Greyfriars House

by Emma Fraser

  ‘Georgina, I’ll do everything in my power to help you, but you mustn’t tell me something that as a lawyer I have to report.’ The warning was automatic but even as the words left my lips I knew I’d do whatever I could to protect them.

  ‘It’s a chance we are prepared to take. You will be free to take any action you feel fit. I promise.’

  It wasn’t the firm rebuttal I’d hoped for.

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘Something,’ she said slowly, ‘that I imagine you’ll find difficult to understand.’

  She paused and I braced myself for what was to come.

  ‘We thought we had plenty of time to decide what to do about the baby. Edith and I never spoke of it. Perhaps we both hoped it would die and then we could pick up the pieces of our lives.

  ‘It was a blessing that there were no servants at Greyfriars any longer and no one could see the house, not without coming to the front door, and although one or two did visit at first, we wouldn’t invite them in, instead making it clear we wished to be left alone. We still had a milking cow, the hens, the vegetable garden and the shop in Balcreen was happy to send groceries over once a week the way they’d always done. Of course there was still rationing but compared to the camp, it was a bounty. Besides, we had more than we needed. Edith had always been decent at sewing – she made us clothes from patterns we sent away for – not that there was a need for anything fancy (and I had left trunks of my clothes behind so there was plenty that could be altered) and she could knit after a fashion. We rented out the house in Edinburgh and the income was sufficient for us to manage quite well on as long as we were careful. We sent some of it to your mother. That was only fair. And for the next few months we lived quietly, letting the comfort and peace of Greyfriars heal some of our mental wounds.

  ‘The child was born just after Christmas. The moment I held her in my arms, I fell in love with her. Even though she was most definitely her father’s child. She had a shock of dark hair and almond-shaped eyes. We decided on a name together – Mary. It was a happy time. We didn’t think of the future. While she was a baby there was no need to decide anything. All babies require is enough to eat and plenty of love. And Mary got both. At least from me. For the first few weeks Edith wouldn’t even look at her.’

  She paused and glanced away, and once again I had the feeling she was keeping something from me. ‘Eventually she couldn’t help loving Mary as much as I did.

  ‘It wasn’t long before I began to realise that something about her bothered Edith. We no longer thought of her as being the child of a Japanese brute, so I knew it wasn’t that. I pressed Edith and she admitted she was worried about the way Mary looked and her development. We’d thought she looked different when she was born but we put that down to her Japanese heritage. However, as she grew we knew there was more to it. She wasn’t supporting her own head when she should have, or flipping herself over when placed on the ground. Edith thought at first that it was because she was premature and that she would catch up sooner or later, but eventually it became clear to us that Mary wasn’t going to catch up and finally Edith told me she was certain that Mary had Down’s syndrome. She had seen many such children when she had nursed. In the forties most of them were put in institutions and left there. No one thought they could ever live normal lives.’

  ‘Why didn’t you take her to be seen by a doctor?’

  ‘He would only have told us what we already knew and he would have asked questions. Anyone looking at Mary would know she was half Japanese. You have to realise that back then and for a long time afterwards people hated the Japanese and everything to do with them. Stories had come out about their cruelty to the prisoners, the way they had starved and worked thousands of men to their deaths – I learned later that Lawrence had been one of them – and the massacres at the hospitals and elsewhere. But it wasn’t just that. What if they tried to take Mary away from us? Put her in one of those dreadful institutions? We couldn’t take the chance. We both loved Mary dearly by then. She might not have been like other children but she was such so loving and happy. And she wasn’t to blame for what her father or mother had done.

  ‘Edith and I told ourselves over the years that there was no need to do anything. That Mary was fine with just the two of us. Edith could take care of any childhood ailments although there weren’t many of those and if Mary did become seriously unwell of course then we would call the doctor. Although we had no idea what we would say. The longer we kept her a secret the more impossible it was to share her existence with the rest of the world. Not only was Mary half Japanese and disabled, she was also the child of an unmarried mother. Any one of these would have made her the object of derision, even hate, but all together? The outside world would have been a very cruel place for her. We might have started off wanting to protect ourselves but in the end we stayed here and kept her with us to protect her.

  ‘Despite her difficulties, maybe even because of them, Mary grew up a happy, contented child. She was the centre of Edith’s and my world. We had plenty of books to read to her and your mother’s old toys as well as ours were still in the nursery. A child who has never known any other sort of life doesn’t find it strange.

  ‘We schooled her ourselves. We made sure she only played in the part of the grounds that no one could ever see, supposing they came right up to the door, and that she kept to our side of the house.

  ‘But when Mary was six, your mother arrived on our doorstep. As you can imagine, it was a dreadful shock. Then Olivia collapsed. We might have been able to take care of her ourselves but Duncan sent for the doctor and it would have looked strange if we’d refused to let him attend. It was bad luck for all concerned that your mother turned out to have a potentially life-threatening condition. The doctor insisted that she be confined to bed – that she couldn’t be allowed to travel – not even to Balcreen. We did manage to persuade him that Edith was capable of looking after Olivia and we promised that if your mother’s condition deteriorated we would send for him.

