by Fern Britton
They spoke in whispers. ‘He’s in those bushes there.’
‘Yeah. I saw it. Let’s get the bastard.’
They took just four rounds, happy to empty their bullets into the bastard who had killed their officer.
‘That’s for you, Lieutenant Bolitho.’
‘God bless you, sir.’
Second Lieutenant Herbert Bolitho’s body was carried back over the expanse of no man’s land he had crossed less than two hours before.
Clara
It was Philippa who answered the knock at the door. I was upstairs feeding our little boy.
‘Two men,’ she told me, her voice shaking, ‘two men in uniform are downstairs. They want to talk to you.’
I knew immediately why they were here.
‘Very sorry to inform you that …’
I screamed.
I saw their mouths moving.
‘Killed in action. He was a very brave man, a great soldier. You can be proud of him.’
Anger surged through me and I shouted at them, ‘I have always been proud of him. Did you know him? Were you there?’
They shuffled a bit and looked uncomfortable. ‘Unfortunately we didn’t get to meet him as we serve in the London office.’
‘Cowards,’ I spat again. ‘Get out. You are not worthy of saying his name.’
My baby boy would grow up without a father. I had stories to tell him and a photograph, but that was not much, was it? He was the bastard child of a woman who wasn’t even a widow.
Philippa tried hard to cheer me with outings and tasty morsels. She began to read books to me in the evening. She helped me find my love for my son when all I wanted to do was die.
And I did love our son. So much. I was on constant alert for danger. I couldn’t leave him in the garden in his pram in case a cat sat on him and he suffocated. Or a crow pecked his eyes out. No. I had to be by his side every minute to protect him.
Dr Channing saw me often. ‘Just keeping an eye on you … How are you sleeping? … You are losing a lot of weight … How often do you cry?’
On and on, every week, until I screamed at him to shut up. ‘Just shut up and leave me with my baby.’
He replied calmly. ‘These feelings can be very overwhelming.’
I laughed. ‘If you really want to know how overwhelming they are, I will tell you. I want to die. I could die today, right now, and have no regrets.’
‘You would leave your son alone?’
When he said that I burst into uncontrollable tears.
There followed two months in a convalescent home. Once a week Philippa would bring my son to see me.
‘I think it is time you gave this little chap a name,’ she said.
‘Is it?’
‘Have you thought of any?’
‘No.’
‘Try and think of one for when we come to see you next week.’
I knew I didn’t want to call him Herbert. There was only one Herbert as far as I was concerned, and no one else in the whole wide world deserved to bear his name.
And then it came to me, almost in a dream. Michael. Michael Carter. A boy with his own name and his own life.
I left the convalescent home feeling that I could, just about, face the world again. Philippa was my strength. A mother to me and Mikey. The summer turned to autumn. Mikey turned from babe in arms to crawling baby. He and I would sit on the grass of Philippa’s small garden picking up leaves or examining snails. His pudgy little hands always finding something he’d like to touch and taste. He and I grew stronger together. We were settled, and I was not going to let anything or anybody into my life again.
And that is what I believed, but at the beginning of December the post brought me a letter with a Cornish postmark. I read it several times over the next week and knew what I had to do. I explained it all to Philippa and took her mother’s wedding ring off my finger. ‘Keep this until I get back,’ I told her.
‘Mikey and I will be waiting,’ she said.
‘I will return as soon as I can,’ I replied. And at that moment that is what I fully expected to do. I had no idea of what would happen next. How my heart would be shredded by yearning and fear. To live in terror of being found out. Of denying all that had been, for the sake of all that was to come. To be a liar.
Caroline
Present day
The trunk was inviting me to plunder it. Beneath the uniform jacket were some shorts and cotton shirts, spotted with age, which I imagined my grandfather wore for the tropical heat of Penang. I lifted those out and beneath them I found some books. Just cheap paperbacks. A lot of Agatha Christie and several Dorothy L. Sayers novels. I riffled through them hoping to find a lost letter or a pressed flower, but no luck. I turned to each inside page and found my grandmother’s name, Clara Bolitho, neatly inscribed.
