Across the Bridge Read online

  Lachy, the farmhand, had a button keyed accordion or melodeon. He taught Ian to play some of the tunes that were more difficult on the fiddle. The skianach had a set of bagpipes and could play well but in the confines of the bothy he deafened everybody so they made him play just the chanter or play outside. The mood around the estate was jovial even though the living was frugal. Everybody knew his duties. Everybody knew his place in the hierarchy of the big household. Ian grew to like the place except for two things. He missed home and he hated Sundays.

  He had to go to the church on Sunday. There were no exceptions. Everyone had to go and everyone had to look smart. The clothes that had served for work all week had to be spruced up and they all had to stand for an inspection by the estate manager or his assistant. A scuffed trouser knee invited a severe reprimand and dirty boots were just not tolerated. So added to the bothy odours and body odours each Saturday night were the smells of steaming trousers as they dried round the stove and of the pig fat that was used to protect and shine the boots. Ian hated the Sunday routine. He hated the piety and false holiness. He liked the hymns and their music but God’s Holy Word rang hollow in his ear.

  7. THE BONNIE LASS

  Meggernie, 1922

  Spring rolled into summer, summer into autumn, autumn into winter. The years passed until Ian was sixteen and had been three years as assistant handyman. He loved the work; he loved the woodlands of Meggernie; he hated Sundays. He often wondered why it was that he never saw Dochie the shepherd at church. In the spring of 1922 the Wills family had important guests up from Bristol. A big shoot was arranged. Grouse and pheasants were released onto the moor and of course there were plenty of rabbits. The real prize though would be a deer. There was at least one royal stag roamed the glen. Ian had seen it many times with its head held high sniffing the air as if showing off its beautiful antlers and daring the world to try and claim them.

  The shoot was arranged for early morning. All the workers of the estate fanned out along the south side of the glen and all the guests with their guns spread out to the north. The workers were the beaters, beating the earth and shouting as they moved up into the glen ahead of the guns. The morning passed pleasantly and the sun just glimpsed from behind the clouds. By noon they reached Loch Lyon and turned across the glen to come back down. It wasn’t considered wise to have loose cannons wandering among the blackface ewes.

  “Ciamar a tha sibh, valich?” It was Dochie calling to Ian, “How are you, son?”

  “Hello Dochie. It’s been a long time. How’s Rory? How’s Mrs. MacFarlane?”

  “Oh, we’re all fine, lad, just fine. Listen lad! I’m needing some help up here more than ever. The Laird seems to want to fill the glen with sheep. Would you not be interested in being a shepherd?”

  “I’ll have to ask Donald MacNeil. Am bi sibh anns an eaglais a-maireach?” Ian asked Donald if he would be in church next day.

  “In church lad? Good God no! What makes you think that?”

  “Well everybody has to go.”

  “No, Ian lad, I don’t have to go. I have to tend the sheep. Sunday’s just another day. They still need tending.”

  “Aye, well, that’s it decided, Dochie. If I don’t have to go to church I’ll be a shepherd but can you ask the factor?

  They shook hands and Ian ran to catch up with the others. There was a spring in his step as he thought about Sundays without the dreaded inspection. Donald might have been reluctant to agree; he liked this young lad who learned quickly and who always left a good finish on every job he did; but his own son was about to leave school and would be needing a job. So it was he who spoke to the factor and the following week Ian set off up the glen again this time to work with Dochie.

  In his first week it was “dipping” time. All the sheep had to be caught and dipped in a tarry smelling disinfectant to kill the tics that clung to their skin, sucking blood. He was introduced to Lassie, the mother of Dochie’s dog Rory. They were black and white border collies, well trained in the art of shepherding. Ian learned the whistles and calls that were needed to guide Lassie in what he wanted her to do but in truth she knew what do without him.

  The work was hard and constant, but surprisingly it was never dull. Each season brought something new. The dipping, clipping the wool, lambing time, bringing the flock down the glen for winter and watching out for braxy and other ailments that befell the sheep, searching for strays so they didn’t fall foul of marauding foxes, selecting and preparing animals for market, just wandering the hill with Lassie by his side, Ian loved it.

