Murdo's War
Page 27
‘My name’s Murdo Mackay. Can you come to Strathy right away?’
The captain of Intelligence had been called from a noisy crowd at the officers’ bar. In wry tones, half amused by the earnest bluff- ness of the appeal, he wanted to know why and at first treated the country boy lightly. But his sense of fun faded as Murdo’s story began to unfold, and at last the threat of ‘Operation Flood-Tide’ was revealed to the British military authorities. Though he told the tale clumsily and with many breaks, its truth was transparent in every word.
A few feet across the hall his father lit a cigarette and was still. Clutching the medicine chest with which she had treated all their childhood scrapes and bruises, his aunt subsided on to his abandoned seat at the foot of the stairs.
Beyond the diamond-leaded window at Murdo’s back the waves crawled up the bay, from the foam-edged crags at the point to a white crescent of shore – where even as he put down the tele- phone, the first men from the village drew close to Hector and Colonel von Kramm. The sun was setting above the high moors making the bracken glow. Long blue shadows spread across the heather and broad patches of snow. A gull whirled past, calling loudly, caught by the wind that blew from the sea.
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