August 1915
No friends or family waited with me on the Holyhead dock on that unseasonably dreary late August day. Usually I loved the sea—I had grown up in London, so the seaside had always been a treat for my brother Ralph and me—but as I stood there clutching my two battered suitcases, preparing to board the ferry that would take me to Ireland, the chill air clung to me and I shivered uncontrollably.
“Are you not well, my dear?” a matronly woman asked me. I blushed. Did I look as pale and wretched as that? I nodded to her, and she said comfortingly, “These really are terrible times. We all know someone at the Front, don’t we?”
This was not the most tactful thing she could have said. As I fished for my compact and gazed disconsolately at my thin, bespectacled face and dark hair sternly knotted in bun, I thought not of myself—Caroline Singleton, nineteen years old and going out into the unknown to Ireland, to work as a governess in what might be a futile attempt to gain some independence for myself—but of Ralph, killed in action at the battle of Ypres in the spring of that dreadful year. He had been one year older than I, and glowing with health and exuberance, even on the day he left us. Ever since Mother and I had received the news, I had felt more and more like a ghost myself. It was selfish, I knew, to want him back so that I could be happy, but that was the role he had always played in my life—protective, charming, teasing—and now there was no one to do it, nobody who cared.
My matronly acquaintance pulled a shawl out of her luggage and offered it to me, introducing herself as Mrs. Grimsby. I told her my name. Her husband, she said, was a merchant in Dublin, a purveyor of fine wines, and every now and then he sent her back to London to check up on their English shop. It was a little holiday for her as well, she explained. Dublin did get dull. Had I ever been there?
I confessed that I had not traveled much, and mentioned briefly that I was going to be working for an Anglo-Irish family called the Wilcoxes, who owned a great house in County Louth, north of Dublin. I would be in charge of their young daughter, Amelia.
Her kind blue eyes seemed to take in everything: my shabby luggage, threadbare clothes, and small frame.
“I hope you’ll be content with your position, my dear,” she said. “Educating the young is a very important affair. A difficult one, to be sure.”
I nodded hesitantly. I wanted to tell her that I did not have much confidence in my abilities as a governess, but perhaps she could read that in my eyes. Often I did not know quite how much to reveal to people. “You say either too much or too little,” Ralph had told me. “Either you don’t give them enough to go on, and they think you aloof, or you embarrass them with detail.” It was the type of advice he’d often tried to offer me, taking the place of our mother, who had not been well since Father’s death ten years before. We had watched her turn from a happy, active woman into a fragile, demanding semi-invalid. Ralph’s death had undone her completely.
“This delay is most annoying!” Mrs. Grimsby observed, pulling a sandwich from her bag and offering it to me. I tried not to wolf it down too fast. Before Ralph’s death, I would not have accepted food from a stranger, but I felt so helpless and alone these days that I would have taken anything from just about anyone. But I had avoided men, always. It had pleased Ralph, but I think he had wondered about it too, wondered if I would ever marry. It seemed unlikely that anybody would want me—poor, educated, but without prospects or good looks.
I was secretly glad of this. I knew I had the strength to live my life on my own without any regrets. I was not maternal. I would never want children, I thought, and certainly not a husband. Perhaps a friend, but I could not imagine what shape this shadowy friend would take. I had had few close girl friends; my mother’s social circle had been too small, and at school I was the shy, studious one. My teachers had liked me, though. I was smiling at some private memory—a pretty young history teacher patting my cheek and saying I was her best pupil—when Mrs. Grimsby touched my shoulder. The ferry was pulling up in front of us. As if some switch had been pulled the light drizzling rain that had been chilling us stopped, and the sun shone weakly through the clouds.
“The sea is calm,” Mrs. Grimsby said with satisfaction. “It will be a peaceful crossing. Will you have some tea with me, Miss Singleton?”
“Caroline,” I said shyly. “Yes, I’d love to.”
