Murdo's War Read Online Free Page A

when he fell asleep, and laid it on the suitcase which stood ready packed for the morning.
    ‘Let’s have the hot water bottle for a minute,’ he said. Lachlan scrabbled with his feet and pushed the heavy stone bottle from the sheets. Murdo took it on his lap and wrapped his calloused fingers about it. The pain of the returning blood was exquisite; he squeezed his fingers and blew on his nails, and soon it passed.
    Sitting on the coverlet in that spotlessly clean bedroom he looked dark and unkempt. Small wonder that he distressed his aunt. Fish scales adhered to the old navy serge of his trousers, his jumper was torn and marked with oil. From the constant burning of the sun, wind and salt sea, his face was swarthy as a gipsy.
    The radio was on downstairs. The sound of voices drifted up the stairway.
    ‘Are they settled down there?’ Murdo asked.
    ‘I think so. What time is it?’
    Murdo consulted the lopsided Mickey Mouse alarm clock. ‘Quarter to ten,’ he said. ‘You’re a bit early.’
    ‘Aye, well, she said I had to have an early night.’ Murdo smiled. ‘No bath?’
    ‘I had that last night.’ Lachlan was waking up. He rubbed his sandy hair and screwed round in the bed. ‘Where have you been?’
    ‘We called at Willie and Meggan’s.’
    ‘Did you have supper?’
    ‘Aye.’
    ‘Are you hungry?’
    ‘A bit. Keep your voice down.’
    ‘Here.’ Keeping beneath the bedclothes as much as possible, Lachlan pulled open a drawer in the polished chest which stood beside the bed. In among the shirts and underclothes was a dinner plate, with bread and cheese and butter and a slice of cake. Some spoonfuls of raspberry jam had run around the edge and trickled on to a vest. Carefully Lachlan lifted the food and a dinner knife to the top of the chest, and sucked the vest as clean as possible. ‘I’ll put it on tomorrow,’ he said. ‘She’ll never know.’
    For several minutes the brothers ate. Soon the plate was empty. With long experience Lachlan gathered up the crumbs from the plate and bedclothes and ate them, then licked away the last smears of jam.
    ‘You’re like a vacuum cleaner,’ Murdo said.
    ‘Well, you know what she’s like.’ Lachlan hid the plate beneath the pink vest, pulled a shirt on top and pushed the drawer shut.
    Murdo stood up. ‘I’m just going to Dad’s room, I need some socks. These ones have had it.’
    He took up a torch from the side of the bed and blew out the lamp. Softly in the dim beam he passed the foot of the bed that had been his own and pulled open the door. The radio grew louder, but all was still. Swiftly he crossed the long landing and let himself into his father’s bedroom.
    He knew in which drawer to look. As he pulled it open the familiar scent rose to his nostrils; a clean manly smell, a comfortable smell – his father. He poked about and selected two thick pairs of working socks.
    Though Murdo wanted nothing else, he pulled open the adjacent drawer. It was half full of oddments; cigarette case, armbands, old brushes, an out of date calendar, a small bowl that Murdo had carved for his father at school. Face down, lay a framed photograph of Lachlan and himself with their sister Maggie. She was four years older and now worked away from home. Briefly Murdo examined it, recognising the sunlit riverbank where the photograph had been taken but forgetting the occasion, for they were all much younger. Before their father went away it had stood on his dressing table. Murdo laid it on top of the chest. He was just about to close the drawer when the torch beam fell on his father’s pocket knife, half hidden beneath a tangle of old salmon line. He took it in his hand, a practical knife with a handle of black and white horn. He flipped up the single blade, honed down and concave, very sharp. His father used it all the time. For a moment Murdo was undecided, then he snapped the knife shut and dropped it into his trouser pocket.
    A minute later, socks and photograph in