Father Unknown (6 page)

‘So? Do you think Tamara might be scared to tell him?'

‘You mean she'd be afraid of the modern equivalent of flogging her naked through the streets?'

‘Well, maybe not in public. I guess he might think it would reflect badly on him, if he's been laying down the law to his students. That could be pretty important to a disciplinarian. Can't even control his own stepdaughter.'

A shiver ran through Suzie. ‘Control. That's a nasty word. She's not his possession.'

‘Oh, believe me, I know plenty of men who would tell you a daughter is.'

SEVEN

M
illie stood in the garden with her back to the house, tearing a glossy camellia leaf to shreds. Suzie watched her. Presently, she got up and strolled towards her daughter. For a while she stood, saying nothing.

At last Millie broke the silence. ‘Tamara wasn't in school today.'

‘Is that important? If she's expecting a baby, there are probably some mornings when she doesn't feel very well.'

‘I rang her mobile, but it was switched off. So I tried ringing her house after school. And when her mother answered, it was, like, weird. As though she didn't know Tamara wasn't at school. She covered up pretty quick. Said she'd been feeling off colour. But she didn't sound
normal.
Like she was making it up off the top of her head. And, like . . . frightened. Said I shouldn't come round to the house because Tamara was in bed.'

‘Frightened?'

‘She was talking too fast and jumpy.'

‘And you didn't go round?'

‘I keep trying her mobile. Nothing. I've texted her, like, dozens of times. She never answers.'

‘If her mother says she's in bed, Tamara may have switched her phone off to get some sleep.'

‘If she wasn't well, she'd have rung me.'

‘Women do funny things when they're pregnant. It takes people different ways. I'm sure she'll be in touch tomorrow.'

‘She was scared.'

‘Yes, you said that. Talking strangely on the phone.'

‘Not her mother.
Tamara
. Ever since she told me she thought she was pregnant. I mean, we'd all be scared, if it was us. But she wasn't just scared about having the baby. It was as though there was something else she didn't dare tell anybody. Not even me.'

Suzie ran over all the nightmare scenarios she and Nick had envisaged when they thought it was Millie who was pregnant. ‘Is it something to do with the father? Not a schoolboy date? Something worse than that?'

‘I've no idea. She wouldn't tell me
anything
.'

Suzie watched a goldfish shimmer under the lily leaves of the pond. ‘Her stepfather. He's a bit of a disciplinarian, isn't he? At least, he is at school, by all accounts. Is she frightened about what he'll do when he finds out?'

‘I don't know. He does give me the shudders, though. He's so big and jolly when you first meet him, but he can change like
that
–' she snapped her fingers – ‘if he thinks you've said something out of turn.'

‘So Tamara would have reason to be scared of him.'

‘Yes. But it's not just that. She'd tell me if it was. So it's got to be something worse.'

‘Don't let your imagination run away with you, love. Tamara's got herself into a mess, but it's not the end of the world. It happens to other girls. It changes their lives, of course, but they adjust.'

‘Why doesn't she
ring
me? Or text?'

‘Stop worrying. She'll be at school tomorrow, or she'll get in touch.'

‘There's something else about her stepfather—' Millie stopped.

‘What?'

‘Oh, nothing.'

But Suzie had seen the shudder that ran through her daughter before she turned and walked into the house.

But Tamara was not in school the next day. Millie called round at her house, but there was no answer. Her mobile stayed silent.

‘Are you sure you'll be all right?' Suzie asked on Saturday. ‘I don't like leaving you alone. I could stay home.'

‘No, you couldn't. You said you'd take Pru to Corley.'

‘She'll understand.'

‘I can go into town and meet the rest of the crowd. I don't need you to hold my hand.'

But her face had a hurt, disappointed look.

Suzie hesitated. But she had promised Prudence.

When Nick and Suzie picked Prudence up at the Angel in the cathedral close, her face was bright with expectation.

Suzie insisted that she take the front seat. ‘I can enjoy the views any day.'

