Ardnish Was Home

by Angus MacDonald

  HOME

  It was Aggie from next door who came to the house in the middle of the night. Fire was a constant worry to everyone. She said she could smell smoke, and sure enough, so could we. We all went outside to see where it was coming from.

  ‘From the east,’ said my father. ‘Maybe the heather is burning.’

  It had been dry for weeks. The steam train threw off sparks from its coal boiler; last year’s dead bracken was lit very easily. There wasn’t much we could do, save move the horses and cattle and our best possessions down onto the beach. We prepared some wet rags to cover our faces, just in case. By dawn we could see the glow of flames on the skyline.

  ‘It’ll be at Laggan within an hour or two. Angus, will you run along and see if they are all right? Come straight back though, and keep along the shore,’ my father told him. ‘It will be here by midday, so let’s help the others clear their houses.’

  In those days, there were maybe half a dozen fit strong men in the clachan, and they were soon carrying beds and other pieces of furniture down to the safety of the rocky shore. Animals were rounded up and herded to the shore, too. If they had panicked, there was little we could have done. The men were most concerned about the big field behind the house; if the hay was burned, there wouldn’t be feed for the winter. So they headed off with rakes, spades and saws to try and make a space that the fire couldn’t cross from the hillside to the field.

  Father stayed with the families; with his leg he was no use.

  ‘We need to say a prayer for the wind to drop,’ said Mother. ‘This is a real threat to the village. If the hay goes, families will have to leave.’

  We knelt down and she led us. ‘Hail Mary, full of grace . . .’

  It was late that night when we knew we were all right. The men returned with blackened faces, exhausted. They had been beating out every flare-up, and the wind had switched to a northerly. We were safe. The men all went down and swam naked in the sea. They were heroes. We hoped that the people at Feorlindhu and Polnish were safe, too.

  This is the worry of Peanmeanach now – none of those men left in the village. Sandy and I were the only two, and now even poor Sandy has gone. If that fire happened today, the hay would be burned, the animals would perish and the houses might burn down, too.

  WAR

  It is nightfall when the men return.

  ‘It is a difficult situation,’ Yannis explains. ‘The boatman said there were too many patrols around and if he was caught they would shoot not only him, but his family. The only way it can work is if you steal the boat and row it across yourselves. If you make it, the boatman can retrieve it later. If you get caught, at least he can claim not to have been involved. But, my friends, there is some good news! I have some drachma for you. It’s a decent amount that will allow you to buy enough food for a couple of weeks. So, you can leave tonight, or tomorrow. It’s up to you.’

  The news about the boat is not reassuring, but stealing it is our only option. We decide that we might as well go tonight. Every day we wait, we are in danger of getting caught and we worry about our kind rescuers being tortured and killed, too.

  The boatman’s house is a fifteen-minute walk away. His family are gone and there is no light. I pat Marc farewell and bury my head in his mane. Without him, we would never have made it much beyond the first couple of days. Prissie and Louise make a fuss of him, too. We take off his rope halter and take it with us; we might need it again on the other side as I will need to be carried over the longer distances. We leave him eating contentedly on the river bank.

  The boat is down by the water. Louise helps me to clamber in. I sit in the front. Prissie tells us that she rowed a bit in Liverpool in her youth so she takes the oars. There is a whispered thanks to Yannis and his companion as they push us off.

  The current takes a hold and we move quickly. Prissie noisily splashes the oars more than is comfortable, and my heart is racing as I strain to hear any cries from the shore. I can’t see a thing in the pitch dark.

  Then, with a gentle bump we are on the other side. We scramble out of the boat and collapse on the bank, laughing and laughing, giddy with the exhilaration of our adventure. We are getting closer to freedom . . .

  Louise takes my hand and leads me into the darkness.

  We come to a road junction where a sign reads ‘DEDEAGACH 57 KM’. Yannis had said that was where we should be heading. We need a place to lie up for the day. We’ve had such generous help from the Christians in Turkey – how will things fare for us from here on?

