Swimming Home

by Mary-Rose MacColl

  ‘You think they’ll take Michael again?’

  ‘No, he’s too old for the Protector. But if you and Michael … you know what I’m talking about.’

  Catherine blushed.

  Florence looked at her sharply. ‘You must go. You have to trust me. You must go.’ She softened then. ‘You like your aunt. And she’s a doctor, like your daddy. She’s giving you an opportunity that you could never get here, Catherine. ’

  ‘But, Florence, what will you ever do without me?’ The tears came now, falling down her face.

  ‘Oh goodness. You mustn’t worry about me.’ Florence wiped Catherine’s tears away. ‘I got the prize, Catherine. I got to raise you. I got to work for Dr Harry. I got given a second chance with my boy. No other mother gets all that without having to pay something back.’

  6

  LOUISA WATCHED AS CATHERINE REACHED THE BANK. She was shivering visibly as she climbed the stairs. Louisa was about to go down to her when a building worker took off his coat and wrapped it around the girl. One of the others produced a blanket, which they put around her shoulders. They were cheering all the while—‘Swim-mer, Swim-mer, Swim-mer, Cath-rine, Cath-rine, Cath-rine.’

  The reporter Louisa had seen earlier had got through the crowd and was talking to Catherine now. Catherine smiled as she spoke. Her eyes, that intense green in the soft light of London, the Quick green, were on fire. She was Harry’s daughter right then, Louisa thought. She looked like all those paintings of the saints, as if that baptism in the filthy Thames had beatified her. She still hadn’t seen Louisa but her eyes scanned the bank as if looking for someone.

  Suddenly, Helen Anderson stepped into Louisa’s line of sight. ‘Now you see why I didn’t want to discuss this on the telephone. We’ve never had a girl do something like this. There are rules at the school. The girls must not leave during school hours.’

  Louisa nodded. ‘I really don’t know what to say. Catherine asked me about swimming a few weeks ago, but I didn’t think she meant …’ Louisa had a flash of memory then, Catherine with the boy, Michael, the two of them long and lean as they ran together into the sea, his dark skin, hers almost as dark because of the sun. It had unnerved Louisa to watch them, and it had strengthened her resolve to remove Catherine from the island.

  ‘We have a rule,’ Helen Anderson was saying. ‘If girls leave the school grounds without permission, expulsion is automatic. She took eight girls with her. Eight. It was carefully thought out, the whole thing. The girl who came to me, the only one who came to me—one of our prefects, Darcy Williams—said Catherine’s been planning it for a month. Catherine told them all to come and watch.’

  ‘Well, the eight on the bank were just following,’ Louisa said. ‘They shouldn’t be expelled.’

  ‘If we bend the rules for one, we’re done for, I’m afraid. Dr Quick, I don’t like to do this, but I don’t want to see Catherine back at Henley.’

  ‘What, you mean from now?’

  Helen Anderson nodded.

  ‘What am I supposed to do with her?’ Louisa said. She thought of the long line of patients back at the clinic.

  ‘It’s not as if this is the only problem,’ Helen Anderson said.

  ‘Well, this is the first I’ve heard of there being any problems at all, Miss Anderson,’ Louisa said. ‘I wish you’d contacted me before now.’ It was no good blaming Helen Anderson, Louisa knew, but she couldn’t help herself. What a mess.

  ‘I suggest you talk to the girl,’ was all Helen Anderson said.

  Louisa walked towards her niece. Catherine was standing below them on the bank, surrounded by men. She looked up at her aunt, frowned slightly and then burst into a smile. ‘I did it, Louisa. I swam.’

  Louisa put a hand on her forehead. She was planning to be stern, to tell Catherine that what she’d done was inexcusable, that now she’d be expelled from Henley, and she’d caused trouble for eight other girls. These were the words forming in her head. But when she got close to her tall, lithe niece she found, almost in spite of herself, she was returning Catherine’s smile. She couldn’t help it. The other girls were still chanting Catherine’s name. The reporter was trying to get Catherine’s attention again. Catherine was still smiling at her aunt. They were eye to eye for once, Louisa higher on the bank than Catherine was. Louisa felt tears forming in her own eyes. She swallowed hard. ‘Yes, you did, Catherine,’ she said. ‘Yes, you did.’

