Saskia's Journey

by Theresa Breslin

  Neil looked out of the window to the sea in the darkness. ‘Well, Ah’m alive, an’ a lot that I grew up with arenae, but sometimes, when Ah hear the herring gulls cryin’, an’ Ah watch them follow the boats oot as they leave in the early morning . . . well . . .’ Neil stopped and shrugged.

  Saskia too looked out to the sea. ‘It is dangerous though,’ she said. ‘And my father’s family in particular appear to have suffered great loss. My father is very uneasy about the sea.’ Saskia hesitated. ‘He worries about me being too attached to it.’

  Neil narrowed his eyes and said, ‘Aye. If Ah was married and had a lass your age Ah might be that way too.’

  Saskia looked at him. It suddenly seemed to her a reasonable apprehension on the part of her father to be concerned for her safety.

  ‘Your father’s father, Alessandra’s brother Rob, was never found,’ Neil went on,‘and that’s a bad thing. There’s nae death certificate, nae insurance for a sailor lost at sea. The family have to wait years before they can claim any compensation, and folk find it hard to grieve with-oot a grave. At least with Alessandra’s own father his body was washed up.’

  ‘I thought he was lost at sea too,’ said Saskia.

  ‘He wisnae killed at the deep-sea fishing,’ said Neil. ‘He was collecting lobster pots one night and must hae got caught in a rip tide. His body came ashore further doon the coast but the boat was broken on the rocks at the headland.’

  The rocks!

  Ben had been right. There was a tragedy connected with those rocks.

  ‘It’s such a pity,’ said Saskia. ‘Alessandra’s life seems to have been full of sorrow. Losing her father and her brother, and having no love of her own.’

  ‘When she was a young woman she was fu’ of life and laughter,’ said Neil,‘fond o’bright colours, and . . . she did have a love o’ her own. His name was Darach.’

  ‘Darach?’

  ‘Darach Keal. She met him when she was awa’ at the herring wi’ my twa sisters. Her father said he could marry her if he brocht him a thousand pounds dower. A thousand pounds! It might as well have been a million. But the lad reckoned he would dae it and he went awa’ tae the whalin’. Up to the Arctic, but that was played oot, so he went off tae the South Seas, round about Japan an’ the like. Ye could mak’ big money in the whalin’.’

  ‘How did you know about Darach?’ Saskia asked Neil.

  ‘Because the letters and the parcels cam’ tae oor hoose. Chris and May, ma tae sisters, used to keep them safe for Alessandra. If they were delivered tae this hoose Alessandra’s father wid a’ways open her letters and tak’ her presents awa’, so eventually she wrote tae Darach nae tae send the letters tae Cliff House but to send them tae us. She was fly enough though. So as nae tae gae the auld man any suspicions Darach had tae send aince every sae aften tae her at her ain hame.’

  ‘And Darach never came back,’ said Saskia sadly.

  ‘Oh aye, he cam’ back,’ said Neil.

  Saskia looked at him in surprise.

  ‘He cam’ back right enough, but she widnae hae him. He cam’ back and for some reason, that very night she sent him awa’. An’ he went awa’. Months and months went by, an’ the next we heard aboot him was when the mission man was at her door. He had been drowned, like her father and her brother before him. The Grantons are a family that gave back more to the sea than they ever took from it.’

  The phone ringing in the hall woke Saskia the next morning. She glanced at her watch as she ran downstairs to pick it up. It was only just half past eight. Who would ring her so early?

  It was the ward sister at the cottage hospital.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Saskia asked in alarm.

  ‘Please don’t worry. It is nothing too serious. We are transferring your great-aunt, Miss Granton, to Aberdeen. It turns out that the break is a complicated fracture and it might be better to put a pin in the leg. That would be done at the hospital there. She’ll go by ambulance this morning.’

  ‘How is she?’ Saskia asked the sister. ‘You know she was a bit distressed about having to stay in for even one night?’

  ‘I can’t say that she is very happy about it,’ the sister replied.

