I exclaimed, ‘That’s what I mean – he killed people. Killing people is wrong, fighting is wrong, being a soldier is wrong,’ I was in my stride by now, ‘And invading other countries is wrong – after all, we thought it was quite wrong when Napoleon wanted to invade us, didn’t we?’
The old Eve reborn. A very painful birth. I was put in detention for cheek (a thousand lines: ‘I must not interrupt a lesson’) and afterwards… Well, half of the girls were the daughters of serving army officers and the rest had friends who were. They backed me up against a wall in the dormitory and tried to get me to retract. I refused, I shouted again and again that all fighting was wrong. Then Olave screeched, ‘Your father ran away before the battle – he was a coward!’
Yelling, ‘He was a pacifist, like me!’ I hit her, hard.
Two thousand lines this time: ‘I must not fight’, and in French. The other girls sent me to coventry for a week. So the remarks about carrotty hair and huge freckles weren’t addressed directly to me – but always nice and loud so I could hear. How I hated school: the stupid rules, the everlasting bells, being treated like a child – no privacy, no freedom, no choice. I said something of the sort in Miss Baker’s hearing. And I’m sure she chose the next story book with me in mind. We were read to after prep each evening, and Miss Baker picked the story of Jane Eyre’s schooldays. ‘Not all schools are as comfortable and happy as yours, girls,’ with a stern look directed at me, ‘Poor little Jane was sent to a dreadful one called Lowood…’
She began to read – I didn’t want to listen, but I couldn’t stop myself. I was gripped by Jane’s torments at the hands of her cousins, then that hypocritical Mr Brocklehurst, the burnt porridge – Miss Baker only read up to the death of Helen Burns – half the class were in tears by then. How stupid, it was only a story, for goodness sake – then she closed the book, said Lowood did become much improved after the epidemic, and we would be allowed to read the rest of the book when we were older. ‘You may talk among yourselves until the dormitory bell rings, girls.’
As the door closed behind her I exclaimed, ‘Whyever didn’t that feeble Jane run away from that awful school?’
Olave said, ‘Don’t be silly, Evelyn – girls don’t. Only boys ever run away from school – and they get brought back.’
‘Girls can do anything boys can do.’
They tittered condescendingly at my folly, then bossy Mabel told me, ‘Anyway, she didn’t have anywhere to run to.’
Dora chipped in, ‘I wonder what happened to her later?’
Mabel informed us, ‘I know – my aunt read me the same bit last summer, and when I asked her what happened next she said Jane grew up and became a teacher.’
I muttered, ‘She must have been mad.’
Turning her back on me Mabel continued, ‘My aunt said after that she met this man, and fell in love with him, and a bit later she married him, and then they lived happily ever after.’
‘How boring – just turning into someone’s wife.’
Olave smiled very sweetly, ‘Well, you needn’t worry about that, Evelyn – men never marry girls with freckles.’ They all laughed.
How I hated school.
If I hadn’t already given it up I would have been crying in bed that night.
It wasn’t just the other girls – or even mostly them. It was that terrible sense of being trapped. I felt like one of those poor animals locked in their cages at Calcutta zoo, never able to run free again. However could I stand it?
In the middle of the night I woke up, and realised I didn’t have to. I wasn’t Jane Eyre – I had somewhere to run to, and someone to give me a home. Half a croft at Helspie, and my Great Aunt Ethel.
I planned my escape like the expedition to the Girthi Gorges – only even more carefully. I double and treble-checked myself, because now there was no Apa to correct my mistakes. But thanks to Apa I’d studied the different routes, back in Almora, when we’d planned our journey to Helspie, together – don’t think, Eve – so I knew I could travel via Glasgow. I was firmly convinced that if I so much as set foot in Edinburgh a lurking Mr Henderson would pounce on me from behind a pillar. Yet it was those same Mr Hendersons who’d given me the first, vital information: the times of the early morning trains to Scotland – and to London.
