Letters from Skye (18 page)

I was reading through some of the Darley poetry last night, and it struck me that I haven’t heard you talk about your poetry for a while. I know I’ve been keeping you running from one end
of the country to the other, but have you been able to find time to write?

The other day I scratched off a little fairy story about a princess with a magic traveling crown and mailed it off to Florence, but after I sent it, I counted out and realized she’s four years or so now. Is she too old for Uncle Dave’s fairy stories? What is it that four-year-old girls like? She is learning to draw and sends me the most frenzied pictures (thankfully accompanied by Hank’s written description). The last one was entitled: “Mama and the chickens and Aunt Sally’s cat by the seashore.”

As I write this, I’m eating my lunch, a rather dismal stew that seems to be mostly turnips and cabbage, and I’m thinking about when we ate at the Carlton. Braised duck, oysters, your first taste of champagne. I can still picture your eyes lighting up at the desserts. I can’t believe you ordered one of each! That seems ages ago, although it wasn’t more than half a year. Half a year, half a lifetime. Doesn’t seem to be much of a difference between the two when you and I are apart.

Do you remember what you said to me when we first met at King’s Cross? The very first words you spoke? You glided over to me and, as I was struggling to think of something intelligent to say, you said, “There you are.” I often think of that, Sue. Here I am. No matter where I am in the world, “Here I am.”

   Davey

Isle of Skye

29 May 1916

Davey,

I’m in my cottage and I’ve embarked on a wee project. With the whole building lime-washed white, it just looked too tempting a canvas, so I’ve bought up all the pigments I could find in Portree and have been embellishing the outside. I perch myself up on the ladder, with my pockets stuffed full of brushes and jars, a curved piece of driftwood balanced on the roof for a palette, and let my imagination and memories flow through my fingers. I’m sure it looks like nonsense to any passing boat or hikers on the other side of the loch, but it all fits together in my mind. Each swirl of colour, each flick of the brush, is a tribute to us.

Finlay has finished my mantel, and it truly is a work of art. So much care taken, down to the tiniest details. Right in the centre is a fairy princess with a face that looks remarkably like Kate’s. I told him he was wasting his time on Skye, that he should be at the Glasgow School of Art, studying sculpture. He shouldn’t languish here like me, wasting his art on crofters’ cottages. Now that he’s off the boats, he’s not bound here anymore, the way the rest of us are. He can set off into the world the way we always dreamed as children.

Truth be told, I want him to go from here; I want him to stop thinking about Kate. When I was mailing your last letter, I saw her in the post office. The wind from the open door pulled the letter from her fingers and I caught it for her. Oh, Davey, it was addressed to Willie. The whole thing reeked of cheap perfume.
She saw that I noticed but, uppity minx that she is, turned up her nose and refused to say a word. I probably should have told Finlay right away, told him that Kate had been playing him false all along with his own brother, but, oh, I couldn’t. Not when it seemed he was finding some peace with his life at last.

I think he may know already, though. Willie came home on leave last week, strutting like a peacock, regaling us with stories of brave battles, then hurrying off. I caught him outside the cottage, heading towards Portree. I told him I knew about Kate. I knew she was the girl he’d been going around with and that he should stop, for Finlay’s sake. He just laughed and said that a husband hadn’t stopped me and, anyway, I’d told him there was nothing wrong with following one’s heart. That he was only keeping with it because I was doing the same thing. That we were alike.

Davey, what he’s doing feels so wrong. And I’m seeing Finlay, broken in pieces over it. Just a few days after, Willie went out to help Finlay on my cottage. He came home with a bloodied nose, and Finlay didn’t come home at all until the next day. He must know. How could he ever forgive either of them?

And, according to Willie, I’ve been doing the same to Iain all along. Thinking about me rather than about him. All of those little fingers of guilt I get every now and again, they came on me full force with Willie’s words. Not only was I a sneak and a cheat but I’d led my own brother to do the same. I’d caused a rift in more than my marriage. I’d caused one in my family.

I could’ve given Willie different advice. I could’ve told Finlay about Kate’s letter back when I had the chance. But I’ve done nothing, and now my brothers won’t speak to each other.

And behind it all are my own actions. If I hadn’t done what I did to Iain, Willie never would have felt justified in his decisions. My family would still be whole.

Davey, my love, my boy, it has to stop. I have to stop. And, believe me, my fingers do not want to write these words. But I can’t do this anymore to Iain. When he’s found, when he comes home, I have to tell him. I have to straighten things out with him before there can be anything with us. Things weren’t good between Iain and me; surely he won’t disagree. But, Davey, I have to go about this the right way or I may never be able to forgive myself.

That’s why I’ve been painting our story on the side of my cottage. A reminder of what was. A memorial to us in paint and brush.

Please understand. Know that I love you, but please understand.

   Elspeth

Place Three

June 8, 1916

Sue,

You don’t know how I’ve been dreading this letter from you. I knew it would be coming someday, but I dreaded it all the same.

The day you wrote back and said that you loved me too, Sue, you turned my world upside down. Life has never looked the same to me since I read those words. But your last letter, that’s
turned it around again, and I’m dizzier than before. I haven’t slept since.

I could beg you not to leave me. That’s exactly what the selfish boy in me wants to do. And, deep down, I think that’s what you want me to do too. But, all of this I’m doing here, it’s an effort to prove myself worthy of you, worthy of whatever it is that we have. That man wouldn’t pull you away from those you love. He wouldn’t send cracks running through your life.

All I will beg, though, is that you consider for a while longer. Don’t shut me out just yet. This has all come so suddenly. I would not hold you in something you do not want, but give me more time. Let me hold you a little while longer. Until Iain returns, please stay with me.

