SHE DID NOT KNOW what time had passed. Adrift in a whirl of confusion and trauma, what had happened was so sudden and shocking in its savagery that it was beyond anything she could understand. When understanding did come, with it came hopelessness and despair. And shame. She felt unclean and unconsciously began trying to scrub herself with her dress, frantically, as if to scrub herself raw. But nothing could take it away. His filth she could feel within, clinging to her insides, cleaving to her mind.
The sound of someone nearby made her stiffen and shake at the same time. Was he coming back? She tried to stand, steadying herself to run, then she heard Murdo’s voice softly calling her name.
‘Kirsty! Kirsty!’
He had come looking for her.
The only thing that seemed clear was that Murdo could not know and must never know what had happened to her. Through her pain she understood he would be leaving within hours and would be gone for months. There would be nothing he could do to help her, and knowing of what had happened to her would weigh heavily upon him. She feared everything might change if he found out, that perhaps he would be turned off her, would no longer regard her as pure.
Kirsty manoeuvred herself upright, using her arm to balance herself against the rock, feeling it tacky where her shredded face had bled on it. She wanted to curl up, to cry and have Murdo cradle her until the pain went away. Her brain throbbed. Murdo was closer now. With a deep breath she stepped from behind the rock, the effort of it unbalancing her. He was almost upon her now and she stumbled into his arms.
‘Kirsty! Are you alright?’
She could not reply, as Murdo lifted her head from his arm he saw her swollen face, gashed and bleeding.
‘My God!’ he cried. ‘What happened?’
She forced herself to speak.
‘I fell,’ she slurred, hearing her voice sound weak and unconvincing.
‘You fell? Where? Where did you fall? Kirsty, speak to me!’
‘I fell,’ she said more insistently. ‘The rock. I banged my head on it. I’m fine.’
‘We need to get you to the doctor. Can you walk?’
He put her arm round his neck and supported her round her waist. Her foot scuffed along the ground as she tried to walk and her head fell forward.
There was a struggle going on between her spirit and body. She just wanted to sleep in Murdo’s arms, but her head thumped and pain jarred her every movement. Nausea brimmed in her throat. Murdo’s voice trying to get her to walk and to speak, seemed distant. She didn’t want to speak, only to sleep. She was safe now and couldn’t resist the impulse to swoon away. She was toiling to make sense of anything around her. A strange dimness was settling upon her.
Murdo, seeing her wavering on the brink of unconsciousness, was beginning to panic. He crouched slightly, swung his left arm behind her knees and swept her up to carry her.
‘Kirsty, don’t sleep! Don’t sleep! Talk to me.’
She moaned incoherently.
‘Keep talking to me. How far did you fall? How far did you fall onto the rock?’
This time there was no sound. She hung limply in his arms. As he stumbled through the gnarled roots of the heather, he was yelling breathlessly at her now.
‘Kirsty! Wake up! Talk to me. You’re going to be fine. I’m taking you to the doctor.’
She was deaf to his voice, to the straining of his breath and the pounding of his feet.
He was nearing the dance again and yelling for the doctor, but the music had sharpened the spirits and dulled the senses and no one heard. He stumbled his way through a swinging set with Kirsty in his arms. Only the sight of her bloodied face made them grasp that something was wrong. Then there was a commotion and willing hands proffered help.
‘What happened?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Murdo desperately. ‘Where is he? Where’s Dr MacLean?’
He had been at the dance and two lads recklessly thrust through the other revellers calling for him. After some minutes it was clear he had already left.
There was a crowd round where Murdo had lain Kirsty on the grass. Boys at the back with too much liquor jostled forward, thinking they were missing a brawl. It would not have been the first scuffle of the night; Iain Ban, stoked by the whisky, had struck out at Donald Letch in a flash of temper and continued pummelling him until he was hauled off by three bystanders. The incident had gone largely unnoticed, but those near the beer barrels had seen it and an older man had admonished him as he stomped off into the night. Iain Ban’s aggression was startling. He had no reputation for alcohol or belligerence. Whatever Donald Letch had said he was regretting it now, holding a handkerchief to his face and slumped bewildered against the dyke. There was little sympathy for him and soon the attention of the witnesses was diverted elsewhere and the Letch had skulked away.
