The Lost Lights of st Kilda

by Elisabeth Gifford

  I sincerely doubted that she was capable of such an arduous crossing, eighty if she was a day, with the build of a wizened girl of twelve. But she gripped my arm, fingers hard as ash wood, and gave me a pull. ‘Vamos ahora. Prisa.’

  I was wrong about the old girl’s stamina. We were hard-pressed to keep up. She strode ahead with her quick little steps, tapping the ground through the snow with her long stick. She kept her cape wrapped tight against the wind, better protection than our fine coats. My feet felt like solid ice, but the urgency to keep moving meant that we could not stop. The cold and the weariness were terrible, but it was your voice in the wind, Chrissie, your face that kept me going.

  The last ridge was the border with Spain. In the distance we could make out the faint lights of a tiny hamlet. The old woman stopped and gestured towards it, pointed to us but not to herself. She seemed to be saying that if she returned now, she should make it back to the little hut before nightfall. I hoped so anyhow. I realized that she had been on her way from Spain to France, had detoured back to help us.

  The afternoon light was beginning to fade again as we began the descent on the other side. By the time we were down that mountain, the evening blue had filled the valley, lights from a village some five or maybe ten miles in front of us, difficult to say when you don’t know the terrain. But they were a welcome sight, a long time since we had seen a place with lights shining freely, and we hobbled on.

  No one about in the village. Was this was the place where we were supposed to meet our contact? There was no clue to the place’s name. No sign of a cafe or an estaminet where you could go in and survey the situation in the warm. The cold was coming in hard with the dark.

  Two figures appeared in the road. They wore cloaks, distinctive hats shaped like upturned boats, Guardia Civiles, Spanish police.

  We had nowhere to go, no food left, half frozen. We stood still and waited as they came towards us. With Spain being neutral, there was half a chance they might help us. The only alternative left to us was to stand in the blue cold and freeze to death.

  CHAPTER 44

  Fred

  SPAIN, 1941

  There must have been over four thousand men crowded into the Spanish internment camp at Miranda d’Ebro; Spanish prisoners from the civil war, soldiers and airmen escaped from France who’d crossed the Pyrenees only to end up in this place. Many were still in the remnants of uniforms, British, Polish, French, and Canadian. The compound stood in the middle of an arid plain swept by frozen winds. In the distance a ring of stony hills and mountains with snow on their peaks. Solid walls topped with barbed wire enclosed rows of white huts. Thin soup once a day.

  Inside the huts, an atmosphere of resigned depression.

  ‘I hear there’s a good chance of being repatriated through the embassy,’ I said to a gaunt Gordon Highlander in the next bunk.

  ‘Still waiting for my papers to come through after six months. More of a chance of being carried out in a box from some godforsaken disease in this place.’

  The black frostbite patches on our toes did better than I thought, peeled off and left new skin underneath as the days dragged on. Cold, lice and hunger were the staples of our lives over the following weeks. With the arrival of the warmer weather, a fever went through the camp and I spent days in a sweating delirium, vivid dreams where I felt you so close, if I could only rise from my bed. You were standing with a child next to you, a girl, tall, though her face was in shadow.

  Angus was next to go down. Almost didn’t pull through.

  Then, on a raw day in October, returning from work in the quarry, I saw a black Austin parked inside the gate, a small Union Jack flag on its bonnet. Hardly dared hope.

  A few days later, Angus and I were sitting in an elegant room overlooking the British Embassy gardens in Madrid. An efficient English lady had organized new clothes, new papers. One at a time we were questioned intensively, suspect until proven otherwise. When they were finally convinced I was no German agent, they asked a lot of questions about Archie. Everything he’d done. How he’d died.

  I could see relief in our interrogator’s face as he closed the file. Whoever had done so much to damage the escape routes, with fifty arrested and shot by the Gestapo, it wasn’t Archie who’d been the traitor. And I gathered from the intensity of the questions around small details that here was a man who had considered Archie a friend.

