Angus Mackay sat smoking his pipe at the supper table. He was a big man of strong face. Deep in thought, his lower lip protruded.
The children had scattered, except for Meg who was cleaning up. He thought about his older sons, Norman and Ian, off fighting the Germans. Norman had joined the 42nd Regiment of the Black Watch Royal Highlanders, a company dating back to 1767. Charles II issued commissions under the Great Seal of John, the second Duke of Atholl, to raise and keep the Black Watch to secure the peace in the Highlands.
Norman was a fine piper. It was an honor indeed to be enlisted in the Watch. Aberfeldy’s only statue, the Black Watch Memorial, the pride of the community, stood majestically near the Wade Bridge on the banks of the River Tay.
Angus’s heart swelled with pride the day Norman marched off to war in his kilt of azure and vert, the tartan of the Mackay clan, and his full-dress regalia. On his shoulder, his plaid held by a brooch was draped with considerable skill and arranged to show the sett of the pattern. He wore a finely tailored black doublet. Under it, a tweed vest with horn buttons. In a checkered pattern, his knitted hose, in tartan colors, were held in place by red garters. The sgian-dubh or dirk was tucked in the right leg of his stocking. He wore the clan crest on his Glengarry bonnet, and the head of a badger was carved in the silver-mounted sporran that hung from his waist. A claymore or broadsword hung from his belt, as well as a single-barreled muzzle-loading pistol of antique vintage and powder-horn that carried a wee drop of refreshment. As he raised his bagpipe into position on his shoulder, Norman looked so grand that Angus wanted to hire the services of a photographer, but he couldn’t bring himself to part with the money.
Ian was a far less imposing sight when he donned the British uniform, for it clearly was no match for a fine Scottish kilt. He had been assigned to a clerical job, on the Front.
Supper at the Mackay residence that night had been neeps and tatties--turnips and potatoes--and half an oat cake each. Nourishing enough for his young flock. They weren’t complainers. It was not easy for him to tailor men’s coats and kilts all day and keep the land as well. The whirring din of the treadle machine often put the children to sleep as he worked into the night.
Angus’s grandfather and then his father had taught at Edinburgh University. Coming from a family of scholars, Angus had dreamed of a professorship at the University of St. Andrews, where he had almost completed his education. But he ran out of money, married Elizabeth and found himself providing for a family. He was quick to learn his father-in-law’s tailoring business and was satisfied with it until the day came he could go back and finish his education. That might not ever happen now. He had to content himself with teaching his children to love the written word. From the time they were old enough to sit still, he poured Scottish literature into them: Boswell, Carlyle, Macaulay, Stevensen, Scott, Burns. When he recited Rabbie Burns’s “Address To The Devil," his children were mesmerized by its beautiful cadence. Isabelle was so enthralled she memorized it and could recite it by heart from beginning to end.
Often after supper, he told his offspring tales of William Wallace, Robert the Bruce, Mary Queen of Scots, John Knox, or Bonnie Prince Charlie. The latter, a Stuart, defeated in the bloody Battle of Culloden Moor, marked the end of Scottish freedom from the treacherous English for all time. Although Scotland remained under British rule, in a more genuine sense the Scots, like a thicket of thistles, could never be truly dictated to by anyone. The children loved the savage Highlander tales and the way Angus related them.
He had hoped that there would be money for college for the boys, but there wasn’t. So, he’d dished up the education he had and served it to them bite by bite. They were fine children. Dear Elizabeth would be proud. God had given him this job to do, and do it he would as long as he was spared and well.
He watched Meg. She had Elizabeth’s beauty, and the silky, mahogany hair that flowed gracefully about her shoulders was her mother’s, as well. The pick of the litter, that one. She brought her wages home from Abernathy’s where she worked as an upstairs maid, and gave every coin to Angus as though it were expected. He was grateful enough. God knows he needed it but he was a proud man and disliked taking it so much he slipped a shilling or two back into her hand.
“Some day,” Meg said as she pocketed her coins, “I just might go to America.”
