I hardly know what happened next. When the foundations of your world collapse, you go down with them.
They buried him the next day; that’s the way things are done in India. I was taken to Naini Tal to stay with the Benhams, while someone packed our belongings from the bungalow. I never saw Almora again.
Sirhan Sears took me to Bombay. I sat and stared out of the train window and saw nothing. A thousand miles of numb disbelief. A thousand miles of grieving.
I remember Sirhan Sears trying to say goodbye to me on the ship at Bombay.
A woman going back to a sick child had agreed to take charge of me; Mr Sherring had arranged it. That’s the way things are done when you leave India. I remember turning to Sirhan Sears and crying, ‘I don’t want to go – can’t I stay? Can’t I stay here with you and Aunt Mary?’
And his reply, ‘No, Eve. Your future is in England, you must go – it’s what your father wanted.’ Then, ‘I promised him that if this should ever happen, I would send you back. To your grandfather, when he was alive – now, to his lawyers. They’ll take charge of you.’ Then he came closer, lowering his voice, ‘Eve, in your trunk – there’s something there. I sold his guns, and some of his books – and there was something more from the sale of the furniture. Your father asked me to, if this happened – to pay for your fare. But the lawyers have telegraphed the funds for that. So the money’s sewn into a petticoat, Mary stayed up all night to do it. It’s all in gold coins – sovereigns – so you can use it in England – and then you’ll have something of your own.’
I hardly heard him. My brief moment of consciousness was gone, and I sank back into the stunned apathy of grief.
The three weeks on the boat. Three weeks of numbed despair, punctuated now by sudden spurts of anger. Why did you do it, Apa? Why did you slip? Why did you fall? Why did you go away and leave me? They were gone as suddenly as they came, and left only my desperate longing for my father – for his voice, his face, his touch, his laugh – until the longing became unbearable. Then that went too, and there was nothing. Nothing.
England in February. Cold, dreary, damp, and grey – grey, grey, grey. No colour, no life. But I didn’t want colour or life, all that had gone with Apa.
Mr Henderson, my grandfather’s London solicitor, met me at Southampton; I stayed overnight in his house. I can’t remember any of it: journey, house, second journey the next day to the school he’d chosen. I know he talked. I don’t know what he said; I was still too stunned with the enormity of my loss.
So I came to the school. I can’t remember arriving. It was a few miles to the west of Northampton, but it was weeks before I realised that. But I do remember that they called me Evelyn. It seemed to make sense; I wasn’t Eve any longer. Eve had gone, dead with Apa. A new creature called Evelyn had taken her place: docile, obedient – crushed.
Over the following weeks I was like a stringless puppet. I daresay people were kind – I suppose they must have been, I don’t remember the reverse – but I didn’t want kindness, I only wanted Apa. Presumably I carried out the tasks I was set, and went to the places to which I was directed, but I was so numbed with grief I didn’t know where I was or what I was doing. I don’t even remember crying any more – I’d gone past that, deep into the darkness of despair.
But as winter gave way to spring, the numbness turned to searing pain – the necessary pain before healing. Tears came back, and every night in the dormitory I stifled my sobs in the pillow.
Easter arrived. The school included a large number of girls with parents serving in India, or elsewhere in the Empire, so some of them stayed for all or part of the holiday. I suppose that’s why Mr Henderson chose it. The rising bell rang half an hour later, otherwise it wasn’t all that different from term-time: fewer maths lessons, more sewing – which I did extremely badly – less essay writing, more supervised reading. And we went on even longer walks in regimented crocodiles along lanes that led between flat, dreary fields. I was the tail, the left over. ‘Marjory, would you like to walk with Evelyn today?’
‘If you want me to, Miss Jennings.’
Seeing the irritation in Marjory’s face at being parted from her best chum Kathleen, I exclaimed, ‘I don’t want to walk with Marjory.’
Irritation turned to indignation as she flounced back to Kathleen, and their two heads met in resentful muttering.
But there was a little more free time over the holiday, so I used it to creep away from the other girls and find an empty classroom, where I could sob, noisily.
That’s where Miss Baker found me. The needlework mistress – of all subjects the one I loathed most. I raised my tear-blurred eyes, and her spare, thin form and grey hair tightly drawn into a bun came slowly into focus – last of all was her pince-nez, with a pair of sharp eyes behind them. ‘What are you doing here, Evelyn?’ It was such a stupid question, I didn’t bother to answer it. Voice brisk she told me, ‘Crying won’t bring your father back – and it certainly won’t make you feel any better.’