Passengers began to swarm up the ramp and we followed with difficulty. Mrs. Grimsby sighed as she maneuvered us into some seats.
“Well, thank goodness we’re going to a country where there’s no war on. It feels different there. True, a lot of young men have joined up and been killed; but the country just hasn’t suffered the same losses. You can see it in the eyes and voices of the people. And they don’t think about the War in the same way. It’s not their affair, not their tragedy. I don’t blame them. Grimsby and I are removed from the whole thing, thank God. I’m glad now that I never had a son!”
Seeing the pain and dismay in my expression, she suddenly stopped.
“I’m a talkative old fool,” she said bluntly. I had to laugh through the tears that were beginning to stream from my eyes.
“Your young man?” she guessed.
I shook my head. “My brother.”
Mrs. Grimsby clapped her hand to her mouth. As she apologized, I began to wish I were somewhere else, somewhere safe, instead of on board ship, heading for a new land. But there was nowhere to hide. All I had in this world was in my suitcases and on my back. And inside me.
I could not blame Mrs. Grimsby, and I did not blame the Germans for taking my brother away. Instead—and this was something I had not told a soul—I blamed the government. I sympathized quietly with the pacifists whom I saw jeered at on the London streets. I had gone to several peace meetings, just to listen. Even before Ralph had been killed, I had known that “the cause” was not worth his death. I must be brave now, I thought, but I must not just accept mindlessly the soothing words handed down by the politicians. My brother was not a hero, and he had not, I thought, done his patriotic “duty.” What was duty, anyway? Surely one’s highest duty was to oneself—and to one’s fellow men!
I could not explain this to Mrs. Grimsby, who sat dabbing at her eyes and murmuring that time would ease my loss. I wondered if she was right.
The ferry docked at Kingstown, a fishing village south of Dublin. All around us seagulls flew, and men spoke with rough voices, Dublin accents. Mrs. Grimsby took a little flask from her pocket and swallowed. She offered it to me, and for some reason I could not say no. My throat burned as I tasted it, and tears rushed to my eyes. “Irish whiskey,” Mrs. Grimsby said with satisfaction. “Now, dear, is someone collecting you?”
“I think so...there should be a motor.”
I looked about wildly. It was quite black. A street lamp cast eerie shadows on people’s faces. How I wished I were going with Mrs. Grimsby to her nice solid brick house on the outskirts of Dublin!
She handed me a slip of paper. “My husband’s card. If anything goes wrong, you’ll call on me, won’t you? We have plenty of room. I’ll be glad to put you up.”
“Thank you,” I stammered. “You’ve been so kind...”
And then she was gone, hailing a cab and jumping into it as if she were a much younger woman.
Someone tapped me on the shoulder, a middle-aged man with a tired, friendly face. “Miss Singleton?”
I nodded. He took my bags and I followed him rather numbly. My eyes widened as I saw a large black motor-car. I had never ridden in one.
The man, who introduced himself as Carter, the chauffeur, opened the door for me. I climbed gratefully into the leather seat. The inside of the car was comfortable and elegant, like a luxury train carriage. I felt completely lost; I had realized the Wilcoxes were wealthy people, but to me wealth had meant a few servants and the leisure to throw dinner parties, not this level of material comfort.
“Sir John’s a motor enthusiast,” Carter explained as the car purred down the road. “It’s still going to take a while to get to Thornley Hall, Miss, so if you’d like to sleep...”
“I think I will,” I said with a nervous laugh. I lay back against the seat, watching the dark streets slip by. Soon we were in the countryside; I could no longer see a thing. I closed my eyes to the sound of Carter’s gentle whistling. It was a tune my mother had liked to sing, “Loch Lomond,” and as I drifted off to sleep, thinking of Ralph lying dead on that dark, lonely Flanders field, tears pricked my eyes.
You’ll take the high road, and I’ll take the low road,
And I’ll be in Scotland before ye,
But me and my true love will never meet again
On the bonny, bonny banks of Loch Lomond...