Searching for Shona

by Margaret J. Anderson

  When she got there, she paused at the gate and then stared in astonishment. She was looking at the Clairmont House of the picture. The gates hung open, bent and rusted, and the huge stone gateposts leaned at drunken angles. They must have been hit many times by carelessly driven army lorries. The stone ball from the top of one pillar lay on the grass. It was just a stone ball, not a skull, but she thought that perhaps if the shadows were different, the chips might look like eye sockets. The grass was long, the flower borders overgrown with rank weeds, and the shrubbery an impenetrable jungle of branches and nettles. The house looked empty and forbidding. One upstairs window was broken and in another the glass had been replaced with raw boards.

  How could Robert McInnes have known when he painted the picture that it would one day look like this? It was as if he had been able to see the future, as if he had stepped outside time….

  The thought overwhelmed her, and she decided she wasn’t going to go inside the house after all. She would go home. As she turned to go, Dr. Knight’s car drew up beside her.

  “The Miss Campbells tell me you want to be a doctor, Shona,” he said, his friendly eyes twinkling behind his thick-lensed glasses. He was a bewhiskered old man now, and Marjorie was fond of him.

  “I leave for Edinburgh next week,” she said.

  “A first rate place to study,” he told her. “I went there myself. But what are you doing here?”

  “I was just out for a walk. Anna and I used to play here.”

  “A friend of mine is thinking of buying this house for an old peoples’ home and he wanted me to look it over,” Dr. Knight said. “I’m sure it’s hopeless—all these drafty rooms and stairs—but would you like to come inside with me and have a look around?”

  “Oh, yes!” Marjorie said eagerly.

  Dr. Knight had a key so, for the first time, Marjorie entered by the front door. They went through the house, and Dr. Knight sighed and shook his head as he went into each room. The floors were scarred from hobnailed boots, the woodwork burned with discarded cigarettes, and the whole place was in a sad state of dirt and confusion.

  “We may as well go, Shona. This place will never be suitable. Goodness knows what will become of it.”

  “There’s one more room we haven’t seen,”Marjorie said shyly. “The little playroom in the turret.”

  “How do you know about that?”

  “Anna and I went in there a couple of times—before the soldiers took over.”

  As they walked through the hall and up the stairs, she told him about Anna’s running away and about the day the soldiers nearly caught them.

  “You two young girls must have led the Miss Campbells quite a dance,” Dr. Knight said, his eyes twinkling again.

  “I’m afraid we did,” Marjorie said.

  They had reached the turret room, and Marjorie pushed the door open eagerly only to find that the room was practically bare. She gazed around, overcome with anger and disappointment. The empty cupboard, the carpet, and the curtains were still there, but the little desk and chair, the couch, the toys and books were all gone. And there was no sign of the diary.

  “You should have seen it. It was such a perfect little room,” Marjorie said, her eyes brimming with tears.

  “The war destroyed a lot of things, Shona,” Dr. Knight said soberly. “But sometimes I think some good things came out of the war, too. Look how much you and Anna have done for Agnes and Morag Campbell.”

  “What do you mean?” Marjorie asked. “The Miss Campbells have done everything for us, not the other way around.”

  “Not at all,” said Dr. Knight. “You girls brought a whole new interest into their lives. Before you came they were two fussy, self-centered, middle-aged ladies. They were always coming to see me with odd ailments—most of them imaginary. After you two came I’ve scarcely seen them. More girls like you scattered around and my practice wouldn’t be worth a darn!”

  “You wouldn’t say things like that—not if you really knew me!” Marjorie burst out. “You see I’m not Shona McInnes. I’ve been cheating everyone all these years.”

  Dr. Knight looked surprised but said nothing as Marjorie launched into the long story of her deception. When she finished, Dr. Knight crossed the room to the window seat and sat down, patting the seat beside hem. “Sit down here, my dear,” he said. “We’ll take all that over again—slowly”

  Dr. Knight listened to the story once again, shaking his head from time to time.

