The Skylark's Secret Read online

  At last everything was ready and a big pan of potatoes was simmering on the stove. Mrs Carmichael summoned the women of the Rural for a final briefing.

  ‘Right, ladies, are we clear? Each child is to be given a bowl of soup, and then once they’ve finished that you two will be serving the mince and tatties. One large spoonful of each, in the bowls they’ve used for their soup. Margaret, you can bring round the cups of milk and the bread and butter. Only one slice each, remember, or we’ll run out. Marjorie and Jean, you’ll be handing out the Red Cross parcels to the host parents. Here’s the list: two tins of milk, one of those tins of corned beef, one bar of chocolate and two packets of biscuits per child. That should help see them through until we can sort out their ration books. I’ll be at the table by the door, directing operations and making sure the right families end up with the right children. Girls’ – she beckoned to Flora, Mairi and Bridie – ‘you come and stand beside me. No doubt it will be chaos when they arrive and I’ll need you as my runners. You can help wash their hands and faces, too. Heaven only knows what sort of a state they’ll have been sent to us in.’

  The flow of commands was interrupted suddenly by a loud crash from outside the hall.

  ‘What on earth . . . ?’ Mrs Carmichael bustled out of the door, followed by the rest of the Rural ladies.

  At the back of the hall, a troop of soldiers were unloading sheets of corrugated iron from the back of a lorry.

  ‘Sergeant, what do you think you’re doing? Don’t you know we’re expecting a busload of children to arrive any minute?’

  ‘Sorry, ma’am, just following orders.’ The sergeant grinned cheerily at Mrs Carmichael, not the slightest bit cowed.

  ‘Well, why are you dumping all this metal here? You have a whole camp along at Mellon Charles. Don’t you have better places to store it there?’

  ‘It’s not being stored, ma’am. It’s for the new extension. To the hall.’

  ‘Extension? I haven’t been told anything about an extension! Who gave you these orders?’

  ‘The camp commander, ma’am. Her Majesty’s navy has designated this ’ere ’arbour Port A. For the Fleet. Assembly point and what not.’ He waved a hand in the direction of the loch, where the number of ships had continued to increase on a daily basis.

  ‘Well, honestly! Someone might have said. We’re about to house thirty children from Clydeside and now Loch Ewe will become just as much of a target for enemy bombs. You can’t just go designating places as ports willy-nilly. People live here, you know.’

  ‘I understand that, ma’am. But you’ll have to take it up with Mr Churchill. He’s the one what’s done the designating.’

  There was silence for a moment as Moira Carmichael thought carefully about taking on the First Lord of the Admiralty.

  She sighed heavily. ‘Very well then, what must be must be. We’ll just have to make the best of it, I suppose. After all, there is a war on.’

  The sergeant saluted and turned back to his men. ‘Right, lads, look sharp. Let’s get these materials unloaded before the kiddies arrive.’

  Mrs Carmichael turned on her heel and flapped her hands to usher the ladies of the Rural back inside. But she relented enough to say to Flora, Mairi and Bridie, ‘While we’re waiting for the bus, you might as well make a tray of tea and take it out to them. I expect they’d appreciate a cup once they’ve finished the job.’

  As Bridie set tin mugs out on a tray, she speculated about the extension to the hall. ‘You know what this means, don’t you? There’ll be lots more soldiers and sailors. There might be dances. Imagine!’

  ‘Bridie Macdonald!’ Bridie jumped, clattering the cups, as the strident tones boomed across the hall. ‘A little less imagining and a lot more concentrating would do you no harm,’ Mrs Carmichael declared from her station at the door.

  ‘Golly, you were right, Flora,’ Bridie whispered. ‘She really does have the hearing of a wildcat!’

  The bus pulled up in front of the village hall two hours later, disgorging its weary, travel-sick cargo. The winding roads had taken their toll. The driver and the women who’d volunteered to accompany the children to their destination clambered out first, taking thankful breaths of the fresh West Coast air. It had been a long day, involving an early start followed by seemingly unending hours spent incarcerated in the wet-wool-and-vomit-tinged reek that was the inevitable consequence of transporting thirty children, already on edge with nerves and excitement, over the hills and around the sea lochs fringing the jagged coastline.

