Fly Me to the Moon

She nestled playfully against his neck, cooed gently, nibbled his ear lobe. From the North Sea a rain squall was darkening the sky as it approached them but the young Shetlanders, snuggling on a boulder at the edge of Brei Wick, continued randomly lobbing stones into kelp-laden, choppy water. The electricity of new love and frisson of the moment was masking the unspoken. Seventeen-year-old Ingrid Tait broached the topic that both had been avoiding.

“You didn’t have to enlist you daft thing, Magnus.”

He paused before replying. He’d been expecting this conversation and had mentally rehearsed his quiet response.

“You know I would have been conscripted even if I hadn’t enlisted, Inga. Dinnae want a white feather under me Ma’s door either.”

“But I’m frightened. I don’t want to lose you Magnus. It won’t be over by Christmas. They said that two years ago. And the trenches in France have already claimed too many of our lads.”

 Magnus Anderson, an 18-year-old labourer, worked on the docks which serviced the Shetland herring boats. Celtic and Viking ancestry coursed through his veins like most of the residents in and around Lerwick, Scotland. Magnus was enamoured with Ingrid Tait, the recently arrived red-haired lass who hailed from a farming croft on the nearby Isle of Bressay. She’d begun working in the Lerwick Post Office because many of the men on the Shetland Islands had been hoovered up in 1916 by Britain’s needs in the Great War. Their friendship had transitioned from trot to full gallop in less than two months.

 “You’re not goin’ to lose me Inga. I love ya too much ta let ya go.”

Ingrid remained silent, weighing up his words, so Magnus ploughed forward.

“But ya have to let me do my bit for the country. It’s actually a wee bit exciting ya know. And maybe when it’s all over, I can transfer to the Air Force, train as a pilot. Better than working around stinking herring boats the rest of my life. Aye, Inga… the freedom of the sky. Fly me to the moon. Let me play among the stars.”

“Well, I like your dream Magnus, and your poetry, but you keep your bloody head down. I don’t want your Ma getting one of those dreaded telegrams from the King.”

“I’m not a Mary ya know. I’m fit, I’m agile, Inga. Besides… I’m a good shot.”

Raising her cheek from his shoulder to face him, she laughed, “Yeah? How good Magnus?”

 From the rustic wooden boatshed 20 yards behind them, he retrieved an empty cobalt-blue bottle which had originally contained linseed oil. Placing it on an exposed rock nearby, Magnus selected a stone, tossed it thoughtfully into the air several times to gauge its weight.

“Watch this.”

The empty bottle shattered. Fragments tumbled amongst the kelp and pebbles in the shallow water.

He grinned as Ingrid playfully punched his shoulder.

“Well … I still want you to keep your head down you daft thing.”

 The wind whipped their faces as the squall neared. Horizontal, chilled rain quickly chased them into the boatshed. They were laughing and embracing. Passion soon silenced them. Lips locked, they basked in the heat of each other’s body, absorbing each other’s energy, and Magnus began fumbling clumsily with Ingrid’s clothing. She was conflicted. Heart pumping furiously, she pulled her mouth away and murmured, “Not yet Magnus. I’m saving myself for when we marry.”

He was silent for a moment before countering, “But I leave for the front in a fortnight Inga. I might never get to know you completely, to enjoy your body. And you mightn’t get to know mine.”

“I know, Magnus, I want you so badly too.”

They stood embracing again, seeking each other’s lips and necks, hands exploring body contours and she acquiesced. Fumbling through their first experience with intimacy, Magnus placed his heavy coat on the earthen floor of the old boatshed, and they exploded in brief, urgent lovemaking as the rain squall furiously lashed the walls and roof.

 Despite the War Department’s preference for Shetlanders to be steered towards the Navy, two weeks after their boatshed tryst Magnus was recruited into the Army’s Gordon Highlanders. Late one afternoon in July 1916 at the Lerwick Docks, seventeen-year-old Ingrid Tait waved limply and sobbed quietly.  Within the crowd around her, some were cheering, some weeping, others waving flags. A pipe band struck up, and the steamship bearing Magnus and other Shetlander boy/men to war on the European continent glided through the safer waters between the Knab and Bressay to navigate the treacherous North Sea in darkness under wartime conditions. Troop ships had already been sunk in the region. The Gordon Highlanders trained briefly at Plymouth before being quickly despatched into the meat-grinder of the Western Front in France. From the mud, blood, stench, latrines, screams, fog and sleet within and around his trench at the Somme, Magnus’ bravado was quickly shattered. In the hours of his loneliness, fear and isolation, he pined to be in Shetland with his Ma and Ingrid. He was also completely unaware that Ingrid was carrying his bairn.

 After a seven-day Allied bombardment of German trenches in early October, the Gordon Highlanders were ordered over the top and across the 250 yard no-man’s land in rolling fog. Charging blindly forward with fixed bayonet, Magnus hadn’t yet reached the first German trench before he became entangled in uncut barbed-wire rolls. Trapped and pleading to be freed, staccato German machine-gun fire raked across the general direction of his distress. It sliced through Magnus, spilling his Viking/Celtic blood into the mud and madness of the Western Front and his life ebbed away. He would never meet his bairn or see his wee red-haired Inga again.

 Over a century later, and half a world away, the 2026 “Made in Dorrigo Markets” featured a huge range of handicrafts and produce made in the small NSW mountain town. Hickory Street was closed to traffic; tourists and buyers swarmed around the various sellers. One popular stall featured hand-made jewellery and felt products created and sold by an elegant silver-haired lady. A tourist was eyeing off some of her creations, each of which had been given a unique title. Selecting a sea-glass and sterling silver pendant, the elderly tourist clutched it in her hand.

 “This pendant just spoke to me,” the tourist beamed, “and it’s incredibly warm to the touch. It’s quite a bizarre sensation, like a tingle. I want this.”

“I’m pleased you like it.”

“Where’d you find this gorgeous piece of sea-glass?”

The jewellery maker explained that she’d recently returned to Dorrigo from the Shetland Islands and had found it while beachcombing in Lerwick.

“Oh. The Shetland Islands,” the tourist’s face lit up. “My grandparents were from the Shetlands. My grandmother is buried there but my grandfather was killed in the trenches in the Somme and was buried in France. But I need to know… You named this piece ‘Fly me to the Moon. Let me play among the stars.’ What prompted that?”

“Hmmm. Good question,” she offered, raising a quizzical eyebrow. “Those words were just leaping out at me strongly as I was creating it. I didn’t name it. It named itself. Strange huh?”

And smiling warmly, the seller placed the cobalt-blue sea-glass pendant into a handcrafted pouch and presented it to its new owner.