Murdo's War

by Alan Temperley

  His plan was to run straight through the house, but at once his eyes fell on the black telephone on a rosewood table. He seized the receiver and pressed it to his ear. It was stone dead. Angrily he banged the rest up and down, and dialled 999, but nothing disturbed the muffled silence. He put the receiver down again and started away, then paused. The Germans too would find it, and realise that he had not been able to summon help. With a fierce jerk he ripped the cable from the wall.

  Swiftly then he continued to the sitting-room at the far end of the hall. He pushed the door shut behind him and crossed the thick, green and gold carpet to the window. It faced east, away from the courtyard and road, with a fine view of the hills on the far side of the valley. He eased back the catch, and being careful not to disturb the ornaments on the broad window sill, pushed the window up, scrambled through to the ground, and pulled the window shut behind him.

  Then, keeping the house between himself and his pursuers, and avoiding open stretches of snow so that his tracks would not be too conspicuous, he made a wild dash across the end of the lodge garden, through the trees, over the wall, and away across the moors in the other direction, heading for a clump of conifers several hundred yards away.

  He made it without being seen, and as he ducked and weaved beneath their sheltering branches, the first snowflakes of the day floated by, and fell softly to the ground.

  The Germans came cautiously into the courtyard. They had no idea of the reception that might be awaiting them, and their rifles were at the ready. But a glance was enough to reveal that the buildings were deserted, and with relief that the chase must be nearly over, Henry Smith led his men forward. He saw the stable doors open and the scuffed snow on the window sill beneath the broken pane of glass. Leaving Gunner and Arne to keep watch, quickly he followed Murdo’s initial circuit of the building. In the lightly falling snow he did not see the half-hidden line of tracks heading away into the moors, and a minute later was back in the courtyard. Sinking against a big dog kennel to take the weight off his weary legs, he dispatched Arne into the house and Gunner into the stables to hunt the boy out.

  ‘Be careful, mind,’ he called after them. ‘Give him a chance and he’ll put a pitchfork through you – young savage.’

  He reached into his pocket and pulled out a packet of cigarettes. It had been quite a chase, but they had made it in the end. The thought of shooting the boy did not appeal to him, especially a boy like Murdo, who he knew and reluctantly admired. It was one thing to hunt him down, quite another to kill him in cold blood. Still, it had to be, they could not take him all that way back. He broke open the breech of his rifle and snapped it shut again.

  The snow was thickening. He looked around the grey-black buildings, imagining what they would be like in the summer, with horses and dogs in the courtyard, women and children walking about the lawns. It was good. He would like a place like that.

  But they were taking their time about hunting that wretched boy out.

  ‘Come on! Get a move on!’ His voice was harsh.

  There was a pause, then Arne flung open an upstairs window on the far side of the courtyard.

  ‘I don’t think he’s here,’ he called. ‘The house looks empty.’ An uneasy twinge made the hair prickle on the back of Henry Smith’s neck.

  ‘Have you looked everywhere?’

  ‘Not yet. The place is huge, full of attics and cellars. Great big cupboards. But I’m sure he’s not here.’

  ‘Look everywhere,’ Henry Smith called up to him, standing and brushing the snow from the seat of his trousers. ‘Everywhere.’

  ‘All right. Can I have the torch.’

  Henry Smith threw up the little flashlight he had used for map reading, and the window banged shut.

  Gunner came out of the stables and sneezed. A few straws and wisps of hay adhered to his clothes.

  ‘Well, he’s not in there.’

  A stronger twinge of uncertainty passed through the leader. ‘You’re sure?’

  Gunner raised his thick eyebrows. ‘Yes.’

  ‘What about the other sheds?’

  ‘They’re not open.’

  ‘Look at the footprints! Check them!’

  For a few minutes longer he waited. The snow settled on his jacket and tickled his face. He moved into the shelter of a projecting stable roof.

  Arne pushed up the broken dining-room window of the lodge, and almost simultaneously Gunner came from the last of the out-buildings and pulled the door shut behind him.

