by Mary Easson
I have a photograph of Meg beside the cabin that Will built on their farm. She’s holding a rifle and two huskies are sitting to one side in the snow. They were to spend the winter in Dawson and go out to their farm when the snow started to melt. Well, that’s how they planned to live until Will enlisted and was sent to France. Though he’d put thousands of miles between himself and his country of birth, the ties of family and childhood had not been severed. Unlike Canada, Scotland could not provide him with any opportunity for advancement but his love for his homeland remained. When I see the geese return in the autumn and leave with the spring, I think of all of the men from the colonies who’ve made the long journey home to fight for a country that squandered their youth and let them go in the first place without so much as a by your leave. It is surely a terrible foe that made these young men decide to come back and put their lives on the line for old Scotland. I have prayed for Will these years past, that his life will be spared, and Meg will have him back with her soon.
The younger men left Netherside in turn. First it was Dochie, then the three lads from the bothy one by one. The work was harder for those who were left and older men did what they could. Annie’s mother had died by then so the farm became Annie’s whole life. She spent time out in the fields with me and Mrs Davidson managed inside with the help of a pensioner. Gradually, women were encouraged to come back to the land and take the place of those at the Front. In January, a mechanised plough came to the county and Mr Davidson said it could do the work much faster, it was the future whether we liked it or not. The army paid a visit as soon as the ploughing was done in the spring and the two mares were taken away hastening the future our way. I would often go into the stable and speak to the last remaining horse, Hector, who was too old for army service. I’d brush down his long tail and plait his mane, rest my cheek on his warm brown flank, telling him that Bess and Ella were fine because they were together, pulling munitions and other supplies for the troops, and that Dochie would be back one day when the fighting was over. Hector listened to every word of it, turning his head and pricking up his ears, looking at me with his big brown eyes when I stroked his nose. I spoke to him about what was on my mind, asked him what I should do. He was always the same, constant, his eyes fixed on mine, listening but never giving anything away. Horses are wise but they keep their thoughts to themselves.
It was late springtime when I went to Rob that first time. I had been thinking about him all day, a Saturday, after the grieve said that somebody had been seen, and not for the first time, on the road by the east march. He’d been seen before, in all weathers, on the hill above the farm, sitting, just looking, not doing any harm but a concern nevertheless. I got it into my head that it was Rob, convinced he had come for me at last so I stole out of bed when Annie was asleep and I went to find him. The road was still wet though the rain had stopped and the gale had eased to a light breeze. It was pitch dark but the moon appeared now and again in the cloudy sky, enough for me to see him standing by the wall. My heart was pounding in my breast.
‘Minn?’ he said.
‘Aye.’
‘Hoo did ye ken?’
‘I just did,’ I replied.
He reached out his hand. I will never forget how it felt when his fingers touched mine.
We found a dry place along at Eppie’s Mill, off the road, away from prying eyes, and we sat together. He was shy at first, drew my shawl up when I shivered, put his arm around me and I laid my head on his shoulder. He said he was glad I was there but he didn’t say why and I didn’t ask him. He was warm and his arms were strong. I heard the rush of the stream outside and the wind in the trees, and his breathing close to my ear. He didn’t say much that first time but his hand on my cheek and his lips on mine were all of the words I wanted to hear. Then suddenly he stopped and he took my hand, kissed it like a gentleman might kiss a lady. He said I should get back to Netherside before I was missed so I smiled shyly and kissed him on the cheek.
‘Will ye come again?’ he asked when we parted at the east march.
‘Aye, I will. But I cannae get caught.’
‘The morn when ye lowse,’ he said. ‘Oan yer road hame tae yer folks. Meet me at the mill.’
I hesitated. ‘Aye.’ Then I pulled myself away, ran up the road knowing he was watching me, a strange mixture of joy and fear in my heart.
Annie was surprised when I began getting ready for the walk home the following evening because I visited Stoneyrigg so rarely by then. She sat on our bed with her knitting and reminded me to take my mother’s hat. I always took that hat though it was daft to wear it off the farm. But I left it on the nail behind the door and I think Annie could read my mind. She asked me if I knew what I was doing and I said that I didn’t know what she was talking about. She told me to be careful and I said that I would.
