by Dee Yates
He thought back to the times he had stood here with Jeannie and they had looked together at the moon, he speechless as ever, unable to articulate his feelings. He looked up at the moon now and it seemed as remote and as unreachable as his wife. There and then he made up his mind that if Jeannie was not back by the weekend, he would go and find her.
He was turning to make his way indoors when he heard a faint throbbing sound. He stood still and listened intently. What could be making such a noise? It was getting louder now. And then, in the sky to the west, came a line of aircraft, their outlines low and menacing in the moonlight. He watched, mesmerised, unaware at first that his father had come out to stand at his side. The planes carried on northwards, the noise of their pulsating engines diminishing in the still air.
‘Are they ours or theirs?’ his father asked, causing Tam to start.
‘I dinnae ken. I’ve no’ heard ours make such a sound as that, but I hope to God they are ours.’
‘I guess we’ll find out soon enough, pal. Come along – let’s get to our beds.’
The two men, father and son, went inside, but Tam was very far from sleep that night. After a wakeful couple of hours, he pulled on his boots and went outside again. It was quiet now, eerily so after the commotion of earlier. His eyes traced again the path of the planes from south to north and their disappearance behind the hills. On the horizon he could see an orange glow. It looked like the last glimmer of sunset or the stirrings of sunrise, but the sun had set hours ago and sunrise was still a long way off and, in any case, in almost the opposite direction. As he stood watching, the strange light became stronger. It must be a fire, and a big one, perhaps in one of the towns to the north – Hamilton or Motherwell maybe, factory towns.
*
It was now four days since Jeannie’s flight to Glasgow and barely two weeks until the baby was due. Tam went about his work the next day in increasing anxiety. No letter arrived from her. It was as if she didn’t exist. In bed that night he was again unable to sleep, missing her by his side and worrying that she might have decided to stay longer with her aunt because of the coolness of their last weeks together – that she might have decided she was not coming back at all.
Tam and his father were finishing their dinner the next day when there was a knock at the door and Fiona entered.
‘Sorry to disturb you,’ she said with a smile, noticing the dirty dishes.
‘That’s fine, hen. Come away in and sit yourself down. Do you have news of Alan?’
‘Yes, I’ve had a letter. He’s fine.’ Fiona glanced around the room and her smile disappeared. ‘Where’s Jeannie? Is she no’ back yet?’
‘No’ yet. I’m expecting her back any day, most probably after the weekend,’ Tam replied more cheerily than he felt.
‘Then you’ve no’ heard about the bombings? No, I suppose you havenae’, being out here away from it all.’
‘What bombings?’ Douglas demanded.
‘Glasgow – it was bombed last night and the night before. Look, Tam, I think you need to go and bring Jeannie home to safety.’
‘Was it bad then, do you know?’ Douglas had risen from the table.
Fiona glanced at Tam, who had remained in his chair motionless. ‘Aye, I think it was pretty bad.’
Tam got up suddenly. ‘Aye. Aye, I will. Father, can you manage until I get back?’ He looked around vacantly for coat and boots.
‘Of course I’ll manage. Here, let me help you, pal,’ his father said, stopping him in his tracks. ‘You’ll need to be prepared to stay at least overnight. By the time you get there and find where her aunt lives, it’ll be getting late.’
‘I don’t know where she does live,’ Tam exclaimed. ‘I’ll have to look through Jeannie’s letters and try to find the address.’ He hurried across to the bedroom and opened the door.
‘Tam. I’ll wait for you and drive you down to the station, if you’ll let me,’ Fiona interrupted him. ‘I have the pony and cart outside.’
‘Aye, that would be good. Thanks, Fiona.’
Tam found a letter addressed to Jeannie at the top of a pile secured by string. He glanced at it to ascertain it contained the address and put it in his coat pocket, together with his wallet. Pulling open a drawer, he took out a change of clothes and some night attire and stuffed them into a battered backpack. Lastly, he fetched shaving equipment from the bathroom, added it to the bag and he was ready.
