Murdo's War Read Free Page B

now. It seems the only reason you come around here nowadays.’ She drew her thin lips together and twitched the ends of a woollen shawl closer about her shoulders.
    ‘And how are you, Meggan?’ Hector smiled.
    ‘Och, I’m well enough, but I don’t like this cold. It gets awful into my bones now. I’m getting old.’
    The heat made Murdo drowsy after the long crossing from Orkney and he yawned. The radio was on and Vera Lynn was singing her great wartime love song:
    ‘We’ll meet again,
    Don’t know where,
    don’t know when,
    But I know we’ll meet again
    Some sunny day...’
    It was pleasant, and he blinked with comfortable weariness.
    ‘Mary, turn that skirling cailleach off, will you!’ cried Meggan sharply. ‘I’m sick of the sound of her.’
    Her daughter came from the kitchen and switched off the crackling set.
    ‘Oh, that’s better,’ exclaimed Meggan with a sigh. ‘That radio – it goes on and on. On and on, until I’m nearly driven off the head with it.’
    Mary smiled at the familiar refrain and went back to the kitchen. With Highland hospitality, she was always on the point of making a pot of tea when friends arrived.
    ‘How’s it going then, Willie?’ said Hector to Meggan’s husband who sat quietly at the opposite side of the fire, seeming very small in the big armchair.
    You would never guess, Murdo thought, looking at the wrinkled face, that he had four sons and a grandson away at the war, and two of them dead aboard HMS Hood. It gave the old man an honour somehow. Murdo regarded him with respect, and glanced across at Meggan. In a way they must feel as he did about his father, now a sergeant in the Seaforth Highlanders.
    The old man’s eyes were bird-bright and alert. Taking the pipe from his teeth, he leaned forward, poking it towards Hector vigorously, as if to wind himself up to the point of speaking. At length the words came.
    ‘Have you got any with you?’
    ‘I might have,’ Hector replied. ‘But you’re not wanting any of that poison, are you.’
    Willie nodded excitedly.
    ‘Indeed he does not,’ said Meggan. ‘I’m ashamed of you, Hector, coming round like this now.’
    ‘Get away with you, Meggan. What harm did one glass of whisky ever do an old man?’
    ‘Hmph!’ she snorted in disgust. ‘A couple of bairns, that’s all you are; a couple of bairns.’
    Murdo smiled. He had a good set of teeth, but his smile showed them to be irregular. For years he had avoided his aunt’s scheme to take him to the dentist and have them straightened.
    Hector beamed kindly at the old lady, then turned to Willie. ‘How many is it, then – one?’
    Willie shook his head and held up two fingers.
    ‘One,’ said Meggan.
    Willie frowned impatiently and shook the two fingers at him. Hector looked from one to the other and shrugged. ‘Well you’ll have to make your peace with that woman of yours,’ he said.
    ‘Och, he’s nothing but an old fool,’ she said. ‘Hand me that bag, will you.’ She pointed to a battered old handbag on the dresser. Murdo passed it over and she poked inside. ‘Here.’ She thrust a crumpled pound note and a ten shilling note towards Hector. ‘Go on, I’m just as bad myself. Give it to him.’ She looked crossly at the old man who had sat opposite her for so many years. He had settled back and was again puffing away contentedly at the pipe. ‘I suppose he’s not such a bad old stick, really,’ she admitted grudgingly.
    Hector took the pound and pushed the ten shilling note away. ‘A pound’s all it is, Meggan,’ he said. ‘You’re getting forgetful in your old age.’
    Although he had left his oilskins in the hall, Murdo began to sweat with the heat of the room. He tugged off his khaki battle-dress jacket and pulled his jersey straight. Stretching his legs across the carpet he yawned again.
    Mary brought through the tea, with sandwiches, pancakes and cake, and they all had supper. Murdo knew better than to comment upon the red, fresh-run