In Falling Snow

by Mary-Rose MacColl

  “I just need to touch your face,” Violet said again, moving her hand up to Grace’s cheek. The hand was a little warmer now. Grace looked at her and, inexplicably, felt tears fill her eyes. She took Violet’s hand again and held it.

  “Who’s the chap?” Grace said, swallowing emotion, pointing to the young man, dark curly hair, a gorgeous smile. You just wanted to hug him.

  “That’s Tom, your father.”

  Grace said, “My father? What do you mean?” She let go of Violet’s hand. “I’m Grace, I’m Iris’s granddaughter, Violet. I’ve come to see you after my grandmother died. Iris, you know she died, don’t you?” Grace started to feel afraid, for no reason she understood.

  “No no no,” Violet said. “Not your father. Your grandfather. Oh, I’m messing this up. But Iris took the baby. I had a baby. Iris took the baby. This one,” she pointed at Tom. “He’s your grandfather.”

  Grace stared at her open-mouthed. She felt as if all the air had been taken out of her lungs.

  “I couldn’t keep a child. So Iris took the child, your mother. Edinburgh, you . . . she was born in Edinburgh.”

  Grace continued staring. “You need to tell me what this is about,” she said. Her heart was in her mouth. She swallowed hard. What was Violet talking about?

  “Iris was angry with me over the scholarship,” Violet said. “Well of course she was. But how was I to know they were planning to give it to Iris? I wasn’t Frances’s favourite but Iris was already engaged to that fellow in Australia. She was never going to go off that course. Or at least, I didn’t think she was going to. I was sure they’d give it to me, even if they preferred her.

  “But Frances said I lacked compassion, a doctor’s truest virtue, she called it. Well, maybe she lacked compassion too.” Violet sniffed, sharp again. “Perhaps I’d have acted differently if I’d known they had Iris in mind. Perhaps not. I’m very selfish.” She smiled weakly and looked at Grace.

  “Violet, I’m really sorry but I just don’t understand,” Grace said, “and I need to. You have to help me. What scholarship are you talking about? How are we related?”

  “I do think you’re being a little slow, dear,” Violet said. “Never mind.” She patted Grace’s hand. “Iris’s brother Tom was my lover. Did you know Tom? Of course you didn’t. I’m sorry. He was a beautiful boy. That one.” She pointed at the photograph, her eyes softening.

  “But where do I come in?” Grace said, still not understanding.

  “I was pregnant. With Tom’s . . . I . . . We were lovers. I was pregnant. I didn’t know what to do and then he was killed. So I told Frances. She was going to help—get rid of it, I mean. But then I told Iris and she said she’d take the baby. She’d marry her fiancé in Australia and take the baby. And that’s what she did. I went back to Scotland and gave birth to the child and then Iris came. She took the child. The others said I only told her to get her out of the way. But I never thought . . .

  “I’m sorry I haven’t done this better,” Violet said. “You have to understand it’s very hard to talk, even now after all these years.” Her bottom lip began to quiver and she bit it hard. “I thought about what I should say to you, whether I should tell you any of it. I wondered if Iris had told you already.”

  Grace shook her head, taking it in. “So I’m not Iris’s granddaughter?” she said.

  “Well, of course you are,” Violet said. “Blood’s not everything. It’s not anything really. She’s the one who raised you. Of course you are, my dear.” She patted Grace’s hand again. “I gave you up.”

  “But Al. I’m not related to Al at all. I’m related to Iris and her brother. And you.” Grace looked at her again and then at the photograph, Violet as a young woman. They did look alike. Grace wished the figures in the photograph could begin to move so she could watch Tom and especially Violet in the world.

  Her grandfather. Her grandmother.

  Grace had asked Iris once why Iris and Al hadn’t had more children. At the time, she’d been old enough to understand how children came about but too young to know that such a question might be difficult. “It just never happened,” Iris said. Later, when Grace was studying medicine, there had been a suggestion that pre-eclampsia might have a hereditary link. Given that Iris’s mother had died of pre-eclampsia, Grace had asked Iris about her own pregnancy. “I had no problems. Everything was easy.”

