Call the Nurse Read online

  I began to wrap a blanket round her shoulders and another round her lower parts. It was very clear that neither her clothes nor her person had been washed for years, and my stomach heaved as I moved her.

  Roddy was at the front door with the stretcher, and she was made as cosy as possible, but that piece of equipment was not constructed for comfort, as its usual occupants were not likely to complain. The same crofter woman came forward and solicitously wrapped a waterproof coat around Biddy.

  ‘Do you know about all this?’ I asked her.

  ‘None of us did, but we do now and can guess the reason for it . . .’ She could not continue but began to shed tears of utter despair.

  I looked at her. If these kindly people had not known of Biddy’s plight, how must they be feeling now? To realise that this cruelty had been happening under their very noses as they went about their everyday tasks?

  John came over to the little group of crofters. ‘I’ll be back when we have got the lady on board, to find out what you know.’

  There were murmurs and sobs from the women while the men looked at their boots.

  The little procession set off along the track in the blustery wind; mercifully, the rain had stopped. I walked beside the stretcher as often as the width of the path would allow and kept talking to Biddy, using her name frequently in the hope of lessening the shock of all this activity. The poor lady was very frightened.

  John had contacted Papavray’s ambulance and it was waiting at Dalhavaig harbour to transport Biddy, the doctor, and myself to Rachadal hospital. As soon as we arrived there, my own involvement ended and I went home to bathe and wash my hair and clothes.

  But all this ‘washing away’ of the trauma was superficial. It was days before I recovered emotionally from the horror of Biddy’s plight and a week or so before I heard the whole dreadful story.

  FOURTEEN

  The terrible, terrible truth

  ‘Nurse? I’m just calling to say that Chrissie is here. The lady who got the soup?’

  ‘Yes, John.’

  ‘I had to ask her to come over to sign statements and stuff. We wondered if you might like to hear the story from her. She’s at her sister’s for a few days, so you could pop in some time. Maggie, Dalhavaig post office.’

  At about three the next day, I made my way to the post office as instructed. What was I about to hear?

  Chrissie and Maggie, both in their late 30s, ushered me into the back room, where a bright fire and warm colours created a cameo of comfort. Maggie departed to serve a few customers.

  ‘Oh, Chrissie. Do you know how Biddy is? I believe she is on Rhuna in Tarradon House.’ This was a bright, cheerful nursing home on the neighbouring island of Rhuna.

  ‘She’s getting better. Clean, hair cut and washed, decent food, and so on, but . . .’ She paused and shook her head doubtfully.

  ‘Yes, yes, I can imagine. Please tell me how all this happened. It seems so unbelievable. It’s like something out of a horror story.’

  Smoothing her skirt in a nervous gesture, Chrissie began a tale that could have been set in the eighteenth century, it was so unbelievable. The first thing she said astounded me.

  ‘Biddy and I used to play together as children, and . . .’

  I interrupted, ‘But she’s twenty years older than you!’

  She shook her head sadly. ‘Oh no,’ she murmured. ‘Biddy is thirty-six.’

  I felt cold and sick. This woman that I had taken to be in her 60s was only 36! What had those years in that dreadful room done to her?

  ‘Please go on.’

  Chrissie gave a ghost of a smile. ‘Anyways, she grew up in that farmhouse. Her parents were strict Brethren, so they kept to themselves, but there was a school on the island in those days and lots more houses. The whaling was still going then, so there were about twenty families and we children had a good life. I got to know Biddy through school, and although her father was very strict her mother used to let her play with me after school. But Mairi was terrified of her dour, grim husband. We children never went near the farm if he was about, and Mairi only let Biddy come to play with me if he was away off the island for any reason.

  ‘Biddy had two half brothers by old Donald’s first wife. She died when they were only boys, but they were grown and working at the whaling by the time he married again. Mairi was not young either, and they were surprised when Biddy was born. The brothers were very jealous of her. They hadn’t liked their father marrying again, y’see.

