Flora's War

by Audrey Reimann

  The captain ordered them to sail towards the foe in a swaying, corkscrew pattern but there would be no last-minute desperate torpedoes for their ship. When they drew near Andrew saw that the two U-boats were side by side, stationary, with the black flags drooping at the mast-head. The decks were crowded with men, as were their own decks. Their war was ended. Andrew would enjoy the victory, the parades, the recognition, the homecoming … and then what?

  Three months later, he went home for a blessed leave. He followed up every slender lead he had in the search for his Flora. He’d discovered that she was the elder of the two young Flora Macdonalds in Edinburgh. A younger Flora Macdonald than his had been issued with a ration book. His own darling Flora had worked at the munitions factory in Portobello until she injured her back and left. He checked the registers at every hospital where she might have been taken.

  There was no Flora Macdonald on any of their lists. It seemed that both Flora Macdonalds had vanished. But then, hundreds of people passed through Edinburgh during the war and disappeared from the records. He would not, could not stop searching.

  A week before he returned to his ship, Andrew and Ma received an invitation from Sir Gordon Campbell to join the VJ Day celebrations at Ingersley on Saturday 18 August. Andrew would not be demobbed for another year and Sir Gordon was going to continue until he retired, but the victory in August, when Japan surrendered after Hiroshima, had been celebrated with street parties up and down the land. Ingersley was going to do it in style and Andrew would put aside his search for the day.

  He wore his best uniform and Ma decked herself out in an apple-green dress of crepe de Chine with a picture hat in fine white straw. Bessie’s occasional visits to the flat meant that Ma had ‘kept up’, as she put it, with the goings-on at Ingersley and in the East Lothian area, and now she regaled Andrew with second-hand stories.

  Bessie had told her of the excitement when a Heinkel was brought down over Davey Hamilton’s land. She told of the prisoner-of-war camps at Gosford where 3,000 Germans were held and the overcrowding there, which meant that other camps had to be opened in Haddington. They were still there, Ma said, but she doubted if they’d be allowed to go and look around.

  Andrew said, ‘Why would I go and stare at German POWs?’

  ‘You know Ingersley stopped being a hospital, don’t you?’

  ‘Really?’ he said, to please her.

  ‘Aye. They requisitioned a bigger place, outside the danger zone. Ingersley couldn’t hold enough patients so it was used for administration instead until a month ago. Now it’s the family home of the Campbells again. I hope Lady Campbell doesn’t ask for the furniture back,’ she added, as they set off for the VJ party.

  ‘Too bad,’ Andrew said. ‘She got rid of you cheaply.’

  ‘Don’t, Andrew. You don’t still feel bad about them, do you?’

  ‘No. I’m grateful to Sir Gordon. He made me pull my socks up and join the navy. He treated us well. But you owe nothing to Lady Campbell.’

  ‘She’s a cruel woman. Bessie says so.’

  It was not like Ma to speak unkindly and Andrew raised his eyebrows in enquiry and asked what she meant.

  ‘She was cruel from the start to wee Robert. Never took to him. I don’t think she ever really wanted one. It didn’t matter so much that she was cold-hearted, though. Bessie and Nanny doted on Robert. When Edward was born it all changed. Lady Campbell thinks the sun shines out of his bottom, Bessie says. She favours him all the time over Robert, who’s a poor weakling of a lad. And no wonder. He doesn’t get enough to eat. Bessie bakes treats for him and sneaks food up the stairs to him at night.’

  Andrew felt his hackles rise. What sort of a woman would be cruel to her own flesh and blood? He said, ‘Then Miss Taylor and Bessie had better do right by him. Sir Gordon can’t know about it.’

  Ma said, ‘Lady Campbell’s going to send the poor little thing away to a boarding school when he’s seven.’

  ‘That’s the way of the upper classes,’ Andrew said. ‘They don’t have any real feelings.’

  ‘Bessie’s going to leave when they send him away. She says Nanny Taylor goes the other way to make up, keeping the wee lad from his mother as best she can.’

  It sounded like mere servants’ gossip to Andrew.

  ‘Don’t listen to this gossip, Ma,’ he said. ‘Come on – are you ready?’

