Letters from Skye (14 page)

So Willie is enlisting and he is coming through Edinburgh. He was supposed to arrive this morning, but the train must have
been delayed. I’ll have a few days to show him around the city before he officially enters the army and ceases to have any fun. Although you seem to paint a different picture, picking fights, going about with French whores … Perhaps war is more delightful than I thought!

Are you having fun, my Davey? All of the seriousness and the grim aspect of this aside, are you finding things to make you happy? You sound content in your letters. Lazy days reading in Parisian cafés, peppered with those bursts of excitement and adventure you love so well, driving pell-mell down the streets and alleys. A woman writing you passionate letters from Scotland …

Which books should I send next? Let’s see, I’ll look through the collection that I’ve amassed thus far in my travels.… I have a slim volume of Yeats (what “pilgrim soul” can resist Yeats?), a book of George Darley’s poetry; what else do I have that you might enjoy? Aha! Perfect:
The Letters of Abélard and Héloïse
. Though promise me that our affair won’t end as tragically. I couldn’t bear a convent.

Edinburgh has been lovely, but I’m getting wistful for my fair isle. I miss the peat smoke, the tang of the bog myrtle, the warm smell of hay in the byre.

Willie’s just arrived. I’ll end now and post this while we’re out. I love you.

   E

Paris, France

January 12, 1916

Dear Sue,

At last, at last, to the front! A guy named Quinn and I have been called up. We haven’t yet been told where exactly we’re going, but we’ve been assigned to the famous Section One. I don’t know if it’s the same ambulance section Harry is in, but I have a pair of socks to return to him just in case.

No, Sue, please don’t ask what it is that Johnson said. Not only did he use language not fit for the ears of a pirate, but the gist of what he said was offensive, more so because it’s true. But true things can
sound
cheapened and distorted when said by people such as Johnson. Trust me on this.

Hmm … do I have any ideas as to what you can tell your parents? A burning desire to see if the sheep on the mainland are as woolly as the sheep on Skye? The insatiable itch to taste an English pudding? An urgent need to buy a new hat? An indescribable longing to follow strange American men up to their hotel rooms?

I’ll be leaving in the morning. I wanted to get one more letter off to you before departing Paris, as I’m not sure when I’ll get the chance to mail another. Even though this is what I traveled across the ocean for, I can’t help but feel the twinge of nerves. We will see what tomorrow will bring!

   Your Davey

Isle of Skye

22 January 1916

My dear Davey,

Here I am, back on my little island. Chrissie had to forward on your letter, hence the delay.

Willie is off to join the rest of you in your silly battles. You should have seen him strutting around in his uniform, a right cock o’ the walk. The ladies seem to find the kilt nigh on irresistible, but Willie is mystified as to how the men are really expected to work and fight in the ridiculous things.

Over tea, he confided to me that he had a girl. He hadn’t breathed a word to any of us! Though he wouldn’t tell me why, he’d been keeping the whole thing a secret. I let slip that I had a secret too. I didn’t say more than that, but Willie, he deduced the rest. He said I’ve been smiling for months. Oh, Davey, I didn’t realise how unprepared I was to answer questions about us, so I blurted out, “We can’t help who we love.” He just grinned and said I was exactly right. I haven’t seen him that happy since the war began.

It is odd to be back here, for so many reasons. My parents’ cottage seems so dim and smoky, the night so much darker and quieter than I’ve been used to, and the people grubbier. Although London and Edinburgh had their fair share of dirt (how can you have that many horses in one city and
not
have it be dirty?), it was overshadowed by all of that urban sophistication. Màthair handed me the milking pail right after I arrived, and I reluctantly changed from trim suit into itchy wool blouse and sagging skirt, traded my silk stockings and buttoned boots for
hand-knitted stockings and great, clumsy boots. I feel as if there are two Elspeths: One who wears expensive, stylish clothes, travels in taxicabs, dines on duck, and goes across the country on a whim to meet handsome young Americans. And the other, who wears broken-in homemade clothes, travels by shank’s mare, dines on porridge, and goes across the country on a whim to meet handsome young Americans.

Remember all of those stories you concocted for me to tell my parents to explain my disappearance? As it turns out, none was needed. As amazing as it may seem, Davey, my mother knew all along! I walked through the door, a dozen stories prepared. Màthair looked up from her spinning and said, “So you went to finally meet your American?” I just about fainted.

Do you remember when I told you how, after Iain left and I was living alone, I would pull out your old letters to read at night? I would sometimes fall asleep literally covered in your words. I was quite the wraith, sometimes not going out of the cottage for days, except to milk and bring in the peats.

One morning I was woken by my mother coming through the front door, stirring up the fire, putting on the kettle. She had brought a big pot of mutton stew with her to warm up for my dinner and spooned some into a bowl for me to take to old Curstag Mór, who lived nearby. When I returned, the floor was swept, the sheets were airing, and the stew was bubbling on the fire. I had left your letters scattered all over the bed and they had been neatly put away, although I didn’t think anything of it at the time. I was too in awe of the pot of real food over my fire to worry about wee details like that!

Obviously, Màthair had read the whole stack of letters. I’m
not sure how much she knows—after all, back then we were nothing more than friendly correspondents—but she gave me no censure. It was just that word “finally” that made me wonder how much she really divined from those early letters.

