The Other Daughter

by Caroline Bishop

  My stomach flips at the prospect.

  I leave the car parked in a street near Mon Repos and walk across a short road bridge. Down below are the cobbled streets and red rooftops of Lausanne’s city centre, and beyond, far down the hill, Lake Geneva and the mountains the other side, hazy in the afternoon heat. The cathedral’s up a hill to my right, but I resist taking myself on a sightseeing tour. I have a purpose and I need to stick to it. So instead I search the map on my phone and follow the directions down some stone steps into a vast square with a bizarre mix of grandiose buildings and ugly concrete apartment blocks. I wonder if Mum walked here, if she saw this, if that restaurant was here when she was. I wish with all my heart I could ask her.

  I find the university library inside the most imposing building in the square. There are a couple of desks with staff serving customers, and beyond that rows and rows of bookshelves. It’s quiet, of course, apart from the turning of pages and the low words of the librarians. I hesitate in the foyer, then hear Maggie’s voice in my head. It’s destroying you. Go and find out what you need to know.

  I take a breath and walk over to the desk. ‘Est-ce que vous pouvez…’ I start to say to the young woman sitting behind it, the words I looked up in the dictionary yesterday.

  She looks at me, cocks her head. ‘Perhaps I can help you in English,’ she says with the merest hint of an accent. A smile flutters about her mouth.

  ‘Thanks. I’m looking for a book on feminism in Switzerland during the 1970s. Do you have anything?’

  ‘Do you know a title or author?’

  ‘No, I don’t know of a specific book. I’m just looking to research the topic,’ I say.

  ‘We have a large local history section, with some texts that may cover the subject,’ she says. She comes out from behind the desk. ‘Let me show you.’

  I follow her to a sweep of shelves towards the back. I can’t remember the last time I went to a library and the thought makes me sad. I remember going with Mum to Greenwich Library as a child, choosing five books a time and wanting many more.

  ‘Here. But they are mostly in French or German,’ she says.

  ‘Right.’ Of course I’d known that, but I’d hoped there would be one or two in English at least. I don’t know what to do now. The rows of books are daunting. There’s no way I can get any information out of them without help, and I don’t have anyone to help me. I suppose I could ask someone. Julia? Michel? No. That would be weird, and could spark too many questions I don’t want to answer. Anyway, both of them seem far too busy to spend time wading through history books.

  The woman – Emilie, her name badge says – gives me an apologetic smile and starts to move away, but I take the print-out of Mum’s article out of my bag and hand it out to her. ‘I’m looking for a woman mentioned in this article. I don’t suppose you know the name Evelyne Buchs?’

  She takes the paper from me and scans the headline, before shaking her head slowly. ‘No, but I know this organisation was very active around here years ago.’ She points at a name in the article – Mouvement des Femmes Lausannoises. ‘Actually, I think some of their newsletters are in our archives. Do you want me to look?’

  Fifteen minutes later I’m sitting at a desk with several papers laid out in front of me. My heart quickens as I read the header on each: Mouvement des Femmes Lausannoises; March 1975; August 1976; January 1977. I can’t understand anything of the text, of course, but I’m drawn to the names – and the grainy black and white pictures. I squint at one particular photo and my stomach jolts when I look at the caption and see the familiar name – it’s Evelyne, giving a speech in Vevey, which I recall driving past on the motorway to come here.

  Where are you now? I want to ask the photo. Why is there no trace of you online?

  Perhaps, it occurs to me, I might find something about her old friends instead. I take a notepad out of my bag and start to write down any other name mentioned in a picture caption or quote. Sonja Jeanneret, Marie Rochat, Monica Gerber, Nina Favre, Fabienne Aebischer…

  When I’ve scoured all the newsletters available, I have a list of twenty names in front of me. I take out my phone and open a browser. I’ve known for quite some time that it’s pretty easy to look up an address and telephone number in Switzerland’s online phone book. It’s even in English. Of course, I tried Brigitte Mela long ago, and then Evelyne Buchs, drawing a blank both times. But when I put in the names from the newsletters, much to my shock, I actually get results. Three Sonja Jeannerets, ten Marie Rochats… I start writing them all down but then glance at the time and see that I have just fifteen minutes to get back to the sports centre. I try to quell my frustration as I put the notepad back in my bag and stand up from the desk.