  Saskia wondered what level of anxiety that guarded remark covered.

  Before she went upstairs to wash and dress Saskia checked the bus timetables. She decided she would catch the late-morning bus and get there for afternoon visiting. But first she should look out some more clothes for Alessandra. Her great-aunt would need some tops and a skirt or trousers to replace the ones she had been wearing.

  Saskia went into Alessandra’s room. She felt distinctly ill at ease at the prospect of opening the locked doors of her great-aunt’s wardrobe. But Alessandra needed a change of clothing. She had no choice. Saskia unlocked the single door that had the key in the keyhole. The door swung open. On the hangers were several items – a blouse, cardigan, skirt, two pairs of trousers, all in black or dark grey. Were these all the clothes her great-aunt owned?

  The double doors that made up the rest of the wardrobe were also locked. But the key she had in her hand would fit. Saskia put it in the lock, unlocked the other two wardrobe doors and pulled them open, and then she caught her breath.

  Hanging like foliage in a rain forest were half a dozen garments in colours of blues and greens, and yellow and purple. From the depths of the wardrobe the materials shone out in the light from the window. Saskia parted the garments with her hands to look at them. There was a kimono of pale-yellow silk, an emerald-green high-necked shantung shift, split from ankle to thigh, a heavily embroidered jacket of dark-purple velvet with draped sleeves, the shimmering iridescence of a midnight-blue silken dressing gown with a red openmouthed dragon embroidered on its back.

  A row of shelves ran down one side, and on them, singly and in small piles, lay exotic things: an ornamental brooch backed with mother of pearl, a decorated whale tusk, a beaded purse, slippers trimmed with pink flamingo feathers, paper parasols, ornate hair combs of amber and tortoiseshell.

  Inside the purse was a letter.

  ‘Alessandra, my Alessandra . . .’

  At the hospital in Aberdeen a nurse took Saskia to the ward sister’s office.

  ‘We would like to check some details about Alessandra Granton. She has named you as her nearest living relative.’

  The ward sister read out her great-aunt’s address. ‘You stay there with her?’

  Saskia hesitated. The word ‘stay’ in the sentence confused her slightly. It wasn’t only the unique words of the Northeast that she had trouble understanding, the sentence construction and the placing of ordinary words within a phrase sometimes sounded foreign to her southern ears. By ‘stay’ they must mean ‘live with’. Saskia thought quickly, and decided it was better if they thought that she lived with her aunt at Cliff House, otherwise her father’s name and his contact details would go down as Alessandra’s nearest living relative. Saskia instinctively felt that Alessandra would not want this. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I do.’

  ‘She says she has never been married, and that you are her great-niece and her nearest living relative?’

  ‘Yes,’ answered Saskia, now without any hesitation deliberately excluding her father.

  ‘Your great-aunt has had health problems over the years,’ the sister said cautiously. ‘We think this is making her so much more anxious than she need be about a straightforward surgical procedure.’

  ‘I know about this,’ said Saskia. ‘She spent some time in what I think was a psychiatric hospital and it makes her anxious about any hospital.’

  ‘Yes . . . I’ve been reading her medical notes. But she has been at home for quite some time. Does she cope all right in the house?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ said Saskia firmly. ‘Cooks, cleans, everything.’

  ‘She is not bothered by the pain of her broken ankle or the prospect of an operation,’ said the sister, ‘yet . . . she appears frightened.’

  ‘I wondered about that,’ said
Saskia. ‘But I suppose if, at the time she was mentally ill, they had to forcibly take her into care for her own good then she would be scared it might happen again.’

  The sister glanced down at Alessandra’s medical notes. ‘She wasn’t sectioned.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Your great-aunt wasn’t taken against her will to the psychiatric hospital. She admitted herself. She could have left at any time.’

  ‘Oh,’ Saskia faltered. ‘I just assumed . . .’

