It was a perfect racecourse. The ground was firm and the weather conditions were fine, at least they were to start with. I was towards the middle of the pack, enjoying myself, biding my time, until suddenly the heavens opened and everything was blown wide apart. I had guessed it might rain. My brother Uilleam said, ‘It will be a catastrophe if it does,’ but I love riding through a downpour. The earth churns beneath you as you fight just to stay upright. The bends become slippery and take your breath away. My more cautious rivals fell behind as I tore on.
The rain wasn’t cold like it is in the Highlands, where I had gone to school. It felt good on my cheeks and trickling down my neck. I was on my Douglas motorbike, two years old and a beauty to behold, and he was puttering along beautifully. The gap between me and everyone else was growing.
And then, I don’t know how it happened – maybe it was my goggles misting up like a January sky, maybe it was a message from God telling me to slow down – but somehow, I got lost. I had followed the signs fastidiously but what I didn’t realise was that the signs weren’t just for our race: that ‘2km’ carved into a tree-trunk could have meant to anywhere.
So, I went one way, through brambles and rushes, low-hanging branches, and the pack went another. I was oblivious at first, enjoying the storm. It was only when I stopped completely, turned off the engine, looked around and could hear nothing except for the sound of one solitary bird chirruping that I realised: I had gone wrong.
Retracing my tracks, I got back to the course as fast as I could. Naturally the others were a good way ahead now.
I patted Douglas – we had lost a light in the undergrowth – and sped up. I thought of how Uilleam would laugh if I failed to finish, my father would be unsurprised and my mother would be pleased: ‘Maybe it’s best you stick to horses, Mairi?’ and it drove me forward.
So I pressed on for I had nothing to lose. My thighs ached and the small of my back was pulsing but my reckless riding paid off… I found the pack again, beaten by the rain and moving at a sick snail’s pace. First they were twenty yards ahead, then ten, then five, but they were either too timid or too tightly bunched to make a break for it. No one was going to box me in. I swerved clean on the outside. I was alone again, tearing up the open road with Douglas roaring underneath me.
Two more hairpin bends were accomplished, just the straight, smooth promise of the finishing line to go. I heard the crowd before I saw them. I thought I could make out Uilleam waving. He had assured me he would be at the end, with a slice of fruit cake.
I was ecstatic, but just as I pulled forward for the last triumphant few yards, someone came out of nowhere, like a burst of unexpected sunshine, and shot past me. She went by at a most ridiculous odds-defying speed. She was creating merry hell. She was lucky she didn’t kill herself. I was left spluttering in the backdraught of black smoke.
It was Gypsy.
I knew Gypsy only by reputation back then: I had heard she was fast but not furious, a devil in a race. A hero on a bike. And off one.
After I got to know her I realised that, if anything, her reputation didn’t do her justice: she was more magnificent, more extraordinary, more everything than anyone else. She would always be one step ahead of me.
There are people you come across in life who you feel like you have known forever. You sense their fears; you can read their dreams. That’s how it eventually became with Gypsy and me. It felt like we were destined to be together. I used to think it was written in the stars that I would follow her to the ends of the earth.
And that, I suppose, is what I did.
For as long as I could.
Dr Munro came to my home in Chedington, Dorset, in the last week of August 1914.
‘Is this the house of Mairi Chisholm – and her parents? Good, I have something I would like to talk about with you all.’
My mother rang the bell for tea, eyeing me uneasily. My father marched down from his study – he disliked an unexpected guest – but he shook hands with the stranger, greeting him warmly. This allowed my mother time to furiously mouth questions behind their rigid backs.
‘What trouble are you in now?’
‘I’m not!’
‘How long has this been going on for?’
‘Nothing’s been going on!’
‘Why didn’t you tell us?’
It took me a good few moments before I realised that my mother thought the man had come to our house to propose to me!
I cringed and shrugged at her, hoping my raised shoulders conveyed, Mother, I have never seen this man before in my life.
