by Emma Fraser
Yet despite its size, probably because of the heat belching from the stove, the kitchen was warm and cosy. Edith was stirring something in a pot – soup, judging by the smell of lentils wafting towards me. I couldn’t help but notice that Georgina was still wearing her wellington boots.
‘It’s just soup and sandwiches, I’m afraid,’ Georgina said, indicating which chair I was to take. We might have been eating in the kitchen, but the table was laid with silver cutlery and china dishes. Beside each setting was a silver napkin ring, inside of which was a rolled-up linen napkin.
‘That sounds lovely,’ I said. ‘I don’t usually have much at lunchtime.’ The truth was I rarely had time to eat when I was working. I wondered what was happening back at Lambert and Lambert. A knot formed in my stomach. Had I been reported to the Law Society? I pushed the thought away. There was no point worrying about something that might never happen.
I waited until we were all ready to start before I lifted my spoon. The soup was good. Best of all it was warming.
‘I thought as the sun has come out I would show you the grounds after lunch,’ Georgina said.
‘Grounds is a bit of a euphemism for the jungle out there,’ Edith muttered.
Georgina smiled sweetly at her sister, before turning back to me. ‘Kerista Island is over a hundred hectares. Far too much land for two elderly ladies to manage. At one time there was a team of gardeners to take care of it. Without them, we’ve pretty much had to let it go wild. Apart from Edith’s garden, that is. She grows potatoes, carrots, cabbage and turnips and makes jams and pickle from any leftover fruit from the bushes. Between that and the hens and cow – we make our own cheese – we are pretty much self-sufficient. We bake our own bread too. At least we attempt to. We also make our own clothes – they’re not exactly the height of fashion, but they do. Everything else we might need we get from Lovatt’s – the grocer’s in Balcreen – or order from catalogues.’
It was as if she wanted to convince me she and Edith had a good life.
‘Now, what do you know about the history of the house?’ Georgina asked, after taking a bite of her sandwich.
‘Only what my mother told me. That the original part – the tower – was built in the sixteenth century by the chief of the McQuarrie clan as a defensive tower and added on to over time. That he let a Jacobean supporter use it – to hide his family during the rebellion – and that the clan chief lost his lands and castles when the Jacobite rebellion failed. It was falling into ruin when it was bought by my great-grandfather in the late nineteenth century who rebuilt the tower and added to the house. That’s about it.’
She smiled approvingly. ‘It’s almost everything that’s known. My grandfather had the intention of creating a shooting lodge, when sharing second homes in the Highlands became fashionable after Queen Victoria’s tour of the Highlands and islands. He called it Greyfriars after the church in the Old Town in Edinburgh which he attended as a boy.’
‘And your father inherited Greyfriars on the death of his father?’
‘Yes. It was he who added the wings and planted the rhododendrons. And then on my father’s death it passed to us.’
‘And to my grandmother?’
‘Yes, and through your grandmother to your mother. ‘
‘And from her to me.’ I laid down my spoon and took a sandwich offered by Georgina. ‘And the house in Edinburgh? It originally belonged to your mother, I believe? My mother thought that it was owned outright by her, but that wasn’t the case, as I found out. Are you hoping to sell it? Or Greyfriars?’
Edith froze. There was no other word for it. She stopped eating, her spoon suspended halfway to her mouth. Suddenly she dropped it and it fell to her plate with a clatter. ‘We’d never sell Greyfriars. Never! Tell her, Georgina!’
I hadn’t meant to jump in quite so quickly with my questions – even to my own ears they sounded more like accusations – but I hadn’t been able to let the moment pass.
‘These are all things we need to discuss, but the sale of the house is not one of them.’ Although Georgina spoke softly, there was a thread of steel running through my great-aunt’s voice. She might be elderly, but she was no pushover.
Georgina dabbed her lips with her napkin. ‘Edith usually has a lie-down after lunch. I normally have my nap later. In the meantime, I’ll show you the grounds. Say in half an hour? We can speak more then.’
She flicked a glance in Edith’s direction. Edith had her head tipped to the side, a look of concentration on her face, as if listening to something no one else could hear. ‘You go on up, dear. I’ll wash up.’
I stood. ‘Please, let me.’
‘But you’re our guest.’
‘I’m family,’ I corrected firmly.
‘Very well, if you insist. The scullery is through there.’ She pointed to the door at the far end. ‘I won’t be long. I’ll just see Edith settled.’
Was Edith ill then? Certainly she didn’t seem quite ‘there’ in a way it was difficult to put a finger on. Did she still suffer from PTSD as Mum had suspected? Certainly she was anxious – almost fearful – and the way her eyes darted all over the place when she was speaking was very disconcerting.
I carried the plates through to the door Georgina had indicated and set them down on the sink. I looked around for a washing-up basin and a pair of rubber gloves but couldn’t see either. I retraced my steps back to the kitchen, hoping to catch Georgina before she went upstairs. I was just about to open the door when I heard Edith’s voice. She sounded agitated.
