Wild Harbour

Ian MacPherson, Ian Macpherson

• Publisher: Canongate Books
• Year: 2009
• Print ISBN: 9780862412340
• eBook ISBN: 9781847675255
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Classics
• Index: Literature

This is the world of universal future war. Faced with the threat of bombs, bacteriological warfare and poison gas, a married couple whose pacifism compels them to opt out of 'civilisation', take to the hills to live as fugitives in the wild.

Plainly and simply told, Wild Harbour charts the practical difficulties, the successes and failures of living rough in the beautiful hills of remote Speyside. In this respect the book belongs to a tradition of Scottish fiction reflected in novels such as Stevenson's Kidnapped and Buchan's John Macnab. But it takes a darker and more contemporary turn, for although Hugh and his wife Terry learn to fend for themselves, they cannot escape from what the world has become. Their brief summer idyll is brought to an end as the forces of random and meaningless violence close over them.

Written in 1936, Wild Harbour has lost none of its relevance in a post-nuclear age, nor its power to move and to shock.

1 OCTOBER

IN A FEWDAYS after that morning when we were wakened by the sound of rifle-fire rain came on with boisterous winds. Now in the general uproar our straining ears could no longer distinguish separate and ambiguous noises, nor constrain each far-off murmur to the likeness of guns beyond the hills. Our ears could not forebode danger while they were deafened with rushing winds and the tumult of waters; our minds, which had been oppressed with the fear of danger coming daily nearer, became calm as the weather rose to wilder storms.

We had been silent in our cave, and preoccupied. The realization of what we craved yet dreaded to know had thrust itself upon us. We saw that as our knowledge increased, so did that which we had fled to avoid come inexorably on, and our calm sunlit haven, untrod and soundless save for late bees and grouse and the roaring stags, assumed the appearance of an arena round which the rage of the world gathered. We were helpless before this thing that stalked into our knowledge, into our hearing, into our sight. Because our imagination could create only vague pictures of what was happening from what we saw and heard, our peril was the vaster. We could conceive of nothing but general ruin to explain the ruin of our garden and Gallovie’s fate. Duncan’s careful warning filled the land with famished troops of desperate men whose strife and clash we heard when that dawn brought the sound of guns.

But as the weather changed, so did our spirits. There was exultation in the wind; rain drove in slanting sheets, the wind amongst the cliffs over our heads was like the surf of the ocean. We were warm and dry in our cave. We sat inside the  door, watching the squalls scud down the gully and spread themselves over the moor, over the valley, until they blotted out Speyside. Loch Coulter was white with foam. Whirling gouts of spray rose from the loch, and the wind carried them away, to drench the moor and flood the Spey and lace the seldom-seen Monadhliahs with silver streams. Floods that fell from the lip of the precipices around us were caught by the wind, blown into mist by the wind, flung back on the hills that gathered them from the clouds.

It grew cold and the land was a vast bog save where the black streaming cliffs rose to touch the racing sky. Our cave was warm and dry. Even when the clouds were riven momently from the peaks and we saw new snow, not the white powdery coat of the year’s first snow, but leaden stuff under the leaden sky, we were not downcast.

We ate, we slept, we watched the days scud past. We seemed to lose track of everything. Our larder was almost empty but I shot grouse from the door of the cave, and we lived on them from day to day, from hand to mouth. Terry unravelled a pair of my stockings to reknit them. I busied myself cleaning the rifles. We piled on fire and prided ourselves on our comfort.

The weather began to clear yesterday. After midday the rain ended and I called Terry to view a break in the western sky. By night the sky was empty. The wind blew as strongly as ever though the sun shone without clouds. Night comes down early now. It hid the world, save where a snowy peak glimmered. We heard the hoarse voice of many streams. Lying awake we listened in silence to their shouting. When we wakened in the morning the wind was down. It was very cold; the burns though noisy yet were falling and we surveyed a bare swept country, prepared for winter. The sun commenced to warm the morning air. The light of morning was very clear; we could see the most remote distance as if nothing interposed between ourselves and it save space. The Cairngorms made miniatures of themselves upon the horizon, against the green-blue sky.

