Echoes of Ossett Guilt

DAPHNE was in holiday mood and mode. And why not? She was on holiday in New Zealand, her first break in six years from work as assistant merchandiser in a Leeds-based retailer.

It was a sunny January day in Auckland, temperature was around 22°C while in her native Ossett, snow was currently falling like mad. She knew because a friend posted pictures of the snow blizzard on Facebook a few moments ago.

The night-mode images were excellent. The falling snowflakes in the photos were clearly defined against the dark night sky.

It was Wednesday 8:30 p.m. in England and Thursday 9:30 a.m. where Daphne was.

She was ready for another day of visiting the vineyards - with wine tasting galore - in Henderson Valley, after poking around Crystal Mountain Resort in Swanson.

But her holiday mood was abruptly broken when she heard a name she hoped she would never hear again.

“Did you say Emmylou?” Daphne was halfway through snapping shut her seatbelt, head turned towards her cousin Sylvia who was in the driver’s seat.

Sylvia, about to start her car, was puzzled. The alarm in her cousin’s voice and sudden unease in demeanor did not escape Sylvia’s sharp senses.

“Yes,” Sylvia replied as she started her car, throwing a quick sideways glance at Daphne, “I said Emmylou. She’s the only client scheduled for my visit today that I could not cancel. Surname’s Brown.”

Daphne felt a cold streak down her spine.

“Know anyone by that name?” Sylvia, a carer who migrated to New Zealand twenty years ago, asked Daphne.

Daphne bit her lip. She had definitely broken out of her holiday mode. Brown might be an ordinary surname, but the name Emmylou was not.

“Yes, I knew someone by that name.” Daphne admitted with reluctance, her thoughts meandering through the past, long gone and forgotten, or so she thought until now.

“Back home?” Meaning, Ossett in Yorkshire.

Daphne didn’t reply. She didn’t want to remember Emmylou. Or Owen. Or the guilt she had carried with her over many, many years.

EMMYLOU Brown was a teacher at Ossett Academy where Daphne graduated from secondary school. Emmylou, or Miss Brown, was no great beauty but she had a lovely smile that everyone thought was sweet. Her teaching skills and rapport with her students were commended. Overall, the new teacher enjoyed a favorable impression in her first year of teaching in Ossett.

But Emmylou’s good name and that of another teacher in the academy were ruined when a gossip started to make the rounds within and outside the school.

She and this other teacher, Owen Dalziel who was very much married and with a young child, were rumored to be having an affair.

Daphne’s mother, no less, told Daphne that she and her friend, also a hairdresser, saw the two teachers kissing inside the newly opened cinema in Wakefield.

Daphne, who was eleven, asked, “Did you tell your friend, Mother, what you saw?”

“And why should I not? He was cheating on Estelle. And with a co-teacher!”

Owen’s wife, Estelle, was a friend of Daphne’s mum. Estelle worked as part-time research assistant at a solicitor’s office, and Daphne sometimes babysat Estelle’s four-year-old son, Tommy, on weekends.

Daphne didn’t quite like Estelle. She thought Estelle was full of herself, with tendencies to be bossy.

But during that time, Daphne did not like anyone or anything. She was perpetually cheerless since her parents separated when she was nine years old, and she had had to live with her mum on weekdays and with her dad on weekends.

She didn’t exactly have a hard life as her dad saw to it that she was well provided. But she disapproved of her parents’ divorce. Daphne believed that couples, notably married couples, should stick to each other no matter what. They should not inflict separation misery on their children.

It was with this frame of mind that Daphne did what she did.

She was feeling much antipathy against Emmylou, assuming that she was a threat against Owen and Estelle’s marriage. Daphne envisaged that if Emmylou were to succeed in breaking up this marriage, what would happen to the child?

Daphne might not like Estelle very much but she could not bear to think of little Tommy being shuttled to and fro each parent, similar to the joylessness she was experiencing.

And so, Daphne did what she did only to discover twenty-five years later that echoes of guilt had a way of resurrecting itself…

ON the drive to Harmony Village in New Lynn where Emmylou Brown lived, Daphne confided how she knew Sylvia’s client back in Ossett, long ago.

