The Christmas Secret

by Karen Swan

  And with a shake of her head, she left the room.

  Alex wandered over to the small two-seater fringed sofa and looked down at the boxes. There were three large ones and several more shallow ones. Tentatively, not at all sure she did want to see any of it if it really was that upsetting, she flipped the lid of the nearest box.

  A small navy leather book lay on the top of a heap of papers. She reached for it and opened it, her eyes skimming the first entries:

  ‘Logbook: Sergeant James Peggie; 156795’ had been written in brown ink.

  6TH FEBRUARY 1918

  Physical description: White male. Weight 10st 2lbs. Height 5ft 9 ½. Estimated age 18–25. Light brown hair. Brown eyes.

  Clothing: One black leather boot (left foot); tan trousers.

  Identifying features: Moustache. Gold tooth (right molar). Kidney-shaped mole on the upper left arm. 1-inch scar on the left knee.

  Injuries: Right side skull fracture. Broken nose. Multiple lacerations to both cheeks. Upper front teeth missing. Broken right arm. Broken fingers, right hand.

  Suspected cause of death: Blunt force trauma to the head.

  Physical description: White male. Weight 13st 4lbs. Height 6ft. Estimated age 18–25. Dark blond hair. Green eyes.

  Clothing: White vest. White underpants.

  Identifying features: Tattoo: ‘Mary’ on inner right bicep. Appendix scar on abdomen.

  Injuries: Compound fracture to right thigh.

  Suspected cause of death: Drowning.

  Physical description: Black male. Weight 13st 9lbs. Height 5ft 11 ½. Estimated age 18–25. Black hair. Brown eyes.

  Clothing: None.

  Identifying features: Tattoos: Black swallow above left shoulder blade; barbed wire around right wrist; large jaguar inked on the lower back.

  Injuries: Left leg missing.

  Suspected cause of death: Blood loss.

  She frowned, her eyes moving faster over the words: ‘Drowning . . . bone crushed . . . 4-inch scar . . . internal trauma . . . 19 . . . broken neck . . .’

  Alex closed the book decisively. No. She didn’t want to read that. Not today. Not ever. There was enough ugliness in the world and she was still shaken from the fire. She hadn’t slept well since and it had turned a key deep inside her, the one she always kept locked.

  She reached down into the box again, pulling up a mustard-coloured card folder; inside was a sheaf of papers. Letters.

  February 12th, 1918

  Dear Sgt Peggie,

  I have been given your name by the war department regarding the sinking of SS Tuscania just off the shores of Islay. I am the mother of Private Harold Cooperson. He is eighteen years old and my eldest boy. He is six feet tall and last weighed 156lbs. His hair is light brown, like a thrush’s back, and everybody always says he has such a handsome, strong jaw. His eyes are dark brown and he has freckles over his nose, but not the cheeks. He doesn’t have any birthmarks, but he does have a long scar above his right knee from where he fell against a saw in his father’s mill, when he was eleven. He’s such a distinctive man, I’m sure you must know who I mean? We pray his injuries are not severe and that you will be able to communicate our love and concern to him. Everyone at home calls him Harry so if you could please call him by that name, I’d be much obliged? It might make him feel a little more at home. I know he looks big but he only graduated high school in the summer and before he signed up, he’d never spent a night away from home.

  We send our deepest thanks to you and your townsfolk; we have heard of your rescue efforts and all you have done for our boys, and pray our son is the happy recipient of your beneficence. If you were able to put our minds at rest and write back as to his welfare, we would be for ever indebted.

  Sincerely yours,

  Kathleen Cooperson

  Alex pressed her fingers to her lips as she saw the notation that had been added to the bottom of the letter in that brown-inked neat cursive: ‘Drowned. Body washed ashore 6th February. Mother notified by letter 14th February. Gold watch returned. JP.’

  February 12th, 1918

  Sir,

  Word of the SS Tuscania disaster has reached American shores and I write to you in the hope that you may set my mind at rest as to the welfare of my husband, Lieutenant John Grantley. He is a squadron leader for the Sixth battalion, 20th Engineers and is a tall, strong man – twenty-nine years of age, 177lbs, six feet two inches tall. His hair is blond, his eyes are blue and he has a rose tattoo on his right shoulder. He holds himself very well when he walks and he will look you in the eye when talking to you. His favourite song is ‘Delilah’ and our daughter, Ella, beseeches me to send on her great affection for him.

