Rhanna at War

by Christine Marion Fraser

  Fergus nodded. ‘One more to be found, but I think we should leave him to the Military. If Mistress Beag got her message through, help should be arriving quite soon. If not, we will continue the search in daylight.’ Wearily the men agreed and everyone began to move away from the scene of the crash.

  Little Grant Fergus was marching up and down the drying green of Laigmhor with a meal basin on his head and a stout tree branch hoisted against his shoulder. He was practising ‘being a soldier’ and Kirsteen, watching him from the window, was angry at the influence of war reaching out to her son.

  ‘Ach, don’t worry yourself, Kirsteen,’ Shona assured her. ‘All wee boys play at soldiers – girls too – I did it myself when Niall and me were bairns.’

  She folded the dish towel and turned to pick up a basket from the table. ‘I’m away over to Tina’s with a bite of dinner, and I’ll do some wee odd jobs while I’m there. Matthew says she can hobble about the house but can’t get out much to see to the beasts.’

  Kirsteen looked at Shona’s white face and felt a great surge of affection as, unbidden, a memory came of a slender little girl starting her first day at school; a child with glorious auburn hair tied back with a blue ribbon and skinny legs clad in black woollen stockings. Little had Kirsteen thought in those far-off days that one day she would marry Shona’s father and become the mistress of Laigmhor . . . She had always got on well with Shona but her time of separation from Fergus had also separated her from his daughter, the only female in the household after the death of dear old Mirabelle. She could sense Shona’s well-hidden resentment of the situation but understood her feelings on the matter. Impulsively she reached out to grasp Shona’s hand and looked into her incredibly deep blue eyes.

  ‘Shona,’ she sighed, ‘you’re so sad inside – I can feel it even though you try so hard to hide it. I know what it’s like – to love someone and be apart from them. What’s wrong between you and Niall?’

  For a moment a veil of hostility hooded Shona’s eyes. She was growing more like Fergus every day, jealously guarding her most private feelings. But then she saw the genuine concern on Kirsteen’s face. ‘It’s not Niall . . . it’s me, Kirsteen. I need time to sort out my feelings. I love Niall, I think I’ve loved him since we were children. It was like a fairy story . . . the way we grew up together then discovered how much we cared . . . but . . .’ she hesitated then went on in a rush, ‘it never ended like a fairy story – that’s the trouble with real life. I blame myself for that, everything that happened to make it all go wrong. It’s like a dream now . . . the cave . . . me bringing that little life into the world . . .’ She stared at Kirsteen with huge eyes then went on in a whisper, ‘I didn’t give him life – I gave him death. The only time he lived was when he was . . . in here.’ She touched the flatness of her belly with trembling hands. ‘When I knew Niall was coming back from France I thought I had forgotten that time in the cave with that poor little dead baby but I hadn’t. It seems to get worse and worse all the time. I go over it and over it in my mind . . . it’s like a nightmare without an end!’

  Kirsteen put her arms round the girl’s slender shoulders and said tenderly, ‘Shona, we’re all guilty of something. Your father and I could spend the rest of our lives feeling guilt, but our time is too precious to waste on useless self-reproach. A lot of our years were wasted because we were both foolish. Don’t make our mistake, Shona.’

  Shona forced a smile. ‘You’re right, of course, but it’s easy to be wise after the event – I don’t mean that to sound cheeky, it’s just the truth. Och, it’s lovely to be back on Rhanna, yet it won’t be the same till Niall is here too.’ She paused to look out the window to the misty blue of the mountains. ‘This is where we both belong – no matter where I go my heart is always on Rhanna.’

  ‘If you really love Niall, you would follow him to the moon. He won’t be studying forever, you know.’

  Shona went towards the door where the hens were cocking beady eyes into the kitchen. ‘I’ll have to go now,’ she smiled. ‘Thanks for listening to all my worries.’

  ‘Be careful out there,’ Kirsteen warned. ‘Your father was making quite a fuss about that missing German. He doesn’t think it safe for us defenceless females to be wandering about unescorted. Shouldn’t Babbie go with you?’

  ‘Ach, the lazy wittrock is sleeping late after the excitement of last night. I took her up a cup of tea but she just turned over and went back to sleep.’

  At that moment a yell came from the garden where Grant had missed his soldierly footing and fallen into the thorns of the rose bed. Kirsteen rushed to the rescue while Shona grabbed a broom and chased the hens from the kitchen.