  In the embassy basements, trestle tables were set out, camp beds, basins and shaving kits. We were given a decent meal of beef stew, beer, jam roly-poly and custard. At the end of the meal, the same man who had interrogated us came down with a bottle of brandy and three glasses. Jack Tolworth. ‘Thought I’d let you see I have a more civilized side. I know it’s not much of a welcome after all you’ve been through to get here, but there’s little we can do on the ground inside France. It’s a hard blow losing Archie. A good man.’

  ‘He saved my life.’

  ‘I don’t doubt it. And you’re lucky to have got away after St Valery like you did. Over ten thousand of the 51st Highland Division are in German prison camps right now, most of them deep inside occupied Poland. Very little hope of escaping from there.’

  ‘I’ve had help. From a lot of people. People like Archie.’

  He nodded. ‘Between you and me, our friend was responsible for a lot of men making it here in one piece. A hero. Don’t forget that.’

  I nodded.

  ‘Well, you’ve an early start tomorrow. We usually take you boys who make it over the Pyrenees down to Gibraltar on the train, but since there’s an embassy car going down to the coast, you’ll be travelling in style. It’s the surest way, no questions asked. Spain is ostensibly neutral but crawling with Abwehr spies. So long as you don’t mind keeping your heads down.’

  In Gibraltar we had nothing to do but wait. After so many months of being close to danger, I was overcome by a deep weariness. The sea breezes coming in from the open windows, army meals; I felt my body begin to heal from months of exhaustion and hunger. I sat in the spring sun, looking out over a blue sea, eyes half closed. Sometimes, I could almost be sitting in front of the bothy again, a faint awareness of you close by.

  It was only when we were on the ship home, the wind fresh off the sea and filled with salt and hope, that I began to feel a rising excitement, a longing I had not dared to allow, the hope of seeing you again. Standing on the deck of the navy frigate, zigzagging our way through rumours and sightings of enemy ships, I willed the ship to move faster.

  I thought about sending you a telegram as soon as we disembarked in the din of Portsmouth but there was too much to say. I’d intended going straight home, wherever home was, heading towards Scotland, but as soon as I disembarked I was escorted to London and a dull building in Whitehall where various men asked the same questions, over and over, and the days ticked by.

  A man like me, escaped from St Valery and on the run through enemy territory for almost two years, it was only fair that they wanted to know how I’d done it. Much easier to get through if you had a German sponsor willing you to get back to Blighty to work for them as a double agent. They had a lot of questions about Archie too. Everything he’d said or done. I could see that they still had their suspicions about him.

  They were wrong. I could understand the need to check things out so thoroughly, there’d been much talk of the fifty people in the underground network being shot by then. But it wasn’t Archie. It was only towards the end of the war that I learned the true identity of the traitor from a fellow officer. It was a man named Harry Cole, a small-time swindler posing as a Belgian officer who ran one of the escape lines down through France and Marseille. He’d been siphoning off money sent from London to aid the escapees. As soon as he was unmasked, he turned double agent and sold fifty people from the resistance into the Gestapo’s hands, including Nancy Fiocca’s beloved husband, to be tortured and shot.

  But for now, my London interrogators were content to wrap the matter up so far as I was concerned. I
was free to go.

  ‘But don’t make any big plans, Mr Lawson,’ the officer said before I left. ‘You’ll have your call-up papers soon. Best get straight back in the fray.’

  ‘How long?’

  ‘A few days, I’m sorry.’

  I hurried for the station, took the night train to Glasgow, so little time to find you.

  CHAPTER 45

  Fred

  SCOTLAND, 1941

  With the address Archie had given me in my pocket, I took the bus going from Fort William to Lochaline, asked the driver to drop me just before Larachbeg. It would have been a while since Archie had been in contact with Chrissie. What if she had married since he’d last heard from her, as well she might with a daughter to care for? I hoped that she had waited for me. It hardly seemed possible. With a tight readiness for disappointment furled deep in my chest, I sat on the bus rocking its way across the winding roads of Morvern, sick, half with the movement, half with nerves and hope. Another hour or so and I might know, I’d see her and she’d tell me how it had been.

