by Emma Fraser
Sarah squirmed in her seat. ‘No but —’
‘I suspect he only goes because he wants to be seen at the right places with the right sort of people.’
‘You’re being unfair,’ Sarah retorted, stung.
Gilly sighed. ‘Am I? Think about it, Sarah. Mr Perfect-for-you might not be so perfect after all. He has his future all mapped out. A future that suits him. But what about you? Are you sure it’s what you want?’
No, she wasn’t. And that was the problem.
It was a long drive to Skye but Sarah didn’t mind. She always thought best when driving. She felt she was getting closer to finding out about her mother and, with a bit of luck, this trip would give her another piece of the puzzle.
It was raining heavily by the time she reached the island and found the road that would take her to Dunvegan and, ultimately, to Borreraig House. The lower slopes of the Cuillins were only just visible, their summits completely hidden by clouds, and it took all her concentration to see where she was going on the single-track roads.
Coming to a dead end she realised she must have missed her destination and had to turn the car around, rolling down the window as she snaked along, trying to find it. Finally, there it was. An open gate hung half off its hinges, the name of the house on a small rusty plate on the fence post, almost overgrown by a creeping hedge of wild roses. No wonder she’d passed it.
She drove down the rutted driveway bordered on both sides by trees that blocked out the sunlight. As she clambered out of the car, easing the stiffness in the small of her back, the rain stopped and the sun came out. She gasped with delight.
The house was close to the edge of Loch Dunvegan and if it hadn’t been so isolated, hidden as it was from any other house, it would have been perfect. Sarah sniffed the air – there was a pungent smell she didn’t recognise – like coal but sweeter. Shouldering her bag, she unlocked the door and let herself in.
She found the kitchen and, dropping her bag to the floor, looked around curiously. There was an ancient black-leaded stove on one side, lino on the floor and a pine table with an armchair in the corner. A door led through to a pantry where she found several tins of Frey Bentos corned beef that looked as if they’d been there for years.
The other rooms seemed frozen in time too. The sitting room was furnished with what must have been the original furniture: high-backed, upholstered armchairs and a faded rug covering a wooden floor. There was even an antiquated gramophone with a pile of long-playing records next to it. She rifled through them. Bing Crosby – she’d always thought of him as an actor – some classical records and some jazz.
Upstairs there were several bedrooms and she chose the smallest, on the basis it would warm up quicker. It had a single cast-iron bed, a bookcase, dressing table and, to her delight, a view over the loch. She found blankets and linen in one of the cupboards and quickly made the bed.When she finally crept between the sheets, having warmed them with a hot water bottle, she fell asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow.
The next morning, realising she hadn’t asked exactly where Lord Glendale was buried, she studied the map of Skye she’d brought with her. About five miles away was the village of Glendale. It seemed an obvious place to start looking.
The village was little more than a scattering of houses, a small shop with a post office sign, a community hall and two churches. Imagine having a village named after you – or was it the other way round?
A bell tinkled as she let herself into the General Dealers. There was a counter with a till, a large fridge and an old-fashioned freezer, and some shelves with an eclectic assortment of tins and packets. Sarah selected a couple of packets of pasta, and a few tomatoes and potatoes from the tired-looking array on a bottom shelf as well as a bottle of white wine. Just as she was beginning to wonder whether the shop was completely unmanned, a stout middle-aged woman appeared from somewhere in the back.
‘Oh hello, dear. Have you managed to find what you’re looking for?’
‘I don’t suppose you have any sweet potatoes?’
‘Just what you see on the shelves. Now if you’d come a couple of days ago, you might have been in luck. We get a delivery from the mainland on Mondays and Thursdays. That’s when most locals do their shopping. But you wouldn’t know that, would you, dear? You’re not from these parts.’
‘I’m from Edinburgh.’ She waited while the woman rang up her purchases.
‘Five pounds and thirteen pence. Edinburgh. Well, then. It’s a lovely city. Are you staying long?’
‘A couple of days.’ Sarah tipped her purse onto the counter and counted out the money. ‘I’m staying at Borreraig House. Do you know it?’
‘Oh, the doctor’s house – that’s what the locals call it. Katherine didn’t mention it had been let.’
Sarah’s heart skipped a beat. ‘Katherine? She knows the Glendales, then?’
‘Oh, aye. Well, she did. You do know Lord Glendale died recently, don’t you? He’s buried in the cemetery just across the road.’
Sarah’s fingers tingled. Her instinct had been right. She would go and find Richard’s grave as soon as she was finished here.
‘You don’t have a number for Katherine, by any chance? Or an address?’
The shop assistant folded her arms, curiosity shining from her bright blue eyes. ‘An address is easy enough. She lives in the house on the hill opposite one you’re staying in. Can’t miss it. You can see it from the road.’
Sarah picked up her shopping. ‘Thank you so much.’ She paused at the door. ‘The cemetery’s across the road, you say?’
‘Aye. If you’re looking for Lord Glendale’s grave, it’s the big one on the right.’