  A crestfallen Grant came over the cobbled yard. ‘Can I come with you, Shona?’ he called. ‘Mother’s out of temper and there is still a while to go before school.’ Mr Murdoch, the balding, fussy master of Portcull school, had gone to assist the Home Guard in their search for the Commander of the German bomber, giving all the children an unexpected morning off.

  ‘Aren’t you wanting to go down to the harbour?’ Shona asked. ‘If old Joe’s there he might tell you a story.’ The little boy loved the harbour with its collection of boats and old men always ready to recount an adventure of the sea. Already he knew a lot about fishing, jumping at any chance to dabble about in a boat. Whenever he could he went to help with the lobster creels and accompanied some of the older boys when they clubbed together to hire one of Ranald’s boats for a day of sea fishing.

  Grant hesitated at Shona’s words, but seeing her basket of food, decided that a cosy strupak would better pass what remained of the morning. ‘Old Joe has a bad head,’ he told Shona in his precocious manner, his cultured English already showing traces of the lilting island tongue. ‘I think, too, he is weary from chasing Germans all night and he told me earlier he was going to sleep off the effects of some meeting to do with the war.’

  ‘The war was it?’ Shona smiled. She had already heard about the ‘disgraceful drunken behaviour’ of the Home Guard. ‘On you go and ask your mother then,’ she conceded, ‘but mind, you mustny bother Tina with your blethers.’

  He ran to tell Kirsteen that he was going with his big sister to ‘protect her’ and a few moments later his grubby little hand was curled trustingly in hers. The misted fields were frosted with white which scrunched crisply underfoot as they walked, and the child’s normally pink cheeks were soon like red apples in the stinging air. He was a picture with his black curls, snapping black eyes and dimpled chin. Tunelessly he began singing a sea shanty taught to him by the fishermen and after a minute Shona joined in, feeling something of his exuberance and youthful buoyancy.

  Soon they were in the field that sloped upwards to a tiny cottage huddled under the brown heather slopes of Ben Machrie. Here Matthew, grieve of Laigmhor, lived with Tina, his ample, easy-going young wife and his two children, Donald and Eve.

  Little Donald, a big-eyed dreaming child, was quietly pleased to see Grant and took him off to view a golden plover’s nest he had chanced upon.

  ‘Don’t be going far,’ Shona warned. ‘Remember what Father told you this morning.’

  Grant gave her a cherubic smile. ‘I’m minding, Shona, don’t worry . . . anyway . . .’ he pulled a roughly-fashioned wooden dirk from his pocket, ‘I’ll kill any Germans with this! I’ll not let them touch Donald or myself.’

  Tina came limping from the byre, clutching a bucketful of manure mixed liberally with hen’s feathers which drifted like snowflakes from the brimming container. At sight of Shona she put up a languid hand to tuck away strands of fine hair into two kirbys that were meant to be supporting a lop-sided bun. The grips were totally inadequate for the purpose and loops of hair descended in fly-away abandon.

  ‘Ach, bugger it,’ she swore mildly, her good-natured face showing not a trace of dismay. The boys scampered off and she told Shona consolingly, ‘Don’t you be worrying your head about wee Grant. Donald might be looking like his head was up on the
moon but he is all there and knows every inch of the moor. I was hearing anyways it was only one airy-plane that came down though there were rumours of there bein’ three. It’s all a bitty mixed up. Matthew says he caught two of the Huns last night an’ the soldiers will find the other later.’

  Shona had to hide a quick smile. Tina’s simple, devoted faith in her husband was such that she believed everything he told her. Her vision of an all-conquering hero was limited entirely to her spouse. It was perhaps her acceptance of his manly boasting that made the marriage one of rare, uncomplicated happiness.

  ‘Ay, you’ll likely be right, Tina,’ Shona said. ‘Though I hear tell that some of the men have gone out to guard the plane. Father was a bit worried about Grant and myself coming out of the house at all this morning.’

  ‘Ach, you’ll be fine wi’ me. If there is one smell o’ a Jerry I’ll set my dogs on the buggers!’

  They had wandered into the house by now and Shona, looking at the jumbled assortment of canine and feline bodies that were heaped contentedly on hearth and sofa, wondered if even a whisker would have twitched if a dozen Germans had come marching into the room.

