THE ARMIES OF BOTH SIDES spent the summer of 1915 resting, reorganizing and reinforcing. It was all so civilized.
Civilization tried to find normality. In France, Chagall and Dufy were painting and Debussy was composing piano music. In Britain, Rupert Brooke was writing poetry, Somerset Maugham completed Of Human Bondage, a Scotsman called John Buchan published a book entitled The Thirty-Nine Steps, and people began to talk about a writer called Virginia Woolf. There was even time, while armies slept, for science to march forward, and the first automatic telephone exchange was set up. Impending disaster was smouldering in Russia where a monk called Rasputin was effectively ruler. In America a divinely handsome film star with twinkling eyes began to make women all over the world forget their worries for a few celluloid moments: his name was Douglas Fairbanks.
In Scotland, Kirsty Robertson’s class collected £1.0.9d. for the Red Cross Appeal and each child was presented with a Red Cross stamp as a memento of such sacrifice. At home Kirsty spent a great deal of time staring into space when she wasn’t wandering around humming the popular new Novello song ‘Keep the Home Fires Burning’.
On the first Saturday after school started, Meg Stewart cycled out to Aberannoch. The girls had long since given up their Saturday-morning meetings, tending instead to meet for a cup of tea after school during the week. Meg had been walking out for over a year with a neighbouring fisherman, a friend of her brother Alex.
Kirsty and her mother were delighted to see her and they spent the first few minutes catching up on the news of their families. Then Meg got down to the real purpose of her visit.
‘Kirsty, I want you to stand up for me next Saturday. Will and I want to get married – he’s joining the Army.’
Getting married! Jealousy flowed into Kirsty’s mouth like a wave of bitter gall. She swallowed both the jealousy and her own pain. This was Meg, her friend, and impulsively she hugged her. ‘What wonderful news: the wedding bit, not the joining up. Fisher lads don’t have to join up, Meg.’
‘I know, but he wants to do his bit. We planned to wed next summer, but Will says if we don’t get in and finish those Germans quickly it’ll go on for ever.’
Kirsty poured more tea. ‘And your job?’ She remembered how much Meg had wanted a job where she wouldn’t have to smell like fish. She remembered how she had cried over homework assignments, and how Meg had sat in the schoolroom at Aberannoch every Saturday afternoon while John Robertson had coached her. All to be tossed away.
‘I’m going to stay at home and help Will’s mother,’ said Meg easily.
‘I’d do it too,’ thought Kirsty, ‘but it wouldn’t be painless.’
‘We want to get married on Saturday,’ Meg went on. ‘I told the headmaster yesterday and he was very nice and understanding. He says maybe soon they’ll allow married women to teach – they’ll need them, the way the men are joining up.’ She turned to Jessie. ‘Will you come too, Mrs Robertson? It’ll be a small wedding, my family and Will’s, the ones at home, and you and Kirsty. We’re going to Dundee for the weekend and then Will will enlist there on Monday. I’m very, very proud of him,’ she finished bravely.
‘Of course I’ll come,’ said Jessie. ‘Have you decided what to wear, Meg? I’ll run up something for Kirsty that complements you.’ She looked at her daughter who, after the first enthusiastic reception of the news, had quietened down and was sitting almost unaware of the excited chattering that was going on around her. ‘Kirsty, Meg will look lovely in blue, won’t she?’
‘Yes, and I’m so happy for you, dearest Meg,’ said Kirsty and burst into tears.
Jessie and Meg stared at her aghast. ‘Kirsty, what’s wrong?’ exclaimed Meg.
‘I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. It’s just that I’m so happy for you, Meg. It’s so romantic. You and Will in love and being married. It’s just perfect, well, almost, isn’t it?’
‘It would be if he wasn’t going to war, but then we’ve been walking out for a year and he never even said he loved me until last Sunday. Maybe he would have taken years . . .’
‘All men are slow, then?’ said Kirsty, and she seemed to brighten up. ‘Tell me again about your dress, Meg. No, it was a suit, wasn’t it?’
*
Later Kirsty cycled a little of the way towards Arbroath with Meg.
‘You heard Bob Cargill enlisted during the holidays, didn’t you, Kirsty? He’s in the new Flying Corps. Can you imagine a fisher laddie in an aeroplane?’
‘I haven’t seen Bob for ages. We lost touch when he went to the university.’ She recalled old memories. ‘He was such a nice lad.’
‘You should write to him,’ suggested Meg, ‘or are you keeping company yourself – your farmer, perhaps?’
‘No, I’m not keeping company exactly, I don’t think so anyway. I write to someone on active service and I see him when he’s on leave.’
‘That’s keeping company, Kirsty,’ said Meg positively. ‘Have you made plans?’
‘No, it’s all very casual, just friends, you know,’ and Kirsty felt that annoying blush that always let her down sweeping across her face and neck as those last moments in the Dell came rushing into her mind. Casual, casual – there had been nothing casual about that!
‘And what about your rustic swain?’
‘Don’t be silly, Meg.’ What a change a tiny diamond chip on the fourth finger of her left hand was making to Meg. Her complacency after Saturday’s ceremony would make her unbearable. Then Kirsty remembered all the early years and Meg’s unswerving help and friendship after her father’s death, and the old affection swept away the annoyance.
‘I’ll see you on Saturday, Meg, and I’m so pleased you want me to be your bridesmaid.’
