Dear Maggie

By Gen Webster

What value can an old man have, who no longer leaves his bed and seldom leaves his room located in the attic of his retirement home?
He’s irascible and impatient with his room-mate and any other residents who happen to call by his room.
Inside his head are memories which are alive. Life in a country town after migrating from Scotland at the age of five. Of his birth family he is the last man standing; there is no one who remembers things quite the way that he does. To Andy, his parents, his brothers and his cousins live on, if only in his memory.
For eighty years he lived a full life, but a runaway horse ten years ago, put a stop to his meanderings beside Sydney Harbour. He feels all but forgotten by all his own kith and kin who are busy living their own lives.
This might have been the end of his story, if not for the arrival of Maggie who inspires Andy to write again.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Jun 30, 2022
• ISBN: 9781528968867

Gen Webster

Gen Webster lives in Sydney’s Inner West. Her interests, besides writing, include her four grandchildren, overseas travel, daily walks through the park or by the river, solving cryptic crosswords, reading and watching murder mysteries on television. Poirot is a particular favourite. Since her retirement, Gen has developed her writing skills through membership of a writers’ group where she has written and submitted short stories. Dear Maggie is her first full-length novel.

Book preview

Dear Maggie

Gen Webster

Austin Macauley Publishers

Dear Maggie

About the Author

Dedication

Copyright Information ©

Part One: Da

Part Two: Mary

Part Three: Flora

Part Four: Thommo

About the Author

Gen Webster lives in Sydney’s Inner West. Her interests, besides writing, include her four grandchildren, overseas travel, daily walks through the park or by the river, solving cryptic crosswords, reading and watching murder mysteries on television. Poirot is a particular favourite.

Since her retirement, Gen has developed her writing skills through membership of a writers’ group where she has written and submitted short stories.

Dear Maggie is her first full-length novel.

Dedication

For my children and grandchildren, my sisters and the friends who have encouraged me on my journey through this novel and beyond.

Copyright Information ©

Gen Webster 2022

The right of Gen Webster to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781528968744 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781528968867 (ePub e-book)

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published 2022

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd®

1 Canada Square

Canary Wharf

London

E14 5AA

3rd Sept

Dear diary

The parcel sat waiting at my place at the table, I could just make out my name in the faint scrawl. Dad said, It’s a gift from Old Andy, he started writing it on the day you were born. He said he felt connected to you because you shared his birthday and he left strict instructions for you to have these letters on your fifteenth birthday. He asked me to censor them but I haven’t done that, purely because I wanted you to have the experience of Old Andy as he was; warts and all. The package looked as if had it spent its life under a bed or in the bottom of the wardrobe. I grinned at Dad to hide my disappointment from him, he clearly loved Old Andy and wanted me to feel the same way.

The other gifts were more to my liking: a new journal (you know that I get a new one every year), an aqua marine bathing suit (Mum said to match the colour of my eyes) and a tiny bottle of eau de cologne.

Hal, twelve years old, put in his tuppence worth: I hope I don’t get anything like that on my birthday! Hal spends his life trying to get under my skin.

I’ve grown up with the stories told by Grannie Annie and I know who Old Andy was of course, she talked about him often. I did get confused at times when Grannie talked about the family. But when she spoke about Old Andy, her eyes filled up and she looked away into the distance. I was very young when he and Granda Bruce died within a year of each other so I don’t recall meeting either of them who, Grannie said were like chalk and cheese. They had one thing in common and that was a love of writing.

I didn’t go for my regular Sunday morning swim, instead, my curiosity was aroused by the mysterious brown paper parcel. The string was so old it came apart in my fingers.

