I know you can finish it. You’re one of the two best writers I know.
With much admiration,
Margaret Dunn
London, England
October 5, 1940
Dear Miss Dunn,
It seems like a lifetime ago that I first wrote those same three words. That lifetime has taken me across an ocean, over the trenches, into hell and back. But writing that “noble ending” was by far the hardest thing. Little wonder that I changed my mind.
Only one copy of the original draft ever existed. Please, how is she?
David Graham
Edinburgh
Tuesday, 8 October 1940
Dear Mr. Graham,
She’s wondering. She’s spent the past twenty-three years wondering why you stopped writing. Why you never replied to the letters she sent after Iain came home. Why you disappeared.
My mother never told me about you or about her life before I was born. But I could see the weight of regret on her shoulders, so many years of wondering and waiting. This war, it’s shaken her. It made her remember the other war, she said. Made her remember what she gained and what she lost. War is impulsive, she told me, and you are left with nothing but ghosts.
And maybe it’s not my place, to write so to a stranger, but I feel as if I know you—after reading all of her letters, kept walled up since the last war ended. Even though we’ve never met, I understand you. I’m just as restless, just as fearless, just as searching for my place in the world. I understand questioning but not leaving without a backwards glance. Why did you?
Sincerely,
Margaret Dunn
London, England
October 11, 1940
Dear Margaret,
I didn’t stop writing to her. I never could. I regretted that “noble ending” the moment I penned it. I wrote her letter after letter, but with no reply. Why would she want to write back to me when she had her husband back at home? When they had a second chance? Why would she want to write back to me when she had you?
She never wrote another letter, but he did: Iain, he asked me to stop. He asked me to never write again.
After he got back, he said, she was happy. They were starting over and trying to make things work. They’d started a family, something she dearly wanted to do. And it made sense. Why would she want a kid like me? A kid who couldn’t settle down? Who didn’t want to commit to a family the way she did? No wonder she was glad for Iain to come home.
I did try once to apologize, face-to-face. Even though Iain didn’t want me to talk to her again, even if I figured she didn’t want to talk to me either, Sue was worth it. When I got out of the camp after the Armistice, I begged, borrowed, and stole to get up to Skye. I had to hear it from her.
Someone directed me to her parents’ cottage. When I got there, I heard laughter, and I stopped in the road. I’d never forgotten the sound of Sue’s laughter. I looked to the back of the cottage, and I saw her. Sue was with Iain and a little girl. You. Iain had swung you out over a stream, and you were giggling uncontrollably. All three of you laughing. I hesitated. Sue looked up, just for a moment, and I thought she saw me, but then you started to giggle again and I couldn’t move a step. I couldn’t intrude on that happy family moment. I couldn’t intrude on her new life. I left and never tried to contact her again.
All of those letters while I was in the camp, unanswered. And, in all these years, she’s never tried to find me. Why stir things up now?
David Graham
Edinburgh
Monday, 14 October 1940
Dear Mr. Graham,
I looked through every letter she saved, and they stopped the day Iain came home. You say you wrote to her. If they’d arrived, why wouldn’t she have saved them?
What if she never saw them? Iain might have tossed every one into the fire. You, who won her heart with nothing but your pen: Why would he let them get through?
She said you’ve always been the only one for her. Her love, her muse, her poetry. When Iain died, she took a risk the way you did. Sent a letter and crossed her fingers. She wrote that she was moving to Edinburgh and that she’d wait for you every day in St. Mary’s Cathedral—your old meeting spot—until you arrived. Because you would. You’d get her letter and you’d come for her. She was sure of it.
So sure that she’s waiting there now, the way she has every day since. She’s never given up on you. She couldn’t go for the noble ending.
Margaret Dunn
London, England
October 17, 1940
Dear Margaret,
Waiting at St. Mary’s, all these years?
You know, I’m not surprised. She was always stubborn as a barnacle. Elspeth never gave up on anything—even when she should’ve given up on me.
I never did get that last letter of hers, the one where she talks of moving to Edinburgh. I’ve found it now. It was nothing but my own pigheadedness that kept me from reading it before. You see, she sent it tucked in the pages of Out of Chaos, her last book. Out of chaos. That seemed to describe Iain to a T. He’d escaped the trenches and a prison camp. He’d left his one rival behind bars. He came home to peace.
From the moment Iain and I met in that prison camp, we were at an impasse. He realized that all was not lost—not with me behind a fence—and I realized that things wouldn’t be so easy with Elspeth, not with her husband still alive. I once made her a promise that, if Iain came home, I’d back off.
I was in on an escape plan with a few other guys. We fabricated “Boche uniforms” out of jacket linings, parts of blankets, sheets. Our plan was to put them on and walk straight out of the gate. Audacious, but that was me back then. Iain got wind of the plan and he wanted in. The other guys saved me from having to say a word. They told Iain there wasn’t room for him. They said “no” so that I didn’t have to.