The blood and cuts on Kirsty’s face caused gasps of astonishment and a chorus of impulsive questions.
‘What happened?’
‘Who did that?’
‘Get the doctor for the girl.’
Murdo felt the crowd close in on him and started pushing them back.
‘Let her have some air,’ he yelled. ‘Where’s the damn doctor?’
‘I think he’s gone, Murdo. I think he’s away home,’ someone said.
Cursing, Murdo picked Kirsty up and once again forced his way through the swarm in the direction of the doctor’s house, which lay about half a mile away. A wake of concerned dancers, still flushed from their exertions, followed behind. A gaggle of young boys, excited by the events of the evening and the lateness of the hour, seized the chance to be a part of the rescue and ran ahead to alert Dr MacLean. Some offered to carry Kirsty, but Murdo ignored them and tramped towards the house, finding it easier on the road than it had been through the sod of the moor. Kirsty’s head bobbled on his arm, the blood from her face staining his sleeve. The blood from between her legs seeped into her skirts but he was not aware of it.
Dr James MacLean had drunk far, far too much. He’d skipped his way through some jigs and waltzes and, with his wife absent and in her bed and his mood so jolly, he’d fair gulped the drink. He’d even blacked out, couldn’t remember leaving the dance and only came back to himself again as he retched violently and repeatedly in the ditch outside his home. His head swirled with voices and noise and light. With disgust, he told himself he was a mess. It was happening again, people would see him for what he really was and he must control it.
Drink was the reason Dr MacLean was on the island at all. At his surgery in the west end of Glasgow he had been establishing a good practice and was well thought of by his patients, who were mostly drawn from the city’s genteel set. He was young and attentive and had a sympathetic manner with elderly ladies and their worries. He and his wife found themselves being invited to dinner parties in sandstone mansions where they would listen and nod to the expositions of the city’s élite, the industrialists and the merchants, cannily realising that compliant agreement was what they sought.
But for Dr MacLean it was an act that he found increasingly difficult to sustain. His calm air masked a lack of confidence that he could not efface, at least not without his regular crutch, the whisky that acted like soothing oil on the churning acids of his stomach. The amber nectar had been a good friend since student days when annual exams had been a constant anxiety. It had been an unacknowledged mistress, and a generous one, never questioning when he needed more from it. Their assignations were brief, snatched affairs, out of sight of questioning eyes. Estelle, his wife never knew – was, he thought, too dull and naïve to know.
The relationship had lasted for some years before the whisky turned on him. As he aged he traded sympathy for cynicism, and his patients began to notice. Disinterest, and on occasion downright impatience, supplanted the apparently genuine concern that encouraged his patients to confide in him. Now they even began to doubt his diagnoses. But they only began to talk amongst each other when they could smell the whisky on his breath. The word spread. Distrust undermined him, and he fell from favour.
Social invitations became less frequent when nice Dr MacLean became argumentative, upsetting the gentility of these occasions. It climaxed at a dinner when a businessman who was also an elder of the Kirk dismissed the poverty abundant in their great city, pronouncing to general approval that the Lord helped those who helped themselves.
‘This city is the engine of the world,’ his discourse had continued. ‘There is work to be had for anyone who wants it and there is a good life to be made. Too many of these people don’t want to work. And when we give them work, they still complain.’
Dr MacLean gazed at his cigar and saw the light a little glazed through his brandy glass. In the golden liquid he seemed to see the faces of the hopeless and the poverty-stricken people he passed on the city’s streets, well away from the plenty before them now.
‘They complain, sir,’ he began suddenly, surprised by the sound of his own voice, ‘because of the wages they are paid. They hear of how this city drives the empire and yet they live in homes that breed disease, they cannot feed their families as they would like or afford a doctor when their children get sick.’
‘That is balderdash!’
