shooting. Good lad. It’s a lot of money for the charity and here’s the laird told me that if you weren’t to tenant one of the best farms he’d have you for gamekeeper.’

  So he would, when the time came, be given the tenancy. Even conscientious objectors could be good farmers. But what if Rupert was the laird by that time? Colin was younger than Sir Humphrey.

  ‘He’s a good man, the laird,’ said Ian.

  ‘There’s at least three people told me about Sam Jarvie heckling you—’ began Colin when Mairi interrupted.

  ‘Sam Jarvie? Him that has taken his dinner with us near once a week for years?’

  ‘He’s not been himself since he lost his boy, Mairi.’

  ‘You’re always too ready to make excuses, Dad. It was horrible the way they muttered at Ian, like dogs when the biggest one’s got a bone they want, all ready to nip in at the right minute.’

  ‘Let’s go home, Dad. We did what we came to do. I’m sorry you didn’t get your tea, Mairi.’

  ‘Tea? There’s nobody bakes better than me anyway,’ said Miss McGloughlin saucily and they walked home together, with Ian and Colin teasing her by going through a long litany of local bakers – ‘except for Pheemie Anderson, except for Betty Starkie . . .’

  *

  Ian was quieter than usual that evening and went upstairs early.

  ‘He’ll be away to write a poem, or maybe a letter to Robin,’ said Colin, and Mairi, who felt sure that her brother was sitting at his window looking towards the big house and holding a delicate silk scarf between hard, work-worn fingers, smiled and said nothing.

  They were both right and both wrong. Ian did spend a lot of time holding the scarf, sniffing its faint perfume, holding its softness against his weather-beaten face. He tried to write a poem but all he could write was one word: Arabella. He tore the poem out of his notebook and folded it with the scarf which he replaced inside his shirt. Then he wrote to Robin.

  I want to do it now, to get it over, but that would hurt my father and Mairi. As soon as conscription is announced, and that must be soon, I will do it.

  We did not speak to your father, and Mairi wanted to see if he needed somebody to help in the house, not her, but some other woman. I’m sure she’ll see to it soon, if you want her to do so.

  The news from the Front is more horrific than ever, and we pray for you. The minister leads prayers for servicemen each Sunday. He must think, especially, of Sinclair; Sinclair who, at school, was terrified of both you and me and, even more, of Mairi, and who has now been decorated for ‘conspicuous gallantry in the face of the enemy’.

  He did not write of his embarrassment when Rupert Grey-Watson had refused to shake hands with him, and he did not write of the scarf.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The war was no closer to ending. It was escalating. By the end of 1915, Britain, France and Italy had declared war on Bulgaria and by the end of March 1916, when Colin was looking forward to the springtime lambing, Albania and Romania had opened up hostilities against Austria, Germany was at war with Poland, and Great Britain had instituted a conscription policy.

  ‘I can’t keep who’s fighting with who straight in my mind,’ said Colin. ‘Have you ever heard of half these wee places, Ian?’

  Ian was staring into the fire and seemed not to hear and with an exasperated shrug Colin went back to his newspaper.

  Ian stared on as if the answers to the questions that plagued him and would not let him sleep were to be found in the flames. Then abruptly he stood up and looked down at his father.

  Colin lowered the paper. ‘Well, laddie? Something on your mind?’

  Still Ian stood and Colin looked at his tall young son with all the marks of manhood on him and he smiled up at the boy. ‘Cat got your tongue, laddie?’

  Ian returned the smile but did not answer. ‘Goodnight, Dad,’ he said and Colin heard him walk to the door, open it, and then climb the stairs to his room.

  ‘Damn and blast the bloody Kaiser,’ Colin said and returned to his paper where he saw that the Canadian Pacific Railway was advertising for farm hands and domes- tic servants to travel from Liverpool to Canada in search of a better life, and that it was expected that trade sheep would fetch at least forty shillings per live hundredweight in the Forfar Sales.