  It was ten months before, in the October, that Louisa had received the wire. HARRY PASSED STOP LOUISA GUARDIAN CATHERINE STOP CONTACT WITHERSPOON CAIRNS ASAP STOP ENDS. When she first read it, she thought Harry must have passed some test. It was the shock, she supposed later. She was in shock. It was only when she reread that she understood. Her brother Harry was dead.

  Heart failure, Alexander told her three days later when she visited his office at Southampton. Alexander came out to meet Louisa in the foyer and they embraced briefly and stiffly. He took her back to his office, which looked out over the keel of a ship in dry dock below. The office had always seemed cold to Louisa. Alexander had nothing personal on the desk, and there was no view to speak of. He gestured for Louisa to sit down in the only visitor chair, in front of the desk.

  Alexander wasn’t as tall as Harry. Like Louisa, he took after their mother’s side rather than their father’s. He had their father’s curly hair, though—blond rather than red—and George’s fine profile and sharp eyes. He’d followed their father into the shipping business. Now it was his whole life. Today he wore an expensive suit, cut perfectly around his muscled frame. He’d taken off the coat and had hung it on the back of his chair, before sitting down and facing his sister. Gold cuff links and a silk-backed vest completed the picture of a successful man in his prime.

  Alexander was named executor in Harry’s will, he said. He’d had word from Harry’s solicitor too. Harry had been in Cairns, Alexander told her. He’d been at the hospital in the morning, to assist in surgery, and had been about to set out on the return journey back to the island. His heart stopped just like that. One minute he was alive, the next he was dead, according to Alexander.

  Their father had died of a heart attack. Alexander was older than Harry by seven years. It had shaken him, Louisa could see.

  ‘Harry’s named me Catherine’s guardian,’ Louisa said.

  ‘I know. You’ll have to go for her,’ Alexander replied.

  ‘Someone will,’ she said. ‘I’ve got the clinic.’

  ‘Well, she can’t stay on the island, Louisa, and she can hardly travel unaccompanied. We can sort out the house and estate later, but you must go for the child, and soon. She’s terribly exposed there.’

  ‘To what?’ Louisa said.

  Her brother looked at her.

  ‘I know she can’t stay there, Alexander,’ Louisa said, annoyed at the way he always tried to run everything. ‘I’m not totally without wit. But I can’t leave the clinic at a moment’s notice.’

  ‘Surely the poor can survive a couple of months without you.’

  Alexander had always been like this. He saw himself as the one in charge in a way even their father didn’t. When Louisa had been arrested during the protests for the vote—she’d marched on Whitehall with the others and then she’d thrown a rock through a window—it was Alexander who’d told her she should be ashamed, Alexander who’d arranged for her to be released from prison early. He said she’d worried their mother unnecessarily: ‘And for what, Louisa? Some stupid idea about the vote.’

  Louisa regarded her older brother now. He was probably right. She would have to go to Australia. It was a six-week journey at the minimum, which would take her through to the end of the year. She didn’t want to feel resentful of Catherine, but she hardly knew the girl. Why should Louisa now drop everything in order to care for Harry’s child, the child he’d made it impossible for Louisa to be close to? Harry should have come home. ‘I’m not inclined to motherhood, Alexander.’

  Alexander only shrugged. ‘Well, you’re a
woman, which puts you in a better position than I am to go.’

  Alexander knew what had happened to Louisa. Millicent had confided in him, against Louisa’s wishes. He’d blamed his sister. She looked at him now. ‘I have my work,’ she said, ‘just as you do.’

  ‘Yes, I know, your work. But now Catherine Quick is officially part of your work—it says so here.’ He’d picked up the telegram and handed it back to Louisa. ‘I really must go.’ He stood and took the jacket from the back of his chair, put it on in one fluid movement and started towards the door.

  ‘What about the funeral?’ Louisa said.

  ‘They’re having something on the island, the solicitor said. There’s that native family Harry was close to.’ Alexander looked hard at Louisa. ‘A total Harry mess.’ He stood at the door waiting for his sister.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Alexander shrugged.

