The Girl Under the Olive Tree (3 page)

‘Why aren’t you dressed?’ Fabia glared at her muddy daughter, still in her stalking gear. ‘Who lent you those trousers? You really are the giddy limit, such a tomboy. You look as if you’ve been dragged through a hedge. How are we going to smarten you in time for the ball? Thank goodness you’re not out for another year,’ she sighed, pointing to the door. ‘We’ll have to lick you into shape or you’ll end up a farmer’s wife,’ Mother continued her lecture outside the bathroom door after Penny had reluctantly retreated there. ‘Tonight you’ll sit with the other young girls and watch and learn.’ Penny dunked her head under the water to drown out the strident voice. She didn’t care what Mother thought. Her parents didn’t know who Penny really was inside. It was Effy and Nanny who listened to her tears and troubles. Papa tried his best but was always busy or away. And what was wrong with being a farmer’s wife? When she married it would be for love, not to satisfy her mother’s social aspirations.

The magnificent ballroom shimmered with candlelight and polished wood, a riot of coloured kilts and black velvet jackets, ladies in their long white dresses and tartan sashes, swords and banners and portraits on the walls. The pipers drowned the air with their tunes and the smoke from pipes and cigars wafted up the stairs where Penny stood taking in the scene as if it was a painting come to life.

In the centre Effy and her fiancé were taking to the floor in honour of their formal announcement. On her finger flashed a cluster of diamonds and sapphires, matching the blue of her sparkling eyes. It was her night, her moment of glory, and Mother stood still in her lavender velvet dress, her hair plastered into swirling waves, admiring her offspring and receiving compliments like a queen among courtiers. It was her moment too, her mission accomplished, one daughter engaged to be married.

Penny observed the scene knowing it would be Mother’s last such triumph; there was no way she would go through all that rigmarole to find a mate. She’d read enough biology to know that it was all simply about breeding with the right sort to produce good stock for the future. There had to be more to life than weddings and parties and comings-out.

She sat with a line of other future debs, who were tapping their feet, itching to get on the floor with the dashing men with sturdy calves and broad chests swirling their partners around as the music quickened and grew wilder. There was a protocol and their turn would come later tonight. Penny thought it was unfair to be tethered to chairs and polite conversation when there was fun going on.

Mother stood behind her, pointing out a group of young men in the corner, laughing loudly, their whisky glasses glinting in the firelight. ‘That must be the Balrannoch rabble . . . Good-looking specimens but wild. I hear Lord Balrannoch never could control his boys,’ she added, sizing them up as if they were cattle. ‘The tall one’s just a friend. He sounds like he’s from the Colonies,’ she muttered. ‘Expelled from Eton, so I am told.’ She sniffed, eyeing him with disdain. ‘The other brother, Torquil or Tormod, is in the army . . . Pity their mother died and left them to run wild. Still, they do cut a dash on the dance floor.’

A woman in a tartan sash, standing behind her chair, whispered, ’Fabia, have you got your eye on one of those boys for Penelope? She could do far worse . . .’

Penny anxiously strained to hear the reply.

‘Not yet, but I was wondering if there was a sister . . .’

‘For Alexander? Afraid not, just boys. There’s a quieter one that might do for Penelope, though.’

Penny felt her cheeks flushing with fury. She was not going to be foisted on anyone, and she slipped out of the chair, saying she wanted the lavatory, desperate for fresh air. The torch-lit corridors were dark but she knew her way by now to the library. Here it was quiet and cool, the lamps were lit and the log fire was crackling and warm. Blissfully alone, she made for the book about archaeology that had so fired her imagination. She settled down into one of the deep leather chairs. No one would miss her for a while.

Her eye caught a copy of the
Scottish Field
, and a catalogue for an exhibition at the Ashmolean showing pottery from some recent excavation at the Palace at Knossos. Oxford wasn’t far from home. If she was careful she could suggest a shopping trip with Effy and persuade her to see the exhibits. It was worth a try.

‘Not bad . . .’

Penny jumped at the sound of the voice behind her.

‘I’ve seen some of those artefacts for real. Over 5,000 years old, and they look as if they were made yesterday. You interested in all this?’

