Searching for Shona

by Margaret J. Anderson

  ISBN: 9781483505787

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Chapter 1 Holyrood Park

  Chapter 2 Waverley Station

  Chapter 3 Canonbie Primary School

  Chapter 4 Clairmont House

  Chapter 5 The Turret Room

  Chapter 6 Christmas Surprises

  Chapter 7 Anna’s Bad Day

  Chapter 8 A Long Night

  Chapter 9 Escrigg Pond

  Chapter 10 The Diary

  Chapter 11 Jane’s Story

  Chapter 12 Dr. Knight Gives Advice

  Chapter 13 Willowbrae Road

  About the Author

  Credits

  Chapter 1

  Holyrood Park

  Marjorie Malcolm-Scott walked slowly up Willowbrae Road toward the narrow iron gate that opened into Holyrood Park in Edinburgh. It was mid-September 1939, and Britain was at war with Germany, but it wasn’t thoughts of the war that were uppermost in Marjorie’s mind. She was merely wondering what she could do to fill the day.

  “You go off and play in the park for two hours,” Mrs. Kilpatrick, the housekeeper, had said.

  Marjorie didn’t like being sent off like that, as if she were a small child who was always in the way. But that’s how Mrs. Kilpatrick treated her. Sending her out and saying that she wanted to get the housework done, though Marjorie didn’t see that there was much work to do. Most of the time there were only the two of them.

  And what fun was there in going to the park all by herself? However, this was Saturday, so there would be other children there. Perhaps she would find someone to play with. Marjorie opened the gate and headed down toward a small pond where a group of children often gathered. Most of them were from St. Anne’s Orphanage and Marjorie sometimes found herself thinking that in spite of their shabby clothes and frequent noisy squabbles, they had a better time than she did.

  Today they were playing on a pile of rocks beside the pond and Marjorie stood watching them, hoping they would ask her to join in. But they were much too busy to notice her—and she was too shy to ask if she could play—so she sat down on a bench near them and tried to work out what their game was all about.

  There was one girl in particular whom Marjorie watched—a girl of about eleven or twelve, with short fair hair and a faded red coat. She heard the others call her Shona, and although she was by no means the biggest, she seemed to be the organizer of the game. She and three boys had occupied the “castle rock” and others were trying to take them captive and drag them off to a stronghold on the other side of the pond. A stray dog, excited by their voices, joined in the fight, and Shona yelled, “Wolves! They’ve trained wolves to attack us!”

  The other children had already captured one of the boys and they now had Shona surrounded and began to pull her, shrieking and resisting, toward the pond. Marjorie watched anxiously, hoping they weren’t really going to throw her in. Then one of the boys left on the rock yelled, “It’s dinner time! Come on!” The children immediately forgot their game and went running off, right past the bench where Marjorie was sitting, never even glancing at her. Marjorie watched them disappear through the gate and then got up and walked slowly home.

  She lived in a big stone house on Willowbrae Road with her Uncle Fergus, but he had been gone all summer. As she approached the house her feet began to drag. There would only be Mrs. Kilpatrick at home and she was never exactly welcoming. Marjorie pushed open the heavy front door, crossed the dimly lit hall, and went through to the kitchen.

  “Is that you back already?” Mrs. Kilpatrick asked without looking up from the brass candlesticks she was polishing. “It seems like you only just went out.”

  Marjorie didn’t bother to answer but picked up the Daily Mail. Slumping into an armchair, she opened the paper. It was dated Saturday, September 16, 1939. The war had started only two weeks ago and nothing had really happened yet, but the newspaper already made gloomy reading. Marjorie stared at a picture of some London children who were being evacuated to the country, and then threw the paper aside.

  “Do you think Uncle Fergus will come home soon?” Marjorie asked Mrs. Kilpatrick.

  “I shouldn’t think so,” Mrs. Kilpatrick said, giving a final rub to the candlestick. “Not with this war on. He’ll have other things to worry about.”

  Marjorie sighed. Not that Uncle Fergus being there made so very much difference. He was always busy with his own concerns. But he had taken her to France two summers ago, and last year to London. This summer they had gone nowhere. It would be another week before school started and Marjorie found the holidays very long and boring.