‘Autumn’s done,’ I told Terry.

She looked into the vacant sky. The clouds, the gulls, the traitorous peewits, all were gone together, swept away by the wind. The birds that had left us made so great a lack, we felt as if all the birds of the air had gone. Stags were roaring in the corries; their throats like the brawling streams did not break the silence that we listened to, nor convince us that our empty country was peopled, but rather they made a background for silence.

The day grew warm. We sat outside the cave to enjoy the sun. The birches were bare, their drab yellow leaves carpeted the ground; the rowan trees had lost their leaves. But here and there in the smoky woods we saw a leafless tree hung with scarlet berries, daring winter. A cloud of small birds swept along the ground beside us, and into the air like leaves in a whirling wind. They fell, and rose, all in one flock, and settled for a moment amongst the birches under our cave, above the loch.

‘Autumn’s done,’ I said again. ‘I must get a beast tomorrow. Pretty soon the stags will be too lean to eat.’

‘It’s warm still,’ Terry said. ‘There’s heat in the sun. If it holds like this to-morrow couldn’t we do something, Hugh? Couldn’t we have a picnic?’

‘The ground’s as wet as muck,’ I reminded her.

‘Och, then we mustn’t sit on the ground. It’s the last chance of the year, Hugh. We were always having picnics in the old days—’

‘I’d like to bathe once more in Loch Coulter, before winter comes,’ I confessed.

‘Won’t it be dreadfully cold?’ she asked, shivering.

‘No,’ I answered, ‘with all the rain there’s been the loch will be as warm as milk. What’ll we have to eat, Terry?’

‘I hope it’s a day like this,’ she said; and then, ‘When will the birds come back again, Hugh?’

2 OCTOBER

AS WE WENT down and came near Loch Coulter, Terry said, ‘When shall we bathe again, Hugh?’

‘Mebbe in March,’ I told her. ‘It can be hot in March.’

‘We must begin to think about next year,’ she went on slowly.

‘What are we going to think about next year?’ I demanded.

‘We can’t live for ever on our stores, Hugh.’

‘Well?’ I inquired roughly.

‘Don’t be angry with me to-day, Hugh,’ she pleaded.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I didn’t mean to sound angry. Oh, it’s always the same, when we mean to spend one day just being happy worries come crowding on us—’

‘I didn’t mean to worry you, Hugh,’ she whispered. ‘Och, never heed next year—’

‘We must heed it,’ I said.

‘Not to-day,’ she replied, ‘another day, Hugh, but not to-day.’

‘To-day and every day. There’s not a moment of our time will ever be free again. To-morrow’s food, every day’s danger—where will it end?’

I looked drearily across the blue waters of the loch. I felt her hand touch mine timidly.

‘Don’t pay any attention to me,’ I bade her.

‘I think we’ll catch one of the goats that are running wild on the Farrow,’ she said with forced cheerfulness. ‘Like Robinson Crusoe, you know. Can’t you make rennet for cheese from the stomachs of young rabbits, Hugh?’

‘Yes, or lambs while they’re very young, or deer calves, or any beast while it’s being suckled by its mother.’

‘There you are!’ she continued. ‘We’ll have milk and cheese and white, white butter. Then we’ll dig a bit of ground and plant potatoes—’

‘Where is the seed coming from?’ I asked ironically.

‘Couldn’t we get potatoes and lots of things from—from round about?’

‘Where?’ I cried. ‘Oh, there’s an easier way, the way we’ll go.’

‘What way is that, Hugh?’ she asked.

‘The way of our fathers, raiding and stealing, thieving like our ancestors.’

‘It’d be better for us to die, Hugh.’

‘That’s easy too.’

‘Hugh!’ she cried. ‘Why are you like this to-day?’

