That We Shall Die

by Peter Hey

  Jane took the hint. ‘Okay. First of all, I handed over the Forrester report yesterday, so that’s done and dusted. Went down well and thanks again for your input. I can now devote my full attention to Alan Shaw. He seems a really nice guy, by the way. A bit of an old smoothie perhaps, but I liked him. The stand-out thing is how little he knows. And there’s no-one else to talk to. We’re starting from virtually nothing. If we can get past the first couple of generations, I guess it will be business as usual, but it’ll lack any personal anecdotes and memories.’

  ‘You said you were going to order his mother’s birth certificate?’

  ‘Yes. It hasn’t arrived yet.’

  ‘And you were going to order a DNA test to look into his paternal side?’

  ‘Yeh, that’s done. I’m crossing my fingers that it’ll arrive before he flies off to Thailand.’

  Tommy frowned. ‘And he thinks his father might be Che Guevara?’

  ‘Nah, not seriously. I don’t think so anyway. My money’s on Fidel Castro himself.’

  Tommy looked at Jane suspiciously and she winked.

  ‘And there’s a woman called Cynthia in a 1960s photograph?’ he continued.

  Jane had lifted her head up and was trying to attract a waiter’s attention as he walked past. ‘Yeh, spent some time on that already,’ she said distractedly. ‘It’s a wild-goose chase...’

  The sister

  Jane’s alarm was set for 7:15 am, but she woke just after 6:00. It was still very dark outside, and she tried to roll over and go back to sleep. After a few minutes, she gave up and felt for her phone on the bedside table. She wanted to see if the weather would allow her to spend an hour or so tidying up her garden. The prediction was for a dry day of intermittent sunshine. Disappointed, she checked her emails. Two had arrived overnight. One was from a supplier of tennis equipment offering a 20% discount on ‘game-changing’, ‘next-generation’ racquet strings. The other was from Tommy.

  Hi Jane

  It was great to see you earlier and thanks again for buying lunch. Definitely my turn next time.

  Let me know when you get the certificates through on the Alan Shaw case. As ever, I’m happy to help out. Trying to pin down his father’s identity is going to be interesting, but I agree there’s nothing we can do until we get those DNA results.

  Work was slow again tonight – as I said, I’m still doing my old job as well as the bank stuff – so I had a quick delve around into Alan’s mother. I managed to find her in some regional newspaper reports. As you suggested, she was very active in local politics as a Labour councillor. I’ve attached one cutting that seems to directly contradict what Alan told you. He said he was from a tiny family with no siblings and no aunts and uncles. This article describes a Cllr. Pat Shaw opening an art exhibition in a Solihull library. It says she was ‘accompanied by her sister, Barbara Curston, herself a full-time artist in the surrealist field, with a studio on the banks of the Mersey’.

  To state the obvious, mother’s sister equals aunt. So where did she come from??

  I found one or two mentions of Barbara Curston, artist, but it doesn’t look like she was particularly successful. A Barbara I Shaw did marry a Barry Curston in Liverpool in 1963. The last trace I can find of them together is on the electoral roll for 2009. They were living in North Wales at that time – I’ve attached a screen print with the full address. As you know, more and more people are opting out of the public register these days, but older copies remain on the Web. From the death indexes, it looks like Barry died in 2011. There’s still a B Curston in the online phone book, same address, so it seems Barbara’s still there, assuming she hasn’t recently moved or passed away herself.

  Whilst there’s no record of Barbara’s death, I can’t find her birth either. I’m not sure why. Her mother might have been out of the country for some reason. Maybe she was evacuated during the war? Or could Barbara have been adopted? It’s probably best to ask Alan if he can shed any light. He would have been two when she got married and moved away, but is it really possible he’s not aware of her existence? I know his mother kept his father’s identity from him, but her sister’s as well? It all seems a bit odd to me.

  Anyway, I’m confident you’ll get to the bottom of it. I’m going to try to get some sleep now. Keep me updated.

