No More Silence
It wasn’t all drifting along on fluffy white clouds, however. Youngsters of today could not conceive of children, from the youngest to the eldest, working in the fields – the back-breaking work of scything hay and cutting peat until the blisters on your hands are transformed into calluses. I can feel them still today.
If Morag ruled the home, Willie’s domain was the fields. Willie was a typical crofter, forever mucking out, herding cattle and shearing sheep. His sheepdog, Tidy, would round up Billy and his ilk, answering Willie’s every shrill whistle of command. When he was not tending animals, Willie would deploy his enormous strength to the crops. He could swing the scythe through hay as if he were cutting tissue paper. Willie appeared to work every daylight hour that God sent. When the Aga in the kitchen was not providing food, it was drying his outer clothes after a day in the elements.
He had one despicable bad habit that to this day makes me queasy. He would blow his nose and deposit the contents on the ground. Even a snotty-nosed ‘keelie’ from Glasgow had enough manners to know a hankie should be used. However, in the scheme of things, it was a forgivable fault. And for those with the experience, there is no finer feeling in the world than laying down your tools at the end of a hard day’s work. What a glorious feeling to see the arrival of the tractor that would take you home to one of Morag’s dinners. By now, my belly aches were a thing of the past. You may have all the money and possessions in the world, but there is nothing more precious than rest and filling yourself with good food.
Then there’s the added joy of the bath. Bath time in the MacDonald household consisted of lining up with your towel beside the great tin bath, which Morag had filled with hot water from the contents of endless kettle runs. The pecking order was youngest to eldest, a happy position for me: I always washed in the cleanest water. Morag would dry us in front of the fire with a rough, if kindly, touch and make us squeal with laughter by hitching up her skirt and warming her legs by the fire. It was a favourite pastime, leading to what we Scots describe as ‘corned-beef legs’ – hot red patches on our traditionally pale skin. She would quickly return to decorum when the croft door, which was never locked, opened to admit a guest. Our childhood was populated by the people who congregated in our home, prattling away in Gaelic. Not a lot happened in such an isolated community, but they could gossip for hours.
The arrival of a visitor was the signal for the children to go out and play. Hide and seek among the hayricks was a favourite, but it was the sandy machair that became my adventure playground. Machair is a Gaelic word describing the extensive fertile plain that lies between the sea and the cultivated land. It is unique to the Western Isles and a world-class conservation site. We would roam far and wide, exploring fjord-like sea lochs that stretched to infinity and from which came the blustering Atlantic winds that had long since blown away the grime of the city from our life. We could hear Morag and Jeanette’s voices in the distance, calling us in for our tea, but we would ignore them. Only when Morag’s voice darkened with anger did we realise we had run to the end of our rope. Jeanette would then appear at the side of the croft, waving a white tea-towel – a flag of truce. To ignore that signal was to go to bed hungry. We invariably made it back in time for dinner, although Johnny did on one occasion run out of the invisible rope.
One of the great treats of childhood on the island was the frantic run home in time for the arrival of the big, green Co-operative Stores van, which motored between the crofts. Ian MacDonald drove the van and his wife, Ina, served. Their nod to corporate image was matching beige shop coats. This rolling Aladdin’s cave could be seen for miles, your anticipation growing as it drew ever nearer. Ian and Ina brought wonderful treats – iced buns and glorious cakes with names such as Eiffel Towers. We were given first pick. On one occasion, this was not good enough for Johnny. He was sent to the van for a message and spent some of Morag’s change on sweeties. She was furious: ‘I’ll not have any boy stealing in my house. Now get up to your bed and lie and think about what we will be eating tonight while you go hungry.’
The recalcitrant Johnny climbed out of the bedroom window in his bare feet and dropped down into the courtyard at the rear of the croft. He went to the barn, got on his bike and pedalled off across the fields to the shop in the village. Alas, the dreary Reverend MacDonald saw him pedalling along, captured him and returned him to the croft. The minister had barely departed when Johnny was seriously cuffed about the ears. ‘You’ve black affronted me, out in your bare feet,’ said Morag, using the Scots phrase for being mortified.
Of course, his caring brothers and sisters thought long and hard about the nature of his wrongdoing and the justice of righteous punishment. How we laughed.
