Searching for Shona

by Margaret J. Anderson

  “We were down near Clairmont House today, and there were a lot of soldiers,” Marjorie said, trying to sound casual.

  “Hush! I’m counting stitches,” Miss Agnes said.

  Marjorie waited until she was finished and then tried again.

  “What would all those soldiers be doing at Clairmont House?”

  “The army requisitioned it. I’m just surprised it stood empty so long,” Miss Morag said.

  “What does that mean?” Anna asked.

  “They’ve taken it over. The army can do that during the war—take over empty houses for soldiers to live in. I expect the officers from the army camp will make their headquarters there.”

  “Who did they take it over from?” Marjorie asked.

  “Old Mr. Carruthers.”

  “But I thought he died last spring. Didn’t he leave it to somebody?”

  “The house was up for sale, but I never heard that anyone bought it. The money from the furniture mostly went to pay his debts and taxes. We all thought he had some money hidden away, but it turned out there wasn’t so much after all. What he had mostly went on keeping up the place. Too proud to let anyone know he was down.”

  “Pride ruined that man’s life,” Agnes chimed in.

  “But what about his children?” Marjorie asked.

  “There was a son who was killed in 1916 in the war, and then there was a daughter who was much younger,” Miss Agnes said.

  “Losing his son in the war, and then his wife dying immediately afterwards seemed to sour the poor man,” Miss Morag added. “Then he lost some money in the depression, but by that time it didn’t matter so much. There was no one to leave it to.”

  “What about the daughter?” asked Marjorie.

  “She had run away by then. What a scandal and gossip that caused around here! There were some that sided with him, but I felt sorry for her, poor girl,” Agnes said.

  “Well, it’s all past and done now,” Miss Morag said and closed her mouth in a prim line.

  “Was the daughter called Jane?” Marjorie asked in a low voice.

  “Yes, she was called Jane. Jane Carruthers. So you’ve heard some gossip about her already. How these stories do linger.”

  “Was she pretty?” Anna asked.

  “She was …. beautiful,” Miss Morag answered. “And it might have worked out better for everyone if she hadn’t been quite so pretty. We used to see her walking up the road with her fine clothes and golden ringlets, all airs and graces. Much too fine for the likes of us, she was. She never spoke to us, although we were practically neighbors.”

  The Miss Campbells resumed their knitting, and then Miss Morag took up the story again. “There was a young artist who stayed here one winter—the winter of ’27 was that? Nothing would do but what he would paint her, and he came to Clairmont House every day.”

  “She fell in love with him,” Agnes broke in. “But her father, old Mr. Carruthers, was quite determined that Jane was going to marry money. He was beginning to worry about how he was going to keep up that big house even then, I suppose, and he wouldn’t hear of her throwing herself away on a penniless artist.”

  “I don’t think that the artist—Robert someone or other—was really in love with Jane,” Morag said. I think he thought she was well off. He wasn’t making much of a living with his painting. And no wonder! Do you remember that painting of his we saw? Such a gloomy thing! Anyway, they eloped and Jane Carruthers was never seen around here again.”

  “That’s not the end of the story,” Miss Agnes said.

  “The rest is just straight gossip,” said Miss Morag, prim again.

  Although Marjorie wanted to hear more, she didn’t know what to ask. But the Miss Campbells couldn’t keep themselves from telling the rest of the story.

  It was Miss Agnes who spoke first. “They say the marriage didn’t work out.”

  “If there was a marriage,” said Miss Morag. “I’ve heard that when he found out that her father wasn’t going to let her have any money, he just left her, and she, having inherited her father’s pride, never went back home.”

  “But there was a baby,” Miss Agnes said. “Mrs. Gillespie, the chemist’s wife, was up in Edinburgh and saw Jane Carruthers and she had a baby with her. Mrs. Gillespie stopped to talk to her, but Jane just turned and walked away. Still stuck up, Mrs. Gillespie said, even though her grand clothes were shabby, and her hair was no longer in ringlets.”