  ‘We’ll hope there’re still some farmhands around in April to sell the beasts,’ mused Colin and set his mind to pondering if there was anything left in the house fit to donate to the Queen Mary’s Needlework Guild’s appeal for donations.

  Upstairs Mairi slept and Ian sat at his table in his nightshirt and set about writing a difficult letter. He had tried, several times, to find both the time and the words to tell his father everything that was in his heart but the words would not come. Now he sat with his pen in his hand and watched the ink drip from the nib back into the old inkwell. He took a deep breath and began to write and this time the words flowed from his brain, from his heart, onto the paper.

  It’s a matter of a few weeks, a few months before they find they need agricultural labourers too, Dad. I’m a strong, healthy man and they will come soon and tell me, ‘Your country needs you.’ And I will tell them that I will not fight, I will not take the life of another man. They will say, ‘Would you protect your wee sister, by force, if she were attacked?’ and I will have to say, ‘Yes, I would do everything in my power to keep her from harm,’ and so they will tell me that I have no right to object to war, for surely it is only a matter of degree.

  But what I say is, ‘If someone asked me to murder a child, what would God and my fellow man expect me to do or say? No, and again no. But asking me to join the army and to kill children legally is barbaric. In war it is always the innocent who suffer. War brings starvation, poverty, illness, deformities, disease, and it brutalises. Decent human beings become brutalised by the very brutality they practise and I know they cannot change back.’

  I have gone into Dundee to tell the recruiting sergeant that I will not fight but I will cook food, or cut down trees, or drive wagons, or whatever kind of job they can find for me. I will let you know what happens as soon as I can. Don’t worry about me. I have to do what my conscience tells me is right. Ask Mairi to tell her I have taken her favour into battle.

  Your loving son,

   Ian

  The recruiting sergeant had no idea what to do with Ian McGloughlin.

  ‘Laddie, there’s boards being set up all over the place to hear them as has been called and don’t want to go. What the Hell am I supposed to do with you?’

  ‘I thought you would know,’ said Ian.

  ‘Why don’t you away home to your farm and maybe this bloody war’ll be over afore we get to the M’s.’

  ‘I can’t do that. It’s now a point of honour.’

  The sergeant looked at him. ‘Honour’s got precious little to do with anything, laddie. Away home.’

  ‘I’ve come to join up. There must be somewhere for me to go.’

  The sergeant was saved from the effort of answering by the entrance of an officer. ‘New recruit? Well-set-up lad. Just what we need.’

  ‘He’s C.O., sir.’

  ‘Not on my patch he isn’t. Got your papers?’

  ‘I haven’t been conscripted,’ said Ian and deliberately left out the sir. ‘I’m here to enlist.’

  ‘In what, the ruddy ballet corps?’ If you haven’t been conscripted and you’re a shrinking violet, get the hell out of this office.’

  He turned away but Ian stood stock-still and waited. His stomach was churning, just as it
had countless times in his childhood when he knew that his father had gone for the shaving strap that hung by the fire. But he had gone too far to back down now.

  ‘Surely I’m not the only man who’s come in here and said he was a conscientious objector. There must be somewhere for me to go.’

  ‘Man?’ The officer turned and looked vaguely around the room. ‘Man? Do you see a man, besides ourselves, in here, sergeant?’

  Ian would not be cowed and he would not be angered. ‘I am fit and healthy and have worked on a farm since I was a wee boy. There must be something I can do.’

  ‘You can go to jail for the night at least, you useless scrimshanker. Put him in a cell, sergeant, and I’ll see what Major Graham has to say in the morning.’

  Whatever Ian had expected, it was not to find himself in a narrow prison cell. There was a rather dubious-looking mattress on the floor, a threadbare blanket and a hard pillow. Ian poked the mattress gingerly with his foot and then decided to remain standing for what was left of the day.

  It was the longest day he had ever lived through. He could hear vague noises from the office but no one came near him for hours. At a few minutes past seven in the evening the sergeant came in with a cheese sandwich and a mug of hot, sweet tea.

