Flora McIvor Read online

  Lorenzo returned shortly with bread rolls and coffee from a nearby bakery. He sat on the edge of the bed and passed over a warm cup and pieces of roll dipped in honey. As Flora reached out from her blankets she felt the cold air on her skin.

  ‘Are you able to get up?’

  ‘Yes, I’m fine, just tired.’

  ‘We’ll go and look round the town. It takes a few days to recover from that hellish crossing.’

  They stepped out together into the street, retracing their steps back towards the port. She felt the raw cold like a blow to her face, and was amazed how, staggering in her exhaustion from the ship, she had barely noticed the temperature. Had that been only yesterday? The people hurrying through crowded streets wore every kind of garment against the cold – furs, skins and horse blankets alongside the coats and cloaks of the more prosperous. There were African faces as there had been at Lisbon, a huge variety of Europeans, a few Asiatics and the occasional brown skinned native with plaited hair and feathers, stepping proudly through the mêlée.

  The narrow street was packed with shops each of which had an outside stall displaying its wares. Then suddenly it ended in a large open space on the other side of which could be seen the walled harbour and beside it a substantial fort. This had been the first armed colonial outpost, originally Dutch and now British. However Lorenzo turned back without comment and headed in the direction they had come by another street identical to the first.

  Flora could see now how brick built orderly houses at the foot quickly gave way to mixtures of brick and wood, and finally to haphazard timber construction. The layout too became more disorderly with streets crisscrossing and bending in different directions. It all depended, Lorenzo explained, on how each section of the original land had been purchased and then variously developed, lacking any overall plan. Yet an overwhelming energy filled the place. People hurried about intent on their business. And everywhere the rowdiness of making and selling was at full pitch. Eventually the houses began to thin out and the streets trailed past fields, orchards and finally into open farmland. Even in its frozen state the country came to Flora as a welcoming relief.

  However, once more, Lorenzo was disinclined to linger in the cold and they retraced their route into the town. Heading most of the way back towards the port, he turned into a road he called Wall Street and stopped at the sign of the Tontine Coffee House. Inside was warm and rich smelling, and though the place seemed packed with traders and merchants, they found a side bench to squeeze into on their own and ordered coffee. When the drinks came in steaming cups they sipped the heat gratefully and looked about them.

  ‘It’s the best place I have found here,’ he commented.

  ‘A little piece of Europe, perhaps.’

  ‘Until you hear the talk. It is all trade or politics, yet good for my English. Though there are French and a few Italians and Dutch, even Spanish, it is mainly English here.’

  That explained the harshness of the street voices. Though the tones were not the same as the speech of London. This was an entirely new place, for Flora at least.

  ‘And Scots,’ Lorenzo continued,’ there are many Scottish here, and on the Canadian frontier.’

  ‘What can we do?’

  ‘There is no theatre or opera, Flora. Occasionally some English actors but the mood here is against England. They want more freedom for their provinces, perhaps a new country.’

  ‘Then there may be bloodshed. I thought I had left that behind me.’

  ‘The British fight in Canada, but there is no war here. Everything is trade and that is how we should look to live.’

  ‘How, Lorenzo, what do you mean?’

  ‘We must rent a shop, not by the port but near the edges where new, better houses are being built. Soon there will be one place for the poor, downtown as they say, and another for the prosperous where there is space and light in the summer at least.’

  ‘Trading what?’

  ‘You, my dear, will be New York’s finest dressmaker. I shall deal in printed books. Until we can see better days for civilised manners.’

  ‘You think they will buy new dresses and literature?’

  ‘To begin with it will be hard, patching and mending, but this city is growing in wealth and soon people will desire the finer things in life. We must be patient. One day they will have a concert hall, theatre and even the opera.’

  Flora found it hard to match this prediction to the streets she had walked with Lorenzo that morning.

  ‘I will do my best,’ she agreed, ‘but will we live above the shop?’

  ‘For now, we have no choice. We shall have to put money down.’

