Georgia

by Claire Lorrimer

Genres: Historical Fiction

Synopsis

Georgia Driffield is passionate, wilful, resourceful, intelligent but often foolhardy, as she grows from girl to woman in the years between the two wars. It is not until she discovers the extraordinary life of her great, great grandmother, Chantal, that she finds a way which will reconcile her to her adoption, reunite her with her adoptive parents and, unexpectedly, discover the true meaning of love. During these highly eventful years, Georgia becomes inextricably involved not only in the rising horrors of Nazi Germany, and the possible death of her best friend fighting in the Spanish Civil War, but also finds herself in terrible danger.

Release date: June 4, 2015

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 384

Sample

‘We will always be friends, won’t we?’ Georgia said, linking her arms through those of the two girls who were walking up the mountainside behind their school. It was the start of the summer term, and despite the previous three week Easter holiday in their own countries, they slipped back effortlessly into the French language common to all the pupils at their international Swiss boarding school.

They settled themselves comfortably amongst a carpet of wild narcissi, and Inge, the tall, fair haired German girl, said eagerly to Georgia:

‘You didn’t forget to bring the letters, did you, Liebchen?’

‘They are in my bedside cupboard,’ Georgia replied, thinking gratefully that they all had keys to their cupboards—the only place which was not communal in the delightful mini Schloss situated close to the vineyards above the lakeside town of Vevey. It was a place where she was wonderfully happy, her adventurous spirit having fretted at the restrictions of her English boarding school. Here she could go ski-ing in the winter, with exciting walks down through the vineyards at four in the morning to catch the little train taking the party of keen skiers to the foot of the surrounding mountains to spend a weekend in the care of the easygoing discipline of their Professor. Lessons were in the garden whenever the weather permitted. There were visits to the nearby town of Lausanne for shopping or to the theatre, and fascinating trips in the steamers which plied along the picturesque shores of Lake Geneva. Most important of all the pleasures, Georgia thought but did not relay to her friends, was being far away from home where she had found it impossible to be really happy for the past year.

Now, at the age of nearly seventeen she had made up her mind that she was never going to be a debutante and stay at home after her Coming Out Season like her much-loved sister, Migs. She was going to become a journalist, preferably a war reporter—if she could find a war to go to.

Sitting beside the tall, broad shouldered figure of her friend, Inge, with the brilliant blue eyes and long golden pigtail, Georgia could not have looked more opposite. Her dark brown, almost black hair, was, according to her mother, a hopelessly unruly mop despite the Kirby grips and frequent trips to the hairdresser to have it cut into a neat bob. Her eyes were also dark, and her complexion, which tanned easily to a golden brown in summer, lacked the extreme palor of Inge’s face against which her bright, rosy cheeks gave her a Nordic look which Inge herself called Aryan.

Georgia’s other close friend, Hannah, resembled neither of them. She was short, thin and her face with its high cheekbones was angular, her features aquiline. Her large, thoughtful eyes and serious expression somehow tended to reject offers of friendship from the less discerning who did not see the deeply sensitive, caring nature that had been quickly recognised by Georgia.

‘I’ll read the letters to you this evening after supper!’ she said now.

She was in no doubt that Hannah would find them every bit as intriguing as she did, but she was not quite so certain about Inge’s reaction. Inge was a hugely practical, self-assured girl who knew exactly what she wanted to do with her life just as soon as she left school. She would live perfectly happily in her precious Fatherland, as she called her country. She was forever talking about her beloved Führer, Herr Hitler, and had full size posters of him on the walls of her bedroom. She belonged to the Hitler Youth movement which, for Georgia’s benefit, she likened to the English Girl Guides—only better with picnics and rallies and gatherings of both boys and girls round camp fires singing patriotic Lieder.

By all accounts, although Hannah was also German, she did not enjoy a similar joyful home. For the past two years, she always spent her holidays with an uncle and aunt who ran a guest chalet in the ski resort of Garmisch. Only occasionally did her mother and father join her there. Her father who she adored, she had explained, was a doctor with a huge number of patients, mostly of Jewish faith like himself, but with numerous non Jewish patients who had been treated by him for many years. He never talked about the changes which were taking place under the new Chancellor, so often praised by Inge. Politics as a topic of conversation was not permitted at the school whose pupils came from countries all over the world, but Inge often regaled them with the wonderful things her adored Leader was doing for Germany and its people.