  ‘The native family—that’s the housekeeper, Florence, you’re talking about?’

  Alexander shrugged again.

  ‘I did notice that Harry seemed very close to Florence,’ Louisa said. ‘But you don’t think …’

  Alexander held his hand up. ‘I’m not saying anything,’ he said, ‘except that Harry was Harry. Just go and see what you can do. You can have an island Christmas.’

  On the train back from Southampton, Louisa sat by herself and looked out the window at the bleak winter landscape. Oh, Harry, I wish it had been different, she thought. I wish … Just what did she wish? That he’d come home when she’d asked? That she’d gone to Australia, as he’d asked, to help with Catherine? Perhaps. Louisa’s life had been a series of decisions, she thought, that had left her just a little stranded. Sometimes she felt as if the life she might have lived was there, just off to the left somewhere. She might have stayed on the island, mightn’t she? She might have cared for the child. It would have helped ease her own pain, surely. But she hadn’t.

  Louisa had done something useful with her life since then. She and Ruth had run the hospital during the war, and then they’d opened the clinic. And the clinic was marvellous. Everyone said so, even those who hated the poor. Louisa cared for so many families now. But not your own family, she thought, with a bitter taste in her mouth. It was Ruth Luxton she imagined saying that, although Ruth had never said it and never would, Louisa knew. Ruth had been a good friend, Louisa’s best friend. But Ruth had her own family, five children, and they’d always come first.

  Louisa and Harry had lost one another along the way. ‘And now you’re gone,’ she said out loud to herself. She sat there as the countryside chugged by, the tears rolling down her face matching the tears of rain rolling down the windowpane.

  At home that night in London, Louisa looked at the telegram again. Alexander was right. Someone would have to go for Catherine and Louisa was named. And then Catherine would have to live somewhere. She couldn’t stay on in Australia alone. She couldn’t really go to Alexander, a confirmed bachelor. There was Julia’s family but Julia was an only child and her parents, in Canada now, were aged. Julia’s father had a sister, Louisa recalled, who had children. They were in New York, or Long Island. Those children must be grown now, must have children of their own. She could go to one of them, it occurred to Louisa, to someone who’d been a mother already. Catherine would surely fare better with an experienced mother.

  The next morning, Louisa told Nellie about her visit to Alexander. She said she might contact Julia’s family about Catherine going to America to live. Nellie was appalled by the idea. It would be wrong, plain wrong, she said, to send Catherine to Julia’s family, whom she hardly knew. Nellie didn’t care what sort of family Julia came from. ‘She’s your blood, Louisa,’ Nellie said. ‘You can’t just refuse her. And it’s your side she knows best.’ But how could she explain to Nellie that of all the things Louisa felt she could do in life, mothering was not among them?

  Louisa asked Ruth Luxton later in the day, but Ruth was surprised too. ‘She’s your kin,’ Ruth said. ‘Of course you must take her in. And you’ll never regret it if you do.’

  There it was. The world would be happier if there were not only more children, but if those women who hadn’t had children would just go and have a few. ‘You’ll never regret it,’ was their song. Louisa didn’t believe them. Not everything you decide in life comes without regret, she’d found. There were more than enough experiences that led to much regret. And many mothers’ lives, as far as Louisa was concerned, were full of regret. But Ruth and Nellie were right, Louisa realised. Whatever else she was, Catherine was her kin. Louisa would have to go and fetch her niece and bring her home. She’d have to do the best she could.

  Thursday Island was much the same as it had been eleven years before. She’d left London as soon as she reasonably could, but she’d had to recruit another surgeon for Princes Square and that took a month, and then transfer her surgical patients from the rooms to another surgeon. She didn’t get away until December, spending Christmas in her stateroom on the ship. She had to stop in Cairns en route this time, to meet Harry’s lawyer, Mr Witherspoon, an older chap, rail-thin, with sharp eyes that regarded Louisa as if she might be plotting to steal her brother’s estate on the spot. Not that the estate was worth much, that ridiculous house and whatever Harry had put away of his government salary. Louisa did her best to assure Mr Witherspoon that she had Catherine’s best interests at heart.

