‘So, what would happen during the summer months is that when we were out on patrol, we would ready our horses and set off at first light, at five or even earlier in the morning. It was warm by eight and unbearable by eleven. We would pitch our tents and get fires going for a brew and some food, then we would take cover before the inevitable storm hit. Mind you, sometimes we had no choice but to ride through it. At times like those the horses were a hell of a job to hang on to. They were terrified of the storms and wanted to bolt.
‘You might cross a riverbed in the morning with only a trickle of water but by nightfall you’d be hanging onto your horse’s mane as it struggled to swim through the current. If you were fording a river and saw lightning miles away upstream, you had to be sure to get over the spruit – that was what they called a creek – before a torrent of water came along. More than a few men were killed that way.
‘Winter was another thing altogether. Much cooler of course, but seldom cold during the day, and little rain. The grass became short and brown. On the border with Basutoland, up at six thousand feet, we occasionally got snow, but it was rare.’
The memories are flooding into my mind, but I’m becoming weary. I look at my son, longing to tell him more, but I’ll do so later. ‘Never mind my old memories. Tell me what you’ve been up to, and what news do you have of the Camerons?’ I’m always interested to hear about my old regiment, although it will be my contemporaries’ grandsons serving in it now – quite a thought. Angus has been the regiment chaplain for two years and seems to know exactly what they’re up to.
‘The regiment has just arrived in Italy, Father. I received a letter from a friend in the Cavalry, Denzil Skinner, and read it on the train from Glasgow. He’s in a brigade that is amassing in Taranto, ready for a push up the east coast to Puglia. He says that the war is nearly won, but there is some stiff fighting ahead of them. Wait, I have it here.’
He fetches his bag and rifles through it, talking as he searches. ‘It paints such a vivid image; you’ll enjoy it.’ He finds the letter, then returns to my side and begins to read a segment. ‘“We heard, although we could scarcely believe it, the skirl of pipes. There, in the brilliant sunshine, marching down the centre of the road from the escarpment, came a long column of men, almost a thousand. The traffic was brought to a standstill or forced onto the verges. A strange, awed murmur went up: ‘The Camerons!’ In columns of threes they marched with a swing to the tune of their pipers: ‘The March of The Cameron Men’. Each company was led by its company commander, just as though they were on parade. It was a supremely moving sight, although some of us could only see it hazily through our tears.” ’
I confess I am nearly in tears myself.
‘The Camerons have had a terrible war, Father,’ Angus murmurs. ‘Enormous losses at Dunkirk and again at Tobruk, but even so, they’re still the most sought-after regiment for recruits . . .’
We both sit in silence, alone with our thoughts of these fine kilted men, whose fathers, grandfathers and great-grandfathers, too, would have marched with pride in their Cameron of Erracht tartan.
‘Oh, and there was one odd occasion I must tell you about,’ he says. ‘I was at the cathedral in Edinburgh just recently when I was given a message that a Canadian soldier wanted to see me. We had a cup of tea and a blether, and at the end of it I still wasn’t entirely sure why he was there. Calum Beaton was his name, and he had the Gaelic.
‘It was as if he was fishing for information. He told me he was not long married to a girl called Morag and lived in Cape Breton. He kept asking about my family. It was really quite strange.’
My son is looking at me intently as if he wants me to acknowledge the name. Should it mean something to me? ‘I’m sorry,’ I reply, ‘but I don’t understand. Did this man know our Sheena?’
‘He didn’t say,’ Angus replies. ‘The whole encounter was odd.’
After breakfast, and with everyone settled around the warmth of the stove, I call out to Angus. He comes over and sits by my bed. I can see the concern on his face.
‘I want to say my last confession,’ I say, avoiding his eyes. My voice is weak, but I feel, suddenly, strong.
He smiles, reaches across and takes my hand. ‘I will hear it, and gladly. It’s so good that I’m here.’
I pause awkwardly. Angus, no doubt, thinks my confession will be the usual things: cursing, unkind thoughts and so on. After all, what else could this old man have to confess?
