We Fought for Ardnish

by Angus MacDonald

  First, we stopped at Our Lady of the Braes at Polnish to say a prayer. On the day of the funeral, the Mass was said by Andrew MacDonald – now Archbishop – as our own Father Angus was still in France with the 51st Division. Polnish church gleamed white and proud on a knoll overlooking Loch Ailort. As we emerged, a train thundered past, its steam engulfing the building. Then we continued along the route to Lochailort Inn where the coffin was set down for a spell and over two hundred mourners took a dram.

  The procession then continued across the bridge, over the Ailort. We sat on the very cairn where the mourners had each placed a stone to mark their attendance, and had a few moments with our own thoughts. From there, we could make out the huts and tents for the students and trainers at the Special Training School. The place was a hive of activity, assault courses were being used with gusto, field guns being fired incessantly, smoke was wafting in the still afternoon, and men were running around in uniform wherever we looked.

  We rose and followed the path up to Glenshian Lodge and then to a small island in the most unexpected spot in the River Ailort – Innis na Cuilce, the island of reeds. Grandfather led us in prayer and then recited an old Gaelic verse which I remember to this day:

  To Ailort’s shore the war-worn hero homeward wending

  Seeks a land where battles cease

  He rests and dreams as from circ’ling hills descending

  Falls a soothing balm of peace.

  Instead of clashing steel and cannon’s roar

  He hears a west wind soughing ever more

  He hears the sea birds calling

  He hears a light sea-wave

  Ripple along the shore.

  But sounds of war in days of autumn echoing loudly

  Coire a Bhuridhe’s fastness thrill,

  Where antlered stags bellow and crash

  In combat proudly challenge clear from hill to hill,

  The warrior fancies again the cannon’s roar

  He seems to hear the clash of steel once more,

  Past battles surge around him,

  Till silent, night draws down

  On Ailort’s peaceful shore.

  My grandfather had told us that it was written over a hundred years before, to commemorate the death of Major General Alexander Cameron of Inverailort. He thought it very fitting for Donald Peter.

  Owen had forged a steel crucifix, and we planted it to mark the spot where my father was buried, aged only twenty-three. It was the 17th of May, 1916. Mother cried, of course, and my grandparents clung together.

  We rounded off our day by wandering up to the Lochailort Inn for a meal of freshly caught salmon, and to admire the newly arrived electricity and telephone – courtesy of the War Office. I wondered what my father would have made of it all. He would certainly have known how deeply he had been loved.

  Mother was fifty now and looking well on it. She still spoke English with a Welsh accent, and even when speaking in Gaelic, she had been known to call her brother ‘boyo’ in the middle of a sentence. The pair of them, maddeningly, spoke Welsh when they didn’t want us to know what they were saying. She, my grandmother and Mairi had become inseparable over the years, and they were always to be found together collecting shellfish, which were stored in hessian bags until the next MacBraynes boat called by, collecting crotal, a lichen used for dyeing the wool, or working the loom to make tweed. She didn’t get too involved with the animals – that was Grandmother’s job – though at clipping and lambing times, everyone worked side by side. Money was tight at times and the ration card didn’t go very far, but she and Grandfather had war pensions which helped. It meant we could grow vegetables, own a cow, have hens, and, of course, there was a plentiful supply of fish in the lochs and the sea. Strange to think that wartime had shown those living at Ardnish to be comparatively well off, for the first time. City life was far tougher, with strict rationing and poorly paid jobs.

  Despite her closeness to Morag and Mairi, I knew my mother got awfully lonely. Social by nature, she needed people around her. It took her several years to get used to the long winter nights, with no light to read by and no one to talk to. She missed my father desperately. ‘He would have filled the hole in our lives,’ she would say, ‘the spark in our day, the love in my nights.’ She had been far too young to become a widow. She often called me Donald Peter by mistake, when her mind wandered back in time to the happy days spent with my father and before then with her best friend from the Queen Alexandra Corps: Prissie.