  A postcard arrived one day from Aunt Sarah in Port Appin. At forty-nine years of age she had decided to get married. The lucky man was her second cousin Donald Black a gardener. They were moving home to an estate called Letterwalton in Barcaldine about five miles from Appin. Ian loved his aunt and was happy that she would not be alone but a little disconcerted that he had nowhere to go home to. Hard on the heels of this news came a letter from his brother Donnie. He had grown tired of gardening and spent a year as apprentice blacksmith but now was going to Glasgow to seek his fortune. Their father had found a flat in Chancellor St. on the west side of the city and Donald would stay with him for a while. Why didn’t Ian come too? But Ian was enjoying life as a shepherd.

  Dochie had an old fiddle, which he played sometimes. He preferred old Scots songs rather than Gaelic tunes and one night played “The Bonnie Lass o’ Bon Accord” much to Ian’s delight.

  “Have you ever been to Bon Accord, Ian lad?” he asked.

  “Where’s that?”

  “It’s a nickname for Aberdeen. Listen. I’ll play you “The Northern Lights of Old Aberdeen.”

  Dochie played the song in the perfect timing of an old Scottish Waltz.

  “Have you ever seen them?” he asked.

  “Seen what?”

  “The Northern Lights, laddie, the aurora borealis.”

  “That sounds like the name of a rose.”

  “Go outside and see what the weather’s like. I think it’s frosty.”

  Ian went out and returned to confirm that indeed it was frosty and there was a beautiful clear sky.

  “Alright get your boots on and your jacket. We’re going for a walk.”

  Ian thought they were going to check some sheep but instead they went south towards land that was not part of Meggernie up the side of Ben Lawers. They climbed for more than an hour, stumbling now and then in the dark, and then stopped on the top of a crag.

  Dochie turned to face the north. “Look there!” he pointed. “That’s the Northern Lights. I don’t know why everybody thinks they’re in Aberdeen. They’re at the North Pole and you see them perfectly well from here.”

  Beyond Rannoch Moor and the distant hills there was an amazing sight. Hundreds of shafts of light danced in the sky, vertical beams of white and purple sparkled then disappeared. They watched in silence for a few minutes and then set off back down the hill chatting as they went. Dochie explained how the last rays of sun at the North Pole produced the phenomenon and how it was only visible on clear frosty nights.

  Back in the cottage they warmed up in front of the fire. Ian picked up the fiddle and asked if he could play a few bars.

  “I didn’t know you could play,” said the older man.

  “I can’t. My fingers are too short,” replied the lad but he managed a reasonable rendering of Northern Lights. “I’d love to play The Bonnie Lass but my fingers don’t move fast enough.”

  “Never mind your fingers. The music isn’t in your fingers. It’s in your head and in your heart. Just think of the music and play. Don’t look at your fingers. You know where the notes are. Just play.”

  So he played, scratchily at first, but with a few night’s practice and lots of encouragement and guidance from his tutor he began make the older man’s foot tap in time so he knew that at least he was getting the rhythm right. On the Saturday night Dochie decided that a dram was in order so he poured them both a glass of malt whisky, took the f
iddle, played the problematic tune and handed the instrument to his assistant. Ian played perfectly except for just one note that kept eluding his second finger.

  “That song was written by James Scott Skinner, Ian, and he wrote the music specially for the fiddle.” Dochie was enjoying the job of music teacher. “ I read the music sheet one time and Skinner explained all the bow movements and how each line should be played. Here let me show you,” and he took the fiddle from his pupil and demonstrated the technique.

  And so the winter nights passed and spring came again to the glen. That year the flock grew and they moved right up to the top of the glen and over to the limits of the estate bordering the railway line that went from Crianlarich to Fort William. Ian learned that this was an alternative route home to Appin curving round by Kinlochleven and then back by Ballachulish instead of the south link at Connel. It wasn’t any shorter but sometimes the train times were more convenient. For the holiday of New Year 1924 he took this route and noticed the beginnings of the construction of the new highway to Fort William, later to be called the A82. The motorcar was starting to impact the Highlands.