  Little Eve, who had been having her morning nap in the commodious bottom drawer of the dresser, tottered through from the bedroom, rubbing the sleep from her huge bright eyes. The drawer had been her bed from babyhood and she simply popped into it when the mood took her. She was a rosy, intelligent child, delivered by Shona the Christmas Eve before last. The very timing of her birth seemed to have bestowed on her everything that was reminiscent of Christmas: roly-poly legs supporting a plump little body; stars shining in velvet eyes; a halo of flaxen hair that was a startlingly beautiful feature in a child otherwise so dark. At sight of Shona she giggled with glee then, turning very solemn, lifted her dress and stretched the top of her knickers till it seemed the elastic must surely snap. Peering over her pot belly she pointed between her legs. ‘Wet!’ she announced and collapsed on the rug in an ecstasy of baby chuckles.

  ‘I’ve been training her to sit on the po,’ Tina explained, ‘but I’m no’ able to bend much just now.’ She collapsed into the depths of a huge armchair, pinning the tail of a skinny white cat against the springs. With a terrified squeal it struggled with the ensnaring layers of flesh till Tina was forced to ease herself up an inch and in doing so upset the brimming pail she had carried in from the byre. Dung and feathers littered floor, furniture and animals.

  ‘Fevver!’ Eve squealed, crawling amongst the mess to stick fluffy bits of down into her hair.

  ‘Ach, my,’ Tina clucked in slight anxiety. ‘This damt ankle is keeping me back right enough. Matthew will be in for his dinner an’ me that’s so quick with everything will never have it ready, just.’

  Shona’s spirits were rising rapidly. Tina, with her effortless air of unruffled peace and uproarious overstatements, was a breath of spring sunshine. ‘Don’t upset yourself, Tina,’ she instructed laughingly. ‘I didn’t just come over to blether, you know. I’ve brought some nice things for a strupak, then I’ll get Matthew’s dinner going.’ She eyed the dangling pail in Tina’s hand. ‘Where were you going with that when I came along?’

  ‘Just over to the midden. I’m saving it for the vegetable patch but I’m not wanting Matthew to know. I’d like fine to surprise him with a fine crop this year. Last year the tatties were like bools and the turnip so dry no’ even the sheeps would eat it. Matthew hasny the time for it, the soul works that hard. I was having a mind to gather seaweed as well but this damt ankle has slowed me down with everything.’

  In a few minutes Shona had swept the floor clean and the kettle was puffing gaily among the peats. Then she settled Tina and Eve with tea and scones and went to get the hens’ pot from the jumbled array of cooking containers in the little stone-flagged outhouse Tina grandly called a kitchen.

  The hens were gobbling greedily when Grant and Donald burst out from the windbreak of firs that sheltered the house from the windswept moors. They were arguing the way children do when greatly excited. It soon transpired that they had wandered up to the shores of Loch Sliach to look for rabbit burrows but had been frightened away when they saw a ‘monster’ floating on the loch.

  ‘It was all spread out with humps on it!’ said a round-eyed Grant. ‘And it was moving about and making noises!’

  ‘Ach no!’ Donald’s protest was faintly scornful of an incomer’s inability to relate a properly embroidered tale. ‘It was a Ullabheist right enough but it was dead because it was all white and limp. It was not making one sound but a water kelpie on the wee island was greetin’ an’ moanin’. Maybe it was crying for the Ullabheist though I don’t know why ’cos they are feart o’ them as a rule and should be glad it was dead!’

  ‘We ran away,’ Grant put in rather feebly, his pale face showing he had suffered quite a scare.

  Shona was about to dismiss the childish ravings as of little import but her quick mind suddenly recalled Righ’s saying that he thought the German bomber was surely bound to crash on the slopes of Ben Machrie and that instead it had careered round the mountains to come down on the open moor. Everyone had assumed the pilot would have bailed out on to open ground . . . but supposing there hadn’t been time? Donald’s Ullabheist sounded very much like a parachute.

  Making a quick decision she bundled the protesting children into the cottage just as Matthew arrived for his dinner. Taking him into the kitchen on some pretext she hastily imparted the news to him. ‘Get away now!’ exclaimed the youthful grieve of Laigmhor, good-natured and easy-going like his wife, but, unlike her, possessed of an energetic taste for adventure.

  ‘Can you get some men together?’ Shona whispered.

  ‘Ach, it would take too long. The last I am hearing they are all up at the airy-plane. Anyways . . .’ he puffed out his well-developed rib cage. ‘I’m here! I’ll get my gun and I’ll be goin’ . . . you will maybe stay here and send some help after me.’

