Losing My Identity Page 9

  ‘I’ve been collecting these for ages.’ But only moved them to this house after Greer died. She’d have sneered, and said they weren’t art.

  ‘I’m a real newbie. Just in the past couple of years.’ He clocked her expression of disbelief. ‘I didn’t have the chance before. Some people see it as yet more junk to dust.’

  ‘Ah, dust! That’s why I had the cabinets made.’

  ‘That’s a great idea. I should do the same.’

  ‘My friend says it looks like a museum.’

  ‘There are worse things! Why birds? Not that they’re not beautiful.’

  ‘I’m not sure. I’ve always loved glass, the way it’s solid and transparent at the same time.’ Possibly a bit the same as you, Hari Gill. She opened one of the cabinets, took out an eider duck and handed it to him.

  He grinned broadly. ‘That’s what I like about it too. The heft of a quite small object in the hand is very satisfying. You picked these up from here and there, I take it? I mean, you didn’t buy them as a collection?’ He placed the bird carefully back in its place.

  ‘I started with one or two I found in auctions – I love going to auctions, by the way. Then I got hooked. I appreciate the way they don’t look like real birds, more like an interpretation of what “bird” is?’

  Hari moved back to study the sunset painting again.

  Leila pressed her nails into her palms. ‘I’m going to the cottage next weekend – would you like to come? If you can get away, that is. It’s in a very quiet spot, right beside Loch Fyne, with its own little beach.’

  He hesitated only for a split second. ‘I’d love that. I’m sure I can arrange a sitter for the beasts.’

  ‘Can’t you bring them? If that pen you have for them folds up?’

  Her reward was a radiant smile. ‘That’d be perfect. Yes, it does fold. If you’re sure you don’t object to them as house-guests.’

  ‘I don’t object at all. Mind you, I need to do a bit of maintenance on the place while I’m there. If I don’t get on top of the garden at this time of year, it gets away from me. Bring some old clothes with you, if you like, and you can help?’

  That night, he kissed her on the cheek as he left.

  Hari’s comments about the women in the portrait and the watercolour preyed on Leila’s mind. She had found the smaller painting a matter of months before, when one that had hung in the hall ever since she could remember fell off the wall. The glass shattered, and the painting under it – a nondescript early effort of Greer’s (from when she was still at school, if Leila remembered correctly) – was ripped by the shattered glass. She removed it carefully, feeling guilty about the damage. Possibly it could be repaired. Behind it, a sheet of very old cartridge paper, with writing in what she recognised immediately as her grannie’s hand (she had most distinctive writing; almost a cursive form of the modern font called Desdemona).

  Flora, bewitched by Trerons window, February 1908. Leila turned it over to reveal a small watercolour painting, the colours still very fresh, as if it hadn’t been exposed to the light for long. The tiny, almost illegible signature in the bottom corner read Eva Connor. The subject was a woman in Edwardian dress, studying a display of hats. Her features were sketchily-painted, but you could see her profile clearly, and her luxuriant auburn hair.

  Flora. A common enough name in Edwardian Scotland. A friend of Grannie’s, no doubt. Presumably Eva Connor was another friend, and they were all taught to write that fancy script at the Mack?

  She had almost thrown the newly-discovered painting out, but on an impulse she had it reframed instead, and hung it in the same place in the hallway (Greer’s school effort had been too badly torn to mend).

  After Hari left that night, she studied the features of the woman in the watercolour more carefully. It was small-scale, but it was enough to let Leila see how much it reminded her of Greer, now that Hari had drawn her attention to it. The same shape of nose. Hair only a slightly less vivid auburn.

  On an impulse, she googled the artist’s name, and was surprised to find a longish list of hits. She selected ‘images’, and there were three photographs, all apparently taken in Kirkcudbright not long before the First World War. Groups of arty women, with Eva Connor named in each. Leila picked her out immediately. Eva’s hair was dressed in one of those elegant Edwardian up-dos, soft around her face. She was very beautiful. And she was Grannie. There was no mistaking her.

  Hands shaking, Leila found the phone number for Glasgow School of Art and promised herself to phone the following morning, and arrange to meet the archivist as soon as possible.