I exclaimed, ‘I don’t want to feel any better!’
She sniffed. ‘That’s a rather feeble observation – and an extremely ungrateful one.’
From pent-up misery and anger I shouted, ‘Ungrateful! Why should I be grateful to you?’
‘Not to myself – ungrateful to your father, who spent thirteen years of care and concern in bringing up his daughter – and now apparently, all she wants to do is spend the rest of her life in misery. I’m sure he wouldn’t have wanted that.’
Shock. Apa, who used to say, ‘Remember Eve, happiness can generally be found – if only we choose to look for it.’
My anger gone I whispered, ‘But I miss him so much.’
Miss Baker’s voice was firm. ‘You can’t go back, child – the only way is forward. Have you the courage to take that path? Or do you prefer to play the coward?’ She turned to the door. ‘I’ll leave you here to think it over.’
It didn’t need any thinking over. Courage – cowardice; there was no contest. Going over to the curtains I used them to scrub my eyes until they were so dry they prickled. I wouldn’t cry again. And I didn’t – not for a very long time – and those were tears of relief, not sorrow.
But going back to that time, at school. I didn’t recover overnight – how could I? But I stopped fighting against recovery – and I learnt to sew. I can’t say I’ve ever particularly enjoyed sewing – when you’ve darned one stocking you’ve darned them all. But – there was a sense of achievement in mastering a new skill. And I was determined to show Miss Baker I was no coward.
I suppose Miss Baker must have said something to one of the girls in my form, because the next day Olave and Dora approached me. ‘Would you like to take turns walking with one of us, Evelyn?’
I saw the pity in their eyes; nobody was going to feel sorry for me. ‘No thanks,’ I said, very off-hand, ‘I like walking by myself. And my name is Eve.’
‘Miss Garside doesn’t like us to use abbreviations, Evelyn.’ They stalked off, huffily.
I hadn’t a clue how to mix with girls – I’d never done it before, and never wanted to. So now I was surrounded by them I was like a fish in sand. All I could think to do was turn myself into a crocodile and snap.
They snapped back, even harder. When carrots were served at lunch: ‘Oh look – Evelyn’s hair is just this colour.’
‘Mm, I’m not sure – don’t you think it’s more marmaladey?’
Then, the horrified squeal at the dormitory mirror as I came back from the bathroom, ‘Oh Dora – I think I’ve found a freckle!’
‘What had luck Ursula,’ peering at her chum’s nose, then, ‘No, it’s alright, just a shadow, after all.’
‘Phew – what a relief!’ I felt my freckled face reddening as they turned to me in a pantomime of pseudo-sympathy, ‘Oh Evelyn, it must be awful for you – having so many of the wretched things. But my sister says there’s a lotion you can get – it takes the top layer of your skin off, but still, anything’s better than being covered in freckles, isn’t it?
Dora chipped in, ‘And there’s another lotion that takes the crinkles out of your hair – you could try some of that, too.’ The bell rang, and they tittered off down to breakfast.
When they’d gone I peered into the mirror. Fiery orange hair, crisp springy curls – and freckles. Lots of them. Not just on my nose, like other girls, but on my forehead and cheeks, too. My bright blue eyes stared back at me, hurt and angry.
But at least I wasn’t numb any more. Though I still hadn’t come properly alive again when the Mr Hendersons came to call. Two of them, because they were cousins: one had been my grandfather’s London solicitor, the other his Edinburgh one. The Edinburgh Mr Henderson was the one who really mattered, because almost all of Grandfather Courtney’s income had come from land and business interests inherited from my Scottish great-grandmother, who’d been a considerable heiress.
It wouldn’t normally have all come down to him, because he’d been the youngest of seven brothers, but the two Mr Hendersons now painstakingly explained what I’d only dimly realised before. Four of my grandfather’s brothers had, like him, ‘served their country’ in the army, three of them dying on active service while still quite young, and unmarried. The fourth had only married after he reached general’s rank, and then to a childless widow. As the Scottish Mr Henderson explained in precise detail, army officers did tend to marry late. I knew that already, from India – which had been the destination of the other two Courtney brothers, both of them entering the Indian Civil Service. One had died of malaria in Bengal, unmarried. The other had survived to retire, but his wife hadn’t.