But it didn’t feel right. Here I was, writing to Sue, dreaming about the day I’d see her again, while her husband drew more and more inside himself, knowing he wouldn’t. Once again, he’d given up. To sit and watch that and know you are the cause… I couldn’t do it.
The night before the escape, I wrote “The Fisherman’s Wife,” with the ending that you read. I folded it in a letter, reminding her of the promise I’d made, to not get in the way if Iain ever returned. I tucked the letter and story in the fake uniform and left it under Iain’s pillow.
It wasn’t until he got up to Skye and Sue wrote, asking what right we had to make the decision for her, that I began to doubt what I did. I wrote her, oh, so many times. I kept writing until Iain asked me to stop. Until he told me that she didn’t care.
Why did I believe him? I don’t know. His story that she was happy with him home made sense. He’d come through so much just to be with her. He’d come out of chaos. Hence the title of her book. And I couldn’t read a book about Iain, for Iain. He’d taken from me the one thing I needed most of all in the world.
But I was wrong. She did write me again. And not only that letter, tucked in the pages next to “Repose.” She wrote me a whole book. Every poem in Out of Chaos—from the blushing to the yearning to the missing—was about us. If I’d opened that book all those decades ago, I would’ve seen that she hadn’t given up on me. Her last plea, her last prayer, bound in leather the color of red jasper. She never forgot.
All I had to do was open the book, read everything she wrote for me over the years. But I didn’t. Again, I let her down. Again, I showed myself a coward when it mattered most.
David
Edinburgh
Saturday, 19 October 1940
Dear David,
One letter I found in her copybooks, she never sent. She was writing it the day Iain walked back through her door. One letter that, more than all the rest, reveals. Read it, and then come up to Edinburgh. Read it and come home to us….
Love,
Margaret
Isle of Skye
10 August 1917
Dear Davey,
I know I hav
en’t written in a long while, but, please believe me, I’ve had good reason. What I’m about to admit to you may make you cross, but please don’t be angry. I had my reasons. I told you I lost the baby. But, as my mother says, “The thing about lost items is that someday you may find them again.” I never had a miscarriage, Davey. I had the baby.
Oh, I tried to miscarry. After I got the letter from Harry saying you were dead, I didn’t want that reminder, that slap in the face, mocking me with the family I could have had. So I tried to miscarry. I did all of the things they say you’re not supposed to do during pregnancy—washing windows, walking over a suicide’s grave, eating green plums, standing outside beneath a new moon, drinking whisky while taking a hot bath. Nothing worked.
Then you were alive, and all was perfect. I had my baby, I had my Davey. But I remembered how you felt before, how scary you found the idea of impending fatherhood. I couldn’t admit that I found the idea of impending motherhood every bit as scary. And so I put off telling you. And then again. And then again. It got to the point where I couldn’t confess my lie without it sounding utterly fictitious. “I hope you enjoyed the parcel of food. Oh, by the way, I gave birth yesterday.”
I wish I had told you. I wanted you by my side during the birth. I wanted you to kiss my forehead and tell me that I was doing well, that I was your brave girl. I wanted you to hold your daughter and be the first person she saw when she opened her eyes.
I named her Margaret, which means “pearl.” She truly is a treasure.
But things have been hard. I can’t lie, Davey. All of the neighbours know. They watched my swelling belly beneath my widow’s weeds and they whispered behind their hands. They’d seen the years of letters from America and the three momentous days when Elspeth Dunn stepped on a ferry. They weren’t surprised when a bairn came a year after the letter saying Iain had died.
I’m thinking of leaving, tying Margaret to my back and stepping on that ferry one last time. Away from Skye, I can raise her without whispers. Away from Skye, maybe Finlay will return. Màthair misses him so.
You once said that apartment in Edinburgh felt like home. Could we make it so? Come home to Margaret; come home to me. Come home to your family, Davey.
Waiting,
Sue
Chapter Twenty-nine
Elspeth
Edinburgh
25 October 1940
Dear Màthair,
Margaret has been searching for the first volume of my life; all along, I’ve been waiting for the second.
On the train back from London, I decided that was enough. No more waiting. No more second volume. What had it brought me? Nine thousand days waiting in the cathedral, a daughter who didn’t know the past, and a brother who didn’t want to. On the train I had Finlay beside me and Margaret following with the letters. And both were more important than waiting for a ghost.
But then Finlay left me in Edinburgh and I forgot all my promises. Without realizing, my feet traced their usual path to St. Mary’s. I wasn’t surprised to look up and see the carved doors. I don’t know if my waiting is a drug or a routine, but I couldn’t stop with nothing but bold words.
