by Emma Fraser
Chapter Eleven
Olivia
1947
Olivia was in her final year at school before anyone mentioned her aunts again.
She was staying with Agatha and Gordon for the weekend when one night she came downstairs to make herself a hot drink and overheard Agatha talking to Gordon in the sitting room.
‘It’s simply too bad,’ Agatha was saying. ‘No matter how fond we are of her, Olivia should be with family. When we agreed to act as her guardians it was with the understanding that Georgina and Edith would take over after the war. I never thought we’d still be doing it seven years later!’
‘She’ll be eighteen soon and legally an adult. It’s not as if she’s our child. It was one thing acting as her guardians during the war, when there was no one else, but to expect us to continue to take responsibility when she’s an adult, that really takes the biscuit,’ Gordon agreed with an annoyed rustle of his newspaper.
‘But how can we go and leave her all alone? She might be almost eighteen but she’s still very much a child.’
Gordon’s reply was indistinct.
‘I appreciate they had a difficult war,’ Agatha continued. ‘Life as a prisoner of the Japanese couldn’t have been easy, but the war’s been over for almost three years and they have a duty towards that child. A duty towards poor, dead Harriet. They wouldn’t even have Olivia at Greyfriars for the summer breaks. Apparently it was quite impossible. Can you believe that! Now they say that Olivia is settled and they see no need to unsettle her.’
Hearing the creak of Gordon’s chair as he stood, Olivia backed away from the door. Her aunts had been prisoners of war! Why had no one told her? No wonder they hadn’t sent for her. But what about after the war? They could have written and left it up to her to decide whether she wanted to go to Greyfriars. Clearly they had no interest in her. Tears burning behind her lids, she crept upstairs without her Horlicks and went to bed.
The next morning Agatha told Olivia that she and Gordon were planning to emigrate to Australia.
‘It is so dreadfully miserable in Britain at the moment. Gordon’s hip aches whenever it rains and I long for the sunshine. We would both be very happy if you would come with us.’
It was very sweet of Agatha to invite her, and perhaps, if she hadn’t overheard them talking last night, or if she hadn’t had plans of her own, Olivia might have given it serious consideration.
‘If possible I’d like to stay here. I’ve applied to Edinburgh University to study History and if I get the marks I expect, I think they’ll accept me.’
‘Of course they will. But are you sure, dear? I hate to think of you here on your own.’ Agatha placed a bowl of porridge in front of Olivia.
‘I’ll be all right. I’ll need to find a job, one I could do in the evenings or weekends, but I’m sure I can find something. I don’t care what I do.’
‘But, my dear, there’s no need to get a job! Your aunts have being sending me money for you every month.’
‘They have?’ She’d always felt dreadful that Agatha and Gordon had had to support her. All Father’s money had been tied up in the bombed London house.
‘Oh yes. Shortly after the war was over they returned to Greyfriars.’ Colour suffused Agatha’s face. ‘I wasn’t sure what to tell you! I expected them to write to you themselves and when they didn’t, I thought…’
‘It better not to tell me they had no interest in contacting me,’ Olivia finished for her. Agatha nodded, looking mortified.
‘I’m so sorry, Agatha, that must have been difficult for you.’
‘More difficult for you. They should have come to see you. At the very least they should have invited you to visit them at Greyfriars. You were Harriet’s only child. Their only niece!’
‘Why didn’t you tell me my aunts were prisoners of war?’ Olivia asked.
Agatha flushed. ‘How do you know that?’
‘I heard you and Gordon talking about it once.’ She didn’t mention it was last night. Agatha would be mortified if she knew Olivia had overheard her and Gordon’s discussion.
‘We didn’t tell you when we first heard because we didn’t know for sure what had happened to them after Singapore fell – even if they were alive or dead. We didn’t want to say anything until we were sure either way. It was all so confused and almost impossible to get information about anything or anyone. We only knew for certain they had survived when Georgina wrote to us from Greyfriars to ask if we could continue to keep an eye on you.’ She shook her head. ‘Whatever difficulties they experienced as prisoners it was no excuse for not arranging to see you.’
‘I can’t imagine being prisoners of war was a pleasant experience,’ Olivia said, although she silently agreed with Agatha. Her aunts could have got in touch after the war was over. They’d never even tried to organise a memorial service for Mother and Father. ‘But they did send you an allowance for me. That was something.’
‘It’s Harriet’s share of the house in Edinburgh and yours by right. Your aunts have been renting it out.’
‘Would it be enough, do you think, to help me through university?’
