The Soldier's Daughter

KNOCKANDO

July 1935

‘When are you going to let me kiss you?’

‘Never, Angus,’ Violet replied matter-of-factly, inhaling the smell that blew across the barley fields on the soft wind, creating golden waves all around them as their tall heads bent in ripples.

‘Why not?’

‘We grew up next to each other. You’re like a brother!’ She shoved him as they walked together.

‘Och, no! Don’t say that.’

‘Already said it.’ She grinned.

‘But I’ve waited all my life for it.’

Now she laughed aloud. ‘You liar! I saw you kissing Morag behind the school sheds.’

‘Ach, that was nothing. ’Tis you I love.’

‘Angus,’ she pleaded.

‘I can’t help it if you’re so pretty.’

‘Neither can I,’ she said, laughing again; it sounded boastful.

‘Fall in love with someone else, please.’

‘Is it because of my red hair?’ he asked, frowning.

She had to stifle a fresh gust of laughter. ‘No, you’re very handsome.’ He wasn’t, but that didn’t matter. She adored him all the same.

‘Is it my flat feet or freckles?’

‘No. Angus,’ she began patiently, ‘you’re lovely in every way. And you’re my very best friend—’

‘So kiss me!’ he said, before she could give him any more reasons not to.

Violet stopped walking. They’d reached the turn-off that would send Angus up the hill to his home. She reached for the basket he had been carrying for her. ‘Angus, do you like having me as your friend?’

‘I want no other,’ he said.

‘Well, surely you’d hate our friendship to change, wouldn’t you?’

‘I would hate that,’ he replied, looking wounded.

She put a hand on her hip. ‘Well, then. It would change. A peck on the cheek doesn’t change much, but a kiss on the lips changes everything,’ she said, hoping her tender tone would get through to him. ‘And neither of us wants that. We want to stay friends forever.’

He frowned, unsure.

‘Trust me.’

He shrugged. ‘Doesn’t stop me wanting to kiss your lips instead of your cheek, though.’

She gave him a friendly push. ‘Go home, Angus. I’ll see you tomorrow.’

‘Don’t leave me, Violet.’

‘I’ve got to go home to—’

‘No, I mean later. Don’t leave. Say you’ll marry me when you’re older, and I won’t chase you for a kiss now.’

She paused to summon her mother’s patient tone as she’d told Violet she behaved like a much older person. Her mother had remarked on it so often that Violet believed it. And the truth was, she felt it, aided by her height, which often put her on par with the boys and a head above many of the girls her own age. These days, in the company of her peers, she heard herself speaking like a grown-up: sometimes dismissive or impatient with their antics, often bored. She had long ago accepted that she was different and needed to follow her own path.

‘So?’ Angus prompted, believing she hadn’t heard him.

‘Angus, if I’m not going to risk our friendship to kiss you, then I’m certainly not going to marry you.’ She didn’t add that she couldn’t promise to stay in Knockando either, that it was too small and she wanted to explore more of Speyside . . . Gosh, she wanted to travel around Scotland, England and perhaps even Europe, where both her parents had been during the war. In her imagination that sounded so exciting.

Angus kicked at the dust. ‘Maybe you’ll change your mind.’

‘I won’t,’ she said.

He ignored her assurance. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow, then.’

‘See you, Angus. Say hello to your mam from me.’

‘She worries about you – and your dad. He still seems so sad.’

‘I think he is.’

‘She feels . . .’ He opened his palms, not knowing how to finish the sentence.

‘I know,’ Violet said, with a gentle smile. ‘But she shouldn’t, as I’ve told her so many times before. It could have happened at any time. And it happened a long time ago, so we all need to get on.’ How pragmatic she sounded and yet, just last week, she had caught her father staring into space. She herself still had moments of melancholy that she would never again see her mum’s smile or hear her voice.

Angus nodded. ‘All right. Bye, then.’

She pretended to pick her nose and flick something at him. He grinned and returned the gesture they’d used since childhood, then began to trudge up the hill, while Violet continued on over the slight rise, towards the small cottage that she and her father now lived in.