I placed them in two piles on the carpet, and dug deeper.
A book with a lock I couldn’t open. Possibly a diary? An old Bible and three books of poetry: Yeats, Masefield and Kipling. I did Yeats for my O levels and searched the index for any poems I remembered. I saw another name written inkily on the top right-hand corner. Herbert Bolitho, 1915.
Herbert? I had never heard of him. A relation clearly, but of whom? And what had he been doing in Penang with Grandfather?
In the index I saw the first line of a poem starred in the same black ink as Herbert’s name.
‘Lake Isle of Innisfree’.
The one I had to learn by heart. I tried to remember it and spoke aloud:
‘I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made; Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee, And live alone in the bee-loud glade.’
I was rather pleased with myself. I placed the three books of poems next to the paperbacks and the locked book and picked up the Bible. Not as large as an old family Bible but nonetheless heavy.
I had never been a Bible reader, but I did run my hands over a couple of the papery pages with their dense and tiny print, wondering who the last person had been to do the same. There were no fancy lithograph prints.
I turned back to the first of the inside pages and saw it. A family tree. Going back at least six generations. My family tree.
I knew none of the early ones but as I got further down the page I saw the name ‘Reverend Hugh Bolitho’, and next to it ‘m. Louisa Jayson’.
My great-great grandfather whose parish was Callyzion.
Underneath them were the names of their children: Herbert, Ernest and Amy.
I knew Ernest was my grandfather, but I had no idea he had siblings. Herbert, the one who liked poetry? Must be. Beside his name was d. 1917. Poor man. A casualty of the war. Unmarried and childless.
I was enjoying this now. A little treasure hunt into my past, although I still had no idea why it had come to me and who had sent it.
My grandmother’s name, Clara, was beside my grandfather Ernest’s, and under them were the names of their children: Edward, Hannah, and David. My mother and her two brothers. My name should be underneath and I was tempted to find a pen and put it there, but before I could, I saw a small edge of paper escaping from the body of the book. Was this the letter that would answer the mystery of why this trunk had come to me? I opened the pages to where the letter had been tucked. There were two letters. One obviously yellowing, addressed to my grandfather in Penang and dated 1948.
PART TWO
Chapter Sixteen
Hannah, Trevay, Cornwall
1938
I was hanging out of my mother’s bedroom window, drinking in the beautiful Cornish day. The sky above Trevay was bright blue, the seagulls were laughing and playing in the warm breeze, and from where I leant, I could just see the sparkling Atlantic, and a small flotilla of fishing boats, off to their rich hunting grounds, bouncing across the waves. I was Cornish on my father’s side and Kentish on my mother’s, but I had been born in Penang, Malaysia. A bit of a mongrel, my father told me. ‘Good,’ I
told him. ‘Mongrels make the best and most intelligent dogs, so I am happy to be one.’
I had finished my morning jobs, and should have been with Mum downstairs, in the shop, but I had been having fun playing with her make-up and taking in the beautiful day.
She called me from downstairs. ‘Hannah?’
‘Yes, Mum?’
‘Would you please come down? There are customers who need serving.’
‘Coming.’ I quickly wiped her rouge from my cheeks and bounded downstairs.
Mum was standing behind the counter, chatting to two regular customers, Mrs Pengelly and Miss Pritty.
‘Is that my rouge?’ My mother looked at me, eyebrows raised but not angry.
‘Just a little.’
‘Well, I hope you put it back. You don’t need make-up.’
‘This can never be little Hannah, Mrs Bolitho? asked Mrs Pengelly, a stout woman with a bristly mole on her top lip, who stared at me beadily through her horn-rimmed spectacles. ‘Look how much she’s grown!’
My mother sighed. ‘Yes indeed.’
‘She’s lovely,’ said Miss Pritty.
My mother put her hands on her hips and observed me ironically, ‘Do you think so?’