“Ah, I need ye here, lass. For now at least. I guess you’ve been hearing that Isabelle wants to go with Thomas. There’s a part of me that doesn’t think she should. Yet, I don’t know how I can stand in her way. With the Titanic disaster still fresh in my mind, I hate to think about any of my children going to sea. And I kin no help but think about the distance. Yet, she will be fifteen in July--if this is what she wants to do."
Belle sat on a frail bridge in the mossy glen lush with trees, cooled by rushing water that folks in Aberfeldy called The Birks. She loved it there. To the southeast, she could see a wooded hillock called Tom Challtuinn, the Hazel Mound, where fairies once danced and reveled in moonlit nights and whence they made their visits to Creag Scriadlain, said to be the real home of the fairy folk in that part of the world.
The fact that Robert Burns, Scotland’s most beloved poet, had once written a poem about The Birks made it consecrated ground. The townsfolk told the story about how Rabbie had titled his poem, “The Birks of Aberfeldy.” Birks meant birches and nary a one originally grew in the glen. But after Rabbie’s visit to their fair town, in order not to discredit their beloved poet, who was no botanist, the townsfolk planted birch trees straight away.
Belle, too, had written a poem about The Birks:
Among the birks and waterfalls
High against a rainbowed sky,
I long to loft on feathered wings
Soaring where the wild geese fly
Rabbie’s poem was a masterpiece. She liked to imagine that this romantic and handsome poet was speaking directly to her.
Now simmer blinks on flowery braes
And o’er the crystal streamlet plays;
Come, let us spend the lightsome days
In the birks of Aberfeldy.
Bonnie lassie, will ye go,
Will ye go, will ye go;
Bonnie lassie, will ye go
To the birks of Aberfeldy?
The days passed quickly and the family pooled its energy to prepare Tommy and Belle for their life in America. Angus’s treadle sewing machine clicked away as Belle made herself a travel suit of tan and rust pongee, styled after one she had admired in the Ladies of Scotland magazine. Selecting the fabric, fitting the pattern, pinning, tailor-tacking, cutting, basting, fitting and finally machine stitching was tedious and seemed to take forever. Belle wearied of it, frustrated over crooked seams that had to be redone and hid her sewing in a drawer. When Meg discovered what Belle had done, she came to Belle’s rescue and together they managed to finish it. After its final pressing, they both were pleased with the way it looked.
Tina and Meg gave Belle her first boned corset of brocaded silk, trimmed with lace and ribbons and a new pair of lisle hose to wear with her leather opera pumps.
Belle tried the corset on. “It must have cost a small fortune,” she mused as she admired her tiny waist and full bosom reflecting in the mirror. For Tommy there was a white “neckband” shirt with a celluloid collar that could be washed in a basin and dried with a towel to keep him looking proper.
Angus tailored scratchy but warm Harris tweed coats for both of them. Angus’s tailoring was so exquisite that no one noticed there was no fur for the collars. Out of the scraps, he fashioned Belle a serviceable muff large enough to carry a linen handkerchief, her smallest treasures, and warm her hands as well.
One glorious summer morning Angus, directing the way with his gnarled walking stick, led his flock on their yearly trek into Glen Lyon. He stood tall and straight as an arrow, bigger than life. Belle liked to imagine that he was Moses leading the children of Israel out of Egypt. They carried bread, cheese and water on their
backs but little else. They bedded down in a haystack or nestled together like cordwood in a simple hostel.
Atop the highest hillock, they stood in awe of the world below, green as emeralds, velvety as a queen’s robe. The cobalt sky convinced Belle that she stood at the gate of heaven. In the marrow of her bones, she secretly mourned that this would be her last trek with her family. She would be out in the unknown, perhaps in a dismal place where nature was not so generous.
