Entry Island

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

I sit writing this tonight with a real sense that there is some force that guides our lives in ways that we will never understand. I could, I suppose, attribute it to God. But then I would have to credit Him with the bad as well as the good, and to be truthful I am no longer sure what I believe. Life has treated me well and badly in almost equal measure, but it is the bad that always tests our faith. In a strange way we tend to take the good for granted. But I shall never do that again. Not after today.

I have been in Quebec City all this week at an exhibition of my work in the old walled town, almost in the shadow of the Château Haldimand. There are sixty works in the exhibition, and today was the final day, with only two paintings remaining to be sold. It was late afternoon and I was preparing to leave shortly when a young lady entered the gallery.

She was an extraordinarily pretty young woman, which is what immediately drew my eye, although to be honest she was not of the class that one would expect to be visiting an art gallery. I calculated that she was probably in her late teens or early twenties, and while very presentable she was plainly dressed, as you might expect of a maid or a serving girl. But there was something about her that fascinated me, and I could hardly stop myself from watching her as she wandered casually around the gallery moving from one painting to the next. She took some time over each picture, and seemed quite engrossed.

There were others in the gallery at the time, and I became distracted by a potential buyer asking me questions about one of my unsold works.

When he had gone, without buying I might add, the sound of a lady clearing her throat made me turn, and there she was standing at my elbow. There was such an intensity in her eyes that my stomach flipped over. Close up she was even more beautiful than from a distance. She smiled. ‘I’m sorry to disturb you, sir. They tell me that you are the artist.’

I felt quite unusually bashful. ‘Yes.’

‘Scottish landscapes, I think.’

‘That’s right.’

‘They are very beautiful.’

‘Thank you.’ My tongue seemed to be sticking to the roof of my mouth.

‘But they’re not just anywhere in Scotland, are they?’

I smiled. ‘Well, no. They are all landscapes of the Outer Hebrides.’

‘And why did you choose that particular place?’

I laughed. ‘It’s where I grew up.’ I hesitated. ‘Are you interested in buying?’

‘Oh, good Lord, no!’ She almost laughed. ‘I couldn’t afford to, even if I had somewhere to hang them.’ Her smile faded, and there was the strangest, most awkward silence between us. And suddenly she said, ‘Why did you come to Canada?’

I was quite taken aback by her directness, but answered her unexpected question honestly. ‘Because my village on the Isle of Lewis and Harris was cleared by its landlord. I had no choice.’

‘And where did you sail from?’

I frowned now, becoming a little irritated by her questions. But I remained polite. ‘Glasgow,’ I said.

She looked at me very directly. ‘Aboard the Eliza?’

Now I was astonished. ‘Well, yes. But how could you possibly know that? You would have been no more than a baby at the time.’

Her smile seemed to me tinged with sadness. ‘That’s exactly what I was,’ she said. ‘Delivered aboard the Eliza by a Highlander who knew how to recover a baby from the breech position.’

I swear that my heart stopped beating for a full minute.

‘A man who gave me my life,’ she said. ‘I had always known that his name was Sime Mackenzie.’ Her eyes never left mine for one moment. ‘I first heard about you, maybe three years ago. An article in the newspaper. And I’d always wondered, but never dared hope until now that you would be that man.’

I had no idea what to say. A million emotions clouded my thinking, but all I wanted to do was hold her in my arms, as I had done on the Eliza all those years before. Of course, I didn’t. I just stood there like an idiot.

‘The family who raised me gave me their surname, Mackinnon. And the Christian name of my mother.’

‘Catrìona,’ the name slipped from my lips in a whisper.

‘I wanted to give you this,’ she said.

And she took out a gold signet ring with an arm and sword engraved in red carnelian. I could hardly believe my eyes. The ring that Ciorstaidh had given me on the quay in Glasgow the day that I lost her. And along with the cash borrowed from Michaél, the ring that I had given to the Mackinnon family into whose care I left the baby at Grosse Île. The only thing of any value that I possessed. My last link to Ciorstaidh, and the greatest sacrifice I could have made.

‘I suppose it must have been worth a small fortune,’ Catrìona said. ‘But they never sold it. Couldn’t bring themselves to do it. The money you gave them helped them on their way to a new life, and I grew up with this ring on a chain around my neck.’ She held it out to me. ‘I’m giving it back to you now as a thank you for the gift of life that you gave me.’