“But you shoot them…”
“I’ve shot grouse all my life. And yet, as I grow older, I shoot less frequently and, I must admit, with some reservation. My son Hamish, so far, has shown no qualms, but Lucilla hates the whole business and refuses to come out with me.” He sat hunched in his ragged old coat, with his good leg drawn up and his elbow resting on his knee. His worn tweed cap was pulled low over his forehead, shading his eyes against the fitful blasts of sunlight. “She feels very strongly that they are wild birds, and so part of God’s creation. By wild, I mean that they are self-perpetuating. It is impossible to rear them as one might rear pheasants, because to put chicks from a hatchery out on to these moors would mean instant and certain death from predators.”
“What do they feed on?”
“Heather. Blaeberries. But mostly heather. Because of that, a well-keepered moor is regularly burned in strips. By law, burning is controlled. It’s only allowed during a few weeks in April, and if you haven’t burned by then, it has to be left for another year.”
“Why do you burn?”
“To encourage new growth.” He pointed with his stick. “You can see the black strips on the Mid Hill where we burned this year. The longer heather is left to give the birds good protective cover.”
Conrad gazed in some bewilderment at the rolling miles all about him. “It’s a hell of a lot of land for what seems to me an awfully few birds.”
Archie smiled. “It does appear to be a bit of an anachronism, in this day and age. But if it wasn’t for the great sporting estates in Scotland, enormous tracts of land would become neglected, or decimated either by intensive farming of some sort or other, or else commercial forestry.”
“Is planting trees such a bad thing?”
“It’s a touchy subject. The Scots pine is our indigenous tree, not Sitka spruce from Norway, nor lodgepole pine from North America. And it depends on how well the woodland is husbanded. But a tightly packed stand of Sitka spruce destroys the breeding ground of upland birds because they won’t nest within nine hundred yards of it. It harbours too many predators — foxes and crows. And I’m not simply talking about grouse but redshank and golden plover and curlews as well. And other forms of wildlife. Bugs, insects, frogs, adders. And plantlife. Harebells, cotton-grass, rare mosses and fungi, bog asphodel. Properly cared for, the moor is a powerhouse of rational ecology.”
“But isn’t the image of the rich guy on the grouse moor blasting away at the birds the subject of some ridicule?”
“Of course it is. The chinless aristocrat loading his gun with ten-pound notes. But I believe that image is fading, as even the greenest of politicians becomes aware that the link between country sports and conservation is of immense importance if the basic ecosystem of the Highlands is going to survive.”
They fell silent. Stealthily, that silence was filled with small sounds, as seeping water will fill a void. The faint piping and drumming of the wind. The whisper of the distant burn, running in spate. Across the glen, scattered over the side of the hill, sheep grazed, moved, bleated. And as these sounds filled the quiet, so Conrad, at ease with his companion, found himself pervaded by tranquillity, a peace of mind that he had forgotten even existed.
Maybe this was wrong. Maybe after what had taken place last night, he should be suffering agonies of remorse and guilt. But his conscience was dormant, even self-satisfied.
“I feel like a shit,” he had told Virginia, “because I want you.”
And he had felt guilty, aching with the physical need to make love to another man’s wife, behind that other man’s back, and in that other man’s house. But he could do little to quench his desire, and even less when it became perfectly clear that Virginia’s need for comfort and love were just as great as his own. It had been, for him, a night of joyous release after months of enforced celibacy. And for her, perhaps an assuagement of loneliness and a last impetuous taste of lost youth.
Last night, coming to Balnaid, she had become shy, keeping Conrad at arm’s length with her hostessy busyness, aware as a young animal of potential danger. But this morning, she was composed. He had woken late, having slept more deeply than he had for months, and found her gone. Dressed, he made his way downstairs and discovered Virginia in the kitchen cooking breakfast, perking coffee, talking to the two spaniels. She still looked pale, but far less strained, and greeted him with a smile. Over bacon and eggs, they talked of trivial matters, and he respected her reticence. Perhaps it was better that way, with neither of them indulging in heart-searching analysis, or trying to rationalise the events of the previous evening.