  As luck would have it, the archivist was free to meet her the next day. Leila explained that she was looking for traces of Flora Henderson or Gibson, who had been a student there sometime between 1908 and 1916.

  With the other woman’s help, she trawled page after page, without success.

  ‘She was possibly an evening class or a Saturday student? In which case, we may have no record of her,’ the archivist said, sympathetically. That figured. Leila was certain there had been little money to spare in the family at that point. But so much had always been made of that Certificate from the Mack – although she realised, with a start, that she had never seen it. The only similar item at home was Greer’s Diploma.

  ‘Can we try looking for Eva Connor?’

  ‘Now that is a name I recognise.’

  Within minutes, the archivist had produced yet more photographs of Eva. There she was, over and over, with groups of art school staff and students. Even with Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh – as close to royalty as Glasgow got.

  ‘Here’s her name on staff lists. She taught in the embroidery department, as assistant to Ann Macbeth.’ The woman opened a fresh volume. ‘I thought so – she was a student here from 1907 until she graduated in 1910. A very successful one, by the looks of it – she won a gold medal for textile work. She specialised in embroidery, and china painting. And some metalwork. When she finished, she was taken onto the staff at once. A talented lady, I think. You say she was a family friend?’

  ‘I’m a little confused. Possibly.’

  The woman looked at her quizzically.

  After 1917, Eva seemed to vanish completely from the records.

  Then the archivist found her letter of resignation. It looked to have been very sudden, in the middle of a term. There was a note from Ann Macbeth too – she appeared to have been puzzled, and very sorry to lose Eva.

  ‘It’s unusual for someone with so much promise to have vanished so precipitately. She seemed to have had such a bright future ahead of her, even though it was more difficult for women in those days. I’m wondering – was she married, do you know, this Eva Connor?’

  Now there was a question! ‘I never heard anything about her husband,’ Leila said, truthfully.

  ‘I thought perhaps she left so suddenly because she was having a child? Or perhaps she left to do war work?’ suggested the archivist. ‘A lot of women did.’

  ‘But surely she’d have done that sooner?’

  The other woman shrugged.

  ‘Well – thank you for all your help, once again. Can I leave you my number, in case you ever run across anything else about my grandmother?’

  Leila felt so spaced-out that she took a taxi home. She didn’t trust herself to walk. She felt disjointed, disembodied. There was absolutely no doubt at all that the woman she’d known as Flora Gibson, whose birth and death certificates she had in a folder at home, and this Eva Connor were one and the same person. Who was she, in that case? And if she wasn’t Greer’s mother, who was?

  All her life, Leila had believed she was a strong, independent woman because she was the granddaughter of a strong, independent woman.

  She spent most of the afternoon trawling through the Ancestry and Scotland’s People websites. She found Flora Henderson’s birth in Edinburgh, in 1889. That tallied with the birth certificate. She found Flora, and her mother, Janet, a schoolmistress, in the 1891 and 1901 censu
ses. First in Eyemouth, then in Millrig, a village in Lanarkshire she had only a vague recollection of having heard of.

  She found the reference to Flora’s marriage to Hector Gibson, in 1908, and sent off for a printed copy of the certificate.

  On a sudden impulse, she searched in her chest of drawers for the wedding ring her grandmother had worn until the day she died. The initials and date engraved inside the gold band were rubbed, but still perfectly legible. FH – HG, 6/09/08. She knew from Greer’s birth certificate that her father had been Hector Gibson of Millrig. Occupation: joiner.

  Seventeen Eva Connors had been born in Northumberland in roughly the period Leila was looking at. She worked on the assumption that Eva’s age had been within five years of Flora’s.

  Then she remembered Greer reminiscing about her vague recollections of living in one of the streets near the art school when she was small – in fact, that was why she had been sent to Hazelbank school. It was close to where they lived when she started in kindergarten.

  Leila found them in Hill Street in the 1911 census. Eva Connor, head of household. Born South Shields, twenty-six years old. Single. Occupation: embroidery instructor. Single. Flora Gibson. Lodger. Born Edinburgh, twenty-two years old. Married. Occupation left blank. Greer Gibson, lodger. Age twenty-two months. Place of birth, Millrig, Lanarkshire.

