by Dee Yates
I called you Liz. Tam told me his wee sister had been called Elizabeth. She had died when Tam was only four. Tam had been very upset and always blamed himself for her death.
They kept me in the hospital for several days. My brain was in a fog that wouldn’t clear. They said it was the concussion and it would get better eventually. I sat there going over and over in my mind what I should do. My aunt never came to see me. I feared she had been killed, or injured and lying in some other nearby hospital. Then, one morning I got dressed (they’d brought me some second-hand clothes as mine were ruined), gave you a bath and dressed you (in clothes that had also been donated) and walked out. My neighbour on the ward had given me some money. I wanted her address so I could send it back as soon as I had some of my own, but she wouldn’t hear of it. I had decided to try and find out what had happened to my uncle and aunt.
I set off walking with you in my arms. I had never felt more alone. Everywhere there were ruins – houses destroyed, others badly damaged, a few mercifully intact. People milled around aimlessly, some looking for possessions that had been buried beneath the rubble, others walking slowly in the direction of the city. My aunt and uncle lived outside of Clydebank itself and many houses still stood unharmed.
A woman stopped what she was doing and started to talk to me. She looked at you and asked how old you were. I told her, just a week, and she said, had I no pram or baby clothes. When I said I hadn’t, she told me to wait and she went off round the back of the block and came back with a pram. She said she had no further use for it. Her four weans were growing up and her man had been killed in the war and she would be glad if I would take it off her hands. It was only a reminder of things she would rather forget. Inside the pram was a bag of nappies and assorted clothes, all, she said, no longer needed. Her kindness brought tears to my eyes. She hugged me and I walked on.
When I reached the house in which I had spent those two happy teenage years, I could see it was mostly destroyed. The bedroom in which my uncle was confined by his illness was gone, as was all of that side of the house. It was clear that my uncle could not have survived, but I had no idea about Auntie Christine.
I knocked on the door of the next house and asked if they had any idea what had happened to Auntie Christine. They said she had been found dead the next morning. Until then I had been strong, but now I started to cry and shiver and couldn’t stop. They took me in and gave me a cup of tea. I fed and changed you and made you comfortable. They asked where I was going and I said I was going to London. (I had met a woman on my first train journey to Glasgow. Madge, she was called. She had invited me to go and stay.) It suddenly came into my head that this was a way to escape the unhappiness that my marriage to Tam was bringing. If it was true what Tam’s brother had said, that Tam and I would make each other miserable for the rest of our lives, then here was a way out of it. I wouldn’t go back. He would think I had been killed. He would be upset, of course, but he would get over it and I would have saved him a lifetime of misery. I must have been mad to think like that. It must have been the bang on the head.
When I looked at Auntie’s house again, I could see that my room had been flattened by the bomb. I climbed over rubble and found the door to the cupboard under the stairs, and I could see why they always said to make for that if there was no time to reach the shelter. It was the only place that was untouched. The stairs above, they were twisted and banisters were hanging loose, but that wee room was untouched. And as I looked at it, the sense came to me that I had been in there. Maybe Christine had saved me.
I could see that the couple who owned the house next door were unhappy about me going. They must have sensed that I wasn’t in my right mind. But when I’m determined, there’s nothing anyone can do to stop me. Tam had found that out the hard way.
I pushed the pram all the way to Partick Station and boarded the train into Glasgow, sitting in the guard’s van with the pram. Then I pushed the pram through the busy centre of the city to Central Station. By the time I had found the guard’s van again, taken you out of the pram together with spare nappies for the journey and found a seat, I was exhausted.
I won’t bore you with details of all the hours I spent on the train. Suffice it to say, it was very long and you were extremely fretful. The other passengers were patient with us. Perhaps they were just glad not to be in my shoes. One of them fetched me a cup of tea and a cake and wouldn’t let me pay. Another, a woman, nursed you for a while so I could shut my eyes and get an hour of welcome sleep. Early in the journey we passed the stop where I would normally have alighted for home. I looked at the hills as we pulled out of the station, wondering what on earth I was doing. I would not let myself think about Tam or I would have broken down completely.
