The Woman Who Walked Into the Sea (4 page)

‘She killed herself . . . after she had held me?’ Violet asked.

‘I can’t say for sure. There’s no official record of your birth. We have to assume she delivered you herself or someone unqualified assisted her.’ Mr Anwar added. ‘
If
she was your mother . . .’ He paused again. ‘Maybe she has brothers or sisters who are still living . . . there are tests you can have done.’

Violet wasn’t really listening. ‘How could she do that, hold me and then leave me, kill herself?’ She was still rocking.

‘I don’t know, Miss Wells.’

Violet let out a shout of anger and Anna clung tighter to the table leg. She had never seen her mother like this. She didn’t know what to do, what she had done wrong. The rocking suddenly stopped and Violet asked, ‘Did she kill herself because of me?’ Mr Anwar said he didn’t imagine she had but nor could he be sure of the answer. ‘If only there was more information.’

‘You know . . .’ Violet’s voice
trembled. ‘I’m so angry with her.’ She noticed Anna’
s frightened face and beckoned to her. The child walked
stiffly across the room and crouched against the wall, copying
her mother. ‘I’m sorry,’ Anna whispered, in case she
had been to blame for the change of mood. Mr
Anwar also apologised for ‘managing a difficult situation inadequately, for
making bad worse.’

‘It’s not you. Really, it’s not.’ Violet replied. She put an arm round Anna and pulled her close. Then she said, ‘Will you read out the letter, Mr Anwar?’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes. It doesn’t matter anymore, does it?’

Mr Anwar picked up the envelope, opened the unsealed flap and removed a single folded sheet of paper. He looked at Violet offering her an opportunity to change her mind. ‘As you’ll see,’ he said, allowing more time to pass, ‘it’s hand-written, but there’s no signature, sender’s address or date.’ He coughed, adjusted his glass and began to read. ‘A new born baby girl was abandoned at Raigmore Hospital, Inverness, before midnight on September 9 1983. Her mother was called Megan Bates and at the time she lived at Orasaigh Cottage, by Poltown.’

He re-read it to himself before folding the letter and returning it to the envelope. ‘Perhaps the anniversary has prompted this – the 9th was two days ago.’ He looked at Violet’s birthday cards on the mantelpiece. ‘Though it’s impossible to say for sure . . .’

‘Where’s Poltown?’ Violet asked.

‘It’s about sixty or seventy miles from Inverness, but on the west coast.’

Violet considered the implication. ‘My mother wanted to distance herself from me.’

‘You could draw that conclusion but I’m sure there are others if only we had all the facts.’

‘How old was she?’

‘She was thirty-three.’

Violet shook her head again: another of her presumptions had been confounded. ‘So she was old enough to know better.’

‘I can’t say.’

‘Did she have other children?’

‘There are no records of any, but there is no record of your birth either.’

Violet pushed back against the wall. Anna copied her. Mr Anwar clasped and unclasped his hands.

‘Where is she buried?’ Violet asked.

Mr Anwar appeared startled by the question, as if Violet had read his mind. He stammered and coughed. ‘I’m sorry Miss Wells. I didn’t want to distress you any more than was necessary.’ His mouth flinched. ‘She wasn’t buried.’

‘Why not?’ Violet turned the question into an accusation.

‘Her body was never recovered. She killed herself by swimming out to sea, according to the police inquiry at the time.’

Violet closed her eyes at her mother’s final betrayal. Even in death she hadn’t wanted to be found by her daughter. Anna pressed closer.

Mr Anwar apologised again for ‘being the bearer of such difficult news’. He placed the letter on the arm of the chair and removed a small brown envelope from his inside jacket pocket and put it beside the letter. ‘I thought you might like to have these. They’re newspaper cuttings about Megan Bates and the search for her body . . . and there’s a photograph.’

‘Of her?’

‘Yes.’

Another shock.

The emotion of the moment affected Mr Anwar too. ‘It’s not a very good picture, I’m afraid, and it’s black and white. Would you like to see it?’ He fumbled among the clippings until he found the one he wanted and carried it over to Violet. ‘According to the caption it was taken at the Poltown fair the year before you were born.’

All Violet saw was
a blur. A woman half-turned to the camera, the
wind blowing her long dark hair to make a veil
of sorts across her eyes and mouth which was caught
open and smiling. A woman captured in a moment of
happiness. Her mother. A moment Violet would never share.

‘Of course,’ Mr Anwar said, ‘it’s possible you’re not her daughter. Whoever wrote the letter might be mistaken. . . .’

‘They’
re not mistaken,’ Violet replied. ‘She is my mother.’