Laying aside her journal, Maggie settled herself on the window seat. The sea breeze that carried with it the faint cries of gulls and ferry workers stirred her halo of curls and with the morning sun at her back she began to read…

1

To be kind to all, to like many and love a few, to be needed and wanted by those we love, is certainly the nearest we can come to happiness –

Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots

(1542-87)

My darling Maggie,

Here where I live, they call me Old Andy, I’m your Great Granda. Exactly why they call me ‘Old Andy’ isn’t clear as there is no ‘Young Andy’ in the house. It may be that I’m considered old. I didn’t pass on the name my father gave me or the one his father gave him. The world seemed to have enough Andrews in it already. Despite her love for me, I think that my darling Mary didn’t want the confusion. This is my letter to you Maggie. I hope and pray that I can complete this before I can no longer hold my pencil. Maggie dear, it’s getting increasingly difficult but at least I still have my eyesight. To see you for the first time gladdened my old heart, your dark curls reminiscent of Mary, your Great Grannie, who was quick to the temper and I sense a feistiness behind your dark flashing eyes. Your tiny fists punching the air and rosy cheeks, how Mary would have loved to hold you as I did. It was a wonderful surprise that you arrived on the same day as I was born a long time ago in 1845. So we have ninety years between us but a bond which I hope will be strengthened through my story which inevitably leads to yours. My fervent wish is to see you grow into a fine young woman as befitting the Brander name but I am realistic enough to know the implausibility of that wish. Through writing to you I hope to keep the gremlins at bay and to gain some perspective on my own life, and for you Maggie to know where we both have our origins.

Part One

Da

Andy’s Room

September ’35

Hunched over his writing slope, in constant pain from his enemies, arthritis and emphysema, Andy’s every waking moment reminded him that it was time, his body was wearing out. Pain killers and sleeping powders provided less than fitful sleep, granting erratic moments of rest between frightening dreams which had no meaning and a dull aching that consumed his frailty.

Andy didn’t remember much about the voyage from his birthplace in Edinburgh. His long life of memories jostling each other for supremacy had somehow dimmed his recollections of four months at sea, to eternally flapping canvas and creaking timbers. At that time, Andy’s father Andrew, called Junior by his family, and his Uncle Bruce still spoke with a thick Scots’ burr that was incomprehensible to all but other Highlanders. Ninety years later, Andy still recalled his Da’s voice which helped to block out the whinging of his room-mate Thommo. The memories took Andy away from his pain and into a past when his Da, full of life brought the family to a new beginning. Andy’s mind wandered from place to place; it was difficult to hold on to a particular scene or memory, sapping the old man’s strength. It was better to let the mind have its will and go with the flow as Junior had so often told his sons. He listened as his father told the story, with renewed strength he began to write in his spidery scrawl…

Dearest little Maggie,

Our family goes back many generations before me and my Da and his Da before him. There’s an ancient Brander family legend which declared that one of the ancestors had played an integral role in the Scottish civil war; his deeds legendary but so far not understood. All anyone knew was that the Douglas clan were at one end of the bridge that crossed the river Awe at its narrowest section and the MacDougal clan were gathered at the other, just above where the dam stood. As the boy piper, Andrew Brander (many, many generations before Junior my Da and Uncle Bruce), prepared himself for battle, he fumbled nervously with the clan badge just as the order came to ‘CHARGE!’ But young Andrew wasn’t quite ready…

It was the boy Andrew’s first battle, he felt insignificant in the presence of the giant Highlanders gathered impatiently behind him. Sweating profusely, his fingers failed to grasp and fix to his plaid, the Clan badge he was so proud to wear; it jumped from his fingers and bouncing off the bridge, tumbled into the Awe. He withdrew in shame from the battle and it was said that by doing so he’d caused the enemy to turn tail and run away up into the hills. No one could explain why. Thereafter, the site was named the Pass of Brander. Of course, we know now that the story is just that – a story; Scottish warriors wore armour into battle, just like other armies!

So, to get back to historical fact. After the fighting, Andrew, who had no trade other than his ability to pipe an army into battle, retired to his family home in the village of Taynuilt. Together with his father, they built a still in the cellar and sold whiskey from the very house that twins Junior and Bruce, generations later in 1824 were preparing to leave. When Andrew died still a young man and without heirs, his younger brother Alexander took over the establishment and set the family tradition of passing it to the eldest son.

Generations of sons and daughters had grown up there; the hut spreading out as it was added to from time to time to accommodate the increasing numbers of the Brander family. In an effort to improve its reputation as more than a drinking place, the incumbent Brander in the 1700s, added rooms to accommodate travellers. The hamlet grew into a respectable village over time and by 1824 when fourteen-year-olds Junior and Bruce were contemplating a future away from the family, Taynuilt was a thriving township with more than its fair share of inns and public houses.