  It would give me great comfort to hear from you and know for certain that my husband is safe and well and recovering in the great care of Islay’s people.

  Faithfully yours,

  Mrs Lavender Grantley

  Note: Safely offloaded to HMS Pigeon. Taken to Buncrana, Co. Donegal, Ireland; transferred to Wiltshire Best camp on 13th February. Mother notified 16th February. JP.

  Alex sank against the cushion as she flicked back and saw that the letters kept coming – and in all of them, a tangible despair marbled with the vain and desperate hope of these poor women, thousands of miles from their husbands and sons fighting in a European war.

  In spite of herself, she read on.

  February 11th, 1918

  Kind Sir,

  I have been supplied your name in my efforts to track the wellbeing of my son Private Edward Cobb. He is just nineteen years old and my only child. He signed up on December the 22nd, 1917 and marched not a week later to Camp Washington in order to serve his country on this mission. Though he is a timberman by trade, he is proud to call himself a soldier and felt an urgent need to prove himself in the fighting fields of France. But I have heard the reports of his troopship being sunk by the Germans and now I must ask – did he even make it that far?

  I feel sure you will recognize him from this description for he is a noteworthy and handsome young man: five foot ten, slight build, approximately 169lbs. He is pale-skinned with dark brown hair and hazel-green eyes and a bewitching smile. You will notice there is a gap between his two front teeth but it is a charming flaw and he certainly has the easy manner to go with it. He is earnest and kind, humble and respectful; to know him is to love him, for sure.

  I have sent with this letter his boyhood bear Berry. I realize how this might look – a soldier, being sent a toy. Indeed, he would not take it with him to Camp Washington, saying his pack had to be light, but I cannot help myself – if he is injured I know, in the way that only a mother can, that it will comfort him and raise his spirits to have a little piece of home by his side.

  I pray you have him on your beautiful isle and that he is safe and well in your care. Any tokens you could offer as to his well-being would by deeply appreciated, as I’m sure you can imagine.

  Yours, in humble thanks,

  Dorothy Cobb

  Note: Found washed ashore by town rescuers 6th February. Broken leg. Multiple fractures. Serious case of influenza. Transferred to Islay House for recuperation. Contents of letter: one toy bear with orange glass eyes. Mother notified 9th February. JP.

  February 17th, 1918

  Kind Sir,

  I trust that this letter reaches you swiftly and that you can bring a conclusion to the agonies we are suffering here, after learning of the—

  ‘Well, Mr P. was right again,’ Mrs Peggie said, coming back in and setting down a tray on the small pouffe. ‘It looks like we’re going to be sitting pretty for a couple of days or so.’

  Alex looked up in alarm. ‘What?’

  Mrs Peggie handed her a cup of tea. ‘The weather’s setting in again. The drifts are already deep in some parts and much of the road is impassable down to the town. It’s as well you’re no trying to get to Kentallen.’ Mrs Peggie sighed. ‘Och. And to think you arrived in a storm too. You’ve no had much luck with the weather here.�
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  ‘No.’ She frowned. ‘What’s the Tuscania?’

  Mrs Peggie’s expression changed. ‘That was the name of the ship that went down in these waters. SS Tuscania. So many boys on it.’

  Alex saw the dates. February 1918. ‘They were soldiers?’

  ‘Aye, American lads. Sailed all the way from New York in terrible weather, only to be hit out there, seven miles away in the Channel. Many of them never even got to set foot on Europe’s shores.’

  ‘What happened? Was there a storm?’

  ‘The Germans,’ Mrs Peggie said with pursed lips. ‘They fired a torpedo from one of their U-boats and sank it.’

  Alex winced. ‘Did anyone survive?’

