Jessica Brockmole - Letters from Skye

“They will be lovelier because they are right outside my door.”

The next day, the sprite danced through the waves until he found the most dazzling fish, with trailing fins of bright blue and yellow. He caught it up in a glass bowl and brought it to Lucinda, who smiled but answered as before. “If I want to see a dazzling fish, I only need to look into the shallows of the bay.”

“None will be as dazzling as this fish from beyond the waves.”

“It will be even more dazzling because it is right outside my door.”

Undeterred, the sprite swam all day and night to a beach in an exotic land ringed with waving palm trees and the smell of fruit. The sand along the beach glittered pure white. He scooped up a measure of the sparkling sand and brought it to Lucinda. But, as before, she answered, “If I want to see glittering sand, I only have to look down at this beach.”

“It won’t be as glittering or as pure white as this sand I found for you.”

“It will be even more glittering in my eyes because it is right outside my door.” She gave the sprite a kind smile. “The sea is yours. You go with the current, traveling across the waves to faraway places. But the sea isn’t mine and never can be. My home on the beach is more precious to me than any of the treasures in the world.”

The sprite swam furiously away. He didn’t understand how, with all the magnificent treasures he’d offered her, with the life he could give her beneath the sea, Lucinda still preferred the company of a mere fisherman and their simple life on this simple shore. The song she sang from the shore, soaring on the wind, was one of yearning and loss.

Rejected, the sprite struck the surface of the water, causing a storm to rise up in his anger. Rain streamed down, hiding the shoreline behind a curtain of gray. Out at sea, a tiny fishing boat bobbed in the roiling water. As the water rose, a water horse—bare-chested, sharp-fanged, seaweed tangled in his mane—strode up the crest of a wave. White spray behind him, the water horse flew straight toward the boat.

The fisherman, pulled beneath the surface, could never come home. The sprite would never have to fight for Lucinda’s love again. But her song rose above the thunder and crashing waves, and the sprite knew what he had to do. He dove beneath the surface.

He made it to the side of the boat just as the water horse reared up with saltwater dripping from clawed hooves. The sprite kicked his legs and shot out of the water like a fish, between the water horse and the fisherman crouched on the bottom of the boat. The claws of the water horse sank into the sprite.

With all of his power, the sprite blew a wind that pushed the little fishing boat back toward shore. He knew that no gift could draw Lucinda away from her home. But, by sending the fisherman back to it, he’d found the only gift that mattered.

Isle of Skye

17 August 1917

Davey,

This man—this stranger who appeared on my doorstep—is not my husband. When he left three years ago, my husband was strong and arrogant and preoccupied. The smouldering in his eyes that I mistook for fanaticism I now know to be the smouldering of jealousy. But this man, this strange man you sent to me—he’s thin, nervous, starving, apologetic, tentative. He’s none of the things that Iain was. I don’t know who he is.

He said you planned some grand escape. That you stitched up fake uniforms and planned to just walk out of the front gate of the prison camp. That he was the only one who made it.

I want to know, what right do you and Iain have to make my decision for me? What would make you think I would choose to take him back? What would make you think I wouldn’t be waiting for you ?

I don’t know what to do with him. He sits in the cottage all day, seemingly ill at ease. He smokes and twitches and weeps when he tries to make love to me. When I pull on my boots to go outside, he grabs on to my apron, as if he expects me to walk out the door and never return.

I’ve thought about it. But, really, where would I go? I don’t know whether you’re still a prisoner. I don’t know why you sounded so cold in the letter you sent with Iain. I don’t know if you are still in love with me. I don’t know if you will even open this letter and read it.

Every time I’m in Portree, I stop in the Catholic chapel. I pray you are safe, wherever you may be, and I pray that everything will right itself. Nothing is the way it should be now.

Davey, I need you. You have no idea how much I need you. Nothing is right without you. I need to make my own choice.

London

Friday, 20 September 1940

Gran,

I’ve found her! Oh, my mother, looking so small and pale in that hospital bed. The doctor said that she was in the Langham when it was hit, but she escaped without too many injuries. She has a few broken ribs, a sprained ankle, and a touch of nervous exhaustion. They were afraid of pneumonia, but she seems to have escaped that.

I went by the hotel first, thinking they’d have no idea where she was. But Mother’s been there for two months, going out for walks every day, stopping at the desk on her way in to ask if there’d been anything in the post for her. They know her. The clerk gave me the name of the hospital and wished her well.

She was sitting up when I walked in, her hands pressed to her temples, crying. But the moment she saw me, she said, “My Margaret. There you are,” and lay right down. The nurses said she hasn’t been able to settle since she was brought in, but after she saw me, she slept for almost a whole day.

I’ll stay with her and write again to let you know how she’s doing, but the doctor doesn’t seem concerned that she’s in any danger. He’s glad that she has family come to care for her. All she needs right now is time and our prayers.

London

Friday, 20 September 1940

Dear Paul,

I’ve found her at last. And she’s as well as can be expected. She was in the Langham when it was hit, though she’s not too badly hurt. She wants to go back to Edinburgh something fierce. They need the bed in the ward, what with more injured coming in every day from the air attacks, so they’re willing as long as she’s not alone.

Right now she’s asleep. She lay down straightaway when I arrived and fell asleep with a smile on her lips. The head sister could see I’d come a long way—I was still in my grey traveling suit—and she let me sit by Mother as long as I was quiet and didn’t disturb the other patients. She thinks Mother will sleep better with me here.

They said that, when she was taken from the building, she was clutching a suitcase. Only one. She left the other behind but wouldn’t let go of the brown suitcase. Even without opening it, I knew why.

Mother snored and murmured in her sleep, and that brown suitcase watched me from under her cot. I knew that I shouldn’t. That obediently filial part of me felt guilty even considering opening the suitcase. But the part of me that tossed caution to the wind and wrote to an estranged uncle, that set off for the Isle of Skye with nothing but the name of a house scribbled in the flyleaf of a book, that rushed down to London to dig for my mother through the rubble and bring her home, that part of me kissed Mother’s limp hand on the blanket and opened up the suitcase.

They wrote to each other for years, Paul. My mother and Davey. And every letter from him was in there. From the first in 1912—an admiring fan letter from an impetuous college student—to the last in 1917—a scribbled note, grimy from a prison camp, that ended their relationship. Just like that. One moment they were looking to the future, the next he broke it off with a fairy story about a fisherman’s wife.