“Not noo that ye’re laird. Ye must bide fit tae yer station an’ yer callin’. Ye want tae make yer mum prood.”
“I hope to make her proud by the man I am, Auntie, not by where I live.”
“That’s as well as may be, but there’s nae reason ye canna do both.”
“Perhaps not, Auntie,” David said with a chuckle. “We shall see. All things in good time.”
20
Season of Change
WHALES REEF, SHETLAND ISLANDS
When David Tulloch drove off the last ferry onto Whales Reef, it was 4:45 in the afternoon and the sun was about to disappear into the sea. Already dusk was hurrying north. It had been a long day. He was tired and looking forward to a quiet evening with oatcakes and tea in front of his fireplace.
More than three months had gone by since his great-uncle’s funeral. Life on Whales Reef had, to all appearances, continued on as normal, uninterrupted by a momentous passing of more import to the island’s residents than they understood. David, who would be the most affected of all, had no idea what changes lay on the horizon. He had just completed a week serving as resident speaker and guide for a tour of Germans on the three big islands. This morning’s final lecture had concluded before lunch. After the inevitable expressions of gratitude and farewells, he had driven south from Unst and Yell with three ferry crossings to make. How good it was at last to see his own wharf through the mist!
He had no more tours, lectures, or conferences until Christmas, and then nothing scheduled until February. By late spring tourists would be flocking north once more in hopes of observing the runs of orca or killer whale. At present, however, he was anticipating a quiet and uneventful winter to work on his current book. He enjoyed the personal interactions of tour groups, but it was wearying. He always found it good to get home.
Dusk was thickening as he drove from the landing to Coira MacNeill’s bakery. A light shone through the front window. Luckily she was still in the shop and had not yet retired to her upstairs quarters. He walked inside to the familiar tinkling of the bell.
“Coira,” he called. “It’s David . . . are you here?”
“Aye” came the woman’s voice, followed a few seconds later by her person. “But only just. I was aboot tae be turnin’ oot the light.”
“Have you more oatcakes?” asked David. “I’m just back from a week in the north. I need some for my tea.”
“There’s always oakcakes, though I’m oot o’ bread, scones, an’ the rest.”
“That will suit me fine, Coira. I want to put my feet up to a warm fire and enjoy being home.”
“Where were ye this time, David?” she asked as she began filling a white paper bag from her glass case.
“Up on Unst.”
“Ye been away a good while. I haena seen ye in days.”
“A week. This was my last stint with the tourists for the year.”
“Who was they this time?”
“Germans—a bird-watching group from Hanover. Pleasant folk, but I’m glad to be home.”
Coira set the bag on the counter. David handed her a five-pound note.
“Yer cousin Murdoc’s some anxious tae see ye, David. He’s been in two or three times askin’ if I kenned when ye’d be home. I told him I’m no yer mum, nor one who keeps an itinerary for a busy man like yersel’.”
David laughed. “Still,” he said, “he knows you’re more likely to know the goings-on of Whales Reef than any other soul. I’ll run by the factory on my way home.”
“He seemed anxious, David, worried like, ye ken? What’s it aboot?”
“I haven’t an idea. But if I did, I would think twice before I told you, Coira!” he added, laughing again. “Whatever he has to talk to me about would be all over the village in less than an hour.” He turned toward the door with his oatcakes.
“Are ye sayin’ I’m a gossip, yoong David?” said Coira before he could get to the door.
“I said no such thing, Coira. It’s just that you and the town wives keep such close council that the minute you know a thing, the whole place kens it.”
“Can I help it if fowk come into my shop? I canna keep them fae talkin’.”
“Maybe not, but you can help what you say in return. Sometimes I’m thinking you’re a bit free with the dispatching of other folk’s news.”
“I can haud my tongue as weel as the next woman!”