  ‘l hope we have enough, but there is one thing I need to ask for, Lorenzo. There must be some quiet where we live. I cannot survive with the noise that surrounds the rooms we are in. I have always had some quiet for my refuge.’

  ‘I understand, though as a child I longed for the din of Venice. But as I say, Flora, we will go out from the downtown to where it is more peaceful, and cheaper. But business will grow there, I wager on it.’

  ‘Please, let us be done with gambling and live plainly.’

  ‘Here, my dear one, there is only plain living unless you drink hard liquor and go to a whorehouse. Look, I have these bills of lease. We should go today to see their shops. My money is almost gone.’

  ‘Yes, but first I must go back and rest, just for an hour or two. My sea legs will not manage another long walk. Come and keep me company, Lorenzo, for a time. We can pretend to siesta even without sunshine or lunch.’

  The old smile came back for the first time that day. She saw he was more troubled than his plan pretended.

  ‘You bring the sunshine back for me, dear one. I was unsure that you would come. Without you it is not worth the struggle for me to make a new life. But now you are here, everything can be done.’

  By that evening they had paid the deposit on a dilapidated clapboard building on the north edge of the town where new streets were advancing daily into the countryside.

  Everything proved harder. The house was bitterly cold. It cost all of Flora’s remaining coins to make it habitable and to provide scant starting stock for the new dressmaking business. Moreover it was a long time since she had made clothes for present day fashions. Most of the women in New York wore working clothes or eked out some imported garments. So her main jobs were low cost repairs. Only gradually did Flora get a feel for what might sell as new, and adapt her designs to the market.

  Lorenzo proved an excellent promoter, getting cards printed and distributed in town. He also hit on the idea that they should collect the repairs and have the finished work delivered by a messenger. In New York time was money. But his biggest breakthrough came when he managed to buy on credit the library of a deceased clergyman, whose catholic tastes had ranged far beyond protestant theology. Education and reading were in favour, and in the absence of theatre or a concert hall, they were the main sources of cultural life.

  The drawback of bookselling however was that New York by itself was not yet a large enough marketplace. Lorenzo had to travel by coach to New Jersey and as far as Philadelphia buying and selling in order to turnover his stock. The roads and inns were execrable making these journeys a misery, while Flora dreaded the trips when she was left alone to face the drudgery of her daily routine. Without her husband’s presence, she mind brooded over what had been lost and could not see beyond the unfulfilling grind. Would they never be able to go back to Europe?

  For the first time she became aware of stiffening joints, and the grey streaks appearing in hair that had been as black and glossy as a raven’s wing. However, Lorenzo would return full of complaints but also claiming modest successes. She was sceptical when he talked up the future, yet his presence lifted her spirits.

  In reality, Lorenzo’s business was growing, and when the more aspiring citizens established a university in New York, he was well placed to supply its new library. These contacts also resulted in the proposal to
establish a concert society. There was already the basis of an occasional orchestra in the town combining music teachers with some skilled amateurs, but his plan was to mount a season of performances. Progress on this proposal was slow, but again the foundation of Colombia University provided an opportunity.

  Lorenzo kept Flora abreast of every bit of progress, and the reverses, in his efforts to recoup something of their artistic initiative. She realised that he was actively trying to involve her in an effort to relieve the frequent depressions. In his own way he was more attentive to her than when they had lived so contentedly in Lisbon, and she was touched by this affection.

  As things improved they hired a seamstress to undertake the routine jobs. She was an old negro woman called Bessie, who had been freed by her master in Georgia and managed to reach New York. Flora began to do more fittings in the shop and occasionally in people’s homes nearby. The warm summer brought happier times to mind, and in the fall Flora could walk out of an evening into the countryside to admire the colours on the trees and the abundance of fruit in the orchards.

  She was pleased and surprised when one day that autumn Lorenzo returned from the port with a book for her.