  The hair on the back of her neck prickled. She knew beyond a doubt that Eva Connor, with her black hair and her Geordie accent, was the woman she’d been raised by. The one she knew as Grannie. What had happened to Flora? Did she die soon after that census, so that Eva was left to bring up her child? Why did Eva take her name, and wear her wedding ring? Where was Greer’s father? Whose daughter was Greer? And was Leila even her daughter?

  She added money to her account with the Scotland’s People website and trawled the deaths for Flora Gibson; the only Scottish entry was for 1960, and matched the death certificate for her grandmother. She found Hector’s death, in 1920, but nothing for another Flora, nor for Eva Connor. Ancestry’s site produced nothing viable from the English registers. She bumped up her membership to the international category and hunted for a compatible death notice in America or Canada. But there was nothing. She found several Flora Gibsons, but the date and place of birth never matched, even approximately. Eva Connor seemed to have vanished without trace.

  Too restless to concentrate on anything else, she took a bus into town and walked along Hill Street until she found the number where Eva and Greer and Flora had lived in 1911. It was still a handsome building, with a stone pediment above the front door, and arched windows on the ground floor. She almost expected it to be able to give her answers. Ridiculous. There was no chance whatsoever that anyone still living there would have known Eva or Greer. The flats all looked rundown – student lets these days, she assumed.

  But this was where Greer had lived with Eva, and the mysterious Flora. Leila’s eyes prickled with tears. Her memories of her grandmother were of a kind woman, but not a warm one. Quite strict. Judgemental, even. She judged Greer harshly. Leila had wondered, the odd time, if that had distorted her own relationship with her mother. But she had worshipped her grandmother.

  And now she’d discovered that all the signs were Grannie was nothing better than an identity-thief.

  And yet – and yet. She’d clearly given up a lot too. She was certain the mysterious disappearance of Flora was connected to Eva’s precipitate departure from a good job at the art school. As far back as Leila could remember, Grannie had scraped a meagre living from painting on china. She’d match cups or saucers or plates that had got broken out of a set. She also taught evening classes, privately, in the flat in Roseisle Drive. Half a dozen ladies round the big table in her workroom (the one that now graced Leila’s kitchen), the low rumble of women’s voices, the smell of turps and linseed oil.

  Eva could also produce the most exquisite embroidery – though certainly by the time Leila remembered her, there was little or no call for that. Somewhere in a cupboard or wardrobe, there were several embroidered texts: Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. That sort of thing. Leila had kept them not because of the morbid and unforgiving mottoes (so Scottish somehow, so Calvinist) but because the spaces around the texts were filled with the most amazing art nouveau curlicues and foliage. The brightest sunrise is but a prelude to nightfall. Cheerful woman, Eva, when she was at her embroidery frame.

  Who the hell had she been?

  Eight

  When Hari arrived to pick her up around four forty-five on Friday, Leila asked him to come in to see something interesting.

  On her desk, she propped the photo of Eva Connor in Kirkcudbright that she’d printed off from the internet. She switched on the anglepoise to give the best light. ‘Can you see the woman from the portrait in that group?’

  He pointed to Eva Connor immediately.

  ‘That’s definitely the same person, isn’t it?’

  ‘Without a doubt, I’d say. The hairstyle’s a little different, but she has a most distinctive face. Why do you ask?’

  ‘I seem to have stumbled across some sort of skeleton in the family cupboard. Remember you said that the woman in the watercolour looked like my mother, but that the portrait of my grandmother didn’t?’

  He nodded.

  ‘Well, I suspect that’s because the woman in the portrait is Eva Connor, and the one in the watercolour is Flora Gibson.’

  Hari looked startled. ‘I’m confused – you said the portrait is of your grandmother as you remember her?’

  ‘It is. I’m certain that’s the woman I called Grannie. But I’m also sure she’s Eva Connor. And you identified her at once in the photo.’

