Agnes
Agnes could smell the winter
fires as she stepped across Princes Street for the umpteenth time that day.
Somewhere high above the whispering smoke the sky was an azure blue. Agnes knew
that for a fact even although she might not always see it; just like she knew
that things were about to change and no one had bothered to tell her.
She had been christened
Agnes Lily on the first day of the War. She didn’t meet her father until she
was nearly a year old as he had suffered some sort of breakdown in the early
days of the fighting. To be honest, her father never really recovered and even
as he was approaching his fortieth birthday his left hand would still shake and
shake until Agnes was certain that it would fall off. When he thought no one
was looking he would grab the wild arm with his right hand and hold it until
it surrendered and shook no more. When her father did return to the bank in the
spring of 1918, he walked past his old desk and sat in the chair of the former
manager, Mister Stephen Andrews, who now lay undisturbed in a field in Northern
France.
In the year of 1927, The
Edinburgh Linen Bank was struggling. Not that it was the fault of Agnes’
father , this poor soul worked every hour that God allowed him, even roping in
Agnes to deliver pamphlets to the good folks of the city as they strolled along
admiring the castle. Agnes would stop off at Nancy’s Sweet shop for a quarter
of pineapple chunks bought with the money she’d earned. It was on one of those
days while walking home and enjoying the chunks that she realised she’d never
seen her father smile.
The War had stolen her
father’s sleep along with his happiness which meant most nights watching the
daylight bleed in from the Firth. God knows he tried, but being a
complete man was just beyond his ability these days; he could no longer carry
his head high nor look after the business and his family, he was just too
tired. So on the day that he walked out of the Edinburgh Linen building it was
to be for the last time and as he strolled through the Saltmarket, Peter,
father of Agnes Lily, broke down and wept.
To Agnes, home had been a
strange landscape for weeks; doors were always being closed leaving her on the
wrong side. It was weeks of whisperings and of quickly swallowed conversations
as she walked into a room - then the day came when her father stopped going to
the bank altogether.
“Maybe he’ll try next
week, we’ll just have to see how things are sweet pea” her mother would say but
next week would come and go and her father would be sitting so still as to be
almost invisible. Agnes had her own worries; no father at the bank meant, no
pamphlets, which meant no income earned meaning no visits to Nancy’s.
Then one night just after
Easter, her mother came to Agnes’ room to tell her that the family were moving.
“Time for a change sweet
pea, indeed it is, time for a change” and by June the family had moved lock,
stock and barrel to a strange little village by the name of Coldharbour,
nestling in the West Highlands.
As they arrived on the
charabanc, Agnes considered the village to be ‘fabulous’, everything in Agnes’
life was fabulous these days, ever since she’d heard a rather absurdly dressed
woman use it when she was handed one of the bank’s pamphlets.
Now as luck would have it,
the little school that Agnes was to attend had stopped for the summer holidays
and would not restart until August; a whole blooming summer to herself,
blooming fabulous.
Coldharbour had two
shops, a church and a small hall which doubled as a library. Monday to Saturday
were the working days and in this village everyone had at least two jobs.
Sunday on the other hand was a day of rest which allowed the villagers a time
to let their belts out and breathe a quiet sigh.
Alexandra McMillan was
petite and bright and lonely. Known as Alex to most of the village, at 51, she
had no family to speak of, least not since her brother Ian had passed away a
couple of years back. Alex ran the library every second Tuesday and every
Saturday in the village hall when it was not needed by the council for
something or other. She may have been small but she could fight her corner
especially when the library’s needs were being overlooked by the council. It
wasn’t a permanent feature, meaning that each time the library had to be set up
and dismantled; an arrangement which suited Alex as she loved being busy. It
wasn’t so much that the devil finds work for idle hands so much as Alex had far
too many thoughts blowing through her mind and possibly too many secrets.
On the morning that the new
family arrived in Coldharbour, Alex had been searching out of the window for a
sign to lift her spirits when she noticed the strange little girl with whom
Alex assumed were her parents. The mother had a healthy ruddy complexion where
as the father was ghostly pale with that same demeanour her brother had brought
home from the Front. The woman and the strange little girl were doing all the
carrying of cases as the man seemed to have enough of a problem shifting
himself and every few steps would let out the most heart breaking sigh.
The family moved into the
old dairyman’s house. It had sat empty for over a year, ever since Stuart Mills
had moved to Canada. It would be nice to see a light in the window again - Alex
could look across the hill and imagine Stuart was still there. She missed him;
the way they always ended up together at the dances, the way they were always
discussed in the same breath as if they were destined to spend what was left of
their lives together - but it wasn’t to be. Stuart had met the young Canadian
girl on one of his trips to Inverness and that was that. Never make plans,
thought Alex.
She didn’t think any more of
the new family until the young girl came to the library on the following
Tuesday. Alex saw that strangeness again – the little girl was blessed with a
beautiful face topped off with wild blond hair, but the eyes - they belonged to
another - someone whom God had put on the earth without giving them instructions
on the rules of life.