  ‘Mental illness is so misunderstood,’ said the sister. ‘Much of it is closely related to duress. Nearly all of us, at some time, have almost more than we can cope with. Some mental illness is merely the mind breaking down under extreme stress. And those of us who do manage to cope, instead of having sympathy with those who can’t, tend to isolate them. The community at large tends to avoid those who are mentally ill.’

  ‘She has been on her own quite a lot,’ said Saskia, ‘and I know that she has had bad dreams.’ She hesitated and then asked,‘She wouldn’t break things?’

  ‘Her illness would not make her violent. Why do you ask?’

  Saskia shifted uncomfortably in her chair. ‘Oh, you know . . . family stories.’

  ‘She’s certainly extremely distressed at being moved from the cottage hospital,’ said the sister,‘but we’ve given her something to calm her nerves. I spent a long time talking to her this morning, and she’s agreed to remain for a few days and let us treat her.’

  Alessandra’s eyes watched Saskia as she approached down the ward.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she said, as Saskia took a chair beside her bed. ‘I am not going to make a fuss today. I am sorry I was overwrought yesterday. I do get nervous about things.’

  ‘It’s all right,’ said Saskia. ‘I’d hate to be in hospital.’

  ‘The ward sister is very good,’ said Alessandra. ‘She has persuaded me to stay here for another day or two. She is a compassionate woman.’

  ‘I’m sure that the doctors and nurses understand that bereavement would have made you . . . fragile . . . for a while.’

  Alessandra smiled gently at Saskia. ‘Such a polite understatement shows you are from the south, Saskia. I was more than “fragile”. I was deranged, completely mentally unwell for many months . . . years.’ Alessandra looked sideways at Saskia. ‘Possibly still am, a little.’

  ‘Neil came by last night to ask after you and see that I was all right,’ said Saskia. ‘He explained a few things.’

  ‘He has been kind to me over the years,’ said Alessandra. She studied Saskia’s face. ‘He would tell you about Darach?’ And as Saskia gave a little nod, Alessandra continued, ‘He would not tell you the part he played in all of it. His mother kept chickens and he brought me my letters hidden in the eggs. When I was ill he came and fed me. He left food at my door. He is a good man.’

  ‘He told me you grew up together,’ said Saskia.

  ‘He was younger than I was by five years but he used to trail after me and his older sisters to try and join in our games. When he was small we treated him mercilessly, wrapping him up in shawls and wheeling him about in a little cart when we played house. Later, us three girls decided to be princesses together and he was our faithful pageboy. When May and Chris were old enough to follow the fishing fleet away to the gutting, I was queen and he my bravest knight. With his clothes-pole lance he would joust among the washing lines and slay dragons for me.’

  And is still doing it, thought Saskia.

  ‘When I was about fourteen or fifteen,’ Alessandra went on, ‘he was about eleven or twelve. He would follow me around wherever I went, bringing me clams and mussels from the shore to help me bait the hooks. Then he was thirteen and we would meet on the top road and he’d give me my letters from Darach. It was very brave of him. Both my father and his would have thrashed him thoroughly if they’d caught him. Strange that he did it because I never gave him even a penny. I had no money.’

  A parcel of slow understanding began to unwrap itself in Saskia’s mind. Neil Buchan. Neil who had never married. She recalled how Neil had lingered in the garden when he had first brought her to Cliff House, his eyes on the face of her great-aunt as he spoke to her.

  ‘He didn’t do it for money,’ she said gently.

  ‘Why then?’ asked Alessandra.

  ‘For love,’ said Saskia. ‘He was in love with you as a boy,’ and, as the obvious fact entered her head, Saskia continued, ‘He still is.’

  ‘Neil Buchan!’ exclaimed Alessandra.

  ‘Yes,’ said Saskia. She looked with close attention at her great-aunt. ‘And you know it.’

  Alessandra glanced away. ‘You imagine things, child. You did it when you were little. You are doing it now.’

  Saskia thought carefully about what she should say next. ‘Aunt Alessandra,’ she said,‘I am not little any more. I am no longer a child.’