I went to the mill and Rob was waiting for me. He’d made a small fire and spread out a blanket on the floor, assured me any passers-by would think it was tinkers, I wasn’t to worry. I didn’t go home to Stoneyrigg that night or any of the nights I met him there. I couldn’t go. I couldn’t face my father because of what I had done.
Chapter 20
John
They finally took the bandage off my right hand today and I can’t help but marvel at the sight of it even though it looks like a piece of scrag end in a butcher’s shop window. The wound where the bullet went through has knitted together well and I can still move all of my fingers. I touch the wound on my neck, careful-like, relieved to be able to feel the scar, how it snakes across the sinews and muscle, from my jaw into the dip above my collar bone. The injury to my hip is healing too, under the dressing. All in all, I’m on the mend. I hold my injured hand up against the sun, imagine the dark collection of bones encased in light-filled flesh, and ponder how complicated a man is. The merest interruption to his proper function, the slightest hurt, can be ruinous but he has to learn to live with it, adapting his movement and his thinking to the new situation. Just like Davy Broon’s dug, I suppose, when it lost a leg down a pothole and had to make do with three.
It pleases me that I may be finding my sense of humour again.
I mind how this hand felt after I’d punched my brother’s face that time in the park. He didn’t know it was me which somehow made it worse. Even though he was bleating and asking for mercy, I hammered the punches home on behalf of my friend and all of the others who might have gone before him, in the hope that none would come after. But experience tells me a leopard never changes its spots. I’d never used my hands with violence before, beyond a scrap in the school playground – which was a way of life rather than an inclination to cause harm. I can still feel the way my knuckles jarred against Davy’s jaw, can still hear the sickening crunch of bone on bone. I hadn’t thought these hands were capable of such brutality again and promised myself I would not repeat what I’d done. But the truth is, these hands have done much worse since.
I was a Lewis gunner in the first months after I arrived at the Front. I trained like everybody else for the infantry then was put with a group in charge of a light machine gun. It was a technical miracle devised to deal death and destruction, and me an extension of it. For hours on end, I took my turn on a firing step dug into the side of the trench, directing bullets at the enemy, intending to kill.
Kill or be killed, the sergeant had shouted in training. Keep it up. And that’s what I did: killed men and boys younger than me, over and over again, dozens of them. I watched the mud between us splatter upwards, a stinking fountain of filth, red with blood and pieces of human flesh. I may never make sense of war but, it seems, I am perfectly suited to it and carried out orders without question.
An officer calls out my name. I hold up my hand so that he can see where I am, curled up out of sight in a deck chair, hidden from the rammie of team sport behind the pavilion. He puts a letter in my hand and tells me not to cry, somebody loves me after all.
/> 88 Stoneyrigg Rows
Blackrigg
21st May 1918
Dear John
I was glad to receive a letter from Major Howe informing me that you are alive and recovering from your wounds. I had begun to fear the worst and could not believe the good news but then your own letter came and I decided it was alright to believe it after all. So, you are being looked after by the Red Cross, in Switzerland. God bless them for their good work. I hope you are making a full recovery and will be back here with us soon. They are saying the war can’t last much longer.
You will be glad to know that I have heard from Jim. He is still in the German POW Camp where you were both taken earlier in the year and is in good spirits.
Mrs Broadley has heard recently from Bert. Dan Potts is with him by all accounts, still at the Front. Mrs Duncan asks if you have any information about Rob, she would be grateful for it. He has been posted missing these several months past and there is no word.
Father and Davy are doing fine. I will write again soon, at the first opportunity.
God bless and keep you, John
With love
Mother
At last, I have good news from my mother who is happy that I am alive. Many mothers are not so fortunate thanks to me. My twin brother is alive and well, thanks be. My memory jolts to the POW camp where we were taken and other memories begin to surge in, like a cold draught when the door is opened. Rob is missing. I am seeing pictures of Rob in my head, piecing together a story of what happened. But the feeling is not good and I try to close the door again, pushing back against the stench of panic as it coils a festering hand around my throat.