On Wednesday, I was there, in my usual pew, my little brown Bible on my lap, the “David Graham” scrawled in round childish letters inside the cover. As I always did, I traced the backwards “d” at the end of his name, and, as I always did, I promised that this was my last. Nine thousand days is a lot, but ten thousand is excessive. I had to be done. You see, Màthair, that evening I had started to see ghosts.
Only moments earlier, as I crossed York Place in front of the cathedral, I bumped into a man, right there on the street. And, oh, Màthair, my heart leapt.
That same sandy hair, the same hunched shoulders, the same thumbnail creeping up to his mouth. Eyes the brown-green of the hills in wintertime. I would’ve sworn on my soul it was him.
But a bus rattled past, horn blaring, and he touched his hat before hurrying across the street. I stood frozen for a moment longer, wondering how I could be so mistaken. I was sure it was him. But the traffic, hurrying home before the blacked-out streets grew dark, swerved around me, and I knew I had to give up.
In the cathedral, finger tracing the name in the Bible, I swore it was the last time. And, Màthair, I meant it.
I sat until the church grew dark, until someone slipped into the seat next to me: my Margaret, with a new green hat perched on her head. She’s moved from home, and I miss her already. Last week, when her Paul had leave, they married. A quick ceremony, an even quicker honeymoon in the Borders, and now she’s mistress of her own house. That night, when she slipped next to me in the pew, she wore a secret smile.
“I just came to deliver something.” She set an envelope, crisp and square, on top of my Bible. “A special delivery.”
Envelopes. Always envelopes in my life. I started shaking before I even saw the name on the outside.
To Sue.
My hands trembled and I dropped it twice before I could get a finger under the flap. I tore the envelope nearly in half.
The letter was short, written on one side of a sheet in scrawled pencil, the handwriting as familiar as my own.
London, England
October 23, 1940
Dear Sue,
Letters are where we started; letters are where we ended. Perhaps, with a letter, we can begin again? I have twenty-three years to tell you about and not enough paper.
I have never stopped loving you.
Davey
The words blurred.
Margaret took my hands. “Mother…” She nodded towards the back of the cathedral.
A Highland lass expects to see ghosts. You taught me that. And yet, when he stepped into the candlelight of the aisle, my breath caught in my teeth. Of all the things I expected, not that, not there, not then.
It was him. Those eyes, startled wide. The thumbnail already creeping into his mouth. Looking the way he did the day we met. My Davey. Oh, Màthair, he came. He came.
Eyes brown-green, like the hills in wintertime, fixed on mine. My looking-glass self. Suddenly I didn’t feel a day older.
I stood, the little Bible falling from my lap. The letter crinkled in my hand. I stepped towards him, with Margaret, the war, and the whole rest of the world forgotten.
“Hi, Sue.” He held out his hand. “Here I am.”
I fell into his arms. “There you are, Davey. There you are.”
Dedication
My breath,
my light,
the one my heart flies toward.
For Jim.
Acknowledgments
Though the first draft of Letters from Skye was written in secret, late at night after the rest of the family had fallen asleep, it would not be where it is today without the support and encouragement of many.
My sincere thanks to all of the readers who helped my novel soar, especially Bryn Greenwood and Christine Roberts. To Elaine Golden, for the last, perfect line. To Sue Laybourn and Louise Brennan, for giving my characters the right words. To Richard Bourgeois, for reads, cheers, and sea monsters. To Kate Langton, for unflinching faith. I did it. To the Nanobeans, for their irreverence, encouragement, and cheese scones. Since leaving Edinburgh, I’ve tried to recreate that circle of writerly energy, of support and nonsense and fellowship. I wish I could.
To Danielle Lewerenz, for being my sounding board, my cheerleader, my friend. You helped build Davey into a hero to fall in love with. To Rebecca Burrell, for being there. I’m still not sure how I wrote books before you.
To my agent, Courtney Miller-Callihan, for signing me with such confidence and sending my manuscript out into the world with such conviction. To my editor, Jennifer E. Smith, for seeing in my words the same story I’ve always seen and for helping me to make it the novel it needed to be. Many thanks to the whole team at Random House/Ballantine, especially the tireless subsidiary rights department.
To my parents and my sister, Becky, for never doubting me. I hope that
I’ve made you proud. To Ellen and Owen, for their patience and their forgiveness when I forget to do the laundry. I love you. To Jim, for Scotland and everything else.
It still amazes me that Elspeth and Davey are just as real to other people as they are to me. Thank you to everyone who helped to bring them to life.
About the Author
JESSICA BROCKMOLE spent several years living in Scotland, where she knew too well the challenges in maintaining relationships from a distance. She plotted her first novel on a long drive from the Isle of Skye to Edinburgh. She now lives in Indiana with her husband and two children.
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Copyright
Letters from Skye is a work of historical fiction. Apart from the well-known actual people, events, and locales that figure in the narrative, all names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to current events or locales, or to living persons, is entirely coincidental.
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