Searching for Shona Page 8
“Did she have brothers and sisters?” Marjorie asked, eager to find out all she could about the family in Clairmont House.
“There was a brother, John, who was about ten years older than her, but he was killed in the last war. Mr. Carruthers never got over that, they say, losing first his boy and then his wife. A terrible thing! And they said that would be the war to end all wars, and here we are at it again. There’s just no sense to it,” Mrs. Appleby said, shaking her head.
Marjorie wanted to get the conversation back to Jane, but there was a loud knock at the door, and Dr. Knight walked in. Seeing Anna sitting there, cheerfully drinking tea and eating the last scone, he didn’t waste much time examining her, but offered to take the girls home. He stopped in and talked to the Miss Campbells who were, of course, greatly agitated when they heard about Anna’s fall. They bustled around fixing supper for Dr. Knight and the girls. Marjorie and Anna ate with such hearty appetites that no one would have guessed that they had polished off a plate of scones at Escrigg Farm.
The next morning Marjorie said rather hesitantly to Anna, “I’m sorry you didn’t have much fun skating yesterday. Today I’ll stay with you more.”
“Will you really?” Anna asked eagerly.
“I promise.”
The Miss Campbells wanted Anna to stay home and rest, but Anna reassured them. “I won’t fall down today,” she promised. “Shona’s going to help me.”
When they reached the pond, several of the children, including Isobel, were already there. They crowded around Anna asking about her fall and respectfully feeling the bump on her head.
“We’d better see she doesn’t knock herself out again,” Isobel said to Marjorie. “You skate on one side of her and I’ll go on the other.”
Between them they led Anna out onto the ice, and Marjorie was pleased to find she was already steady enough on her skates to be able to help Anna, even when Anna wobbled. By the end of the morning, Anna was venturing out on her own and enjoying herself as much as the others.
The prolonged cold weather caused a lot of hardship, especially when food and fuel supplies began to run low. Farmers worried about their sheep and cattle, and blizzards disrupted the movement of the troop trains. But for Marjorie and Anna it was a happy time. They were no longer “them evacuees” but were now Canonbie children.
Chapter 10
The Diary
It was a great disappointment to both Marjorie and Anna to awaken one morning to the sound of rain beating against the window. Marjorie drew back the heavy curtain and stared out at the thick, gray clouds.
“I wish it could have stayed cold forever,” Anna said, joining her at the window.
“So do I,” Marjorie agreed. “But I suppose we would get tired of it.”
“I wouldn’t,” said Anna.
However, the best part of skating stayed with them. They now had friends at school. Marjorie asked Miss Campbell that morning at breakfast if she could bring Isobel home for tea.
“I suppose so,” Miss Campbell said. “But there won’t be anything fancy.”
Marjorie asked Isobel somewhat diffidently, but found that Isobel was eager to come.
“I think the Miss Campbells are ever so funny,” she said. “I’ve always wondered if they eat exactly the same things at the same time. ‘Shall we have marmalade on our toast this morning, Miss Campbell?’ ‘No, Miss Campbell, I think we should have honey today!’ And how do they decide what to wear? ‘Shall it be the pink or the blue knickers today?’”
Isobel doubled up with laughter at her own joke, but Marjorie wasn’t sure she liked Isobel making fun of the Miss Campbells like that. She was relieved that when Isobel came to tea she was very quiet, even shy.
After tea, when Isobel’s shyness was wearing off, Marjorie suggested they should go for a walk and they set off down the road. It was a drizzly, gray evening, but both girls were glad to be outside.
“Do you like it here better than at the orphanage?” Isobel asked. “I should think it would be a bit quiet for you with just the Miss Campbells and Anna after living with so many people.”
“It’s better here,” Marjorie said.
“Did they make you work hard at that place where you lived before—scrub floors and all that?”
“They had maids who did the scrubbing,” Marjorie said. “We went to school and played in the park just like other kids.”
Marjorie had sometimes thought about confiding in Isobel, but by now she had told so many falsehoods that it was almost as if she couldn’t disentangle the truth from the lies. Besides, Marjorie now had the comfortable feeling of being accepted as Shona McInnes, the Miss Campbells’ evacuee from St. Anne’s, and she didn’t want to change that. She was happier here than she had ever been at Willowbrae Road. She hadn’t managed to capture the bold self-confidence that she was sure Shona possessed, but she had left behind the uncertainty and loneliness that belonged to Marjorie. Even Anna no longer distinguished her from “the real Shona,” and she spoke to her as if they had shared past adventures in the orphanage.
When Marjorie and Isobel reached Clairmont House, they stopped and looked through the gate. Lately Marjorie had been so busy with skating that she hadn’t given much thought to finding out more about the Carruthers but seeing the house again brought back all her curiosity. She looked up at the turret windows half expecting to see the wistful face of Jane Carruthers peering out, but all the windows stared back blankly. Maybe she and Isobel, together, could discover something about the history of the house.
“I know a way to get in,” Marjorie said. “Anna and I have been inside.”
“Go on, Shona!” Isobel said, not believing her. “You didn’t dare do that!”
“We did, too!”