A few minutes later, Sarah was standing in front of it. On top of the recently filled mound of earth was a bouquet of wild flowers. Along with his dates of birth and death and his RAF rank, his simple granite headstone was engraved with a few lines. She traced the words with the tip of her finger and whispered them out loud. ‘At the going down of the sun and in the morning, we will remember.’
As eager as she was to talk to Katherine, Sarah forced herself to wait until mid-morning.
There was only one house on the opposite side of the road to where she was staying, an old-fashioned crofthouse, the likes of which she’d seen dotting the landscape as she’d driven through Skye. She knocked tentatively on the door but, receiving no reply, wandered around to the back of the house where she found a woman, somewhere in her late sixties, pinning washing to a line.
‘Excuse me, are you Katherine?’
The woman swung around and smiled around the peg she was holding in the corner of her mouth. She removed the peg and held out her hand. ‘That would be me. You must be the lass staying in the doctor’s house. What can I do for you?’
Sarah had expected someone much frailer, not this energetic, slightly plump woman with bright blue eyes and, albeit grey in places, curling hair. ‘I’m looking for someone who can tell me about the late Lord Glendale. I was told you knew the family.’
‘Yes, I did.’ A sad smile flitted across Katherine’s face. ‘Let’s go inside and have some tea.’ She picked up the empty washing basket in one hand and a bucket of what looked like clods of earth in the other.
‘Shall I take that for you?’ Sarah offered, but when Katherine passed it to her it almost fell from her hands. It was far heavier than it looked.
Katherine led her into a kitchen similar to the one in Borreraig House. It had a Rayburn and a scrubbed table with several chairs around the edge. It was warm and bright and smelled of baking.
‘Now then, let me get you a cup of tea and then we’ll talk properly.’ Katherine shifted a heavy black kettle onto the stove and bent to stoke the fire. ‘Is the house warm enough? It’s been empty for quite a time.’ Her voice was soft, almost musical.
‘It is a bit chilly. I didn’t have much luck lighting the stove.’
‘It’s easy enough when you get the knack. I could send my grandson d
own if you like, to give you a hand? He won’t be in until later, though.’
‘Thanks, but I’m sure I’ll work it out.’
Katherine placed scones on a plate and took some pancakes from her larder and set about buttering them.
‘How many children do you have?’ Sarah asked. Desperate as she was to quiz Katherine, she couldn’t launch in straight away with her questions.
‘Three – two daughters and a son. Five grandchildren as well.’ She tipped her head towards a shelf filled with photographs.
Responding to the unspoken invitation, Sarah picked up a photograph of a woman in a graduation gown. There was one of another woman and a man, both holding degrees and looking self-consciously into the camera. The rest were of children at various ages as they grew into adulthood. ‘Do they live here?’
‘Heavens, no. They come home on holiday but they prefer the city. ‘My daughter, Emily, is a thoracic surgeon in Glasgow; Susan is a lawyer in London and Donald is in Italy.’ She smiled. ‘Now come to the table and have your tea.’
She set a plate piled high with scones and pancakes in front of Sarah. Surely all this wasn’t for her alone? It seemed, however, that indeed it was. Katherine poured Sarah a cup of tea so strong a teaspoon could have stood up in it, before taking a seat on the other side of the table.
‘Aren’t you having anything?’ Sarah asked.
‘Oh, no. When you get to my age you have to watch your weight.’ She patted her slightly rounded stomach. ‘Emily is always telling me off for baking every day even when I’m on my own.’ She grinned. ‘ My grandson does his best when he’s here, but even he can’t keep up. The deep freezer is full to the brim and I hate to throw anything away.’
Sarah bit into a buttered scone thick with cheese and washed it down with a sip of tea. Emily’s loss was her gain, although how she was going to get through all of it, she had no idea.
‘Now, my dear,’ Katherine said, topping up Sarah’s teacup, ‘what is it you want to know about the Glendales?’
‘Lord Glendale left the house I’m staying in to my mother as well as one in Charlotte Square – in the event a certain Magdalena Drobnik isn’t alive to claim them. Does the name ring a bell?’
Katherine’s brow knotted. ‘I did wonder how you came to be staying in Richard’s house, but I assumed his family had decided to rent it out before putting it on the market. I’m afraid the name Magdalena Drobnik means nothing to me. Doesn’t your mother know who she is?’
‘Mum had a stroke a couple of months ago. She can hardly speak now, but she did seem to recognise Magdalena from an old photograph Lord Glendale left to her. I would have brought it to show you, but Mum insisted on keeping it. I think Mum must have known Magdalena when she was younger – and she wants me to find her.’ Sarah’s throat tightened. ‘I only recently found out that Mum was adopted when she was a little girl.’
‘I’m not surprised you didn’t know your mother was adopted,’ Katherine said. ‘In those days most people kept it quiet. They believed it was better for the child that way.’
‘If you don’t know who Magdalena Drobnik was, I don’t suppose you know anyone who might?’
Katherine shook her head. ‘I really wish I could help you.’