The three girls were all but inseparable. They skied, swam, played tennis, threw javelins, spent all their free time together, and trusted one another implicitly. Such was the closeness of their friendship, Georgia had confessed her deeply guarded secret to them on the last day of the previous term. Sitting on one side of Hannah’s bed, Inge on the other, she had said:

‘I’m not who you think I am. I mean, I’m not Georgia Driffield.’ Seeing the look of astonishment on their faces, she’d added quickly: ‘Well I am in one way but … well, I’m adopted. I was born to two other parents, only they weren’t really parents, I mean they weren’t married, and then the man died and Daddy, I mean he’s my father now, adopted me so I’ve got his surname. My real father’s name was Charles de Valle. I’m illegitimate! I looked it up in the dictionary and it means unlawful.’

She had expected them to see her henceforth as a different sort of person—someone not quite equal to themselves, but their reactions were totally opposite. Inge thought it fascinating and wanted to know more. Hannah was sympathetic and tried at once to reassure Georgia that whatever happened before she was born was not her fault and her parents must love her to have brought her up as their own child.

Georgia explained that she did not resemble her darling sister, Migs, who she believed her mother loved far more than herself. Not only was Migs prettier, she was far less trouble, happy to remain quietly at home playing with her dolls or, in recent years, shopping with her mother for pretty clothes. Georgia, on the other hand, had always preferred to join in her best friend Sebastian’s boyish escapades, when he permitted, and was inclined to argue with her mother who disapproved of most of her activities. As for her father, she had once adored him when she was little and they’d had wonderful times together telling stories and playing games, and she’d half believed she was the favourite of his two daughters. Then last summer she had suddenly come into a very large sum of money left to her by her former father and thus discovered that he had withheld this truth from her for all those years—that she was not really his child. Neither then nor subsequently had she felt able to forgive him, the father who had always insisted that she should never tell lies or be dishonest, for pretending she was his daughter.

Had it not been for the way Sebastian had treated the news, she would not ever have told them, these two close new friends, about her adoption.

Sebastian was the only son of their next door neighbours. He was the same age as Migs and had entrusted Georgia with the secret that he had been in love with her sister since their early teens; that when the time came for him to leave university and get a job, he was going to propose to Migs. An only child, ever since his family had moved into the house next door he had had to make do with young Georgia’s company if there were none of his own friends visiting. He openly called her his ‘slave’ because she always fell in with whatever activity he chose to enjoy, allowing him to confiscate her sweets or her toys for whatever game he had in mind with no more than a muttered apology if they were ruined in the process. Even though Georgia knew he only tolerated her company because she complied so readily with his demands and enabled him to see Migs so often, it was Sebastian’s indifference to her adoption she valued, and she’d never yet taken offence at any of the derogatory names by which he often called her.

Far from being as shocked by the news as she had expected, he had merely grinned and said: ‘How absolutely fascinating! Always thought there was something odd about you, Pugface. Tell me more!’

He’d been even more excited than she when they had discovered the letters and her ancestors’ family tree. On her sixteenth birthday, having passed his driving test, he’d driven her and Migs down to Tonbridge to see Audley Court, the old house her original father had left her in his Will. Whilst Migs unpacked the picnic lunch on the grass in the overgrown garden, she and Seb had explored the house and discovered in the cellar a dusty, woodworm-ridden old desk with a secret drawer.

He had been as intrigued as she was to discover, in the first letter Georgia had read aloud, that it was from a pirate—by the sound of it a real one, professing his love for what must be one of Georgia’s ancestors.

As a consequence Georgia had soared in his estimation and he had even agreed that when he was married to Migs he would permit her to live with them. As well as the house, according to her father Gerald Driffield, Georgia had also been left a huge financial legacy which, Sebastian told her, would make her rich enough when she was twenty-one to support him and Migs and her, too, if she lived with them, and at least half a dozen children. ‘You can tell them stories about your piratical forbears!’ he’d teased.

