The Ghost

By Debra Milligan

The Ghost
Julia Mac Vicker is a young widow working in Glasgow, just after the end of the Great War. Grief-stricken, she slowly takes the first few steps of what will be her new life. One large step is her work as an apprentice draughtsman at an engineering house. At first, this woman is scarcely aware of the existence of a ghost. This ghost is the spirit of her dead husband, Heath, who drowned in the Minch on New Year’s Eve of 1918. As the weeks pass by, Julia experiences anguished memories and eerie sensations that are, indeed, senses-beyond-the-senses.

This story is Julia’s story, the tale of a young widow venturing forth into independence and eventual fulfillment as a maturing woman. With courage and trepidation, she comes to realize that she must free The Ghost, Her Ghost, from his watery grave. Only then can she be free to live fully. Only then can she love once more, but in a more profound way the young Scotsman who painfully bears too many reminders of The Ghost.

Julia had no real intention of falling in love with anyone, least of all with the young, immature, surly, selfish engineer Alexander Aberdeen. This boy insists on taking charge of teaching Julia the fundamentals of engineering drawing and, through his insistence upon assuming a superior position to this young woman, he falls in love with her. He is utterly blind to his love for Julia, just as he is woefully blind to the fact that he does not love an odious, low female whom he has engaged, literally, as a romantic engineering project.

The engineering house of Hamilton & Mac Duff in downtown Glasgow is the setting of not only this almost silent romantic intrigue; it is also the covert scene of an arms smuggling operation to support the Irish Republican Brotherhood. Irishmen and Scotsmen almost come to blows over the fate of a free Ireland, but the real fireworks take place within the hearts of this young widow and this foolish boy who has yet to become a man. Alexander Aberdeen learns his lessons in life while Julia learns to live her life. Ultimately, they learn of their love for each other, but not until a couple of corpses find their fitting endings.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Debra Milligan
• Release date: Jul 27, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310977169

Debra Milligan

Debra Milligan is a novelist, essayist, poet, and short story writer. She is fluent in French and has varied interests in the fine arts, architecture, history of all kinds, music, horses, hounds, the Golden Age of Hollywood, quilting, fashion, and gardening.

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The Ghost

By Debra Milligan

Copyright 2014 Debra Milligan

Smashwords Edition

All Rights Reserved

Cover design Copyright 2014

DigitalDonna.com

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Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your very own copy.

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Table of Contents

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

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DEDICATION

To My Conquistador

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Chapter One

Alexander Aberdeen was a Scottish bridge engineer. He was born in 1895 in Glasgow. He was a good engineer and had suffered only two bridge collapses in his career. These failures, however, were not of the physical or structural sort that involved spans, piers, or girders. These failures were of the heart. They were romances that he’d insistently engineered and they toppled from their own fraudulent weight. Of them, Alexander would later say, They are doors we do not open.

And yet the statement begs us to open them. They were, after all, the gateways that led to the portal of true love.

The Hogmanay of 1919 cast a black pall over the Hebridean isle of Lewis and Harris, indeed over all of Scotland. On that New Year’s Eve, HMS Iolaire sank in the Minch. This strait in north-west Scotland separates the north-west Highlands, as well as the northern Inner Hebrides, from the island of Lewis and Harris in the Outer Hebrides.

The HMS Iolaire was an admiralty ship, a sailing yacht that had been commandeered by the Admiralty in 1915 during the Great War. It was returning the Scots contingent of servicemen home for a holiday to this island whose northern part is called Lewis, and whose southern part is called Harris. For those brave men, however, it did not matter to what part of the island they were returning: they were coming home.

The New Year had only just begun when the Iolaire approached Stornoway Harbour. There was a rising wind and rain, perhaps sleet. Because there were so few survivors, the full truth of the tragedy would never be known. The details remained unclear at best. The light at Arnish Point was reportedly seen but the Iolaire did not change course at the proper place so as to head safely into harbour. The ship was therefore headed straight toward the rocks of Holm Cliffs. The passengers on board must have taken ominous notice of this treacherous path and the even more treacherous destination.

It was five minutes to two on the morning of the New Year when HMS Iolaire crashed into the dark rocks known as the Beasts of Holm. The tragedy occurred ever more rapidly after the ship listed starboard and took on water. Rescue attempts were made; some were successful, others horrifically doomed. Of the approximate 284 servicemen and crew, only 79 survived.