Laughter was a constant companion. It was such a joy for a little boy who was still in many ways the timid child in the corner, who could take fright at things that had no power over other children – such as Santa. Santa is rarely perceived to be ominous, but he scared the hell out of me on my first Christmas on the island. We trooped off to the laird’s ‘big house’, Calarnais House, for the annual bash. The ground was thick with snow and we poured into the elegant surroundings of another way of life entirely. I occupied my usual position in the corner and waited for the arrival of this legendary figure. Father Christmas had not featured large in my life until that time. When he arrived with his great white beard and red coat, I ran for it, straight into the heavily decorated tree. I was trapped in the tree, tied up by tinsel, with only my legs visible as it slowly toppled. Poor Santa was only helping when he attempted to extricate me, but the sight of his big red face made me howl even louder.
Santa said, ‘My, my, what a lot of noise from such a wee boy.’ He rummaged in his sack and a brightly wrapped present materialised. ‘Now, see what Santa’s got for you,’ he said kindly.
I bawled and refused the gift. My brothers and sisters pushed me forward, but Santa’s smiling face served only to make matters worse. I bawled louder. I was led from the room, tear-stained and howling. The journey back to the croft seemed dark and terribly long. I got a few sore ‘nips’ in retribution from Jimmy and Johnny. They, too, were empty-handed, thanks to me. I had failed them. Never been a big fan of Santa ever since.
Not every trip to the big house was so fraught. Lord and Lady Granville would invite me and Jimmy there for a birthday party for one of their children, who were educated in England and did not speak Gaelic. There were few children on the island who spoke English as well as we did, so we were brought in to translate, and to keep the laird’s children amused.
It would not be the only occasion when we would rub shoulders with the aristocracy and royalty. The Queen was a regular visitor in the summer, when the royal yacht Britannia sailed around the islands. Her Majesty would come ashore for the annual Agricultural Show and picnic with her cousin the earl and his family. In the year that I was there, Jeanette was chosen to present Her Majesty with a bunch of flowers when she came to open the show. Morag’s ample bosom heaved with the pride of it all, the signal for Jeanette to be prodded, poked and decorated with a brand-new pink party dress that made her look like a fairy on a cake. She hated it with a vengeance.
‘You will not embarrass me, lady,’ said Morag, ‘by wearing a tatty school uniform to meet the Queen. It’s the new dress for you, whether you like it or not.’
Jeanette could never have been described as ‘frilly’ but frilly she was, in spades. Morag had looked out her catalogue – a Bible of delights that had to be ordered from the mainland: North Uist, like my sister, did not do frilly. When the dress arrived, Jeanette was hoisted onto the kitchen table for a fitting.
My poor sister, who was 14, declared, ‘I feel like a pink blancmange! Why can’t I wear my school uniform?’
‘Do you want everyone to think you’re a scruff?’ Morag mumbled through a mouthful of pins. ‘You’ll not give us red faces, do you hear? This is a beautiful dress. If I’d had a dress like this when I was your age, I’d have thought I was the cat’s pyjamas. Now, stop jumping around while I pin this hem. You don’t want the Queen to see you with a squint hem, do you?’
Jeanette suffered for hours until Morag decided the dress was ‘just right’. It was only the beginning of Jeanette’s discomfiture. For weeks she had to practise how to greet Her Majesty with a proper curtsey. This was a joy to the rest of us. We howled with laughter. Poor Jeanette was never the lightest on her feet. She was ordered to curtsey very low and deferentially. Jeanette then had to take three steps, hand the Queen a bunch of flowers and say, ‘Good morning, Your Majesty.’ We practised with her, behind her back of course, stifling our giggles for fear of offending Morag’s sense of decorum. Jimmy and Johnny could not curtsey if their lives depended on it and they would inevitably end up tumbling over each other, whereupon a fight would ensue.