  “Did you go to term?”

  “What does that mean?”

  “The full nine months.”

  “Yes.”

  “How was she born?”

  “It was normal.”

  “Vaginal, you mean.”

  “Grace, please.”

  “That’s what we call it, Iris.”

  “Yes, it was all very normal.”

  It had all been a lie.

  And even before that. In primary school, Grace had been friends with a girl who’d been adopted. The girl’s parents hadn’t told her. But kids at the school knew because one of the mothers had told her own daughter and her daughter had told the other girls. Inevitably, someone hurled it as an insult in the playground. “You’re adopted.” The girl had gone home and asked her parents and they’d told her that yes, she was adopted, but to please not ask them anything about it. The girl had confided in Grace. Grace had felt helpless, couldn’t understand how the girl could not know where she came from. She asked Iris about it. “Some things are best not to know,” Iris had said.

  “But what if she wants to know?”

  “Would you want to know?”

  “Of course I would. Who wouldn’t?”

  “I think children just need to be cared for.”

  How had Iris managed to keep this from Grace, and probably from Rose before her, for all those years?

  Grace looked over at Violet. It was shocking, completely unexpected. But strangely not unexpected too. It was that feeling of déjà vu, where you remember something from before; Violet speaking to her, the perfect diction, the frizzy white hair, the glasses, telling her this odd, odd truth. Had Grace dreamed this?

  “Would you mind if we met again later? I think I need some time to think,” Grace said. She rubbed her forehead.

  “Oh yes, dear,” Violet said. “I did wonder whether to tell you.” She looked so old, so unsure, Grace wanted to embrace her and tell her it was all right but found she couldn’t, not yet.

  She walked out through the cloister and into the abbey grounds, across what would have been the church—bits of rubble and foundations still embedded in the soil—and into a forest of tall trees. She found a path through the forest, wandered past a little spring.

  Her coat wasn’t warm enough but she didn’t care. The cold was good, real. She sat down under a tree heavily but felt as if she weighed nothing more than the air. She had the experience again of feeling totally surprised and unsurprised at once. Trust, it was a breach of trust. Or was it? She made herself breathe, focus on the trees, their bare branches oddly reassuring. She remembered what Janis had said, one foot after the other, and this way, you go on. But how would she go on after this?

  It was as if her life had been predicated on a puzzle, a riddle, and here was the answer. Grace wasn’t like Iris. She’d always felt guilty about that, felt she should be more like her grandmother. Iris, the perfect mother, the perfect homemaker. Grace had never been interested in any of that. And when they found out Henry was sick, underneath everything else, she realised now, there was guilt, guilt born of her failings as his mother. If she’d been a better mother, if she hadn’t fallen on the ice, hadn’t let Henry fall off the verandah. If she’d been home instead of at work all the time, he’d have been all right. If she’d been Iris, she saw now. If she’d been Iris, she’d have saved Henry. She saw the folly of this view, saw too it would lead her into despair. And now, she had learned, she wasn’t the person she’d thought she was anyway.

>   It struck her suddenly that she’d always felt she had more in common with Al, to whom, it turned out, she had no blood ties. So there you are, she thought. Was she like Violet? she wondered. Hard in her heart? Able to give up her own child? Had she given up all her children in a way, becoming an obstetrician, working in the world that was still the world of men, leaving the children to others to raise, to Iris, who’d do a better job anyway?

  Grace leaned into the tree under which she sat, the ground cold beneath her, the strong reassuring trunk behind her back. After a little while, she started to cry. Silent tears fell down her cheeks at first and then gave way to hard hacking sobs, one after another, for Henry more than anything, but also for herself now.

  She found Violet in the library, sitting with a book open on her lap, staring out the window. Grace paused a moment and took her in. This was her blood grandmother. It was preposterous and yet she had this odd feeling of calm deep within again.

  “Is the purple for suffrage?” Grace asked Violet, noticing she’d changed into another purple outfit, Crimplene slacks and a blouse and cardigan.