  ‘Biddy was a pretty, dainty little thing, but not very bright. Not exactly backward, y’understand, but not good at lessons.’

  Chrissie paused and sighed. ‘Well, we grew from children into young girls, and the lads began to notice us. Biddy in particular, as she was a lot prettier than I was. I started courting my Angus about then, but Donald began to keep Biddy in and wouldn’t let her mix with us at all. She helped on the farm and we hardly saw her except when she came to the shop for the mails and the groceries once a week. We kept the post office, y’see. She’d linger a while, glad of the chance of some young company, I suppose. She’d chat with my brother sometimes. He worked our croft, y’see, as my father was poorly. The lass was not allowed at ceilidhs or dances. Aye, we had dances back then!’ Chrissie smiled at her memories of those good days. ‘Chreileh’s a quiet place the now,’ she added sadly.

  ‘Well, one day after Biddy had been in the shop, I saw the two of them together on the hill where Johnny was working. Just talking, they were. But I knew! There was something about the way he was looking at her—with his head bent, you know. I was afraid for them. I knew that Donald would near break Johnny’s neck if he found out that they were meeting. I spoke to Johnny about it, but what lad takes notice of his sister? Eh? He was besotted with her! She used to climb out of her bedroom window when they were all asleep and they’d meet in the byre or out on the hill, he told me.’

  Chrissie sighed again. ‘They were more than just friends, as you’ll have guessed. But I’m sure they were very much in love. And it was time. Time for marriage! Folk married young in the islands. Still do. I was already married to Angus by then.’

  She paused for a few moments and then shook her head. ‘Of course, it couldn’t last. Donald saw them one night when he was at a lambing on the hill. He followed them and beat them both half to death and broke both Johnny’s legs. He left him there and dragged Biddy home by her hair. My father, who could scarcely breathe for his bronchitis, went out looking for Johnny and they got the poor lad off the island and to Papavray in a fishing boat. They took Johnny to the hospital, a poor little place then, not the lovely new one at Rachadal. But he never came out!’ Chrissie’s eyes were damp as she spoke of her brother’s death.

  ‘He got pneumonia and septicaemia, and I don’t know what else, and he died after a few weeks. My father was getting worse and worse, and the shock of Johnny’s death finished him too. Next thing, Donald had a stroke and died. Nobody was sorry about that death!’

  She smoothed her skirt in that nervous fashion again. ‘The only time we saw Biddy after that was at Donald’s funeral, and she looked ill. We could see bruises on her arms and neck, but the two brothers kept hold of her so we couldn’t speak. She didn’t come to the shop any more. Mairi came instead and never spoke a word. Just handed over a grocery list, took the mail and the goods and went. Then Padruig and Lachy came home for good to work the farm. The whaling was done anyway. Awful men! Nobody liked them. Mean and bigoted, they were like their father before them! Just occasionally we’d catch sight of Biddy away in the distance fetching the cow or perhaps a stray sheep. Then nothing for months. One day, my mother asked Mairi if Biddy was all right and she said, “Yes, of course”, but she looked kind of wary and frightened, Ma said.

  ‘Then, about six months later, off goes Lachy to the mainland for no reason that we could see. And in their old leaky boat too. They hadn’t used that boat for years. He had a big bag with him, and so we thought maybe they had had a falling out
and he was leaving. I remember wishing that they had both gone, for I would have gone up there to see if Biddy was all right, but I couldna with that Padruig there and me pregnant and Angus just away to sea.

  ‘Rumours got round that she’d gone mad, with her being a little bit simple as a child, y’see. Folk thought that Mairi was keeping her in for that reason. We know now that it wasn’t Mairi’s fault. Lachy had come back now and he could have turned her and Biddy out because he had inherited the farm.

  ‘Then they started to do the shopping. Mairi was ill, they said. My mother was for calling the doctor, but they said there was no need. Well, by the time they did finally call him, it was too late. She was dead when he got there. He was a locum, so we didna get to know too much about what ailed Mairi.’