Agnes loved books and the
library was her kind of place. When she went missing in Edinburgh her family
always knew to look in the nearest book shop; to Agnes they weren’t just books,
they were people sitting on shelves waiting to tell you about their lives,
their loves, the universe and everything in it. How could you possibly not love
books? Agnes took her large selection to the old lady who stood behind
the counter.
“I’m sorry dear but you’re
only allowed two books at a time, otherwise there wouldn’t be enough to go
around”. Agnes felt this couldn’t possibly be true but nonetheless returned
four of the books.
“My name is Miss McMillan.
What is yours?”
“Agnes”
“Well Agnes, why don’t you
come with your family to tea on Saturday at my house? I live in that little
yellow one across from you. I have shelves of books there I’m sure you would
appreciate.” Agnes carefully lifted her two books and ran off. Alex smiled.
On the next Saturday, Agnes’
mother dropped her daughter off at the librarian’s house. Agnes’ father was
still too sick to visit or entertain anyone or be left alone and since they
only lived across the way, her mother didn’t see what harm it would cause for
Agnes to visit Miss McMillan on her own. That is how Agnes and Alex became the
best of friends.
All summer long, Agnes would
either be carrying books to or from the little yellow house across the street.
To Alex, Agnes was a light
in an otherwise dull life but to Agnes, Alex was a mystery. She knew little
except that Alex McMillan had taught English in France prior to the War.
Looking back over those
years from the distance of her retirement home in Hastings, Agnes, the great
grandmother, finds it difficult to remember when she first set eyes on Isaiah.
She is almost sure it was as he stepped off the bus from Inveraray but even
her, as an Edinburgh girl in 1927, had seen very few black people but now there
was one standing in Coldharbour and all eyes were upon him. Some stared
unashamed, others held conversations but never fully listened as their
attention was spent looking over their companions’ shoulders probably feeling
this was polite. One little boy ran up to him and kicked him. This was the day
that Isaiah, twenty three years on this planet and as black as coal, turned up
on the steps of Miss Alexandra McMillan.
Mrs Edith Huckerby told
anyone who would listen that Mac - for that is how she referred to Alex -
had taken a lover, and a black one at that, and he was inferior in years and
therefore Mac would most certainly burn in hell. Agnes thought she detected a
hint of jealousy in Edith’s scrupulous face as she was casting Miss McMillan
into the fire and brimstone.
The following Saturday the
library was closed as Alex was preparing a tea party. Many of the villagers had
tried to ingratiate themselves in order to partake of a scone and a wee cup of
tea but Alex was having none of it and only Agnes and Isaiah were guests.
Agnes marvelled at the light
that reflected from such a black skin. Isaiah glowed, she could think of no
better way to put it and the glowing made him seem constantly happy. He laughed
a lot, mostly at things he has said himself. Agnes wasn’t sure if this annoyed
her but she was willing to put up with it to find out the story. Was Agnes
nosey or just full of a healthy curiosity? To be honest she didn’t care as this
was all far too interesting to let it slip through her fingers.
“There is something I should
tell you Agnes. Isaiah is my son.”
“But he’s...”
“I met his father in France.
He was such a kind and brave man who marched into my life. I had never
seen such an exotic sight, I was swept away. He was the only man I ever loved,
apart from my beautiful boy Isaiah - who has indeed his father’s eyes. I saw
those eyes in so many people through the years. I can never seem to forget
them.”
“I discovered I was carrying
Isaiah on a wild Christmas day in 1905, but the baby was taken away from me
shortly after he was born and given to his father’s family. I could never bring
a child, much less a black one, back to Coldharbour.”
“Why did you not stay in
France?”
“His family did not want me
there and I was no longer allowed to teach.”
“Where is he now?” inquired
Agnes.
“He died in France two days
before the war ended” said a sorrowful Isaiah. “He joined the Buffalo Soldiers,
as they called themselves, all American and all black. I only discovered my
mother was alive after my father died. When I found out that fact I arranged
that we meet in Glasgow, that is, if she was willing....”
“and I was.”
“...but no one had
told me my mother was white. It was a shock but she is beautiful, is she not?”
Agnes nodded.
“Isaiah is to be married in
the autumn in London and I am to be the guest of honour” said a very proud
Alex. There was a warm wind blowing through her hair as Agnes headed back home
with her head spinning.
Now all these years later in
her retirement home, Agnes’ thoughts drift back to remembering how Alex went to
Isaiah's wedding and never returned to the village; Agnes kept the village
library going in hope and she remembers how her own father never really existed
properly in that room again and on one lonely Tuesday he died of a broken
heart.
Agnes closes her eyes
knowing that war can change lives forever.
Alex
If Alexandra McMillan had been
born in any era other than her own, she would have most certainly been burned
as a witch. Luckily for her, she popped into the world the same year as
Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone; inspiring her father, Robert, to name his
new daughter after the Scottish inventor.