  “And not long after that, we heard she’d died, poor thing,” said Morag. “People here all felt that Mr. Carruthers should have tried to find the child, but they say he never did. His own grandchild and no one knows what became of it.”

  “Was it a boy or a girl?” Marjorie asked, her knitting quite forgotten. “Do you think maybe the father looked after it?”

  “They say the father left Jane before the baby was born. And as for a boy or a girl, no one seems to know. But this is just straight gossip and we shouldn’t be passing it on.”

  Marjorie had so much to think about that she put away her knitting and said she wanted to go to bed early. The Miss Campbells both fussed, asking if she had a headache or was coming down with a cold.

  Once in her bedroom, Marjorie pulled the painting out from under the bed and stared at it. In the corner, so obscure that it was no wonder she had overlooked it earlier, she made out the tiny letters, “R.M.”

  Did the R stand for Robert and the M for McInnes? Had Jane Carruthers married her artist and become Jane McInnes, and then had a daughter whom she named Shona? Everything fit. First of all, the dates were right. And there was the picture and the fact that Shona said her mother came from Canonbie. There were things about Shona, herself, that fit. She didn’t care too much about consequences. She got that from her mother. And she could draw—both Anna and Matron had said she was a good artist.

  Marjorie got into bed and lay for a long time lost in romantic thoughts about poor Jane who had married her artist to escape from the lonely life she’d known at Clairmont House. Then he had deserted her, leaving her with a baby and a picture of her old home. It was such a dreary picture of Clairmont House, much worse than it really was! Then Jane had died and the baby was sent to the orphanage with only the painting as a clue to her past.

  Just then Anna came into the bedroom, and Marjorie said, as she’d been wanting to all evening, “Anna, do you realize that Jane could have been Shona’s mother?

  “Your mother?” Anna asked.

  “No, the real Shona’s mother.”

  “I don’t see why you’re saying that.”

  “It all fits, Anna,” Marjorie said. “Shona’s picture of Clairmont House was painted by the artist who married Jane.”

  Marjorie wished Anna would share her excitement, but that was not Anna’s way. She pulled on her nightgown, and padded across the floor to turn out the light. Pretty soon her even breathing told Marjorie she’d fallen asleep, quite unconcerned about the mystery of Shona and the painting.

  But Marjorie was still wide awake. She wished she had brought the diary with her when they ran from the turret room because she wanted to read it again. Jane Carruthers had been a lonely child with no real friends and a father who shut himself away and a paid housekeeper who didn’t love her. Jane was much like Marjorie herself had been in Edinburgh—a child surrounded by things, not people. How odd that she had escaped all that by changing places with Jane’s daughter!

  She did, however, admit that Jane’s life sounded drearier than hers had been. Mrs. Kilpatrick had never locked her in her room or been cruel to her. But she’d never fussed over her like the Miss Campbells did. They made her feel cared for.

  She continued to think about Jane—the Jane in diary and the Jane the Miss Campbells talked about. The lonely child and the vain, willful girl who had run away from home. If she had only heard the story from the Miss Campbells, then Shona’s mother would just have been a character in a sad, romantic story. But finding the diary and hearing about her from Mrs. Appleby made h
er a real person who had once been a lonely little girl She must go back and see Mrs. Appleby again, and she would ask about Becky, too.

  Marjorie wondered how she could make Jane real to Shona when they met again. And what difference would it make to Shona to know? Marjorie realized the biggest part of the discovery was the experience of finding out, the excitement of seeing Clairmont House, and of uncovering Jane’s life. How could she ever give that to Shona?

  She drifted off to sleep thinking about it.

  Several hours later Marjorie awakened suddenly, her heart beating uncomfortably hard. The sound of wailing sirens filled the whole room. It must have been the direction of the wind that night, for Marjorie had never before heard the sirens sound so loud, so urgent.

  Anna stirred in her sleep, and then began to cry.

  “Soldiers are shooting! Soldiers are shooting us!” she shouted, sitting up in bed and pushing off the covers.

  “Anna, you’re dreaming,” Marjorie said. “Wake up!” She tiptoed across the cold stretch of floor between the two beds and put an arm around poor, shivering Anna.

