Only Sofia-Elisabete

by Robin Kobayashi

  I added, “You might even sail under a rainbow or play with the dolphins.”

  He grinned at those happy thoughts. In a good mood, he opened a letter from his sister Margaret that he had been saving to read. It had arrived yesterday when we were busy packing. He perused it slowly. Near the end of it, his countenance changed, and an anxious gloom descended upon him.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked him, nervously fingering my red beads.

  He handed me the letter. Margaret advised him that she would journey to Scarborough because Brodie had written that we were going there next, due to some quarrel with Lord Scapeton. She was glad of it (our northern destination, that is) since she disliked coming up to London and she disliked arguing with Brodie. She, accompanied by a chaperone from Glasgow, would take passage on a steam-boat once they reached Edinburgh. Her parting words were, “Mamma begs you to see reason, to keep away from the mischief, depravity and machinations of the aristocracy, unless it is your intention to kill her. She instructs me to rescue you, to bring back her boy, so that she can see you before she draws her last breath. Dearest Kitt, I shan’t give up until I’ve persuaded you to return to Glasgow with me.”

  13. Faithful

  Margaret arrived, prim, pretty and determined. Kitt was really glad to see her in Scarborough, despite her misguided intention to save him, because they hadn’t seen each other for well over eighteen months. “You will like her,” he had told me, quite convinced of it. As soon as he espied Margaret, with her elderly chaperone, standing on the deck of the steam-boat, he broke out into a broad happy grin. “My dear sister is come at last,” he rejoiced, shedding a discreet tear. And when she stepped onto the quay, her eyes shining, her composure almost crumbling, they embraced each other fondly, albeit briefly. Brother and sister were both naturally reserved.

  “Miss Munro, where have you been?”

  “Where have I been? Nay, how now, where are you?” Her eyes took in his new clothes purchased in London. “Mr. Munro, you have become a man of the fashionable world.”

  Kitt smiled at her teasing joke. He introduced me to Margaret and her companion, an elderly spinster named Miss Wilson. While he arranged for porters to deliver their luggage, Margaret became noticeably quiet such that I didn’t know what she thought of me, though I tried to engage her in conversation. But I sensed her taking my measure. Did she scorn me? Did she tolerate me for Kitt’s sake?

  She was very handsome, with milky skin, blue-grey eyes and dainty freckles dotting her cheeks and nose. Though she was younger than Kitt by two years, a twin-like kind of love existed between them. Towards him, she was warm and affectionate. It wasn’t long before I noticed how they spoke as one, how they sighed together, how they walked similarly, with an unaffected gait.

  Our visitors admired our picturesque spa town, murmuring with polite approval at its high limestone cliffs, castle on the promontory and pleasing passable streets. The familiar sight of gulls perched on the black chimneys always charmed me, and my heart soared at being home in Scarbro’, where the sands brought back happy memories of my childhood.

  And to be in my own bedroom again! Kitt had laughed with his eyes at my vast treasures—toys, books, drums, sea-stars. There hadn’t been much time to cicerone Kitt about town, although we did walk thrice to Cornelian Bay. Margaret’s imminent arrival had given me much to do, domestically speaking, to tidy up the house for guests. And then, I had to tidy up myself, by hiring a lady’s-maid to make me presentable. She, Baillie, worked a miracle.

  A proud Kitt strolled up Newborough Street with a beloved (and presentable) wife on his right arm, and a beloved sister on his left, while poor Miss Wilson trudged behind, out of breath still from the many steps she had had to climb to reach the town.

  “Is not my sister a cheerful sight?” He spoke to me.

  “Ah, yes,” muttered Margaret, somewhat embarrassed. “According to Brodie, I’m dreadfully cheerful, and the second most cheerful Munro in the Lowlands.”

  “Brodie does you a disservice,” said I. “Who, then, is the most cheerful Munro?”

  “Murdo Munro,” brother and sister said as one, so close were their thoughts, and they laughed for whatever reason.

  “He’s a rugged mariner, and a distant cousin twelve steps removed,” Kitt explained the family joke.

  “Oh,” I replied and then, I said to her, “How strikingly pretty you are, sister.”

