Hiding the Past (The Forensic Genealogist series Book 1)

by Nathan Dylan Goodwin

  Quiet Brian told Morton where to find the files containing information on enemy aliens, as Germans and Austrians had been called during the war, as if they had all arrived via a UFO from Mars rather than on a boat from mainland Europe.

  Morton withdrew a chunky folder from the shelf and took a seat in the crowded search room. He read, with a sudden and unexpected twinge of sympathy, through the countless and increasingly aggressive directives and instructions from the Home Office to the local County Council regarding what to do with anyone of German or Austrian descent. Was James Coldrick’s mother one of the thousands of aliens rounded up within forty-eight hours of Churchill coming to power in 1940? It seemed so unlikely, somehow. He flicked past various letters and pieces of correspondence marked ‘confidential’ or ‘secret’ until he reached the files that he had come to see: ‘Home Office: Aliens Department: Aliens Personal Files HO 382.’ He quickly scribbled down the reference number, located the relevant (and alarmingly bulky) film and hurried over to the bank of microfilm readers, only one of which was vacant – the rest having been commandeered by family historians.

  Morton threaded up the reel and wound on to the first page, which contained a brief synopsis of the microfilm’s contents. He was sure that he could feel the cool surge of adrenalin rush into his heart. Could it really be that the answer to the Coldrick’s ancestral history was contained within the fat celluloid roll in front of him? Really? A small part of him didn’t want to read on, didn’t want to risk another dead end. He’d given everything to the Coldrick Case and if the answer wasn’t here then he didn’t think that he had the stamina to continue. There was a lot to be said for the predictability of mundane family history research jobs.

  He took a deep breath and read the first page on the film. The Vice Chief of the Imperial General Staff said that, in the light of the possibility of invasion, it was very desirable that all enemy aliens in counties in the south east should be interned. No doubt ninety per cent of such aliens were well-disposed to this country, but it was impossible to pick out the small proportion of aliens who probably constituted a dangerous element. In the circumstances, the only course seemed to be that all aliens in this area should be interned for the present. The number is probably four to five thousand. These aliens should be categorised thus: ‘A’ are known Nazis who are interned immediately, ‘B’ are the doubtful ones who will have restrictions placed on them and ‘C’ were all the rest, mostly Jewish refugees.

  Morton desperately hoped that James Coldrick’s mother would appear in the ‘C’ category, constituting one of the ninety percent of aliens ‘well-disposed to this country’, yet he doubted that a Jewish refugee would have been willingly photographed with a swastika around her neck.

  He wound the film on and discovered that the files were arranged haphazardly and in no particular order. At first he read each and every word on the record cards. After all, he had no idea of James Coldrick’s mother’s name and he hoped that it would be the detail that would finally reveal the truth.

  It was going to be a long search, which might well stretch into days huddled at a microfilm reader.

  After several hours of fruitless searching, Morton began to skim-read the entries, his eyelids gravitating towards earth, like shop blinds at closing time. He looked at the clock: in little over two hours’ time Deidre Latimer would take great pleasure in shooing him away.

  He ploughed on, but it had become an effort to stay focussed and the names that he read received diminished process-time in his brain. Fritz Karthauser, Rozsa Balogh, Charlottenne Hellman, Eva Loewenheim, Walter Tauchert, Hans Hacault, Magda Mueller, Leni Raubal, Geli Reitsh… the names skewed and twisted in his addled mind. He wasn’t even sure if Leni and Geli were men or women. He ached all over and the idea of making a note of where he’d reached in the reel, packing up for the day and returning home and snuggling up with Juliette took hold. There was no guarantee that he’d find James Coldrick’s mother anyway. She could easily have been one of the names he had read, having blithely skipped over her. Then he thought of Dr Baumgartner and the way that he held Morton in such high esteem. What would he think about him struggling to stay awake and casually casting his eyes over the records, as if he were reading the Sunday papers, wanting to give up halfway through? He’d be mortified, that’s what. Morton wasn’t that person. He needed to do this properly.

  He switched off the machine, stood, and contracted his tight leg and arm muscles. A brisk walk and a shot of caffeine would see him through the last quarter of the reel. He strode boldly past Deidre Latimer, across the car park and down to Nero’s. He had a plentiful choice of vacant seats, but Morton chose to sit in the same comfy leather armchair where he had sat the last time he was here, where Max had finally confessed the snippet of information about William Dunk that had led him back here again. There was something oddly comforting in sitting in the same place, in remembering Max pulling apart his double-chocolate muffin, casually revealing his corruption. Morton drank his coffee, feeling like an echo of himself that day, a third-party observer watching the discussion taking place again.

  A loud crash and sound of smashing crockery as a tray of drinks hit the floor snapped Morton from his reveries. He was back in the room, back to the present time. He finished his drink and hurried back to the archives.

  He returned to the microfilm reader with a renewed zeal and desire to find the answer. He’d been scanning the reel for several minutes when his mobile rang. Damn, in his haste to minimise contact with Deidre Latimer in the lobby he’d forgotten to switch off his phone, and now the amplified iPhone ringtone was attracting the attention of the dozen or so disgruntled researchers, who were currently glaring at him as though he’d just committed a terrible atrocity. Leaving your mobile switched on was a kind of atrocity here, he supposed. He elongated their pain as he deliberated whether or not to answer: it was Jeremy, he had to answer. Just in case.

  ‘Hi,’ Morton whispered.

  ‘Morton, just thought I’d tell you that Dad’s been moved back to the Atkinson Ward. He seems to be doing well.’

