FOR TWO MONTHS she did not bleed. It had been the first time since that frightening but ultimately thrilling day when her mother told her she was no longer a girl, but a young woman.
Kirsty told herself that it was because of the shock. She tried to keep it from her mind and sometimes if she was busy or involved, she could forget. But always the uncertainty came back to her and she felt her heart and stomach mash together. Each morning in the days before she was due to menstruate she would sleep fitfully and waken feeling tense because no blood had come. She tried to convince herself that it was the worry that was upsetting her system.
The only real relief was the further letters from Murdo. Each one a thrill, each one replenishing her with his words and his love. As soon as she finished one, she longed for another, wanting to know so much of what he was doing. The only way she could be part of it was to read them over and over again. Each night she kissed his image. Every time she received a letter she sat that night to write him one by return, reciprocating his love. She wrote so freely. What she could say on paper was more than she would be able to say when they were actually together. She told him what was happening in the village and any stories she heard from those over in America. She took to knitting, and Mam did too, sending him socks and mittens. She and Annie talked of going to town to get a photograph taken to send to him. The letters were so good for her, lightening her spirits for a while and making her feel close to him. But always reality would settle upon her once more.
The third month she knew. Days after she had expected the blood to start, there was still none. Her body was changing: her breasts increasingly tender and a tightness in her lower abdomen. She knew now that it had not been nerves that had made her sick on those two or three occasions. Kirsty was expecting her rapist’s baby.
The awful import of what was growing inside her pushed her into a darkness in her soul, to a place she had never been before. She did not know that she had fallen there. She was in a constant panic, she could not eat, could not converse. Her mind was gnawed by this awful truth. Her fear was dragging her into the darker quarters of her being, pits in her psyche that she did not even know were there. All she was conscious of was agitation and dread. This was no open sore that could be balmed. This was a growth within, a tumour that would destroy her life as surely as if it was a cancer.
For days she endured this anguish. She told her concerned mother that she was having a difficult time of the month and Mam had accepted that readily. The bruises from the attack had faded from sight and from the front of Mam’s mind. She made no connection. Slowly, Kirsty appeared to emerge from the gloom and she did so on the back of the realisation that she had to. She saw that it was not the baby growing inside her that would ruin her, but people’s knowledge of it. If they did not know, they would have no reason to treat her any differently. That would give her time, to do what, she did not know, but at least she could think.
People still saw the same Kirsty. They saw no change; they did not hear a baby squealing beneath her skirt, there were no tiny hands jerkily grasping at the air, there was no swaddled figure suckling from her. There was not even a swelling. Then they would notice. That would have them pointing and condemning. But, on the outside at least, Kirsty was the same as ever, physically at least: the tall, slim girl with the flashing eyes and untamed mane of hair. Those who were close to her may have noticed a slipping of spirit, but she had a ready answer.
‘Are you alright Kirsty?’ Annie had asked one night as they lay in bed. Annie was disturbed by her sister’s restlessness.
‘Yes.’
‘You’ve not been yourself. You’ve been so down.’
‘I’m fine,’ Kirsty said, forcing a smile into her voice.
Kirsty had thought long and hard about this situation and had known that the first person she would have to talk to would be Annie. They had always been close, despite being very different both in personality and in appearance. Kirsty was vivacious where Annie was withdrawn and sensible, the sort of girl of whom Old Peggy approved. She was always a steadying influence for Kirsty. Annie did not resent her sister’s good looks or popularity with the boys, indeed, she was occasionally embarrassed for Kirsty if she felt she was being too flighty. They cared for each other and they looked after each other and shared everything. But Kirsty could not bring herself to tell Annie what she was struggling so hard to accept herself.
‘I miss Murdo,’ she told her sister. ‘I know I haven’t told you much about it. I suppose I was scared that you would tell me I was letting myself go too quickly. I think I love him. No, I know that I love him. It’s the first time I’ve ever felt like this, Annie. But he’s been taken away from me and I’m left feeling empty.’
Annie lay, listening intently. She knew that Murdo and Kirsty were courting, but this depth of feeling was unexpected. And Kirsty spoke on, in a calculated attempt to deceive her sister, the one person in whom she had always had faith and trust. But faith and trust were strangers to her now because she felt betrayed by them.
‘There’s something else, Annie,’ she whispered, conscious of her sister tensing beside her.
