FIC: Backstory - Orphan
Mar. 1st, 2013 11:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
m_is_forShe is five when the war begins, though she doesn’t know it at the time. All she knows is that Mummy and Daddy are having a disagreement downstairs, their voices drifting up the stairwell to where she sits, her small hands wrapped around the spindles of the railing.
More accurately, Daddy is arguing, his voice clipped and stern, while Mummy makes muted protest, her voice almost too soft for her to hear at times.
“For God’s sake, she’ll be going to school in another year or two. She’s certainly old enough to stay with my sister.”
“But...to be away from both her parents...”
“She’ll need to get used to it before she goes to school, and even the government says that children five and over can go without their parents. I need you here; who’s going to look after the house otherwise?”
It’s a couple weeks later that Mummy buttons her red wool coat and picks up her child's gas mask case and a bag with her clothes and a couple favourite books inside, and leads her out to a waiting cab. She holds her stuffed rabbit tightly under one arm as they rumble through the streets, and she stares out at ARP Wardens standing next to piles of sandbags on street corners.
The train is crowded as it leaves the station, many other children and a few parents in their carriage. Some children are apparently alone, their names and destinations written on tags that flap as they go running past her and Mummy’s compartment.
The carriage slowly empties with each stop, growing quieter and quieter. There are few people left when they reach the small country station where Mummy leads her out, a porter lifting her out of the carriage with a sweep of his arms. She giggles as he swings her back onto her feet, a noise that dies away as she sees her Daddy’s sister Isobel standing a few feet away, her lips in a thin line. It isn’t until much later that she realizes that Auntie Isobel probably wasn’t too happy about having to look after her brother’s child, as she had no husband or children of her own.
At that moment, however, all she knows is that Auntie Isobel has never been terribly warm toward her, and she doesn’t understand when Mummy says that she has to stay there with Auntie Isobel, but that Mummy will be going back home. She doesn’t really understand it until the next day, when they go to the station and Mummy tells her to hold Auntie Isobel’s hand and be a good girl, and Mummy gets on the train but Auntie Isobel doesn’t.
As the train starts to move, she tries to pull away from Auntie Isobel, but Auntie jerks her back to her side.
“Don’t make a scene. You’re a very lucky little girl that you get to stay with family and that your Mummy got to bring you here. Now wave, and no crying.”
*
She is six, six for a whole week, when the phone rings and she hears Auntie Isobel talking quietly to the person on the other end of the line. She stops copying letters from a book--hers a little more wobbly than the printed ones--and stands as Auntie walks into the lounge.
“That was your father. He said that your mother was killed yesterday, and I’m to take you down for a couple days on the train tonight.”
She’s too shocked at first to realize just what Auntie Isobel says, and it’s only once she’s reached her room that, as little as she understands death beyond what the vicar says in the pulpit on Sundays, she realizes that when they get to her house, Mummy will not be there to see them. That Mummy won’t be there anytime she goes home, though she can’t quite wrap her head around “never”. It’s only then that she starts to cry, clutching the stuffed rabbit that Mummy had told her Mummy bought when she was born.
After that day, she doesn’t cry again until the funeral, standing at the graveside in front of the box that Mummy was in, though she hadn’t seen her in it. She hears people around her talking about the bomb that landed in their street, and it isn’t until years later that she realizes why the casket had been closed.
As she starts to sniffle, she feels her father tap her on the shoulder. “Don’t make such a fuss. There are a lot of other little girls that have lost one or both parents. Now dry your tears and stand up straight.”
She tries, desperately wanting Daddy to be proud of her, to hold her like Mummy used to, but she can’t stop a few more tears from trickling down her cheeks.
*
She is ten, and home from school on Christmas holidays when she sneaks into her father’s room. Previous days’ snooping have told her where to look today, in the precious hour she has before her father arrives home from work, while his housekeeper and her minder is busy with dinner preparations.
She quickly finds the box in the crawlspace, careful to note its placement and the location of things around it as she pulls it out from behind a box of books. Taking care not to disturb the dust on top of the lid, she lifts it off, finding boxes and envelopes of photographs, and she flips through them until she finds the face she’s looking for: her mother’s.
