Vee: Lost and Found

by David Roberts

  He nodded without even thinking about it. “Yes, I suppose I do.”

  There were more questions but they tailed away rapidly as tiredness overtook them.

  The next morning found Adrian and Ellie in front of two simple graves. Ellie shared the flowers with him and he placed a small bunch in the tiny vase in front of his mother’s stone, then his father’s. It was only then that the enormity of it all finally registered. He rarely thought of his father but not to see his mother again, it was unjust. She had always loved him.

  “She talked about you a lot, you know,” said Ellie. “She was really proud of you.”

  He felt her hand in his. It freed itself and she slipped her arm around his waist, her thumb resting on the top of his belt.

  “She so looked forward to when you were on leave.”

  He thought back to the ‘late Christmas’ he’d spent in the house with her in mid-January, only four months before. She had been so pleased that he’d been there…

  “Time to go,” said Ellie. “Come on soldier,” she said when he hadn’t moved. “I’ve only got two days off then I’m back to the college. Shorthand and typing. Come on, let’s do something that’s fun.”

  They wandered back to Heathcote Gardens, where there were more questions about Scotland; about his room; about the scenery; about the food. About everything and anything, really.

  “You could visit,” he said. “Vee told me you’d be welcome to stay.”

  “Later, maybe. Auntie Pauline isn’t keeping very well. Anyway, there’s the typing. I can do something useful down here for now…”

  She could sense his slight disappointment, so she continued.

  “But the war can’t go on for ever. When it’s over, we’ll see then. Could you please thank her for me. She’s a special sort of person, isn’t she? I will meet her, I do know that.”

  After a sandwich at home they took the bus into the centre of Birmingham. The first cinema they passed, an Odeon, had several of those war films on: ‘Target for Tonight’- that sort of thing. A bit further on there were two cinemas close together: ‘Pinocchio’ in one and ‘The Maltese Falcon’ in the other. Adrian was about to step into ‘Pinocchio’ but Ellie kept on walking.

  “I’m fifteen. And I’ve already seen it anyway.”

  The poster in the cinema entrance had Humphrey Bogart in a trilby, smoking a cigarette. No point in asking if Adrian had a cigarette, she reflected. There was nothing sophisticated about Adrian, though she had tried it once or twice. Confident that she looked old enough to be a soldier’s girlfriend, she put her arm around his waist and they went inside. After all, anyone could be looking. Hopefully.

  After tea that evening, Pauline was in the kitchen clearing the dishes when Adrian came through from the dining room.

  “I can dry, if you like?” he said.

  She looked up

  “I’m used to helping at home, in Gairloch. I like helping.”

  She smiled and shifted along a bit to give him room.

  “You’ve always been considerate, Adrian, even when you were tiny.”

  She paused as she changed the cloudy water in the basin.

  “There are lots of selfish people about, Adrian- sometimes in the most unexpected places, but helping other people is always good. And in the end you benefit too.”

  Pauline looked across as she handed over the last two plates.

  “I expect you’re just the same when you’re working in the base. You’re just that kind of person.”

  “Well I do errands quite a lot, I suppose,” he said rather sheepishly. “Collecting sandwiches for the guardhouse; that kind of thing. I do it on a bicycle.”

  “There you are them. That’s just who you are. I can see you are a bit embarrassed but don’t be. You should feel good about that because we are proud of you.”

  She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek.

  “I’ll take this to the pig bins along the road- back in a minute.”

  She lifted a small metal tin with the scrapings and, taking a spoon with her, she went out the kitchen door and along the path.

  Adrian wiped his cheek with the dishtowel and kept on with the drying. It was quite different out the back, he reflected. He remembered the flower beds and the grass. It was Heathcote Gardens after all. Now they were gone, dug up for vegetable patches. They didn’t look very healthy. Ellie was probably right about Pauline not keeping very well. That would explain the untended plants. Ellie had only been there for a few weeks. You can’t turn things around in only a few weeks.