I needed the existence of that London train if I wasn’t to be caught and hauled ignominiously back to school. You see, there was absolutely no hope of concealing my absence after the rising bell, and I knew a telegraph message would reach Scotland long before I could – but if Miss Garside believed I’d gone to London… Like the Pandit on his mission in Tibet I would lay a false trail, and also like him, I intended to make my escape in disguise. I planned the simplest of disguises; my enemy Olave had given me the idea for it – though I certainly wouldn’t have admitted that then – I’d not addressed a single word to her since she’d said what she had about Apa. But I’ve got to admit now that her unintentional assistance was vital. As was the headmistress’ contribution to my escape – our winter games uniform. Miss Garside had chosen this outfit with a view to satisfying the demands of practicality as well as those of modesty. So we’d set off for our hockey lessons wearing a divided skirt of light-weight grey worsted. But on arrival at the pitch we were ordered to bend down, release the straps concealed behind the hem, and then perform a complex buttoning operation which converted the skirt into a quite passable pair of boy’s breeches.
Next came the the problem of my plaits, but that was soon solved by using my pocket money to buy an old cap from Tom, the bootboy. I decided my Indian boots and thick woollen stockings would pass for male or female, but they were packed away in my trunk, along with the stout tweed jacket I’d worn in Himalayan autumns, my more feminine jumper – and my gold-plated petticoat.
Once more, Tom – the only friend I’d made in that place – supplied the answer: the whereabouts both of the boxroom and of the key to get me into it. So midnight saw me creeping stealthily out of the dormitory – toe, heel, remember to keep in the shadows, Eve – down to the key board outside the boothole, along to the boxroom…
By the time I crept back upstairs again I had everything I needed stuffed into my kari – that’s a kind of haversack that Dotial porters weave in their spare time. I’d asked for mine to be made larger than usual, and I was glad of the extra space now. Having hidden my kari, clothes and spare set of underwear in the bathroom I crept back to bed, where excitement and apprehension kept me awake until an hour before dawn – which fortunately came early because it was already June.
With the traditional bolster left stuffed down my bed in imitation of my soon-to-be-absent form, I slipped along to the bathroom and quickly dressed. Barefoot, but with my skirt buttoned into breeches and wearing my jacket, I climbed out of the window and slid down the drainpipe. Retrieving my kari and boots from the crushed rose bush below, I then headed rapidly across the lawn and into the shelter of the shrubbery.
We’d walked almost into Northampton in those interminable crocodiles so I knew the way, and once there a hurrying workman directed me to the right station. There, with my betraying plaits coiled up under Tom’s cap, I asked in Tom’s accent for a ticket to Glasgow. In case of questions I had a story ready that I was going to work on a ship as a cabin boy, but I didn’t need to use it.
I slipped back outside again and found a convenient alleyway – in the shelter of which I pulled on my sweater, unbuttoned my breeches, swung my plaits free and stuffed cap and jacket into my kari. Back at the station, at the other booking office window, a girl bought a ticket to London. Rather riskily, I’m inclined to think now, she asked a question in her normal accent about the time, and said she was in a hurry … Luckily I was tall for my age and the booking clerk not at all inquisitive. The same girl proferred her ticket for clipping at the barrier, and on its return asked in a nice clear voice for directions to the London platform. But after a quick change behind an unattended luggage trolley, it was a boy who boarded the train. Th
e train to Glasgow.
Curled up with my head on my kari I slept my way through most of England, waking beyond Carlisle in time to welcome Scotland – and freedom. I’d sprung my trap.
I arrived at Glasgow Central at three o’clock in the afternoon. My enquiries disclosed that the next through train to Nick, stopping at Helmsdale, left from Glasgow Buchanan Street at ten that evening. Good, I had some time to explore Glasgow and replenish my provisions – the bread, cheese and apples I’d acquired from the school larder had long since been eaten. Then I could sleep overnight on the train, and arrive at Helmsdale at quarter past ten on Friday morning, all fresh and ready for the nineteen-mile walk to Helspie. Clever, clever Eve.
