Letters from Skye (22 page)

When we get a call and start heading for the
postes
, a certain spot by a derelict barn marks the unofficial boundary between the shelled zone and the safe. As we approach that barn, there’s an instant where we toss any fears out the window and open the flivver up as much as she will go.

We can’t think as we drive down this Corridor of Death, we can’t concentrate, we can’t reason. We just look at the brown ridge of the rear trench that marks the end of the corridor and forget all else. It takes only twenty-six seconds to drive this road, but it feels like twenty-six minutes, so we’ve taken to counting it aloud. Yesterday I made it in twenty-five.

Oh, God, I don’t know how Riggles could be content with selling autos after this is all over with. I don’t know how Harry can be content teaching whining undergraduates. I don’t know how any of us can be content with doing anything that doesn’t make us feel invincible.

   David

Isle of Skye

4 October 1916

Davey,

My brother is gone.

When he walked away from me in Edinburgh, he walked
away from the whole family. He didn’t even send Màthair a telegram to say goodbye. She hasn’t come out of her bed in days.

The way he’s always kept an eye on the horizon, I think we all half-expected this would come, especially after his discharge. Deep in my heart, I’ve always thought he’d leave one day. Màthair said he only ever stayed on Skye because of me, that when he saw, growing up, that I would never set foot on that ferry, he tucked away his wishes and let Da take him out on the fishing boat. If I couldn’t leave, he wouldn’t either.

But now he did! Without a backwards glance, he sailed away. I should be glad he escaped the fishing and crofting life he never looked for, but I can’t help but cry. After all this time, he did it without me. Worse, he did it to spite me.

I wrote Finlay a letter, even though I have nowhere to send it. I told him I was sorry but that he was wrong, that “my American,” as he put it, had made me a promise. My American isn’t going to forget about me up here on my island. He isn’t going to sail back to America without a backwards glance. “Here I am,” he said to me once. And he is. He’s there, no matter what happens. And, in another month, his contract will be finished, and he’ll come up here and sweep me away.

You promised me Christmas, Davey. I know you won’t walk away like my brother. Please.

   Sue

France

October 18, 1916

Sue,

I hate having to say this, but I don’t know if I’ll be home by Christmas. I know you’ve probably thrown this letter across the room already, but once you pick it back up, hear me out.

I wasn’t happy back when I told you I would renew only until December. The glamor of this all, the excitement I’d felt last fall when I volunteered, had started to fade. I wasn’t doing much but sitting around behind the lines waiting for the next sector. I wanted nothing more than to go on permanent
repos
with you.

But now, with the new section, I feel so alive. You wouldn’t believe how much. Sue, for the first time, I matter.

Remember, I couldn’t cut it as a student. I couldn’t cut it as a teacher. Hell, I couldn’t even cut it as a son. My dad still thinks I’m a disappointment. But now, using the bravado that did nothing but get me in trouble as a kid, I’m succeeding. Guys who otherwise wouldn’t make it now do. And all in the back of my flivver. Mine.

So, you see, I can’t leave now. Not when I’ve really begun. Can’t you see that, Sue? Would you pull me away from all this just when I’m needed most?

   David

Isle of Skye

1 November 1916

“Would you pull me away from all this just when I’m needed most?” Yes, yes, I would, especially when you’re needed even more here. Davey, I’m pregnant. So stop all of this nonsense and come home.

France

November 12, 1916

This is how you tell a fellow news like this? This wasn’t supposed to happen. That’s why I brought the French letters. We’re not in a position to make a decision like this. A family, Sue? You’re still mourning, I’m still “playing war.” We’re seven hundred miles apart. And look at how your brother acted in Edinburgh. I deserved each blow. After all, I’m the American who came between you and your husband. I’m the one who caused the rift with your brother. Why would your family welcome me after that?

Isle of Skye

29 November 1916

Then come and take me away from here! Whisk me away to America, where there is no war or disapproving brothers. The neighbours are already starting to whisper and, oh Davey, I just
want to go away with you and start on that future we keep talking about.

Yes, this is enormous. It’s overwhelming. It’s even a bit scary. But how can the thought of impending fatherhood be scarier than speeding down the “Corridor of Death” every day?

It terrifies me too. The way I’ve already torn my own family in two, I’m not fit to raise a child. Maybe I was right all those years ago when I said I shouldn’t be a mother. I don’t think I can do this.

Davey, I need you to be the strong one. I need you to be brave for the both of us. Please come here and take me away. I feel invincible when I’m with you.

I’m tired now. I don’t want to argue about this. It’s a fact and not worth fighting about. Amidst all this war, all this death, we’ve made life. The baby, it’s just another adventure. And, remember, I can face any adventure with you by my side.

   Sue

December 3, 1916

Dear Elspeth,

I wish I weren’t writing you. Months ago, Dave gave me this envelope and told me to mail it if something ever happened.

We were doing a run four nights ago. When we got there, we found that the dugout had just been hit. Doctors, orderlies,
blessés
—gone. An officer was trying to put some sort of order on the situation, directing those coming up from the first-line trench.

Having a little medical training, I started checking over the
blessés
coming in, deciding who was going to even make it back to the
poste de triage
. Those
brancardiers
still upright were dumping their loads and heading back out as fast as they could stumble. Dave, fool that he is, jumped into the trench and followed after. He came back a few times, ignored my shouts, and went back out. One time he didn’t come back.

He had no business being up over the first line, but you know Dave. He never would listen to prudence. He did what had to be done, though.

I debated for those four days whether or not to mail you this letter. I kept hoping he’d come limping out of No Man’s Land with an amusing story about yet another lucky escape. It wasn’t to be.

