Grace looked at her, realisation dawning. “Muscular dystrophy,” she said. “Your brother had Duchenne’s muscular dystrophy.”
After she left Violet, Grace went up to her room. She couldn’t be angry with Violet. Grace had seen the girls come into the hospital who were adopting their babies out. It changed them. You could see that. After Mia was born, Grace wondered how they could do it, walk away from their babies. This was how they did it, she thought now, closing off the past and only looking towards the future. Poor Violet.
She tried to phone David but it rang out. She’d try again later. She didn’t want to talk to Violet again for now either. She went out of the room intending to walk again, although it was dark outside and cold. On the stairs, she passed two women, wool suits and hats, one old, one very old. The very old one, holding onto the balustrade, cane hooked on the other arm, put her hand on Grace’s arm. “I knew your grandmother, dear,” she said. She had washed-out blue eyes that lit up when she smiled at Grace.
The woman had said “grandmother.” She meant Iris, of course, although would Grace ever think of Iris as her grandmother again? She wanted to cry, bit her lip. “Did you?” Grace said. I didn’t know her, she thought angrily.
“You look a bit peaky, dear,” the woman said. “We were going down for a sherry. Do join us. I’m Marjorie Lanois. I was Marjorie Starr,” as if she expected Grace would know who she was. Her accent was American, Grace thought. “Iris and I were good friends. And this is Miss May Robertson.”
“Oh yes,” the younger one said. “Do join us. My auntie Frances thought the world of your grandmother.” Frances Ivens had been director at the hospital, Violet had said. May had spent some time there as a volunteer, she told Grace now.
“We’re so sorry for your loss,” Marjorie said.
Grace felt like crying then. She told them she wouldn’t join them, she was going for a walk.
“Don’t be silly,” Marjorie said. “Come, join us.”
Grace was about to refuse outright when something changed her mind. She sighed. “Yes, a drink,” she said, “and you can tell me about my grandmother.”
She helped Marjorie Starr negotiate the rest of the stairs. “It’s my knees, dear.” She was better on flat land.
They went to a little alcove off the dining room, ordered drinks, champagne cocktails for themselves. Grace ordered a neat scotch.
“This was once the monks’ bathrooms,” Marjorie said. “They had a hundred and eighty toilet seats.”
Grace looked at her. They were all a bit odd, she thought.
Marjorie sighed, took a long look at Grace. “Iris was the one I was looking forward to seeing,” she said. “So it’s lovely you came for her. She’d have liked that. We were all so sad when we heard. She was such a good woman. It wasn’t fair, what happened. She blamed herself.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, her brother, dear. She was supposed to take him home. You knew that, didn’t you?” Grace nodded. Violet had told her. Iris hadn’t. “That’s why she came over originally. And then she got to Royaumont and Miss Ivens wanted her to stay and she and Violet became such good friends. She eventually learned what Violet was like.”
“And what’s that?” Grace said, taking a long pull on the drink. It felt good, calming.
“Violet got the place in medicine, didn’t she? That was Iris’s place.”
“Iris was going to do medicine?” Grace said, confused. This was something Violet had said too but Grace hadn’t understood.
Marjorie nodded. “Oh yes, Miss Ivens had a scholarship to give out. The Scottish Women’s Hospitals were great fund-raisers. They had money come in from all over the world, even Canada where I’m from.” Canadian rather than American. “A lot of those women wouldn’t give their money to the war, but they’d give it to our hospitals.” Marjorie took a sip of her drink. “You see, we didn’t ever support the war really. We just did what we could for the men. They were lovely, the French soldiers, so kind and considerate.
“The nurses weren’t to fraternise with the patients. That was a cardinal rule with Miss Ivens. But goodness me, you put all those young men with all those young women and what do you expect? We used to have concerts and dances. It was a merry place, almost as if the war was all around us but couldn’t touch us.”
May Robertson smiled, even blushed. “It was such a time for all of us,” she said.