   Always,

   Davey

Isle of Skye

19 June 1916

Dear Davey,

I received a formal letter from the War Office. As there has been no further news received, Private Iain Dunn is regretfully presumed to have been killed in action.

The moment I heard the knock on the door, I knew. I didn’t even open the letter right away, just set it up on the mantel Finlay carved. Funny, my very first thought was of Finlay, how he’d collapse at the news. I had to shore myself up. I had to be there for my brother.

I didn’t sleep at all after the letter came. I spent the night in the old cottage, sorting through Iain’s few things. He left behind so little, such scant evidence that a man once lived. I couldn’t bring myself to move anything from the places he laid them.

Forgotten on a shelf in the old cottage, a nautical almanac from 1910—did he really once read?—and a carved pipe. Evenings, while I sat and scribbled, Iain carved. He got that from Finlay, I know. I still remember the two of them as boys, sitting down by the shore with dark heads bent together, whittling pieces of driftwood into peg dolls and tops for me. In recent years, he’d started fishing in deeper waters, staying out in the boat all night. I told myself it was because he was tired of doing nothing but carving and staring into the fire every evening. Now I just don’t know.

He kept a small kist for his clothes, though he walked out the door wearing most all that he owned. Nothing left in the kist but two oft-mended blue shirts I made when we first married. They were enthusiastically uneven, but he never complained, only brought them to me for mending when the old patches wore out. I still have a length of that blue fabric somewhere. Amazing that the shirts lasted longer than we did.

Tucked in the back of the kist was a broken wooden comb. He always wore his hair too long. He said he liked to feel it blowing against his forehead when he was out on the water. The night before he left, he sat in front of the fire in just his trousers and cut his hair short. I thought to catch it all up and tuck the locks between the pages of Byron, but he tossed it all into the fire. I wasn’t that sentimental, anyhow.

At the bottom of the kist, I found a dented biscuit tin, crusted
with salt and rusted shut. It must’ve lived in his seabag, before he emptied it and packed for the army. I had to lever it open with the meat knife. And, oh, Davey! Inside, a copy of my first book,
Waves to Peinchorran
. We hadn’t been married yet when I gave it to him, not knowing if he’d ever read it. The pages were water-stained and, right in the middle, at a poem about summer nights, was a twisted lock of my hair. In pencil he’d underlined the phrase “warm as a breath on my face.” Next to the book was a carved wooden baby rattle.

Since then I’ve been sitting here, wrapped in a sweater of his, staring into the fire. Màthair came over yesterday and clucked her tongue to see me sweltering in front of a fire with a wool sweater. She brought in water for a bath and set to work making a fish pie. While the pie cooked, she helped me wash my hair and asked, “Is it guilt you’re feeling?”

How could I explain to her that it wasn’t guilt over loving you, that it was guilt over not loving Iain enough? That all this time I spent thinking he was turning from me, he wasn’t. He went away, chasing herring up the Minch, but he carried a piece of me with him. He always kept me close.

I feel so hollow, Davey. Back when I got the other letter, when I found out he’d gone missing, I told myself he was dead. I cried my allotment of tears then. Why would I tell myself anything different? Hope is useless at a time like that. Hope only sets you up for disappointment.

Davey, I don’t know how to do this. Mourn. I didn’t shed a tear when the letter arrived, and I still haven’t. I can’t leave the house, because who would understand? There goes his widow, who refuses to cry. There goes his widow, who doesn’t care.

But I do. He was my husband. How could I not care?

I don’t know what it is I expect you to say. I’m not entirely sure why I’m writing, except that’s what I do. Màthair told me not to stop. She told me to keep writing “my American,” that there was no better way to keep me going.

Please don’t leave me, Davey.

   Sue

Chapter Eighteen
 
Margaret

Beagan Mhìltean, Skye

Saturday, 31 August 1940

Dear Paul,

After Gran found me at Seo a-nis and brought me back to her house, she could see the questions in my eyes. But she put me off. Told me we could talk tomorrow. She had a big pot of brose cooking over a fire and set me down at the table across from my grandfather and my uncle Willie, two men as weathered as the Crags. Gran kept those sharp crow’s eyes fixed on me, but Grandfather didn’t look at much but the inside of his eyelids the whole meal.

With no sounds but the crackling of the fire and the scraping of spoons in bowls, I waited for Gran to say something. Such a wee woman, yet so intimidating. She’d dried me off and given me an ancient sweater and a pair of Grandfather’s trousers to
put on. My own clothes steamed quietly in front of the fire. Uncomfortable in strange clothes in a strange place, I waited for Gran to go first.

Uncle Willie blethered the whole meal, with anecdotes about Skye, questions about Edinburgh, and a whole string of awful jokes. About himself or my mother, he said nothing. From Gran’s tight mouth and narrowed eyes, I gathered that Willie was the family disappointment. Unmarried, uncouth, still taking up space in her house.

Through all Willie’s talk, Gran sat silently, watching me. A battle of wills, and the old woman was the more stubborn of us. I finally broke and asked her how she knew I’d be coming. On a place such as Skye, I could full well believe in second sight.

“Finlay wrote to me.”

Willie’s spoon clattered into his bowl. “Finlay wrote?”

“First time in twenty or so years.” She had a glint of satisfaction in her eyes. “He said Elspeth’s daughter had tracked him down and, if she stayed as persistent, would be up on my doorstep in no time.”

“Why didn’t you tell me he wrote?”

Gran glared. “Just because you live in my house and eat my bread does not mean I tell you everything, Willie Macdonald.”

Willie didn’t even look chagrined. “He’s my brother.”

“And yet he didn’t write to you.”

Willie thumped back his chair and, with no apology, left the kitchen.

Disappointment indeed. My first night there, and already in the middle of a family squabble.