Too clever by half, as it turned out. Oh, there was no problem with Glasgow – I happily explored that great soot-blackened city with a lightness of spirit springing from the realisation that I was now far, far away from school – school with its rules and restrictions, control and confinement – school, where someone had dared to call my beloved Apa a coward.
No, my problem wasn’t with Glasgow, it was with the Glaswegian accent. Returning to catch my train in the evening I followed the directions I thought I’d been given – and took the wrong turning. I ran and ran, arrived panting at the ticket office, seized my change and that precious small oblong of cardboard, ran off to catch the Wick train – but all that was left of it was the smell of smoke and the flicker of a tail lamp disappearing down the platform.
A moment of pure panic. The ticket collector saved me. He pointed the way to the third class waiting room, along with the information that the next train to Helmsdale from Buchanan Street departed at twenty to eight the following morning. After a brief – but very necessary – spell as a girl so I could visit the Ladies’ Cloakroom I lay down on one of the long benches in the waiting room, put my head on my kari, and slept the night away, exhausted.
I woke in time for tea, a large plate of bacon and eggs – and to be very early indeed for my train. It was a quarter to six in the evening before that train set me down on the platform at Helmsdale and steamed off on its long journey inland to Wick. I could have gone with it to Wick, travelled down the branch line to Lybster, and then walked the mere five miles south from there to Helspie. Instead, I now faced a nineteen mile hike, overnight and over the Ord of Caithness. But that wasn’t why I stood on the platform fighting back my tears; I’d chosen this route because it had been the one Apa and I had planned to take, together. And now, there was no Apa.
Dazed with grief I hardly noticed the first part of my journey – all I could do was remember Apa’s voice telling me how he’d walked this way beside his mother, looking at the moors and the sea; and how, as they came down into Caithness, his mother had pointed out the distant mountains of Morven, and the ridge of Scaraben with its three summits – ‘just like our own Trisul, Eve,’ – Don’t think, just walk.
And slowly the steady rhythm of my legs soothed me, because now I was walking uphill – I was zig-zagging up the steep slopes that I, mountain-born, had so missed. And as I drew nearer and nearer to the summit I remembered that I wasn’t truly alone – because there, on the other side, at the croft in Helspie, my Aunt Ethel was waiting for me. At that thought my pace quickened and I began to run – and so I ran over the Ord of Caithness, running on into a new life.
Chapter Nine
Suddenly I was tired. So I trudged along with the open moorland on either side until I found a small bothy by the road, where I spent the night curled up in a corner on a pile of dusty straw. Next morning I drank from the cold, clear water of a nearby burn and then walked on, munching my last Glasgow apple for breakfast. Steeply down to Berriedale, across its pair of bridges and then steeply up again. Now the open moorland was giving way to walls, neat fields, and scattered low cottages – but always, on my right, and ahead of me was the sea. Down the hill to Dunbeath, across the river there, and on upwards – walking, walking – surely Helspie couldn’t be far now? And where was the cliff path Apa had told me about, which cut along behind the Gob and on down to the harbour?
I was desperately trying to remember the map he’d drawn for me when I spotted it, leading off to my right. Confident now, I left the road and headed for the cliffs – and so I came to the Gob.
There was no missing it; it reared high up above the sea looking like a great beak – just as it had to those Gaelic-speaking refugees who’d first named it. I remembered Apa telling me about those men and women and children who’d been banished from their homes and come to this barren coast to make a new beginning. Now I would do the same.
Abandoning the path I headed straight for the highest part of the Gob, and stood there on the very edge of the cliff, buffeted by the wind and exhilarated by the wild waves beneath me. And saw the boats – the boats! For the first time I watched the herring fleet come sailing home to Helspie harbour, bounding and skipping over the sparkling waves below like a flight of dark-winged birds.
I realise now that what I felt on the Gob that morning was more than just excitement; as I stood there watching the small dark figures hauling on ropes and wheels and the sun glinting on the shining silver of their catch I felt the first stirrings of hope again.
