Rhanna at War Read online

  She pointed suddenly over the water. ‘Look, isn’t that Rhanna? It certainly looks like your description of it.’

  A blurred mass of blue mountains had appeared on the horizon and Shona laughed aloud with pure joy. ‘Yes, that’s Rhanna! That’s Rhanna! I told you it was beautiful, didn’t I?’ She had spread her arms wide as if to embrace the distant island to her breast and in her moments of surging happiness her face was a glowing cameo, full of childish delight and unrestrained love. It was the part of Shona that was best known to those who knew her best, an untamed wild spirit that had roamed free through the solitary wide spaces of her childhood. It was the part of Shona least known to Babbie, but now Babbie knew that she was witnessing the emergence of the real Shona. She felt the mood washing into her and despite the fact that a crowd of passengers had come round to watch the island looming nearer she too spread her arms to the heavens and shouted, ‘Yes, yes, Rhanna is beautiful! The loveliest Hebridean island in the world!’

  ‘Ach, you are a daft pair o’ lassies right enough!’ grinned one of the crewmen who was fiddling nearby with the ropes. ‘It is a well-known fact that Barra has the rest of them beat. You can ask anyone that.’

  ‘And is it not yourself who spends more time on Rhanna than anywhere else, Malcolm McKinnon?’ Shona dimpled mischievously.

  ‘Well now, and that is only because most of my brothers were daft enough to go and get themselves married to Rhanna lassies. A man has to go where his relatives are, indeed just.’

  At the harbour of Portcull there was the usual air of restrained excitement whenever a boat came in. Men shouted instructions to each other, small boys darted to catch the ropes, chickens clucked, sheep bleated, engines churned the water till the waves foamed and slopped against the pier.

  Shona’s eyes raked through the throng on the jetty and almost immediately she spotted her father’s jet-black head among the rest. ‘Father!’ she cried ecstatically though she knew he couldn’t possibly hear her above the general din. But as soon as the gangplank was lowered she flew downwards like a young deer, almost colliding with Erchy the Post on his way up to collect the mail. ‘Erchy, the very man! Would you put this letter into the outgoing mailbags for me? I forgot to post it on the mainland.’

  ‘Indeed I will just,’ Erchy grinned, glancing at the address with the usual curiosity displayed by the islanders. ‘To young Niall, eh? ’Tis surprised I am you weren’t after delivering it to him in person. It will be a whily now before he gets it.’

  ‘Yes – I do know that, Erchy, and feeling bad enough about it as it is so don’t you go rubbing salt into the wound.’

  Erchy scratched his sandy head with a stubby finger and gave an apologetic grin. ‘Ach well, I’ll put it into the bag right away but don’t ever say a word to old Behag or we’ll never hear the end of it for she would have you goin’ through all the palaver of postin’ it proper in the pillar box an’ then have me pickin’ it up . . . mind you . . .’ he rubbed his square chin thoughtfully, ‘I’d say she has been so taken up wi’ the contraption this whily back that she has no’ been up to her usual sniffin’ about like a starving bloodhound.’

  ‘The contraption?’ Shona exclaimed, puzzled.

  ‘Ay, a radio thing wi’ tubes sproutin’ everywhere an’ enough bits o’ wire to make a fence round my vegetable garden . . . But look now, I have no time for idle bletherin’. You’ll hear all about the contraption in good time. It’s nice to see you home again, lass . . . and . . .’ he gave a shy, sidelong glance at Babbie.

  ‘My friend, Babbie Cameron,’ Shona said quickly.

  ‘Pleased to meet you indeed, Miss Cameron.’

  ‘Just call me Babbie. Better to be informal from the start.’

  Erchy looked at Babbie’s exceedingly comely figure and his eyes gleamed. ‘Ay well, right enough now, I’m no’ a body for all this polite way o’ doin’ things myself. I’ll be seein’ you around then . . . Babbie.’

  Shona was already at the foot of the gangplank struggling her way through people and a collection of horses and carts that had assembled at the pier to collect the coal and other items from the boat. Soon she spotted her father’s black head bobbing and beside it the fair one of Kirsteen.

  ‘Father!’ Shona threw herself at Fergus and he laughed through the smother of auburn hair against his face.

  ‘Hey, steady on. I’m just about choking to death and there’s a whole lot of people gawping at us.’

