by Vicki Delany
But I wasn’t at the Richmond Hotel in Dawson, Yukon, on this pleasant day in June 1898 to steal the cutlery.
The moment we walked through the hotel’s drawing room doors, Euila was on her feet squealing like a schoolgirl. She threw her arms around me and hugged me heartily. Trapped under the force of her embrace, I patted her back a few times. At last she released me, only to go through the same performance with Angus. He stood as still as a Greek statue under the power of her greeting. The entire drawing room watched us. Angus’s face was as red as my late-lamented Worth gown, and Euila was sobbing heartily.
My son and I scurried to take our seats.
Euila collapsed into hers without looking. Fortunately no one had moved her chair in the meantime. She was dressed like an English lady making her afternoon calls in a gown, somewhat out of date, of pink satin and white lace topped by an extravagant hat crowned with a garden of pink flowers. I hadn’t seen a hat quite so elaborate since I’d left Vancouver.
Martha Witherspoon, in contrast, wore what appeared to be her usual ensemble of stiff brown tweed suit and porkpie hat. She wore no jewellery, not even earrings, save a heavy watch pinned to the centre of her prominent bosom.
The waiter hovered over us. He was young and freshfaced, with shaggy hair slicked back, dressed in a neat black suit and tie with a long white apron (on which there were only a few stains) wrapped around his waist. He smiled as if he genuinely wanted to please us.
Martha Witherspoon ordered tea for us all and whatever they had in the way of sandwiches and cakes.
“Fiona,” Euila said, as the waiter went to place the order, “after all these years.” She sighed happily and simultaneously sniffed into her handkerchief. It was trimmed with lace, and “EF” was written in the corner, the letters embroidered in a fine pink hand. Like the waiter’s apron, the handkerchief was marked with stains that were never coming out. “You’re so…so…beautiful,” she said. “I always knew you would be.”
I smiled in return; it was nice to see her. I shouldn’t have been so apprehensive about this reunion. “Euila, how have you been?”
“Lonely, always lonely. I missed you so dreadfully, Fiona.” Water gathered in her eyes. “How could you leave me like that? Without a word. Didn’t you care about me? Your parents, how could they be so horridly selfish as to take you away from me? Alistair told me I shouldn’t have expected anything better from people of your parents’ class, but you…you were like one of us.”
I stared at her. The waiter arranged cups and plates at each place. Angus’s mouth formed a question, but no sounds came out. Miss Witherspoon leaned across the table and waved her hands in front of my face. Euila droned on, her voice high-pitched, complaining. Now I remembered: Euila had always been complaining. Alistair, she was saying, your class, your father, unfair. Unfair.
I hadn’t slept properly in days; I’d tripped over a dead body; I hadn’t even finished my beef sandwich. Alistair. Your father. Unfair.
I fainted. For real this time. I found myself on the floor, with an anxious Angus peering into my face, Miss Witherspoon calling for cool cloths, the enthusiastic waiter waving his apron over me, and all the while Euila whined on about how Alistair had warned her against becoming too close to people of “your class”.
My son looked so worried, crouched on the floor beside me, patting my hand, calling for water, that I thought I should let him know I was perfectly fine. I started to get up, but it seemed like so much trouble, I decided not to bother.
Chapter Fifteen
I am the only living child of my parents. My mother had numerous pregnancies before and after my arrival, but they all ended the same way—in blood and tears. So they doted on me, the precious only child.
It was different up in the big house where Lady Forester cranked out a baby a year. To the delight of Sir William Forester, the Eighth Earl of Sleat, they were usually boys, but to Mrs. Forester’s despair, there was, amidst eleven sons, only one daughter: Euila. Sickly from birth, not terribly bright, eager to please. Euila.