Grace smiled too. She couldn’t help it. They were such amazing women, crazy but amazing. “So why didn’t Iris get the scholarship in the end?”
“Well, she had the baby, dear. And you know who got the scholarship instead? Violet.” Marjorie pursed her lips.
Grace didn’t know if Marjorie knew the truth about Violet and Iris. “Iris had such a way with people,” Marjorie said. “And such initiative.” She told Grace the story of the lorry. “It probably doesn’t seem like much now but it was very difficult for us to get anything done. Iris just looked at a problem and solved it. She was a blessing. Miss Ivens would never have succeeded without her.”
May Robertson said Iris was wonderful at cutting through the nonsense to keep them on track. “She certainly kept my auntie Frances on track and that’s saying something.”
“You must be so proud of her,” Marjorie Starr said.
Finally she managed to reach David. The kids were still out with his parents at dinner, but he’d come back early to wait for her call. She told him everything she’d found out, that Violet was her blood grandmother, Tom her blood grandfather, that Iris had lied, hadn’t done medicine, had felt guilty about her brother, had never talked because of all this, had kept this information from her daughter and granddaughter.
“To be honest, I’m still reeling,” she said. “The rooms keep moving on me.”
“I knew there was something,” David said. “If you think about it, for you it’s not really any different though,” he said.
“Yes it is. They didn’t tell my mother who her parents were. Can you believe that? They didn’t tell me. How could they . . .”
“Well, they were a different generation. You didn’t tell. You hid things,” David said.
“Yes, but Iris never told me. Iris looked at me and lied.”
“Give it up, Grace,” David said. “You’re starting to sound . . .”
“To sound what?”
“Ungrateful.”
“Ungrateful? My whole life’s been a lie. You just have no idea.”
“That’s not true. Your whole life hasn’t been a lie. Your mother died having you. Your father didn’t want you. Your grandmother raised you as her own.”
“But she wasn’t my grandmother, much less my mother.”
“Yes, she was. She stepped up and said, I’ll do this. She was willing. I can’t help but think that what she did for your mother, taking her home when she’d been offered a chance to do medicine . . . I can’t help but think that took extraordinary courage. And it doesn’t change anything.”
“Our son has muscular dystrophy.”
“Would you have done anything differently if you’d known?”
“You mean, aborted a male foetus?”
“Or not had children?”
“No. Maybe. But it’s not about that. It’s about my right to know.”
Early the next morning, Grace found Violet in the dining room on her own. Grace couldn’t face food. She’d spent the night tossing and turning. She remained angry, angry with Iris. And now, she couldn’t even confront Iris, couldn’t tell her how it felt.
“How are you now, my dear?” Violet said. “Sit down, won’t you?” Violet’s face was pleading.
Grace remained standing. “My mother and I had a right to information,” she said. “Iris should have told me. She should have . . .” Grace was pointing at the air, her finger trembling.
Violet interrupted her. �
�I want you to know that it was me who decided we should keep the secret, not Iris.” She smiled. “If you want to kick someone, it should be me.” Violet took an envelope from her bag and handed it to Grace. “I want you to read this. Now sit down.” Grace did as she was told. She opened the envelope. Inside was a letter, written on soft thin paper in a neat hand.
Dear Violet,
There is news. Our daughter Rose has died. It was a haemorrhage following birth and quick. Al says she wouldn’t have suffered at all, which is what you’d hope for. To be honest, Violet, I’m rather in shock, I think, to have lost what was never mine to begin with. You see, I’d always intended to make amends, to write you like this, to tell Rose the truth. And all I did really was put it off, and then the time was gone. I did show her your photograph and I told her you were once a dear friend of mine who’d become a great surgeon. We’d drifted apart, I said, because our lives were so different.
