The Inheritance

by Michael Phillips

  46

  Sudden Worries

  WHALES REEF, SHETLAND ISLANDS

  David arrived back in Whales Reef after being gone the better part of a week. He did not even need Coira MacNeill’s wagging tongue to tell him that a change had come during his absence.

  As he drove from the ferry into the village, he saw aging Eldora Gordon making her way down the sidewalk. He pulled alongside, stopped, and jumped out of his car. “May I be privileged to give you a lift?” he said, offering the amazingly spry woman his arm.

  “Oh, aye, laddie!” she said with a smile. “So ye’re back fae the city, are ye?”

  “And glad of it!” laughed David. “London is no place for the likes of me. You’re not at the Mill today, Eldora?” he said as he helped her into the passenger seat.

  “No, for several days noo, laddie.”

  “Why is that?”

  “I thoucht ye kenned. I thoucht it came fae yersel’.”

  “You thought what came from me?” asked David.

  “The changes up on the hill.”

  “What changes?”

  “Mr. MacBean said he hasna the money tae pay us a’,” Eldora answered. “Somethin’ or ither aboot the laird’s death, ye ken. He didna tell us much, only that hard times was upon us an’ that we had tae work together till it was sorted oot. He said ye’d telephoned fae London aboot it.”

  David listened in angry silence.

  “He asked for volunteers, frae those o’ us who wouldna hae too grit a hardship if we had tae cut back oor hours. The first tae work must be the older women, ye ken, those that hae nae husbands or other income. Weel, I was thinkin’ that I may be auld, but my brither Sandy takes good care o’ me. An’ I kenned some o’ the others were mair sore o’ needin’ the work than me, so I said I’d stop workin’ for a spell. I’m happy tae do it for the sake o’ the others, ye ken.”

  “That is very understanding of you, Eldora,” said David.

  “Some folk is worried,” Eldora persisted. “But not me. I ken that ye’ll take care o’ us. Ye winna let harm come tae yer folk, will ye, laddie?”

  “No, Eldora, I certainly will not,” replied David, doing his best to force a smile.

  He was soon helping the elderly lady into the bakery. He jumped back behind the wheel, quickly turned around, and sped back out of town as fast as he dared and up the hill to the Mill.

  When he entered the building, he immediately saw that fewer employees were on hand. He was even more conscious of the eyes turning toward him from every workstation. The fingers of the claques of women in their circles knitting seemed more lethargic. Every eye watched David as he went, though few faces wore smiles. He walked across the room and up the stairs to his cousin’s office.

  “I’ve just been talking to Eldora Gordon, Murdoc,” said David. “She says you told the workers about the financial difficulties, that you needed to cut back their hours.”

  “I saw no reason to keep it from them,” replied MacBean. “After your call from London, I assumed—”

  “Murdoc,” interrupted David, “I specifically told you not to worry them, to make changes quietly and discreetly.”

  “I’m sorry, David. I suppose I thought—”

  “Thought what?”

  “I don’t know, that they needed to know why we had to cut hours.”

  “And now the whole island is agitated.”

  “I’m sorry, David.”

  David sighed and shook his head. “Well, it’s done now. We’ll have to make the best of it.”

  47

  A Long Spring

  Much to his dismay, David discovered that his cousin’s premature revelation and subsequent actions had turned the island on its head. Even those whose fates were not directly connected to the wool factory felt the impact. The seeming inevitability of the Mill’s demise spread a leaven of gloom throughout the community.

  The Mill represented the lifeblood of Whales Reef. If the wool factory went under, how long would the market, pub, gift shop, and other small businesses be able to survive?

  As peat was necessary for warmth, wool and fish were the twin foundation stones of the island’s economy. Fishing and visitors and David’s nature tours brought in their own share of revenue. But wool was the pride of Whales Reef. Could the village survive without the Mill?

  A suddenly obvious fact came starkly into focus. They had taken the wool factory for granted. No one had given it much of a thought. Suddenly it became apparent just how greatly the island’s well-being and commerce had depended on it.