  “Is that sirens?” Anna asked, shaking off the confusion of her dream, only to find the more frightening reality of an air raid.

  It was during these night raids that the war seemed close. Ration books, sweetie coupons, and empty shelves in the grocer’s shop were an inconvenience, but that wasn’t war. Even gas masks were just a bother now. On the first Monday of each month the children had to remember to take their gas masks to school to be checked, and if they forgot them they were kept in. The news on the wireless was remote, and soldiers, lounging about in the town or hanging out of the back of army lorries never looked as if they worried about the war. But at night the war was real. The sound of the sirens, the throb of the planes, the smells of dust and polish in the broom closet….

  Miss Agnes came bursting into the bedroom urging them to hurry down to the shelter. They had begun using it again. There were several troop camps in the area now, and the Canonbie people had lost their complacency when, one night, bombs had fallen only a few miles away. Billy Wallace had cycled over to see the crater. “A hole as big as a house,” he told Marjorie with some relish. “Right in the middle of a field of cows.”

  Anna still didn’t like the shelter, but tonight she crowded in beside Miss Agnes.

  “Will it last long?” she asked.

  “Maybe an hour,” Miss Agnes answered.

  “No, I mean the war,” Anna said.

  “There’s no telling about that,” Miss Morag said. “It could go on for years.”

  Years, thought Marjorie. Years before she could tell Shona about Jane Carruthers and Clairmont House. Years before she could find Marjorie Malcolm-Scott.

  Chapter 12

  Dr. Knight Gives Advice

  Although Marjorie didn’t realize it at the time, the morning in March when she took the Qualifying Exam was to change her life almost as much as changing places with Shona in Waverley Station the September before.

  She passed the exam with flying colors and was admitted to Nettleton Academy, twelve miles from Canonbie. For the next five years she caught the bus every school morning at eight o’clock and returned home at five in the evening. Isobel McKay had passed the exam, too, so the girls traveled together and continued to be friends.

  During her first year at the academy, Marjorie was no longer able to shut out news of the war. The evacuation of Dunkirk in June was followed by frightened talk of invasion. There were terrible tales of the blitz in the south. Long convoys of lorries passed the house on their way to the army camp outside Canonbie, and occasionally tanks rumbled down the road, rattling the dishes on the sideboard. The Miss Campbells worked long hours at the Canteen, serving mugs of tea and thick sandwiches to tired soldiers on the troop trains. And Marjorie and Anna continued to knit khaki scarves and squares.

  There were times during the next year when Marjorie envied Shona and wished that she had gone to Canada, which sounded a safer, happier place to be. But gradually the far-off days “before the war” became unreal, and for long stretches of time she never thought about Mrs. Kilpatrick or Uncle Fergus or even the real Shona. “After the war” was the time people talked about, but no longer believed in. Marjorie began to live completely in the present, worrying only about such things as homework and school friends and sweetie coupons and pocket money. She couldn’t imagine what it would be like not to live with the Miss Campbells and Anna. They had become a family.

  Marjorie worked hard at school and always brought home good report cards. The Miss Campbells were very proud when they read the glowing remarks her teachers wrote.

  “Perhaps some day you’ll go to the University in Edinburgh,” Miss Morag told her. “Quite a step up from going back to the orphanage!”

  Because food was scarce, the Miss Campbells dug up their neat front lawn and planted potatoes, and when the egg ration fell to one egg a week, they decided to keep hens. Anna was delighted at this and went with Miss Morag over to see Mrs. Appleby at Escrigg Farm. They bought a broody hen (whom Anna called Jenny) and twelve eggs for Jenny to sit on. Jenny had such a voracious appetite that the Miss Campbells wondered if they would ever come out ahead, but when the chickens finally hatched Anna was so excited that they decided it was all worthwhile.

  One year the summer holidays were shortened to three weeks, and then school closed again in late September and early October so that school children could help with the potato harvest. The farm workers were all off fighting or working in munitions factories. At first Anna and Marjorie enjoyed it, but it turned out to be such hard work that they were glad when school started again.