‘Is it?’ The table was hushed now. Estelle tugged at his sleeve and some ash dropped onto his plate. ‘I see it, y’know. I see it everywhere I look. Don’t you? You’re supposed to be a Christian man. Don’t you ever look? Poverty up every close. But these people work, by God they work. Doesn’t seem to do much good. They make the engines that drive the empire, but they get nothing back for it. It is no surprise they complain.’
‘They are paid what they are worth, sir. If they were paid any more, no one could buy what they make. Then where would they be? They’d know poverty then, believe me.’
‘And you know what that means, do you? You know what poverty is?’
The other guests shifted uncomfortably. Arguments of principle were all very well, if inappropriate at the dinner table, but this was becoming personal.
‘No, I don’t. You’re right, I don’t. But poverty means to have nothing. The reason so many of them have nothing is because they drink it all away. The pubs are never empty in these parts of town.’
‘They drink to escape. Don’t you see that?’ Dr MacLean persisted.
‘They drink because they have the money to drink, then they blame the likes of me who gives them a job for not paying them enough. I’ve heard your sort of talk before and I’m surprised, frankly. That is the talk of those, what do they call themselves? Labourites. You’re one of those damned revolutionaries, sir.’ The man’s eyes blazed and his ruffled whiskers twitched.
‘No. I’m one of those humans,’ he responded with pointed emphasis, then sat back and took a last swig from his glass.
There had been a potent silence as the eminent one glared at the doctor, and the doctor gazed languidly back at him with the contented pose of a man who no longer gave a damn. The tension was broken by their hostess, Mrs Fotheringham, instructing the maid to offer more cake.
The end was not long in coming. Perhaps he could have survived the ending of the invitations, perhaps he could have disguised his drinking… perhaps. A confusion with a near-hysterical female patient who had taken news badly hastened his demise. He had not meant to slap her nearly so hard, he’d only meant to calm her, but the sips he had taken from the bottle earlier made him misjudge. His partners told him to go quietly. After more than a year of looking for another practice he realised that the word on him was out. Enthusiasm from potential partners faded quickly after initial, promising discussions. This was the way he had finally come to the islands.
There were not the same comforts here, not the same genteel company, but Dr MacLean came to like it well enough. The people gave him unquestioning respect because he was the doctor, he was educated and he could help them. He kept his drinking until he went home now. It helped blot out his wife, who bitterly resented their change in circumstances and reminded him of it at the slightest opportunity. There were people of her class on the island, but they were in the town, a day’s ride away. Here she had the minister’s wife for companionship, and that was it. The other women were of no interest to her. This had been brought upon her by her husband and she resented him for it with a vengeance, but having no means of her own she had to remain with him. Tonight, though, she was already in her bed and the doctor could sit with a glass, watch the fire and try to find peace within himself.
The banging on the door stirred him. A young boy was standing there gasping.
‘We need your help, Doctor,’ he panted. ‘A girl’s been badly hurt. They’re bringing her now.’
The doctor could hear the approaching disturbance. His mind tried to crank up again. He had hoped he could escape the turmoil of it, but the night was refusing to leave him.
‘Bring her in.’
Murdo was struggling. He was four hundred yards from the door and his gasps of breath seemed to be delivering less and less oxygen to his straining muscles. He focused on the light but he didn’t seem to be getting any closer.
‘Walk with her, Murdo, walk. You might be hurting her more with the running,’ someone said.
It made sense. He wanted to run, to get her there quickly, but he understood that in his desperation to do right by her, perhaps he was harming her. As he slowed to a fast walk, her head rested more easily against his arm. He couldn’t tell how she was breathing, but he could feel the heat between them and the sweat was dripping down his body. He whispered reassurances to her and at last he was stumbling through the doctor’s doorway. Only now was he willing to relinquish her.
Even then there was doubt. The doctor looked bleary and unkempt and smelled of drink. He was now at the front door, leaning heavily against the frame telling the crowd that they must go, there was nothing more they could do. A jacket lay outside, stained and stinking. The doctor slammed the door shut and stood momentarily with his hands pressed against it and his head sunk between his shoulders, exhaling loudly, whether in exhaustion or to regain composure Murdo could not tell. He had to remind himself that the doctor could do more for Kirsty than he could.
