by Valpy, Fiona
Flora’s fingers curled around the brooch in her coat pocket, squeezing it so tightly that the point of the crown dug into the flesh of her hand. She was about to reply when he wheeled around to glare at her, his face dark with anger. She recoiled in horror, recognising again that flash of likeness between father and son.
‘Would you like me to have a word with your commanding officer, Miss Gordon? Or perhaps with the camp commander, who’s a personal friend of mine? You would do well to remember that. I could easily have you transferred to another base, and that brother of yours as well. I’ve no doubt he enjoys his nice safe position on dry land, while others like my son are off facing the perils out at sea.’ He spat the words at her, little flecks of spittle gathering in the creases at the sides of his mouth.
Involuntarily, she backed away from him, feeling a mixture of horror and bewilderment at the venomous bite of his words. For a moment she was speechless as she tried to gather her thoughts. She swallowed back the stinging retort that rose in her throat, though, finding the sleeve of her coat gripped by a firm hand. Turning, blinking back the furious tears that had flooded her eyes, she found Mairi standing beside her.
‘Come on, Flora,’ her friend said, tugging at her arm. ‘Let’s go and get our orders.’
As they walked towards the semicircle of huts surrounding the parade ground, Mairi said to her, ‘What was all that about? I could see from the way you recoiled that he’d said something to hurt you. He’s still no more accepting about you and Alec, is he?’
Flora shook her head, biting her lip so that the tears wouldn’t fall. She was determined not to give him that satisfaction.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said, once she could trust her voice not to break. ‘Alec is back, that’s all that counts. I’ll see him soon enough.’ She shot Mairi a grateful glance. ‘Thank you for coming along when you did. I was about to say some things that certainly wouldn’t have helped the situation.’
Mairi shook her head. ‘There’s not much point in arguing with a man like that. He’ll not hear what you say, in any case. Give it time. Everything will be different once this war is over, you’ll see.’
Flora sighed. ‘Even more time . . . how are you and I supposed to bear it? I feel as if our lives have been on hold for years already.’
‘I know, but there’s progress being made. Did you hear about the Tirpitz? Bridie says there’s been a secret mission to Norway and they just received word yesterday that it was successful. Apparently they used midget submarines and got to her in the fjord where she’s been hiding. They reckon she’s been put safely out of commission for months now. So cheer up, that’s one less danger for us to have to worry about when Alec and Roy are out there next, isn’t it?’
Flora smiled wanly. ‘You’re right. Every day that goes by we’re one day nearer to them coming home for good.’
‘And don’t you dare forget it, Flora Gordon!’ Mairi gave her a quick hug. ‘If you’re not going to let Mr Hitler beat you, then you can’t let Sir Charles do so, either. Now let’s get on with doing our bit to make that day come around a little sooner.’
As the year reached its final short-lived days, Flora tucked pine branches along the top of the mirror in the entrance way so they would fill the cottage with the scent of the forest, and wove a wreath of scarlet-berried holly to hang on the front door. She felt she was going through the motions, but she needed to make an effort at some sort of cheerful normality to lift her spirits.
It had been good having Alec home for a few weeks, even though, in the times they’d been able to snatch together, she’d been a bit subdued and distracted in the wake of Sir Charles’s brutal threats. She hadn’t been able to bring herself to tell Alec what his father had said to her, knowing it would only put him in an even more impossible position. Alec was already at breaking point. And now he was away again, and his Christmas Day would be spent in the Arctic twilight as he looked out across the steel-grey sea, constantly on watch for enemy attacks.
Last night the Aultbea Songbirds had sung carols in the packed hall. Flora had sensed the audience of men and women were putting on a brave face, covering up their longing to be at home with their families by raising their voices together to sing the familiar words of the yuletide songs. Today, thick fog shrouded the ships anchored in the loch and Flora could feel the weight of it pressing on her lungs, as stifling as the fear that shrouded this fifth war-torn Christmas.
