Letters from Skye

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?

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.

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?

Glasgow

10 August

Margaret,

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

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?

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.

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?

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.

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.