There’s not much I can do for you from here, but please write to Minna if there’s anything you need. I know about your situation. Dave told me that night, as we were speeding along to the
poste
. Yes, he was shocked and scared. But that night he was hopeful. And quite happy.

So to satisfy the last wish of the best friend I could ever hope to have …

   Harry Vance

Sue, my own sweet girl.

This is the letter you were never supposed to read. If you are, it means this is the last one I’ll ever send.

As I’m writing this, it’s May and I’ve just gotten back from seeing you in Paris. Your stack of increasingly frantic
letters waited for me upon my return. As I read them, I began to realize exactly how scared and worried you must have been, so far away from everything happening here. I don’t want you to have to go through that again, not knowing, so I’m doing what works best for us. I’m writing you a letter.

I don’t know when you’ll read this. It could be next month, it could be six months from now, it could be a year. I hope it’s never. I don’t know what the world will be like then. I don’t know what sort of things we’ll have been writing about. I don’t know if you’ll have found yourself another handsome American ambulance driver.

I can say with certainty (even looking into the future) that I haven’t and never will find another Sue. You are the reason I frown at the sunrise and smile at the sunset. Frown because I have to face the day alone, without you by my side. Smile because that’s one less day we have to spend apart.

You wrote in one of your letters that you didn’t think you were strong enough. You said, “I can’t do it all on my own without knowing you exist in this world.” You
are
strong, Sue. Look at you—you crossed the English Channel for me! When I see the things you did for me, it makes me wish I was a stronger man for you.

I know you wish I had never gotten involved with this war over here, that when I got to London I had just stayed on that train and raced clear up to Skye, never leaving again. But I had to do this. I couldn’t come to you as a failure, Sue. I had to prove I was
something
. You always
call me a boy. I needed to grow up and become a man.

I know you, my dear. I know that right now you are shaking your head angrily at my words and saying, “But you
didn’t
fail. You got me to fall in love with you!
I’m
your success.” You are my success, Sue. And I know that. I don’t know what I did right in my life, but it must’ve been something pretty worthy for me to have gotten you. My pearl.

I regret not telling you this. I want to be the first thing your bleary eyes focus on in the morning. I want to watch you wash your face and slide on your stockings. I want to cook you breakfast and kiss the egg from the corner of your mouth. I want to curl up by the window, you tucked on my lap, reading, writing, talking, breathing. I want to warm up your bare feet between my knees in bed. I want to fall asleep with your hair tickling my chin.

I would have moved to Skye and suffered through the disapproval of your neighbors and your family, if that was what you wanted. I would have gone to the farthest reaches of Siberia, if that was what you wanted. I know that now I’m in a place neither of us would have chosen.

You said once a long while ago that it was too clichéd to say you could love someone forever. Is there a word that means “longer than forever”? That will be how long I love you.

   Now, forever, and beyond that. I love you.

   David

Chapter Twenty-two
 
Margaret

Glasgow

6 September

Margaret,

It’s weighed on me for years that I was the cause of my sister’s sadness. I’m sure she blames me still.

You see, I had a girl named Kate. When I went off to soldier, she wove a lock of her hair into a rosette and stitched it to my shirt, near my heart, so that she’d always be with me.

Then came Festubert and I returned home a leg short, wanting nothing more than to bury my face on her shoulder. But that first moment, when I tried to draw her into my arms, she flinched. Literally flinched. She slowly stopped coming around, but, really, that made it easier. If she wasn’t there, I wouldn’t have to see her eyes sneak to my folded trouser leg, wouldn’t
have to feel the air between us as she stepped aside to let me pass.

I thought I understood. What lass wants a cripple for a husband? Even when I received my prosthetic, I knew it wouldn’t matter. She already felt so far away.

Then Willie came home on leave. I was out at Elspeth’s new cottage, carving a mantelpiece. Willie found me sitting behind the kailyard with a lapful of wood shavings, and he tossed off his tunic to help. There, sewn to his shirt, right over his heart, was a golden rosette of hair.

We scuffled. He kept saying that we can’t help who we love. I think I broke his nose. Màthair was furious, and Elspeth cried and cried. Willie left the next day and didn’t come home on leave again.

And I thought that was that. I simmered, but Willie left and I could carve Elspeth’s mantel and try to forget I’d ever met Kate. But peace doesn’t last long. Elspeth received a letter from the War Office. Iain had been officially declared dead.

Those months passed in a blur. Iain, closer to me than my own brother, was gone. We’d set off for France with a lot of bravado and a promise to watch out for one another. I’d failed. Those were black days, to be sure. Elspeth was better off than I was. Alasdair’s bairns had come to stay with her, to fill her days. Since Kate left me, I had no one. I spent my time alone, walking the hills with my cane and a flask. When I went to Edinburgh for a check on my prosthetic, the doctor took me to task for abusing it so on the climbs. I didn’t care. I needed the pain.

But on my way back to Waverley Station, I saw Elspeth. She
wasn’t back on Skye, mourning Iain. She was in an embrace right there on the street, with a stranger.

I know I wasn’t being fair when I squared her around and gave her a piece of my mind. The man pushed between us, as if it were any business of his. He wasn’t even from here; he was just an American. How could she forget about Iain like that? Only months after his death, and here she was throwing herself at someone else. How could she betray him, and with an American?

She stood with head down and let me say my piece. Whispered that she hadn’t forgotten Iain and never would. But then she started to cry, and the American stepped between us again. I went for him, asked what he was doing going after other men’s wives while soldiers were dying in the trenches. And Elspeth’s eyes flared up.