  Prissie had come to stay with us twice when I was younger. For my mother, her visits were the best of times and she would fall into a depression when she left. Prissie was great fun. She loved playing tricks on my mother – who fell for them every time – like rushing in at six in the morning, shouting, in her broad Liverpool accent, ‘There are deer amongst the vegetables! Quick, get up!’ She really just wanted my mother up for company. She used to get the sleeper train up from London on an army warrant, then the train to Lochailort where my mother would meet her. She would recount every conversation she had struck up with strangers in the dining car in minute detail, much to our amusement. You couldn’t help but love Prissie; she was a friend to everyone.

  Prissie remained in the Queen Alexandra Corps for her whole career, ending up as a senior matron in the same King Edward VII hospital where she and mother had trained. She married a dull older man from Kent called Stephen and had a daughter, Emily, who was three years younger than me and came with her to Ardnish quite soon after the Great War, although I was too young to remember. Prissie stayed with her husband, but no one knew why. ‘Loyalty,’ said Mother. Prissie was my godmother, and always sent me the biggest and best presents at Christmas, I remember.

  The last time Prissie visited, I was about sixteen. My mother was determined to show her a good time. On her first evening we went with the grandparents over to Roshven House and had tea with the Blackburns. Grandmother enjoyed these visits as she could pore over the remarkable wildlife paintings by her friend, the renowned artist Jemima, and then regale us with tales of their time spent together.

  The following night, Mother and Prissie went to the Astley Hall in Arisaig for a ceilidh where, I learned later, they danced like dervishes and chatted up anyone in trousers. I had stayed at home because we had three tiny lambs that weren’t faring well and I had been told that if they lived I could have them. They returned home at dawn, full of whisky, giggling madly and clinging to each other. I heard them before I saw them and went out to meet them but, instead of going indoors to sleep off their excesses they stripped off to their underwear and went for a swim in Loch Doire a’ Ghearrain, splashing each other and shrieking. I was so embarrassed I ran back home.

  After that, we all went to help make hay at Roshven farm for a few days. Prissie loved it. Trousers rolled up, turning the hay and loading up the cart, all the while she would be telling the most risqué stories and teaching me some inappropriate English.

  My mother kept Prissie busy during her stay. After the haymaking they weeded the vegetable garden, chatting incessantly. They rewarded each other with a trip to Fort William by train and returned with a case each full of new clothes. I remember the day ended with a fashion show after supper.

  Prissie loved teaching my mother new recipes. One in particular – a pizza, she said – was all the rage in London. She was at pains to point out that it was made there with fresh ingredients and Italian cheese and meats but she cooked a Highland version for us, spreading cheese from the farm, chicken, egg, spinach and tomato paste onto a home-made bread base and cooking it on the range. She also bought some curry paste and rice in Fort William and made a chicken curry. Grandfather would have nothing to do with it, declaring it inedible, but the rest of us loved it.

  I knew my mother confided in Prissie. I would enter the house and they would stop talking, look sheepish. Prissie felt strongly that mother should leave the peninsula. ‘Your life is passing by, Louise,’ she would say. ‘If you were in the south you
could meet someone who would love you. You could even have another baby, it’s not too late.’ I could tell my mother was tempted and I felt sorry for her at times. Now and then she would make a comment about the sameness of her life, or she would wistfully mention a friend of a friend who had found a house and employment in Glasgow or London, but she always stopped short of expressing a desire to leave. I think she knew Father would be pleased she had stayed, to bring me up and to help his parents.

  I’d lie in bed and hear them giggling in the big bed, talking about men.

  My mother and Owen and went to see their mother in Wales one day, not long before the war. The trip had been a long time coming. It was Grandfather who pushed her.

  ‘You need to go and see Bronwyn, Louise,’ he said. ‘You may have drifted apart over the years but I know for sure that she’ll miss you.’ For some reason, she was always known as Bronwyn to us – never Mother or Grandmother.

  The last time Mother had seen her was in 1916, when my parents had made a surprise visit. Bronwyn’s flat in Abergavenny had been squalid and my mother was upset. Bronwyn was living with an awful man called David, and as soon as they realised that there was nothing to be done, my parents couldn’t get away fast enough.