  ‘It’s a translation by Melchiore Cesarotti of some Scottish work. I knew Cesarotti a bit in Venice. He loved the theatre but was an enemy of Goldoni. This is poetry though.’

  ‘Can I keep it to read?’

  ‘I got it for you. It was in a shipment of French and Italian books for the university but no-one here will know of it. They want Dante and Petrarch.’

  That night she sat up late accompanied by a candle, and balancing on her nose glass frames that Lorenzo had purchased to help her eyes with finer needlework. The Poems of Ossian by James MacPherson was a compelling yet puzzling read, in Cesarotti’s Italian at least. His lyrical descriptions evoked the atmosphere of the Scottish mountains, but the stories, such as they were, bore small resemblance to any of the tales and legends she had heard in her childhood or at Castle McIvor.

  MacPherson’s Fingal was obviously Fionn the martial Gaelic hero, but who was Temora and why was everyone in the poems permanently lamenting? Many of the stories of Fionn and his warrior band as she remembered them were fantastic and humorous, not mournful. She felt that the author was trying to represent the Gaelic world to a European audience rather than his own people. Now his book was here in America, in Italian and presumably in English as well.

  The next morning she quizzed Lorenzo for any clues to understanding the work.

  ‘Apparently MacPherson’s book is a great success in Britain and is being translated into all the languages.’ This seemed to be all that Lorenzo knew about Ossian.

  ‘But it is a dream vision of his own making; it is not Scotland,’ Flora objected.

  ‘There is a new movement in letters, Flora, away from the natural. Your MacPherson may be a man of the new age.’

  ‘He is certainly writing out of defeat and despair. The massacres after Culloden were devastating for our people, and he is a Highlander. Yet I could relate the story of Ossian better than MacPherson does. His treatment is like Fuselier’s version of the Americas in Amorous Indies. There is no flesh or blood.’

  Lorenzo showed more interest at the mention of his rewriting triumph.

  ‘Why don’t you recollect the story and we could make a libretto?’

  ‘For whom? We have no opera house.’

  ‘But, Flora, when the concert society begins we can perform some operatic pieces without costume or scenery. It was sometimes done this way in Vienna.’

  ‘That is serving pasta without the sauce.’

  ‘Better eat pasta than starve.’

  ‘Alright, let me make notes and write some passages. But you would have to turn the action into drama for music.’

  ‘I will need your help. This could be New York’s first opera. Your Highlanders can stand for the Indians. Are they not the natives here?’

  ‘So we shall need costumes, and feathers!’

  Flora did not truly believe in Lorenzo’s operatic project. The concert society was not yet established despite endless discussions. Yet she snatched at the chance to recover something of what they had shared in Lisbon.

  She began by outlining in her mind the life of Ossian. That was a story that MacMurrough the bard had delighted in, and constantly repeated in the long rainy afternoons when there was no alternative diversion. He seemed to claim Ossian as a kind of patron saint of poets, so justifying frequent recitations of the birth, deeds, and fantastical wanderings of this first of bards. As Flora recalled, Ossian had gone to dwell with his love in a land without time or death beneath the sea, until overcome by longing for his native soil he had returned and crumbled into dust. At least Flora recalled the tale, or most of it, and she found that writing it down helped fill the gaps. Things started with Ossian’s strange birth.

  Fionn was out hunting one day and his hounds pursued a scent. When he caught up with them in a thicket they were gently licking instead of mauling a graceful hind. ‘That is strange,’ thought Fionn, ‘it is as if this creature were trying to reach my fortress.’ So they released the hind which went in front of the hunting party till they reached home. In the middle of that night there came to Fionn’s bedside the most beautiful young women he had ever seen, slender and dark. ‘Am I dreaming?’ asked Fionn. ‘No,’ the woman said, ‘I have escaped through the kindness of your hounds from a curse of the Grey One, who wished to possess me. Now I can be yours.’ ‘What is your name?’ ‘I am called Saba,’ she replied.