On the big day, we all trooped along to the show, wearing our kilts. Jeanette waited for the arrival of Her Majesty, picking at her dress, an act that had Morag drawing daggers with her eyes. When the Queen arrived in a big Land Rover, she waved to the locals and offered a wonderfully benign smile. Morag was resplendent in her Sunday best, a navy-blue two-piece ‘costume’ suit that smelled disconcertingly of mothballs. Dear Morag looked glamorous … almost. Even Willie had escaped from his dungarees, replaced for the occasion by a suit and a heavily starched white shirt, which, as the day progressed, was intent on choking him to death. In the end, Jeanette was perfect in words and actions. We stuffed our faces and returned home lit by the glow of it all.
We thought the good times would never end. How wrong we were. The only security in the lives of the Whelan children was the certainty of insecurity. The bombshell dropped when the MacDonalds were informed by the Social Work Department that our mother wanted us back and we were to be returned to Glasgow. For some godforsaken reason known only to the authorities, we would be prevented from maintaining contact with the only real parents we had known. There was no rhyme or reason to it, a casual and probably unintentional cruelty. It would be 20 years before we would see Morag again.
I had been on the island for little more than a year when we prepared to return to Glasgow and God knows what. The only thing we were certain of was that it would not be good. Paradise was about to be lost. The halcyon days would be left behind for a return to the slums and – worst of all – Quarriers beckoned.
CHAPTER 4
Paradise Lost
I had cried myself to exhaustion. As the aircraft carrying us away from North Uist arced out of Benbecula into an endless blue sky, my heart and stomach lurched. The feeling was more than physical. The Whelan siblings were surrounded by people embarking on journeys. We were in a sea of smiling faces, but we could not share the excitement that was so evident in our fellow passengers. They had something to look forward to on their journey. We did not, and we were terribly alone with our thoughts and the uncertainty of the future.
I was too young to fully appreciate what had been going on, but I had nonetheless begun putting together the pieces of a jigsaw that had been puzzling me for days: Willie’s grim-faced stoicism and Morag’s demeanour, so withdrawn, shedding tears at the slightest provocation. He had evidently been struggling under a dreadful burden, bearing a secret he could not share. Whatever was going on, Jeanette had been fretting about it, too, and it had transmitted to Irene, who had been abjectly miserable. It would be some time before I learned of the secret meetings in the barn between Willie and Jeanette when our future – or lack of it – was laid out before my eldest sister. Somewhere above my young head, the most recent chapter in our lives was closing and the next sad episode was in the process of being written. Our world was coming to an end. We would soon be leaving the island and we would not be returning. I was not party to the knowledge that we were going back to Glasgow to live permanently, but I knew, somehow I knew. I had been experiencing a dreadful sense of loss without quite knowing why. I wasn’t certain any more of what lay ahead.
Later, as we sat on the aircraft, our geographical destination was Glasgow. From the vantage point of adulthood, I am aware now that the distance between what had been and what would be was measured in more than mere miles. The clues had been there, but I was too naïve to identify them. The atmosphere at the croft had changed dramatically in the early part of May 1966, like the temperature in a room dropping suddenly. I could not, however, see the complete picture, only glimpses of a mysterious canvas. As I said, Morag had begun to cry at the smallest thing and she clung to us as if she would never see us again. She wouldn’t for a very long time. It would be many years before my sister Jeanette turned up on her doorstep, as a grown woman and the mother of three children. It would be even longer before we would be reunited with the only mother we had ever truly known. In the days before our departure, Morag had clung to us, a particular mystery to me because she was hardly the most demonstrative of women. Willie would take himself off to the barn, seemingly unable to hear me when I shouted a greeting at him. I knew instinctively I wasn’t being ignored; he was preoccupied.
What I did not know was that Willie had taken Jeanette to the barn because he had news for her. Jeanette revealed to me much later that this big, strong man was weeping unashamedly when he told her that Morag was broken-hearted because our real mother had demanded that we return to Glasgow, to start over ‘as a family’. He swore Jeanette to secrecy, which must have been a dreadful burden on her. I was playing in the early-summer sunshine, throwing a ball for Willie’s sheepdog – even working dogs were allowed a little fun in their life. Boy and dog were having a wonderful time, but our innocent game wasn’t quite managing to dispel the gloom of misery hanging over Willie as he headed into the barn. He beckoned to Jeanette. Something was amiss. I played on, oblivious to the life-changing events that were unfolding. Willie’s bright, open face, creased by sun and biting wind, had somehow crumpled. It was sorrow. I had seen enough of it in my life to recognise that mask. Jeanette also knew Willie was distressed, and within a few moments she knew why.