  Witherspoon’s concern seemed to be that Harry had left his estate to Louisa rather than in trust. He’d left it to Louisa outright. Louisa did think this was strange but not all that strange. Harry knew he could trust his sister on that score. On the other hand, even her own solicitors had said there would be a trust. It didn’t much matter, except that Witherspoon seemed worried on Catherine’s behalf.

  As he’d been going through the file, Witherspoon had said there was something missing. He located a document number but no corresponding document. He remembered something, he said, and he’d ask his clerk to do a search. He’d find it, he assured Louisa, and if it included instructions to set up a trust for Catherine, Lousia could be very sure that’s what he would do. But for now, Louisa just needed to sign papers to make her Catherine’s guardian.

  Louisa saw a copy of Julia’s death certificate on the file. Harry had certified the death, which was most irregular. Her brother would know he shouldn’t certify the death of a relative. Mr Witherspoon was unperturbed about it. Drowning was the cause of death, Louisa noted, but she also knew that Julia’s body had never been found. It should have been Missing, Assumed Drowned, which would have triggered an inquiry. It was odd, she thought, but perhaps Harry wanted as little fuss as possible.

  Louisa read the documents she had to sign, feeling for the first time the weight of the responsibility she was taking on. She had to warrant to care for the girl, to be ‘totally responsible for the minor’s welfare,’ the agreement said.

  The trip north from Cairns did nothing to ease Louisa’s mind and, she realised, it had taken her three months to get here. Harry had died in October and now it was early February. They’d had word through the solicitor that Catherine had stayed on in the house with Florence, the housekeeper, and was still attending school. The police officer on the island, a chap by the name of Macklin, had been appointed guardian pro tem, although he hadn’t done much as far as Louisa could see. Now Louisa had signed a document that gave her full responsibility for this fourteen-year-old girl of Harry’s. How could Louisa possibly manage this additional responsibility? She couldn’t manage all the things she had to do as it was.

  As the buggy had come through town on Thursday Island, Louisa noticed the native children under the trees in the main street, only now they wore dresses instead of shorts and shirts. There was what looked like a green silk dress in the oriental style Louisa remembered well—how dear it might have been with Catherine’s eyes—and a linen blouse and skirt in blue. They were the clothes Louisa had been sending for Catherine over the years, worn by the native child
ren. No wonder Harry had never answered when she’d asked about the clothes. Louisa wondered if he’d even given them to Catherine or had just handed them around. The children did look lovely, she thought, even if that bow around the boy’s arm should have been in his sister’s hair.

  After she’d met with Sister Ursula from the school, who, eleven years on, was now in charge, Louisa went up to the house. Florence answered the door. She looked taken aback by Louisa’s arrival, as if she hadn’t been expecting Harry’s sister, although Louisa had wired ahead. Florence didn’t look a day older than the last time Louisa had met her. She was polite but far from friendly. She had a grown boy with her.

  ‘This is my son, Michael,’ Florence said. ‘We were just on our way to the school.’

  Michael was tall and lean, with a body that communicated strength, soft blue eyes and a smile that made you want to smile back. He was carrying a basket. He didn’t say much to Louisa but he did take her offered hand. He leaned down to her in a kindly way and told her that Catherine was teaching down at school but was sure to be home soon to go for a swim. ‘We go every afternoon,’ he said, smiling. ‘She likes to beat me out to the reef.’

  Louisa said she’d wait on the verandah where it was cool and, yes, a glass of cold water would be lovely. What a delightful young man, she thought. She didn’t know where he’d been the last time she’d come to the island.

  Catherine came bounding in the gate about half an hour later. She was older, of course. She had Harry’s eyes and her mother’s chestnut hair combined with the Quick red and darkened to auburn, her skin browned by the sun. Across her nose and cheeks was still that band of freckles. She looked straight at Louisa. She was much calmer and more demure than Louisa had expected she’d be. The wild creature Alexander described had grown into a thoughtful young woman, Louisa saw. She was tall, too, like Louisa’s father and Harry.