The Scottish Mr Henderson looked a touch embarrassed at this point, since she’d died ‘in – ahem – childbirth’. He forged on rapidly to inform me that the child hadn’t lived either – so I was the last of the Courtneys.
‘The last of the Courtneys’. I still remember Mr Henderson saying that – and my sudden, horrible shock as I realised it was true. So it was a minute or two before I took in that the London Mr Henderson was telling me that I wasn’t to worry about this because after my grandfather died my father had re-written his will, appointing the Scots Mr Henderson as my curator. And, he reassured me, you could almost say that a curator under Scots Law was the equivalent of a guardian under English law – so I had no cause for worry at all. The two Mr Hendersons would ensure that all proper arrangements were made for me, just as my grandfather had planned. I was to stay at school until I was grown-up, then, once my education had been completed, they would find a suitable lady of good family, under whose care I would reside, and under whose chaperonage I would make my debut in Society, as was appropriate to my station in life.
Then, no doubt, I would find a nice young man who would want to marry me, and – once his prospects and intentions had been carefully vetted by the two Mr Hendersons – I would become his wife, and he would take care of me for ever after. So there was absolutely nothing for me worry about, my future was all under control. Their control.
At that point, as if by some pre-arranged signal, the headmistress returned to her drawing room, followed by a maid with a silver tray and three glasses of sherry. I sat unregarded while all the usual, tedious adult comments about weather and journeys were made. The two Mr Hendersons were staying overnight at Northampton, and explained to the headmistress that first thing the next morning they would both proceed together to the Castle station, and from there could leave virtually simultaneously for their respective destinations. The English Mr Henderson would catch the 6.22 for London, and a mere minute later the Scottish Mr Henderson would depart on the train for Glasgow and Edinburgh – dividing at Carstairs. All so very convenient.
Story and sherry finished, they stood up to leave, telling me I must be good and work hard – and that I really was a very lucky girl, since despite all his differences with my father, my grandfather had taken so much care to secure my future.
Lucky! I was so furiously angry now – I was ‘a lucky girl’ – when I’d lost Apa! The anger spilled over into the history lesson which followed and finished off any slight chance I might have had of making friends with the other girls. Yet I can see now that the Mr Hendersons had actually done me a very big favour – their visit made me realise that if I didn’t take charge of my own life, somebody else would, and control it for me, for ever.
But back to the history lesson. You didn’t ask questions in that school. Mistresses asked questions, and even then only certain answers were permitted – the ones they’d taught you to give. Now as Miss Jennings was informing us that ‘the Duke of Marlborough was a great man, who won many victories for England’, her voice finally penetrated my misery and I raised my own voice in reply – even worse, without raising my hand first. I shouted, ‘He wasn’t a great man – he was a murderer!’
There was a terrible indrawn communal hiss, followed by an awful silence, then Miss Jennings’ freezing tone, ‘I think you have not been paying attention, Evelyn, I was talking of the Duke of Marlborough – one of our greatest generals.’
I exclaimed, ‘That’s what I mean – he killed people. Killing people is wrong, fighting is wrong, being a soldier is wrong,’ I was in my stride by now, ‘And invading other countries is wrong – after all, we thought it was quite wrong when Napoleon wanted to invade us, didn’t we?’
The old Eve reborn. A very painful birth. I was put in detention for cheek (a thousand lines: ‘I must not interrupt a lesson’) and afterwards… Well, half of the girls were the daughters of serving army officers and the rest had friends who were. They backed me up against a wall in the dormitory and tried to get me to retract. I refused, I shouted again and again that all fighting was wrong. Then Olave screeched, ‘Your father ran away before the battle – he was a coward!’
Yelling, ‘He was a pacifist, like me!’ I hit her, hard.
Two thousand lines this time: ‘I must not fight’, and in French. The other girls sent me to coventry for a week. So the remarks about carrotty hair and huge freckles weren’t addressed directly to me – but always nice and loud so I could hear. How I hated school: the stupid rules, the everlasting bells, being treated like a child – no privacy, no freedom, no choice. I said something of the sort in Miss Baker’s hearing. And I’m sure she chose the next story book with me in mind. We were read to after prep each evening, and Miss Baker picked the story of Jane Eyre’s schooldays. ‘Not all schools are as comfortable and happy as yours, girls,’ with a stern look directed at me, ‘Poor little Jane was sent to a dreadful one called Lowood…’
She began to read – I didn’t want to listen, but I couldn’t stop myself. I was gripped by Jane’s torments at the hands of her cousins, then that hypocritical Mr Brocklehurst, the burnt porridge – Miss Baker only read up to the death of Helen Burns – half the class were in tears by then. How stupid, it was only a story, for goodness sake – then she closed the book, said Lowood did become much improved after the epidemic, and we would be allowed to read the rest of the book when we were older. ‘You may talk among yourselves until the dormitory bell rings, girls.’
