Father Unknown (3 page)

With a feeling of unexplained guilt, Suzie closed the door softly.

THREE

M
illie was running a comb through her short hair. Her back view signalled haste, tension. It wasn't a good time. She should be on her way to school by now. Suzie tried to catch her eye in the mirror, unsuccessfully.

‘Is everything all right, love?'

‘Yes. Fine.' The words came fast, like gunfire.

Suzie sat down on the bed. ‘You'd tell me if there was a problem, wouldn't you?'

Millie whirled from the stool, grabbing jacket and school-bag. ‘Do you mind? That's my homework you're sitting on.'

She was gone, like a rush of wind down the stairs.

Suzie sighed and stood up. The house had fallen silent. Husband off to work in his architect's office, daughter to school. Soon it would be time to catch her own bus into town, to spend the morning in the charity office. Most of all, she missed Tom. So like his father, with his waving black hair and bright-blue eyes, but with a laughter and energy that was his alone. Millie melted invisibly into corners. Tom's presence, when he was at home, seemed to light up the whole house.

She remembered that it was dustbin collection early tomorrow. She just had time to empty the waste-paper baskets. She retrieved Millie's from under her desk and carried it downstairs with the others from the bedrooms.

She paused at the kitchen door. Since the council had got into its recycling stride, it was necessary to sort the contents. The foil from pills and cellophane packaging into the black bin for landfill; paper into the green one.

It wasn't really prying, was it? She had to check what was in Millie's basket.

Crumpled sheets. She smoothed them out. They seemed to be history notes. Tom would just have tossed his in the basket, for anyone to read. Millie's tightly-balled pages had a more secretive look. Silly, really. What would she have to hide? Suzie scolded herself for being unnecessarily suspicious.

A crisp packet. The wrapper from a CD. All normal.

She was tempted to empty the contents of the bathroom bin straight into landfill. But there were the odd bits of paper and cardboard her conscience told her she ought to remove.

A till receipt. Crumpled, like the sheets from Millie's bedroom. Suzie always dropped her own receipts in just as they were.

She teased it open. From the chemist's, of course. The next words burned themselves on to her brain.

She searched frantically through the rest of the bin. There was nothing there. No packaging. No used equipment. She hurried back to Millie's bedroom. If she hadn't used it yet, where would it be? Her flustered fingers fumbled through the contents of drawers. She peered under the bed. Stood on a chair to check the top of the wardrobe.

Nothing.

She searched the dustbins outside.

Millie had bought a pregnancy testing kit, but there was no sign that she had used it, or of the result.

Suzie did not enjoy her fillet of sole in the Angel's restaurant overlooking the cathedral as much as she should have done. It was far superior to the sandwich she would normally have had before setting off to the Record Office. Her mind was still racing, but it was three hours yet before Millie would be home.

She came back to the present to find Prudence ordering two cokes.

‘Not for me,' she said hastily. ‘I'll just have water.'

What she really wanted was a glass of dry white wine, to still the waves of panic which were washing over her. But she didn't know Prudence well enough yet to judge whether ordering wine would be a faux pas.

‘Make that one coke, one mineral water.'

‘Just tap water for me, please.' Better not to get into what she thought of the bottled water industry. She forced a smile for her generous host. ‘How was your morning in the cathedral?'

She let Prudence's enthusiasm wash over her.

It was a relief to enter the hushed atmosphere of the Record Office's search room. There was a twinge of guilt as she felt the tension of the present begin to slip from her. There was nothing she could do about Millie yet. She could allow herself to sink into the comforting arms of the eighteenth century and the search for Prudence's family.

In the panic of this morning, she had forgotten to bring with her the reference numbers of the documents they needed. Her mind was beginning to steady as she located them on the catalogue. She took the file number of the apprenticeship to the help desk.

The archivist who took it was unfamiliar to her. He didn't give her the helpful smile she was expecting.

‘This is an apprenticeship indenture.'

