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We were taken to a children’s home the name of which I do not remember. At Glasgow Sheriff Court, on Wednesday, 28 January 1959, the RSSPCC was granted a Section 66 petition, which allowed Glasgow Corporation to commit us into care. Five months later, it was decided to send my four brothers and sisters to a foster home on the Outer Hebridean island of North Uist. It was also decided that I would not go with them. I remained behind, in the children’s home. I only learned many years later that the authorities wanted to put as much distance as they could between my siblings and our brutal father. My older brothers were bruised and covered with welts from a belt. And they believed that my sisters and I would also be at risk if he had access to us. Irene was just a tot and I was a babe in arms. But it was thought that five children, including two babies, would be too much for a foster couple. They went. I stayed. And so my brothers and sisters disappeared from my life, along with my infantile memories of them and my parents.
It is a strange fact of my life that childhood memories elude me, especially those from my infancy. It is as if I have suppressed many of them. Perhaps the influence of my father, a man I effectively did not know, is stronger than I imagine. Whereas most children would enjoy fairly precise memories of their formative years – from about the age of three to four – I struggle to reclaim mine. Consequently, I have only the vaguest recollection of the two people who arrived at the children’s home one day and talked soothingly to me of becoming my new mummy and daddy – their words. I do not even remember their names. They will be written down somewhere, but I have no access to those records.
By the time I was ensconced with the two doctors in their big house in Newton Mearns, just outside Glasgow, I believed I was alone in the world. Nobody thought to tell me otherwise. Even behind the scenes, however, the mother I didn’t even know existed was manipulating my future. I learned later that the doctors wanted to adopt me, to give me their name and offer me a stable home and opportunities that someone from my background could only ever have dreamed of, but Ma refused to sign the adoption papers. God knows why. It was clear from her actions that she had not wanted me or any of her children. The doctors had treated me as their son for nearly two years, a period during which apparently they exhausted every avenue in an attempt to keep me, but ultimately, when it became clear that they could not be assured that I would be allowed to stay with them, they decided they could not live with that uncertainty.
On the day I left them, they were distraught. They stood by the door of that big house, watching me as I walked down the path flanked by two social workers.
Before I reached the garden gate and the waiting car, I pulled away and ran back to them. ‘Was it because I stole the food?’ I asked.
CHAPTER 2
Paradise Found
Paradise was 17 miles long by 13 miles wide. I took the measure of it on 6 August 1964. North Uist, in the Outer Hebrides, a place as remote as it is beautiful. My new home. I was seven years old, and an extended island family of 2,205 hardy souls who lived on the western fringe of Europe were waiting to welcome me to the next stage of my young and not uneventful life. Four of them would be the brothers and sisters who, until that momentous day, I did not know existed.
‘I have something to tell you, Davie,’ said the social worker, as we rode in a taxi from the tiny airport at Benbecula across an alien landscape beneath an endless sky.
I felt very small. The incredible excitement of the journey from Glasgow to the airport, and then the wonderful adventure of the flight, had subsumed any questions that had been forming in my mind. It had only been a few hours since I had left the doctors’ house. My innocent enquiry about the food had sent them fleeing indoors, with tears streaming down their faces. I was confused. As I was ushered into the car, I heard from behind me a terrible howl of anguish, which I could not understand. They wanted me to go away, didn’t they? There was no time to think about it now. I would think about it later. Now there was only space and wind and blue sky.
The social worker sensed that I had come back down to earth physically and metaphorically. It was time for answers. She placed her arm around my shoulder, drawing me closer to her in the back of the car, enveloping me in comforting warmth. I was too young and damaged to recognise such an action as intimacy, which had played little part in my life so far. However, I sensed she wanted to share something special with me.
‘Do you know you have brothers and sisters, Davie? Did you know that?’ she asked.
I was not sure what having brothers and sisters meant. The concept was unclear. My life had been a pretty solitary affair until that time, usually me and whichever adults had charge over my care. I looked for inspiration at the back of the silent driver’s head and beyond, to his view of the astonishing landscape spreading before us. Neither he nor the cloudless sky offered any explanation.
