Murdo's War

by Alan Temperley

  He crossed the quarter mile of heather and rough pasture. The house was deserted. His knocks returned a hollow echo from the empty hall.

  It was no time for respecting property. Kicking beneath the snow, almost at once his boot struck an old fence post. With some difficulty he pulled it from the frozen ground, a clumsy weapon covered with grass and snow. A crude blow smashed in the window and sent the glass tinkling to the floorboards inside. He reached through and pushed the catch back, then heaved up the window. For a moment it stuck, then shot up half way and jammed solid. A sharp pain in his frozen hand told him he had cut himself, and putting the palm to his mouth he felt the taste of warm blood. He squeezed through the gap and pulled the window shut behind him.

  Inside the house all was black, but slowly his eyes adjusted until he could distinguish dim shapes. He was in what had once been the living room. The place was not very long empty, for paper still clung to the walls and it was dry. A few sticks of furniture remained, and bumping into something soft he discovered, with a feeling almost akin to pleasure, that it was an old burst sofa. He swept some scraps of gritty paper and wood to the floor and slumped heavily upon it. Heedless of the ice and snow that still clung to his clothes, he drew up his legs. Minutes later he was sound asleep.

  Outside the clouds were gathering again. The last stars disappeared behind an advancing storm cloak, and the moors resigned themselves to darkness.

  Gone to Earth

  DAWN CAME LATE. It was preceded by no lightening in the east, no glow in the sky: it came, if you could say it came from anywhere, from the ground. Imperceptibly the night gave way to dimness, and dimness to an endless waste of moors, over which the clouds lowered and the snow drove in wild, fierce blasts.

  The cold half-light filtered into Murdo’s cottage and stole about the bare rooms, revealing the filth of desolation. He tossed fretfully in his sleep, muttering and half crying out as the dreams raged inside his head. Mountainous black seas, crags, dead men, Hector, tearing hot bullets, the blizzard, Carl Voss, his father, exhaustion throbbed and swam. More and more, as the dawn lightened, he turned and flung his head from side to side. His breathing quickened almost to panting, then suddenly, with a choking cry, he sat bolt upright and woke.

  Where was he? Shutting his eyes for a moment he tried to steady the trembling and sickness that convulsed his whole body. But he could not control himself. Rushing to the door he flung it wide, and heedless of the blizzard and icy gale that beat against him, vomited down the side of the house.

  It seemed as if he would never stop. Long after there was nothing left his stomach kept heaving, and the sweat stood on his forehead, icy cold in the wind. At length, shivering and weak, he turned back into the hallway and closed the door behind him.

  He was ill, really ill this time. Again his stomach cramped and he leaned against the staircase, pressing his brow to one of the struts of the bannisters. Slowly the confusion in his head quietened. Heavily Murdo pushed himself back and made his way to the sofa once more. For a while he just sat, staring wretchedly at the damp soot and rubbish in the fireplace, numb to everything but his own misery. At length he raised his head and looked towards the window. Through the broken pane and narrow strips of glass that were not covered with drift he could see the blizzard. Horizontally, blinding, the flakes swept past. No matter how he felt, he could not go out in that; no-one would venture forth in such conditions. It was a relief. Unless there was another house close by, and he was sure there was not, he must stay where he was. Try to get a fire going, dry out his clothes.

  Shivering, he pulled his shirt and jacket tight to the throat, draped a filthy rag of sacking about his head, and ploughed through knee-deep snow to the end of the house. This way and that he peered through screwed-up eyes into the veils of grey, searching for any sign of life. Up and down the glen nothing was to be seen but the empty hillside, the shrouded river sixty yards away, and the driving snow. The wind rushed and whined about the house and few small out-buildings, the cold cut through to his skin. Abruptly, as he forced the front door shut upon it, the noise was cut off. For a moment he stood in the hallway, and his eyes closed. Reluctantly he opened them again and dragged himself on an inspection of the house.