‘We were planning to go to America.’
She felt Annie‘s head twist round to face her.
‘America!’
‘Yes. We had it all planned. Murdo has saved some money and we were going to stay with his uncle in New York.’
‘New York!’
‘Shhh! You’ll waken Neil.’
‘New York,’ Annie repeated in an urgent whisper.
‘Yes. Murdo was going to get a job with his uncle. I was going to get a job somewhere and we were going to stay there.’
‘Oh, Kirsty!’
‘I know, I know. But now he’s away at the war and I might never see him again. I just miss him so much.’
Kirsty began weeping. Annie turned to her and put an arm on her shoulder.
‘He’ll be fine. They’re saying they’ll be home by Christmas. And maybe it’s not such a bad thing that he’s away. It’d be a big thing to leave home and it’s better that you really think all this through. Maybe the war is God’s way of giving you time to be sure that it’s what you want to do.’
Kirsty’s weeping was not an act. As she spoke she saw her hopes before her again in all their glory and she was back with Murdo on the croft, basking in the glow of the setting sun. Bitterly, but silently, she was scornful of her sister’s suggestion that the war was part of God’s scheme. She loved her sister and knew she had been trying to comfort her, but the absurdity of the notion exasperated her. Then almost immediately she felt guilty at feeling so dismissive of someone whose only motive had been compassion.
The two women, so close by blood and yet so disparate in mind, lay side by side, the arm of one wrapped around the other, trying to offer comfort, but in the knowledge that she was doing so in vain and could do no more.
The Post Office, ever busy, was the feeding point for news from the Front. The latest despatches would be written on a telegram and put in the window. Simply dated and titled ‘Official War News’, the postman’s neat writing detailed every barrage, every costly retreat, as intimated by the War Office. In the early weeks of the war it had seemed as if the British troops were always retreating. The word ‘losses’ meant little then, but in the months and years to come they would cause a heaviness in the heart. Place-names from far away became part of everyday conversation: some easily and uniformly pronounced, others repeated in various ways, but understood every time. Mons, Verdun, Ypres, Loos, Neuve Chappelle became part of the village dialogue, little towns in Belgium and Northern France at the centre of the maelstrom that was engulfing all their lives, even here on the edge of the world.
OFFICIAL WAR NEWS
FIGHTING AT THE RIVER MARNE. GERMANS DRIVEN BACK TO AISNE. FOUR TRAWLERS LOST IN NORTH SEA TO ENEMY MINES. EASTERN FRONT, RUSSIANS DEFEATED AT TANNEBERG. PETROGRAD ACKNOWLEDGES ‘SEVERE LOSSES’.
These staccato reports were a tenuous, impersonal link they had with their loved ones. The letters from the front came through irregularly, sometimes two or three arriving together. There could never be any knowing the grim reality behind the bald facts, not until after the soft young men had aged and hardened in spirit and soul and returned from the killing for the last time. The sparse, formal lines in the Post Office window said nothing and when the lads wrote home they said nothing either, not only because of the official censorship; they censored themselves. What good would it be to tell their mothers and fathers of the hell they were in? The church warned of eternal damnation for the unbelievers, but they believed, and what could be worse than the deaths they saw. No sad passing on a deathbed here, with death gently holding the breath and guiding it away. Here death leapt upon you and thrust its grasping fingers deep into your chest, ripping, tearing and gouging the life from you. This was no walk in death’s dark vale; this desperate dodging of death through the sucking, gorging mud. Here you doubted that God was with you. How could they tell their people that? They sought solace among their comrades and tried to be strong for their loved ones.
Autumn chilled into the wind and the grey and the wet of winter. Each day Kirsty would walk the mile or so to the Post Office, which was housed in a cramped extension to the postman’s own home. It could be several days before the message was changed, but when it did Kirsty wanted to see it and feel closer to her Murdo. Even if there was no message there was still the possibility of a letter from Murdo. Peter the Post would see her approaching and would have any letter ready for her.
‘The boys are moving north now,’ he would say. ‘They’re not far from the coast. Once they’re back at the coast it’s just a boat ride home.’
There was no sense of defeat in the news that the lads were retreating. As stories spread of large numbers being killed, there was just a strong desire to have the boys home.