Farmers, who came for the regular market day on Wednesdays, increased the population temporarily as did tinkers, travellers and itinerant workers. Brander’s functioned as the worship centre on Sundays; a promised Church building hadn’t materialised.

For the second and third-born sons of their father, my Da Junior and his twin brother, Uncle Bruce, life was one long contest. Their rough and tumble of the battle of wills, turned into fist fights more often than not but was soon forgotten with the issue of another challenge.

Bet I can beat you to the bridge!

Not on your life! came the response and off they’d go, kilts flying. Bruce always chose the rocky path alongside the river, while Junior took off along the track, beaten smooth by the numerous carts that travelled the road to town. On reaching the bridge, it was Bet you’re not game to jump off this time! this was an ongoing dare as neither was up to the challenge but it satisfied them to know that they weren’t alone in their fear.

Since the age of six, when they’d taught themselves to swim, it became a case of who could go further across the loch, dive deeper, or hold their breath longer underwater. Who was better, stronger or faster depended on the activity. Junior excelled at water sports but Bruce was more at home roaming the hillsides, running for miles without missing a beat with his breath; climbing rocky outcrops and leaving his twin hanging on halfway down, his head spinning, while Bruce grinned from ear to ear.

Their father, Andy the Elder, had no desire to see his younger sons leave home but there wasn’t enough work for all of them in the public house that had been run by the Brander family since the end of the civil war in the 1300s. The boys’ older brother Alexander would inherit the inn, so their father arranged with a craftsman in Edinburgh to apprentice them as cabinetmakers where there was a better living to be made. Their father didn’t want to see his sons ruin their health and strength in the smoky atmosphere of the Brander Arms, carting kegs of whiskey, rum and ale up the steep ladder leading from the cellar, with the knowledge that the inn would remain in Alexander’s firm grip. Brander’s was situated on the fringes of the town on the same parcel of land that had been in the family for generations.

I can still hear Da talking about his home; his true spiritual home where the hills towered over everything and changed aspect with every hour. From his bedroom window, Junior’s world was dominated by the green mastiff that blocked his view of the sky. In spring and summer, the gorse and heather-covered hills soared high above and at the very top, a line of towering pine trees stood guard. Junior paused in the course of his daily chores, never tiring of the view as the sun designated the hours of daylight, shades of lilac changing to deep purple reflected from the heathers and giant shadows running between the crevices made by the constant flow of water, the rains and melted snow that fed the river and the loch.

Winter covered the inn and all its surrounds in a thick blanket of pristine snow. In daylight hours, Bruce and Junior took handmade toboggans half-way to the top of the massive cliff opposite the inn, careering at break-neck speed to the bottom – naturally racing against each other, only returning home when it got dark. Their Ma worried, of course, but she knew that trying to keep her adventurous sons at home was futile.

The boys of the family had built the sturdy dyke, the dry-stone wall that bounded the property to the west; it separated the extended family members living next door, who ran black-faced sheep on their land. A small tributary lined with scrubby bushes flowing from the hills facing the entrance to the inn, fixed the property on its eastern side. Two large pine trees commanded the space between the inn and the river. There used to be three but during one terrible night, the most massive of the trees was struck by lightning. Their father trimmed some of the smaller branches for firewood but the trunk, being too cumbersome to move, lay where it fell, becoming a home for a family of squirrels. Junior’s attention was taken by the daily coming and goings of the little animals; his Da’s voice called him back from his day-dreaming to …git away t’ yur chores, Laddie, afore Ise lose me temper! The yard behind the inn sloped gently down as far as the river bank where it became rocky and difficult to negotiate, then dropped away to where the water rushed over stones smoothed by eons, as the river raced to meet with the loch further west, which flowed into the sea.

On many occasions, on the back of their Da’s cart, Junior and his brothers had followed the flow of the river, leading all the way to Oban to get supplies. My Da said that he could find his way home from anywhere by following the river. When the river teemed with fish and salmon was plentiful in season, Junior and Bruce caught the fish and their Da cooked it over a coal fire and served it with whiskey, which was no longer distilled in the cellar, since a better-quality brew could be found in Oban.