  Now I have a hint of a way forward, I want to keep going. It’s possible it will all lead to nothing. But it’s also possible that one of them might just know something about Evelyne Buchs, or Brigitte Mela, or anything at all that might help me decipher the mystery of my life.

  * * *

  Luca’s tired after tennis, so I put him down for a nap as soon as we get home. I set up Léa in the living room with some paper and coloured pencils and a book of animals to copy, getting her to draw her favourite ones and learn their names in English.

  ‘Jess, what is this called?’

  She’s a pretty good artist, definitely advanced for her age. She’s drawing eyes and tails and snouts with a studiousness that makes me smile. ‘Guinea pig,’ I say. ‘Have you ever had one of those as a pet?’

  Léa shakes her head. ‘Maman says we can’t have pets.’

  I think of Bruno, the tiny kitten Dad got for me when I was about Léa’s age. A vague memory of an argument.

  She doesn’t have any siblings so at least let her have a cat.

  Mum snapping back: As long as I don’t have to feed it, I’ve got enough on my plate.

  I was devastated when, years later, we found him dead under the buddleia in the garden. Mum consoled me, but I thought she was secretly pleased, since he had inevitably been left for her to feed most of the time.

  ‘Well, she must have her reasons,’ I say. Killjoy, I think.

  Léa frowns and looks down at her drawing, and my heart swells with affection for her serious little face. I hope Julia likes the drawings. I hope she can get away from work early enough to see them tonight before Léa goes to bed; I can see how much it would mean to her.

  It hits me in the stomach right then: a physical ache for a child of my own, a child like Léa, another being on this planet who shares my genes, who is physically connected to me. I don’t need to be a psychologist to know that what’s happened in recent years has only heightened my need for a child. Ever since the tests, I feel like I’ve been floating alone in this world, linked to nothing and no one.

  Untethered.

  It doesn’t have to change a thing. We can just forget about it, Dad had said.

  But as much as I wish he were right, I know deep down that I can’t forget. What’s done is done and it changes everything. Even so, I long to return to Léa’s age, safe in the cocoon of family life with Dad and Mum and Bruno and nanny Erika.

  Back before I knew it was all a lie.

  MARCH 1976 Lausanne, Switzerland

  SYLVIA

  Rue Haldimand 8, like all the buildings on the street, was an elegant old dame: tall, slim, well kept, but fading. Sylvia pressed the intercom for ‘Buchs’, stepped inside, glanced at the minuscule lift and took the stairs. The door was ajar when she reached the fourth-floor flat, so she knocked and pushed it open. A warm, orange light and soft music drew her in.

  ‘You’re here! Bienvenue!’ Evelyne appeared in the doorway. She kissed her on both cheeks and Sylvia pulled back after two, not expecting a third. ‘It’s three here, darling!’ Evelyne laughed. She took Sylvia’s coat and led her into the living room where several women were standing around a table with what looked like bedsheets spread out over it. One had a paint brush in her hand.

  ‘Les fil
les! This is Sylvia; she’s come to help us share our plight with the world!’

  The women in turn came to greet her: Monique, Sophie, Nina, Sonja; names Sylvia knew she’d never remember.

  ‘Any good with a paintbrush?’ one of them said to Sylvia. Nina, was it? Her jet black hair parted in the middle and fell nearly to her waist, framing a serious face that lit up when she smiled.

  ‘I suppose so. What are you doing?’

  ‘Banners.’ An older woman with red hair and a warm, round face smiled at her. ‘We’re prepping for the rally in Bern tomorrow.’

  Reading upside down across the table Sylvia could make out, in wonky letters: ‘Les enfants ou non, c’est nous qui décidons’. ‘Children or not, it’s us who decide’, she translated in her head. ‘Tous égaux devant la loi’ said another, ‘Everyone equal in the eyes of the law’.

  ‘You’re coming, right?’ Evelyne said.

  She nodded. That was the plan. Her chest prickled at the thought. A demonstration in the Swiss capital, just before International Women’s Day, was exactly what she needed for her story. If she did it right, maybe she could offload the golden oldies column onto some other poor sod.