His father had put together some fruit cake and a flask of tea for his journey. He put his arms round his son and hugged him.
‘You take care, pal. Mind and bring her back soon.’
Tam said little as Fiona steered the pony and cart along the track and towards the village. As they were nearing the train station, she turned to him with a smile.
‘Let me know when the two of yous are back home.’
‘Aye, I will – and thanks.’
Once on the train, he fished in his pocket and brought out the letter from Jeannie’s aunt, tearing off the address and putting it for safety in his wallet. He read again the words he had only glanced at before: Maybe you will tell me more about what is wrong when we meet. You know I would do anything to help.
What had Jeannie said to her aunt that could have resulted in this offer of help?
He sat back in his seat, his eyes flicking from one view to the next through the window of the train. He should have been less sharp with her, even if he was only voicing concern for her welfare. She had merely been anxious to help her aunt and uncle after all, just as she had wanted to help the evacuee lads, and just as she had been helping the Cunninghams. Once he had found her and taken her back home, he would, he resolved, be a better husband to her than he had been thus far.
42. The Aftermath
March 1941
Everywhere Tam looked, the billboards stared out at him.
CLYDEBANK BOMBED
HUNDREDS DEAD
THOUSANDS HOMELESS
He cursed now that he had not been to Glasgow more often. He had no idea how far Clydebank was from the centre of the city, nor for that matter whether Partick was near or far from the bombed town. As he walked from the station, he could hear people talking about the bombing in hushed tones.
A policeman pointed Tam in the direction of the tram to Partick. Folk stood around the tram stop. They nodded to him as he approached.
‘Where are you going to, pal?’ a man looking to be in late middle-age asked him.
‘Er, Partick, to see some relatives of my wife’s.’
‘Och, you’ll be all right then. It’s Clydebank that’s really suffered from the bombing, so we hear. That’s where we’re going.’ He indicated his wife who was standing quietly to one side of the group. ‘It’s our daughter who’s there with the weans.’
‘Have you heard from her?’
‘Not a word, though they say the phone lines are down, along with everything else. That’s why we’re going, to make sure they’re not affected and, if they are, to bring them back to stay with us in the city.’
‘How far is Clydebank from Partick?’
‘No’ so far. You’ve no’ been to the big city before, pal?’
‘No. I farm in the hills further south. There’s no call for us to come up here.’
The arrival of the tram curtailed any further conversation. Tam stared out of the window and his stomach churned as he contemplated the task ahead. Would Jeannie be prepared to come back and give him a second chance?
He alighted at Partick railway station, pulled out the letter and asked directions from a nearby policeman. The policeman looked at the address and then at Tam.
‘Friends of yours, were they?’
Fear clutched at Tam’s heart. ‘Relatives – of my wife. Why do you say “were”? Has something happened to them?’
‘I understand the house took a direct hit. No survivors, I was told.’
Tam swallowed, his mouth so dry that he could hardly get out the words. ‘But my wife – she was staying with
them.’
‘Are you sure of that, sir?’
‘Well, yes. At least she got on the train to go and visit them.’
‘Well then, sir, I suggest the best thing you can do is to go to the local hospital and enquire there. The only other place is the mortuary, I’m sorry to say, although they are so overwhelmed with casualties that it will be some time before names are put to faces. I’m sorry, that’s the best I can advise. Good luck! I hope you find her.’
The queue at the hospital reception stretched almost to the door, others like himself enquiring after missing relatives. Some were directed onwards to numbered wards within the bowels of the building; others sympathetically turned away. It seemed it was better to be told one’s nearest and dearest were lying injured in a hospital bed than left to contemplate an even worse possibility.
‘I’m looking for my wife, Jeannie McColl. Is she here? The house she was staying in was bombed. She may be injured.’