  “Purple because I like the colour. How are you, dear?”

  Grace pulled up a chair next to her. “The hospital,” she said, not wanting to talk about her feelings yet. “You worked here too?”

  “Oh yes,” Violet said brightly. “I was one of the drivers. But Iris ran the place. That’s what I always thought. She loved Frances Ivens, the medical superintendent. But Frances never could have done it without Iris.” Grace let her talk. “I arrived here yesterday and it was so strange. The track to Royaumont we used to take is a road now, of course, and the fields are without the flowers we loved so much in the spring. I used to pick those daisies for Iris. He loves you, he loves you not, about her man. What was his name?”

  “Al,” Grace said. “Alastair Hogan.”

  “No, the other one. I always wondered what became of him. He was in the Croix-Rouge and afterwards I think he went back to psychiatry. He helped Ruth Berry with some of the mental cases at Royaumont. What was his name?”

  “Iris had someone here in France?”

  “Oh yes, we all did,” Violet said. “But the strangest thing was yesterday I came to the abbey and I didn’t recognise it. I’d always thought it would come back to me as it does in dreams. After the war, I used to come to France for holidays almost every year. I always stayed away from Royaumont though, from all of what happened in those years. It was the only way.

  “But when I saw it yesterday, it held nothing for me. It could have been any old abbey in any old woods for all the effect it had. I think they’ve turned the entry around, that we came in through the back where the cars were kept, although the stable buildings and garages are long gone. But still, I didn’t feel it. All I saw was a long drive, a stream beside it, a fountain, the front door, some church ruins. It was Saturday so there were tourists everywhere, like Brighton Beach.”

  “Did you love him very much?” Grace said.

  “Who?”

  “Tom, Iris’s brother, my . . . grandfather I guess.”

  “He was so young and sweet and hopeful. God, we were all young. Oh, the war was horrid. Worse than the next one, worse by far because we all went with such hope and we came home so hopeless.

  “He was trying to prove himself. That’s what I thought. He’d grown up with Iris as his sister, and she was so much cleverer and better at everything, and she’d mothered him right from when he was small. And she was so bossy with him, always telling him what he should do.”

  Grace smiled. She knew that Iris.

  “He had a very kind nature but he wanted to fight. He didn’t really know what fighting was. None of them did. But he wanted to do his part, felt he wasn’t. He was underaged, you see, so they put him in the postal service. Still, he wanted to fight and Iris didn’t want him to.” Violet shook her head and swallowed. “When I first saw Iris fussing over him I thought he was a spoilt brat. I knew her fussing would only make him worse. But I did an even more stupid thing. I treated him like the boy he was. And it made him more determined of course. Iris was so angry at me and I couldn’t bear her anger. She was such a dear friend.” Violet put her hand to her face, as if she wasn’t sure what to say next.

  “The wounded.” She shook her head and paused, lost in thought. “I felt so helpless. Iris was always much more resilient. I think religion helps. I just got more and more unhappy. And then I got an idea in my head about Tom. I thought if I could do this one thing, save this one boy, it would make a difference. And it would help Iris.

  “So I let him love me. I thought it would save him.” She smiled weakly. “And it nearly did. He’d agreed to stay with the postal service because of me. I didn’t tell Iris about our affair. She wouldn’t have approved of her younger brother with such an older woman.” Violet laughed, a hard cackling laugh, which changed suddenly into a sob. “I was twenty-six.

  “But I came to love him, you see. He was just so . . . uncomplicated. Oh, I knew there was no future. We all knew that. They were different times. The ambulance on the road at night, shelling nearby, the cloister in the early morning, the patients. At Royaumont, the rest of the world faded away. As I say, I was young,” she said, “and I’ve always been quite clever at pretending to be more than I am. That was how I became a doctor, after all. Me, who had no compassion.” She let out a sob and her voice cracked. “That’s what Miss Ivens said. I lacked a doctor’s most necessary gift. Compassion.”

