If Alexandra McMillan had been born in any era other than her own, she would have most certainly been burned as a witch. Luckily for her, she popped into the world the same year as Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone; inspiring her father, Robert, to name his new daughter after the Scottish inventor.
Robert
McMillan came down from the Isle of Skye in 1870 with the intention of
working on the Oban railroad; a few days later, he fell hopelessly in
love with the best looking girl in Coldharbour. They married several
months before Alexandra’s birth and neither of them ever regretted the
haste of their marriage. Ian, their healthy robust son, who followed
three years later, was to join what everyone agreed was the happiest of
families.
Robert’s
hard work and honesty brought him promotion within the rail company
and he was assigned the difficult route of Tyndrum to Oban; a line that
was pestered by constant rock falls from Ben Cruachan. One night when
Alexandra was only six years of age, she drew a picture of a train
being struck by a large boulder. The following afternoon the rail crash
came to pass just as it had been prophesised and no one in Coldharbour
ever looked at little Alexandra in quite the same way again. She never
found her own behaviour, in any way, odd and neither did her mother,
and in fact they would sometimes imagine the same things at the same
time. The story was often repeated in the family that at the very
moment Ian fell from a ridge in Glencoe, both Alexandra and her mother
felt his leg snap.
She
once visited an ‘old wifey’ who lived just outside Dalmally and of
whom it was said had the gift of the second sight. So one afternoon
when Alexandra had finished the big school, she walked the nine miles
to the wifey’s house. Alexandra apologised that she couldn’t afford to
pay the woman for a reading but the woman patted her hand, told her
that everything happens for a reason and that one day she would return
the favour. Alexandra was told that she would be loved and not loved in
the same measure and at the same time.
“You
will be loved by one who does not know you are there”, whispered the
old wifey “You will have your dreams but in a different flavour from the
wanting of it and not within the confines of Coldharbour”.
So on the long walk back home, Alexandra came to the conclusion that she would have to leave the village at the earliest opportunity to fulfil her dreams.She would study hard, she told herself, for therein would lie the escape route. Reading and the getting of knowledge was relatively easy for Alexandra, for more than anything else in the world she loved books. Walter Scott was her favourite author and Ivanhoe, her hero, but for her, the greatest of all writers was a mister Robert Burns from Ayrshire. It was always with a hint of regret to Alexandra that she found herself born too late to marry the great man.
She
could break hearts with her rendition of ‘My love is like a red, red
rose’ but she knew that the breaking of hearts in Coldharbour was a
waste of her time and theirs.
There
was never any chance of her attending college or university in
Glasgow, so she read and studied and taught herself French which, she
had to admit, had limited uses in Coldharbour until one day in early
spring a French family visited the village. They had heard stories
about the pretty church founded by the Vikings and it had proved so
interesting that they delayed their trip to Fort William.
Alex,
as the French family called her, was employed as an interpreter.
Monsieur Picard felt that Alex’s accent was “a little unusual but your
grammar is delicious”. High praise indeed as she’d never actually heard
anyone speaking French until then. She found the family both exotic and
exciting and in a very short time they became close, so much so that
on the day they left, they kissed a startled Alex on both cheeks and
insisted she visit their ‘little chateau’ in Montparnasse, Paris. Life
came looking for Alex McMillan and found her packed and ready to take
the journey.
She
fell head over heels in love with Paris the moment she stepped out of
the train at Gare Du Nord. This was a city in the middle of the Golden
Era, la belle époque, a city that was impossible to resist.
Deciding
to save the little money she had, Alex walked away from the station
and turned left down a narrow street clutching her five centimes map.
Every open door she passed had its own smell and its own personal
story. There are slivers of time, when just for that second, you know
that your life is almost achingly perfect – Alex would later call these
the ‘passing wonderful’ moments – those moments when you are happy to
just to be alive.
She
crossed the Rue De Rivoli and lost her breath with the beautiful
splendour of it all, but the best was yet to come. As she rounded the
back of the Louvre and crossed the Pont Neuf, she saw reflected in the
sparkling River Seine the Notre Dame cathedral and she wept. If there
was anywhere in the world or any time you could wish to exist then it
was here Paris, autumn 1896.
A
little ginger man with a large straw boater pointed out the Picard’s
‘little chateau’. No wonder he had a wry smile on his freckled face, it
was such a monster of a building, easily the largest on this stretch of
Boulevard Raspail. After she had pulled the black lever which tipped
the wooden block which rang the bell, she was told by a woman who was
in the process of bleaching her moustache to go to the rear of the
building. Alex sat in the servant’s kitchen scared to even breathe when
suddenly Madame Picard swished into the room and screamed out “what
have they done to my little Scottish friend?”
Madame
showed Alex into a bedroom that was larger than her entire Coldharbour
home. “You will be happy here and you may stay as long as you wish,
dinner is at seven thirty”.Alex outstretched her arms, looked
heavenward then fell comfortably back on to a big soft bed, life was
good and she was still just ‘passing wonderful’.