  ‘More than should have done. There were over two thousand two hundred troops on board and it was only two hundred or so that perished – and mostly they were the ones who panicked and jumped too soon, straight into the sea, or overcrowded the lifeboats. As if that wasn’t bad enough, there were terrible gales too that night. Just like now, in fact.’ Alex looked out of the window to see the snowflakes, so tame just an hour ago, beginning to dance wildly against the panes. ‘Most of the men were picked up by our destroyers on patrol and taken to Ireland but those that perished . . .’ She was quiet for a moment. ‘Their bodies were washed up on the beaches here. And the men who thought they were safe in the lifeboats were dashed upon the rocks. It was as terrible a day as ever there will be in Islay.’

  ‘That’s just awful.’

  ‘It was. It fell to the poor islanders to retrieve the bodies, bury them . . . They did manage to rescue some survivors, but not many.’

  Alex frowned, trying to think back. ‘Wait – is this the wreck you were telling me about? The one your American guest’s grandfather was on? He does the dives?’

  ‘Aye, that’s the one. And he’s not the only member of his family to have come here to pay his respects. His grandmother – the widow – she came over as part of the Gold Star Pilgrimage in 1932, to see where her husband perished.’

  ‘The Gold Star Pilgrimage?’ Alex echoed, as Mrs Peggie came and sat on the sofa beside her. ‘I’ve never even heard of that. What is it?’

  ‘It was a state-sponsored trip organized by the American government for all the mothers and un-remarried widows of American soldiers killed in the line of duty in the Great War, so that they could see where their loved ones had fallen. All their expenses were paid – the ship over, hotels, food. They even arranged for chairs to be put beside the graves so that they could sit without tiring. And they took a photograph of each woman beside her loved one’s grave which she could take back home with her – because remember, these were the days when you couldn’t just . . . photograph your toast, or whatever it is you young folk do these days. A photograph meant something.’

  ‘That’s amazing that they did that – the US government, I mean. Nothing like that would ever happen now.’

  ‘No, but then there’s no honour in war these days. All this fundamentalism and extremism . . . it’s just barbarity.’

  She was looking upset so Alex let the subject drop.

  Mrs Peggie rifled through the box again, pulling out a wad of small, no more than five-by-three-inch black-and-white photographs. ‘Ah, now that’s more like it.’

  Heads bent together, their eyes grazed the photographs as Mrs Peggie passed them over to her, one at a time, giving a commentary on the black-and-whites of people long since dead, wearing fashions of petticoats and cloche hats, boots and tweed coats. They were a jumbled mix of different dates and scenes: Alex saw the old General Stores in Port Ellen, now the Co-op, but the modern sign above the door was the only tangible change; she saw small, rigged fishing boats moored alongside the quay, a photo of a couple of fishermen in heavy jumpers and caps, one of them puffing on a pipe as they mended their nets. Some of the photos had names, places or dates ascribed below them, others were left blank. There was a picture of the school house, maybe fifteen children gathered in an orderly group in the playground, tunics to their knees; she saw a young woman holding the hand of a child outside a church, her hair set in Charleston waves beneath a felt hat.

  There were agricultural scenes – men working in the barley fields, one farmer guiding the cattle down the lane with a long prod, a group of workers burning the peat – women picnicking in a field, a game of cricket on the beach, a donkey nodding over a garden gate, a graveyard scene with a crowd in shirtsleeves and guns pointed to the sky . . . It was a remarkable history of the island, of its people. She saw some of the same faces several times.

  ‘Is that the distillery?’ Alex asked, holding up a black-and-white photograph of the distinctive maltings and the pagoda-topped still house.

  ’Aye, and . . . That’s my father there, second from the right.’

  Alex examined the image – five men were standing in the courtyard where the copper still now sat so decoratively, four of them in rolled-up shirtsleeves and knitted tanks, shovels held in front of them like ceremonial swords, the man in the middle in a wide-shouldered dark suit.

  ‘And the one in the middle is Archibald Farquhar, the eldest of the founding brothers of Kentallen whisky. He was Sholto’s grandfather – and Lochie’s great-great-uncle.’

  ‘I think I can see a bit of a resemblance,’ she said, taking in the reserved expression and intense eyes, able to glimpse her taciturn client in his ancestor even three generations back. ‘It’s amazing, it really doesn’t look like much has changed at all,’ she said, her eyes taking in the familiar layout: only the loss of the maltings, so recently destroyed in the fire, now separated the skyline in the photograph from the one still standing two miles down the road from here. ‘I mean, I know the technology has been upgraded but in terms of the actual buildings and the landscape around it, it’s exactly the same.’