  I limp along, with Louise holding me by the hand. It feels good. I am in awe of the way she compensates for my poor eyes. With her I step out confidently.

  We bed down under a clump of bushes, down a track away from the road. Yannis’s wife has given us a bag crammed full of dates, cheese, bread and dried meat. But we are too tired to eat.

  I wake first, with both girls lying sound asleep against me. I don’t want to move. Neither my shoulder nor my eyes are sore, for the first time really. But I know I’m not a strong man any more. It has been seven or eight weeks since I was tortured. What a lot has happened since then. I imagine the evacuation has taken place. Did they get away from the peninsula without too many being killed? Where are the Lovat Scouts right now? Back in Egypt, maybe? Colonel Willie had been evacuated with dysentery, like Lord Lovat. I think of my fellow soldiers often. I picture Sandy. Where are you now, my friend? He’d be fishing, given half a chance, with a beer beside him.

  ‘Pray for us, Sandy,’ I whisper. ‘There are dangerous times ahead.’

  Aunt Mairi will have received notification that her son has been ‘killed in action’; this not two years after her husband drowned. And no other children, either. I remember a story about all three brothers of the same family being killed in one attack. Unimaginable. Poor Aunt Mairi. She has my mother to care for her and is probably walking to Mass every day in Polnish, but she must think the Lord is punishing her, poor woman.

  Louise says there are hospitals all over the Mediterranean now – on Lemnos and Malta, of course, at least a dozen in Alexandria, and even one in Gibraltar. They must be over-flowing with Gallipoli patients. Three are for dysentery sufferers and for those needing operations. There are separate hospitals for officers, as well as convalescence hospitals. And the Anzacs, French and others all have their own. I wonder if we’ll make it to one . . .

  Louise wakes and stretches. We lie in silence, with her caressing the back of my neck.

  We decide to stay here all day, with no fire. We have food, and Louise wants me to rest and rebuild my strength. They can go out and see what is going on now and again; two young girls will be less conspicuous than an injured man with a bandaged eye. We talk about the last few weeks and how lucky we have been. My God, the kind people we have met, and the little donkey. When we were hungry, there was always someone who had food for us. The weather has been less cold, too. We touch wood and pray our luck continues.

  Prissie sets off to reconnoitre. ‘I’ll go and see if there’s a path we can take rather than going along the road,’ she says. ‘Otherwise, we’ll have to move at night. Maybe we can find another donkey.’ She picks up the rope halter. ‘If the going’s good, we might manage seven miles a night. What do you reckon, DP? Think you can manage?’

  I shake my head. I feel so useless.

  We are on the edge of a marsh. After Prissie has gone, Louise goes for a quick look around. ‘It’s flat round here,’ she reports. ‘I think we’re close to the sea – maybe a delta for the River Evros.’

  At midday Louise tells me she feels hot and wants to vomit.

  I hold my hand to her forehead; it is covered in sweat. She definitely has a temperature.

  As the day wears on, she gets worse and worse, constantly rushing off with bouts of diarrhoea. I feel completely helpless. And scared.

  By the time Prissie comes back, Louise is in a very bad way indeed. She has a terrible headache and delirium.

  ‘It loo
ks like dysentery,’ Prissie says. ‘Did she drink any dirty water?’

  ‘She went off and came back saying there was a swamp,’ I reply.

  Louise whispers that she did drink some water, and that she is so sorry.

  ‘I hope it’s not cholera,’ Prissie says quietly. ‘Let’s see in the morning. For now, we need clean water. She needs to drink lots.’

  Prissie had seen a fast-flowing burn the night before, further along the bank. She picks up our gourd and sets off into the darkness.

  ‘I hope I can find my way back,’ she says. ‘If not, it will be at first light. Look after her, DP.’

  Louise thrashes around, dripping in sweat and making no sense. I am the nurse this time, but there’s not much I can do except cradle her head in my arms and wipe the sweat from her brow.

  Prissie returns in a couple of hours, with fresh water. She forces Louise to drink. ‘Open wide, drink more . . . more,’ she says. ‘We’ll need to find a doctor. We need medicine. There are a couple of places nearby I’ll try.’

