by Leah Fleming
They dragged his body out of the wedge where it lay and pulled him to the edge of the rocks. Ewan threw the broken torch into the sea. Minn was shaking as she watched him ruthlessly straighten Ken’s uniform.
‘Don’t do that, I’ll see to him,’ she whispered. ‘What are we doing but acting as if we murdered him, disposing of his body like this? How can you be so cold and calm? I don’t know you, Ewan dubh,’ she turned from him but he spat his words in her face.
‘I’ve seen far worse things than this in war. I’ve seen executions and killings. Don’t ask what else I’ve seen. This time, I tell you, no one was to blame. He’s dead and nothing changes that. I won’t let him spoil our chance of a future together. Give him to the sea. Trust the sea. It knows best. Three things it will do for us. It will throw him on the rocks or drag him down under the waves or carry him far out into the ocean to feed the fishes. Let the sea decide for us. Come on, there’s no time to waste now while we have darkness to cover us.’
‘But he’s my husband. I can’t just leave him on the cold rocks.’ Minn was weeping, trying to button up Ken’s uniform, straighten out his limbs and wash the blood from his face.
‘Then we’ll lower him on to the water when the tide turns. We’ll say some proper words and you can sing a hymn and give him an honest sea burial, if it makes you feel any better. That’s all that we can do for him now,’ Ewan answered coldly.
She was stunned into silence by the hardness of her hero’s words. There was a steel edge to this man she had never seen before. From this rock-like strength must have come the will to evade captivity. He had seen battle and death before and it had changed him, separating him from her. She was not sure of this hard Ewan but he was strong now for both of them and she was crumbling fast.
Yet her heart was sad as they prepared Ken for his watery burial. A surge of raw pity washed over Minn as she bent over and kissed his forehead, closing his eyes in a silent farewell. She stroked his brown hair back how he liked it, buttoning up his pockets, taking nothing from his uniform. She wanted nothing more from him but his name for a while.
Then they stood as Minn clung to Ken one last time, waiting for the turn of the tide, the moonlight catching his body as it rose and swelled ready to be launched out on the water
Ewan stood with bowed head and repeated the only bits of the burial service he could remember in Gaelic.
‘We commit this body to the deep to be turned into corruption, looking for the resurrection of the body when the sea shall give up its dead…’ Both of them were praying that this was one corpse that would sink down to the bottom of the sea never to return.
Minn clasped hold of Ken’s cold hand in a lingering gesture of both guilt and kindness, holding it like a mother grasping the hand of her wandering child. She sang two verses of the sad widow’s lament: ‘Griogal cridhe’. Her voice crumbled into a sob as Ewan pushed him out into the sea of everlasting sleep, into the sea without a shore, on the final journey to Tir nan og, land of the ever young. They watched silently as he floated away like a buoy bobbing on the surface.
There was a crumb of comfort in the dignity of this departure, the softness of the gentle waves as they caressed their charge. It was the best they could do and she knew many a poor fisherman had never even had such a burial as this. ‘If only you’d taken the ferry,’ she wept. How different things would have been then.
They returned to their lair, dressing slowly, and sat watching long into the darkness. ‘We mustn’t meet again, Ewan, not on Phetray. Not until all this has died down. I cannot take it in,’ she said.
‘I suppose you’re right,’ he whispered. ‘Better not to tempt fate now. The sooner we both forget what happened here the sooner we can begin our life again. You’re free now to marry where you will. You must go home and prepare to play the abandoned wife or the grieving widow as the case may be. There’s no need to rush now. I’ll return to my unit and see out my commission. I’ll be sent overseas but there’s nothing to stop us sending postcards and letters to each other as friends.
‘There must be no other collusion between us. When the time is right I’ll come for you, dear heart. I’m so sorry. Why is the time always out of joint for us? Someday soon it must come right.’
His voice sounded far away but she felt so exhausted she could hardly move her aching limbs. This separation now would be a just punishment for all that had happened. She would never come here to the beach of the singing winds again unless Ewan was by her side. She was afraid that Ken’s ghost would always be lying in wait to accuse her of a terrible treachery.
*
In the weeks following Ken’s death she was physically sick with worry. It was hard to eat or sleep. Minn went about her duties like an automaton. There was no show of emotion, no crying fits when Ken’s mother wrote asking why her son had gone AWOL and the military police were at her door. Her mother was watching her like a hawk but she did everything as planned.
She wrote to his family saying she had heard nothing from her husband since he took the SS Hebrides back to Oban. The only lie was about his visit being like a second honeymoon and he had left smiling. She insisted that there could be no suggestion of desertion and put the thought in their minds to contact the hospitals in case there was some bomb incident or some such accident on his way home. She even contacted the constable and he made a note that her husband was reported missing.
Then she waited in a terror of guilt and anguish, not daring to reply to Ewan when he sent a brief postcard with a BFPO address abroad. Hours went by scouring the coastline and the tides waiting for a sighting of Ken’s body washed up in some crevice but the sea held its secret.