Dr Munro was a tall, no-nonsense fella with a thick ginger moustache and a narrow build. Despite his height, he didn’t take up much room. You wouldn’t notice him in a crowd, so maybe I had seen him before and missed him? Perhaps he had seen me walking to the post office or maybe he had observed me in church. I often fancied I made a pretty picture, on my knees at the altar. And maybe without my having the faintest inkling, he had fallen in love with me? He might have knocked on doors around the village – it wouldn’t be difficult to find my name and address, how many pious young redheads were living in Chedington? – then decided to make his approach.
That would require some nerve, a quality I did generally admire, but even so, it seemed… impulsive. Foolhardy even.
The idea of a secret admirer was unexpected, yet flattering. I had not experienced a lot of male interest, truth be told, although I had not been seeking it either. My brother Uilleam’s friends had, on occasion, set my heart a-flutter but more because they were different to what I was used to, rather than because they had any particular appeal.
However, if I wanted an engagement – which I was not sure I did – then I would have preferred the gentleman to be at least thirty years younger than Dr Munro appeared. And perhaps someone who trimmed their facial hair more than occasionally. Would it be wrong to ask for broader shoulders too?
I knew that one of my mother’s darkest fears was that I was ‘unmarriageable’. In spite of my feelings, or rather lack of feelings, towards this doctor, it occurred to me how pleasant it would be to prove her wrong for once (not that she would admit it).
Yet Dr Munro seemed in no hurry to get to the question of why he was here. We drank tea in the drawing room and talked of the weather. Which was, as my mother was fond of saying, unusually kind for this time of year.
Inevitably, our conversation turned to the recent outbreak of war. Although I tried to keep up with the news on the wireless, most of what I knew about it came from my father, who was fervently in favour of military solutions to just about anything. I had never heard my father’s opinions on the Belgians in particular before, but now he agreed with Dr Munro that they were a plucky people who must not be crushed. As for the Germans, I had in the past heard my father admire their manufacturing, but now they were ‘methodical’ and ‘desperate’. Dr Munro disagreed here, saying it was ‘six of one and half a dozen of the other’, and my father, who instinctively knew when he had an audience, reined himself back. Now the Germans were not so much ‘methodical’ and ‘desperate’, but ‘efficient’ and ‘dutiful’. Dr Munro added that he had spent many happy summers in Berlin, a centre of intellectual thinking and technological advance. Surprisingly, Father agreed. A shame to make enemies of such people.
Dr Munro thought, optimistically, that the war would be over by Christmas. My father, determined to out-do him even in positive thinking, said he would lay good money that it would be done and dusted before October’s end.
As their conversation turned to Lord Kitchener – ‘a superb commander’ according to Dr Munro, ‘The Kaiser underestimates him,’ opined my father – I tried to imagine the wedding. I had always thought I’d marry in the Highlands – and since it appeared that Dr Munro may have some Scottish in him, there was no need to rethink the location. Certainly, my father would be wearing his military kilt and he would insist we listen to the meow of bagpipes. He might even have a go at playing himself. There would be a rare blue sky and sunshine. Rice would be thrown and nestle in my veil, Mother might cry into Father’s handkerchiefs and Uilleam would tease us.
I liked the way Dr Munro talked. Perhaps not quite enough to marry the man and to listen to him talk all day long, but he had a compassionate and intelligent way about him. Shooting him sideways glances, I imagined our wedding night. Me in a new nightdress with more – no, fewer – ribbons than usual, he in his… bedtime finery? Surely, he wouldn’t want to do it at his age.