On 10 January 1919 The Stornoway Gazette uttered these words:

"No one who is now alive in Lewis can ever forget the 1st January 1919, and future generations will speak of it as the blackest day in the history of the island, for on it 200 of the bravest and best perished on the very threshold of their homes under the most tragic circumstances. The terrible disaster at Holm has plunged every home and every heart in Lewis into grief unutterable."

One of the loved ones plunged into grief unutterable was Julia Hume Mac Vicker. At twenty-five years of age, she was now a widow. Julia had been anxiously waiting for her beloved, Heath, to return from service in the Great War. For two years, she’d known the odds of his returning alive. She’d heard too many islanders complain that there were more Scots than Brits serving in this bloody war, but she’d cared not a whit about numbers or ratios or fairness.

One in five of the island’s men did not return home, but Julia did not cipher when it came to fate and the will of God. Julia meekly but bravely surrendered to each day with prayer and thanksgiving that she’d not received any notice of the death of her husband in battle.

That past week, she’d been filled with joyous apprehension. Heath, her husband of three years, was coming home to her. He’d left for war a year after they’d married. He’d survived each battle. He was returning to her for the New Year.

This Scotsman had been her life, her world, her vision of love. For two years she’d waited to once again hold this bold, tall, quiet man. For two years, she’d lived to see him. For two years, she’d not had the touch or the feel of him. And now she would have to live without him. No longer would she know the touch or the feel or the smell of him. No longer would she hear his soft, deep voice. She would have to live without her beloved. She would have to live.

Julia knew not how to survive this loss as the curtains of grief unutterable folded round about her. She only knew that much of her life had just been drained from her by this tragedy of a horrible Hogmanay. She knew only a love that would never die.

Julia had been living in the tiny town of Rodel in Harris. There, she’d been welcomed as part of the family into the blond stone cottage on the croft of her father-in-law. He was a gruff but patient and hard-working man. She’d worked with her mother-in-law, weaving by hand the Harris tweed that had begun to be made in the factories in Lewis. Her husband had been an only child, and these parents wished for their daughter-in-law to stay with them.

Her first instinct had been to go home, to her people, but her mother wrote to her and stated that she must make patient decisions about her life. The people of her deceased husband deserved comfort, kindness, and consideration. The Hume family would wait for her to come to them when the time was right. The arms of her mother wanted to embrace a grieving woman, not a crying girl.

Julia stayed with the parents of her beloved for two months. They formed a circle of sorrow that, at first, soothed all of these loved ones. In time, however, Julia knew that it was best for her to leave this village and to return to her people in the burgh of Leith, the port located just north of Edinburgh on the south shore of the Firth of Forth.

It was a difficult homecoming. Julia was the oldest of three daughters. Her mother was a seamstress; her father worked in the glassworks factory. The family home was a red sandstone row house, a house that now looked rather small to this young woman. Julia had left this place three years earlier as a girl very much in love with a fisherman. She’d returned to it no longer a girl, not quite a fully grown woman, and, fundamentally, a grieving widow.

As much as she loved her family, and she knew that they loved her and sought to protect her, Julia also knew that she had to make her way in the world. There was simply no room for her in this small house. Julia felt guilty for imposing on her family.

She could not return to the people of her husband. Their blood was not her blood; she’d not given birth to any child to bond them together. It was the kinship of clan that had drawn her back to Leith. Even so, Julia deeply longed for the lush, open spaces of the Outer Hebrides. She now understood why it was said that God made the country.

God had now made her a widow, and she was not going to argue with Him about where she would live. Julia knew that she had to live where she could earn a decent wage; this place would be in the city. She expected little sympathy during a time when so many others had also lost loved ones. She could count on a pension from the British government, but she would have to find a job to earn her keep.

She wrote well because of a natural gift. She was also quite literate and proudly so because the Scots heartily encourage a keen knowledge of many subjects. In school, she’d excelled in drawing. She now decided to apply for a job in the field of draughting. Glasgow was a city of engineers of many types. The dearth of men because of the Great War had created fertile opportunities for a female to try her hand at technical drawing. Julia applied with high hopes to an employment agency in Glasgow for work as an apprentice to a draughtsman.

