Mabel stirred the porridge. There wasn’t really enough, but her Da wasn’t going to eat much, anyway. Henry and Charlie, the youngest, would divvy up his share and still look for more. She looked at the clock. Nearly seven. Better wake them all.
Da, lying so straight and still on the right half of the big bed, could have been a ghost already. It was hard to believe that he was only 55, his skin translucent over the blue tracery of the blood vessels and she had teased him only yesterday that her own hair, so very pale, was clearly a gift from him. He smiled his shy sweet smile for a moment as they both remembered it had been as carroty red as Charlie’s not long ago. But Margaret had sniffed that superior sniff of hers and said, “As if the hair on your head was any kind of gift.”
Mabel’s hair had been moonlight colored from the first. The shape of her face was like her mother’s, high cheekboned, pointed-chinned, but somehow whitewashed or bleached paler, like a copy carved in ivory, except for her eyes. Da had sparkling blue eyes, light with laughter, and Ma’s had been green and changeable like the sea. Somehow out of that, Mabel had eyes both green and blue with a touch of gold all at once, as if all the color in her body concentrated there. And she was the only one of the ten children—nine now--to look at all like Ma. The rest came in varying shades of red hair and freckles, blue eyes ranging from George’s China blues to Jessie’s forget-me-not. Margaret, four years younger than Mabel, had flyaway strawberry curls and icy irises that kept all the light they took in.
Gently, Mabel set the tray with the little bit of porridge and the single cup of tea on the nightstand next to her father. She stroked his hand, “Da, time to wake up.” He stirred and opened his eyes. “Eat your breakfast,” she said. “I need to wake the others.”
“You’re a good girl, Mabel,” he said.
She didn’t feel like it as she stood in the doorway of the boys’ room. “Rise and shine, you lot,” she sang out. There were groans. “And Archie, you make sure that all of you wash your faces, even your own.”
Margaret was already awake and dressed in her blue dress, fluffing her curls in the mirror. “Would you please help Ellen and Jessie?” Mabel said, giving Agnes’s shoulder a little shake.
“I’m supposed to open the shop this morning,” Margaret said. “Agnes can do it.”
“It’s just gone seven,” Mabel said, trying to be reasonable. “I’m sure it won’t take long.”
“Then why don’t you do it yourself,” Margaret said, flouncing out the door.
Agnes stretched, her arms too long for her worn nightgown. “It’s no trouble for me.” Mabel gave her a grateful hug.
Back in the kitchen, Mabel surveyed the devastation four brothers with the manners of bears can do to a breakfast table. “Leave some for your sisters,” she said.
“Who died and made you boss?” Archie said.
Mabel’s pale face paled more. George nudged Archie, “Don’t be a gowk.”
Archie’s face reddened all the way down his neck, where their brother John’s dog tags hung beneath his shirt. He had been twelve when John died at the Somme, fourteen when all of them had had Spanish flu and Ma had not made it through. He had been the most mischievous of the siblings until then, ruddy, chubby, trusting everything to come right. He opened his mouth and Mabel didn’t know if it was to complain more or apologize. She never found out because Henry and Charlie between them knocked over the sugar bowl and Agnes, Ellen, and Jessie in their dark skirts and white blouses came into the kitchen.
Fifteen minutes later, Archie and Agnes were off to the family’s jewelry shop. Archie didn’t have his father’s gift for delicate workmanship, but he did have a head for figures, which made him look graver than his seventeen years; the business was not flourishing since Da was so poorly. Agnes did have a feel for the craft, but her designs were too new for the old ladies who could afford to buy from them. Margaret, at 21, ruled over the glass cases, bitterly resenting every happy couple in to buy wedding rings.
“And what are you lot doing today?” Mabel asked.
“I thought I’d take the boys fishing,” George said. Henry and Charlie whooped and disappeared to dig worms.
Ellen and Jessie giggled at each other and whispered. Mabel threw up her hands in mock horror. “Right,” she said. “Secret stuff. Be home for dinner.” Mabel suspected they’d be down by the sea as well, running with the rest of the kids who weren’t quite old enough to pair off, surfing the ever-changing alliances and battles.
When the house was empty, Mabel returned to Da’s room to collect his tray. “Thank you, lass,” he said.
She opened the curtains. “The longest day,” she said. “Good thing. I have plenty to do.”