  Although it was dirty with the grime of desertion, the building was in good repair. The last occupants could not have been out for more than a year or two. Save for an empty window in the back kitchen, where a pane of glass had fallen out and let the rain in, and two extensive wet patches on the ceilings, there seemed little wrong with it. The black grates were messy, and the second downstairs room had been used by a shepherd, for a couple of liver-fluke tins stood in one corner, and the high mantlepiece was littered with some empty beer bottles, candle stubs and a bit of stained rag. Struck by an inspiration, Murdo poked about among this rubbish, and almost immediately his fingers alighted on a packet of Woodbines with two left in it, and an old match box. He shook the box and it rattled. With a sinking heart he tipped the charred sticks into his palm, but there among the dead matches were half a dozen or more with pink tips, and they were dry.

  Almost hopefully he gathered together some paper – a dusty yellowed copy of the Daily Record dated the previous summer, some old paper bags that rattled with dry crusts, a People’s Friend Annual that had been kicked into a cupboard – and carried them through to the room in which he had slept. The dried-out corpse of a rook straggled awkwardly in the grate. Taking it by the wing tip Murdo tossed it into the far corner. Then he felt up the chimney in case it should have been blocked for some reason, but it seemed perfectly clear. He raked away the damp soot and old ash with his hands, laid the paper in the grate, and smashed a broken chair to a bundle of sticks and splintered wood. Soon a bright yellow fire was leaping up the chimney, smoking heavily as the remaining soot smouldered and the varnish flared on the wood.

  One chair, however, will not keep a fire going for long, and hunting through the house, Murdo dragged everything burnable into the living room. It was a pitiful collection. Carefully he fed some more into the blaze. His trousers and jacket began to steam. With the warmth the fever drew on again so that his head swam, and he had to put out a hand to steady himself.

  But before he lay down, he needed more wood. There was no shortage, for the whole house was lined with wood, but he felt too weak even to think of how he might tear up the floorboards. There were the doors, however, and going upstairs to a bedroom, he took hold of the door of a small cupboard and wrenched it back against the hinges, then slammed it hard. Again and again he twisted and slammed. The catch broke and the metal buckled. He took the flat of his foot and kicked against the hinges, his head thudding with every blow. The screws gave and the cream-painted door skewed awkwardly to one side. A few more wrenches and it came away altogether. Murdo propped it against the wall and jumped on the boards, then the split planks, and soon had reduced the neat door to burnable pieces. He carried them downstairs and laid them at the side of the fire.

  In a while he had built a reasonable stack. It was still not big enough, but for the moment he felt he could do no more. He dragged the sofa across until it was only a foot or two from the blaze, then took off his heavy wet clothes and hung them around to dry. Wearing only his damp underclothes, he huddled towards the fire.

  He had shut the door to keep the room as warm as possible, but the back and sides of the sofa gave little protection from the arctic gusts that blew through the broken pane. For a time he tried to put up with it, turning first one shivering side then the other to the flames, but it was impossible. He padded through the dust of snow to the window, and with the faded curtains and two or three splintered boards managed to rig a rough patch. Then he hurried through the hall to the other downstairs room, tore down those curtains also, and carried them back to the fire.

  For a few minutes he crouched to the blaze, trying to dry out his underclothes. His shins and chest scorched, his back and the backs of his arms and legs remained cold as ice. Piling the fire as
high as he dared he stretched out on the sofa, and lifting the curtains from the hearth carefully arranged them on top of himself like sheets. They were damp against his legs and bare shoulders, but at least they were warm and would soon dry out. On top he pulled a bit of ragged carpet he had found upstairs. Turning to face the fire he twitched the curtains about his chin and drew up his feet. The flames danced and flared; his eyes began to slip out of focus. The heat, gathering in the cocoon of the sofa, made the room swim about him. He closed his eyes.

  For three days sickness and fever wrapped him in their web of sleep; not a sound, healing sleep, but a burning unconsciousness that inflamed his mind into grotesque nightmares and dreams that racked his mind as much as the fever racked his body.

  Periodically he woke and stacked more wood on the fire, or gathered a handful of snow to drink, moving about the house in a daze of heat and cold, so that when again he collapsed heavily on to the couch and fell asleep, he might never have risen.

