“And how are you today, Jamie?” asked Miss Mackay, forgetting once again how difficult a question that is for a five year old. “I mean, hello Jamie.”
“Hello,” said Jamie, looking up with a smile, legs just dangling away.
“You should see the picture he’s making,” said Mhairi, inclining her head slightly in invitation.
Marion Mackay squeezed through between the counter and the doorframe. Mhairi felt the counter move slightly.
“Oh Jamie, it’s beautiful. Look, it’s even got little portholes. Are you going to have faces there?” Marion asked.
“Yes,” he said, starting immediately.
Marion smiled, gave his hair a little shake and winked at Mhairi.
“I’ll pop around this afternoon if you like.”
“Great. We can have a good chat and some tea. Cake is also a possibility,” she added, and they smiled again.
Of course, this is just a snapshot of an ever-changing scene. The customers were speaking to Jamie by the end of the first week. A couple of weeks after that they were asking to see his latest picture. Soon after that Mhairi started to invent things for him to do.
“This pencil is very blunt. Could you sharpen it for me please, Jamie?”
“Where did I put my cup. Can you see it anywhere?”
Soon the familiar customers were at this too.
“I can’t see the milk, Mhairi. Could you show me where it is?”
“Jamie will show you, Mrs Henderson.”
And so on, and so on.
There were still bad days of course, but the routines of opening the shop up, of serving customers, of exchanging pleasantries- these applied a covering to the day, especially when funny things happened. Mr Henderson was especially good at those, you know the ‘where are my glasses, they’re on the top of your head’ conversations. Moments like those.
Or the time two sheep came in and tried to nibble the porridge oats boxes.
“He must have read the label.” That was Mhairi’s explanation.
And so Jamie’s education continued and after a year and a half, despite only having spent one month at school, he could copy letters and drawings from signs; he could count out change; he could read (and write down some things) and his level of social interaction was pleasing to everyone, even Marion Mackay, whose jumpers he once described as “lovely and stretchy”.
It was therefore with a sense of optimism, albeit tinged with nervousness, that Mhairi visited the village primary school in June 1938. Jamie was in the shop ‘helping’ the owner, who worked there most afternoons and this gave her an hour at least- enough time to explain Jamie’s situation to the headteacher, Graham Clare. Of course in a village like Gairloch everyone knew everyone else’s business anyway, but this is not the same as knowing in an official sense. Things might have to be written down, to be read by someone she’d never heard of, in Ullapool or even Inverness.
She checked her watch. School would be finishing in three minutes. Already the pupils would have been told to put their things away. Textbooks would have been lodged inside the heavy wooden desks. Pupils would be sitting in pairs, waiting for each row to be dismissed in turn, according to neatness, or quietness or merely because of the geography of the room.
Mhairi sneaked a look at the classroom she had taught in. They were obviously still at the tidying-up stage because she could see pupils milling about inside. A face appeared at the window and looked in her direction: it was another Mhairi- Mhairi Wilson, the daughter of Esther. Another face appeared and both girls waved and smiled. They were often in the shop together. Mhairi smiled back as both girls disappeared, so their row could get away quickly.
She looked at her watch again. This was a long three minutes. Turning round, she looked out into Loch Gair itself and the white houses strung along up through Strath and Smithstown on the coast road leading to Melvaig. It was a beautiful place, she thought to herself, even on a grey day; a perfect place to bring up a family. She thought again of Jamie.
The school doors opened with the ringing of the bell and the former inmates poured out, the boys mainly running and the girls mainly speaking. Mhairi imagined Jamie as part of this rush, desperate to get home, desperate to change so he could play.
“Did you get out first then?” she said to Morag and Mhairi.
“Yes Miss Mackinnon,” they beamed. “Miss Sullivan likes us because we are good.”
“Yes, we know how to be good,” said Morag, “and then we are let out first.”
At that, the two linked arms and skipped off. Would they always be so close, thought Mhairi? She thought of the world out there, beyond the grey waves, where terrible things were happening. Who could say how they would be affected?
“Come in Mhairi. Would you like a cup of tea? I’m just about to have one myself.”
The voice was a familiar one: kindly, yet with authority.
“Oh yes please,” she replied rather weakly.
“Yes please Graham,” he repeated with a smile, sensing her unease.
Mhairi smiled back and nodded a tiny thank-you.
“I’ve been expecting you. Actually it’s more like hoping.” He raised his eyebrows momentarily. ”But we’ll come to that later. You’ll be here about Jamie starting after the summer holiday.”
“Yes. I think he’ll be ready for school by then.”
“Going by what I’ve seen in the shop, I rather get the impression that he’s ready now. Always gives the correct change, does Jamie. He always speaks, you know. Customers always like that. You must be very proud of him.”
There was a pause.
“We are all proud of him, the whole of our family.” There was another pause before Mhairi continued.
“Sometimes I’ve just found myself watching him, without even realising it, and it’s because I almost can’t believe it- you know, how he’s coping.”
