Whispers Through Time

By Joni Scott

This historical drama, part true, part fiction, is based on the mysterious lives of the author’s maternal grandparents’, Walter and Winifred, spanning most of the twentieth century.
Encompassing the Boer Wars, the end of the Victorian era and the Titanic tragedy, the characters not only travel onwards through these times but also to the colonial outposts of the British Empire.
As the first book of a trilogy, Whispers Through Time introduces the personalities, dreams and motivations of Winifred and her family. The mysteries that surrounded her life in the past intrigue her real-life grand-daughter, Heady, who tries to unravel them in the present day.
Why did young Winifred leave London alone on a ship to travel to Australia?
Why especially in June 1912, just months after the Titanic tragedy? Where did her brother, Oscar, disappear to without a trace? And what happened to her beautiful younger sister, Francesca, after her tragic love affair?
Time is an ever-present theme that waxes and wanes like a tide throughout lives. There are the what-if moments, the only if moments and the sad reality that past and present generations can never meet, forever separated by time.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Nov 30, 2020
• ISBN: 9781784551759

Joni Scott

Joni Scott had a scientific career as an organic chemist and biochemist in hospitals and industry. She also home-schooled her children and embarked on another career running a tutoring business. After writing her debut novel, Whispers Through Time, she contracted CRPS and lost the use of her dominant right arm and hand. In early 2020, she travelled to Italy for treatment but ended up in lockdown. This experience inspired her second novel, The Last Hotel which she wrote with her left hand. Though the physical act of writing is still a struggle, Joni is determined to continue. Time Heal My Heart is her third novel and can be read as a free-standing novel or sequel.

Book preview

2016

About the Author

Joni Scott (Ryall) lives near the beach on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland, Australia, with her husband, John and small Lhasa dog, Mix.

During her life, she has worked as an organic chemist and biochemist in hospitals and industry. She then home-schooled her two now grown children and embarked on another career running a tutoring business. This especially has been very fulfilling, helping and motivating high school students in maths and science. She believes it is never too late to learn or write a book. Whispers through Time is her debut novel, inspired by her sister’s family research.

Copyright Information ©

Joni Scott (2020)

The right of Joni Scott to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781784551674 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781784551759 (ePub e-book)

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published (2020)

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd

25 Canada Square

Canary Wharf

London

E14 5LQ

Preface

This story came to be due to the research conducted by my sister, Heather (Heady), as she constructed our family tree. Her tenacity yielded the factual details upon which my imagination feasted, enabling this story to happen, for Winifred Dora Reeseg was our maternal grandmother whose life details are both known and unknown. She was born on 18 October 1887 and passed away eighty-two years later, in 1969. Yes, she did actually board the Rangatira in 1912 and meet her Walter, my grandfather, on-board. But as a person with dreams and motivations, she has defied detection. No one alive remembers or maybe ever knew why she came to Australia alone, apparently as a young woman, and why later in life she behaved mysteriously.

It is to these intriguing gaps and silences that I applied my natural fascination with why people do what they do and my love of writing a story.

This tale therefore, is a work of fiction based on the bare facts of Winifred’s life. Additionally, although the names of Winifred’s siblings and parents are all true, their characters and actions are fictitious.

This is also a historical novel, for which I did much background research, for example, I needed to understand the complex railway network in London that was still being developed in 1905. I could not have my characters boarding trains at stations that had not yet been built. Nor could I describe passenger life on a steamship or the various ports without diligent research.

If there are errors found by some more historically knowledgeable reader, then, my apologies. I did my best with resources at hand from a distance of both, time and place.

I never knew Winifred Dora, maybe I met her a few times briefly when I was a little girl. She did not live nearby, neither visited nor was visited, which is strange.

We have few photos of her. Ironically one of these is of her as an older lady with purple tinted hair, on a ship, enjoying a cruise no doubt. The other is of her seated in a garden, surrounded by two small dogs. Also a lover of small dogs, I know small canines do not like mean people, which confirms my belief and supports family hearsay that Winifred Dora was a kind, caring person who loved animals.

Whoever she was and whatever she did, she was my nana, albeit a nana I never knew.

I have fashioned my Winifred as the young woman I imagined she would have been, a fitting complement to the grandfather I knew and loved.

This tale is also about two sisters, Winifred and Francesca, and the lifelong bond they share. No one else, apart from one’s parents has such long shared history as siblings do. When siblings base their relationship on care and kindness, not competitiveness, the relationship is a wonderful support through life’s turmoil. Winifred and Francesca in the story have such a relationship and I am fortunate to have such a one myself.

This book (my first ever novel!) is dedicated to Winifred Dora Reeseg, my unknown grandmother.

But it also is dedicated to Heady, my elder sister, for being ever supportive and without whose research into our family, this book would not have happened.

Hope you enjoy the read.

Joni.

