Doing No Harm (36 page)

Chapter 33

W
r apped in her yellow and
black plaid with red strands, Elizabeth MacLeod was buried the next day in a small patch of sunlight quickly replaced by misty rain. She was far from her glen in the Highlands but now cradled on another silent shore that the minister assured everyone was far better than this one. No one disagreed.

Olive felt her heart lift when one of the Highlanders in Charlie MacGregor’s crew piped “Flowers of the Forest” for Gran MacLeod.

“If I’m not mistaken, that’s the same air that he piped for Brian Hannay a week ago,” Doug Bowden whispered to her.

“Aye, it is,” she whispered back. “I told you before, ’tis our funeral song.”

He nodded and directed his attention back to the crude coffin. Olive could nearly feel the embarrassment that radiated from him, but somehow, he had been drawn to stand beside her anyway. She knew she could ignore the matter, as he may have wanted to in some portion of his troubled mind, or she could do what she thought he really wanted. She held his hand, giving it a brief squeeze before letting go.

It was left to the men to walk Gran’s coffin to its new Scottish home. The women and children returned to the tearoom to complete preparations on the modest meal they would serve when the men finished.

Her expression set in stone, Flora MacLeod brought out the plates of food. Every now and then, Olive heard a sobbing breath from the child, which always brought Brighid Dougall to her side, even if only for a light touch.

You have a fine instinct, Brighid
, Olive thought, envying her for the smallest moment. A less kind Olive Grant would have demanded that the innkeep’s wife give the child to her, she who would never have children of her own, the way matters stood. An even less kind Olive would have reminded Brighid Dougall that she once had a daughter and she still had sons living, albeit far away in India in service to the king. Couldn’t she at least share Flora MacLeod?

But Olive was none of those Olives. She kept silent and worked, the only remedy she knew for a heart broken.

And there matters would have stood, if Brighid had not come to her for advice a few days later, after Edgar returned to the business of rebuilding itself.

Brighid had made it a habit to bring over any extra cinnamon buns remaining after the morning coach came and went. “They never keep,” she had said when she began the habit, even though all the grateful recipients of the delicious treats saw right through her. Olive even suspected the woman of making another batch, just so she could say she had leftovers to share.

Brighid brought along no pretense this morning. She handed over the buns and found the man she was looking for.

“Mr. Bowden,” she said to the surgeon, as he rose with the others to leave in a group and not have to face Olive. “I have a dilemma. You’re the surgeon.”

“So I’ve heard,” he said, even though Olive saw no smile on his face. “Sit down. Tell me.”

The others left. Olive sat, too, which made Douglas Bowden tighten his lips. She knew he wanted no audience but she ignored the look. Brighid, on the other hand, flashed her a relieved smile and patted the bench next to her.

“It’s this, sir: Poor Flora cries herself to sleep, and then she wakes in the night in tears. I hurry to her room, and all she can do is cry and say there is no one to help.” Brighid patted her generous bosom. “I tell her I am here to help, but it does not bring her comfort.”

“She must be remembering when the soldiers came and put her dying mother out of the house, to lie on a mattress while they burned down her home,” Olive said. “She told us that one day. Don’t you think that is the problem, Mr. Bowden? She has terrible memories and they haunt her.”
So there
, she thought.
I don’t care if you think I am a managing woman, Douglas Bowden. You are a sore vexation to me
.

The sore vexation sighed and stared beyond the tearoom wall into a place she was not invited. “Charlie MacGregor has told me the same thing about his daughters,” he said, still not looking at either of them. “I think if I were to ask all the Highlanders, they would tell me the same thing. The fathers might be working now, but there is a greater problem, a sore trial of the mind.”

He surprised Olive by addressing her directly. “Miss Grant, would you gather all the children of the Highlanders here? Those above, say, three years of age? How many would you think that is?”

“Maybe fifteen. Boys and girls?”

“Yes. Everyone up to thirteen years or so.”

“That makes it sixteen. When?”

“Now.”

With no explanation, he got up and left the tearoom. She looked out the door to see him walking toward the boat docks, then beyond to the shipyard.

“Something is wrong with our Mr. Bowden,” Brighid said.

“Very wrong,” Olive agreed, “but let us do as he asks.”

To Olive’s surprise, no parents questioned her. All she had to do was tell them that “our Mr. Bowden” wanted the children in the tearoom. She wondered if the surgeon had any idea of the vast respect that the Highlanders and people had for him. All he seemed to see were his own flaws.

In less than half an hour, she and Mrs. Dougall had rounded up the children. From some magical place, more cinnamon buns emerged, which brought out smiles all around, even among the restless.

Olive took a good look at the restless ones, watching their eyes rove about the room, as if looking for an escape route. Maeve dropped a wooden bowl in the kitchen, which made some of the children jump up, then look around, hopeful they had not been noticed. They slunk down in their chairs then, seeking invisibility.