  ‘We don’t exactly have a ton of womanpower here.’ Nina gestured to the table. ‘So if you can write straight and spell, we’ll have you.’

  ‘She’s a writer, she should be able to manage that,’ Evelyne said.

  Nina smiled at Sylvia sideways. ‘Then you’re in.’

  She pulled up a chair and grabbed a paintbrush, tasked with writing ‘Marriage is a work contract’ in French across a metre-long banner, wondering, as she did so, what the women here thought of the single diamond on her left hand. Part of her agreed with the banner’s sentiment – for some of her friends, that’s certainly how marriage appeared – but she’d never thought it would be like that with Jim. Jim was different.

  They worked for an hour or more, Evelyne refilling their glasses with a regularity Sylvia was more accustomed to seeing from Max and Ellis in El Vino’s wine bar. She thought, briefly, that maybe she shouldn’t be drinking so much, but then dismissed it with a coldness that surprised her. It didn’t feel real, so perhaps it wasn’t. By the time Evelyne emerged from the kitchen with a platter of raw meat and a pot of hot oil, she was feeling heady from booze and paint fumes. The fondue bourguignonne was a Lausanne speciality, they said, but to Sylvia it felt distinctly British; it reminded her of dinner parties her parents would throw when they wanted to impress someone. Her mother in the floor-length dress she pulled out twice a year, a long string of fake pearls and a precious dab of Chanel No. 5, serving up a platter of beef and an assortment of supermarket sauces decanted into individual ceramic pots.

  ‘God, this must all seem like repeating ancient history to you,’ Nina said. She skewered a piece of meat and placed the long fork in the broth.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘All this.’ She waved her hand towards the stack of flyers and banners they’d just prepared. ‘Our struggle, when you’ve got so much already. I mean, abortion is perfectly legal, isn’t it?’

  ‘Not on demand – you need two doctors’ permission, but essentially yes, since ’67,’ Sylvia said.

  ‘Here it’s more or less banned, unless you find a doctor with a liberal interpretation of the law, which is impossible in some parts of the country,’ Nina said with a shake of her head. ‘And though contraception is legal, it can be difficult and costly to get hold of, especially in conservative cantons that don’t believe in family planning. So women are screwed either way.’

  ‘You have paid maternity leave now too, right?’ Sonja asked.

  Sylvia nodded. ‘Yes, a new employment protection law passed last year. But only women who’ve been in their job for two years will benefit – and it’s not in force yet.’ She stopped herself thinking any more about that – to consider if she would be eligible for maternity leave was to acknowledge a reality she was trying hard to suppress.

  ‘And now you have Madame Thatcher – surely she’s going to make things even better for women if she gets into power.’

  ‘La dame de fer!’ Nina laughed. ‘Switzerland must seem like the most backwards place to you.’

  Sylvia thought of turning up at Dirty Dan’s door to find him in his bathrobe, coincidentally just out of the shower even though her tutorial times were fixed weeks in advance. She thought of Clive squeezing her waist in false bonhomie as he brushed past her in the office kitchen. And the way all the men in the newsroom talked to Marnie’s substantial chest rather than her face.

  ‘Not exactly,’ she said. ‘I’m grateful for the legislative progress that’s been made back home. But there’s still so much to do, and just like here, attitudes take longer to change. Feminists aren’t exactly championed in the media.’

  ‘We know all about that. Here we’re either cast as old ladies in flat shoes or hysterical banshees,’ Nina said.

  ‘In the UK they think we’re all hard-faced, bra-burning ball-crushers.’ Sylvia smiled. ‘And as for Thatcher, though it’s wonderful we have a woman as leader of the opposition, she’s hardly the ultimate feminist. I think she’s out for herself, not for all women.’

  ‘But she’s a symbol, at least,’ Monique said. ‘Whatever she’s actually like, she shows women that they can do it, they can get there. We need that here. I mean, it will probably come, now we can vote and stand for office, but there still aren’t any women in the Federal Council.’

  Sylvia nodded. The Swiss cabinet, she knew from her research.

  ‘It might take years yet because women weren’t in a position to get any experience of federal politics until we got the vote. And you can’t change the world in five years.’