  If the Germans had arrived at the door, he was theirs. He might not even have woken as they carried him off. But they did not come, indeed they could not come. For two whole days the blizzard blew and the moors were quite impassable.

  But the third morning dawned fair. The snow had ceased during the night and the wind had shifted to the south. No longer were the clouds lowering and slate-grey, they were white, and as the morning wore on, chinks appeared and patches of sunlight moved across the moors. Some of the snow on the roof of Murdo’s cottage slipped and fell to the ground with a hiss and a thud. By the evening a listener in the silence might have heard the tinkling of water about him as the frozen runnels began to flow, and a tiny rustling as the snow slumped more heavily on the grass, and clumps of heather broke free from its weight.

  That same Wednesday evening brought Murdo’s fever to its climax. The fire was out and the room very cold. But he had put on his clothes the day before, when they were dry, and beneath the covering of curtains and carpet his body was burning hot. The sweat streamed off him, beading down his face and making his hair wet. From head to toe his body shivered violently.

  But by ten o’clock his breathing was easier, the trembling had quietened. By midnight he lay calm. The furrows left his brow and the wet hair dried across his face.

  It was daylight when he woke. The nightmares were gone. For a long time Murdo just lay there gazing at the ceiling. Brilliant sunshine flooded through the window, revealing all the cobwebs and dust and the filthiness of the rags that covered him. But he was accustomed to them and kept them tucked about his face, for it was warm underneath. A musical noise of trickling water came from the window, and further off a heavy splashing roar like a waterfall.

  At last he pulled an arm from beneath the curtains and scratched his head. His hand was filthy, smeared with soot and ash, and a scratch across the back was ridged with grime. The deep cut across his palm made him hold the hand half closed, and when he stretched his fingers slightly the black scab, already cracked open a dozen times, tugged sharply against the flesh. For a while he amused himself with it, enjoying the sensation as his fingers tugged gently against the cut. But the skin of his hands, apart from being dirty, was of a different texture. Normally weather-beaten and rough, it had become smooth and soft, slightly damp.

  Carefully he pushed the coverings back and swung his legs to the floor. Immediately a trace of the old dizziness made him blink and lean back for a moment against the arm of the sofa. Then he rose, feeling very weak, and tentatively stretched himself at the fireplace. His clothes were twisted and uncomfortable from having been slept in, and he unfastened his battledress and trousers to tuck in the shirt and sweater. As he did so he became aware how hollow and empty his stomach felt, and for a moment pulled up the clothes to examine himself. He was thin as a rake, his ribs stood out sharply and his stomach had sunk almost out of sight beneath his chest.

  ‘It’s food you need, Murdo,’ he said to himself, tucking down his clothes once more and fumbling with the buttons.

  He crossed to the window. A few sheep huddled under a wall in the sunshine a few yards away, their droppings scattered across the melting snow. The crown of the wall and the roofs of the out- houses were thickly covered: their long blue shadows reached across the dazzling turf. But the snow would not last very long if the thaw continued at its present rate, for the sun struck warm through the glass, and all the way along the roofs dripped, the sparkling drops carving caverns for themselves in the drifts below. As he stood there a great slab of snow, too wet and heavy to adhere any longer to the sloping roof of the barn, slid over the rone pipe and thudded to the ground in a long crumpled heap. The river, sixty yards beyond, gushed brown and brim-full between the snowy banks and roared over the boulders of a salmon pool.

  Food! Murdo looked at the sheep. There might well be a stack of turnips in one of the sheds.

  As he opened the front door the mild air surprised him. It was warmer outside than in. The sheep scattered, tails swirling, as if scenting danger as the boy appeared in the doorway. Blinking in the brightness, occasionally putting a hand to the rough wall for support, Murdo began searching through the old croft buildings.

  At the end of the house was a lean-to, bare and deep in sheep dirt. Obviously the animals used it as a shelter in bad weather. A few yards away stood the barn and shed. The shed was locked, though through the window it appeared to be empty save for a few rusting tools. The barn, when he had unfastened the cord that held the door shut, proved to have a stack of hay in it and a few sacks of oil cake for the sheep. Not a sign of turnips, or any human food. Murdo fell in the hay and gnawed a corner of one of the drab cakes. It tasted terrible, like dust and dry grass, and made him cough. He lay back and closed his eyes.