  Mrs Carmichael clapped her hands. ‘To your stations, ladies!’ She then hurried forward with her clipboard to direct the children into the hall, checking the brown labels pinned to their coats and ticking off their names as they filed through the door. Her nostrils flared as she bent closer. ‘Flora! Mairi! Bridie!’ she called. ‘Take the children and wash their hands and faces before they sit down, please. You’ll need to use some of the hot water. And don’t spare the soap!’

  Flora smiled at two small boys as she led them to the sink. The elder one looked about eight, but the younger of the two was scarcely more than a baby – no more than three or four years old, she guessed. Their hair straggled in unkempt wisps over their ears and their knees were chapped and bruised where they protruded from beneath short trousers that were shiny with wear. She helped them push up the frayed cuffs of their coats and then dabble their hands in the basin of warm soapy water. With a flannel, she wiped the crusts from their eyes and noses, gently drying their hands and faces with a towel, trying not to rub the sore-looking, reddened skin where chilblains had nipped their fingers. She did her best to clean up the younger boy’s coat, which bore the evidence of the effect the west coast roads must have had on his stomach.

  ‘There you go. Good as new. Now, come and let’s find you a seat at the table and get you something to eat.’

  ‘Please, miss,’ the larger of the two said, ‘are you going to be our new mammy?’

  Flora’s heart swelled with compassion for the two wee scraps. She shook her head. ‘I’m afraid it’s not me that you’re coming home with,’ she said. ‘It’ll be one of the other ladies. There’s no room in our cottage.’ She stooped to read the names on their labels. ‘Stuart. And David. The two of you will be just fine, don’t you worry. Now, sit yourselves down here and we’ll bring you a bowl of soup and some mince and tatties. You must be hungry after your long journey. Then the lady who’s going to be looking after you will come and find you and take you to your new home.’

  She hurried off to help with the next children in need of some freshening up. But as she worked, she was aware of the boys watching her, two pairs of round, grey-blue eyes peering over the rims of the cups of milk they’d been given.

  Once their hot meal had been consumed and the bowls scraped clean, the children began to leave in twos and threes, gathering up bags of belongings and boxes of rations, having been claimed by their host families. Mrs Carmichael continued to direct operations from the doorway until, at last, the hall was empty apart from the two little boys left sitting at the table. The younger of the two – David – had fallen asleep, propped against his brother’s shoulder, worn out by the long day’s journey from home to this strange new place. But as she finished drying up the cups and plates, Flora noticed that Stuart still maintained a wary eye on the proceedings in the hall as he watched over his little brother.

  At last, Moira Carmichael left her station at the door and bustled across to make sure everything had been put away properly. ‘All finished? Well done, girls.’

  ‘What about those two?’ Flora nodded discreetly towards the forlorn-looking pair at the table.

  ‘Don’t you worry about them,’ Mrs Carmichael said. For all her outward bluster, Flora knew she had a heart of gold and that a bedrock of kindness lurked beneath her bossiness. ‘Stuart and David are coming with me. You wouldn’t expect me not to do my duty, would you, with my own sons’ rooms to spare in the house? Right then, boys, pick up your t
hings. Let’s get you home.’

  Flora smiled encouragingly at the pair as they turned to look over their shoulders at her, following like a pair of bedraggled ducklings in Mrs Carmichael’s wake. With a cheery wave of her damp dish towel, she said, ‘Bye then, boys. I’ll see you around.’

  Stuart draped an arm protectively around his brother’s shoulder, ushering him on towards their first night in a strange bedroom in an unfamiliar house. And her heart swelled again with emotion as she remembered how Alec and Ruaridh used to do the exact same thing when they were young, on the football field or plotting their next adventure in the den among the trees: another pair of brothers-in-arms.

