Ardnish Was Home Read online

  *

  ‘And your brother?’ Louise prompts.

  ‘Father Angus is the divisional padre. He’s been sent off to the Western Front and I haven’t seen him for a year. I get the occasional letter but most of the factual information has been censored. I’d love to see him again and I hope he’s all right.

  ‘He’s small like our mother, with much of her about him. He’s quite serious, has a very strong understanding of what is right and wrong, and God help you if you cross him. I remember him catching me baiting a cat when I was about six, and he came at me so fast I didn’t know which way to turn. His fist hit me like a battering ram and I got a broken nose that’s still squint and no sympathy from our mother who I ran to.’

  ‘A priest in the family.’ I can tell Louise is impressed. ‘What’s that like?’ She shifts a bit, and I can feel her warmth against me. My pulse quickens.

  ‘I’ll tell you about him. I think you’d like him . . .’

  *

  The last great celebration in the village was when he was ordained. It happened in Glasgow, where we all went for a couple of days on the train.

  There were about forty young men all joining the priest-hood on the same day, to be ordained by the Archbishop of Glasgow.

  We were all in our finery. Father was wearing the beautiful kilt he was given by Clanranald, a long white horsehair sporran, the piper’s tartan plaid draped over his shoulder, his dirk hanging from his waist and the elegant Glengarry hat. There is not a head that doesn’t turn when he is in this kit. Mother had on a purple heather-coloured skirt that she had woven herself and Sir Arthur Astley-Nicholson, the laird of Arisaig estate, had had made into a skirt for her, and a mantilla, with her beautiful red hair almost glowing through it.

  I was wearing a kilt that used to be Angus’s and was far too big for me. It was the first time I’d dressed up like this; my hair was smoothed down with Brylcreem, and my woollen stockings were scratchy in the heavy army shoes that my mother had borrowed for me. I was a terribly self-conscious fifteen-year-old.

  Along with all the other families we were in a quiver of excitement, and fiercely proud of our priest-to-be. Most of them came from the Isles and Lochaber – the mainstay of Catholics in Scotland, or so I’d heard.

  We stayed with Aunt Aggy, my Dad’s sister, and other friends and relations who had moved down to live in the big city. They all lived in tenements, on top of each other in wee rooms, sometimes two to a mattress – and toilets just a bucket in the corner. There was another family who had been great friends of my parents from Arisaig and had moved to the city a couple of years ago to find work. Cameron, the father, and his son Iain both worked in the Govan shipyards building battleships for the Royal Navy. And Aunt Aggy had a job as a cleaner in the Grand Central Hotel. They were much better off now, with enough money to be able to eat, and they were hoping to get a flat to themselves soon, in a better part of town.

  It all seemed very rough to us, but they treated us like royalty and there was a tremendous party in a bar before the big day. We all went to the Barra Head, a pub frequented by those from the west and run by the redoubtable Mrs MacNeil who, it was said, had owned the place since Adam was a boy.

  There was no nonsense about Protestants taking us on here, unlike in many parts of Glasgow where Catholics were given a hiding. The Catholics had been pouring into Glasgow from all over the West Highlands seeking work, and the locals feared for their jobs. The Irish, too, had come to Glasgow to seek work in the mighty industrial powerhouse that the city was. Old Mrs MacNeil didn’t hesitate to come bolting out from behind the bar with her shinty stick, cracking heads left, right and centre, if people got out of order.

  Although there were drams a-plenty that night, Mother was keeping everyone under control – no one would have a hangover for Angus’s big day. Sandy and me she watched in particular. We had not seen much more than the odd dram before, and we were keen to live it up a bit.

  The cathedral was packed with a thousand souls, we guessed. The whispering up and down the aisles was mainly in Gaelic; you could hear the soft lilt of Barra and Eriskay. My father said that were three men being made priests from the village of Invergarry alone. Here and there was the unmistakeable broad tone of Glasgow Scots.