A one-night stand. For Virginia, perhaps, that was it. Conrad could not be sure. For himself, he simply felt immensely grateful to the fates that had flung them together at a time when both were vulnerable, bereft, and deeply in need of each other. Matters had taken their own course in a natural progression as basic as breathing.
No regrets. For Virginia he had no real worry. For himself, he only knew that twelve years ago he had been in love with her, and now he could not be too certain that anything had changed.
A movement caught his eye. A buzzard appeared, floating in the sky, then began its descent, spiralling in flight. A second later, another covey of grouse burst from the heather halfway down the hill and flew southward, at amazing speed, with the wind on their tails. The two men watched them go.
Archie said, “I hoped we’d see more birds. We’re shooting this glen tomorrow. Driving over the butts.”
“Will you be there?”
“Yes. It’s about all I can manage, provided I can get myself to the bottom butt. It’s one of the things I really regret, not being able to walk the hill any longer. Those were the best days; walking up with a few friends and half a dozen dogs. Now just a thing of the past.”
Conrad hesitated. The two men had spent most of the day in each other’s company, but Conrad, not wishing to appear curious or impertinent, had deliberately not brought up the subject of Archie’s obvious disability. Now, however, it seemed a sensible opportunity. “How did you lose your leg?” he asked casually.
Archie watched the buzzard. “It was shot off.”
“An accident?”
“No. Not an accident.” The buzzard hovered, dived, swept back up into the sky, its prey, a small rabbit, dangling from its beak. “An incident in Northern Ireland.”
“What were you doing there?”
“I was a regular soldier. I was there with my regiment.”
“When was this?”
“Seven, eight years ago.” The buzzard had gone. Archie turned his head to look at Conrad. “The Army has been in Northern Ireland now for twenty years. Sometimes I think the rest of the world forgets how long that bloody conflict has been going on.”
“Twenty years is a long time.”
“We went to stop the violence, to keep the peace. But we haven’t stopped the violence, and peace still seems a long way off.” He shifted his position, laid down his glasses, leaned on his elbow. He said, “During the summers, we have Americans to stay, as paying guests. We give them beds, arrange diversions for them, wine them and dine them, and make conversation. During these conversations, the subject of Northern Ireland is frequently raised, and inevitably, some joker comes out with the opinion that Northern Ireland is Great Britain’s Vietnam. I have learned swiftly to change the subject and talk about something else.”
“I wasn’t going to say that. About Vietnam, I mean. I wouldn’t be so presumptuous.”
“And I didn’t mean to sound aggressive.” He eyed Conrad. “Were you in Vietnam?”
“No. I’ve worn glasses since I was eight years old, so I was labelled medically unfit.”
“Would you have fought, without that legitimate let-out?”
Conrad shook his head. “I don’t know. But my brother went. He joined the Marines. He flew a gunship. He was killed.”
“What a flaming, bloody, useless war. But then, all war is flaming and bloody and useless. And Nor
thern Ireland most useless of all because the troubles have their roots in the past, and nobody is willing to pull those roots up and throw them away, and start planting something decent and new.”
“By the past, you mean Cromwell?”
“I mean Cromwell, and William of Orange, and the Battle of the Boyne, and the Black-and-Tans and the young men who went on hunger strike and died of starvation. And I mean long and bitter memories, and unemployment, and segregation and no-go areas and religious intolerance. And worst of all, the impossibility of being able to apply logic to the situation.”
“How long were you there?”
“Three months. It should have been four, but I was in hospital when the battalion came home.”
“What happened?”
“To me, or to the battalion?”
“To you.”
Archie’s response to this was a deep and reluctant telling silence. Looking at him, Conrad saw that once again his attention had been caught by some distant movement, far away out on the opposite hill. His profile was gaunt, seemingly frozen in concentration. Conrad sensed the other man’s reluctance to talk, and swiftly retracted from his question.
