Father Unknown (2 page)

‘I'm a widow. Since last year.'

‘I'm sorry.'

Tears were threatening behind the glasses again. ‘He left me comfortable. I thought I'd use a little of the money to take myself over here and see what I could find out. I'm staying at the Angel Hotel.'

‘So it's your husband's family you're researching? The Claysons.'

‘That's right. Well, I guess mine sort of links up, if you go far enough back. We've got some Claysons too. I wanted to tell my children where they came from. And my husband's folks. It was to be sort of my present to them, in his memory.'

‘I see. So
that
was why you were so shocked.'

‘Not much of a present, is it?'

‘You don't know. It could be. If we knew more about Johan and Adam. How he got from here to there. That's something to be proud of, isn't it?'

‘I guess you could look at it like that.'

Suzie levered herself forward on her chair arm with a sudden impulse. ‘I tell you what. You don't want to go back to the hotel and eat on your own after this, do you? Why not come back to my place for a meal? You can tell me more about your Adam, and I may be able to come up with ideas of how you could find more about your Claysons in England. Have you tried the Overseers of the Poor?'

Prudence Clayson shook her head in incomprehension.

‘Right.' Suzie stood up. ‘We're going to look into this, you and I. With any luck, I'm going to send you back with a story you really will want to tell your children. How are you on walking?'

The woman looked down at her medium-heeled court shoes. ‘OK, I guess.'

‘It's about twenty minutes from here.'

They climbed the hill above the Record Office to the ridge that overlooked the city centre. The square towers of the cathedral came into view, the metallic glint of the river, with moorland rising beyond.

As they walked down the last slope towards Suzie's road she glanced at the stranger beside her. Had she been rash in inviting her home? She realized how little she knew about Prudence Clayson. Just that she was a widow from Pennsylvania and that, way back in the eighteenth century, her ancestor had given birth to a bastard child.

Suzie pushed open the door to the wide hall of their house. She turned to invite Prudence inside. Their entry was interrupted by a commotion above them.

A teenage girl, in grey-and-white school uniform, came almost tumbling down the stairs. Her figure might be described as curvaceous. Long, waving brown hair fell about her shoulders, half obscuring her face.

Suzie saw her flushed cheeks as she hurried past, her brown eyes very bright. ‘S–sorry, Mrs Fewings,' she stammered. ‘Got to dash. They'll be expecting me at home.'

‘That's all right, Tamara.' Suzie held the door open for her. ‘You're welcome any time.'

The hall fell still again. Suzie looked up to the head of the stairs. But no one else appeared.

‘One of your daughter's friends, I guess,' Prudence said.

‘That's right. Tamara Gamble. She and Millie have been practically inseparable since primary school.'

Again, that questioning look at the landing, but Millie's bedroom door stayed firmly shut.

TWO

S
uzie had hoped to leave her visitor in the sitting room, while she rummaged in the kitchen to see how the evening meal she had planned for three could be stretched to four. She was unsettled when Prudence rose from the sofa to follow her. She didn't like people talking to her while she cooked. It was too easy to get distracted and miss a vital ingredient or let something burn.

Prudence's large presence seemed to fill the kitchen. Suzie felt under scrutiny.

‘Wouldn't you like to sit in the conservatory?'

The cushioned cane chairs she indicated gave a view of the banks of herbaceous borders that Nick had so lovingly planted. The dahlias were a feast for the eyes. You could just about carry on a conversation with someone in the kitchen from there.

The woman didn't budge. ‘You have family?'

‘Two. Tom's just finished A-levels. That's the exam before university. He's away at the moment, camping in France with friends. Millie—'

‘I'm here.'

Both women turned. It was still a shock to Suzie's heart to see her fourteen-year-old daughter. Two weeks ago, Millie had gone off to the hairdresser's, her pale, sharp face hung about with lank mousey-fair hair. Until then, Suzie had tried to resist the smugness which told her that other people compared Millie unfavourably with her still-pretty mother, whose soft brown curls framed a rosy face almost unlined by approaching middle age.

