by Leah Fleming
‘Now you’re my girl, I want to take you home to show you off to my family. We can have a right good holiday. I’ll take you to Blackpool and we’ll go dancing in the Tower Ballroom.’
She nodded without much enthusiasm. He was a distraction and she was lonely and miserable, wanting only the comfort of another man’s arms around her, any man would have done but it just happened to be Ken.
He was going to take her away from the island and that was just what she needed to hear, but Mother had other plans.
‘No girl of mine goes abroad on her own. It’s an invitation to sin! The tongues of Phetray will clang like kirk bells at such a disgrace, if you catch my meaning. Sergeant Broddick,’ she whispered.
‘Then we’ll make an honest woman of her before we go and it can be our honeymoon. What do you think, Minn love?’
She was speechless at this sudden proposal, mother’s cunning, shocked by the speed of things. It was easy to drift into the planning of a modest highland wedding with a high tea in the sergeants’ mess. There was a tweed suit to be sewn, a veil to be borrowed, a trousseau to be found from the last of Lady Rose’s oddments, the minister to be visited and Ken’s leave to be sorted.
Yet sometimes, as she lay in the box bed wide awake listening to the wind howling over the roof, it was as if it was all happening to someone else, as if she no longer inhabited her own body, as if she was borrowing someone else’s dream. It was too soon, warnings whispered, but she was past caring. Half a cake was better than none.
She sensed that the Mackinnons were relieved to see her married and away from their door. Ken got permission to marry and they made their vows before a packed kirk with Uncle Niall home long enough to give her away one Saturday afternoon in March 1944.
Clothing coupons for a two-piece tweed suit and new shoes bought from a postal catalogue meant there was little left over for any fancy underwear. The mess put on a spread and the islanders provided a faith supper to augment the celebrations. There was going to be another celebration when they got to Ken’s house in Lancashire for all his relatives to meet his new bride.
All the doubtings melted in the warmth of everyone’s kindness, but still in a corner of her mind the yearning for Ewan never went away. She should be marrying a sailor in navy not some airman in air force blue.
Yet deep in her heart, in that part that never fails to see through the fog of grief, she heard warning voices; but Minn didn’t want to listen within when it contradicted what was going on without.
*
The wedding night was spent chastely in a haze of whisky fumes sleeping in Mother’s brass bed lying shyly side by side, Ken not wanting to disturb her snoring.
The boat journey ferrying them south to Oban Station and on to Glasgow was rough. Minn’s heart went out to the darkened city so bomb blasted and blackened by war. The smoke from the steam engines made Minn sneeze. She had no eyes for her husband when there was so much to see out of the carriage window.
On the second night of the honeymoon Minn lay wide awake listening to strange city sounds, afraid of the crowds and the darkness. They were staying overnight in a boarding house in a street of tall tenement houses where the roar of trams and motorbikes, drunks shouting and singing underneath their window kept them awake all night. Ken dosed fitfully, bitten by fleas, and Minn was covered with red lumps.
Her husband woke and stretched his arm across her breast.
‘Come on let’s be having you…’ He put his hand between her thighs and Minn froze as he heaved himself on top of her and began to fumble between her legs. He moaned and muttered, ‘Come on love, open up… it’s alright, yer married now…’
‘Open up what?’ Minn struggled, having no idea what she was supposed to do. She was tired and exhausted by the journey. She wanted to turn over and go to sleep.
‘Come on… it’s not difficult, let me put it inside and Bob’s your uncle…’ Ken was trying to cajole her into relaxing as his hand was groping ever deeper into her groin, forcing her to let him inside. A spasm of terror and pain shot through her stomach like a fierce cramp and Minn screamed out, terrified, in agony as all the muscles tightened their hold.
‘Stop! I can’t, it’s killing me… not yet.’
The sound of her crying had an instant effect on Ken’s passion and he rolled off her with a grunt. ‘What’s the matter? Nerves… A few gins’ll see you right tomorrow. We’ll try again tomorrow, no sweat.’ He rolled over on to his side and began to snore.