  Grace nodded. This had clearly upset Violet. She’d said it once already.

  “Tom was different from the others. He just loved me. And then, the pregnancy. What was I to do? He never knew. I hadn’t told him. Perhaps I would have. I was confused. He died not knowing he had a child. I used to think sometimes that if it had been different . . . But that only made it worse, that kind of thinking. I quickly learned that.

  “Iris was angry with me, of course, never forgave me. But I hadn’t meant her harm. It just happened.”

  Grace watched Violet as she spoke. “So you had the baby in Edinburgh, you said. Rose.”

  “Iris named her. I’ve never been back to the hospital. Once I was offered a job in Edinburgh, a good job, but I didn’t take it because I’d have had to walk back through those doors. I couldn’t do it, not then, not ever.” Violet took a breath in and held it, then let it out heavily.

  “After the child was born, my mother came and took me home. She came up on the train and took me back with her. I thought I’d be fine, I’d just get on with life.” She smiled but looked like she might cry again.

  “After we’d been home a few weeks, we went to town to a café Mother liked. She ordered scones for herself and for me, although I’d said I wasn’t hungry. A young woman came into the café, Amelia Wickham. We’d gone to school together. I recognised her across the café, hoping she’d relieve us, my mother and I, of the need to converse with one another. I smiled. Then I saw she carried a bundle, a small bassinette. But she’d registered my smile and was upon us before I knew. I looked briefly inside the bassinette and saw a new baby, mottled red arms out of a white nightdress, peeling skin. I began to feel cold. It’s hard to describe. I didn’t really notice the baby. I just began to feel cold.” Violet stopped, swallowed, narrowed her eyes.

  “My mother knew Amelia’s mother. There had been some tragedy. At the time, I couldn’t quite recall the details. Amelia greeted my mother and turned to me. She mentioned that she’d heard I was going to be a doctor. Who’d have thought? she said. My mother ignored this part of the conversation. Medicine wasn’t something we discussed. She was against it from the start, felt women shouldn’t work.

  “So of course my mother fussed over Amelia, who had the far more appropriate life with a husband and baby. Do join us for tea, my mother said. Neither my mother nor I had mentioned the baby. I’m meeting Rob’s parents, Amelia said. My mother looked
a question. Robert Benton, my late husband. He was in the Somme. Her mouth was set tight. My mother offered condolences, happy now to have got to the nub. She began to ask Amelia about her family, who we knew vaguely.

  “I hadn’t said a word. I stood so suddenly I felt faint. I excused myself. In the lavatory I vomited and then I sobbed, my heart just a stone inside me.” Violet whimpered. Grace reached out a hand and took Violet’s.

  Violet withdrew her hand, composed herself. “The feeling subsided eventually. I returned to the table. Amelia had taken her leave. The child was gone. It’s going to be like this for a long time, my mother said. She put her hand on mine and said, You didn’t have to do it, you know. I didn’t reply.

  “What I always remembered about that day wasn’t Amelia Wickham, who couldn’t have known what I’d done. It was my poor mother, trying in her own way to reach out and help me.” Tears were rolling down Violet’s cheeks now. Grace felt for her deeply. Violet grinned through her tears. “And yet I remained helpless.” The smile turned into a grimace. She covered her mouth with her hand, as if her feelings were a surprise to her.

  “I used to tell people I wasn’t someone who regretted things. And when I did regret what I’d done, I told myself that I had chosen my life. I had made the decision, however badly I felt. No one made it for me. It helped to know I’d made the choice.

  “But I’ve always remembered that day with my mother, her reaching out her hand, trying to help me. We’d never been close, and yet she tried in her way to reach out. I always felt bad that I didn’t respond. My mother. You have to understand the kind of life she had, the kind of woman she was. My brother died as a child and she never got over it.”

  “What did he die of?” Grace said. In the pit of her stomach she felt a coldness without yet understanding why. But something nagged at the edge of her consciousness.

  “Pneumonia,” Violet said. “There was something wrong with him. He was always sick. No one quite knew what it was.”