Dreams were punctuated with his staring eyes, flashing before her eyelids: those frightened eyes, wide open, so full of accusation. The sound of his last wheezing breaths rang in her ears making her dizzy until she vomited with disgust on to the grass.
Mother rallied from her usual lethargy as news of his disappearance began to register. There were military policemen and the local constable making enquiries, and Eilidh was able to confirm that she had been one of the last people to see her son-in-law, the night before he left for the ferry.
To her credit she said nothing of the quarrel or the terrible events of Minn’s struggling marriage. Only her amber eyes flickered questioningly in her direction now and then as they sat knitting socks by the fire, as if she was half wondering if Ken’s disappearance could be laid at her daughter’s feet.
In truth Minn needed no script to play the grieving wife for she was racked with guilt and fear. Gradually it was dawning that without Ken’s body there would be no widowhood, not for many years. The court demanded years of waiting before declaring him dead. She would not be free to marry Ewan for a long time. Phetray would have to be both prison and refuge from the coming storms ahead.
The love of her life was gone and the pain was unbearable. Her only true friend and she had sent him away. It had seemed the best option at the time. They were living in a world where convention mattered and she didn’t want to harm his reputation or her own, what little there was of it. The island was so hidebound by respectability. They must each keep to their silent pact and no one would be the wiser.
Weeks passed and she took to watching the tide hoping Ken would be returned and she would be free at last, but the sea still held its secret. Sometimes she thought she could hear Ewan’s voice on the wind calling to her but it was just the scream of a sea bird. He was gone from view and she must wait until the faintness and the aching passed over, until she could breathe again.
Eleven
Phetray 1945
‘Is that you puking up again, mo ghaoil?’ Eilidh caught Minn retching into a bucket.
‘It must be the scallops… too rich for my stomach.’ She turned, seeing a strange look on her mother’s face.
‘It’s a gey funny fish that has you puking every morn and night and me without a bust of wind in ma innards. Give it a few more months and it’ll be
swimming in yer stomach ready to make its way in the world, I’m after thinking.’ Mother was laughing and shaking her head.
‘What do you mean?’ she gasped.
‘What goes up has to come down in its own good time, lassie. Did you no reckon you could be with child?’
‘I thought it was all the upset with not hearing from Ken for weeks that had upset my system.’ She blushed. ‘I don’t know what to think. Surely not?’ Her heart was sinking at the thought. There was no joy in knowing she was carrying a child and with it the awful thought that only God alone knew whose child it might be. It made her retch with fear. Surely not?
In the confines of a small cottage nothing could hide her growing condition from her mother’s eagle eye as quietly she took up knitting needles and prepared for her daughter’s confinement. ‘Poor fatherless bairn it may be, not the first or the last, but the Lord has softened your grief, child,’ whispered her mother. This was going to be a piece of good news to blow in the wind.
Minn went about her daily work with a heavy heart. No one on the island would begrudge a grieving widow this gift of life but an adulteress giving birth to a bastard was a different matter. She felt sick with apprehension and guilt.
Then Ewan’s mother, Susan, died suddenly of a stroke and his father took another post on the mainland, unaware of Minn’s condition. All her connections with Ewan were being severed. He was unable to return for the funeral now that he was serving in the Far East so Minn paid her respects and showed the minister postcards from Ewan.
‘Still no news of your husband?’ he said. ‘It’s a sad business and no mistake. He seemed such a decent young man. His family must be sore distressed. We know that feeling only too well do we not, lass?’
This only made her feel worse. She had only written once to his family, to tell them of his sudden disappearance but not of her pregnancy. She wanted none of them staking a claim on this baby whatever the outcome. As far as she was concerned that part of her life was over.
The hardness of her resolve shook her. She was becoming like this island, remote, inaccessible, with few harbours to shelter in, with a heart hewn from Phetray rock.
The months that followed Ewan’s departure were dreich winter months of storms and gales when the island was pounded by swollen waves and gales. She made preparations for the birth but her nightmares were filled with visions of Ken’s body rising from the deep, walking over the water, screaming out, ‘Adulterer!’ to haunt her, invading her body with a sweating terror.
*
‘You’ve a beautiful daughter, Mrs Broddick… Hold her close.’ The midwife smiled and the exhausted mother, sweating, turned her face from her child at first. ‘Come now! Think yourself lucky you’ve got such a bonnie bairn!’
The screaming infant was shoved on to her breast to suckle and Minn cried with the pain of her efforts. In the last month she had left for the mainland to stay with a distant cousin until she went into the small nursing home in Oban, using the last of her savings to pay for her care.
The baby wailed but still Minn daren’t look down at her face. She wanted no permanent reminder of Ken’s treachery, but instinct made her curious. The baby’s head was covered in dark soft down, and when her eyes opened they were navy blue, fringed with dark lashes so unlike her own fairness.
Her heart leapt with emotion at the sight of such a beauty. She unfurled the fronds of her long fingers, examined each toe. The little face was screwed up with rage at being torn from the comfort and warmth of a womb into this cold world.
A flood of love poured into Minn for this tiny creature, born of passion or shame, she knew not which. How she wished she could share this joy with someone, but the only man who mattered was halfway across the world. How could she tell him about this daughter if she was not his child?