  Margaret accepted the compliment with a modest blush.

  She remarked kindly, “I find that you, with your natural healthy glow, are as delightful as my brother described in his letter. Like him, you must be keen to be out of doors, always seeking adventure.”

  It was an awkward moment. Kitt winked at me, and so, I said nothing. How could she have known that underneath this healthy glow of mine, I am and shall always be tanned compared to someone like her?

  We continued on quietly. When we got to our dear old house, a sturdy three-story red-brick abode on Queen Street, Margaret became known to the colonel and Aggie. She was not a little taken aback. To be fair, I suppose anyone would be surprised by it at first, given the strange circumstances in which Colonel Fitzwilliam and Mrs. Wharton lived together. But we Fitzwilliams never spoke about our misfortune to others since nothing could be done about it. We were very private that way—hopeful one day, resigned the next, hopeful again, resigned once more.

  I conducted Margaret to our best spare room—a well-appointed bedroom painted in a reflective blue, with white curtains, white bed, white chimney-piece. Surely she would love it. But she didn’t, to my great disappointment. Neither her surroundings nor the special touches we had made to guarantee her comfort held any interest for her. She began to pace like a nervous horse.

  “How came you to know the colonel?” she asked me.

  Her question confounded me. How did anyone get to know their own father?

  “I suppose when I was born,” was my stupid response.

  She cast me a bemused look. I felt even stupider.

  “Mrs. Wharton is very fond of him,” she remarked.

  “Oh yes, quite so,” I replied, perhaps too boldly.

  She pressed her fingertips together, waiting to hear more.

  So, wanting to humor and befriend her, I revealed, “Aggie adores him to the skies, and hopes to make the colonel hers. She even dyed her hair red recently and uses pearl-powder to improve her complexion.”

  I smiled into my hand, believing the whole thing amusing. This information, however, unsettled Margaret even more.

  “And they … live together this way, until she wins him by this feminine stratagem?”

  “Certainly.”

  It must’ve been the wrong answer in that she became a good deal flustered. She wished to speak to Kitt straight away. Before I could ask why, she bolted.

  “All right, Margaret, all right,” he soothed her.

  Kitt and I assumed that Brodie had told her about the colonel’s loss of memory. Then the truth came out—that she and their parents didn’t believe I was the daughter of a war hero. They suspected that Lord Scapeton was my real father. After Kitt cleared up that matter, and he also convinced her that the colonel and Aggie were already married, I realized just how proper Margaret was. Rigid moral principles guided her every thought, her every action.

  Tea-time came. I told myself that things with Margaret would surely improve before they got worse. But then, the painting happened. Oh, Aggie! She had been the mystery buyer of Goya’s painting—the one of me in a blue-silk morning gown. Something about the portrait had touched her. And when she saw me, a young wife of fifteen, for the first time on the cutter in Bordeaux, she had been stunned at the serendipity of it—of having purchased this portrait of me. I never thought to see this painting again in my lifetime. But now that it was here, hanging on our wall, it made perfect sense.

  “Welcome to Scarbro’,” and I, being silly, kissed the wooden frame.

  Kitt placed his hand on my shoulder. “How despondent
you had become when the painting was sold. It’s a part of our lives once more, where it belongs. Wouldn’t Don Francisco be amazed to know of its journey home?”

  “I don’t think he would be surprised by it—this mysterious coincidence.”

  “Who is Don Francisco?” wondered Margaret.

  Kitt told her, “Don Francisco de Goya is an old Spanish painter living in self-exile in Bordeaux. He wished to paint a portrait of my beautiful wife.”

  “How extraordinary the painting is. I can almost hear the rustle of the silk morning gown,” said she, admiring it.

  I blurted out, “Don Francisco gave me the gown afterwards since the brothel-keeper owed him a favor.”

  “It came from a brothel?” Her eyes widened in surprise.

  Aggie, always a quick thinker, changed the subject. She conducted everyone to the tea-table, where she expertly made our tea. With her gentle courtesies, she put our guests at ease. But her work as hostess came undone when the colonel steered the conversation to Edinburgh and his frank observations about that ancient city. He became an encyclopedia of dry facts from the latest census.

