Father Unknown (6 page)

Daisy felt choked up as she read this, for she had never realized her mother felt so strongly. She remembered how understanding she had been when Kevin finally ditched her, she had listened to Daisy raging about him, yet not once had she ever said that she was well rid of him.

Daisy shuddered herself now when she thought about Kevin, but how wise Mum had been to keep her own counsel. Daisy might very well have gone out and found an identical replacement for him if she had known how much her mother had despised him. Girls are like that at sixteen.

There were notes about Harry, the married man, too. Her mother had suspected he was married all along, and she spoke of her fear that Daisy’s heart would be broken. Again, when it was over, the only thing Mum had said on the subject that stood out in Daisy’s mind was that no woman should take happiness at another’s expense.

There was no real order in the box, it seemed as if her mother had often gone through it, read things and put them back. Sometimes there was a note on an event when Daisy was five or six, then one right next to it from her twenties. There was a great deal about her early days, problems with feeding, trips to the clinic to get her weighed and vaccinated, even a very funny report on the trials of potty training. But as Daisy got right down to the bottom of the box, she found two sealed envelopes.

Daisy opened the fatter one first, to find it contained her adoption papers, her original birth certificate, two faded black and white photographs and a note from Lorna. She recalled Mum trying to show her this bundle when she was about thirteen. Daisy had refused point-blank to look at the contents. In subsequent years it became something of a joke: Lorna would ask if she was ready to look at them now, and Daisy continued to refuse. She had really wanted to look, at least she had once she was around sixteen, but she had always been afraid her mother would be hurt by her change of heart.

She looked at the birth certificate now and saw that her real name was Catherine Pengelly, her mother’s name was Ellen Dorothy and her birth was registered in Bristol. Yet the saddest thing of all was in the space for her father’s name – the word
UNKNOWN,
in spidery writing.

Daisy sat looking at it for some time.
Unknown
was such a bleak, chilling word. Did it mean her mother didn’t know who the father was? Or had she refused to name him for some reason known only to herself?

Daisy knew that nowadays when a couple weren’t married the child could be registered in the father’s or the mother’s name, and in either case the father had to attend the registration. But perhaps it was different back in the Sixties.

Daisy had always known she was illegitimate, that didn’t bother her. Lots of girls she’d grown up with were as well, and besides, her mother would hardly have given her up for adoption if she’d been in a stable relationship. Yet ‘Father unknown’ had a desolate ring to it, almost a Dickensian workhouse image.

She turned to the photographs and found one of two young girls. They were very alike, both with curly hair just like her own, and probably no more than two years between them. On the back it said, ‘Ellen and Josie, 1955. On the farm at Mawnan Smith’.

The other photograph was of herself as a very young baby. She felt it must have been taken while still in hospital as she couldn’t have been more than a couple of days old. Bald, as Mum had said, hands waving like two little starfish.

She read the note from Lorna then. It was a series of facts, as if she had hastily written down everything at the time of the adoption, for fear she would forget it, then added a postscript at a much later date.

Ellen Dorothy Pengelly, born 1947. Left parents’ farm in Cornwall during pregnancy. Unable to tell parents of her predicament. Refused to give any information about baby’s father, other than that he was white, fair-haired, blue-eyed, slim build, athletic and of above-average intelligence.

The adoption society were of the opinion he was a married man.

Worked as a mother’s help in Bristol during her pregnancy. Arrangements had been made for her to enter a mother-and-baby home later, but did not go there. Adoption arranged privately, through doctor. Daisy put with foster-mother from hospital while health checks were made. Ellen returned to job in Bristol.

Family history
.

Ellen Pengelly showed great promise at school. She was in the sixth form intending to sit ‘A’ levels, having achieved eight GCEs in the summer of 1963.

Father Albert Pengelly, farmer. Clare, Ellen’s mother, died in 1948 when Ellen was fourteen months old. Albert remarried soon after. Another daughter, Josie May, born 1949.

It was reported that Ellen and Josie were very close, but Ellen had problems with her stepmother.

Postscript, 1971
.

I suspect now that Ellen was pressured into giving up Daisy for adoption, perhaps by the family she worked for at the time, in conjunction with the doctor who arranged it.

I feel this because of a letter from Ellen which was forwarded to me by the doctor in Bristol, along with two photographs, one of Daisy taken in hospital, and one of her and Josie at the farm.

Sadly the original letter was accidentally lost, but in it Ellen said she was unable to forget her baby, and she asked me to tell you when you were old enough to understand that she wasn’t given any choice in the matter. She asked me to keep these pictures safe until that time too. She added that it was her hope that one day you would meet, so she could explain everything to you.

The tone of Ellen’s letter was of someone haunted by the past, deeply regretful, yet appreciative that her daughter had gone to a loving home. It was written beautifully, in clear, neat handwriting, her spelling and grammar proving she was intelligent and thoughtful. Although it is considered inadvisable to enter into any correspondence after an adoption has been made legal, I was so deeply moved that I sent back a reply through the same doctor, enclosing a recent picture of you and details of your progress at school, and your delight in the twins. I told her that I’d made a little story for you about adoption, and that later on when you were old enough to understand fully I would go into it in more depth. I told her too that by giving you to us, she’d blessed us with more joy than she could possibly imagine.

I found it staggering to see the similarities between the picture I sent of you, and the one she sent of herself Aside from the early Fifties clothes, it could have been the same child.

