Jessica Brockmole - Letters from Skye

I know you’ve asked me not to write again, but I’m old enough to not always do what I’m asked.

My mother wrote. She’s in London. If you’d told me that a month ago, I wouldn’t have believed it. In my lifetime, she’s never been out of Edinburgh. But since learning about her life on Skye, I’m ready to believe anything.

She told me about David, “the American,” that she’d been in love with him for years. She hadn’t expected it, yet she couldn’t do without it. And, seeing her face as she gathered up those letters from the floor, I think she still can’t. But, you may be happy to know, she did. She has. Apart from me, my mother has been alone for the past two decades. Until I saw her the night the bomb fell, the night the war tore through her heart, I never would’ve known. I never would’ve seen in that instant how lonely she was. I never would’ve learned what she’d lost.

She’s never talked about being loved or being left behind. She’s never talked about my father. What happened to David? All of those years ago, what happened to them?

Margaret

Edinburgh

Wednesday, 14 August 1940

Dear Paul,

If you can believe it, my mother is in London. Chasing after memories. And I’m here, trying to ask the right questions of my disagreeable uncle, chasing after the same.

She wrote to me, finally, and offered something in the way of explanation. Paul, my mother was “Sue.” Those letters, they were all for her. Some grand romance, in the middle of the last war. With an American! I don’t know how my mother ever met an American up on the Isle of Skye. And, whatever happened with him, it led to her brother leaving.

As I picked up pen to write her back and ask all the questions still swirling around in my head, I realized she gave no address. Only “London.” I could send a letter to every hotel in London and never find her. I can’t help but think that, if I discover where she has been, it will lead me to where she is now.

Paul, am I doing wrong to be digging into her life? Should I just leave the past alone, the way she wants? The way my uncle wants? The way everyone seems to want me to do?

Margaret

16 August 1940

Dear Maisie,

All of these night sorties make me realise how the past doesn’t help when we’re put in a tight spot. Memories are all well and good to hold on to, but it’s the promise of making new memories that helps me to push through.

I never told you, but I was shot down over France, right before the evacuations. I knew if I admitted it to you in Plymouth, you’d be so worried, you’d never let me get back on that train. It wasn’t bad—I jumped before I hit the ground—and, as you saw, I wasn’t worse for wear. I joined in with everyone fleeing for the beaches at Dunkirk. And there I saw none of our planes. Just the damned Luftwaffe, trying to keep our lads from making it onto the ships.

Despite what everyone said, we were over there in France—the R.A.F.—just not at the beaches. We were inland, trying to keep the Jerrys from ever getting as far as the coast. But all the men waiting to be evacuated, all the men being strafed on the sand, they didn’t know that. I waited there on that beach with them, in my uniform, trying to ignore the glares and the grumblings of “Where’s the R.A.F.?”

If I stopped to remember how it feels to duck down in a strafing, with nothing between me and the bullets but my helmet and laced hands over my neck, if I stopped to remember the miles of slogging, only to see the lads in front of me stumble upon a mine, if I stopped to remember crouching in the dark, not knowing whether the whine of the next shell had my name on it, if I stopped to remember the muttered comments around me of lads who didn’t know that I’d been up there, doing my job, I’d never move forward. I have to just keep telling myself that I’ll be back with you in no time. Nothing else I can do.

But, as much as I try to push the past aside so that I keep moving forward, nothing is holding you back that way. You have more questions than memories, more mystery than enlightenment. You have to look behind you. The present and the future are built on the past. I know that you want to find where you came from before you’ll know where to go.

My lass, don’t give up. Disagreeable uncles? They are no match for you.

Love, Paul

Edinburgh

Monday, 19 August 1940

Dear Uncle Finlay,

She mentioned you in the letter she sent from London.

She told me how she was so happy with David, so deliriously in love, but that it had cost her her brother. That you’d left Skye and she wished you never did.

She didn’t explain the reasons why, and I won’t ask. Of course I’m curious—who wouldn’t be about a family schism spoken about only in whispers?—but I know it’s not my business. You didn’t approve of Americans? Wartime romance? I only hope the reason was big enough, threatening enough, lasting enough, to make decades away from your family worthwhile.

But know this: Whether or not she regrets the choices she made, she does regret losing you. If she’d known in the past twenty years where you were, she would have told you that herself. She’d already lost one brother; what made you think she could bear to lose another?

Margaret

Glasgow

20 August

Margaret,

She’s telling you the truth. She was in love with the American. More than that—she made it sound like a fairy tale. A chance letter that sparked years of correspondence, finding blots of love between each word on the page. Depending on the post more than the tides and the moon. Even war couldn’t stop what blossomed between them.

She didn’t lie about either the American or how she felt. But it wasn’t the time for all that. It wasn’t the time to fall in love.

When Elspeth began writing to the American, she was already married.

Finlay Macdonald

Edinburgh

Wednesday, 21 August 1940

Dear Uncle Finlay,

There are so many women around here with a “Mrs.” before their name but no man at home. A black-edged photograph on the mantel of a man in uniform hints at a story better forgotten. Because my mother has always refused to answer my questions, I’ve assumed her story was the same—some sad youthful marriage that ended on a battlefield somewhere. Lately I’d started to wonder if it could’ve been David. But now… She was already married?

Who is my father? Please, Uncle Finlay, I have to know! What is my story?

Margaret

London, England

6 August 1940

Dear Sir or Madam,

Many years ago, a family named Graham lived at this address. I do not know if they still stay there or if they have moved from Chicago, but I would appreciate any information you could supply. I have been out of touch with the family and would like to find them.

If you have any information about their whereabouts or, indeed, if you are a member of the Graham family, can you please contact me? You can write to me at the Langham Hotel, London. I thank you in advance.

Sincerely, Mrs. Elspeth Dunn

Paris, France

December 17, 1915

My Sue,

It looks more and more like we’ll be spending Christmas beneath the Eiffel Tower. It goes without saying that I would rather be spending Christmas in Edinburgh, on Skye, or wherever you are. Harry is all fine and good as a companion but not exactly the person I hope to catch unawares beneath the mistletoe.

We’re living in the dormitory above the hospital with the other American volunteers. After the first few days of trying to muddle our way through brisk French, it was so comforting to hear a good ol’ American twang. We sleep in one huge room with beds lining all of the sides. Only one shower for all of us guys, and a cold one at that. No lights at night, save for a single lamp in the center of the room, so I’m working on this letter in snatched moments during the day. It’s not much, but, at least for now, it’s home!

I think both Harry and I had this vision of driving the ambulances directly off the boat and into the front line of danger. Even though we’ve not been sent to the front, we haven’t been idle. I’ve been assigned a little ambulance with another chap, name of McGee. When the hospital trains come in from the front, we have to zip to the freight yards at the end of Rue de la Chapelle to collect their ragged passengers. Some are quite serious, but they are the ones deemed fit enough to make the train journey. I suppose the worst cases don’t even make it onto the train. We load them up and then hurtle through the dark streets to the makeshift hospitals scattered around the city. I like to pretend the Grim Reaper drives next to me, racing me to the hospital to see who gets the men in the back of my ambulance. My little truck is light and fast and so the Grim Reaper always ends up a street behind me, with a mouthful of dust.