Father Unknown

by Lesley Pearse

  Tim nodded. ‘That’s about the size of it. Immediately and completely. Gran’s letters to Ellen came back marked “Gone away”. It wasn’t until a couple of years later that my Aunt Isobel told me about you being born and Gran’s part in it. Even my own mother didn’t know about that.’

  ‘How strange all this is,’ Daisy said thoughtfully. ‘But there must have been some very good reason why Ellen cut her off.’

  ‘Oh, Gran will tell you a dozen of those tonight.’ He smiled wryly. ‘She used to make up a new excuse for Ellen every time I saw her. That she needed to make a new life for herself, with no reminders. Her bleak childhood, even her commitment to her work. But none of them really hold water, Daisy. Between you and me, and I’m sorry if this will hurt you, I think Ellen was a bit of a selfish bitch.’

  Daisy was shocked by such vitriol. ‘Well, you’ve put that plain enough.’

  He blushed furiously. ‘Oh dear, I’ve said too much,’ he said, hanging his head. ‘But my gran is one of the kindest, most generous-hearted women on this planet. She doesn’t lean on people, she just cares. Ellen must have known that, so I’m sorry I can’t make excuses for her too.’

  Daisy thought that was a reasonable enough explanation for his sharpness. ‘Do you stay with your grandmother a lot?’ she asked.

  ‘Whenever I get a chance,’ he said. ‘I teach at a boarding school near Exeter so I usually spend the holidays with her. But as a kid I was always here. My mother was very much a career woman, and she used to dump me on Gran almost every holiday.’

  ‘Did you actually know Ellen?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes, in as much as she visited several times while I was there. I remember her as being nice, asking me about school and stuff, but I can’t say she made much of an impression. You know how it is as a kid, you don’t take much notice of grown-ups unless they give you money or act strange. But I did take notice of your Aunt Josie, even though I only met her once.’

  ‘Did she give you money or act strange?’ Daisy said with a grin. There was something rather engaging about Tim’s openness.

  ‘No,’ he laughed, ‘but she did kind of flirt with me, I was really knocked out by it, after all I was a spotty eighteen-year-old and she was gorgeous and famous.’

  ‘Famous!’ Daisy exclaimed, stopping in her tracks. ‘What for?’

  Tim looked at her in consternation. ‘You don’t know who she was?’

  Daisy shook her head. ‘All I knew until today was that there was a younger sister called Josie. Now it seems she died in the fire. What else was she famous for?’

  ‘She was Jojo, the model!’

  Daisy frowned. That name did ring a very faint bell, as if she might have heard it on the radio or seen it in a magazine, but that was all.

  ‘Even if I had heard of her, how could I possibly know she was my aunt? If she died in ‘78 I was only fourteen.’

  He looked embarrassed. ‘Of course you wouldn’t. Silly of me. I suppose I thought the doctor in Bristol would have told you about her.’

  ‘No, not a word,’ she said.

  ‘She was as well known as Twiggy and Jean Shrimpton in the late Sixties and early Seventies,’ he said. ‘You know, one of those faces of the Sixties.’

  ‘Really?’ Daisy exclaimed. This was all becoming very bizarre.

  ‘I was too young to take any interest at the height of her fame,’ he said, and grinned. ‘I didn’t prick up my ears till I was about fourteen, by which time she was on the downward slide, hanging around with rock stars, taking drugs and generally behaving pretty wildly. That of course was fascinating to a boy cloistered in boarding school, especially as she came from my gran’s village.

  ‘I used to lap up every new bit of gossip about her in the papers. There were pictures of her everywhere when she was at the height of her fame. You know the kind of thing, tiny mini-skirt, all eyes and cleavage. I almost became a celebrity myself because I had a vague connection with her. But I didn’t actually meet her in the flesh until the day before the fire. She was in the post office and she spoke to me.’

  Daisy half smiled, imagined a bunch of adolescent boys drooling over such pictures. ‘I feel a bit out of my depth,’ she admitted. ‘First the shock of the fire, then this. No wonder your gran said we had a lot of talking to do.’