In preparation for the future employment of her daughter in Glasgow, Mrs. Hume sewed four cotton shirtwaist dresses. Two were in a medium blue color, the other two in dark gray. As a widow, Julia was expected by society, her mother, and herself to wear in public proper mourning clothes for a year.

Julia told no one, but she firmly decided that she would forego wearing the dark clothing in an office. She did not wish to announce her status as a widow with her clothes; indeed, she planned on keeping this fact of her life a secret. This woman would secure a job not through sympathy but through her skills.

This decision meant that Julia Mac Vicker would be known as a spinster, an unmarried woman, although the word originally was given to any woman who spun textiles. Julia did not care about titles or names. The only name that she jealously guarded was her given name. She would be Julia, and from that glorious given name would come her identity, her sense of self, and her birthright as a woman. She did not know how she would arrive at this person, and she seemed not to care. The beginning of Julia’s story therefore is then interwoven with the spinning of her new life, much as the Spinners of Life wove the Fates in ancient times.

It was therefore as part of the weaving of her fate that Julia carefully and with quiet determination contemplated her widow’s weeds. She considered wearing half-mourning clothes socially for a second year, but then she decided against it. She was not one to do anything by half-measures. She’d not loved Heath by half-measure; neither would she grieve him in such a manner. Despite her complete devotion to the memory of her husband, Julia could not bring herself, at the age of twenty five, to accept the period of full mourning for four years which had been the rigid norm during the Victorian era.

Julia set as a goal that within a year or two she would face life as an independent woman, not as a widow. Her womanhood was now largely in her hands, her small, skillful hands. How that precious and essential being -- of mind, body, and soul -- would be achieved, she did not yet perceive, but this female did believe that working for her living would assist her in reaching that state of independence.

She slept late one morning, and upon awaking was overtaken by a series of memories from a trip that she’d taken with Heath to the upland heather moor at Glencoe. Her mental journey to that moor of lavender and purple heather soothed her, but she also felt shaken by visions. There was within her remembrances an eerie quaking of the soft clumps of heather, almost as if a wandering shaking spirit was walking amidst the purple plants, calling to her.

She spoke to no one about this unusual experience. Her emotions were all in disarray and she had a hard job of focusing upon any one task or activity. She was afeard that her people would think her daft, or worse.

After a month of rest, and with the nurturing love from her mother, the comfort from her younger sisters, and the firm guidance from her father, Julia was ready to face her future. She boarded a train from Leith to Glasgow. She carried with her two suitcases, along with the optimism of youth, and the sense that the spirit of her beloved was guiding her to wherever Fate would lead her.

In this Second City of the British Empire, Julia Mac Vicker stayed three weeks with a Scotch kizzen, a distant relative. She experienced nerve-wracking rejection, tears, and the mounting tension of fears. She’d about given up her quest for a situation when on a chilly, rainy morning in April she found one as an apprentice to a draughtsman in Hamilton & Mac Duff, a small engineering house in downtown Glasgow.

Julia Mac Vicker would now, in the words of her stern father, mak saut ti ane’s kail, earn a living. She would abide in her own space, a small room that she rented in a brick townhouse in the former burgh of Govan in the southwest of Glasgow. The house was not far from the south bank of the River Clyde, and it was about two miles from the center of Glasgow where the building of Hamilton & Mac Duff was located. A double-decker bus would be her means of transport to and from her place of work.

With trepidation, Julia Mac Vicker had bade goodbye to her loved ones in Leith. She thus began her new life. It was to be a bartered life. She was young, desperate, sorrowful, alone, and prey to manipulation.

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Chapter Two

Lucinda, the mother of Alexander Aberdeen, was a woman of considerable charm, dark beauty, grace and dignity. She was a good wife as well as a devoted mother to this first-born and to her two daughters: Matilda, who was feisty; and Mary, who was shy. She’d often counseled her son that in life, something often starts out as a joke, and then it becomes quite serious. She did not state the inverse corollary because she’d not considered the possibility that it would be necessary for her headstrong son to hear it. For Alexander, however, something that started out as a serious, even grave matter was, once again, becoming a joke, at least to his loved ones.

Mr. and Mrs. Aberdeen and their two daughters had already been subjected to repeated meetings with the treacherous Maeve, the black-haired beauty who had, not surprisingly, betrayed Alexander. After just the second time of speaking with this woman, who was slightly older than her son, Lucinda had calmly but directly asked Alexander, And what happens when Maeve moves on to another male?