“It is strange,” said Mr Clare. “You’ll remember the Mathieson twins about four years ago- the boys whose father and uncle were lost on the trawler. A week after the funeral they were back to their old selves. I had been expecting all manner of difficulties. And they weren’t hiding anything. They just seemed to be able to pick themselves up and get on with living. I’ve never understood this.”
“If only grown ups could do the same the world would be a better place,” Mr Clare said, rising to pour the boiling water into the teapot, which he then brought over.
“Exactly,” said Mhairi, thinking of the newspaper headlines and all the trouble in Spain and Germany.
Mr Clare nodded as he poured the tea, thinking mainly about the council offices in Ullapool and Inverness.
“Well,” he continued, “we will be delighted to see Jamie in August. Delighted.”
Having reassured Mhairi on that point, he then felt able to cover other ground. Yes, Mhairi was Jamie’s legal guardian. No, no new information had come to light since the disappearance of Euan and Margaret. Yes, Margaret’s sister was still living in the Glasgow area- and there was frequent contact. Both Mhairi and Elizabeth had agreed that Gairloch was a better place for Jamie to grow up in especially since his grandparents were still on the farm at Loch Maree. And yes, Mhairi’s father was coming back from his illness, thank goodness.
Graham smiled and nodded his head. He looked down at the form. All the points had been covered.
“Well,” he said, “that’s everything I need as far as Jamie’s enrolment is concerned.” He smiled. There was a short pause. “And it’s just occurred to me that since you happen to be here anyway, I might as well ask you, as a prospective parent, for your views on something.”
Mhairi tilted her head slightly.
“Of course, Mr Clare.” Having worked with him before, she knew what was coming.
“Well, I don’t imagine you will have heard about this, because in a community like Gairloch people keep things to themselves,” his eyebrows flicked upwards at this point, “but Miss Sullivan is going to be leaving us. She’ll be off to E
dinburgh by the time Jamie starts.
“It’s early days of course, but I was wondering if you knew of anyone who might be interested?”
“Would prior teaching experience be useful?” Mhairi ventured.
“Oh certainly, if it were in the right sort of school.”
“You mean a school like this one?”
“Ideally.”
“And how would such a person register an interest in this position?”
“Well,” said Graham, “she could come to the school and speak to me about it. Or she- sorry, I meant they- they could write to the council.”
“Does that mean I have to leave the room and come back in again? Should I be changing this hat?” asked Mhairi.
They both laughed, equal partners in a conspiracy.
“Seriously though, Mhairi, we’d love to have you back. Miss Sullivan is good and we’ll miss her, but we all remember how good you were. Your name often comes up. But there’s no pressure. If you are not ready to come back, or if you just don’t fancy teaching that’s perfectly fine.”
“What about the official side of things?”
“Don’t worry about that. The headteacher has the main say in the matter of appointments. I will also make sure the council is aware of the practical advantages of the appointment- you know, you being familiar with the school; living just along the road, and how that’s going to be useful in winter; plus of course it’s less work for them and less expense. The work thing, the less work thing- that always has real appeal for them. You know, I think it might be a good time to remind them of the situation in Kinlochewe, where it took them seven months to find the right person. Who turned out not to be, in fact.”
“Yes, I heard about that. What about references?”
“Well, I really shouldn’t be writing a reference because I’ll be involved in the interviewing but I’d recommend the Reverend Harris. I know he’s very complimentary about the work you do in the Sunday School. He was telling me about this only last week, on the golf course. He’ll be on the interviewing panel, as it happens.” Big smile.
“If you want to widen the net a little you could also ask John Macleod. A reference from a local doctor counts for a lot in a place like this.”
No smile. Eyebrows entirely unflicked. Excellent, thought Mhairi to herself. Excellent.
“Thank you Headmaster. Thank you for your time and for your advice.”
Mhairi rose, they shook hands and she left with a smile. It was almost as big as his, as he watched her turn right at the end of the path on the way to collect Jamie, her left hand keeping her hat in place as her coat flapped in the wind.
14 A Museum Visit
Gairloch 2014
Turning right at the end of the hotel service road took them straight on to the main road which would take them through Gairloch to Poolewe and, beyond that, Ullapool. Tom looked across to the pier and the small road which led past the shop to the boatyard. They had walked there the previous evening and, unaccountably, Tom had been relieved to find older, wooden hulled boats, some of them nearing the creaky stage, propped up on the flat concrete slipway. There was just something about wood which appealed to him and he looked back for new and interesting camera angles as they accelerated up the hill
Easing down the other side, into Gairloch proper, Tom could see on the left the two circular concrete structures Alastair had mentioned the night before. Clearly, they were designed to perform as turntables for gun installation. He saw something else too. Looking at the shoreline: the tide was high and the water choppy.
“I think you’re right about going straight to Loch Ewe,” he said. “There won’t be much of a beach up there today.” He indicated the road which turned left to go up to North Erradale. “The entrance to the cave might not be accessible.”
“Don’t tell me you haven’t packed your weldibobs!” said Alastair.
“No. They’re back in Hamilton. The bikini and the wedding dress took up so much room that I didn’t think we’d have space in the car for them.”
