Gilly's Gone Home

By Greg Tuck

An elderly woman is slowly dying in hospital and her old neighbor and friend has returned to be by her bedside. She had been found as a child outside a bombed house in the streets of London during the Blitz in World War 2. Unable to speak and suddenly orphaned she was evacuated to Liverpool and then out to Australia where she was adopted by a farming couple in a small country town. She steadfastly refused to give up a crumpled photo she had carried with her. On the back was the word Gilly and so everyone assumed that was her name. Her friend returns to the old farmhouse and makes some incredible discoveries including a previously unknown artist studio with some brilliant artwork of Paris. He also finds her diaries. To find out more about her he advertises in a London paper. What happens after that makes you question the telepathy that is thought to perhaps exist between siblings.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Greg Tuck
• Release date: Jan 26, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463396032

Greg Tuck

I am a former primary teacher and principal, landscape designer and gardener and now a full time author living in Gippsland in the state of Victoria in Australia. Although I write mainly fictional novels, I regularly contribute to political blogs and have letters regularly published in local and Victorian newspapers. I write parodies of songs and am in the process of writing music for the large number of poems that I have written.

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

He stared intensely at the serene face in the bed across from where he sat. In his peripheral vision he caught himself reflected in the windowpane stroking his beard. The greying stubble on his chin that originally he had grown to add a sign of wisdom, needed a trim. As a psychiatrist, he would have been the first to comment on the habit he had developed of unconsciously tugging on his facial hair when perplexed. Those thoughts were far from his mind as he once again focused on the face. It still had the childlike quality, despite the tubes in her nose and the occasional grimace from the twist of pain that would rack her body. He rose from the visitor’s chair and wandered over towards the window. The cloying smell of the hospital; its clinical sounds and regimentation were left far behind as he gazed out of the partially open window and breathed in the aromas from beyond the four walls where he had spent the last six hours.

The nurses had kindly offered cups of teas and meals, but he was well aware of hospital food and so he declined. He had gained an incredible dislike for it after surviving on it during his university days and internship. In fact, as he glanced down at the corpulent bulge that had forced him to buy tailored clothes, he mused about the notion that he had developed an eating disorder because of it. His main vice was that he craved rich and expensive cuisine and as his practice had grown so had his waistline.

He could see some cows being enticed to head for the milking sheds by snapping blue heelers, even though the land in close proximity was being developed. The new housing estate was part of the boom in the country town where as a child he had known all of the inhabitants personally. He had come back regularly to visit his parents whilst they were still alive, after having been away for around thirty-five years in the city. Now things had changed. Many of the old faces had moved on, some to the cemetery that he could just see on the ridge. That cemetery built close to the hospital, new retirement village and nursing home, had two funeral parlours within walking distance. The town planners had done well. The semi-circle of later life – retire, nursing home, hospital, funeral parlour and then cemetery. All within easy walking distance especially for the frail and elderly. Couldn’t say the same for the youngsters; sporting complexes nowhere near schools; kindergartens, childcare and primary schools scattered willy nilly across the town. He ruminated about the cemetery and relived the discussion about the location of the new cemetery that had taken place after the decision made at a closed local council meeting. Yes, there was no room at the inn at the old cemetery; but to build the new one on the ridge next to the hospital and nursing home smacked of insensitivity or corruption. The landowner, cousin of the mayor, was happy. The council promoted the idea that the view was superb. The people buried there must be impressed. The friends and relations visiting their dearly departed relatives weren’t. They were exposed to the westerly and southerly winds that howled incessantly across the ridge. The ridge in fact protected the town from wintery gales. The Councilors were swept out of office at the next election by an even stronger wind of change. He was glad that his parents and the parents of the patient he watched over, resided in the old cemetery. It was quiet and sadly now attracted fewer visitors as generations changed.

Like himself, his schoolmates had left the small country town to seek fame and fortune and he had lost contact with nearly all of them. Some of the shops still bore the names of family businesses from long ago, but apart from the close family resemblance in some instances, he didn’t recognise the younger generation, or they him. After so long, he was a stranger in his own town.

