‘I can’t get over how much it’s all changed,’ Flora commented. They’d been sent to pick up a Polish officer from his billet in Poolewe who needed treatment for an abscess on a tooth. He’d chatted with them on the way, describing how he’d escaped from Warsaw when the Germans invaded and how determined he and his comrades were to win back their country from the Nazis. They dropped him at the hospital and he saluted smartly as they drove off. ‘Who’d ever have imagined we’d be doing this?’ She patted the steering wheel of the ambulance.
‘I know, it’s strange, isn’t it? But at the same time, it feels so familiar now. I can’t imagine going back to how I was before, just helping with the farm and the bairns. Do you think our lives will ever be the same again?’
Flora shrugged. ‘The war will end one day. But you’re right: I think when it does we’ll find it has changed our lives forever – for better or worse, I suppose.’
Mairi turned to face her friend. ‘Did you hear? They’re wanting to organise some concert parties to help entertain the troops. I saw a notice in the canteen asking for volunteers. You should sing for them, Flora. They’d snap you up in a second.’
‘Oh, I’m not sure I’d have the courage to sing in front of an audience like that.’ Flora shook her head slowly. She was torn. She’d love to sing at a concert, really, but she could just picture what Sir Charles would make of it if he found out. It’d be another black mark against her – engaging in such frivolities while Alec was off at sea. He’d certainly disapprove. And her confidence wobbled a little as she wondered whether Alec mightn’t disapprove as well. His outburst of rage had sown a seed of doubt in her. She couldn’t quite put her finger on why it had unnerved her so, but in that moment she’d felt he’d become someone else, not the Alec she thought she knew.
‘Flora Gordon, are you a woman or a mouse? You’ve never been afraid to sing before. And with your voice, it’d be a crime not to share it with those poor men and women who are stuck here so far from their homes and longing for a little entertainment of an evening.’
Flora laughed. ‘Are you daring me, Mairi Macleod? Because you know fine that you have a perfectly good singing voice, too, so I could say the same to you.’
‘I most certainly am daring you if that’s what it takes! But YOU know fine that I don’t have your voice. Although I suppose Bridie and I could back you, if you’re really not sure about singing on your own in front of such a big audience. In fact, Bridie would love that! Go on, let’s give it a try.’
And so it was that the trio of friends became the Aultbea Songbirds, a regular and very popular act at the weekly concerts in the hall. Surely Alec couldn’t object, Flora told herself, if she was part of a group, doing her bit to keep morale high. And if she began to imagine where her singing might take her, she never shared those dreams with anyone, not even Mairi and Bridie, despite being told on many an occasion that she had a voice anyone would pay good money to hear.
Away from the fun and the laughter and the applause of the concert hall, on the long summer evenings once supper was cleared away and she was free, Flora would hike on her own up the hill to the lochan. Sometimes she’d fish for the brown trout that glided between the stems of the waterlilies; but more often she would sit, lost in her thoughts as she gazed out at the distant sea, imagining Alec away there, somewhere, and wondering whether the waves that met the rocks at the mouth of the loch might have encountered his ship as they rolled towards Scotland’s northern shores. As she sat beside the silvered pool cupped in the palm of the hills, the deer kept watch, silent and still, from the heights above her and, higher still, the song of the skylarks floated on the evening air.
At last, in late August, the fronds of bracken began to turn to bronze and the branches of the rowans hung heavy with clusters of scarlet berries. When the first skeins of geese appeared in the skies above the loch, their hoarse cries announcing the end of summer, the boom nets were drawn aside to allow three merchant ships through as the next Arctic convoy began to muster. Ruaridh was a useful source of information, monitoring the latest arrivals from his post at the signal station on the hill, and he kept Flora, Mairi and Bridie informed.
‘They’re British ships so far, come up the east coast from Tilbury and Hull. But they say there’s another Atlantic convoy on the way and some of the American Merchant Marine are carrying supplies for Russia. So we may well see Roy and Hal before too long.’