  Anna continued to go to school in Canonbie and had made her own friends there, but her happiest hours were spent helping the Miss Campbells in the shop. The Miss Campbells often said they didn’t know how they had ever managed without her, although there was not much business now that clothes were rationed. However, people did eventually have to replace out-grown or out-worn garments and often bought ribbons or fancy buttons to give a new look to clothes they’d grown tired of.

  When Anna was fourteen, she left school and went to work in the shop full time. By then Marjorie was sixteen and had decided she wanted to be a doctor. Although she could never have explained it to anyone, the decision was somehow tied in with Anna. There were ways in which Anna was really smart, but most people overlooked them, and Anna hadn’t learned a thing in all those years in school. If Marjorie had told people about wanting to help kids like Anna, they’d have said she should become a teacher, but that wasn’t Marjorie’s answer. She wanted to understand Anna’s problems, to know what made her different. At sixteen, however, you can’t tell people all your ambitions. Becoming a doctor was just the first step.

  When the Miss Campbells learned of her plans, they were delighted. “But the question is, how am I going to pay for it?” Marjorie asked in a worried voice.

  “You’ll get a government grant,” Miss Morag assured her. “Being an orphan, you’re entitled to the maximum. And you know that Agnes and I will be glad to give you money for extras.”

  “So proud of you, we’ll be!” said Miss Agnes, looking up at Marjorie fondly. Marjorie was tall now and not as slim as she’d like to be. Six years of starchy food and living with Miss Morag who could not abide a picky eater had done that. Her hair was light brown and she wore it curled under in a pageboy. She didn’t look in the least like the dirty, woebegone child with the extraordinary haircut who had been assigned to Miss Agnes in the church hall long ago.

  In March of 1945, Marjorie took her Higher Leaving Certificate exams and applied to Edinburgh University to study medicine.

  And in May of 1945 the war ended. There were victory parades, street dances, and bonfires on every hilltop in Britain, and Marjorie thought she must be the only person in the whole country who was not completely happy.

  In actual fact, there were thousands of people who shared Marjorie’s uncertainty about the
future. Soldiers had to find civilian jobs, women lost their work in factories and offices, children had to learn to get along with fathers they hardly knew, and evacuees returned to homes they scarcely remembered.

  The Miss Campbells had no trouble getting permission to become guardians of Marjorie and Anna. Marjorie had turned seventeen, so there was no question of her going back to the orphanage. But she did worry about what would happen to her plans for the future when Shona came home. She had sat all those exams using someone else’s name. Worse still, she had applied for a grant, claiming that she was a penniless orphan when she had a rich uncle to support her and probably quite a lot of money of her own.

  All that summer the question of her true identity weighed heavily on her mind. She hated to hear the Miss Campbells bragging about her, but she couldn’t bring herself to tell them what was worrying her. She felt she’d been cheating them for six years.

  She wondered, too, what she would tell Shona when they met. She hadn’t thought about how they had found Clairmont House or about Jane Carruthers for ages and wondered if it had all been their romantic imaginations. How old had she been then? Eleven?

  One afternoon, she went up to her bedroom, reached under the bed, and dragged out the picture of Clairmont House. For a long time, she gazed at it, thinking more about Shona, who had treasured the painting, than about the picture itself. How had she got along with Uncle Fergus’s cousin and her family? It must have been a terrible strain for Shona, who had grown up in an orphanage, to suddenly find herself surrounded by relatives she didn’t know, who wanted to hear all about relatives she was supposed to know!

  Marjorie wished Shona could have been there when they discovered the turret room. Then she remembered the diary. If only she’d taken it so that she had something to give Shona when they met. Perhaps it was still there, lying unnoticed in the toy cupboard. She would go and find out.

  Marjorie pushed the painting back under the bed and ran downstairs and outside. She hadn’t been past Clairmont House for a long time, but she knew that the soldiers had moved out so the house was unoccupied. She wasn’t sure, however, that she would have the nerve to go inside. She walked down the road telling herself that she would, at least, look at it one more time.