A lamp glowed on the stairs and a shrill voice called down. Dr MacLean barked back irritably, ‘It’s a patient.’ Nothing more was heard from upstairs.
‘Bring her through here and lay her on the couch,’ the doctor instructed Murdo. His head was beginning to clear.
‘She fell,’ Murdo began to explain as he lowered her gently.
‘I’ll see to her,’ said the doctor, easing him aside. ‘You’ve done what you could. You go home now.’
‘I don’t want to leave her,’ said Murdo.
The doctor said nothing for a moment as he gently moved Kirsty’s head with his fingers, examining the gashes on her face.
‘Very well,’ he said flatly. ‘You can sleep in the outhouse. My wife. You understand. Go now. I’ll take care of Kirsty.’
‘Thank you,’ said Murdo, hovering momentarily before leaving.
Lights and sounds burst through Kirsty’s head as she surfaced to consciousness and she was seized by a severe pain between her legs. Her mind reeled in a confusion of nightmare impressions. She felt somebody near and opened her eyes. Her pupils shrunk from the brightness of a fire and she closed her eyes again. She opened them again, tentatively, and saw a silhouetted figure sitting by her.
‘How are you feeling, Kirsty?’ a voice asked gently. ‘It’s Dr MacLean. You’re in my house.’
Kirsty didn’t speak and her eyes filled with tears.
‘Take your time,’ the doctor said reassuringly.
Incoherent thoughts whirled in a murky confusion of images and torment. She was sick and sore. Her head was swathed in bandages and she could smell disinfectant. She gazed at the ceiling. She was lying on a couch in a strange room. The doctor sat facing her in an upright chair close to her head. A fire was burning in the fireplace. The doctor was holding a glass in his hand. She heard him swallow deeply and then the chair creaked as he leaned forward.
‘Do you remember what happened, Kirsty?’ he asked quietly.
The smell of the whisky on his breath instantly took her back to the awful moments of her rape. Her back arched and she whimpered.
‘Kirsty. Do you remember what happened?’
She was living it again, the terror, the pain, the helplessness. She groaned and cried aloud, feeling her skin stretch and pull where she’d been bandaged. He placed his hand on her shoulder in a hopelessly inadequate gesture of compassion. At length she relapsed into a frozen quiescence. She might have confided in the doctor, this man who had sat as her protector, cleansed her wounds and tried to ease her dejection. But she knew she must not. That way, only she and her attacker would know, and neither could tell.
Dr MacLean gave her a handkerchief and she dabbed her eyes. She must tell him something because she would not be left to her silence.
‘I remember running,’ she began hesitantly. ‘Round by the rock at the lochside. I tripped. I must have banged my head against it. I don’t really know.’
The doctor’s intent face was very close to her now, leaning urgently forward with his elbows on his knees and his whisky glass clutched in both hands. The flickering fire light caught in his eyes and she could see a wet slick of the whisky on his lips.
‘Are you quite sure?’ he breathed. ‘Nothing else happened?’
A tear rolled down her face and her lips contorted as she tried to stop herself crying aloud again. The room was very warm and her body hurt. She wondered if Dr MacLean somehow knew.
‘That was all,’ she finally answered, as strongly as she could.
Dr MacLean continued to look at her. The fire threw his shadow swollen and flickering on the wall behind him. Silence hung heavily, punctured only by the ticking of a grandfather clock and the sparking of the burning peat. Suddenly he sat back, startling her.
‘Good,’ he said. ‘Good.’ And took another gulp from his glass.
‘You see if you can get some more sleep and I’ll arrange for you to be taken home when the daylight comes.’
‘Did Murdo bring me here?’ she asked, her voice steadier.
‘Yes he did. He carried you all the way. He didn’t want to leave you, either.’
‘Did he?’
‘He’s asleep in the outhouse. He’ll take you home.’
Kirsty began feeling faint again and as she lay her head back and let her eyes close, Dr MacLean watched over her.
When next she stirred it was Murdo who was with her, leaning over gazing at her face. The touch of his breath had wakened her. He barely brushed her lips with a kiss.
‘It’s time to get you home,’ he whispered.