  ‘The major’s a decent man and he’ll know how to handle this,’ he said. ‘I’ll bring you a po for your convenience and you can empty it the morn’s morn when I come back. You fancy a jam butty for your breakfast? Ma missus’ll make you one.’

  He was gone and Ian, for the first time in his entire life, was completely alone and in complete darkness. He crouched down against a corner of his cell, wrapped the blanket around his shoulders, and waited for the morning.

  It was a long time coming. Every hour or so Ian stood up and slapped his arms against his body in a futile attempt to keep the circulation going. He was stiff and cold and hungry and he thought he could almost smell Mairi’s soup simmering away on the back of the fire. It would be warm there in the kitchen with the firelight throwing shadows on the walls. Mairi might be singing or humming as she went about her countless jobs; his father’s long legs would be stretched out to the warmth of the fire and he would sigh now and again as he thought of his son.

  ‘I’ll be able to tell you soon, Dad,’ he said into the darkness, and his voice startled him as it exploded the silence. He crouched down again against the wall and tried to recall the words of Arnold’s ‘The Scholar Gypsy’ that he and Robin had tried to learn one summer so long ago as they sat under a tree by the stream. He recalled the first ten lines and then another ten and then the lines began to run together in his head and he fell asleep, only to wake later colder and stiffer than before. He was on his feet walking around the perimeter of the cell when he heard the door open.

  It was the sergeant. ‘We’re out of jam, lad, but there’s some dripping in the bap. I’ll make you a cup of tea. Looks like you could do with being warmed up.’

  Gratefully Ian took the soft roll and ate it quickly. He would have liked to wash too and to shave but there was no water and his bag with his razor and his change of clothes was still in the office.

  ‘Why didn’t you just wait for call-up, lad?’ asked the sergeant when he came back. ‘You’d have saved the both of us a lot of trouble and Captain McNeil’s a right bugger when he’s crossed.’

  ‘Surely not all jobs in the army are done by fighting men? There must be non-combatant groups.’

  ‘Aye, there are, but they had the decency to wait till they were called up. Why couldn’t you wait and go before the board, according to regulations? Regulations make life easier for everybody.’

  Ian had never expected to feel sorry for the military. ‘I’m sorry, but I couldn’t live any longer with the threat of conscription hanging over my head. It’s just a matter of time.’

  ‘Hell of a lot can happen in a few weeks, laddie, even in a few hours. I got hit two days after I reached Belgium; was hardly worth being that bloody sea sick. And now you’re upsetting this nice little job.’

  They heard the office door open and the sergeant turned to leave. ‘That’ll be his nibs. We’ll see what he’s come up with during the night.’

  But the immaculately dressed officer who came into the little cell was not Captain McNeil but Major Graham. And the major was very angry.

  ‘What is this man’s crime, sergeant?’

  ‘He’s a C.O., sir.’

  ‘I wasn’t aware that that was a crime. Why are you here, boy?’ he asked, turning to Ian.

  ‘I came to enlist in some kind of non-combative corps, sir.’

  ‘Been conscripted?’

  ‘No, sir, not yet. I’m a farmer. Well, I’m working with my father.’

  ‘And why do you want to enlist?’

  ‘I can’t not do something, sir.’

  ‘Get this man some shaving water.’

  Everything Major Graham did was done quickly. By ten o’clock, Ian found himself on a train bound for Berwick- on-Tweed and two days later he was learning to drive an ambulance. Three weeks later he was remembering the sergeant as he hung on to the sides of a ship as it heaved and tossed across the Channel. If his night in a prison cell had seemed endless, this journey across a stormy sea was eternity.

  ‘Nothing can be worse than this,’ was his only coherent thought throughout the entire voyage.

  *

  Mairi and Colin heard from him two weeks after the awful morning when Mairi had found his room empty and the letter on his table.

  ‘He says he’s learning to drive. What about that, Mairi? Our Ian, driving like one of the toffs.’

  ‘Thank God he’s safe,’ said Mairi and burst into tears.

