by Emma Fraser
Her heart gave a dull thump. It was just more fantasising. Whatever her future was going to be, it wouldn’t be that. She’d be a mother soon, responsible for another soul and it was time she grew up and faced reality. She returned her attention to the view. At one time she was certain she could have seen all the way to the pier from here. Now her line of sight was restricted by the height of the unpruned rhododendrons. She thought longingly of the bedroom she’d had the last time she was at Greyfriars. The one in the turret. Being at the very top of the house and with its many windows, it would have a much better view. She could watch the birds perhaps, look out to the sea and watch how it changed with the light. It would be brighter up there too.
It was Georgina who brought the books a short while later.
‘Edith told me you were up and looking for something to read.’ She placed the leather-bound volumes on the table beside the bed. ‘There’s the Brontes and Robert Louis Stevenson as well as some Dickens. I’m sorry but we don’t have anything more modern.’ She turned back to Olivia. ‘Goodness me, you look like a baby in a blanket the way Edith has you all wrapped up.’ Unexpectedly she laughed and so did Olivia, the shared laughter making her feel lighter than she had felt in days.
Emboldened, she asked Georgina whether it was possible to move into the tower room.
The amusement immediately drained from Georgina’s eyes. ‘It’s quite impossible, I’m afraid. Surely you remember the stone steps leading up there? How narrow and worn they were? It would be too risky for you to manage them and Edith and I would find it difficult to get up and down those stairs with trays.’
Olivia did remember. Georgina’s words brought Olivia back to her aunt laughing with her in that very room, Olivia asking Georgina why she didn’t sleep there, Georgina’s reply that adults wouldn’t be able to manage the stairs if they were squiffy. Georgina swirling the champagne in her glass, the invitation to Singapore – clearly not truly meant, Georgina dancing on her own in the garden, with complete abandonment. Olivia following her down to the shore, watching as she slipped her arms around Findlay’s neck. Whatever trouble her aunt had caused she’d been so alive back then. What horrible things had happened that had sucked all the joy from her?
‘Aunt Georgina, did Findlay survive the war?’
Georgina’s cheeks paled and she swayed slightly, grasping on to the bedstead, as if she needed support. ‘Yes, he did.’
‘Did he and Edith ever make up?’
‘We don’t talk about Findlay – he belongs to the past.’
It seemed there was no topic that wasn’t off limits.
Georgina released her grip on the bedstead and smiled too brightly. ‘Now, I’m afraid I must leave you. I have chores to do.’
Chapter Nineteen
As her health improved and Olivia stayed out of bed for longer and longer periods, so the hours between sleep dragged and stretched. Edith permitted Olivia to sit in the armchair in her room as long as she was well wrapped and kept her feet propped up. Her aunts brought her more books from the library, but she could only read for short periods, especially by the flickering light of the oil lamp, before her vision began to blur. When Olivia was tired of reading, she would lay her book down and stare out of the window, thinking of Ethan and watching as the leaves began to appear on the trees and the birds returned from their winter sojourns.
Once a week one of her aunts would appear from the tunnel through the rhododendrons pushing a wheelbarrow laden with food and sometimes fuel. At other times Olivia would see them outside, returning to the house with a pail of milk or a basket of vegetables or eggs.
As everyone had said, it seemed they never left the island to shop for themselves.
‘We have no need to,’ Georgina had said when she’d asked her. ‘The store has a limited amount of foodstuffs so we order what we need and have it delivered. Eggs, milk and vegetables we provide for ourselves.’
‘But don’t you miss having company?’ Olivia pressed. She was so bored with her own company and wished Georgina would spend more time with her. It was one thing to believe Edith content with such a dull existence but impossible to imagine the Georgina of her childhood being happy to live like a hermit.
‘We had enough of living in close quarters with others during the war to last us a lifetime.’
It was the first time her aunt had referred to the war with more than a passing remark and Olivia seized her chance. ‘What happened to you during the war? Agatha said you and Aunt Edith were captured by the Japanese? Was it very awful?’
‘You could say that,’ Georgina said with a twist to her lips, ‘but neither Edith nor I have any wish to speak of that time.’ Her expression softened. ‘What’s done is done. There’s no point regretting what can’t be changed, and no point dwelling on the past.’
The old Georgina would never have spoken in such clichéd terms. Nevertheless, it was good advice. Advice Olivia would do well to heed. She needed to stop dwelling on the past and start looking to the future. ‘Of course. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked.’
Georgina sat down on the edge of the bed and took Olivia’s hand. ‘I didn’t mean to snap.’ She gave Olivia one of the brilliant smiles she remembered from the past. ‘I do have regrets; not least that I couldn’t have done more for you after Harriet died. I wish I could have come to see you after the war or had you to stay – but Edith and I – we needed time to recover. We were barely able to look after ourselves let alone you. All we wanted was to stay here and lick our wounds. Let the peace and solitude of Greyfriars heal us.’