There is an audible sob and Liz stops and rests a hand on his shoulder, squeezing it gently.
‘Did she get to London?’
Liz reads on.
We arrived in London in the early hours. As soon as it began to get light, I enquired about trains to Lambeth. When I eventually got to the address that I remembered from the envelope, the house had disappeared. All that was left was a pile of rubble. Why had I not stopped to consider that the house I was seeking might have been bombed? After all, I had heard, as had everyone, of the repeated air attacks on London. So there we were in the Capital with no roof over our heads, no money in my purse and no friends within several hundred miles.
I wandered into a church and sat down near the back. I was tired and cold. You were needing a feed. I was just wondering whether I could feed you there and then when the minister came out of a side door and walked down the aisle. He stopped when he reached us and asked whether he could help or had we just come in for a bit of peace. I must have looked a sight. I hadn’t slept properly for the last day and a half, my clothes and shoes were ill-fitting and covered with dust. I explained that we had come a long way to visit someone and the house had gone. He asked how old the baby was and I told him. I asked if there was a place where I could feed you and he said to follow him and he showed us into the vestry.
A half-hour later, there was a knock at the door and the minister asked if he could come in. He was carrying a tray of sandwiches and a pot of tea. I had fed and changed you and you were lying quiet in my arms, but he went to the back of the church where I had left the pram and brought it through. He lifted you into his arms and put you into the pram ever so gently so that I could relax and eat my sandwiches. He poured the tea, a cup for each of us. He was kindness itself.
While I was eating, he explained that he was a curate and had been in his current post for only six months. He would eventually, he said, become a vicar and would then have a church of his own to look after. He asked if I had anyone to look after me and I repeated the story that I had travelled down from Scotland to visit a friend and had found her house bombed to the ground. I merely said I couldn’t go back. I couldn’t tell him why. He said that while I considered what I wanted to do, he thought he knew of someone who would look after you and me – an elderly lady in the church whose husband had recently died.
Mrs Phillips was a godsend. She was still mourning the loss of her husband, but having me and the baby to care for seemed to give her a purpose. She grew to love you and would take you out for walks in your pram to give me an hour’s rest. It wasn’t long before I began to worry, because she was getting no payment for looking after us. I was doing jobs round the house, of course, but there was no money coming in. She must have said something to the curate about how I felt because one day William Saunders – that was the curate’s name – came to see me. He explained that, being on his own, he would very much like someone to cook and clean for him. The busy job, he said, left very little time for household chores and I agreed to it.
At first we stayed with Mrs Phillips and she looked after you while I was working. Eventually we moved in with him. It was a big house and we had three rooms all to ourselves. We still called to see Mrs Phillips regularly. This arrangement la
sted for three years. It surprised me that he didn’t move on to a vicar’s job, as would normally have been the case. I didn’t realise that he was, in fact, ill. I’m sure he didn’t realise it either, not at first anyway.
William grew very fond of us. He was young – only a couple of years older than me. One day he told me how much he thought about me. I was shocked. Maybe, if I had been free, I would have realised and perhaps allowed myself to love him back, but of course I wasn’t free. What made it worse was that you had begun to call him ‘Daddy’, copying some of the wee friends that you had made. I know I let you go on believing that he was your daddy. At the time, it seemed easier than trying to explain the truth. For years you told everyone that your daddy had been a minister in the church and that he had died.
I had to tell him the rest of my story, about how I had left your father on the farm and never gone back. I told him that I wasn’t free to love him. He was upset but thanked me for being honest – though it would have been better if I had been honest with him earlier, then he would never have allowed himself to love me. Is it possible to stop yourself loving someone just by force of will? I don’t know the answer to that. But I do know now that it pays to be honest.