Sylvia listened intently as she drove.

“Miss Brown was not one of my teachers but I knew her by sight. But after I heard the gossip, I started to pay attention when I saw her in the corridor, in the cafeteria or anywhere inside the school. It wasn’t a big school as you know. You can bump on the same students or the same teachers in the course of a day.”

And it was this kind of attention – not quite stalking, really – that caused Daphne’s guilt.

The eleven-year-old, one morning, was in a hurry as the bell for the first subject had rung minutes ago. But someone else ahead of her was also hurrying more than Daphne. It was Emmylou. Daphne recognized the teacher even from the back.

Emmylou seemed harried, if not distracted, as she carried a big pile of papers in her arm. Something dropped on the floor, a letter.

Daphne picked it up. She intended to run after the teacher, despite her antipathy, to give the letter that fell from her papers in her arms, but Daphne saw the initials of the letter sender. She stopped on her tracks.

The sender could only be Tommy’s dad. Who else would have the initials OD? On impulse, Daphne pocketed the letter in her backpack.

At lunch break, Daphne hurried out of the classroom to go to the toilet. Locked in a stall, she opened the envelope and read Owen’s letter to Emmylou. Daphne, though young, felt the urgency in the message.

In the letter, Owen Dalziel wrote that he was divorcing Estelle so he could marry Emmylou, and could Emmylou meet him to discuss their plans in a discreet coffee shop in the town center?

She decided, right there and then, to tear up the letter and flush it in the toilet.

She hated for little Tommy to be like a tennis ball being bounced from parent to parent!

Daphne felt bad shortly after that deed.

“CAN I just stay in the car while you attend to your client?” Daphne felt her guilt, a long-time resident in her subconscious, on the rise.

Sylvia was mysteriously adamant, her eyes were on the road as she drove towards their destination. “I suggest that you come inside the house and face your demons. You never know what you may find.”

“It would be painful for me to know the outcome of what I did.”

“Don’t you believe that if something is meant to happen, it will happen regardless of what you did before to sabotage Emmylou’s or Owen’s chance for love?”

“No, I don’t quite believe that if something is meant to happen, it will. Not after the mischief I did to Emmylou and Owen. I was only eleven at the time, remember? I did not think about how it might affect Estelle and their little boy. That’s why I have this guilt, until now.”

“You said that your mom’s friend, Estelle, had long ago moved to the US, got married again there. With a rich husband, she could be as snooty and as bossy as she used to be. So, she and Owen were destined to be divorced, right?”

“Exactly why I felt bad. Estelle soon had a good life after her separation from her husband. But what about him? What about Emmylou? The rumor was that they were subjected to disciplinary actions for breaking the morality clause in their contracts.”

Daphne let out a deep sigh, feeling the weight of her misdeed of long ago.

“But who knew, really, what happened to her after she resigned due to the gossip?” Daphne continued, with another sigh. “She left Ossett soon after Owen suddenly quit his job. The gossip was that she went back to her family in Wales. But what about the boy, Tommy?”

“Surely, auntie – your mom – knew what happened? She was Estelle’s friend, was she not?”

“Mom tried to keep in touch with Estelle, but I think Estelle had no time for ex-friends who are below her social status.”

Sylvia slowed down as she turned right towards Harmony Village.

The entrance, which did not immediately face West Coast Road, a main road, was bracketed by two big residential houses on each side. Each also had a five-foot hedge towards the archway to the tiny community.

Daphne forgot her anxiety momentarily as she looked around while Sylvia drove slowly.

Daphne was impressed by the nice bungalows, each painted in different pastel colors, all with well-tended front gardens. It was so postcard-pretty that thrilled Daphne’s senses, especially when she focused on the garden.

The rose garden was in the middle of the tiny community, and could only be described as awesome. On each corner of the garden was a tall unicorn topiary, each facing an 18th-century style mini gazebo at the center of the garden.