  The gate opened again and he watched Pauline coming towards him up the path. She was definitely struggling and she did look tired, pained even.

  “Finished,” he said as she came in. He folded the towel and hung it over the rail in front of the range.

  “Thank you Adrian. Let’s go through. We can have a chat while Ellie’s finishing her college work upstairs.”

  She lowered herself rather stiffly into the armchair.

  “These sticks are great, Adrian. Thank you very much.”

  He nodded.

  “You went to the pictures then,” she continued. “Good for you. Here, let me give you some money.” She reached over towards her purse.

  “No Auntie Pauline. I don’t need that. I brought money with me.”

  She opened her purse.

  “No, I’m sure, but thank you. I thought a detective film would take her mind off things.”

  “Oh it did that: she’s been telling me all about it. If I thought I could squeeze myself into those seats I’d consider going myself. ‘The Maltese Falcon’. Humphrey Bogart is brilliant. I saw him in ‘Casablanca’ last year. From what Ellie’s been saying, ‘The Maltese Falcon’ might be even better. Honestly, she’s been going on and on about it since she came through the door. She’s going to get the book from the library, you know.”

  “It was good,” said Adrian, “but I didn’t like the ending very much. It turned out the bird statue was a fake, when the paint got stripped off. They’d spent all that time looking, and for nothing….. But it was still a good film. You should go to see it, Auntie Pauline.”

  “I might just do that,” she said, but Adrian wasn’t convinced. She really didn’t look all that keen.

  “What about tomorrow then?” she asked. “Ellie is still free and I’ll be here all day.”

  “I’m not sure. We’ll see how Ellie feels.”

  “Well, don’t go to the house, Adrian: that’s my advice. It’s a wreck. There’s nothing to be gained by visiting it. People and houses are being destroyed in this war but only the people are important. Take this house. Your uncle John and I spent all our married lives working to buy this house. We were so proud of it. And it was beautiful. Now it’s fading away and I don’t really care. It’s just a thing.”

  She looked around the room.

  “I care about the memories and the people. One day they’ll be gone too.” She paused for a few moments.

  “Don’t go to the house.”

  They talked on for a short while, but without any real sense of purpose, so Pauline put on the wireless and they listened to the Home Service and then some music. By the time Ellie came downstairs, Pauline had ‘conked out’ on the chair with her mouth hanging open so they sneaked quietly upstairs. Nobody wants to see that, or to have to listen to it.

  36 The Return

  Gairloch 1942

  “And did you visit your old house, Adrian?” Mhairi asked.

  “No. I took her advice. We just took a bus into the city centre. We wandered round shops and went to a tea room. Ellie wanted to visit a couple of bookshops, but we didn’t buy anything. They didn’t have what she wanted.”

  Remembering something, he went back out to the hallway, where his coat was hanging.

  “We didn’t need this,” he said, handing back the three pound notes. “The uniform got me free transport and I had some money anyway, just in case. But thank you, Vee. It meant there was something I didn’t h
ave to worry about.”

  Mhairi nodded, thanked him and returned the money to her purse.

  “I’ll put it in here, for any of us, for when we really need it… And how was Ellie?”

  “She was amazingly good, considering what’s happened. She’s just keen to get on with things. She’s doing typing and some other thing at the college: doing really well according to Aunt Pauline. She’s very clever, so of course you would expect that. Ellie’s very busy: always reading, or working.”

  “She’s happy being there in Birmingham?”

  “Oh yes, I did say to her about coming up here, but she thinks she should finish her course and she wants to help Aunt Pauline too. I made a point of asking her.”

  “But she does know we’d be very pleased to have her come up?”

  “Oh yes. She knows that for sure. She asked me to thank you. Not many people would offer to do something like that Vee, to put up a stranger.”

  “She’s not a stranger to us. Please make sure she knows she can change her mind. Just tell her how difficult life is for me here, stuck on my own in a household full of men.” She winked at him.