I remember him – standing in the room – tall, too thin, his eyes shining, the tinge of early fever on his cheeks. I couldn’t stay, of course. We left that day, packing our things and moving back temporarily with Mrs Phillips. I felt bad, acting like this after all the kindness he had shown us. I continued to go in and clean for him – he was usually out on parish duties during the times I was there. Later, when he was in the sanatorium, I would go and visit him and I think he valued our continuing friendship enough to prefer me turning up than never having the chance of seeing me again. He died of TB just as war came to an end.
I did love William, but as a friend, nothing more. He was gentle and kind and considerate. But I would not allow myself to fall for him. It would not have been fair on him or on your father. I had already seen what my attraction to Alan had done to your father. William gave me all the things I was missing in my relationship with Tam. I still thought a lot about Tam, but I could not have gone back to him. I had begun to agree with Alan that we would have made each other miserable. He would never have begun to trust me. He would never have believed that you were his child, no matter how many times I told him.
Of course, this decision left me over the years with a lot of unanswered questions. Was your father well? How was he managing, having to run the farm with only your grandfather to help? How was Alan? Had he survived the war and returned to Fiona? Did they eventually have children? Did your father find anyone else to love?
Liz stops. She sits quietly, reading to herself the last sentences, before repeating them aloud to Tam.
You know the rest because we shared it, you and me, as you grew up. Forgive me, Liz, for not telling you all this until now. I know you have had your own problems. I can only say how dreadfully sorry I am for keeping you from the father you never knew. I know it was a very selfish thing to do. He will have died by now, I’m sure, as he was older than me by a few years.
For myself, having you as a daughter has made my life worth living. You are my one happiness in a life containing so many wrong turnings.
From your mother who will always love you. xx
‘So, after all these years, I find I have a daughter.’ Tam looks at Liz with something approaching reverence. ‘I should be angry that Jeannie kept this from me and never gave me the chance of seeing you grow up, but I have no right to be angry. Jeannie wanted something I never gave her – an assurance of how much I loved her. And it was me who failed to believe that she really loved me.’ Tam shakes his head slowly.
‘She’s here now, your daughter.’ Liz says softly.
Tam gives a slow smile and takes both her hands in his. ‘“God moves in a mysterious way” – it’s the first line of my favourite hymn. Do you know it?’ he asks.
‘Yes, I do. It’s one of my favourites too.’
‘What can I say?’ her father continues. ‘Your mother has apologised, but I’m the one who should be making the apology. It was the way I behaved with your mother that sent her away.’
‘Don’t apologise. It sounds as though you had hard things to bear in your life that made you the way you were. Mum and I, we were happy together. She gave me a good start. I loved school. I trained to be a nurse. I married and had children of my own.’
‘Did she marry again, your mother?’
‘No, she didn’t. I suppose she couldn’t, being still married to you. Maybe she would have married William Saunders if she had been free. I don’t know. And anyway, he got ill and died. There never seemed to be anyone else special that she wanted to be with, not as far as I could see. If there had been, I think she would have told me.’
‘And to think, she never knew that Alan had died. I could see that he was fond of Jeannie. After all, we'd grown up together - I could read him pretty well. I was jealous, of course I was, and I was never sure how much your mother felt drawn to him - although it was me she said she loved. I always had this lingering doubt that you were his child, not mine.'
‘She makes it very clear in her letter whose child I am.'
‘Do you have anyone special?’ Tam asks.
‘As I told you, my husband and I were divorced quite a few years ago. I’m… well, I’m on my own now. The children are grown up. Timothy is in Australia and Rebecca in the south of England, both with families. Maybe sometime you’ll be able to meet them.’ She gives the old man a tender look. His attention is wandering and he looks exhausted. ‘I must let you rest. I’ve tired you out with all these revelations. I’ll call in again in a couple of days, I promise.’
‘Yes, I am tired. I can barely take it all in. I need to think over all you’ve told me. But the best thing is that I’ve just discovered a daughter I never knew existed!’