  The following Monday, Mrs. Kilpatrick again sent Marjorie out to play in the park. The city schools had started earlier in September than Marjorie’s private school, so she knew the park would be deserted except for young mothers pushing prams (and it was too early in the day for that) and staid old ladies and gentlemen walking their dogs or sitting on park benches, staring at the threatening headlines in their newspapers.

  Marjorie had a piece of dry toast in her pocket and she planned to feed the ducks. When she had asked Mrs. Kilpatrick for bread, Mrs. Kilpatrick had told her firmly, “With a war on, there’s no bread to spare for ducks. We’ll be lucky if there’s food for ourselves before the war is over.” Marjorie was used to Mrs. Kilpatrick’s gloom and didn’t listen. Instead she took the toast she’d left uneaten at breakfast. Throwing it in the dustbin wouldn’t help the War Effort that Mrs. Kilpatrick talked about so endlessly. Besides, it wasn’t the ducks’ fault there was a war on!

  She reached the pond and was trying to entice the ducks with the toast, when a voice behind her asked, “Can I feed them, too?”

  Marjorie turned quickly and found that Shona, the girl from the orphanage, was standing beside her. She broke off a piece of toast and handed it to Shona, saying shyly. “I do like the ducks, don’t you?”

  “Especially the ones with the shiny green heads and blue and white collars,” agreed Shona.

  When the toast was finished, Shona looked curiously at Marjorie and asked, “Why aren’t you in school?”

  “My school doesn’t start till next week.”

  “Lucky you!”

  “Why aren’t you in school?” Marjorie asked.

  ”I didn’t want to go,” Shona answered.

  “But won’t you get in trouble?”

  “Not if I don’t get caught,” Shona said with a shrug. “I’ll go back with the others when they get our of school.”

  “Don’t you go to school in the orphanage, then?” asked Marjorie.

  “Of course not,” answered Shona. “We go to Preston Street Primary like everyone else who lives around here.”

  “What about the other children from the orphanage who are in your class? Don’t they tell on you when you don’t go to school?”

  “There’s only Tommy Walker and he wouldn’t tell. He wouldn’t dare!”

  Having watched Shona scuffle and play with the boys in the park last Saturday, Marjorie thought this was probably true. A silence fell between them, and then Shona asked, “Do you want to climb Arthur’s Seat? That’s what I was going to do.”

  Arthur’s Seat was a high hill in the middle of the park, and although Marjorie spent a lot of time in the park, she had never climbed all the way to the top. Now that Shona suggested it, it sounded like a good idea.

  It took them a long time to walk up the lower slopes. As they talked together, Marjorie discovered that Shona had seen her watching their game and had wondered why she didn’t join in. “I thought maybe you didn’t want to get dirty,” Shona said. Marjorie was suddenly conscious of her smartly tailored green coat and pale blue dress and white sock
s. Her long blond hair was neatly braided and tied with blue ribbons to match her dress. Shona’s skirt hung unevenly below her shabby red coat and her socks had worked their way down inside her battered shoes.

  There was no breath left for talk as they scrambled up the last rocky heights and reached the stone marker on the very top. They looked down on Edinburgh and all the countryside around it spread out below them.

  “Look!” said Marjorie. “You can see the Forth Bridge and the Braid Hills and the Castle. I can see my house!”

  “Where?” Shona asked.

  “Behind the wall that borders the park down there. That’s my street, and you can see the back of our house. The tall one.”

  “That’s a posh house,” Shona said impressed. “Your mum and dad must be very rich.”

  “They were drowned six years ago when I was five,” Marjorie answered abruptly. “I live with my Uncle Fergus and his housekeeper, Mrs. Kilpatrick.”

  “You mean you’re an orphan, too?” Shona asked, her eyes widening. “Some people have all the luck!”

  “What’s so lucky about being an orphan?”

  “I don’t mean that. I mean having a posh house and nice clothes even if you are an orphan. You know who your parents were and you’ve got someone to look after you.”

  “But you’ve got lots of friends,” protested Marjorie. “You always have someone to play with.”