Miss Pritty reminded me of a fairy-tale princess, preserved like a rose under a glass dome. A faded beauty with greying blonde curls and a delicately crinkled skin.
Mum thought her rather wet.
‘Thank you, Miss Pritty,’ I grinned.
Miss Pritty continued, ‘I don’t know how to cure myself of the desire to come to your shop, Mrs Bolitho. The sight and smell of it all continually thrills me.’
The walls were lined with bolts of the finest silks and cottons, all in jewelled colours or bold patterns. Mum’s shop, ‘Clara Bolitho Silks’, was her emporium. She imported them from Malaya where I was born.
I had grown up loving everything bright and colourful. To me the Far East was a magical place and I imagined I would miss it.
I had left Penang for England when I was five and, in my blurred memories, I still saw palm trees, still felt the sun on my cheeks, still remembered the perfume of warm air after rain.
My father, Ernest Bolitho MBE, remained in Penang. He owned a rubber plantation and worked for the Malayan Civil Service.
‘Buttons,’ said Miss Pritty. ‘To match this chiffon.’ She lovingly ran her fingers over a new roll of soft lilac fabric. ‘Isn’t it pretty?’
‘One of my newest favourites,’ my mother affirmed. ‘Pure silk.’
‘How many buttons do you need?’ I asked, already looking for something suitable in one of the two glass-fronted, glass-topped counters. Beneath were rows of open wooden drawers, with hundreds of buttons, ribbons, lace and embroidery threads.
Miss Pritty placed her nose close to the glass, looking for the perfect thing.
‘The pattern suggests small and round. Six of them,’ she said. Then she pointed, ‘Ooh. Those could be just the thing.’
My mother took over. ‘They arrived yesterday from Singapore. Silk-covered and as light as a feather. Perfect for the chiffon.’
Mrs Pengelly, who had been ignored throughout this, tutted. ‘I was here first, Mrs Bolitho.’
Mum was unfazed. ‘Hannah will assist you.’
Mum knew I liked Miss Pritty better, but I knew Mum liked to convince customers to spend more than their budget, and Miss Pritty was fair game.
‘Mrs Pengelly,’ I smiled, ‘how can I help you? We have some very fine gloves.’
I worked in Mum’s shop every Saturday while my older brother, Edward, played rugby and my younger brother, David, played cricket.
Edward and I had been the first to come to England from Penang. Our father had decided we would be safer in Cornwall due to the political unrest in Malaya. I had been five and Edward nine. Our parents had brought us over on the ship, promising us a glorious holiday with our grandparents in Cornwall. They had not told Edward and me that they were leaving us in Callyzion while they returned to Penang without us. So, when they left, waving goodbye from their taxi, my father calling ‘See you soon’, I had no reason to be concerned. I spent the next week with my face stuck to the front window, expecting them to reappear. I didn’t see my mother for seven years. I didn’t see my father for many, many more.
Life at my grandparents’ home was not what either Edward or I were used to. For a start, our English was not very fluent. Because my father’s work was highly confidential, the only time my parents spoke English was to each other, in private. Our parents spoke only Malay in front of us and the staff to ensure the staff didn’t learn any English.
You can imagine the difficulty we had in understanding and being understood when we got to Cornwall. At school in particular. We were singled out as savages for leaving our shoes outside and walking indoors in bare feet, something that was expected of us back home. We were labelled disobedient.
Our favourite time of each day was when Grandfather came home from the church. He was kind to us and always had a toffee in his pocket or time to share his big armchair with the two of us as we chatted in pidgin English or drew communicative pictures together.
Grandmother was kind, too, but suffered from her nerves. I had no idea what that was but it meant we had to be quiet around the house and not disturb her frequent naps.
Dora, the maid, was a sweetheart. Always ready to have a game of draughts with us or play a game of hide and seek. Cook was always telling her off because she spent more time with us than at her chores, but we soon found that Cook was all bark and no bite.
She taught us to bake jam tarts and sponge cakes, buttered eggs and baked potatoes, and when Edward and I told her how much we missed eating curry, she looked out a recipe and made us kedgeree for breakfast.
