It was a shock to hear the manner of my uncle’s death described by a stranger

Generally, my mother tamped down her grief and avoided a head-on confrontation with her sorrow, though sometimes she was caught unawares.

A recording of a war-time siren set her off down the road of horrible memories, the receipt of a telegram (even a highlydecorated greetings one) made her tremble.

At church during Remembrance Sunday, she was overcome by emotion, particularly when the congregation sang hymns about the perilous sea.

My gloom persisted. I looked out of my window and gazed at sheets of sleet, diagonal projectiles shot from the sky. I decided I must find out what happened to Angus.

My unconscious urged me to investigate but my rational mind advised me to forget as I was afraid of discovering a skeleton in the cupboard.

When I was young I broached the subject with my father. Never very articulate when it came to emotional matters he stuttered a few words: “Awful!” “You mustn’t talk about it!” “For Heaven’s sake, don’t ask your mother!” and like a battery-spent machine, his voice then dwindled to a halt.

I returned again to the file containing Angus’s letters.

The first was hand-written, in small print that belied a far from modest signature. (Angus had underlined his name and punctuated it with a full stop.) It was Easter Day, 1939 and the letter came from India in the Deccan where he was stationed. Adventure My uncle was no introvert but a young soldier of 25 wanting adventure. This, he hoped shortly to get by travelling to Kashmir on a shooting expedition. But before he detailed his plans, he congratulated his 18year-old sister on gaining a place at Somerville College, Oxford. “Enjoy Oxford!” he advised. “I did!” This terseness was followed by an inquiry as to her whereabouts; as she and their mother were at that moment on a cruise in the Mediterranean, he feared their itinerary might have been interrupted by Mussolini’s invasion of Albania on April 7 of that year.

In his second letter, dated August 1941, typed and sent from the Cameron Highlands in Malaya where he was on leave, Angus apologises for being a poor correspondent.

After a brief description of his hotel (mock Tudor with olde-worlde beams and a wishing-well in the garden) Angus arrives at the important news. He had bought a new 6hp Fiat.

“I must say it is a grand wee car and has done me very well indeed,” he wrote. As the smallest vehicle on the market, it was an odd choice for a man of 6ft 4in. “As you may imagine,” he continued, “I look a bit of a sight driving about in this tiny little car with my head sticking out several inches through the sunshine roof.”

The letter ends with cryptic remarks about the state of the world. Would Japan invade, he wondered? If they did, the Allies would smash them. This gung-ho approach might have been, if not for his sister’s benefit, then for the censor’s.

Both of these communications display a breezy optimism with a glaze of humour.

There was no doubt he was a loyal servant of the Crown but still frank enough to gripe about the heat and his homesickness. “I’d give anything to be back home for a week or two at Largie,” he wrote.

There is only so much you can eke from a brother/ sister correspondence. Fleshpots My mother was hardly likely to be a confidante to her brother’s drinking exploits or sexual adventures in the fleshpots of Singapore city. That’s if he, a promising young officer, indulged in such activities.

Angus and Esther’s relationship was not especially intimate; their social background, where brothers and sisters attended different boarding schools, prevented it.

He was seven years her senior and, in the absence of their father, who died when they were very young, he might well have served as a father substitute.

I folded the letters and replaced them in the file. They were all I had to help me bridge the gap of 60 years and grasp the nature of my mother’s relationship with her brother.

It wasn’t much but it was something. Whereas once my uncle was just a man in a photograph, now he had a voice, distinctive in idiom, quirk and form.

I realised then, now that she and my father were dead, who was to stop me from discovering what happened? I grabbed the telephone directory, looked up “army” and found the number of Edinburgh Castle museum.

That was military, wasn’t it?

“If he was in the Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders, it’s Stirling Museum you want,” said a polite woman on the other end and she gave me the number.

I rang it and when another female voice answered I faltered.

“Was he Major Charles Angus Macdonald?” she asked. “I don’t know!” I couldn’t confirm his rank. “I think he was. He was brigade major... of the 12th Indian Infantry.”

If I was honest, I had little idea of the difference between a brigade, battalion or regiment. “Here it is!” she said, “He was killed at sea .... ” It was a shock to hear the manner of my uncle’s death described by a stranger. I wanted to correct the lady and tell her he wasn’t killed but lost. The distinction was important.

“...on 2nd March, 1942.” the voice explained. “He left Singapore on the 14th of February, two days before the surrender.” “How do you know he died on that date?” I asked. “Aitken’s book states it was on the 2nd of March.” Frustration

“Who was Aitken?” I was frustrated by the woman’s reluctance to explain.

“Aitken kept a record of all soldiers’ deaths and hid it while he was in captivity. Major Macdonald is in it.”

It puzzled me how Aitken came by the news but this detail was not what I wanted to concentrate on just then. “And his next of kin was his mother.” I felt a weight pressing on my chest and a prickling sensation attacked my throat. I wanted to scream at the disinterested woman privy to my family tragedy.

They say that experiences can last from one generation to the next. If that is so my tears then joined those of my mother and grandmother.

“The reason I’m ringing,” I mumbled, “is I want to know what happened after his ship went down.”

I heard the woman speak to somebody else in the background. “Can I help?” the voice belonged to a man.

(More tomorrow)