THE ROCK MADE HER MOVE. She had not wanted to leave the road where she and Murdo had danced together. Perhaps the longer she waited the longer the spirit of that night would linger around her. Every step towards home would take her further away from him. She stared bleakly at the hill, knowing he was on the other side walking on the stony road to town. She could still see him if she ran to the top of the brae, but she didn’t. They had said goodbye and it would be even harder to watch him walking away from her. She wanted to stay where she was, but the presence of the rock brooding over her and the memories it brought, she could not bear.
Most of its mass was hidden where the peat and the heather swelled over it, but at one side the white-flecked grey of the gneiss rose too sharply for any earth to cling to it. When she looked over her shoulder she could see it, could feel its flinty sharpness tearing through her flesh as her head was rammed against it. Her hand involuntarily shot to her cheek. She had to get away from the rock’s incriminating stare.
Others were making their way back to homes that would be sadder places. Wives held their husbands’ arms, fathers walked with faces stoic and grim, mothers dabbed handkerchiefs to red eyes amid sniffs and sobs. It was a straggling funeral cortege for boys who still lived.
Kirsty rose and began her own solitary walk, trying to preserve images of Murdo in her mind’s eye, but her thoughts of him were constantly jabbed by pain. She was still clotting and she felt torn inside. When she had walked with Murdo to the lochside earlier her willpower had overcome the physical pain. Now, with him gone, there was nothing to distract her from her wounds.
And there was a fear, a dread she must now confront.
Could she be carrying the beginnings of a child?
Could it be that the seed of the devil who had overcome her could be causing a baby to grow within her?
Was that the cause of the agony she was feeling in her body?She did not know exactly how a child was created in the womb, but she had tended enough animals to know the physical action required. That was how her attacker had treated her, like a beast to be served, only worse. It repelled her to think that she might give birth to a baby brought to her in this way. A child should be a yield of love, the sort of love she had for Murdo. If she were pregnant then what would this one be?
The other awful question was who had done this to her. The thought struck her forcefully. Someone she knew had done unspeakable things to her. Maybe there had been a stranger hiding out of sight, but the whisky on his breath suggested to her it was someone who had been at the dance. Had she danced with him, laughed with him? Could he have been at the farewell? She glanced around in fear that he might be nearby. Was he watching her now? There was an animal in him and she dreaded that he might be unleashed again.
The thought of Mary Horseshoe loomed before her. If she was pregnant, who would believe that she was a victim? She could hear Old Peggy now, harshly telling people that she’d been warned often enough. ‘Interfered with was she? We’ve only got her word for it. You can’t expect to put temptation in front of young lads at the dancing when they’re fired up by the drink and the devil.’ Even worse, what if they thought it was Murdo’s baby? That’s what they would all say. How could she tell her mother? How could she tell Murdo, now so far away? How could she love a child that had been forced upon her, a child that would be her’s, but not Murdo’s?
She was lost in her torment. As she passed the church, she didn’t notice a figure emerging from beside the wall. The man checked the road in both directions before advancing hastily towards her. As he came to her she heard the sound of his boots and became aware that she was not on her own. She span round in alarm.
‘Kirsty,’ he called.
She saw that it was Dr MacLean.
He hadn’t known what time it was when he finally woke. It had been an uncomfortable introduction to a new day, but not one he was unused to. The first sensation had been a dull, persistent ache in his head. The dry tissue of his throat stuck together as he instinctively swallowed, forcing a rush of bile into the sluice gate of his gullet. He jolted upright. The sudden motion made his head spin and he felt his neck crick as the muscles abruptly pulled out of their constriction. He clasped his hands to his face and hung his head again. His breath came in pants and he swallowed each time he inhaled as he tried to control his stomach. The chill in the room made him shiver. There was always a payback when he returned to reality from the drink. The suffering was always the same. At least he had been here often enough before to know it would pass once he had got fluids into his system. He began to make his unsteady way to the kitchen. Then he saw the blanket folded on the couch and the events of the earlier hours flashed back. He looked around, but she had gone. In the kitchen he slurped from a milk jug, the shaking of his hands spilling white trails down his chin. He leaned on the table, bracing himself in case it came straight back up again. When it didn’t, he began to place peats slowly into the stove. Once he got the fire going and brewed up some tea he would feel better.