  The choir sang and we competed with them, nearly lifting the roof off. As you can imagine for a lad used to no more than fifty in our wee church at Polnish, it was quite the thing.

  In came the procession: a dozen altar boys, then the same number of priests and, lastly, Archbishop Maguire wearing his tall mitre and carrying his crozier. The singing rose and fell, and the men were welcomed into the priest-hood. A circle of hair about four inches across was shaved from each of their heads, which my sister Sheena told me was called a ‘tonsure’.

  Angus came and joined us before the service for a few moments. There was much hugging and kissing, shaking of hands, and then he was off again. We would see him later, on the train. My mother was sobbing like a baby. Our family had always been emotional; it was my mother who’d got that going, she couldn’t be doing with all that formality. I would wrestle and twist away as she clasped me to her at any time, even when my friends were watching.

  After two hours, we were done, and there was a rush for the 4.10 train to Mallaig, so we could get home that night. MacBraynes had laid on a special steamer to take people from Glasgow to Barra and the other islands. There would be a lot of whisky and not much sleep on the boat that night.

  The train was packed as we headed up north, where a huge party was planned. My brother looked funny in his new black habit. Sheena and I both felt his tonsure; as smooth as a baby’s bottom, she said, to her brother’s discomfort.

  ‘Not much of a halo on you yet,’ said his disrespectful sister. Mother preened and glowed as people came from all over the train to shake his hand and wish him well.

  The train clattered and rocked up Loch Lomond and across Rannoch Moor. You could see the steam yacht on the loch that Sir John Maxwell had shipped up to Corrour in pieces from Glasgow by train. It was reassembled on the side of the loch and was used to ferry his guests the eight miles down to the new lodge he had built.

  The spring sun made the hills glow orange and the rocky outcrops glisten like silver. The mountains of Glencoe had snow still in the gullies, and alongside the track the stags would gallop away from the train as it approached. Ben Nevis towered above us as we pulled into Fort William and many of the passengers disembarked. But just as many newcomers got on, most of whom would be joining us for the big celebration that night.

  Bottles of Long John whisky were passed around as we set off for the final hour on the train, and three fiddlers – Alex Macdonald and his two brothers from Avoch – got the party off to a good start in the front carriage. They were coming to the village to provide a bit of music, having played at a wedding in the Fort the night before. Sleep was a thing that fiddlers never seemed to need. They simply curled up after the evening was finished, always the last to bed down, and were up and off to the next ceilidh the following morning.

  We felt heady and excited as the train stopped especially for us at Polnish, and the procession headed off over the hill in single file towards Ardnish and home. My father was on the grey garron with his wooden leg sticking out at the side. Mother, Sheena, myself, Mairi and Sandy shot off ahead to get some fires going and water boiling before everyone else arrived.

  It was all done, though. The neighbours from across the peninsula who hadn’t come down to the service had been hard at work.

  Those from all over Ardnish and friends and cousins had arrived, armed with bottles of whisky, haunches of meat, and bread. There must have been a hundred people present, and almost all of them, it appeared, were at pains to point out their relationship to us.

  ‘I’m your grandfather’s sister’s daughter from Bohuntin,’ said a white-haired cailleach.

  ‘Your great-auntie Lexie had two boys, of which I am the youngest,’ declared a man whose name I nev
er caught.

  The whisky was opened, savoured and complimented; the smiles became broader and laughter louder. The Auch boys were urged to get their fiddles out and then the ceilidh was in full flow. Faces grew bright red from the exertions and the alcohol, and clothes were shed as the May warmth was exacerbated by the sheer number of us cramped in the front room. Children danced with grandparents, teenage boys tried to unbalance the girls as they spun round the room, and not a single person sat on the sidelines.

  My father, Father Angus and myself played eightsomes on the pipes; it would probably be the last time we would all play together, what with my brother heading off to the church.

  My father was a doer, rather than a talker. My mother’s genes, on the other hand, had been inherited by Sheena, so without much persuasion she was up making a speech.