His mum had left him the old house in her will and despite the desire to sell it initially; he had chosen to keep it for these past four years. In the end he had finally retired and moved back into his original home and into his original bedroom. Despite it being the smaller of the two bedrooms he couldn’t quite bring himself to take over the room where his parents had slept. Rather than keep that room as a shrine to the people who had scrimped and saved to send him off to university, he chose to use it as his study. They’d be pleased with that idea and perhaps because of their poor background and Presbyterian upbringing would have frowned at the waste of not using it.

The house was small and nothing more than an old miner’s cottage that had obviously become very fashionable as prices in the area soared. He had been sad to leave it and head for the big smoke as his dad had called it all those years ago. His father had been an abrupt man who had had it obviously instilled in him that emotion was something that strong men didn’t show. Still, the now retired psychiatrist, who had studied and practised in places as diverse as London, Rome and Suva could remember the single tear that had wended its way down his father’s cheek the day he left home.

He turned and looked at the woman in the bed and ruefully smiled. Miss Cartwright as he had called her when he was young, had been the key and impetus for the direction his life had taken. Later on, he would call Gillian Cartwright, Gilly; but it had to be Gilly with a hard G or she would ignore him. Stunningly beautiful, she had lived three doors down from him at the end of the lane in what now he assumed was prime real estate. Her parents had owned a farm and as the town gradually grew, they had refused to sell. Gilly had a hundred acres and a rambling old farmhouse in the middle of town. It was worth a small fortune if she only knew. But she would never know. What would happen to it when she finally succumbed to the cancer that was consuming her from the inside? As far as he knew she had no relatives; the only child of a very private couple who had long since passed on. Indeed, his mother, a couple of inquisitive neighbours and himself had been the only people apart from Gilly at her parents’ funerals. Not that she had noticed, nor would she be wondering about the intricacies of the legacy she would be leaving behind. That serene calm child-like face that drifted in and out of consciousness had always been like that.

He’d later regretfully been one of her tormentors when he was younger. Mad Cartwright, Silly Gilly and other horrible things he and other children and the occasional adult had taunted her as she sat on the front fence of her farm, until her father came and took her inside. Her father was a mild mannered and shy man who refused to be drawn into retaliation, but would angrily and then sadly shake his head, take hold of his daughter’s hand and walk her back to the house. Gilly would be blissfully unaware of anything that was said. She was somewhere else in a world of her own.

As he sat down again, ignoring the rumbling of his stomach and chewing on an antacid tablet, a certain memory came flooding back. He had been severely told off by his father for using some tools inappropriately; and as angry eight-year-old had stormed out of the house and flung himself down on the grass on the road verge. He had begun beating his hands on the grass trying not to cry. His father had instilled in him that to cry was a sign of weakness. In the end it was too much for him and he sat up and buried his head into his drawn-up knees sobbing his heart out. Sixty years later he could still remember vividly the touch of her arm going around him and as usual it brought tears again to his eyes. Gilly had witnessed his anger and sadness and instinctively she had come and put her arm around him and stroked his hair until the crying stopped. He had fallen in love with her then and there. She was four years older than him, but in reality, only as grown up as a four-year-old. He had looked into her eyes and seen a kaleidoscope of many different things. She had been holding him, comforting him for around ten minutes when he became aware of his father standing nearby. As he looked up, he heard Gilly’s father ask if his dad didn’t mind Gilly bringing her new friend home for some afternoon tea. He remembered the confused look on his father’s face change to a slow spreading smile and saw the nod of agreement pass between the two men and the glance of approval his father had given to his only son.

He now stared again at the patient on the bed and realized that the face that stared blankly back at him was the same face that he had stared into all those years ago. It still had that calm countenance and the capacity to make him smile even in times of great distress. It was the face that had been the guiding light all through his career and life. It had led him to become a doctor and created a craving to study further and become a psychiatrist. Just as she had helped him many long years before, he had wanted to help her and to his deep regret she had been his most spectacular and ongoing failure.

She had drifted off to sleep again and occasionally a smile would pass her lips. He kissed her forehead and stroked her hair before drawing the curtains and turning off the light. He would be back tomorrow and the next day just as he had been everyday over the past few weeks.

