LITMIR.BIZ

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and probably unintentional cruelty. It would be 20 years before we would see Morag again.

      I had been on the island for little more than a year when we prepared to return to Glasgow and God knows what. The only thing we were certain of was that it would not be good. Paradise was about to be lost. The halcyon days would be left behind for a return to the slums and – worst of all – Quarriers beckoned.

      CHAPTER 4

       Paradise Lost

      I had cried myself to exhaustion. As the aircraft carrying us away from North Uist arced out of Benbecula into an endless blue sky, my heart and stomach lurched. The feeling was more than physical. The Whelan siblings were surrounded by people embarking on journeys. We were in a sea of smiling faces, but we could not share the excitement that was so evident in our fellow passengers. They had something to look forward to on their journey. We did not, and we were terribly alone with our thoughts and the uncertainty of the future.

      I was too young to fully appreciate what had been going on, but I had nonetheless begun putting together the pieces of a jigsaw that had been puzzling me for days: Willie’s grim-faced stoicism and Morag’s demeanour, so withdrawn, shedding tears at the slightest provocation. He had evidently been struggling under a dreadful burden, bearing a secret he could not share. Whatever was going on, Jeanette had been fretting about it, too, and it had transmitted to Irene, who had been abjectly miserable. It would be some time before I learned of the secret meetings in the barn between Willie and Jeanette when our future – or lack of it – was laid out before my eldest sister. Somewhere above my young head, the most recent chapter in our lives was closing and the next sad episode was in the process of being written. Our world was coming to an end. We would soon be leaving the island and we would not be returning. I was not party to the knowledge that we were going back to Glasgow to live permanently, but I knew, somehow I knew. I had been experiencing a dreadful sense of loss without quite knowing why. I wasn’t certain any more of what lay ahead.

      Later, as we sat on the aircraft, our geographical destination was Glasgow. From the vantage point of adulthood, I am aware now that the distance between what had been and what would be was measured in more than mere miles. The clues had been there, but I was too naïve to identify them. The atmosphere at the croft had changed dramatically in the early part of May 1966, like the temperature in a room dropping suddenly. I could not, however, see the complete picture, only glimpses of a mysterious canvas. As I said, Morag had begun to cry at the smallest thing and she clung to us as if she would never see us again. She wouldn’t for a very long time. It would be many years before my sister Jeanette turned up on her doorstep, as a grown woman and the mother of three children. It would be even longer before we would be reunited with the only mother we had ever truly known. In the days before our departure, Morag had clung to us, a particular mystery to me because she was hardly the most demonstrative of women. Willie would take himself off to the barn, seemingly unable to hear me when I shouted a greeting at him. I knew instinctively I wasn’t being ignored; he was preoccupied.

      What I did not know was that Willie had taken Jeanette to the barn because he had news for her. Jeanette revealed to me much later that this big, strong man was weeping unashamedly when he told her that Morag was broken-hearted because our real mother had demanded that we return to Glasgow, to start over ‘as a family’. He swore Jeanette to secrecy, which must have been a dreadful burden on her. I was playing in the early-summer sunshine, throwing a ball for Willie’s sheepdog – even working dogs were allowed a little fun in their life. Boy and dog were having a wonderful time, but our innocent game wasn’t quite managing to dispel the gloom of misery hanging over Willie as he headed into the barn. He beckoned to Jeanette. Something was amiss. I played on, oblivious to the life-changing events that were unfolding. Willie’s bright, open face, creased by sun and biting wind, had somehow crumpled. It was sorrow. I had seen enough of it in my life to recognise that mask. Jeanette also knew Willie was distressed, and within a few moments she knew why.

      ‘Lass, I have something to tell you,’ he said in a faltering voice. ‘This is the hardest thing for me, but I have to tell you.’

      ‘What?’ said Jeanette, alarmed.

      Willie took a deep breath. ‘You’re all going back to Glasgow.’

      Jeanette was dumbfounded. Tears sprang into her eyes. ‘Why?’ she whispered in a voice that was not her own. ‘We’re all so happy here. Why do we need to go back?’ she pleaded. ‘Don’t you want us?’

      Willie had promised himself he would be brave, but he was lost. It was his turn to plead. ‘No, no, no, lass! We love you like you are our own. You know that, don’t you? We’ve never made any difference between any of you. I hope you know that?’

      Jeanette was blinded by tears. ‘Is it because we were bad?’ she asked, falling into the trap that has snared unloved children from the beginning of time – believing it’s your fault when things go wrong. My sister grabbed Willie’s hand and said, ‘Please, Willie, it was just a joke. We were only having fun.’ Jeanette’s mind was swimming. She believed that it was the recent prank she and Jimmy had played on Willie and one of our neighbours.

      The two of them had found a tin of paint in the shed and had deemed it a great jape to paint the lambs all over – in blue! They hadn’t realised that colour patches were daubed on the animals so each crofter could identify his own beasts. Willie had been really angry with Jimmy and Jeanette and had berated them, but he hadn’t realised I had been watching, and when they were out of sight he’d laughed out loud to himself.

      ‘No, lass! This isn’t about the sheep,’ he told Jeanette.

      She wrung her hands. ‘It’s about the postie’s van, then, isn’t it?’ Another jape. Johnny and Jimmy had seen the post-office van parked in a lane with the keys inside. The postman had been having a cup of tea with a crofter and hadn’t reckoned on the arrival of two unmitigated scallywags. They took the van for a joy ride and crashed it into a hedge, by virtue of losing control of the vehicle because Johnny’s feet didn’t quite reach the pedals. No harm had been done to the vehicle or its drivers, but Morag had been incandescent with rage. She’d bellowed at them, ‘You’ve black affronted me, you two. How can I hold my head up in church with everyone knowing I can’t control you boys?’

      Willie reassured Jeanette, ‘It’s not about the postie’s van. That was just a bit of nonsense.’ For a few moments, Willie was lost for words, and when he found his voice, he said, ‘This is something we can’t fix. Your mum has demanded the social workers take you all back to Glasgow, to be a family again. We’ve tried arguing with them, but they say your mum has rights. We’ve loved you all from the moment you came. We’ve tried to give you everything we would have given our own children if God had granted us the blessing of having any. No matter what happens now, we’ll still always love you, no matter where you are. I’m so sorry.’ The cruelty of the moment was heightened when Willie revealed the worst of it: ‘They’ve told us that we can’t even stay in touch with you – no birthday cards, no Christmas cards, nothing.’

      Jeanette was inconsolable.

      Willie added, ‘You have to promise me not to tell the others. Not yet. It would only upset everyone more. We’re waiting to hear when the social worker is coming to collect you. We just want your last days here to be happy. We want you all to have good memories of us.’

      Willie recovered a dog-eared letter from the pocket of his dungarees and handed it to Jeanette. It had come from Jenny, our mother’s sister. Jeanette told me later that Jenny had written to Willie and Morag, telling them she was sorry that we were all being taken away from the only loving home we had ever known. She apparently thanked the MacDonalds for looking after us all so well, far more than her sister had ever done for her own children.

      My sister’s face was ashen when she came out of the barn and suddenly I lost interest in throwing the ball for Tidy. From that moment, everything in the croft changed. Heaven knows how Jeanette kept the secret and endured that deeply troubled period.

      A few days later, the beginning of the end was heralded by a perfect early summer’s day – 25 May 1966, a date etched in my memory. People who have led normal

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