‘More than enough I should imagine. My dear, I was going to wait until your birthday to tell you, however I see no reason not to tell you now, you own, or, to be more exact, will own, a third of the house in Edinburgh as well as a third of Greyfriars when you turn twenty-one. You will need to decide what to do when you inherit. In the meantime, I have put the allowance that Edith and Georgina have been sending these last years into an account for you. Gordon and I didn’t want anything for looking after you.’ Agatha mentioned the sum she had put aside as well as the monthly allowance. ‘As long as you are careful, it should be more than enough to cover your university fees along with room and board, with some left over to clothe yourself and buy books.’
Olivia had worried about how she was going to be able to afford university. Now she wouldn’t have to worry about any of that. It was a huge relief. She couldn’t have borne to ask Agatha and Gordon to help out when they’d already done so much and for far longer than either of them had expected. Of course, she would have much rather her parents had still been alive and there had been no money to inherit. A lump rose in her throat. She still missed them every day. It was as if there was a big empty space inside her that nothing could fill.
Chapter Twelve
Charlotte
1984
A tear slipped down Mum’s cheek and my chest constricted. I’d never seen her cry. I took her hand and squeezed it.
‘Oh, Mum, how horrible for you. To lose both your parents when you were so young! And to overhear what you did. You must have felt so rejected!’
She dabbed away her tears and sighed. ‘Agatha and Gordon were terribly kind to me but they weren’t family and I always felt a little like a cuckoo in a nest. I didn’t spend much time with them – holidays, of course, and the odd weekend – and my time at boarding school made me pretty self-reliant. In those days it toughened you up. It was the same for most of us. Tears and homesickness weren’t tolerated, one had to put a face on things.’
Whatever she said, my heart ached for the girl my mother had been.
Mum knotted her hands together, clearly struggling to get her emotions under control. ‘When I found out that my aunts had been prisoners of war, I understood why they hadn’t sent for me during the war. I wish Agatha had told me at the time! It would have made it easier to understand why they didn’t come.’
‘They could have made more of an effort to see you when the war was over.’
‘I’ve always wondered why they didn’t but in time I gave up thinking about it, but by the time Agatha told me they were back at Greyfriars it had been eight years since I’d last them and I’d got used to being on my own and depending on myself.’
Mum was a whole lot more forgiving towards her aunts than I would have been. For them to know Mum was orphaned but not to have taken her in, or at the very least kept in touch was, in my v
iew, unforgivable.
‘But if you had a share in the house – it was as much your home as theirs!’
‘It was clear they didn’t want me at Greyfriars.’ Her voice hitched.
‘You don’t have to talk about it any more, Mum. Not if you don’t want to,’ I said, giving her hand another squeeze.
‘I do. I haven’t spoken about it before. Besides, the next part’s important – for you.’
‘In what way?’
‘Because of what will happen after I’m gone. I still have my share in Greyfriars and it will come to you when I die.’
I wasn’t interested in a share of a house I’d never seen and even less prepared to think about a future without Mum in it.
‘And there’s more, I’m afraid, Charlotte. This house – the aunts still own two thirds,’ Mum went on, her fingers fidgeting nervously with the pearls around her neck.
Now that was a shock. ‘What do you mean?’
‘We came to an arrangement. Years ago. I thought I had swapped my share in Greyfriars for their share in this house but when I started sorting out my affairs I realised that wasn’t the case.’ Mum shook her head. ‘It was all so complicated.’
‘Didn’t you get anything in writing?’
‘We didn’t think like that. Not back then.’
‘Do you think that’s the reason the aunts want to see you now?’
‘I don’t know. It might be. But why not before?’
‘Whatever they want now, try not to worry about it, Mum. Conveyancing isn’t my area of expertise, but I can easily find someone. It can all be sorted without you seeing them.’ My dislike of my great-aunts was deepening with every new revelation. ‘Oh, Mum, all the people you lost. Your parents, your aunts, Agatha and Gordon – then Dad.’ I couldn’t bear to think of how lonely she’d been for most of her life. ‘You must have felt so abandoned – so alone.’ But she wasn’t alone now. She had me. And I wasn’t going anywhere.
Mum’s eyes blazed. ‘I’m not telling you this so you can feel sorry for me! You talk to me as if I am some kind of saint. Everybody makes mistakes, Charlotte, and I’m no different.’
I was taken aback by the vehemence in her voice. ‘I didn’t mean…’
But Mum wouldn’t say any more, declaring suddenly she was too tired and needed a nap. Looking at the greyness of her face, I had no option but to believe her.
Over the next few days, Mum and I discussed and argued about books, still our fallback position when it came to conversation. When we’d exhausted that, I’d read to her or we’d listen to the radio together. The news always seemed to be grim; the miners’ continuing desperate strike, the rising unemployment figures, famine in Africa, and Aids was becoming an epidemic. When we’d had enough dispiriting news we’d change the station to Radio Three and listen to that while reading instead. She hadn’t said anything more about Greyfriars and I didn’t press her. Recalling her childhood clearly upset her. I should have guessed there was more to the story than what I already knew.