  ‘Ach, to hell with people!’ Shona cried gleefully. She turned from her father to hug Kirsteen to her then she stood back to survey them both. They were a handsome pair with Kirsteen’s corn-coloured hair a startling contrast to Fergus’s jet-black locks. His sideburns were almost white but this only added to his powerful attractiveness. Kirsteen looked small and very feminine beside him, her fine-featured face alive with pleasure at seeing Shona. She had such a look of deep contentment in her blue eyes that Shona felt a sudden rush of gladness in the knowledge that the look sprang from the fulfilment that Kirsteen had with her father.

  Fergus surveyed his daughter’s pinched little face and said gruffly, ‘It’s just as well you’re home for a time. You could do with a bit of fattening up.’

  Babbie came struggling towards them, laden down with luggage. ‘You left me to carry all this,’ she accused Shona. ‘You ought to know I’m far too lazy to enjoy such punishment forbye the fact I’m supposed to be here for a well-earned rest.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry, Babbie,’ Shona said with an apologetic grin. ‘I was in such a hurry to get down to these two. This is my fa—’

  Babbie held up her hand. ‘I know who they are. God, girl, you’ve described them to me so often I see black-haired men and golden-haired maidens dancing in my dreams.’ She stretched out a friendly hand. ‘I’m Babbie Cameron and I can only hope to heaven you got Shona’s letter telling you you were about to have an unexpected guest. She has a habit of forgetting to post minor little things like letters!’

  Kirsteen laughed. ‘Short notice but enough to allow me to air the spare room and beg a pheasant from Robbie Beag.’

  Fergus extended a cautious hand. He was always very aware of his missing left arm when first introduced to strangers, but he needn’t have worried about Babbie. She took his hand, and shaking it warmly said, ‘Now if we had both been left-handed this might have been a bit awkward, but we’re not so it isn’t and I’m very pleased to meet you, Mr McKenzie.’

  The ludicrous statement put Fergus immediately at ease. Babbie had brought his disability straight into the open and looking at her steady green gaze and generous smiling mouth he knew that here was one girl who would never be accused of beating about the bush.

  A small figure detached itself from a snowy-haired gnome sitting on the harbour wall and Grant Fergus came racing to throw himself at Shona though he was careful to check the immediate vicinity to make sure that no young male companions were there to witness such a ‘cissy’ demonstration. His sturdy little arms wound tightly round Shona’s neck but for a moment he couldn’t say anything. He adored his recently acquired big sister and her leaving Rhanna had caused him a good deal of anguish, though not by one word had he conveyed his feelings to anyone.

  Shona felt a swift rush of love flooding into her heart. ‘Shouldn’t you be in school, you wee wittrock?’ she asked breathlessly.

  ‘Old Murdoch let me out for ten minutes seeing you were coming home,’ he imparted off-handedly. ‘Old Joe was telling me stories till the boat came in and I got so interested I forgot all about you.’

  ‘Well, thanks a lot,’ Shona giggled.

  He looked up at her with dark solemn eyes, the mirror-image of his father’s. ‘I have to get back now . . . sums. I hate them! I wish I was going out fishing with Ranald . . .’ His grubby little hand curled into Shona’s and squeezed it tight. ‘I’ll see you later if I’m not too busy . . .’ He threw a laughing glance at Babbie and darted off through the village towards the school.

  The others began
to move away from the harbour towards Glen Fallan. Shona gazed rapturously at the peaks of Sgurr nan Ruadh and asked, ‘Anything new happening on Rhanna? Erchy mentioned something about Behag having some sort of contraption.’

  Fergus threw back his head and roared with laughter. ‘Ay, you could call it that right enough. Our postmistress is very full of her own importance these days. She is in charge of a wireless transmitter and we all have the feeling that she is just waiting to report some momentous event in order to cover herself in glory.’

  Everyone smiled at Fergus’s words and Babbie said, ‘It might be that this contraption thing will keep her back from all the idle gossip I hear she’s so good at.’

  ‘Nothing will keep Behag from that,’ Shona said fervently.

  ‘And nothing will keep me from the dinner that Kirsteen has spent the last two days preparing in your honour,’ Fergus said. ‘C’mon, get a move on you two.’

  They were a happy throng walking up the winding Glen Fallan road to Laigmhor, which lay amongst the shaggy winter fields where there was nothing but a few early cross-breed lambs to suggest that spring was just waiting to creep slowly out from its long days of slumber. Shona talked and laughed with the others, but all the time her eyes were on the chimneys of Slochmhor in the distance. This was where Niall had lived and she looked towards the house longingly with pain in her eyes.

