The Silver Bough
Authors: Lisa Tuttle
Contents
In memory of Campbeltown
Public Library and Museum,
this book is dedicated to all who
sailed in her, most especially Sue,
Florence, Caroline, Christine, and Barbara.
From the
Appleton AdvertiserFerry Hopes ‘On Hold’
The latest attempt to establish a ferry service between Appleton and Northern Ireland has met with no takers.
“This would open Appleton to the world. It would be a great thing for Appleton residents and visitors alike to have regular, speedy access to Ireland, as well as giving a great boost to tourism in Northern Ireland,” said Trevor Burns, speaking for Appleton Aye! a community group dedicated to improving and upgrading the area’s economy. “It would also attract more visitors, year-round. Unfortunately, none of the major ferry companies we approached consider the route commercially viable. I call this very short-sighted of them.”
Applications for government funding for this and previous proposed ferry projects to give the town a sea-link to other parts of Scotland have all been rejected. A matching grant from the European Union might be available, said Burns, “but for that to happen we need a major business investment first.”
Burns insisted that this is not the end of the Appleton Ferry Project. “The need is still there. The plan is still there. We are not giving up, just putting things on hold for awhile.”
Farewell to Farmhouse Cider
It’s the end of an era. There are no cider-makers left in Scotland now that Martin MacDonald has closed his doors.
“I’m just too old to carry on,” said Mr MacDonald, 94. “I’ve earned my rest.”
His daughter, Martina Gregory, said they had considered giving up cider production after her husband, Barry Gregory, died two years ago, but had struggled on because “Cider-making has been my father’s whole life. It was a labour of love for Barry, too. Even though we have many faithful customers who love our cider, it has never been a profitable business. We can’t compete with the cider factories down south.”
Appleton was once famous for its apples, and an apple is still the symbol of “the wee toon.” Asked to comment on this latest closure, local councillor Duncan MacInnes remarked, “I should point out that neither apple-growing nor cider-making have been of economic significance to the area since the 1950s. No jobs have been lost, either, as members of the MacDonald and Gregory families involved in the cider-making were all pensioners. You could say the cider company was a hobby for them. Of course it is a sad loss to Appleton and to everyone who ever enjoyed a bottle of ‘Old MacDonald’s Finest.’ Truly, this is the end of an era.”
an excerpt from
“Aboot th’ Toon”A big Appleton welcome to our latest incomer,
Mrs Kathleen Mullaroy
, who started work last week as Appleton’s librarian. Mrs Mullaroy comes to us from London, where she spent the last seven years working as a librarian for the London Borough of Brent, but, as one can tell from her lovely accent, she comes from much farther abroad, being an American, born and raised in sunny Tucson, Arizona. Let’s hope the weather here doesn’t scare her off, and that she disnae hae too hard a time unnerstannin’ th’ patter roun aboot th’ toon!
A
SHLEY
K
ALDIS LEANED
her head against the cool glass and gazed through the bus window at the Glasgow streets. Although this was her first foreign city, she couldn’t get excited about it; she just didn’t feel she was really
here.
Something about the quality of the milky light, the greyness of the streets, reminded her of old black-and-white movies made long before she was born—before her own parents were born—from a vanished, untouchable era. She looked at it all as if from a very great distance, and wondered if what she felt—or didn’t feel—was simply the effect of exhaustion and jet lag.
It was late September. At home, it was still summer, with everyone wearing shorts and tee shirts or bright summer dresses, but here it looked like winter already, with people on the streets all bundled up in coats and jackets. The chilly air carried the scent of rain mixed in with traffic exhaust and fuel smells.
She sank a little farther into her seat and shut her eyes as the bus grumbled and shuddered and made its slow, complaining way from one stoplight to another through the teeming city streets. She’d made it to the last leg of her journey and there was nothing else she had to do, nothing to worry about for the next four hours and fifteen minutes until the bus delivered her to her final destination. She should sleep.
