The Postcard (2 page)

She nodded curtly and fled down the steps into the bustle of the busy traffic and the bright afternoon, heading straight back to the Music School to shove the box in her locker, where it stayed
for a week until all the formalities of her future studies were confirmed and she took it home.

The box stayed unopened for another week. She just couldn’t face what might be inside. One evening, however, curiosity got the better of her, so armed with a bottle of Shiraz and a large
block of milk chocolate, she carried it to her father’s flat in his apartment block. It was all black leather sofas and glass, the sort of soulless place she’d hate to live in. Now it
felt emptier than ever.

This was a private wake between the two of them. She poured herself a large glass of the wine before she sank down to open the letter addressed to her. Her heart lurched to see that familiar
scrawl. From out of the envelope a postcard fell to the floor. She picked it up. It had an old British stamp with a King and Queen’s head on it and it was addressed to ‘Master Desmond
Lloyd-Jones c/o Mrs Kane, Ruby Creek, South Australia’.

Opposite, the message read: ‘TO DARLING DESMOND . . . from Mummy with lots of love’.

She flipped over to the picture, a sepia-tinted photograph of some village by a lake.

She picked up his letter with trembling fingers.

The room swam around Mel as the tears flowed for all the misunderstandings and arguments they’d had in the past. Now she was completely alone.

Eventually, she gathered herself to see what else the box contained. At the bottom were swimming badges, snapshots, a postcard of some old-fashioned lady in a cartwheel hat smiling up at her,
and a medal, its ribbon faded, its inscription in a foreign language.

For one angry moment, she wanted to ditch the whole box of tricks into the bin. What had all this junk got to do with her? Why should she burden her new life in London with a search for mystery
ancestors? She knew in her heart, however, that she could not let her father down.

Perhaps fate was taking her to England for a reason.

When they being the beguine

It brings back the sound of music so tender

It brings back the night of tropical splendour

It brings back a memory evergreen.

Caroline came tearing through the wood down the path from the walled garden of Dalradnor Lodge, bent and holding her bleeding knee from climbing the Witch’s Broomstick,
which Niven Laird said was made by the devil. She knew it was only an old bent branch covered in knots but it had skelped her just the same, and that hurt. She didn’t want the twins to see
her crying so she shot off home so Marthe would make it better. And she was starving.

It was mid-September and the brambles were fat and juicy so the kitchen was filled with jammy smells as Mrs Ibell filled the old Dundee marmalade jars with ruby jelly. This was no time to stop
to collect acorns and beechnuts or look for hazelnuts and wild mushrooms, however, with her hurt knee.

She ran into the hall and almost bumped into a man in tweed jacket and knickerbockers, who was standing admiring the pictures on the wall by the staircase. He turned at the sight of her in her
kilt and grubby socks, her thick Fair Isle jumper, splattered with sticky burrs, with a hole in its sleeve.

‘Now who is this wearing the clan tartan?’ he said, eyeing her with interest.

Just at that moment Mrs Ibell hurried in to greet him. ‘Mercy me, look at the state of yon bairn. Whatever will Sir Lionel think? Miss Phoebe’s niece is such a
harum-scarum.’

‘I can see that,’ he smiled . ‘How old will she be now . . . six tomorrow, by my reckoning?’

‘Seven,’ Caroline snapped back. ‘Sir.’ She remembered her manners just in time. Fancy this old man knowing when her birthday was. Perhaps he’d come to bring a
present, though she had never seen him before. She hung back shyly, seeing him examining her closely.

‘Tall for her age, wouldn’t you say? Looks like a tomboy to me,’ he laughed.

‘You can say that again. Never out of the wood – or the mud. Her aunty always brings dresses from London, but to get them on her . . . well, you’ll no’ be wanting to hear
all this. It’s good tae see you back for the Season. How are the family?’

He turned to the housekeeper. ‘Just the same as ever. My wife’s never got over Arthur’s loss and it’s hard on his sister, Verity. So few of her old friends made it back
but I’m glad to see Dalradnor looking like in the old days. Nothing like children’s banter to breathe life into a place. The child looks at home here. You say she’s Phoebe’s
niece . . . Caroline?’ He was staring at her again.

‘Callie. I’m Callie, and my knee hurts,’ she replied, pointing to her bloody knee.

‘I wonder there’s any skin left on those knees,’ said Mrs Ibell. ‘Away upstairs and Marthe will clean you up out of those dirty things.’ Callie reluctantly did as
she was told and Mrs Ibell turned back to the visitor. ‘It’s good to see you again, Sir Lionel. You’ve been away awful long. If only things had been different for young Arthur and
his bride . . . You’re welcome to stay for supper. I’ve no idea what time Miss Phoebe will arrive from Glasgow.’

‘Thank you, but I’ll be on my way; just wanted a wee peep at the place for
auld lang syne.
I see your hand is still at the tiller, Nan.’

‘I have tae admit to liking wee ones round the place. She’s a bright lassie and Marthe, the nursemaid, is good with her considering she’s a foreigner. Miss Phoebe is always
busy down in London.’

‘I’d thought she’d give that up,’ he said.