We lived on the Isle of Skye, off the west coast of Scotland. Not a very hospitable place, Skye. The big house was more of a castle, with a few modern bits tacked on over the years, which had escaped being burnt to the ground when the Forester ancestors had, through pure dumb luck, consistently chosen the right side (whatever that side might be) in the never-ending battles that plagued Scotland throughout the previous centuries. They certainly had been on the right side in the great uprising that ended with the terrible battle of Culloden, and an appreciative King George had added to the family’s estates by handing them the property of those neighbouring landowners who’d supported the Bonnie Prince. My own family, the MacGillivrays, as my father never tired of reminding me, fought like true Scotsmen—to the last man—in the cause of the Prince. Thus, according to my father, we lost all our lands and barely escaped being sent off to the colonies. As my father told the story, a young Lord Forester was hunting companions with a young Master MacGillivray and persuaded his father to let the MacGillivrays remain on the land as crofters.
All of which may or may not be true and is of no relevance to the story of Euila and me and our strange friendship. My father had been groundskeeper of the estate, which they called Bestford, and was held in high regard by Sir William, who would occasionally sit by the peat fire in our neat white croft house, sharing a dram of whisky, and talk about preparations for a hunting party, what to do about poachers, or whether the salmon were less plentiful than in previous years.
My mother would take a chair at the well-scrubbed table and sew, and when I was very young I would sometimes be allowed to sit at the Earl’s feet. He would stroke my hair and politely ask how my day had been. I would mumble something and enjoy the scent of him, of whisky and tobacco, horses and leather, with not a whiff of peat clinging to his clothes.
As I grew older and bolder, I had the run of the estate and would often end up in the big kitchen at the castle, where Cook offered me bread and dripping or the occasional oatcake. Euila, with no one but brothers to play with and a mother who always seemed to be about to give birth or recovering from the last one, would tiptoe into the kitchen to beg a treat from Cook. And so Euila and I became as good friends as our social structure would allow.
One day in late fall, when the cold rain had been lashing across the bare hills of West Skye for days, bringing tidings of winter soon to come, the Earl rode up to our door. I was helping my mother in the garden, trying to get the last of the vegetables in before winter came to stay. The Earl removed his hat and made a small joke about the weather. He was always excessively polite to my mother: it was a great shock to me the first time I understood that not all the nobility treated women of no status with such respect. Then he turned to me with a smile and asked if I’d ever thought about going to school. I told him quite honestly that I would love to, and my mother scolded me for talking such foolishness.
Sir William had decided I would join Euila in the day nursery every morning for lessons with her new governess. My parents were easily convinced to allow me to do so.
Euila loved the governess, Miss Wheatley, but hated the lessons. I hated Miss Wheatley and lived for the lessons. The horrid woman never let me forget for a minute that I was the daughter of the help, and I should think myself fortunate to have the opportunity to improve myself. Although I was two years younger than Euila, I outperformed her by leaps and bounds. We learned to read Greek and Latin, to speak French, to paint in watercolours, and some English history. (Miss Wheatley slapped me across the face when I asked if we were going to learn Scottish history.) It was only in music that Euila did better than I. Where I was all thumbs, like the crofter’s daughter I was, seated at Lady Forester’s dusty, out-of-tune piano, Euila could coax beautiful notes out of the keys and into the evening air without appearing to try. Only Miss Wheatley seemed to mind that the charity case was better at almost everything than the daughter of the house. Lady Forester never paid much attentio
n to anyone or anything, Euila least of all; the boys certainly didn’t care what we got up to; and I suspect Sir William was happy to see me thriving. As for Euila, she adored me and never seemed to have a moment’s envy of either my intelligence or my life, which was so much more carefree than hers. Euila spent the afternoons confined to the house and the gardens, often with embroidery or her Bible, while I wandered across the brown and purple heather, waded through streams bursting with fish, and climbed the barren hills of the Cuillins with my father as he told me the story of how the MacGillivrays had lost all for the Bonnie Prince and Scotland. And would do it again, he always concluded.