‘Lass, I have something to tell you,’ he said in a faltering voice. ‘This is the hardest thing for me, but I have to tell you.’
‘What?’ said Jeanette, alarmed.
Willie took a deep breath. ‘You’re all going back to Glasgow.’
Jeanette was dumbfounded. Tears sprang into her eyes. ‘Why?’ she whispered in a voice that was not her own. ‘We’re all so happy here. Why do we need to go back?’ she pleaded. ‘Don’t you want us?’
Willie had promised himself he would be brave, but he was lost. It was his turn to plead. ‘No, no, no, lass! We love you like you are our own. You know that, don’t you? We’ve never made any difference between any of you. I hope you know that?’
Jeanette was blinded by tears. ‘Is it because we were bad?’ she asked, falling into the trap that has snared unloved children from the beginning of time – believing it’s your fault when things go wrong. My sister grabbed Willie’s hand and said, ‘Please, Willie, it was just a joke. We were only having fun.’ Jeanette’s mind was swimming. She believed that it was the recent prank she and Jimmy had played on Willie and one of our neighbours.
The two of them had found a tin of paint in the shed and had deemed it a great jape to paint the lambs all over – in blue! They hadn’t realised that colour patches were daubed on the animals so each crofter could identify his own beasts. Willie had been really angry with Jimmy and Jeanette and had berated them, but he hadn’t realised I had been watching, and when they were out of sight he’d laughed out loud to himself.
‘No, lass! This isn’t about the sheep,’ he told Jeanette.
She wrung her hands. ‘It’s about the postie’s van, then, isn’t it?’ Another jape. Johnny and Jimmy had seen the post-office van parked in a lane with the keys inside. The postman had been having a cup of tea with a crofter and hadn’t reckoned on the arrival of two unmitigated scallywags. They took the van for a joy ride and crashed it into a hedge, by virtue of losing control of the vehicle because Johnny’s feet didn’t quite reach the pedals. No harm had been done to the vehicle or its drivers, but Morag had been incandescent with rage. She’d bellowed at them, ‘You’ve black affronted me, you two. How can I hold my head up in church with everyone knowing I can’t control you boys?’
Willie reassured Jeanette, ‘It’s not about the postie’s van. That was just a bit of nonsense.’ For a few moments, Willie was lost for words, and when he found his voice, he said, ‘This is something we can’t fix. Your mum has demanded the social workers take you all back to Glasgow, to be a family again. We’ve tried arguing with them, but they say your mum has rights. We’ve loved you all from the moment you came. We’ve tried to give you everything we would have given our own children if God had granted us the blessing of having any. No matter what happens now, we’ll still always love you, no matter where you are. I’m so sorry.’ The cruelty of the moment was heightened when Willie revealed the worst of it: ‘They’ve told us that we can’t even stay in touch with you – no birthday cards, no Christmas cards, nothing.’
Jeanette was inconsolable.
Willie added, ‘You have to promise me not to tell the others. Not yet. It would only upset everyone more. We’re waiting to hear when the social worker is coming to collect you. We just want your last days here to be happy. We want you all to have good memories of us.’
Willie recovered a dog-eared letter from the pocket of his dungarees and handed it to Jeanette. It had come from Jenny, our mother’s sister. Jeanette told me later that Jenny had written to Willie and Morag, telling them she was sorry that we were all being taken away from the only loving home we had ever known. She apparently thanked the MacDonalds for looking after us all so well, far more than her sister had ever done for her own children.
My sister’s face was ashen when she came out of the barn and suddenly I lost interest in throwing the ball for Tidy. From that moment, everything in the croft changed. Heaven knows how Jeanette kept the secret and endured that deeply troubled period.
A few days later, the beginning of the end was heralded by a perfect early summer’s day – 25 May 1966, a date etched in my memory. People who have led normal lives recall the good days in their lives. The disadvantaged and abused remember the bad times. We were told we were ‘going on a trip’. In any other child’s mind, embarking on trips would be anticipated with fun, a sense of adventure, but I wasn’t like any other child and this was going to be like no other trip I had ever been on. Morag told us to get washed and to dress in our Sunday best. I kept asking why. We were only going to school, weren’t we?