There came more stories of men dying and boats being sunk, with hundreds being lost. The initial excitement felt about the war began to dissipate. Life on the crofts was constant work and whilst thoughts were with those away from home, the work had to continue. It was a life dictated by the weather and when the sun shone you made the most of it. There was little time to dwell on uncertainty. Women busied themselves responding to Queen Mary’s call for three hundred thousand pairs of socks to be knitted for the troops.
Iain Ban came to see her. He came right up to the door and asked if he could see her. Mam had invited him in, but when he saw that Annie, Neil and her father were also at home, he asked Kirsty if he could speak to her alone. Reluctantly she had walked out with him. They had not spoken to each other since the night of the Road Dance. It was only at the church that they ever came across each other, and there he avoided even looking at her. She had become used to that behaviour and, if truth be told, it was a complication less in her life. Now he was here. Outside the door he began heading towards the shore.
‘What is it, Iain?’
‘I want to talk to you alone. There are things I need to say.’
She stopped.
‘Iain. Nothing’s changed. What is there to say?’
He turned and beckoned her towards him.
‘Please Kirsty, just come with me. Listen to me. Please.’
She walked towards him uncertainly.
‘Kirsty, I’ve joined up. I’m going off to the war.’
He let her absorb his news.
‘Well, good, Iain, if that’s what you want to do.’
‘I’ve had time to think Kirsty. What I said to you at the dance was unfair, I know that. I shouldn’t have said it. I suppose I was hurt at seeing you and Murdo. I’d always thought that it’d be you and me. And I know you never said it, but I just thought that’s how it would be. It’s how I dreamed it would always be. I spent all my time getting the new house built, and I lost sight of you. That’s my fault, and I’m sorry for it.’
They were standing on the rim of the bay, the rocks and pebbles falling before them down to the shoreline. Iain stood looking back up the track to the village, facing her, his back to the sea.
‘You’ve nothing to be sorry for, Iain.’
‘There is. I was so angry at you, Kirsty and I thought bad things. I’ve tortured myself over you.’
He had picked up two small stones and was playing them through his fingers. She watched him intently, wondering what he was leading up to.
‘I’ve thought that maybe if I’d made an effort, things would be different between us.’
He waited for her to speak, tumbling the stones in his hand, his blonde hair blowing over his forehead. He was unable to look straight at her. He could not bear the rejection he might find there. Kirsty knew she would see hurt in his eyes and she looked out to the horizon so she might avoid it.
‘Don’t torture yourself, Iain. It wouldn’t have made any difference. I don’t understand how these things are, but you can’t choose the people you fall in love with.’
‘I don’t believe that. You can be made to love someone. They can make you love them. If they show love to you, it is difficult not to give it back. That’s the mistake I made. Murdo is not the man for you, he just got there first.’
‘I don’t want to hear this, Iain, I’ve told you that before.’
‘That’s not why I brought you here. It’s not what I wanted to say, but it’s true.’
‘I need to get back,’ said Kirsty impatiently.
‘I just wanted to tell you that I’m going and that I’m sorry.’
‘Iain, there’s nothing to be sorry for.’
Kirsty started to make her way away from the shore. He looked so dejected she felt a wave of sympathy for him.
‘Come on, Iain. Walk back up with me.’
He cast the stones aside and strode after her.
‘What will you do with the house while you’re away?’ she asked.
‘I don’t care about the house,’ he said. ‘It’s of no interest to me anymore.’
She turned to look at his downcast face.
‘You take care, Iain Ban,’ she said kindly.
He touched her arm.
‘Think well of me, Kirsty.’
Then he was gone. As she watched him walk away up the road, she worried for him and the gloom around him. She wondered whether she would ever see him again. Then she shivered and went back into the house.
Calum Morrison was on the roof of his house, renewing the thatch, spreading straw over the clods of heather turf that sat on the roof timbers. An old fishing net lay at one end ready to be spread over the straw to keep it in place. It was hard work and usually a job for two men and more. But today Calum worked alone.
Peter the Post was cycling to the house. He had a bad feeling. Over the years he had become familiar with the mail; the postmarks from far-flung places, the unbending envelope that told of a photograph inside, the typewritten address that always indicated official business. He knew the village and the people and he knew more than most about what was happening in their lives. He never liked telegrams. Telegrams either carried news of the birth of a grandchild away in the city, or they told of death. Peter knew that the Morrisons were not expecting a new generation to be added to their family just yet. Calum was their eldest and he was at the war. He had been anxious ever since that day six months ago when he’d taken the batches of buff envelopes round the district calling the young lads to battle. The telegram had been brought over from town that lunchtime, and as soon as he saw it Peter had felt cold.
