Murdo's War Read Online Free Page B

hand, he was back in Lachlan’s bedroom.
    ‘I’ve taken Dad’s knife as well,’ he said. ‘So you don’t need to get blamed if they go looking and it’s not there. Now I’m off. How long will you be away?’
    ‘Till the end of the week after next – a bit over a fortnight,’ said Lachlan sleepily.
    Murdo switched off the torch and drew back the curtains. The road and hills were bright with moonlight. As he pushed down the window the bitter breeze flowed into the room. He had forgotten how exceedingly cold it was.
    ‘Hey, I’m not going out there.’ He shivered. ‘You can let me out the back door.’
    Softly in the darkness the two boys tiptoed downstairs and flitted into the kitchen. The top bolt of the door was stiff and resisted Murdo’s tugging. Suddenly it gave and shot back with a loud bang.
    ‘Oh blast!’ In a moment he had turned the key in the lock and was outside. ‘Have a good time in Edinburgh.’
    There was no time to say more. A door opened in the hallway and there was the sound of voices. Murdo took to his heels, stubbing his protruding toes against a hidden boulder.
    Light flooded the back of the house. He heard his aunt’s voice. ‘What on earth are you doing out here at this time of night, child? And in your pyjamas. You’ll catch your death of cold.’
    ‘I just wanted to see what kind of night it was,’ Lachlan replied. ‘The moon and that.’
    ‘The moon and that! I should have thought you would have seen enough of the moon and that, being out till all hours with Donald Sutherland.’ There was a pause. When she spoke again her voice was a little softer. ‘But it’s a nice night, sure enough.’
    ‘Yes, it was foggy before. I wanted to see if it would be all right for going down to Edinburgh tomorrow.’
    ‘Lachlan, I don’t believe a word of it. You only had to look out of your bedroom window. I wouldn’t be surprised but you were down for more food. Where you put it all I’ll never know, the amount you ate at supper, all that bread and cheese. And you’re still as thin as a rake. I’m sure the neighbours must think I starve you. Perhaps you’ve got worms.’
    Again there was silence. Then Murdo, crouched behind the shed nursing his damaged toes, heard a sharp intake of breath.
    ‘I know what you were doing, that brother of yours has been round, hasn’t he? That’s what you were doing, wasn’t it, giving him food?’
    ‘No, Aunt Winifred.’ Lachlan’s voice rang with innocence and injured righteousness.
    But again she did not believe him and Murdo saw the lamplight wavering down the grass towards him. Soft as a wraith he flitted away down the side of the house, sprang over the wall into the front garden, collected his boots and jacket, and vanished into the shadows at the far side of the old manse.

Stranger at the Captain Ivy
    HECTOR’S CAR WAS parked in its usual corner outside the Captain Ivy Inn. Due to black-out restrictions the building looked deserted. Murdo found the car doors unlocked and searched among the jumbled oddments on the floor behind the front seats for his tackety boots. Sitting on the edge of the horse trough, he pulled off his seaboots and stripped off the damp, not over-fresh remains of his socks. The breeze from the bay blew bitterly cold about his feet, though a little on the large side, his father’s socks were thick and comfortable. He reached for his nailed boots. The leather laces, short through having repeatedly been broken, were hard and difficult to knot.
    When he had finished, his feet felt luxuriously warm. Briefly he stamped on the frozen yard, then looked for a place to dump the discarded socks. There were no dustbins. He tried to roll back a stone on the moor, but it was frozen into the peat and immovable. Finally he opened the car again and dropped them, already stiffening, among the rubbish in the back.
    Murdo was about to close the car door when it occurred to him that although the crates of whisky had been delivered,