He remembered Kirsty being in the house, because the condition she was in had sobered him somewhat. The events leading up to her arrival, though, were obscured out of any coherent sequence. Her head had been a bloody mess. The wounds were superficial, mostly to her forehead and down one side of her face: two gashes, some grazing and bruising. A tooth looked to have been chipped and her tongue cut.
As he had worked on her the blur of the alcohol had cleared. What disturbed him most was how, even though she was drifting in and out of consciousness, she held her hands protectively over her groin. While she was unconscious he gently moved her arms away and rucked up her skirt. A cursory examination confirmed that she had been subjected to rough intercourse. He had to swallow hard. He’d cleaned her as best he could and left a dressing in place. Having made her as comfortable as possible, he had taken his whisky bottle from the shelf and poured a tumblerful to ease the shake in his hands. Then he’d sat and watched over her and wept pitifully.
She had stirred some time later and they had spoken, but little had come from it before she fell asleep again. He hadn’t remembered falling asleep in the armchair and he’d heard nothing of her leaving.
He knew he must speak to her, but it would have to be a private conversation. For the meantime a drink would help him think everything through.
‘I didn’t mean to scare you, Kirsty. I just wanted to see how you were. How is your head?’
She touched the cotton on her cheek and managed a weak smile.
‘You should have rested.’
She couldn’t respond.
‘I had to check on you,’ Dr MacLean said by way of explanation. ‘I knew you’d have come to see the boys off and I knew I would see you here. You should be at home resting.’
‘I’m going home now,’ she said almost in a whisper.
As she began walking again he fell in beside her. She didn’t want to look at him, knowing it wasn’t just the wounds to her head that concerned the doctor. He knew what injuries she had there, and he had come to find out more. She didn’t want to tell him anything.
They walked a few yards in silence. There was the wind and the crunch of the stones on the road and the distant sound of the sea and the gurgle of the river, but they were so familiar, so much part of living here, that it seemed that the silence was total. When he spoke the doctor’s mild tones could not have seemed sharper to Kirsty.
‘Kirsty, what happened? What really happened? Can you tell me?’
Kirsty pressed her chin into her breastbone and unconsciously began to walk faster to escape Dr MacLean’s probing and the sight of the rock and the horror of its memory. But he grasped her arm to stop her and as he did so her face crumpled in tears.
‘Kirsty,’ he said softly to try to soothe her. ‘Kirsty, no one else need know what happened, but I have to know that you are alright. You know that I know. You don’t need to tell me anything you don’t want to, but you must come to me if there are problems.’
Dr MacLean looked a tired man, not from lack of sleep, but from exhaustion of spirit. Bags weighed down his eyes and the lines did not hint at laughter. His thinning hair lacked life and lustre and although there was no weight in his face it seemed to sag in chronic defeat. But the concern in his voice reached out to Kirsty and she felt her words leak away from her.
‘How could someone do that?’ she asked through tears. ‘How could someone hurt me like that?’
The doctor helped her over to a dyke and leaned her against it. She was quivering, her fists forced against her eyes. He bowed his head and sighed deeply before speaking, all the while keeping his hand steady on her arm.
‘Who knows what demons drive people, Kirsty? And God knows, these demons will be all the greater today. I can’t protect you from that. All I can do is try to help you.’
‘What can you do?’ she asked, her helplessness ripped by a rising rage. ‘He’s ruined me. He’s dirtied me. What can you do about that?’
The doctor stood and said nothing.
‘Oh, you could help me where I’m torn, but you can’t help what he’s done to me here,’ she said clasping her hands and thudding them against her chest. The force of her anger broke on the final words and she sobbed once more.
Dr MacLean offered her a crumpled handkerchief and moved round to sit beside her on the dyke. Kirsty struggled to contain herself, forcing the handkerchief against her eyes, her tremulous breathing causing it to flap. The doctor remained motionless, his head bowed, his hands clasped between his legs and his forearms resting on his thighs.
‘He’s destroyed me, doctor,’ she whispered.
‘You mustn’t let yourself think that. He hasn’t destroyed you. You’ve been hurt in a way that’s unforgivable, but don’t let it destroy you. Don’t think like that. You weren’t to blame. You did nothing wrong, you’ve no cause to feel ashamed. I can’t tell you how to feel, but your life didn’t end last night. Your mind will heal too. It all takes time.’
‘But I’ll never be able to forget it, doctor, how can I?’
‘I don’t mean that you should. But you must try to leave it behind you. Don’t carry it with you. That’s what would destroy you.’