  ‘Especially when society is against us right from the start.’ Evelyne leaned forward. ‘I mean, did you know that in many schools here, girls don’t even have the same education path as boys? They’re forced to take classes in needlework and knitting and homemaking, leaving them less time for maths and science. Girls are literally being brought up to be housewives.’ She took a swig of wine and Sylvia saw her eyes were slightly glazed.

  ‘And that’s why we’re doing this.’ Monique said. ‘Maths not knitting – shall we put it on a banner?’

  * * *

  It was late when the door buzzed and no one else seemed to hear it. Someone had turned the speakers right up and David Bowie’s Suffragette City flooded the room. Sonja and Monique were dancing around the room, and Sophie was smoking out of the open window, the winter chill seeping into the room. Nina had her camera out and was snapping photos of them all in silly poses.

  It buzzed again and Sylvia gestured to the door. ‘Wasn’t that the bell?’

  ‘Who the…?’ Evelyne got up, cigarette and wine glass in hand, and pressed the intercom. Sylvia saw the smile on her face fall away as she opened the flat door and went out onto the landing, waiting for her visitor.

  Footsteps and a low male voice on the stairs. Whispers in fraught, pained Swiss German. And then Evelyne reappeared, a too bright smile on her face.

  The man behind her was tall and broad, but with a youthful face that belied his imposing stature. The mass of dark hair that curled around his ears was so similar to Evelyne’s own unruly mop that Sylvia knew immediately this was a relative.

  ‘Regardez qui vient d’arriver!’ Evelyne said. Look who’s here.

  ‘Hey, what are you doing here?’ Sonja walked over and kissed the visitor, as did the others, before Evelyne grabbed his hand and dragged him over to her.

  ‘Sylvia, this is my baby brother, Daniel. Spontaneous visit at… ooh, midnight.’ She smiled, but there was something else behind it.

  He shook Sylvia’s hand and sat down in Evelyne’s chair as she left them to fetch him a beer. Despite his youth he looked weary, eyes bloodshot.

  ‘Have you come a long way?’ Sylvia said.

  ‘From Betten.’ He said it as though she should know where that was, but she shook her head and he ra
ised his eyebrows. ‘In the Valais. Where Evelyne and I are from.’ His French was curious: precise, singsong, clearly influenced by his native Swiss German.

  ‘Right. Sorry, I just met Evelyne today. I’m here from London to write about the MFL.’

  ‘Huh.’ He smiled at her, but his expression made her uneasy.

  ‘Are you a teacher too?’ Her eyes flicked to the kitchen, but she could see Evelyne still rooting around in the fridge.

  ‘Me? Oh no.’ His brief laugh was loaded with bitterness. ‘I’m a farmer. I only teach the farmhands how to milk a cow and mend a fence.’

  Sylvia smiled. ‘That must be interesting.’

  ‘Fucking fascinating.’ He sat back in his chair and looked towards the open window. Smoke hung in the air, illuminated by the street light outside the apartment block.

  ‘I’m sorry, I thought… Well, I’m sure it’s a tough life but it must be—’

  ‘Voilà!’ Evelyne appeared and held out a beer to Daniel. Sylvia excused herself and went to the toilet. Under the bright light of the bathroom she felt dizzy, tiredness and booze overcoming her. She felt a sudden need to see Jim, to wash Daniel’s scowl out of her eyes. She patted water on her forehead and cheeks and dried her face on a towel before stepping out into the living room. It was time to go.

  ‘Don’t mind my brother, he’s such a bore sometimes,’ Evelyne whispered at the door.

  ‘Oh, he was fine. No problem.’

  ‘He’s had a falling out with our father. Again. It happens a couple of times a year at least. He’ll stay with me for a few days, then Mother will call and persuade him to go back, and he’ll agree because he can’t bear her to be upset, and then we’ll be back to square one until the volcano starts bubbling up again.’ Sylvia’s eyes flicked over Evelyne’s shoulder to Daniel, now smoking by the window, beer in hand. ‘C’est la vie! Anyway, at least I get to see him for a bit. Baby brother.’ Evelyne looked over at him herself with a sad smile. ‘He’s pretty much the only family member I do see.’