Elizabeth
Towards the end of 1915, I walked with Sarah across the muir because we both had visits that had to be made and were long overdue. We parted at Eppie’s Mill, agreeing to meet up later for the walk back to the manse. Dark clouds were gathering on the horizon though the sky still showed a hint of brightness. We couldn’t take too long if we were to make it back to Blackrigg before the storm. I asked her if she needed some company for the rest of the journey to Netherside but the answer was no, she was fine. The thought of seeing Minn again was a comfort to her, she said. We set off in opposite directions and I couldn’t help but take a final glance back along the road to her lonely figure, diminished in size by the huge trees lining the roadway, as she pushed her way doggedly into the cold north-westerly wind.
Sarah told me later about how she had stood at the door of the farmhouse whilst Annie hurried off to find Mrs Davidson. Then she was shown into the scullery and asked to wait whilst they fetched Minn from her work. Annie reappeared with a chair and two cups of tea, leaving Sarah in the gloom, a cold wind whistling under the door to the yard, and downwards from the hatch in the ceiling that led up into the loft. Motes of dust hung in the shaft of dim light filtering through the snow on the skylight above.
Minn appeared through a door in the corner concealed behind a layer of sackcloth. The smell of the byre came with her. Sarah thought Minn looked heavy in her layers of winter clothing, dark shadows under her eyes, and her lovely, long black hair hidden beneath a washed-out scarf.
Worse than Teeny-fae-the-Neeps, in Sarah’s own inimitable words.
‘It’s Uncle Peter,’ she said to her sister. ‘I thocht ye should ken.’
‘How’s Mrs Graham… how’s Jean…?’
‘She puts a brave face oan it for the sake o’ the bairns.’
‘Aye,’ was all Minn said. Then after a while she asked after the rest of the family.
‘Aye. They’re fine.’
Minn forced a smile
‘We never see ye, Minn – it’s why I came by – and tae let ye ken aboot Uncle Peter’s demise.’ Sarah had searched her face, said she looked tired.
‘It’s the work,’ Minn began as if she might be about to unburden herself. ‘It’s hard, hard work.’
Sarah studied her elder sister and dearest friend. She could see the mark of a difficult year on her, the tea cup held in calloused hands, nails dirty from her work in the byre and in the fields. Her cheeks were ruddy from the wind and the cold, her lips dry. Her skin was pale, almost bloodless and her eyes were full of weariness.
Breaking the silence between them Sarah said, ‘Ye’ve haurdly come visit, Minn, even in the summer.’
‘Ye cry yon a summer? The muck was thick like glaur, sair work wi’ the rain it was. The harvest wasnae a patch oan the year afore an’ it was hard gettin’ it in.’
Sarah hadn’t been asking about the summer and it hadn’t been as bad as Minn was suggesting.
‘I thocht ye micht’ve been ower tae see Rob at least,’ she said.
Minn seemed to stare at nothing in particular.
‘Have ye seen him?’
‘I have.’
‘That’s guid, is it no?’
‘He cam by. No for a while though.’ Minn looked down at her empty cup, smoothed out the large hessian apron she wore for her work with the cattle.
There was another long silence.
‘Will ye come an’ see Jean, Minn? She’d fair like a visit, so would Faither.’
Minn stood up, ignored the question, just gave Sarah her cup saying it was good of her to visit but she had to get back to work, the kye had to be fed. They couldn’t wait.
‘Tell Jean I’m sorry aboot Uncle Peter,’ she said as she opened the door into the byre. The sound of animals shifting and snorting in their winter stalls and a loud bellow drowned out her final words.
Annie was in the kitchen, making scones at the big table, her back to the fire.
‘I dinnae ken whit’s up wi’ her, neither I dae.’ She had answered the question before Sarah could ask it. ‘But never fear,’ promised Annie. ‘I ken whaur ye bide if needs be.’ She glanced out of the window where flurries of snow rose and fell on the air swirling around the farmyard.
‘Ye best get yersel hame, Sarah. Ye dinnae want tae get caught in the storm.’