‘She’s a lawyer!’
I stood there, frozen, my hand on the doorknob.
‘That might yet turn out be a good thing,’ Georgina replied.
‘She’ll poke her nose into all our secrets. She won’t be satisfied until she winkles everything out of us!’
‘I thought that was rather the point,’ Georgina said dryly.
‘But can we trust her? We know nothing about her.’
‘That’s exactly what I’m going to find out. Now come on, dear…’ Their voices faded as they moved away and frustratingly the rest was lost.
Bemused, I headed back to the scullery. I would just have to risk chipping the fine bone china in the Belfast sink. As I ran the water, adding a few drops of washing liquid, I pondered what I had overheard. It seemed clear that despite the letter inviting me, or rather Mum, Edith didn’t want me here. And what secrets was I going to ferret out? Hidden bodies? Gambling debts? Hardly. I couldn’t imagine two women less likely to have deep, dark secrets. But then I hadn’t imagined Mum had had secrets either. And I, of all people, should know that the most surprising people were capable of the most surprising acts. I was also slightly miffed. I thought I was good at reading people but it hadn’t occurred to me that my aunts, Georgina in particular, were determined to size me up as much as I was them. She’d sucked me in, the minx. I felt a flash of admiration for her. I wouldn’t underestimate her again.
One way or another, I was damned if I was going to leave before I’d discovered what it was they wanted to keep hidden from me. If nothing else it would give me something to think of apart from Mum and the hollow feeling in my heart.
A short while later, Georgina came downstairs carrying an old tweed jacket, heavily patched with leather at the elbows, over her arms. She handed it to me. ‘This belonged to your grandfather. Despite the sunshine, it’s chilly and it looks like it might rain again. I thought you might need it. You can keep it if you like.’
It was hardly my style but to refuse would have been rude so I slipped it on. The sleeves covered my hands by a good two inches and the hem came to halfway down my thighs. Although it smelled fustily of pipe smoke and mothballs, it was warm.
Georgina was wearing a grey trench coat that came past her calves and that had probably also belonged to her father at one time. On her it looked surprisingly chic. Even with the wellingtons.
Outside the door she picked up a pail. ‘I’ll feed the hens while we’re out.
I keep the feed in the byre – next door to Daisy. Our cow,’ she added.
With none of her sister’s apparent fragility, Georgina took long, fluid strides that I had to work hard to keep up with. We walked in silence for a while, Tiger trotting at our heels, breaking away now and again to explore, but always returning before she lost sight of us.
The rhododendrons didn’t just form a barrier at the front of the house but surrounded it and we passed through another arch, this one on the west, and continued through a thick copse of oak and beech. As we passed through the trees, we emerged all at once back out into the light. I sucked in a deep breath of salty air. Now this was the big sky Mum had spoken of; as blue as a robin’s egg, and feathered by light, white clouds, it stretched above us and in every direction there were stunning views of purple and green hills stretching into the distance as far as the eye could see. Anchored close to the mainland, small fishing boats painted in pretty whites and blues swung lazily in the breeze. On the shore, grey slabs of rock encrusted with lichen formed a natural barrier between the land and the sea.
‘It’s quite beautiful,’ I said. ‘I can see why you love it here.’
Yet, lovely though the landscape was, I could never imagine living here. The vastness, the large empty space was as intimidating to me as London would be to a villager, as was the unearthly silence, broken only by the squawking of seagulls, the sighing of the wind through the trees and the shushing of waves on the shore.
Georgina’s eyes lit up. ‘We do. We really do. It’s the same all around the perimeter – six miles in total. I mean different views, of course, but all just as lovely. The best views are from the top of the hill in the middle of the island, although I don’t advise you attempt the climb. The path is rough and badly overgrown, like all the paths on the island. It makes no difference to us, we know our way around Kerista like the backs of our hands, but you might get lost, or trip, so it’s probably better you leave any walking to when you are on the mainland.’ She pointed across the sea to the mainland. ‘Those are the Black Hills. They have several well maintained trails.’
Half cast in shadow, they towered over the island like a brooding presence and I shivered as if a cold hand had stroked my neck.
‘If you want to walk there, you’ll have to take the boat to the other side, of course.’
‘Ian said there was one in the boathouse I could use.’
‘Yes. If you wish. I’ll need to get it out for you. I’ll do it later and leave it tied up at the jetty.’
‘If you show me where the boathouse is, I’ll get it out.’
‘No. I can manage perfectly fine. I think I remember where the key is kept.’ She started walking again. ‘The farm is round a bit,’ Georgina said. ‘Along here.’
We plunged back into the woods, skirted the shore of the island until we came to another clearing, and a small cluster of houses, almost identical to each other and almost as dilapidated as Greyfriars.