“I know I wouldn’t,” Isobel said. “That house is haunted.”
It was now Marjorie’s turn to be skeptical. “Who by?” she asked.
“Old Mr. Carruthers! He died last year. Right in that front room. You wouldn’t catch me going in there for anything.”
“Do you really believe in ghosts?” Marjorie asked.
“His ghost, I do,” Isobel answered. “Some of us kids used to sneak through the gate and try to cut across the lawn without him seeing us. But he’d always spot us from his window up there, and he’d shout and shake his fist. I bet his ghost is up there watching to see that we don’t do it again.”
“If you used to go into his garden when he lived in there, then surely you’re not frightened to go in now when there’s nobody about.”
Isobel shook her head. “I’m not going in.”
“Do you know anything about Mr. Carruthers? Or about his family?”
Again Isobel shook her head. “He never had a family.”
“He did so!”Marjorie insisted. “Mrs. Appleby said he had he had a son called John who was killed in the last war and a daughter, Jane, with golden curls.”
“Not that old man,” Isobel said positively. “I’ve never heard of him having children, and if he did they’d be grown-up. Why, I bet he was eighty years old!”
The girls turned and walked slowly home. Marjorie was disappointed that Isobel knew nothing more about the Carruthers. How was she ever going to find out how Shona had happened to own the painting of Clairmont House and what the connection was between her and the Carruthers family? She had tried asking Miss Morag, but that had reminded Morag of Anna’s running away and the burned dress, and they never got back to the subject of the Carruthers.
When they reached the Campbells’ house it was time for Isobel to leave and she politely thanked them for having her.
“A nice child,” Miss Morag pronounced. “You may ask her to come again.”
A few days later the top class took the Qualifying Exam. It all seemed very important as the desks were set up in the hall, spaced far apart. Marjorie was surprised to see Dr. Knight in the hall as well as Miss Dunlop and Mr. James, the headmaster.
“What’s Dr. Knight doing here?” Marjorie asked I
sobel. “Do they think we’re going to faint when we see the questions?”
Isobel giggled. “He’s here to see we don’t cheat,” she explained. “He always comes in for the Qualifying.”
Dr. Knight gave Marjorie a friendly wink as he passed out the papers. Then he sat down at the front of the hall and read a book, while chewing on his unlit pipe. The only sound in the hall was an occasional perplexed sigh and the shuffle of feet. When Billy Wallace dropped his pencil, all the children raised their heads from their work and watched him walk up to the front of the hall to sharpen it.
Marjorie rather enjoyed the exam, especially the arithmetic and the intelligence test. Miss Dunlop smiled at her encouragingly when she gathered in the papers and asked if she’d found it hard.
“Not too bad,” Marjorie said, and then she more or less forgot about it. Now that she was happier at Canonbie she wasn’t sure she wanted to be chosen to go to the Academy the following September. It would mean being the new girl all over again and having to make new friends.
It was now light later in the evenings. Anna and Marjorie often went out together, exploring the countryside. The hedgerows were beginning to turn green and delicate spring flowers were blooming in the woods.
“Let’s go and see Mrs. Appleby at Escrigg Farm,” Marjorie suggested, as they walked down the road together after school.
“I want to go to Clairmont House,” Anna said.
“Clairmont House! Do you still go there?” Marjorie asked in surprise.
“Sometimes,” Anna said. “There’s something I want to show you.”
“You shouldn’t be going in there,” Marjorie scolded. “Are you still playing with the toys?”
“I want you to read a book to me,” Anna answered.
“We’ve got books at home I can read to you.”
“Not like this book,” interrupted Anna. “This isn’t a real book. It’s just written in pencil. I think that girl Mrs. Appleby told us about wrote it—the girl who fell through the ice.”
“Jane Carruthers?”
“I saw ‘Jane’ in it, but most of it’s too hard to read.”
“Do you think it could be a diary?” Marjorie asked, really interested now.
Anna nodded.
The idea that they could, by themselves, find out something more about the people who had once lived in Clairmont House was enough to overcome any qualms Marjorie might have had about going into the house again. She wasn’t in the least frightened by Isobel’s suggestion that the house was haunted, but she did worry about being caught trespassing, though she couldn’t imagine who would care.
The garden looked more neglected now, with the first lush growth of the spring. Daffodils nodded among the weeds in a border under the window, and bluebells were growing in the long grass at the edge of the shrubbery.
They entered the house through the coal cellar as before. Once inside, Marjorie was uneasy, struck again by the size and the emptiness of the house. But when they reached the sanctuary of the little turret room, everything looked welcoming, just as it had when they first found it.
Anna ran over to the small cupboard, obviously quite familiar with its contents, and sorted through a pile of books. She brought out a small, buff-colored exercise book for Marjorie to read.
They sat together on the couch in front of the empty fireplace, and Marjorie opened the book. She saw that it was filled with neat, though childish, handwriting. She turned back to the first page and read, “Jane Carruthers, My Diary. January 1920. I have decided to write a journal, although nothing exciting ever happens.”
