Chapter Twelve
Anna was mopping when I got downstairs the next morning. Without a word, she leaned the mop against the wall and went through to the kitchen. Breakfast was a piece of gray, mealy toast and another cup of tea made from recycled leaves, unceremoniously delivered.
Since I didn’t have anything else to do, I brought a book down to read by the fire, a murder mystery called Died in the Wool. The title had seemed a lark when I packed it for the trip, but judging from Anna’s expression, she didn’t agree.
After I settled into the chair, she mopped all around me, sloshing the gray water noisily in the bucket and wringing the rope mop quite clearly as a substitute for my neck. Finally, she rolled up the carpet so she could clean directly in front of me, all but asking me to lift my feet.
It was almost a relief when she planted her hands on her hips and said, “Surely you’re not going to waste another day?”
I closed my book and waited.
“Here’s Meg and me both working at least sixteen hours a day, her at the sawmill, me at the croft, and then taking turns catering to the likes of you, and there’s you spending your days lolling about by the fire waiting for your meals to be brought and your bed to be made.”
I moved my mouth, but nothing came out.
“Why don’t you knit some socks for the soldiers, or at least blanket squares?” she asked accusingly.
“I can’t. I don’t know how to knit.”
“Well, that’s a surprise.”
I set the book on the table. “Anna, I don’t know what you want me to do.”
“There’s a war going on, but apparently it’s all fun and games for you lot. I can’t imagine what you’re even doing here.”
Neither could I.
When Anna went back to mopping, I got my coat.
—
After finding the post office and enduring withering looks from the postman, whose fiery and unruly brows looked like caterpillars glued to his face, I sent the following telegram:
DR ERNEST PENNYPACKER 56 FRONT STREET, PHILADELPHIA PA
DEAREST PAPA HAVE MADE AWFUL MISTAKE STOP AM IN SCOTTISH HIGHLANDS MUST GET OUT STOP CANNOT BEAR OCEAN AGAIN PLEASE SEND AIRPLANE STOP I NEED YOU STOP YOUR DEVOTED DAUGHTER
The postman was even less impressed after I realized I had no way to pay him.
As soon as I left the post office, I began to wonder if I’d done the right thing. I hoped so, because the thing was certainly done.
When Ellis returned, I knew he would try to talk me out of going, but since he and Hank seemed intent on leaving me behind anyway, I couldn’t see why they shouldn’t leave me all the way behind, in the States. I supposed the only reason they’d brought me along in the first place was that Ellis couldn’t afford to stash me anywhere else.
—
I couldn’t go back to the inn until I was sure Anna had left, so I wandered around the village trying to find the loch.
The village consisted mostly of row houses and a few freestanding cottages surrounded by stone walls. There were only three stores, and stark reminders of the war everywhere: posters advising to “Make-Do and Mend” along with “Dig for Victory Now!” were plastered on the walls of the Public Hall, and the lone telephone booth—bright red and looking like it was plucked straight from a postcard—was shored up on three sides by sandbags. A group of fast, tiny planes came out of nowhere, zooming overhead in formation and causing me to shriek and duck into a doorway. The only reason I knew we weren’t under attack was that the villagers paid no more attention to the planes than they did to me. Not a single person made eye contact with me. I wondered if they all knew I was the Colonel’s daughter-in-law.
I came to a school. As I gazed at the children in the playground, I realized that every one of them, as well as all the adults on the street, had a cardboard box like Meg’s slung over one shoulder by a piece of string. I thought of Anna’s comment about mustard gas and felt suddenly naked.
Most sobering was the graveyard, which contained family stones with the freshly carved names of young men. There weren’t many different surnames, and many of the names were identical. I counted three Hector McKenzies and four Donald Frasers, and wondered how many of the latter were connected to the Fraser Arms. Probably all of them, if you went back far enough. Old Philadelphia suddenly didn’t seem so old.
There was one stone, still quite new, that I stood in front of for a long time. It was unusual not just because an infant, husband, and wife had all died within two months of each other, but also because the date of the husband’s death was vague—only the month and year were engraved on the stone, with a space left for the date. They had died three years before, so I imagined that he, too, was a casualty of war, and that in the chaos the specifics had been lost. There was only one date for the baby. She must have been stillborn, or died immediately after birth. The wife had died six weeks later. Perhaps she’d died of a broken heart. I wondered what it would be like to love that much.
The sky had turned threatening, so I wasn’t surprised when the sleet started. I left the churchyard and headed up the road. Not long after, I became so light-headed I had to lean against a wooden fence post until the feeling passed. If I hadn’t known better, I might have thought I was pregnant.
The furry white ponies on the other side of the fence came to greet me, pushing their inquisitive noses into my face and giving whiskery kisses for naught. There was nothing in my pocket but a soot-covered, crumpled handkerchief.
Eventually, I walked the long way around to the top of the road where the Fraser Arms was. As I skulked around the bend waiting for Anna to leave on her bicycle, I realized that I’d been all the way around the village and had yet to lay eyes on the loch. On the map, Drumnadrochit appeared to be virtually on its bank.
I’d harbored the hope that at some point in the afternoon I’d see the monster. Not that I had a camera or any way to prove it, and in a way I was glad I hadn’t seen it, because it was not a noble wish. I just wanted to see it before Hank and Ellis did, to make them regret leaving me behind—and not just that day, or the day before.
It had always been Ellis and Hank, or Hank and Ellis, long before our group included Freddie and whatever girl was currently swooning over Hank. It had begun years before that, when they were at Brooks together, and then at Harvard. Even after Ellis and I married, I often felt like an afterthought.
I needed him to comfort me, to reassure me that I was wrong. But he wasn’t there. He simply wasn’t there.