The doctor’s name was Dr Julia Fordham, 7 Pembroke Road, Clifton, Bristol. In 1964 she would have been around forty-five. We met and talked on the telephone several times. She struck me as being a very domineering but good-hearted woman.

Please bear in mind, Daisy, that you cannot judge any of the decisions made on your behalf right back in the early 1960s by present-day standards. Up until 1967/8, unmarried mothers were virtually outcasts. There was little financial help for them, and accommodation would have been difficult to find. The societies which did help them were mostly run by the Church, and in most cases, unless the father was willing to marry the girl, or help came from her family, unmarried mothers had very little choice but to give up their child. The advent of the Pill and the Flower Power era, with its Free Love ethic, changed everything dramatically just a few years later. Social workers moved heaven and earth to help young unmarried mothers, and of course babies put up for adoption were few and far between. So don’t judge Ellen harshly, everything I was told about her, and what I gleaned from her letter, points to her being a very decent, sweet girl who was just a victim of circumstance.

Daisy picked up the photograph of the two girls and looked at it more carefully. Mum was right, they were very alike. She thought Ellen’s family must have been quite poor, for the girls’ dresses looked very shabby.

She then picked up the slimmer envelope and opened it. It enclosed a letter from Mum dated April of this year, and a cheque for six thousand pounds.

Dear Daisy, she read. I always liked to get the last word in, didn’t I? As I sit here writing this, preparing to put it in the box with all the other memorabilia that I collected for you over the years, I sincerely hope that the doctors may be wrong in their prognosis, and that in a few years’ time we will go through the box together and laugh at its contents.

But if I am unable to share it with you, I hope you will find comfort in it, for it was accumulated with a great deal of love, and my little notes, though a little embarrassing to me now, do show how I felt at the time.

No child was ever loved more than you were. The utter joy your father and I felt when you were handed to us still gives me a lump in the throat now, after all these years. That joy was almost certainly the reason why five years later I managed to conceive the twins, when we had been told that was impossible.

You filled our lives with happiness after many years of disappointment and we were always so proud of you. Stay close to the twins, for the ties of a shared childhood are just as strong as blood lines. I wish you as much joy and happiness in your life as I had in mine, and the only sadness I have is that I won’t be around to see my grandchildren. The cheque I’ve enclosed is a share of the money left to me by my father. He too died without seeing the grandchildren he hoped for, and saving some of it for you, Lucy and Tom was my way of honouring him. So spend it wisely, my darling. A final goodbye is no time for lectures, and I’ve given you enough of those in the past. So all I can say now is that I love you, and that I shall be watching over you.

My love,
Mummy

Daisy read the letter three times, sobbing uncontrollably. It was so like Mum to have had the foresight to put something in writing that Daisy could hang on to, yet at the time she wrote it and sealed the envelope she must have been so afraid for herself.

What an incredibly brave and honourable woman she was, with such compassion for others, and an indomitable spirit. In the face of such courage and goodness, Daisy knew that now she had to put her own house in order and justify her mother’s faith in her.

She picked up the picture of the two little girls again later. Ellen had to be about eight, her half-sister six. They were standing under a tree, arms around each other’s shoulders, both smiling. The picture was crackly with age, the feel of it suggested Ellen had kept it close to her for a long time before sending it to Mum. Why send such an old picture? Did it hold some special significance?

Daisy thought about this deeply for some time. Most people would send a recent, flattering picture just of themselves, especially if they were in a position like Ellen’s, hoping to make a good impression. Therefore it stood to reason that this picture was very important to her. But why?

Chapter Three

Cornwall 1955

‘You’re mad, Ellen Pengelly, just like your mum,’ Sally Trevoise screamed out above the tumult of sixty noisy children turned loose into the small playground of Mawnan Smith primary school. ‘Go and jump off a cliff like she did.’

Trouble had started between the two eight-year-olds in the classroom a few minutes earlier. They had been painting at easels side by side, when Sally had spoilt Ellen’s picture by daubing a large black cross over it. Ellen had retaliated by concealing some blue paint in her hands as the bell rang for playtime, and the moment they got outside she’d grabbed Sally’s plaits and smeared the paint on to them.

A sudden hush fell over the playground, all the children as taken aback as Ellen by Sally’s statement. Silently they grouped themselves around the two girls, expecting a real fight to start.

But Ellen just stood there staring at Sally, utterly confused by what she’d just heard. Her mother was home on the farm, just as she always was.

Sally’s parents owned the grocery shop in the village, and her appearance confirmed that they were rich by local standards. She wore a pleated skirt, and unlike the many cheap ones in the playground that had no depth to the pleats and lost them altogether after a few washes, hers swung with style. Her red hand-knitted cardigan coordinated perfectly with her skirt, and the blouse beneath had a lace-trimmed collar. Her socks were snow-white and knee-length, shoes patent leather bar-straps. She had an air of supreme confidence, along with blonde hair and blue eyes, and few people noticed her mean, narrow lips and tightly pinched nose.

Ellen, by contrast, was a ragamuffin. Her curly red hair rarely saw a good brushing, her grey pinafore dress had a badly sewn patch by the hem, and the jumper beneath it which had once been pale yellow was now matted and a dirty ivory colour. She wore plimsolls on her feet, and knee-socks that hung in festoons around her ankles.