As she pushed the roasting tin containing the brace of pheasants into the oven, she wondered how many more Christmases this war could last. Each member of the community of Aultbea was exhorted by the posters pinned to the noticeboard outside the post office to help with the war effort: Make Do and Mend, A Clear Plate Means a Clear Conscience (Don’t Take More Than You Can Eat)), and Doctor Carrot – The Children’s Best Friend. Flora was thankful that the hills and the sea provided them with much-needed additions to the monotonous rations that were available in the shop: she’d made a dish of skirlie to help eke out the meat on the gamebirds, the bed of coarse-grained oatmeal soaking up the savoury juices from the pan; and while there was no dried fruit to be had to make the traditional clootie dumpling, she’d improvised an apple and honey pudding that was steaming away on the stove top. The fruit had been soaked with a tot of whisky from the precious bottle given to Iain by Lady Helen which, she hoped, would infuse it with a little festive cheer. A jug of cream sat in the larder, a gift from Mairi’s family, and her mouth watered as she pictured how it would trickle over the slices of hot pudding. But even as she prepared the meal, she couldn’t help wondering what Alec’s Christmas fare would be. She’d given him a tin of shortbread, made with most of the month’s sugar ration and tied with a tartan ribbon, to help make his ship-board diet of corned-beef sandwiches and the mugs of kye, as the sailors called their watery cocoa, a little more festive.
They were all putting a brave face on things and making the most of what they had. But everyone was exhausted by this endless war. Five Christmases. And still no end in sight.
With Alec on escort duty in the Arctic and Hal and Roy on another Atlantic run, none of the girls felt like attending the ceilidh in the hall on Boxing Day that year. All three had volunteered to be on duty that day and they were on a tea break in the canteen when Ruaridh walked in. He’d just finished his watch at the signalling station and had come in search of a cup of tea and to thaw out after hours spent in the crude concrete signal post, which offered little shelter from the biting wind that had blown away yesterday’s fog.
His forehead was creased in a frown as he pulled off his cap and raked a hand through his close-cropped sandy curls.
Flora glanced up, tensing immediately at his expression. ‘What is it?’
He pressed his lips together, as if loath to tell her the news he’d heard from the signalman who’d replaced him at his post. Bridie set a cup of tea down on the table before him.
‘Thanks,’ he said. Then he met Flora’s anxious eyes. ‘They’ve been engaged,’ he said, tersely. ‘By a German battleship.’
Flora froze, waiting for him to say more. There was no need to ask which ships he meant.
‘But I thought the Tirpitz was still out of commission,’ Mairi broke in, instinctively reaching over to put a hand on Flora’s arm.
‘It’s another German battleship, the Scharnhorst. It was anchored in one of the fjords on the North Cape. It began heading for the convoy in the early hours, so the escort cut in.’
‘Isla?’ Flora asked, already certain of the answer.
Ruaridh nodded. ‘All three destroyers. But that’s all I know at the moment. The communiqué has only just come in.’
Automatically, Flora’s hand went to the pocket of her coat and her fingers closed around the brooch as if, by holding it tight, she could protect Alec. It was unbearable to imagine what he might be facing at that very minute, but all they could do was wait for more news to trickle through. She felt completely helpless.
Bridie had other ide
as, though. They watched as she picked up a plate of the bright yellow sponge cake and marched across to where two officers sat, hunched over their teacups, deep in conversation. They couldn’t hear what was said, as the exchange was muffled by the hiss of the tea urn and the hum of noise in the canteen, which reverberated from the hut’s tin roof. But a few minutes later she returned – minus the plate of cake – with a triumphant grin, and seized Flora’s free hand.
‘It’s all right! The Isla is safe. They think the battle’s over now and the German battleship’s been sunk. The convoy is back on course for Murmansk.’
Ruaridh gazed at her in admiration. ‘Bridie Macdonald, your skills are wasted in the NAAFI. They should be deploying you as a secret agent. If they turned you loose with a few slices of the Yellow Peril, who knows what intelligence you might be able to unearth?’
The four of them were able to breathe again. But their thanksgiving was muted, overshadowed by the image of more lives lost with the sinking of the enemy battleship. For they knew that the graveyard of the ocean deeps was a lonely one, with ice floes in the place of headstones and only blank-eyed sea creatures to watch over the bones of lost sailors from both sides of the divide as they were stirred by restless currents.