Kirsty tried to absorb what the doctor had said while he tried to convince himself that it was true.
‘Doctor,’ Kirsty began hesitantly, ‘do you think he could have made me expect a baby?’
Dr MacLean breathed in.
‘It’s possible, Kirsty. It is possible.’
The confirmation barely seemed to penetrate. She sat with her hands clasped on her lap, looking down at the handkerchief she still held.
‘We will know in time. What matters now is that you get the proper care you need. I will come and see you.’
Kirsty gripped his arm, and her eyes, though swollen and red, lost their dead expression and came alive with urgency.
‘No. Don’t do that. If I need you I’ll come to you. No one must ever know what happened to me,’ she said fiercely. ‘You mustn’t tell anyone.’
‘I can’t tell anyone, Kirsty.’
They parted.
The talk with the doctor had given her hope. It was only possible she might be pregnant, so she might not be. She would cling to that hope and pray for it. Yet even as she resolved to do so, she questioned why she should pray.
This was a cruel life that let her glimpse what could be, then wrenched it from her, as it tore her body and took her love away. Was all this made to happen by a God who loved her? Why so much misery, she wanted to ask Him? Why did He allow so much crying, so much despair? These were simple questions, she knew, and the greater mind of the minister and the unshakeable faith of her mother would have answers. But Kirsty, in the depths of her anguish, doubted for the first time that their explanations could satisfy her.
This community had suffered tragedy more than most. Death hovered in the wind; it rode the waves that smashed the rocks and seeped through the earth to ruin the crops. It stalked the young and the old. Its visits were accepted with a fortitude built on the faith that each soul would find peace at the feet of the Lord for time everlasting. Beyond the sorrow there was the solace that a loved one went on to a better place. Death could be spoken of as part of life. Death, whenever and however it arrived, was accepted.
The creation of life was different. There was joy of course, but it was not the event of death. Then the silence would hang heavy. There was not the corresponding community elation when a child was born. Village life would continue as on any other day. Visitors would come with gifts and wish the new baby well on its journey through life, but as the fate of Mary Horseshoe’s daughter made clear, it was not an unquestioning acceptance. Mutterings would cling to a child born less than the full term after its parents’ marriage, and that fact would remain with it throughout its days. The gossips would never lose sight of the fact that the child’s parents had had to get married. It was only after Mary Early had had three premature births that it was accepted that she had been justified in wearing white on her wedding day. Calum an Lochan had been born eight months after his parents’ marriage, the reason, according to Old Peggy, why he was such a wild child. Death was held in greater reverence than birth, and perhaps even than life itself. The premature loss of a child – a tragically common event – would bring more attention bustling to a house than the birth immediately preceding it.
As she walked home, Kirsty forced her mind to dwell on the places that had become so special to her and Murdo in the short time they were together: the twist in the road where they had first come upon the Road Dance, the spot on the moor where their love had blossomed, and even from here she could see the ocean, barely audible this far inland but alive in colour and motion and possibility. The sea might not be the only barrier to their hopes now. And always she would think of him on the moor road to town. Would he be laughing with the other boys, would he be thinking of her? She felt he was.
The way home took her past Old Peggy’s house and inevitably conversation with her. Old Peggy would sit outside her door, spinning at her wheel, clacking her knitting needles together or simply watching, missing nothing. Nobody walked by her door uninterrupted. Her conversation was inquisitorial. How was the family? What were you doing? All the while she was gathering threads and weaving them together making a fabric of village life. She felt herself to be the communal conscience, the arbiter of what was morally right. In her own judgement, she herself had led a good life and had faced her misfortunes steadfastly. Her cupboards were bare of bones. She had not missed a day in church since her days of childbirth. Not a funeral service took place without Old Peggy being there, sitting upright at the front of the mourners, her hands resting on her walking stick. It was this righteousness that allowed her to observe and comment on the lives of others. It was a privilege she took seriously. She knew everyone and knew their history, and what she didn’t know, she supposed.
Kirsty could hear the click, click, clicking of the needles as she approached the grey stone of Old Peggy’s house. Despite the trauma of her rape, the fear of pregnancy and the emptiness left by Murdo’s departure, there was further for her heart to fall. Old Peggy would know something had happened, she may not know exactly what, but she would know something and she would want to know more. She could prise what she wanted from you. Kirsty would need to be sharp and strong to keep her secret and she didn’t feel she could be.