  Mother and daughter had exchanged letters for a few years, with Bronwyn promising to visit but never doing so. However, recently even these had stopped. My mother didn’t even know if her own mother was alive.

  ‘I’m going to send her a telegram, and if she replies, we’ll go,’ promised Mother after being pressed once too often. Owen was keen, although that was as much to see their older brother Thomas as his mother. After all, he had been only fourteen when he last saw them.

  The telegram was duly sent, and to everyone’s surprise, a reply came back almost immediately: LOUISE DO COME STOP BRING OWEN STOP SAME PLACE STOP MAM.

  So that was that. Train tickets were booked. I couldn’t go, nor did I want to, using the genuine excuse of having the farm to run. I was curious to see how my other grandmother lived her life but the day-to-day necessity of my role on the farm meant that my joining them was out of the question.

  It was a twelve-hour journey, but despite that, Owen stayed only two days, Mother five. They found Bronwyn frail and living on her own. David had left her not long after my parents had called in. Mother was shocked by how destitute she was. Her diet was awful and she drank and smoked far too much. I can still recall my mother’s angry words: ‘She does nothing to improve her lot. She won’t be long for this world and it will be no surprise!’

  Owen wasn’t enthusiastic about his brother either, declaring that ‘Thomas didn’t think highly of me, so that was fine.’ But I could see the pain and hurt on his face as he tried to shrug off the slight. Still a coal miner, Thomas was forty years old at the time of their visit. He had a wife he didn’t seem to care much for, and four children. He wasn’t interested in our life of farming or the sea, Owen and Mother quickly discovered. His life consisted of work, boozing and watching rugby matches. He would travel a hundred miles with friends to watch Abergavenny play most weekends, if he wasn’t down the pit. My mother found the entire situation utterly depressing.

  I was worried about Owen when he returned from Wales. My immediate family was small, and incredibly close. I couldn’t imagine having a brother who didn’t care about me or anyone else. But Owen, always the stoic, threw himself back into his work and avoided any talk of the visit until one night when he came to Peanmeanach.

  ‘Thomas is a sad man. He’s going the same way as our father. His body takes a hammering in the pits, his skin is never clean, he drinks too much and he’s so coarse – you’ll never have heard language like it. Still, it doesn’t matter, because I won’t be seeing him again.’

  Everyone agreed that duty had been done and there was no need to visit again. Mother had returned with a photograph of her parents when they were young and she had it framed and hung in the front room. ‘I want to remember the good days when I was young, Donald Angus,’ she’d said. ‘Later on, when your grandfather got bad with black spittle he became angry and took it out on us. He drank himself free from pain in the Miners Welfare Club until he died of it. And with him gone, your grandmother lost her confidence and let herself go.’

  It seemed to me that she was being unduly kind to her parents, but I knew that she had to create what decent memories she could out of a dreadful upbringing.

  *

  After a breakfast of yoghurt, bread and cheese, Claude had left. Marie was busying herself in the scullery, and Françoise and I were talking.

  ‘You’re not your normal self, lass,’ I said.

  ‘No. I’ve got my mission on my mind.’ She didn’t catch my eye.

  I waited for her to elaborate, but she didn’t. What could I talk to her about to stop her worrying?

  ‘I’d like to hear more about Cape Breton,’ I said. ‘I’m desperate to visit there myself one day. My aunt Sheena says it’s just like the Highlands, apart from having no hills to speak of . . .’ She didn’t respond straight away so I ploughed on. ‘Do you have nicknames for everyone in Chéticamp like we do at home? In Mabou Sheena told me they had Donald the Fish, a fisherman, obviously, and Ewan Dhu, because he had black hair and needed to be differentiated from Ewan Ruadh, who was a redhead. And one man was called Step and a Half because he had a short leg caused by polio and another was called Ten to Six because he permanently held his head at an angle.’

  Françoise couldn’t help but smile.

  ‘Sheena says the older generation all speak Gaelic, and the younger ones can, too, but they’re encouraged to speak English. And there are great fiddle players. She’s taken up the fiddle herself and tells us she’s quite good now. I know that most folk are fishermen or coal miners. Oh, and they’re all called MacDonald.’