Robert McMillan came down
from the Isle of Skye in 1870 with the intention of working on the Oban
railroad; a few days later, he fell hopelessly in love with the best looking
girl in Coldharbour. They married several months before Alexandra’s birth and
neither of them ever regretted the haste of their marriage. Ian, their healthy
robust son, who followed three years later, was to join what everyone agreed
was the happiest of families.
Robert’s hard work and
honesty brought him promotion within the rail company and he was assigned the
difficult route of Tyndrum to Oban; a line that was pestered by constant rock
falls from Ben Cruachan. One night when Alexandra was only six years of age,
she drew a picture of a train being struck by a large boulder. The following
afternoon the rail crash came to pass just as it had been prophesised and no
one in Coldharbour ever looked at little Alexandra in quite the same way again.
She never found her own behaviour, in any way, odd and neither did her mother,
and in fact they would sometimes imagine the same things at the same time. The
story was often repeated in the family that at the very moment Ian fell from a
ridge in Glencoe, both Alexandra and her mother felt his leg snap.
She once visited an ‘old wifey’
who lived just outside Dalmally and of whom it was said had the gift of the
second sight. So one afternoon when Alexandra had finished the big school, she
walked the nine miles to the wifey’s house. Alexandra apologised that she
couldn’t afford to pay the woman for a reading but the woman patted her hand,
told her that everything happens for a reason and that one day she would return
the favour. Alexandra was told that she would be loved and not loved in the
same measure and at the same time.
“You will be loved by one
who does not know you are there”, whispered the old wifey “You will have your
dreams but in a different flavour from the wanting of it and not within the
confines of Coldharbour”.
So on the long walk back home, Alexandra came to the conclusion that she would have to leave the village at the earliest opportunity to fulfil her dreams.She would study hard, she told herself, for therein would lie the escape route. Reading and the getting of knowledge was relatively easy for Alexandra, for more than anything else in the world she loved books. Walter Scott was her favourite author and Ivanhoe, her hero, but for her, the greatest of all writers was a mister Robert Burns from Ayrshire. It was always with a hint of regret to Alexandra that she found herself born too late to marry the great man.
She could break hearts with
her rendition of ‘My love is like a red, red rose’ but she knew that the
breaking of hearts in Coldharbour was a waste of her time and theirs.
There was never any chance
of her attending college or university in Glasgow, so she read and studied and
taught herself French which, she had to admit, had limited uses in Coldharbour
until one day in early spring a French family visited the village. They had
heard stories about the pretty church founded by the Vikings and it had proved
so interesting that they delayed their trip to Fort William.
Alex, as the French family
called her, was employed as an interpreter. Monsieur Picard felt that Alex’s
accent was “a little unusual but your grammar is delicious”. High praise indeed
as she’d never actually heard anyone speaking French until then. She found the
family both exotic and exciting and in a very short time they became close, so
much so that on the day they left, they kissed a startled Alex on both cheeks
and insisted she visit their ‘little chateau’ in Montparnasse, Paris. Life came
looking for Alex McMillan and found her packed and ready to take the journey.
She fell head over heels in
love with Paris the moment she stepped out of the train at Gare Du Nord. This
was a city in the middle of the Golden Era, la belle époque, a city that was
impossible to resist.
Deciding to save the little
money she had, Alex walked away from the station and turned left down a narrow
street clutching her five centimes map. Every open door she passed had its own
smell and its own personal story. There are slivers of time, when just for that
second, you know that your life is almost achingly perfect – Alex would later
call these the ‘passing wonderful’ moments – those moments when you are happy
to just to be alive.
She crossed the Rue De
Rivoli and lost her breath with the beautiful splendour of it all, but the best
was yet to come. As she rounded the back of the Louvre and crossed the Pont
Neuf, she saw reflected in the sparkling River Seine the Notre Dame cathedral
and she wept. If there was anywhere in the world or any time you could wish to
exist then it was here Paris, autumn 1896.
A little ginger man with a
large straw boater pointed out the Picard’s ‘little chateau’. No wonder he had
a wry smile on his freckled face, it was such a monster of a building, easily
the largest on this stretch of Boulevard Raspail. After she had pulled the
black lever which tipped the wooden block which rang the bell, she was told by
a woman who was in the process of bleaching her moustache to go to the rear of
the building. Alex sat in the servant’s kitchen scared to even breathe when
suddenly Madame Picard swished into the room and screamed out “what have they
done to my little Scottish friend?”
Madame showed Alex into a
bedroom that was larger than her entire Coldharbour home. “You will be happy
here and you may stay as long as you wish, dinner is at seven thirty”.Alex
outstretched her arms, looked heavenward then fell comfortably back on to a big
soft bed, life was good and she was still just ‘passing wonderful’.
At dinner that evening, Alex
was seated beside an elderly gentleman whose hands were ravaged by arthritis
but whose heart was still relatively untouched. “I noticed you admiring the
painting hanging on the wall. It was a gift to my very dear and close friend,
Alain Picard”
Alex recognised it as a
Renoir or at least an excellent copy.
”It is called ‘Dancing at
Bougival’, you like it?”
“Of course” said Alex.