Prologue

Sunshine Coast, Queensland, 2014

It had all started as a small seed of curiosity, initiated by supposed facts that did not quite ring true about her maternal grandparents. Heady had made a solid start on family history matters some years ago when she retired from her role as a personal assistant to the manager of an air conditioning company. Well organised and efficient as always, from her time as a secretary and assistant, the prospect of making order out of the jumbled hearsay and faded photos that constituted her family history was not at all daunting. Equipped now with the modern tools of the internet and Ancestry.com, it would surely be a piece of cake. Compared to her first tentative efforts a decade ago, which had required the slow process of letters to birth and death registries, the World Wide Web had facilitated family genealogy research, especially for lay researchers. However, despite this, it had not all panned out as tidily as her usual spreadsheets. There were gaps and, more insistently, silences that veiled a clear picture of the past. The ghosts of her grandparents continued to stare back at her from the grainy tattered snapshots, but refused to reveal themselves.

In her understanding of the social conventions of that long-ago time, young women like her grandmother did not sail unaccompanied to the other side of the world on a whim. There was no such thing as a gap year in 1912, it was well and truly a phenomenon of the future—young women had still to wait many decades for such freedom. Equally confounding was that the date her grandmother, Winifred Dora Reeseg, sailed forth was only two months after the sinking of the ill-fated Titanic. What motivated a young woman to set forth on a long sea voyage on a small liner into ice-infested waters so soon after this disaster? Had she sailed alone, and why was she coming to Australia?

These puzzling facts, originally gleaned from her aunt Dorothy, her mother’s sister, had started Heady on her journey back in time, back to the time of the Great War, and even before that, to the Boer War in which her grandfather had fought at the age of sixteen. Her grandfather, Walter Grout, and her grandmother, Winifred, had supposedly met on that ship in 1912. How had their worlds collided there so long ago? Did they, in fact, already know each other? These were the mysteries that had begun to tantalise her.

No-one in the family seemed to know the answers to her questions. It had been no use talking to her mother, Elsie, who professed utter ignorance of her mother’s early life and possessed no photos or keepsakes. The one fact she offered was that she herself, Elsie Grout, was named after her mother Winifred’s best friend, Elsie, from early days in London. Other than that snippet, she knew little of any of her family’s motivations, least of all her parents’. Was this out of sheer lack of interest about others, even your nearest and dearest, or the Victorian principle that it was rude to ask? Heady figured that it was a smattering of each. Definitely her mother was a self-interested woman whose whole being orbited around her husband, Archie. One wonders why her mother had bothered to have her children, Heady and her sister Joni, at all, for they never appeared to interest her much, and seemed only a background distraction to her raison d’être, her husband. Admittedly, Heady’s father Archie must have been a catch in the early 1940s with his matinee idol looks, and being an engineer who assembled spitfires for Australia’s war effort was equally dashing. Mum, after all, was just little Elsie Grout who worked at a butcher shop for a butcher with the unlikely name of Jesse James. Her parents’ worlds had collided by way of a blind date conducted in semi-darkness because of the blackout requirements of the time. Jesse, the butcher, had played matchmaker. He was a mason, as was young Archie. He admired the fine, strapping lad and decided Archie was in need of a bit of distraction from his long gruelling nights in the hot aircraft factory. Orchestrating the event, he bid Archie to wait for Elsie at a specified time under the clock tower at Manly Wharf, in the seaside suburb of Manly, where he figured there would be enough light for them to see each other. From there, they could proceed to the nearby theatre opposite the wharf to see a film, the name of which no-one had ever informed Heady. Young Archie, despite his good looks and twenty-five years, had yet to have a girlfriend, and young Elsie was a pleasant-enough looking, slim young lass. Time together was snatched between his long shifts, as war gave a sense of urgency to life and pleasure taken. They married in the presbytery at Manly, just after the war, Easter 1946. There was no proper wedding, just sister Dorothy and husband as witnesses. Like many wartime weddings, it was short on ceremony, and no photo was taken of the event. But her mother had told her, wistfully, like a young love-struck girl, that she had worn a cornflower blue dress and brown pumps and held a posy of tiny roses.

Yes, Heady knew all this, and had witnessed first-hand her mother’s unquestioning devotion to her, at times difficult, father. Her parents’ life did not interest her as she had been present for most of it and considered them a strange, mismatched pair anyway. Nowadays they were reduced to a demanding ill-tempered couple in denial of their faltering capacities. Their footprints in the sands of time were easily traced and were still being imprinted, though now at a much slower pace.

No, it was her mysterious grandparents she was fascinated by, mainly because they were a mystery, but also because they had lived through a fascinating period in history—Victorian times and then two world wars. She had distinct memories of her grandfather as a gentle old man, slim and tall, who smelled of pipe tobacco. He had lived out his last days in the War Veterans Home near her Aunt Dorothy’s home. Her parents, unlike Aunt Dotty, as she was called, rarely visited him, which seemed uncaring. But even stranger was the fact that her grandmother had vanished from family memory. In fact, Heady had only really met her about three times in her life, the last time at her own first wedding. She had seemed a sweet old lady, small and petite, with blue button eyes and purple-tinged grey hair. As it was an important event, there were photos, and quite a few, of her grandmother in the family group. But by then she was an old lady in her eighties, and the photos offer no insight into who she really was. It is conceivable that she, as a newlywed bride of nineteen, could have sat down and had a long intimate chat with her grandmother about her own girlhood and marriage. But, no, she didn’t have that chat. Now, how she wished she had initiated that important conversation, as that was the last time she ever saw her grandmother, Winifred, for she died less than a year later.

