He walked up the overgrown path and climbed steps to the front door, guilt descending on him now at all the years he had neglected to stay in touch with his sister. While Annie had sent him birthday and Christmas cards religiously each year, he had never responded. Never lifted the phone or sent an email. His apprehension at seeing her again tightened across his chest.
The door swung open as he approached and his sister stood in the doorway, wide-eyed with expectation. He was shocked at how much older she seemed. Grey strands streaked once lustrous blonde hair that was pulled back now in a severe bun. She had put on weight, become almost matronly. But her green eyes were flecked with the same warmth he remembered as a child. Her expression changed the moment she saw him. ‘My God, Sime! When you said you hadn’t been sleeping, I never imagined …’
His smile was wan. ‘It’s been quite a while since I had a good night’s sleep, sis. Not since I broke up with Marie-Ange.’
Shock was replaced by sympathy, and she stepped forward to put her arms around him and draw him close, his years of neglect ignored and forgotten. The sense of relief he felt in that simple moment of affection almost produced tears. He hugged her back, and it felt like years since he had known such genuine warmth.
They stood for a very long time like that on the porch, before finally she held him at arm’s length, and he saw how moist her eyes had become. ‘It’s maybe for the best,’ she said. ‘You and Marie-Ange.’ She hesitated. ‘I never did take to her.’
He smiled and wondered why it was that people always seemed to think it might be a comfort to learn that no one liked the person you once loved.
Annie looked beyond him to the mess that was the garden and her embarrassment was clear. ‘Gilles used to come and cut the grass every other week,’ she said. ‘And we tried to keep up the paintwork. At least maintain it to a basic level.’ She shrugged. ‘But when you have a family …’ Her voice tailed away. ‘It’s a fair way from Bury, and when the snow comes …’ She smiled her regret. ‘The winters are so long.’
‘No one interested in buying?’
‘One or two at first. But you’ll have seen for yourself, Sime. The town’s dying, so selling’s not easy. And when it began to look like it had been lying empty for a while, any interest evaporated.’ She smiled, banishing the thought. ‘You’d better come in.’
He nodded.
Inside it was dark. It smelled fusty and damp, and felt like stepping back into a previous life. A house that had once been a home, populated now only by the memories of their younger selves. Sime walked slowly over floorboards that creaked painfully beneath his feet, looking around the living room which had occupied most of the ground floor. Although empty, apart from an old picnic table and a couple of chairs, he could conjure up from somewhere a memory of how it had once been. Full of big dark furniture. An old piano, a dresser. Indian rugs on the floor, ornaments on the mantel above a stone fireplace. All around the walls faded wallpaper still betrayed the telltale shadows of the paintings which had once hung there. A large pale rectangle above the fireplace was like the ghost of the picture that had spared the paper from discoloration. But he had no memory of any of the pictures themselves.
They wandered out to the deck at the back of the house and heard the rush of the river rising through the trees. They stood, leaning on the rail, breathing the damp of the woods and feeling the air cool on their skin as a slight breeze whispered through the leaves. Annie turned to look at him. ‘What’s this all about, Sime?’
And so he told her. About the murder on Entry Island. His certainty, on meeting the widow for the first time, that he knew her. About his ring and her matching pendant. And how that had sparked his first dream, and then his recollections of the diaries. She listened in thoughtful silence as he spoke, and when he had finished she said, ‘Come through.’
A large leather satchel lay on the dusty picnic table. Annie picked it up and sat with it on her knee, then patted the seat beside her. As Sime sat down she lifted a bundle of books from the bag. They were small, cracked, leather-bound volumes in different colours and sizes, all held together by yellowed string wrapped several times around and tied in a bow.
‘That’s them?’ His voice was not much more than a whisper. She nodded and he reached out to touch them. Seeing the diaries, touching them, was like being witness to history, like being a part of it.
She untied the string to open the top book as he watched in trembling anticipation. Folding back its leather cover, she revealed the brittle yellowed pages inside. Pages covered with a clumsy handwritten scrawl, faded now with the years.
‘This is the first one,’ she said. And with cautious fingers flipped back the pages to the inside cover. Di-ciadaoin 21mh latha de’n t-Iuchair, 1847 was written in a bold, copperplate hand.
‘What does it mean?’
‘It’s the date in Gaelic, Sime. Wednesday, 21st July, 1847.’
‘How in Heaven’s name do you know that? You don’t speak Gaelic.’
Annie laughed. ‘Granny taught me the Gaelic numbers, and the days of the week, and the months. I was very little, but they’ve always stayed with me.’
He was crestfallen. ‘Are they all in Gaelic?’
She smiled. ‘No. Just the date. He wrote his diaries in English.’
Sime stared at the page. Below the date was a signature. Not easy to read at first. And he canted his head a little and screwed up his eyes. ‘Sime Mackenzie,’ he read. The man who had bequeathed him his name. Sime. So that’s where his father had got the spelling. He was tense with emotion. ‘Can I hold it?’
She handed it to him and he took it in his hands as if it might break. His ancestor had held this very book. His hand had wielded the pen that formed the letters and words and sentences that told the story of his life. Of the birth of his sister. His rescue of Kirsty. The death of his father. The clearing of Baile Mhanais. That dreadful voyage across the Atlantic. The nightmare that was Grosse Île.
Annie said, ‘I thought there might be something symbolic about giving you the diaries here. Since this is where they were read to us.’ She put a hand over his. ‘But I think we should go home now. The family are waiting to meet you. There will be time enough for reading.’
III
Annie lived in a large, rambling, grey-painted wooden house on Main Street, sandwiched between the town library and the redbrick Bury Armory Community Center. Bury’s military history was still evident in the building that housed Branch 48 of the Royal Canadian Legion just across the road, beyond the Post Office. Main Street itself was quiet, leaves falling gently on to manicured lawns from the trees that lined it. There were three churches along its length. Anglican, United and Catholic. Bury had a strong religious as well as military heritage, and the Mackenzies had gone each Sunday to the United Presbyterian Church of Canada, which had absorbed most of the Scottish churches during the Great Merger.
He parked behind his sister’s car in the drive and they climbed the steps to the porch. He glanced across the garden. Large maples dropped coloured leaves on to neatly cut grass. A double garage beyond them was almost completely hidden from view. His apprehension returned. While his sister had forgiven him his neglect, he was not so sure that her family would.