Scottish summer never usually seemed to last long enough, but that year it felt interminable to Flora, Mairi and Bridie. They tried hard to be thankful for the calmer weather and longer days, knowing that these were things that would make life on board ship a little easier for Alec, Roy and Hal and the thousands of others who sailed the restless northern seas. But when the three of them were together, they could confide in one another the secret longing they shared for the summer to end so that the winds of autumn would bring their men back to Loch Ewe.
Flora was thankful that her duties kept her so busy. She and Mairi had been selected to be given some additional basic medical training and they were spending more time driving the ambulance that they’d been allocated, working as a team. They knew the roads around the loch like the backs of their hands and made almost daily runs ferrying the ill and the injured back and forth between the sick bay in the base at Mellon Charles and the hospital at Gairloch.
‘I can’t get over how much it’s all changed,’ Flora commented. They’d been sent to pick up a Polish officer from his billet in Poolewe who needed treatment for an abscess on a tooth. He’d chatted with them on the way, describing how he’d escaped from Warsaw when the Germans invaded and how determined he and his comrades were to win back their country from the Nazis. They dropped him at the hospital and he saluted smartly as they drove off. ‘Who’d ever have imagined we’d be doing this?’ She patted the steering wheel of the ambulance.
‘I know, it’s strange, isn’t it? But at the same time, it feels so familiar now. I can’t imagine going back to how I was before, just helping with the farm and the bairns. Do you think our lives will ever be the same again?’
Flora shrugged. ‘The war will end one day. But you’re right: I think when it does we’ll find it has changed our lives forever – for better or worse, I suppose.’
Mairi turned to face her friend. ‘Did you hear? They’re wanting to organise some concert parties to help entertain the troops. I saw a notice in the canteen asking for volunteers. You should sing for them, Flora. They’d snap you up in a second.’
‘Oh, I’m not sure I’d have the courage to sing in front of an audience like that.’ Flora shook her head slowly. She was torn. She’d love to sing at a concert, really, but she could just picture what Sir Charles would make of it if he found out. It’d be another black mark against her – engaging in such frivolities while Alec was off at sea. He’d certainly disapprove. And her confidence wobbled a little as she wondered whether Alec mightn’t disapprove as well. His outburst of rage had sown a seed of doubt in her. She couldn’t quite put her finger on why it had unnerved her so, but in that moment she’d felt he’d become someone else, not the Alec she thought she knew.
‘Flora Gordon, are you a woman or a mouse? You’ve never been afraid to sing before. And with your voice, it’d be a crime not to share it with those poor men and women who are stuck here so far from their homes and longing for a little entertainment of an evening.’
Flora laughed. ‘Are you daring me, Mairi Macleod? Because you know fine that you have a perfectly good singing voice, too, so I could say the same to you.’
‘I most certainly am daring you if that’s what it takes! But YOU know fine that I don’t have your voice. Although I suppose Bridie and I could back you, if you’re really not sure about singing on your own in front of such a big audience. In fact, Bridie would love that! Go on, let’s give it a try.’
And so it was that the trio of friends became the Aultbea Songbirds, a regular and very popular act at the weekly concerts in the hall. Surely Alec couldn’t object, Flora told herself, if she was part of a group, doing her bit to keep morale high. And if she began to imagine where her singing might take her, she never shared those dreams with anyone, not even Mairi and Bridie, despite being told on many an occasion that she had a voice anyone would pay good money to hear.