  All my future was in her hands, in her forgiveness, married or not. At least then there might be some peace.

  The bus stopped in the middle of nowhere, a sheep by a barred gate, a stoop of newly plated fir trees, the earth still red and raw around them. The bus driver nodded to a cart track that led away down the hill.

  ‘It’s a mile or so that way you’ll be wanting to go and there’s the village, though it’s barely a village to speak the truth. They’ll be glad to see you back home, son.’

  The door slammed shut, the driver facing forward and already away. I stood in the last of the bitter engine fumes, hoisted my duffel bag on my shoulder and let my hand loosen the collar of my cheap demob shirt. Hard to breathe.

  If Chrissie wasn’t there?

  I began to stride out through the green and brown of the autumn hills, the sky a new blue. After a while the scenery had changed and yet was still the same. I breached the brow of the hill and saw the row of white cottages below. Smoke from the chimney of the middle one.

  My legs taking me too fast down the hill. Wanting and not wanting to be there and finally know my fate. I stopped and crouched down at the roadside on my haunches, lit a cigarette. A way of resting that was still a habit from the camps. As I watched the cottages, a door opened and a woman came out.

  I stood up, for she had the way and the gait of my Chrissie. But Chrissie as a girl. Her hair was covered by a red beret. She fetched a bike from a shed, her movements quick, decided, all Chrissie’s spark and dash. She began to cycle up the hill towards me. I couldn’t move as she toiled up, steady, easy, growing in size and nearness. My Chrissie, unchanged by the years.

  She passed by, saying a good morning in Gaelic. I saw it wasn’t Chrissie at all, but so like her.

  And then I turned to stare after her. If it wasn’t Chrissie, then it was surely Chrissie’s daughter.

  My daughter. Nothing but the singing of birds after her passing.

  I turned back towards the cottages, hurried on down the road.

  The girl had come out from the middle cottage. I stood loitering a little way along, trying perhaps to catch sight of some movement in the windows. But there was no sign of life. I waited a while longer then took my courage in my hands and went up the path, past the foxgloves and the cabbages run to seed. Knocked on the door, every detail of its green paint and small glass panel with a lace curtain burned into my memory. This moment. This moment would tell.

  No one answered. I stood on the step, then walked back and looked up at the house. That’s when an old biddy from next door came out and asked me my business.

  ‘A friend,’ I told her. ‘Back from France.’

  That was enough to reassure her, along with the duffel bag and that air of a soldier that clings on to you, it seems, even in civvies. In the Highlands and Islands they all knew what so many of the men had been through by now, a trickle finally making their way back from the camps.

  ‘She’ll no be back before this afternoon when the last milking is done. But you can come in bide inside if you will. I’ve the kettle on the stove.’

  I followed her broad back, a pinny crossed over her shoulders. I watched her red rough hands make a pot of tea. A plate of hot griddle cakes appeared, smelling of salt and butter. I still hadn’t got used to ordinary food.

  And Chrissie, how would time have treated her? Would I know her again? I knew I’d love her no matter the changes. And the changes in me? I’d seen in the mirror the greyness and gaunt cheeks since coming back. What right had I to ask her to consider the boy and all his failings, and hope she’d still see some good in me?

  ‘And Mr Gillies?’ I asked the neighbour. ‘Is he home soon?’

  ‘Oh my goodness, we have never known a Mr Gillies,’ she said with a laugh. ‘I am sure there was one, one way or another, but we have never seen hide nor hair of him. Oh, but she manages. She manages very well, our Chrissie.’

  And she gave me a curious, old-fashioned look. But I wasn’t minded to be worried about her curiosity. I was thinking how good it felt to hear Chrissie’s name spoken with such warmth and fondness again. This, more than anything, made me know why I was here, waiting for her.

  The waning afternoon had begun to send down its chill, thinning the air, when, two hours later and with all of the patient neighbour’s old newspaper off by heart, the old lady beckoned me to the window. ‘That’s herself returning now.’ And I saw a woman so like Chrissie, hair cut short, a stronger build, firm of step but the same black curls, the same energy and decision in all her movements. I felt the tears spring to my eyes and an explosion of hope in my chest. My Chrissie.