  Uncertainty was in the air.

  If probate was not settled soon, both David and Murdoc MacBean knew they would be forced to shut the Mill’s doors. If they stopped processing orders, customers would find other suppliers. Once those buyers jumped ship, MacBean was businessman enough to know it would be difficult to win them back. The future of the Mill could evaporate within months if they did not continue to fill orders.

  MacBean paid half salaries in April. Those who chose not to keep working wouldn’t lose their jobs. “When the finances are sorted and the Mill is operational, your jobs will be waiting for you,” he assured them. Those who agreed to keep working at reduced pay would be reimbursed retroactively, with a ten-percent bonus added for all unpaid back hours . . . if the Mill survived.

  Gradually orders piled up as April gave way to May and production decreased.

  As David walked through the village these days, greeting the villagers as before, he sensed anxiety in the air. The looks they cast him as they returned his cheerful greetings told the tale. They were not optimistic about his chances against Hardy. He could tell many of them felt sorry for him. They knew nothing of Macgregor Tulloch’s secret benevolence toward him and the rest of the island. Yet the dark rumor about David’s ancestry had so taken root in their minds that they now looked upon him with pity, resigned that their new laird would be none other than Hardy Tulloch.

  The common mind will invariably believe the bad over the good. With no evidence other than the man’s blustering confidence, therefore, few by now doubted Hardy’s tale about the illegitimacy of David’s great-grandfather. Though silence is usually a more reliable indicator of innocence, as bravado is of guilt, the indiscriminating masses often draw exactly opposite conclusions from the two responses. The fact that David refused to assert himself and offered no word of defense against Hardy’s charges seemed all the more to confirm the suspicion against his pedigree.

  But the islanders accepted the approach of the inevitable with stoic resignation. If Hardy raised their rents, they would face that when the time came. They had endured hardships before. In these regions life itself was hard. They took it in stride with a fatalism that was not altogether a bad thing.

  They still had no inkling of the extent to which their financial well-being had been essentially underwritten by Macgregor Tulloch. But they were astute enough to realize their rents were low by modern standards. They kept abreast of the outside world with newspapers and television. The more progressive-minded used email and the Internet. Though steeped in tradition, they were neither ignorant nor backward.

  Some were quietly considering their options for relocating to the mainland. If such discussions around clotheslines and over fences and in shops and among the fishermen at their nets came within Hardy’s hearing, he gave no indication of it. Nor did he let fall so much as a word what might be his intentions. If he tripled their rents and was suddenly faced with a mass exodus from the village, what good would it do him? So reasoned those who professed little anxiety over the future. If their rents were raised ten or even twenty percent, it wouldn’t cripple them. Hardy would be foolish to raise them more. One thing no one had ever accused Hardy Tulloch of was being a fool.

  If things changed dramatically, however, and they were forced to leave the island, they would sell their sheep and chickens and cows, take their few possessions with them, and start a new life elsewhere. But their values and traditions would rem
ain no less deeply ingrained in their souls.

  As summer approached, David divulged nothing of what he had learned from the elder MacNaughton. Besides the church building and attached cemetery, all of which comprised no more than three acres, the Auld Hoose was the only house on the island not owned by the laird. At least he knew that ownership of his own home was secure, and that Hardy could not evict him.

  As David went out early one morning, his responsibility as chief to the people of the island hung heavily upon him. The moment he had foreseen was at hand. It was time to stand and fight.

  He knew his fight was not against Hardy, nor even for his uncle’s inheritance. This was an invisible battle he must wage within himself.

  Was he willing, for the well-being of his people, to lay down the one earthly possession he treasured more than anything in all the world, that asset which neither the probate courts nor his cousin nor anyone else could touch? Was he willing to give up the security of his own future?

  Even as the question focused itself starkly in his mind, he knew the answer. It was a sacrifice he must make. One he would make without question. No true chief would do less.