“That you can, I have no doubt . . . whether you choose to hold it may be another matter. Thank you for the oatcakes, Coira,” added David quickly. He turned for the door before she could reply further. Whatever tongue lashing was sent after him as he exited the shop was thankfully drowned out by the bell and its echo. The door banged shut and silenced the temporary annoyance of its owner.
David returned the half mile back along the coast, then inland up a wide, skillfully cobbled road, arriving at length in front of a surprisingly ornate two-story stone building now known simply as the Mill.
The double-lane driveway—where in this region even the main roads were wide enough only for a single automobile—spoke silently of better times. A century had passed since expensive carriages had clattered along this drive, bearing wealthy southern visitors from their yachts and ferries up the hill to spend a week or two in what was one of the Shetlands’ most glamorous Edwardian hotels. Island walking tours and nature excursions were then all the rage among British aristocrats and the wealthy from the Continent.
But fads and airplanes, depressions and World Wars and automobiles bring change to out-of-the-way places, and the Whales Reef Hotel had suffered the consequences. In the middle years of the previous century, after being used as a wartime hospital, it sat empty for a decade. Abandoned and in disrepair so serious it threatened the building’s survival, the villagers had disparagingly dubbed it “England’s Folly.”
Thankfully, the once proud edifice had been rescued, rehabilitated, reroofed, and progressively refurbished over the years by Macgregor Tulloch’s father, as well as by Macgregor himself, and now served more utilitarian purposes. Electricity had been installed when it arrived on the island. Indoor plumbing came later. Finally oil boilers to heat the massive building in place of dirty and inefficient peat fireplaces were added some years after the discovery of North Sea oil in the 1960s. It was the largest structure on Whales Reef and represented the hub and source of the island’s economic vigor.
Lights shone from the Mill’s ground floor windows in the gathering darkness, as well as from his cousin’s upstairs office, indicating the usual life and activity within. As David parked in front, however, his was the only vehicle to be seen. None of the thirty or more workers—mostly women, a good number fishing widows—who earned their livelihood at the Mill would have considered driving to or from work. The only concession afforded the weather, in the event of a snowy blizzard or a driving rain, was the rare occasion when Murdoc MacBean, the Mill’s manager, ferried the less hardy—several older than seventy, two more than eighty—to and from their homes in the Mill’s red van like a school bus making its rounds. Even on the most inclement of days, however, the majority of the workers buttoned their coats, slid their rubber boots over their stockings, and set out from their homes for the Mill under wide hats or umbrellas. They were Shetlanders, after all. What was a little rain to them?
As David walked toward the front door on this evening, the familiar red van was out of sight, safely stowed in the garage at the back of the building. There it usually remained unless deliveries were to be made to the mainland—as the largest island, officially Shetland, was known—or unless the weather took a nasty turn.
He walked inside to bright lights and a hubbub of activity throughout the huge single room, most of the ground floor’s original hotel dining facility and ballroom. The varied conversations and machinery sounds combined with a colorful visual array, a symphonic spectacle of sight and sound unlike any other. David never tired of it.
The place bustled with the life of a human beehive. The whir
of spinning wheels combined with the clatter of great looms at the far end fashioning iconic Shetland wool blankets. A few knitting machines were spread about, along with several clusters of women seated in circles whose blethering tongues were moving as fast as their fingers wielded their needles. Most of these were knitting Shetland lace or sweaters. David stood a moment and took in the sight with pleasure.
Shouts and greetings from all through the great room rose to meet him.
“It’s the chief . . . Good day tae ye, laird . . . Hoo are ye, yoong David? . . . ’Tis aye the new laird!”
None paused in their work. But every eye turned toward him, accompanied by smiles and more words of welcome.
As was his custom, David proceeded about, greeting each woman by name, asking about their families and showing keen interest in what they were crafting and in the particular patterns forming from their needles. An occasional ripple of laughter from the chief’s mouth was music to their ears. David’s laugh had been one of his trademark characteristics since boyhood.