  I couldn’t move. I watched her go inside her house and close the door.

  The old lady gave me an impatient look. ‘Well, you’ll no talk to her standing here.’

  This time, the green door opened moments after my knock. I’d stepped back down from the step, and she stood a little above me, her eyes narrowed as if troubled in her sight.

  ‘Yes?’ she said. Impatient. Kindly. ‘I’m afraid I have no work for you, but I can find you a sandwich and a glass of water if you’d like.’

  I realized my one civilian suit hadn’t been cared for as well as it might.

  ‘Chrissie?’ I said. ‘Don’t you remember me?’

  She frowned and stepped closer. Took in my receding hairline and close-shaved head, the gaunt frame and the loose suit. Could she see anything of the boy I had once been? I could barely see him myself any more. ‘It’s Fred. Fred Lawson.’

  A look of pain on her face She gripped the door jamb, and I thought she might fall she was so white and unsteady. I moved to help her but she backed away.

  ‘It can’t be,’ she said. ‘You left so long ago. Why are you here now?’

  ‘Oh, Chrissie, can’t we talk? Can’t I come in?’

  She shook her head, couldn’t stop shaking it as if afflicted by a tremor. ‘Is it really you?’ Then she put her hand out and touched my arm, the other against her chest.

  ‘Can’t I come in, Chrissie?’

  She stood searching my face as if she doubted what she saw, who I was.

  ‘Please, Chrissie.’

  Another voice, the old lady from next door, calling over the low fence. ‘I took him in and gave him a cup of tea till you got back. Such a nice fellow, back from France. So is he from the old island then?’ She gave me a nod and a wave.

  ‘From the island, yes. Thank you, Mrs Baird. Very kind of you. Well, you had better come away inside then, Mr Lawson.’

  It was a small cottage, bright and homely. The signs of two women everywhere. I still hadn’t mentioned the girl.

  She showed me to the kitchen table. Her kitchen. I watched as she made tea, keeping her distance, both of us I think glad of a chance to gather our thoughts and feelings into some order, both failing. All I knew was that I didn’t want to leave this place.

  When she sat down with her teacup in her hands, a mug
pushed in front of me – did I want sugar? – she was still wild-eyed and white. And she was still my Chrissie, not a girl any more, a woman, but even more beautiful for it, her face filled out to a new harmony and generousness, the same full lips, the same blue eyes and dark hair. Her hands were reddened, no doubt from the farm work in the cold mornings that she’d told me about as she made the tea. Cold lye and water and scrubbing brooms scouring the concrete – my Chrissie had always known how to work. I saw with a catch in my heart how the knuckles were a little swollen, and I ached for her pain.

  And what right had I to be here, when I had left her to so many pains for so many years?

  Then we began to talk, halting at first, then both of us talking, telling each other all that had happened over our lost years, the evening turning to dark and the need to light a lamp before we realized how much time had passed. For time had become all in pieces for us, and I swear, Chrissie as familiar to me then as if we had parted only days before, as if there had never been a parting.

  But there had been a parting, the wound between us fresh and new. I could see it in her eyes, all the hurt and questions.

  ‘I am sorry, Chrissie. I was such a fool. You see, there was something that Archie told me, that wasn’t true. . .’ I began, not sure how to tell her what I had believed for so long.

  ‘I know,’ she said.

  ‘You know?’

  ‘Yes. I know that Archie told a lie, about me. A letter came from him, just after war broke out. He was very honest about what he’d said, trying to drive you away from the island. He wanted to tell me. I expect he knew that the war meant he might not have another chance, and he was right in the end, wasn’t he?’

  I nodded.

  ‘But it wasn’t just Archie. You see, I made you go that day. I knew I could have stopped you, just by running out to you and asking you to stay. But I loved you too much. I wanted you to have every opportunity, to go home and finish your degree and have all the wide world at your feet. And I knew you would come back to me one day. I just didn’t think it would take so very, very long.’