‘I don’t know, Terry. Oh Christ, I can’t see, it’s dark and hopeless every way I turn.’

‘We’ll go out to the hill for meat to-morrow,’ she said simply. ‘I think it’ll do us good. We’ve been too idle lately, Hugh. I often notice,’ she went on in earnest tones, ‘we get like this, downcast and hopeless, when we have nothing to occupy us. You are always happier after a hard day on the hill, Hugh.’

‘What’s the benefit of feeling better for a few hours when it’s worse afterwards?’ I exclaimed.

‘That’s nonsense, Hugh, and besides, we need meat. What are you seeing?’ she asked sharply.

‘Sheep,’ I answered. ‘We can eat mutton now, Terry, and have tallow candles to light us, and skins to keep us warm.’

‘We’re not sheep-stealers yet, Hugh,’ she said.

‘There’s no stealing when there’s no owner,’ I replied.

‘No owner! What do you mean?’

‘Why are the sheep still here, all scattered everyway, and their lambs with them that should have been weaned and sold six weeks ago? Have you seen a shepherd, or heard his dogs? Why is there wool in tufts on every low branch of this wood? If there were owners still, would the sheep be out here now, with their lambs, and some not even clipped?’

‘I don’t know,’ she whispered.

‘Why should we try to blind ourselves—the worst we imagined isn’t so bad as the things that have happened there! there! there!’ I spread my arms wildly to the places beyond our country where men used to live.

She began to take off her clothes and wade into the loch. I followed her. Winter had couriers in the viewless air. We hurried, breathless with cold, out of the water to dry ourselves.

‘There’s frost in that wind,’ I told her. As I rubbed myself dry my skin began to tingle and my flesh to glow. I started to run up and down the sandy foreshore of the bay where we swam. I pounded the firm sand with my feet and felt wisps of sand rise between my toes. Terry stood on the bank laughing at my antics. She shook her tangled hair over her eyes and began to comb it aside with her fingers. As I turned from watching her to raise my arms to the pale sun I caught a glimpse of moving figures in the gorge beneath our cave.

‘Down, Terry! down!’ I whispered fiercely, flinging myself flat on the sand as I spoke.

‘What’s the matter, Hugh?’ she asked in bewilderment, looking about her without obeying my command.

‘For God’s sake lie down or you’ll destroy us both,’ I muttered furiously. I began to worm my way to the place where she crouched with her head in the air and a petulant look on her face.

‘Keep your damned head down,’ I bade her with increasing anger. I was now beside her. I commenced to gather my clothes in my arms.

‘Get your clothes together,’ I whispered. ‘For the love of God do as I bid you, Terry.’

Her cheeks grew white and without another word, without even a murmur of complaint, she followed me as I crawled uphill to the shelter of the wood. Sharp stones struck our bare limbs, heather and branches scratched us, we were wet and filthy and cold with the muck of bogs we crossed. I could scarcely keep my teeth from chattering and I heard Terry’s breath come and go in painful sighs.

‘Not far now,’ I encouraged her hoarsely. She followed me in dogged silence.

‘Put on your stockings and shoes first,’ I bade her when we reached the thicket I had aimed for. ‘If we’ve to run we must be shod. Put on your clothes as fast as you can—I’ll steal a look—’

She sat down obediently on a lichen-covered stone and began to clothe herself. There were long deep scratches on her legs.

‘Here,’ I said, giving her my handkerchief, ‘put that under your stocking. It’ll keep it from sticking to you if there’s blood when you grow warm again.’

She took the handkerchief without a word. I dragged my clothes on; they were sopping and made me feel colder than when I was naked. My left knee was aching with a knock I had taken on a stone. Terry looked at me with a grey anxious face, I tried to smile.