The receptionist looked down the long list of admissions and shook her head. ‘I’m sorry, sir. There’s no one of that name here. I would suggest you try the town mortuary – not that she’s necessarily there, but just to exclude the possibility.’
The mortuary was in chaos. Many people had been injured beyond recognition, especially those that had been caught in the fires that had raged through Clydebank. Others were laid out in close rows in nearby rooms, from which relatives emerged in bewilderment or tears and a few with hopeful expressions on their faces. Tam summoned up every ounce of courage and followed an attendant.
Up and down the rows he trod, seeing old and young – grandparents with faces wrinkled with age and worry, careworn mothers, children and babies with smooth faces, seemingly untouched by the cares of the world.
But she was not there.
Leaving the room, he was advised that there were still ruins to be searched, still many more bodies likely to be uncovered. Some had been buried already, unidentified or unidentifiable. The attendant suggested he leave his details with the police and they would contact him if further information came to hand.
Tam turned away with a heart as heavy as lead. He knew how it would be. And it was all his own doing.
Outside, he was surprised to see the world still going on as it had been when he entered the building. He stood at a loss, then decided to go and find the house in which Jeannie had been staying with her aunt and uncle. He passed several houses that had been, to a greater or lesser extent, damaged by bombs, but most of those in the streets along which he walked were intact. When he eventually reached the address written on the letter he still clutched in his hand, it was to find that the house had indeed received a direct hit. The greater part of the building lay in ruins. The upper floor had collapsed onto the lower, leaving outer walls missing or standing in jagged columns, decorated by flapping curtains and vulnerable to the elements. Furniture was upturned among the devastation, partially buried with bricks, covered in plaster. The springs of a bed lay contorted amongst the rubble. Shattered crockery and scattered saucepans were all that identified where the kitchen had once formed the hub of the home.
No one could have left this scene of disaster alive.
43. Letters
June 2002
Liz goes to answer a knock on the door of her cottage. It’s the postman.
‘Recorded delivery for you,’ he says cheerfully. ‘How are you settling in?’
‘Plenty to do, but I love being here,’ she replies with a smile, signing her name in the required place. He hands her a small package with a London postmark.
Mystified, Liz goes through to the conservatory and sits on the sofa by the open French window. She tears off the brown paper wrapping. Inside is a box containing two letters. The thinner of the two, lying on top, is from her mother’s solicitors and concludes the settling of her affairs. It also states that the enclosed letter was put in their hands for safekeeping for the duration of her mother’s life, to be given to Liz after the death of her mother and when all business had been concluded.
This letter is in a separate envelope and clearly contains several pages. It is addressed to ‘Liz’, nothing more. She holds it in trembling fingers, before reaching across for the letter opener.
By the time she has finished reading, the range of emotions which she has experienced has left her exhausted. She has laughed and she has cried, been amazed and been angered. More than any other, it has triggered the emotion of overwhelming sadness. She takes a deep breath, lets it out very slowly and gets up from the sofa. The pages of writing on the table before her stir gently in the breeze from the garden. She steps onto the decking and walks down the lawn to the fence. Her eyes trace the valley towards its origin. She sees the river in its base, the bare rounded tops of the hills and the clumps of trees that protect the scattered farms and cottages in the westward reaches of the village, where the hardiest of animals and their hardy owners eke out a living.
And she feels more at home here now than she has done at any time since her arrival.
*
It’s June now and the days are long and the nights gone in the blink of an eye. Liz never fails to be amazed by the long hours of daylight and makes the most of them by exploring the various paths and logging roads through the forest. Often out in the early morning, she sees hares and deer and once a fox that vaults the stone wall and lands on the road in front of her. Which of the two is the more astonished is unclear, but the fox jumps over the wall on the opposite side of the road, turns to look at her with amber eyes and sets off at a jaunty trot across the field.
