Annie lifted the final diary and turned towards him. ‘After you phoned,’ she said, ‘I dug these out and spent most of the next two days reading them. I can’t tell you what memories they brought back. I could almost smell Granny’s house as I read. And I could hear that distinctive little creak she used to have in her voice when she was reading.’ She paused. ‘You know she didn’t read us everything?’
He nodded. ‘I knew there was stuff our folks didn’t want us to hear. I can’t imagine what, though.’
‘You’ll figure it out when you read for yourself,’ Annie said. ‘But you mentioned the ring when you phoned, and that’s what I focused on.’ She searched his face with dark green, puzzled eyes, then opened up the diary that she held in her hands and searched through it for a page she had marked with a Post-it. ‘His entries became more and more infrequent before he stopped altogether. But you should read first from here, Sime. Granny never read us any of this. If she had I’m sure you’d have remembered the significance of the ring.’ She handed him the diary. ‘When you’ve read to the end, you can go back and follow the trail from the beginning. I think you’ll know where to look.’
She reached up and kissed him softly on the cheek.
‘I hope you’ll find resolution here.’
When she had gone, Sime stood for a while listening to the silence of the room around him. Somewhere outside he heard the hoot of a distant owl. The diary seemed to grow heavier as he stood there with it in his hands, before eventually he pulled up the chair at a small writing desk below the dormer.
He sat down and turned on the reading light. Then carefully opened the diary at the page she had marked and began to read.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Thursday, 19th May 1853
I have floored the beams now in the pitch of my cabin roof to make an attic. I have built a spare room and indoor toilet at the back, and a covered porch with fly screens at the front. I often sit on the porch at the end of the day and watch the sun set over the trees, and I dream about how things might have been had I not been separated from Ciorstaidh on the quay at Glasgow that fateful day.
I have cleared and ploughed most of my land, and grow enough to feed myself with some left over to sell. At certain times of the year, myself and a few of the other men from Gould walk across the border to earn a bit of cash on the bigger farms at Vermont in the United States. At others I am busy enough on my own land. Especially at harvest time when I have to rush to bring in the crops before the first frosts, which can come as early as September.
Recently I have obtained part-time work teaching English to the Gaelic-speaking children at Gould school. Most of them arrive having spoken only Gaelic in the home, but when it comes to learning to read and write, it’s in English that they must do it.
The reason I write about this today is that a remarkable thing happened at the school just yesterday morning.
There is a new teacher this year, Jean Macritchie. She’s married to Angus Macritchie, the mayor of the Lingwick municipality. She’s a very genteel sort of lady. In her mid-forties, I would say. No airs and graces about her, but polite and softly spoken. She wears print cotton dresses and silk shawls and has a sort of artistic air about her. In fact, art is her great passion, and she has instituted a new art class for the children.
It was lunchtime yesterday when I finally finished marking some papers and I wandered into her classroom. Everyone had gone to eat, but the still-life that Mrs Macritchie had set up for the children to draw was still there. Just a jug and a glass of water and some fruit. And the efforts of the children themselves were still lying on their desks.
I wandered around looking at them. Most were pretty awful. Some of them even made me laugh. And one or two were quite good. I have no idea what impelled me to do it, for I have never drawn anything in my life, but I had a sudden fancy to see what kind of a fist I could make of it myself. So I got a fresh sheet of paper and some charcoal from Mrs Macritchie’s desk, and sat down to draw.
It’s amazing how I got sucked into it. I don’t know how long I sat there following the lines that my eye guided me to draw, using the flat of the charcoal to create the light and the shade, but I didn’t hear Mrs Macritchie coming in until she spoke. I just about jumped out of my skin. I looked up and there she was peering down at my sketch. ‘How long have you been drawing, Sime?’
‘I’ve no idea,’ I said. ‘About half an hour, maybe.’
She laughed then. ‘No, I mean, is drawing something you’ve been doing for a long time?’