Sebastian was the only other person in the world, apart from Migs, with whom she’d been willing to share the letters. Now, because these two school friends had come to mean so much to her, she was about to share them with them as well.

That evening, sitting on the end of her bed, she unlocked her bedside cupboard and withdrew the dog-eared bundle, untied the blue ribbon and first read aloud the label attached to it. In Gothic handwriting it was addressed to ‘CHANTAL DE VALLE, PRIVATE’. She began reading out the first of the letters …

‘18th Day of July, 1841

Meu querida Chantal,

How shall I begin to tell you of the joy Captain McRae’s arrival on Coetivy has given me. It is two years almost to the day since you sailed away to your homeland, not a single one of which has passed without my wondering how you are. If you are well? If you married your titled English nobleman? If you are happy? If you have quite forgotten the happy times we shared here on my island?

Oh, Chantal, can you imagine what happiness is mine to learn from Captain McRae that it was you who persuaded him to divert his voyage to China so that you could have news of my well being here on Coetivy! So you have not forgotten me as I feared might be the case.’

Georgia stopped reading for a moment to explain that she had not brought the family tree with the letters but that she and Sebastian had worked out that Chantal was her great-great-grandmother and that she had married the ‘titled nobleman’, John de Valle, in 1840. As the pirate’s letter was dated 1841, she must have been married after she left the island of Coetivy. Sebastian had looked it up in an atlas and found it was one of a group of uninhabited islands in the West Indies known as the Seychelles.

Their faces glowing with excitement, the girls urged Georgia to continue reading, words which by now she almost knew by heart.

‘The Captain has given me paper, quill and ink with which to write this letter to you and has promised to deliver it to you in person on his return to England early next year. He has assured me that you have forgiven me for failing to signal either of the two ships who sailed so close to us and would have taken you from me; that time has allowed you to reach an understanding that my love for you was too great for me to facilitate your leaving me. I thought I would be unable to bear it, yet I have had to do so.

There are times, Koosh Koosh, when I think I hear your voice when the wind is stirring the leaves of the palm trees; or at twilight when the shadows fall and I think I see you running towards me from the rocks where you loved to fish, your long dark hair dancing round your shoulders. Your devoted servant, Zambi, swears she has seen your ghost in the moonlight slipping between the trees surrounding our clearing. We miss you! Sometimes I think I must leave here; go back to the sea and the life I led before you stole my heart. I make the decision to go but then I cannot bring myself to leave so many memories of you. Do you think of me, Koosh Koosh? Sometimes? Do you dream sometimes that you are back here on Coetivy with me and Zambi? When you read this letter, you will know that I cannot forget you and that EU AMÁ-LO-EI SEMPRE.

Dinez da Gama. Coetivy. July 1841’

Hannah drew a deep sigh:

‘But he is so sad!’ she commented. Inge shook her head.

‘Georgia said this man was a pirate,’ she reminded Hannah, ‘and that he had taken her prisoner after boarding her ship at sea: so we should not feel sorry for him.’

‘That’s what Seb said!’ Georgia told her, ‘but when I read you the next letters, you will agree that he really did love her.’

And he’d done so in a very poetic way, she’d thought each time she had read them. She could not imagine Sebastian ever writing to Migs in such a vein although he was in love with her. But this was 1936 and as Seb had said, everyone had become far more down to earth since the war and people just weren’t like that any more.

Urged by both girls, Georgia began to read the second letter. It was dated 1844.

‘Meu querida Chantal.

How have I managed to wait three long years for your letter which Captain McRae brought to me today? I knew it would take him many months to return to England after his last voyage here, and still more to return to Coetivy and I could not be certain he would deliver my last letter to you, still less that you would reply.

I thank you from my heart for it. For your happiness, I will make myself pleased that you are now married to de Valle although I cannot but remember that magical day when my faithful Zambi witnessed the marriage you and I made here before God when I truly believed you would be my wife for ever.

It may surprise you, Chantal, to hear that two years ago at Zambi’s request, she and I performed the same marriage ceremony as ours. She was carrying my child. Because you had wished our union to be as legal as possible without a Priest or ship’s Captain to officiate, she wished it, too, and I did not have the heart to refuse her.