  Tommy x

  Oversight

  Dear Jane

  I really am most terribly sorry, and I feel really stupid. I’ve sought your help and then seem to be making things as difficult for you as possible. Yes, Barbara is my aunt, though not by blood. That can be my only excuse for not mentioning her. I somehow decided she was irrelevant to my family history because she was adopted. To be fair, I haven’t seen her for years. Out of sight, out of mind? Or am I just finding another excuse?

  There was a big age gap between her and my mother, and they were never close. I think she also had a chip on her shoulder about not being my grandparents’ natural child and always felt resentful, of my grandmother in particular. Barbara went off the rails as a teenager, met some builder down from Liverpool and got pregnant at 17. He did the decent thing, married her and took her home. But she then lost the baby and never had any more. At least I was being accurate when I said I had no cousins. I could only have met her a handful of times growing up. My grandmother thought Barry was very common, I’m afraid. She absolutely hated his accent and his background.

  My grandparents owned a holiday home in Criccieth in North Wales. Aunt Barbara and Uncle Barry visited us there once or twice, and she did come down to Solihull on her own on a couple of occasions. I know Barry died a few years ago – my mother didn’t feel well enough to go to the funeral. He and Barbara had moved into that old holiday home. That’s the address your colleague found in the electoral register. My grandparents left their main house to my mother and Barbara got Criccieth. As far as I know, she still lives there. By all means contact her. I don’t think there’s any ill feeling between us. We’ve just drifted apart, as families often do.

  Again, I can only apologise for my embarrassing oversight.

  Kind regards

  Alan

  PS My flight for Bangkok leaves tomorrow evening. Fortunately, the DNA test kit arrived today. As you said, it was really easy. I popped the plastic tube into the packaging and posted it off. Hopefully, I’ve at least done that right.

  I’m not going anywhere too remote and will try to check my email, though obviously I don’t want to spend my entire trip hunched over a computer. I can look forward to the big reveal when I get back. That said, do contact me if you get stuck.

  Llywelyn’s castle

  Jane had only visited North Wales once before. She and Dave had stayed in the coastal resort of Llandudno when they were in their energetic, hiking phase. They climbed Mount Snowdon and also walked around the rocky limestone headland known as the Great Orme. Visible from their hotel bedroom, the Orme – a name derived from the Old Norse word for sea serpent - had looked like a gentle stroll compared to the exertions of Snowdon, especially as they intended to take the Edwardian tramway to its summit. Once there, they were rewarded with panoramic views of the town and the mountains beyond, until the clouds blew in from the Irish Sea and the weather changed dramatically. The wind whipped up and over the cliffs and hit the two walkers with near horizontal rain. They had read the forecast and dressed, they thought, accordingly. They kept on their planned route but their waterproofs proved inadequate to the task. Water flowed in at their necks, wrists and ankles. Their feet squelched in sodden boots. They were forced to take refuge in a café on the Orme’s northern tip, where they dripped and shivered and steamed over mugs of coffee, steeling themselves for the long, wet walk back.

  As Jane’s mind pictured that moment, she felt a contradictory warmth. It was funny how the happiest memories sometimes stem from adversity, particularly if that adversity is short-lived and skin-deep. And shared.

  It had supposedly been summer back then; now it was autumn and the road had jus
t started a steep ascent into barren hills framed in heavy cloud. It felt cold and remote, though at least it was still dry. On the map, her destination didn’t look that far from Nottingham, a short sideways hop roughly equidistant to the journey down to London, but the motorway network that led to the capital stopped short of the Welsh border. Jane had chosen the more scenic option of going through Snowdonia and had already been driving for some three hours. She had around another hour to go. The little sports car was enjoying the smooth, wide A-road as it followed high valleys twisting between craggy outcrops, until they met a line of traffic backed up behind an ancient lorry wheezing up the inclines. They crawled for a mile or two before the driver took pity and pulled onto a lay-by that was a narrow bend of rough tarmac left over from a previous incarnation of the route, when sluggish progress must have been the accepted norm.

