I left home this morning a poverty-stricken single mum. I am returning a wealthy woman. A woman who could never have dreamed of the opportunities that lie before her now.
Lexie, 1980
Davy tops up my glass and the bubbles froth to the very brim before settling again. He raises his own glass in another toast. ‘To Lady Helen Mackenzie-Grant and Flora Gordon, the women who made all this possible.’
There’s a round of applause before the fiddles and flute strike up again, playing ‘Flora’s Waltz’， the piece that the band have composed especially for my mum. The lilting melody suits her perfectly with its beautifully simple rise and fall, and as I listen I can picture her gentle smile. She is with me here tonight in the big house as we launch the Centre for Traditional Music, which I’ve established in her name. She could never take up her rightful place here in her lifetime, but now the empty rooms will be filled with life and laughter and music. The songs my mum used to sing will resonate from the panelled walls and the corniced ceilings and – at last – Flora Gordon will be mistress of Ardtuath House.
It’s to be a place where people will come from far and wide, and everyone will be made welcome: all generations and backgrounds, beginners and experts, people who want to make their own music. People who want to find their own songs to sing.
I think my grandmother, Lady Helen, would approve, too. At the meeting in Inverness, Mr Clelland had explained to me that on her death, her entire estate – the proceeds from the sale of the house in London as well as the sale of the house and lands at Ardtuath – had been put into a carefully managed trust. She had specified that an amount was to be paid each month to Flora Gordon of Keeper’s Cottage, Ardtuath, to enable her to live there and raise her child. And on Flora Gordon’s death, the trust was to be dissolved and the capital made over in full to the then about-to-be-born grandchild of Lady Helen Mackenzie-Grant, who would be her sole heir.
Once Mr Clelland had gone through the legalities of Lady Helen’s bequest with me, he’d then shuffled through his pile of papers and turned his attention to Mum’s will. She’d left Keeper’s Cottage to me, of course. But what I didn’t know was that she’d put almost all of her monthly allowance from the trust into her post office savings account, preferring to live simply and quietly as her parents had done before her on the little croft. She’d sent me a small allowance when I was studying in London, and I imagine she might have used her savings to pay the fees for me to attend stage school if I hadn’t won a full scholarship. But she’d always preferred to let me stand on my own two feet, proving to myself and to the world that I could make my own success, and all the while the money she’d saved had been accumulating quietly in the background.
I smile at Davy as he joins the other musicians on the stage, picking up his guitar. He has a new part-time job here now as one of the teachers when he’s not out on the boat. Elspeth and I will work together running the administrative side of the centre, sharing the job and our childcare. She has little Katie now, Jack’s sister, and Daisy loves spending her days with them.
I caress the gentle swell of my own belly as Davy begins to play ‘The Eriskay Love Lilt’。 It’s still our secret, but I’ve no doubt that before too many more weeks have passed it will be general knowledge about these parts that Daisy Gordon is going to have her own wee brother or sister by the time the heather turns the hills purple again in the summer. My money’s on Bridie Macdonald being the first to know.
As he sings the verse, he searches for me in the audience and looks straight into my eyes.
‘Thou art the music of my heart,
Harp of joy, o cruit mo chruid,
Moon of guidance by night,
Strength and light thou art to me.’
He’s the one who helped me come up with the idea for the centre. We’ve taken out a long lease on the house so that instead of it being shut up most of the year and only used for the occasional shooting party, it’s become a focal point of the community, open to all. There’ll be concerts and festivals and residential retreats on offer. And there’ll be music lessons for local children, as well as the toddler’s music and movement group that Elspeth and I will continue to run. We have plans to install a recording studio, too, so that the traditional songs can be preserved for posterity.
Tonight, the windows of Ardtuath House no longer look like blank, dead eyes staring out at the loch, and the oppressive atmosphere of sadness and fear that used to linger in these rooms has been exorcised. Light spills on to the lawn, pushing back the shadows, and music floats on the air, bringing the night to life. Davy once said that Keeper’s Cottage had always been filled with song and good cheer, and that’s another way that Flora’s spirit has finally been allowed to inhabit the house where she’d once dreamed of living as Alec’s wife. Although that dream was destined never to come true, perhaps Fate has a funny way of making sure things work out in the end.