‘They went away when you were still a tiny baby,’ the social worker continued. ‘While you’ve been in one place, they’ve been in another – here,’ she added, her hand indicating what seemed like a vast plain beyond the safety and seclusion of the old car, which was now rattling along a rutted track. ‘But now,’ she said, ‘you’ll all be together.’ She looked towards the front, beyond the driver, to the ribbon of road lying ahead. ‘We’re nearly at Knockintorran – look!’ she said.
The blue ‘reek’ of peat smoke was a thin, almost transparent column leaking into the sky from the chimney of an isolated single-storey cottage that was dwarfed by the landscape. I could sense the rough texture of the grey walls, which, from this distance, looked as cold as the feeling in my stomach. I was still grappling with this brothers-and-sisters problem.
It would soon be resolved. They were lined up against the wall of the croft house, an honour guard for the new arrival. They would soon have names: Johnny, Jeanette, Jimmy and Irene. Ranging in age from 9 to 13, they, too, had spent a significant portion of their lives separated from me, but they had the advantage of memory. A man and woman were standing behind the children, a tentative smile playing on their kind and ruddy country faces. These were folk outwith my experience, dressed in rough-and-ready clothes, with a quiet stateliness that I would come to realise was the hallmark of those who live in wild places. It is hard to describe. They had a dignity that belied their appearance. Morag and Willie MacDonald were my new mother and father.
I learned later that I was here because my natural mother had refused to agree to me being adopted by two childless doctors in Glasgow, despite not being able to care for me herself. Unbeknown to me, while I had been in and out of children’s homes and foster care, my brothers and sisters had been staying with Willie and Morag. Ma’s demand, which reunited me with my siblings, was arguably the only true act of compassion she had ever shown her children. The social worker gently pushed me out of the car and into my new life. The woman behind the children waved my brothers and sisters forward. It was an awkward moment.
Someone, I can’t remember who, said, ‘Hello, Davie!’
I had come home.
I still do not know what possessed social workers to despatch a gaggle of poverty-bred street kids from Glasgow to an island where English was the second language, but I bless them still for it. I would discover that my brothers and sisters were much changed from the urchins who had left the city so many years before. They formed a circle round me, and standing in the centre I suddenly had the feeling that I was where I was meant to be. Maybe that was what this brothers-and-sisters thing meant.
They were clearly fascinated by me, this small stranger who had without ceremony been added to their number. They looked from me to my new parents, asking questions in an unfamiliar tongue; they had acquired Gaelic. Children learn by osmosis and it would not be long before that incomprehensible and musical language would morph into words and phrases that I could understand.
I brushed aside the clouds of insects that had formed around my head – midges. Those familiar with the west of Scotland will know the scourge of these minuscule and annoying creatures.
Morag and Willie MacDonald took me into the warmth of their home, warmth that was as emotional as it was physical. Heat emanated from a large open fire beside an Aga, upon which a great black kettle was coming to the boil. I would discover that this kettle boiled from dawn till bedtime. Morag walked into a wall of steam. To this day I remember her in a halo of cloud. She never strayed far from that cooker and its huge pots of potatoes and stew, which took two hands to carry to the wooden deal table in the middle of her kitchen. It was the heart of the home.
My first – and erroneous – impression of the croft house was that it seemed sparse and bleak, but it was soon lit up by the bright, if stern, Morag. In retrospect, I realise Morag had none of the vanities of the city women I had known. Her looks were unprepossessing. Make-up and hair-styling were dismissed as the work of the Devil. Morag was a devout Christian. Her uniform of shapeless dress, cross-over white pinny and men’s socks, rising out of sturdy shoes that would not have looked out of place on a man’s feet, was good enough, thank you very much.
Willie was her soul mate, a silent, strong, hard-working man with cool blue eyes that took in everything but gave little away. He, too, wore a uniform – dungarees under a suit jacket and wellington boots. The sleeves of his collarless shirt were invariably rolled up to reveal bulging biceps. The ensemble was completed by a ‘caidie’ – a bunnet, or flat cap – which was removed from his head only at the dinner table or to wipe the sweat from his brow.
Their home reflected the couple. The term ‘modern amenities’ would have meant little to them. The toilet was in a shed at the back of the small garden. It was a treacherous journey in the dark. There was no electricity. The soft glow of light in the three-bedroom croft was generated by paraffin lamp, and while the world had long since been seduced by the age of television, it was an apparatus that Morag regarded as an abomination and an affront to the Good Lord. An ancient battery-powered radio, which broadcast the mournful Gaelic songs that became one of the soundtracks of my life, was sufficient for Morag and Willie. It would take me some time to come to terms with this strange new world of the Western Isles, a place with its own unique personality.