“I’m sorry.”
“Why sorry?”
“I sound curious. I don’t mean to be.”
“That’s all right. It was an incident. That’s the euphemistic term for bombings, murders, ambushes, general mayhem. You hear the word every other day over the evening news. An incident in Northern Ireland. And I was involved.”
“You were operational?”
“Everybody was operational, but my actual job was Officer Commanding HQ company.”
“One reads of such incidents, but, still, it’s hard to imagine how it must be out there.
“I hear it’s a very pretty country.” Conrad was on the point of saying, “I didn’t mean that,” and then thought better of it, and let Archie continue.
“Parts of Northern Ireland are very beautiful. Sometimes my job took me out of HQ for the best part of the day, visiting units in their posts all over the countryside. Some of those on the border were in beleaguered forts made from old police stations which one could only get to by helicopter for fear of ambush on the roads. It was great, flying over that country. I was there in spring and early summer. Fermanagh with all its lakes, and the Mountains of Mourne.” He stopped, and grinned wryly, shaking his head. “Although one had to realise that they not only swept down to the sea, but to the badlands as well. The border.”
“Is that where you were?”
“Yes. Right in the thick of it. And different country again. Very green, small fields, winding country roads, lachans and streams. Sparsely populated. Tiny farms dotted about the place, grotty little homesteads surrounded by dead and broken machinery; old cars and tractors left to rot. But all quite pastoral. Peaceful. I found it impossible, sometimes, to relate such surroundings with what was going on.”
“It must have been rough.”
“It was all right. We were all in it together. Being with your own regiment is a little like being with your own family. You can cope with most things if you have your family around you.”
Archie fell silent again. The granite boulder made a painful resting place, and he had become uncomfortable. He shifted his position slightly, easing the strain on his leg. The younger dog, alert, moved in beside him, and Archie fondled her head with a gentle hand.
“Did you have your own barracks?” Conrad asked.
“Yes. If you can call a requisitioned clothing factory a barracks. It was all fairly rough and ready. We lived behind barbed wire, corrugated iron and sandbags, seldom saw daylight, and had little chance of exercise. We worked on one floor, went downstairs to eat, and upstairs to sleep. Scarcely the Ritz. I had a batman-cum-bodyguard who went everywhere with me, and even in plain clothes, we were never unarmed.
“One existed in a state of siege. We were never actually attacked, but there was always the threat of some sort of ambush or assault, so one was prepared for any of the various ploys for blowing a police or military establishment off the face of the earth. One of these was to hijack an armed Land-Rover, load it with high explosives and then get the poor bugger at the wheel to drive it through the open gates of the barracks, park it and set it off from a distance. This actually happened once or twice, whereupon a device was conceived to deal with such a contingency. A solid concrete pit with a steep ramp. The idea was to drive the vehicle into the pit, and then run, shit-for-ginger and screaming warning like a maniac, before the whole caboodle blew up. The resultant devastation was still pretty formidable, but by and large, lives were saved.”
“Did that happen to you?”
“No, that didn’t happen to me. I have nightmares about those bloody bomb pits, and yet it was never an experience that I had to endure. Strange, isn’t it? But then there can be no explanation for the workings of one’s own subconscious.”
By now Conrad had abandoned his inhibitions about curiosity. “So what did happen?”
Archie put his arm around his young dog, and she settled, to lie with her head on her master’s tweeded knee.
“It was early in June. Sunshine and blossom everywhere. Then an incident on the border at the crossroads near Keady. A bomb buried beneath the road, in a culvert. Two armoured vehicles — we call them Pigs — were out on border patrol, four men in each Pig. The bomb was detonated by remote control from over the border. One Pig was blown to smithereens and all four men with it. The other was badly damaged. Two men dead and two wounded. One of the wounded was the sergeant in charge, and it was he who radioed back to HQ to report. I was in the Operations Room when the message and the details came through. On such occasions, for security reasons, no names are ever mentioned over the radio, but every man in the battalion has his own Zap code, a number for identification purposes. So, as the sergeant gave us the numbers, I knew exactly who had been killed and who was still alive. And they were all my men.”