‘Yes. I found it on A2A.'

‘You do know that all the relevant details are on the catalogue? You won't find anything more in the original.'

She felt the coldness of rejection. ‘I just thought . . . My friend here is over from the States. She won't have seen one before. And there's nothing quite like seeing the actual document, the signatures . . .'

‘Where are you sitting?' Still no smile.

‘Table twenty.'

He turned away without a word.

Prudence's lipsticked mouth made a comic parody of reprimand. ‘Guess I'm making a nuisance of myself.'

‘Don't mind him. They try to avoid getting out the originals as much as they can. With so many of us doing family history now, the documents would fall apart if they didn't digitize things. But you ought to see the real thing at least once.'

She couldn't deny the thrill when the document arrived and they unrolled the long scroll.

Prudence began to read it aloud, her voice shaking slightly. ‘
This Indenture made the Twelfth Day of April in the Twentieth Year of the Reign of our Sovereign Lord George the Second by the Grace of God, of Great Britain, France, and Ireland King, Defender of the Faith, and so forth.
My, doesn't that sound grand!'

‘And here's the names of the churchwardens and the Overseers of the Poor.'

But Prudence was running ahead of her. ‘
Do put and place Adam Clayson, a poor Child of the said Parish, Apprentice to Thomas Sandford of Norworthy in the same Parish to dwell and serve from the Day of the Date of these Presents, until the said Apprentice shall accomplish his full Age of Twenty four Years.
You said twenty-one.'

‘I thought it was. But listen to this:
During all which term, the said Apprentice his said Master faithfully shall serve in all lawful Business according to his Power, Wit, and Ability; and honestly, orderly, and obediently in all Things demean and behave himself towards his said Master and all his during the said Term.
'

‘And what does old Thomas Sandford get to do in return?' Prudence was warming to the search. ‘
Find, provide and allow unto the said Apprentice, meet, competent, and sufficient Meat, Drink, and Apparel, Lodging, Washing, and all other Things necessary and fit for an Apprentice. And also shall and will so provide for the said Apprentice, that he be not any way a Charge to the said Parish
.'

‘And at the end of his time he gets:
double Apparel of all sorts, good and new, (that is to say) a good new Suit for the Holy-days, and another for the Working-days.
'

The two women looked at each other. Tears were glistening in Prudence's eyes again. Suzie felt the sudden bond between them. In the formal words of the indenture, little Adam Clayson came alive.

‘Eight years old,' Prudence said wonderingly. ‘And Adam was twenty-four when he finished. I'm going to have to do some math to work out how old he was when he took the ship for Pennsylvania.'

The links in the chain, both sides of the Atlantic, were coming together.

‘That guy was sure wrong, telling us we wouldn't learn anything more from the original. It's all coming to life. Poor little soul. I hope this Thomas Sandford was good to him.'

‘Maybe it was there he learned about trees and timber,' Suzie said. ‘Wasn't that his trade in Come-to-Good?'

‘It certainly was. And a fine success he made of it.'

Suzie forbore to remind her how far he had come from his origins as a ‘base child'. Instead, she followed up the lease for that older Adam Clayson. ‘We need to find where Hole was. It wasn't on my modern Ordnance Survey map. Let's see if they have older ones.'

‘That's a strange name, Hole.'

‘It's quite a common name in these parts. It means a hollow.'

They tracked the farm down on a nineteenth-century map, and Suzie photographed it for Prudence.

They checked the catalogue numbers for the documents on Hole.

‘Look. The lease was for that older Adam's life, and then the life of a Robert Clayson; I suppose that would be his son.'

‘Nothing about our Johan?'

‘No. It's a bit unusual. Leases were usually for three lives. But we can look up her baptism in the parish register. I'm sure she must be related to them.'

After a run of success, they drew their first blank. The register only went back ten years before the younger Adam's baptism. Too late for Johan's.

‘Does that mean we'll never know?'