  “Anyway, it’s late so I’m off.” She yawned. “Your pass gives you another day, Adrian. I think you should take it. It’s very stressful, all that travelling.”

  Mhairi said goodnight, tightened the belt on her dressing gown slightly and made her way up the stairs. Adrian watched her go, looking at the way she moved. She must be, what, thirty-eight, possible even forty. Quite old, then, but he couldn’t take his eyes off her. No wonder the men in the gatehouse fancied that doctor’s wife with the red hair.

  37 Riverside

  Ullapool 2014

  Alastair pulled the sleeve of his jumper up slightly and looked at his watch: not even two o’clock. They had left Lairg at ten and even with the slow speeds and the stops, they’d still managed to cover a lot of ground without really trying. It was the lack of hold-ups: no roadworks, hardly any traffic. It’s the hold-ups that scupper you.

  He smiled as he thought of the compulsive overtakers he met on his drive to work every morning. They simply had to get past, swinging out and ‘booting it’, sometimes taking three or four cars at once. Two miles later on they’d be stationary at the traffic lights like everyone else, and absolutely fuming: all that time wasted; all that fuel. And the rest, he thought to himself. All those clutches, all those replacement aftermarket pads and discs. All those underpants.

  “You ready? You looked miles away!” It was Tom’s voice.

  “It’s a beautiful road. I never tire of it. One to come back to.”

  They climbed back into the car and drove out of the car park and down the hill. Overhead a buzzard crossed them, wings straight out, heading inland, down the path of the river. It had a different perspective, but the landscape was the same.

  “About fifty miles to Ullapool,” said Tom, closing the Road Atlas and chucking it on to the back seat. “Maybe an hour away.” He looked at his watch, forgetting there was a clock on the dash. “We could be there about three, on a good road like this.”

  The crofts started clustering together as they approached Scourie but there was no need to stop. They would fill up in Ullapool in the morning, for the journey south. Nobody driving in the Highlands ever wants to think about the drive back home, where everything just seems to become steadily worse: the landscape; the traffic levels; the potholes- even the people, if crime statistics are anything to go by.

  Tom thought of the small cafe in the centre of Ullapool, whose owners sounded as if they had transplanted themselves from down south to escape from all of that. It really did seem to him to be the most rational thing to do.

  “We could go for a coffee to that place in Ullapool,” he said. “It’s a bit early for the pub. It would be good to go there again and take in the atmosphere.”

  The road south wound along the coast, through Unapool, past the turn-off to Lochinver and on to Ledmore Junction. Alastair was always struck by how different everything looked heading south, when the only thing which had actually changed was the direction of travel. The whole experience was different: unrecognisable, even.

  They turned right at Ledmore. It was eighteen miles to Ullapool but Alastair’s mind was racing ahead, bringing him much closer than that. Something had been bothering him, working away on him quietly and he was only beginning to recognise what it was. It was something in the book- or rather, something on the book.

  After the long pull they rounded the corner to begin the descent into Ullapool. There were cars behind them this time so stopping, or even slowing down, would have been awkward. Instead, they would try to remember how beautiful it looked; a conscious act of remembering which is more valuable than any photograph. Looking, really looking- that takes effort. That’s why so many people take a photograph instead.

  They drove down the main road and turned right along the sea front. It was a still day and the small, bright boats were motionless, their masts unclanked by wires. They continued past the shops, past the area where cars collect for the ferry and on into a parking bay at the Inn.

  “Coffee then?”

  Tom nodded, stretching himself as he got out of the car. Alastair reached into the glove-box for the book and grabbed the paper from the back seat. He wouldn’t need the map this time: they had arrived.

  The table right in front of the big glass counter was occupied this time so they took one to the right of the door. Tom was doing the ordering , swithering in front of the cake display. Good. That would give him the chance to check. He put the newspaper to one side and opened the “Secret Places…” What he was looking for was near the start.