“Sit with me a moment,” he said. “We have things to talk about.” He patted the smooth left side of the bed, Ma’s side, but Mabel pulled up a chair to perch on instead. Da reached under his pillow and pulled out a sketchbook. He caressed the cover for a moment, took a deep breath, and said, “Mabel, I’m dying.”
The tears filled Mabel’s sky-sea-sun eyes and she started to deny it, but Da held up one thin hand. “It’s true,” he said. “And death is a time for truth-telling. I could not love you more, my dear.”
Mabel nodded. She had always loved him best, too, better than her beautiful, busy, distracted mother. She loved the precision of his movements and the strength of his laughter and the way he made everything seem new with his joy. “I know.”
“But,” he said. “You had another Da, one who never met you, but one you need to know about.” He opened the sketchbook. Mabel had thought it was his, one that he used for his jewelry designs, but it was Ma’s. A sculpted face, beautiful, otherworldly, slightly tilted eyes and a quirking smile looked out from the page. Pointed ears.
“No,” she said.
“Darling girl, I’m dying. You are my daughter, right enough, and I’ve loved you since I first saw your dandelion hair, but hard times are coming for all of you. You need to know about your other Da’s people.”
“But Ma loved you,” Mabel protested. It was true. Even in all the rough and tumble of the day, the endless cooking and washing and work, Ma had always stopped to smooth her hair and straighten her dress so she’d look well for Da when he came through the door, putting her arms around his neck and kissing him.
“And before me, she loved him,” Da said. “His name was Mabon and he was some kind of prince, but he died. Someone came to her and told her at the sìdean when she had gone to tell him she was pregnant.”
“The milk and honey,” Mabel said.
“Yes,” Da agreed. “It was her way to remember, to keep you connected to your other family. And there is this.” He reached under the pillow again and brought out a locket.
Mabel took it. “You made this,” she said.
“I did,” Da agreed, with pride. “My best work. Inside is a bit of your Ma’s hair and a bit of his. Your Ma wore it always. I should have given it to you when she died, but I was selfish and kept it near me instead. It’s yours now. And I want to come with you tonight, to the sìdean.”
Mabel squeezed his hand. “Better rest up, then. And I better get my work done.” She slid the locket into her apron pocket, took up the tray, and left him looking at the sketch.
She lost herself in the washing up, in getting in the vegetables for the stew, in kneading the bread and patching the knees of the boys’ pants, but she felt the weight of the locket in her pocket. It shifted everything. The soap bubbles in the dishpan iridesced more vividly. The carrots practically grew in her hands. Even the thread seemed to sing through the fabric. It was a relief when the house re-filled with her siblings because their noise covered everything.
After the younger ones were in bed, Mabel looked at Margaret and Agnes and Archie. “Da wants to come with us.”
Margaret sniffed. “I have a date,” she said. “If you want to go in for foolishness, you go right ahead.”
Archie shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “I should work on the books,” he said.
Agnes, meek, mild, looked from Mabel to the others. Mabel smiled at her ruefully. “It’s all right, Agnes. You can get some rest. Da and I will go.”
Da gripped Mabel’s arm tightly. It took a long time for him to shuffle his way to the sìdean and then to lower himself to sit on a boulder while Mabel placed the wooden bowl of milk and honey on the ground. Nothing happened. The earth did not open. No voices whispered or sang or spoke in the moon-washed hills. Nothing ever had before, but this time, Mabel felt it like a snub, like the way Margaret treated her.
She helped Da back toward the house, outwardly patient and inwardly seething at someone or everyone or no one. The shadows, the trees, the blades of grass had the kind of sharpness that comes from moonlight, and something extra that Mabel thought must come from the locket. She felt it thump against her leg as her skirt shifted with each step and she hated it.
Da died in the night. The next morning, Mabel did not hesitate. She packed her Sunday dress, her good coat, her three blouses and extra skirt, one nightdress, underthings, her mother’s sketchbook, and one of Da’s old jumpers, smelling of pipe and whiskey, in Ma’s old suitcase. The locket weighed heavy in her pocket. She left a note for Margaret and the rest and went to catch the bus to Glasgow.