If there was a name for what confronted the children, she did not know it. Their mothers and fathers were stretched past bearing to find food and work and a place to lie down at night. With such huge worries, it was easy to overlook the children.

When the children were seated and through eating, the door opened. She turned to see Douglas carrying sheets of paper and a handful of pencils. She had watched Homer Bennett and Joe Tavish working over a table in the shipyard, instructing and drawing on similar paper.

He set down the paper on one of the tables and did nothing more to get their attention. He commanded respect and he got it, no questions asked.

“I want you to tell me something,” he began, “and you must be honest.”

The children looked at each other, then back at the surgeon, their eyes wary now. He sat down to be on their level and motioned them closer. Soon his arms were around two of the little boys, and the younger MacGregor girl was on his lap. Without needing a cue, Olive sat down too, with the same result. Mrs. Dougall was not slow to follow. Flora MacLeod nearly leaped into her lap.

“It is this, my little friends. How many of you are troubled with bad dreams?”

Silence. One hand went halfway up, then another and another. The girl on Olive’s lap turned her face into Olive’s breast.

“You went through a terrible time,” he said, his voice soft. He looked at Flora, who sat on Mrs. Dougall’s lap, her eyes so troubled. “There was no one to help you, but you survived and you have my deep respect.”

Again the children looked at each other, but there was something in their eyes besides fear now. One of the young boys sat a little taller.

“I want you to do something very hard now.” Douglas took a deep breath. Olive found herself breathing with him because she understood too plainly what this cost him.

“I want you to draw what happened there in your homes.”

Two of the girls gasped and Euna MacGregor on his lap began to cry. He cuddled her close.

“I told you it would be hard, but you need to do this,” he said, when Euna was silent.

No one questioned why. They seemed to understand exactly what he meant. Olive looked to the older children, a wordless prayer in her heart, as they were first to obey, taking a piece of paper and then a pencil. She thought they would sit together at the tables, but they scattered to the corners of the room, their backs to each other, seeking a private place for their misery.

Sixteen children began to draw. Douglas went to the window and looked out, giving their privacy dignity. Olive and Mrs. Dougall went into the kitchen and closed the door.

“He wants them to face their terror, doesn’t he?” Brighid asked quietly.

Olive nodded.

“There’s more to this, though,” the woman said.

“Much more.” Olive could barely get out the words. The two of them held hands.

Time passed. The tearoom was silent except for the scratching of pencils, and an occasional sob. Brighid put her hands to her face.

“We could have been kinder to them when they first came here,” she said. “We could have been as kind as you, Olive.”

“Never mind that,” Olive said. “We here have learned our lesson too. We know better now. Maybe many of them speak little English and have strange Highland ways, but we are all Scots.” She touched the woman’s cheek. “Let’s not forget that.”

Nearly an hour passed, during which time Olive and her helpers who filed in through the back door finished preparing soup and bread for luncheon. Olive heard firm footsteps cross the room and a knock on the kitchen door. She opened it to see the children all seated again, their faces so serious, but with the addition of pride. Not the pride that speaks of power or ownership, but the pride of shared experience and survival.

Douglas held the pictures. He shook his head as he looked at them and even grew pale. He placed one on top of the pile. Olive stared at the picture, a crude drawing, but explicit. She held her breath to see a croft on fire, troops outside, if those stick figures held muskets and bayonets as she thought they did, watching a woman burn to death inside.

“Mary MacKay,” a little boy said. “We watched and no one helped her.”

“She wouldna leave her home,” a small girl chimed in. “My da, he tried to tell the soldiers she wasn’t right in the head and mostly deaf, but they only laughed.”

“That should never have happened,” Douglas said. “Who wants to tell me about this picture? And this one?”

His gentle questions opened a floodgate as the children took turns with their own pictures, describing cattle slaughtered, chickens with their necks wrung, fathers and uncles beat down to the ground when they tried to resist, and other soldiers herding women and children like animals. His face more serious than a judge, Tommy had drawn a tarpaulin draped over tombstones as he and his mother cowered within. It was a good rendering of misery of the acutest kind; Joe Tavish’s artistic talent had touched his son.

Flora sat on Mrs. Dougall’s lap again, her drawing in her hands. The child had drawn a woman lying on a mattress, with streaks of pencil rain pouring down. Olive looked closer in horror and then turned away, her mind reeling. Another figure lay on top of the dying woman. She thought at first it was Flora, but it was a soldier with a musket beside him. She caught Mrs. Dougall’s wild-eyed glance and held it.

“He blacked my eye just like yours,” Flora was whispering to Douglas, who knelt beside her now. “I tried to pull him off Mam, but he wouldn’t listen. Mam screamed and screamed, but he didn’t care.” She drew a breath that caught and became a sob. “Then he left her and he laughed at us.” She put her hands on Douglas’s cheeks, drawing him close. “We needed help! Where were you?”

Chapter 34