  Louise is aware of Prissie’s words and tells her how brave she is.

  ‘Not at all,’ Prissie replies. ‘I just hunch myself over with my shawl round my neck and walk really slowly. I look like a sixty-year-old peasant off to do my shopping. I’ll go to Peplos first, then Ferres. I’ll be back as quick as I can.’

  Louise is no longer delirious, thanks to all the clean water Prissie has poured into her, but she still has awful vomiting and diarrhoea. I help her as best I can.

  ‘I’m sorry, DP,’ she says again and again. ‘It’s so embarrassing.’

  ‘Not at all, Louise,’ I soothe. ‘Every man in the battalion had it.’

  ‘Talk to me,’ she urges. ‘Keep talking to me. I need to think of other things . . .’

  HOME

  The mansion house across the loch has been an important part of our life for almost sixty years now; my father and his father before him, and almost every able-bodied man in the area, were involved in building and extending it. Not only the big house, but the farm, the steadings, the gate lodges, workers’ houses and jetty. It has the nicest view, across towards Ardnish and the islands from its own bay.

  Everything was brought in by boat. The puffer came around the corner from Glenuig, belching black smoke and giving a hoot of its horn to get everyone down to help. It arrived at high tide and charged straight onto the shore to beach itself on its iron bottom. There was then a frantic few hours as a couple of horses and carts were taken onto the sand and all the chimneys, wooden planks or bags of cement were unloaded before the tide came in and the boat was floated off again to head back to Glasgow.

  There must have been a dozen men working there at any one time, either on the house, building a jetty by the boathouse, or on the hill cutting peat. Father worked there for about ten years, helping to build a long wing onto the east side. He is very good with his hands and can fix just about anything. The old house has a four-storey tower and a square behind where the horses are kept, where my father stayed with Ewan Cameron. The owners of Roshven, the Blackburns, looked after all their workmen. In the middle of the day, a big bowl of soup or stew would be handed out.

  The Blackburns loved having guests when they were younger and there was often a steamer or sailing boat in the bay. Father would put on his Clanranald piping uniform and go and play a few jigs for them while they were having their supper. He used to tell me about all the famous guests they had to stay, including Ruskin, Landseer and even Disraeli.

  Mrs Blackburn was a very accomplished artist and she would paint pictures of the birds and plants, as well as family and guests. She became a good friend of my mother, although she was much older. They had both lived in Glasgow at some stage. They enjoyed talking about recent discoveries, or some bird they had not seen before in the area. Mrs Blackburn published a book called Birds of Moidart. She gave my mother a copy. Well thumbed now.

  On Ardnish, about half a mile beyond the schoolhouse, is a beautiful crescent of sand about 300 yards long. It is pure white and it squeaks as you walk on it. It’s made of very fine coral and known as ‘the singing sands’. When they had people staying, the Blackburns and their guests would row across with lunch and have a picnic on the beach. Or they would go to Goat Island, which sits at the mouth of our loch and has an ancient fort at the top. There, they would pick brambles and play games with their young.

  Now and again, we would all go across and play in a big shinty match at Roshven Farm. Everyone in the area would come together, a ceilidh would be held at night, and the day was always the event of the year.

  I was just a youngster but I vaguely remember Queen Victoria’s Jubilee in 1897. There were several beacons of fire at Roshven, and we lit three on Ardnish, and when ours were ablaze that triggered those above Arisaig and on the Rhu peninsula, too. I remember my father giving me a piggy-back up the hill and cooking sausages on the embers late at night. We could even see those on Eigg in the distance. There was a chain all around the coast of Britain and on every hill.

  Anyway, back to the shinty. All the lairds were there: the Cameron-Heads from Lochailort, the Astley-Nicholsons from Arisaig, and the Stewarts from Kinlochmoidart. Each of them had a shinty team, and wagers were placed. There were other teams from all around as well, maybe ten teams of twenty men and children, even with some women playing, too.