I’d been home almost a week before she mentioned her past again. She was on the sofa and I was sitting in the armchair, pulled up close to her, reading from Evelyn Waugh’s Decline and Fall and making us both chuckle when, after I finished the chapter, she placed her hand on my arm.
‘Charlotte, we need to talk,’ she said. ‘I’ve put it off long enough.’
I closed the novel and marked our place with a bookmark.
‘Fire away.’
‘There’s something I have to tell you. Something I know you’ll find hard to accept and particularly hard to forgive. I should have told you a long time ago.’ She smiled faintly. ‘There is nothing quite like being close to death to make one realise how much one wants to unburden one’s self.’
I felt a ripple of unease. What else, apart from her childhood, hadn’t she told me about?
‘Your father isn’t dead. At least not as far as I know.’
I gaped at her in stunned silence. I’d been eight or nine when I’d asked Mum why she and I had the same surname when everyone else I knew had the same surname as their fathers. All Mum had told me about Dad up until that point was that he’d been a university lecturer in history and had died before I was born. Whenever I tried to find out more about him she’d simply say he’d been wonderful, that she wished Dad and I could have known each other and how sorry she was she didn’t have a single photograph of him to show me. It had never crossed my mind they hadn’t been married. She’d told me then that they had been planning to, but my father had died before they could.
I’d felt the shame of it then, and had never told anyone. Now it seemed that even then my mother hadn’t told me the whole truth. My father might still be alive.
‘Why did you tell me he’d died?’
‘Because I didn’t want to tell you the whole truth.’ Her eyes filled with tears and she lowered her voice to a whisper. ‘Because I was ashamed and I didn’t want to diminish myself in your eyes.’ She raised her head and looked me in the eye. ‘I need to tell you everything now. I only hope, when you hear what I have to say, you’ll find it in your heart to forgive me.’
Chapter Thirteen
Olivia
1950
To Olivia’s gratification and delight, she did get in to Edinburgh University. Agatha waited until term started before she sailed to join Gordon who had left a few weeks earlier. It was hard saying goodbye, to Agatha in particular, but Olivia’s sadness was tempered by the excitement of being independent and starting a new life.
University was everything Olivia had hoped for. She found a room in a house in Nicholson Street. Mrs Linklater, the landlady, was strict, but her rules – no male visitors after six, in for the night by ten, no cooking in the bedrooms, except to make a cup of tea – were easy after boarding school. There were two other women students in the house who shared a twin room. They were in their final year and Olivia saw little of them. They were either at the library or out with friends. But when they did meet over breakfast and supper, meals provided by Mrs Linklater, they were friendly enough.
There were many similar to Olivia at university – young women with sheltered upbringings who were away from home for the first time, or who, like her, had spent their childhoods in boarding school. Many had lost brothers and fathers during the war and even a few like her, who had lost everyone. She threw herself into her new life. She joined the Celtic society, had the occasional meal out with her fellow students and went for long walks. Above all else she loved the intellectual demands of her course. She’d taken History and English Literature to begin with, and enjoyed both of them, but when it came time to decide what subject to take to honours she’d plumped for History. She had a notion that after senior honours she might go on to do a Bachelor of Laws.
She was in the penultimate year when she met him and, almost immediately, she knew he was the one.
As always, she was sitting in the third row, determined not to miss a word, not to be distracted by the students making paper aeroplanes in the back row, or snoozing, snoring softly. She didn’t ever take the front row – that made her too conspicuous, but here in the third, she was sufficiently inconspicuous while able to concentrate on the lecture.
He was American; a Ph.D. student standing in for the term for their usual lecturer who had had to take some time off to care for his wife who was ill. Ethan – he told them to call him by his first name – was considerably more casual than their usual lecturers. Instead of standing he perched on a chair, speaking directly to his audience without the need for notes, or even a blackboard. He was good-looking although she suspected not everyone would find him so. He was tall, with a beaked nose and a mouth that turned up at the corners as if his lips were either just beginning or just finishing a smile. His suit was cheap, she had a good eye for that sort of thing, but his shoes were polished to a high shine, his shirt freshly laundered, his tie neatly knotted. But despite this there was something faintly exotic, even dangerous about him. In many wa
ys, he reminded her of Findlay.
He was giving a lecture on Scottish heroes of the past and had everyone in the lecture theatre hanging on his every word.
‘Some might think Rob Roy McGregor a romantic figure – indeed that is how he is often depicted – a man of the people for the people – but I would argue that he was probably little more than a thief. History often imbues figures of the past with motives and behaviour for which there is no evidence. But does it really matter? Is oral history as important as written, documented original sources? Can it ever – should it ever – become part of history? I’ll leave you to pick your own figure from the past and to write an essay comparing and contrasting original sources with oral history. Papers due in advance of your next tutorial. Any questions, come and see me.’