Letters from Skye (10 page)

Since writing the above, something has happened. Harry let Lara into my room to surprise me and she spotted the letter on my desk. She snatched it and read it before I realized what was happening. Lara’s called the engagement off for good, in fact tossed the engagement ring in my wastebasket. She says she fancies I’m in love with you and she can’t compete with someone who’s been winning all along.

You know, for a girl who didn’t finish college, she’s quite smart.

   David

Isle of Skye

4 August 1915

Davey, oh, Davey! You shouldn’t have written what you did. If you hadn’t written it, then I wouldn’t be in this quandary. I could go along, carrying my secrets. I would go on expecting to be a widow, checking the newspapers to see each fresh casualty list. You would go on being my cheerful correspondent, an admirer of my poetry, and an interesting friend. And now you’ve spoiled that with your last letter. You can never now be just my “interesting friend.”

What
should
I say? I
should
say that it’s terribly presumptuous of you to write to a married woman and claim to be in love with her. But what do I
wish to
say? I
wish to
say that I don’t think you would have written that if you weren’t somewhat sure of how I felt.

What was I thinking about when that photograph was taken? I thought you knew, Davey. I was thinking of you.

   Sue

Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A.

August 20, 1915

My dear Sue,

Do you realize how nervous I’ve been, waiting for your reply? If I were a betting man, I would’ve put a large wager on you not replying at all. But the small part of me that saw signs and portents in every letter you sent, the part of me that not only read between the lines but above and below, that part would have put a wager on you writing back and knowing exactly what I was talking about. I’m glad that part of me won the bet, for the prize is so much greater.

What happens now? If you lived down the street in Chicago, I’d ask you to dinner. Or maybe not. What does one do with a married woman, apart from leave her alone?

See, I’m going to make a muddle of this. Whatever “this” is. You’ve seen how I’ve been failing at just about everything I’ve set my mind to these days. A guy with nothing going for him but guts. Why would you want a guy like me?

   Wondering,

   David

Isle of Skye

6 September 1915

Davey, Davey, Davey,

You’re not a worrier. Why are you thinking so hard about this? The past three years, we’ve let things fall as they may, and
love happened. Do we need to plan out what comes next? Do we even need to know?

I hope you realise that I’ve never thought of you as “a guy with nothing going for him but guts.” If you only knew how you keep me going, how you keep me waking up, simply because I know you’re thinking of me. You moved me to write again when I thought my muse had fled. You reminded me that I’m not just a lonely recluse. I have something more now. I have you.

Do you really think you need to prove yourself to me? Do you think you have to do anything but continue to be there? That’s all I ask. Just be there.

   Thinking of you,

   Sue

Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A.

September 28, 1915

Sue,

So much has happened here. You’ll never guess—I’m going over to the front! Harry saw an ad for the American Ambulance Field Service, looking for volunteers to drive ambulances for the French Army. Wilson can’t get off his duff and let us Americans into the war, so we’ll have to find our own way in.

Think of it! Driving an auto as fast as I can, shells whizzing by overhead, men’s lives actually dependent on me driving as recklessly and as fearlessly as I can. Can you think of anything more perfect for me? I couldn’t manage as a teacher, but this … this I can do.

We don’t get paid, but I have a small trust fund set up by my grandfather. Harry has already said we’ll pool our resources once we get to France and, if we have to eat canned beans or brown bread or whatnot every day, so be it. No money forthcoming from my father!

Harry and I went over there for dinner last night to break the news. My mother left the table, dabbing at her eyes, and my father asked, “Why on earth are you going to France?” Harry leaned back in his chair and said, “Hell if I know. But it will be a damned fine adventure,” then saluted my father with his glass of Madeira. My father turned purple and I thought he would have an apoplexy.

We have a few things to do here. Have to get a typhoid inoculation, which will take a couple of weeks, and we’re waiting for official letters from the headquarters of the American Ambulance to send to the State Department. We’ll need letters of credit from our banks. We have supplies to get together (boots, sweaters, driving gloves), but we’ll get our uniforms in Paris. And photographs! I need a dozen or so copies of my passport photo for licenses and identification cards. So much to do and we’re trying to get it done as quickly as we can.

We officially sign on for a six-month term of service and can reenlist for three months at a time after that. Both Harry and I told them to count us in for at least a year. We’re not the kind of guys who do anything halfway.

I finally feel as if I’ve found my purpose in life, Sue, and I can hardly wait to get there!

   Exuberant,

   Davey

Isle of Skye

15 October 1915

You stupid, stupid boy! Did you expect me to be
happy
about this plan of yours? With a husband at the front and a brother crippled from this blasted war, what on earth did you think I’d really say?

I don’t even understand why you’re doing this. What do you owe France? Or any other nation, for that matter? Why do you feel duty-bound to get involved in the foolishness on this side of the ocean? What makes you think this war has anything to do with you?

Did you stop to think for a moment about me in all this? How, only recently, I offered my heart up to you, tentatively, hesitantly, not trusting my own feelings but trusting you implicitly? And now you’ve trampled all over it in your haste to run off.

All I wanted was for you to be there. Why are you leaving?

Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A.

October 31, 1915

Dear Sue,

I know you’re angry; please don’t be. Talk of “duty” and “patriotism” aside, how could you really expect me to pass up on this, the ultimate adventure?

My mother’s been floating around the house, red-eyed and sniffling. My father still isn’t speaking to me. And yet I feel like
I’m doing something right. I messed up in college. I messed up at work. Hell, I even messed up with Lara. I was beginning to think there was no place in the world for a guy whose highest achievement included a sack full of squirrels. Nobody seemed to want my bravado and impulsivity before. You know this is right for me, Sue. You of all people, who seem to know things about me before I myself do. You know this is right.

