Nicky I May 1901 Dundee, Scotland Nicky woke to gold morning light effervescing in the eaves of her parents'' house. It was May, but in this small room winter lingered, the old fireplace unused on account of the coal stains that had ruined the stair carpet. She pressed her feet on the floorboards, heat from the downstairs fire held in the wood, slowly creeping into her bones. The mirrored door of the Georgian wardrobe threw back the white fangs of her nightdress collar, two dark curtains of her unpinned hair framing her face. Recently, her temples had begun to shimmer with strands of gray. She was only twenty-seven, and at forty-nine her mother Mhairi still had a vivid red crown, even when she removed her hairpieces. But they said gray hair was the flower of worry, and she had spent the last twenty months in two halves-her body here in Dundee, installed in her parents'' house like a child, and her mind with Allan in the Transvaal, fighting the Boers. She frightened herself by struggling to recall the exact line of his jaw, the texture of his palms, his smell.
Her own husband. So far, marriage had not been as she expected. But then, she had not expected a war. She washed quickly by the sink, fastened her corset, slipped her petticoat and dress over her head. Then she pinned up her hair, clipping two long ringlets that had come from her sister''s head just above her ears. Her own hair was poker-straight; not even the hottest iron produced a lasting curl. It was Monday-the day Allan''s letters arrived at their house on Faulkner Street. The postman came at nine, which was yet two hours away, but on Mondays she took the chance to spend the day there, beating the rugs and airing the rooms.
It had been her mother''s idea for her to move back into her parents'' home while Allan was dispatched-a woman living alone was indecent, whether wedded or not-but she had surprised herself by how indignant she felt at this requirement. Wasn''t war indecent? And yet. There was certainly nothing wrong with her childhood home-Larkbrae was one of the finest homes in Dundee, sitting proud above the Tay-but she felt she had moved backward in time into her old life. The main reason she went, aside from collecting mail, was to feel the embrace of her marital home, and all its promise: a future with Allan. From the floors below, a voice sailed through the shadowy hall. "Wheesht, now. I''ve got you!" She rushed downstairs to find her father, stooped over, his shirt and waistcoat unbuttoned, revealing his vest. Something was clasped between his palms, his strong arms held at right angles as he addressed whatever he held.
His hands were covered in soot. Then, sensing her there, he looked up and tilted his chin. "Open the door." She turned and unlocked the storm doors, watching as he inched past, two small wings poking through the gaps in his hands. He had caught a bird, and from the soot marks on his forearms and vest she gathered it had fallen down the chimney. "Steady, now," he said, stepping out onto the porch with his arms outstretched. He lifted his top hand away to reveal a sparrow crouching in his palm. A second later, it shot off toward the trees.
Her father clapped his hands together as he looked after it, and she watched him carefully, unnerved. George Abney wasn''t a man to care about small things, and never a man inclined to save a creature that had fallen into the grate. He looked like he''d not slept all night, still in yesterday''s shirt and waistcoat, his eyes shadowy and the gray hair at the sides of his head ruffled. "Are you well, Father?" she asked. He kept his pale eyes on the garden ahead, searching after the bird. "Yes," he said. "I think I am. I think I am.
" He turned to her. "Have you time for a word?" She raised her eyebrows, certain now that something was amiss. Her father never sought her out, never asked to speak to her. They were too similar, her mother always said. Each as headstrong as the other, long grudges held. "Is something the matter?" she asked, following him slowly along the hall to his office at the other end. He didn''t answer, but she noticed he walked as though carrying an unseen stone on his back, weary from wrestling all night with the cares of his mind. Except her father never worried, never struggled.
