Bruar's Rest

word between us. His Auntie brought him up, and as there wasn’t a school nearby, well, it remains a doubtful point whether he ever found the need to read and write. I think big Rory can, though.’
    ‘Well, Megan, you sell me a handful of those scourers of yours, and I’ll pop the kettle on and read you a few paragraphs from The Times . Mind you, lass, news is usually a day old before it reaches me, but surely there’ll be wee bit to interest us. We’ll finish our tea, and then I’ll go back with you to see to Rachel.’
    Megan was more than pleased to sell her scourers to the doctor. She wasn’t looking forward to trekking around braeside cottages through dung-furrowed farmyards.
    Sauntering through to a warm kitchen, Doctor Mackenzie withdrew from the breast pocket of his old creased waistcoat a pair of thin-rimmed spectacles, which he positioned on the point of his nose. Megan sat down in an armchair in the parlour to wait. After what seemed like an eternity, she wondered if he was still in the house.
    ‘Sir, do you need a hand?’ she called through the half-opened kitchen door. Silence followed. She called again, not getting an answer, entered the warm kitchen of the big house and raised her voice. ‘Doctor, I think perhaps I’ll get myself away home to Rachel.’
    The old man was sitting head down into his newspaper, his brow furrowed thick and tight, the spectacles slipping off his nose and dangling from his ears.
    ‘What terrible news. This is an awful day, a real bad one for sure!’
    ‘What’s wrong? Are there bad words in that paper? Read, like you said you would.’
    In the time she’d known the old man, she’d never seen him look so worried. His face was pale grey instead of its usual ruddy pink. Whatever was written in the pages of that newspaper certainly wasn’t easy reading.
    ‘Sit for a moment, Megan, here by my side. This concerns all of us, even your kind.’
    As the lassie knelt by the man’s chair he read from the front page: ‘An announcement by His Majesty: “It is with regret that I have to inform my subjects that Britain is at war with Germany”!’
    ‘Where’s Germany, what’s a subject and who’s His Majesty?’
    Ignoring her, the doctor hastened through into an adjoining room and came back with another newspaper, muttering to himself. ‘I think it was in this issue, yes, Monday June 29th. Here it is. I knew it, I bloody knew it. I told everybody in the town and countryside this would bring a heavy price. Listen now, my girl.’
    The copy of an earlier edition of The Times had been folded in a crumpled fashion. He pushed Megan forcefully down onto a wooden stool and read, his eyes fixed on a column of small typed words: ‘The Austro-Hungarian heir-presumptive, the Archduke Francis Ferdinand, and his wife the Duchess of Hohenberg, were assassinated yesterday afternoon at Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The actual assassin is described as a high school student, who fired bullets at his victims with fatal effect from an automatic pistol as they were returning from a reception at the town hall.
    The outrage was evidently the fruit of a carefully-laid plot. On their way to the town hall the Archduke and his consort had narrowly escaped death. An individual described as a compositor from Trevinje, a garrison town in the extreme south of Herzegovina, had thrown a bomb at their motorcar. Few details of this first outrage have been received. It is stated that the Archduke warded off the bomb with his arm, and that it exploded behind the car, injuring the occupants of the second car.’
    ‘I remember thinking at the time that this vile act would find an end, and by God what an end, bloody war with Germany.’ Tears almost spilled over as he folded the paper and laid it down. He could see that in her blissful ignorance Megan still hadn’t grasped the enormous gravity of the news. He would only waste time explaining, so he quickly set aside his fear for the dark days ahead and got the horse ready for his visit with Rachel. Soon the pair were bobbing along the uneven surface of the old track. Lost, though, in thoughts of what lay in store for the young people of his country, the old doctor was almost at crawling speed. Threatening enemies waited at the door. Sitting beside him was an innocent child, a walker with nature, of a kind which had no national enemies. They suffered prejudice, yes, and persecution by certain individuals, but not the monstrosity of