  From that time Fionn lived only for the lovely Saba, till his warriors grumbled and muttered against their leader’s neglect of war. Eventually he had to leave in order to repel an invasion by the Norsemen. But when he returned Saba had gone, lured away by a dark stranger who had appeared in the shape of Fionn. For seven years he sought his lost love across land and sea, till one day his hounds ran down a strange quarry, which instead of killing they defended against all comers. It was a human child, a boy, who said he had lived in the forest mothered by a hind, until he had been driven away by a dark man. Neither Saba nor the Grey One were ever seen again, but the child was named Ossian, ‘little fawn’, and grew under Fionn’s protection to become a poet of the Fianna.

  This was the Ossian to whom James MacPherson ascribed the poems he had gathered. Could they belong to a bardic tradition of which MacMurrough had been unaware? More practically, who was the Grey Man and what dark hold did he have over Saba? That would need to be explained if any dramatic plot was to make sense.

  It seemed unlikely that something could be fashioned from this material for the stage. Would there be a Rameau in America, and if such a talent emerged could he be persuaded to abandon MacPherson’s plaintive siren in favour of such primitive old stories? Why would Scotland and its ancient struggles be of interest in this new world?

  But Lorenzo’s faith in America’s future was unbounded, certainly able to embrace a magical tale that could have come from the forests of New England. Everything would be possible in such a land of opportunity and plenty, in time. For now he would prepare a libretto from the material. What other stories could Flora remember and write down? Would she not sketch scenery and costumes? One day they would realise their joint conception here and eventually take it back to Europe.

  For now the daily grind of business must continue. Yet somehow an incipient dark had receded. Flora rose to work lighter in hand and heart. Lorenzo took up his campaign for the concert society with renewed vigour.

  In late autumn a season of storms came on, sweeping away the last ragged leaves. Lorenzo left on an extended tour of his trading outposts before the full onset of winter closed the roads. Because of her husband’s absence Flora was more frequently downtown, buying fabrics and settling accounts. Ever growing resentment against the taxes and restrictions of the colonial administration had made the atmosphere in New York tense throughout the summer heat. Flora almost welcomed the calmer mood that the winter freeze wo
uld of necessity bring.

  One blustery morning she left the seamstress and an idle message boy in charge of the shop. She wanted to check the last cargos of the season at the port, for sometimes stray rolls of cloth could be bought cheaply in the sheds. She also needed to stretch her legs after the recent stormbound days, and enjoy a wan sun which was blinking through chasing clouds. Soon she was past the Tontine, over the denuded square which was the borderland between New York and the British garrison, and through the dock gates.

  She turned left towards the wharves and walked down between long rows of open-sided sheds, looking out for the bays where unloaded goods were piled ready for shipment or collection. One whole section seemed to be full of people sheltering from the wind. They must be recent arrivals. Flora stopped. People of all ages were huddling together under blankets, between piles of baggage, but there was no hiding the tartan plaids. Highlanders. Fifty, maybe sixty, and some clearly distressed. She moved under the roof where the stench of dank misery filled her nostrils. She touched the first person she reached. The woman looked up from hollowed eyes.’

  ‘Scottish?’

  ‘Scotland. Nan Gaidheal. We are sick.’

  Suddenly a bowed figure close by rose out of his blanket and stepped towards Flora. Gaunt, grey-haired but unmistakable.

  ‘Nighean Ivor, mo cridhe. Mo cridhe, nighean McIvor.’

  He went down on his knees and put his arms round her skirts.

  ‘Calum. Tha Flora, nighean Ivor. Calum, it is really you.’

  She stood for what seemed a long time as the bowed Highlander held her, and tears ran down her cheeks. Eventually she gently lifted Calum to his feet and walked with him towards the group which was shifting and turning towards this unexpected meeting.

  ‘What has happened, Calum? Please in English.’

  ‘These are Glengarry’s people. They are being driven out by their chief. We were sailing to Canada but great storms are putting us here for a time. Many are sick from the long voyage and the winds and wet. Three months we have been at sea and hungry.’