Leaving the relative comfort and safety of Arisaig House for the Beasdale train station felt a bit like picking her way barefoot over glass shards, but Maggie was determined not to let Sarah down. The Black Dog was napping, but for how long?
It was an uphill walk over dirt roads and under pewter skies to the tiny station, where she waited for the one and only train of the morning. It pulled in with a shrieking whistle and a billow of steam. The cold and drafty train took her to nearby Fort William, where it stood and waited for more passengers to board, then wended east through the mountains.
Maggie had brought her knitting, but she couldn’t help staring at the vistas outside the train’s dirty window. It was as if Scotland’s history were flashing before her eyes. Snowcapped mountains cut by the ancient glaciers. Giant oaks, with the dark tangle of birds’ nests in the bare branches. Sheep and horses grazing in frozen fields, dotted with white farmhouses.
She transferred trains at Glasgow’s Queen Street, waiting under the curved-glass Victorian glass ceiling, and continued east. There were graveyards on the curve of hills, older men on brown and patchy golf courses, small towns with lonely church spires beside blue lochs. Unconsciously, as the sun began to set, she began to hum the tune of “Scots Wha Hæ,” which she’d heard many times at the pub in the town of Arisaig. She loved the sound of the bagpipes and the cadences of Robert Burns’s lyrics:
Scots, wha hæ wi Wallace bled,
Scots, wham Bruce has aften led,
Walcome tæ yer gory bed,
Or tæ victorie.
Lay the proud usurpers low,
Tyrants fall in every foe,
Libertie’s in every blow!—
Let us do or dee.
Maggie’s feet and hands were aching with cold by the time she finally arrived at Princes Street Station in Edinburgh. She wrestled her valise from an overhead bin, and then made her way toward a great red sandstone building with Victorian carved figures and Corinthian columns, illuminated by moonlight.
Maggie snorted, remembering how David had once called the Langham Hotel “a Victorian train station.” Well, now she knew exactly what he meant. The Caledonian was one of Britain’s great railroad hotels. Made of red brick, it was as Victorian as the Queen herself—heavy, stately, and not quite fashionable. Angels and a sphinx overlooked doormen in livery who held large black umbrellas to shelter the hotel’s guests.
On the street corner a Salvation Army worker in her navy-blue uniform rang a brass bell. “Advent is coming!” she called in a Scots accent. “Advent is coming! Give to the poor!”
Maggie dropped a few coins into the woman’s basket and made her way up the steps to the lobby. There were marble floors and a great chandelier, pillars and a grand staircase. Upstairs, a dignified sign announced, was The Pompadour restaurant, but Maggie didn’t have the time or money for that. She checked in and then took the creaky elevator upstairs.
Her room might have been small, but it afforded an excellent view of Edinburgh Castle. The furniture was handsome, the duvet rose silk, and on the wall was a reproduction of George Henry’s oil painting Geisha Girl, her smile as mysterious as the Mona Lisa’s.
Maggie looked at the small silver bedside clock. It was time to get ready. She washed up and rolled her hair, dabbing on a touch of red lipstick. Wish I could find my pearl earrings, she thought absently, as she put on her hat and gloves, making sure to drop the wrought-iron key in her handbag.
She just had time for a quick cup of tea and roll with margarine at a restaurant across the street. As she sat, watching the other patrons talk and smile, she felt out of place. I shouldn’t have come, she thought, imagining her Black Dog flick his tail and bare his fangs in his sleep. What am I doing here?
Edinburgh boasted the same signs from the Ministry of War as London—BRITISHERS: ENLIST TODAY! and IT CAN HAPPEN HERE! Someone had used a finger to write in the dust on the back window of a vehicle: IF YOU THINK THE VAN’S DIRTY, YOU SHOULD SEE THE DRIVER.
Well, I suppose it could “happen here,” but it really hasn’t, Maggie thought. Yes, Edinburgh had the same sandbags and barbed wire as London, its metal fences and railings taken to be melted down for planes and tanks. It had the same black taxis and red telephone booths. But unlike London, Edinburgh had sustained no serious bomb damage. Maggie knew that some of the outlying areas had been hit and lay in rubble. But the city itself looked unscathed.
The people walked a different way, too, she noted—they were still confident and untouched, certain their families and homes would still be there when they returned. Edinburgh might have been a city at war, but it was not, like London, a warrior city. And there’s a big difference, Maggie realized, looking at the people: mothers pushing infants in prams, old men with tweed hats and goose-headed walking sticks, a pair of teenagers ducking into a door frame to get out of the wind long enough to light their cigarettes. They were able to sleep through the night in their beds, unmolested, not required to crawl off to Anderson shelters. She both resented their innocence of the brute reality of war, and also desperately wanted to protect it.