Letters arrive, but less frequently, from David. He phones when he is able, often when she is out or busily occupied with the hundred and one things there are to do in an old cottage recently acquired. He rarely rings in the evening, when she is lonely and would welcome his call. She keeps his letters, of course she does. She puts them in a box with the dozens of others, filed chronologically, like his declarations of love.
*
A letter plops onto the mat a week later. Liz picks it up, noticing the ‘NHS’ heading on the envelope. It’s addressed to Mr Thomas McColl. Obviously the hospital has not been notified of his death. She opens the envelope carefully in order to find the telephone number. It’s an appointment to attend Outpatients. She sees the number at the base of the letter and rings the department, explaining that Thomas McColl no longer lives at this address and that in fact, she understands, that he has died.
‘Can you give me the full name and address on the appointment, please?’
Liz does so. There is a pause and the receptionist says there has been a mistake and the appointment has been sent to his old address.
Liz’s heart skips a beat. ‘You mean he isn’t dead?’
‘Not as far as we know. He’s been on our records for a while, but we only received this new referral letter a few weeks ago. But thank you for letting us know. I’ll make sure another letter goes to his correct address.’
‘Please,’ Liz says breathlessly, before the receptionist has a chance to put the phone down. ‘Please will you let me have his address, only I’d very much like to get in touch with him.’
‘I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to do that.’
‘But if I knew it, I could send any post on to him, and besides…’ She stops knowing that if she tells the person on the end of the phone the real reason for wanting to know where Tam McColl lives, she will certainly never be told.
‘I’m sorry. It’s against the rules. But thank you for informing us. Goodbye.’
The phone goes dead. Liz’s heart is beating fast. So the previous owner of the cottage, the person who had a picture of Liz’s mother on the windowsill, is still alive. She thinks back to what she was told about him when she was buying the cottage. He was a loner, they said in the pub. He had one brother older than himself, but they hadn’t mentioned anyone else. That being the case, he would probably be in an old people’s home. But why did they say he’d died… or did they? May
be she had misinterpreted what she had been told.
Straight away she reaches for the telephone directory and leafs through until she finds Care Homes. There are three listed. The first has no record of the name. The second has a Thomas McColl, admitted the previous December.
‘Who can I say is asking for him?’
‘My name’s Liz Deighton. I… I think he used to know my mother. Would it be possible for me to come and see him?’
‘Certainly. It will be lovely for him. It’s not often that Tam has visitors. Come to the desk and introduce yourself when you arrive.’
*
At two o’clock in the afternoon of the same day, Liz rings the bell of Bankside care home and is let into the foyer. The receptionist looks up with a friendly smile as she approaches.
‘You must be here to see Tam McColl,’ she says.
‘That’s right. Was it you I spoke to this morning on the phone?’
‘No, I’ve only just come on duty, but I can see you’re related. Come this way and I’ll show you where he is.’
Liz follows her down a long corridor, her brain in a daze at the receptionist’s words.
Tam McColl is sitting by the open window of his room, gazing out onto a neatly manicured lawn, finished off by a line of pines, behind which blue-grey hills form an unbroken horizon.
‘A visitor for you, Mr McColl.’
Tam turns slowly from the window. ‘What’s that you said? A visitor? For me?’ He looks beyond the receptionist to the woman standing behind her and he gasps and puts a hand to his chest. The receptionist steps forward anxiously, but he peers round her, staring at his visitor. ‘I don’t believe it.’ He rubs his forehead and looks again. ‘It can’t be. You look so like her. But it’s not possible. It’s… it’s an apparition sent to haunt me.’
Liz laughs. ‘I can assure you I’m not a ghost.’ She sits down in the chair opposite Tam. ‘Let me explain why I’m here. My name’s Liz Deighton. Your cottage was for sale. I’ve bought it; I’m living there now. But when I was looking round, I found a photo – this photo.’ She pulls it from her handbag. ‘She looks like my mother. And if it’s not my mother, she has a double.’