She sorts through the photographs more slowly now, savoring the feeling as some of the dim, half-forgotten memories of her mother come back to her. They’d been growing darker, more blurred with time, and the image of her mother’s face in her mind had faded until she could hardly call it up any more, her voice a faded echo.
Realizing that she’s losing time, she quickly selects a snap of her mother taken at the seaside, her hair being blown by the wind as she laughs at the person behind the camera, and one of her mother holding her hand when she was very little, dressed in their summer Sunday best and standing in front of their house.
She places the rest of the photographs back just the way she found them, puts the lid back on the box and pushes it behind the others, screened from view. She’s reasonably sure that her father will never miss them--there had been no signs in the dust that he’d so much as looked at the box since he had placed it in the crawlspace--but she’s still careful that nothing will give her away once she closes the crawlspace door behind her. He would call her desire for a picture of her mother needlessly sentimental.
*
She is thirty-one when she receives the call that her father has died of a sudden heart attack. On the train from London to the village which he’d retired to a year before, she reflects that she feels rather empty of emotion, but that it should hardly surprise her. He had been little more than a stranger to her her entire life.
She stays at his cottage so she can sort through his things, giving most of the practical things away to charity shops, throwing out most of what is personal. The only thing of his that she keeps is the Royal Doulton bulldog with the Union Jack on its back; she doesn’t remember seeing it before, so she supposes it must have sat on his desk at the various government offices he’d worked in. It has no real connection to him in her head, and she likes it, so it joins the box of photographs and a small box with her mother’s jewelry and a couple other items. It will look well enough on her desk in Century House, and isn’t likely to draw any scorn from the other analysts like other fripperies might.
Everything else goes; the small things she disposes of herself, the larger--furniture and the like--she leaves for her father’s lawyers to auction off. Her father had been a looming presence of dissatisfaction in her life, and she had never really considered him a real parent. She knows that her employers were likely aware of this before they made their offer, and it may have been one reason that they approached her.
Orphans make the best agents, after all.
As she tosses dirt on her father’s coffin, she does not cry, her head up and her shoulders straight.
More accurately, Daddy is arguing, his voice clipped and stern, while Mummy makes muted protest, her voice almost too soft for her to hear at times.
“For God’s sake, she’ll be going to school in another year or two. She’s certainly old enough to stay with my sister.”
“But...to be away from both her parents...”
“She’ll need to get used to it before she goes to school, and even the government says that children five and over can go without their parents. I need you here; who’s going to look after the house otherwise?”
It’s a couple weeks later that Mummy buttons her red wool coat and picks up her child's gas mask case and a bag with her clothes and a couple favourite books inside, and leads her out to a waiting cab. She holds her stuffed rabbit tightly under one arm as they rumble through the streets, and she stares out at ARP Wardens standing next to piles of sandbags on street corners.
The train is crowded as it leaves the station, many other children and a few parents in their carriage. Some children are apparently alone, their names and destinations written on tags that flap as they go running past her and Mummy’s compartment.
The carriage slowly empties with each stop, growing quieter and quieter. There are few people left when they reach the small country station where Mummy leads her out, a porter lifting her out of the carriage with a sweep of his arms. She giggles as he swings her back onto her feet, a noise that dies away as she sees her Daddy’s sister Isobel standing a few feet away, her lips in a thin line. It isn’t until much later that she realizes that Auntie Isobel probably wasn’t too happy about having to look after her brother’s child, as she had no husband or children of her own.
At that moment, however, all she knows is that Auntie Isobel has never been terribly warm toward her, and she doesn’t understand when Mummy says that she has to stay there with Auntie Isobel, but that Mummy will be going back home. She doesn’t really understand it until the next day, when they go to the station and Mummy tells her to hold Auntie Isobel’s hand and be a good girl, and Mummy gets on the train but Auntie Isobel doesn’t.
As the train starts to move, she tries to pull away from Auntie Isobel, but Auntie jerks her back to her side.