“Your men?”
“I told you, I was Officer Commanding the Administrative company rather than a rifle company. That meant I was in charge of the Signals, the Quartermaster, the Pay Office and the Pipes and Drums.”
“Pipes and Drums?” Conrad could scarcely keep the disbelief out of his voice. “You mean you had a band out there?”
“But of course. The Pipes and Drums are an important part of any Highland regiment. They play Reveille and the Last Post, beat retreat on ceremonial occasions, provide the music for dancing and smoking concerts, and guest nights in the Officers’ and Sergeants’ Messes. And pipe the lament at funerals. ‘The Flowers of the Forest.’ The saddest sound on earth. But apart from being an integral part of the battalion, every Piper and Drummer is, as well, an active service soldier and trained as a machine-gunner. It was some of these men who were trapped in that ambush. I knew them all. One of them was a boy called Neil MacDonald, who was twenty-two years old and the son of the head keeper at Ardnamore — that’s up at the head of our glen, beyond Tullochard. I first heard him piping at the Strathcroy Games, when he was about fifteen. That year he walked away with all the prizes, and I suggested that when he was old enough, he should join the regiment. And that day, I listened to those Zap codes coming in, and I knew that he was dead.”
Conrad could think of no suitable comment to make, and so sensibly said nothing. A pause fell, not uncompanionable, and after a little, Archie, unprompted, went on.
“To deal with such emergencies there is always an Air Reaction Force at full alert. Two bricks of men…”
“Bricks?”
“You’d call them squads, and a Lynx helicopter ready and waiting for takeoff. That day, I told the sergeant to stand down, and I took his place and went with them. There were eight of us in the helicopter, the pilot and a crewman, five Jocks, and myself. It took less than ten minutes to get to the scene. When we reached the area, we circled to suss out exactly what had happened. The explosive, which had totally destroyed the first Pig, had left a hole in
the road the size of a crater, and the second Pig was arse-over-tit in this. All around was littered with scraps of metal, mess-tins, bits of camouflage netting, bodies, clothing, burning tyres. A lot of smoke, flames, the stench of burning rubber and fuel and paint. But no sign of movement. No sign of anything or anybody.”
Once more Conrad found himself astonished by what he thought of as an obvious discrepancy.
“You mean no local people, farmers, or ploughmen, hearing the explosion and running to investigate?”
“No. Nothing. In that part of the world no person goes within arm’s length of that sort of trouble, unless of course he wishes to be dead or kneecapped within the week. There was nobody, just the smoke and the carnage.
“There was a patch of grass, like a layby, alongside the road. The helicopter landed and we all piled out. Our immediate task was to stake out the area, and get out the wounded while the helicopter flew back to base to bring in the MO — the Medical Officer — and his boys. But the helicopter had scarcely taken off, and before we had time to shake out, we were caught in a hail of machine-gun fire from across the border. They were waiting for us, you see. Watching and waiting. Three of my Jocks were killed instantly, another was wounded in the chest, and I caught it in the leg. Shot to pieces.
“When the helicopter returned with the MO on board, myself and the worst of the wounded were flown straight to hospital in Belfast. The sergeant didn’t make it, he died on the way. In the hospital my leg was amputated above the knee. I stayed there a few weeks, and then was flown back to England to begin the long business of rehabilitation. Finally I returned to Croy, pensioned off with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel.”
Conrad endeavoured to make a mental tally of the casualties, but lost count and gave up. “So what did that particular incident achieve?” he asked.
“Nothing. A hole in the road. A few more British soldiers dead. The next morning, the IRA officially claimed responsibility.”
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