I was tempted by the vanilla macaroons, but I did not want to be proposed to with crumbs in my mouth, so I held off. However, I could have had ten vanilla macaroons by the time things came to a head. Father and Dr Munro discussed Russia – my father: ‘The average Russian wants war no more than the average lamb wants to be slaughtered’, Dr Munro: ‘The average Russian has no more say in what he wants than the average lamb’; the French – my father: ‘self-interested, self-serving’, Dr Munro: ‘It can appear that way’; even the Japs – my father: ‘The Orientals are untrustworthy’, Dr Munro: ‘The Orientals are an unknown quantity’. We circled and circled the most important question, as though too timid to get into a cold bath, until finally, Dr Munro announced that he may as well get to the crux of it: he had something of sensitivity to ask of me and indeed of my parents.
Everything seemed to slow down. My father put his cup and saucer on the table with a loud clunk. I watched the rise and fall of my mother’s chest and the flush on her throat, which crept up to her cheeks. I had no idea what to say. Perhaps I would ask if he would be opposed to a long engagement – wouldn’t it be sensible to get to know each other properly? I couldn’t imagine how my mother would respond to that. Nor him, in fact – he was old enough already. Might he not die if he had to wait very long?
Dr Munro did not get down on one knee, but he did walk the long expanse of the room to take the vacant leather armchair to my right.
‘Mairi,’ he said and I nodded resolutely. I had a feeling this was a once in a lifetime event for me and I was determined to treat the moment with respect. I might let down my poor suitor, yes, but I would let him down gently. Dr Munro was clearly a good man. The last thing I would want to do was humiliate him.
‘Would you do us the honour of joining our war effort?’
It turned out that Dr Munro did indeed want my hand, but not in marriage. He had heard of my riding ability. The hairpin bends I negotiated so well. The competitions I won.
My courage.
This was what had piqued his interest.
I let out a breath. I didn’t know if I was happy or sad. Happy, I thought. Disappointed, a little. Curious, a lot.
Dr Munro explained that he was setting up a ‘Flying Ambulance Corps’ to travel to Belgium and join the war effort over there.
‘Flying?’ I spluttered, still trying to catch up with the change in proposal.
‘Well, not exactly flying.’ He gave me a toothy smile. ‘By that we mean… very fast motorised vehicles.’
‘We had horse-drawn wagons in my day,’ my father said nostalgically.
‘Very good they were too,’ agreed Dr Munro. ‘But this is the future.’
Dr Munro made the undertaking sound relatively simple: retrieve soldiers in difficulty. Maybe give a hand on the ground.
‘But I’m not a nurse,’ I told him.
‘You’ll soon learn. It’s only dressing wounds, that kind of thing. Most treatment will take place at the hospital.’
I explained that I had just started volunteering in London for the Women’s Emergency Corps and I wasn’t exactly available for… I didn’t know what to call it. I decided on ‘a trip’.
‘Have you seen much action there?’
‘In the city? Not yet, but—’
‘Your driving – your bravery – is what we are looking for, Mairi.’
‘Her brother Uilleam taught her to ride,’ my mother said abruptly, as though aggrieved on behalf of her neglected son. ‘He’s very talented too—’
But Dr Munro interrupted with a list of my motorcycling achievements as though she hadn’t spoken at all. ‘First at Chichester, first in Bournemouth. And second at the Dorset… I heard it was an utter mudbath—’
‘I may well have come first,’ I said stubbornly, ‘but for the signs.’
He smiled. My father smiled. My mother did not. She had never held with my riding motorbikes, and it was only after many hysterical threats (her) and desperate promises (me) that I had been allowed to join a club and to race at all.
‘Would you like to go out to Flanders, Mairi? To do your bit?’
I imagined rescuing soldiers from the methodical and desperate but also intellectual and technologically advanced Germans. I imagined the gratitude on plucky Belgian faces. Dressing the occasional wound, driving up and down rough terrain – were there any hills in the lowlands? – Uilleam gruffly explaining to his friends, ‘My sister is as tough as any fella.’
This was a far superior picture of the future than the one of me with rice in my veil and Dr Munro in his best pyjamas.
‘What do you think?’
Everyone looked at me.