The leaping ships of the herring fleet curved round the foot of the cliff and on into the hidden harbour. As the final boat skimmed lightly past me I turned and ran, running back to the cliff path, running down the steeply shelving hillside to that harbour – running back to life.
The brown-sailed ships were all safe home by now, with the inner harbour wall curving protectively round them. The wall of the outer harbour tried to do the same – but beneath the spray spewed up by each battering wave I could see its abrupt, jagged end; it was still broken, just as Apa had told me.
Back in the tightly packed inner harbour a single larger vessel was using its steam winch to unload a cargo of long wooden planks. Gusts of thick grey smoke from its funnel blew down into the faces of the men at work on the fishing boats either side. As the swooping seagulls shrieked above them these men shouted their news to each other in unfamiliar words that I knew must be Gaelic – but they never paused in their rapid heaving of loaded baskets over the side of their ships and down on to the quay. Once there the baskets were hurried along to the women, who were already hard at work over great troughs of shining herrings. Knives flashed – blood and guts and silver scales bespattered mackintosh aprons and bare arms – even down-bent faces – but their rapid rhythm never faltered.
Already I was scrambling down the last steep slope, irresistibly drawn to all that purposeful activity – so different from the artificial world of school.
Along the quay I breathed in the pungent scents of coal smoke and tar, blood and fish – and fast-dissolving salt from the barrels already filling up with layer upon layer of gutted herring. I drew closer and closer to it all – too close, and suddenly my own face was bloodied too. I leapt back, laughing – but after the laughter came sadness, because Apa was not there with me to share my delight in this exciting new world.
But even then, I think, that beneath the sadness of the child was a more mature awareness – I think I did realise that it was only because of Apa I was there at all. Apa, who’d encouraged me to make my own choices, and given me the confidence to carry them out. So now here I was in Helspie. And Aunt Ethel was waiting for me.
A dog barked, and I turned my back on the harbour and set off towards the row of small stone houses, looking for someone to tell me the way to the Gunn croft. I met an old man, and he pointed with his stick to the green entrance of a narrow valley, and in slow, careful English told me I must follow the burn up the strath – the croft house was on the left, before the bridge. To reach the strath I must turn up beyond the post office. The post office! I had a sudden bright idea.
I wrote out a telegram to send to school: HAVE COME TO LIVE WITH AUNT ETHEL GUNN STOP SEND LUGGAGE. Rather reluctantly I added, PLEASE, before finishing with: STOP EVELYN COURTNEY, and handing it to the
girl behind the counter. After counting the words she said with a smile, ‘It will be nice for the old lady to have company’, but then pointed out that I’d not said where I wanted the luggage to be sent to. Seizing the form back I briskly wrote: GUNN CROFT STOP HELSPIE STOP CAITHNESS STOP NB STOP. I smiled in a moment of triumph at that N.B.; North Britain – almost as far north as I could be! Then I paid with the last of my small change and set off for the strath.
The strath – narrow burn below, bare, open fields above, and on the slope between a gently winding path leading upwards through clustering trees whose whispering leaves still glowed with that special fresh green of spring – though by the calendar we were well into summer now. None of the trees were very tall, or thickset of trunk – only in this narrow valley could they withstand the winds of Caithness – and even in that shelter there was a fragility about them all.
Child of a forest officer I began to identify those I could: silver birch, hazel, sycamore – and there was one with all its trunk and branches covered in lichen! I turned to tell Apa – Shock stunned me – I stood numb and rigid on the path. Then the familiar rustling of leaves and chattering of fast-flowing water gradually loosened my body, and I reached out and put my hand firmly on the slender trunk of a silver birch. The rough feel of its bark under my fingers brought me back to the present. I would tell Aunt Ethel about the lichen-covered tree, she’d be interested in what I’d noticed. I set off again, faster now.
I came upon it suddenly: a long, low building growing out of the edge of the field high above the path. I bent to unbutton the knees of my breeches, tugged off my cap to free my plaits, and then remembered to scrub the herring blood and scales off my cheek before scrambling up the bank, over the wall into the field, and round the corner of the building to the front door.
Eve Page 9