  He stared at Leila, who suddenly felt unaccountably tired. ‘I’ll tell you what I’ve found out once we get to Ardvreckie. It’s a bit of a mystery. Maybe you can help me solve it?’

  She had already been down to the cottage twice that year, so she was confident that it was fit to receive a guest. No one except Leila herself had slept there for a long time. Not since more than five years before Greer died. She had aired the mattresses – particularly the one in the spare room (the room that had been hers when Greer was still alive). Wasps sometimes nested under the eaves beside the window of that room, where she meant to house Hari. She was confident there was no nest this time. Wouldn’t do to let him get stung, if wasps were about so early in the year. Or his precious bunnies. She had had to treat more than one cat that had swallowed a wasp or bee and been stung on the throat. One she couldn’t save; on the other she’d managed to perform an emergency tracheotomy; the owner had fainted.

  Most years, she used every available snippet of good, dry weather from spring to autumn for all the routine maintenance jobs outdoors. You couldn’t be that close to salt water without having to recoat every painted surface every couple of years. She had even managed to fix slates from time to time. She knew she was as capable as any man.

  They were taking Hari’s car, because it held the rabbits and all their paraphernalia. Leila had asked him to pick her up as early as he could get away on the Friday evening, so that they could reach Argyll at a decent hour. It was only 108 miles, but the roads were atrocious for the last fifty or so. As they were leaving, he hesitated. ‘Can we make a detour? I usually take my stuff to the laundry on a Saturday morning. I’m not sure what time they close on Friday.’

  ‘What stuff?’

  ‘My shirts and so on. Sheets, towels.’

  ‘Have you got it all with you?’

  ‘I have.’

  ‘There’s a washing machine at the cottage, and it’ll dry in no time tomorrow. The forecast’s good.’

  He still looked dubious. ‘Well…’

  ‘Och, come on, Hari. We can be there for supper at this rate. I’ve brought something that’ll be quick to cook.’

  She had made a chick-pea and vegetable tagine which would reheat in no time. She was rather pleased with it.

  ‘I’ve brought some food too, f
or tomorrow,’ he said.

  ‘Great. We won’t have to risk the local hotel restaurant. It specialises in seafood.’

  Leila wasn’t usually a happy passenger, though she wouldn’t claim to be all that keen on driving either. It had been a matter of ‘needs must’, all her working life. Greer used to drive like a maniac, her eyes and her mind not fully on the road, changing lanes without indicating, overtaking on blind bends. It took Leila a good hour to settle into the knowledge that although Hari drove fast and assertively, he drove safely.

  He muttered appreciatively as they turned down the track towards the cottage, bordered by a jungle of Rhododendron ponticum.

  ‘That’ll be a sea of purple in a few weeks,’ said Leila. ‘You get slash-and-burn grants to combat it now, but I don’t suppose anyone bothers.’ The understorey of gorse already glowed gold. ‘The place is going to wrack and ruin since Sir John died.’

  Hari raised an eyebrow.

  ‘Sir John Arbuthnott, the old Laird. There are some lovely specimen rhodies up at the big house. At least there used to be. I haven’t been up there for years. We could explore tomorrow, if we have time.’

  ‘I didn’t realise there was a “big house”?’

  ‘You can’t see it from the track. Typical nineteenth century Scottish mock baronial. Reproduction Lorimer. Huge but hideous. I spent a lot of my childhood in and out of there – my mother was friendly with the Laird.’

  ‘Who owns it now then?’

  Leila shrugged. ‘Several people. It’s been made into flats. I suppose it was either that or it’d have fallen down. No one can afford to maintain these places nowadays. I hope you’re not expecting anything grand by the way of a cottage – I think it used to be the boatman’s house, or some such thing. An underling, anyway.’

  As they pulled up outside Ardvreckie, she tried to see it through Hari’s eyes. A dour, two-storey rectangle of plain grey stone, slate-roofed, with a lean-to extension on the south gable, and one out-building, forming an L-shape. It was shabby. The windows probably needed replaced, not just painted. The grass in the garden was overgrown, even though she’d cut it a fortnight before. The wild fuchsia hedges were already almost out of control.