Ardnish

by Angus MacDonald

  ‘Linde? Is that you, Linde?’ I whisper, feeling my eyes well up with tears.

  ‘No, Donald John. It’s me, Anja.’ She approaches the bed. I lift my hands to hers as she bends to kiss my forehead. Then she embraces me.

  We look carefully at each other for a few moments. She is smiling. I am searching for similarities to the child I knew a lifetime ago.

  ‘My God, I thought it was your mother coming to take me to the next world,’ I whisper.

  She sits by my bed and takes my hand. She reaches into her rucksack and pulls out a crumpled slouch hat. ‘Look, it’s yours. See the tartan patch?’ She puts it on. ‘Do you remember me wearing this as we walked across the veld? Because I do, vividly, even though I was so young. I’ve worn it from time to time over the years, too, especially when I’m on a horse. When I was at the camp at Aliwal, a gravedigger brought it to me. He told me you’d left it on my mother’s grave. He said it would be stolen.’

  ‘How kind of him,’ I manage to say.

  ‘I can only stay a little while,’ she says. ‘The men say the tide is turning and the boat will get stranded on the sand.’

  Anja seems comfortable being with me and my heart swells with happiness. Once again I picture her as a young girl, holding her mother’s and my hands as we walk along. Even as a ten-year-old she had her mother’s athletic stride, easy laugh and delight in the simplest things. I squeeze her hand tightly.

  ‘I have your letter,’ she says, rummaging in her bag again. She pulls out a creased piece of paper, torn from my army notebook. ‘Look, I’ve read it so often that it’s become almost impossible to make out the words. It comes with me everywhere. Do you remember writing it?’

  ‘Of course I do,’ I reply.

  ‘It’s lovely. I’ll read it to you.’

  To my darling Anja,

  I now need to leave you. Soldiers have come to take me back to the camp. It breaks my heart to go. Over the last month you and your mother have become very precious to me. I pray that your fever has passed and you recover fully. I am leaving you to live with a lovely woman who will bring you up as her daughter.

  There will not be a week, a day, an hour that I will not think of you and wish to be with you. Your mother’s death will be mourned by us both, and I will love her until my last breath.

  I was very touched and proud to get to know you and your mother in difficult times. I will remain forever like a father to you in my heart.

  Your loving Donald John Gillies, Ardnish.

  Having Anja read my own words from all those years ago moves me to tears. I need time to compose myself, and she seems to understand when I ask her to make us some tea.

  I’ve always been emotional and prone to shedding tears. I remember composing every sentence of that letter, writing ‘Ardnish’ after my name and wondering why I was doing that. But, deep down, I had always known. It was in the unlikely case Anja might one day come to find me.

  ‘What on earth are you doing here?’ I finally remember to ask.

  ‘I’m a senior radio operator for the Dutch SOE, here on a course at Roshven House. The Resistance in Holland is weak now, but there is a new drive to build it up. There are forty Dutch men up here, training to be parachuted back into the country. I am the only woman. I was talking to Peter Blackburn in his garden. He was digging out the last of his turnips for his cattle and he mentioned Ardnish as we were talking. I couldn’t believe it. I asked him if he’d just said “Ardnish”, and he said yes and pointed over here.

  ‘So I asked if the name Donald John Gillies meant anything to him and he replied it certainly did. He told me you were an old family friend and had helped to build Roshven House. I had your hat in my Nissen hut, so I showed it to him. He said, “That will be his. Look – the Fraser tartan. Donald John was a Lovat Scout.” Then he pointed over the water to here, Peanmeanach. We could see smoke coming out of a chimney. I was so excited, I could hardly believe it.’

  ‘Did he not wonder why you had the hat?’ I ask.

  ‘Oh, I just brushed it off, told him our family knew you in South Africa. But . . . he told me you weren’t very well. So I asked one of the army boys for a lift across the loch and here I am!’

  I am so relieved that Morag and the others aren’t here. Anja and I wouldn’t have been able to talk like this.

  ‘Tell me about your life,’ I say. ‘I’ve prayed for years that you were all right.’

  Anja begins her tale. She is very open and frank. ‘I’ve been lucky. After the Treaty of Vereeniging in 1902, the woman who took me in, Roos, took me to her farm just as her husband, Dolf – he was a gentle giant of a Boer – was released from the internment camp in Ceylon. They got money to rebuild the farm buildings and to buy cattle. They’d had only the one child, a girl who died in the camp, and so they adopted me. I was so lucky. But my new parents were quite old and both died before I was twenty-five. I inherited the farm, but then decided to go to university in Amsterdam so I sold the place. I now have a lovely Dutch husband and two teenage girls in London. We all moved to Britain in 1939, just before the war broke out.’

  ‘Thank God,’ I murmur. ‘When I left I feared the worst for you. I hated not knowing what might happen to you. After I left you, I lost my leg in battle a few days later. That was a period in my life that changed everything for me.’

  ‘Oh, my goodness,’ she gasps.

  I gesture across to the corner where my wooden limb is propped against the wall, leather straps trailing down. I don’t want to recount the whole story to her and am rescued by the sound of the door opening. There, in the light reflecting off the snow, stands Morag, with the others behind her. Her mouth is wide open in astonishment as she looks from the visitor to me.

  There is a moment’s silence until Anja approaches my wife with a beaming smile. ‘You must be Morag. I’ve heard all about you from Donald John.’

  My wife is lost for words and my family are on their most polite behaviour as this striking woman talks nineteen to the dozen about how we’d met in South Africa, how I’d saved her and her mother’s lives, and thank God, now we have met again thanks to Peter Blackburn.

  It is only a minute or two, however, before a couple of soldiers appear in the doorway and tell Anja that she must leave now. The tide is going out and they don’t want to be stranded here.

  Anja takes my hand, kisses me on the forehead, and quietly says farewell. As she leaves she turns to give me one last lingering look before she strides off through the doorway. My eyes are welling, but a coughing fit saves me from blubbing like a baby.

  Everyone is talking at once. Who was she? How did she know we lived here? All eyes are on me.

  ‘Morag, can I have a quiet word?’ I whisper.

  Louise, Angus and Mairi instinctively know to retreat next door to Mairi’s, and they leave us alone.

  I open my mouth to tell my wife all, but no words come. My head falls forward and my body collapses, as if all my energy has been sucked out. I suddenly feel more tired than I have ever felt before.

  Chapter 35

  Morag, Ardnish, 1944

  A few moments ago, my husband looked so content. It was as if he had found peace. But now he is coughing hard. His chest is full of phlegm which is drowning him. I can see that he is struggling to breathe. I jump to my feet and rush next door to get the others.

  We all return, and I sit on the bed, holding his hand. Mairi kneels on the stone floor beside us, hands pressed together as she prays. Louise stands close by, tears pouring down her face.

  Then our son says the last rites, ‘O Dhia an Tiarna’, as Donald John passes.

  I kiss him and gently pull the blanket over his head, whispering, ‘He was a good man.’

 

 

 
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