I’ve just received a letter from my mother. She’s finally letting Willie enlist. He’s been wearing her down over the past year and a half. Finlay won’t be going back to the front, so she is secure in at least one son surviving the war.

Who knows what she thought when I disappeared? I didn’t tell anyone I was leaving—aside from Willie, that is, and he didn’t know why. We snuck from the cottage while Da was checking the lobster traps and Màthair was down on the shingle gathering up seaweed for the garden. I left a wee note saying there was something I had to do and I would write but it would be at least a fortnight before I returned. I knew it would be some time before they could decipher my scrawl (how do you do it, Davey?). I was fairly confident that neither would think to check the pier for me and that I could be halfway to London before anyone got the idea to question the ferryman. Willie loves a good adventure, and I was certain he wouldn’t give it away too soon, no matter how fit to bursting he was. I’m going straight home from Edinburgh and have the whole train trip home to concoct a convincing story as to what gave me enough courage to cross the water by myself. Any suggestions?

So Willie is enlisting and he is coming through Edinburgh. He was supposed to arrive this morning, but the train must have been delayed. I’ll have a few days to show him around the city before he officially enters the army and ceases to have any fun. Although you seem to paint a different picture, picking fights, going about with French whores… Perhaps war is more delightful than I thought!

Are you having fun, my Davey? All of the seriousness and the grim aspect of this aside, are you finding things to make you happy? You sound content in your letters. Lazy days reading in Parisian cafés, peppered with those bursts of excitement and adventure you love so well, driving pell-mell down the streets and alleys. A woman writing you passionate letters from Scotland…

Which books should I send next? Let’s see, I’ll look through the collection that I’ve amassed thus far in my travels…. I have a slim volume of Yeats (what “pilgrim soul” can resist Yeats?), a book of George Darley’s poetry; what else do I have that you might enjoy? Aha! Perfect: The Letters of Abélard and Héloïse. Though promise me that our affair won’t end as tragically. I couldn’t bear a convent.

Edinburgh has been lovely, but I’m getting wistful for my fair isle. I miss the peat smoke, the tang of the bog myrtle, the warm smell of hay in the byre.

Willie’s just arrived. I’ll end now and post this while we’re out. I love you.

E

Paris, France

January 12, 1916


Dear Sue,

At last, at last, to the front! A guy named Quinn and I have been called up. We haven’t yet been told where exactly we’re going, but we’ve been assigned to the famous Section One. I don’t know if it’s the same ambulance section Harry is in, but I have a pair of socks to return to him just in case.

No, Sue, please don’t ask what it is that Johnson said. Not only did he use language not fit for the ears of a pirate, but the gist of what he said was offensive, more so because it’s true. But true things can sound cheapened and distorted when said by people such as Johnson. Trust me on this.

Hmm… do I have any ideas as to what you can tell your parents? A burning desire to see if the sheep on the mainland are as woolly as the sheep on Skye? The insatiable itch to taste an English pudding? An urgent need to buy a new hat? An indescribable longing to follow strange American men up to their hotel rooms?

I’ll be leaving in the morning. I wanted to get one more letter off to you before departing Paris, as I’m not sure when I’ll get the chance to mail another. Even though this is what I traveled across the ocean for, I can’t help but feel the twinge of nerves. We will see what tomorrow will bring!

Your Davey

Isle of Skye

22 January 1916


My dear Davey,

Here I am, back on my little island. Chrissie had to forward on your letter, hence the delay.

Willie is off to join the rest of you in your silly battles. You should have seen him strutting around in his uniform, a right cock o’ the walk. The ladies seem to find the kilt nigh on irresistible, but Willie is mystified as to how the men are really expected to work and fight in the ridiculous things.

Over tea, he confided to me that he had a girl. He hadn’t breathed a word to any of us! Though he wouldn’t tell me why, he’d been keeping the whole thing a secret. I let slip that I had a secret too. I didn’t say more than that, but Willie, he deduced the rest. He said I’ve been smiling for months. Oh, Davey, I didn’t realise how unprepared I was to answer questions about us, so I blurted out, “We can’t help who we love.” He just grinned and said I was exactly right. I haven’t seen him that happy since the war began.

It is odd to be back here, for so many reasons. My parents’ cottage seems so dim and smoky, the night so much darker and quieter than I’ve been used to, and the people grubbier. Although London and Edinburgh had their fair share of dirt (how can you have that many horses in one city and not have it be dirty?), it was overshadowed by all of that urban sophistication. Màthair handed me the milking pail right after I arrived, and I reluctantly changed from trim suit into itchy wool blouse and sagging skirt, traded my silk stockings and buttoned boots for hand-knitted stockings and great, clumsy boots. I feel as if there are two Elspeths: One who wears expensive, stylish clothes, travels in taxicabs, dines on duck, and goes across the country on a whim to meet handsome young Americans. And the other, who wears broken-in homemade clothes, travels by shank’s mare, dines on porridge, and goes across the country on a whim to meet handsome young Americans.

Remember all of those stories you concocted for me to tell my parents to explain my disappearance? As it turns out, none was needed. As amazing as it may seem, Davey, my mother knew all along! I walked through the door, a dozen stories prepared. Màthair looked up from her spinning and said, “So you went to finally meet your American?” I just about fainted.

Do you remember when I told you how, after Iain left and I was living alone, I would pull out your old letters to read at night? I would sometimes fall asleep literally covered in your words. I was quite the wraith, sometimes not going out of the cottage for days, except to milk and bring in the peats.

One morning I was woken by my mother coming through the front door, stirring up the fire, putting on the kettle. She had brought a big pot of mutton stew with her to warm up for my dinner and spooned some into a bowl for me to take to old Curstag Mór, who lived nearby. When I returned, the floor was swept, the sheets were airing, and the stew was bubbling on the fire. I had left your letters scattered all over the bed and they had been neatly put away, although I didn’t think anything of it at the time. I was too in awe of the pot of real food over my fire to worry about wee details like that!

Obviously, Màthair had read the whole stack of letters. I’m not sure how much she knows—after all, back then we were nothing more than friendly correspondents—but she gave me no censure. It was just that word “finally” that made me wonder how much she really divined from those early letters.

Of course, by insisting that Johnson didn’t say anything worth repeating, you’ve piqued my curiosity even more. Do we really have secrets from each other, Davey? Have we ever had secrets from each other? We’ve told each other things from the very beginning that our own parents and siblings didn’t know. You needn’t worry about protecting me from any language or sentiments. This is wartime, you forget. We women are made of sterner stuff these days.

E

P.S. Minna sent the picture of us that she took outside the register’s office. Have you seen it?

Chapter Fourteen

Margaret

Glasgow

22 August


Dear Margaret,

It was no impulsive war marriage. Elspeth was married to my best mate, Iain. The three of us had grown up on the hills of Skye. We ran bare-legged down the braes, splashed along the shingle in search of stones. Truth be told, Iain was always a little afraid of Elspeth. Her hair wild, she’d shout poems into the ocean spray. She was as fey as the island. One day we were dangling over the Fairy Bridge and he asked for her hand. She looked at me, then smiled and said yes. I thought the three of us would always be together. I never thought Elspeth would betray him.

As much as I’d like to help, I don’t have the answers. I left Skye about a year before you were born. But my màthair, she was there. Write to her on Skye. Your grandmother will know more than I do.

Finlay

On the train to Fort William