Free The Silent Weaver by Roger Hutchinson

we knew. There was no class system.’ And their upbringing left happy memories – ‘Och yes, good laughs. Good laughs, yes.’
    They attended Iochdar School, a walk of a mile from their Balgarva croft, with the sea on their left and fresh water lochans on their right. As an infant in 1914, Mary Godden was taken home by her mother from Edinburgh to the neighbouring township of Kilaulay in Iochdar. ‘I was at school with them,’ she said.
    Angus had a very intelligent family. I never saw his mother, but his father was a very clever man. He was full of old folklore, and stories and rhymes. And his sisters – Mary, Patricia and Peigi – they were very clever. I was good pals with Mary.
    But I didn’t know Angus much. You weren’t allowed to go dancing or anywhere until you’d left school. Then when you left school there were dances – pipers and good dancers – in the school. But I don’t remember Angus MacPhee at any of the dances. He kept himself to himself, you know.
    The only chances I had of talking to him was, there was a wee shop in Balgarva there, which was run by the MacQueens. I used to walk from home in Kilaulay to the shop. I could go either by the road out there or round by the beach. And usually it was round the beach, which took me past Angus’s house. Every time I left MacQueens’ shop the MacPhees’ house was the next house.
    So he always used to be standing at the corner of the house, you know. And I always used to stop and talk to him. But he was rather a quiet person himself, you know, and I wasn’t that talkative either! Just a quiet normal sort of boy –I never ever thought of him as anything other than that. He was a very nice, quietly spoken boy.
    His sister Peigi said that Angus was a studious as well as a reserved child. When at nights the girls sat knitting or sewing, their brother would be curled up by the peat fire in their small crofthouse reading a schoolbook.
    His niece Eilidh was told that Angus was a great lover of horses . . . ‘Angus and his pals would be down at the end of the croft, out of sight of the house, riding the young foals all summer long. They would break them in. When the time came for the foals to leave, they’d be broken. His father, Neil, would say, “How did these horses get so mild?”’
    Angus MacPhee left Iochdar School in 1929, at the age of 14. His father was still fit and strong, but was almost 70 years old. Angus worked the croft with a view to inheriting it, while also bringing some cash into the house by freelance hire as a labourer. They planted barley and potatoes. They kept a domestic milking cow, and sheep and cattle for market. On Sunday they walked to mass at the old church of St Michael in Ardkenneth. Like his Uncle Francis, Angus MacPhee anticipated an unremarkable life. It could only properly be sustained if it was unremarkable.
    In September 1936 Anna Bheag, Neil’s older sister and the children’s Aunt Anna, died at home. She was 82 years old. Her death was uncertified by a doctor and its cause was recorded as ‘supposed old age and natural causes’. The girls were grateful to Anna Bheag, but knew that they had missed their mother Ellen, in small ways and large: ‘The bobs my father used to give us, because my mother was dead,’ said Peigi. ‘My father used to give us the haircut. We had bad luck in our family; about three generations lost their mothers.’
    The children began to spread their wings. In 1933, when she was 14 years old, Peigi MacPhee left Iochdar for the southerly island of Barra, where she assisted an English doctor. On 20 January 1934 – four days after his 19th birthday – Angus MacPhee of Iochdar joined the Lovat Scouts Territorial Army unit at Carnan Drill Hall in South Uist.
    In February 1934, a month after joining up, Angus passed his physical examination. A medical officer and a recruiting officer both