“I am Pierre-Auguste Renoir
and you are Alexandra, the fortune teller, I have heard much about you”
Monsieur Renoir told her of
his new neighbour in Montmartre who had recently arrived from the south of
France and who was in want of an English teacher.
So the strange girl from the
West Highlands became a teacher and a friend of one of France’s greatest
painters. By December, she had moved to a flat in the Pigalle only a few
minutes’ walk from Montmartre. By the following summer, her growing number of pupils
had led her to set up a small English language school near the Sacre Coeur,
although it didn’t pay well, she supplemented it by charging for fortune
telling. By the light of day she was the paragon of sobriety but by night she
sat with her comrades in cafes, smoking, sipping brandy and discussing the
current troubles. On one such evening she was given a pencil drawing of herself
by Toulouse Lautrec, it lay undimmed in her suitcase until it was found by her
son many years later.
In late August of 1905, Alex
had saved enough money to take a short holiday in the fashionable resort of
Deauville on the north coast of France. It was populated, every summer, for
several weeks by the international rich. Alex was hoping that maybe this was a
place to find a husband before she was thirty and past her prime.
One day, as she was leaving
the beach, she leaned against a post to put her shoes on when one of the straps
broke. She hobbled for a short distance along the promenade before she was
stopped by the most gigantic of men who asked in French, but with a distinct
American twang, if he could help. Alex said of course he could.
“I’m assuming you’re not
French...English?”
“Scottish”
“Ah, the land of Robert
Burns” said the very confident, very tall black man with obvious good taste,
thought Alex.
“He is my most favourite of
all poets” she said proudly.
“Is he indeed...is he,
indeed?” and with that Jacob took her small hand in his and led her to the
Saint Bernard cafe, where over a glass of cheap wine she found out all she
needed to know. He had recently left the French Foreign Legion where he had
spent many a happy year, he was originally from west Philadelphia, a city in
the United States of America, but had left that country suddenly for reasons he
would not expand upon.
“And that, my Scottish, is
the story”.
When she first made love to
Jacob it was on Bastille night, just as the whole of Montmartre had turned into
one large firework celebration; it was her time for true happiness, right here
and right now, and so another ‘wonderful’ was about to be passed.
On Christmas day, Alex found
out that she was pregnant. In Montmartre there were many combinations of
couples, all one had to do was throw a stone and you were sure to hit an
unconventional pairing. Outside of this environment life was very different,
very different indeed. Even before Isaiah’s birth, Jacob’s family had found out
about the baby and were begging him to bring it home. Whatever troubles had
occurred to make him run in the first place, they must have now been settled as
he felt it was safe to return.
One morning Alex woke to the
silence. This was about the same time as Jacob was boarding a ship bound for
New York with a baby. If ever a heart was broken, it was Alex’s heart; broken
all the way through and quietly done.
She returned to the family
home at Coldharbour where now only Ian, her brother, remained. No one in the
village saw her light a bonfire early one morning, a large bonfire which
contained all the souvenirs and memories of France. When the fire eventually
faded away to embers and died, so did her eyes.
It stayed that way for many
years until a letter arrived from a young American by the name of Isaiah Dupont
who, he believed, may be Alex’s son and he wondered if she could meet him in
Glasgow.She knew from the moment she stepped nervously into the Tea Rooms on
Sauchiehall Street that this was her son - no doubt about it, he had Jacob’s
face. He told his mother that he had met an English girl while studying at
Temple University in Philadelphia and that they were now engaged and living in
London. He showed Alex the letter that Jacob had asked to be sent to his son if
he should fail to return from the Front. It explained what really had happened
to his mother and how very sorry his father was. Then Isaiah told his mother he
was to be married in August and he wanted her to be at his side.
Before Alex left
Coldharbour, she visited the cottage of the ‘old wifey’ who’d once lived just
outside Dalmally. The woman’s daughter thanked her for the years Alex had sent
money from France and told her of the difference it had made to their lives. A
letter lay on her mother’s fireplace to be read by Alex when she returned.
“I can never thank you
enough for your kindness and for the beautiful way you have repaid me. I know
by the time you read this you will have found what you are looking for. Once
you were loved and not loved at the same time and now that time has passed. Go
to them.”
Alex lived well into her
nineties and was lovingly looked after by her son, his wife and their three
children. She never went back to Coldharbour.
Each night, as she closed
her eyes, she would clutch a book of poems by Robert Burns and within seconds
sleep would paint a huge smile on her face.
AGNES + STAN
As a boy, Stan thought he
could remember seeing a clown being fired from a cannon at a circus in Hove. He
couldn’t recollect, however, witnessing a man flying through the air. At least
not one who flew straight through a pair of heavy wooden doors knocking Stan over
and causing him to end up in the middle of a busy street. That sort of just
didn’t happen in Hastings
Stan lived off this story
for years, and he told and retold it so often that people stopped listening.
“That was how I met Logie”
Stan would say to everyone and no one in particular.
On the morning we speak of,
he had set out intending to go for a constitutional stroll along the older part
of town. This was his sanctuary; down here he could scupper and hide by the
little fishing boats and let the wind wash away his mother’s ‘inspirational
talks’.