‘No, son. Please ask Canon MacNeil from Arisaig to come.’
We are both silent for a moment, embarrassed.
‘But why?’ There is a note of hurt in my son’s voice, which pains me.
‘Angus,’ I whisper, ‘you are a fine priest. But you are also my son. And it is as my son that I want you by my side today.’
‘Of course. I’m sorry,’ he replies.
But Mairi is harder to convince. ‘What nonsense, Donald John,’ she cries. ‘You have a perfectly good priest here on the spot and you want to waste Canon MacNeil’s time – and asking him to come in this weather, too!’
I can’t argue with Mairi’s logic but fortunately Louise comes to my aid. ‘I’ll go and get him right away,’ she announces. ‘If he’s at St Mary’s he’ll hopefully come immediately. He’ll have to stay overnight, of course.’
‘Watch out for the weather, yourself,’ I say as Louise puts on her coat and looks for a stick. Angus gives her the ration book and a list of messages. Mairi quickly prepares a piece to keep her going.
‘I’ll wear your Tam o’ Shanter if that’s all right with you, Donald John?’ Louise calls over to me. She likes to wear it. I suspect it reminds her of Donald Peter. That old family black-and-white Lovat Scout bonnet has been used by her more than by myself these past years.
It’s a long way for Canon MacNeil to come from Arisaig. It will take half a day each way on his pony, and that’s not even taking into account the difficulties he may encounter with the weather and with parts of the footpath being washed away. I fear he might struggle to get his pony along it at all and he may be forced to come on foot.
Mairi has gone back to her house next door, to the peace of her loom, and my son has gone for a walk over to Laggan along the shore. And so I am left alone with my troubled thoughts, and begin to compose my confession in my mind.
Chapter 3
Donald John, January 1900
Morag and I had been married for twenty-three years and our children were growing up fast. The older two were ready to leave home, and only little Donald Peter still went to school. Sheena was away a lot, in service at Roshven House during the summer when the Blackburns had guests and helping around the village. She’d find any excuse to go to a ceilidh in Arisaig or further afield, and often stayed away for a few days at a time. She had itchy feet, that was for sure. Her younger brother, Angus, was seventeen, three years her junior, fit and strong.
Morag often spoke to him about what he might do with his life. She would urge him to leave Lochaber, to seek an easier life than one scratching a living from this hard ground. He was like me though, with an emotional tie to the Highlands. I knew it would take a greater calling than money to drag him away. I once asked him if he would join the army and see the world like I did myself at his age, but he just shook his head. I was hardly surprised; he’d be the last person to stab someone with a bayonet. He wouldn’t hurt a fly, he was so gentle a man. That said, he wouldn’t be pushed around. If I wanted him to fix a gate or a bridge or some such task, he would do it in his own sweet time. There were often angry words between us because of it.
Donald Peter, my wee man, was twelve. He was always at my side, holding a hammer or a piece of wood, keen to get involved with some joinery work. Not so wee, in truth; he was almost my height and very funny. We always had a laugh as we worked together. He was doing very well at school, spoke English fluently, and his teacher, Mr Erskine, remarked that there wasn’t much more Latin he could teach him, such was his rare gift for languages.<
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As a young man, I had made good money in the army; later, the constant renovations at Roshven House kept me fully employed. There were always buildings being added. First, the east wing, then both east and west gate lodges, and later, the stables they referred to as the Square. I was the joiner there, and all the windows, doors and shutters were made by me and a couple of lads from Glenuig. My wages kept us well fed, and we were able to buy some decent furniture and a good pony. I used to think to myself that we must be the most comfortably-off family on Ardnish. The last few years had been tougher though. The previous winter, a whole three months had gone by without a penny of income coming into the family. There was plenty of unpaid work, repairing nets or fixing fishing boats when a wooden stave caved in, and instead of seeking employment all the time I taught myself to make baskets out of hazel and willow. But as I wove, Morag would sweep briskly around me in the house, making me feel that I wasn’t really working. She said more than once that basketmaking was a tinker’s job. But in the spring, I took a dozen of my baskets down to Helensburgh on the puffer which was delivering supplies. It was said to be the richest town in Britain, and I thought I might be able to sell the baskets there. I walked around for two days trying my hardest to get a good price, and when I eventually came back with a couple of guineas, Morag dismissed my efforts, telling me that I’d sold them too cheap and the shopkeeper would make three times that. She told me that the next time I should go around the big mansions that were being built around the town and charm the ladies. I often felt I could do nothing right.