Click, click, click, ‘Hello, Kirsty’, click, click, click. The voice cracked through the bustle of the needles.
‘Are you alright, girl?’ she asked without waiting for a reply, ‘Look at your poor face. It’s a terrible thing to happen on the night before the boys leave. And your head, girl, what happened to your head? The drink, my girl, that’s what it is. The drink drives men to the devil.’
It was a tactic of Old Peggy’s to bombard her victim with a barrage of questions and statements, to pummel them into a response. And when they denied or confirmed, she would have them, they would be talking.
‘What they did to you was terrible.’
Kirsty panicked. What did she know? If Old Peggy knew, soon enough everyone would know. The clicking of the needles demanded a response.
‘No one did anything to me. I fell.’
‘Are you okay, girl?’
‘Yes thank you. I just got a bang on my head.’ Kirsty worried that maybe she had sounded too defensive.
‘I hear you stayed the night at the doctor’s, my dear. It must have been a terrible thump you took. Surely you weren’t touching the drink yourself, girl?’
Old Peggy chuckled. This was her idea of teasing.
‘No I wasn’t. I just fell. I tripped and fell. Nobody else was near me.’
‘Were you running, girl? You have to be careful on the moor. You must have fallen with some force to hurt yourself like that.’
Kirsty hesitated. She would have to lie, but Old Peggy was wily. She would pounce on any inconsistency like a cat on a mouse.
‘Yes, I was running.’
The old woman smiled revealing the stumps of her remaining teeth. She winked suggestively.
‘One of the boys chasing you, girl?’
‘No. I was hurrying back to the dance. I really need to get home now.’
‘Of course, my dear.’
Old Peggy knew she was lying. She would find out soon enough what was behind all this. She had one more trick to play and as Kirsty turned to go she asked quietly, ‘Has Constable MacRae seen you yet? He was asking if I’d seen you.’
Kirsty swayed and swallowed. Old Peggy had hit home, and she knew it.
‘Oh yes, you’ll need to see the police about it,’ she said with quiet satisfaction. ‘You’d better get home girl, you really don’t look well. If I see the officer, I’ll tell him I saw you.’
If she could Kirsty would have run, just run and run. Instead, she could only limp away. Not for a moment had she even thought of the police. Why would the police get involved? What had they been told? Police. Questions and answers. Everything was running out of control. They would be getting involved in what she had wanted to keep to her most private self. The physical rape had might be over, but the emotional rape would be equally brutal and it would go on. She had been attacked, she had been raped and that could not be swept away, even if she wanted to. What her attacker had done to her, he could do to others. The police would want to know exactly, in detail, what had occurred. Word would get out. How did they know?
She didn’t know how she summoned the strength to complete the last part of her journey to her home near the shore. She shuffled along, every step a conscious effort, and every few houses she had to withstand further conversations. She was caught in a disorientating vortex of questions and civilities.
‘Are the boys away?’
‘Brave lads that they are, brave lads.
‘Of course you’ll miss him, my dear.’
‘They’ll be back soon enough.’
‘Your face girl, how did that happen?’
Finally she was home, her legs almost numb and her head too. Her mother was waiting for her, expecting to hear how well the boys looked as they walked off, wanting to know who had all been there. But Kirsty mumbled that she was tired and stumbled past, through to the bedroom. Mam came right in behind her.
‘Kirsty, are you alright?’
‘I’m just tired Mam, I’m so tired.’
‘You’ve been trying to do too much,’ Mam chided. ‘You should never have gone so far. Will I send your brother for the doctor?’
With the last of her energy, Kirsty managed an emphatic ‘No!’ Mam helped her undress. She climbed between the sheets and sleep swept her away.
It took only an hour for him to come. For an hour she huddled in her bed, her sleep disturbed as her mind and body relived the trauma of what she had endured. She woke panting and sweating. This was no bad dream that would fade when she came to and she lay tossing from one side to another. Slowly her breathing calmed and her panic subsided.
She hadn’t fallen asleep again, but there was some sense of protection cocooned in the dark. Then she heard the scrape of the policeman’s boots on the stones of the path, the curt rap on the door and his authoritative voice greeting her mother and asking if she was home. Her heart began pounding again.