  ‘Well, he’s definitely not here,’ he called across the courtyard through the falling snow.

  ‘Have you looked round the back?’

  ‘Yes, but there’s nowhere to hide. He must be in the house.’

  ‘I’m afraid not,’ Arne called back. ‘And he’s been at the telephone. Pulled the cables out of the wall.’

  ‘What!’ Henry Smith was stunned. ‘Was it working?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Can you fix it?’

  ‘Yes. It will take a few minutes, though. I’ll have to find some- thing to take out the screws.’

  ‘Well you get on with that. Gunner and I will take a look round the outside.’

  ‘Right.’ The cropped blond head and red-rimmed eyes vanished into the gloom of the house.

  ‘You stay here and keep your eyes open in case he is hiding, and tries to slip back to the road. I’ll look round the other side again.’

  Moving more slowly Henry Smith followed the boy’s foot- prints to the end of the lodge. As he rounded the corner the wind- driven snow struck in his face. He turned the top of his head into it and pulled his collar close. The visibility was deteriorating all the time. Carefully he made his way along the front of the lodge, between the broad bay windows and the lawn. Sheltering his eyes from the snow, a second time he failed to see Murdo’s half-hidden tracks, and soon was at the far gable wall. He paused, dissatisfied. Clearly the boy had not gone that way, for a flawless stretch of snow- covered grass, broken only by their earlier prints, led back to the end of the courtyard. Henry Smith turned, and retraced his steps. Suddenly he spotted the ruffled snow on the window ledge, and looking below saw the line of footprints heading away from the house. Murdo had walked along the sunken edge of a flower patch beneath a high bank of rhododendrons, his tumbled foot-falls hidden between the edge of the lawn and snow-covered remnants of summer flowers. Already the snowflakes were filling them in, moulding the edges, smoothing them over. Silently Henry Smith looked away through the drifting veils of white. A few hundred yards off stood the dim silhouette of a copse of fir trees. Beyond that all was grey and blind.

  A slow rage of frustration mounted within him, the culmination of all he had endured at the hands of the two Scots. He relieved it in a passionate outburst of oaths and curses, stamping his feet and beating his fists in the air. In a matter of seconds the stormy fit had run its course and he relaxed, panting and more calm.

  Gunner heard the noise and appeared around the end of the house. Glad that the responsibility was not his, he shook his head half admiringly.

  ‘He’s some boy,’ he said.

  ‘He’s a damned pest, I know that,’ Henry Smith replied sharply. Together they returned to the courtyard and waited for Arne beneath the overhanging stable roof. Impatiently the leader strode across to the dining room and shouted for him to hurry up.

  Five minutes later Arne appeared once more in the window, a kitchen knife in his hand. ‘It’s all right,’ he called through the thickening snow. ‘The line’s dead.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘Yes.’

  A warm flood of relief made Henry Smith sink back momentarily against the stone wall. ‘Right. Come on over here, then.’

  Swiftly Arne tidied up in the lodge, pulled down the broken window, and joined them at the stable.

  Henry Smith brushed some of the snow from his shoulders. ‘He’s away again,’ he said with no preamble. ‘Out the far side towards the hills. I want you two to g
o after him. If you catch up with him you know what to do. Cover his body with a few rocks, or snow and heather: it will be safe enough for a week or two, that’s all we need. I’ll head down the road in case he tried to circle back to the village. The snow’s filling in his footsteps all the time, so you’d better get cracking. We’ll meet again here, in the stable. There’s plenty of straw, and there might be some food in the house.’

  Arne nodded.

  ‘What about Peter?’ Gunner said.

  ‘I’ll keep a look out for him.’

  ‘And if we don’t find the boy,’ said Arne, ‘and he doesn’t cut back to the village?’

  ‘In that case,’ Henry Smith replied, ‘he’s probably dead. There’s nothing out there but hills and more hills.’ He paused and made a rueful face. ‘But I suppose I’d better get in touch with the Colonel and let him know. See what he wants me to do.’