Minn lay rigid until the pain subsided, afraid to move in case he woke and tried again. What have I done? She cried into the pillow. So this was the big… it. There was something ridiculous in all this humping and bumping. She felt nothing for the stranger beside her who was trying so hard to be patient. Would it have been like this with Ewan? The more she had tried to do her duty the more her insides had clenched themselves tightly in a spasm of fear. Perhaps she was just tired and needed to get used to the feel of such a swollen rod of a thing poking its way inside her body. They had a whole lifetime to get used to each other, she mused, drifting off to sleep as the agony subsided.
The journey south on the long black train from Central Station was exciting, crammed with troops in kilts and sailors in their jaunty uniform, all crowding along corridors as they rattled down to the Borders over mountains and fells with glimpses of the sea to the right. Then Carlisle, Lancaster, Preston and the smoky town called Wigan, where a line of giggling girls fell on Ken with delight.
He had four sisters and a mother hanging on his every word. It was not the welcome she had expected. There were no black pools or sands only rows and rows of brick houses belching smoke from the chimneys, cobbled streets with lines of sooty washing hanging across the road. And they were all expected to crowd into two rooms.
The tablecloth was covered with pies and cakes and strange cooked meats soaked in vinegar. She had made such an effort to be polite but Minn’s stomach was still churning from the long journey and she couldn’t eat her share, only pick at the tripe and the pickles. She had tasted nothing like this food before and she wanted to be sick.
‘Waste not want not in this house, my girl. There’s a war on. Food is hard to come by, but your eggs are always welcome even if half of them’s cracked.’ His mother smiled wanly at her gift to the family.
It had been hard to keep the present from being bumped and jostled in the crush and Minn was quickly aware that she herself was found wanting. Ken was waited on hand, foot and finger by his family like some Arabian prince: their hero returned from the war with his new bride in her Harris tweed suit, which they thought quaint and old fashioned.
Minn was ushered into the scullery to do the chores while Ken went out to visit school friends home on leave. He disappeared for hours leaving her alone to face the teasing of his sisters. Ivy, Rene, Beryl and Pat. It was hard to understand their chatter. It was quick and thick and made no sense. Her English was slow and deliberate and they roared when they heard her pronunciation.
‘Ooh, La-di-dah! Where did you learn to talk posh?’ They curtsied and bowed in mock salute so Minn retreated into silence, getting on with her dish-drying, swallowing back the tears. The next day Ken went out fishing and she was trudged around the town and the market stalls.
Where were the open fields with hidden eggs? Their meals came from stalls and tins and boxes. Their milk came from a churn not the udder of a soft brown cow. It was all so strange and confusing. The noise of mill hooters, siren bells and clanging trams on rails and the rattle of mill machinery through open windows startled her.
Ken’s sisters were doing war work in ammunitions at the local ordnance factory and it was assumed Minn would bring her ration book and join the family to add to the general wage packet. Minn looked up in horror at this assumption. No one had said anything about staying here in Wigan. Ken had omitted to mention that he expected her to live with his family while he returned to Phetray. Minn began to shake at the very thought of being trapped in this town
with strangers who were happy enough in this grey sooty world. She could no longer hear the beat of the waves in her ear or the sound of the sea birds calling.
It was hard to breathe in this acrid air. ‘What have I done?’ she screamed inside. How would she survive in a foreign land with no sand and sea and salt tangle? She would suffocate in this tiny house. At least Uncle Niall’s stone cottage had thick walls and room for two or three. You could run straight out on to the grass or the shore and be alone with your thoughts.
Minn yearned for the smells of home: the peat fire, the crisp smoky tang of fluchties and ling, the tangle of seaweed and salt. She was panic stricken by the thought of being forced to stay behind with folk who didn’t understand her.