Callie was listening from the top of the stairs, ready to chip in. ‘Aunt Phee’s going into filums and she’s going to take us all to the picture house in Glasgow for my birthday
Have you brought me a birthday present?’

‘Caroline!’ spluttered Mrs Ibell, but the old gentleman just laughed.

‘If you don’t ask you don’t get,’ he said, looking up at her. ‘I’ll see what I can find, young lady.

‘In my day it was if you ask, you
don’t
get,’ said the housekeeper, folding her arms across her chest. ‘Away you go and do as you’re told or there’ll
be no birthday for you at all. I do apologize for that wee madam.’

Callie shot up to her bedroom to find Marthe sitting in the rocking chair, mending her torn school shirt.

She’d never known a time when Marthe wasn’t there helping her dress, making sure she had a clean liberty bodice, darned stockings, a handkerchief in her knicker pocket for school,
telling her stories when she couldn’t sleep. Marthe, Nan Ibell and Tam in the garden were her world, Nairn and Niven her best friends, and the only bad thing in her life was that she was a
girl not a boy.

Marthe bathed Callie’s bleeding knee with such tenderness it no longer hurt, wrapped a bandage around it, washed her all over and put her to bed. ‘Time for your nap. You can stay up
late if you sleep now until Miss Phoebe arrives.’

Callie was too excited to sleep. When Aunt Phoebe came to stay, there were always presents to open – new picture books and sweeties in pretty boxes – and lots of news to tell. Mrs
Ibell baked fresh scones with raspberry jam and cream, sponge cake and steak pie. The table in the dining room was already laid out with a lace cloth and silver cutlery and pretty china cups and
saucers. Aunt Phoebe was coming for her birthday, as she always did, and Callie was on holiday from school at Miss Cameron’s Academy so there would be lots of lovely days to plan. Tomorrow
morning they would go on the train into town, as promised in Aunt Phee’s postcard.

Marthe and Nan were her daily bread but Aunt Phee was like iced buns: a special treat, for best only. There was so much to tell her about the owls’ nest in the wood, the special flowers
she’d pressed, the songs from Belgium that Marthe taught her, the new stitches she was learning at school and how she could write her name neatly in a straight line.

On her wall she had a special book with all the postcards Aunt Phee had sent from faraway places: Biarritz, Paris, Malta before the Great War ended and the church bells rang out in Dalradnor
village. There was the Tower of London and a place called Le Havre, after which Aunt Phee had appeared, sunburned, with dolls in costumes – stripy skirts and lace hats – for her display
cabinet. They weren’t dolls you played with, not that Callie played with dolls. She had a stuffed donkey with a real leather saddle, a real pair of Dutch clogs and a necklace of shiny blue
beads.

None of her friends at Miss Cameron’s had such a famous aunt who acted on the stage and wore beautiful gowns, furs and hats. She knew this was Miss Faye’s home and that her own
parents had died before she was born so she must be grateful that this was her home too. Miss Faye had served her country helping soldiers in their time of need, Marthe said, but there was no war
now, just a big cross in the village square with names carved in gold, names she could almost read. She was slow with her letters but she could name all the flowers in the walled garden and woods,
the birds in the trees. Tam had taught her to recognize their songs. She knew where there were tadpoles and frogspawn in spring, where the blackbird had nested. Marthe would take her to the loch
and they had picnics on the pebbled beach: game pie, sandwiches and chunks of fruitcake, with a Thermos of piping hot tea.

Callie hated being stuck indoors when it rained but when it snowed in the winter it was a wonderland of snowball fights, snowmen building and sledging down the brae. Sometimes she helped in the
big kitchen with Nan and the maid, Effie Drummond, who was full of tales about kelpies and scary ghosts in the mist. Callie was allowed to lick the baking bowl and cut out pastry tarts or draw with
crayons in colouring books, but today she must shut her eyes and pretend to sleep so Marthe would leave the Nursery in the attic, with its barred windows and coal fire with the brass guard rail
round it, and let Mr Dapple, the rocking horse, guard the door, which was always left ajar just in case she was frightened in the night.

Callie loved her bedroom, with the brass bedstead and patchwork counterpane. She had her own dressing table with drawers scented with sprigs of lavender in which dresses were layered in tissue
paper. Most of the time she wore a bottle-green school uniform, gymslip and gold-striped shirt with a green cardigan piped with gold, and thick green itchy three-quarter socks and a big green felt
hat with the school hatband. She couldn’t wait to change back into her kilt, handmade in her very own tartan, red with green and blue plaid, belonging to the Clan Ross. Aunt Phee had told her
that Rosslyn was her second name, so she could wear the tartan. It came from Lawrie’s the kiltmakers in Glasgow.

If only she could wear nothing but a kilt and jumper she could race along with the twins like a boy and not a sissy smothered in the smocked dress with white socks and sandals that she must wear
on Sundays. She’d begged for bobbed hair like Aunt Phee, but Marthe said she mustn’t have her hair cut before she was twelve. It was bad luck, she warned, tugging Callie’s thick
hair into ropes before school every morning.