I was tired, so tired, and my losses so many. I could make no proper reply. But suddenly, standing there at the well with a bucket of water that Clementina would be waiting for, I thought: Aye, Magnus Tulloch is the one I will tell.

I was the same and I had changed too. It is just what people do.

August 1973

August 1973

Oh, lambsie. All this grief I am parcelling up for you in these books. I’m afraid you will not be wanting to read any more, and I canna lie: there is more.

But I would never want you to think I have forgotten the joy. There was that, too, aye. Perhaps I will choose a pen of another colour and hope you will stay with me a wee while longer. Because I want you to stay. I want to write a story that you will read some day, right through to the end.

Joy and grief. It is life, lambsie: the promise and the pain. You have to kneel to both.

20

That summer at Lerwick in 1906—never have I sung so much. Not hymns, not Sankey’s, no. I sang to put distance between the now I lived and the past I’d buried. I sang to take my mind from salt eating at the sores on my skin. I sang to get through exhausting days that sometimes turned into long, wearying nights. And for that I needed the mindless and the cheerful. Thank you, Harry Lauder, for ‘Roamin in the Gloamin’ and ‘Doughie the Baker’, for ‘She Is My Daisy’ and ‘Stop Yer Tickling, Jock’. The girls joined in, ever willing—no need to be asked twice, them—but Clementina Slater often warned that if she was plagued with another round of ‘It’s Nice to Get Up in the Morning but it’s Nicer to Lie in Bed’ she would take herself back to bed an’ we could pack the herrin’ ourselves.

So purposeful, I was, about seeking out cheer that it took me by surprise when it turned into something else. When I stumbled upon the sublime.

~

Every night after tea, there were chores—washing out clooties, dressing my hands, sharpening my gipper. And then I’d sit by the fire, talking with Magnus Tulloch. On Saturday nights we’d dance, although sometimes we didn’t because the music jangled him, set off the ringing in his ears. Oh, the disappointment after a week of waiting for that, for him … Well, I would scold myself for impatience—he couldn’t help it, now, could he?—and blush at the strange and breathless ache in me.

Forgive me, Meggie, he’d say in a yearning way that would make me shiver and make me glad because it meant he felt the same.