  Arne and Gunner exchanged glances, then looked back at their leader.

  ‘Von Kramm?’ Gunner said softly.

  ‘Of course. Who else?’ Henry Smith’s voice was sharp. He felt the anger welling up inside him once more. He would cut a poor figure when the facts became known. ‘Still, that’s my business. You’ve got your work to do, what are you hanging about for? Get moving.’

  Arne pushed himself from the wall, buttoning the collar of his jacket, and slung the heavy rifle to his shoulder. Gunner shook the snow from his hair and settled his own rifle in the crook of an arm. More hills lay ahead, more rough ground. He blinked with fatigue and braced his shoulders.

  ‘Remember,’ Henry Smith told them, ‘he’s quite as tired as you are.’

  ‘I wouldn’t count on it,’ Arne said.

  Gunner raised his eyebrows ironically, and thought of the warm comfortable straw in the stables, behind them. Not in the least encouraged by their leader’s empty platitude, he clapped Arne heavily on the shoulder.

  ‘Ah well,’ he sighed. ‘Come on.’

  Together they trudged away across the courtyard and round the corner out of sight.

  For a minute Henry Smith watched the snow drifting and whirling by. Wearily he pulled the map from his inside pocket, unfolded it, and held it up against the stone wall. For a long time he pored over it, his brow wrinkled, trying to work out what route a resourceful but tired and frightened boy might follow. The great strath ran north and south. To the east, the way he was heading, lay nothing but a waste of hills, gashed with rivers, which beyond the watershed ran eastward into the North Sea, twenty miles away. Unconsciously and almost imperceptibly he shook his head. The boy had no chance. The only danger lay in the village of Kinbrace. If he saw the houses he might try to cut back along the foot of the hills and seek help there.

  He folded the map and eased his aching legs. Then, wondering how he could explain to Colonel von Kramm, field officer in command of Operation Flood-Tide, the threat of a fourteen year old boy, he turned reluctantly from the lodge and made his way back down the long drive. The snow drifted through the trees. Already the tracks they had made twenty minutes earlier were almost obliterated.

  At the same time Murdo was high above the valley, and climbing. Uncertain of his position, and doubtful that Kinbrace could really have lain round the next bend in the valley, his only thought was to keep ahead of the Germans. All his energies were directed into pushing on, pushing on, for the moment it did not matter where, so long as his feet might take him beyond the reach of those whipping bullets. But truly he did not have much strength left. He seemed to have gained a little time through entering the house and crossing the copse, but the nervous energy which had sustained him during the chase round the loch and down the road to the lodge, had gone. In its place a state of physical and mental weariness had settled like a blanket about his shoulders and legs. But his determination, though numb, burned as strongly as ever, and never faltered as he plodded up and up towards the shoulder of the long slope and the eastern summits.

  Far below, the black clump of pine trees had long vanished into the swirling snow. His entire world had shrunk to a white circle of hillside two hundred yards across, flecked with black in the lee of rocky outcrops and clumps of heather. An arctic hare burst from under his feet and sprang off at incredible speed up the steep slope of the hill. A pair of grouse clattered away, calling loudly as they swung in a long low circle behind him, to settle again not very far from where they had risen.

  He bent and broke a crust of snow from the edge of his footprint. The ice was beautifully sharp in his throat, and he crunched the aching-cold crystals in his teeth as he walked on.

  Although only an hour or two after dawn, the morning was darkening as the clouds thickened and the snow fell still more heavily. The little world closed in upon him. The slight breeze drifted the flakes against his face, where they settled on eyebrows and eyelashes, cheeks and lips, tickling and bitterly cold as they melted. His toorie had vanished in the loch, and his shock of black hair, still wet from the ducking, was covered with a cap of snow. The whole front of his body, khaki blouse and thick blue trousers, was obliterated in a clinging white blanket that shivered off as the cloth wrinkled beneath it. Socks and trouser bottoms were thick with little balls of ice, moulded solid, packed tight around the gaps at the top of his boots. As he breathed, the whirling flakes pricked the inside of his nose and mouth.