The room was lighter, but colder. Daylight had come. She could see it force itself through the weave of the curtain fabric. The fire was dead, and the grate piled with grey ash. Dr MacLean was asleep in the chair, his head slumped onto his shoulder and his jaw locked open. An empty glass sat on the floor beside him. There was something in his form that made Kirsty sad for him, something forlorn and pitiable.
Murdo threw back the blanket that covered her. Kirsty moved her legs to the floor and stopped suddenly as she felt something pressing against her crotch.
‘Put your weight on me,’ Murdo reassured her, slipping her arm around his shoulder and pulling her to her feet. ‘The doctor says you’ll be fine.’
Kirsty wasn’t listening to him. The unfamiliar pressure between legs was tormenting her.
‘Could you leave me for a moment?’ she almost snapped.
‘Leave?’ She could hear the hurt in his voice.
‘I need to sort myself,’ she said more gently.
Murdo left the room and she instantly hitched her skirts. A bandage had been folded into a pad and placed inside her pants to stem the blood that had flowed earlier. Only Dr MacLean could have done that. He had known something else had happened, but he hadn’t forced her to say. She felt a well of affection for the slumbering figure and padded over to him to gently kiss his forehead.
Murdo was waiting in the hall.
‘Shouldn’t we tell the doctor we’re away?’ he asked.
‘He’s been awake most of the night watching me. We’ll leave him to sleep.’
The doctor slept on as they left the house. The room was cold in the early morning, but no colder than his bed would have been next to his wife.
The previous night one of the boys had told Murdo he would bring along a horse and cart to take Kirsty home. He had been as good as his word. Murdo guided her slowly over to the cart and lifted her on to it. She was so weak that she would have been unable to do so herself. Her head was a constant shank of pain. And worse, she felt as though there were a jagged stick inside her, invading her and defiling her. She sat silently as Murdo brought the horse over to hitch it up. The animal snorted and a plume of hot breath billowed around it. Its hooves clumped on the grass verge and then clopped on the stones of the road. Kirsty breathed in the fresh air of the morning. A hint of peat smoke infiltrated it. The cold air caused her to shiver and the pain in her head to intensify, but once that had passed she felt better for it.
The grey, dawn mist was fading as the sun rose higher. Birds chirruped excitedly. It was going to be a wonderful day, a day of colour and glory. A day for young men to go off to war.
She watched Murdo as he pulled on straps and buckles and stroked the horse’s head and she felt a foreboding in her soul. How she loved this man, and yet so much had changed since they came together only days before. Everything was so grim now. She could never be the same woman again after the vile attack, and today he was leaving. The certainty of those wonderful first hours was now a mass of doubts. Would he ever come back to her? If he did, would she be there for him? She feared the ragged pain inside her and did not dare imagine what its consequences might be. The dread of it all made her want to cry out. Instead, she silently implored the Lord to spare them both.
At last he was beside her, pulling himself onto the cart. She wrapped her arms round his and rested her head on his shoulder as he grasped the reins and flicked the horse onto the road home. The jolt made her wince, but he would be with her for the next precious few hours, and that was all that mattered.
They said almost nothing on that journey. How could they without ever saying he would be leaving? For the short time remaining they could be lost in each other without having to confront the inevitable.
As the cart trundled up to Kirsty’s house, Murdo kissed her gently on the head. ‘The boys are leaving in two hours. I’ll go to the house and get my things and I’ll meet you back at the gate.’
Her mother and sister dashed out to her and her father stood watching from the doorway. Her mother had been awake all night. How was she, the poor soul? She must get into the house and lie down. What had the doctor said? Amid the clucking and fussing Kirsty heard the cart rattle away, and despite the concern from her family she wished she was with Murdo.
Murdo’s mother stood at the door of their home. Her lips were set unnaturally firm, but the flaring nostrils and the tears in her eyes betrayed her. They had agreed she would not go with him to the lochside. Their parting would be a private one. A hug, a kiss on her flushed cheek as she sniffed back the tears and a simple goodbye was all either could bear.