Tommy ran on ahead of the family and hid in the bushes. When the girls walked by, he jumped out, growling like a bear. The girls squealed then giggled once their terror subsided. Through a mossy glen, laughter filled the cracks in the silence when the Mackays weren’t singing. They missed Norman and Ian, especially Norman. If he were there, he would pipe them on their way. Belle remembered, just a year ago, how the family bedded one moonlit night on the banks of a loch and in the quiet after the birds had sung their evening hymn, Angus built a warming bonfire. A distant, eerie sound of an ancient bagpipe drifted in on a cool breeze off the loch and from far away. Out on the still water, where the moonlight played in the night mist, they saw the faint outline of a lone piper standing in a rowboat as an oarsman rowed across the water toward them. There was no more stirring sound in all the world than Norman’s bagpipe. Carried on the wings of the night from off the loch was more than splendid. At that moment, tears streamed down Belle’s cheeks and she glanced at her sister Meg who was dabbing her eyes. A look of sheer bliss spread across her face.
All too soon, the Mackay holiday came to an end and final preparations were underway for Tom’s and Belle’s departure. Belle plopped herself on her father’s lap and hugged him. That was not a thing anyone was inclined to do to Angus Mackay, the stoic Presbyterian, who had never let his children see a tear when their mother left this earth and little Nan came into it. Belle, friendly puppy that she was, could get away with things the others wouldn’t dream of trying.
With great ceremony, Angus took a black velvet pouch from his breast pocket and wrapped Belle’s fingers around it. “Twas your mother’s; she wore it on our wedding day, my gift to her. Meg’s to have her wedding band and I think she would have liked it if I sent this off with ye.”
Wide-eyed, Belle gently opened the little pouch and a fine gold chain, no bigger than a few sewing threads wound together, rested in her hand. On the chain hung a lavaliere that Belle remembered her mother wearing. Leaves of gold entwined tiny blue seed pearls and three wee emeralds around a moonstone. She caressed it with her fingers, then held it to her heart. “Oh, Father!” Her eyes flooded.
“This is no time for tears, lass. Ye musn’t give in to it. Ye are going t’be on your own now.” He put his fist under Belle’s chin. “Keep it safe, Isabelle. Love for a man will fill your heart one day. When ye say your vows will be time enough to fasten it about your neck. Now, go wipe your eyes. “
It was decided. Tommy would carry the money in a pouch, a miniature sporran, around his neck. It would be safe there. Angus managed to get cabin class accommodations for both of them. No children of his would go steerage. He had heard too many horror stories about the filth, the disease, people herded like cattle. It was no place for Mackays.
“You’re going to be leaving the nest, lad,” Angus told his son. “We’ve no use for this beast ye drug home with ye. Just another mouth to feed and ye not here to care for it. Either find it a home, Thomas, or put it out of its misery.”
Angus’s words sent Tommy and Belle scurrying through Aberfeldy, door by door. It wasn’t easy promoting a lame animal. It looked hopeless until Willie O’Neill, a tinker, bribed with a sack of dog bones, agreed to give the stray a home. They wondered, as they walked back home, if some of the bones would find their way into Willie’s soup kettle but what did it matter? He was a good sort and would be kind to Friend.
“Watch out, America!” Belle wrote in her diary. “Isabelle Mackay, poet, dancer and singer, and Thomas Angus Mackay, Graduate of Breadalbane Academy, Aberfeldy, Scotland, are coming to invade you!”
Belle tucked her younger sisters, Nan, Tina, and Mary, into their respective cots in the upstairs alcove and listened to them chant their prayers in unison knowing it would be the last time she would hear them do that. How annoying these little girls could be; how dearly she loved them. She climbed into her own bed beside them but it was hard to sleep. Tomorrow she and Tommy would take the train to Glasgow and board The Caledonian. Angus’s words rang in her head. She was going to be on her own now. And what of the love that would some day find her?
Her finger touched the little pouch under her pillow just to make sure that a urisk, a Gaelic hobgoblin, hadn’t entered the house and stolen the pouch while playing out its other tricks of mischief on the Mackays. Father must love her very much to have given her such a treasure.