Olivia could have pointed out that they had had years to heal themselves – and there was nothing preventing them from writing to her. But to confront her aunts in that way was unthinkable, especially when she’d accepted a long time ago that neither had felt any filial duty towards her and still didn’t. Although one third of Greyfriars was hers, she was essentially dependent on them, treated like a guest in a country house who simply refuses to go rather than a member of their family. Her aunts never failed to ask how she was feeling and always appeared most solicitous of her comfort, ensuring she was well wrapped and her fire was kept lit. However, Olivia couldn’t get over the feeling she wasn’t welcome or even wanted at Greyfriars. They rarely stayed to talk to her and never, once she thought about it, visited her together. It was as if she were a chore they divided between them. She understood she’d disrupted their lives by coming and once the baby was born would disrupt it further. But she was their only living relative, the only child of a sister they’d loved. And she was here, in her family home. Really! They might make more of an effort!
She still intended that she and her child would stay there for a while, although her aunts’ guarded manner whenever they were with her prevented Olivia from raising the matter with either of them and neither did they raise it with her.
One late afternoon she awoke with a start, every hair on her body standing on end, her heart beating in terror. She wasn’t sure what had woken her.
She’d been reading and must have dozed off and while she’d been sleeping the room had darkened, the furniture little more than shadowed outlines.
She listened, her heart thudding sickeningly against her ribs, straining her eyes in the semi-darkness. Had the noise that had woken her been the wailing of the wind down the chimney breast, or the scratch of the branches of the unpruned rowan tree against her window? The cry of a fox perhaps? There were a few on the island, their high-pitched screams sounding so human it always chilled her.
But she knew it had been none of those. She’d had a sense of a breath against her face, that someone was in the room or had just left it. She tried to call out but the words stuck in her throat. Then, with an immense effort she managed. ‘Aunt Edith? Aunt Georgina? Is that you?’
There was no reply. She must have been dreaming. It was impossible to believe that either of her aunts were, or had been, in the room, heard her call out and not answered. Unless they’d left just before she’
d woken?
The fire was almost out and her limbs had stiffened. The cold wind snuck between the old window frames and she stood to close the curtains to keep in what little warmth remained. But it wasn’t the sun setting that had cast her room in darkness. Whilst she’d been sleeping a heavy mist had fallen. As she reached to draw the curtains, she saw Edith walking towards the house carrying a basket. Behind her aunt, in the shadows of the trees, Olivia thought she saw something move, although it was so misty she couldn’t be certain. Georgina returning from the evening milking? But both her aunts couldn’t be outside, not if one of them had been in her room. A deer or fox then? However, no animal moved like that, nor was it the right shape.
She shivered. Was it the ghost of Lady Sarah? She shook her head at her flights of fancy. It was being back here, amongst the ghostly presences she’d always imagined that was making her see and imagine things. Anyway, she told herself with an impatient click of her tongue, she almost wouldn’t mind if it was the ghost of Lady Sarah. At least she’d have company.
Deriding herself for her bout of self-pity she climbed back into bed, the lump in her stomach making it awkward, and pulled the blankets up to her chin. Of course there was no such thing as ghosts!
Just as she was settled, there was a knock on the door and Georgina came in carrying her supper tray. It was neatly laid, a napkin under the plate and another one on the side, a silver salt and pepper pot, and as always there was a cup of the noxious stuff they liked her to drink, Bovril or something like it. The food was pretty much the same too. A slab of corned beef, some boiled potatoes and carrots on the side, kept warm with one of the cloches that always covered the dinner plates to stop the food getting cold when they were brought up from the kitchen. If it had been Georgina she’d seen, surely there had been no time for her to have come in and made up a tray for her?
‘I feel terrible that you have to wait on me like this,’ Olivia murmured.
Georgina reached behind her and plumped up her pillows. ‘It isn’t as if you can do anything about it,’ she said, not unkindly, setting the tray down on Olivia’s lap, before crossing over to the window.
‘Did you look in on me just now?’ Olivia asked.
Georgina had her back towards her but Olivia was certain her aunt stiffened. It was several minutes before she turned around. ‘No. What makes you ask?’
‘I fell asleep in the chair and I was sure someone was in the room, but when I called out, no one replied.’
‘It must have been Edith. She couldn’t have heard you. We do check up on every now and again.’
‘But I just saw Edith outside.’
‘Then you must have imagined it.’
Maybe she had. Sometimes, when her headaches were bad, her vision blurred. Olivia took a forkful of corned beef. Unusually Georgina took a chair beside the bed while Olivia ate.
‘What will you do when the baby is born?’ Georgina asked gently.
‘Couldn’t we stay here? We won’t be any trouble.’
Her aunt looked away. ‘What about the father?’