  “And you’ve never heard a word from this Marjorie whoever?” he asked. “Not even now with the war over?”

  “I don’t see how she’d know where to write,” Marjorie answered.

  “I expect she could find you through the orphanage records if she wanted to. But why should she want to?”

  “So she could be herself again, I suppose,” Marjorie said slowly. “I was the one who suggested it, you know. And what will happen to me when they discover I took all the exams under the wrong name when I really do have money?”

  “It seems that the other girl has the money,” Dr. Knight said. “What I want to know is, do you want to change back? Do you want to find your Uncle Fergus again?”

  Marjorie shook her head. “I think of the Miss Campbells and Anna as my family now. And I really do want to be a doctor, and that’s not the sort of thing Uncle Fergus would want for his niece. His friend’s daughters went to boarding schools and finishing schools, though I suppose the war has ended some of that. I do want to be something useful, Dr. Knight, and I’m so worried about what will happen when people find out.”

  “You leave it to me,” Dr. Knight answered. “I’ll vouch for your character. But, you know, I think that when you go to Edinburgh you’ve got to try and find this Marjorie person. For your own sake and for hers. You should both face up to what you did, though as I see it, that’s for the two of you to work out. Now, let’s get along home. It’s almost time for evening surgery.”

  Chapter 13

  Willowbrae Road

  The Miss Campbells and Anna had come with Marjorie to Canonbie Station to see her off on the Edinburgh train. As she looked at these people who had become her family, she had a sudden flashback to timid little Anna Ray in the railway station six years earlier and the fussy, identical twin sisters who had taken them in. How they had all changed, she thought. They hadn’t just grown six years older. They had become different people, and that was partly because they had known each other. She must be different, too.

  A boy, who had been in Anna’s class at school and now worked for the railway, shouted something to Anna, and she grinned at him, tossing back her dark, shoulder-length hair. She was now a pretty girl, and although she was still quiet, she wasn’t as shy as she used to be.

  The Miss Campbells were both wearing their tweed coats, but they no longer dressed exactly alike. That dated back to the day Anna burned Miss Agnes’s best silk dress. Today, Miss Morag was wearing a green felt hat and Miss Agnes had a bright scarf knotted around her head. Wisps of hair struggled out from under it, and she looked younger than her sister as she handed Marjorie a small package.

  “Just something to nibble on in the train, my dear,” she said, and then looked as if she was going to break down and cry.

  “It won’t be long until Christmas,” Miss Morag said firmly. “Just think how much Shona will have to tell us when she comes home.”

  Marjorie turned away and stared down the track. In the distance she could see a puff of smoke. The train was coming, and neither the Miss Campbells nor Anna could possibly have guessed the depth of Marjorie’s feelings as she watched the train approaching along the straight stretch of track.

  It was coming to take the Shona McInnes they had known back to Edinburgh, where her new life had started six years before. She had the frightened feeling that nothing would ever be the same again. Suddenly she wanted to stay safe in Canonbie, hidden away from the real Shona.

  But the train came on, whistling and thundering, and screeched to a hal
t.

  “All aboard for Edinburgh!”shouted the porter, as doors banged open and shut.

  The Miss Campbells eagerly helped Marjorie lift her heavy suitcase into the train—so much bigger than the little cardboard case she’d carried six years ago. Inside was the picture, the thread that tied her to Shona McInnes.

  For the first few days in Edinburgh Marjorie was so busy that she found it easy to tell herself there was no time to go anywhere near Willowbrae Road. She was living in a student hostel and busied herself with registration and buying books and finding her way to lectures. But every time she wrote the name, Shona McInnes—as she did repeatedly during these first few days on forms, on registration cards, in her new text books—the uncertain feeling of not quite knowing who she was, came nagging back.

  On Saturday morning Marjorie lingered over breakfast, then tidied her room and wrote a long letter to the Miss Campbells. At last, knowing she couldn’t put it off any longer, she pulled on her coat and went out.