  Part Two

  Clydebank

  March 13th 1941

  Chapter Two

  Young Niall McLachlan slumped over the books which were spread out before him on the table in his cramped little lodging room on the fringes of Clydebank. He had embarked rather adventurously into reading a long chapter on bovine milk fever. With his chin cupped in his hands he plodded on doggedly, occasionally shuddering out an involuntary yawn. His cheery little Glaswegian landlady had just relentlessly filled him with a hearty meal of thick broth followed by an enormous helping of mashed potatoes, fluffy dumplings and mince. ‘Ma Brodie’, as she was known to young and old alike, was a thrifty soul who could conjure magical meals from apparently very little, the limitations of ration books no obstacle to her culinary prowess.

  ‘How do you do it, mo ghaiol?’ Niall had asked once, and she had put a finger to her lips and winked a knowing eye.

  ‘There are wee ways, son, wee ways a body has,’ she had said mysteriously and hastened away without enlarging on the subject.

  Niall, well aware of the existence of the ‘Black Market’ but less aware of how it worked, had wondered if this endearing woman could be involved in such a thing. But in the end he had decided it was none of his business because she enriched the lives of those around her with endless kindly gestures. She always seemed to be hastening across the landing with a pot of steaming broth for gentle snowy-haired Miss Rennie whose bony frame suggested a spartan existence. And Mr Maxwell, the cantankerous widower one flight below, also found his life the richer by thick slices of dumpling and other tasty tit-bits. ‘I’ll be her tit-bits he’ll be after,’ Iain Brodie had winked to Niall and roared with laughter at his own ludicrous suggestion.

  The Brodies had taken the young, handsome Gael to their hearts, delighting in his soft lilting tongue, his inherent politeness and his talk of the Hebridean island of Rhanna that was his birthplace. Their only son lay in a distant grave in France, killed in the very battle in which Niall had been wounded, and his heart wept for them and their unspoken suffering. He felt honoured to sleep in Tim’s room and to use the things that Tim had used in life.

  Undoubtedly Niall was happy living and working in Glasgow and seldom wasted time pining for dear familiar people and places, but occasionally his thoughts would drift, carrying him far over the western seas to Rhanna. It was a place where time itself seemed to stand still and the dour but fun-loving inhabitants retained a child-like innocence in their approach to life. Yet they were a powerful people, full of character and a strength of endurance born through the never-ending battle to reap a living from the harvests of land and sea. In amongst the dust and fumes of city life, Niall often found it difficult to remember the clean, wind-fresh air of Rhanna but sometimes it came to him in the diluted form of memories till he could almost smell the wild sweetness of tossed-heather moors, the nectar of summer fields, the piquant perfume of peat smoke, and, above all, the tang of salty sea. And of course there were the sounds of the Hebrides, the hill sheep bleating from mossy slopes, the ever-present sigh of the Atlantic Ocean, the gentle autumn winds rattling the seed pods of the gorse, heather bees buzzing . . .

  Niall’s elbows slipped and he sprawled into his heap of books. He’d been at it again, day-dreaming about Rhanna. Lately he seemed to be thinking about it more and more. He dearly longed to see his mother’s bonny face, his father’s brown eyes lit with a smile, the lively dark-haired nymph who was his little sister, Fiona, already using her feminine wiles to wheedle people round her little finger. But he wasn’t sure when next he would be home because as well as being a student at the vet. college he was also a part-time member of Britain’s Civil Defence, and with the Germans forever trying to get a foothold on British soil the country was alert and wary. It had been stipulated that anyone in a war-connected service should remain in their own locality.

  Although Niall felt that the training he had received in the Regular Army was being put to some use, there were times when he felt a great sense of frustration and an anger against the enemy for rendering him unfit to take an active part in battle. By nature he was a pacifist and didn’t believe in marching blindly into a foray for the sake of dying for King and Country. But in the exuberance of youth he felt he was of the stuff that went into one battle after another, always, in the height of his dreams, emerging unscathed and ready to start again. But he had fallen almost before he had begun his posting to Northern France in the autumn of 1939. After that it was only a matter of time before the Allied armies made the withdrawal from Dunkirk.