‘This is the farm, or I should say, used to be the farm. None of the houses are inhabited any more, of course.’ She tipped her head to the side. ‘They could do with some maintenance, as you can see. Everything could do with maintenance.’ She sighed, then shrugged. ‘We do what we can to keep the byre in decent condition of course. We wouldn’t want Daisy to get wet. ‘
The cottages needed a bit of work but I could see the potential. They would make lovely second homes – I might even take one myself. We would have to build a bridge —
What on earth was I thinking? I had no intention of burying myself hundreds of miles from civilisation. I would get bored stiff within a couple of days. I loved living in London and hopefully soon everything would be sorted and I could return to the job I needed like an addict craved a hit. I’d find out what the aunts wanted and then, possibly the day after tomorrow, go back to London.
We went into the byre, one side of which was used as storage for bales of hay and old tea chests filled with hen food. Georgina scooped a couple of handfuls of the sweet-smelling kernels into the pail. We left the byre and walked behind the cottages. ‘Could you hold on to your dog, please? I don’t want her to get in amongst the hens.’
I did as she asked and picked up Tiger who settled in my arms like a baby. She loved being carried. Georgina banged a spoon on the pail and the hens rushed towards us squawking and pecking at our feet. She threw them some feed and deposited the rest in feeding bowls inside the hen house. The floor was thick with droppings so I beat a hasty retreat outside and waited for her while she collected the eggs. I really needed to buy some wellingtons or boots. As it was, my expensive pumps would never be the same again.
‘Six today,’ Georgina told me happily when she emerged.
She pointed to the east. ‘That’s part of the mainland. If you look carefully you can see Stryker Castle, once the home of the McQuarrie clan – the same people who built the tower at Greyfriars. It’s a ruin now – has been for years.’
I could just about make out the top of crumbling turrets.
‘Mum told me Greyfriars has a lot of history attached to it. She wasn’t sure which stories were true and which made up. She particularly remembered one about a Jacobite lady and her daughter who drowned.’
‘Edith and I were told that same story when we were children. I suspect it was to keep us away from the rocks. Sarah’s rocks.’ A shadow crossed her face. ‘That’s what we called them.’
‘Mum told me that too.’
Georgina seemed to give herself a mental shake and her expression brightened. ‘Fancy your mother remembering, but Olivia was a sharp little thing. As bright as a button.’
It was as if the older version of my mother hadn’t existed.
The mention of Mum brought back the feelings of resentment. It seemed to me that while Georgina said one thing, her actions indicated another.
‘Yet you never kept up with her. You said you adored her. She certainly adored you when she was a child. It was you she came to when she was in trouble – seeking refuge with her only living relatives.’ An unbearable sadness washed over me, quickly replaced by anger. ‘She needed you – especially as her own parents were dead. And undoubtedly she needed you more after I was born. At least when her parents died she had Agatha.’
‘It was your mother’s decision to leave Greyfriars,’ Georgina replied quietly.
‘Was it really? She told me she never truly felt welcome.’
Georgina looked pained. ‘I know how it must seem. When you hear what I have to tell you I hope you’ll understand. No one ever knows the full story – why people do what they do.’ She shook her head. ‘I wish I could have been more involved with your mother, more than you can know. I was very fond of her. She was Harriet’s child and I loved my sister.’ She caught her lip between her teeth and took a breath. ‘However, you are quite right. You deserve an explanation – one we should have given Olivia many years ago. It’s often easy with hindsight, don’t you think, to see what one should have done?’
Her words struck a nerve. How true I knew her words to be. I should never have agreed to defend Simon. All at once, the anger drained out of me.
‘I’m listening,’ I said.
‘Why don’t we sit for a while?’ Georgina indicated a rock. ‘And I’ll start my story?’
She waited until we were both perched on our stony seats.
‘Perhaps it would be easiest if you tell me what you already know? What your mother told you?’
‘It isn’t a great deal. That you were once a model in Paris, but went to work in Singapore around the time war broke out. That Edith was with the QAs and that you and Edith returned to live at Greyfriars after the war. That’s more or less the sum of it.’
I didn’t tell her what Mum had said about her time here when she’d been pregnant with me. Perhaps it was my barrister training – never show all your cards at once. Keep what you can up your sleeve until the right time to reveal it.
‘Did she tell you that there had been a falling out betwe
en Edith and I the summer before the war?’
I was taken aback. I hadn’t expected Georgina to be quite as candid. I was constantly having to revise my opinion of her.
‘Yes. Over a man.’
Georgina’s eyes took on a faraway look. ‘What a boring old cliché. But yes. We fell out over a man and because of that we didn’t see each other until November 1941 when Edith ended up in Singapore.’
‘Findlay?’
‘Yes. How do you… Ah, Olivia. As I said, very little escaped her.’ Georgina took a deep breath. ‘It’s important you understand how we sisters were, what we meant to each other. So you can appreciate why what I did to Edith hurt her so much.’