Their big dream to forge ahead with their own whisky had been slowed by the death of her mother, and perhaps rightly so. She couldn’t expect her father to go at full speed with their new business venture amid the loss. But she was glad they had followed through and set up the distillery, because it kept them both anchored to a shared pursuit, and busy. While she was at school, he blended his own whisky at their tiny distillery, selling it to one of the biggest whisky operations in Scotland. It was sold under the bigger label, though he and Violet made a pact that one day they’d sell their whisky under their own. She spent every spare moment outside of school learning at his side.

These last two years, they’d found a rhythm that had kept them close and there was a building sense of contentment, as though Ellen had slid fully into the past, allowing them to become more connected to life. From next week, Violet would be a full-time employee of Glen Corbie, their own label. The thought excited her. They could be more productive without school in the way.

She went into the cottage first, not for a moment expecting to find her father there, but he was sitting at the scrubbed table, staring out the window with a faraway gaze. Her mood of moments ago, laughing with Angus, fell away. ‘Dad?’

‘Oh, it’s you Violet.’

She didn’t know who else he’d be expecting. ‘Are you alright?’

‘I think so.’ Even his tone sounded distant.

She frowned. ‘Why aren’t you in the distillery?’

He shrugged and then gave what sounded like a nervous chuckle. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Dad!’

‘Hmm?’

‘Stop.’ She banged the basket onto the table to get his attention.

‘What’s going on?’

He barely looked up. ‘It’s over, Violet.’

‘What’s over?’

‘Glen Corbie.’

She blinked. They’d chosen the name together – it meant ‘Glen of the Ravens’ – and it fitted the landscape and their tiny distillery so perfectly, with their frequent, chatty black visitors. ‘Dad, talk to me properly. Why is it over? What is this about?’

He turned and finally focused. ‘We can’t go on, darling girl. I haven’t involved you in any discussion of the finances, but there’s nothing to be done.’

‘Och!’ she said, sounding like Angus now. ‘We’ll make ends meet.’

‘No, Violet, we’re way past making ends meet. The bank is not extending any further credit. They want us to sell off what stock we have, and they’re talking about selling off our equipment too.’

She blinked, not really understanding the intricacy of bank loans. She did understand that a bank selling off someone’s equipment meant no more money could be earned.

It was the death of their dream.

‘No! We don’t agree, Dad.’

He shook his head. ‘I’m afraid we have no further say.’

She hated how beaten down he looked. ‘We’ll find the money.’

‘No. That’s your mother talking. I know the reality.’

‘Dad, one of the things Mum so loved about you was your fearlessness. You might not talk about the war, but Mum told me a little of your bravery behind enemy lines, and I can’t imagine you ever really lose that sort of courage, surely?’

He smiled sadly at her. ‘It’s not about courage anymore. It’s about realism – what is actually possible, and what, no matter how hard I try, is not.’

Violet sighed. ‘Did the Alexanders go back on the deal you struck?’ She knew all about her father’s agreement with one of the leading Scotch distributors in the region.

He nodded. ‘But even if they hadn’t, I think we were headed for gloomy days. I don’t blame them for pulling out.’

She sat down heavily opposite her father. ‘You don’t know that about gloomy days ahead, Dad. This was a truly special blend – we agreed. You said it had the magic.’

He smiled again. ‘You know, Violet, I forget too often that you’re only fifteen.’ He shook his head now. ‘I feel embarrassed that I let you taste it. You’ve been tasting whisky for years, and your mother would be turning in her grave.’

‘Don’t be daft, Dad. She would be smiling. She always knew I was going to follow in your footsteps, and you can’t make Scotch if you can’t taste it. Besides, I don’t drink it properly . . . yet!’

‘The children’s authorities would string me up for sure.’

‘They’d see I’m well fed, well cared for, well loved . . . more than you can say for some of the other students at school.’

‘Either way, we don’t have the cash now to pay the coopers. No more barrels for us, and without barrels . . .’

‘I know,’ she said, not needing to hear it. She reached over to cover his hand where it rested on the small kitchen table. ‘But please don’t give up, Dad. We’ll think of something.’

She watched the dust motes in the late afternoon sunlight, which streamed through the cottage’s small windows, dancing around her father’s thick head of hair. She imagined them as a magician’s aura, sparkling around him like wizardly dust. Their latest whisky blend was distinctive; she might be young, but her palate was already well trained. She’d known it was special from the first sip, so she couldn’t understand why the big houses weren’t queueing up to buy it. ‘Why did they go back on their word?’