  Colin had no idea how safe driving an ambulance in a war zone might be but he said nothing. He was so relieved to know, at last, where his son was. When Mairi had brought him the letter his first impulse had been to go into Dundee and demand that Ian return to the farm. He was needed. The war was good for farmers. They could sell as much as they could grow or raise and that was necessary war work. But he had read the letter again and again and the words had affected him.

  ‘I’ll never understand him, my own flesh and blood. Where did he get these daft ideas from? War’s not legal murder . . . it’s, it’s . . . war and that’s not murder.’

  Now he looked helplessly at Mairi and had no idea how to calm her tears. ‘Ach, lassie, he always wanted to go abroad,’ he said but that only made Mairi cry more than ever.

  ‘Oh, I hate Robin Morrison,’ she said and ran into the kitchen. Colin stayed in the front room and heard what sounded like his daughter throwing pots around.

  ‘Women,’ he sighed in exasperation. Why she had chosen to mention the Dominie’s son, he could not imagine. He did not understand that Mairi was comparing her brother’s first overseas trip with that of Robin. He did not know that she had kissed Robin and slapped him on the same night. He could not know that she prayed daily for a message from him. He did not realise that her love for Robin and her fear for his safety were now bound up again with her love and fear for Ian. He decided, wisely, to stay out of the kitchen.

  Mairi stopped banging the pots around and began to peel potatoes, a mindless task that allowed her to think. She would write to Ian. She would write as often as she could and she would tell him everything that happened. She would describe every leaf unfurling on every tree; she would note where the swallows built their nests and she would tell him of the antics of the babies as they leaned precariously out of the nests. She would tell him when a salmon was caught in the burn and she would describe the antics of lambs and calves as they played by their mothers in the flower-strewn fields. She would start immediately after supper.

  First she told him of her unimaginable pride in her big brother.

  Dad’s not saying much except a man’s got to do what he believes to be right, but he’s very proud of you. He spent the whole of teatime telling me about every test you had ever taken at school.

 
; ‘The Dominie always said our Ian was a brain.’ If he said that once he said it a thousand times, and then he talked about the picnic and how you won the shooting and Sir Humphrey’s respect. Sir Humphrey rode over a few days ago and Dad told him you’d joined the army.

  ‘I thought the lad would see sense,’ said Sir Humphrey.

  ‘He’s always seen sense, Sir Humphrey,’ said Dad. ‘It’s me that couldnae see.’

  I sent Miss Huntingdon a note and told her what you said. Dad doesn’t want to know about that. ‘He’s got more than enough problems,’ was all he said.

  Miss Huntingdon answered Mairi’s note in person. One afternoon, when Mairi was wringing blankets before hanging them out to dry, Arabella, accompanied by a groom, rode into the steading. Mairi looked at the beautifully attired girl on her superb blood-horse and glanced down at her own dress, soaked in spite of her huge apron, and she could have wept. Instead she wiped her soapy hands on a dry corner of the apron and went forward to meet her visitor.

  ‘Miss Huntingdon,’ she said.

  Arabella turned to the groom. ‘Walk the horses, Ewan,’ and when he had complied she turned back to Mairi. ‘I’m sorry to disturb you at a busy time . . .’

  ‘It’s always a busy time on a working farm.’ Mairi was angry and she did not know why. Somehow she felt that Arabella had to see what Ian’s life was like. He was a farmer, not a poetic dreamer.

  ‘Ian,’ said Arabella. ‘Mr McGloughlin . . . he has gone into battle, your note said. He has joined the army then?’

  ‘No,’ said Mairi. ‘He has been sent to a non-combatant corps. He’s going to France to drive ambulances.’

  Arabella’s face grew pink with excitement and she clasped her gloved hands together. ‘Oh, how wonderful, true to himself. You must be so proud of him.’

  ‘He didn’t need to go; he wasn’t conscripted,’ said Mairi mulishly.

  ‘I know, I mean I know that farmers are still exempt. Please, Miss McGloughlin, will you tell him that . . .’

  She stopped as if she was unable to continue and looked at Mairi.