  Tim didn’t reply to that for a minute, just picked up a stick and threw it for Fred. ‘Talking about Ellen to her is like walking on thin ice, one word of criticism and she gets snotty. But she can be really funny about Josie too. She’s a very liberated old girl in many ways, but some of the things Josie was reported to have done were too shocking for her.’

  ‘That’s a shame.’ Daisy grinned. ‘She sounds fascinating.’

  ‘I agree.’ He laughed. ‘I’ve dined out on my vague connection and one meeting with her. I suspect Gran knows far more about what went on in the entire Pengelly family than she’s ever told me. She can be very cagey, especially if she was told things in confidence. But I do know that Violet, that’s Ellen’s stepmother, was very mean to Ellen when she was a small girl, while she doted on Josie. I also know Albert and Violet were at each other’s throats most of the time. So I’ve drawn some conclusions of my own.’

  ‘And they are?’ Daisy asked.

  ‘That Gran might have been blind to faults in Ellen, because she loved her. Maybe she only latched on to Gran because she wanted a mother figure, then once she got the money she found she didn’t need her any more.’

  Daisy frowned. ‘You’ve lost me,’ she said. ‘What money?’

  ‘Her inheritance after the fire. She was left the land the farm was on. She sold it to a hotel group and made herself a fortune.’

  ‘This story is getting more and more outlandish,’ Daisy thought to herself. ‘On the way down here from Bristol I was imagining Ellen as a sweet, gentle girl, maybe even a long-suffering martyr. Now she seems to be turning into a selfish, cold-hearted gold-digger!’

  ‘I’m sorry, I’ve jumped ahead, forgetting you don’t know the family history,’ Tim admitted. ‘My interest began after the fire, so I had to back-track to find out the rest. What Gran and I should do is sit you down and go right through the family history, from beginning to end, then you can draw your own conclusions. You see, I don’t think you can get a true picture of Ellen without seeing the family in its entirety first, or without knowing about the hostility between Albert and Violet and their wrangling over the value of the farm. I’d say Ellen’s character was forged by that, along with what happened to her, and Josie’s fame too.’

  ‘I see,’ Daisy said, even though she didn’t.

  Perhaps Tim saw her puzzlement for he chuckled. ‘Gran once said she wondered how she would explain it all to you if you ever turned up. Of course, she never really supposed you would. Then out of the blue you breeze along the road with your dog, and suddenly it’s real, and possibly very hurtful.’

  Then he went on to astound her even further with the story of how Clare, a society girl, had married Albert and come to live at the farm, and of her death on the cliffs with her baby in her arms.

  ‘My grandmother did that!’ Daisy exclaimed. ‘Come on, you’re making it up!’

  ‘I’m not,’ he said firmly. ‘That’s exactly what I mean about the history of the family being so important.’

  He went on to explain that no one ever knew for certain whether it was an accident or suicide, and told her how Violet came into the picture, married Albert and then produced Josie. ‘The girls were two and a half years apart and almost like twins, with the same hair as yours. Ellen didn’t know they weren’t real sisters or that Violet wasn’t her real mother until someone in the village let the cat out of the bag.’

  ‘I see what you mean,’ Daisy said, thinking back to when Lucy told her she was the cuckoo in the nest. She was an adult and knew perfectly well she was adopted, yet it had still stung her. ‘What was Violet like? Was she the kind to explain gently?’

  Tim gave a mirthless laugh. ‘Hardly. I used
to see her when I went down to the cove. I always thought she was a witch. Ellen told Gran that Violet laid into her for being upset about it. I don’t think you’ll find anyone with a good word to say about her. Gran did try to find something to like about her, but I think even she failed.’

  When they came to a stile which brought them back on to the road Daisy had driven along earlier in the day, Tim pointed out that although there were houses along it now, most had only been built in the last twenty years.

  ‘Ellen and Josie must have felt very isolated,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘No television, no phone, I don’t think they even had electricity until they were in their teens. Stuck in the middle of nowhere between parents who never stopped fighting.’

  A short walk along the road from the stile brought them to a tree-lined drive with a very elegant sign in gold lettering for the Rosemullion Hotel. A low wall separated the grounds from the grassy bank at the side of the road, and through the thick bushes Daisy caught a glimpse of smooth lawns. ‘That’s not it, is it?’ she asked, stopping in her tracks.