Alexander had smiled in the overly self-assured way that only a totally inexperienced male can express. I have no fear of that, he said in a deep voice.

Mrs. Aberdeen said nothing. She realized that her naïve son had not a rag of a clue about this female, his first love.

Lucinda was that quaint entity, an obedient wife. Her husband had told her, He’ll nae listen to ya. Ye are wasting yer breath. And so she spoke no more on the manipulative Maeve. She had a hard job of it, watching her son go down the path of a fool, but she told herself twas for the best. He’d learn his lesson and become a man because of it.

Within months of moving out of the nest, this firstborn child had gone right ahead in pursuing this beautiful woman at great personal expense and, worse, the emotional expense of his loved ones. Family birthdays were ignored; sisters were neglected. Lucinda felt torn between telling her son that she’d washed her hands of him and telling him that he was ruining his own life. All of this hurtful nonsense had occurred quite quickly on the heels of his leaving home, and so this mother had patiently but painfully hoped that her firstborn would wise up at some point.

Eighteen months later, the treacherous Maeve took off with everything but the shirt on young Alexander’s back. Lucinda believed that her son had learned his lesson. Her husband and daughters advised her, Do not hold ye breathe. Pride goeth before a fall. He’s too stubborn and has not yet fallen hard enough nor far enough.

Lucinda was troubled, deeply troubled by the prospect that her son would put himself, and his family, in for more trouble. Maeve had been on the windy side of the law. Lucinda scarcely knew what to expect next!

Great Scot! What came next was a trollop named Elspeth Gilhooley, a female blackguard in a burgundy velvet dress that spared no cleavage and none of the snide whining of the lower class.

It now began to occur to this woman that her firstborn was afeard of things which were not frightening, and he was not afeard of things that ought to have sent a shiver down his stubborn spine. This inexplicable conundrum was calmly and aptly explained to Lucinda by her younger daughter, Mary, the shy one of eight and ten years of age.

Mary smoothed her wavy, long blonde hair and then she announced with an air of mockery, Alexander does not think that he can find the woman of his dreams. And so he has concocted a scheme to build a bride. From that loosely packaged mess!

But tis absurd! Lucinda widened her large, brilliant, wide-set, hazel eyes.

Aye, John Aberdeen softly intoned. I’ve tried to teach the boy. He will nae listen. He is so green that he thinks that he can engineer romance. Aye, he sighed, In matters of love, me boy is terrible stupid.

Mrs. Aberdeen was short o’the Greek, or speechless. She and her husband had sacrificed to pay for the university education of their son in engineering. She, as the mother, had invested many hopes and dreams in her firstborn, this handsome, seemingly intelligent male. She now realized that all of those hopes and dreams were being re-invested by this mule-headed male in yet another woman of foul intent. When his first fraudulent construction of the heart, founded on sugared suppositions and stupidity, had fallen of its own deceitful weight, Lucinda had held high hopes that Alexander would have learned his lesson. He would then seek true love, a process that involves risk, trial-and-error, and, often, rejection.

John Aberdeen and his daughters knew Alexander better in this realm of reality. Lucinda had been too much like her son in seeing what she’d wanted to see. Instead of wising up after the first romance of his young life, a romance that had been a fraud, Alexander decided to redouble his stubborn, naïve efforts into yet another errand of a fool. This time the creature was not a sophisticated, dark beauty but a common-looking, dim-witted wench.

Scarcely three months had elapsed since the abysmal failure of the beautiful Maeve to conform to the specifications of this engineer and Alexander found another love project to design! He seemed to have forgotten about the older woman who had proved to be a sly cheat, a clever con, and competent liar. There had also been the broken engagement in which the duplicitous woman absconded with the big diamond ring among other gems and pieces of jewelery.

The truly scandalous incident was, however, the theft by Maeve of hundreds of pounds from the safe of the engineering house where Alexander worked. Alexander had told his mother only that the clever, devious Maeve had also stolen a braw pennie -- he would not mention the exact huge amount of quid that she took from the company safe.

This young engineer was spared from being fired from his job only because he swore that he would work overtime and pay the filched money back to the engineering house of Hamilton & Mac Duff. And Alexander was true to his word. If only he’d recognized that other humans are not