  ‘My goodness, isn’t the church lucky to have got Angus? There isn’t a girl in Lochaber who wouldn’t have him in a trice! I hope they care for him . . .’

  And so on. There was much shushing from our brother and whoops from the audience as she recounted how his determination to join the clergy had been given a serious wobble when that brazen young hussy Maggie Wilson came up to stay with the Macphersons two or three years ago.

  Anyway, her speech was well received, and after Angus stood up and said a few words of thanks to everyone, the party really buckled down into something quite serious.

  Every stick of furniture had been removed from the croft house and still there wasn’t an inch of space. Food was handed out to a big table outside, while indoors, haunches of venison and mutton, piles of steaming potatoes and cabbage, and a big stack of herring rolled in oats lay beside a big salmon that had been caught on the Ailort in the nets only the day before and donated to the celebrations by the estate. Little did they know, but the rest of the fare probably came from their ground, too, not that anyone would have said anything.

  The dance now was the Highland Schottische, where Jimmy and Hazel Macdonald always showed the way. And, with the exuberance and giddy excitement always encouraged by whisky and dancing, romance was in the air. Girls would be twirled off their feet and the lads would relish the chance to hold them tight. From time to time, a stealthy couple would slip off towards the cattle shed, always noticed by the grandparents sitting in benches along the wall.

  As the evening wore on, the moon came out and bathed the shore with a light you could see to read by. My brother and I walked along the beach, talking as dawn broke; both of us were aware that it would never be the same again: us, the village, and the gathering of friends and kin like the night just gone.

  ‘What will you do for a job, Donald Peter?’ Angus asked.

  I talked about getting a fishing boat; fishermen never starve.

  ‘There will always be plenty of fish around these waters,’ I said. ‘But I might join the army for a few years. I’ll know in a couple of years when I have finished my schooling. Mother wants me to go to university, to better myself, to move away.’

  I sighed. ‘I’ll never be away from Ardnish for long, Angus, I’ll promise you that. Father says I should go and help out old Tearlach Maclean, our mother’s cousin on Canna. There is great demand for his whisky since Lloyd George put his tax up to fifteen shillings a gallon. He’s in his seventies now and is finding it difficult to manage.’

  ‘Aye, but it’ll be lonely for you, DP,’ said Angus.

  ‘I might just do it, though. It’ll be fun getting one over the excise men. Those Mackinnon girls on the island are easy on the eye too,’ I said, giving him a playful punch on the arm.

  The hooded crows were cawing as they wheeled above us in the early morning. Gulls floated on the sea, and a seal poked its head up amongst them to survey the debris of the party. The village was full, with comatose bodies lying on the floor in every house. The whisky would surely help them sleep despite the hardness of the floor and the lack of a blanket or mattress.

  I was sweet on a lass called Kirsty McAlistair from Glenuig at the time. Kirsty and I had danced like mad March hares; there was hardly a reel we’d missed apart from when I had had a spin with my mother, and Sandy’s, too. I felt the heat from Kirsty’s body through her cotton dress, but although I yearned to kiss her, I never had the chance.

  That night, I pushed her boat off the beach and watched the McAlistairs row, unsteadily, the three miles across to their house. It was the last time I saw her. Her father worked for the estate, but it had laid him off, and the family moved to Glasgow shortly after.

  WAR

  Louise is silent for a long time. I wonder if my storytelling has sent her to sleep, but I feel her hand touch my arm.

  ‘Did you ever get that fishing boat?’ she whispers.

  ‘Not yet, maybe I will yet, though,’ I say, although with my injuries we both know it is unlikely. ‘I went off to Canna for a couple of years to help Tearlach make whisky. It would take a bit of time to tell you about it, Louise, but I think you’d enjoy the story. It was illegal whisky, we were on an island, and we spent our time avoiding the Customs and Excise men. I’m tired now, so I’ll tell you another time if that’s all right.’