Alec reached for Flora’s hand and pulled her the last few yards up the steep path to the old bothy beside the lochan. He’d had a few precious days ashore and this time they’d spent every minute that she had free together. On his return a storm had lashed the loch, obscuring the hills, the squalls sending sheets of rain sweeping in from the sea and keeping them indoors. He’d come down to the cottage each evening to see her, leaving his dripping jacket and boots at the door and stretching his legs towards the warmth of the stove as he asked her father about the day’s stalking, or chatted with Ruaridh about the latest ships to arrive in the harbour. He opened up a little, confirming what Flora had long suspected as he confided to her that he much preferred the welcoming warmth of the Gordons’ home to the chilly formality of Ardtuath House. To her relief, he seemed more like the old Alec again, calmer and more relaxed, in the homely atmosphere of Keeper’s Cottage. He’d also confided that his relations with his father were even more strained. They’d fallen out again over Alec’s refusal to apply for a transfer to a land-based job in the south. His mother had taken his side, and the resulting atmosphere was the worse for both of them. It went without saying that Flora’s presence would be an additional thorn in Sir Charles’s flesh, so she was thankful that Alec never asked her up to the house any more.
Then, at last, the wind and rain had abated and the day had dawned clear and calm.
‘Make the most of it,’ warned Iain. ‘The deer are staying on the lee of the hill. They know when there’s another storm coming in.’
As Flora and Alec climbed the path to the lochan, the wind began to pick up again, filling the sky to the west, stretching it as taut as a blue sail to where it met the horizon. From the heights they could see a pair of ships entering the loch.
‘Is there to be another Arctic convoy so soon?’ asked Flora, surprised.
Alec shook his head. ‘Not yet. Those will have journeyed up from the south to join the muster for the next Atlantic convoy. There’s one due to leave in a few days’ time.’
Flora breathed a sigh of relief, knowing that she had him safe on shore for a while longer. Today was a gift. They fished for a while, but nothing was biting; then they retreated to the shelter of the bothy’s walls, which offered a little protection from the teasing bluster of the wind. It had swung round to the north-east, the Arctic breath slicing through their layers of clothing. There was a small stash of dry sticks and peat in one corner, half-buried beneath some old boards, and Alec managed to coax a fire alight in the grate so they could warm their hands and toast the bannock that they’d brought with them, the butter melting into the oatmeal and dripping on to their fingers.
He pulled her close to his side and wrapped his coat around them both, cocooning them from the world beyond the bothy’s walls, and she breathed in the smell of the peat smoke on his hair.
‘In the summer, let’s come and camp up here,’ he said.
And she nodded, a wave of hope surging through her at the thought that the summer would come and he would be there. And maybe the war would be over by then, and the doubt and fear that cast such long shadows would be gone. They’d be able to plan a life without goodbyes, and the paralysing unspoken anguish that each one of those farewells might be their last. And she would hold Alec in her arms until he was healed.
At last the glow of the fire began to fade, the peats crumbling to grey dust. Alec stood, brushing crumbs from his jumper, and took her hand to help her up. Beyond the shelter of the bothy wall, the wind was like a cold blade against their cheeks.
‘Looks like your father was right,’ he said, glancing to the west. As the winter sun slipped towards the sea, a bank of dark clouds rose to meet it, hungrily devouring the light. ‘There’s another storm coming in. We’d best be getting back.’
By the time they’d reached the cottage, the darkness had enveloped the loch and the wind had turned from a tease to a bully. Drawing the blackout to shut out the threatening storm, Flora shivered a little despite the warmth of the kitchen. This was no night to be out at sea. She was thankful Alec was on shore, and thought maybe the storm would delay the departure of that next Atlantic convoy. She just hoped all the ships were now safely gathered inside the harbour.
At first, as she surfaced from her sleep, Flora thought the banging was part of the symphony of the storm, a bass beat joining the banshee howl of the wind and the rush of sleety snow being driven against the walls of the cottage. But then she realised the rhythmic, insistent knocking was someone at the door. She scrambled out of bed, hearing her father’s footsteps in the corridor as he went to answer it.
