Nanny cringed at her harshness and brought the pram forward. She had made it ready with a frilly pillow and an embroidered eiderdown. Ruth would change her mind and would want to push the baby out when she saw how adorable he looked. Nanny picked up Robert and handed him and his woollen coat to Ruth, and then winced to see how roughly Ruth handled the infant, who began to cry lustily again.
It was a terrible thing for Nanny not to trust the baby’s mother, but she dared not leave Ruth in sole charge of him. Only when Bessie was on duty did Nanny have peace of mind. Bessie, promoted to nursery maid, had a cheerful disposition and the simple goodness of a country girl. Ruth had a cruel streak that led her to tease and almost to torment a defenceless baby whose birth-right was the care and safety of a loving mother’s arms.
Ruth held Robert at arm’s length on the edge of her knees. ‘Let us go down to the farm,’ she said in the shrill voice that set the baby screaming in terror. ‘We’ll see Lucy Hamilton. We’ll see if she is receiving yet, shall we?’ Ruth had also acquired the habit of speaking to Nanny through the baby. She said, ‘That is, if Nanny thinks that a week is long enough?’
Lucy’s baby girl had been born a week earlier than expected after three days of labour that had left her weak and probably unable to have more children.
‘I expect Lucy has already scrubbed every floor in the house,’ Ruth said. ‘If we can’t see Lucy then we’ll show you off to Mike. Here, Nanny. Put it in the pram. I’m ready.’
When they had gone Nanny passed a hand over her eyes. What could she do? She dared not tell Gordon the truth for if Gordon rejected the baby he would also reject Ruth, and most certainly and with justification, herself as well. And the baby? What was his future? He had no protection, except that which Nanny could provide. She would give him her undivided love and attention and would not allow him to suffer.
The Canadian Pacific Steamship Company’s White Empress slipped out of Greenock at night. When Flora awoke the following morning, she fed Alexander and went up on deck. Yesterday, she and Joan Almond, the friend she’d made, had been given a four-berth cabin and at this moment Joan and her eight-year-old daughter Mary were minding Alexander for her. The cabin was small and they had agreed that the only way to have privacy would be if, when Alex awoke at six o’clock, Flora fed him and left the cabin. Joan and Mary would then pull back the curtains on their bunks and wash themselves whilst watching Alex. It was a good arrangement, and so Flora found herself on deck at 7 a.m.
It was already warm and there was no swell on the sea. High in the clear blue sky above them an RAF flying boat circled lazily. On the horizon Flora could make out the smoke of the distant convoy they were to join, and behind, though too far away to recognise anybody standing on the decks, a corvette shadowed their progress.
She knew it was a corvette because two nights ago a group of four sailors – two of them from the corvette – had come into the bar of the small, seedy hotel where Flora had been living for the last five weeks. It was there that she’d met Joan, the young Scottish wife of a Canadian pilot. Joan and her daughter were going to stay for the duration of war with her husband’s family in Montreal.
The four sailors were young, harmless boys who wanted to enjoy their last night before putting to sea again. One of them played the piano, and when he called out for a singer, a barmaid who had heard Flora singing, ran upstairs to ask her if she would oblige. With the baby sound asleep and the barmaid’s assurance that she’d listen out for him, Flora went down to the room behind the public bar. It would be her last evening in Scotland until heaven only knew when. She may as well savour and remember it.
Enjoy it she did, for the requests came thick and fast, at first for the latest dancing tunes: ‘Dancing with my Shadow’, ‘Begin the Beguine’, ‘Tea for Two’. Soon the place was full. People crowded into the spaces between tables and around the piano and Joan, who played the fiddle, was persuaded to join in. They sang the rousing patriotic songs that were currently on everyone’s lips, the community songs that everyone knew and ended with the old Scottish songs, ‘Over the Sea to Skye’, ‘Westering Home’ and ‘It’s Oh But I’m Longin’ for My Ain Folk’. The evening ended with the sailors buying port and lemonade for Flora and Joan, promising to wave from the deck of their corvette should it come near enough to the White Empress and urging the girls to go on the stage.