Charlie stood, stretched to his full height and let out a sigh. He’d lost weight, she could see; the stress was taking its toll and his strong frame was leaner than usual. ‘So many things were against us even before we started,’ he said. ‘The Great War put so many distilleries out of business – their workers gone, the barley held for the war effort or essentially to feed everyone, and the equipment being used for weapons. This was all before your time, Violet, but a year into the war, the government limited the amount of alcohol being produced, especially near the munitions factories up here in Carlisle and at Invergordon.’

After a second she realised what he was saying. ‘Oh, you mean so the workers weren’t drunk on the job?’

‘Sobriety – er, to be sober—’

‘I know what sobriety means,’ she said, hearing the tedium in her tone. ‘Sorry,’ she added quickly with a smile.

‘Being completely focused is important around explosives,’ he explained. ‘The munitions workplaces were hazardous, and I understand that they had to protect the workforce. Each person – man or woman – was so precious, given so many lives were being spent daily.’

She could hear the emotion in his voice. This was the first time she’d ever heard her father talk about wartime in anything but a very general way.

‘I deliberately made no friends,’ he continued, ‘because we couldn’t be sure that the next day one of us wouldn’t be lost. It’s tough. I remember once, a young lad was so keen to help, perhaps ultimately take on the sniper role I held in my unit. His excitement frightened me. He was a good lad too. I thought if I kept him under my wing, and not going over the top into no-man’s-land, running madly at the enemy and firing blind into a blizzard of smoke and explosives and whistling bullets, that I could keep him safe. His name was Hartley; I can’t forget it.’

Violet didn’t want to hear what was coming. Her father recounted how Hartley had been killed in the night, while he himself had lain in that space between safety and the enemy. Her father had been wounded but had taken the opportunity to feign death so he could get a shot at a German sniper who was taking out too many of his fellow soldiers. Until her mother had died, she’d never seen anything but affection and laughter from her father; she couldn’t imagine him killing.

‘Anyway, the war crushed us, and crushed the whisky industry in Scotland too. Men came home to no jobs, no income and not enough food to feed their families, and let’s not even speak about the Spanish Flu that raged around the world claiming the survivors.’ He shook his head. ‘We don’t speak much of the Great War, Violet, because it’s so painful. I count myself lucky to have survived with a healthy mind, but so many came home and were never the same.’

She hadn’t heard him say so much at one time and wished he’d say more, but then he sighed. It was hurting him to speak of that time, she could see, and it was up to her to steer him away. ‘But Dad, that was a long time ago. Why is it still affecting the industry?’

‘It takes a decade at least for the wheel to turn. Just about all the distilleries closed. The last small handful were there simply to supply industrial alcohol and perhaps grain whisky. Malted whisky was fully outlawed until the end of the war. I guess the industry was still finding its way back from that and then the General Strike knocked it back to its knees.’

‘The distilleries look busy enough to me,’ Violet argued. But, in truth, she didn’t know. Her father took care of all the finances, while she concerned herself with making sure they had the necessary stocks and keeping his laboratory tidy, because he tended towards mess and she couldn’t bear it. She liked labelling all the bottles they used and her greatest joy was being in their tiny barrel room, which she considered her space. It was a quiet, reflective area, where the oak barrels slumbered quietly, allowing the alcohol within to develop its flavours over the three years required to be called Scotch.

She took her role seriously and often found herself talking to the barrels, each of which she named at the time of its filling. She’d called one Angus, thrilling her friend, who had come in twice to visit it, which made her smile.

For her most recent birthday, her father had ordered an ornate spirit thief to be made just for her. Until that point she had used an old copper tube from her father’s first distillery to draw off – or steal, a more fanciful thought – tiny amounts of the spirit to taste and test. But she deserved her own, he felt.

‘No cast-offs for you, Violet.’

The thief was fashioned in shiny copper and the top, which she covered with her thumb when dipping the tube into the barrel, was wrought in a beautiful pattern. On the shaft her father had inscribed For Violet, Mistress of the Barrels. CN x

‘You’re the only woman right now in Speyside actually making whisky – not that anyone knows it – and, unlike my neighbours, I trust you implicitly. I know you can test the barrels for alcohol and choose the right moment for us to bottle and sell our product. That’s why you need your own tools.’