  “Don’t you know—there are 138,225 souls in Edinburgh, of whom the women outnumber men by 14,038? I do believe, Miss Munro, the women of that city must need humble themselves to catch a husband.”

  Margaret’s nose quivered in the way Kitt’s did when something annoyed him. Meanwhile, the colonel went on, because nothing would stop him, not even my discreet kick to his foot under the tea-table.

  He said, “I have often observed that Scottish women are very prolific. Why, most families I’ve met had ten to fifteen children. As a consequence, a great number of Scots must seek their fortunes in England, America and the colonies. Good heavens! It’s a Scottish invasion everywhere.”

  The colonel was a downright rogue. He enjoyed rattling people because, according to him, “there’s no better way to test the mettle of a soldier than to place him under fire.” To be sure, I nearly died at the tea-table from embarrassment. Poor Margaret took him at his word, not knowing that he was funning with her. Then she did the oddest thing by speaking to him, with her eyes closed, perhaps to contain her ire. I hadn’t seen anything like it before.

  “Colonel, contrary to what many believe, not all women wish to humble themselves to gain a marriage partner,” she defended our sex. “I know there are excellent men, such as my brother, who would never seek to be connected with any woman who falsely humbled herself.”

  “Hear, hear,” agreed Kitt.

  Her eyes still shut, Margaret decried the notion of a Scottish invasion, when it was poverty, famine, evictions and lack of work that forced thousands to leave their homeland in search of a good life. It was then, during her thoughtful speech, in praise of her countrymen, that the colonel gave me a very slow wink, knowing she couldn’t see us. Aggie noticed it, as did Kitt. A tense silence ensued, and I dreaded what Kitt must think of us Fitzwilliams. He was clearly protective about his younger sister, and rightly so.

  Believe me when I say that I admired my new sister. Forthright and intelligent—she conversed with ease, so self-assured. It became my purpose to know her better. Despite my wishes, I sensed the feeling wasn’t quite reciprocated, that perhaps something prevented her from getting too friendly with me. Something big, something emotional stirred inside her. I surmised it must be her loyalty to her parents.

  One day soon thereafter, when we young people settled upon an excursion to Scarborough Castle, the colonel declared his intention to join us and I was glad of it as always, to have his company. There, amongst the windswept ruins overlooking our two crescent-shaped bays—one north, the other south—Margaret’s human heart, a heart made fragile by a thousand hurts, revealed itself. What happened was this. Kitt and his sister had wandered off, conversing somewhere near the castle keep, while the colonel and I stood guard on the greenish-brown slope below. The clear tones of their voices came to us, due to some trick of the wind.

  “Have you left off caring about us, your own family?”

  “Oh, Margaret, how can you say that—”

  “You seem so different now, speaking often in a foreign tongue, which I can’t understand, and marrying a foreigner without telling me. We’ve never kept secrets from one another.”

  “The truth is,” and he paused, “I am different, because I’ve fallen in love—the deepest, the most wonderful kind of love.”

  “Fiddlesticks! The girl is just fifteen. When the excitement wears off, and your ordinary perceptions return, you will rue the consequences of tethering your heart to someone so young and impetuous. She is naturally clever, yes, but highly unpolished in mind and manners.”

  “Sofia has an independency of spirit,” my man praised me. “And her manners are pleasing and genuine. She is perfectly free from pride and conceit.”

  They sighed heavily in disagreement.

  Gently he said, “What do you want me to say?—that I regret marrying for love, and having to spend the rest of my days with someone whom I happily adore beyond words? Well, I cannot.”

  “Oh!”

  “Surely you wish me joy.” He must’ve taken her hand in his.

  She cried out, “Let me alone!”

  “All right, Margaret, all right.” Kitt tried to calm her, but she would have none of it.

  Inconsolable, she wept for a long while. The colonel assumed a grim uncomfortable look. What to do? We couldn’t sneak away without looking like despicable eavesdroppers. Trapped we were, until the sister and brother would move on. They didn’t, however. There was nothing for it but to try to shut our ears to the rest of their private conversation.