  He may have dozed a little, but slowly, as half an hour slipped by, an idea germinated in his mind. At first it seemed horrible, and he rejected it: then it came to seem only too realistic. He had to have food, and there was one food only – the sheep. Rolling over on his hip he dug the clasp knife from his trouser pocket.

  At first his fingers could not open it, but with a black thumb nail he managed to push up the blade enough to grip it. With a snap it flicked open. The edge was still good, but it could be better. Picking a smooth stone from just inside the barn door, he spat on it and carefully whetted the concave blade back and forth until the edge gleamed steel-white, and satisfied the delicate tip of his finger. He laid it on a ledge, and gathering a big armful of hay, carried it outside and strewed it widely on the ground. From a safe distance the sheep watched with interest, looking from one to the other as if seeking an opinion. Around the hay Murdo scattered a few scoops of oil cake, leaving a trail to the door of the barn. Just outside he spread them more thickly, tempting the animals through the entrance to a positive feast on the barn floor. Then he settled himself out of sight in the hay and waited, fingering the sharp blade and planning how he would do it. Even in proper conditions, he knew, it was a bloody business, for over the years he had helped his father and Hector to kill several sheep, and a pig too.

  It was a long time before the animals came up, then suddenly they were there, more than a dozen of them. The poor creatures were starving and tore at the hay ravenously.

  Murdo stationed himself just inside the barn door and prepared for what he must do, trying to blind his thoughts and make it an instinctive act. The barn was well built and there were no chinks through which to peer. He waited for what seemed a long time, but at length a shadow appeared in the sunlight that streamed through the doorway, and then another one. He cautioned himself: ‘Don’t rush it, wait until you are certain.’

  The shadows grew as the sheep became bolder and drew towards the doorway, until one must have been at the very brink, for in the low sunlight he could see the shadow beneath its knees. He drew a deep breath and set his teeth, gathering himself like a cat. Muzzling at the oil cake the leading sheep came closer still, and Murdo saw the tips of its ears at the edge of the door. He shuffled his
feet slightly, gripped the knife like a dagger, and launched himself round the corner.

  Before the sheep could move he was upon it, the sudden fury of his attack bowling it to the ground. It bleated despairingly and rolled its eyes. Murdo knotted his fingers in the wool and flung himself astride the creature, feeling for its throat with the knife. But the fleece was thick, and the knife not very big. Time and again he thrust into the wool. The animal kicked wildly and he was nearly flung off. Then suddenly the knife slipped home and the hot blood gushed over his hands and arms, swamping the blood from his own burst palm, drenching the snow scarlet.

  Still the animal kicked and he hung on tight, but slowly the struggling lessened and the kicking became spasmodic. In a while it no longer fought to raise its head. Finally the beast lay still, and the pumping blood subsided to a trickle. Murdo fell in the snow across its flank, exhausted and drained.

  When he had recovered somewhat, he wiped the sweat from his face with a bloody hand and dragged the sheep through the entrance of the barn. Then he set to with the knife. In half an hour he had several juicy joints of mutton laid out on the hay. It was enough. Taking the partially dismembered sheep by the front legs, he started to drag it towards the river. The animal was heavy, and dragging it through the wet snow it became a dead weight. For thirty yards Murdo struggled, leaving a bloody trench across the pasture. But the effort was too great. He dropped it where it lay and walked back to the barn. An old twist of cord lay on one of the ledges. He tied up three of the joints and slung them over a rafter, to keep them fresh in the cool air and free from rats and insects. The fourth joint he had to cook. Taking it in his hand, still warm, he tied up the barn door and turned back into the house.

  The sheep shifted nervously, looking from the carcase to the shredded armfuls of hay and oil cake, and at the door into which he had disappeared. At length one, bigger and bolder than the rest, walked forward cautiously and began to tug at the remains of the hay. The others moved closer.