Millie had come back, unannounced, with bleached white-blonde hair cropped close to her head. Her face, which had seemed angular and sallow, now looked suddenly elfin.

Suzie had grown used to comforting Millie with the promise that one day she would become not just a pretty, but a strikingly beautiful woman. Unexpectedly, that day had arrived.

Her heart turned over again as Millie stood in the kitchen doorway. She was seeing not just a new haircut, but a new person. A stranger she felt she did not know.

‘My!' Prudence exclaimed. ‘Aren't you a beauty!'

The flush that just tinged Millie's cheekbones might have been panic, as much as pleasure. There was something very vulnerably in that pointed face.

‘This is Prudence Clayson,' Suzie said hastily. ‘From Pennsylvania. We met in the Record Office. I've invited her to tea.'

‘Family history. Don't tell me.' Millie addressed a cool, unsmiling stare at the American. ‘She never talks about anything else.'

‘Well, yes,' Prudence agreed. ‘It kind of gets you like that. I guess I bore the pants off my family.'

Millie threw her mother a look. An appeal Suzie couldn't interpret.

‘I'm going to change,' Millie said. She swung round. A slim girl in a grey school skirt and a white blouse. From the back view, still a child.

But she's not, Suzie thought. Not any longer.

Prudence spoke what Suzie already knew. ‘That's a stunner you've got yourself there. Guess she'll keep you awake a few nights, worrying about a girl with looks like that.'

It was, Suzie supposed, a compliment. But one it was hard to thank her for.

Nick's intensely blue eyes laughed at Suzie over the remains of the meal.

‘I'll see to the dishes. I can tell you two are itching to get to that computer and see what your detective work can turn up.'

Suzie leaned across and kissed him. She ruffled his black hair. ‘Thanks. Prudence is only here for a few days. I want to find out as much as I can on the Internet, before we go back to the Record Office tomorrow to dig out documents – if there are any.'

‘Really,' Prudence protested. ‘You're being way too generous. You must have things of your own to do. I can't drag you back there for a second day. Just point me in the right direction and I'll go by myself.'

‘Don't try and stop her,' Millie said. ‘There's nothing she'd like better than an excuse to spend even more time on her old records. She lives in the past. The present might not be happening, as far as she's concerned.' For all the lightness of her words, she did not lift her eyes from the table as she spoke.

‘That's not fair,' Suzie countered. ‘I spend every morning in the charity office.' But she knew by the warmth in her cheeks that Millie's barb was uncomfortably near the truth.

‘Just enjoy it.' Nick got to his feet and shepherded them out of the kitchen.

Suzie fetched her laptop. The two women settled themselves on the sitting room sofa.

‘Let's see what we can find on Access to Archives.' Suzie opened up her search engine and selected the National Archives website from her favourites. ‘Adam Clayson isn't exactly a common name. Not like John Hill. If there's anything on him, we should hit it pretty quickly.'

‘You're going to have to show me how to do this. I'm pretty new to this Internet search business. I mostly leave it to my son.'

‘Access to Archives is great. It has summaries of vast numbers of documents from all over the country. I've found wonderful stuff there. You just type in the name you want, the date range, and the region. In our case, that's the “South West”. Here we go. Search for Adam Cla*son. 1700–1800. South West Region. I put in the asterisk to cover variant spellings. Click. And . . .'

‘You've hit it.' Prudence leaned forward in excitement.

‘Yes. We can rule out the entries for Clarkson. You get more than you want when you put in an asterisk. But we've scored three records for Clayson. Adam Clayson, lease of a property in Corley called Hole, 1716. If your Adam was born in 1739, that's too early for him. Might be an ancestor, though. Even Johan's father, perhaps. That would explain why she called the baby Adam. We could follow that up. The next one looks like the counterpart of the same lease. But, hey, look at this one. Corley parish, Adam Clayson, apprenticed to Thomas Sandford for Norworthy, 1747. Is Corley the parish where you found his baptism?'