  In the spring of the year Dochie and Ian began the annual round up of the sheep for clipping and dipping. Most were down in the pens but about fifty remained at the western extremes of the hill-farm next the railway. They had nearly finished the day and both dogs and men were getting tired. Ian and Lassie pulled a group of ten or so from a bank of grass next the railway track. The same number had crossed the track and Dochie sent Rory in a round sweep to bring them back across the track. The 6.30 Fort William to Glasgow rounded a curve in the line and came into view just below Ian. Rory was just going to make it in time. The train driver saw the movements up ahead and pulled two blasts on his whistle.

  Two of the ewes panicked at the line and started back up the embankment. Rory snapped at the others chasing them on clear of the track and ran back up the mountainside coming in on the two strays from above. He growled chastisement and nudged them back towards the track. One crossed. The other went halfway and hesitated. Rory slipped and slithered down the embankment and chased the tardy sheep across the line. As the dog jumped across the track the front of the locomotive hit him smack in the belly. He slumped over on the track and the train rumbled on.

  As the end of the train left the scene Dochie and Ian charged down to help the stricken dog. Rory lay in two halves, legs still kicking, the hind part in between the lines and the head and front quarters lying in the heather. Dochie screamed.

  “Help me Ian,” he wailed as he tried to push the two parts together, “He’s alright. He’s still moving. Help me, Ian. For Christ’s sake help!”

  “We can’t Dochie. He’s dead.”

  Two hours later, as dusk came down, Dochie seemed to accept the inevitable. The two shepherds walked down to the cottage each carrying half a dog with its mother, Lassie, whimpering at their heels. They buried Rory quietly behind the house. Dochie didn’t speak to his wife or to Ian. He took the whisky bottle from the kitchen and walked alone to the shores of the loch. He never recovered from the loss of his dog. Another collie was sent from the farm across the glen but it wasn’t Rory. By summertime the atmosphere was pulling Ian down too so he decided it was time to move on. He took his leave of poor Mrs MacFarlane and walked away in the direction from which he had come as a boy of thirteen. He took the train north to Fort William, passing the spot where Rory died. As they passed the new road works the incline increased and the train slowed to walking pace. Ian opened the door and jumped then ran to slam the door shut again. He walked over to the road works and asked for the foreman. Next day he was a road-builder, no longer a shepherd.

  Road building was no fun, just pick and shovel hard labour, but the pay was better than estate work. The bothy was a hastily thrown together wooden hut. By December the road was cut through as far as Kinlochleven. Snow brought work to a standstill. Ian took his earnings and set off to catch a train back to Appin for Christmas, his first break since starting in Meggernie nearly four years before. Back home in Appin things had changed; Aunt Sarah was away; old friends were grown up and working and Dugald grumped that his brothers were becoming more interested in motorcars than in carpentry. The fiddle making had slowed up in favour of his new hobby, painting watercolours but Ian’s fiddle was complete.

  “I said I would make you both a violin but your brother has gone up to Glasgow so you can have this one and he’ll get his when he comes back. But first you have to play a few tunes.

  Ian took the new fiddle, checked that it was in tune and played “The Bonnie Lass o’ Bon Accord”. Only someone who knew the tune well would know that he still had one note wrong. Dugald knew but was delighted with his nephew’s performance. He wasn’t looking for perfection. He wanted people to enjoy his fiddles. Now he knew that Ian would.

  “It’s yours Ian. Have fun with it.”

  Ian took it and for the rest of his life it was his proudest possession. He never became a maestro but as Dugald wished he had fun playing it. With the few shillings that he still had from the road-building work he bought a small button key accordion and a second hand bicycle. He found accommodation with a cousin John Black who lived in a small stone cottage called Burnside and went to work for a few years in the family carpenter’s business. With the handyman skills he learned at Meggernie there was no shortage of repair jobs to keep him occupied.