  And so he plodded on, unaware after a time how far he had come, thoughtless of where he was going. Behind him the moulding drifts filled in his footprints. The slope levelled out into a broad plateau. All around him the land spread out into the falling snow, flat and featureless.

  After a time he noticed that his feet and ankles were black, smearing clots and stains of mud across the snow. He looked back at the line of inky footsteps, wondering which way to go to climb out of the bog. But there was no way of knowing, so he trudged on, noting the direction of the snowflakes so that he could keep a fairly straight course by the wind.

  Abruptly, not a minute later, he fell sidelong as a leg was gone from beneath him into the mire. He struggled upright, trapped in the ooze right to the fork in his legs. He pulled his free leg beneath him, and levering with his hands and knee dragging the leg out. It was covered to the thigh with an evil-smelling mantle of black mud, which oozed down and fell in gobbets on to the snow.

  Grunting, he pulled himself to his feet and looked for a way round the soft patch. He imagined it looked a little better to the left and turned his face in that direction. For a few steps the earth supported him, then again his leg slipped from sight and he lurched forward, wrenching his wounded thigh as he fell. For long moments he lay there, collecting himself, then a second time hauled his fouled leg from the sucking mud. Lumps of snow fell into the black crater. Panting with fatigue, he pulled the hair from his eyes with a muddy hand and peered once more into the veils of white.

  How long that nightmare crossing of the bog took, Murdo never knew. Time and again he plunged into the mud. There seemed no way of telling the treacherous places from firm ground, for the frosts had covered the earth with a crust of ice and the snow was over all. At each footstep he hesitated, uncertain whether the ground would support him, or merely take his weight for a moment before he broke through once more into the soft mud beneath. At length he learned to steer clear of the smooth, level patches.

  Half an hour – an hour. Murdo was panting. His sweat mingled with the melting snow in his face. His body was hot, burning – then chilled through and through, gripped down his back and across his stomach by the sodden clothes. He felt so weak. His legs trembled and would hardly go where he wanted them. He was frightened; he had never felt like that before. He cast about, this way and that; there seemed no way out of the terrible bog. He forgot to check the wind direction and retraced his steps, then circled and crossed them again. Where were the Germans? Where was he? No landmark, no slope of land. He might be no more than a hundred yards from where he set off. The stumbling, blind passage had completely destroyed his sense of direction. The very win
d seemed to veer and switch direction as he stood still, the snowflakes whirling about him in the gloom of the morning. Morning – midday more like!

  He forced himself to take ten deep breaths. ‘Your head, Murdo,’ he said out loud. ‘Use your head!’ But he could not think straight, his head was swimming. For a long time he stood, and the wind froze him to the marrow, shivering and cramping. Vaguely he tried to recall the wind direction he had followed. Had the snow been into the left side of his face? He thought so, and turning once more so that the flakes drove on the whole in that direction, started forward yet again.

  ‘One – more – step – Murdo. One – more – step – Murdo,’ he chanted underneath his breath at each footfall, forcing his uncertain legs to support him and carry him forward over the treacherous and uneven ground. It seemed as if he would never reach the other side, as if there was no other side. How he longed to lie and rest; how he mistrusted that wind. His struggle against the Germans seemed nothing compared with the struggle he was now having to put up for his life, against the Highland winter and the very mountains themselves.

  But at last, when he felt he could surely stand no longer, he became aware of rising ground ahead, saw a little hillock, and dragged himself heavily towards it. The earth was firm beneath his feet. Too numb with exhaustion even to be thankful, he found a boulder and sank behind it into the drifts of snow.

  The struggle was over. His breathing was deep. It was so warm and sheltered there. A comfortable glow spread through his body, and his relaxing legs trembled pleasantly as the heat stole through his muscles. It was so restful. He was so tired. His eyes slowly closed, and his head nodded on to his chest.