Stan was twenty four years
of age, for goodness sake, and since leaving the army had never held down a
decent job. The war had been long over and for a man born on the first day of
1900 he was not making a wonderful example of the new dawn. What was going
through that stupid head of his? I ask you?
In life, all the best things
appear to come when you least expect them, usually followed by the best things
hitting you straight in the face - or making you roll out into the street -
just the way Stan met Logie, as if you didn’t know.
Now here’s a question, would
Stan have ever known he could be an engineer if he hadn’t met Logie? Just like
there must have been another Einstein or Shakespeare out there who, for whatever
reason, never got a chance to find out about their own genius. Not that I’m
saying Stan was a genius but certainly Logie was one and he knew Stan had his
uses.
After the ‘flying man’
episode and as a way of an apology, Logie took Stan for a drink. As so often
happens in these circumstances, they found they actually liked each other’s
company. So much so, that when Logie’s landlord stormed into the public house
later that day “to find the mad Scottish scientist who had blown up his rented
rooms” Stan lied for Logie and told the landlord that his friend “had been
taken to hospital that very afternoon and could be at death’s door even as we
speak” whereas Logie was actually hiding in the toilet. Needless to say,
the two of them became the greatest of pals.Here was Stan, a man in need of a
job and Logie in need of an assistant he could trust. Stanley Addlington was
born and bred a Sussex man and proud of it, his friend John Logie Baird, or
Logie as he preferred, was from Helensburgh in the West of Scotland.
Now it wouldn’t be so far
from the truth to say that Logie was run out of Hastings. Logie and his
landlord had an altercation in the street when he demanded recompense for the
damage caused by the explosions. Logie reluctantly paid the swine and decided
enough was enough, taking his inventions to a set of rooms in London’s Soho.And
it was in these modest rooms that John Logie Baird demonstrated the first
electro mechanical television.
Stan would tell you that he
was the first face ever to appear on a television screen. He had done it to
amuse himself one night when Logie was out. The problem was that since he was
the only person in the room at the time, he couldn’t actually see himself on
the screen but he did remember burning himself on the lights needed for the
camera. When Logie came in the next day and spotted the burns on Stan’s face,
he smiled to himself having guessed what his friend had been up to.
Unfortunately for Stan, history chose another as the first televised face.
Those London years were the
busiest of Stan’s life, forever working on Logie’s latest inventions, sometimes
fourteen to sixteen hours a day. Too much work for him to realise how lonely he
actually was.
In the spring of 1936, Logie
decided to take a trip home to Helensburgh to see the family but due to his
deteriorating health Logie asked Stan to drive him up there. This meant that
Stan could take the car north and return to collect Logie at the end of the
stay. Stan had only been to Scotland once before and that was when Logie
transmitted television pictures to the Central Hotel in Glasgow via a telephone
line from London. So yes, he would drive him to Helensburgh and then take the
car on into the Highlands.
Whatever made Stan take the
Coldharbour road at Inveraray is between him and his maker but turn he did and
before long he was staring at a rusty welcoming sign:
‘Coldharbour: The B nniest
Place in the West’.
Coming in from that
direction, the village hall was the first real building you would pass. Outside
Stan saw a rather pretty girl taking down a notice telling that the library was
now open. She disappeared inside the hall and Stan saw this as a reason to
stop.
When he entered, she was
packing up the makeshift library into boxes and was apparently doing so without
anyone to help her.
“Excuse me” said Stan.
The girl spoke without
lifting her head. “If you’re going to tell me there’s a letter ‘O’ missing from
our village sign, then I already know. It fell off last week. If you’re here to
borrow books, you’re too late and anyway judging by your accent you’re not from
these parts.” And on she worked.
“I just wondered.....I was
wondering if you would like to come out with me this evening...for a drink or
something, young lady?”
“Did you just call me young
lady?” enquired the girl.
“Depends - did you want me
to call you ‘young lady’?”
And the beautiful young girl
thought about it and decided, yes, she did like it. So that was how Stanley
Addlington met Agnes Lily Sorensen, daughter of Peter; the man who sat quietly
in rooms.
Stan decided that this was
as much of the Highlands as he wanted to see and found a room at Mrs Edith
Huckerby’s bed and breakfast – five shillings and clean sheets.
Mrs Huckerby never told her
lodger that she disapproved of Agnes and her demented father but it seemed to
Stan that Mrs Huckerby disapproved of everyone. What she needed was a hard kiss
on those lips, thought Stan, but decided he wasn’t the man for the job.
Although her house smelt of the most delicious baking, Mrs Huckerby, herself,
smelt of mothballs, probably one of the reasons why Stan did not feel he was
the right man to deliver the kiss.
Stan and Agnes spent the
next Sunday afternoon walking the high hills overlooking Loch Awe – Agnes liked
the way Stan called it ‘Lock ah’, in fact she liked many things about Stan. She
was twenty two years of age and this was the first time she had ever had these
feelings.