Penny turned to see who was talking; the accent was unlike any she’d ever heard before, deep and round. He was one of the crowd in the corner, one of Mother’s wild boys from Balrannoch. ‘Where did you see them?’ She eyed the young man. He was taller than Zan, with black hair plastered down with Brylcreem, his lace jabot already splattered with gravy stains.

‘On an island off the Greek coast, we watched them being brushed out of the ground. We washed the bits and pieced them, well, those who were trained up did . . . I just observed. I was a summer student in Athens, the British School of Archaeology, brilliant place.’

‘Sounds wonderful. I’d love to do something like that,’ Penny sighed. Why did boys get all the opportunities, the foreign travel to exotic places?

‘They take female students. You can always apply . . . It’s backbreaking work in the heat and dust, and you have to pay, of course, but give it a shot. Go next year.’ He smiled as if it was the easiest thing on earth to do. As he talked she saw his black eyes flashing with enthusiasm, smelled the whisky fumes on his breath. No one had ever talked to her as an equal before.

‘Where’re you from?’ she asked. ‘You don’t sound Scottish.’

‘My parents emigrated to New Zealand but sent me to board here. It’s where I met Torquil and Tormod, the mad twins . . .’ he laughed, and she thought it sounded like a peal of bells. ‘I’m at Cambridge. I want to be an archaeologist but my pa says I must join the forces when I’ve finished. Where’re you at school?’

‘I’m not,’ Penny blushed, ashamed. ‘Evadne’s getting married next year . . . It’ll be my season after that,’ she muttered as if it were an apology.

‘So
you’re
the little George sister. We’ve heard about you . . .’

Penny bristled. ‘What?’

‘You’re the one who can hit a target straight out and outpace some of the older gillies. The mountain goat, they call you.’ He was laughing, looking at her amused. ‘I’m Bruce, Bruce Jardine, in borrowed plumes, I’m afraid.’ He indicated his kilt. ‘Jardines are Lowlanders, don’t have a clan tartan so I borrowed one from Torquil’s clan . . .’

‘I’m Penelope George, but then you know that already,’ she said smartly, suddenly feeling uncomfortable at the backhanded compliment. Was he mocking her?

‘Old pots are not the sort of thing most of the debs I know go in for, but it figures,’ he added, eyeing her book with interest. ‘I’m doing a slide show about a dig in Greece tomorrow, if it’s wet.’

‘Where?’ she asked, despite herself.

‘In here, that’s why I was doing a recce. You’ll see what I’m talking about.’

‘I’m not going to be a deb,’ she announced suddenly.

‘Good for you. What will you do then? University?’

‘You must be joking! My mother would have a fit. And I’d never make the grades. But one thing’s certain, they can’t make me go into that cattle market.’ She blinked back tears of frustration. Bruce sat down beside her, his eyes fixed on hers with a look of sympathy. He was really listening to her. He pulled out his pipe and began to fill it. She could smell the rich aroma of his tobacco. Nobody ever listened to her at home, not about serious stuff. It felt so safe with him next to her, the fire crackling in the hearth and the lamps flickering, a world away from the noisy ballroom upstairs. She sat back on the sofa, wanting this moment to go on for ever.

‘If you want something badly enough, you’ll make it happen,’ my old nanny used to say. “Find what you love and do it well.” That was another of her sayings. See you tomorrow!’

Then he was gone and the room felt empty as if a fire had gone out. Penny shivered. Time she too went back to the ball before Mother sent out a search party. But instead she sat back in the leather sofa, turning over their meeting in her mind. Why did she resent being called a mountain goat? Why did she suddenly yearn to be on that dance floor under the spotlight like Effy rather than stuck on the sidelines?

Find what you love and do it well: it’s all right for you, Bruce, but what about me? How do I change my destiny, defy my parents’ plans, get myself an education that will allow me to follow my dreams? There must be a way, but will I be brave enough to take such a daring path to freedom? There’s just a chance, if you are on my side and believe in me. Then it might be possible.

Suddenly life didn’t feel quite so bleak after all, and she jumped up to join the dance.

I woke next morning, smiling at the memory of that first meeting with Bruce Jardine so long ago and those first longings wakened within me, but also the shame at being so uneducated, so ignorant of the wider world. I recalled how the following evening I’d crept into the darkened room where the shutters were closed against the autumn gloom, ready to devour his talk and slide show. A handful of guests sat staring at the white sheet on the wall, their cigar fumes spiralling like blue mist before the projector.