Olivia’s heart thumped. She had a sudden image of Georgina in the sea, her fingers trailing up Findlay’s torso, him grasping her wrists as she looked up at him, Georgina, she felt certain, knew what it was like to fall in love with the wrong person. Surely she, of all people, wouldn’t judge? Olivia took a deep a breath and summoned her courage. ‘There is no father – I mean there is, but we can’t be together.’ She felt her colour rise. ‘He’s married. With a family. He’s gone back to live with them in America.’
‘I see.’ The words were quietly spoken. ‘Does he know about the baby?’
Olivia shook her head. ‘You must think badly of me and I don’t blame you.’
‘Oh, my dear, I’m the last person to think badly of anyone. We all make mistakes. The best we can hope for is to be allowed to make restitution for them. If we ever truly can,’ Georgina said, a wistful look on her face. ‘I suspect by being apart from him, you are making yours.’
Her words brought back the conversation they’d had that last summer – when Georgina had said that the only ghosts that existed were those of a guilty conscience. It made sense then that whatever ghostly presences she felt were inside her head – the result of her own misery and guilt.
It was only when Georgina had left the room that Olivia realised her aunt hadn’t said that she and the baby were welcome to stay.
Chapter Twenty
As the weeks passed, Olivia’s sense she was being watched, that there was someone roaming the corridors and grounds of Greyfriars, grew. Sometimes she’d wake in the night convinced someone was in her room, certain she heard breathing, light footsteps, a smothered giggle. But there was never anyone there and no reply to her strangled demands for the person to reveal themselves and although she never saw Lady Sarah or Lady Elizabeth, she wondered. Perhaps spirits did stay around places where they were once very sad – or very happy. In which case maybe it was her mother’s spirit she sensed? If so, it brought no comfort. She shook her head at her silliness. She wasn’t a child any longer to believe such nonsense. Far more likely that it was just fantasies of a mind with little to occupy it. In an old house like this she was bound to think of past lives.
She kept telling herself that all these feelings would disappear along with her toxaemia as soon as her baby was born.
The baby, despite her ever-growing bump, did not yet seem real to her. She simply could not imagine a being, both separate from her yet part of her and Ethan, a child who would grow up to be a man or a woman. But she needed to make plans for its arrival, and their future.
One morning she woke before it was light, the luminous hands of the clock by her bed, when she held a burning match to it, showing the time to be ten to six. Her aunts wouldn’t come with breakfast until seven. Unable to get back to sleep and fed up with the four walls of her room, she lit her oil lamp and with it casting larger than life shadows on the wall, carried it in front of her, and tiptoed downstairs. The sudden creaks and noises of the house added to the feeling that someone was following her, that there were other presences in the darkness. Gathering her courage, she told herself not to be ridiculous – ghosts didn’t exist and, even if they did, they couldn’t hurt her.
In the kitchen she set her lamp down on the large pine table she remembered so well. A pang of longing tore through her at the memories of childhood summers spent at that table watching Cook as she rolled pastry, or slipped Olivia a still-warm scone or a slice of newly baked bread, spread thickly with butter. Perhaps her child would sit here too? Be fed baking still warm from the oven by a caring, benevolent cook. She allowed herself a few moments to imagine Greyfriars the way it had once been and could be again. Filled with laughter and people. But as quickly as it came the image vanished. Who would wish to associate with an unmarried mother?
She took a saucepan from the shelf and milk from the larder. It was crammed with row upon row of tins: evaporated milk, bully beef, Heinz tomato soup, baked beans – enough surely to last the aunts until the end of their lives.
Once her milk was boiled she took it up to her room to drink. When she’d finished it she lay down on the bed and tried to go back to sleep for an hour or two, but instead of the hot drink making her sleepy, she was refreshed, more wide awake than she’d felt for a while. Probably down to her short walk to the kitchen. It was then that she heard it. A sort of squeak squeak, like a rocking chair or, more probably, another loose shutter hanging on its hinges. She visualised the house, trying to remember which room was above this one. It didn’t take too long. It was the nursery, of course.
She had a sudden longing to see it again; to establish what needed to be done to make it ready for her and the baby. When Olivia had used the nursery, back when she was a child, Nanny had had a room that led immediately off. Olivia could sleep there and the baby in the nursery. Remembering that the east-wing staircase the servants had used led from one of the back corridors to almost just outside the
nursery, she decided to investigate. She could go there, have a look and be back in bed, and her aunts wouldn’t even know she’d left her room.
Throwing on her dressing gown again she thrust her feet back into her slippers. She opened her door cautiously and peeked along the corridor, straining her ears for her aunts’ footsteps, but all was still. Keeping close to the wall, lest she inadvertently stepped on a loose floorboard, she crept along the main corridor to the servants’ staircase. She took the narrow uncarpeted stairs to the top where she turned right, glad of the light her small lamp afforded. It was very dark as there were no windows along the length of this corridor.