Meanwhile, I was being shown up to Mrs Maclean’s bedroom by the housekeeper who suggested that my visit be kept short, doctor’s orders. I found the elderly patient lying peacefully in a bed festooned with thick quilts. The room was bright, although the curtains were half-closed against the glare from the snow on the ground, and a small fire crackled in the grate. I pulled up a chair for myself and settled down beside her, reached out for her time-worn hand with its band of yellow gold. I studied her face, the skin like taut, thin parchment over bone, wrapped up in the comfort of sleep. Mrs Maclean opened her eyes. It was a moment before she recognised me.
‘How lovely to see you, lass. Kind o’ you to visit.’
‘I got your letter and came as soon as I could get away. I’d no idea you were poorly.’
‘A lot of fuss about nothing at all,’ whispered Mrs Maclean, trying not to provoke the cough that had laid her so low for so long.
‘You’ll be back on your feet as soon as you’re able,’ I said.
‘Nothing truer,’ agreed Mrs Maclean. ‘I’ll confound them all, if the Good Lord lets me.’
‘As long as you do what you’re told, you probably will.’
Mrs Maclean made the mistake of trying to laugh which started a bout of furious coughing. I raised her up and put a glass of water to her lips. When the coughing subsided, she lay back on a mound of soft pillows.
‘I’m glad you’ve come, lass,’ Mrs Maclean began. ‘There’s something I need to speak to you about.’
‘Are you sure you’re up to it?’ I asked. ‘I can come back when you’re feeling better.’
‘But I micht no get onie better,’ came the reply. Mrs Maclean was suddenly full of realism. ‘Dinna fuss, lass. Dinna fret.’ She looked into my eyes and admired my neatly pinned blond hair. ‘You’re a bonny lass, right enough, Elizabeth.’
I blushed, conditioned as I was
not to take compliments well.
‘What did you want to speak to me about, Mrs Maclean?’
‘It’s Donald.’
I swallowed hard. ‘Donald? What about him?’
‘This is a lonely life, Elizabeth, here on the farm with an elderly aunt for company. You can be surrounded by servants and workers, all busy doing the master’s bidding, and yet never feel lonelier.’
‘He’s been here nigh on two years and he’s getting to know people,’ I said quickly. ‘Through his dealings with the merchants, the journeymen and ... he’s joined one or two societies, I hear.’
Mrs Maclean held my hand tightly. ‘But do you not see what’s right in front o’ your eyes, lass?’
‘Yes, I do,’ I confessed. ‘But... the war... I don’t know...’
‘Och, the war. The war’s an excuse for a lot o’ things but life can go on.’
‘Yes, it can. Life should go on,’ I agreed. The war had been my excuse for not confronting the truth.
‘I can see you’re confused. If you don’t feel the same about him as he does for you, will you at least be honest with him. He’s a fine young man and very dear to me.’ Mrs Maclean drew a difficult breath before settling back in her pillows again.
‘I will speak to him, I promise. We are nothing without truth after all.’ Neil had written those same words to me a long time ago.
‘Let him ken where he stands. There’s nothing worse than wishin’ for somethin’ that canna be, lass. That was all I wanted to say. I hope you understand.’
I understood and promised that I would talk with Donald. Mrs Maclean closed her eyes. She would sleep easy now, knowing that she had said her piece.
I closed the bedroom door behind me and stood for a moment in the quiet of the upstairs hall. I thought about Neil’s letters, about the joy and sadness they had brought me when I had read them. Tears pricked my eyes and anger rose in my heart as I thought about the wasted years when I could have been with him. We had been kept apart by my own brother’s deceit. I better understood Mrs Tennant’s attitude towards me, why she ignored me in the street, and why the Tennant family had joined the congregation of another church in the months after their son’s departure. To take such action, they must have been bitterly hurt and angry by what had driven their eldest child away from them. Neil’s mother must have written to him, to say that I had visited Smiddy Cottage looking for him the day after he had left the village, and several times after that still looking for news. That knowledge must have rekindled a hope in Neil’s heart that I loved him after all, encouraging him to write to me over and over again, even though I had never written back. Having heard from Minn of Neil’s plans to return to Blackrigg, I had been disappointed not to find a more recent letter with the others, telling me of this intention. What did that mean? That he had given up on me after so long? That he had been coming home for family reasons that had nothing to do with me? And now he was fighting in France under a Canadian flag without knowing that none of his letters had reached me.