Bruce’s slide show transported us into another world, a world scarcely glimpsed in the Pathé newsreels in the cinema. There were snow-capped mountains set against a tinted blue sky, a harbour full of ancient sailing boats he called caïques, men in strange costume, baggy pantaloons and knee boots and waistcoats, with thick moustaches on their rugged warrior-like faces. He’d taken shots of their team leaders, the Pendleburys, a couple who were the curators of the British School of Archaeology, with premises on Crete, a tall man who had a glass eye and his tiny wife, Hilda, peering across at the camera, blinking against the sun.

Then came that first glimpse of archaeologists in pith helmets unearthing ancient treasures, brushing the sand and dust, washing the pots. Girls in shorts, not much older than I was, sketching details of the discoveries. There were piles of wicker baskets full of finds ready to be labelled up and catalogued. Scenes from the tops of mountains, picnics by caves on Crete. Shots of the party all laughing and the men doing strange dances, and I felt the jealousy fired up inside me for their freedom to be out there doing something of such importance. It looked a wondrous place. But a place that was so far away from my humdrum life, it could have been the moon. It was boys who got to tramp round Europe, to travel without chaperones, to learn foreign languages. I’d hardly been down the street on my own. There was always someone by my side, giving me orders, checking the seams on my stockings. I’d never been on a bus or train alone, gone into a public house or hotel, or been allowed to stay out late. Permission would never be granted for a girl like me to go on such a risky expedition, even if Greece was in my father’s ancestral homeland and I did possess a little nursery Greek.

A burning sense of injustice seized me at the unfairness of our childhood, privileged as it was, and now I laughed out loud.

But you did it, old girl. You did it in the most roundabout way. Oh, the single-minded arrogance of youth. This was going to be your destiny and you flew towards it like Icarus to the sun, regardless of others or the danger.

I sighed, shaking my head. If only youth knew and age could, went the saying. How true. Little did I know then that such a flight would demand a lifetime of service to pay back its dues.

The brochure for Crete was still lying on my bedside table, unread. Now I was going to return to that special place, perhaps to gather up the scattered bits of myself that had been left behind there, if they were still to be found. Perhaps only by facing the past would I find answers to the mysteries that still lay hidden on that island of heroes and dreams.

Evadne’s wedding had taken months of preparations. The fact of the King’s shocking abdication and the coronation of the new King George in his place were merely minor events in Mother’s calendar. Nor did rumours of war in Germany ruffle her determination to make this the wedding of the year. There was to be a grand reception in the grounds of Stokencourt Place, with London catering, after a service in the parish church.

Effy’s dress was being made by the society couturier Victor Stiebel, whose team demanded endless fittings, making trips to London a regular occurrence. This gave Penny a chance to explore the capital with the help of Effy’s chief bridesmaid, Diana Linsley.

Diane, as she preferred to be called, had just been ‘finished’ in Munich and kept the George girls in stitches with stories of her escapades in Hitler’s Germany. She described the Führer and his ardent followers strutting down the streets like cocks in a barnyard. She’d been sent home early after speaking out too loudly at a party, making a joke about the Hitler Youth camp she’d attended with her hosts.

‘It’s not like our Boy Scouts, I tell you. I saw a nasty side to them: kicking old men off the street, chanting abuse at anyone forced to wear a yellow star on their coat, knocking their hats off and tormenting their children. My hosts tried to apologize for their behaviour but I could see they were worried too. We’ll have to face them one of these days,’ she warned, but no one was interested in such gloomy news, chattering instead about corsages and the wedding trousseau.

Diane was a kindred spirit with Penny’s own sense of adventure, and she covered for Penny while she browsed in bookshops and spent her allowance on anything she could find that might help her to become an archaeologist. And it was Diane who sparked something in her when she kept reminding them that they ought to be doing something useful in case war came.

‘The Red Cross are holding lectures and training sessions, we ought to sign up,’ she announced, while they were being fitted for their bridesmaid’s dresses, which were slinky slub satin, cut on the bias, in the latest shade of eau de nil.