  Before the morning was out, David had gathered the papers and deeds and was on his way into Lerwick. There he arranged a confidential interview with Douglas Creighton. By the time he returned to Whales Reef later that afternoon, all the necessary documents had been prepared—an application for a massive mortgage against everything he owned in the world, pledging the Auld Hoose, all its property, and his future earnings as collateral against the loan and its repayment.

  If he had waited too long to take some action—an accusation his aunt continued to harp on with importunity—the moment the funds came through, Murdoc would be able to pay all back salaries, resume the Mill’s operations at full strength, and continue until his uncle’s estate was settled once and for all.

  48

  Whales Reef Solstice Fair

  WHALES REEF, SHETLAND ISLANDS

  As the Shetland days lengthened, the specter loomed of inevitable changes on the horizon. After the difficult winter and spring, few residents of Whales Reef felt they had much to celebrate as summer approached.

  With the sun reaching its apex of the year, however, the annual solstice in June represented renewal and hope. The Whales Reef Solstice Fair was a long-standing tradition of both social and economic importance for the community. Perhaps, everyone hoped, the long sunlight hours would bring better times.

  The women were scurrying to put finishing touches on sweaters, scarves, mittens, slippers, and all manner of handwoven and felted wool products for the village fair on the weekend prior to June 21. It would not be the only summer celebration or handcraft fair in Britain, but it was of ancient date and laden with tradition. Two ferries were enlisted for the weekend to bring visitors from throughout Shetland to the small island for the three days of the fair.

  The island’s sheep had been shorn of their winter coats earlier and now wandered the island looking uncharacteristically thin in the fuzz of their new coats. But several dozen of the laird’s flock had been kept from their spring haircuts by Dougal Erskine for the purpose of the shearing contest, always one of the highlights of the festival.

  The annual fair featured flowers, handcrafts, and spring produce—the latter including strawberries, new potatoes, carrots, turnips, some beans—as well as an abundance of homemade cheeses and jams.

  The contest categories were so diverse as to give almost unlimited options to creativity, from food to art, from small to large, from creative design to presentation, from local paintings to the culinary delights produced in kitchens throughout the village. By midday Friday all the prizes would be posted beside their entries.

  The eighteen rooms of the Whales Fin Inn had been booked months in advance, the one time of the year when every room was certain to be occupied. Pub and kitchen would work to capacity all weekend—Keith and Evanna in the kitchen, Audney at the bar and serving meals. During such busy seasons they also added Rakel Gordon to the staff. She would be especially busy this year, doing double duty when not engaged at the inn conducting a felting demonstration in the wool factory.

  At last the long-awaited weekend came. By noon on Friday the 18th, the village was alive with activity. A variety of aromas from fires and kettles tempted the hungry to part with a few pence in exchange for their lunch. Booths and tables and amusements and every imaginable design of hand-knit wool products were spread out everywhere.

  The tents were beehives of curiosity and excitement. Everyone was anxious to see the contest winners in every category from most perfectly shaped potato to most artful vase of sweet peas.

  Even in the best of times there was never a great deal of money to be made at the island’s annual celebration. Everyone grew their own potatoes and carrots and had a yard full of hens that delivered the family supply of eggs. Even so, eggs were on sale at every table, along with potatoes and carrots and home-canned preserves. Remarkably, though everyone had plenty in the larders of their homes, much produce indeed changed hands over the course of the weekend.

  Indeed, describing the goods on offer for trade was the accurate term. Barter was more common than cash as the preferred medium of exchange. As hard as they prepared for it, few actually expected Monday to come and find a great deal more money to put in the family cashbox than they started out with. Nevertheless, they all saved up their pennies and 20p and 50p coins for the Solstice Fair. That was part of the fun. Spending was as greatly anticipated as selling. Money and produce might circulate between friends as a means of lubricating commerce in a village struggling to retain its optimism. It was not profitability that everyone looked forward to, but the social tradition of the community.

  No Shetland gathering would be complete without fiddlers. By midafternoon on Friday the lively strains of violins could be heard. They would be joined by accordionists and dancers for Saturday evening’s country dance—outside if the evening was warm, inside the factory building if not—which would last until the thin light of midnight began to give way to a new sunrise.