  But Shona was not a McKenzie for nothing. ‘Havers! I’m coming with you. I’m a nurse, remember, and the pilot of that plane might be badly injured. It’s not a silly wee girl you are talking to, Matthew.’

  ‘But Tina has that bad leg and will no’ be able to send for reinforcements. I’m no’ mindin’ going to look for this Jerry so long as I know the lads will be up at my back. The island is crawling wi’ strange men. Totie Little of Portvoynachan saw them early this mornin’ rowing away from a big boat out on the Sound. They came over in rubber dinghies and hid them in the caves at Aosdana Bay. It’s surprised I am you havny heard!’

  But Shona’s brilliant blue eyes were smiling. ‘Ach, that’s just a lot of rumour. Father thinks Behag sent a wrong message and it is soldiers – our soldiers who have come to Rhanna. There will be ructions and no mistake.’

  Matthew’s eyes were bulging and he hissed, ‘I am hearing it was Robbie took the message to Behag!’

  Shona nodded sympathetically. ‘Poor old Robbie. Behag will never forgive him, his life will be worse than ever. But c’mon now, it’s time Grant went down the road to school. I’ll get him to stop off at Laigmhor and ask Father to come with Bob and the others.’

  Grant was given instructions and, fairly bristling with importance, scampered off with Donald at his heels, leaving Tina to mourn gently about ‘poor Matthew’s empty belly’.

  The path through the woods was a thick carpet of russet pine needles which muffled their hurrying footsteps. There, in the cathedral of tall trees, it was dim and mysterious, a world apart from the surrounding open spaces. Matthew’s steps were a little less jaunty now and he took frequent peeps over his shoulder.

  ‘Did the baims say something about a Ullabheist?’ he asked nervously, the threat of the ethereal appearing to worry him far more than the possible presence of Germans.

  ‘Ach, don’t be daft, Matthew!’ Shona scolded. ‘The boys were exaggerating and fine you know it! Look, we’ll go over the bum here and come out of the woods quicker.’

  They wobbled
their way over slippery stepping stones and, skirting a rise, saw Loch Sliach below. It was a dark, umber pool with the steep crags of the mountains on one side and the amber stretches of the moor on the other. A tiny tree-clad island rose in the centre, separated from dry land by a wide area of water. Billowing out from the island was a long length of translucent white material, humped into odd shapes where pockets of air lay locked in the folds. And plainly, on the cool breath of the calm, frosted air, there came an unintelligible thread of sound . . . human, yet, there in the shadow of the sleeping Ben, with the ever-present sigh of moor and sea, frighteningly uncanny and unreal.

  ‘It’s a spook or a Uisga Hag wandered inland,’ Matthew gulped. ‘I think we’d better be wise and wait for the lads, Shona.’

  ‘Nonsense! You have a boat tied up here, Matthew, for I know you go fishing on the loch with Robbie. Where is it?’

  Unwillingly he pulled aside clumps of bracken to reveal the boat in a hollow of sand, and with a distinct lack of enthusiasm helped Shona drag it into the water. As she sat in it, gently bobbing in a scurry of wavelets, she looked at him with quizzical eyes, and a few moments elapsed while he stood on the shore, embarrassed but unmoving. She grabbed the oars and began to pull away.

  ‘Wait! I was just coming!’ he said peevishly. ‘I will not be having a lassie doing a man’s work.’

  They reached the islet in minutes. Matthew made a great fuss about tying the boat but Shona climbed quickly ashore and in a very short time found the delirious figure of Anton Bütter lying on a bed of frantically gathered heather and bracken. His eyes were closed but his head was moving from side to side in the madness of his inward nightmares. His uniform was a cold, sodden mess. Of the trousers only tatters remained, and blood seeped from a jagged gash in his leg. But it wasn’t that which made Shona’s hand fly to her mouth. She was staring at his stomach where a cruel finger of rock had ripped it open, allowing part of his intestines to escape in a red congealing mass. The skin of his legs was blue with exposure, but worse, the fingers of both hands were waxen white with frostbite – the ragged fragments of his flying gloves having afforded him little protection from the elements. The pathetic vulnerability of him lying there, his partially covered genitals giving him the innocence of a small boy, made the tears of pity well into Shona’s eyes, and she forgot that this was the Enemy, a young man trained to take life. She forgot that long months of worry over Niall and the subsequent loss of her tiny son had been brought about by the Nazis and their greedy war. She saw only a critically injured human being, lying as Niall had lain, in a foreign land without consciousness to aid the instincts of self-preservation.