Auld Acquaintance

by Ruth Hay

  They were always reluctant to discuss family matters and I guess I just gave up in time.”

  “Yes Anna, not uncommon in that generation, I believe. I will, of course, fax you the appropriate document copies for your perusal at leisure but I can provide an outline of the facts now, if you wish.”

  “Yes, George, I do wish. Please go on.”

  “Your maternal grandmother, Aileen Wilson, married a Patrick Knox in 1916. He was a volunteer in the Black Watch Regiment and was sent to the front lines in World War I.”

  “Oh dear! Don’t tell me he was one of the many thousands of young men who died in the trenches in Europe?”

  “No. In fact, he was injured and returned to Scotland to recuperate.”

  “So he survived?”

  “I am afraid not. Patrick Knox succumbed to the influenza pandemic that swept the world in 1918 but his wife bore a daughter just three months after her husband’s death.”

  “Ah! This confirms something my friend Susan uncovered. She must have accessed some of the same sources you used, but I hadn’t heard about a child. What was the daughter’s name? Was it Helen?”

  “The child in question was christened Aileen Anne after her mother, but it is at this point the trail becomes cold. In 1925, Aileen Knox married a Samuel Jarvis.....”

  “But that’s my mother’s maiden name,” Anna interrupted.

  “Yes, their child Marion, your mother, was born two years after that marriage but the certificate of marriage states that Aileen was a widow and no child was listed in the details.”

  “Wait a minute, George! What happened to Aileen Anne? Would a child be included in a certificate of marriage in normal circumstances? Did my grandfather adopt her later?

  And who on earth is Helen?”

  “I do realise how frustrating this all is, Ms. Mason.”

  Anna recognised the change of tone as evidenced by the lawyer’s use of her formal name so she tried to calm her impatience once again.

  “George, I apologize. This is so fascinating to me and I am rushing things, I know.

  You told me previously that Helen had been adopted. Are you aware that here in Ontario adoption records have just been opened to inquirers for the very first time? I do think you have done extremely well in such a short period and isn’t it fortunate that Scottish records are open to the public?”

  “Indeed, it is fortunate. Now, before I continue, I must caution you that this phone call is likely to be expensive. I can, of course, curtail my remarks and send documents instead if you wish.”

  “‘In for a penny; in for a pound’ was a saying of my mother’s George. I can’t bear to stop now. Please go on.”

  “I did pursue the question of Aileen Anne’s fate but I could not find any record of her subsequent adoption by Samuel Jarvis. She may have died in the intervening period before the marriage, but I could not find a death certificate in her birth name or under the name of Jarvis. At this juncture, I began to follow alternative strategies.”

  “What does that mean, George?”

  “When your grandmother re-married, Aileen Anne would have been six years of age.

  I then attempted to trace adoption records during the six to eight years of her early life.”

  “George! I am amazed! How did you manage to do all this so quickly?”

  “Ah, I am afraid I was not able to complete my research. There are, as you can imagine thousands of records to examine, and what makes the task more difficult is that many children from Scotland were sent to Canada and Australia during this period from Barnardo’s and Quarrier’s Homes for poor or abandoned families.”

  “Are you suggesting that my grandmother abandoned her own daughter?”

  “Not at all, Anna, but you must remember the times. In the early part of the last century there was much poverty in Britain following the war years.

  Perhaps your grandmother did not have the benefit of family support and found it impossible to earn enough money to maintain a home for herself and a young child and was forced to give her to a charity or to an agency that could provide food and shelter.”

  “My God! Do you think that is what happened to Aileen Anne?”

  “I cannot tell. I was obliged to turn over the search to a genealogy expert who is pursuing enquiries for me. I must remind you that this, also, is a costly business.”

  “To hell with the expense, George! Forgive me, I am forgetting my manners.

  Please give me some time to digest this news. Fax the papers to my London Library number and I will look them over. In the meantime go ahead with any developments, no matter the expense, and I will talk to you again in a few days. I can’t thank you enough George. You have done sterling work for me.”

  “Thank you, Anna. It’s my pleasure. I must admit to increasing curiosity about this situation. I may be just as anxious as are you, about the results of the search. Goodbye, for now.”

  “Goodbye, George.”

  * * *

  Anna put down the phone and exhaled. She felt as if she had been holding her breath for minutes, afraid to miss one word of the saga. Her mind was far away in an unknown land and time, wondering about the fate of a child who would be an aunt of hers; older sister to her mother Marion.

  “Why did I never hear about this aunt?” she challenged the air. “Even if she did die as a child, someone, somewhere, sometime, should have cared enough to remember her in some permanent way.”

  Sinking back into the chair cushions, Anna stared out of the window and found a little comfort in watching the endless snow drift past. She could not imagine any circumstances that would make her give up a child of her own........... if only she had ever been so fortunate as to have a child of her own.

  * * *

  George proved to be as good as his word, and Anna found a large document file awaiting her when she arrived at the Library. There was no time to read the items and even a glance revealed that the hand-written cursive script would not be easy to decipher.