He made straight for the Morrisons’ house. However much he did not want to be the bearer of bad news, that was his duty. Delay would not spare them. He tried to calm himself into believing that it was really nothing serious, but it was a telegram and what else could it say?
He pedalled quickly and a few folk noticed that Peter was in such a hurry he didn’t have time for his usual chat. There was warmth in the early spring sunshine and he began to perspire beneath his Royal Mail cap. From about four hundred yards away he could see Calum working away on the thatch. He was a good man, Calum, quiet and dependable. Some years previously he had suffered severe injuries when a fishing smack struck the pier as the boats were being tied up in preparation for an incoming storm, jamming Calum between the boat and the stone of the pier and damaging his left shoulder and hip. He had been bedridden for weeks, a difficult predicament for a man with a young family to support. The community had come together to help but it was too much for a proud man to rely on charity. He did not look down on those who needed community support, but he had felt demeaned while he had to rely on it himself. He had recovered and resumed an independent life. But Peter the Post could see now that Calum was ageing, was stiffer moving about the roof, was slower lifting the thatch from the ground.
‘Hello Calum. How are you doing?’ said Peter, more brightly than he felt.
Calum looked down, wiping the sweat from his head with his forearm.
‘Ah, good Peter, good. And yourself?’
‘Aye, fine, fine. That’s a power of work you’re doing.’
‘Ach well, Peter, it’s taking me a bit longer y’know, but it still needs doing. Young Calum was helping me last year and we got it down quickly.’
He began to come down from the wall of the blackhouse, more glad of the break than he would care to admit.
‘So have you got anything for us there?’
‘Aye Calum, I do.’
The postman reached into his bag and lifted out the envelope.
‘This came over from town,’ he said handing the small brown telegram to Calum.
‘Oh! What can this be? Are they wanting the girls to go and fight now eh?’ He walked to the doorway and called to his wife.
‘Morag, bring me my glasses.’ He looked at Peter and winked with a smile. ‘We’ve got a telegram.’
Peter remained rooted where he was, gripping the handlebars and saddle of his bike, the weight of doom holding him where he was. He did not know what was in that envelope, but everything told him that it was bad, very bad. He heard Calum’s wife coming through the house. He had never seen Morag Morrison without a good-natured smile on her face.
‘What’s all this fuss you’re making?’ she admonished her husband. ‘Hello Peter, and how are you? What d’you make of this fool shouting to all that the King has written us? Now what’s this you’re talking about, you clown?’
Calum ripped it open and pulled the wire-rimmed glasses over one ear, across the bridge of his nose and over the other ear, blinking his eyes to focus. He held the telegram at arm’s length and leaned back, his top lip stretching as he peered. Peter the Post delivered many telegrams after that, too many, and he never again stood to watch them being opened.
‘And how’s Marion?’ asked Morag. ‘I was speaking to her at the church last Sabbath and she was saying that her hip was sore.’
Peter wasn’t listening. He was staring at Calum as he slowly read, painstakingly mouthing words of a language that was not his first tongue.
‘Maybe it’ll be better with the dry weather,’ went on Morag.
Calum was blinking no more, his eyes were staring hard at the paper and he’d stopped breathing.
‘Oh it’s painful, is the rheumatism,’ continued Morag.
Suddenly Calum slumped back against the wall of the house.
‘Oh dear Lord!’ he groaned.
‘Calum! What? What is it?’ In that same instant Morag knew. ‘Oh no, not Calum, not my baby.’
She grasped the letter from him, but the English meant nothing to her. She could read the Bible in the Gaelic, but for her English was a language of a few isolated words. These thin strips of ticker-tape stuck to the telegram sheet were indecipherable to her, but she knew their meaning as clearly as if her son had fallen in front of her.
‘Oh not Calum.’ She crouched to the ground, her head slowly lifting back, her mouth twisting in an agony beyond sound.