Sarah sagged back in her chair, realising she’d been pinning her hopes on Katherine knowing something.
‘What about an Irena Kraszewska, then?’
Katherine sat up straighter. ‘Irena? Yes, I knew her.’
‘You did?’ Excitement jolted through Sarah and she leaned forward. ‘I was wondering if Magdalena and Irena knew each other. Were sisters even.’
‘I don’t believe Irena had a sister. If I remember correctly she had a brother – Aleksy, I think his name was – who was with the RAF.’
‘Do you know what happened to him?’
Katherine shook her head. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t.’
‘What can you tell me about Irena? I’m convinced there’s a connection between her and Magdalena. And between them and Richard.’
Katherine pulled out a chair and sat down. ‘I can fill in some of the blanks. At least about Irena. I met her during the war.’ Some of the light died in Katherine’s eyes. ‘I haven’t thought about the war in a long time, but perhaps it will be easier for you to understand what I do know if I start there.
‘I met Irena through Richard, Lord Glendale.’ She smiled. ‘I thought she was the most beautiful yet the saddest woman I had ever seen. She had this hair I envied – it was like a cloud of gold – and blue eyes paler than a summer sky. It was Richard who introduced us. She’d turned up on his father’s doorstep one day – it must have been ’forty-one. No, was it ’forty-two? I can’t remember. Wait, it was ’forty-one because I was in my second year as a student nurse in the Infirmary, although that wasn’t where I met her first.’ She shook her head. ‘Oh dear, I’m not telling this very well, am I?’
Although Sarah had several questions she was burning to ask – such as how Katherine knew Richard in the first place – she decided it was better to let the older woman tell her story in her own way and in her own time.
‘Anyway, whenever it was, I soon found out why she was so sad. She’d been in Poland – she was Polish, you see, did you know that?’
When Sarah nodded, Katherine continued. ‘She was there when war broke out and had seen some awful things, I imagine – I couldn’t then, of course, not really. At that time I hadn’t seen much of the war first hand – we were spared the worst of it in Edinburgh. That changed when I joined the QAs.’ She paused and sat in silence for a while.
‘The QAs?’ Sarah prodded gently.
‘The Queen Alexandra’s Imperial Military Nursing Service. We called it the QAs for short. I joined them as soon as I could, but I couldn’t go out with them until I had finished my training and that wasn’t until ’forty-three. So that’s right, it must have been ’forty-one when I first met Irena.’
‘Lady Dorothea told me the same thing – I mean the part about Irena coming to London after escaping from Poland.’
‘Richard’s aunt is still alive? Goodness. She must be a very old lady.’
‘Almost a hundred. But pretty sharp with it.’
‘I never met Lady Dorothea,’ Katherine said, ‘although my mother spoke of her. But that has nothing to do with Irena – or maybe it has. Anyway, let me carry on before I get even more muddled.
‘Irena was a medical student. There were Poles all over Scotland at that time, my dear, in our air force, in our army. Just everywhere. We loved them. They were so polite and so fierce. They hated what the Nazis were doing to their country and were determined to do what they could to make it free again.’
‘Do you know why Irena sought out Lord Glendale’s family?’ Sarah asked.
‘That I can’t tell you. Some sort of connection in the past, perhaps? Or in Poland? Does it matter?’
‘I don’t know. I’m sorry I interrupted. Please go on.’
‘Irena stayed with Richard’s mother, Lady Glendale, or Dr Maxwell as she was better known at the hospital. Dr Maxwell was one of the first women surgeons at the Royal Infirmary. Were you aware of that?’
Sarah shook her head.
‘Well, I suppose there is no reason for you to know. From what Irena told me they got on well and she stayed with them until she’d graduated. By that time I had joined the QAs and been posted to North Africa.’ She smiled again. ‘That’s where I met my Johnny.’
She bent and took some peat from the bucket, opened the door of the Rayburn and threw it in. Sarah had the impression that Katherine wasn’t a woman who liked to sit still for very long and right enough as soon as she sat down at the table again she picked up some knitting, a man’s sweater from the look of it, and her needles started clacking. Sarah was impressed that she didn’t seem to need to look at what she was doing. The most she’d ever knitted was a teddy bear in primary school and that had turned out badly.
‘Johnny was with the SAS.’
&nb
sp; ‘I didn’t know the SAS were around then.’
‘They were formed during the Second World War. By someone called David Stirling. He was an aristocrat from Bridge of Allan way.’
‘Was Johnny an aristocrat? Is that how you knew Richard?’
Katherine laughed. ‘Johnny? No, he was an engineer. And and a rugby player – played for Scotland, as a matter of fact. I think that’s why the SAS took him. They liked people who could think on their feet and were physically tough.’ She laid her knitting on her lap and stared into space. ‘He never played rugby after the war – he took a bullet to the knee. Although he returned to engineering, I’m not sure he ever really settled down to civilian life.’ Katherine picked up her knitting. ‘And your boyfriend?’ she asked. ‘I’m assuming a pretty girl like you has one. Where is he?’