I have a little daughter who I have named Poquita Cantora because it is the closest I can come to your name in my own language. She is white skinned like me with green eyes which Zambi tells me would be just like mine if I only smiled as often as my little Cantora; but she understands my sadness and tells our Daughter loving stories of her Papa’s captive white Princess!

Ah, Chantal, was it wrong of me not to open your cage door and set you free before you came to love me just a little bit? I will never know that truth but I will never regret those nine months we shared.

I congratulate you most sincerely on the birth of your Son. McRae tells me that by now you will have had a second child but that many children in England have succumbed to diphtheria this past winter and that you fear for your son’s survival. I shall pray for him. As you know, we do not have such illnesses here on Coetivy. Zambi believes you will return to visit us one day but sadly I do not share her hope.

McRae tells me you are as beautiful as ever but he comforts me by telling me there were tears in your eyes when you read my last letter to you. I must confess, however, that he added that you were most happily married and that your Husband was most loving towards you.

Please Koosh Koosh, write to me again. I live now for my sweet Poquita Cantora and my memories of you.

Munca seu amor

Dinez da Gama

If you like, I’ll read the last letters Dinez wrote to Chantal,’ she said to the two girls whose faces showed how intrigued they were. ‘The writing is more faded but I know them almost by heart.’

She started to read the first page.

‘Meu querida Chantal,

I truly believed my Heart was broken when you first left the island. Now I know a Heart can break a second time.

Last winter, a huge wave swept in from the sea without warning and engulfed my beloved little Daughter and poor faithful Zambi. When I discovered their poor lifeless bodies, I wished I, too, had perished.

Today our good friend Hamish McRae has arrived and I told him how I was high up one of the big palm trees by chance gathering coconuts when the sea swamped Coetivy. He said it was more probably the hand of God than mere chance.

As you knew, Chantal, I was born into a Catholic family but relinquished my Faith when I led a life of piracy. I told myself God would approve my desire to rob the rich merchants in order to improve the miserable lives of the poor. Hamish has made me see that this terrible tragedy which has robbed me of my Daughter, may be God’s way of showing me that I cannot remain here on this lonely Island with that great wealth of merchant gold buried in the sand.

This God-fearing man has offered to break his journey to China and take me and my treasure trove to the capital Island of Mahé some two hundred miles hence; there to have a new boat built to my liking in which I shall return to my homeland …’

Georgia paused to take up the second sheet of paper. She could see by the two girls’ faces they were fascinated by this story nearly one hundred years old. The second sheet was dated two days later than the first. She continued to read:

‘After much reflection, I have decided to follow McRae’s advice if for no other reason than that I cannot bear to go on living here without my Daughter and Zambi and only my memories of you. I shall be going back to my homeland in Portugal, Chantal, and if McRae is right and it is God’s will that my Life has been spared for a Purpose, I will journey safely these next two years with my treasure chests, and will use this wealth to set up an Orphanage for Destitute Children in my Daughter’s name. Linked as it is with your name, my one true Love, I cannot think of one without the other.

McRae tells me you are well and content with your Life although you, too, have suffered the sad loss of three of your Dear Children. Remember me if you will in your Prayers as I remember you, always and always.

Dinez.’

All three were silent for a moment and then Hannah wiped her eyes, saying:

‘That’s so sad, Georgia! He did get back to Portugal safely, didn’t he? Does he say?’

Georgia shook her head.

‘I’m afraid not. I shan’t read the last one if it’s going to upset you, Hannah.’

But Inge insisted she should do so.

‘It is dated August, 1856,’ Georgia said, ‘and written from an island called Madeira.’ Handing soft-hearted Hannah her handkerchief, she started once more to read:

‘Meu amor um verdadeiro

I and my three surviving crew have now been on this beautiful island for six months. I have very little money left after weeks of payments to the divers I hired to search for the Cantara which was blown by a northerly gale towards to the island where she hit rocks and sank to the bottom of the ocean together with my sea chests containing my treasure. I and my Mate had only a few gold coins left when the dinghy in which our lives were saved reached the shore. Two men have lost their lives in the attempt to salvage my fortune, and I have now abandoned all hope of retrieving it although I had hoped to do so having noted its distance and direction from land.