Peter clamped his lips together to stop himself sobbing aloud. Everything stilled and the three formed a tableau of total desolation, the bereft couple unable to reach beyond their own wretchedness to comfort each other. The casual slaughter of a young man in a fleeting moment of battle had its full resonance here in a faraway, peaceful village where it shattered a mother’s heart like no shell ever could.
The mother’s wailing followed Peter as he walked back home, wheeling his bike beside him. Peter’s face was set grim and he cast his eyes unblinking to the road. Those who saw him knew the news had been bad.
From that day on, Peter the Post never delivered a telegram other than with his regular mail. The sight of him cycling through the village with his hat on in the afternoon would have meant only one thing. Even as it was, everyone knew some home might be torn asunder by the envelope he carried. They might breathe easy once passed them by, and then feel guilt because that meant someone else would be in mourning soon. Peter hated his role. He almost began to hate himself. He became as feared as the Grim Reaper himself. The prospect of delivering a telegram filled him with an implacable dread. He would make his leaden way to a home wakening in the morning light, knowing that he would be leaving it in a deep, deep darkness.
Kirsty shuddered when she heard of the death of Calum, the songster Murdo had told her had written a paean to the village and land he loved and to which he would now never return. She had known Calum all her days and was shocked by his death. His passing drove home the harsh realisation that Murdo, too, may never return. She had wept often at the thought that he might not, but now her tears dried up. This was the cold realisation that her beloved Murdo could die.
Life was delivering a series of brutal truths. Christmas had passed, and the war should have ended and brought Murdo back to her. But it had not. As the time trudged forward, Kirsty felt the baby within her grow and move. That first fluttering had not brought a maternal thrill, but was fuel to her fear and forced her to confront again that she was trapped and that the physical release of childbirth would offer no escape. Her height still allowed her to disguise her pregnancy, but that surely could not last long. Annie must notice. They slept in the same bed. How long could Annie fail to see her sister’s swelling belly? Sleep, once a deep rest for Kirsty, became fitful. She found herself waking in the very early hours, turbulence in her head and anxiety in her heart. She would worry about Murdo, she would check that she was turned away from Annie. If her sister’s arm should stray onto her in her sleep, she would move it away. Annie hadn’t noticed because she was not looking and because any small changes in Kirsty were so gradual that she didn’t see them as changes at all, but there would soon come a time when there could be no hiding at all.
And now death had taken one of the village boys and the naïve excitement of the late summer of the previous year was gone. The longer it dragged on the more would die. Murdo‘s latest letter from the Front told her that he was feeling the same way. This letter was different, devoid of optimism and making no attempt at cheerfulness. Its tone was bleak and sour. She was not the only one confronting harsh realities.
My Darling,
I hope you are well and your mother, father and family also.
Things are desolate for us just now. I’m sure you will already have heard what happened to Calum. Dear Calum with his songs and his poetry. His words made us think fondly of home and his singing was a great comfort to us. His passing makes us ever more aware of what fate could await us.
We had been waiting all day to attack, but for some reason it was nearly dark before we went. I can’t tell you what that does to your mind. You think you are prepared for what is to come and then there is a delay. You try not to let doubt eat at you, but of course it does. For most of us it was our first taste of real battle. There have been skirmishes but this was full-blooded war. I admit I was scared, we all were, but you are there with your comrades and you try to be strong for each other. You don’t want them to see you have the wind up.
You are never away from my mind, my love, but sometimes I am filled with a deep sadness. When I think of the times we had together I feel good, but then I think I might not see you again and I dread that. I know I have never said that to you before, my darling, but now I have seen what could be and we must steel ourselves for it. I had never heard of Neuve Chappelle and neither had Calum, but that is where he died. I have written to his parents, but what can I say? Truth is another victim of this awful affair.
There is little movement here now. The Germans and ourselves are dug in trenches stretching across the north of France into Belgium. No one knows what will happen now or what we’ll be doing. Forgive my gloom, my darling, but we are all so low. We lost other lads as well as Calum and it has made us all feel bad. However, if I keep thinking of you and what lies ahead for us together I will be fine.
Take care of yourself my love. I shall write again soon.
With all my love,
Murdo.
Kirsty folded the letter. It was the first she had not re-read immediately. It pulled her down even further. She knew that Murdo was desperately unhappy where he was, but he had always made the effort to make light of it in his letters home. This one was written under no such pretence. If he let such desolation show through, what did that say about what he truly felt?