  Neither would such a weekend attract sufficient men from the community without a suitable offering of animal flesh for sale or trade. Between the village and the Mill, in a large roped corral, were gathered an assortment of pigs, ponies, a few cattle, but mostly sheep to see what offers might be made. Gamekeeper Dougal Erskine, a man known for his genius with all animal flesh, was on hand to counsel, advise, and instruct. A handful of men were clustered about examining teeth and legs, hooves and flanks, discussing all things ovine, equine, bovine, canine, and porcine with as much animation as a claque of women around a knitting circle. Most had come for information, and a few hoping to purchase a ewe or ram of that special breed known as the Shetland Dunface, whose wool was earning a wider reputation with every passing year. The former laird’s gamekeeper was recognized as the man whose efforts had almost single-handedly rescued the Dunface from extinction. Dougal Erskine was a household name in Scotland’s sheep-breeding community, no less than was David Tulloch among those who studied the flora and fauna of the northern islands.*

  Around the edges of the animal corrals could also be seen one of the oldest men on the island. He said little, though was spoken to by all who passed. He was short even for a Shetlander, standing a mere five-foot-four, wiry and unbowed in spite of his age. He carried a walking stick, not for lack of strength or balance but merely from force of habit. He and Dougal were more than friends. The older man—for fifty years the island’s vet—was a mentor to Dougal Erskine in the full sense of the word. Erskine was the first to admit that eighty-nine-year-old Alexander Innes knew every creature that walked on four legs far better than he did. The two had worked together on the Dunface project from its inception. Innes’s father had been gamekeeper years before. At his father’s death the position had been offered him by then-laird Wallace Tulloch. But his own veterinary practice, and his reluctance to place himself at the behest of the mis
tress of the Cottage, made it impossible, he explained, for him to accept the laird’s kind offer. The position was subsequently abandoned, and the laird’s flocks declined until Macgregor’s hiring of Dougal Erskine had reversed that trend.

  With a Shetland Natural History Tour beginning on Monday—lectures, day trips, and one overnight excursion to the northernmost tip of Unst—and knowing the weekend would be hectic and full of distractions, David closeted himself at home Friday morning and into the early afternoon, going over his itinerary and putting the finishing touches on several of his planned lectures.

  His need for solitude had a far more personal reason, however. The telephone call he had received an hour ago had been brief, but it had plunged him into the deepest despondency he had known since the death of his father. After the news he just received, it would not be easy to smile cheerfully through the festivities. Most difficult of all would be smiling through his aunt’s jibes about his doing nothing to help the island’s people, knowing that he had done all he knew to do . . . but that it had not proved to be enough.

  Over and over, the call replayed itself in his mind, but he could not change its finality.

  “Mr. Tulloch, hello—it is Douglas Creighton calling. I’m afraid I have some unfortunate news. I know you were hoping for the loan against your property to provide funds to underwrite operation of your island’s wool factory. I am sorry to have to tell you that your application has been denied.”

  Stunned, for several seconds David said nothing.

  “Mr. Tulloch . . . ?”

  “Yes . . . yes, I am here,” said David at length. “I don’t know what to say. I had assumed that approval was a mere formality. The value of the house and land is far in excess of the amount I had requested.”

  “I understand your confusion. And you are right, of course—the asset value of the collateral would be sufficient even for a larger loan. Unfortunately, the underwriters examine not only collateral-to-loan ratio, but also cash flow and the income stream necessary to service the debt. In your case, though the asset value is unquestioned, your personal cash flow is not sufficient to guarantee the monthly payments. As you have told me yourself, your income fluctuates. And as incongruous as it may seem, the income from the Mill itself is outside your reach. The underwriters are reluctant to make a loan where even a remote contingency of foreclosure exists. This factor is based almost entirely on the long-term dependability of monthly income. I am very sorry. I understand your predicament. I sincerely wish the bank could help. However, I am afraid there is nothing I can do.”