1.1 Mrs Sinclair and the Feather Haa

In which the newly-widowed Mrs Sinclair is trying to control her emotions.

Yell, Shetland, in the early nineteenth century

Mrs Margaret Sinclair sat in the book-room on the ground floor of Houlis House, and studied the fading brown ink on the parchment pages. Her late husband’s handwriting was tight and the numbers were convoluted. She was sitting at his walnut desk now for the first time in her marriage. The morning sunlight illuminated its shining wood. There were gleaming brass handles on each of the three drawers on either side of the kneehole under which her children had never been allowed to play. They were too large for such games now.

The chair was too low for her, but she sat up straight, and did not ask for a cushion. She could see that her worn black dress did not show to advantage against the warm brown wood. It was a familiar sad contrast.

Oliphant, the late Mr Sinclair’s man of business, stood behind her, shifting his boots on the faded puce rug. She could sense his nervousness. He had never shown the register of accounts to her before. She had never before been able to ask to see them.

Mrs Sinclair was a new-made widow.

Mr Gilbert Sinclair now lay on the mahogany table in the dining-room, two rooms away. After Mrs Sinclair and the housekeeper had washed his body and laid him out that morning, on the bed in his dressing-room, the men had brought his body downstairs on a board. While his removal was being effected Mrs Sinclair had sat with her children in the schoolroom while they ate their nuncheon with Miss Warner. She had not felt able to eat.

After the nuncheon Mrs Sinclair had rested for a little on her daybed in the bedroom she had shared with her husband. This period of privacy had allowed her to recover her composure sufficiently to ask the housekeeper to pack up her husband’s clothes for the poor. Mr Sinclair had no near male relations, and it would be wasteful to throw such good garments away.

Downstairs in the book-room she listened to Jessie’s brisk steps on the floor above her. Mr Sinclair had never allowed a rug or a drugget to be laid on his dressing-room floor. His pacing steps in the small hours had kept her awake for years.

Outside in the hall Anderson, the butler, was consulting with the carpenter and his boy on how the coffin would leave the house.

Mrs Sinclair ran her finger carefully along the columns of figures on the page headed ‘August 1815’, noticing the regularity of the crisp, curly black script. Oliphant had also shown her where Mr Sinclair kept his slate, in the top desk drawer on the right. Surely it must have been his own old slate from his schooldays, it was so cracked and dull, but she did not touch it. She could work the additions easily in her head.

Maria had wanted to help her with the arithmetic, but Mrs Sinclair had told her to go and read to the younger girls in the schoolroom so that Miss Warner could sew their mourning clothes.

‘Mama, may I have Papa’s repeating watch?’

Maria was a sharp-eyed girl of twelve with black curly hair and rosy cheeks. She had a skill for entering a room silently before she was noticed, and listened to conversations carefully. She had her father’s trick of looking at her interlocutor without saying a word, yet while Mr Sinclair’s dispassionate stare had caused speakers to fumble and forget their words, Maria’s gaze was friendly and encouraging. The servants confided in her.

‘If you wish, child.’

Mrs Sinclair was absorbed by the numbers on the stiff ruled pages, and had hardly heard what Maria had asked. She was also preoccupied with the effort of looking sombre. She still did not feel hungry. The servants would be pleased, at least: a newly-made widow should have no appetite. She turned her attention, with an effort, back to Maria’s request.

‘Wait, child. Ask Ishabel if she would like to choose something from poor Papa’s things as well. And Anne too: she is too small to have a rational preference, but you might see if there is something that she will like later.’

‘I do not think she should have the bottles with the shiny tops in Papa’s medicine chest,’ Maria had said firmly. ‘She would suck them. They should be washed out.’

Mrs Sinclair was startled. What did Maria know?

She cast about for another keepsake, at a loss as to what there might be in her husband’s chilly sanctum suitable for a child of three. In his youth Mr Sinclair had been a man of fashion, but he did not give away his possessions, or lend them to his children. Viewing the snuffboxes had been their annual indulgence, on his birthday.

‘The prettiest snuff-box, perhaps.’

Maria nodded. ‘She will like the blue Sèvres box with the lambs. I will take the box with the Golden Fleece. Ishabel can have the rose-coloured one, with the flying birds.’

‘Maria –’

‘Yes, Mama?’ Maria paused on her way out of the door. The strip of low sunlight flooding through the windows shone on her homespun stockings, showing their darns at the heels. Mrs Sinclair realised that her daughter’s skirts really must be lengthened again this year, and added another mental note to an overwhelming list.

‘I know you are sad, dearest. You must remember Papa in your prayers tonight.’ She tried not to press the point, with Oliphant in the room not four yards away, but her gaze held Maria’s black eyes meaningfully.

Maria gently touched a finger to her eye, encouraging any tears that might want to appear. ‘I am, Mama. I will.’ She disappeared soundlessly out of the door.

Episode 1.2 will follow.

‘Mrs Sinclair and the Feather Haa’ © Kate Macdonald 2024.

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