The sea rolled gently against the shoreline. A fulmar petrel flew up into the sky before turning, as if shot, and dropping like a stone beneath the waves. Kirsty saw in that simple act a parallel with her own life: soaring so high, then plummeting down. At least the petrel had done so of its own choosing and may have a fish in its mouth as a reward. If Kirsty could believe that when she emerged back into the sweet air she too would be better off, then she could cope. But her mind was a tangle of doubt from which she couldn’t free herself.
She could never remember how the final weeks passed, how she stopped living a life and instead trudged through each day. She could not recall a single thought from those days. She did the work required of her, ate little, slept less and less. There was increasing discomfort from the sheet she had torn into strips and wrapped tightly around her. It reduced the swell, but breathing was difficult. Her mother told her she was filling out, but no one else noticed. She took to going to her bed before Annie and getting up before her, so that her sister would not see her undressed or in her night-clothes, but that was an instinctive ploy, not something that she rationally thought through.
Springtime was busy for the crofters with planting, peat cutting and lambing. Kirsty took full part, but by the end of the day she could not recall what she had been doing. Only one episode remained with her. One evening her father called her to the byre at the end of the house. A ewe was having trouble delivering its lamb.
‘Can you help me here, Kirsty?’ he asked in his matter-of-fact way. It was nothing she had not done before, but Kirsty began to tremble, hoping her father wouldn’t see as he busied himself with the sheep. She almost bolted, but stopped herself.
‘I think the cord is tangled round the lamb’s neck,’ her father said. ‘I’ll hold her and you pull out the head and see if you can loosen it.’
His daughter’s face was so pallid she looked as though she was about to pass out, but his back was to her as she pressed her hand against the cold stone wall to steady herself. The sheep was writhing and groaning with a deep-throated rattle. Its eyes bulged.
‘Come on, come on,’ her father urged. ‘We can’t lose this one.’
Kirsty knelt beside the animal. The lamb’s head was already protruding, but while normally the rest of its body would have slid out quickly, it seemed to be stuck fast. The skin of its mother was stretched tight. Kirsty stared in horror.
‘Come on! Hurry up!’
Kirsty cleared the mucus from the lamb’s nose and mouth and it bleated pathetically. This made the ewe thrash her legs in panic. Kirsty’s father edged round to use his side to hold her still. Kirsty then began working her fingers into the birth canal and felt the umbilical cord coiled round the lamb’s throat. It wasn’t so tight that she couldn’t slip her fingers underneath it, but it was constricting more with every squirm of the mother.
‘Can it come out?’ her father asked urgently.
Kirsty didn’t answer. Her hands were now both inserted in the sheep almost up to the knuckles and the flesh would split were she to push any further. She saw her father’s eyes looking over his shoulder at her, his mouth hidden by his shoulder. He was looking anxiously at her, glancing sharply at the head of the lamb, and back to her. She couldn’t see the sheep’s head, but she could hear it snort and feel it jerk. The lamb’s head was so black and slippery in her hands and there was urgency in the air. The atmosphere closed in around her; the panting of her father, the rasping of the ewe, the heat in the byre, the warm smells of unfamiliar fluids and somewhere she the screaming of a baby and she saw herself standing above herself pulling a baby’s head from her body.
‘What’s the matter? Pull it out!’ she heard her father shout.
She breathed in deeply, closed her eyes and pulled at the head of the lamb. She could feel the neck stretch, the sheep kick and then the lamb slipped out of from the warmth of its mother and flopped, steaming, in a slimy heap of vernix. The placenta followed in moments, along with the rest of the cord.
Kirsty’s father released the ewe, which heaved itself onto its legs and immediately went to its newborn. Kirsty walked slowly out of the byre and back up to the house. Her father watched her go before setting about cleaning the lamb. The following day he was involved in organising the fishing and the incident was gone from his mind.
The experience had traumatised Kirsty, who crept into her bed and lay there shuddering. This was what lay ahead of her. Now the certainty of what she must endure within days had been shown to her in all its gore. And she would have to bear it alone.
In the days that followed she confronted the lambing again and again. Her father and brother left for the fishing and on the Western Front Murdo and his comrades first heard of Aubers Ridge.
Before the month was out, Peter the Post held more telegrams his hand.