You know, it may seem queer to you after all your years at it, but I could never imagine you a surgeon. I used to think I was jealous, and I was, but it was more than that. You seemed too soft for surgery. When I think back to the two of us, I was the tougher one really, although anyone who looked at us, at you, would have been in no doubt that you were, with your boys’ pants and your leather gloves and cigarettes. Do you still smoke them? Al says they’ll do you no good. It was a brittle strength, yours. Perhaps we were each unsuited to the lives we chose, or had chosen for us. But perhaps after all they’ve been the better choices.
I’m rambling, Violet, because I don’t know what to say. Isn’t it strange to think back on your life like this and see it was so different from how you’d always believed it was? I spent many years thinking you had the best of life and I the scraps. I was wrong, although perhaps you don’t agree. But I was wrong. I had the best of life, and you couldn’t have had better.
We had the funeral here at St. Pat’s. Everyone came, even the ones who probably shunned us in our troubles. The priest nearly refused to say the mass but Al had a word—I think some money changed hands—and the mass went ahead with a eulogy Al had written that was read by his brother. It was very beautiful and Rose’s whole class came, along with faculty and many from the hospitals.
She was so like you, Violet, impulsive and quick to anger and beautiful. Tiny too, not like Al and me. She called us the giants. She’d have been a strong woman in her later years, I think. When she decided on a medical degree, Al was as happy as a man could be. She was at the university in Brisbane and Al and I had agreed privately that when she graduated we’d bring her to you, show you what a marvellous girl she was. You’d have been proud, I hope. We meant to make amends, Violet. We just didn’t get to it.
As for the pregnancy, it was me who said Rose wasn’t going away, although that’s still the done thing.
There are homes in all the towns now where girls can go and the Church looks after it all, finds a family. But I didn’t have the heart for it and Rose had no idea what to do. I told her to come home to us and we’d manage.
I knew people would talk. Let them, I said to Rose. It was no worse than when Al and I came home with her, I thought to myself. They’d move on to someone else eventually, as gossips always do.
So we had her home here and my plan, if you could call it that, was that we’d stand up straight and let the whole world say what it wanted. When Rose had the baby, she’d go back to her study and finish what she started while we—Al and I—looked after the child. I haven’t forgotten too much, although I have given away most of the baby things, thinking I wouldn’t be needing them again until much later and then I’d probably make new things.
Rose hadn’t talked to us about who the father was, although we’d guessed. It wasn’t that she couldn’t have talked to us, Violet, but on this occasion she kept her own counsel and we respected that. Al was not the type to storm some boy’s room and pull him out by the ear and make him marry, but I think he’d have liked to know, to sit this boy down and give him a chance to act properly.
He’s a nice boy, Violet, from a well-to-do family in Brisbane. He was studying with Rose and they were the best of friends until the pregnancy and then we heard no more of him. I don’t know if she told him but he came to the funeral along with her class and he looked so lost. Afterwards, I wrote to thank him and asked if we might have tea. I never heard back so didn’t push.
As for the child, she was born eight pounds two ounces with light eyes and fair curly hair. She’s the spitting image of you, although she’s long and thin so I don’t know if she’ll be tiny or one of “the giants.” I can’t see so much of Tom in her, except around her eyes.
This has all been quite a circular route to apologising for not contacting you sooner. I wasn’t sure what to do. I’ve never been sure, to be honest. Al has always said we were acting rightly but even Al is faltering now. I want to know, Violet, what you want us to do. We will happily raise the child. Al is still busy at work and though I’m older now than when Rose came home with us, I seem to be stronger, have more verve, rather than less. Al says it’s a last great effort before age overtakes me. I hope not.
Anyway, it’s hard to find words. We thought, Violet, that you might have some views about the child and if you did, I know we’d be amenable to something different. I don’t know your exact personal circumstances and you can be sure that I’d be over the moon to find myself blessed with another child. It’s nothing like that, not from me and not from Al.
I can’t make up for what happened to you, not now that Rose has gone. But I can pay my respects, finally, to you as this child’s—we call her Grace—as Grace’s grandmother.