When I arrived on the island, the community survived on crofting. In English terms, crofters would be tenant farmers. My new parents had the lifelong tenancy of the croft, which had been passed down through generations of the family. Morag and Willie paid their rent to the ‘laird’, in this case the Fifth Earl of Granville, a cousin of the Queen, who owned a 60,000-acre estate, part of which was divided into the small farms.
The Outer Hebrides are a bleakly beautiful collection of islands, stretching from the largest, Lewis, in the north, through Harris and the Uists to the butt of Barra, in the south. Separated from the mainland by the Sea of the Hebrides, it is a world apart in every sense. North Uist is flat, almost devoid of trees, and blasted by Atlantic winds that would soon cleanse me. Moorland extends as far as the eye can see in a landscape punctuated by croft-house chimneys and their plumes of peat-fuelled fire smoke. The adjoining crofting communities of North and South Uist, where Gaelic is the first language, are steeped in Highland history. When I eventually went to the local school there were children who had not spoken a word of English before they began their education.
This is the birthplace of heroines such as Flora MacDonald, the saviour of Bonnie Prince Charlie after the 1745 Jacobite Rebellion, which sought to restore the displaced Stuart dynasty to the thrones of Scotland and England. The romantic venture ended tragically with the defeat of the prince’s ragtag Highland Army by a superior British force at the Battle of Culloden in 1746. To this day, however, the memory of how Flora spirited away the fugitive prince ‘over the sea to Skye’ is still strong in the minds of the inhabitants of the islands.
Memory and heritage are precious things in a spectacular and timeless landscape ruled by majestic red deer, which roam a land of lochans teeming with trout, beneath a sky that is the domain of eagles. I had never seen or experienced anything like it. Until I became part of it, my horizon was defined by the distance from the front door of my house to the end of the street. This was another world, where quiet folk spun cloth that was fashioned into the clothes they wore. The food on their table came from the land, the fruits of their own labour.
It was my first evening at Knockintorran and I was about to partake of those fruits. To a child raised on watery soup and insipid stews, the richness and quantity of Morag’s fare would provoke the mother of all belly aches. All of us had somehow muddled through in the hours preceding dinner, operating in that self-conscious atmosphere in which much is thought but little is said. The social worker had long since departed. We were a guarded group as we gathered round the table, with the hatless Willie at its head. My brothers and sisters were subdued. There were obviously rules, which I knew nothing of, but I was street-smart enough to learn.
The table groaned under baskets of homemade bread and scones waiting to be smothered in butter, which had been churned by hand that day, and jam made from fruit grown in the garden. Morag emerged from her cloud of steam, bearing a large pot of potatoes, which she placed on the table. I reached out to take one and learned, somewhat painfully, the first rule of dining at Knockintorran. A wooden spoon tapped my knuckles.
‘Now, young David,’ said Morag, ‘you don’t snatch your food until we’ve thanked the Good Lord for what He’s given us. I’ll let you off this time because you don’t know any better, coming from that heathen city you’ve grown up in, but you will go to your bed hungry if I see bad manners like that from you again. Got it?’
I got it.
Willie bowed his head. Morag and the children followed suit as he intoned words in Gaelic. Later, when my ear attuned to the language, I would learn that he said, ‘Lord, for what we are about to receive, may we be truly thankful.’
When he finished the prayer, my new life began in earnest. Those who eat together become a family.
CHAPTER 3
Of Long Summer Days and Billy the Ram
Billy regarded me with solemn, unblinking eyes, lulling me into a false sense of security with his quiet dignity.
‘Go on, Davie,’ said a voice behind me. That was Johnny.
‘Have a go!’ This was Jimmy.
‘I don’t think you should,’ cautioned Irene.
‘You’ll know all about it if you fall off,’ warned Jeanette.
It had been several weeks since my arrival and I was settling nicely into my new life with my brothers and sisters, but I desperately wanted to be accepted. There was still a sense of distance between me and them. I knew that Billy, a ram of monstrous proportions, with great curling horns, might be the means to prove me worthy of their affection, but he petrified me. I was pretty scared of all the animals on the croft. If truth be told, I am still wary of anything on four legs. My knowledge of animals had been confined to the mangy cats and dogs that patrolled the streets of Glasgow.
