The Ghost Tree. Barbara Erskine

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      Ruth turned the page.

       10 December 1912. My 19th birthday. As soon as he heard that he was to receive a living at last, Joseph asked Papa for my hand and Papa agreed. I’m the happiest person in the world. On our return from honeymoon he will be installed in his new church.

      There were only two more entries. The first, dated December, 1913.

       How strange it is to read this diary now. The day before my marriage and once again I saw my ghostly visitor. He gave me his blessing and told me I would be happy with Joseph. He told me that we would have four children and said I should give them all his name. I pointed out that he had never told me his name. He said he was Thomas Erskine. I told him that I already bore his name, given to me at my baptism, and he smiled and told me that he knew it! I have a little girl of my own now, and to her I have given the family name of Erskine.

      Ruth felt she had stopped breathing. Thomas. Her Thomas. But then she had guessed it might be him. The last entry was written after two blank pages and was dated 1916:

       Thomas came to me last night. He was gentle and kind and told me Dunc was dead in France. He told me to prepare my parents for the coming news as they would find it hard to bear. How can I prepare them? He told me my children would thrive and live long lives to comfort me and that my parents would find joy in my children. I am broken-hearted. I believe him though even now Mama has written to say she has received a letter from Dunc, dated some weeks ago. He says he is not allowed to say where he is but that he is well. Yet I know it isn’t true …

      The remainder of the notebook was empty.

      Ruth sat for a long time staring into space then at last she reached for the rest of the papers that had fallen from the envelope. There was the letter sent by Duncan’s commanding officer to his parents, saying he had been fatally wounded after showing exceptional bravery leading his men; there was another giving the date of his death.

      There was a copy of her mother’s family tree. She realised there were tears running down her cheeks as she studied the letters and then the notes her mother had drawn up. Ruth ran her finger from the bottom to the top of the page, pausing when she came to her great-grandmother Catherine Anne, the author of the diary, who was born in 1893. Thomas, Catherine’s great-great-grandfather, who had died in 1823, was there, and there above him were lines and lines of names. Her mother had traced her own line of descent from Thomas down through the daughters of the family, every one, save Lucy, married, she noticed, to a man of the cloth. There were other lines of descent, of course there were, the male lines, the direct lines, but this one was hers and Lucy had added Ruth’s name at the bottom of the page. Ruth stared at it incredulously. She was there, but this was a version of herself she had never seen before. Ruth Catherine Erskine Dunbar.

      Her mother had given her his name. Her father couldn’t have known. He would never have countenanced such a thing. It wasn’t on her birth certificate. Or her passport. So, it was her mother’s secret name for her, the name she had wanted her to carry.

      She sat back for a moment, overwhelmed. Then it occurred to her that she didn’t need to make a family tree; her mother had done it all for her, but that made her want to know their stories even more. This was her family, the family she had craved since she was a little girl.

      She reached for the next envelope. It contained a neat bundle of letters with remnants of broken seals, tied together with ribbon. Had her mother read all these? If she had, it must have been in secret, and when her father locked all Lucy’s treasures away he couldn’t have realised what they were or surely he would have burned them. Perhaps they had never been read again since they were first opened.

      She carefully unfolded the first. This was from Thomas himself, addressed to his daughter, Frances; these had been arranged in order of date of writing, beginning in 1821 – addressed from somewhere called Buchan Hill. Her heart hammering with excitement, she glanced through them, aware that she had something inestimably valuable in her hands, something of national importance and, to her, fantastic interest. She picked out one and looked at it closely. The handwriting was firm and there was a small sketch at the end. Ruth screwed up her eyes, trying to see what it was. A cartoon character of some kind. An old man, with glasses and wild hair, a letter in his hand, at his heels a small attentive dog. It was a tiny, mocking, self-portrait. She put down the letter and stared at the wall for several moments, trying to calm herself, her instinct to ring Harriet and tell her what she had found. She resisted the urge. For now, this was her secret. It was too important, too exciting to be hijacked by Hattie.

      This was her route into her family and the first thing she must do, she realised, was to sort everything into chronological order, starting with the first letter from the copies, which were Thomas’s letters to various members of his family that had been collected together. Thomas’s own writing was condensed and hard to read and she carried it over to the lamp on the side table. It was like finding a route into his head. His style was direct, if wordy, but that was a character of the age in which he wrote, detailed, seemingly with total recall and with a delightfully dry sense of humour.

      Pushing the letters aside two hours later, she realised her head was aching and her eyes sore; she felt extraordinarily tired. Going over to the French doors, she pulled back the curtains and looked out into the dark. It had started to rain. The garden was wet and windy, the trees thrashing noisily as she stepped out onto the terrace and felt the rain on her face. The wind tore at her hair and she took a deep breath, smelling the salt in the wind off the churning Forth and the sweeter scent of mountain grass from the far-off Highlands.

      It had always been a source of great pride to her Sussex-born mother that her ancestors came from Scotland, that wild, untamed place of history and myth and legend, a place that had pulled at the heartstrings of generation after generation of her family. And now that she was reading about it through the eyes of her Scottish ancestor, Ruth was beginning to understand. How strange that the wiles of Fate should have snatched him away from Scotland so young, first to Bath and then to the heat and sun of the Caribbean. Perhaps it was from these letters, written from so far away, that they had inherited their sense of nostalgia.

      Ruth hugged herself with glee. She was at the beginning of the most glorious adventure. This was the world she had seen in her dreams. She was hooked.

       17

      The entire crew, officers and men, had been assembled on deck to witness Farquhar’s punishment. The charge was insubordination and persistent recklessness in such a way as to cause the death of another crew member. They had given him the benefit of the doubt, and decided he had not intended murder. The sentence was to be flogged publicly at the gratings, followed by de-rating, which meant he was to be turned forward as an ordinary seaman with loss of status, pay and patronage.

      Tom watched, his mouth dry, as Andrew was brought up from below deck. His face as he came past the line of officers was set, with just the smallest glimmer of defiance in his eyes. His gaze lingered for a second as he passed Tom, who felt a sudden shiver of fear. Andrew was unpopular on the ship, but there were many among the junior officers and seamen who would perhaps have preferred to deal with this matter amongst themselves. Here even Mr Harrison and Mr Wyatt were required to be present. The ship must be shown to be united on the side of discipline. Andrew’s irons were removed, he was stripped naked to the waist and secured to the grating that had been lashed to the lee rigging.

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