Letters from Skye (11 page)

And so, when the war tore through my walls and let memories come tumbling out, where to go but London? I had to see if ghosts still drifted here the way they always drift around Edinburgh.

Once, too long ago, I fell in love. Unexpected, heady love. I didn’t want to let it go. His name was David, and his soul bloomed with beauty. He called me “Sue” and wrote me letters, emotion pinned to the page with each stroke of the pencil. When he wrote, I didn’t feel so alone up on my little island.

But the war seethed then, and it wasn’t the time or place for new love. In a war, emotions can be confused, people can disappear, minds can change. Perhaps I was wrong to fall in love so suddenly. What happened all those years ago, what happened with David: It cost me my brother. It cost me a lot.

If I could do it differently, would I? Make different choices that would keep my family together? Make different choices that would keep me from spending the rest of my life alone?

I’ve spent the past twenty years wondering that. But on the train to London, surrounded by Davey’s letters, I realised that I wouldn’t have done a thing differently. Of course, I wish that Finlay never left. But those few bright years of beauty, despite the rest of fumbling loneliness, I wouldn’t have traded for the world. All of the choices I made then brought me you. And that makes everything that came before worth it.

I hope you forgive me for not telling you everything. But the
past is past. I love the present, with you. I never wanted anything to rattle that.

Happy birthday, my Margaret. When I find the answers I need, I’ll come home to you.

   Love,

   Mother

Chapter Eleven
 
Elspeth

The Langham, London

27 November 1915

Davey,

You’ve only just left, are probably now settling down in your seat, listening to the train rumble out of London. I’m sorry I didn’t see you to the station. Truly I am. I had no faith in myself. I knew if I had gone to the station with you, I would’ve clung on to your arm and not let go. Now, though, I do regret not going, not getting one more chance to see your dear face.

I have to admit that, once the tears dried, I was quite angry with you. I suppose I thought I could somehow convince you to stay. If I gave it all to you, you wouldn’t be able to leave. Not that I would’ve given you any less of myself. How could I? Everything about these past nine days was perfect.

On the train down, though, I was terrified, more terrified
than I’d been to climb onto that ferry, and that I had to walk onto with eyes closed and breath held. With every pitch of the boat, I wished myself back at home, where the ground didn’t move. But the train was even worse. It wasn’t only taking me away from home, into the unknown. It was taking me towards you.

I know you’re in love with me. Never doubt that, my boy. Three years of deliberate word choices, neat turns of phrase, the “Sue” on the envelope written with extra care. I know I had no reason to worry about our meeting. Yet I did. All that, you did for a pen-and-paper Elspeth, a witty and worldly woman who offhandedly sends letters to Americans, who argues about books and writes poetry at the drop of a hat.

But those poems I write by dim candlelight, as birds roost in the thatch above. I wipe stinging eyes to read your letters, crouched by the smoky swirl of the peat fire. None of my neighbours thinks of me beyond That Odd Bird, Elspeth, the one who walks into town with a book in hand rather than a spindle. As the train chugged closer to London, I couldn’t help but wonder whether you’d think the same.

But then I stepped into King’s Cross Station, met your eyes across the crowd, and all my fears melted. You saw past the elegant pink dress, past the hair I’d spent the past hour straightening, past my attempts to look like the kind of woman who travels across the country to meet fascinating Americans. You saw the real Elspeth. You saw me.

Did you really think I wouldn’t recognize you without that silly red carnation in your lapel? Did you think I wouldn’t see you for the romantic I know you to be? I’ve pulled out and
stared at your picture enough that I think it may be burned onto the inside of my eyelids. Now I know my dreams are the stuff of more than imagination.

But to see you in the flesh, in colour, is more than I could ever hope for. Did you know your eyes are the exact brown-green of the Scottish hills in wintertime? And you are so much taller than I would’ve guessed from your photos. You lost that mustache you’d taken such pains to grow, and your hair is shorter yet still invites fingers through all those sandy curls.