When I remember those years, I think of Miss Wheatley with no ill will, for she inadvertently gave me the greatest gift I could have ever received: she constantly (and sometimes literally) beat a “proper” English accent into me. Miss Wheatley had a passionate hatred of Scotland and all things Scottish, which expressed itself in her determination to rid me of any trace of a Scottish accent. She would have preferred to instill the accent of a cockney kitchen maid into me if she had any idea of how to do so, but Miss Wheatley was a niece of minor aristocracy and had previously spent all her life in fashionable London drawing rooms. The only example of proper speech she could teach me was her own.
My son is annoyed with me when I scold him for using colloquialism and not bothering with proper grammar. The way I speak is what lifted me out of the gutter, more important than my beauty, my intelligence, or even my formidable luck. If Miss Wheatley hadn’t beaten the sound of generations of Skye crofters out of me, I don’t want to think of where I’d be today. Certainly not owner of the most popular, most profitable dance hall in the Yukon Territory.
When I was nine years old, and Euila eleven, Sir William took very ill. The second son, Alistair, was called home from London to manage the estate. Alistair was, to put it mildly, not his father. He hated Scotland almost as much as Miss Wheatley did and hated the life of a country landowner even more. Being the second son, he wouldn’t even get to be Earl some day.
At home, my father’s face was often grave, and he and my mother would stop talking when I walked into the house. But I overheard bits and pieces of things I’d never known before—of gambling debts and selling off pieces of the land.
Alistair paid no attention to Euila or me, and for another year our lives carried on much as before, although I did miss meeting Sir William out on the road after lessons, when he would pull his big bay to a stop and ask me, as I patted the horse’s velvet nose, what I’d learned that day, and give me an apple for the horse and a piece of shortbread for me.
My mother had been a great beauty. Even in her homespun dresses, smelling of the peat fire, her face dusted with dirt from the vegetable patch, and her hands coated with mud from the soil of Skye, she was more beautiful than Lady Forester or any of the fine ladies who visited in their jewels and English clothes. I’m called the most beautiful woman in the Yukon, and when I say that, I’m not being vain, because I know I’m but an imitation of my mother.
After he’d been home for about a year, Alistair Forester started visiting our cottage. Not cheerful and friendly like his father, ready to pull out a flask of whisky and sit by the peat fire, but to sit on his horse and try to talk to my mother while she worked. I did notice that he rarely came around when Father was home. Alistair had no interest in the running of the estate, only in what it could offer him and his wild London friends in the way of sport.
It was November of 1879, a few days short of my eleventh birthday, when Miss Wheatley bent over to pick up a pencil Euila had thrown across the day nursery in a fit of temper and found that she couldn’t straighten up again. She put up the most dreadful fuss: moaning and wailing, yelling at us to do something. Euila ran around the room, managing only to wrench Miss Wheatley’s back even more when attempting to force her into a chair, and I went downstairs to fetch Mr. North, the butler.
They got Miss Wheatley to her room, with no small amount of trouble. Classes were cancelled for the remainder of the day. I was disappointed at missing Latin but pleased at the idea of having lunch at home with Mother.
I tried to be quiet approaching our house, thinking I would surprise my mother. I peeked through the peatsmoke-darkened window to check if she was inside. Because of my father’s favoured place as groundskeeper, our cabin was a good deal grander than most crofters’ cabins. It was bigger and sturdier and didn’t let in much rain at all, even on the worst days. My mother had a few nice things, such as good dishes, curtains for the windows and thick blankets on the beds. There was a mirror and a painting of Culloden Moor in a proper frame hanging on the walls. But, like most crofters’ cabins, it was really one long room, with a thatched roof, whitewashed interior walls and an ever-burning peat fire in the middle of the floor. A small alcove at the back served as my parents’ bedroom, and I slept on a shelf set into the wall of the main room.
I could smell mutton stew cooking in the large iron pot suspended over the fire.