‘Couldn’t be anyone else, now, could it? I’ll get Bob’s address for you. He wasn’t walking out with anyone: too busy with all those extra courses. He’ll be a head teacher one day soon if this awful war ends quickly.’
‘With your Will and Bob Cargill on our side, how could it not?’
Meg laughed happily, the laugh of a girl who loved and was loved and was being married in a few days. Kirsty envied her. She didn’t turn back towards the cottage as Meg cycled away but cycled on. Almost before she realized it, she was at the castle gates but she turned away. Without Hugh there would be no beauty in the Dell. She dismounted and stood for a moment looking up at the eagles, then turned slowly and began to cycle home.
‘May I walk with you, Kirsty?’ Where had Jamie appeared from?
Kirsty looked at him for a long moment. She had not seen him for nearly a year, not since the social on New Year’s Eve, and he had changed. If anything he was even thinner, but he was taller and somehow he looked stronger. The eyes that looked down at her were clear and bright, but the skin around them was wrinkled from years of working out in all weathers. He exuded health. She could afford to forgive him for embarrassing her; she could even understand, for was she not now the one who had sworn undying love and who had seen it . . . not rejected, no, but hardly accepted, and certainly not reciprocated. Not once, not once in those beautiful moments in the Dell when Kirsty Robertson had given her love with her whole heart and soul, had the object of that love and desire said, ‘I love you too, Kirsty.’
She smiled now at Jamie. ‘I’ll be glad of your company, Jamie. My friend Meg was just asking if I saw much of you.’
‘I saw her go past.’
‘She’s getting married on Saturday. Her fiancé wants to enlist.’
‘Seems a daftlike thing to do. Marry and then enlist.’
‘Will feels that the more men who join up, the quicker the war will be over.’
‘There’s only one thing sure, Kirsty. The more men that join up, the more’ll get killt. War is not something for civilized men to be doing with. If I take a gun and shoot a man in Aberannoch, I’m a murderer and I hang. If I take a gun and shoot a German in France, I’m a conquering hero. What bluidy arrogance!’
‘It’s not the same thing at all.’ They were ten years old again, talking and arguing as they had always done, but Jamie was no longer awed by the power and position of the Dominie’s lassie. He was a man who had suffered, who had read and listened and, more importantly, learned.
‘The Germans were the aggressors,’ said Kirsty hotly.
‘Aye, but since when do two wrongs make a right? If these educated men are that clever, can they no’ sit down and talk sensibly and get this all ironed out? My God, Kirsty lass, it’s madness. It won’t end with Right conquering Wrong. There does’nae seem much in the way of tactics being thought out here. It’s just, if one battalion gets wiped out, find two more to fill up the hole. It’ll be the army with most men that wins, most money, for I’ll tell you something, Kirsty Robertson. Somebody’s making a lot of money out of this war.’
What he said seemed to make sense, but he had to be wrong. Hugh was out there, and Bob Cargill, and soon Meg’s Will. There had to be more to it than self-seeking, self-aggrandizement.
‘The old minister at Aberannoch has three sons in the Army, Jamie. His youngest’s only sixteen and he wants to go, to fight for Right, and his father is a man of God. He wouldn’t have three boys in uniform if it wasn’t right. The aggressor has to be beaten and punished, to make sure he doesn’t do it again. It’s like teaching. I can hardly bear to punish children, but I’ve been a teacher long enough to have learned that if you don’t act really firmly with naughty children they soon become bad children.’
‘Europe’s hardly a classroom full of bad bairns.’
‘Sometimes to me that’s exactly what it seems like.’
They had reached the cottage and were so involved in their argument that they almost passed, but Jessie hailed them.
‘How nice to see you, Jamie. Watching you two took me back nearly ten years.’
‘Aye, we were always arguing, but not about the rights and wrongs of war.’
‘How is your mother?’
‘Better off in the fields than in one of those munitions factories. Our Cissie’s gone off to London, did you hear? They’re offering wages of 12/6d. a week and 2d. an hour overtime, but since she’s not eighteen she can’t work nights, otherwise I don’t think the lass would sleep at all. Mind you, the man that had the job before her got near £3 for the same work. Is that not the war we should be fighting? Inequality.’
‘You sound like Meg’s brother. He even wants women to vote,’ said Kirsty incredulously.
Jamie looked at her almost scornfully. ‘Kirsty Robertson, did your father not show you you had a brain in your head better than most boys in the school?’ He laughed like the young Jamie. ‘In fact, I sometimes thought it was near as good as mine. Why should I vote for my government, and not you? Think, lass.’
‘Heavens, Jamie, don’t turn my daughter into a suffragist.’
All three laughed and, happier than she had been for some time, Kirsty said good night and went indoors. It was good not to be at outs with Jamie. If only a letter would come from Hugh! He had to write; it had to have meant something to him. She should have let him speak, and then perhaps he might have said the words she wanted to hear. But she had been so terrified that he would say he hadn’t meant it to happen, that it didn’t mean anything to him. He had tried to apologize, to say he was sorry, and she couldn’t have that. She wasn’t sorry, would never be sorry, ever, ever, even if . . . even if . . . No, to say that would make it true and it couldn’t be true, mustn’t be, not yet, not yet till he’d written and said he wasn’t sorry – that he had wanted it as much as she had.
Not for the first time since the night in the Dell, Kirsty Robertson cried herself to sleep.