This panic seemed to make Ken’s lovemaking all the more futile, for try as they might she would not open up to him, and he banged at her until she was sore and he spilled himself over her nightdress. She felt the wetness and was repulsed by the smell of him sweating over her. Why hadn’t she been warned of this nightly shame? What if she so displeased him that he left her behind? She must take no chances and keep him interested in her body enough to want to keep her by his side.
All the arguments she rehearsed in her mind like a prayer. ‘You know I have a mother to support. She needs me to see to the vegetable plot until Uncle Niall returns from sea. I still have my canteen work and there are jobs even for married women until the men return. I must go back with you.’
In desperation she found that if she shut her eyes and stimulated Ken by hand he found release and pleasure. It was the best she could offer but it made her feel soiled and left out.
Strangely no mention of her staying on in Wigan came up for discussion. To her relief his family were just as silent on the matter once they had examined her closely and found her wanting.
She overheard Ken’s mother discussing her with a neighbour over the backyard wall while smoking a cigarette. ‘She may be a looker but believe me, Elsie, she’s a queer thing. Live like peasants they do up there, Ken tells me. She’s no idea how to use the mangle, the dolly. They must throw their washing over the hedges like tinkers, and all her clothes are hand stitched and so old fashioned. I think Ken’s wondering what he’s taken on, to be honest. He’s only taken her out the once to the pictures. I’ll be glad when his leave is up and she’s out of my hair. And… she looks down her nose at us. Have you heard her speak? You’d think she was the Queen herself! I’m disappointed, to be honest, I thought she’d be bringing in a wage packet, but she’s that thick she’d never catch on in the mill.’
Minn found herself smiling with relief at his mother’s words. I’m safe! Ken went to book the tickets north as she packed up their belongings. She bought gifts to take home for Mother, material from the cotton market. If this was the mainland she never wanted to set foot on it again. Where were the corncrakes and the seagulls, the wild flowers? How she was longing for her little boxed bed and the sound of the gales whistling through the marram grass roof. She would never turn her nose up at Phetray again.
Then she looked at the band on her wedding finger with a sickening heart. ‘You’ve made a terrible mistake,’ she thought as the back of Ken’s head popped up from the bolster, and shuddered. He’s just an ordinary working man in uniform; a man who expected his wife to behave like his mother and sisters.
In Phetray he’d seemed dashing and full of promises. Here he was just like all the others. The two of them had nothing in common. You don’t love this man, she croaked, you never did, but you’re stuck with him now, Minn, mo ghaoil. You made this bed of nails now you must lie on it.’ Thank goodness Ewan was not alive to see her stupidity.
She blamed the war for their difficulties. It had brought men like Ken and his crew to the island. Without the war their paths would never have crossed, and deep down she knew it was never going to work, never, ever. They came from two separate worlds.
On the boat home she was gripping the hand rail eagerly for a first sight of the long island. How could she pretend that this was not some living nightmare?
It was wrong to have encouraged him, let alone married him. Was their marriage over before the honeymoon was ended? Doomed to death in the houses of women: my dour house full of ignorance and his full of giggling women who laughed at my country ignorance. They had looked at her as if she’d come up river on a biscuit tin.
If only she’d been left to grieve for Ewan in peace. If only she’d trusted her instincts and held firm, but in weakness she’d married the first man who’d looked at her twice. Even she knew enough to know that love on the rebound was a dangerous liaison. Perhaps on Phetray it will be different. I must play my part and be a good wife. For better or worse I have made a promise, she resolved. I owe it to Ewan’s memory to let go of things and welcome Ken into my arms.
Eight
Kilphetrish Harbour, October 1944
The SS Hebrides left Oban harbour early in the morning, steaming up the Sound of Mull and the rocky islands laden with seals and their pups with wet skins glinting in the sunshine, past the stern outline of Duart Castle and up the channel flanked by familiar purple hills, sailing towards Tobermory and Ardnamurchan Point.
The airmen unfamiliar with the Western Highlands hung overboard watching the shearwaters skim over the waves, throwing their rations to seagulls. Ewan watched them with amusement.