Alistair Forester had my mother pinned against the wall. Her long black hair was half out of its knot, and her face was red all down one side. He held both of her hands in one of his, over her head. His free hand fumbled at the front of her dress, and he sort of twitched all over. My mother opened her mouth and screamed, a scream that echoed through the Black Cuillins and had the ravens lifting into the air and the sheep looking up from their fodder in alarm.
Then my father was in the room, pulling Alistair away from my mother. My father hit Alistair in the face, and Sir William’s son stumbled and fell onto the floor. My mother threw herself into my father’s arms, sobbing.
I wanted to cry out. I wake up in the night sometimes, crying out. Warning them.
I am always too late.
Alistair’s long, thin aristocratic fingers touched the iron poker with the big hook on the end that was used to lift the pot from the fire, and while my parents clung to each other, and I watched, he got to his feet, and brought the poker down once on the side of my father’s head. My father collapsed and lay perfectly still. Mother didn’t scream again. She held her hands to her mouth, her eyes open wide, and she stared directly at Alistair Forester. He knocked her to the floor with one blow from his free hand, then the poker rose and fell as it struck her head time and time again. Bright red blood leaked through her hair, splashed up against the clean white walls, and pooled in the dirt floor, where it mixed with the blood leaking from the gash on the back of my father’s head.
I was still standing by the window when Alistair came out of my home, his shirt spattered with blood. He was holding the poker. He looked at me, looked at the poker and walked towards me. At last I came to my senses and I ran. I was only ten years old, eleven in a few days, and he was a young man, but he was weak with drink and rich food and idleness, and I’d run in these hills since the day I could first walk.
A group of gypsies found me a few days later. Or rather I found them, shocked, frightened, cold and wet, drawn out of the hills like a starving rabbit by the scent of meat roasting over their campfire.
At first they thought, by the way I spoke, that I was the daughter of the big house and were all set to take me home and claim some sort of reward. But they’d learned over the generations never to act hastily. A few careful inquiries revealed that the daughter of the house wasn’t missing. However, this entire side of the island was full of talk about the sudden disappearance of the MacGillivrays, who had packed up and left without a word, after fire destroyed their home.
When his son told the story to Old Yuri, leader of the band of travellers, Old Yuri stroked his beard and asked me one question only: “What’s your father’s name, girl?”
“Angus MacGillivray,” I replied, lifting my head high. “Our ancestors were at Culloden.”
“Time to be moving on,” Old Yuri said to his youngest wife.
I lived with the travellers for almost two years.
Chapter Sixteen
When I opened my e
yes, all I could see, floating in front of me in a hazy whirl, was an ocean of white faces. Angus was holding the back of my head while Miss Witherspoon held a glass of water to my lips. I blinked, and the faces swayed once then drifted back into focus. Some concerned, some curious, some trying to peer down the front of my blouse.
“Allow me through, allow me through, please.” The doctor crouched beside Miss Witherspoon and held his hand to my chest, no doubt checking that my heart was still beating. Any fool would have been able to tell by the look on my face that I wasn’t dead. I swatted his hand away. “Leave me alone, you idiot. Angus, help me to stand.”
“Are you sure, Mother?”
“Of course, I’m sure. Get this fool of a doctor out of my way.”
“Allow me, please.” Mouse O’Brien swept through the crowd and gathered me into his arms as though I were one of the straw dolls my mother had made for me so long ago. He carried me over to a somewhat worse-for-wear settee lining the tea room wall and laid me down without even trying for a grope.
“Thank you, Mouse,” I said.
Miss Witherspoon was there, still holding the glass of water. “Mr. O’Brien,” she said, smiling up at him, her eyes blinking as if the reflection off his shining armour might blind her. “How terribly kind of you.” Blushing to the edge of her high, tight collar, she extended the glass of water. He accepted with a slight bow and took a drink.
Wasn’t I the patient here? Miss Witherspoon tore her eyes away from Mouse.
“Everything seems to be under control,” she said to the onlookers, more of whom were arriving off the street every minute. “Mrs. MacGillivray is perfectly fine.”