  Saskia left the hospital and walked into the city centre. It occurred to her that Ben might be working in his office today and she stopped and asked someone the way to the Marine Research Institute.

  When she got there the girl at reception said he was down at the docks. ‘You’d have to nail Ben’s feet to the floor,’ she laughed, ‘to get him to stay indoors for long.’ She waved her hand towards the office area. ‘Just go through and leave a note on his desk. He’ll probably call you when he returns.’

  Ben’s desk by the window was a jumble of papers, scientific reports, professional journals with articles highlighted, a few cups with congealing coffee, and above it the best poster Saskia had seen in a long time. It was a black and white photograph of a Native North American with a caption that read:

  Only after the last tree has been cut down,

  Only after the last river has been poisoned,

  Only after the last fish has been caught,

  Only then will you find that money cannot be eaten.

  The Marine Institute was at one end of the city and as Saskia left the building she saw a sign pointing to the preserved fishing cottages at Fitdee. She turned in that direction and walked through the narrow lanes until she came to the open place where the posts for drying the nets still stood. What had once been a tiny village was now overtaken by the city, but the layout of the buildings and the stone walls of the houses held fast to their own identity.

  Saskia wandered down towards the harbour. On a steep slope within sight of the sea she found the Fisheries Museum and went inside. There was a model of a fisher-girl standing by a trough piled with herring. Her fingers were wrapped with cloth strips and at once Saskia thought of her great-aunt and Neil’s two sisters. She entered a tiny booth and watched a grainy film about herring drifters. The tremendous difficulties and hardness of the men’s lives were apparent, and yet Saskia saw that they were smiling as they worked about their boat. She thought of the old fisherman whom she’d heard speaking on Alessandra’s tape, the soft sound of contentment in his voice. She remembered Neil Buchan looking out to sea from the window in her aunt’s house and telling of his sisters’ decision that he would not go to the fishing, unable to conceal the undertone of regret.

  Saskia found some albums with old photographs of fishing communities and in among them was one taken at the harbour in Fhindhaven. Was her grandfather one of these young men lined up beside the boat? Laughing into the camera, shy, yet pleased at having their picture taken. She asked one of the museum guides. No names, sorry. But we could try to trace them. No, no thanks, she said and told him that she’d be in Fhindhaven for the summer.

  ‘Then you could do no better than the Fhindhaven Heritage Centre, or the one in Buckie. The staff there have tremendous local knowledge and phenomenal memories. I can give you some contacts.’

  But she already had the contacts. She knew the people to ask – one in particular was closely related to her. And that was just what she was going to do, Saskia decided. As soon as Alessandra was home from hospital and well enough, she was going to find out everything she could about her ow
n family history.

  In a side room there was a small exhibition on the whaling industry. Saskia shuddered at the description of how the whales were lashed to the side of the boat, the skin stripped off and the blubber removed. One of the glass cases displayed silver snuff boxes, examples of scrimshaw, the long spiral tusk of a narwhal, and the record of a Greenland whaler’s diary.

  The thrashing beast broke the back of the ship and with a heaving crack the mast fell. The harpooners in the whaleboats were dragged down and we never saw a one of them again. With what provisions we could salvage and carrying the last small boat between us we took to the ice. . .

  With the mate McLeod. . . an evil man with a foul mouth, but with a compass in his head, he will lead us, like Moses, out of our affliction.

  Open water before us. Prepared the boat, raised a sail and laid in a course. By guess and by God, we hope to see our families once more.

  It was like a scene from Moby Dick, thought Saskia, and then smiled at herself. Moby Dick had been taken from life, not the other way round.

  Coming out of the Fisheries Museum, she bumped into Ben.

  ‘Aha,’ he said with a grin. ‘I found your note on my desk and I thought you might be here.’

  ‘Really?’ Saskia was flattered. She noticed that he was slightly out of breath. Had he run all the way from the Marine Institute to meet her? ‘I was catching up on some of the local history.’

  ‘You would have walked past the fisher cottages at Fitdee on your way down?’ Ben asked.

  Saskia nodded.