But after so long awake—she’d been too excited and anxious to get much rest the night before she left, and too uncomfortable on the plane, sandwiched between two strangers—sleep seemed like a skill she’d lost. Her nerves were jangling and her heart pounding, probably from that horrible coffee she’d had in the bus station, forcing herself to drink in an attempt to keep herself warm and alert while she waited.
With a sigh, she sat up again and dug into her rucksack for some distraction. She missed her phone; its absence emphasized how far she was from everything she’d ever known, in a foreign country where it wouldn’t work. She reminded herself that it was only for six weeks; not worth changing to a more expensive contract. And, anyway, who was she going to call? Her best friend was dead, and she’d split up with her boyfriend. Her parents wanted her to check in with them, but if she did that too often, they might start thinking she was lonely or something.
She pulled out the cute, old-fashioned travel diary, which had been a present from her mother. So far, she’d only noted down her itinerary, and a few details about the long-lost relatives she was going to visit: Shona Walker (Daddy’s first cousin; daughter of Phemie’s brother), her husband Graeme, their children: Jade (6), Ewan (10), Callum (12). She wondered what they were like, and if she’d be expected to babysit. She had their home address, and two telephone numbers in case some unforeseen emergency kept them from meeting her at the village bus stop as planned. Also in her bag was her purse, with five hundred dollars in traveler’s checks, a credit card linked to her father’s account (for emergency use only), an AT&T International Calling Card, and
The Rough Guide to Scotland.
She’d be fine; nobody who knew her could doubt it. She could take care of herself.
But the thought of her own self-sufficiency made her feel a little bleak. She put the diary away and turned her attention back to the passing scene. They’d left the downtown area and were in the suburbs, which looked oddly crushed and miniaturized to eyes that took Texas landscapes as the default setting. She gazed at row upon row of nearly identical houses with front lawns the size of doormats,
bijoux
strip malls, filling stations, a supermarket, a car dealership, and, finally, the first appearance of open space: bits and scraps of empty land, vacant lots, and something that looked like a long-abandoned factory with a sign advertising a unique site available for redevelopment.
The bus continued to trundle along slowly, muttering under its breath, air brakes squealing every time it was forced to stop. She looked down on the cars in the next lane and saw a man with a ponytail behind the wheel of a small red car, nodding and smiling to unheard music. It felt strange to have such an elevated and detached view. She was used to going everywhere by car, and had flown half a dozen times, but bus travel was weirdly exotic. It was something old-fashioned, a routine from another age, like traveling by train or steamer. Apart from a few school field trips—and there was no glamour in thirty kids packed into a yellow school bus to be ferried across town—she’d been on one other bus journey in her life.
The memory of that trip to San Antonio gave the empty seat beside her a sinister aspect. Freya should have been sitting there. But, no, that was wrong, because if Freya were still alive, neither of them would be on this bus; they’d both be back at school in Dallas, planning their great escape to France. France was where they’d wanted to go, France or Italy. Scotland was never in the running. Freya had no great opinion of the home of oatmeal and bagpipes and men in plaid. The fact that Ashley was one-quarter Scottish was of no more significance than Freya’s half-Swedish heritage. Their long-dreamed-of, long-discussed trip abroad had nothing to do with “finding their roots”—an urge which, she believed, did not strike normal people until middle age—but with fun and adventure, the desire to see lots of great art and sit in sidewalk cafés sipping cappuccino and flirting with the local talent.
She turned her face back to the window, watching urban wasteland give way to open countryside, feeling the bus pick up speed on the empty road. No art museums, no famous landmarks, no sidewalk cafés, no best friend, and nobody so far worth a flirtatious second glance; nothing to see but rolling fields dotted with grazing sheep, the gentle hills a luminous green beneath the milky sky. This was Phemie’s country; this was the land her grandmother had departed more than half a century ago, left behind so utterly that she’d never had a word—good or bad—to say about it.