If losing her mother was the saddest day in her memory, then opening that gift was easily the happiest. But now it seemed as though all her learning and skill development had been for naught.

‘The strike hurt us all badly,’ her father continued now, ‘and you don’t have to be an accountant or banker to see that a Depression has been coming for us all. Now that it’s here, all it will take is one more punch in the guts and we’ll all crumple.’

‘How? Not another war?’

He shook his head. ‘Never again, one can only pray. No, Violet, there’s misery, but also greed everywhere, with the big buyers forcing us to sell our product cheaply. And a downturn may have nothing to do with us here in Scotland. We’ll just be the victims.’

He looked at her, grim. ‘One more thing going against us, Violet: we’re not even Scottish. Perhaps I was silly, thinking it wouldn’t be a problem that we’re English. I’d hoped that a great product would overcome the prejudice. But I’m still the Sassenach.’

‘Dad, you always said the people in our industry take care of each other.’

‘They do, yes.’ He nodded. ‘It’s a very good industry in that regard, but when we’re all hurting and there’s a Scottish family and an English family to choose between . . .’

‘The Alexanders are taking Jimmy’s whisky instead?’ she asked. Now the knockback made sense.

He shrugged. ‘I don’t blame them,’ he repeated, then raised his head to look at her. ‘But I’m tired of fighting, my love. I seem to have done it for a lifetime.’

She searched his features as he paused, looking as though he wasn’t sure how much to say.

‘I know you don’t know much about my past, and your mother was perceptive enough not to pry, but my childhood was a hard one. And it’s been one long fight ever since, apart from . . .’ His gaze turned wistful again.

Violet wanted to ask where his thoughts had gone to earn that soft smile, but she stayed silent, considering his worn face. Nearing fifty, he was still a handsome man, but he’d worked himself near skeletal at one point, doing the work of several men, especially during malting, which was physically arduous and repetitious. She helped him in their endeavours as much as she could around school; she was a sponge, soaking up everything he shared.

She’d surprised him one day in the malting house with a random thought. ‘Does the water we use affect how our whisky tastes?’

He’d smiled with pleasure. ‘I certainly believe so. If the water has passed through heather or perhaps peat bogs in other parts of Scotland, or maybe near a forest, then I believe the water picks up potential flavourings on its journey, which can inspire the final outcome of our whisky.’

‘How do you know, though?’

He was always happy to encourage her curiosity when it came to the chemistry of whisky making. ‘Well, let’s take Champagne. Wherever those grapes are grown, their vines are firmly rooted in the soil, and the flavour of the final wine is influenced by what the French call terroir.’

‘The earth?’ she translated.

‘Violet, when did you get so clever? How do you know that word?’

‘You know the teacher I really liked, Miss Laurent?’

‘Yes, a lovely person, I recall.’

‘I hated it when she left. Although she was taking us for English lessons, she used to teach us some French as well, because she was fluent. I loved listening to her speak French. It was so beautiful. She took a real interest in me because I had a good ear for language. I remember hearing that word and she explained it.’

‘French is perhaps the most romantic language to listen to . . . certainly to my ear.’

‘Mine too.’ A thought occurred to her. ‘Did you hear it spoken during the Great War?’

‘Yes. We would march through local towns and villages in France.’

‘Mum said you were wounded badly behind enemy lines.’

He grimaced slightly, clearly not happy to be reminded. ‘Yes, I was. I managed to get myself to relative safety and I was found by a French officer. He took me to a hospital in a place called Reims.’

‘Where’s that?’

‘East of Paris.’

She considered the map of France in her mind. ‘And were there vineyards there?’ She watched her father blink slowly and wondered why he looked suddenly spooked. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘Nothing.’ He tried to smile. ‘What were we talking about before we got sidetracked?’

‘We weren’t sidetracked. We were talking about terroir and Champagne. So I asked about the vineyards in France where you found yourself.’

‘Yes, um, there were beautiful vineyards – exquisite, in fact – producing the three major grape varieties used in the making of Champagne at a place called Épernay, which is where all the famous brands call home.’

‘Like all of us whisky makers here in Speyside?’

‘Yes. The war took a terrible physical toll on their vines and their produce . . . and especially their people.’

‘Who looked after you?’