  ‘All of them?’ said Françoise, raising an eyebrow.

  ‘As good as,’ I replied. ‘Sheena goes to Mass, as everyone else does, and works as a primary-school teacher. I don’t know much about her social life, though. She doesn’t seem to have a man, but she’s mentioned dances at a place called Glencoe that she enjoys . . . And that’s all I really know. Your turn now?’

  ‘All right. I’ll start with my father. He’s mad about fly fishing. When I was a child, whenever he wasn’t working we would go out and cast a line on the Chéticamp River, the Middle River, or his favourite, the Margaree. It was fish or be alone in our house, so we all fished. It’s still my favourite thing – and my mother and sister are keen salmon fishers, too.’

  I was impressed. ‘What was your biggest catch?’ I could tell she relished the question.

  ‘Oh, only a forty-three-pound salmon, caught at Portree Bridge with a fly I tied myself. I was twelve at the time.’

  ‘Twelve?’ I echoed.

  She grinned. ‘I remember it so clearly. It was a glorious September day and my mother was fishing above me. Suddenly my reel went whizz and I knew it was a big one. The rod was bent right over. My mother ran down with a net, and we struggled for ages before landing it in a pool further down the river. We were on vacation at the Normaway Inn – which had just opened and catered mainly for fishermen – and they cooked my fish and brought it into the restaurant for everyone to see. My mother told everyone that I’d landed it and everyone stood up and clapped.’

  ‘I bet they did.’

  ‘Do you fish?’ she asked.

  I knew this was a crucial question to get right. ‘Well, I may have landed a few salmon in my time.’ I could feel myself blushing.

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘Well, there is a wee river, the Morar. Owen works near there as a blacksmith, and when I’m with him we’re always at that river. I’ve taken salmon out of it every way except with a rod, I’m afraid.’ I avoided her eyes. ‘The river is owned by Lord Lovat and he has a ghillie, James MacVarish, whose job it is to stop people like Owen and me. Anyway, when he’s away, or we think we can get away with it, we go down and string a net across the falls. O
n a good night we can catch twenty sea trout and half that number of salmon. Or we use a gaff, you know, a long stick with a hook that you . . .’

  ‘I know what a gaff is,’ said Françoise in a low voice.

  ‘Sorry. Of course you do. Anyway, we would lie on our chests on the bank and gently tickle the stomach of a sea trout and then, with a flick, we’d have it on the bank. So satisfying.’

  Her lip curled in distaste. ‘You’re the worst, Donald Angus, honestly.’

  I held my hands up in surrender. ‘And then Owen sells them to hotels. Lord Lovat’s probably eaten his own salmon, poached, at the Morar Hotel likely as not.’ I laughed anew at the thought. ‘Owen got caught two years ago and went to the magistrate in Fort William. He was fined two pounds and warned that if he was caught again he would be sent to prison. He gaffed a fish again that night, he told me.’

  I was enjoying teasing Françoise. ‘You have hard winters in Cape Breton, don’t you?’ I asked breezily, changing the subject.

  ‘You have no idea how cold. The ground is rock hard from the end of November until April. Sometimes the road has eight feet of snow along it and the walkway is like a tunnel. The water freezes in the taps, so you have to melt snow on the fire to wash with. I remember a pony was left out one night in November in minus forty degrees. And the poor thing was found the next day, frozen solid, standing up. The sea freezes as far as the eye can see and we walked across to Port Hood Island one time to see my aunt.

  ‘They have horse races on the ice sometimes. I’ve only seen one, but it was spectacular. A dozen horses flying along, with studs on their shoes; the noise was deafening. At least two hundred people turned up to watch; they set up braziers to cook on and then the party continued at Port Hood Hall.’

  ‘I can’t imagine these kinds of temperatures,’ I exclaimed. ‘Ardnish doesn’t really get cold, or that much snow, because of the Gulf Stream. So tell me, what do you do about food in winter? Heating? What about the farm animals?’