  Lexie, 1978

  On the days when the weather allows it, Daisy and I have got into the habit of walking down to the jetty. Or rather I walk and Daisy commands which direction to take from her perch in the baby carrier on my shoulders. There’s always plenty to see. She likes to check up on the sheep in the field behind the hall, leaning out of the carrier to peer behind the corrugated half-cylinder of the hall’s wartime extension and watch the flock diligently cropping the grass.

  ‘In the springtime, there’ll be lambs,’ I tell her.

  ‘Lat,’ she says, approvingly. Her speech really is coming on in leaps and bounds.

  When we first got here, I would walk with her on the more solitary path that leads from Keeper’s Cottage up through the pine trees to Ardtuath House. The ‘Big Hoose’, as it’s known locally, is shut up most of the time, only used very occasionally for shooting or fishing weekends. But there was something so bleak about the façade of the deserted house, with its forbidding, darkened windows and air of abandonment, that it made me want to seek out happier places to walk. My mood is low enough already without any additional dampeners. And so we’ve taken to heading towards the village, the risk of having to be sociable being a lesser evil than the risk of complete and utter despondency.

  We walk past the row of cottages, where we are usually accosted by someone weeding flowerbeds or trimming hedges in their front garden. Daisy enjoys the attention, even if I do not.

  I nod and smile, responding to the social niceties. ‘Yes, she’s getting bigger every day. Yes, thanks, we’ve settled in fine. I know, isn’t it a grand day for a walk?’ And all the time I’m hoping that my smile is doing a good job of hiding how desperately lonely I feel. While I know I should value these simple daily connections, to my mind they only serve to emphasise my feelings of being an outsider.

  Bridie Macdonald is almost always around. Sometimes she’s pottering in her garden, but occasionally she’s indoors and will rap on her window as we walk past, shooting out to join us, as she does today. ‘Good morning, Lexie. And Daisy – look at these rosy wee cheeks! It’s surely doing you both the world of good being up here in the fresh air. Much nicer for kiddies than a city, eh, Daisy? I was just about to pop to the shop for a pint of milk so I’ll chum you along the road. Wait there a moment while I get my purse.’

  Inwardly I sigh, knowing that our progress will be even slower as she questions me about all manner of things, from the state of Keeper’s Cottage to the whereabouts of Daisy’s father (boundaries being an unknown concept to Bridie Macdonald). And the inquisition will be interrupted at regular intervals as she stops to hail a neighbour and exchange snippets of local news. ‘Have you heard, Marjorie’s off for her operation next week? I know, it’s taken long enough to get a date. And apparently they’re fixing the road over at Poolewe. There’ll be all sorts of hold-ups, so leave time if you’re going that way. Has Euan got that boat of his back in the water? Oh, he’s off out in it today, is he? Is it scallops he’s after? Well, tell him I’ll take half a dozen if he has them. You know Lexie Gordon, don’t you? Yes, she’s come home – back where she belongs at last. And this is wee Daisy – isn’t she gorgeous!’

  There’s something proprietorial in the way Bridie says all this. I feel myself bristling slightly and have to remind myself that she was one of Mum’s oldest friends and has always been a lynchpin of the community. It’s only natural, and she means well. Behind my smile, my defences are well and truly up, though: the emotional brick wall that I use to keep people out.

  We amble onwards, along the road that winds its way beside the loch.

  ‘So, Lexie, will Daisy’s daddy be joining you here soon?’

  ‘No,’ I reply. ‘His work keeps him in London.’ At least I can say that in all honesty.

  ‘Och, that’s a shame. You’ll be missing him.’ Her eyes dart again to the third finger of my left hand, which is very obviously lacking any sign of a ring – engagement, wedding or otherwise.

  I decide I might as well come clean. At least then it’ll put an end to Bridie’s questions. ‘Actually, we’re not together any more. He turned out not to be the paternal type. We split up before Daisy was even born.’

  We walk on for about ten paces while Bridie digests this. I’m bracing myself for more questions, but in the end all she says is, ‘Well, I’m sorry to hear that. It’s hard bringing up a wee one alone. Of course, poor Flora knew that as well as anyone.’

  Seizing this welcome tangent, I divert Bridie with a well-placed question of my own.