There was a short pause.
“You’re still on the lookout then?”
“Oh yes.”
“But what happens if you do get lucky and meet some gorgeous young thing who is desperate to marry you, but she turns out to be the wrong size for the dress?”
“The dress is for me.” He paused. “I do like that word ‘desperate’ though. It conjures up exactly the right image.”
By this time they had passed the petrol station and the big hotel and the row of white cottages and a small shop. A more recent two-storey building appeared to double as a craft shop and community centre. They continued past the turn off to the left and up the steep climb.
Tom leaned forwards and opened the glovebox, taking out ‘The Secret places…’ It fell open at the page about Loch Ewe, the place still bookmarked by the photograph.
“It says here that from the top of this hill you can get a view of the whole of Loch Maree. Look for a track leading off to the right when we get near the top. On the map,” he said, switching to the Road Atlas, “it’s marked as a single track.”
With nothing behind them, they had slowed right down- and still nearly missed it. The track itself was less than a mile long, but it gave them the chance to park up and climb a hillock.
The whole of Loch Maree stretched out before them. About five miles distant, they could see the islands which gather together at the widest part of the loch. The hotel was just beyond them. To the left they could see the mountains stretching much further into the distance, almost to Kinlochewe.
“This is why I love Scotland,” Alastair said. “It’s not really the history- the Wars of Independence, William Wallace and all that. It’s more to do with the place. You’ll not get views like this anywhere else in Britain. Or anywhere else full stop. I remember about fifteen years ago I was on a touring holiday with a car club, going up the west coast. Some of them had been all over Europe- the Alps, mountainous areas in Germany and Austria and so on. They said Scotland beat them all. And that’s without seeing the most dramatic things, like this.” He pointed down the loch. “The draw a place like this has- it’s more than just beauty. That’s why you can’t capture it in photographs. It’s more of a feeling….” That was when he began to feel a hint of embarrassment.
“Right, I’m going to shut up now before you start taking the piss.”
“No, I understand what you mean, though I don’t really feel that way myself.”
“Perhaps not yet, but the more you travel in the north west, the stronger it becomes. Being here a lot doesn’t make you immune: it makes you an addict.”
They stood for a moment, looking back over the loch, before turning to walk back to the car.
“Wait a moment,” said Tom. “I think I’m beginning to feel something.”
“Take that hand out your pocket, shut up and get into the car. Honestly, why do I even bother….?”
A little over a mile further along the main coast road, and after passing most of Poolewe, another turn-off took them to a different sort of place, a place defined not by its geography but by its history. Alastair pulled in as soon as he found a somewhere to park.
“Loch Ewe,” he said. “It’s from here the Arctic convoys sailed.”
The elevation of the road along the south side of the loch gave them a good view of the loch as a whole. It was much bigger than Loch Gair, which explains why it was used instead. Having so many ships crowded into a small bay would have made them vulnerable to air attack. Also, the projecting headlands on either side narrowed usefully. The Road Atlas confirmed this.
“I suppose they could have closed that channel off with anti-submarine nets, mines and so on,” said Tom.
“Very likely, I would have thought. This road is higher up than the one on the other side so I think there would have been lookout posts and gun batteries up here.”
Another mile further on, where the road was at its highest, they found just such a place, a larg
e concrete gun emplacement.
“Going by the size, I would say it would be big naval guns here, guarding the approaches,” Alastair said. “I imagine the smaller anti-aircraft guns would tend to be lower down. You don’t want to be shooting on dive bombers from above. You’d end up hitting your own ships and shore installations.”
They left the car in the lay-by and walked across before climbing on to the huge concrete base, which was all that remained, though they still felt dwarfed by it. Even Tom was impressed.
“Imagine being a soldier up here on sentry duty, watching over the huge guns, with all the ships gathered below and the launches ferrying men and materials out to them. God, it would have been cold though.”
“Do you want to go a bit further along this road?”
“Not really,” said Tom. “I’d like to try out the road on the other side. There’s a place called Mellon Charles. I think there’s some kind of museum there.”
The Mellon Charles road, signposted Aultbea, ran off the main coast road about six miles further on. The journey to this turn-off took them past the entrance to Inverewe Gardens. Alastair had been there before –and Tom had no interest in gardens. That had been one of Eleanor’s interests. He did look at the strange treetops, but that was it. The road wound over a hill and through some tight turns overlooking the loch. Below them they could see the unmistakeable shapes of oil storage tanks built into the hillside and a couple of jetties. A grey naval vessel of some kind was moored alongside.
After the turn-off the road was very narrow, running through a tiny place called Orsmiscraig to Mellon Charles, which wasn’t really any bigger. The road was much lower down than the one on the opposite shore and they could imagine it being busy in wartime, with men billeted in many of the houses at the lochside. There would have been women also- in supplies, in administration, in transporting men and materials and so on.
“I suppose this would have been staffed by soldiers as well as naval personnel, for guarding the installations, manning the anti-aircraft guns and so on,” said Tom
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