  It was a bright, clear day, but there was a cold wind from the east. Marjorie turned up the collar of her coat and shoved her hands into her pockets, as she stood waiting for a Number Eight tram car to Portobello. When the tram came, she climbed inside and took a seat next the window. Could she still find her way back to the house on Willowbrae Road? Beyond that, she dared not think.

  The tram car rattled around a curve, and she recognized the church ahead of her, its stone walls stained black with age. How many times had she and Mrs. Kilpatrick got off the tram just here on their way back from shopping on Princes Street, she wondered. She rose from her seat as in a dream, stepped down from the tram, walked past the shops, and then turned up the long hill that led to Willowbrae Road.

  She counted off the houses, her heart beating uncomfortably loud, and then found herself standing in front of her own familiar house. The curtains were closed and a feeling of relief swept through her because she was sure the house was empty. Just the same, she pushed open the wrought-iron gate and walked up the path and rang the bell. No one answered.

  Marjorie walked slowly away from the house toward the narrow gate that led to Holyrood Park. She followed the road through the park to the little pond where the orphanage children used to play. A group of children were feeding the ducks, and Marjorie half expected to see a small, fair-haired girl in a faded, red coat among them.

  She sat down on a park bench. Inside her head she could hear her own anxious voice asking, “But how will we change back?” Shona had answered, “I’ll work that out. After the war—in Holyrood Park.” But it was more complicated now than just switching clothes. She looked down at her brown winter coat. The Miss Campbells had sacrificed some of their clothing coupons to help her buy a new coat for coming to Edinburgh. She couldn’t give that away!

  With a sigh, Marjorie got up and walked back to the tram stop. Somehow she had to contact Shona, and the only way she could think of was to start from the house on Willowbrae Road.

  She went back to the house two more times but it was still empty. The first time, Marjorie was relieved, but the next time she felt depressed. The uncertainty of the future was gnawing at her. It would soon be the end of term, and she felt she couldn’t go back to Canonbie and the Miss Campbells without making a greater effort to find Shona. There must be something she could do.

  One Saturday in December, she decided to try the house once more, but at the last minute she took a tram to Princes Street instead. The shops were very crowded, and on a sudden impulse, looking for somewhere quiet, she turned into a small art gallery just off Princes Street. There was a showing of paintings by war artists in one room, which didn’t greatly interest her, but nevertheless, she went in and looked casually at the stark and awful paintings.

  Suddenly her attention was riveted to the work of one artist. The first painting was of a plane, wrecked in a desert. Pieces of distorted metal lay half buried in the sand. One piece, bent and twisted, cast a shadow like a swastika, and another—a huge lump of metal—was highlighted so that it looked like a skull. Marjorie walked toward the painting to examine it more closely and peering at the right-hand corner saw, as she had been sure she would, the small letters, “R.M.”

  There were several other paintings signed “R.M.” One was of pipes, twisted together, a meaningless thing. She turned away and went back out to the reception desk and asked an old man if he could tell her the names of the artists in the war pictures exhibit.

  “Didn’t ye get a paper as ye went in, lass?” he asked her. “It tells a bit about each o’ them.”

  Marjorie snatched the paper from his hand and ran her eye down the sheet.

  There it was! Robert McInness. 1903-1943.

  This was followed by a brief biography: “Robert McInness was employed as a war artist to make sketches of enemy installations in places where photography was impossible. His sketches were of little use to the Government because he sacrificed accuracy for emotional impact. His paintings are, however, likely to have lasting value as a graphic interpretation of scenes of war. He was killed in active duty in November, 1943.”

  Paintings of lasting value. Here, at last, was something she could give to Shona. The father whom she had never known had left something so that people would remember him. Surely, through his paintings, Shona could find out about him for herself.

  Clutching the flimsy paper, Marjorie turned and walked out of the gallery and caught a tram toward Willowbrae Road. When she reached the house, she was, somehow, not surprised to see that today the curtains were open and the house looked lived in.