George ran one of the oldest and most successful whaling companies in Scotland, and he did so by being bullish and fierce, and sometimes cruel. Whaling was as perilous as it was necessary, for without blubber the streets and the factories would lie dark. A venture of blood and bone to sequester light. Though George never ventured out on the ships, he had his own tempests to weather, such as the loss of three ships in as many years, and all his profits with them. The newspapers had taken pleasure in printing their speculations about the finances of Abney & Sons Whale Fishing Company, with hints that the crew of George''s only remaining ship, the Ormen, were set to down tools in protest at their conditions. Inside George''s office, the heavy curtains were still drawn from the night before, walnut paneling and bookcases cocooning them. A lamp on his desk set an amber glow across his face, and when he closed the door she saw he was troubled, a crease deepening in his forehead. "I want to apologize," he said, moving to his desk.
"For what?" "I did something a few days ago that I deeply regret," he said, looking down at something. A letter. "But today, I shall put it right." She frowned, wondering if she had missed a conversation. "Put what right?" He pulled out the desk chair and sank into it as though the metal inside him had splintered. Should she call her mother, or her sister, Cat? Was he having a heart attack? There was a glass of water on the table next to the sofa; she passed it to him, watching nervously as he raised it to his mouth with a trembling hand. Then she pulled up another chair and sat close. "Papa?" She didn''t know what else to say.
She couldn''t bring herself to touch him. They''d not touched in years. She knew he loved her in that deeply unacknowledged way that their family seemed to love one another, and she was suddenly moved by the thought that he might die. "The company is folding," he said, dabbing his mouth with a handkerchief. "I''ve not told your mother. You''re not to say a word." The words landed like stones. The company? He couldn''t mean the family business.
"I won''t tell a soul," she said, staggered now by the realization that she was the first to receive this terrible news. He hadn''t told her mother. Of course not. It would devastate her if it was true. "We may need to sell this house," he said, nudging papers across the desktop with his fingertips, a general tabling his battle strategy. "I''ve written to Uncle Jim." "For what reason?" "To see if he would help us move to Toronto." "Toronto?" She''d suspected things with the company were tricky, especially after the last ship sank in the Arctic.
Many said that Dundee was going the way of Aberdeen, whaling no longer profitable. The lost ships weren''t being replaced. But this was something else. Her father wasn''t one to panic. He was never afraid. "You need to be careful," he said, coughing hoarsely into his fist. "I''m going to put things right. But I need you to keep out of sight for a while.
" She reeled. Out of whose sight, exactly? How would the collapse of the company put her in danger? "Papa," she said again, touching his arm. "What things? Why do I need to keep out of sight?" He held her in a long look, his eyes softening. "You used to sing as a child. You had such a beautiful voice. My little songbird. Why did you stop?" She searched his face, her thoughts cartwheeling. "You had such a lovely voice," he said, his voice a whisper, and she felt his hand against her cheek.
He hadn''t touched her when Morag died. Not even at the graveside, when she fell to her knees. He turned away and waved a hand, his voice hard again. "Go on, now. We''ll talk more later." She felt panicked, the strangeness of the situation forming a hard knot in her throat. "What is it you''re going to put right?" she asked as he made for the window, throwing open the curtains. A spear of light thrusted through the room.
"Go on," he said again, and she knew he would say no more. Outside, she saw a bird in the branches of the old willow tree that poured down to the path. A sparrow, she thought, its wings still clotted with soot. II Nicky''s marital home on Faulkner Street was a brisk twenty-minute walk followed by a five-mile tram ride from her parents'' house on Douglas Terrace. She took the road that ran alongside the River Tay to hear the slap of the waves against the shoreline buffer and the call of the gulls. This part of the city was quiet, without the sound of traffic or industry, and without the cacophony of accents that swirled in the heart of Dundee. Russian, American, Indian, Polish-Dundee was a global city, now, nicknamed "Juteopolis" for the boom in the jute trade. It was good for many-sixty jute mills providing jobs for fifty thousand.
The poverty that had beaten down generations beginning to ease. She turned the strange encounter with her father over in her mind, unstitching his words from the fabric of memory as though she might find a hidden chamber inside their echo, a secret meaning.