You seemed so shy when you met me at the station, almost as if you didn’t know me at all. And I couldn’t believe that my Davey, the boy who can blether on for pages about books and tree wars and his niece, couldn’t think of more than ten words over supper! I think I prattled on enough for the both of us. I was nervous, though, dining at my very first restaurant. So many people, so many forks, and not an oatcake in sight. But when we walked back to the Langham, when you stopped my words with a kiss that left me breathless, that’s when I saw the Davey I love. That’s when I saw the fearless boy who stole my heart.

Ah, the Langham! I felt like a princess just walking through the front door. All marble and glass and electric lights, like a palace. Did you not expect me to come back to your room? It certainly seemed so, the way your eyes grew huge and your hands trembly when I suggested it. You dropped the key to the room five times; I counted. And there was nothing to be nervous about in the end.

I wish we could’ve stayed up there the whole time. Nine perfect days. Waking up and seeing that funny startled look in your
eyes each morning to find me still there. Falling asleep in your arms with our drowsy conversation in the dark. I collected each word like a bead, to string together on my lonely nights back on Skye. Yours is the very first American accent I’ve ever heard. I like it best when it’s saying, “I love you.”

I know you had to leave. Even after all that, even after
me
, you had to leave. And I hate myself for hating it. I hate myself for wasting a single second of our precious time wishing things could be different.

Of course, I couldn’t tell you any of this in person. I couldn’t say much at all. The very sound of our voices was so … 
odd
. So banal. I confess I couldn’t wait to get back to my notepaper and pen to tell you how I felt. And to tell you how my mind is collaborating with my heart and my body to make me miss you unbelievably, more than I thought I could.

I love you. Stay safe. Stay safe for me.

   Sue

The Langham, London

29 November 1915

My own boy,

You probably don’t yet have my earlier letter, but I thought it could never be too soon to tell you again how much I miss you. The hotel seems so big and lonely without you (does the room echo or it just my imagination?). The scent of oranges linger in the air and I swear I can still see the shape of you in the
mattress. As lovely as the Langham is, I shan’t be too sad to leave. It isn’t as lovely when you aren’t here.

I went out shopping today. Davey, why didn’t you tell me about all of the books? While out walking, I turned a corner and was confronted with a street packed full of bookshops. You may laugh, but even if I were to have let my imagination run loose, I never would’ve conjured up an image of an entire store filled with
nothing but books
. I’m afraid I looked quite the “country yokel,” standing in the doorway of the first establishment I entered, staring around me goggle-eyed at the shelves upon shelves. It was Foyles, so of course it was some time before I reemerged, blinking, into the sunlight. I swear I became lost a dozen times. The rest of the day I traipsed from one end of Charing Cross Road to the other, ducking into every single bookshop I passed, and not leaving without buying at least one thing. I became quite adept at saying, in an offhand sort of way, “Send this to the Langham,” and then was flabbergasted at the stacks of parcels awaiting me at the hotel that evening.

I puzzled over what to get for you, Davey, my dear, as I know that you have only a limited amount of room in your kit bag. All a person really needs to get them through the vagaries of life are the Bible and W. S. (both of them). I guessed you already had a Bible, so I’m sending you Scott’s
Lady of the Lake
and the most compact edition of Shakespeare’s works I could find. And a little sliver of room left in the package which I’ve filled with Dryden. After all, “words are but pictures of our thoughts.”

The funniest thing—I was greeted in one bookstore by a display
of my own books. I must’ve looked amused as I picked up a copy of
Waves to Peinchorran
, as a salesclerk hurried up to me. “Twee little verse,” she said, quite seriously. “The author lives up in the Highlands of Scotland. You get a lovely sense of their superstitions and almost primitive lifestyle.” I nodded sagely, then took the book to the counter and signed the flyleaf with a very distinct “Elspeth Dunn.” I handed the book back to the astonished salesclerk and said, with what I hope was an airy tone, “We’re regular savages but don’t
always
eat our own young.”