  ‘Mary was aware of your mother’s arrival so we made up a story to keep her away from Olivia. We said she was very sick – which was true – but had to be kept away from Mary in case she made her sick too. Of course Mary accepted what we told her – she was always very obedient. But naturally she was intensely curious about your mother; the only people she’d seen up until that point were Edith and me. Because your mother was confined to bed there was little chance of her stumbling across Mary, but of course we couldn’t stop her being aware at times of Mary’s presence. Mary was used to running free at Greyfriars when she liked and when Olivia almost came across Mary in the nursery, I’m afraid we locked Olivia’s bedroom door after that.

  ‘Mary was here all the time Mum was?’ It was scarcely believable.

  ‘Yes.’

  So Mum hadn’t been losing her mind as she’d thought. Everything she’d seen and heard had been real.

  ‘We discussed often whether we should tell Olivia the truth but we had no way of knowing how she would react. We would have told her had it been necessary and thrown ourselves on her mercy. As it happened, Olivia took you and left.’

  ‘But why didn’t you just tell Mum about Mary? She would have understood. Particularly when you told her what had happened to you and Edith during the war. She might even have been able to help.’

  Georgina gave a quick, dismissive shake of her head. ‘We couldn’t risk telling her. At first it was because Olivia was unwell. We didn’t want to add any more stress to her situation. We would also have put her in an impossible position. She would have either had to keep our secret and thereby implicated herself, or she would have felt duty bound to tell the authorities. I didn’t know what they would do to us. I had some idea that concealing a pregnancy and birth was against the law. Mary’s birth of course hadn’t been registered. If they put me in prison, or charged me, I would have had to stand up in court and go through everything that had happened in the camp all over again. I couldn’
t bear to. I couldn’t bear the shame. And if they did put me in prison, then what would happen to Mary and Edith?’

  This part of her story didn’t ring altogether true and once more I had the uneasy sensation Georgina wasn’t being entirely honest with me. Everything I had learned about her so far had led me to believe that if there was a woman who was prepared to face her accusers, hold up her head and stare them down, who couldn’t care less about what other people thought of her, it was Georgina.

  ‘Is there anything else?’ I prodded gently. ‘It’s best you tell me everything.’

  ‘I’m telling you what you need to know,’ she retorted. ‘And that’s difficult enough.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to imply —’

  She patted my hand in apology. ‘Let me finish. I promise there’s not much more. ‘Edith was never the same after the war. I thought that the seclusion of Greyfriars and plenty of wholesome food would heal the damage eventually, that all she needed was time. When we returned to Greyfriars she would barely speak, had no interest in anything and she had these terrible nightmares. Sometimes her screams would wake me in the middle of the night. I’d run to her and hold her. She thought she was back in the camp, that rats were chewing on her toes, or that the Japs had put her back in that dreadful prison. The nightmares were never identical, but they were always to do with that awful time.

  ‘It was when Edith started sleepwalking I became really concerned. One night, shortly after we returned to Greyfriars, I found her down at the shore, at Sarah’s rocks, balancing on the rocks and about to step in the sea. If I’d been moments later, I believe I would have been too late. I was terrified I was going to lose her, after everything we’d been through. I tried locking her bedroom door at night but when she discovered this she became so agitated she screamed the house down. It made her believe she was back in prison. I wanted her to see a doctor but she begged me not to make her. She said they’d lock her up and then she’d truly go mad. All I could do was try and keep her safe and hope that the peace and solitude of Greyfriars would heal her in time. In the meantime I waited until she was asleep before locking the outside doors, making sure I was awake before her so I could unlock them before she realised. You see, we had never locked the doors of Greyfriars before. There was never any need. After a while things did improve and I let myself hope that she might even return to nursing. She always loved it so much. I tried to talk her into it, I thought it would be good for her, but she kept saying she wasn’t ready, wasn’t strong enough – that maybe one day…’ A few beats of silence passed. That day never came.

  ‘Over time Edith seemed to get better although she still had bad spells. When your mother came to stay Edith started sleepwalking again. I don’t know if it was your mother’s arrival that triggered it all off again. It must have been. I think Olivia was a reminder of the outside world and Edith didn’t want to be reminded of it. In addition, Olivia being pregnant made Edith think about Mary and how she’d come in to the world. That’s when I proposed to Olivia that she take our share of the house we owned jointly in Edinburgh in exchange for her share of Greyfriars. It seemed the safest and fairest solution. Unfortunately, Olivia seemed equally determined to stay. Until, that is, she found you’d been taken from her room.’

  So that was why they’d come to the arrangement about the houses.