“An’ hoo are ye this evening, Eldora, my dear?” said David, leaning down and planting an affectionate kiss on the wrinkled cheek of the Mill’s oldest worker, eighty-eight-year-old Eldora Gordon. She was formerly Eldora Innes and aunt to Odara whose dark rose at the laird’s graveside was still being talked about.
The elderly woman beamed. “Ye’re a scamp, laddie!” A delighted cackle followed. “Ye canna go aboot kissin’ the lassies sae freely. Folk’ll git the wrong idea.”
“I don’t kiss all the lassies, Eldora,” David said with a grin. “Only the bonniest ones!”
21
What’s in a Name?
ABOVE THE ATLANTIC
Sitting in coach on a Boeing 747 heading west, Loni Ford leaned over a leather-bound journal on her lap, pen in hand.
Following a short hop between Edinburgh and London, and the first two hours of her transatlantic flight home from Heathrow, she had read, dozed, glanced through several magazines, and attempted to review her notes from the Gleneagles conference just concluded.
Then came the flight attendant’s voice beside her. “Miss Ford,” she said. “Alonnah Ford?”
Loni glanced up with a smile and nodded.
“I have your vegetarian meal.”
“Oh . . . thank you,” said Loni, pulling down the tray table.
As the attendant moved away, Loni’s thoughts tumbled back to a time long before she had turned herself into Loni Ford.
She never knew when the mere mention of her given name would exert a hypnotic spell and set off a succession of contemplative reflections. That’s why she always packed her journal when she traveled, the book whose story she was writing herself.
As soon as her meal was finished, she had taken the journal from her bag. She held it thoughtfully, then slipped her favorite Sailor fountain pen from its pocket inside the book’s cover, removed its cap, and set nib to paper.
That was two hours ago. She’d been writing on and off with many pauses and faraway gazes out the window ever since.
Her pen stilled as she scanned the page in front of her.
At such times of pensive reflection, the rushed pace of life seemed to fade into slow motion. Somehow the disengagement forced by air travel often brought with it a mood of reflective quiet.
She could not truthfully say she enjoyed gazing back at her girlhood years and earliest memories. Confusion about one’s self wasn’t always fun. Yet seasons of self-examination were necessary to growth. Where better than in an airplane six miles above the earth to gain a bird’s-eye view of life—present and past—just like the view of the earth floating by below.
The company shrink was always harping on the “integration” of what he called their “many conflicting selves.” She put up with the yearly interview without allowing him to poke around in her psyche too deeply. Any poking around in those regions she would handle herself, thank you very much. Imagine the delight of gray-haired old Dr. Glossop if she let slip she was an orphan! He would be performing a psychoanalytical autopsy before her mandatory hour was out. With follow-up visits required!
Definitely not!
Suddenly another voice startled her out of her reverie. A girl of five or six was standing beside her in the aisle. The question from her lips was simplicity itself.
“Hi, what’s your name?” she said innocently.
It was the entrée to every relationship, especially for the childlike, the most fundamental identification of personhood. Without knowing it, the tiny stranger had plunged her fellow traveler into a conundrum probing the very meaning of the universe.
“Who am I, do you mean?”
The girl nodded.
“Hmm . . . I think today maybe I am Alonnah,” answered Loni with a wistful smile.
“I’m Sophie,” said the girl before scampering away.
Loni stared down the aisle after her young visitor. Slowly the quizzical smile faded from her lips. As many times as she had been asked her name in recent years, she hadn’t replied by saying Alonnah in longer than she could remember.
She flipped back to the front of her journal.
Inside its cover, in her own hand, she read The Journal of Loni Ford. She had intentionally become Loni after leaving home for college. The name symbolized an attempt to say good-bye to the past, maybe even leave the shadowy Alonnah behind as well.
When traveling, however, she could never escape the Alonnah Ford on her driver’s license, and now, for this most recent trip, her passport. When officials asked her name, as little Sophie just had, she did not have the luxury of using a trendy self-styled nickname.