Symmetrically and artistically arranged around the pale-gold gazebo were the roses in different colors and stages of bloom, from red to orange to pink to yellow to purple; and from buds to half-bloom to full bloom.

The heady scent of the roses made Daphne forget, for a heartbeat, the building crescendo of her guilt.

Sylvia parked in front of a bungalow painted in soft pink. It was immediately across the short, western side of the rectangular garden.

The bungalow’s front garden and the hanging plants on the porch were bursting with purple-and-white summer blooms. Daphne could not believe that it was a council house, or the rest of the bungalows neatly surrounding the rose garden in the tiny community.

The rose garden alone could only be maintained by a professional.

“Of course not! These are not council houses!” Sylvia said with a horrified chuckle.

“But you said that your clients are mostly living in council houses and receiving government benefits,” Daphne said, somehow confused.

“Harmony Village is different. This is a private retirement village. Very expensive to live here, by the way. All residents have some form of minor disabilities or ailment but they are still capable of living on their own. They did not want to live with their younger family members, not wanting to disrupt their normal life.”

“Including Emmylou?”

“Yes,” Sylvia replied, smiling mysteriously at her cousin, “including Emmylou. She and most of the other residents here in Harmony have carers like me. We attend to their needs – checking their medication, or giving them injections, or shopping for them, or preparing them a meal – for one hour daily. That’s all.”

“What about Emmylou?” Daphne’s unease was evident. “Has she got an ailment or something? She’d be about fifty-five years old tops.”

“She has early-onset dementia. Not that bad yet. She’s able to cope living on her own. Her family drops by regularly though. I’m Emmylou’s carer, Monday to Friday.”

“Did she marry, has she got a family of her own? But, of course, she’s still a Brown, her maiden name.”

“I know a few married women who chose not to use their husband’s surname,” Sylvia retorted, as if scolding Daphne for being out-of-touch with modern women.

Daphne ignored her cousin’s retort.

“So she has a family that obviously cares, lives in an expensive retirement village, with a regular and dutiful carer,” Daphne said thoughtfully, almost to herself. “Maybe she did well after all, after the bad turn I did to her.”

“There,” Sylvia was smiling, mysteriously, “you’re thinking positively now.” She unlocked the car doors, looked at her cousin and asked, “Ready to face your demons now?”

Daphne did not smile back.

She was thinking, even if Emmylou was fine, what about Owen who professed his undying love in his letter to Emmylou? And what of the little boy with whom she projected her young self as a “sorry” product of parental estrangement?

Both ladies were out of the car when a tall, good-looking man opened the door of the bungalow and stepped out in the porch. His smile was as bright as that morning’s summer sunshine.

“Hi, Sylvia!” he said, but paused slightly upon seeing Daphne. “Oh, you’re with your cousin from England. Hi, there.”

“Hello, Tommy,” Sylvia said, a happy lilt in her voice. “Is your dad with you visiting Emmylou?”

Daphne stood there, frozen in shocked surprise, looking at Tommy. As far as she could remember, he looked exactly like Owen.

Tommy waved them to step into the porch. “Emmylou’s not here. Dad fetched her about 15 minutes ago to pick strawberries in Helensville. Emmylou likes strawberry picking at this time of the year, as you know. And sorry, I forgot to phone you to cancel your schedule for today.”

Sylvia said cheerfully to Tommy as soon as she stepped with Daphne on the porch, “Not a problem, Tommy. Why don’t I make tea for the three of us while you, Tommy, chat with Daphne, your former babysitter in Ossett when you were four years old.”

Tommy’s eyes lit up with awed delight as he stared at Daphne. “I so can’t believe this!”

Daphne burst into tears, her Ossett guilt was akin to a dam that exploded in a torrent, as Tommy hugged her.

He was perplexed with her former babysitter’s strong emotion, but no matter. He’s happy to meet anyone from his former home country.

“Believe it, Tommy,” Sylvia advised him, while surreptitiously winking at Daphne. “Nothing is impossible if things are meant to be, like meeting again a former babysitter from our former part of the world.”

---------------------------------the end------------------------------------

First published here.

Thank you very much for reading!

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