***
Mabel pulled four pints, one of each of the men at the table in the back. They were regulars, dressed too fine to be entirely honest, not fine enough to be good at crime. Owen tried to pinch her behind, but Malcolm slapped his hand away. “That’s no way to treat a lady,” he said.
Owen snorted, “She’s a barmaid.”
“And you’re a lazy layabout,” Malcolm said. “Pretend your mam taught you some manners.”
Martin and Frank laughed. “Speaking of ladies…” Martin winked.
“Don’t you go insulting my mam,” Owen said, standing up, fists clenched.
“Take it outside,” Mabel said, tiredly. “I’ve had enough of cleaning up the broken crockery after you lot.”
They settled down instead, got to the business of drinking and boasting and plotting whatever petty mischief they had going, but Malcolm’s eyes followed Mabel.
“I’m off,” she called to Angus, the landlord. She untied her apron and hung it on its peg.
“Walk you home?” Malcolm asked, suddenly at her elbow.
Mabel looked him up and down, from his sleekly parted hair and pencil moustache to his shiny brown boots. “If you can keep up,” she said.
Malcolm winked at the rest of the boys and Mabel cast her eyes up toward the ceiling, asking for patience or mercy or something. The truth was, there was something about Malcolm Clark, something that made her heart beat just a little faster under the heart locket she wore under her pale green summer dress. The dress had been something of an extravagance, linen and cool, and she had taken pains over the embroidered collar and the covered belt. She had thought of patterning the collar with something geometric, but what came out was delicate vines with tiny pale flowers, just the color of her own hair. The way Malcolm was looking at her in it made her think that giving up her morning tea to economize was worth it.
Mabel was an old maid at 33 and she knew it, even though she also knew she didn’t look any older than she had when she’d arrived in Glasgow eight years before. She shared a flat with three other old maids on the first floor of a four story tenement. The only thing that could be said in praise of the building was that Mabel had made the back garden grow. They slipped in through the rickety gate in the stone wall.
“It’s almost enchanted,” Malcolm said. Then he swung his walking stick and created a shower of rose petals to redeem his masculine sense of self.
The heavy locket on Mabel’s breast agreed, both about the enchantment and about the masculinity. Malcolm had spent the war working in steel, not in the army, because he was the only child of his widowed mother. Both the steel and the mother had left their mark, one in a certain stiffness of spine and the other in an inability to get wrinkles out of his shirts now that his mother no longer ironed for him. Mabel walked slowly, just ahead of him, down the garden path to the door.
“Well, then,” he said. “Here you are, safe and sound.” The midsummer sun still slanted through the leaves, just about to set. It gilded Mabel’s silvery hair.
“You’ll come in for a cup?” she asked. “It won’t be scandalous. Flo is home.”
He nodded. and followed her up the grimy stairway. The women had managed to get their flat clean, but there was nothing to be done about the splintered floors and the cracked windows. Flo tactfully took her mending off to her bedroom as Mabel and Malcolm edged into the kitchen.
Mabel stopped short and Malcolm bumped into her. “I’m sorry,” she said, pushing a lock of hair back behind her delicate, almost-pointed ear.
He saw a wooden bowl on the scrubbed and sanded table.
“I forgot,” she said. “I have something I need to do tonight.”
Malcolm raised an eyebrow at her and she caught the twinkle in his gray eyes. “Nothing like that, you silly,” she said. “Just a tradition. I need to put out the milk and honey.”
Half-embarrassed, she filled the kettle and lit the gas. She spooned the tea into the pot—that would be another week without tea for her—and while she waited for the water, she poured half of the milk into the bowl. “I’ll leave you enough for your tea,” she promised.
He drank his tea and helped with the washing-up. “Shall I come with you?” he asked, nodding at the bowl.
The locket thumped on her chest. “I would like that,” she said.
“Where do you leave it?” he asked, surveying the shadowy garden.
“In Craighill, I used to take it to the sidean,” she said. “Here, the only hills in the garden are where the potatoes grow, so I put it there.”
“Sensible,” Malcolm agreed.
She bent gracefully and set the dish under the white-flowered vines. When she stood up, Malcolm took both her hands. “Mabel, I want to ask you something.”
Mabel’s green-blue-gold eyes managed to retain their color even in the shadows. Looking into them, he said, “Will you marry me?”
He was never sure whether it was Mabel or some quiet voice from the garden that said yes.