It would be a long crossing for them, smooth at first then the poor sods would be wretching over the side. Some of the airmen sat smoking, playing cards, while officers sat below drinking cocoa and reading the Oban Times.
He sat in the fresh cool air half nodding with exhaustion, jerked awake by the excitement of giving everyone in Phetray a surprise at his sudden return. One minute he was in mortal danger, the next he had been scooped up from France, debriefed and offered a pass for three weeks leave.
He had almost made it a year earlier when he had taken the escape route down to the Brittany coast, down the line to the Gulf of Morbihan where there was a Resistance group of gendarmes at Vannes who could get him out to the Scilly Isles. But the group had been smashed long before he’d got within sniffing distance of the port. There was no choice but to head back and take his chance with the Maquis.
It was his duty to fight on until news of liberation was no longer a rumour, and he linked up with the regular army, which screened him and sent him on his way back to report for duty.
It all happened so quickly and now he was going home. He couldn’t wait to see their faces when he strolled off the ship. He had so much to tell them about his escape and the brave men and women who had kept him alive; how in the bitterness and grimness of war he had discovered his artistic talent, developed his eye for detail and clinical observation and honed his drawing technique. Once the war was over he knew what he would be doing with his life.
As long as he lived he would owe a debt of gratitude to France, its landscape and the brave people who had sustained his wounded spirit and given him hope. It would take many lifetimes to repay this debt of honour.
So many images were racing through his mind, but the face of Minn Macfee was foremost, imprinted like a sign post calling him home, his muse when holed up in shacks and caves. He couldn’t wait to hold her in his arms.
Now the ship was swinging round into the open waters of the Atlantic where the familiar dark outlines of the island known as the Dutchman’s cap came into view. The sea was rougher and the engines switched gear, puffing smoke like signals into the sky. Nearly home, he sighed to himself suddenly wide awake. This was the last lap ploughing headlong into the autumn swell before his beloved island came into view.
Phetray was flat and long, a brilliant emerald and silver in the summer light, now it would be grey and windswept. It hadn’t the hilly grandeur of Skye or the ruggedness of some of the inner isles, but far out on the horizon these other islands shimmered as a backdrop.
As they chugged ever closer, hugging the coast, he saw some of the men rolling from side to side. One poor
chap was spilling his guts over the side.
‘You okay?’ said Ewan, picking up his slithering kit bag.
‘I shall never get used to this bloody hell hole,’ said the sergeant. ‘You on leave?’ He was looking at Ewan’s battered naval uniform. ‘You’ll be used to this then.’
‘You could say that,’ Ewan smiled. ‘Back to the base for you?’
‘Back to visit the wife,’ came the reply. Ewan was going to ask if he knew the family, but the ship juddered, sending everyone flying. It was going to be touch and go if they managed to land in Kilphetrish harbour.
To be so near and yet so far. It was almost worth the risk of jumping overboard and taking a chance in the waves but that would be stupid. They would ride the waves until the sea calmed and edge their way into the little port. He must be patient.
Already the groups were gathering by the jetty, Sandy, the polis, Dan the buth, transport for the base and the post. Was Minn still delivering mail around the crofts? It was so good to be home.
*
‘What’s up with you now? That man of yours is not coming back for long… You should be away down to meet the ferry like the hammers of hell.’ Mother was watching over Minn’s marriage like a hawk, sensing the wind of discontent, chunnering into her knitting. There was not enough yarn to knit another pair of the socks to line airmen’s boots that they sold alongside their eggs from under the counter of the mobile canteen.
Minn shrugged her shoulders. How could she explain to her own unwed mother just how miserable marriage was turning out to be? How trapped she felt to be saddled with a man she had never really loved. How guilty she felt to have let everyone down by her physical revulsion for his body.
Ken was fast losing patience with her inability to make love properly, jeering at her reluctance with disgust.
‘Are you a witch? Taking away my manhood with your Teuchtar spells.’ There was a bitter edge to his voice now when he spoke to her.