It was early morning, still dark outside. Alec stepped across the threshold, quickly pulling the door shut behind him as the storm threatened to wrench it from his grasp. Rivulets of melting snow ran from his oilskins and pooled on the floor around his boots.
‘There’s a ship in trouble out beyond the point,’ he said. ‘We’re going to need more hands, stretchers, ambulances. Flora and Ruaridh . . . ?’
‘We’re here,’ said Ruaridh, already pulling on a jersey and reaching past Alec for his own waterproofs, which hung next to the door.
In her room, Flora hastily tucked her nightdress into a pair of trousers and grabbed her greatcoat. ‘Drop me at the base,’ she told them as they jumped into the car at the gate, its engine already running. ‘I’ll get the ambulance and pick up Mairi on the way past. We’ll catch up with you at the end of the road.’
Alec nodded. ‘It’s gone on to the rocks at Furadh Mor. It’s not going to be easy to reach them. Bring the ambulance along the track as far as you safely can.’
In the darkness, the truck’s headlights were scarcely able to pierce the spinning eddies of snow that lashed the windscreen. Flora peered ahead, her eyes straining to pick out landmarks, driving as fast as she dared, thankful that she knew every twist and turn like the back of her hand. The gale pummelled the sides of the ambulance, making it sway and lurch, the snow rattling against the metal like machine-gun fire, and she had to fight to keep it on the road, which was slippery with melting sleet. Mairi sat beside her, white-faced and tense, gripping the sides of her seat.
Flora knew what was on her mind. Just the other day, Bridie had shown her a postcard from Hal saying that the brothers were on their way back to Loch Ewe having managed to get berths on one of the Liberty ships coming up from London, which would meet with others there before returning to America to pick up another cargo. Neither girl spoke as the ambulance battled onwards through the storm, but they both shared the same fear and each prayed silently that Hal and Roy were on some other ship, in some other port, weathering the storm.
There was already a small cluster of military vehicles parked haphazardly where the road ended, just beyond th
e croft houses at Cove. A door opened as a frozen, bedraggled casualty was helped inside, to where Mrs Kennedy and Mrs McKenzie were doing what they could to warm those who’d managed to make it ashore through the seething waves. Flora gingerly edged the ambulance past and manoeuvred it along the rough track, pulling up behind another truck that had already stopped at the top of the cliff, its headlights illuminating the thick veil of snow and the roiling waters beyond.
‘Have you got a stretcher?’ shouted a man with a captain’s stripes on his coat sleeves. ‘Hand it over to them’ – he gesticulated to Alec and Ruaridh – ‘and bring what supplies you can. There are casualties on the shore, but be careful. That cliff path is dangerous and we can’t afford any more injuries.’
Flora gasped as she reached the cliff edge. Beneath them, at the bottom of the sheer rocky path, the beach was veiled by the driving snow. Over the fury of the wind, she could hear waves crashing on to the rocks with the full force of the Atlantic. She strained her eyes to see the foundering ship, but there was only sleet-swept blackness beyond the beam of the ambulance headlights. She started down first, with Mairi close on her heels, scrambling into the unknown as the storm grabbed at her coat and whipped her hair across her face, trying to pluck her from the rocks and throw her into the raging cauldron that roared somewhere beneath them.
It was chaotic on the shore. Torch beams wavered here and there as the rescue party searched for survivors. It was impossible to tell whether the oil-black, huddled shapes on the beach were rocks or bodies until you reached down to touch them, feeling for hard stone or yielding flesh. Every now and then there would be a cry of ‘Over here!’, the words snatched by the wind and almost lost beneath the crashing of the waves.
The crofters from the cottages at Cove had been first on the scene, summoned by the flares sent up when the ship had been beached on the rocks and by an officer who had managed to swim ashore and climb the cliff to summon help. The men had raced down to the bay, followed by the women bringing blankets and a can of hot tea. A fire had been lit and there were glimpses of huddled figures in the light of the leaping flames as they attempted to revive the survivors.