Of course, by insisting that Johnson didn’t say anything worth repeating, you’ve piqued my curiosity even more. Do we really have secrets from each other, Davey? Have we ever had secrets from each other? We’ve told each other things from the very beginning that our own parents and siblings didn’t know. You needn’t worry about protecting me from any language or sentiments. This is wartime, you forget. We women are made of sterner stuff these days.

   E

P.S. Minna sent the picture of us that she took outside the register’s office. Have you seen it?

Chapter Fourteen
 
Margaret

Glasgow

22 August

Dear Margaret,

It was no impulsive war marriage. Elspeth was married to my best mate, Iain. The three of us had grown up on the hills of Skye. We ran bare-legged down the braes, splashed along the shingle in search of stones. Truth be told, Iain was always a little afraid of Elspeth. Her hair wild, she’d shout poems into the ocean spray. She was as fey as the island. One day we were dangling over the Fairy Bridge and he asked for her hand. She looked at me, then smiled and said yes. I thought the three of us would always be together. I never thought Elspeth would betray him.

As much as I’d like to help, I don’t have the answers. I left Skye about a year before you were born. But my màthair, she
was there. Write to her on Skye. Your grandmother will know more than I do.

   Finlay

On the train to Fort William

Saturday, 24 August 1940

Dear Paul,

I’m done with writing letters. I’m on my way to the Isle of Skye!

Of course, Uncle Finlay didn’t give me an address for my grandmother, and I didn’t think I’d get far wandering the island, asking the way to “Granny Macdonald’s” house. I would imagine that half of Skye is called Macdonald. So I poked around the house looking (again) for a forgotten envelope, an old address book, my mother’s birth certificate. Nothing. Not even one of the letters Gran sent each and every month, covered with scribbles of Gaelic. David’s letters must be the only ones Mother kept.

Then I remembered how, from the moment I learned to read, my mother insisted I write my name and address on the inside covers of my books, in case I was to accidently leave a treasured Stevenson or Scott on a park bench. I went at once to her library and pulled the most battered, ancient-looking thing I could find off the shelf, a scruffy copy of
Huckleberry Finn
with a faded poppy pressed in the middle. Sure enough, right inside the cover she’d scrawled “Elspeth Dunn, Seo a-nis, Skye, United Kingdom.”
As though, even there and then, there was a danger of thieving park benches.

I asked around until I found a family looking to evacuate a child north. Emily’s neighbour, Mrs. Calder, has been terrified with all the recent bombings. She’s arranged for me to escort her daughter Dorothy to a farm outside Fort William. It pays my fare that far, and it’s only a short way from Fort William to Skye. I borrowed a suitcase from Emily and away I went!

I tell you, Paul, this is a little thrilling. Of course it isn’t the first time I’ve been away from Edinburgh but, apart from that jaunt down to Plymouth to see you, I’ve never been away on my own purposes. Even when you and I went bouldering or rambling the hills, we never went far from the city. Of course, it could be argued that I’m not heading to Skye for myself; I’m heading there for my mother. And the grandmother I’ve never met! But if I can learn more about Mother’s “first volume,” about that part of her from before I was born, then the trip will be worthwhile in more ways than one. She’s not here to stop me from finding out about my father.

Train to Mallaig

Later

Dear Paul,

Dorothy is settled. A silver-haired woman built like a battleship met us at the station and took charge of both Dorothy and the envelope of money from Mrs. Calder. Before she left, Dorothy
pressed a note into my hand, written on the back of her train ticket, and asked me to give it to her mother when I return to Edinburgh. I can scarcely read it for the smudges and tearstains and deplorable penmanship, but it says, “I love you,” over and over. She’d folded it over and upon itself a half dozen times and scrawled their address on the front. I promised her it would be the first thing I’d do when arriving back in Edinburgh.

Really, though, I’m starting to worry about Mother—and, I have to admit, feeling somewhat guilty. Maybe it wasn’t the letters or the bomb that ran her off. Maybe it was our argument. Even though I’ve pushed her before to find out who my father is, we’ve never actually argued. I’ve always let her shrug it off. I went too far, I asked too much, and I can’t help but feel that something fractured in that instant.

Was she right, Paul? Are we rushing into things? Not too long ago, you and I were just friends. We never did anything more serious than offer each other a sandwich or a hand-up on a boulder. When you joined up and asked me if I’d write to you, I almost laughed. I didn’t think you and I had enough words between us for letters. Then you said you’d fallen in love, and I thought maybe we did and maybe it could work. But, as my mother said, emotions run high and sharp in wartime. I trust yours—honestly I do—but don’t know if I believe my own.

Maybe this trip will be what I need. A lick of independence, a thread of distance. A chance to figure out if this is really what I want. Perhaps this is a journey to solve more than one mystery.

   Affectionately,

   Margaret

London, England

10 August 1940

Dear Sir or Madam,

Many years ago, two men named David Graham and Harry Vance lived at this address. I do not know if they still stay there or if they have moved from Chicago, but I would appreciate any information you could supply. I have been out of touch for some years and would dearly like to find them.

If you have any information about their whereabouts, can you please contact me? You can write to me at the Langham Hotel, London. I thank you in advance.

   Sincerely,

   Mrs. Elspeth Dunn

Chapter Fifteen
 
Elspeth