On the following Tuesday ,as
usual, Agnes set up the library in the hall but this time there were two
differences: Stan was there helping and the rooms were full of the happy sound
of laughter, even the sun turned up to shine through the windows.
They set up the books in an
ordered fashion, crime was on the left and very popular in Coldharbour, the
classics were on the right and the penny romances were in the centre; the
latter proving very popular with the women and girls of the village who never
stopped dreaming of their knights in shining armour.
Stan, Agnes’ knight, lifted
a small vase out of a tired old box and asked what it was for.
“Ah that’s the suggestions
vase, at the end of every session I read what’s been placed in it. Some suggest
particular books, some just want to leave a message, some to place some money
or to say thanks” said Agnes.
By the end of the afternoon
Stan knew it was time to head back south to Helensburgh and pick up Logie. They
intended to stay a night in Glasgow before driving to London and Stan wished
with all his heart that Agnes could join him, but he knew about her father and
him sitting in a room quietly.
So when Agnes’ back was
turned, Stan scrawled a quick note and placed it in the jar, then he kissed her
goodbye and promised lovely Agnes that he would return.
As he was driving away from
Loch Awe, he looked at his watch and knew that she would soon read the proposal
of marriage he had placed in the vase.Stan was just about to whistle his
favourite tune by way of celebration when the car skidded for several yards
before tumbling off the road. He was sure he had felt the road shaking just before
the accident. As he sat stunned in the automobile, he felt it again, the earth
definitely moved. The machine was stuck good and proper and there was no way he
could push it out. So Stan set out to walk up the old road that followed the
Orchy River to the bridge.
Nothing passed by him that
afternoon and it was early evening before he arrived at a small house in
Inveronan on the shores of Loch Tulla.An old man answered the door, “There is
nothing we can do this evening for your transport young man, but come away
inside and we’ll feed and water you”.
In Coldharbour, Agnes was
clearing up the mess in the hall. There had been small earthquakes before in
the area but this was a bit stronger than usual. Still, she got to work picking
up all the bookshelves and the scattered books but Agnes failed to notice the
broken vase lying on its side and its contents having spilled out under a
wooden desk.
In the morning, Stan thanked
the old couple who fed him well and who asked for nothing in return. He walked
the military road across Ba Bridge and into Glencoe, finding a telephone at The
Kingshouse and thereby allowing him to notify Logie that he would be delayed.
In the Autumn of 1936, Logie
and his team were busier than ever supplying the BBC with their latest television
technology to test against other competing systems. Logie’s group were based at
The Crystal Palace, a structure moved from Hyde Park to Penge Common in 1851.
Stan had bought a small
house near-by in Sydenham, in the hope that he would hear from Agnes and that
she would say yes. It was nearly the end of November and Stan had begun to give
up on the idea of a life with Agnes.
Several days before the
Coldharbour hall was to be used for a Saint Andrew’s night party Miss McKelvie,
the village hall cleaner, found the contents of the suggestion vase underneath
the desk, including Stan’s proposal of marriage.
So on the night of the 30th
of November and instead of dancing in the village hall, Agnes found herself
knocking on the door of a house in Sydenham, south east London. She had been
reluctant to go as it would mean leaving her mother with a father who sat and
said nothing, but her mother told her that sometimes happiness only comes once
and that she should catch it before it was too late.
Stan proposed properly to
Agnes that night with the ring he had been keeping safe on a chain around his
neck. It was just as Agnes had accepted Stan’s hand in marriage, that she
noticed the redness of the sky. She thought, at first, it was to do with the
London lights being so much stronger than those in Coldharbour but when Stan
went out into the garden he could smell the smoke, then he heard the
clang...clang...clang of the fire engines.
The Crystal Palace, and all
ideas that he and Logie had worked so hard on over the years, was on fire.
The BBC, in the end, chose
another television system just as the country drifted into war. In Hastings,
Agnes and Stan got married and had two wonderful years before Agnes moved back
to Coldharbour to wait on her knight returning from battle.
Donald
There was a time during the
war when Coldharbour was neither one thing nor the other. The permanent part of
town consisted of the main street, the harbour and the muddy road that led to
the old castle. Yet, in the spring of 1942, a tented village grew that
stretched all the way back to the McKenzie Falls and increased the size of
Coldharbour by three fold.
Most of the incomers were
American soldiers waiting to go to war but there was also a scattering of
British, Dutch, Polish and Free French commandos, added to this mix were
several of the allied naval ships nestled in the bay; Coldharbour was
considered a safe berth.
Looking back, there are some
who might say that these were Coldharbour’s most exciting days.
If it was particularly
exciting or busy at Mrs Huckerby's, then that would depend on whom you talked
to. She had turned over the house to the government at the start of the War
with the proviso that only a better class of gent would occupy the rooms. As
Edith would tell you herself, it was seldom the case.
In Fort William, in the
1920s, Edith had been used to a very superior type of clientèle - those who
took golfing tours of the Scottish Highlands - until her husband, Mr Allan
Huckerby, ran away with a housemaid and all the money Edith had deposited in
Fort William’s superior bank. Mrs Huckerby felt she could no longer hold up her
head in social circles and so, on a dark night, she took her son Donald and the
emergency money she had secreted under the bed and escaped to Coldharbour.