Goodbyes were said at the house on Dunkeld Street and then all of the Mackays who weren’t off fighting the war marched along with Belle and Tommy to the railway station. The two travelers would take the local train to the junction at Ballinluig where they would transfer to an express bound for Glasgow.
A cattle wagon sat on the tracks in front of the passenger car and on this hot day its heavy, unsavory stench permeated the platform. As the Mackays grew closer, the girls held their noses with one hand while brushing away flies with the other.
Tommy, amused with the girls’ sensitivity to the smell, and trying to cover up his nervousness about leaving, teased Belle. “Ill-winds bloweth nasty smells. The unknown may be filled with cow dung, Belle. Do you want to change your mind about going? It may be too harsh out there for the likes of ye.”
“Tommy.” Belle glowered at him. She was having misgivings enough without him making it worse.
“Don’t fret, Isabelle.” Meg patted Belle’s arm. “The heather, like a carpet of amethyst, will be blooming over the brae as you journey south toward the Trossocks. Such a bonnie sight, you’ll hardly notice the putrid smell.”
As their goodbyes became weepy, Angus cleared his throat and there was sudden silence. “No more tears.” His voice was firm. “Mackays don’t cry and certainly not in public.”
Townsfolk gathered around the family circle. In good Scottish tradition, they joined hands and sang "Auld Lang Syne.” The words suddenly had new and terrible meaning for Belle. “Should auld acquaintance be forgot and never brought to mind.” Would the day come when these dear people might never think of her again?
“Meg.” Belle squeezed her older sister’s hand. “Promise me, on all that is holy, ye will no forget me.”
“Forget ye, Belle? How in the world could anyone possibly forget ye, least of all, me?” Meg gave her one last hug and handed her a poke filled with shortbread she had baked that morning. Belle and Tommy climbed aboard the train.
Chapter Two
On August 2, 1914, all land disappeared as The Caledonian sailed the high seas and into a major storm. Between horizon and ocean there was no definition. It was only the second day out of Glasgow yet as far as the eye could see, grayness and monstrous waves were the only relief from nothingness.
For Belle, it was like the haar, a fog that rolled in from the sea back home, bleeding every trace of color from the landscape.
Their cabin and the passageways were stifling and the stench of vomit and worse permeated the air. Porthole covers had been battened down, and the lamps didn’t give enough light to read by. Belle felt uncomfortable in her cabin. It was a dark closet with barely enough room for a single cot and the little bit of luggage she owned. She talked Tommy into climbing topside to the observation deck to get a breath of air.
Relentlessly, the storm beat against the ship. The forward deck washed under the raging sea, then rolled high into sight only to disappear again. Belle clung to the railing and looked far below through fog where the water churned like a pot of boiling mud. She felt squeamish, yet excited. Unkind winds revived her from the all-consuming odor that had settled deep in her nostrils as she tried not to be seasick.
This was an adventure and she didn’t want to miss a second of it.
In the dining room, they shared their table with a fashionable woman who was returning from visiting her childhood home in the south of France. Belle thought madame’s elegant ensemble, a gray serge with its gathered blouse front giving a “pouter pigeon” look, suited the woman perfectly. She reminded Belle of a saucy laying hen. Her bosom bulged beneath her beak-shaped nose and her black eyes snapped as she clucked. She introduced herself as Mme. Annette Du Cartier. When she discovered that Belle was Tommy’s sister and not his wife, she turned all of her attention to him. “So, Monsieur Mackay, where have they been hiding you? There are so few handsome men aboard this ship,” she said flirting with him.
Tommy blushed and smiled, squirming in his chair.
“Why haven’t I seen you before? You are in first class, n’est-ce pas?”
‘‘‘No, madame, we are in cabin class,” Tom replied
“Oh, that explains it. The idiots! I should be seated in first class. Waiter! S’il vous plait!” Mme. Du Cartier snapped her fingers. When the waiter came to the table she whispered something to him and then said, “Please see to this, tout suite.”
Out of Innocence Page 2