  ‘Of course, DP. I won’t let you forget . . . You’re not coarse like many of the other soldiers, DP. You know things, too. You’re an educated man.’

  ‘No, no. I’m not, I’m not,’ I insist. ‘But we did have a strict upbringing – no swearing in the house. My father treated my mother well, they respect each other, and there has always been a feeling that God is somewhere nearby. Grace before every meal and family prayers on our knees before bed. My parents were always teaching us things.’

  ‘Mmm,’ murmurs Louise. ‘It wasn’t like that in our house. Rest now, and I’ll be back to see you later.’

  As she heads off, the patients come to life with groans and coughs. I can hear a man peeing into a glass jar. There are raised voices as a soldier is brought down from the lines, probably with dysentery. Gulls screech; plenty of pickings for them. I had heard that losing one of the senses made the others more alert, and I am aware of straining to hear and identify everything much more than I did before.

  Outside, I hear female Turkish voices. There are a couple of women who come along the shore and sell cigarettes, coffee, bread and other things to the soldiers. They do a roaring trade, with troops queuing to buy everything. The women take anything as currency: army boots, pound notes and even the contents of our ration packs. The officers did their best at first to stop it, but the women would just appear somewhere else, and there was always a willing buyer. The officers are concerned that our secrets will get back to the Turks, as no doubt they do, but it seems to us that our shortage of water and the position of the casualty station are the only two things they have learned, which they were certain to know, anyway.

  The men revel in having Turkish cigarettes, which are much stronger than those issued to us and rather more exotic.

  Louise has a close friend, and when I had been in the clearing station for a few days she bought her over.

  ‘DP, this is Prissie, my best friend. She’s working with the doctors in the operating tent.’

  Now and again, Prissie comes by and we have a wee chat; she is very amusing and I am delighted to listen to her. One day, she appeared with some dried green beans, which she’d bought from the Turkish women and had cooked.

  She passed them around the tent. ‘Eat these,’ she encouraged the men, ‘they’re good for you.’

  Not many vegetables come our way so we’re happy to comply.

  Chapter 2

  WAR

  Louise is coming. I can hear her footsteps.

  It must be late; there is only the snuffling from the man beside me. Beyond I hear the rhythmic crash of the waves on the rocky beach and the accompanying rumble of the stones as they shift with the water. An occasional rifle shot can be heard on the hills above – maybe some poor woman is a widow now.

  Louise kneels beside the bed and takes my hand. ‘The sergeant’s just d
ied.’

  We don’t talk for a while. I think about him. He’d been shot in the thigh and had lost a lot of blood. His strong Lancashire accent was but a whisper, and although he must have been in terrible pain, he suffered it silently. More than half of those who make it as far as the field hospital end up dying – a limb blown off or a bullet hole, often in the head as that’s what the Turkish snipers can see sticking above the trench. When a big push happens, huge numbers of men spill in here. There are separate tents for those with dysentery, the most common ailment.

  Louise clearly enjoys my stories and I look forward to our conversations.

  As the days pass, I lie there and remind myself of things to tell her. Without the distractions of sight, I seem to possess an extraordinary ability to recollect the smallest things.

  *

  I remember an incident from almost ten years ago. Sheena and I were walking along Loch Eilt on the way home from spending a few days in Glenfinnan with friends of the family. Along came Mr Cameron-Head in his new car. It was the first car I’d seen, and we stepped out of the way to let him pass. My mouth was wide with wonder, apparently, and I was stuck for words when he stopped and offered us a lift.

  He talked all the way home. ‘Real leather seats. It’s American,’ he said, ‘a Cadillac. They’re the best.’

  Sheena wasn’t struck dumb like me and blethered away to him quite happily.

  He offered her a cigarette – her first, she said unnecessarily, as she coughed and spluttered.

  There isn’t a detail too small for me to remember of that day: how small the rough track was for that big car, how I had to get out and push stones out of the way, and how grown-up my sister was after all.