She was distraught, struggling to appear as if it was just another day, exhorting us to get ready quickly. ‘Because I told you, Davie – and remember to wash behind those ears!’ The woman could not see for tears.
The household was silent, except for her sobs. I was crushed on her behalf. I had never seen her like this before. She was the sort of woman who would have faced up to the Devil. We were soon all ready and had to endure a silent inspection by Morag and Willie. Even in their grief, they were privately determined that if this was the last time anyone saw us, we would at least be looking our best.
We left the house and trooped down to the school. We didn’t know it yet, but we were going to say goodbye. When we arrived, our classmates were subdued. They knew what was happening. The headmaster and our beloved Corky could not speak. We were each presented with a white leather-bound Bible with embossed gold script. Our names had been carefully inscribed inside the cover in precise copperplate writing. It felt cold in my hand. One associates the Bible with spiritual and emotional comfort. There was no solace in this sad, if beautiful, little edition of the Good Book.
Our school chums shifted uneasily, unable to make eye contact with us. They had been told they would not be allowed to know where we were going, so friendships formed and the bonds created were being severed for ever. We suddenly realised what was happening. We were going. Everything we had known, everything that had seemed so safe and permanent, was being removed.
It was a long, silent walk on leaden feet back to the croft house. We plucked at the hedgerows, as if we could keep a tiny bit of Uist alive in our hearts and minds by gathering these tawdry little souvenirs of the times when we were happy and safe from harm. The taxi was waiting for us. Like condemned men being rushed from a death cell to the gallows room, we were ushered towards the vehicle by the social worker. We all suffered the same moment of panic, looking for a way out, like prisoners confronted by bars who attempt to make a final bid for freedom.
Jeanette was trying but failing to keep us calm, promising us we were safe, that we were together and she would look after us. Irene, poor Irene was howling like a wounded animal. I had only heard such anguish in a human voice once before – when I left the doctors’ house in Glasgow. Irene had to be prised physically from Morag’s bosom.
We left our island life with the clothes we stood in. Our toys and other belongings remained inside the croft, where Morag would turn them into a shrine to the children she loved and lost. I started to cry and I did not stop.
Normality is a majority concept. I thought my life was normal because it was my experience and that of those I knew and loved. Only later, when I was able to make comparisons, did I realise how abnormal our lives were. When people who live normal lives are on the threshold of something new, they describe it as looking forward. Up until that juncture in my short and troubled life, I had never been conscious of looking forward to anything. Such an emotion implies that there is hope, the promise of something, anything. Peace? Contentment? Love? I had never entertained the possibility of finding anything other than the next episode of uncertainty. My time on Uist had taken the edge off that emotion, but it was ever present. My view of the world had never truly been elevated above ground zero and the horizon was an alien, unreachable destination. It did not, however, prevent me from yearning. My dilemma was that I wasn’t sure what to yearn for. I knew, somehow, that I wanted, needed something that had not yet visited me, but without having a means of comparisons or terms of reference by which to judge, it remained an imponderable mystery.
I had been on Uist for less than two years, but such was the influence it had on me that even when I thought very hard about it I could not conjure up a vision of what had gone before. The past was a film running in my mind, but it was an old movie, sepia-toned, blurred and moving far too quickly to make any sense.
By now, I knew that we were being reunited with Ma, a mythical creature, with her long, lustrous hair, dark eyes and faded glamour. I knew her only through what I had been told. If the knowledge that I had brothers and sisters had been a surprise, the fact that I had a mother was a revelation. I had thought I was an orphan. For as long as I could remember I had no real sense of having a mother, merely a succession of female figures who, to a greater or lesser degree, offered me security and care. Morag had come closest to fulfilling the role. However, very soon, I, and my brothers and sisters, would be reunited with the woman who, in spite of her manifold problems, clung to some notion of keeping a family together. I am still not sure why, and I don’t think she was either. I don’t believe she could have articulated her reasons, but I cling to the belief that there existed within her some degree of mothering instinct that would not allow her, no matter how bad things were, to relinquish her brood.