Aunt Amy was the one person we both avoided. She didn’t like children, especially ones like us. We loved to snoop around her bedroom when she was out. Our secret raids into her lair had gone unnoticed for so long that we thought she would never catch us, but one dull and rainy afternoon, just as we were under her bed about to read through a box of envelopes addressed to her and signed by someone called Peter, she came in. Edward, being tall for his age, didn’t manage to get one of his feet under the bed quickly enough before she spotted him. Immediately her bony fingers swooped down like an eagle’s claw and pulled him out, burning his cheek on the rough carpet.
The scariest thing about Aunt Amy was that she never raised her voice. Quiet menace was her chosen weapon.
‘What do you think you are doing under my bed?’ she hissed.
‘Nothing.’ Edward got to his feet.
‘Don’t lie to me, you little savage. What did you find under my bed?’
‘I didn’t find anything,’ he continued bravely.
From my viewpoint, still under the bed, I could see her narrow black boots tapping on the rug. ‘Where is that little sister of yours? If the brat is under the bed right now …’
I had no time to move. I saw her bend down and whip up the edges of the candlewick bedspread. Her furious eyes blazed into me. ‘Come out now, or you will be very sorry indeed.’ I could see spittle on her lip.
‘Yes, Aunt Amy.’ I crawled out and stood next to Edward, who felt for my hand. I still had one of Aunt Amy’s letters in it.
When she saw it, her scalp twitched and I swear I saw flames in her eyes. She advanced towards me and lifted her hand. I squeezed my eyes shut, terrified of the smack that was coming to me. And as it did, I wet myself.
My cheek stung from the slap and my humiliation.
‘Give me that letter.’ She was an inch from my face and had not noticed my disgrace.
I gave her the letter.
My knickers and socks were warm and wet. There was a puddle building on the rug. ‘I’m so sorry,’ I whimpered.
‘Did you read this?’ She held the letter against my face. ‘Did you read my personal letters?’
‘No,’ Edward said stoutly. ‘Neither of us did.’
She
took her eyes from me and stepped towards him. She was poised ready to swipe him too when her black boots gave a little squelch. She stopped and looked down. She was standing in my pee.
Edward took advantage of her rigid horror and took my hand shouting, ‘Run!’
Grandfather gave us a very serious telling-off and we were sent to bed without supper. To upset Aunt Amy was one thing, but to upset Grandfather was much worse. He was the adult we respected and loved. He was everything to us, and to have him say how disappointed he was hurt more than twenty lashes of the school’s cane.
We never disappointed him again.
As we grew older our lives became more regimented. As soon as we arrived, Edward had been made to go to church every morning before school, and by the time I was ten, I was joining him. On Sundays we had to go twice. Morning and evening. We also had to write weekly letters to our parents.
As time went on, Grandmother was becoming weaker. Eventually she stopped coming downstairs altogether. She began to express her need to see us confirmed in the church. She insisted that our confirmation classes should be held at her bedside so that she could listen to Grandfather’s weekly teaching and join in the prayers for our salvation.
We had never been allowed into her bedroom before this, and I must admit my mind often wandered as I knelt by her bed and managed, through half-closed eyes, to squint around her room.
It wasn’t a glamorous room but it was feminine. On her tidy wooden dressing table there was a small crucifix, a silver-backed hairbrush, a hand mirror, and a painted vase always holding a fresh spray of simple flowers. There was also a sepia photograph of my father in army uniform. I longed to get closer to it. To pick it up and stroke the face I missed so much. But the fear of going near anyone’s private property had been powerfully instilled in me.
Our confirmation became a huge topic of conversation in the vicarage. Cook and Dora fussed about what we’d wear. Grandmother and Grandfather presented us with our own small prayer book, but Aunt Amy just sniffed. One night, as she came to see we were tucked in bed, she told us that we were not good enough for God. ‘The devil wants you for his own,’ she said, before turning the light out and leaving us in darkness.