Morag was hard on me. I felt I was under her feet all the time and failing her – a disappointment. Our past intimacies and shared laughter were things of the past. When she came in at dusk from her day’s work, she would put the kettle on, barely acknowledging me in the corner where I’d be squinting in the dim light of the kerosene lamp, trying to mend a shoe or strip bark off willow. She was always busy with the animals or helping the older people in the village, and both of us were worried sick about feeding the family over the coming winter.
I remember eyeing up the two beautiful Orkney chairs I’d bought her in Glasgow for our tenth wedding anniversary on my way home on leave from the army, and wondering how she’d react if I told her I’d found myself wondering how much we’d be able to sell them for now. She had coveted chairs like these since she was a girl and I remember her excitement when she first set eyes on them. She had thrown her arms around me and told me I was the best husband in the world that day. I know if I took them off to sell, I’d become the worst. But things were so bad I felt I had few other options.
During the summer I had been kept busy rebuilding an internal wall at the west end of Roshven House – the damp was making it uninhabitable – and making two new windows. But as the owners, Professor and Mrs Blackburn, grew older, construction work began to tail off. I had day work with the ponies when the Astley-Nicholsons of Arisaig House came stalking on Ardnish, but gradually we went from being comfortably off to poor. Morag picked whelks, milked the cow, and looked after the few sheep on Ardnish as well as her three weeks of lambing at Borrodale but that was it as far as income went.
It was late August that year when I got word that men were needed for a big cattle drive from Glenelg down to Falkirk. We were told we would be away for three months. The money wasn’t good, and the man leading the drove was John Mackenzie, a Wester Ross man whom both Morag and I had met before. He was a brute of a man with a terrible temper and was rumoured to have once beaten a man to death.
Morag and I spoke about it late into the night. By God, we needed the money and this would see us through the winter, but it would be miserable for me sleeping out in the winter’s rain with just a sodden wool blanket, never mind putting up with the inevitable abuse from Mackenzie. However, I made up my mind to go. I needed to get away and I thought maybe this would restore my wife’s belief in me.
But Morag wasn’t having it. She said I was being stubborn and I would die my death of cold and it just wasn’t worth it. It turned into a heated argument, with words that would haunt us later and young Donald John clinging to her, crying at us to stop shouting. I eventually conceded and agreed not to go, and later was to be grateful that Morag had forced me to overcome my pride and stay in Peanmeanach.
We had rarely argued in years gone by, but the lack of money was dispiriting and Morag worked so hard she was always exhausted and irritable. Gone were the days of putting my arm around her as we sat by the fire talking about our life or sneaking off to bed together when the children were at school. Years before, when I came back on army leave from Egypt each summer for six weeks, we would walk along the coastline of the Ardnish peninsula with a picnic. I’d spread out my plaid and we would make love in the heather. Those were the days.
Stalking with the Arisaig House guests always resulted in good tips and was enjoyable work, even though on Ardnish it would only be three or four days a year, in October. One of the gardeners would come across the week before and give me instructions. Morag would tidy me up, insisting I shaved and dressed in the tweed jacket and plus fours which Mairi had made for me. I relished those days away, the fresh air in my lungs, the challenge of man against beast and the conversation with men who lived completely different lives from myself. On those days I would be guiltily delighted that there would be no hoeing of the kale patch or picking stones from the big field, my least favourite chores.
I was only an occasional stalker, but when the rut was at its peak and there were a couple of parties already out elsewhere on the estate I would get my chance. I fancied myself at it, and more often than not we’d have a good stag by the end of the day.