In Flora’s room later, she and Joan talked far into the night. Joan said, ‘If it doesn’t work out for you, Flora – with your relatives in Ontario – come to Montreal, will you?’
Flora said, ‘I’ll keep some money aside, in case.’ Nanny’s sister Dorothy and her husband John, had two sons. One had joined the Royal Canadian Air Force at the outbreak of war and the other was studying to be a doctor. The family kept a general store not far from Bancroft, a small town in northern Ontario where Flora would find a safe haven for the present. Then, seeing a shadow of disappointment cross Joan’s face, she added, ‘I won’t stay indefinitely. I have to make a life and a home for myself and Alexander. I shall find work.’
‘You are so brave,’ Joan said. ‘You and Alexander will fare well, I know you will. You are so confident.’
Flora would long remember this evening, when she’d stood in a bar with four sailors and sung her heart out for strangers, but she had not realised until Joan said the words that at last she had lost her shyness. With a baby to protect she was transformed. She said, ‘You are my dear friend, Joan. I can’t tell you how much it means to me to know you.’
When Joan went to her own room, Flora did the remainder of her packing, humming softly to herself as she pushed her belongings tight into the tin trunk, which, with Alexander’s little Rexine folding pram and a small suitcase for him, was all the luggage she was allowed to take aboard. Then she went to the window to have a last look at her country, for they would embark in the morning and wait for orders to sail.
Outside, she saw and heard a sailor on a Norton motorcycle. He came tearing through the town, as he’d done on the last couple of nights. Tonight, though he could not possibly have seen her, something about him made her wave and wonder if he too would be on one of the escort ships that would protect them on their dangerous journey across the Atlantic.
When she had finished her packing, Flora knelt by her bed and said her prayers. She recited to herself the words she had heard in St Philip’s church in Portobello. She said the prayers she loved, the prayers she had always said for Gran’s soul. Though she’d told Nanny that she despised Andrew, it was not true. God knew the secrets of everyone’s heart and she begged Him fervently to love and bring Andrew home safely. Last of all she prayed, as she had from the very hour they were born, for her two babies. ‘Dear God. Keep my babies safe. Watch over the one who will never know me. Make him good and strong and true. And, please God, if ever he finds out what I have done and blames me for denying him his brother, let him know I loved him and help him forgive me.’
Then, quietened and comforted, she took Alexander into bed beside her where she could feed him and hold him close and feel his little heart beating against hers. And in the dark emptiness of the night she knew there would never be a day of her life when she would not long for the missing son who had been conceived in love under a weeping tree.
Now, standing on the deck of the White Empress in the early morning, with her baby being minded by Joan, Flora told herself that she must put the past behind her. She and Alexander were taking their first steps into the unknown and yet she was not afraid. She had been told at the emigration office that they would be part of an eight-lane, ten-mile-long convoy, threatened by U-boats, which, someone said, scored at the rate of four ships sunk on every crossing. The White Empress carried four hundred unaccompanied children, many mothers with young babies and as many other adults, old and young.
She looked up. The sky was clear and empty. The aeroplane had gone. Some distance behind was the comforting presence of their escort.
Half a mile astern of the White
Empress, Andrew stood at watch, binoculars to hand but not needed. The tail of the convoy was well within sight. They would collect more ships off the Irish coast, then, heading due west, would shadow them until the halfway point, where Canadian boats would take over. The Iris meanwhile would escort the eastbound convoy back to Britain.
He lifted the binoculars to keep station on the ship in front a Canadian Pacific steamship he recognised as the White Empress. He did not know how many ships would join the convoy at Dublin – nor the names of any of them, though the captain would. Throughout the trip they would be in constant contact by wireless and light signals with the other RN ships’ commands. The crew was never told anything until they were underway. The RN ships’ names had been painted out and sailors’ hat bands were blank. Secrecy was all, for the docks were natural feeding grounds for spies.
Only this morning Andrew had had to put on orders two sailors from the Iris. They’d returned late last night after spending the evening in an hotel bar at Greenock. Quite an evening by the sounds of things. Two women who were going west on the White Empress, to sit out the war with relatives, had joined in the fun, one singing, one playing the fiddle.
