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First published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2015
FIRST EDITION
© Gregor Fisher and Melanie Reid 2015
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Cover quote reproduced with kind permission of The Telegraph © Michael Deacon, The Telegraph
All picture section photos provided by Gregor Fisher except where indicated.
The Scotsman extract © The Scotsman
Nancy Banks-Smith/Guardian extract © Nancy Banks-Smith
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Source ISBN: 978008150433
Ebook Edition © October 2015 ISBN: 9780008150464
Version: 2015-11-20
To my mother
Contents
1 The Curly-Haired Boy in the Corner
2 Fisher, You’re Playing Pooh-Bar
3 You Don’t Know Me But I’m Your Sister
4 I’d Like You to Move to the Colour Blue
5 Eat the Ice Cream While It’s on Your Plate, Ladies and Gentlemen
6 Aunt Ruby and the Red-Chip Gravel Drive
9 The Deil’s Awa’ Wi’ the Exciseman
10 Evening Comes, I Miss You More
‘Time shall unfold what plighted cunning hides’
King Lear: Act I, Scene I
A story has to start somewhere, so let it begin with two men, strangers to each other, but with lives that will run in parallel. Matthew Donaldson McKenzie and William Blake Kerr were born in Scotland in 1888 and 1895 respectively. Both survived the slaughter of the Somme, married the same year, had children the same age, found jobs and sought to make their way in the world. Eventually their paths would cross, with far-reaching consequences.
Matthew, the elder of the two, returned from the trenches to witness his sick wife give birth, and two days later he was to see her die. He was left with three motherless children, serious trench fever and a damaged leg.
In 1921 he re-married, to a young dressmaker, and took a job at a whisky distillery in a small village in central Scotland. He moved his family into a tied house – one of the houses under the hills. Remember this place, for we shall return here many times.
William, the younger soldier, returned from war scarred by the sight of filth and disease. Educated and ambitious, he got a job as a customs and excise officer, married and started a family. In 1928 came the move upon which this story hangs. William took a job overseeing three whisky distilleries within a mile of each other. One of them was where Matthew worked.
So the lives of the two