I didn’t have to think. ‘I’d love to,’ I said.
‘Impossible,’ my mother said that evening. ‘You are too young.’ She would have much preferred a proposal even if I had turned it down. At least then there would have been a clean vote of confidence in my eligibility.
‘I won’t stop you travelling,’ she said, ‘but if you must have excitement, what is wrong with the Caribbean?’ I knew she wanted me to go out to the Chisholm family plantation to watch over Uilleam, who would be heading there to manage it soon. Uillleam had been delaying his departure for years, but the outbreak of war had given him a much-needed shove. My mother pretended that she wanted me to go because it would be an interesting experience for me, and not because Uilleam couldn’t be trusted not to burn the place down or get in a fight with the natives.
‘The heat doesn’t agree with me. Think of my freckles!’ It was true, I was a proper Scottish-looking girl, with a mongrel cross of gold-and-red hair and white skin that demanded shade. I once overheard my mother tell her friend that my looks were an ‘acquired taste’.
But my father, a Scottish-looking man if ever there were one, became my strange ally in this. For once, he took the position that if going to Flanders was what I wanted, then that was what I must do. As soon as he said this, my resolve hardened. I could feel the new sensation of his approval raining down on me. My mother was not going to get in its way.
We ate a light supper, the three of us still at odds. Uilleam was out with his local friends who I was not allowed to meet nor to mention. It was still warm and summery, but the sun was low in the sky and you knew autumn was snapping at its heels.
My father talked about opportunities to serve, dedication, a call to duty, a responsibility. He was only sixteen when he first went to fight in South Africa so I suppose, for him, at eighteen I was positively ancient.
As he was warming to his theme, it occurred to me, not for the first time, that my mother did not like him much.
What my father did not say was: Thank goodness, one of the children takes after me. Pity it wasn’t the boy but you make do with what you get. But it was evident to me, and probably to my mother, that he was thinking this.
I basked in it. I demolished all the food in front of me, like a champion.
My mother fought back by not saying a word. Her bowed head sank lower, her parting down the middle so firm that it looked like a white thread of cotton. I was wondering if she would save her face from going into her soup, when finally, she rose from her chair with great dignity and walked out the room hissing, ‘Mairi is not going anywhere.’
‘Oh yes, she is,’ said my father, and that, as they say, was that.
My mother refused me a single suitcase. I called her petty and accused her of wanting me to be a coward – the worst thing a Chisholm could be – but she would not bend. We were similar in that way. I could have persuaded the housekeeper to tell me where they were kept and taken one – but my mother would have been furious. She did not want to be complicit in my going and as a kindness to her I did not make her so.
In the end, I wrapped my supplies in a bedsheet and tied it to myself like I had seen native women do with their babies in Uilleam’s secret copies of the National Geographic. My mother also refused to give me any money, but I had some savings – from winning races funnily enough – and Dr Munro had explained that I would receive a small service stipend. That would do me. I’d never been a big spender.
The only trouble I had packing was deciding which books to take. I had two Bibles: one well-thumbed edition passed down from my grandfather, and another, more ornate, that I had won at school for an essay on forgiveness. Although I feared it might get ruined, I decided to take the school one. The other could await my return by my bedside like the faithful friend it was. In addition, I took another old favourite, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. I rather felt like Alice, following the white rabbit (or Dr Munro!) on a curious adventure.
The morning I departed, my mother refused to come out of her bedroom or say a word to me. Even my father was nowhere to be found but that was normal – well, normal for him. Once away, I resolved, I would write to let my mother know I had forgiven her. And that I was managing very well without her silly suitcase, thank you.
Later that day, I pushed Douglas up the gravelly front of the West Cliffe Hotel in Harwich on the east coast of England and found a shed in which to park him. Groups of people were milling around, some in civilian clothes, many, or maybe even most, in uniform. It seemed we weren’t the only ones using the West Cliffe as a last stop before heading to the continent. Everyone seemed caught up with one another. Everyone appeared to be in the middle of some fascinating conversation.