  There had been many changes since Andrew had last seen it, but that day Ingersley looked good. The sun shone and they could hear children’s happy laughter ringing out as they went through the wooden gates beside their old South Lodge home.

  The house was still unoccupied, though the Campbells had engaged a new cook from the village. The smell of cut grass was sweet in the golden afternoon sun as they walked on the mown lawn, where little folding tables had been set for the adults. In the centre was a long trestle table for the children of the villages and estate. The trestle table was laid, Ma noticed, with hospital plates and beakers. Volunteers were needed. Ma was one of the first to offer, and soon she had shanghaied a team of women into carrying out ashets laden with sandwiches, jellies, cakes and trifles to children who could barely contain their excitement.

  Sir Gordon Campbell and his wife mingled with the guests, shaking hands with all. ‘Pleased to see so many friends,’ said Sir Gordon when they reached Andrew and Ma.

  Lady Campbell had not changed. She was still pretty and looked good in a pleated silk frock of patriotic red, white and blue, and a small, whining child clung to her hand, taking most of her attention. She gave Andrew the impression that she was pretending indifference whilst watching him closely, yet she managed to look down her nose at him as she held out a limp hand. ‘Andrew,’ she drawled. ‘You are unscathed, too. How nice to see you.’

  Sir Gordon asked if Andrew would continue in the Royal Navy.

  ‘No, sir. The police are recruiting. I thought I’d join.’

  ‘And leave the sea?’ Sir Gordon’s eyebrows lifted in astonishment. ‘I can’t bring myself to cut all ties,’

  Andrew smiled. ‘I shall buy a small boat and join a sailing club.’

  Sir Gordon could not linger for too long with any one guest. He had just started to say, ‘You will stay for the dancing and the evening entertainment – you and your mother. We’ll have a talk then …’ when a skinny little livewire of about five years old came tearing across the grass, laughing and shouting, ‘Daddy! Daddy! Here I am!’ His dark curls fell across his eyes, blinding him as he launched himself at Sir Gordon’s legs and, as he did so, knocked to the grass his baby brother, who started to cry.

  It was ordinary childish high spirits and did not warrant the violent reaction of Lady Campbell. Andrew had never seen anyone roused so quickly from passiveness to fury. It was shocking to him and must have terrified the child. Her eyes were wild. ‘You wicked boy!’ she snarled. She snatched the child from Sir Gordon’s legs with fingers like talons, roughly enough to bruise the arm of the young boy, whose face was suddenly white with terror as his mother said, through clenched teeth, ‘You will go to your room. No tea. No party for you. I will deal with you later!’

  Ignoring the shaking child’s sobs, Lady Campbell called out for Nanny, who came racing to protect the heartbroken child from his mother and take him away. The punishment was harsh and excessive and Andrew found himself fighting back the urge to defend the little lad.

  Sir Gordon picked up his younger son and remonstrated with his wife. ‘No punishment today, Mummy,’ he said firmly. ‘My son, Robert, meant no harm.’

  Andrew silently noted the phrase, My son, Robert, and wondered what Sir Gordon had meant by it. Was it a slip of the tongue? Whatever it was, the Commander must have made his point. Robert was included in the tea party and Andrew felt enormously relieved, as if he himself were the child’s protector.

  Later there was another incident. Ma was talking to Lucy Hamilton who had her child, Phoebe, by the hand, when little Robert, without adult supervision, came up to them and
slipped his hand into Andrew’s. He stuck his other thumb in his mouth and regarded Andrew solemnly. Andrew smiled and bent down to talk to him. He was a dear little chap.

  The child took his thumb out but still held fast to Andrew’s hand. ‘You’re a sailor,’ he said. ‘Sandy’s daddy is a sailor.’

  ‘Is he?’ Andrew, puzzled, smiled at him.

  Lucy Hamilton laughingly explained, ‘Sandy is Robert’s imaginary friend. Nobody has ever seen him …’

  ‘I have,’ said Robert, still with his hand in Andrew’s, but at that moment Nanny Taylor, displaying the energy of a young girl, came haring across the grass again to take the child away. It was as if the boy were Nanny’s own.