‘Violet, we’d better get on with—’

‘Dad, I know nothing about this time. I want to understand. I only have you, and I want to know about your life. After all, you know everything about mine.’

He gave a sad laugh. ‘That’s the way of parents and children, Violet.’

‘Tell me. I like these stories. They help me to learn, they make me want to see places like you have.’

‘Well, I hope one day you do see Épernay, because you’ll fall in love.’

‘Did you?’

He stared at her open-mouthed.

‘With Épernay,’ she prompted. ‘Did you fall in love with it?’

He cleared his throat. ‘Yes . . . yes, I did. I think it was because

of my time there that I decided to one day make something delicious with my science skills, rather than make something that could hurt people, like mustard gas.’

‘Did you learn about making Champagne, then?’

‘I did. While I recovered from my wounds, I learned from one of the best Champagne makers in the region.’

‘What was his name?’

He cleared his throat. ‘It was a champenoise, actually – a woman. Her name is Sophie Delancré.’

Violet had noticed how curiously uncomfortable her father had become, even though he’d answered her questions. She put it down to him being reluctant to speak about his past, but it was something more than that, though she couldn’t put her finger on it.

‘I’m glad it was a woman you learned from,’ she replied. ‘I’m going to be as good with whisky as she is with Champagne, so that people will say Violet Nash is one of the best Scotch makers in the region.’

She watched a smile break across his face. ‘Violet, they’re going to say you’re the best Scotch maker in all of Scotland . . . the best whisky maker in the world.’

‘Thanks, Dad,’ she replied, feeling a fizz of joy at his praise.

‘Now, where on earth were we?’

‘That water and the earth it flows through can affect the taste.’

‘Exactly! Well done. I’m glad you pay attention. Now, I’m not suggesting it dominates the flavour, but I firmly believe that every influence, from water course and source to the season we malt in, is important to the complexity of the liquor. The malting really is the key to how the final whisky emerges.’

‘Right. So what does our water taste of?’

He picked up a hoe and began to work on the rows. ‘It comes down from the Cairngorms Well at Moray, one of Scotland’s highest natural mountain springs. It flows over hard rock to become soft and low in minerals. It’s perfect. One of the reasons Speyside whisky is so admired.’

Now, sitting at the table in their cottage, she realised she’d been musing for long enough to allow her father to lose himself in his thoughts. Violet cleared her throat, bringing herself back to their dilemma. ‘So what are we going to do, Dad?’

‘Hmm?’

‘If we’ve run out of money, what shall we do?’

‘Well,’ he said, as though enlivened with fresh energy, ‘we’re going to close Glen Corbie, as I said.’

‘Do we really have to?’

‘You know we do.’

‘And what then?’

‘You’ll go back and finish school to O-Levels, perhaps even consider doing your A-Levels to give yourself some time. I’ll try to find some work with Glenfiddich or one of the other major distilleries.’

She could see by the set of his mouth that he’d resigned himself to a future he would hate. ‘That is everything I do not wish to do,’ she said firmly.

‘Give me a better idea, then, Violet, because I can’t see another way for us. We need time to, I don’t know, reset ourselves. Decide what comes next.’

Her lips pressed together firmly as she ran her mind across what felt like a rather final decision about her future, one she didn’t support and would frankly refuse. But her father was right; she needed to give him an alternative. He watched her, almost amused – or was it fear she could see? She reached for the only salvation she could think of.

‘Dad, let’s pack.’

‘Pardon?’

‘We’re going to London.’

‘London? Whatever for?’

‘I want to talk to my grandparents.’

She saw him make the leap in his mind. ‘No, Violet. He’s not going to give me money. Your grandfather doesn’t even like me.’

‘It’s not you specifically he doesn’t like; he has just never appreciated that his daughter and granddaughter were taken far away from them.’

‘Well, he was right to be unhappy. His daughter died, and his granddaughter is now in danger of having few choices in life.’

‘Both of those statements are rubbish, Dad. Mum died. She would have died in London in their house if we were still there, or wherever she was.’

‘But they’d have had her longer.’

‘And,’ Violet continued, ignoring his remark, ‘I don’t need others to give me choices.’

He shook his head. ‘I don’t want his money.’

‘I know. It’s not for you, though. It’s for me. Now get packed. We’ll take tomorrow morning’s train.’