I was hot and trembling. It had been a wonderful ride and I had enjoyed two picnics in the sunshine en route. Douglas was in peak condition. Both times I stopped, passers-by had come over to compliment him. Here though, no one gave me so much as a second glance.
A solidly built soldier was embracing a blond woman wearing a long red dress right in front of me. He kissed her fiercely and his hands travelled up her scarlet hem. A friend had once shown me blurry photographs she had found in her father’s room of a naked woman with her lover, but I hadn’t seen this behaviour in real life before. Throughout my journey to the coast I had felt grown-up, but seeing this reminded me that, in some areas, I was still inexperienced.
You can still turn back, I told myself. But I couldn’t – if only because I wouldn’t be able to stand the glee on my mother’s face and the disappointment on my father’s if I returned home.
Walking quickly past the fornicators, I haughtily said, ‘Excuse me,’ and the man replied, ‘Excused!’ The woman he was pawing laughed loudly.
In the large, dimly lit foyer of the hotel, staff at a mahogany reception desk were dealing with queues of animated people. On the wall behind them, there were rows of keys that they plucked at every few minutes before moving on to someone else. I stood nearby for some time, the staff skilfully ignoring me. I didn’t know what I should do. Somehow, I felt bemused that I was there: that I had agreed to this.
Dr Munro eventually found me, thank goodness, as I was still tempted to turn homeward. He rubbed his hands when he saw me. The way he said, ‘Well, well… here you are!’ made me think he had doubted that I would turn up.
He was flanked by a couple, who he introduced as Helen and Arthur. ‘From America,’ Dr Munro explained.
As we shook hands, I found myself saying, ‘I’m from Dorset, and Scotland, and from all over the place really!’
Dr Munro patted my shoulder and said, ‘You must need a drink after all the goings-on…’
I nodded in agreement, although I wasn’t sure which goings-on he meant.
Helen was stern-faced with tiny round glasses, and Arthur was too but the severe look suited him better. Two blinking owls, they were one of those couples who had grown to look like each other, like my late grandfather and Betty his pug. But while Helen’s hair was wispy and tied away in a messy bun, Arthur’s was thick and slightly too luxurious. They looked exhausted, especially Helen, and I thought –rather unfairly – we haven’t even begun.
Straight away, Arthur told me he worked for the New York Times. I didn’t know about that kind of thing so I asked what it was. He didn’t titter but I could tell he thought my question was ignorant. I was ignorant.
‘It’s the largest newspaper in America,’ he said. ‘And probably in the world.’
‘I see,’ I said, vowing not to ask him anything of substance again. ‘What do you do, Helen?’
‘Me?’ Helen seemed surprised to be spoken to. She pushed her glasses up her nose dreamily. ‘I’ll do anything.’
‘Really, Helen?’ Arthur laughed. ‘Must you show your hand so soon?’
I had no idea what they were talking about. Helen took pity on me and added, ‘I play piano. I love to read. I enjoy both poetry and plays.’
‘She also sews.’
‘Yes, Arthur,’ she said, as though this was a private joke between them. ‘I sew very well.’
I gazed at her, mystified. Had Dr Munro perhaps recruited me to the American Needlework Society by mistake?
She went on, ‘I have done first aid, don’t look worried, Mairi. But I dare say, my strengths may have more to do with morale.’
‘Oh! Do you envisage a problem with… morale?’
Arthur put his arm around Helen, and for a horrible moment I worried that they too were going to engage in the open-mouthed kissing I had seen outside.
‘Helen envisages a problem with everything, don’t you, darling?’
Fortunately, Dr Munro was smoothly making his way over to us, although when I saw the tray of drinks my heart dropped further. I was not practised in drinking alcohol – for some reason people always assumed us motorcyclists were as good at downing spirits as we were with revolving wheels.