  On the marbled inside cover was the inscription which had led him to the house, and to Ellie, a dozen or so years before.

  ‘Adrian Fallows, Annat.’

  He thought back to his visit to the local shop and the meeting with Ellie all those years before. What he was after, though, was a little further on. For some reason, he had no idea why, it was normal practice up to the nineteen-thirties at least, for a book to have four or even five sheets with snippets of information before the actual text began. This could be half a dozen lines about the publisher; a fancy title page; perhaps some information about the author; details of when the book was printed initially, reprinted, reset and so on. A lot of this struck him as utterly pointless. The only thing he had ever paid any attention to was the information about Adrian and where he lived- but that wasn’t the only thing that was there. Two pages further on there was something else.

  ‘To Adrian, from Jamie

  August 1945’

  Of course, the name had meant nothing to him. When he used the book he skipped these useless pages anyway. The only time he would have seen it would be if he’d happened to have shoved one of the photographs in there by accident, and it had opened at that page.

  Now, though, it was beginning to mean something. He picked though The Ullapool Advertiser till he found the article about Ellie. Her husband was called Jamie, and they were described as having been ‘childhood sweethearts’. He couldn’t really see how that could be right because she’d told him she was brought up in the Midlands and the doctor was local, but their friendship obviously went back a very long way. And if it went back all the way to nineteen forty-five….it really could be the same person.

  He broached the subject with Tom over the coffee and cake. The response was reassuring: it was plausible.

  “Of course it’s impossible to know one way or the other with the small amount of information you have, but it does make sense…..You want to see Ellie again, don’t you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well this book gives you the excuse. It may be, this time around, that she would want to have it back. Or it might be that Jamie might want it- if it’s the same Jamie. Either way, you’ve got a reason for looking her up.”

  “That’s what I was thinking. They’re still in Ullapool, you know. I’ve checked the dates.”

&nbs
p; They paid up and wandered back in the direction of the Inn, passing the Edinburgh Woollen Mill and the newsagent. For a moment they stood looking out at the pier, which showed few signs of activity. Then the bookshop took Tom’s eye and they headed up the hill and through the small entrance.

  The woman behind the counter smiled and they perused the shelves. Alastair worked his way down to the books dealing with Scotland, in the far corner. He was a terrible magpie for snippets of history, or the geography of the Highlands. Rather furtively, he had a look at a book of poems because he recognised Norman MacCaig’s name. One was about the Archangel Gabriel, about him having ‘no navel’. What on earth was meant by the word ‘patly’ he asked himself? Can a tree actually be ‘explicit’? Enough questions. The book slipped easily back into its space to wait for a more receptive customer. He had never really learned that books, like people, need to be given a chance.

  Seeing Alastair was miles away, Tom sidled up to the lady at the counter.

  “My friend over there,” he said quietly, “is wondering if he can find this lady.” He pointed to the photograph of Ellie. “He borrowed a book from her many years ago and he would like to return it.”

  She looked over at Alastair and saw the old brown book under his arm and nodded.

  “We know she’s in Ullapool and that she’s near the river but that’s all. Is there any way we can find out?”

  “Okay,” she replied. “Can I see the article again. Yes, what a lovely story, waiting all those years and finally getting married. There was a lot of interest locally in this story, as you can imagine. Yes, they should be here, according to the dates.” She thought for a moment.

  “It says ‘riverside’. The riverside area is at the other end of the town. If you turn right at the door and go straight up past the clock, keep going and you’ll come to the river. It sounds like it should be somewhere up there.”

  A few minutes later, Alastair came up to the counter with ‘Fire and Steam’ by Christian Wolmar. It appealed to the technical side of his nature. The Poetry hadn’t. They left, and she watched them talking outside before heading up the hill. They didn’t look like reporters or trouble-makers, but she would give Charlie a buzz anyway.