Beginning of the End 1. Beginning of the End I Late one afternoon in September 1938 old Father Francis Chisholm limped up the steep path from the church of St Columba to his house upon the hill. He preferred this way despite his infirmities to the less arduous ascent of Mercat Wynd; and having reached the narrow door of his walled-in garden he paused with a kind of naïve triumph – recovering his breath, contemplating the view he had always loved. Beneath him was the River Tweed, a great wide sweep of placid silver tinted by the low saffron smudge of autumn sunset. Down the slope of the northern Scottish bank tumbled the town of Tweedside, its tiled roofs a crazy quilt of pink and yellow, masking the maze of cobbled streets. High stone ramparts still ringed this Border burgh, with captured Crimean cannon making perches for the gulls as they pecked at partan crabs. At the river’s mouth a wraith lay upon the sand bar misting the lines of drying nets, the masts of smacks inside the harbour pointing upwards, brittle and motionless.