From the time he was a wee lad, Da loved to lie in bed at night, listening to the river run, he always meant to ask his Ma why the water seemed to be in such a hurry to leave the place. He couldn’t explain to himself why his unspoken thoughts took him away from the place where he was born; a place he loved. Junior wondered if he kept swimming down the loch, would it take him all the way to Glasgow. He didn’t doubt that he could just keep going when Bruce could no longer keep up with him.

He would never leave Bruce behind…

Andy’s Room

September ’35

Andy felt the grief rise like bile into his throat. Da had left, not intentionally of course, but Da did leave Bruce behind. ‘He left us behind too,’ thought Andy, ‘Ma and me and my brothers. The difference was that we kept living; doing the best we could. Uncle Bruce held on for as long as he could until one day he let go…’

The old man, overwhelmed by memories that kept at him, nagging him day and night, realised that they wouldn’t be quietened, no matter how much time and space he tried to put between himself and the past. If he allowed them to take control, he would never finish his letters to Maggie. He knew that they had the power to crush his spirit. Many times during his life he’d been tempted to let go…what he needed was sleep; but that too eluded him.

Maybe the trick was to embrace the memories, well, if not embrace, then accept them as part of his past and acknowledge the influence that they have wielded over him since he could remember. This was his chance to tell it all without any interruptions. In his heart Andy knew that it wasn’t actually a question of the past taking control, although to Andy it had felt like it much of the time; he could take the opportunity to tell Maggie about everything, then the past might not have so much power, but be put to rest.

Dearest little Maggie,

There was excitement in the town of Taynuilt as two of its favourite sons were preparing for their big adventure, to start work in Edinburgh. Many sore heads including their father’s, from the farewell party the previous evening, prevented more than a few townsfolk from being beside their Ma to wave goodbye.

Early in the morning of their last day at home the boys, taking a final wander around the property that was once their playground, stood on the brow of the hill overlooking the River Awe. Down the hill was the Loch, which was the boy’s swimming hole. It was time to leave childhood behind. Reluctantly, arms about each other’s necks they gathered canvas swags rolled up and fastened with sturdy leather belts and with apprentice contracts safely stowed in their respective vests, kissed a tearful Ma and began the fifty mile walk to Glasgow where they would meet up with their new master.

Their plaids sufficed for bedding along the road and Ma had packed half a cheese and loaves of bread wrapped in a flour sack; enough for the three days’ journey. The boys had never been far from Taynuilt and were glad of one another’s company as the hills rose up before them and descended into the glen where a fresh spring provided a welcome drink.

The twins planned to walk about twenty miles each day and arrive in Glasgow early in the afternoon of the third day. They figured that it might take some time to find the inn where their Master awaited and didn’t want to be late or to miss the man who would be their teacher for the next seven years. Da had paid a significant sum to the Master for the apprenticeship agreements, but he was getting two boys for the price of one; the money would be lost if the boys failed to arrive in time.

Late on the first afternoon, they stopped to rest above the still waters of another loch, Loch Lomond. The boys weren’t aware that for centuries, travellers had stopped in the very same spot to rest and drink in the view; so famous in fact it was named ‘The Rest’ for short. They intended to cross the water in the morning but ever-restless Bruce needed to explore the moors before settling down for the night. His stamina on dry land proved a god-send as they still had some distance down the rocky slopes to reach the bridge. Junior just wanted to lie down but Bruce insisted that while there was still twilight, they should descend to the small hamlet that clung to the bottom of the hillside where the bridge began.

Following the well-worn cattle tracks their journey continued to be uneventful; the second night was spent in Dumbarton on the banks of the River Clyde. Junior although exhausted from the journey was too excited to sleep; he tossed and turned restlessly, impatient to reach Glasgow – the big city of his imagination was so close by.

As they tramped along Dumbarton Road the next morning following the river, they were joined by jostling happy crowds of folk making their way to town for it was Wednesday – Market Day. The boys, glad to be in Glasgow at last, were only too happy to be a part of the throng. It was a much bigger affair than market day in Taynuilt! The boys found plenty to occupy themselves; it was all so new to their young eyes; they set off to explore the city. By early afternoon, the market stalls that had sold their produce were closing up for another week; the boys hadn’t eaten since breakfast when they finished the last of Ma’s bread and cheese.