“Don’t make a scene. You’re a very lucky little girl that you get to stay with family and that your Mummy got to bring you here. Now wave, and no crying.”
*
She is six, six for a whole week, when the phone rings and she hears Auntie Isobel talking quietly to the person on the other end of the line. She stops copying letters from a book--hers a little more wobbly than the printed ones--and stands as Auntie walks into the lounge.
“That was your father. He said that your mother was killed yesterday, and I’m to take you down for a couple days on the train tonight.”
She’s too shocked at first to realize just what Auntie Isobel says, and it’s only once she’s reached her room that, as little as she understands death beyond what the vicar says in the pulpit on Sundays, she realizes that when they get to her house, Mummy will not be there to see them. That Mummy won’t be there anytime she goes home, though she can’t quite wrap her head around “never”. It’s only then that she starts to cry, clutching the stuffed rabbit that Mummy had told her Mummy bought when she was born.
After that day, she doesn’t cry again until the funeral, standing at the graveside in front of the box that Mummy was in, though she hadn’t seen her in it. She hears people around her talking about the bomb that landed in their street, and it isn’t until years later that she realizes why the casket had been closed.
As she starts to sniffle, she feels her father tap her on the shoulder. “Don’t make such a fuss. There are a lot of other little girls that have lost one or both parents. Now dry your tears and stand up straight.”
She tries, desperately wanting Daddy to be proud of her, to hold her like Mummy used to, but she can’t stop a few more tears from trickling down her cheeks.
*
She is ten, and home from school on Christmas holidays when she sneaks into her father’s room. Previous days’ snooping have told her where to look today, in the precious hour she has before her father arrives home from work, while his housekeeper and her minder is busy with dinner preparations.
She quickly finds the box in the crawlspace, careful to note its placement and the location of things around it as she pulls it out from behind a box of books. Taking care not to disturb the dust on top of the lid, she lifts it off, finding boxes and envelopes of photographs, and she flips through them until she finds the face she’s looking for: her mother’s.
She sorts through the photographs more slowly now, savoring the feeling as some of the dim, half-forgotten memories of her mother come back to her. They’d been growing darker, more blurred with time, and the image of her mother’s face in her mind had faded until she could hardly call it up any more, her voice a faded echo.
Realizing that she’s losing time, she quickly selects a snap of her mother taken at the seaside, her hair being blown by the wind as she laughs at the person behind the camera, and one of her mother holding her hand when she was very little, dressed in their summer Sunday best and standing in front of their house.
She places the rest of the photographs back just the way she found them, puts the lid back on the box and pushes it behind the others, screened from view. She’s reasonably sure that her father will never miss them--there had been no signs in the dust that he’d so much as looked at the box since he had placed it in the crawlspace--but she’s still careful that nothing will give her away once she closes the crawlspace door behind her. He would call her desire for a picture of her mother needlessly sentimental.
*
She is thirty-one when she receives the call that her father has died of a sudden heart attack. On the train from London to the village which he’d retired to a year before, she reflects that she feels rather empty of emotion, but that it should hardly surprise her. He had been little more than a stranger to her her entire life.
She stays at his cottage so she can sort through his things, giving most of the practical things away to charity shops, throwing out most of what is personal. The only thing of his that she keeps is the Royal Doulton bulldog with the Union Jack on its back; she doesn’t remember seeing it before, so she supposes it must have sat on his desk at the various government offices he’d worked in. It has no real connection to him in her head, and she likes it, so it joins the box of photographs and a small box with her mother’s jewelry and a couple other items. It will look well enough on her desk in Century House, and isn’t likely to draw any scorn from the other analysts like other fripperies might.
Everything else goes; the small things she disposes of herself, the larger--furniture and the like--she leaves for her father’s lawyers to auction off. Her father had been a looming presence of dissatisfaction in her life, and she had never really considered him a real parent. She knows that her employers were likely aware of this before they made their offer, and it may have been one reason that they approached her.
Orphans make the best agents, after all.
As she tosses dirt on her father’s coffin, she does not cry, her head up and her shoulders straight.