  Shona shook her head and then sat down, her back against the stone base of the marker and said, “There aren’t many of us older kids living in the orphanage. Most of them are younger, and it’s always the wee ones who get adopted and move away. Nobody’s going to come along and adopt me now. But worst of all is not knowing who I am and why I was left there. What were my mum and dad like? Who were they?”

  “Don’t you know anything about them?” Marjorie asked.

  “Just the little Matron told me. My mum came from a place called Canonbie, and I have a picture of her house. Someday, I’ll go there and find out about myself. But come on! I’ll be late if we don’t go back down.”

  Shona jumped up, as if she hadn’t a worry in the world, and they ran down the hill together. They parted on the road at the bottom, Marjorie heading toward Willowbrae Road with its tall houses surrounded by trees and prim gardens, and Shona toward the old part of town with its cobbled streets and crowded buildings and St. Anne’s Orphanage.

  “Will you be here tomorrow?” Marjorie asked, as they parted.

  “I’ll try,” Shona answered.

  They met three more time that week. Marjorie was greatly impressed by Shona’s daring, and she knew that Shona envied her her nice clothes and the fact that she had money to spend. On Tuesday they ventured out of the park and bought sweets in the little corner shop right next to Preston Street Primary School. The shopkeeper winked at Shona and asked, “Playing truant?” Shona just grinned at him, while Marjorie blushed scarlet. Then they bought buns at the baker’s and went back to the park where they shared them with the ducks.

  On Wednesday, Marjorie was disappointed at not finding Shona, but the next morning Shona was waiting beside the iron gate near Willowbrae Road.

  “Let’s go back to your house to play,” she suggested.

  Marjorie hesitated. She knew that Mrs. Kilpatrick would think that Shona, with her shabby red coat and down-at-heel shoes wasn’t a suitable friend, but she could hardly tell Shona that.

  “Maybe we could go later when Mrs. Kilpatrick goes shopping,” Marjorie suggested.

  “Are you scared of her?”

  “She doesn’t like me around when she’s doing her work,” Marjorie explained lamely.

  “We won’t get in the way,” Shona said, boldly marching off down Willowbrae Road with Marjorie trailing behind.

  When they entered the big front hall, Shona was obviously taken aback by the ornately carved Victorian furniture, the Oriental rug, and the dark paintings in gilt frames.

  “It’s as fancy as Holyrood Palace,” she said in an awed whisper.

  “Come on and I’ll show you my room.” Marjorie was hoping they could avoid Mrs. Kilpatrick.

  As Shona followed Marjorie up the thickly carpeted stairs, she paused to look at the portraits that hung on the walls of the upper landing. Marjorie hovered anxiously beside her, listening to the distant sound of Mrs. Kilpatrick’s wireless down in the kitchen and the banging of pots and pans. If only she’d go out shopping.

  “Who are all these people?” Shona asked.

  “They’re our ancestors who used to live here long ago, Malcolms and Scotts,” Marjorie answered vaguely.

  “You’ve got ancestors and here’s me not even knowing who my mum was,” Shona said. She studied the paintings a little longer and then remarked, “Glum looking lot, aren’t they?’

  Marjorie agreed. When she had first come to live with Uncle Fergus, she’d been afraid to go upstairs alone, watched by so many eyes, and even now she didn’t like to cross the landing except in broad daylight.

  Her bedroom was at the back of the house overlooking the park and, in contrast to the other rooms, was very simply furnished. Marjorie liked it that way, but Shona was disappointed.

  “You haven’t got many fancy things in here,” she said, looking around at the narrow bed, the bookcase, and the plain chest of drawers with a mirror above it.

  “I’ve got toys and games in the cupboard. Do you want to play something?”

  “I’d rather see the rest of the house.”

  “I’ve got a bagatelle board and snakes and ladders,” Marjorie said hopefully, but Shona was not to be diverted from her desire to see the other rooms.

  Very quietly, Marjorie led Shona on a tour of the bedrooms and then they went down to the sitting room. The sitting room, overcrowded with furniture and ornaments and photographs, was more to Shona’s taste. She walked around examining everything.

  “Who are these people?” she asked, looking at a photograph on the roll top desk.

  “My mother and father and that’s Uncle Fergus,” Marjorie answered.