  Whisky would flow freely, and there would be old scores to settle, of course. The competition at one stage became a bit of a fight, but everything was soon patched up. One unexpected team comprised Irish navvies, who were building the railway extension from Fort William to Mallaig and had heard about the games from the Lochailort men at the Inn. They had had some practice with hurling and went into the tackles so hard there were bodies littering the field in minutes.

  The final was between them and the Glenuig fishermen, and it was a full-time job stopping war from breaking out. It is said a bottle of whisky and a fight are sure to follow each other amongst the Irish, and thus it was that day.

  The Irish won fair and square, and hands were shaken before the food was produced and the dancing got going. Old Professor Blackburn stood up and presented a keg of beer to the Irish for winning and a huge cheer went up.

  A story went round from the Irish which everyone wanted to hear. The railway viaduct at Loch na Uamh was being built at the time. Starting at the Arisaig end, it stretched two hundred yards long and was twenty yards high. The shuttering was up, and horses and their carts of wet concrete were being backed towards the half-full pillar. At a certain point, they would be stopped, and a couple of men would shovel the concrete out and go and get some more.

  There was one difficult horse, always kicking out when men passed, making contact as often as not and making life difficult for its carter. When it started backing towards the pillar, it just wouldn’t stop and, despite desperate attempts from Paddy, the wee man from Kilkenny who had scored the winning goal at the shinty, the wagon went backwards into the wet concrete, followed by the horse.

  Paddy danced a wee jig, we were told, and they just kept topping up the pillar until it was full of concrete. ‘That bloody nag will be making the Almighty’s life misery now,’ said our storyteller.

  After the shinty loss, one wag from Glenuig remarked that it was a pity Paddy hadn’t gone into the concrete with the horse and cart.

  WAR

  I finish my story. ‘Let’s see what we can find you to eat,’ I say to Louise.

  ‘I couldn’t eat a thing,’ she replies. ‘It’ll just come straight up again.’

  ‘A wee bit of bread, washed down with water,’ I coax. ‘You must have it, your body will need it.’

  ‘More stories, DP,’ Louise murmurs, closing her eyes.

  I am frantic with worry. She’s usually so cheerful, never stops talking to draw breath. Now, she just lies, curled up and silent.

  I continue . . .

  HOME

  The other big get-together in the area was at haymaking time.
The horses would go back and forth pulling the cutter and laying the grass in tidy rows, and a couple of days later, it would be turned over with long wooden rakes so that the other side could dry in the sun and the wind.

  The last part involved every man, woman and child making stacks. A triangle of wooden poles would be erected in a spot where there was a good pile of hay, and, using a pitchfork, the hay would be pulled together into a sheaf and hoisted onto the stack until it was maybe eight feet high. It would be raked down to pull out the loose hay and tidied up, and then a canvas hood would be put over the top to shed the rain.

  Haymaking time holds some of my best childhood memories. When the sun was out and everyone was involved, us children would run around playing and the adults seemed to tolerate us tunnelling under the hay or chasing each other around.

  The old Blackburns would come down with their horse and trap laden with juice and scones, as everyone was taking a breather in the heat of the day. A week or two later, when the wind had had a chance to blow through the stacks to dry them and we had a good dry spell, a horse would be tied up to the big cart and the hay would be carted along to the square. We could sit on top of the rocking pile of hay, enjoying the sensation as it wobbled and we dodged under branches.

  WAR

  Louise smiles and squeezes my hand. I embellish the fun and the romantic life we led in these tales, because I don’t want her to know of the bits that weren’t so good.

  For instance, I don’t tell her that in the depths of winter it rains day after day so you think it will never stop. How, sometimes, every bit of clothing we had would be soaked through, and we would cough and sneeze all day long with cold, and mother would worry half to death that we’d catch pneumonia. How many children died when they were tiny, and how getting to a doctor or a hospital was well nigh impossible. From January until early summer, food was short, sometimes desperately so.

  I know that Louise’s life in the Valleys and the brutal poverty of life in a coal mining family is something she wants to forget. My life is the utopia she dreamed of.