She put her hand into the pocket of her jeans and withdrew a small green box. ‘It’s the brooch she’s wearing in the photograph.’ She handed the box to Mr Anwar. ‘The nurses found it when they found me. It was attached to a piece of knitting, something cut from a jersey or a cardigan.’ She watched as Mr Anwar opened the box and studied its contents. ‘The flowers are violets . . . that’s why I’m called Violet . . . it was the name the nurses gave me.’ She let out a brittle laugh. ‘I took it to an expert once but he wasn’t able to tell me much except it’s made of porcelain and might be worth £60 or £70.’

‘Yes, I see.’ Mr Anwar closed the box and returned it. ‘Yes, I see.’ He went back to the chair, where he sat with his head bowed, as usual allowing an interval to pass for Violet to assimilate each new revelation without interruption. ‘You have many things to think about,’ he said at length. ‘And thinking is best done alone.’ He stood up. ‘So I should leave you now.’

Violet made to move but Mr Anwar insisted she stay where she was. He would see himself out. At the door, he turned back. There was something else he needed to tell her. It was clear from his doleful expression that he was torn about doing it now. ‘What is it?’ Violet asked.

‘There’s no mention of her
being pregnant in the newspaper cuttings. I don’t know
why that is because the police report into her death
refers to her being close to full term.’

After Mr Anwar’s departure, Anna continued to mimic Violet; sitting like her; her back pressed against the wall, legs outstretched, feet together. She occupied herself by making faces on her finger nails, scratching out two eyes, a nose and a mouth in the dried varnish. Each nail was given a girl’s name and was introduced to its neighbour. These formalities included a whispered warning to be quiet because ‘Violet is upset’.

‘Not with you,’ Violet said before examining the photograph again. ‘I wish I’d asked if she was married.’

‘Don’t you
have
to be married when you’re thirty-three?’

‘No,’ Violet said, ‘no you don’t.’

Anna
passed on the news to her ‘nail polish’ friends, and
Violet remembered the day she was told the circumstances of
her birth, those few that were known. She had been
twelve when Bridget, her adoptive mother, sat her down in
the kitchen and explained why a woman might desert a
new born baby. ‘She’ll have been abandoned too, by
the father, poor girl. No mother would do that unless
she was young, desperate and alone. It must have broken
her heart.’ Violet recalled every detail of the conversation because
Bridget seemed so troubled by it. ‘Things are better said,
don’t you think, so we all know where we
are? Even if I’d given birth to you, I
couldn’t love you more than I do.’ Until then
she’d thought Bridget was talking about one of their
neighbours, or another girl at school. She hadn’t liked
to ask, because Bridget seemed on the verge of tears.
The thing she remembered most clearly about the revelation, once
she had understood its significance, was her sense of relief;
that and the wave of emotion for her lost mother
which had ebbed and flowed ever since. Even before Bridget’
s ‘chat’ as she had prefaced it, Violet sensed she
hadn’t belonged; that Tom and Bridget Wells weren’t
her real family. After it, she called them by their
first names and not mummy and daddy as she had
before. Every day she expected her real mother to rescue
her, and imagined how extraordinary that would be.

Not her father: though she didn’t know why she never imagined him coming.

Never wondered about the way he looked or the way he sounded.

Never wanted his arms around her. She just hadn’t, still didn’t.

Most likely it was because she accepted her mother’s action was dictated by desperation, by circumstances beyond her control, by her father’s fecklessness, as Bridget suggested. Was there another possible explanation, one that made any kind of sense? Now Mr Anwar had brought the beginnings of another version of events, one that demolished all her previous assumptions. Megan Bates hadn’t been young, a girl, nor had she spent the past 26 years trying to find the daughter she gave away.

A knock at the door interrupted her thoughts: a soft tap followed by another as though the person outside was aware of the sensitivities of the moment; of the tactless inconvenience of wanting to be let in now. Violet and Anna exchanged glances.

‘Who is it?’ Violet called out. Her question elicited a familiar cough from the visitor on the other side of the door. ‘Miss Wells, it’s me, Mr Anwar . . . If I might, just for a minute, I won’t need to come in, there’s something . . .’ He sounded so unsure of himself that Violet was concerned for him, of the unsettling effect his visit had had on him too.

‘Of course,’ she said, going to the door, brushing her hands across her face. ‘Please, come in.’

‘I won’t, if you don’t mind.’ Mr Anwar stood awkwardly, neither crossing the threshold nor saying why he had returned.

‘It’s all right Mr Anwar, whatever it is. Really . . .’