She tried to tell him to write, but the words wouldn’t come. She could only nod. As he walked away with his younger brothers, he turned every few yards to raise a wave to the figure in the doorway of home. As he watched her bravely holding her hand high, flapping a farewell with her fingers, he felt the swell of tears in his own eyes. All he had thought of these past days had been had been leaving Kirsty. This painful parting from his mother had stolen up on him unawares. How sore it was. Kirsty had so filled his spirit, but his mother was so much part of him. That he had almost overlooked her in those dramatic last hours pierced him with guilt. What for her now? They had drawn strength from each other.
As he reached the corner that would finally wrest him from her sight, he gave one last wave, pulled the handles of bag onto his shoulder and was gone. His mother stepped back behind the door. Now at last she could weep for the boy who’d had to grow so quickly on the death of his father and who was now going off to war. How bitter life could be to those so good.
Murdo’s brothers walked along quietly, aware of his heavy heart. They had been stirred by the glamour and only now did the thought of the sorrow it could bring creep into their minds. When Murdo asked them to run ahead to the lochside, it was a release.
Kirsty had taken off the swathes of bandage, determined not to say farewell looking so absurd. Now her hair hung free in its rich glory, veiling the injuries to her face.
His head was down and she could only see his cap and the white of the shirt and scarf he wore beneath a dark Harris Tweed jacket. He was transformed from the man of the early morning. It would take everything she had to buoy his spirits. She would have to be strong. She walked to him and slipped her hand into his.
‘So this is it,’ he sighed.
‘Only for now,’ she said.
‘I shouldn’t have to do this. Kirsty, I don’t care what’s happening in Europe. It’s nothing to do with me. Our future is America and I’m being tied down by a history that’s not even mine.’
Kirsty walked with him, letting him unburden himself to her. But the chance was quickly denied him. As they walked village folk came to their doors to wish him well. He had to let go of Kirsty’s hand as the men grasped his and shook it firmly. They would pray for him, they said. And Murdo knew that if God listened to prayers then he would be alright. These were genuine people, good people, and they would respectfully ask the Lord to look after the boys. If sincerity of faith and power of belief had any effect, Murdo knew that the Lord would look after him on the battlefield. There was little jingoism. Sending their young men off to war had been a sad ritual for so long for the people of the island, and the dust of many of these boys blew across the historic battlefields of Europe and beyond. Yet again the King had called from so far away, and again the young bloods had rallied to the cry. And when the steel had clashed and the guns had roared and the victory had been won, those who were left would return home to be forgotten again. The islanders knew this and yet they always marched. It was God’s will, some said.
Murdo looked upon the familiar faces, faces that he’d known all his life, and it saddened him to be leaving them. Some old women slipped him small parcels. ‘For the journey, my dear.’
‘If leaving is as hard as this now, what will it be like when I leave for America?’
Kirsty let him talk.
‘All I’ve thought about for years is getting to America. I suppose I knew it would mean leaving my mother and the family, but I’ve never really confronted that. Maybe I didn’t allow myself to. My mother always told me she never said goodbye to my father when he left for the fishing, because then he would come back. She never did say goodbye to him and after he was lost, how that has tormented her. But when I go to America, I’ll be saying farewell to her, knowing I’ll never see her again. How can I do that?’
‘Don’t you want to any more?’ Kirsty asked after a pause.
‘Cutting my ties with the past won’t be difficult. But turning my back on my present? That will be so hard.’
Twelve hours before, the scene at the lochside had been so different. There was no music this time, only subdued voices and a universal heaviness of spirit that could almost be seen. It showed in the tear-stained faces of the mothers and sisters who had come to see the lads off and in the strained looks of fathers and sons. The minister was there too, with his dark clothes, his black Bible and his overcast face.
Murdo was the last to arrive. Ten young men stood ready to walk off to war. This was the worst time. When they set off they would provide mutual support and they would look forward to the adventures ahead. Before that, though, came the send off and the farewells.