  An undulating descent led into country where the greens became less muted and trees and bushes began to fill the verges. Through a gap in the branches, Jane briefly caught a glimpse of the ugly, stained-concrete bulk of a pair of squat industrial towers that seemed to belong in a dystopian sci-fi movie rather than the beauty of a national park. They looked sinisterly dormant but soon disappeared from sight, and Jane was left wondering what purpose they might once have served and why their dead presence was still allowed to haunt the landscape.

  The road bypassed the old slate port of Porthmadog and continued out onto the Llŷn Peninsula, the arm of land defining Cardigan Bay below it. It wasn’t until Jane was just outside Criccieth that the sea finally came into sight. It was grey like the sky, but the view was soon given drama by a mediaeval ruin rising from a rocky headland.

  Jane’s lips formed into a smile. She didn’t need to look at her phone’s satnav; she had visual confirmation she was nearly there. When planning her journey, she had read that the castle had been established by Welsh prince Llywelyn the Great but had later been held by Edward I, the English king who was ‘Hammer of the Scots’ and had also borne down on the Celts to the west of his realm. The fortress’s useful life had been ended in the early 1400s when it was taken by the rebel Welsh forces of Owain Glyndŵr, who tore down its walls and put it to the torch. The twin towers of the great gatehouse had resisted the flames and the erosion of time, and their picturesque grandeur still dominated the coastline six centuries later.

  Jane entered the small town and turned left over a single-track railway crossing and then round into a street that climbed steeply to approach the castle entrance before dropping again towards the beach on its far side. After 100 yards, she pulled into a wide parking bay that had been set back into the cliff face. Facing her was a tall terrace of Victorian houses that looked out over the sea whilst sitting directly beneath the broken curtain walls of the ancient fortification. The one-time Shaw holiday home had a magical location, albeit at the end of a journey that would have been even longer on 1960s roads.

  Jane had arrived early to avoid being late. She left the car and walked back up the hill in search of an overdue lunch. She decided to treat herself at a fish and chip shop she had just driven past. There was one customer ahead of her, and she was surprised to hear him ordering in Welsh. At least Jane assumed he was ordering. He was chatting away at some length and she couldn’t recognise a single word. When it was Jane’s turn, the man behind the counter greeted her in perfect English. Something about her obviously said outsider. When Jane left with her bag of chips, she felt embarrassed for not even being able to say ‘thank you’ in one of her homeland’s living, native tongues.

  She ate on a bench overlooking the sea, the castle rock providing some shelter from the October wind. Having thrown the paper in a convenient bin, she checked her watch and decided it was now reasonable to knock on the door, which was only a few yards away.

  It swung open before Jane reached it, and a woman in her early seventies, dressed in the extravagant manner of an artistic temperament, stood smiling in the doorway.

  ‘You must be Jane. Thank you for coming so far. I saw you out on the bench there and wondered if it was you. You should have come in.’

  ‘Sorry, I hadn’t eaten and succumbed to some chips. I didn’t want to stink your house out.’

  ‘Oh, I’d have coped. Barry, my husband, used to love that chippy. Wasn’t great for his waistline, mind. He’d been a bricklayer and still had an appetite like he was burning thousands of calories lugging hods around in the freezing cold. It was his heart that got him in the end, of course, but there you go…’

  Jane was shown into a large farmhouse kitchen at the back of the house. She was made a coffee, and then the two women climbed a flight of stairs to a first-floor sitting room that enjoyed a breathtaking view.’

  Barbara pointed out of the large bay window. ‘On a clear day the bay is a glorious cerulean blue, and then there are the misty purples and greens of the hills beyond. And we get dolphins of course. They’re wonderful to watch.’

  ‘I’m not sure I’ve ever seen one. I mean, not in the wild,’ said Jane, quickly scanning the waves.

  ‘Well, you sit there and keep your eyes out.’

  Barbara sank into a crimson sofa with her back to the window. Jane sat facing her and put her coffee on a coaster on the low table that lay between them.

  ‘I really like the mugs,’ she said, ‘They’re very unusual.’