I’m leaving tomorrow for New York and have to trust my mother to mail this letter. When you read it, I’ll be on a ship somewhere in the Atlantic. Even though we get a reduction on our fares if we sail the French Line, Harry and I are bound for England. He has Minna over there waiting for him. And I … I have you. Like knights of old, neither of us can head off to fight without a token from our love to tuck into our sleeve.

I’ll be landing in Southampton sometime in the middle of November and will be going up to London. Sue, say that you’ll meet me this time. I know it’s easy for me to ask, far easier than it is for you to leave your sanctuary there on Skye. Don’t let me go off to the front without having touched you for the first time, without having heard your voice say my name. Don’t let me go off to the front without a memory of you in my heart.

   Yours … always and forever,

   Davey

POST OFFICE TELEGRAPHS

S 8.25 SOUTHAMPTON

15 NOV 15

E. DUNN ISLE OF SKYE=

HEADING TO LONDON WILL BE AT THE LANGHAM AGAIN

   WILL WIRE WHEN WE ARRIVE=

      D+

POST OFFICE TELEGRAPHS

S 15.07 PORTREE

15 NOV 15

D GRAHAM THE LANGHAM HOTEL=

THURSDAY AT HALF PAST SIX KINGS CROSS STATION SPECIAL SCOTCH EXPRESS=

WAIT FOR ME MY LOVE=

   SUE+

Chapter Ten
 
Margaret

Edinburgh

Wednesday, 7 August 1940

Dear Uncle Finlay,

My mother is a contained person. I’m not sure what she was like before I was born, but as I know her, she keeps everything held tightly to her chest. She never talks about the past, apart from her childhood. Nothing about friendship, nothing about yearning, nothing about love or loss. She simply moves through the present.

She has her routines, the things she does every day. In the morning, she walks. Along the Water of Leith. Around Holyrood Park. Along the beaches and docks, before they were fortified. To the farthest edges of the city and then back again. No matter the weather, no matter the season, she’s out walking. She’ll bring back a sprig of gorse just to put it on her pillow and
smell it; she’ll bring back the first snowdrop of winter to remember the promise of spring.

When she’s finished walking, she goes to St. Mary’s Cathedral and sits. Not for the Mass; she goes when the church is quiet, empty, still. The priests, they all know her by name. She’s the one who comes only to sit and bask in the peace of the cathedral.

But this war here suddenly unsettled my mother beyond what I’ve ever seen before. Before disappearing, she started to carry her brown Bible in her handbag. She didn’t walk as far or as long. She began to crumble.

I know that war is frightening, especially when you’ve already lived through one. But why Mother? Why now?

   Margaret Dunn

Glasgow

8 August

Margaret,

Maybe the better question is, “Why not everyone else?” Why doesn’t everyone over the age of twenty-five freeze up at the very mention of war?

Elspeth was never one caught up in the past. Even as a lass, her face was always turned towards the sun. But she never could keep hold of her feelings. Our brother Alasdair always said she wanted too badly for everyone to love her. Back then, we did.

That was Elspeth’s problem. She cared too much. When the war started to threaten everyone around her, she reached out
and grabbed for whatever she could hold on to, trying to catch any bit of happiness she could. As if life really works that way. She set herself up to be shattered, and she was. None of us could stop the choices she made. It’s little surprise to me that this war reminds her of the other. Of the time when she broke our family in pieces.

   Finlay Macdonald

Edinburgh

Friday, 9 August 1940

Dear Uncle Finlay,

Is that it? Is that why Mother has never spoken of her life on Skye beyond girlhood? Why she’s never mentioned that I have an uncle staying just a short train ride away in Glasgow? What did my churchgoing, nature-loving mother do to break a family to pieces?

Was it because of Sue?

   Margaret

Glasgow

10 August

Margaret,

You should be asking her these questions. I cannot help you. I don’t know anyone named Sue.

   Finlay Macdonald

Edinburgh

Monday, 12 August 1940

Dear Uncle Finlay,

I can’t ask her. She’s gone. She left.

Last month, a bomb fell on our street. We didn’t have much damage apart from broken windows, but, in the wreck, I found letters I’d never seen before. Piles and piles of letters. The one I picked up was addressed to “Sue” from an American called Davey. I don’t know who they are or what was in the rest, because, the next morning, both my mother and the letters were gone.

So I can’t ask her. I can’t even find her. If I weren’t desperate, why would I be looking up mysterious uncles?

   Margaret

Glasgow

13 August

The American? That is what this is about? After all these years, still the American?

I couldn’t stop the choices she made then and I certainly can’t now. Please don’t write to me again.

   Finlay Macdonald

Edinburgh

Wednesday, 14 August 1940

Dear Paul,

It was working. Uncle Finlay was telling me about my mother in dribs and drabs. There was something that he said “broke our family in pieces.” And then I mentioned the letter and the American and he’s stopped writing. I don’t know what I said! How does this American fit into my mother’s story? What happened all those years ago?

   Margaret

London

10 August 1940

My Margaret,

I must have written dozens of letters explaining to you where I went. But then I looked through the letters I’d brought with me and wondered if you’d even still be in Edinburgh. Maybe you’ve already set off in search of secrets.

One of my letters is missing: the letter you picked up off the floor that night. I know exactly which one it is. A letter where a silly, wonderful boy joins a war to prove himself a man. Where he begs the woman he loves to set off into the Great Unknown. London, his arms—both equally intimidating. Where he dares her to trust him. Ridiculous that such a boy could have not a fear in the world, while the woman waiting at the other end of
the letters is terrified of going beyond the water’s edge. Terrified of meeting the wielder of that pen. Terrified to open up her heart again.