At
dinner that evening, Alex was seated beside an elderly gentleman whose
hands were ravaged by arthritis but whose heart was still relatively
untouched. “I noticed you admiring the painting hanging on the wall. It
was a gift to my very dear and close friend, Alain Picard”
Alex recognised it as a Renoir or at least an excellent copy.
”It is called ‘Dancing at Bougival’, you like it?”
“Of course” said Alex.
“I am Pierre-Auguste Renoir and you are Alexandra, the fortune teller, I have heard much about you”
Monsieur
Renoir told her of his new neighbour in Montmartre who had recently
arrived from the south of France and who was in want of an English
teacher.
So
the strange girl from the West Highlands became a teacher and a friend
of one of France’s greatest painters. By December, she had moved to a
flat in the Pigalle only a few minutes’ walk from Montmartre. By the
following summer, her growing number of pupils had led her to set up a
small English language school near the Sacre Coeur, although it didn’t
pay well, she supplemented it by charging for fortune telling. By the
light of day she was the paragon of sobriety but by night she sat with
her comrades in cafes, smoking, sipping brandy and discussing the
current troubles. On one such evening she was given a pencil drawing of
herself by Toulouse Lautrec, it lay undimmed in her suitcase until it
was found by her son many years later.
In
late August of 1905, Alex had saved enough money to take a short
holiday in the fashionable resort of Deauville on the north coast of
France. It was populated, every summer, for several weeks by the
international rich. Alex was hoping that maybe this was a place to find a
husband before she was thirty and past her prime.
One
day, as she was leaving the beach, she leaned against a post to put
her shoes on when one of the straps broke. She hobbled for a short
distance along the promenade before she was stopped by the most
gigantic of men who asked in French, but with a distinct American
twang, if he could help. Alex said of course he could.
“I’m assuming you’re not French...English?”
“Scottish”
“Ah, the land of Robert Burns” said the very confident, very tall black man with obvious good taste, thought Alex.
“He is my most favourite of all poets” she said proudly.
“Is
he indeed...is he, indeed?” and with that Jacob took her small hand in
his and led her to the Saint Bernard cafe, where over a glass of cheap
wine she found out all she needed to know. He had recently left the
French Foreign Legion where he had spent many a happy year, he was
originally from west Philadelphia, a city in the United States of
America, but had left that country suddenly for reasons he would not
expand upon.
“And that, my Scottish, is the story”.
When
she first made love to Jacob it was on Bastille night, just as the
whole of Montmartre had turned into one large firework celebration; it
was her time for true happiness, right here and right now, and so
another ‘wonderful’ was about to be passed.
On
Christmas day, Alex found out that she was pregnant. In Montmartre
there were many combinations of couples, all one had to do was throw a
stone and you were sure to hit an unconventional pairing. Outside of
this environment life was very different, very different indeed. Even
before Isaiah’s birth, Jacob’s family had found out about the baby and
were begging him to bring it home. Whatever troubles had occurred to
make him run in the first place, they must have now been settled as he
felt it was safe to return.
One
morning Alex woke to the silence. This was about the same time as
Jacob was boarding a ship bound for New York with a baby. If ever a
heart was broken, it was Alex’s heart; broken all the way through and
quietly done.
She
returned to the family home at Coldharbour where now only Ian, her
brother, remained. No one in the village saw her light a bonfire early
one morning, a large bonfire which contained all the souvenirs and
memories of France. When the fire eventually faded away to embers and
died, so did her eyes.
It
stayed that way for many years until a letter arrived from a young
American by the name of Isaiah Dupont who, he believed, may be Alex’s
son and he wondered if she could meet him in Glasgow.She knew from the
moment she stepped nervously into the Tea Rooms on Sauchiehall Street
that this was her son - no doubt about it, he had Jacob’s face. He told
his mother that he had met an English girl while studying at Temple
University in Philadelphia and that they were now engaged and living in
London. He showed Alex the letter that Jacob had asked to be sent to
his son if he should fail to return from the Front. It explained what
really had happened to his mother and how very sorry his father was.
Then Isaiah told his mother he was to be married in August and he
wanted her to be at his side.
Before
Alex left Coldharbour, she visited the cottage of the ‘old wifey’
who’d once lived just outside Dalmally. The woman’s daughter thanked
her for the years Alex had sent money from France and told her of the
difference it had made to their lives. A letter lay on her mother’s
fireplace to be read by Alex when she returned.
“I
can never thank you enough for your kindness and for the beautiful way
you have repaid me. I know by the time you read this you will have
found what you are looking for. Once you were loved and not loved at
the same time and now that time has passed. Go to them.”
Alex
lived well into her nineties and was lovingly looked after by her son,
his wife and their three children. She never went back to
Coldharbour.
Each
night, as she closed her eyes, she would clutch a book of poems by
Robert Burns and within seconds sleep would paint a huge smile on her
face.
bobby stevenson 2015
http://www.randomactsstories.blogspot.co.uk/
bobby stevenson 2015
http://www.randomactsstories.blogspot.co.uk/
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