‘Not necessarily. She could have been born in another parish. And there may be something else on her. We didn't run her name through A2A, did we? Only Adam's.'

‘Can we go back to your place and do that?'

‘No need. They've got computers here.'

She booked a machine and typed in the search criteria. ‘Jo*n* Cla*son' and the date range. ‘I've put in the asterisks again to allow for all the possible spellings of Johan as well as Clayson.'

There were sixteen catalogue entries. Most of them were for John Clarkson, or from places unlikely to be related to Prudence's family. There was nothing about Johan Clayson.

‘Women don't show up as often as men. But somebody else is lucky.' Suzie pointed to the twelfth entry.

Prudence followed her pointing finger and read aloud from the screen. ‘
Maintenance of Joane Clarkson's male bastard.
What does that mean?'

‘It's a bastardy bond. Joane Clarkson swore before a magistrate who her baby's father was. What a pity we haven't got one for your . . .'

Her voice trailed away into silence as the memory of Millie rushed back to her.

FOUR

‘
T
hat's too bad. Hey, is something wrong?'

Suzie checked her watch in alarm. She was already rising to her feet. ‘I'm sorry. I hadn't noticed the time. I need to get home.'

‘Sure. Your daughter. I've been taking up too much of your time. Forgive me. I just got carried away.'

‘You stay on.' Suzie smiled gamely. ‘You can ask them to get that lease out for you. It might be the family of your Adam.'

‘No. We'll leave that for another day – if you're still interested. I've had a great time.' Her amiable eyes grew shrewd. ‘There's something wrong, isn't there? You were kind of freaked out over lunch. I shouldn't have kept you.'

‘No. I enjoyed it. Really. But I have to go. Will you come back to eat with us?'

Prudence's eyes measured her. ‘You've been a great hostess. But I guess there are times when a family needs to be on its own. It's OK. You don't have to tell me what's wrong. Besides, I met up with some fellow Americans at the hotel. They've invited me to the theatre with them this evening. I'll call us a taxi.'

‘No. It's all right. I usually walk home from here.'

‘And I could go back on the bus, like we came here. But, hey, I'm not short of money. I'm taking you home my way.'

For all her protests, Suzie was grateful to let herself be shepherded into a taxi and whirled home in a matter of minutes. She felt the warmth of the American's sympathy as they parted. Prudence had seen more from behind those tortoiseshell glasses than Suzie had realized.

The house was quiet as she hurried up the drive. But then, Millie had never been a noisy child. If Tom had been home, the walls would be thrumming with music. What Millie played was discreetly masked by headphones.

She unlocked the door. ‘Millie?'

The silence lengthened. Then, a distant: ‘Hi.'

Suzie climbed the stairs. She was frightened. The receipt she held in her hand could change all their lives.

She stood in the bedroom doorway. The blonde stranger who was her daughter lay on the bed, headphones on. It was hard to tell whether her expression was hostile, or just wary.

Suzie held out the paper. ‘We need to talk. Would you take those headphones off?'

She sat down on the bed, not sure if she was invading Millie's personal space, but wanting to convey sympathy, not condemnation.

‘I found this when I was sorting out the bathroom rubbish. Is it yours?' A foolish question. Who else's could it be?

Millie looked at the receipt. Her expression did not change. ‘Yes.'

‘Have you . . . Have you used it?'

‘No.'

‘But you thought . . . You must have thought you might be . . . Do you still think . . .?'

Millie's grey eyes gave nothing away. ‘So what if I am? Is it any business of yours?'

‘Of course it is! How can you say that? You're my daughter, for heaven's sake!'

‘Parents don't own their daughter's bodies.'

‘We're not just talking about bodies. Though that's important, too. It's people. You. You're only fourteen, love. That's not nearly old enough to be a mother. What were you thinking of? It shouldn't even be a possibility. You've got your life in front of you. And if there's a baby, you'll have responsibilities to it. We all will. We're its grandparents. And who's its father?'