Andrew had come down hard on the sailors, saying, ‘You knew it was an offence. The night before we sail is not the time to get loose-tongued with cheap women in a bar on the docks. Explain yourselves.’
‘Sir. We said nothing. I played the piano. My oppo sang. The women Joan Almond and Flora Macdonald were decent types. One was a married woman, the other a young widow. They were going out to Canada with their children.’
Andrew’s heart leaped. Then he pulled himself together. Flora Macdonald was a much more common name than he’d have believed – as he was discovering in his search. There were at least four in Edinburgh including an old lady of ninety, an actress, a younger girl and his own Flora. He said, ‘You told them that you were sailing on a corvette, escorting the convoy?’
‘Yes.’
‘You will be reported.’ He had let them off lightly. They would probably lose two days’ pay – but it was an eleventh-hour offence such as he might have made had he been in their shoes, enjoying the company of women, forgetting for one night what might lie ahead for all of them.
As the White Empress drew closer to Canada, tempers on board were becoming frayed. Everyone, the children included, was quieter than at the start of the trip. Bored now with the long journey under the cramped conditions of the cabin, Flora and Joan were starting to snap at one another, then, as quickly, apologising. Over the last week, so as not to aggravate a fraught situation, Flora had spent as much time as possible on deck, no longer keeping a lookout for the grey blobs in the distance that were the other ships in the convoy but instead allowing feelings of homesickness and doubt to assail her. Was she running away again? Should she have fought to keep both her babies? She could never go back unless the biggest deception of all came to light – the existence of the baby she had left behind. The questions went round and round in her head as she gazed back over a swirling, zigzagging wake.
Then, early in the morning of 1 July, as soon as she went on deck she noticed a change in the air. It was warmer and there, ahead, was the first sight of land in three weeks. It was a wonderful, welcome sight and the negative mood of the last week evaporated in an instant. She ran back down the stairs and passageways to their cabin, where Joan was dressing young Mary, and said, ‘Joan – quick! Come up on deck! Land ahoy!’
Joan grinned. She had done this trip before. ‘Go ahead,’ she said. ‘We’ll bring Alex up. Don’t miss any of it.’
‘I was beginning to think we’d sail on for ever,’ Flora said. ‘How long before we dock?’
‘Hours yet. Let’s get breakfast.’
Excitement was building in Flora as she washed Alexander, changed him and put him in the little pram, which she must now remember to call a buggy. They made their way to the dining room for what would be their penultimate breakfast and listened carefully to the loudspeaker system and the repeated announcements: ‘We will dock at midday. Will those passengers who disembark today please have their trunks packed. Those who wish to remain on board until tomorrow are requested not to block the passageways and stairs with their luggage. There will be ample time when today’s passengers have left.’
Four hours later, fluttering with excitement, Flora stood at the rails amid churning propellers and the welcome hooting and tooting of tugs. She watched the berthing of the White Empress in the deep harbour that was right in the centre of the old town of Halifax. From the approach she had seen that Halifax was built on three hills. The houses appeared to be constructed in tiers, plentifully dotted with church spires, and towering over all, on top of the highest hill, was a citadel. ‘No wonder the first explorers called this land Nova Scotia,’ she’d said to Joan as they drew nearer.
All at once she had a shiver of what she could only liken to stage fright, such as she’d experienced in the ship’s chapel when they asked her to sing the anthem last Sunday. Suppose the Murrays, Dorothy and John, did not like her – or she them? Would they resent her arrival when their own elder son was a Spitfire pilot in England, fighting the war? The younger son was at medical school at the University of Toronto.
‘I am going ashore, Joan,’ she said. ‘Look after Alex. I have to ring Aunt Dorothy to let them know I’m here.’
She must also write to Nanny to let her know of her safe arrival. Just the one letter, Nanny had said. After that all the information she would receive would come through Dorothy.
‘Go on then,’ Joan said with a laugh in her voice. ‘You are nervous, aren’t you? I told you – you can always stay with me in Montreal.’