‘I'm so excited,' Prudence said as she climbed into the car. ‘This is going to be such a wonderful day out before I have to leave you folks.'

‘You're going?' Suzie exclaimed. ‘But I thought your plane wasn't till next week?'

‘Yes. I was planning on asking what church you folks go to, and if I could come along with you tomorrow. But I've had a phone call. You remember you put me on to that one-name group? The Clayson Society? Well, guess what? When I let them know who I was, and that I was looking for Adam Clayson in the 1700s, this William Clayson got in touch with me. Would you know, he's invited me to visit with him and his wife for a couple of days. Says he has a mountain of stuff on the early family. My Claysons of Corley might be related to them. Well, I couldn't pass up an opportunity like that, could I? Plus, they'll take me to Stratford-upon-Avon while I'm there. He sounded so helpful. So I'm off tomorrow. But I'll be back, and I plan to take you folks for a fine dinner before I go home. As a thank you.'

‘That's terrific. He's probably got all sorts of stuff on the family that we haven't.'

‘But he hasn't got all this. This is the real thing. Sort of my home country now.' She gestured at the view through the windscreen.

They were leaving the city. The wooded valleys and climbing fields of the countryside were opening up before them. Hay-making was in full swing. Green fields were turning golden where the crop had been shorn and the bales lay ready for the tractor.

They treated Prudence to lunch at one of their favourite country pubs and enjoyed her delight at the date of 1654 carved in the oak beam over the enormous fireplace.

‘I'm so jealous of you, living amongst all this,' Prudence said.

‘The irony is that Nick designs houses for the future. Lovely ones. Eco-friendly and energy-efficient.'

Nick grinned modestly. ‘I can still learn a lot from the people who built these. They understood their environment and their local materials better than most of us do nowadays. I'd be proud if anything I designed was still being lived in four centuries later.'

After lunch they plunged deeper into the narrow lanes, then tackled a winding hill. Nick eased the car round the last bend. Cob-walled farmhouses turned their curved backs to the road, sheltering age-old farmyards. Chimneys rose high above thatch.

‘This is just so English,' breathed Prudence. ‘How old would these be? A couple of hundred years?'

‘Maybe five, six hundred.' Suzie was enjoying her friend's amazement.

‘You're kidding me?' Prudence peered through the car windows as though she couldn't get enough of the rural scenery. ‘Not just one building, like that pub where we ate. A whole village.'

One last corner brought them to the village green. At the far end, the church's crenellated tower reared up. Cobbled paths led to rows of cottages, with rainbow-flowered gardens. And there was the big house, hardly changed from the eighteenth-century engraving. Corley Barton.

‘This would have been quite new when Adam was born. Seventeen twenty-one, wasn't it?' Suzie asked. ‘Personally, I'd rather have had the medieval farmhouse. Look at that stone barn. That's probably older than the house. Stop here, Nick.'

Prudence was out of the car and taking photographs, almost before Nick had parked. Then she stood, looking up at the house, with its Georgian frontage. ‘So that's where she worked?'

Suzie joined her. ‘It was just a guess. We don't know that. They'll have employed a lot of local girls as servants. Johan might have been one of them.'

Prudence looked around her at the quiet green, the cobbled paths. ‘However it happened, I can't help seeing her, going about this village. People turning a cold shoulder to her, gossiping behind her back.'

Nick spoke from behind them. ‘Didn't you say something about your ancestor being a Dissenter?'

‘Presbyterian. Right from the time he landed in Pennsylvania. That's what I've read.'

‘Then, if your Johan was one, maybe her boyfriend's family didn't approve. Wouldn't let them marry.'

‘Yes, but . . .' Prudence turned to Suzie. ‘She got Adam baptized in the parish church. And you told me about unmarried mothers having to confess there.'