‘I think it’s all right now,’ I whispered, and left her and skulked down from tree to tree until I came into a glade that opened on the gorge. I saw about a dozen men, with four or five dogs at their heels, advancing in the direction of the loch. I did not wait to see more. Immediately I perceived the rifles on their backs, and the crew’s wild air, I slipped back to where Terry cowered. She stood up at my approach, gazing at me with enormous eyes. Her hands, blue with cold, went to her breast.

‘Oh! Oh!’ she said, articulating with difficulty. ‘I didn’t see you coming! you frightened me!’

‘We must get back to the cave,’ I whispered, ‘there may be other men—’

‘Are there men?’ she asked in low tones.

I nodded.

‘If they find the cave we are as good as dead,’ I went on. ‘What a fool I was to leave the rifle!’

We climbed up the hill-side as far as the wood gave us shelter. Then, casting back and fore, we ranged the steep until we found a ravine gouged out by a winter-flooding burn. Though the course of the stream was dry there were pools of water in rocky pots in the gully. We could not avoid them. We trailed ourselves up the gorge, splattering through the pools, clambering up dry falls of rock and shale-slides with infinite care lest we dislodged a stone and sent it tumbling down to warn the men below. Now and then as I crawled I could see them beneath us if I raised my head so much as an inch. They seemed very near; I could scarcely believe they had not our progress in plain view.

At length we lay breathless on the summit almost directly above our cave. I crept to the edge of the cliff whence I could peer at the disturbers of our peace. They were making north along the shore of Loch Coulter. Their dogs stalked at their heels. We waited until the company of men and dogs vanished over the rim of moor beyond the loch. No other danger showed itself. We searched the country, especially the valley to the west from which these men had come. We saw nothing there to alarm us.

‘Are they gone, Hugh?’ Terry whispered behind me.

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘I’m cold, Hugh,’ she went on.

‘We’ll go down,’ I said, rising heavily to my feet. ‘Oh, I’m stiff and sore! Did you hurt yourself, Terry?’

She shook her head.

When we came to the cave I ran in to snatch up my rifle and load it.

‘I’ll never go out without this again,’ I said.

‘Why are you loading the rifle? Why are you looking like that?’ Terry demanded.

‘I’m loading it in case I need it,’ I told her grimly. ‘What am I looking like?’

‘You can’t! You can’t!’ she cried wildly. ‘I won’t let you do it! I’d rather see us both dead, Hugh—’

‘Hush!’ I tried to quieten her. ‘You’re overwrought, Terry. Sit down, lassie, and I’ll see about a meal. Take off these wet clothes. Let me look at the scratches you got—’

‘I know what you’re meaning to do!’ she went on without heeding my words. She stared at me for a moment with panic in her eyes.

‘You’re going to kill! you’re going to make murderers of us both.’

‘I’m going to defend myself if I must,’ I answered.

‘No! No! No! No!’ she exclaimed. ‘You can’t do it! I won’t let you! Give me the rifle!’

She flung herself on me and began to wrest the rifle from me.

‘Let go!’ I shouted, ‘it’s loaded; do you hear, Terry! let it go, it’s loaded!’

I had to use my strength brutally before I could loosen her grip on the rifle. Suddenly she let the gun go. My hands were round her wrists and the gun fell clattering to the floor. She began to drag herself back, struggling in intent silence to be free. I gripped her wrists with all my force. Then she let herself fall on the floor beside the rifle, clawing with her fingers towards it. I dragged her to her feet and held her close to me.

She commenced to tremble and shake and her struggling ended.

‘Terry!’ I breathed. ‘What are you doing, Terry?’

‘Let me go,’ she said in a hoarse voice. ‘Take your hands off me.’

‘Then let the rifle be,’ I retorted. All at once she grew limp. I supported her as best I could with one arm while I let ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• 15 May 1944
• 21 May
• 28 May
• 10 June
• 22 June
• 5 July
• 10 July
• 24 July
• 16 August
• 4 September
• 16 September
• 1 October
• 2 October
• 5 October
• 9 October
• 10 October
• 11 October
• Night
• About the Author
• Copyright