Why so little is known of Winifred and why her grandmother kept herself apart from her children for so many years, was part of the mystery that was becoming increasingly intriguing.

Little did Heady know that, once she started her journey into the past, other mysteries would also unfold.

Chapter One

Sisters

Hampstead, London, 1905

Winifred woke with a jolt as her mother jostled her out of a heavy sleep and a most enjoyable dream.

Winifred Dora, you’ll be late for work! Brisk and busy girl!

How had she ever slept past her usual 5.30 am, she wondered, especially as she shared a bed with Francesca and Dorothy, her younger sisters, who must, she reasoned by the tousled bedding, be downstairs at their chores.

Pulling her drab brown day dress on quickly, and muttering, same old, same old, as a profession of its very dullness, she clattered downstairs to join the usual noisy domestic chaos.

The well-practiced routine of chores was in full swing. With six children, of the original ten, still in the one-up-one-down terrace, peace and quiet were a rare commodity, so dreams and self-interest had to be put aside until later solitude. ‘Brisk and busy’ was her mother’s philosophy, and inspired the endless list of chores allotted to all but the youngest of the large brood. Brisk and busy, Winifred mused, not for the first time, that her parents must have indeed been brisk and busy to have had so many children in quick succession. It embarrassed her to even think of her dour middle-aged parents engaging in such an activity, so she brushed the image from her mind. Her thin worn mother dominated the kitchen and turned to acknowledge her entrance.

Brisk and busy, Winnie. Serve up the oatmeal, please.

For all her exhortations to briskness, her mother was now a slower moving central cog in the engine of domestic activity. Her commands, however, rang out with some of her previous energy, orchestrating a pattern of scurried movements in response. Winifred served up bowls of clumped oatmeal, noting Beatrice, her older sister, had not topped it up with enough water while the cereal had cooked. She hoped for Beatrice’s sake that her mother would not notice or they would all be hearing about it for days. Francesca read Winnie’s thoughts and hurriedly poured the diluted milk over the cereal, handing the bowls out to her sisters and younger brother.

Waste not, want not, her mother chided. Eat up, that’s all we have today. Maybe Winnie can bring some bread from the bakery. There’s a girl, heh?

The scrapes of spoons on tin bowls replaced the previous barking of orders as the children delved into their food, juggling their thin arms for space at the old wooden table. Winnie winked at little Dorothy Marie, who was eight, and Oswald Ernest, now ten, the two youngest and hopefully last of her many siblings. Francesca, her younger sister, aged sixteen, sat at her side while staring at her from the other side sat her older sisters, Beatrice and Gertrude. At twenty-five and twenty-three, they were still not married and unlikely to be now, placing them in the unfortunate category of old maids. Their wide plain faces rarely showed the animation she saw and loved in her younger sisters, and Winnie had long ago distanced herself from their orbit and gravitated to Dorothy and Francesca, whom she loved dearly.

Father and the boys, her older brothers, had already gone off with the cart to deliver a repaired piano to the other side of London. Afterwards, Gustave and Oscar would return, Oscar to give piano lessons along with Francesca in the parlour, and Gustave to run errands for the grocer in Hampstead. Father would continue on as a journeyman tuning and repairing pianos around London. Oscar, the eldest, lodged nearby, no longer at home, nor married though, now twenty-seven years old.

Now that she had a job at the local Albion Bakery in Dartmouth Street, Winnie was excused from further chores. Taking her bowl scraped clean to the sink, she kissed Ma, who was starting to organise the wash up, and hurried to leave. Francesca offered her a gulp of her warm tea as she passed the table, which she gladly accepted with a dimpled smile and a pinch to Dorothy’s arm. Grabbing her worn old coat from the hall-stand, she stepped out the door into the chill of a September morning. Her thin dress and coat offered scant insulation, but she knew she would soon be warm as toast in Mr Gottfried’s bakery.

One, two, three, she counted quietly to herself as her footsteps echoed in a pleasing beat. How she would love to tap dance down a street as she had seen a young spirited performer do one day last summer on the high street. There were so many things like that she dreamed of trying. Maybe one day, she sighed.

Arriving at her destination, Winnie hauled the supplied crisp white apron over her dark brown plaited head and fastened the straps at the back of her small waist. She loved the business-like crispness and whiteness of the starched apron. Nothing was ever as clean and starched at home, especially not her clothes. Being the third eldest girl, she always wore hand-me-downs, disappointedly ragged and thin.

Now in work mode, she hummed contentedly as she kneaded the puffy warm softness of the bread dough with her small deft hands. The warmth of the bakery and the pleasant nature of her boss and the young lads who assisted was a welcome reprieve from the tight-run schedule at home. This job was a first step towards independence, now that she was eighteen, if that was possible for a girl in the early 1900s.

She knew marriage was more likely to claim her out of necessity unless she could provide for herself. Francesca felt the same—it was a popular topic of their