  ‘Yes, it is, but a far cry from what it looked like when it was Beacon Farm.’ Tim laughed. ‘As I remember there was a broken-down fence along there under the bushes, and the drive to the farm was just a muddy rutted track.’

  Daisy was staring at it in wonder.

  ‘Try not to see the sign, the lawns or the tarmac drive.’ He grinned. ‘I’ll try and give you a glimpse of what the old farm was like for Ellen and Josie by taking you through the woods.’

  Whistling to Fred, he took Daisy’s arm and led her back a little way to a footpath which was signposted to the beach. It was almost hidden by thick bushes on either side. ‘This is the way I used to come down to swim in the cove with Grandpa,’ he said. ‘It’s not that different now, except someone has put some gravel down in the muddiest places.’

  Daisy was charmed by the way trees formed an archway above their heads. To either side of the sloping footpath was a blanket of yellow celandines, wind-flowers, and bluebells about to flower. It seemed to go on and on, but finally the woods thinned out and she could see down across the fields to the sea.

  ‘All the land on both sides of us and right down to the sea belonged to Albert, his father and his grandfather before that,’ Tim explained. ‘But it was hard to farm by all accounts, and he refused to make part of it a camp site or caravan park which would have brought in some extra money.’ He stopped suddenly as the front of the hotel came into view to their left.

  If Daisy hadn’t been told it had only been built in the last twelve years she might have believed it had been there forever, for it was in the style of an old country house, with sash windows, wide steps leading up to the huge front doors and a stone porch covered in wisteria.

  ‘Try and wipe that picture out,’ Tim said, making a sweeping gesture with his arm. ‘Replace it with a low, ramshackle stone cottage which had bits added in a haphazard fashion over the years. It didn’t even face the same way. The back of it was right up in the woods, the front door faced the sea. In fact the hotel isn’t even in the same spot as the old cottage, that’s under the drive now. When the guests sit in the dining-and drawing-rooms admiring the view of the cove, they’d be where the old front garden was. That had a scrubby lawn, a few fruit trees and a dilapidated wooden fence. Then of course there were several old wooden outbuildings too and a barn to the right of it.’

  Daisy nodded. The photograph she had of Ellen and Josie as little girls had part of the farmhouse, and one of the fruit trees in the background, so she had a picture in her mind. But this smart place with its manicured lawns and carefully planted flower-beds was overriding that image of rural poverty.

  ‘Well, I suppose if nothing else I can get some kudos from boasting that this was once all my grandfather’s,’ she said with a smile.

  ‘Let’s go on down to the cove,’ he said, whistling again to Fred who was rooting around in the woods. ‘There at least nothing has changed, other than the National Trust putting in a proper footpath along the cliffs.’

  As they put the manicured gardens of the hotel behind them, Daisy could easily imagine why her grandfather hadn’t wanted to sell the property. It was simply awe inspiringly beautiful. The tumbling stream, the mix of heather and wild flowers, lush grass and craggy boulders were far beyond any landscape gardener’s capabilities.

  There were a few sturdy little ponies and some goats in the steeply rising fields to either side, where presumably Albert once kept his cows and sheep, but Daisy doubted anything much else had changed. Down at the little cove, she could almost visualize two small tousled red-heads in woolly bathing suits, catching crabs in the rock pools, and it all seemed so familiar to her, as if she had carried the memory of this place with her in her mother’s womb.

  ‘I used to wish Grandpa owned the farm when I was little,’ Tim admitted as he threw pebbles into the sea. ‘This was my idea of the most perfect place in the world to live.’

  Daisy stood looking all around her in wonder. It was too early in the year for tourists to have found their way here, and the utter peace and tranquillity, with nothing but the soothing sound of waves and cries of seagulls, brought a lump into her throat.

  ‘Yet Ellen got pregnant and ran away to Bristol, and Josie became a model and moved away too,’ she said with a sigh. ‘I don’t think I would have wanted to leave it.’

  ‘Josie ran away too, when she was only fifteen,’ Tim said. ‘But then we’re looking at this enchanted place from a different perspective to the one they had. We know what big cities are like, we aren’t children deprived of company or luxuries. Ellen was supposed to be the one who loved it, yet when it became hers, she couldn’t get rid of it fast enough.’