45. The Visitor
July 2002
‘I think you should have this picture in your room. After all, she was yours before she was mine.’ Liz stands the framed picture of her mother on Tam’s bedside table. ‘Don’t worry,’ she says as Tam makes to object, ‘I’ve made a copy for myself.’
Her father leans back in his chair and smiles. He looks tired but happy. ‘I was worried you might not come back to see me again, lass. I was beginning to wonder if I’d invented the whole story and it wasnae true.’
‘I’m sure the letter spoke the truth. And it was certainly my mother’s writing. I recognised it straight away.’
‘So did I. I’ve been thinking about what she wrote in the letter. Why was I told she wasn’t there when I went to the hospital? She must have been there. Where else could she have been?’
‘Perhaps we’ll never know. She was obviously suffering from some kind of memory loss, maybe from that bang on the head. Maybe she was there but had given a wrong name, perhaps her maiden name. After all, the memory can play tricks at times like that. Or it could be that she was taken to another hospital, if she was having her baby.’
Tam massages his eyes with his fingers. ‘I can’t stop thinking that if I’d kept on looking, rather than believe what my eyes were telling me, I might have found her. We must have been there at the same time and I can’t get that thought out of my head.’
‘What happened to you when you couldn’t find her, Dad?’
Tam smiles at her use of the endearment. ‘It was a policeman at the station who had told me the house took a direct hit and no one had survived. I couldn’t believe him so I went to the hospital. They’d no record of her. They said I could try the mortuary.’ He shudders. ‘It was grim. Bodies laid in long rows. The awful smell of death. She wasn’t there. I was hopeful then. I walked a long way until I reached her aunt’s house.’ Tam stops and stares ahead, as though seeing the ruin afresh. ‘It had taken a direct hit. I didnae think anyone could have survived. What the policeman had told me was right, or so I thought.’ He looks at Liz with eyes full o
f sorrow. ‘If only I had known what I know now, I would have carried on looking and looking until I found her. Instead I believed what my eyes were telling me and I went away and left her there – somewhere.’
‘You don’t know that. She may already have gone. You know yourself how determined she was once she had made up her mind.’ For a minute or two they are silent, each thinking his or her own thoughts. ‘So, you came home after that?’
‘Yes, I came back and carried on where I had left off, only without Jeannie. Alan had gone off to fight. My father couldnae have managed on his own. What else was I to do? Life wasn’t worth living. But you have to go on living it, don’t you?’
‘What about my mother’s family – my grandparents? Did you contact them to say what had happened?’
‘I did – eventually. They hadnae been happy about Jeannie and me getting married. They didnae even come to our wedding, so we weren’t keeping in touch with them. But sometime after I had lost Jeannie, I fell to thinking that it wasnae fair that they had no idea that their only daughter had died. I found their address in among Jeannie’s letters and wrote to them. They came to see me then – straight away almost. Heartbroken they were, of course. I explained how Jeannie had come to be there in Glasgow. I think they felt bad then that they hadn’t visited their poorly brother-in-law themselves. Anyway, we parted on more friendly terms than on the previous occasion we met. I lost touch with them after that – they never contacted me again and I had no reason to make contact with them.’
A knock on the door of Tam’s room makes them both jump. ‘Visitor for you, Mr McColl.’
Tam struggles to turn round in his chair. His face creases in a grin. ‘Malcolm! It’s good to see you, pal. Come away in and meet my daughter.’
‘Your daughter!’ The man stops in his tracks. He is tall and upright, a shock of unruly white hair framing a weathered face and twinkling eyes. He looks at Liz in perplexity. ‘Your daughter! You didnae tell me you had a daughter, though I can see a likeness to you and, from what I can remember, she has Jeannie’s smile.’ Malcolm steps over and shakes Liz’s hand. She feels the roughness of his skin and a firm ridge across his palm that no doubt betrays an ancient injury.