  Anna put the entire issue out of her mind for now, although she had to admit that the fate of poor Aileen Anne lingered as a shadow in the background.

  As the hours wore on toward the 9:00pm closing, the library patrons were thinning out. Snow had fallen steadily all day and the downtown regulars had decided to stay home rather than face the onslaught of wind-created snow drifts.

  Andrew sent most of the evening staff home early, but Anna decided to stay and close up for him and take the opportunity to do some private research on the library’s super-fast internet.

  It was hard to know where to start. There were so many unanswered questions.

  Foremost among these was the identity of Helen Dunlop and the possible, or improbable, connection to Anna and her family.

  Anna clicked onto Google and on an impulse typed in the name Helen Dunlop.

  The rush of responses indicated that it was not an uncommon name. Anna was faced with dozens of pages of information. She refined the search by locating the name in Scotland and providing a time frame. For this she had to refer to George’s folder where she tracked down the certificate of death. Not much help there. She still found a dozen pages of Helen Dunlops.

  Looking around the Library area to confirm that she was not needed at the desk, Anna rolled up her sleeves and tackled the entries one by one. She had no idea what she was looking for at first. Details about memberships and authorships scrolled by but not much in the way of personal information of the type Anna needed. ‘Her’ Helen did not appear to be notable in any way that was important to Google. She was just about to switch to tourist information about Scotland as a light relief when something unusual caught her eye.

  It was the word ‘adoption’ in an entry on the next-to-last page.

  Helen Dunlop, daughter of a distant cousin of the famous Dunlop family.

  In her teen years, Helen was the subject of a huge police search in Scotland that lasted three weeks. A kidnapping was suspected but no ransom note ever transpired.
Helen was found safe, miles from her exclusive Dundee home after apparently hitchhiking across Scotland.

  There was speculation in the press that Helen was unhappy at home and had attempted to trace her real parents. No confirmation of this supposed adoption was ever provided, and the family refused all interviews.

  Could this be the Helen Dunlop she was seeking? Anna’s pulse was racing as she considered the possibilities. Adoption. It was a giant leap of faith but something drew Anna to make a connection to the forlorn little child, Aileen Anne, who had disappeared from the records some time in her childhood. Was it just the recent phone conversation with the solicitor in Scotland that made these two unrelated events seem linked?

  Was it even possible that Aileen Anne and Helen were one and the same? What were the chances that such a coincidence could occur? At this thought with numbers in the range of millions to one zooming into her consciousness, Anna pushed back her chair in an attempt to separate herself from this futile speculation.

  “What am I doing?” she accused herself out loud. “This is craziness! It’s time I went home and got some sleep.”

  A timid voice from behind her announced, “Well, if you could just check out these books before you go, I would be very grateful.”

  Anna recovered her balance after nearly falling off the chair in shock and rushed to help the young student with her research homework.

  The swift return to reality gave her the energy to turn off lights and check that doors were locked before setting the alarms and heading to the underground parking building.

  During the slow drive home through snowy streets that would not be cleared until overnight sno- removal plows came out, the exhaustion of a very eventful day began to catch up with Anna. She felt more and more weary as she neared the apartment building.

  Dragging herself into the elevator, she decided that she really needed time to think.

  So much had happened so quickly. She must not allow events to escalate out of her control.

  It was time to take stock, review the past week and make some decisions but, first, sleep was a priority and giving no thought to hairstyle or makeup, Anna collapsed into bed with a grateful sigh.

  Chapter Eight

  Thursday morning dawned bright and clear. “A good day for decisions,” yawned Anna, as she pulled open the drapes and admired the fresh white snow mounded over bushes and cars in the parking lot.

  “Coffee, then I’ll read those papers George sent and do a lot of thinking, hopefully without interruptions.”

  She brewed a whole pot of coffee and savoured the aroma that soon filled the room.

  Before she could finish the first full mug, papers were scattered on the floor in front of her chair and Anna had to resort to sketching out a tentative family tree on a large piece of paper in order to make sense of all the new information George’s research had provided.

  A feeling of annoyance surfaced again as she contemplated a family history of which she had never previously been made aware. Stepping carefully over the document copies, she fetched the photograph of her parents’ wedding from her bedside, as if to accuse them face to face of keeping secrets from her.

  Such young faces met her gaze. Once more she realised the gaps in her information.

  Why had this young couple left Scotland to settle in Canada? Why had they never returned to their homeland for a holiday or to contact relatives? Did they know about the first marriage of Marion’s mother and the story of Aileen Anne? Could they have solved the mystery of Helen Dunlop for their daughter and if so, why did they never mention her?

  Side by side with these unanswered questions came the personal challenge that could not be ignored. Why had Anna neglected to ask the questions about family that might have prompted her mother’s or father’s confidences?

  Surely there were occasions during her schooldays when families were discussed in class.

  What responses had Anna made? Did she resort to fabrications to avoid being singled out for lack of knowledge? Why did she remember nothing of this? Had she blocked it out altogether?

