So my father lies, like so many other sailors, in a grave that I can never visit. His name on the family memorial of the Mackenzie-Grants in the graveyard doesn’t seem nearly enough, but I suppose it was all Mum had. Those wildflowers that we laid there every Sunday were all she could offer him. He left not knowing that she loved him still. She had to live with that for the rest of her life. And he never knew that she was carrying his child.
And then Bridie tells me how, after the memorial service in the kirk, Sir Charles accosted Ruaridh in front of everyone, his rage and grief spilling over, and told him he should be ashamed of himself, sitting safe in a shelter on the hill in a job that Alec had made sure of for him, while his son’s bones were lying under a hundred fathoms of icy sea. Ruaridh stood there and took it, saying nothing, but his jaw was clenched, his face as pale as a ghost with his own grief at the loss of his childhood friend.
Flora begged him not to go, but the very next day Ruaridh marched down to the base and asked for a transfer to the escort ships. And, because they needed a signalman, he was given a berth on the Cassandra, whose name indeed turned out to be a portent of doom. Ruaridh was lost as the last-but-one convoy was returning to Loch Ewe after a safe run through to Murmansk, the ship’s bows shot away by a German torpedo.
And so it was that the next time Mr McTaggart cycled along the road towards Ardtuath, he passed the gates of the estate and turned in at Keeper’s Cottage with the telegram that would break – again – the hearts of Iain and Flora, just three months after they’d learned the news of Alec.
‘So that was it, then,’ I say, once I’ve digested the story that my mother’s best friends have told me. The tragedy of it makes me want to weep.
No wonder Mum found it hard to talk about my father. She must have felt so guilty about writing that awful letter to him. About him sailing to his death not knowing how much he was loved.
Then the awful realisation hits me, too, that she might have felt responsible for her own brother’s death. Sir Charles’s fury at Alec’s love for Flora must have played a part in his grief-stricken rage, detonating his outburst at Ruaridh. Both my father and my uncle were war heroes, but now I understand how complex Mum’s feelings must have been about the part she imagined she’d played in their deaths.
And, in the end, what had it all been for? Could we ever really have belonged in the world of the Mackenzie-Grants? Mum’s last faint hope of that ever coming to pass died with Alec. She never met anyone else. Many of the men who left their Highland homes to fight in that war never returned, so there was another generation of women, just like there’d been in the aftermath of the previous war, whose prospects of marriage were slim to none. Mum had been one of those single women, living her quiet life in the little lochside community among the hills, bringing me up in Keeper’s Cottage with Grandad, until he died just after my fifth birthday.
I sit in silence for a while, mulling it all over. But at last I ask, ‘What happened to the Aultbea Songbirds?’
‘We never sang in public again, apart from in the kirk, after Alec and Ruaridh died.’ Mairi’s voice sounds softly wistful. ‘But, Lexie, it meant so much to your mum when you won that scholarship to the school in London. She felt then that you were being given the opportunity she’d never had. To share your voice with the world.’
I know her words are meant kindly, but I wince, feeling even worse now that I’ve let them all down. And my mum in particular. She’d been careful never to put pressure on me, but now I can see how much my career must have meant to her – so much more than I’d ever realised.
I pick up the photo of Mum with the wind blowing her hair and the sun on her face, her expression full of a love that was taken from her so brutally. Then I set it back on the mantelpiece with a sigh. As I look round, I catch Bridie and Mairi exchanging a glance.
‘What?’ I ask.
Bridie shakes her head and presses her lips together, as if the words might escape, unbidden, unless she refuses to let them.
But Mairi reaches across and pats her hand. ‘It’s time she knew the full story, Bridie. So she can understand.’
‘Understand what?’ I say, my eyes darting from one face to the other.
Bridie’s expression is wary, closed off as she tries, one last time, to keep the secret that she’s held tight for so many years. Almost thirty-four years, to be precise: my lifetime. But Mairi nods, encouraging. And so, reluctantly, Bridie tells me the rest.
Flora, 1944