As the door closed behind her I exclaimed, ‘Whyever didn’t that feeble Jane run away from that awful school?’
Olave said, ‘Don’t be silly, Evelyn – girls don’t. Only boys ever run away from school – and they get brought back.’
‘Girls can do anything boys can do.’
They tittered condescendingly at my folly, then bossy Mabel told me, ‘Anyway, she didn’t have anywhere to run to.’
Dora chipped in, ‘I wonder what happened to her later?’
Mabel informed us, ‘I know – my aunt read me the same bit last summer, and when I asked her what happened next she said Jane grew up and became a teacher.’
I muttered, ‘She must have been mad.’
Turning her back on me Mabel continued, ‘My aunt said after that she met this man, and fell in love with him, and a bit later she married him, and then they lived happily ever after.’
‘How boring – just turning into someone’s wife.’
Olave smiled very sweetly, ‘Well, you needn’t worry about that, Evelyn – men never marry girls with freckles.’ They all laughed.
How I hated school.
If I hadn’t already given it up I would have been crying in bed that night.
It wasn’t just the other girls – or even mostly them. It was that terrible sense of being trapped. I felt like one of those poor animals locked in their cages at Calcutta zoo, never able to run free again. However could I stand it?
In the middle of the night I woke up, and realised I didn’t have to. I wasn’t Jane Eyre – I had somewhere to run to, and someone to give me a home. Half a croft at Helspie, and my Great Aunt Ethel.
I planned my escape like the expedition to the Girthi Gorges – only even more carefully. I double and treble-checked myself, because now there was no Apa to correct my mistakes. But thanks to Apa I’d studied the different routes, back in Almora, when we’d planned our journey to Helspie, together – don’t think, Eve – so I knew I could travel via Glasgow. I was firmly convinced that if I so much as set foot in Edinburgh a lurking Mr Henderson would pounce on me from behind a pillar. Yet it was those same Mr Hendersons who’d given me the first, vital information: the times of the early morning trains to Scotland – and to London.
I needed the existence of that London train if I wasn’t to be caught and hauled ignominiously back to school. You see, there was absolutely no hope of concealing my absence after the rising bell, and I knew a telegraph message would reach Scotland long before I could – but if Miss Garside believed I’d gone to London… Like the Pandit on his mission in Tibet I would lay a false trail, and also like him, I intended to make my escape in disguise. I planned the simplest of disguises; my enemy Olave had given me the idea for it – though I certainly wouldn’t have admitted that then – I’d not addressed a single word to her since she’d said what she had about Apa. But I’ve got to admit now that her unintentional assistance was vital. As was the headmistress’ contribution to my escape – our winter games uniform. Miss Garside had chosen this outfit with a view to satisfying the demands of practicality as well as those of modesty. So we’d set off for our hockey lessons wearing a divided skirt of light-weight grey worsted. But on arrival at the pitch we were ordered to bend down, release the straps concealed behind the hem, and then perform a complex buttoning operation which converted the skirt into a quite passable pair of boy’s breeches.
Next came the the problem of my plaits, but that was soon solved by using my pocket money to buy an old cap from Tom, the bootboy. I decided my Indian boots and thick woollen stockings would pass for male or female, but they were packed away in my trunk, along with the stout tweed jacket I’d worn in Himalayan autumns, my more feminine jumper – and my gold-plated petticoat.
Once more, Tom – the only friend I’d made in that place – supplied the answer: the whereabouts both of the boxroom and of the key to get me into it. So midnight saw me creeping stealthily out of the dormitory – toe, heel, remember to keep in the shadows, Eve – down to the key board outside the boothole, along to the boxroom…
By the time I crept back upstairs again I had everything I needed stuffed into my kari – that’s a kind of haversack that Dotial porters weave in their spare time. I’d asked for mine to be made larger than usual, and I was glad of the extra space now. Having hidden my kari, clothes and spare set of underwear in the bathroom I crept back to bed, where excitement and apprehension kept me awake until an hour before dawn – which fortunately came early because it was already June.