Constable John MacRae was well respected and liked. There was little crime to be solved. His role was more one of keeping the peace, the occasional row over the ownership of an animal or a piece of land, or more likely a drunk with a loud mouth and aggressive manner. He lived near the church and his children went to the village school. There was a delicate line between being a member of the community and his position as official arbitrator. It was a help that he was not local so he was not immersed in some of the family tensions that developed over the years. Nonetheless, he was from the islands and had an understanding of the people and their ways. He tried to settle disputes without resorting to the court in the town. He had lived here for five years and what he had been told of the previous night’s incident made it potentially the most serious problem he’d faced.
Old Peggy had been at his door that morning. A girl had been injured at the Road Dance, she’d told him, and what else could be expected when such debauchery was allowed? She said she didn’t know what had happened and it was none of her business anyway, but the girl had spent the night at Dr MacLean’s, and that couldn’t be right. Old Peggy had just thought he ought to know.
MacRae couldn’t pretend to like the old woman, but she was a useful source of information and he had often been able to defuse a problem before it had come to anything because of snippets she had told him.
He had spoken to Dr MacLean and had been surprised by the doctor’s reticence. The two men had dealings with each other from time to time and had a cordial enough relationship. But the doctor had been defensive, apparently surprised to see him and telling him that there was really nothing the police need get involved in. From what he could glean, though, Kirsty’s injuries were more than might have been expected from a fall. John MacRae was curious.
‘Kirsty,’ her mother said urgently. ‘Constable MacRae is here to see you.’
Kirsty lay curled, hugging the sheets between her legs and chest. Her breathing suggested that she was awake and as her mother grew accustomed to the dark she could see the glint of her daughter’s eyes. Her instinct was to hold her daughter, to cradle her through her suffering. But the police were at the house and the police were authority and that could not be questioned.
‘Constable MacRae just wants to ask you about your fall,’ she said. ‘Why don’t you come out and see him?’
Kirsty lay without moving. She did not know what he would ask, she did not know what he knew. Her mother had accepted the story that she had fallen and banged her head. There had been no reason for her to think otherwise.
‘Tell him to come through,’ she murmured.
Her mother left her, pausing only to pull open the single curtain strung across the small skylight cut into the thatched roof. Moments later she heard the metal studs of the policeman’s boots clattering on the stone floor of the house. The wooden door that separated the sleeping quarters from the living room scraped open and there he stood. He seemed to fill the room. Kirsty pulled herself into a sitting position, her back against the wall and the sheets pulled up to her neck. It was an involuntary, defensive movement and PC MacRae saw it. His curiosity grew. He knew Kirsty as a bright, friendly girl. Why was she so scared?
‘Hello Kirsty. How are you feeling?’
There was a long pause, too long a pause for an innocuous question.
‘Better, thank you.’
‘Your mother tells me you were seeing the lads away. Let’s hope they’ll be back soon.’
She nodded her head slightly.
‘Dr MacLean seems to think you should have stayed in your bed.’
This time there was no pause, and a sharpness in her voice.
‘What did he say to you?’
‘Nothing, Kirsty, nothing. He just told me you’d got a bang on the head and he thought you’d been concussed and he’d have been happier if you’d stayed at home.’
‘It’s a bang on the head, that’s all. I wanted to see the boys off.’
‘Uh huh.’
The silence returned. The policeman gazed steadily at the girl and she stared back at him before dropping her head slightly and glancing about the floor.
‘That was all, Kirsty? You fell and hit your head off the rock? No one was chasing you or carrying on?’
‘No,’ she said, almost irritably. ‘There was no one near me.’
‘If there is anything more, Kirsty, you should tell me. If someone did this to you, tell me.’
‘There’s nothing more to tell,’ she said with all the force she had left.
‘Okay, Kirsty. I’ll leave you be. If you think of anything else you want to say, you know where I am.’
She didn’t look at him as he stood up. The figure sitting on the chair with his hat off, talking gently to her, and looking at her kindly might have teased more from her over a longer period of time. But now that he stood, so tall, he was once again authority and the tenderness he had shown her as he sat speaking to her was lost. The policeman observed that she was still not looking at him. He knew she was lying, but without her co-operation he could do nothing. Who was she protecting? As he stooped to go through the doorway into the living room, he spoke over his shoulder.
‘I hope I don’t hear of anyone else having an accident like this, Kirsty.’
He instantly disliked himself. The girl was wounded and sore and that must have sounded like a threat. She did not deserve that.
Behind the closed door, Kirsty remained hunched in her bed, sobbing silently, all defiance exhausted.