  Maggie came in at this point with some tea and pulled the curtains, making the room even cosier. She had closed the post office and now sat down with us. Chrissie had a sip of tea and then continued her bleak story.

  ‘At Mairi’s funeral, we asked the brothers why Biddy was not there, and they said that she had gone away a while ago. We couldn’t understand this, because no one had seen her go. On a small island like Chreileh, everyone watches comings and goings.

  ‘Time went on and those two were only ever seen when they got a few bits of groceries and collected the mail. And there was precious little of that! But one day a letter came for them from a town on the mainland. With so few mails, my mother used to get to know people’s usual letters and always noticed anything different, if you follow. Well, we thought it must be from Biddy, so we came to the conclusion that she had left after all. Maybe in their old boat again, we thought. Some years later that boat did for Padruig. He drowned.’

  Another biscuit appeared to fortify Chrissie, and after a moment she went on. ‘Of course, we know now that the letter must have been from someone else or the wrong island and not for them at all. We’ve pieced it all together since. How could we have been so gullible? How could we not have seen what was going on?’ She was weeping now, and I understood the feelings of guilt and frustration that she must have been feeling.

  ‘You mustn’t blame yourself, Chrissie. These islands are full of odd, reclusive families. Usually it’s all right. Just different.’

  Blowing her nose energetically, she handed Maggie her cup for a refill. She nodded but was clearly very upset.

  Dreading the answer, I asked, ‘So how long was Biddy a prisoner in that room, do you think?’

  ‘Probably from the time that Mairi died, and that was in 1955.’

  ‘Fifteen years or more! Dear God! And she’d have been . . . what? About nineteen, twenty?’

  I paused for a moment, unable to take it all in. ‘And do you know now what happened to start all this?’

  ‘Yes. John, your policeman, went through the house and found a letter that Mairi had hidden in the bottom of her sewing box. I suppose she guessed that the men would be unlikely to find it there. She wrote that she had discovered that Biddy was pregnant just after Donald died. It’s as well that it was not before he died or he’d likely have killed her.’

  ‘Lachy wanted Biddy sent away, but it would have cost him to send her to one of those places for pregnant women, and Mairi fought to keep her anyway. So she was just kept out of sight. As it happened, the men were away on one of the last of the whalings when the baby was born, so Mairi looked after him for a week or more. Biddy called him Johnny, by the way. According to Mairi’s letter, she loved and nursed that baby just all the time.

  ‘Then the men came back and immediately they decided to take the baby away. One night they just wrapped him up and Lachy went off. Oh! The cruelty and the evil of it!’

  Chrissie was overcome for a moment and took a long drink of tea.

  ‘Surely they didn’t . . .’ I couldn’t go on with my question.

  ‘No. Not even they were that bad. Or perhaps they just thought that they would go to hell if they killed a baby. Who knows? No. Lachy took the child to a hospital on the mainland, handed him to the night nurse on duty and ran off!

  ‘When Biddy found that her baby had gone, she really did go out of her mind. Mairi wrote that the brothers said they had arranged an adoption. Mairi didna believe them, but they threatened to turn both women out if they tried to locate the child.

  ‘Well, there was a lot in the letter about trying to comfort Biddy, but Mairi wasn’t young and I think the whole business killed her. She had written this letter rather like a diary, and it stopped about there. Maybe she knew she was dying and that’s why she hid it. When she did die, those two just shut Biddy up and treated her like an animal—or worse. Of course, Padruig drowned some years ago and Lachy just carried on by himself. He must have been 50 or more.

  ‘Well, last week, when he hadn’t turned up for the mails and we had heard the beasts bellowing because they hadna been fed and milked, we knew something was wrong, so my Angus went up there. He found Lachy dead on the kitchen floor. So he rang the minister and Roddy. He couldn’t get the doctor—I don’t know why. It was when the minister was praying over that Lachy (and if anybody needed prayers, it was him) that he heard a noise upstairs . . . Just think, if he hadn’t, she would have starved to death up there!’