With the traditional bolster left stuffed down my bed in imitation of my soon-to-be-absent form, I slipped along to the bathroom and quickly dressed. Barefoot, but with my skirt buttoned into breeches and wearing my jacket, I climbed out of the window and slid down the drainpipe. Retrieving my kari and boots from the crushed rose bush below, I then headed rapidly across the lawn and into the shelter of the shrubbery.
We’d walked almost into Northampton in those interminable crocodiles so I knew the way, and once there a hurrying workman directed me to the right station. There, with my betraying plaits coiled up under Tom’s cap, I asked in Tom’s accent for a ticket to Glasgow. In case of questions I had a story ready that I was going to work on a ship as a cabin boy, but I didn’t need to use it.
I slipped back outside again and found a convenient alleyway – in the shelter of which I pulled on my sweater, unbuttoned my breeches, swung my plaits free and stuffed cap and jacket into my kari. Back at the station, at the other booking office window, a girl bought a ticket to London. Rather riskily, I’m inclined to think now, she asked a question in her normal accent about the time, and said she was in a hurry … Luckily I was tall for my age and the booking clerk not at all inquisitive. The same girl proferred her ticket for clipping at the barrier, and on its return asked in a nice clear voice for directions to the London platform. But after a quick change behind an unattended luggage trolley, it was a boy who boarded the train. The train to Glasgow.
Curled up with my head on my kari I slept my way through most of England, waking beyond Carlisle in time to welcome Scotland – and freedom. I’d sprung my trap.
I arrived at Glasgow Central at three o’clock in the afternoon. My enquiries disclosed that the next through train to Nick, stopping at Helmsdale, left from Glasgow Buchanan Street at ten that evening. Good, I had some time to explore Glasgow and replenish my provisions – the bread, cheese and apples I’d acquired from the school larder had long since been eaten. Then I could sleep overnight on the train, and arrive at Helmsdale at quarter past ten on Friday morning, all fresh and ready for the nineteen-mile walk to Helspie. Clever, clever Eve.
Too clever by half, as it turned out. Oh, there was no problem with Glasgow – I happily explored that great soot-blackened city with a lightness of spirit springing from the realisation that I was now far, far away from school – school with its rules and restrictions, control and confinement – school, where someone had dared to call my beloved Apa a coward.
No, my problem wasn’t with Glasgow, it was with the Glaswegian accent. Returning to catch my train in the evening I followed the directions I thought I’d been given – and took the wrong turning. I ran and ran, arrived panting at the ticket office, seized my change and that precious small oblong of cardboard, ran off to catch the Wick train – but all that was left of it was the smell of smoke and the flicker of a tail lamp disappearing down the platform.
A moment of pure panic. The ticket collector saved me. He pointed the way to the third class waiting room, along with the information that the next train to Helmsdale from Buchanan Street departed at twenty to eight the following morning. After a brief – but very necessary – spell as a girl so I could visit the Ladies’ Cloakroom I lay down on one of the long benches in the waiting room, put my head on my kari, and slept the night away, exhausted.
I woke in time for tea, a large plate of bacon and eggs – and to be very early indeed for my train. It was a quarter to six in the evening before that train set me down on the platform at Helmsdale and steamed off on its long journey inland to Wick. I could have gone with it to Wick, travelled down the branch line to Lybster, and then walked the mere five miles south from there to Helspie. Instead, I now faced a nineteen mile hike, overnight and over the Ord of Caithness. But that wasn’t why I stood on the platform fighting back my tears; I’d chosen this route because it had been the one Apa and I had planned to take, together. And now, there was no Apa.
Dazed with grief I hardly noticed the first part of my journey – all I could do was remember Apa’s voice telling me how he’d walked this way beside his mother, looking at the moors and the sea; and how, as they came down into Caithness, his mother had pointed out the distant mountains of Morven, and the ridge of Scaraben with its three summits – ‘just like our own Trisul, Eve,’ – Don’t think, just walk.
And slowly the steady rhythm of my legs soothed me, because now I was walking uphill – I was zig-zagging up the steep slopes that I, mountain-born, had so missed. And as I drew nearer and nearer to the summit I remembered that I wasn’t truly alone – because there, on the other side, at the croft in Helspie, my Aunt Ethel was waiting for me. At that thought my pace quickened and I began to run – and so I ran over the Ord of Caithness, running on into a new life.