Through hard work and sheer
determination, Edith built up a nice little business where travellers could
find good food and a clean, spacious room but in the war years the
military now allocated bunks and so space was very scarce indeed.
Mrs Huckerby had moved
Donald into the attic as a temporary measure, expecting him to move out and go
to war like all the other men in Coldharbour. What neither of them knew, was
that Donald had a heart defect from birth and was found to be unfit to fight.
"He might drop dead at any moment" said the doctor, leading Donald to
sleep on Mrs Huckerby’s bedroom floor when the house was full.
Although the army had its
own boffins for electrical wiring and such like, Coldharbour didn’t have an
electrician to speak of. The last one had been shot in Belgium and most of the
houses were still lit by oil and heated by the peat bricks from Ewan’s
fields.
But, one way or another,
electricity had arrived in town and Mrs Huckerby insisted that her house was to
be the first to have electrical light, even if it did mean Donald having to
work day and night to achieve this. She had a ‘Switching-on of the lights’
ceremony (or soiree as they liked to call it in these parts) to which only
Coldharbour’s good and great citizens were invited. Within a couple of months,
both Mrs Huckerby’s house and the castle had been appropriated for war work
which didn't stop Edith reminding everyone that the castle wasn’t fully fitted
with electrical power unlike her bed and breakfast.
Due to the friendly invasion
of Coldharbour, the Duke of Inverkeith and his wife had vacated the castle in
favour of a gamekeeper’s cottage, which stood high above the village and was
handy for spying on poachers. The problem was that Lady McFonal, the Duchess,
had become used to what little electrical power they had at the castle and
insisted that Teddy, the Duke, install it without fail in the cottage before
she would set foot in the blasted place. Teddy, being a man who liked a quiet
life, immediately employed Donald Huckerby for the job. The Duke and Duchess
moved to their flat in Edinburgh while the work was being carried out.
Donald was only twenty-two
and refused to let a little thing like dropping dead at any moment get in the
way of living. He enjoyed the days spent at the gamekeeper’s cottage and it
kept him away from his mother’s gaze. The only downside to the work was the
cottage itself. There was a particular atmosphere about the place, that gave
you the feeling you were being watched by someone or something. When Donald
reluctantly told his mother his feelings, she told him to grow up and be a man
and insisted the story about the gamekeeper’s ghost was just an old wives'
tale.
“What gamekeeper’s ghost?”
was Donald’s immediate reaction.
It seems that the old, old,
old Duke – Teddy’s great grandfather - had married an Austrian girl whose
beauty was renowned as far away as Oban. The downside was, that when the old,
old, old Duke found her in the arms of the gamekeeper he shot them both, right
there in the cottage.
“That’s the story?”
“That’s it” insisted Mrs
Edith Huckerby “Isn’t that enough, Donald?”
Donald was now sorry he had
asked the question because he knew where it was going to lead.
“If I had a gun, I would
have shot your father and that scarlet woman before they had a chance to run
away with all our money” and this discourse repeated itself all the way through
their evening meal.
Donald had judged it would
take him about four weeks to complete the wiring of the cottage, however with a
little help from a couple of the American army guys he had finished it in just
under three. The Duke and Duchess were happily informed, in their town flat,
that the gamekeeper’s cottage was fully wired for electricity and ready for
them to move in.
The Duchess decided that the
Christmas season would be the perfect time to invite the locals and some of the
selected armed forces who would join them in a Christmas Evening soiree. This
would let the Duchess show her new lighting and, according to her, give a
boost to the village morale.
The Duke of Inverkeith’s
entourage consisted mainly of young boys, too young for war, and of old men. So
when one of them contacted the Duke to inform him that there was no electrical
wiring actually in the house and asked whether they should bring more candles,
the Duke immediately assumed that the man was a fool. This was a judgement
hastily made. On closer inspection, no wiring of any sort could be found in the
gamekeeper’s cottage.
Constable McKelvie was called away from his normal war duties in Fort William to investigate this most serious of cases. He, too, quickly came to the conclusion that no wiring existed or had ever existed inside the cottage.
Donald Huckerby swore an
oath on a stack of bibles that the wiring had been installed and that most
certainly he was out of pocket and required immediate paying. Whatever double
dealing had been involved, it was nothing to do with him. The constable could
not locate the two Americans, who had kindly helped Donald, as they were already
on their way overseas.
Edith Huckerby took the
whole episode as a slight against her family and wondered why the police force
weren’t chasing real criminals; hadn’t they seen the behaviour of Agnes
Addlington, wife of Stanley and friend of a particular American soldier? Edith
called in ‘The Old Wifey’s daughter’ who lived just outside Dalmally to
investigate if a poltergeist or a similar spirit could be responsible for the
disappearance of the electrical wiring. Although the daughter felt a presence
in the cottage, she was sure it was the ghost of some long clan chief who was
not that particularity interested in electricity.