  ‘Your cries woke me up,’ Georgina continued. ‘My first thought was that Edith had started sleepwalking again and had taken the baby. I ran to where the noise was coming from to Mary in the nursery holding you. When Mary saw me she hugged you tighter. I was terrified that you wouldn’t be able to breathe. I knew I only had moments before Olivia woke to find her baby missing but I was frightened of scaring Mary.

  ‘Edith had woken too by this time and had come up after me. She took the scene in in a moment. She persuaded Mary to hand you to her, promising her that she would be able to play with you another time. Mary didn’t want to hand you back, but we could hear your mother calling. Edith grabbed you while I took Mary back to her room. There is a secret staircase that runs down past the nursery – we were able to leave that way, without your mother seeing us.

  ‘Your mother came bursting in only moments before I returned after leaving Mary in her room. She was understandably frantic. She calmed down a little when she had you safe in her arms but then she became really angry. I told her that Edith had heard you crying and not wanting to disturb her rest, had taken you for a walk around the house to try and pacify you. I knew it wasn’t a good explanation, but it was the only one I could come up with. And your mother didn’t believe me either.

  ‘After Olivia returned to her room, Edith came to me. She suggested we keep Olivia and you here, as a playmate and friend for Mary. She even suggested we tell Olivia that her baby had died and send her away. She came up with increasingly wild ideas. I knew then that Edith could never be trusted around you. Fortunately your mother decided she’d had enough of Greyfriars and agreed to the house exchange.’

  So Mum had been right to feel threatened.

  Georgina twisted her fingers together. ‘Everything settled down again after you and your mother left but the sleepwalking started again when you arrived.’

  ‘I thought I saw someone in the nursery one night, but they seemed to vanish,’ I said. ‘I remembered Mum telling me about the door at the back of the wardrobe that led to the secret staircase but when I tried it, I couldn’t see a way to open it. Was that Edith or Mary?’

  Georgina nodded. ‘It must have been Mary. She uses the staircase often, although she knows she has to keep the door locked in case Edith sleepwalks. It was her in the garden that first night too.’

  Finally, it all made sense. The shadows, the sound of feet, the figure in the corridor, the sensation of being watched – the beckoning figure on the hill. My first reaction was one of relief. I hadn’t been imagining things. My second was one of disbelief.

  ‘But Mary must be a grown woman! You can’t have kept her here all these years.’

  ‘We had no choice. As the years went on we thought about moving back to Edinburgh with her, introducing her to society, but it was too late. She’s never been exposed to a virus of any sort – and how would we explain to others and to her why we’d done what we’d done? Could I really tell her that her father was a murderer? Was that fair? No, she was safer and far happier here than she would have ever been in the outside world.’

  There was so much wrong with her way of thinking I couldn’t even think where to start.

  My unease deepened. I had been here the best part of a week and apart from hearing her and those brief glimpses I now knew was Mary, I had never met her.

  ‘Are you telling me you keep Mary locked up during the day?’

  Georgina looked horrified. ‘Oh, no! Of course not. We use part of the ballroom on the first floor as another sitting room. We’ve only kept her upstairs while you’ve been here. Edith spends most of her day there with her. Whenever you weren’t here we went for walks or Mary helped Edith in the garden as she usually does.’ She gave me a wry smile. ‘Keeping you and Mary apart has been made easier as you’ve spent so much time off the island, although you came close to stumbling across her more than once. She knows you’re here but that she can’t meet you just yet. We didn’t want that to happen until we’d come to know you better. It’s why we asked Olivia to come. I realised we’re getting on. What if I died? Who would care for Edith and Mary then? What if we both died? What would happen to Mary? Where would she live? How would she live? That’s when we decided to write to your mother. We hoped she would agree to look after Mary if anything happened to Edith and me. We got quite a shock when we learned of her death and that you were coming in her place, and an even bigger shock when we discovered you were a lawyer. We didn’t know if that was a good or a bad thing. Good if you’d help us, bad if you reported us to the police.’ She leaned forward. ‘It’s why I needed to tell you our story. I hoped you might understand better why we did
what we did when you knew everything.’

  So this, finally, was the reason they’d asked for help. But what were they expecting me to do?

  ‘Mary can’t manage on her own. She will always need someone to take care of her.’ Georgina smiled sadly. ‘She has as much right to her share of Greyfriars as you do, but more importantly we need to know that in the event of our deaths she will be cared for.’

  I was still finding it all difficult to take in. Mary had lived here all her life and now the aunts wanted some sort of guarantee I would look after her. Where? Here? In London? I shook my head to clear it. Hopefully my aunts would live for a very long time and there would be years to help Mary adjust to a normal life. One thing was clear to me. She couldn’t be kept here for another forty years.

  Georgina stood, smoothing down her skirt, her expression lighter than I’d seen it for a while. ‘Mary is looking forward to meeting you. I’ll let Edith know she can bring her down. But remember, Mary isn’t like other young women. She is very much a child in a woman’s body. Please be very gentle with her.’