  ‘It’s all right,’ Andrew said, as Nanny lifted Robert off his feet and held him fast. ‘We were having a nice little talk weren’t we?’, but Nanny looked at him, her eyes wide with alarm, as if he were about to kidnap her precious child. She did not say a word but turned and scorched across the grass to the house, the boy laughing in her arms and waving back at Andrew.

  All in all, though, he and Ma agreed on the train home, it had been a good day of celebration. The old drawing room cleared of desks and equipment but not yet restored to its former elegance had made a fine place for dancing. A band had been hired and in the smoky, dusty room that had once been so grand, masters and servants, with social barriers gone, danced to the eightsome reel, the Dashing White Sergeant and the energetic Scottish country dances.

  On the train home Ma said, ‘I shouldn’t say this, son, but did you see Lady Campbell dancing the Gay Gordons with Mike Hamilton?’ She giggled. ‘She was swooning in his arms. She must have had a drop to drink.’ Then she added, ‘I don’t think Sir Gordon noticed.’

  ‘No,’ Andrew said. ‘People never see what’s under their noses.’ And he sat back to think about the day and to wonder whether the favoured son was Mike Hamilton’s.

  By 1946 it should have been easy to forget and consign to the past the lies and the fear of being found out. But never a day passed when Flora did not ache for her lost son, though her working and home life was secure and happy.

  Aunt Dorothy and Uncle John loved her like a daughter, and Alexander, who would start school soon, was their ‘little big guy’ who followed Uncle John everywhere. Alexander was a delight; a happy, contented and outgoing child who was easy to please and devoted to the man in his life, Uncle John. He was six years old, tall and strong, and had an enormous, healthy appetite. He had dark, wavy hair like Andrew’s and eyes that everyone said were like Flora’s own; large and round and liquid green. Alexander could read a few words, talk like an angel and pick out a tune on the cottage piano. He was not allowed to go up to the sawmill with Uncle John for safety reasons, but he’d come flying across the yard or along the deck whenever he heard the engine of the Dodge arriving, and always he’d yell, ‘I’m here – I’m here, Uncle John. Wait for me and Campbell.’

  Flora would startle every time he said it. Lonely children often had imaginary friends, but there was more to it with Alexander. Flora’s own guilt and pain came to taunt her day and night. Alexander had probably got the name Campbell from the letters from Nanny that Dorothy read out to them – news of Robert and the Campbell family, once even a photograph of Nanny and Robert but taken from so far away that it was impossible to make out their features or Robert’s shape, though he looked smaller and thinner than Alexander. But then Robert’s birth weight had only been half Alexander’s, and rationing was still severe back at home. Flora told herself not to worry because you couldn’t tell a thing from a photo.

  However, Campbell was not a childish phase. Campbell had been there from the start – even from infancy, when Alexander would reach out and cry when he found that his arms were empty. When Flora avidly read the British newspapers that were sent to Bancroft – the Edinburgh Evening News amongst them – Alexander would sit, thumb in mouth, watching, once making her heart almost stop by pronouncing solemnly as Flora scrutinised a newspaper photograph of a group of naval officers, ‘Campbell’s daddy is a sailor. Like my daddy – wasn’t he, Mommy?’

  Flora asked, ‘Where does Campbell live?’ Alexander took his thumb from his mouth and replied solemnly, ‘Stockland. Silly.’

  Flora had to set an extra place at table for Campbell. Alexander would shout, ‘Don’t close the door. Campbell’s not in yet,’ or, ‘Hold Campbell’s hand too, Mommy.’ It was an obsession.

  When she forgot, for a few hours, her anxiety for Robert and her guilt over both boys, Flora was happy and lucky, she believed. She went down on her knees every night to thank God for delivering her into the Murray family, who now declared themselves fearful that she might leave them to find something better.

  She worked hard in the store and was keen to learn the lumber business. And she was well liked in the town she had come to love for its friendliness, its wooden homes and shops and wide, straight streets, and its crystal-clear air scented with pine that was clean, healthy and energising. She loved the space and the sense of belonging to a small community that had put down roots and tamed a land of few people but a wealth of natural resources. She thrilled to the feeling of kinship she shared with the Scottish society. She became a leading light in both the amateur operatic society and the church, where she sang in the choir. She was also one of the prettiest girls in a town that was famed for them. Aunt Dorothy said she was a little too thin, but her green eyes were clear and bright and the long red hair she wore in the American style of a ponytail, or at shoulder length, was thick and wavy.

