Searching for Shona (2 page)

“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.

“Please don’t make me go!” Marjorie begged. “I’ll be safe here. Other children don’t have to go to Canada. They get to stay here—I saw a picture in the paper of children from London going to the country.”

“They’re just not so lucky as you. Not everyone has cousins in Canada who’ll give them a home,” said Mrs. Kilpatrick. She was not an imaginative woman. Ignoring Marjorie’s panic, she set about packing in her usual methodical way.

“Your Uncle didn’t give us much warning,” she complained. “Here it is Friday, and he expects me to have everything ready by Monday. It’s lucky you have a passport, because you’ll need that.”

She found Marjorie’s passport in the desk drawer and said, “Dear me! I hope they believe this is you at the customs office. You’ve really changed in the last two years.”

Marjorie looked at the small, nondescript unsmiling face staring back from the picture. It was a poor picture, slightly blurred, and her hair was short instead of in braids as she wore it now. It occurred to Marjorie that the customs officer might not let her pass, thinking she was traveling on someone else’s passport. For a moment, she felt hopeful, but the decided it was unlikely he’d hold up the whole group over one blurry picture.

And then a new worry plagued her. Suppose she arrived in Canada and there was no one to meet her. She didn’t know Uncle Fergus’s cousin, and the cousin didn’t know her. There would be hundreds of children on the boat. How were they going to find one another? Suppose this cousin didn’t really want her to come and didn’t even bother to meet the boat ….

During the day, Marjorie knew her fears were exaggerated yet at night they invaded her dreams. She tossed and turned, afraid to sleep and unable to stay awake. The nights were long and restless, but the days went by all too fast.

On the morning of Monday, September 25, Mrs. Kilpatrick took Marjorie and her luggage by taxi to Waverley Station. The station was the scene of utter chaos. Several different schools were being evacuated, not to Canada like Marjorie, but to small towns in the south of Scotland. Mrs. Kilpatrick gave Marjorie into the care of a tall, severe lady, who checked various lists and tickets and finally pinned an armband to Marjorie’s coat and told her to wait beside a pile of luggage. A number of other somber-looking children and their tearful parents stood there, waiting until it was time to board the train.

Mrs. Kilpatrick hung around looking uncertain. She felt she should wait to see Marjorie on her way, but Marjorie was so sullen and unhappy that they had nothing to say to one another. It was hard to tell how long the wait would be. Mrs. Kilpatrick’s bunions were beginning to hurt and she longed for a cup of tea.

“Do you want me to stay, my dear?” she asked.

“I don’t care,” Marjorie answered with a shrug.

“Well, I’ll be running along then.” Mrs. Kilpatrick fumbled in her handbag and pulled out half a crown and gave it to Marjorie. “Here, my dear! But don’t spend it on sweeties before you get on the boat. They might make you sick.”

It was an unnecessary remark because Marjorie was feeling sick already. She accepted the money ungraciously and watched Mrs. Kilpatrick walk away without any show of emotion. Then, suddenly, Marjorie wanted to call her back. She didn’t want to be left completely alone among all these strangers. But Mrs. Kilpatrick was swallowed up by another tide of children who came tumbling down the long flight of stairs leading to the station. They carried their belongings in small suitcases and paper carrier bags, and they all had gas masks slung across their shoulders so that, at a glance, they looked like tourists with cameras.

One of the children waved to Marjorie, and she found herself again face to face with Shona.

“Where are you goin’?” Shona asked, setting down the small cardboard suitcase she was carrying. She wore her name, SHONA McINNES, on a large label pinned to her coat.

“Canada,” Marjorie said mournfully.

“Ooh! Aren’t you lucky!” Shona said. “Are all these people going too?”

“Just the children,” Marjorie answered. “But I don’t know any of them. Where are you going?”

“Our school’s being sent to some place in the country. They haven’t told us where. I wish
I
was going to Canada, though. Do you go in a boat?”

Marjorie nodded unhappily. “I’d rather be you, just going to the country.”

“Pity we couldn’t change places, then,” Shona said with a laugh.

The rest of the Preston Primary children had moved down the platform and were gathered around three harassed teachers, but there were so many children in the station that it was hard to say where one group started and another left off. As Marjorie watched them all wandering about, an idea began to grow in her mind—a wild, exciting, impossible idea.

“I’d better go,” Shona said, reaching for her battered suitcase. “I don’t suppose we’ll see each other for a while, but I’ll look for you in the park when this old war’s over.”

“Just a minute,” Marjorie said breathlessly. “Why don’t you go to Canada instead of me? They wouldn’t know.”

“But don’t you need papers and things?”

“Just a passport, and mine’s two years old. I had short hair then. The picture’s about as much like you as it is like me.”

“But what would
you
do?” Shona asked.

“I’ll go to the country in place of you. By the time they notice, it’ll be too late to do anything.”

“But they’d spot you right away,” Shona said looking at Marjorie’s green coat. It wasn’t the kind of coat children attending Preston Primary wore—too new and stylish for that.

“Not if I wore your clothes,” Marjorie said. “I could keep out of the way of the teachers. Would the other girls notice? Would they tell?”

Shona looked at Marjorie and a smile spread over her face. It really might work! And how she would like to wear that coat!

“Let’s go to the ladies’ room and swap clothes,” Shona said, speaking quickly in case Marjorie should change her mind.

The woman in charge was still busy with lists and tickets. Shona and Marjorie dodged behind the pile of luggage and ran to the crowded waiting room. A few minutes later, inside a rest room, they quickly undressed right down to their underwear and changed clothes. Shona’s gray skirt and woolen jersey fit Marjorie quite well, but the short red coat was even shorter and tighter on Marjorie than it had been on Shona. Shona wriggled around, trying to see herself in Marjorie’s pale green dress and black patent shoes.

“Where are the rest of your things?” Shona asked.

“In the pile of luggage where I was standing. They’re labeled. You’ll find them all right. And the woman’s got my passport. Just don’t forget your name! Do I look all right?”

“Except for the pigtails,” Shona said, looking at her anxiously. “They’re a dead giveaway. Nobody at school has pigtails and all the girls from St. Anne’s have short hair. Matron cuts it herself and always makes a mess of it.”

Marjorie searched in her shoulder bag and found the red manicure set that Mrs. Kilpatrick had given her on her last birthday. Taking out the small nail scissors, she held one braid in her left hand and chopped her way through it, and then she did the same with the other braid. Even Matron, who didn’t have high standards when it came to hairdressing, would have been shocked by Marjorie’s ragged hair. But there was no mirror, and Marjorie simply pulled Shona’s beret firmly down onto her head. Someone was hammering at the door. There was no more time.

“You’d better take this,” Marjorie said, handing Shona the shoulder bag.

“And you’d better have my gas mask. It’s got my name on it.”

Marjorie reluctantly accepted the square cardboard box that contained the ugly, rubber mask and was immediately beset by doubts. She couldn’t possibly pass herself off as Shona. And did she really want to? Did she want to be one of the children from Preston Primary School heading for some unknown town to stay with unknown people? Surely, she would have been better off going to Canada where there were no gas masks, no blackout, no threat of bombs, no war.