This letter doesn’t have an ending, but there’s another page dated over two weeks later which explains why not. It’s very sad, so don’t start crying again, Hannah!

‘If this news ever reaches you, Chantal,’ Georgia read, ‘you will know that I am no longer on this Earth. An horrific Pestilence is sweeping this Island and Person after Person around me has died. My Mate and all the divers are dead and I myself have been unwell these last three days. There is no cure for this Epidemic which they call Cholera, and I do not deceive myself that I shall survive it.

Dearest Chantal, I do not fear Death, and I no longer grieve for my lost fortune lying for ever on the bottom of the sea. My only regret at leaving this Life is that I shall never see you again. It is a comfort to me that, God willing, I will be reunited with my sweet Daughter, Cantara.

Remember me in your Prayers, Koosh-Koosh. I shall love you unto Death and beyond.

Your devoted Dinez’

There was a brief moment of silence as Georgia stopped reading, then Inge voiced her opinion that the pirate’s end was well deserved seeing that he had kidnapped Chantal in the first place! Both girls were intrigued by Georgia’s relationship to the recipient of the letters.

That night, when her two friends were asleep in their beds, Georgia lay awake, her mind restless with unanswered questions. Had Chantal returned the pirate’s love? If so, why had she not stayed on the island with him? Was the island still unpopulated? One day when she was twenty-one and could do what she wanted she would like to visit it. Even more urgently, she would like to visit Madeira, the place where the pirate had died, which she had found on the large globe her father kept in his study, to search for his grave and to discover if his boat had ever been raised.

On the point of sleep, her eyes closed but her mouth curved in a smile as the thought struck her—if she did fly round the world with Sebastian, as he intended when he left Cambridge University, they could visit Madeira and look for Dinez’ boat. They might even land on the mysterious island in the Indian ocean and see where the pirate had fallen in love so tragically with her mysterious great, great grandmother, Chantal.

Dona Resita Reviezky lay on one of the lounge chairs on the balcony outside her sitting room looking down across the beautiful gardens of Reid’s Palace Hotel. The large suite in which she had chosen to make her home was tastefully and luxuriously furnished: the service and food provided by the hotel was excellent and the moderate, all year round, sunny Madeiran climate was exactly to her choosing.

Money was of little consequence to the elderly lady. When her husband, a wealthy Romanian, had died, she sold their house in New York and the beautiful furniture and furnishings, retaining only her jewellery and János’ yacht. She had then sailed to the island of Madeira having fallen in love with the place when she and János had once holidayed there.

The yacht, which she seldom used, was an absurd extravagance but as she was a widow, childless and approaching seventy years of age, she could think of no better way to spend her money.

Many years ago, she had lost touch with her only relative, a brother called Nikolai Anyos. Despite the fact that her husband had left her a very wealthy woman, she was often lonely, and she decided to go back to his last known address in Europe, and try to find him.

When finally she reached the street where he had been living, it was to be told by a neighbour that her brother had started to drink when his wife died and a year later he, too, had died leaving a small son who was put in an orphanage run by nuns.

Now, as Resita waited for her adored nephew to return, she drew a deep sigh as she asked herself where those years had gone since she had begun her search for him. It had been no easy task, for by the time she began, the boy, aged fifteen, had left the orphanage and had found employment as a kitchen boy.

With no more to go on, Resita had spent a week searching the many local restaurants without success. She was on the point of giving up the search when she was contacted by a restaurant owner named Stefan who told her that he knew of a young waiter who answered the description of the lad she was looking for and would tell him to present himself to her at her hotel next day. Resita at once saw the strong resemblance of the youth to her dark-haired, brown-eyed brother, who even had the same name, Fedrik.

When she called to thank Stefan for finding him, the boy’s first employer went to great lengths to inform her that he had spent many hours training the inexperienced boy, and reminded her quite unnecessarily how she might never have found her nephew but for him. Finally, aided by a handsome sum of money, he volunteered to square matters with the boy’s present employer and allowed Resita to take him then and there back to her hotel.