  Anna realized suddenly that she knew more about Alina’s family background than she did about her own. She had met Alina’s aunts and uncles many times and shared a cottage holiday on Georgian Bay in Northern Ontario one summer with Alina and a tribe of cousins. They had happily accepted Anna into the fold and she was welcomed by the adults as one of the extended family group.

  Swimming, canoes and fishing, interspersed with explorations in the deep woods and along the rocky shores, were still vivid in Anna’s memory. She could almost feel the sunburned skin and itchy blackfly bites and the glorious freedom of endless hours of unsupervised play. They roamed around as a group with the older boys and girls warned to keep an eye on the smaller ones on pain of death.

  One hot afternoon when the grown-ups were dozing on the deck, the cousins had bounced into a far clearing in the woods and found themselves three yards from a black bear cub. Jaws dropped in amazement and eyes popped as they stood transfixed absorbing every detail of the cub’s appearance from his wet brown nose and tiny eyes to his shiny fur and huge claws. When the spell was broken by the cub’s plaintive mew, it was Anna who took charge and signalled to the pack to keep silent and back out slowly. Somewhere she had read that cubs were always accompanied by an adult female and the wrath of a threatened mother bear was not to be taken lightly.

  By mutual agreement, Alina’s cousins promised each other to keep this incident secret, fearing the adults would never let them out of their sight again all summer.

  Ever after this, the code words ‘Black Bear’ whispered between them signalled an unbreakable bond of silence that excluded all adults.

  Anna had to smile remembering that summer. It was decades since she and Alina had invoked the Black Bear code but it was just one layer of the bond that made their friendship so strong.

  Somehow Anna could not recall such happy memories of her own small family group.

  Simon and she were comfortable enough and fortunate to have a bedroom each.

  Perhaps because of this, and because Simon was three years older, they did not share many hobbies or friends. Simon was into hockey from a young age and spent early morning hours practising in the arena with his dad, while Anna hated the cold atmosphere and refused to accompany them to games, preferring to spend her time with Alina in her fashionable home only a short walk away. Alina’s mother always seemed to be at home with cookies and milk at the ready and they had a beautiful backyard pool where Mrs. Barlow supervised their play on hot summer days.

  Thinking of Mrs. Barlow relaxing with a book by the poolside while her only daughter splashed and laughed with her best friend, Anna began to wonder why her own mother was absent from the picture. So many memories of her childhood revolved around the Barlow household that Anna had trouble conjuring up a cozy chat with her mother at the kitchen table, or a cooking lesson, or girl talk about boys. Where was her mother all those hours when Anna was with the Barlows?

  A blush of shame rose into Anna’s cheeks as she remembered the reason why her mother was not available for after-school or summer vacation activities.

  “What a selfish little monster I was,” she admitted to herself, “rushing off to Alina’s house instead of helping out at home.”

  Her mother had worked long hours of shift work as a registered nurse at the Children’s Hospital, a large complex of buildings on the outskirts of town. By the time she arrived home in the evenings, she was often exhausted and not capable of much more than a cursory attempt at family interaction with her own children after a day dealing with the life and death crises of her young patients.

  No wonder there was little time or opportunity for long reminiscences about Scotland and a life that must have seemed as if it belonged to another era altogether. As an adult, Anna could see that her parents’ primary concern must have been to establish a new home in Canada for their family and that this concern outweighed all others.

&nbs
p; Her father was an engineer but he was required to re-train by repeating some of his Scottish courses to meet Ontario standards. During this period he worked as an apprentice in machine shops while studying at night school for his qualifications.

  There was seldom enough money for expensive gifts or treats. Simon and Anna, like most children, did not appreciate that having a roof over their heads and food on the table was achieved through the sacrifice of their hard-working parents.

  Not for the first time, Anna wished she could go back and make amends for the careless way she had accepted the sacrifices of her parents without acknowledging the personal price they had paid.

  Delving into past memories brought the thought of Simon to the forefront of Anna’s mind.

  It’s about time I called Simon again, she decided. It’s just possible that he can shed some light on all this.

  Michelle answered the phone and after some light banter about the weather and their adult children’s latest purchases followed by the inevitable wonders of the grandkids, she called her husband to the phone.

  “He’s been working in the garage on an old beat up motor he found. I think he hopes it will magically transform into a new lawn mower by the summer!”

  While she waited for Simon to pick up the receiver, Anna thought how much like their father he was. Fiddling around with an engine was always the most relaxing thing both men could find to do whenever problems confronted them.

  “Hi, sis! I’ve been hoping you would call. I haven’t been able to get our last conversation out of my mind. It’s brought up so much stuff from our childhood that I had forgotten.”

  “Me too, Simon. I’ve just been sitting here thinking about mum and dad and what a tough life they must have had when they came to Canada. I really didn’t appreciate everything they did for us.”

  “You’re right, of course, but does one generation ever appreciate the efforts of the one that came before?”