I am running water for one more long, luxurious bath; a bath where I don’t have to draw and heat the water myself. Just to sink back in the steamy water and rose oil is heaven itself. In the morning I’m meeting my publisher in Cecil Court (where he’s promised me even more bookshops!), and then I’m heading back to the station to catch my train north. I’ll write to you again when I get there, but I’ll be crossing my fingers, my toes, and maybe even my eyes (when no one is looking) that there will be a letter from you waiting for me.

   With every inch of my being,

   Sue

Paris, France

December 5, 1915

My Sue,

What a surprise to get here and find not one but two letters from you waiting!

I’ve been busy, running from one end of Paris to the other, it
seems, securing the necessary paperwork, buying my uniform and the last bits of equipment, taking my driving exam. Did I tell you that, when I was on the boat trip across the Atlantic, I had the childish urge to go to Paris first and then to London, so that I could greet you all kitted out in my uniform? I think I look quite well turned out. All dressed up, but nowhere to go!

Until we get to the front, we’ve been trying to enjoy what bit of time we have before we’re really put to work. Our uniforms get us all sorts of boons—half-priced theater tickets, discounted drinks. It’s been fun, but … it still doesn’t seem like the “Gay Paree” I remember. Many of the theaters and music halls are shut or operate on shortened hours. Cafés are closed early, lights are dimmed on the street at night. Even so far from the trenches, it’s a city at war.

The books are much appreciated, as I’m sure you knew the moment you bought them. You’re determined to turn me into a poetry reader, aren’t you? Haven’t I told you that Elspeth Dunn is the only poet for me? I just have room left in my duffel bag for the Shakespeare, but Harry’s going to read the Dryden and W. S. and then we’ll swap.

My Bible is one that I’ve had since my First Communion. It’s a slim little volume bound in limp brown leather with pages as thin as dragonfly wings, so it’s the perfect size for my bag. My name is scrawled in the frontispiece in round, childish letters, and I have a lock of Evie’s hair tucked somewhere in the Book of Ruth, so it can’t help but remind me of home.

I also brought along my battered copy of
Huck Finn
, more for comfort than for reading, as I could probably recite the whole book verbatim. But that dog-eared book has been the first
thing in my suitcase when packing for anything stressful or upheaving—hospital visits (of which, as you know, there have been more than a few), first ocean voyage, going away to college, moving to the apartment. I take it out, read it straightaway, and it immediately makes me feel that I’m back curled in the green armchair in my parents’ library. It only stands to reason that I’d bring it along here.

Perhaps it’s superstitious, but I also view the book somewhat as a lucky charm. My mother bought it to read aloud to Evie and me when we had the measles. We finished reading the book and then, the next day, Evie’s fever broke. I’ve always somehow associated that collective sigh of relief with
Huck Finn
.

You may rightly wonder, why does the invincible Mort need a lucky charm? Well, Sue, I’m afraid. For the first time in my life I’m really afraid of something tangible. I was fine on the boat ride over, even eager for what awaited me in France. What I overlooked, though, was what I would find in London. I found something worth coming back for. I found you, Sue.

The boy who never shied away from any form of daredevilry, brought to his knees by a woman he only just met. But what a woman she is! When you stepped off the train and that shaft of sunlight found its way through the glass in the roof to set you aglow, even an atheist would’ve seen the finger of God in that.

Even after you stepped into the shadows, you glowed like a candle the rest of the day. You spoke, and I heard a chorus of seraphim. You laid your hand on my arm when we were leaving, but I felt the touch of wings. A bit flowery, I’ll give you, but such was my state of mind. I laid eyes on you, there was that shaft of sunlight, and I was suddenly terrified. Terrified you
would disappear in a cloud of bubbles, terrified I might be hit by a bus in the next instant, terrified the world would end before our world had even begun.