  The horror of Dunkirk often tore his dreams apart till they became nightmares, but his daytime thoughts were even more vivid and real. He remembered now and lived again in the smell of unwashed flesh, the blood and guts pouring from the wounded. No one really knew what was happening, and some were too sickened and dazed to care. Like weary flocks of sheep they had been organized on to various embarkation beaches to await in a terrifying cacophony of noise the boats that were to take them home. Smoke, dust and acrid fumes filled everyone’s lungs till it seemed it would be impossible ever to breathe clean air again. Thousands of men had been taken from the beaches but thousands more still had to wait. Moreover the place swarmed with French and Belgian troops and, adding to the congestion, hordes of empty-eyed and hopeless refugees. Niall now watched it all again with a feeling of utter despair. He felt that nothing was being achieved, that the fighting and killing was all in vain. He felt vulnerable and hopelessly inadequate and, seething with passion, knew that he would gladly tear apart a German soldier with his bare hands.

  The voice of his mother came to his mind like the rippling little wind of a storm warning: ‘How will it feel killing a man, Niall? You that never hurt a living thing in your life?’

  He had shuddered then, hating a war that turned ordinary men into savage beasts. And while the hate churned inside him, an explosion rocked the ground nearby. When the smoke and dust cleared he looked round to see one of his comrades dying, blood spewing from a gaping wound in his neck. He was but a boy of eighteen with a light sprinkling of fuzz on his chin and it had worried him that his downy beard wouldn’t grow into the wiry stubble of manhood. Lying together in the cold, dark trenches, he and Niall had laughed together as they dreamed up all sorts of ridiculous beard-growing potions. Looking at the round boyish face, Niall knew that the dawn would never break again for a life so young.

  The youngster, nicknamed Billy Boy by the older men, shivered as the finger of Death loomed over him. His filthy uniform had been shredded to tatters by the blast, and Niall tore off his own battle-jacket, and pushed Billy Boy’
s arms into the sleeves in a rough frenzy of fear. ‘This will keep you warm, Billy,’ he choked harshly, the sob at the back of his throat making his whispers of reassurance sound rough. ‘I’ll get help, you’ll be fine in no time.’

  But Billy Boy reached out a smoke-grimed hand to grip Niall’s arm. ‘Don’t – leave me to – die alone. You know there’s no help for me now.’ A weary smile touched his white lips and he looked up into the smoke-blackened heavens. ‘I’ll finish off growing my beard up there . . . though . . . I think it won’t matter . . . any more.’

  The feeble little joke was lost in the wisp of a sigh, and the long curling lashes of a young boy who had fought like a man and was dying like one, closed over eyes from which sight had already departed. In seconds he was gone, his head a dead weight on Niall’s arm, the blood of his life still rushing from the hole in his neck. Niall rocked on his heels in an agony of grief but one of the older men came and tore him away. They stumbled along the beach together while above them the air attacks continued, the planes of the German Luftwaffe zooming in and out of the pallid smoke-clouds, dropping bombs with a fiendish certainty that they were bound to hit some target, be it human or otherwise.

  Suddenly Niall felt the ground ripping apart and the sound of an explosion coincided with a searing pain in his head. He heard the older man screaming in agony and saw the blood seeping through the fingers held to his eyes. The world was a spinning blur of red, and the agony inside his head made him want to vomit. Before he sank into a thick blanket of nothingness he felt a rush of gladness that it was over and he could forget a world where power-hungry fanatics took away the freedom of peace-loving people.

  But, Niall thought, coming back to his present state, it hadn’t been over for him. He had lain unconscious in a military hospital in England and no one had known who he was because his identity disc had been blown from his neck and the rest of his personal belongings had been in the jacket he had given Billy. When he had finally come back to the living world he learned that his parents had believed him to be dead and that Shona, his childhood sweetheart, had given birth to a little stillborn son. In the agony of thinking him dead she had stumbled over the Rhanna moors to the place that had been their secret hideout since early childhood. There, near the old Abbey ruins, was their cave, set into a heather-clad hillock called Dunuaigh. In it they had placed precious bits and pieces, there they had aired their childish dreams, had argued and laughed the years away till finally, in the passion of their youth, they had loved in a world-spinning union of body and soul. He had taken away her virginity and with it her childhood. She had been just sixteen then, he eighteen, and after the warm sweet days of their intimate loving he had gone away to war leaving his seed in her, a seed that had grown into a tiny son never to know the sweetness of life.