  ‘I made them myself. I’m an artist by trade. Slowed down a bit, of course, but…’

  Barbara gestured towards several canvases hanging on the walls. Jane remembered her being described as a surrealist in the old newspaper report, but wasn’t sure these works fitted into that category. They seemed more abstract, with bold sweeps of strong colour.’

  ‘I love those oranges and reds,’ she said.

  ‘Thank you. I could see by that blouse of yours that we were kindred spirits. I noticed your car as well. Wonderful. I’d get one. If I could drive. Maybe I should get one anyway, as an installation. Not that I could afford it!’

  ‘Talking of driving,’ said Jane, ‘I came past a big, ugly building up in the hills. Well, two, side by side...’

  ‘Trawsfynydd.’ Barbara pronounced the name in a Welsh accent, though her own suggested middle-class, Middle England with hints of Scouse that could just have easily been Brummie.

  ‘Atomfa Trawsfynydd’, she continued. ‘It was a nuclear power station. They started building it in the late fifties. You know, brave new world, the promise of limitless, cheap electricity. Most of the plants were on the coast. Trawsfynydd was the exception.’

  ‘It didn’t look like it had been operational for quite a while?’

  ‘Not for thirty years. They can’t just pull the monstrosity down, of course. All that toxicity within its walls.’

  ‘I guess they didn’t think it through. Their intentions were good,’ said Jane, immediately realising she was fence-sitting as usual.

  ‘Perhaps. But they were Magnox reactors, dual purpose. Produced plutonium for H-bombs as well as electricity. Trawsfynydd has influenced a few of my darker works. I’m glad I can see the castle out of my window and not that eyesore.’

  They talked for a few minutes about Barbara’s life as an artist and the inspiration of where she lived, with its sea, its mountains, its wildlife and its history. Eventually, Jane decided to steer the conversation onto the reason she was there.

  ‘It was really kind of you to see me, especially at such short notice.’

  Barbara shook her head. ‘No, it was good of you to come all this way. I don’t get many visitors these days. And despite having lived here for so long, I still feel like a foreigner sometimes. They’re very proud of being Welsh round here. And why shouldn’t they be?’

  ‘Exactly how long have you been in Criccieth?’

  ‘My parents bought this place in about 1964. I was in Liverpool with Barry by then. I think my father thought it might act as a bridge, sort of a halfway house. In the end… Well, it drove a wedge between us. For years and years.’

  Jane’
s questioning face prompted Barbara to continue.

  ‘It wasn’t the house really, of course it wasn’t. My mother and I always had a difficult relationship. Her own mother died young and she was adopted by an aunt and uncle. They were well off and gave her pretty clothes and dolls, material things, but I’ve always assumed they didn’t give her affection. In turn, she was very cold. I’m sure she couldn’t help it, but she was cold. Part of her desperately wanted to be a good mother, but...’

  The sentence was left hanging and Jane made what seemed the obvious observation. ‘I understand you were adopted yourself.’

  ‘My sister, Pat, was born in 1935. During the war, my dad was conscripted into the RAF. Just desk jobs, not aircrew or anything. My mother knew she hadn’t done a good job with Pat – again, this is my interpretation – and wanted to have another try. So, after the war, they adopted me. My father was a nice enough man, but a workaholic, building up his business. We hardly ever saw him. My mother was still, well, my mother. I ended up rebelling, kind of like Pat, got pregnant and married Barry. I was very young, but I think I was just looking for love and found it. He was a rough diamond, a lovely man. He came from a big Catholic family, and it taught me what family life is supposed to be like. I lost the baby and couldn’t have any more. It broke Barry’s heart, obviously, but he had his nieces and nephews and, for my part... I was always scared that I might be, well, my mother all over again. I mean, look at Pat...’

  ‘Pat?’

  ‘My sister tended to boss me around. There was ten years between us. But she came back from Cuba, had Alan, and effectively dumped him on our mother. Our mother! No wonder he was such a troubled little boy.’

  ‘Troubled?’

  ‘He had terrible tantrums as a toddler. Later on, well, things weren’t good for him at school. He was bullied and in turn bullied others. So I understand. I was out of it a long time.’