‘Helen fears we’re going to serve as undertakers rather than drivers and nurses.’
‘It’s just what I read in your paper, darling—’
‘Absolute nonsense,’ Dr Munro said firmly as he passed around the sherry. ‘Cheers everybody. To Belgium.’
‘To Belgium…’
I was to share a room that night with another member of our party, a woman yet to arrive: Mrs Elsie Knocker. Her name called to mind a bosomy housemistress. I hoped she would not tell me off too much. At school, I could sometimes win over the matronly types but I hoped I wouldn’t have to here. I heard that she was thirty – a good deal older than me – and I hoped she would not see through my pretence of acting mature. Arthur had started calling me ‘young Mairi,’ which grated, but I didn’t know how to correct him without confirming it.
After our drinks and with tiny droplets still perched on his moustache – thank goodness we were not engaged! – Dr Munro handed me my room key. Clutching it tightly, I made my way through the maze of corridors across carpets the colour of baked apples. Loud laughter came from some of the rooms, silence from others. In one, someone was whistling a song I knew from school: ‘Give my Regards to Broadway’. It was strange to hear it here.
The hotel bedroom was small and sparse. Although I was initially disappointed, it felt appropriate. Luxury on my last night in England wouldn’t have been right. I needed to prepare for the austerity of the future, though in truth who knew what to expect? I used to eavesdrop when my father told Uilleam wartime anecdotes, but he had a parent’s way of making even the most interesting things sound boring, so I usually drifted off, preferring my own imaginings.
I put away my things neatly and tried to decide between the two single beds. I wanted to choose the worst one so I couldn’t be accused of selfishly snagging the best, but there was little between them.
After about an hour, I went down to dinner where I met another member of our party, the charming Lady Dorothy. Pink-cheeked and smiley, ‘Lady D’, as we quickly came to call her, was easy to talk to and so reassuring that – despite her incongruous hat with cherries on the top – after five minutes in her company I grew assured that everything was going to be utterly marvellous.
When I quietly turned down Dr Munro’s offer of whiskey, Lady D confided that she too was not a great drinker and thought it a pity liquor was so fashionable. She also couldn’t believe I was only eighteen, which I decided, coming from her, was a compliment. We didn’t talk about the war – a relief, for I kept forgetting whose side everybody was on or indeed where everything in Europe was on the map – but instead discussed our respective journeys to Harwich. She thought trains were ‘marvellous’ and added quietly that she had taken the opportunity to leave ‘Votes for Women’ leaflets on each of the seats.
‘You didn’t,’ I said, uncertain if this was a joke. I had never – to my knowledge – met anyone who would do anything like that before.
‘I most certainly did,’ she said, pleased with herself. ‘I may leave some here too!’
Fortunately, Dr Munro joined in, urging us to explore the gardens later. ‘The azalea japonica is exquisite!’
I nodded obediently and Lady D murmured, ‘Very good, Hector.’
I wondered if I too should call him Hector but decided against it. My mother would say I was being ‘presumptuous’, although I doubt she would have said the same about Lady D, suffragette or not.
I was eating bread and butter pudding – which, frankly, could have done with a good ten more minutes in the oven – when I noticed a woman in the doorway of the dining room waving – at us? I wasn’t quite sure. She weaved her way between the tables towards our group. She was wearing a brown leather coat buttoned all the way down over a forest-green skirt or dress, and was clearly hot off her bike. Nearer our table she removed her helmet, goggles and the coat. (It was a dress underneath, a gorgeous one.) I had never seen anyone so cavalier about disrobing in a restaurant. I decided she must be either very posh or not posh at all – those of us in the middle wouldn’t dream of making such an exhibition of ourselves.
The waiters with their knuckles of pork, the waitresses with their fish knives, even the soldiers who had been pawing at the. . .
We hope you are enjoying the book so far. To continue reading...
Copyright © 2024 All Rights Reserved
Please log in to recommend or discuss...