However she tried to avoid it, the question of identity always brought inner conflict. She had a pretty good idea who Loni was—or so she thought. But Alonnah remained a mystery.
She looked down again at the book in her lap. This wasn’t Loni Ford’s journal at all. It was Loni’s reflections about Alonnah.
For years she had tried to forget Alonnah. Now that she was a seasoned veteran of life at thirty-one, she realized how impossible that was. Alonnah was intrinsic to her deepest self. There was no getting away from her. Alonnah was part of the package.
And yet . . . who was Alonnah? And where had she come from?
They were questions Loni was unable to answer. Her early memories of life with her grandparents only scratched the surface. But the roots, the heritage beyond them, were sketchy at best. She knew who Loni was. She had, in a sense, created her—fashioned her purposefully, almost as if inventing a new persona. She was comfortable in Loni’s skin.
But what of the shadowy Alonnah?
Her different selves weren’t in harmony. The Loni Ford of the investment world and the Alonnah Ford of her childhood were two different people.
Which was her real self?
Dr. Glossop would probably dredge up all kinds of terms to describe her. Then he would tell Maddy that she had a basket case for an assistant!
But how could she feel at home with her childhood self when she had no idea where that little girl had come from? When she knew nothing about her mother? When information about her father was doled out in such painstaking thimblefuls that she could not help wondering whether it was even true?
She had no illusions that writing down her thoughts in a journal would get her to the bottom of it. But at least it provided an outlet for the disarray of her fragmented self-image.
Dr. Glossop would no doubt approve of the journal. Psychologists were all about getting in touch with one’s inner child of the past.
But she had no intention of letting a word about it slip in his hearing any more than she intended to divulge the fact that her parents were dead.
This was one book whose pages no one else in the world would ever lay eyes on!
22
The Mill
WHALES REEF, SHETLAND ISLANDS
The Whales Reef woolen mill was a thriving tumult of creative enterprise involving every phase of wool production. Clumps o
f wet, dirty, matted wool came into the back of the building after the shearing. That same wool went out in the Mill’s delivery van in boxes to be shipped as finished hand-knit sweaters and scarves, shawls and other items of lace, yarn, caps, mufflers, and a myriad of products, some machine-woven, though much of it produced by hand. The reputation and quality of its name-patented Whales Weave brand was spoken of by vendors and retail outlets as among the best the Scottish isles had to offer. Murdoc MacBean’s reputation on Shetland, Unst, Yell, Fetlar, and Bressay, moreover, was as an imminently fair man who would pay the sheep ranchers of the Shetlands more for their shorn wool than any buyer on the mainland. If it turned out that he had an excess inventory of wool, it was shipped to other woolen mills throughout Britain or the Continent.
For a small island operation, the Mill’s activity was remarkably diverse. It had begun as a means to provide employment for the widows of fishermen lost at sea. Demand for its products was sufficient to engage anyone on the island who was willing to work.
Meanwhile, the fishing industry ebbed and flowed in its inevitable cycle. Though oil had brought prosperity to many parts of the Shetlands, not every fishing village found it to be so. Few were as fortunate as Whales Reef in having a second commercial enterprise able to take up the slack during lean times.
David continued about the floor, smiling and asking the villagers about their work. At the far end of the room, his kinsman Murdoc MacBean descended from his office. As he came down the stairs, gradually all eyes turned toward him. His face wore a serious expression.
“Hello, David,” the man said, extending his hand as they met.
“Murdoc,” replied David with a smile. “I stopped in at Coira’s. She said you’ve been asking when I would be back. Here I am.”
“I need to talk to you, David,” said Murdoc in a low tone. He took a step closer and leaned toward David’s ear. “In private.”
The two men turned back to the staircase. Conversations around them slowly ceased. David glanced back from the bottom stair. Every eye rested upon them.
The Inheritance Page 9