‘Until the Toleration Act of 1689, everyone had to go to the parish church on Sunday. You got fined if you didn't. Even when the Dissenters were allowed to build their own chapels they had to leave the door open during services, to make sure they weren't preaching treason. In Johan's time, a lot of people still thought you had to be baptized in the church to get the right of settlement in that parish. Being legally settled in the parish entitled you to poor relief. You'd got your proof of entitlement in the baptismal register. She may have been taking out insurance. So she could have been a Dissenter and still used the parish church. Besides, I couldn't find any evidence of a Presbyterian chapel in Corley. She'd have had to go to South Farwood, the nearest market town. Maybe she had friends who would support her there . . . Or perhaps not.'

‘You think the Presbyterians might have thrown her out when they heard about her baby?' Nick asked.

‘Lord knows,' Prudence sighed. ‘Folk can be mighty cruel.'

Suzie was tempted to remind Prudence of her own shock at the discovery of illegitimacy in her family, but decided it was better to say nothing. Prudence had come a long way on her voyage of discovery. Johan Clayson had become real to her.

As they turned away from the house, Suzie's thoughts flew back to another girl, another shock of illegitimacy. A strait-laced stepfather.

Tamara was only fourteen.

‘I wonder how old Johan was when she fell pregnant?' she wondered aloud.

They moved up the yew-lined path into the church. Suzie's eyes were drawn to the finely carved screen at the head of the nave. But Prudence had halted in the porch.

‘So she might have knelt here.' Her voice was tinged with incredulity. ‘Bare-legged, in just a sheet. With the whole congregation staring at her. And had to confess her sin and ask forgiveness, before they'd let her in. And do you know, a week ago, I might have approved of that. Now, it makes my stomach curl up to think of it.'

They stood silent. But Suzie was thinking of that other girl. Tamara. Too frightened to tell even Millie exactly what had happened. The stern stepfather, who might indeed flog her, if only in private.

She shook the black thought away and said more brightly, ‘Look. That's the font where Adam was baptized.'

Nick called from the aisle where he was examining the carved bench-ends. ‘It says in the booklet that the font's probably Norman.'

‘What does that mean?' Prudence asked.

‘Eleventh or twelfth century.'

Prudence's mouth fell open. All she could manage was: ‘My!' But soon she was busy with her camera. ‘Is it all right to take photographs inside the church?'

‘Go ahead. There's nothing that says you can't.'

When she had finished, Suzie asked, ‘Well, have you seen enough here?'

‘It's been wonderful. I just love to touch these things. Feel the connection.'

It was Nick who suggested: ‘Do you still want to find that farm? The one where your Adam was apprenticed?'

‘Could we do that?' Prudence's face was filled with delight again.

‘Of course we can. Got the map, Suzie?'

‘Yes. It's up on the high ground, on the edge of the parish.' She swivelled round to survey the surrounding hills. ‘That one, I think, with the patch of moorland on top.'

‘Right. All aboard.'

Suzie leaned forward from the back seat. ‘You have to imagine Adam walking this way into the village every Sunday. I imagine all the farm apprentices were expected to attend the service. The farmer's family might have travelled in a cart or trap, or ridden horses. But my bet is that the apprentices had to walk.'

It was a long winding road down over a narrow ford and then up the steep hillside. At first the view was barred by high earth banks with hedges growing on top.

‘Looks like they dug this road deep down. Why would they do that?'

‘I don't suppose they did. It's just the passage of feet and hooves over all those centuries, carving it down into the earth.'

Prudence shook her head. ‘It's hard to imagine all those hundreds of years, all those travellers. And you folks live with this history all around you.'

‘Yes. It didn't really come home to me until I started tracing my family history. It makes me look at everything from a different angle. Through other people's eyes. I've found out so much about English history I didn't know before. Not just the kings and battles, but the way ordinary people lived.'

‘I guess I ought to be getting out and walking this. Just to live my Adam's experience.'

‘Hang on,' said Nick. ‘We'll let you out at the top.'

They crossed a cattle grid, and suddenly the day was bright around them. Hedged fields gave way to open moorland of bracken and heather on the top of the hill.