Her gloom only lifted when the photograph came. The letter was addressed to her, the first she’d ever had in her life. She knew it was from Murdo, although she had never seen his handwriting before; that momentary thought of how little she knew of her love made her sniff back a tear. The writing was a flowing script. The envelope was thicker than any other she had seen delivered to the house. Annie and her mother stood watching her expectantly. Normally mail was addressed to her father and the family would watch as he carefully slit the envelope open with a knife and read through the contents slowly and silently before sharing the news with them. But Kirsty wanted to be on her own. She could already feel her heart racing and she did not know how she would react when she started to read Murdo’s words. She went outside, round the end of the house. Annie tried to follow, but Mam understood and kept her back.
The postmark showed the letter had been sent from Glasgow. He was already so far away. She slit the corner with the edge of a cracked seashell that had been dropped by a passing gull, thrust her finger inside and along the crease, anxious to open it as delicately as she could. Four sheets of paper were folded neatly in half and as she slipped them out of the envelope she could feel something hard inside them. The unexpected sight of his face made her heart turn over.
The sepia print was on a stiff cardboard postcard. There he stood uniformed, upright and somehow different. There was a solemnity about him that she did not recognise. Some might have thought it was pride, but she knew he did not want to be where he was wearing what he was. His tunic was buttoned to his neck and she worried that it might chafe him. She had never seen him wear a kilt and the plain khaki apron over the one he wore in the picture took the life away from it. He held his cap in one hand, the other resting on the back of a stout, wooden chair. His mouth was set firm and his hair combed tight. She’d known him those few days as a man who could bring the world to life through his words and laughter, a man whose wavy hair was tossed by the wind. The photograph did not show such a man, but it was unmistakeably his features and she knew she would treasure it and keep it with her to feel closer to him. The back of the card was split into two sections, one for correspondence and one for an address. A line of small print separated them, giving the name of the photographer in Glasgow where the picture had been taken. He had written on the back, ‘To my love and my future.’ She kissed his image, careful that her tears did not stain it.
‘My Darling,’ the letter began. ‘My Darling’. He didn’t use her name because he didn’t need to; she was his darling, his one and his only, and through her tears that brought joy to her.
My Darling,
I miss you so much already. I have been away not one month yet, but each day I miss you more and I wonder how long I can go without seeing you again. They say we’ll be back by Christmas and that cheers the other lads because they think it is not so long. I think it has been too long already and waiting for Christmas fills me with dread. I feel as if I had just begun to live and it was taken away from me so soon. I want to live again and it is you who breathes life into me. I will just have to be strong.
How are you? I was so worried after you hurt your head, but the doctor told me you would be fine. It was a dreadful thing to happen, but I hope you have got over it.
We are in Glasgow on our way to a camp in the South. From there we will be crossing the water to whatever fate awaits us. The lads are excited about it. They want to get at the Germans with their bayonets. I don’t ask them why. I don’t think they would even know.
I hope you like the photograph. I have sent one to my mother also. I have never seen myself like that before because I have never had my photograph taken. It is a strange experience. I am sure there will be a lot of new experiences over the next few months.
There is a good crowd of lads with me, including the boys who left the village with me. Iain a’ Bhuth is saying that the army is such a good life that even when it is all over he will be staying on to become a regular. I think having us all together has helped us settle in, although there is not much chance to settle anywhere because we are being moved on so quickly. For some of the boys it is not quickly enough. It is hard work and we are training all the time and although it helps the time to pass you are never far from my mind.
One of the boys has been writing a song about home. Calum Morrison has shown me some of the verses and it is a beautiful song. He is missing home as much as me and his words are full of praise for the island and the village. I miss home, but not the land, as he does. I miss the people and I miss you more than anyone.
I don’t want to finish writing this because there has been so much I wanted to say and to tell you. I feel as if each time I put pencil to paper I am speaking to you and I can see you listening to me and for a few moments I am back with you.
Alas, my darling, I must send this letter off now. We are moving on again. My next letter might come from France and how fancy that will be.
With all my love,
Murdo.
Kirsty pored over his words, oblivious to everything around her. She read each paragraph over again and could almost hear his voice. She was torn between joy and desolation. He had told her she was the breath of his life, that she was his ‘darling’. She had his photograph to carry with her and to look at when the loneliness became too much. However the letter also told her how melancholy her love was and while that reassured her in a way she did not like, it compounded her own despondency. Tenderly she kissed his image once again and lost herself in melancholy longing, for how long she did not know.