The first few pages of the diary seemed to confirm that, indeed, nothing exciting did happen to Jane. They were a catalogue of what Jane wore each day and what she ate. Mrs. Johnstone was mentioned once or twice, and Marjorie thought that she was, perhaps, a housekeeper or governess. Then, a few pages farther on, she came to an entry that made Marjorie and Anna feel they were reading about a real friend of theirs.
“January 31. Escrigg Pond is frozen over and I want so badly to try out my new skates. Mrs. Johnstone says I can’t go today and, of course, I can’t go tomorrow because it’s Sunday. By Monday, who knows, the ice may be gone. But I have a plan. I’m going to slip out this evening. What an adventure!!”
The next entry on February 4, read: “The adventure didn’t turn out at all well. I was no sooner on the ice then—crack!—I went right through. The water was very cold and I was sure I was going to drown. Someone from Escrigg Farm heard me screaming and rescued me and took me to the farm. Mrs. Appleby was very kind and wrapped me up in a blanket and made me tea and hot scones.”
“Just like she did for me!” Anna said, her face shining. Mrs. Appleby’s kindness seemed to forge a link between the girls.
“Let me read more,” Marjorie said.
“Mrs. Appleby is Becky the maid’s mother. It was nice at the farmhouse but it stopped being nice when Mrs. Johnstone arrived in a rage. She wasn’t a bit sorry that I’d nearly drowned and told Papa and he was in a rage, too. Now I have a cold and have to stay in the playroom all the time and they say it serves me right. I wish I had drowned, then they’d be sorry.”
“Poor Jane!” Anna said. “They were horrid to her.”
“Listen to this,” Marjorie said, reading another entry. “Becky stayed and played with me today. We played dominoes and I won. Then I taught her to play Ludo and she won that. Games are no fun if there is no one to play with. I hope she comes again soon.”
Marjorie laid down the diary and went over to the toy cupboard. She found a box of dominoes, yellow ivory ones with black dots.
“Here’s the Ludo board, too. Isn’t it strange to think that these are the toys’ she’s writing about?”
“I wish she could play with us,” Anna said.
“I think she would have liked that. She sounds rather lonely. But she’ll be grown up by now. This was written twenty years ago.”
“Read some more,” Anna said.
“There isn’t much more. I suppose she got tired of keeping a diary. I usually do. But here’s something about Becky again.”
“May 14. I was hiding in the loft above the stable spying on Danny the groom, when Becky came in. She and Danny whispered together and I jumped down out of the loft and scared them out of their wits! Becky was so angry she says she’ll never come up and play with me again. I hope she doesn’t mean it.”
Marjorie turned to another page in the diary, which was written in June. “Becky and Danny are going to be married so she won’t work here any more. I wish I were old enough to get married and move away from here. Mrs. Johnstone was angry today because I tore my white dress — the one with the lace on the bodice and pink flowers — and she locked me in the playroom with no supper.”
Anna had climbed onto the window seat and was looking out. Suddenly she stiffened, and when she turned around her face was white and her eyes were huge.
“There’s soldiers down there! Soldiers with guns! They’re coming to look for us!”
Marjorie jumped up beside her and saw that Anna was right. There were soldiers — everywhere. Several army lorries were parked in the driveway, and dozens of soldiers were jumping out the backs of them and throwing out rifles and duffle bags. Some of them were already approaching the front door.
Anna and Marjorie, confused by the sudden appearance of the soldiers, imagined that somehow the dreaded German army had come. All the awful things they had heard about the Germans, whispered from child to child in the school playground and then pushed to the backs of their minds, suddenly confronted them. Dropping the diary, Marjorie wrenched open the door and hurtled down the spiral staircase with Anna behind her.
Soldiers were already swarming through the front door into the main hall. Great big men in khaki uniforms with rifles and huge boots — the giants the house had been waiting for.
“The back stairs,” Marjorie said breathlessly. “We can get down the back stairs to the kitchen without them seeing us.”
They ran across the cobbled courtyard and made for the shrubbery. There, under the cover of the thick bushes, they crept toward the gate. Underfoot grew wild garlic, its smell so pungent that Marjorie was afraid it would attract the attention of the soldiers. For a long time afterwards, the smell of wild garlic always brought back something of the panic she had experienced that day.
They managed to duck out the open gate unnoticed, and were walking along the road when Anna asked in small voice, “Were they looking for us? Would they have shot us?”
Marjorie, calmer now that they had reached the safety of the road, said in a rather superior voice, “Of course not! They were British soldiers, you know. They might have been angry with us for being there, but they wouldn’t have shot us.”
“What are they doing in the house?”
“Maybe the Miss Campbells will know,” Marjorie suggested. “We’ll ask them, but don’t you say anything. Let me do the talking.”
Chapter 11
Jane’s Story
After the table had been cleared, the Miss Campbells and Marjorie and Anna sat around the fire, each with their knitting. Marjorie was making a scarf and she wished for the hundredth time that soldiers didn’t have to wear that awful khaki color. She was sure her knitting would go faster in some other color. Why not patriotic scarves of red, white, and blue?
Anna was still knitting squares for the blanket, except that they were never quite square, because if she stopped in the middle of a row she couldn’t figure out which direction she should be going. Even without stopping, she sometimes managed to change direction.