  ‘I’ve been wondering about that,’ I say. ‘You must remember the war years, how my parents met. Everything that happened. Mum never spoke about it all that much. I know my dad was in the navy and he died in the war, but that’s about it. Apart from his photo on the mantelpiece and his name on the Mackenzie-Grants’ stone in the graveyard, there’s not much I know about him. Could you tell me, Bridie?’

  For once, she’s silent. Maybe I’m imagining it, but it seems to me that something in her usually open expression closes in on itself. It’s fleeting – a wary look in her eyes as she inadvertently glances towards the hills above the loch. Something about it reminds me of the look in my mum’s eyes when I’d ask her questions about my dad.

  Then she pulls herself together. ‘Of course, darlin’. You bring Daisy over to mine sometime and we’ll have a cup of tea and a chat. I’ll be happy to tell you about Alec and Flora. They really were the golden couple. Well, here’s the jetty – you’ll be taking Daisy to look at the boats, I expect. I must be getting on.’

  I stand and watch as she hurries on towards the shop. She turns to look back, giving us a wave, before she ducks through the door.

  Is it my imagination, or do I get the impression that when I asked her to tell me about my parents, she was choosing her words very carefully? That caution – and the momentary silence that preceded it – are enough to pique my interest. Is there something there, something that concerns my own past?

  Because, for once and most unusually, it seems to me that there’s something that Bridie Macdonald is NOT saying.

  Flora, 1939

  The ebb and flow of the navy’s ships in and out of Loch Ewe continued as winter drew in. Along the shore, wisps of peat smoke rose from the chimneys of the little white croft houses, the soft, familiar scent mingling with the sharper smell of fuel oil as tankers replenished the grey hulks on the water.

  It was a clear, still morning, and although the December sun lay low in the sky it had managed to flood the loch with light for a few precious hours. Flora was making the most of the good weather, at work in the patch of garden alongside Keeper’s Cottage. Her fork plunged easily into the dark soil. It had been worked for generations, enriched with seaweed from the shore and rotted manure from the stables up at the big house, and it provided them with a good supply of vegetables under Flora’s careful stewardship. Digging up potatoes, she transferred them, still covered in a powdering of black loam, into a bucket. The tatties rattled against the tin sides of the pail, quickly filling it. Then she heaved it to the store behind the house and emptied it into the larger wooden crates where the harvest would keep through the winter. Ruaridh had suggested that they turn the storehouse into an Anderson shelter, as some of the other crofters had done in case of air raids, but her father had just shrugged an
d said it didn’t seem worth the fuss. Looking out across the water on that calm winter’s day, Flora tended to agree with him. The war still seemed very far away. And, after all, the secrecy afforded by Loch Ewe’s secluded position was the very reason for its use as a safe harbour.

  Coming to the end of the heaped row, she straightened up, hands in the small of her back, and pushed a tendril of hair from her eyes with her wrist. Two small boys were walking along the road and she waved to them as they drew nearer.

  ‘Hello there! Stuart and David, isn’t it? How are you getting on?’

  They wore clothes that were a size or two too large, jumper sleeves rolled up and short trousers hanging below their knees over thick woollen socks. Moira Carmichael must have kitted them out in her sons’ outgrown clothing. Despite the poor fit, the things were of good quality and looked a good deal warmer than the few clothes the boys had brought with them from Glasgow.

  Two pairs of round blue-grey eyes regarded her solemnly. ‘Hello, miss,’ said Stuart, the elder of the two. ‘We’ve to go for a walk and get out of Mrs Carmichael’s hair.’

  Flora smiled at the words, clearly repeated verbatim. ‘Well, it’s a good day for it. How would you like to give me a hand getting the last of these tatties out of the ground? And then we can find you a glass of milk and maybe a bit of bannock indoors?’

  Two heads nodded and they came up the path to where she stood.

  ‘Can you manage the fork, Stuart? Dig like this, see? If you just turn the ground over, David and I can gather the tatties into the pail.’

  She smiled at their amazement as the first forkful unearthed a heap of potatoes. ‘Get them all up, that’s it. Don’t bother to rub the soil off, it helps them keep.’