  Mrs Peggie picked up the next photo and Alex saw Islay House, recognizing the broad sweep of steps and the gravel drive where they had drunk coffee before the shoot and she had introduced herself to Torquil. There were several shots of the house taken from the grounds, florid rhododendrons in full flower, a couple of Gordon setters sitting majestically on the lawns at the foot of a man in tweed breeks and Norfolk shooting jacket; she saw a young woman sitting on a terrace in a hooded wicker chair, a man of similar age sitting beside her with a bandage around his head and a vacant look in his eyes. Then they came to a later photo – Mrs Peggie’s wedding day – and Alex saw that she had made a lovely bride with a slim, wiry figure in cotton lace and a bunch of heather in her hands, her cheeks fuller then but the set of her jaw as purposeful and resolute as it was now; Mr Peggie, though shorter than his wife, had stood broad-chested on the church steps in his best suit, his hand proudly over hers and his shoes polished to a high shine that matched his eyes.

  She saw a group of nurses standing beside their patients in dressing gowns and pyjamas. It didn’t look like a typical hospital on account of a large oil portrait hanging from wires on the wall behind them and a grand fireplace poking into the corner of the image. The patients – all men – looked thin and pale, their eyes slightly too big in their sockets, but their smiles were genuine enough. One had his leg in plaster and a teddy bear comically tucked under one arm.

  Alex felt her eye drawn to him. To them. For he and his nurse had smiles wider than the rest, as though sharing a joke no one else was in on. She didn’t think it was the comedy effect of the bear. She held the photo closer and realized the woman looked familiar. Had she seen her somewhere else?

  ‘Who is this, do you know?’ she asked, holding up the photograph and showing it to Mrs Peggie.

  The old lady squinted. ‘Aye, that’s Miss Clarissa. Clarissa Farquhar. Archie’s sister – and Lochlan’s great-grandmother. She was quite the beauty.’

  ‘Clarissa Farquhar,’ Alex echoed. She quickly flicked back through the photographs in her hand, stopping as she found the one of the young woman holding a child’s hand outside the church. ‘That’s her there too, isn’t it?’<
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  ‘That’s right. With her son George. She adopted him after the war.’

  Alex looked at her. ‘Adopted?’

  ‘Aye. There were so many poor wee orphans after the war ended. Her own fiancé – Phillip Robertson I think was his name, he was from another of the important families – he had been killed early on in the war and I think she believed she would never marry; she must have felt it was her only chance to become a mother. After all, so many of the young men had left for war and precious few returned. Archie came back unscathed but the younger Farquhar boy, Percy, was one of the fallen. Their mother never recovered from it.’

  ‘God, no. How would you?’ Alex asked, feeling drained. She knew all too well that no mother every fully recovered from that loss. She looked back at the picture taken in the hospital. ‘So is that Clarissa’s fiancé in the picture?’

  Mrs Peggie looked at it more closely. ‘No. I believe those men are the American soldiers that survived the Tuscania.’

  ‘Looks like this poor chap broke his leg.’

  Mrs Peggie peered at it again carefully. ‘Yes, probably when he was thrown onto the rocks. In fact, if I’m remembering correctly, she was the one who found him,’ she said, pointing to Clarissa.

  ‘Really?’ Alex asked interestedly.

  ‘Yes, that’s right,’ Mrs Peggie said, rembering now. ‘Everyone said it was a miracle. No one knew how he survived it – being out there in those conditions all night; especially since he was already half dead with the Spanish flu before he even hit the water.’

  ‘The Spanish flu?’

  ‘Surely you know about that? It was a terrible epidemic in 1918 and 1919 – as if life wasn’t bad enough! It just decimated the troops. Mr P. tells me more American soldiers were killed by that than by enemy action.’ She tutted, looking back at the photo. ‘Aye, everyone knows of that poor fellow – he was ill for weeks; stayed long after his comrades were sent on to England. He wasn’t expected to pull through but Miss Clarissa didn’t leave his side. She was just determined he would survive.’