Anyway a small man, he seemed smaller still as if shrinking from whatever else he had to tell Violet had shrunk him literally.

‘You asked me if I had children.’

‘I did, and you said you had a son.’

The repetition of it appeared to cause Mr Anwar anguish. He shook his head and made an expression of contrition. ‘I have a daughter too.’

‘Oh,’ Violet said.

‘Shereen – she was very pretty, and clever.’ There was pride in his voice; that a daughter of his could be such things; but regret too. Violet registered the tense he used – ‘was’ – but said nothing.

‘I don’t see her anymore.’ Mr Anwar shrugged. It happened, the shrug said, though he hadn’t expected it to happen to him. ‘When my wife died . . .’ he tried to explain before giving up. ‘Shereen found herself another family, I suppose.’

He faltered and Violet stepped
towards him, touching his arm lightly with her hand. ‘There’
s no need, Mr Anwar.’

‘Please . . .’ He sounded cross for not saying what he meant. Violet took her hand back and waited for him to speak.

‘She married, too quickly. She didn’t know the man well enough and now she might as well be a stranger. His family is rich and I,’ he went on, ‘well, I am not. I never see her. She has told me never to contact her.’ His head dropped, pulled down by the weight of regret. ‘Every night for the last four years,’ he glanced up at Violet, ‘every night before I go to bed, I sit in her room and talk to her.’

From behind his back he produced a carrier bag. ‘I couldn’t help seeing . . .’ His eyes darted around the room and back. It meant he couldn’t help noticing the lack of furnishings. ‘It’s just a book,’ he said, sensing her reluctance to accept it.

‘There’s no need.’ She took it because refusing it might hurt his feelings. ‘Thank you.’

‘Go to where she was, talk to her, like I talk to Shereen. It helps.’ He retreated along the landing.

‘Thank you, I will,’ Violet called after him. As he started down the stairs, she remembered the question she had omitted to ask him before. ‘Oh, Mr Anwar,’ she shouted, going to the handrail and leaning over it. Mr Anwar seemed apprehensive, as though Violet was about to return his gift.

‘Was my. . . .’ She stopped. ‘Was my mother married?’

Mr Anwar shook his head. ‘No, no she wasn’t. The newspaper reports of the time refer to her as Miss Bates and my information is that the police report also described her as a spinster.’

After the door to the street had shut, Violet opened the bag and removed the book, a travel guide to the Scottish Highlands. Lying flat inside the front cover was a wad of £20 notes and a card from Mr Anwar. She counted out the money, ten notes, more than she had held at one time, ever. Then she read the card.

Dear Miss Wells,

I hope you’re able to find your mother’s spirit somewhere in Poltown. A word of caution: you might be wise initially to disguise the purpose of your visit and your probable relationship to Megan Bates. It’s quite possible, even likely, your father is still alive and that he has family in the area. In my long experience of these kinds of cases, it’s better to move slowly and with as many of the facts as possible before declaring who you are. It might save you and others hurt. I hope you don’t mind me offering you this small piece of advice.

He had signed it modestly: Anwar.

Violet found the reference on page 192 of the guide book.

‘Poltown,’ she read aloud to Anna. ‘Question: when is a town not a town? Answer: when it’s Poltown. This example of misplaced suburban planning was dropped on the unsuspecting West Highlands for the workforce of the Nato refuelling depot which opened here in 1962. The military fondness for acronyms (POL = Petroleum, Oil and Lubricants depot) gave the new settlement its name. Unwisely, those responsible for designing Poltown allowed themselves an evocative flourish, imagining their creation one day becoming notable like the famous dead Scots after whom they called this ugly collection of cul-de-sacs. To save you the bother of going there, there is Thomas Telford Court, Sir Harry Lauder Gardens, William Wallace Drive, Sir Alexander Fleming Rise, David Livingstone Neuk, and Jenny Geddes Walk, after the spirited woman who threw her stool at the head of the Dean of St Giles Cathedral in Edinburgh for having the affront to use an Anglican prayer book. Wouldn’t she have aimed another missile at the perpetrators of this more modern heresy had she been alive? If you’re still tempted to see it for yourself, there is also a refuelling jetty in the adjacent sea loch, buried fuel tanks in the hill-side behind and a collection of disused military sheds, where visiting forces were trained in the theories and practice of covert mountain warfare. Since Nato’s retreat and the departure of the military trainers and depot staff, the cul-de-sacs have been used as overspill social housing from the surrounding towns and villages, the Highland equivalent of a refugee encampment, the residents huddled and forlorn, waiting to return to their lost homelands, all hope gone.’