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 things. 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.