  “Your Uncle Fergus looks like his relatives up in the hall—a bit dour!”

  Then Shona’s attention was caught by a parade of seven ebony elephants with ivory tusks arranged on the mantelpiece. The lead elephant was the biggest, and each succeeding elephant was smaller, so that the seventh was only about an inch high. She picked up the littlest elephant, cradling it in her hand.

  “What’s going on in here?” asked a severe voice from the doorway. Marjorie and Shona spun around guiltily. Shona hurriedly replaced the little elephant, while Mrs. Kilpatrick watched her with obvious distaste.

  “I was just showing Shona the house,” Marjorie said nervously.

  “And raising dust and leaving fingerprints everywhere,” scolded Mrs. Kilpatrick. “As if there wasn’t enough for me to do without you making extra work. I told you to play in the park.”

  “We’re just going,” Marjorie said, and the two girls hurried out.

  “You should stick up for yourself more,” Shona said, once they were outside. “I wouldn’t let her boss me like that.”

  Easier said than done, Marjorie thought to herself. Yet she found herself wishing she could be a little more like Shona, who obviously didn’t let people push her around and only did what she felt like doing.

  The next morning they stayed in the park, making a fleet of paper boats out of an old newspaper and sailing them on the pond. When it was time to leave, Marjorie explained that she would be going back to school the next week and wouldn’t be able to play any more.

  “There’s still Saturdays,” Shona said.

  But Marjorie knew that Saturdays wouldn’t be the same. The other children would be there. Besides, with the start of school there would be ballet lessons and invitations to have tea with girls from school. But she didn’t tell Shona this, because she’d found it made Shona angry to hear about the things that she had that Shona didn’t—even a cross housekeeper and an uncle who was never home.


  Chapter 2

  Waverley Station

  That Friday afternoon two letters arrived from Uncle Fergus, one addressed to Mrs. Kilpatrick and one to Marjorie. It was quite unusual for Uncle Fergus to write to her, and when she opened the letter, she found it wasn’t even from Uncle Fergus, but from his secretary. She read it twice through before she took it in, and then she read the main part of the letter a third time.

  “With the war situation so serious, your Uncle Fergus wrote to his cousin and her husband who live near Toronto, in Canada, and has heard from them that they are willing to have you go out there. It will be safer for you, and more exciting than evacuating you to the country here. Fortunately, we have been able to make arrangements for you to travel with a group taking a train from Edinburgh to Glasgow on Monday, September 25, and then sailing from Glasgow to Montreal, where his cousin will meet you. I have written to Mrs. Kilpatrick giving her all the details, and she will see to everything. It will be a great relief to your uncle to know that you are safe.”

  Marjorie crumpled up the letter and threw it in the direction of the fireplace. What right had Uncle Fergus to make all these plans without thinking about how she might feel—sending her off to Canada to get her out of the way—and not even bothering to write to her himself!

  She brushed aside angry tears and went storming through to the kitchen to confront Mrs. Kilpatrick.

  “I’m not going! I’m not going!” she shouted.

  “Of course you are,” Mrs. Kilpatrick said placidly. “And lucky you are to get away from all this. Who knows where we’ll all end up.”

  “But I don’t want to go! I don’t want to stay with people I don’t know.”

  “Your uncle’s cousin has children, and they’ll be company for you,” Mrs. Kilpatrick answered. “It’ll be good for you to live in a family with children.”

  “But I don’t want to go on a boat,” Marjorie said with another burst of tears. “I get sick on boats.”

  Marjorie had been miserably frightened and seasick the time Uncle Fergus had taken her to France, and that had only been a few hours on the English Channel. This would be days on the Atlantic. And although Marjorie had mostly closed her ears to talk of the war, she did know that there might be Germans out on the Atlantic waiting to sink the boat. Somewhere in the back of her mind was the memory of the day that her parents’ sailboat had overturned and the currents had swept them out to sea. She tried to forget that day, but it came back to her in her dreams and she herself would be struggling in the sea, unable to swim, and awaken to find herself in a tangle of blankets in her bed. The idea of spending days and nights on a boat—actually sleeping on a boat—terrified her.