  Soon after she settled in, she met Jake Murray, who came home on leave from the Royal Canadian Air Force. He had miraculously survived a crash, suffering only surface burns on his feet, and was flown home for two months’ leave. Jake was tall and burly like his brother Peter, whom she already knew well. Both the Murray sons had blue eyes and curly, fair hair, as their father’s had been. The only cloud on this particular front was the brothers’ rivalry for her attention. Flora felt badly about it, though Aunt Dorothy laughed and said, ‘They have always competed, Flora. But once you choose, the other will back off.’

  All the same, Flora did not want to choose between the brothers, though she found herself drawn to Jake, the raffish one, the daredevil who made her laugh and, in the four November weeks he was home, taught her to ski and skate despite his own injuries. Jake wanted to follow in his father’s footsteps after the war; to take over the sawmill, run the store, buy timber limits, mines, for there were gems and minerals and precious metals to be dug from the ground. He even got Flora on to a ranger’s flight over some of the thousands of small lakes of northern Ontario and up to see the great, remote forest of Algonquin Park.

  Before he returned to England they went to Toronto to stay with relatives and there Jake took her to a romantic dinner and dance where he kissed her and said, ‘I’ll make you the richest woman in Canada, honey. You will never regret it.’

  Flora laughed and said, ‘I hope you aren’t proposing, Jake.’

  ‘I have nothing to offer,’ he said as he held her tight and whirled her around the dance floor. ‘When the war is over, you and I will set the place alight.’

  She would not, could not, say to a man who needed hope of a bright future whilst in mortal danger that she had never felt for any man the love she still had for Andrew and, unless she could feel that way again, she would never marry. And she was glad that she had not turned him down, because barely six months before the end of the war, in late 1944 when the war news was generally good – when the tide had turned against Hitler, when hope sprang in everyone’s heart at the news from England, when Aunt Dorothy and Uncle John were confident that Jake would soon be home – the blow fell.

  Jake’s Spitfire went down over the Channel. Jake was dead and the Murrays could not recover from their loss. Aunt Dorothy’s hair went white in the space of three weeks and Uncle John came to a halt. He lost his energy and drive and would sit by the fire or in the stock room at the store, saying
little, refusing to go to church, even when Flora was singing.

  He did not pull himself out of it for months, until his misery started to affect Alexander, who followed him around and was always there like a faithful puppy. That year, Alexander began bursting into uncontrollable, hysterical sobbing that had no apparent cause. When Flora asked what the trouble was, the child cried harder and said, ‘Campbell’s mommy hurts him. She hurts him real bad. I want Campbell.’

  Flora went cold to her heart. But Alexander’s obsession with Campbell was to last until, at the age of twelve, he stopped telling his mom about Campbell, who needed someone like Alex to stand up for him, help him fight the enemy that was ranged against him.

  Chapter Eleven

  1952

  Nanny Taylor regarded herself in the nursery mirror. She was still a fine-looking woman and she was seventy-two years of age. Her white hair was thick and plentiful and she wore it pulled back into a bun at the nape of her neck. She had never been vain but was glad that all the nonsense of youth was behind her, even though her duties were not. Robert was away at boarding school and her most onerous task should have been over. She should be living out her retirement in Ivy Lodge. As it was, eight-year-old Edward could be a bit of a handful and she was often needed at Ingersley House.

  Ruth had come to motherhood and maternal feelings late and was hypercritical of anyone, other than Nanny, who had charge of Edward. Nurses came and went with unsettling regularity and Nanny had to stand in for them, between times.

  She still had plentiful energy and could have managed the occasional duties from Ivy Lodge had it not been for Ruth’s overpowering hatred for the child Nanny loved above all – loved, in fact, above all who had ever come within a mile of her. She had cared for Robert from months before he was even born. Her instincts were as strong as they would have been had she herself given birth to him. Robert was hers. And she must protect him against Ruth’s savage and vengeful authority.