Letters from Skye (13 page)

Dear Uncle Finlay,

There are so many women around here with a “Mrs.” before their name but no man at home. A black-edged photograph on the mantel of a man in uniform hints at a story better forgotten. Because my mother has always refused to answer my questions, I’ve assumed her story was the same—some sad youthful marriage that ended on a battlefield somewhere. Lately I’d started to wonder if it could’ve been David. But now … She was already married?

Who is my father? Please, Uncle Finlay, I have to know! What is my story?

   Margaret

London, England

6 August 1940

Dear Sir or Madam,

Many years ago, a family named Graham 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 with the family and would like to find them.

If you have any information about their whereabouts or, indeed, if you are a member of the Graham family, 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 Thirteen
 
Elspeth

Paris, France

December 17, 1915

My Sue,

It looks more and more like we’ll be spending Christmas beneath the Eiffel Tower. It goes without saying that I would rather be spending Christmas in Edinburgh, on Skye, or wherever you are. Harry is all fine and good as a companion but not exactly the person I hope to catch unawares beneath the mistletoe.

We’re living in the dormitory above the hospital with the other American volunteers. After the first few days of trying to muddle our way through brisk French, it was so comforting to hear a good ol’ American twang. We sleep in one huge room with beds lining all of the sides. Only one shower for all of us guys, and a cold one at that. No lights at night, save for a single
lamp in the center of the room, so I’m working on this letter in snatched moments during the day. It’s not much, but, at least for now, it’s home!

I think both Harry and I had this vision of driving the ambulances directly off the boat and into the front line of danger. Even though we’ve not been sent to the front, we haven’t been idle. I’ve been assigned a little ambulance with another chap, name of McGee. When the hospital trains come in from the front, we have to zip to the freight yards at the end of Rue de la Chapelle to collect their ragged passengers. Some are quite serious, but they are the ones deemed fit enough to make the train journey. I suppose the worst cases don’t even make it onto the train. We load them up and then hurtle through the dark streets to the makeshift hospitals scattered around the city. I like to pretend the Grim Reaper drives next to me, racing me to the hospital to see who gets the men in the back of my ambulance. My little truck is light and fast and so the Grim Reaper always ends up a street behind me, with a mouthful of dust.

The work here really is pretty light, though. Trains seem to mostly come at night. We have to spend some time in the garage keeping our vehicles in tune. Still, we have plenty of opportunity to explore Paris during the day. Harry and I sightsee like tourists, catch flicks half-price at the Gaumont Palace. We’ve been combing the French bookshops with as much joy as you did their London counterparts. Parked at our favorite café, we slog through Dumas and Boussenard (untranslated) in an attempt to dust off our much-disused high school French.

Not quite Christmas, but I’ll include your gifts. I wish I could be there to give them to you in person. Will you do something
for me? As Christmas Eve turns into Christmas Day, right at the stroke of midnight, step outside and tilt your face up at the moon. Taste the snowflakes on your lips and imagine they are my lips touching yours. I will step outside at exactly the same time. I promise. No matter if I’m still in Paris or somewhere else in France, I’ll close my eyes and I’ll imagine the same. Perhaps it could really come true, if even just for an instant. If a miracle such as our Lord’s birth could occur on a night like this, then it is no great feat for our spirits to meet.

   Love,

   Davey

Edinburgh

Late Christmas Eve, wee sma’ ’oors of Christmas Day, 1915

My love,

It’s late on Christmas Eve, the children are “nestled all snug in their beds,” and I’m the only one still awake to wait for St. Nicholas.

Chrissie and I sat up late, drinking far too many mugs of mulled wine. It was the first time we’ve really been able to sit and catch up on the past six or so years with no children running circles around us. Not much to tell. Apart from the husband-running-away-while-dashing-American-seduces, the past six years have been nothing more than crofting and writing. Your name slipped out, just once, but something on my face must’ve made her kiss my forehead instead of asking another question, and she went off to bed.

I poured out another mug of wine and watched her through the open doorway, climbing into the bed she’s kept empty since Alasdair’s death, and knew she wouldn’t understand even if I were to tell her about you. Alone, she’ll stay married to Alasdair the rest of her life. And so I retired to the sitting room with my candle, notebook, wine, and secrets.

I’ve opened the window, swung my legs out on the windowsill to open up your present. Ah … a bottle of real French perfume! An appropriate gift for a lovesick boy to send from Paris. And, oh, Davey, the necklace is simply lovely! A pearl so perfect, like a single drop of moonlight. Thank you.

The mantel clock—two minutes fast—is chiming out midnight, so I’m leaning out the window. Did you feel that, my love? Not a snowflake against your cheek; my lips tasting you. Not a whisper of wind in your ear; my voice whispering, “I love you.” Did you smell that hint of Ambre Antique on the air? I was there.

I know the children will be up early, stampeding into the kitchen to see if St. Nicholas has come, so I should go to bed, although I’d sooner stay up with you and this letter. We may be far apart but, at least for a moment tonight, we tried to erase that distance.

Merry, merry Christmas, my Davey.

   Elspeth

Paris, France

January 1, 1916

Dearest Sue,

I was getting quite impatient for your letter! I suppose I didn’t think about the holidays delaying the mail. That knowledge didn’t lessen my impatience, but at least I knew it was late because you waited until Christmas to write and not because you’d found yourself another brash American cowboy.

The wristwatch is perfect! You remembered I’ve been wanting one to replace my pocket watch. This will be much handier over here. I keep my pocket watch buttoned inside my jacket, and it’s not so easy to pull out when I need to check the time (quite frequently these days).