The Reverend MacIver stepped forward, flanked by the elders of the church. He bowed his head, paused until everyone had followed his lead and began to pray. He thanked the Lord for His Goodness and begged forgiveness for their sins. He spoke in a monotone and even as he struggled to find his words, his voice filled the gaps in the flow with a tonal moan. As he pronounced that the fate of these brave boys was in the hands of the Lord, he swayed gently back and forward, his face set in a grimace. If it was God’s Will, he intoned, that any of these boys should not return, pray let them fear none ill as they walked through Death’s dark vale. For twenty minutes he prayed, oblivious to the tears that were seeping again among his congregation.
Reverend MacIver wasn’t finished there. He flicked through the light leafs of his Bible until he settled upon Mark, Chapter 10. His voice was tremulous now.
‘Jesus said, ‘I tell you this: there is no one who has given up home, brothers or sisters, mother, father or children, or land, for my sake and for the Gospel, who will not receive in this age a hundred times as much…’’
He led the singing of Psalm 23 himself and pronounced one last prayer. Then the minister approached each of the young men and shook them firmly by the hand.
Murdo turned away and clasped the heads of his two brothers to his chest. They fought not to sob. Murdo, as so often since his father had died, found the strength he needed to comfort them.
‘You be good for Mam,’ he instructed. ‘You know what needs doing. Now it’s up to you to see to it. You have to be men now. D’you understand?’
The boys nodded, their lips trembling.
Calum Boer approached.
‘Your mother will not be on her own, lad, have no fear of that.’
‘That’s good of you, Calum.’
The older man took his arm and led him to one side.
‘I’ve been there Murdo. I know something of what’s waiting for you. I’m not telling you to scare you, but I know you’re a sensible lad and I want you to be prepared. You will see death, and death on the battlefield is a cursed sight. Forget glory. Remember the people you are fighting for are waiting for you back here. There is not much victory for them if you don’t return. Do your duty, lad. That’ll make you a hero enough. And don’t worry about home. Your mother will be fine.’
They shook hands firmly, the older man gripping Murdo’s elbow.
‘Say your goodbyes.’
Similar scenes of embrace and parting were being played out along the lochside. It was a sombre dance, with woman embracing men, except the women were all older and their faces were seared with sadness. Final gazes were made at faces they had known so intimately from the cradle. Bold young men off to war they may be, but they were still their children. Final farewells were made and after the tearful embrace, a clasping of hands in a last bonding before the off.
Murdo was with Kirsty and the tears were in his eyes. It made her realise how little she knew this man who filled her heart. Despite her own tears and the anticipation that he would be sorrowful, the reality of it weakened her, although her voice remained strong.
‘I’ll be here waiting for you, my love. And America will be waiting for us both.’
He embraced her and hugged her so hard that she would have struggled for breath had he held her too long. He pulled his head back and gazed at her before kissing her. His lips were so soft as the blood swept to his face and she could feel the heat of his emotion. As she closed her eyes the tears ran to their mouths and although she could faintly taste the salt, it was the sweetest of kisses.
When they separated, the other soldier boys were already gathering together at the moor road, ready to walk the miles to town. Murdo picked up his bag, already a red tinge to his eyes the only sign of his sorrow. The bagpipes sounded a march. The ten young men set off together to a rousing three cheers. Some of the men threw their caps in the air. They watched as their sons, brothers and sweethearts walked up the incline of the moor road, turned for a final wave before their heads bobbed out of sight down the other side. It was the last some of them ever saw of their loved ones and for those who watched them go that final cheery wave was carved in their memory.
Kirsty stood watching, staring at the point where the top of the brae met the sky. There, moments before, Murdo had looked round for a final glimpse of her, still near enough for her to run after him, still close enough to hear her call. And yet he was gone and she didn’t know when he would return. She could not let herself think that she might not see him again.
The crowd began to disperse, drifting back to homes that would seem emptier. For Kirsty the pain from her ordeal of the previous night began to return. She had subconsciously held it at bay until Murdo had gone and now it came back to her, forcing the air from. An older woman saw her and misunderstood.
‘It’s always painful, my dear, but you be strong for him.’
Kirsty eased herself onto a boulder to sit. The woman put a soothing arm round her shoulders, unaware of the extent of Kirsty’s anguish. She so desperately wanted to be alone. And yet she had never felt so lonely.