Grace looked up from the letter. Violet met her eyes and spoke slowly. “I wrote back that it would be ridiculous for me to have a role in the child’s life,” Violet said. “In your life. I told Iris I didn’t want you to be told anything. And that was the last of it. Until now.”
“You didn’t want to know me?”
“I didn’t,” Violet said. “I had made up my mind and I wasn’t going back on it just because the circumstances had changed. That was how I survived. It’s all so long ago now, but you must understand that I couldn’t remain with the loss. It’s . . . impossible to convey.” Violet looked sharply at Grace.
“What does she mean, make up for what happened to you?” Grace said.
“When your mother was small, I went to see Iris. We met in Sydney,” Violet said. “Her man was there, the husband. Alastair. I didn’t much like him, felt Iris could have done better. I always thought he was too interested in keeping her under his thumb.
“I told Iris I wanted the child. I don’t know what possessed me. I hadn’t planned on saying it, but the child was there with us when we met, playing at a fountain in a park. We three sat in a line on a bench and watched her. It was early morning and the sun came in hard lines through the leaves of a large tree. I don’t know why I went. It was like a hunger. You gave her up, Iris said to me. She looked fierce, as if she might pick the child up and run. I was wrong, I said. Well, you can’t change now. But she’s my child, I said.
“Her man ended it. Listen to yourselves, he said to us, parcelling out a life like so much flour or butter. She’s a child and we’ve created a world for her. It’s hers now. It’s all she knows. He looked straight at me then. For mercy’s sake, if you really care about Rose, you’ll leave her settled where she is and never hurt her so.
“As if a signal had been given, the child came bounding up and jumped into his arms and said, Daddy, I saw a lizard, and that sealed her future. She would remain with him and Iris, and I would go back to England and leave them alone. And that’s what I did. There were never any papers signed and I suppose Iris was always afraid I might come back. But I accepted what had happened and got on with my life. I closed that door behind me and I wasn’t going to open it all those years later when you came along. I’m sorry if that’s hard.”
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“You said you have no regrets?” Grace didn’t believe her.
“No,” Violet said quickly. “I am not a person who regrets things. And I’ve used the life I was given well. As did Iris.
“In the end, you have to do what’s right. There’s a higher good, always, to be found. You have to find it, that’s all. And as doctors we have an even greater responsibility because we take part in important moments of so many lives. You can believe in a vengeful God. You can believe in medicine. It will all fall away. Truth runs under the world, a deep black seam of truth, and that’s in the end what we seek, as doctors and as human beings.”
After she left Violet, Grace went outside again. She walked back towards Viarmes, taking the road Iris would have taken, a minor highway now. She walked up the hill to the railway station. She thought of Iris coming here all those years ago. She’d been just twenty-one. God, her youth, Grace thought. When Grace was twenty-one, she was fourth-year med and still living at home. And here was Iris, running a hospital, a war hospital, on the smell of an oily rag from what the women had told Grace, and looking after her younger brother.
David had been right. Iris had given up a chance to have a different life in order to raise a child, to raise Grace’s mother, Rose. Iris’s light had shone for those years of the war and then she’d chosen to hide it under a bushel for the rest of her life. No wonder she’d been tough on Grace about school, about study, about medicine. She wouldn’t let Grace waste whatever talents she had. She probably felt her own talents had been wasted. Although you’d never have known it if you met Iris. When Grace thought about it, Iris was one of happiest people she’d ever known. Her happiness was hard won, it seemed now.
Surely Iris must have been bitter, Grace thought. Grace had resisted medicine, had thought about doing something else, but had had the choice. That was the point. What if that choice had been taken away from her? Iris never once gave any hint of the sacrifice she’d made. At the time Grace was born, Iris had been about to start studying again, a science degree at the university. Grace had only found out when they’d been clearing out Sunnyside together. She found the application forms and acceptance letter. “Why didn’t you do it?” Grace had asked at the time. She hadn’t even noticed that the year was the year of her own birth.
In Falling Snow Page 38