Flora found a phone box and soon she was speaking to a softvoiced woman who made every sentence sound like a question because of the upward inflection of her Canadian accent.
‘Glad you’ve arrived,’ said Aunt Dorothy.
‘Yes, I am,’ Flora replied. ‘I mean – thank you.’
‘We’ll meet you in Montreal.’
‘No. No thank you,’ Flora gabbled on. ‘I’ll stay with a friend for a few days.’
The slow drawl came back, ‘Gee. You have no idea how worried we were about you, Flora. Now I can tell Uncle John that you’ll soon be here. We’ll see you in Bancroft, honey, as soon as you like.’
‘Did you get the letter? The one telling you that I have a baby with me?’ Flora asked. Suppose they could not accept both her and Alex?
‘Yes, honey. My sister told us all about it – you being a young widow with a new-born baby. You are both wanted and welcome here.’
‘Thank you. Thank you so much …’
Later she began her letter to Nanny on the few sheets of headed White Empress notepaper she had saved.
Dear Nanny, The voyage was uneventful and the White Empress comfortable but crowded. Our cabin companions were my new friend Joan and her daughter Mary. It made a difference having Joan. We shared the children though she could not feed Alexander. He is thriving – a really bonny, bouncing baby. He weighs 12 pounds and has been no trouble at all. He is such a contented child.
We left Halifax by rail on the CPR to Montreal, setting off at 10.30 a.m. Joan and I had separate sleepers and we arrived in Montreal the next day at 10.30 a.m. We travelled through deeply forested country with high, rolling hills and a wide, slow-flowing river that Joan says is used to transport lumber in the spring. I loved Montreal but found it a disadvantage that I don’t speak French. Joan is fluent. She said, ‘Good job you aren’t going to Quebec.’
Left Montreal at 9.30 and reached Belleville at 4 p.m. then changed trains for Bancroft. Thirteen little whistle-stops and four hours later we arrived in Bancroft. Aunt Dorothy and Uncle John met us and drove us home.
They are wonderful people. I thank you from my heart for everything. Alexander is being thoroughly spoiled by Aunt Dorothy who says it’s nice to have a baby in the house again after all these years.
The letter was not sent for
another week, until Flora was settled, temporarily she thought, in the home of the kindest people she had ever known.
Chapter Ten
Flora threw herself with enthusiasm into the life of the family. Aunt Dorothy, small and slim, with blue eyes like Nanny’s and Nanny’s quiet strength, was an immediate success with Alexander, who kicked his heels in delight whenever she approached.
It was odd that Flora had expected to find houses built of stone and brick, made to last for centuries. Here, wood gave the houses and the town a temporary feel, which was liberating to Flora, though the small, tight cabin on the White Empress had at last cured her of her fear of closed-in spaces. She asked why, with so much stone and rock, they used wood. They said that speed was the big factor. Timber was always to hand and houses, hospitals, schools, shops and factories could be built before the snows came. But she was warned of the ever-present danger of fire. She heard heart-breaking tales of the loss of settlers’ homes and businesses.
The Murrays’ home was not as fancy as those of the rich lumber barons but they lived in comfort in a house that had a sitting room and parlour and a large dining room. There was a pantry and kitchen and a small summer kitchen, all on the ground floor, with upstairs five bedrooms and a bathroom. Flora loved the clean lines of beds and painted cabinets, the maple floors, and even the squirrels that leaped and chased about in the branches of the trees and raced across the roof over the bedroom she shared with Alexander.
Aunt Dorothy was thrilled with Flora’s pleasure in all things domestic. ‘Wait till you see this,’ she’d say, before showing her one of the latest delights. ‘You’ve never seen one of these …’ of the big American washing machine with its huge rubber mangle rollers that were worked by electricity, on top of its shiny cream and chrome lid.
‘Oh! May I use it?’ Flora asked in a hushed, respectful whisper. Already she was astonished at the laundry – the huge furnace and the indoor airing lines where she could dry Alexander’s diapers in no time at all. ‘Imagine! All this space. The whole cellar for a laundry.’
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