Jimmy and Johnny were, however, well versed in the ways of the country. They thought it would be fun to introduce their newly found brother to Billy. I don’t know what age Billy was, or whether he was suffering from some malaise, but his great shaggy coat looked as if it was in tatters.
‘OK,’ I said at last.
‘Good man,’ said Jimmy, who swung me onto the creature’s back, while Johnny held its horns.
‘Daaa-vie!’ wailed Irene.
I was numb with fear.
‘Ready?’ said Johnny, letting go of Billy’s horns without waiting for a reply.
Still robbed of speech, I nodded. ‘GO!’ shouted Jimmy, and I was off, like a National Hunt jockey heading for the sticks.
Someone was screaming in terror and I realised to my horror that it was my own voice. God Almighty could that beast run, round in circles, up and down, with me bouncing ever higher on his back. Johnny was already rolling on the ground, helpless with laughter, when the world went into slow motion and Billy came to a grinding halt, throwing me into the air over his head. I hit the ground and skidded through a muddy puddle. My shrieks had brought out the household and a bedraggled boy with a very sore bottom was gathered up by Jeanette.
She crooned, ‘Davie, Davie, are you all right?’
I was speechless with shock as she carried me back to the adults, who were trying very hard, damn them, not to laugh at my discomfiture. The family gathered in the kitchen as I was deposited naked in the tin bath. My indignation was complete when Morag rolled her sleeves high up on her leg-of-mutton arms and began soaping me all over. Very soon I was respectable in clean shirt and shorts, and placed into the care of my siblings.
‘Get off and play with your wee brother for a few minutes while we grown-ups have a talk,’ said Morag, who added, ‘And mind now, you’ve got jobs to do, so don’t wear yourselves out.’
We all ran through the open door, out into the sunshine. ‘Davie’s a good sport,’ said Johnny.
I was now officially one of them. I cried.
My brothers and sisters were soon revealing their individuality and personalities. Jeanette was five years older than me and she was the little mother, taking my hand and kissing me on the cheek, ruffling my hair and tickling me until I laughed out loud. She would whisper me to sleep in my bed.
I was closest to Irene. She was nearest to me in age. Irene was a serene girl. It quickly became apparent to me that Morag regarded her as special. I’m certain she loved us all in her own gruff way, but it was as if Irene were her own daughter. It was touching to watch the solemn child interacting with this childless woman. It was new territory for them both. Irene and I would remain close until our teens, when she was abruptly removed from Quarriers after reporting that she had been physically beaten. Having to deal with our shared abuse and facing up to our abusers brought us close together, but for the moment we were safe from the future, distanced by geography and time from the bad days that lay ahead.
James, or Jimmy, was the joker, an incorrigible youth who enticed me into the barn one day to exhibit a country skill that I would have no problem in leaving behind me when I eventually left Uist.
‘Look!’ he said, holding out a pillowcase that was squirming alarmingly. ‘I have something to show you.’ He opened the bag to reveal a chicken. ‘Watch,’ he said, pulling the head off the chicken and throwing the quivering carcass at my feet.
I ran for my life, mouthing silent screams, to the echo of Jimmy’s laughter. I believe Jimmy quite liked wringing chickens’ necks, an everyday pursuit in the country, but a definite character flaw where we had come from.
Johnny was the oldest, older than me by six years. Poor Johnny had suffered, and it showed, God love him. He apparently took the worst of the beatings from our father and his sleep would be for ever broken by nightmares that caused him to wet the bed. He would be mortified and the usually sanguine Morag would be furious. Johnny would have to wash himself and his sheets in cold water from the pump at the side of the house. My brother never talked about it, but we could sense his pain, which resulted from the torment inflicted on him by my wicked father. He was, however, a good person. During the eerie night hours, when the world was filled by strange noises and animal songs, he would be the first to comfort me.
Life was good, but there were legacies from our old existence. My brothers and sisters were all afraid of the dark, thanks to our less than loving father. When we lived in Kennedy Street, he invariably chose to arrive late at night, when he was in a drunk and violent mood. He would rouse the boys from their sleep and challenge them to fight. Morag understood our distress and provided us with paraffin Tilley lamps. That light saved us from the darkness.