‘Yes, it was.'

‘Then that's got to be him, hasn't it? Eight years old and put out to work on Thomas Sandford's farm by the Overseers of the Poor. We could get the actual indenture out at the Record Office tomorrow, if you like.'

She turned to share her enthusiasm with Prudence. The other woman was silent. Her eyes, Suzie realized, had misted over as she stared through tortoiseshell-framed glasses at the computer. She reached out a hand and touched the screen gently, almost reverently.

‘That's him? Our Adam?'

‘Almost certainly. It's the right name, the right parish.'

‘Where's this Norworthy?'

‘It'll be the name of the farm where he was put to work. Most poor children were apprenticed for farm or housework. It tended to be the better-off children who learned a craft. Thomas Sandford may not even have wanted a farm boy, but parishioners had to take their turn. It kept the children in food and lodging and clothes till they were twenty-one or – if they were a girl – got married.'

‘Could I go there? This Norworthy place?'

‘You certainly could.
We
could. I'll get the map out. With luck, it'll still be on the Ordnance Survey.' She went to the bookshelf where the OS maps were shelved and ran her finger along the names. ‘Here we are.' She spread out the map on a table. ‘There's Corley. It's quite a small village. A cluster of houses and farms around the church. That looks like the village green. Now, if we trawl around it . . .'

Her eyes had caught the name she was looking for. She waited a few seconds more without saying anything and was rewarded with Prudence's cry of delight.

‘Norworthy! Do you see it? Up there, between those rivers.'

‘Well done. So it
is
still there. We can go and check it out.'

‘I just don't know how to thank you. I'm mortified when I think how I bawled you out.'

‘Don't worry. Millie's right. I'm really enjoying myself.'

She copied details and reference numbers for the apprenticeship, and the older lease as well, and printed them out. She shuffled the papers together with satisfaction. ‘There. We've got plenty to go on now. I work in the mornings, but I can meet you tomorrow after lunch. We'll take the bus out to the Record Office from the city centre. Unless –' a disappointing possibility occurred to her – ‘you want to get over there first thing in the morning and follow this up yourself. They open at ten.'

‘No.' Prudence eased her comfortable bulk from the sofa. ‘I feel I'm in safe hands with you. I wouldn't know how to go about it. And I'm dying to take a tour round your cathedral. But cancel that “after lunch”. Lunch is on me. Come over to the Angel Hotel. You know it?'

‘On the cathedral close. Of course. I'd love to.'

‘My pleasure. Now, where do I get a bus into town?'

‘You don't.' Nick had appeared in the hall when he heard their voices. ‘I'll run you back.'

‘You folks have been so good to me.'

‘Our pleasure. See you tomorrow, then,' Suzie told her.

An hour later, she walked upstairs with a glow of enjoyment. Normally, she allowed herself one afternoon a week to follow up her family history research in the Record Office or the Local Studies Library. Not counting, of course, the hours she spent on her computer, or the Saturday expeditions to parishes where her ancestors had lived. Prudence had given her the perfect excuse to drop other boring things, like housework, and spend more time doing what she liked best. And there was the extra satisfaction that she was genuinely able to help Prudence. In a very short time she had warmed to this plump widow, who so wanted to take back a story she could be proud to tell her children. Suzie would help her do that.

Her children.

Suzie paused, her hand tightening on the banister. She had a sudden picture of Millie, arrested in the kitchen doorway as she saw Prudence. Those grey eyes turned to her mother in what looked like a mute appeal, before she turned and went upstairs.

Those words of reproach. ‘
The present might not be happening, for all she's concerned.
'

She crossed the landing swiftly to Millie's room. She opened the door softly.

Millie lay in bed. The blonde head looked tiny, shorn of its familiar long hair. She seemed to be sleeping.

‘Millie?' Suzie whispered, just in case.

The eyelashes, dark with mascara, did not stir. Whatever Millie might have wanted to tell her must remain unsaid.