  Back in ‘Swallow’s’ much later that afternoon, with a fire lit because it had grown chilly once the sun faded, Mavis told Daisy how she came to know Ellen, and about the girl’s home life. Daisy listened spellbound to the tales of the primitive conditions at the farm, of the difficult and uncommunicative Albert, and Violet, the harsh, slatternly stepmother.

  Having painted the background picture, she then went on to tell Daisy of the part she had played in Ellen going to Bristol to have her baby.

  ‘I’ve never been able to make my mind up about whether I gave her the right advice or not,’ she sighed. ‘Maybe I should have encouraged her to tell her father about you.’

  ‘It doesn’t sound to me as if that would have been a better solution,’ Daisy said thoughtfully. ‘And I certainly had a better childhood than Ellen could have given me.’

  ‘But she never got over giving you up,’ Mavis said with real feeling. ‘She made a good life for herself, she worked hard, had good friends, she claimed she had put it behind her, but I could sense the sadness within her. I used to hope she’d meet some nice young man, get married and have more children, but she said she believed her path in life was to help other children, ones that really needed her. She meant it too, she was entirely dedicated to her work, she didn’t even care about her appearance.’

  Mavis shook her head as if she still didn’t understand it. ‘Sometimes when she came down here to see me, I used to plead with her to let her lovely hair loose, to put on a bit of makeup and buy herself some pretty clothes. But she would just laugh and say she’d leave all that to Josie who was enough of a sensation for both of them.’

  ‘Was this sadness just the result of giving me up, or was she badly hurt by my father too?’ Daisy asked. ‘Do you know about him?’

  ‘Yes dear, I do know.’ Mavis stopped short, glancing nervously at Tim. Daisy guessed this was something she hadn’t shared even with him, and wasn’t sure if she should now.

  ‘Tell me,’ Daisy begged her. ‘It’s all water under the bridge now, and I’m sure she wouldn’t mind either Tim or me knowing. Was he a married man? Is that why she couldn’t tell anyone else about him?’

  ‘No, he wasn’t married, at least as far as Ellen knew. It was just what he did for a living, and the
fact he went off without a word to her. He worked in a circus.’

  Daisy’s eyes opened wide in shock, then she giggled. ‘Really! Don’t tell me he was a clown, I’ll never live that one down.’

  Tim laughed and his grandmother reprimanded him. ‘No, he wasn’t a clown. He was a trapeze artist.’

  ‘But that’s fabulous,’ Daisy said with delight. ‘You aren’t teasing me, are you?’

  ‘Of course not. But though it may sound fabulous to you, to Albert it would have been as bad as consorting with Old Nick himself. All that is irrelevant now, because the circus moved on without him saying goodbye, even before Ellen knew she was pregnant.’

  ‘Oh God, yes, I can see what you mean,’ Daisy said reflectively, suddenly aware of how terrible that would be for a young girl.

  ‘He was actually one of the top stars of that circus,’ Mavis said. ‘Nowadays he would probably be something of a celebrity, but people didn’t view circus folk like that in those days.’

  ‘It explains something about me though,’ Daisy said. ‘I’m good at gymnastics, I was even once a bit of a child star, winning prizes and stuff. It’s nice to know where it came from.’

  ‘You seem rather bucked about it,’ Tim chuckled.

  ‘I am,’ she admitted, grinning broadly. ‘It was my one talent, and it always seemed so extraordinary in a family where no one else could even do a hand-stand.’

  ‘Well, Gran, you don’t have to worry now,’ Tim said laughingly, looking pointedly at his grandmother. ‘Your dark, dark secret never to be spoken has made Daisy happy.’

  ‘Don’t talk such rot, Tim,’ Mavis said heatedly. ‘I only kept it to myself because Ellen asked me to. I didn’t think there was anything shameful in it.’

  ‘It could have been a lot worse, he could have been a rat catcher.’ Daisy smiled. ‘I wish he’d come back for Ellen though, that would have been very romantic.’

  ‘I never felt she was ashamed of having loved him. Only hurt that she’d been fooled into thinking he loved her back,’ Mavis said.

  ‘I’ve loved some pretty unsuitable men myself,’ Daisy admitted, ‘so I can sympathize with that.’