  Chrissie put her head in her hands and rocked to and fro. ‘If only Donald had dealt with it all decently, they could have been married before anyone knew about the baby. Johnny loved her; I know he did. He would have done the right thing. He probably had no idea that she was pregnant at the time. I don’t suppose she knew herself.’

  We sat in the firelit room and thought of all the wasted years and the wasted lives.

  ‘Do we know anything about the child?’ I asked after a while.

  ‘The police have started enquiries. It will take months, I shouldn’t wonder. He must be nearly a man by now—16? He’s my nephew, of course. Biddy does not seem to remember anything. Still can’t walk properly. Just sort of crawls with a funny kind of hop, and she hasn’t said a word. Not one! They’ve got psychiatrists and speech therapists and I don’t know what going in to see her, but she just sits and watches people.’

  Another awful thought struck me. ‘Did those two beat her?’

  ‘Doctor doesn’t think so. Just put water and food into the room and removed the newspaper in the corner. They probably even thought they were doing the right thing by keeping her hidden. She was bad, you see. A baby out of wedlock. Huh! As if it doesn’t happen all the time. Why, I was three months gone when Angus and I were married. No one thought a thing about it.’

  We gazed at the fire in companionable grief.

  Suddenly, Chrissie looked up. ‘We have decided to petition to be moved off Chreileh.’

  This was a surprise. I knew that the inhabitants of St Kilda had petitioned back in the 1930s and they had been relocated in Argyllshire. But there had been 20 families there. I was a little hazy about the criteria for this request to be granted, and I asked Chrissie to explain.

  ‘I don’t know if the Commission will help us. They may just expect us to make our own way because there are so few of us now: only four families and no children. We can’t manage with so few men for the heavy work, and they are all getting older. We’ll have to see whether they will help, but we are going anyway. This has finished us. None of us want to stay now. The men have been talking about it for some time, but if ever something was needed to make their minds up, this has done it!’

  ‘But where would you go?’

  ‘Probably here, to Papavray, if the men can find work. There’s the forestry.’

  ‘And the oil rigs,’ added Maggie.

  On that note of hope, I left them.

  Biddy stayed in the nursing home for many months. I went to visit her once and she was looking reasonably fit and could walk, but there was a dull look to her eyes and she had still not uttered a word.

  She was moved to a specialist home on the mainland some time in the following few weeks and remained there until her death at the age of
only 41. Her heart had been irreparably damaged by the years of abuse and privation. We heard that the only time she spoke was when she saw a baby on the television.

  She said, ‘I had a baby.’

  FIFTEEN

  The wedding

  One sunny day in spring, Mary came puffing over the croft in a state of great excitement. She flopped down, prepared for a good gossip. ‘Have you heard about Rhuari and Catriona?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Well, they are to be married!’

  ‘Really?’ I tried to sound surprised. ‘Good. I like those two and I think they will do well together.’

  The locals had prophesied this match years ago when Rhuari and Catriona were scarcely out of school. It was often the same on the island. Folk were so familiar with each other that it was easy to predict these unions.

  But, despite the inevitability of this match, Mary was excited about the forthcoming nuptials. She was intensely interested in island people and convinced that they were superior in every way to all others, and that Papavray was the only place to live. This opinion was not well based, as the farthest afield that she had ever been was to the busy harbour and fishing port on the mainland. However, Mary’s parochial life was never short of interest, as the family affairs and so-called private lives of her neighbours afforded infinite grist to the mill of her incessant chatter.

  But she was a good neighbour, always on hand to help anyone, always ready to cook a meal, watch a child, milk a cow, look after an old person, or get someone’s meat from the travelling butcher. On dark winter evenings, she watched the lane into the village through binoculars to make sure that everyone who worked ‘away’ got home safely. When it snowed, she knew that Loch Annan would be treacherous and was usually the one to raise the alarm if a villager had failed to appear. Two or three crofters would then set out on tractors, armed with stout ropes, to rescue the latest victim of this notorious hill. A far cry from ringing the RAC on your mobile!