  She walked up to the door and rang the bell. She listened to the slow tread of answering footsteps. The door opened, and there stood Mrs. Kilpatrick looking at her stolidly.

  Marjorie stood there, waiting for the spate of words that would surely come when Mrs. Kilpatrick recognized her. Mrs. Kilpatrick looked so much the same to Marjorie that it seemed inconceivable that Mrs. Kilpatrick wouldn’t know her. But Marjorie was quite changed from the little pigtailed girl who had lived there six years ago, the girl who had worn tailored coats and black patent leather shoes. Marjorie’s winter coat was new but was, after all, just a plain, wartime coat. She wore flat brown shoes and thick lisle stockings. She’d grown tall, and her hair, now brown, was curled—somewhat limp and straggly curls on that raw December afternoon.

  When the silence became uncomfortably long, Mrs. Kilpatrick asked sharply, “Well. What can I do for you?”

  “Is Marjorie Malcolm-Scott here?” Marjorie asked. And added by way of explanation, “We used to be friends.”

  “She is here. She’s just back from Canada, you know. But I don’t remember her having friends in the old days.”

  “We played together—in the park,” Marjorie explained in a small voice.

  Mrs. Kilpatrick looked at Marjorie curiously for a minute and then said, rather grudgingly, “Come inside, and I’ll call her.”

  She led Marjorie into the Victorian sitting room, and Marjorie looked around. Everything in the room was just as she remembered it, even the seven ebony elephants arranged on the mantelpiece. It was all so familiar, yet all so strange.

  “What name shall I say?” Mrs. Kilpatrick asked.

  Marjorie gave a start and then said, “Shona McInnes. She’ll know who it is.”

  Mrs. Kilpatrick bustled out and came back in a few minutes.

  “She says she’ll be down. Please take a seat.”

  Marjorie sat down feeling dreadfully nervous.

  “How long has she been back?” she asked.

  “Just a week—and she’s not back to stay. Her Uncle Fergus wanted to see her, so she has come over for Christmas, but she plans to go back to her relatives in Canada. I can understand it. She’s more at home there.”

  “Her Uncle doesn’t mind?”

  “I think he was relieved at first that she had decided to live in Canada, but now, I don’t know. Such a smart and pretty girl she’s turned out. Her Uncle said he wouldn’t have recogn
ized her when he met her off the boat if she hadn’t sent us her photograph. She’s not the quiet, sulky little thing she used to be before the war.”

  Marjorie bristled at that and felt some of her nervousness leave her. The door opened and a tall, slim girl wearing a gray skirt, a pale blue twin set, and silk stockings stepped into the room. She tossed back her golden hair and said almost imperiously, “You can leave us, Mrs. Kilpatrick!” She spoke with a Canadian accent.

  Marjorie stood up and wondered how to begin, but Shona spoke first, saying, “Mrs. Kilpatrick says that your name is Shona McInnes. I’m afraid I don’t remember you.”

  She stared at Marjorie with a cold, calculating gleam in her blue eyes.

  “Of … of course, you do,” stammered Marjorie. “The day in Waverley Station when we changed places.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I’ve found out about your family,” Marjorie said nervously. “Look, if you don’t want to change back, it’s all right with me, but we’ve got to talk about it.”

  ”I’m afraid there’s nothing to talk about.”

  “Don’t you at least want to know about your mother and father? I was sent to Canonbie. I felt awful at first because you should have been one to go there, and you would have found Clairmont House for yourself. It would have meant more to you. The house in the picture, you know.”

  Marjorie knew she wasn’t putting it well, but Shona’s icy stare unnerved her.

  “I know all there is to know about my parents,” she said in a low, steady voice. “They were drowned in a yachting accident when I was five. I’m Marjorie Malcolm-Scott, and immediately after Christmas I’m going back to live with my cousins in Canada, and I doubt if I’ll ever come back here.”

  Then she added, very slowly, looking directly at Marjorie, “There’s no way you can change that.”