Morag was kindness personified, but even that good woman would not allow herself to be seen to be spoiling the Whelan brood with such fripperies as chocolate. I’m certain, however, that she had a deal going with soft-touch Willie. He would often call us into the barn and ceremoniously close the door after ensuring, somewhat theatrically, that his wife was out of earshot. Bars of Cadbury’s Dairy Milk would appear as if by magic from his dungaree pocket. As he broke up the chocolate into equal shares, he would say, ‘Wheesht now. Don’t tell Morag. She’ll have my guts if she finds out I’ve been spoiling you.’ We would wolf down the chocolate, promising never to reveal our secret.
Soon after, I would be required to keep other secrets, terrible secrets, but I still delight in the ones we shared with Willie, a good and honest man.
Long before we returned to the bad times, the croft would echo to our laughter. We were content. Life was anything but easy. Morag and Willie were disciplinarians, insisting on the maintenance of Christian values that were adhered to strictly. The Sabbath is a big day in the Hebrides, the last bastion of Presbyterianism. No games were allowed, no playing, no washing on the line, no radio. Reading the Bible was the only recreation permitted. In spite of being nominally a Protestant, something in my Irish Catholic genes railed against the notion. I was content to go along with it, though.
On the Sabbath, we went to church three times. The Reverend Ian MacDonald had a particular talent for making scripture as unutterably boring as it could possibly be. Hollywood may have by that time injected high drama into the Old Testament tales of Moses and Samson, but the Reverend Ian could not. I recall there was much talk of heathens, hellfire and damnation.
The church was fashioned from grey stone as dull as his sermons. It was typically Protestant, devoid of decoration. There were no statues, paintings or stained glass to reflect a rainbow of colours that might have illuminated the Reverend Ian’s dreary monologue. I prayed for the day the strong gusts of Atlantic wind might blow off the corrugated-iron roof. It was as cold inside as it was outside and our legs required to be swung to and fro to maintain circulation. This did not please Morag. ‘Don’t think God doesn’t see you, Davie Whelan – playing instead of praying.’
There would be a brief, if welcome, respite for lunch before afternoon Sunday school. The final service at 6.30 p.m. was mercifully shorter than the morning version. I never worked out why God required our presence three times on a Sunday. Morag declared it to be representative of His love. God must have loved us an awful lot.
School was just as stern, although even our teacher, ‘Corky’ – more properly Miss McCorquodale – could show compassion to young boys. In one of my small acts of rebellion I was sucking a gobstopper during a lesson when it lodged in my throat and I began choking. The teacher was clearly not familiar with the subtleties of the Heimlich manoeuvre, so she bent me over and started beating me on the back. When that failed to dislodge the offending confection, she proceeded to stuff her fingers down my throat in an effort to make me sick. Blue in the face, I vomited the sweet and watched as the gobstopper, red and magnificent, clattered to the floor and smashed to smithereens. I had been so enjoying it.
‘That’ll teach you,’ said Corky, rather unsympathetically, I thought.
There is little room in the island mentality for moral weakness or gobstoppers. I believe moral weakness was expected of us – we were the ‘city slickers’, for ever the outsiders, but we were strangers who were exotic and welcomed because of it. Even our surname set us apart among friends with names such as Mary McIntosh, Alistair McDougall, Donald Archie McKay, Susan McCluskey and the gloriously named Marina Sherwood. There were also more MacDonalds than you could shake a stick at.
Many of the children arrived at the village school in boats, which fascinated me no end. It was Irene’s job to ring the big hand bell that demanded they come to class, a task she performed with relish. Mr Blance, the headmaster, ruled with a rod of iron over the proceedings, and while the tawse – a leather belt used for corporal punishment – stayed in his desk drawer mostly, the threat of it was ever present.
My introduction to the Gaelic had already begun around Morag’s great Aga, but it was reinforced every morning as I passed the wall chart that recorded the days of the week and numbers up to 10 in both languages. Despite our being different from these uncomplicated island folk, so secure in their heritage and place in the world, they welcomed us with their revered Highland hospitality. Long days passed in an atmosphere of kindness and laughter.
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.