CHAPTER 2

The sunshine was fading but he put his sunglasses on anyway. The last thing he wanted was being innocently questioned about the puffiness and redness of his eyes. He wondered how long she would hang on, not because the task of sitting with her was a chore, but he couldn’t bear to see her in pain. He had prayed for remission but prayers weren’t going to be enough so the doctors had reported. He’d called in leading oncologists and even flown a friend from the US in to examine her but her body was ravaged beyond redemption and she had only time, but no hope left.

The hospital was like many others he had seen in a myriad of places over the years. It spawned its own little community. The small offshoot that was the nursing home was where patients seemed to be queued up waiting to die. The more ornate funeral home on the other side of the hospital doubled as a morgue. It was glaringly obvious to all, yet discreet to the patients in the nursing home who had been screened off with expensive landscaping. Over the road stretched converted Victorian and Edwardian houses that held medical practices, pathologists, radiographers and the new age practitioners of chiropractic, acupuncture and naturopath. They seemed to feed off one another and as the town’s population aged, they thrived as evidenced by the plush waiting rooms. He envied their business acumen and hoped that patient care was still uppermost in their minds. Times had changed but he had no regrets. He cut through the doctors’ carpark, past the latest models of the most exotic cars and took a shortcut to the main street. He’d taken this route so many times in the past few weeks that many people would probably set their watches by his regular return path.

He carried with him in a brown paper bag, the bundle of clothes he would wash tonight. At first, he had been reluctant to carry out this task. When he had seen her however in the nightie supplied by the hospital, he had been furious that having no family to take care of menial tasks, Gilly had been demeaned. Then he realised that in fact Gilly did have family. He was her family. They had shared secrets, many good times and some bad times when they were younger. He loved her like a sister and despite her mental state; they had always been closing no matter how far apart they had been.

The first time he had gone into her home alone after she had been taken to hospital he had felt like a trespasser. Yet that house had become his second home and he had always been made to feel welcome there by her parents and then later by her alone as she continued to live on her own after they had died. She may have been disabled mentally, but was able to maintain a life that kept her independent and sheltered from the outside world. He had made his first look through her chest of drawers very clinical and quick like a thief in the night, he took the bare minimum and disturbed as little as possible. Her smile of gratitude and the way she hugged the clothes he had brought to her had encouraged him to find more and more of the clothes she needed and the crazy collection of objects he alone knew as her treasures. Her room at the hospital was now awash in these and they were secreted around the vases of fresh flowers he brought daily.

The greatest of all her treasures was a small photo of her when she was around four standing in a park somewhere in London. He had found it beside her bed half crumpled where she must have dropped it when the ambulance had come to take her to hospital for the last time. He knew that above all things, this was capable of reaching to the very core of her soul. When she had seen it in the hospital, she had hugged him so tightly that the breath had been driven out of his body. She screamed out loud the phrase that had caused many people to label her as mad over the years. It was the phrase that would bring her the greatest joy and the most immense despair at the one time. The words she would say over and over again until they blended into one monosyllable were, Gilly’s gone home.

He knew of her history from London onwards having been told by her parents as they tried to explain why Gilly was different. Because of the blitz, she had been due to be sent to a family in Wales for protection. Families were divided and children were farmed off to so-called safe areas. However, for Gilly that never eventuated. Wardens had found her dazed and shell-shocked walking towards the bombed-out ruins that must have once been her family home. They had carried her away still screaming, Gilly’s gone home. From there it was from foster family to foster family as no-one could manage to look after this waif. She was christened Gillian and sent to Liverpool where she had been shipped off to Australia for safety. He had often wondered whether part of the reason for her move was as a means of dealing with a difficult problem. She had been examined for physical injury and when none was found had been labeled as mentally unstable. This tag she had worn all her life. Nowadays people had a better insight into how to deal with the aftereffects of a traumatic incident, but for Gilly little had been done at the time and, despite his best efforts, the damage was done and was irreparable.

Gilly had refused to let go of the photo at any time until she arrived in Australia. Apparently, even when bathing, she would keep it in one hand away from the water and wouldn’t let anyone remove it from her grasp. Mrs. Cartwright, her adoptive Australian mother, had heard that she would wail like a banshee should anyone dare try and that