It was, however, several further weeks before Resita and her nephew were able to leave the country whilst she went about the task of obtaining a passport for him.

Within a year, Fedrik had grown into a charming companion, filling the gap left by her late husband. He was an exceedingly good looking young man, now six foot tall with jet black hair, dark brown eyes and amazingly long black lashes. He had only to give one of his charming smiles for women to respond to him and the young girls to blush. His manners were impeccable and he had a near perfect command of the English language which he’d quickly picked up from the British guests in the hotel. He was not only charming, but always attentive to her well being, and Resita developed a deep fondness for him, delighting in the knowledge that he seemed perfectly content to take care of her and be a companion to her in her old age.

Now, fifteen years almost to the day since she had found him, she stared out from her balcony at the hotel’s beautiful tropical garden watching for his return. Seeing no sign of his tall figure approaching, she told herself he was doubtless down by the swimming pool in the rocks at the base of the cliff on which the hotel had been built. Although nearly seventy, she was still an elegant and attractive woman, but now an unsightly frown creased her forehead at this deviation from their habit always to take tea together at four o’clock after her siesta. She glanced once more at her watch as a waiter came on to her balcony carrying a large tea tray, including Fedrik’s favourite cherry cake the chef had baked especially for him. Throughout luncheon he had been flirting with an American girl sitting alone at an adjoining table. Without embarrassment the young woman, called Christobel, had approached Fedrik in the foyer and enquired if he would be interested in a game of tennis or a swim after lunch. With his usual consideration, Fedrik had promised to be back in time for tea.

Although Resita never tired of her nephew’s company, she realised that it could not be much fun for a young man always to be dancing attendance upon an old woman like herself, and she made a point of not sounding upset or resentful when he enjoyed other company than hers. She never implied that he was indebted to her not just for ‘rescuing’ him from his former life, but for the generous allowance she paid regularly into his bank so that he was never embarrassed by having to ask her for money. He adored the speedboat Resita had given him one Christmas, and although he did not own a car, she allowed him to drive her Bugatti for his own use as well as hers.

Resita now occupied herself reading the letter she had received that morning from her close friend, Priscilla Wiscote. Priscilla lived in London with her husband, Sir Archibald Wiscote, and her letters were always full of amusing society gossip, the latest concerning the King’s association with the American woman, Mrs Simpson.

He should know better than to parade his paramour so publicly she had written. It’s not common knowledge yet—press repression no doubt—but the establishment are hardly likely to approve of his increasing obsession with a twice divorced woman. A bit of discretion absent, I fear.

She had gone on to say that she was giving a Ball for her granddaughter, Margaret Driffield, a pretty girl who was currently enjoying her Season.

It would be a lovely chance to see you, darling. Do try and come, and bring that handsome young nephew of yours.

Resita put down the letter as at last she saw Fedrik’s tall, athletic figure approaching from the beautiful, subtropical garden which her terrace overlooked. By then, the waiter had long since removed the tea tray and put a bottle of wine in an ice bucket in her apartment. Fedrik came out onto the balcony and flopped down on a chair beside her, his white, open-necked tennis shirt contrasting sharply with his sun-tanned neck and chest.

‘You’re very late, my darling,’ she said, a hint of reproach in her voice. ‘It’s almost five o’clock. I hope it wasn’t anything unpleasant which detained you?’

The expression on Fedrik’s face was one of resignation as he went over to the table and poured himself a glass of wine. There were times, he thought, when he resented his aunt’s dependence upon him, and in particular during these last few days when he wished to spend far more of his time with Christobel, the pretty American girl who seemed every bit as interested in him as he was in her.

‘So sorry, Tia Sita!’ he said as he went to sit on the chair beside her. ‘Our last set of tennis lasted far longer than usual.’ He paused momentarily before adding casually: ‘I hope you don’t mind, I’ve arranged to play with Christobel again tomorrow.’

Resita felt a renewed frisson of anxiety. She wanted always to please him, but not to forgo his company too often in order that he could spend their precious time together with someone