In the afternoon after the birth she sat up in bed to write him a long letter.
I have called her Mor-Anna. Don’t ask me why but I like the sound of it and it being the better half of my own given name. She is so beautiful, so different to myself, a delight to behold for I imagine I’m holding you in my arms…
The letter lay by her bedside and was never sent. What purpose would there be in misleading him? There had been enough deceit already. It was better that the child was accepted just as Anna Broddick. It kept them all safer that way. There was no turning back from what was done that night to Ken and she must protect this bairn from the truth of her parentage.
She didn’t want Ewan to catch the first boat back from the Far East to claim this child and stir up a scandal of suspicion on Phetray. It would be better if their reunion was delayed to take place out of sight of local gossips. Only time would tell if Anna was a Mackinnon or not.
It was going to be a struggle to make ends meet now that Ken’s pay was stopped on the presumption that he was a deserter, but Minn had already calculated how much they would need to survive and there was now a small allowance for single mothers. The sparkle in her eyes vanished with tiredness and sleepless nights to be replaced by a flintier gaze.
The war was over at long last. There was a new feeling of optimism in the air and hopes for a better future for children but restrictions were worse than ever. She could not help herself dreaming dreams for her daughter as she rocked her in her arms.
I want more for you than a shabby cottage next to a byre and a shawl to carry you around like some tinker’s child, she thought. It was time to leave the island, time for them both to leave all the terrible events of the past months behind here. You are my responsibility now and we can do better for ourselves on the mainland, I’m sure. It’s not fair to rely on Ewan to bail us out of trouble. It’s better to do this by ourselves. Macfee women have relied on men’s promises for far too long. Time now to seek employment somewhere where we’ll be just a war widow and her child, doing the only work I’m trained for, hard though it’ll be.
She gazed up to the mantelpiece to her one precious porcelain figurine. ‘I want you to be dressed in silks, with leather shoes that fit on your feet and books to read.’ She pointed the baby to the little china doll. ‘I want you to have all the things I never had and the opportunities you’ll not be getting in this out-of-the-way place. We can’t wait for Ewan to return. What if he’s injured or worse? Time for your mammy to go back into service,’ she sighed. ‘Time for us to move away from Phetray and make a new life, just the two of us.’
*
‘So you’re going then?’ Eilidh watched Minn scouring the Oban Times for positions vacant. ‘Now your Uncle Niall’s got hisself a Glasgow wife and seat by her fire he’ll be in no hurry to return. What’s to become of me, poor abandoned soul that I am? How can a daughter not do her duty and take me with her to mind the bairn?’ she was pleading.
Minn stood firm, not wanting Anna’s head filled with her mother’s Highland nonsense. This must be a fresh start for both of them. ‘You’re strong enough when it suits you. Mother. Now there’ll be only your own mouth to feed and the hens and the garden will fill your pot. I’ll send what I can, but there’s nothing for me here on Phetray now. I’ve counted six situations vacant in the Oban Times. I’m writing to register with the domestic agency in Edinburgh. There must be plenty of country homes wanting a housekeeper, willing to offer accommodation to a widow. Anna must be brought up on the mainland. It’s all decided.’
Eilidh looked up from her knitting, her round spectacles at the end of her nose. ‘You’ve grown mighty cold this past year. Grief’s not softened the mouth on you, but the black becomes your colouring, I have to admit. It’s a hard world out there for a servant. Mark my words, I know only too well that you’re not safe off this island, mo ghaoil. It’ll all end in tears.’
‘What are you talking about? It’s hardly been safe for me here!’ she snapped impatiently. It was always the same old story of doom and gloom and wicked masters and poor helpless serving girls. ‘This is nineteen forty-five. Mother. Things are different now after all we’ve been fighting for. The fut
ure is ours for the taking. No more of your warnings… Wish us well. We’ll come back whenever we can. I have to think of the bairn.’
‘And here’s me thinking you’d settle with Ewan dubh, but he’s vanished like poor Ken Broddick over the water to goodness knows where. You frighten all your suitors away… I don’t understand you.’ Eilidh was rocking the baby as she spoke. ‘You have a hard mother.’
‘Ewan will return when he’s good and ready. Who knows what might happen for us both then? Better not to lose a tide or make plans too far ahead. That’s one thing I’m learning in this life. Take your chances when they come. Live for today and not tomorrow. Tomorrow may never come.’ Minn patted her mother’s leathery hand.
‘Aye, you’re right enough there. Who knows what’s round the next corner for you? Better not to know, I’m thinking. Only the Good Lord knows what’s in store, and he makes the back for the burden.’
When the letter arrived from Pitlandry House in the autumn of 1945 inviting Mrs Broddick to take up a post as live-in maid, with accommodation provided in house, she did not hesitate to accept the position. She had asked her old dominie for a reference and borrowed the school atlas to find just where Pitlandry was to be found in the Borders of Scotland. It was close to the town of Peebles and the River Tweed in the Lowlands; far enough away to make a clean break from all the sadness of the past year.