  We heard more, of course. Margaret tearfully reminded him of their long-held plans to find a humble cottage near Greenock, where he would teach their pupils—the boarders, the day-scholars—while she managed the household. This shocked me that Kitt had made such a promise to her. He, apparently, hadn’t told her yet about his plans to study medicine, and he didn’t wish to, at least for now.

  Soon came her despairing plea that she be saved from an empty existence, one in which her family expected her to care for their mother. She blurted out, “My mother is always difficult! I can’t bear it any longer.” I truly felt sorry for her, knowing how it is to live with a demanding mother. Poor Margaret. She had waited patiently for her faithful brother, her beloved hero, to come and rescue her but, to her mind, he had forsaken her and their plans because of me.

  I’m no stranger to abandonment and the pain of it. You could say that Abandonment and I have long been foes, which is why I hate being left behind. Margaret’s grief and disappointment shook her to the very core. She took to her bed, feeling feverish. Kitt, an affectionate brother, watched over her, getting her to take beef tea, reading poetry to her, cheering her up with a posy of autumnal crocuses.

  He explained to me that his sister depended upon him, perhaps too much, and he worried for her. During his time on the continent, he had hoped that she would develop feelings for one of her suitors, but that hadn’t happened. And then I happened to him, and he happened to me, and the “we” of us—a bold, united, courageous love—constituted too many happenings for her.

  What I didn’t realize was how this whole matter about abandonment affected the colonel. He asked Aggie for the key to his desk where she had locked away certain remembrances of the past that might upset him. My childhood lesson-books, examinations and sketches crowded one of the drawers. Countless hours I had spent, sitting there in his study, doing my lessons. How strict he had become whenever he caught me cheating, or being a lazy-bones, or playing tit-tat-to when I should’ve been hard at work. He would give me poor marks, just like they do at a boy’s school, such as Negligenter for slackness, and Pessime for bad.

  The door to the colonel’s study swung wide open.

  “Mrs. Munro?”

  Eagerly I rushed forth. “Yes, colonel?”

  He crinkled his eyes. “Once, many years ago, when I slept under my favori
te Scots pine in the garden, a giggler had the audacity to shoot me with peas.”

  “A mischievous little girl, no doubt, who wanted her father’s attention.”

  He meditated upon it, then shut the door. I gasped inwardly, praying that he remembered something about me, without having one of his manic episodes. But I was too afraid to tell anyone at the time. Because if I did, then it might not be true, and my father would still be that other colonel, that waggish impostor, with his mind wandering in a hazy fog.

  Later that night, when we were about to retire, I mistakenly called him my father.

  Flustered, he searched my face. “I bid you good-night, Mrs. Munro.”

  “Good-night to you, colonel,” was my sad response.

  What could I do but continue on, quietly disappointed, forever hopeful? Come Sunday morning, when we attended the Catholic chapel on Auborough Street, my spirits felt somewhat renewed. Why is it, though, that when I’m trying to be contemplative and good, something always happens to dampen my mood?

  The pious Gibsons sat in the front row. How could I forget Mrs. Gibson’s old scorn towards me, the colonel’s love-child? Years ago, she had told me not to play anymore with her boys. My seven-year-old self at the time had saucily retorted, “Pooh! Your boys stink like cheese.” One boy was now seventeen, the other fifteen, and their mother still coddled them. I wondered if those two still smelled like boys? They turned round to gape at me and my handsome husband.

  “Who are those lads?” Kitt whispered.

  “The Gibson boys,” and I shuddered.

  Kitt touched my hand, and I puzzled at its meaning.

  We didn’t celebrate Mass, given that Father O’Shaughnessy was away in Whitby. Instead, we eighty congregants read from the Bible. At the end of it, a few brave souls known to everyone shared what was on their minds. Kitt then rose to his feet, even though it was his first time at our chapel, and he mentioned that he and I hadn’t been a part of a worshipping community for many months during our travels. “I have come to believe that faith cannot be cultivated on its own, in the absence of human fellowship,” said he. Hearing his words, I certainly felt guilty that I hadn’t acted kindly towards the Gibsons.