  8. I BELONG TO GLASGOW

  Glasgow, 1929-30

  On April 29 1929 Ian was in Glasgow. He had come down to be best man and witness at the wedding of his brother Donald and his bride Bessie. Donald had established a small radio repair shop in the Maryhill area. This was Ian’s first time back in Glasgow since his trip north from Barrow in Furness with Aunt Sarah seventeen years before. The city still had its exciting, bustling appeal, if anything more so now that the motorcar was fighting for street space with the trundling tram.

  It was a chance to meet some of the family that he had never met, Blacks, Grieves and Livingstones but the greatest thing for Ian was another opportunity to meet up with his father and Bobby and hear about their adventures. Donald, his father, still had the flat in Chancellor Street but son Donnie hadn’t stayed long with him there. He had started working as barman with McEwan’s brewing company and moved around from pub to pub and now he was getting married and setting up his own home in Glasgow. Donald the father had spent the last year in the USA on a middle-aged adventure meeting up there with Bobby. He paid a year’s rent in advance and went to see something of the new world.

  “It’s a wild place,” he told Ian, “Everybody carries a pistol like the stories of the Wild West and they’d cut each other’s throat just to get a job.”

  “Did you and Bobby have a gun?”

  “I had a Colt revolver but Bobby didn’t. He didn’t stay long.”

  “Did you shoot at anybody?”

  “Don’t be daft lad. I wasn’t supposed to have it. I kept it hidden.”

  “Where did you go?”

  “New York, Chicago and up to Canada but I didn’t get in. Bobby did. He’s some lad that brother of yours.”

  “What did he do?”

  “Well, we went up the Niagara River and went to see the falls and then Bobby took it into his head that he was going to live in Canada. We went up river to Lewiston, that’s in the state of New York and we crossed the bridge to go into Queenstown on the Canadian side but the Mounted Police said no because we didn’t have the right papers. So what do you think your daft brother did? He shook my hand, said bye-bye, jumped into the river and swam across. He’s a crazy man, worse than his father,” he cackled and slapped the table. “And what about you, Ian lad? What have you been doing?”

  Ian brought his father up to date with his own tamer adventures.

  “Why don’t you come and stay a spell here with me in Glasgow? I’ll get you a job in the shipyard and we can have some fun in the Glasgow pubs.” Donald asked his youngest son. “Bobby’s here a few days
and then he goes back to sea. I’ll be on my own. It gets lonely, son. I don’t like it. We can go and see Partick Thistle. They’re doing alright you know, beat Rangers last week.”

  It didn’t seem like such a bad idea. Appin was a bit dull for a lad of twenty-three. Maybe Glasgow could offer some excitement. The wedding drew to a close as everybody waved away the newly married couple.

  “Good luck to you both,” Ian wished his brother and his wife, “I’ll come and see you in Maryhill.”

  The couple drove away in one of the new black taxis. The wedding reception began to break up and eventually Ian, Bobby and their father took a tram and went to the flat in Chancellor Street. This is just off Byres Road in the West End of Glasgow, mid-way between the University and the area of Partick. In the twenties and thirties it was a thriving commercial area with Lipton, Cooper and Templeton each having a grocery store and with RS McColl, the news and tobacco shop on one side of Byres Road and James Birrell vying for the same trade on the other, right next to the subway station, tailors’ shops, hardware stores, two cinemas showing the newest movies. At the top was Great Western Road with the Botanic Gardens and at the bottom Dumbarton Road with the Kelvin Hall exhibition centre. Very, very different to quiet little Port Appin.

  Donald was as good as his word and found work for Ian in the Partick shipyard. The pay was good, much better than in the Highlands. The work was interesting too, assistant to a carpenter fitting high quality doors and fixtures around the ship. He didn’t really like the crowded feeling working alongside three hundred other men with the constant banter in the “Glesga” language, that took some time to get used to, but everybody was friendly. Nearly all conversational exchange was about football. The yard was split three ways. Catholics supported Glasgow Celtic; Protestants supported Glasgow Rangers; anybody that wasn’t sure or didn’t care supported the local team Partick Thistle. Ian logically fell in the third group and started going to all the home games played at Firhill.