Your letter and gift provided a speck of light in what was otherwise a black and thundery week. The weather wasn’t quite so dire; I’m afraid it was my mood that was black and thundery. I was down enough about spending Christmas away from my family (yes, I even missed my mother’s fruitcake!), but then Harry got his orders.

Throughout all this, Harry and I have been inseparable, and then they had to go and send him off into the teeth of the battle, leaving me behind with sniveling McGee. All because Harry happened to be ahead of me in line as we were signing up. Without my family, without even you, Sue, I figured at least to have Harry to spend Christmas with. Instead, I was faced with the choice of hanging out with Johnson and the rest of the degenerates down in the red-light district or sitting in the dormitory listening to McGee read aloud from old letters from his mother.
I ended up crawling into bed with Dryden (becoming quite dog-eared now) until lights-out.

Even though Harry had nothing to do with the decision, I was quite cross with him while he was packing up. I grumbled and called him names, many gleaned from the copy of Shakespeare sitting on my bed. I particularly liked “monstrous malefactor” and “unlick’d bear whelp.” He just laughed at me, punched me in the shoulder in the male version of the tender embrace, and tossed a spare pair of his socks on my bed.

It’s a running joke between the two of us. Right around the time we first met, Harry and I had gotten ourselves into some sort of mischief on our way home from school. I don’t remember exactly what it was but something that left him without his hat and me without my boots or socks. We got to Harry’s house first, and I begged him to lend me something to wear, as I knew the direst punishments imaginable awaited the boy who walked in the front door barefoot on Mother’s “at home” day. Harry was reluctant—our friendship was still very new, mind you—but finally relented, after making me cross my eyes and spit over my shoulder to swear I’d return the boots and socks. He told me later he didn’t think he’d ever see either again. I rather liked Harry, though, and hoped to become better friends, so I brought back the socks the very next day.

After that, it became a thing between us. A pair of socks was a promise to see each other again. I set off for college with his fine white dress socks folded in my suitcase, and he embarked across the Atlantic with a pair of my sturdy wools in his steamer. So I suppose that, since I have his socks, I’ll
have
to see him again. Even if he is an unlick’d bear whelp.

I was able to sneak outside at midnight on Christmas Eve, as promised. I closed my eyes and stood as still as I could, trying to remember just how your fingers pressed on my shoulders, how your hair tickled my chin, how your body measured the length of mine. I caught the faint smell of flowers and had the wild thought that perhaps it worked, that, for a brief moment, our spirits had somehow transcended the distance between us.

But it was soon replaced by a whiff of cigarettes and raucous laughter. Johnson, Pate, and Diggens stumbled into the quadrangle, a
cocotte
on each arm. The girls wore skirts nearly up to their knees and filled the courtyard with the reek of cheap cologne. Pate already had a hand under one of those short skirts.
“Attendre un moment, m’petites,”
slurred Diggens in ghastly French, before disappearing into the dormitory. Whether for his “French letters” or for a piss, I couldn’t tell. Maybe both. Need I say that my moment was ruined?

Johnson spotted me and demanded to know why my “pansy ass” was lurking around outside by myself rather than going after tail with them. I ignored him (with enormous self-restraint!) and tried to move farther down the quadrangle, but he followed, taunting. For whatever reason, he seems to find it unnatural that I won’t come out to the brothels. I don’t know what it is about me that infuriates him so much, as I don’t see him pestering McGee, and McGee is perhaps the archetypal “pansy ass.”

Johnson was drunk and determined to pick a fight, throwing all sorts of insults, many revolving around my questionable gender and my alleged choices of barnyard lovers. For my part, I couldn’t think of a response aside from “unlick’d bear whelp”
and “mad mustachio purple-hued maltworm,” neither of which I think Bill S. intended for such a situation. Then he tossed a verbal grenade (one I shan’t repeat) that hit a bit too close to home, and I started for him. I think I would’ve gotten into a fight if the door to the ward hadn’t opened. I saw the night nurse silhouetted in the rectangle of light and I melted back into the building, hurrying up to the dormitory. When I looked out the window, Johnson, Pate, and the girls had disappeared and a very confused Diggens stood in the yard being scolded by the nurse.

Believe me, Sue, neither fighting nor being alone is how I’d hoped to spend my Christmas this year. The only thing that made it all bearable was the chance that, for at least an instant at the stroke of midnight, we touched hands across the miles.

Well, Sue, the
mère
who owns the café is wiping down mugs and giving me a pointed look. A quick glance at my new wristwatch shows that I’ve been here for much longer than I thought. I will close for now, but I will be watching the post every day for your next letter.

   Love you,

   Davey

Edinburgh

7 January 1916

Davey,

What was it that Johnson said that “hit a bit too close to home”? You can’t tell a thrilling story like that and then leave out the “punch line,” as you Americans would say.

I’ve just received a letter from my mother. She’s finally letting Willie enlist. He’s been wearing her down over the past year and a half. Finlay won’t be going back to the front, so she is secure in at least one son surviving the war.

Who knows what she thought when I disappeared? I didn’t tell anyone I was leaving—aside from Willie, that is, and he didn’t know why. We snuck from the cottage while Da was checking the lobster traps and Màthair was down on the shingle gathering up seaweed for the garden. I left a wee note saying there was something I had to do and I would write but it would be at least a fortnight before I returned. I knew it would be some time before they could decipher my scrawl (how
do
you do it, Davey?). I was fairly confident that neither would think to check the pier for me and that I could be halfway to London before anyone got the idea to question the ferryman. Willie loves a good adventure, and I was certain he wouldn’t give it away too soon, no matter how fit to bursting he was. I’m going straight home from Edinburgh and have the whole train trip home to concoct a convincing story as to what gave me enough courage to cross the water by myself. Any suggestions?