—
I’d imagined a million scenarios since the headstone first caught my attention, but none was as tragic as the truth. The only body beneath it was the infant’s.
“Mhàthair helped deliver her, in this very room,” said Anna. “It’s almost certainly the last time there was a fire in the grate. The wee mite lived only a few minutes, God rest her soul. That was nearly the end of Màiri right there. Then, a month to the day later, the telegram came saying Angus was also gone. I was here when Willie delivered it. It’s still in the lockbox downstairs. It came on Valentine’s Day, of all days.”
“When did you find out it wasn’t true?”
“Too late for our poor Màiri.”
—
The very first time I saw the grave I’d wondered if Màiri had died of a broken heart, and it turned out she’d done just that. Two weeks after hearing that Angus was dead, she walked to the castle, through the Water Gate, down the slope, and into the loch. The frantic fisherman who saw her do it could not row fast enough to reach her, and her body was never found.
When Anna told me this, my heart twisted. I realized I’d seen Angus at both graves.
“Had they been married long?” I asked.
“They’d been sweethearts for years, but they only wed when the war broke out and Angus joined up. It had that effect on a lot of people.”
“My God. They weren’t even married two years.”
“Aye. The war has cut short a great many things.”
She fell silent, and I knew she was thinking of her brothers.
“Did they have much time together before Angus shipped out?” I asked.
“Here and there. It wasn’t until April of ’forty that the fighting really heated up, and it wasn’t long after that that Angus was injured the first time.”
As Anna recounted what happened, I was struck not just by what she was telling me, but also by how well she knew it. Then I remembered the size of the village and how huge a tragedy this was, even in an age full of tragedy.
During the Battle of Dunkirk, Angus had gone back into the line of fire not once, not twice, but three times to rescue other members of his unit, despite having taken shrapnel in the thigh. His courage attracted the attention of higher-ups, and when he recovered, he was invited to join the newly formed Special Service Brigade.
Only the toughest made it into Winston Churchill’s “Dirty Tricks Brigade,” the elite and deadly group he formed for the sole purpose of creating “a reign of terror down the enemy coast.” They trained at Achnacarry Castle, by then known as Castle Commando, under the fifteenth Lord Lovat, who based his techniques on the small commando units that had impressed his father during the Boer War.
Angus and other potential commandos were dumped off at the train station in Spean, seven miles away, given a cup of tea, and then left to their own devices, in full battle gear, in whatever weather, to find their way to the castle. If they made it, they spent six grueling weeks training with live ammunition, being pushed to the brink of physical exhaustion and beyond, as well as learning all the ways you could kill a man even if you didn’t have a weapon.
Angus was shipped off after a leave of only a few days, which was nonetheless long enough to leave Màiri with child. Nine months later, he was grievously wounded—gutted, essentially—during hand-to-hand combat in France, collapsing only after slitting his opponent’s throat with the edge of his metal helmet.
As Anna spoke, I could see it all in my head, unfolding relentlessly. I’d dreamed up countless versions of what had happened, but this was worse than any of them. I saw Angus doubled over, struggling to remain upright, using one arm to try to hold in his internal organs while slashing out with the other to fell the enemy soldier. I saw Angus collapsing, sure he was dying, his eyes open and trained on the blue sky, his thoughts on his wife and the child that was due at any moment, and may well have already been born.
Angus was hauled to safety by members of the French Resistance, but nobody knew for a long time—his ID tags had been torn off and lay somewhere among the rotting bodies that littered the cobblestone streets. The fighting was so fierce the corpses could not be recovered for more than a week, rendering them grossly bloated and unrecognizable.
He had remained on the brink of death for weeks. It was a miracle he survived at all, but five months later, against all odds, he made his way back to British territory.
“My God,” I said, when Anna paused. “And then he found out his wife and child had both died.”
“Aye,” said Anna. “There was nothing anyone could have done about the child, but he blames himself to this day for what happened to Màiri.”
“That wasn’t his fault,” I said.
“I know that, but he feels responsible anyway, like he should have been able to find a way to get word back, even though he was lying right gralloched somewhere in a French cellar. He hasn’t touched the waters of the loch since. He’ll only fish in the rivers. In fact, he won’t set foot through the Water Gate.”
“Other than that, has he recovered? I mean, physically?”
“He’s strong as an ox—I’ve seen the man haul a deer down the hill on his shoulders, Harris-style. The only reason he’s not back at the Front is because they need him at the battle school. Only a commando can train a commando, so that’s what he does, up at the Big House, most of the time. The rest of the time he’s keeping us all fed.”
“Do you think he’ll go back to being the gamekeeper? I mean, after the war?”
Anna shook her head. “No. The old laird died, you know. Only a few months ago, but it was a long time coming. He never recovered from the loss of his son, the poor man.”
I remembered Bob the Bobby’s warning with a sinking feeling. There were no hunting parties at the estate—for obvious reasons—so no rich person was being robbed of a trophy head, and Angus was supplementing the diet of every last family in the village. It was a true case of righteous theft, and I hoped the new laird would have a change of heart. After everything else Angus had been through, it seemed beyond cruel not to let him go back to being the gamekeeper after the war. It was clear he knew and loved the land.
“Well,” Anna said wearily, “now that I’ve blathered your ear completely off, I should probably get going. I’ll fetch you a cup of tea first.”
“Anna?” I said, as she got to her feet.
“Aye?”
“Thank you for filling me in,” I said. “Even if it isn’t any of my business.”
“Oh, I don’t know. I’m starting to think of you as one of us now.”
A lump rose in my throat. I thought that might be the nicest thing anyone had ever said to me—and meant.