I’d go to meet the laird, Sir Arthur Astley-Nicholson, and his guest by Lochan Dubh at nine in the morning. The previous day I’d have spied the ground and located a suitable stag or two. I was provided with a pony and a ghillie to carry the beast back to the larder. Sir Arthur would become enraged if the stalk was ruined by any passers-by, and so, before the big day I would spread the word that people should stay in their clachans. Woe betide anyone who scared off the deer.
I remember one hot summer’s afternoon in particular. The laird was out with a Member of Parliament as his guest when a man from Glasgow wandered up with a fishing rod. We intercepted him and told him of our stalking plans. He replied aggressively that he didn’t care what our plans were; he was off fishing and would do just as he wanted, where he wanted and he didn’t care if he ruined our day or not.
We went back and forth and up and down, covering every inch of the peninsula, and didn’t encounter a stag all day. Sir Arthur had been keen to show his guest some good sport and as we turned for home he furiously blamed the fruitless day on the belligerent angler.
On the way back, as we passed along the path to the west of Loch Doir a’Ghearrain we caught a glimpse of the man, swimming naked. With great glee, the laird and the MP crept up, took the man’s clothing and boots, and we all retired to a safe spot to watch what happened next. The fisherman emerged from the loch and hunted and hunted for his clothes. Then, as he realised what had happened he began shouting obscenities, furiously waving his fists in the air. It was early evening and there wasn’t a breath of wind in the air – just when the midges were at their most voracious. We all thought this a well-deserved prank and walked off half a mile before the laird, waving off midges himself, relented and left the man’s clothing on the path.
I heard later from Mrs McCallum at Lochailort Inn that the man had been the most unpleasant guest and she had been delighted to hear of his mishap and subsequent early departure from the area.
I had very much hoped to be taken on by Sir Arthur as a full-time stalker but the role was keenly sought after. In any event, the two men who were already in post weren’t so old as myself, and despite my many hints, Sir Arthur wasn’t tempted to have a third man down at the south end of the estate. So, in the absence of regular work anywhere, I had to make do with whatever occasional employment c
ame my way. But things had become desperate and I feared for our very survival.
Chapter 4
On New Year’s Day in 1900, I had to take old Donald MacVarish, who had suffered a badly broken arm, to hospital in Fort William. After leaving him to be treated, I met my good friend Captain Willie MacDonald in the High Street. He told me he was seeing his mother, I told him of my errand, and we decided to toast in the new century in the Volunteer Arms with a tot of his family’s Long John whisky.
‘It’s a bad day to be away from the peninsula,’ I joked, ‘but I’m sure my liver will benefit!’
Although a decade younger than myself, we’d got on well ever since I’d been a corporal and him a subaltern in the Camerons in 1890. A young officer, however well born, knows little, and I was a seasoned soldier from my years in North Africa. My job was to be his batman, his personal servant. I looked after his horse and protected him in battle. We built a professional relationship but quickly forged a deep personal bond through our shared love of the people and the way of life in the West Highlands.
With our drams in our hands, Captain Willie and I had a long talk about my family and how they were doing. He knew them well, especially my youngest, for whom he had a soft spot. ‘Is he keeping at the piping?’ he enquired eagerly. Donald Peter’s progress with his piping was always an early question of his. I told him that Donald MacDonald in the village was tutoring him now, as well as MacDougall, who was concentrating on his pibroch. He was incredibly fortunate to have two such remarkable pipers nearby. Captain Willie knew of both and nodded approvingly. I told him proudly about Donald Peter’s ability with languages and how pleased the teacher was with him.
‘And how is Morag?’ he asked.
I found myself avoiding his eyes as I replied, ‘She’s well, thank you for asking. Keeping busy as always.’
‘She must come over to Blarour and compete in the sheep dog trials this year.’ He smiled. ‘Hosting that event on the farm is my highlight of the year, and I know Morag would give the men a good run for their money!’
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