Donald felt aggrieved and
decided the only way forward was to re-wire the cottage in its entirety and at
his own expense; that way, it would stop his mother’s constant references to
their loss of status in the community and stop the locals referring to him as
the ‘Wire Liar’.
So not only did Donald pay
for all the new materials himself, he managed to re-wire the house in just two
weeks. This time he brought the locals in to see the place and to observe the
lights going on and off. This attracted a spontaneous round of applause that
caused Donald to make a spontaneous speech; his mother was very proud.
The Duke and Duchess ( Teddy
and Lady F as they were known to friends in the United States) were far too
busy with their social lives in Los Angeles to return home to see the wiring
installation. They would return in the spring of ‘43.
They eventually returned
home in July of that year and again they had organised a large function to
welcome colleagues and family from around the Coldharbour area to join them in
a little Summer soiree.
And again, when the staff
arrived to open up the house for cleaning and airing, the wiring had completely
vanished. Not a trace of electricity was to be found for love nor money in the
gamekeeper’s cottage.
People couldn’t call Donald
a liar this time as they had all been present when the lights went on and off.
As the church minister had quite rightly stated - it would have been
foolish for a man, such as Donald, to remove all the wiring that he himself had
paid for, so surely there had to be another explanation that did not involve
poltergeists .
No one in the village could
think of any way to explain the phenomena, especially Constable McKelvie who
had kept the supernatural at the top of his list of suspects. Mrs Huckerby grew
ever more desperate as she was no longer invited to high tea at the Big House
at Tyndrum, nor was she even asked to help with the first aid in the village
hall. So desperate times meant desperate measures and she decided to bankroll
Donald in one more attempt at re-wiring the gamekeeper’s cottage.
By now the Duke and Duchess
had grown bored of Coldharbour and decided to wait out the war in a large
rented property in Guelph, Ontario in Canada.
Donald was to re-wire the
cottage and this would be celebrated by an Electricity soiree thrown by Mrs
Edith Huckerby. Everyone, who was anyone, would be invited including those in
the Big House at Tyndrum but not the women who organised the first aid in the
village hall.
Donald re-wired the house in
a record time of eight days and he allowed any passing party, who were nosey
enough to ask, to inspect his work and watch the lights going on and off. On
the night of the soiree, Mrs Huckerby led the convoy of goods that were to be
prepared for that evening’s party. The first thing she did, when she entered
the gamekeeper's cottage was try the light switch - the second thing she did was
shout “Donald!”
Once again, the wiring was
completely stripped from the walls but this time it looked like whoever had
done it, was in a hurry.Sergeant McAllister from the Inverness branch of Her
Majesty’s police force was called upon to solve the mystery once and for all.
He noted - and was surprised that no one else had mentioned it - that there was
no sign of a break-in at the cottage. Whoever had removed the wiring had not
broken into the property. So did they have a key? Was it the work of a ghost?
Or was there a more obvious answer?
The following night,
Sergeant McAllister asked that Constable McKelvie and Donald meet him in the
village hall at 11.30 pm exactly. They were to wear dark clothes and, in case
of emergencies, bring a blunt instrument with them.
Donald decided it was for
the best not to mention anything about this to his mother and met the two
policemen in the village hall at 11.30pm, prompt.
The Sergeant asked the two
to be silent until he told them otherwise.
“Do not make a sound unless
I tell you to, or make a movement unless I tell you to.”
They were ordered around the
back of the gamekeeper’s cottage and, with the use of a key from Donald, they
entered via the rear door.
“There was no sign of a
break in, and no sign of damage of any sort. So maybe whoever it was wasn’t
trying to steal the wiring but maybe they were attempting to stop anyone moving
in.” whispered Sergeant McAllister.
“Why would you do that?”
asked Donald.
“Good question – probably
due to the fact they didn’t want anyone to know they were there.”
“Why would they do that?”
asked Donald again.
“That is what we are about
to find out.”
As they quietly climbed the
stairs they could hear talking in one of the upper rooms.
“That sounds foreign.”
whispered Donald.
Sergeant McKelvie nodded it
was indeed and then signalled that they should enter the room on his count of
three.
"One...two....three"
and then, with a joint effort, they battered down the door with their
shoulders. The two men with the binoculars were totally surprised, making it
easy to overwhelm them.
“Job well done” said a
satisfied Sergeant McAllister as he led the two handcuffed men down the stairs.
Donald seemed particularly pleased with himself and when he told his mother of
the adventure, she was already thinking of ways to organise a Hero soiree
for a few selected friends. It wasn't to be however, as the man from the
Ministry told them that if it was known that two spies had been watching the
movement of troops and ships it could cause widespread panic - it was all
better left unsaid.
It didn’t stop Mrs Edith
Huckerby informing everyone that her son had been decisive in ending the War.
Our hero Donald moved to Inverness and married a local girl, where they had two
sons.
Donald didn’t drop dead at
any moment, as the doctor had warned him, instead he died in his sleep one
night, after telling his grandson all about the time he caught the foreign
spies.