  ‘Oh, thank God,’ Morton said, genuinely relieved that his father seemed to be pulling through.

  ‘The only trouble is that he keeps asking when you’re going to come in.’

  ‘Okay, tell him I’ll be there this evening,’ Morton answered. Whatever it was that his father wanted to say had better be worth it, especially now that Quiet Brian was making a beeline towards him with a condemning look on his face. At that moment Morton’s eyes did an involuntary double-take at the microfilm reader and both Jeremy’s tinny voice and Quiet Brian’s admonishing whisper sharply faded away, the aural equivalent of them blurring into the background.

  He’d found her.

  Regional Advisory Committee

  Surname: Koldrich

  Forename: Marlene

  Date and place of birth: 18 November 1913, Berlin

  Nationality: German

  Police Regn. Cert. No: 470188

  Address: Sedlescombe, Sussex

  The committee have decided that the alien should be placed in Category ‘A’ – sent to Lingfield Internment Camp immediately

  Date: 20 May 1940

  M stood for Marlene. Marlene Koldrich, the un-anglicised name of James Coldrick’s mother, Peter Coldrick’s grandmother and Finlay Coldrick’s great grandmother. He wasn’t surprised to see that she was classified as a category A alien; it kind of went with the territory of wearing a swastika in World War Two. He hit the print button and watched excitedly as a black and white copy spewed from the machine. He snatched the photocopy and considered his next move. He supposed it would be to find out what records still existed for Lingfield Internment Camp and take it from there. He’d ask Quiet Brian, he always seemed to be a mine of military history information. For no reason other than to be completely satisfied that the entry was complete, Morton wound the film reel on one page and was startled by the short entry.

  The committee have decided to de
classify Marlene Koldrich

  Date: 27 May 1940

  Morton reread the entry. From category A to declassified in one week. How did that happen? The more he thought of it, the more likely it seemed to him that someone in high authority had pulled the right strings. Someone in government, perhaps. He doubted that Marlene had ever even made it to Lingfield Internment Camp in the intervening week.

  Morton left the archives, carefully clutching his two printouts, his head in a tailspin. What on earth could have possessed the Regional Advisory Committee to take such action? After a grovelling apology to Quiet Brian for using his mobile, Morton asked if there were any other records that might help him, but Quiet Brian seemed quite certain that there were none that had survived. Morton had briefly considered calling up street directories or electoral registers for Sedlescombe in 1940, but remembered that they weren’t produced during wartime. There was also no 1941 census taken. National security and all that.

  As he crossed the car park towards the Mini, Morton pulled out the torn corner of a newspaper from his back pocket on which Dr Baumgartner had scribbled the phone number of Professor Geoffrey Daniels. The phone rang for several seconds before a gruff, disgruntled voice answered. When Morton explained that he was a very good friend of Gerald Baumgartner the voice swiftly softened.

  Someone had evidently noticed that the waiting room at the Conquest Hospital wasn’t a particularly great advert for the place. The blue plastic chairs had been wiped, the payphone mended and a colourful set of three posters now adorned the walls. Morton gazed across the glossy attempts to educate and inform the ill and injured public. The first one showed four Russian Matryoshka nesting dolls standing beside one another, painted as a father, mother, son and daughter. Above the family a tagline read ‘Diabetes often runs in families.’ The next featured a middle-aged distorted face with accompanying stroke advice. The last poster gave frank information on the symptoms of bowel cancer.

  He carried the cup of tea, requested by his father, to the Atkinson Ward and placed it on the cabinet beside him, receiving an appreciative nod from him.

  ‘How’s work?’ his father asked in a raspy, weak voice. Jeremy had said on the phone that their father was doing well but Morton had seen no evidence of it so far. He looked pasty and sallow, a haunted version of his pre-operative state. Morton still couldn’t quite believe that he wasn’t at death’s door.

  ‘Very busy,’ Morton said.

  His father nodded. ‘I suppose that’s why you haven’t been here much.’ It was a rhetorical question; Morton didn’t need to answer it. Actually, it was bait and Morton did answer it.

  ‘I was here last night, actually.’

  ‘I know,’ he answered airily.

  How could he know? Morton wondered. Had Jeremy or one of the nurses told him that Morton had kept a stoic bedside vigil? Or had his father heard every word of his extensive tirade? He didn’t want to ask. He just wanted to know whatever it was that his father’s cracked and sore lips were struggling to say.

  With what seemed the greatest effort in the world, his father lifted his hand and placed it on Morton’s. He gripped Morton’s four fingers tightly. ‘I’ve got something to tell you,’ his sandpapery voice said, his eyes meeting Morton’s earnestly for the first time. Morton knew that he was about to be told something big, something life-changing. ‘It’s about your past. It’s time you knew.’

  Chapter Eighteen

  Wednesday

  Well, the kitchen table of the Farrier residence sure was an uncomfortable place to be. Morton, Juliette, Jeremy and Guy sat half-heartedly eating their way through the pile of toast in the centre of the table, an awkward silence lingering over the cafetière that sat between them. Morton felt sorry for Jeremy and Juliette; he knew that their brains were being eaten alive with questions that they wanted answering but that neither of them could quite articulate. Questions that he himself had asked his father last night. He felt most sorry, though, for the bewildered-looking Guy, trying - and failing - to make the three stunned, voiceless people at the table engage in small talk. The poor chap had even resorted to commenting on the weather. He’d only arrived moments before breakfast and hadn’t been privy to the long and emotionally intense night that had followed Morton’s arrival back from the Conquest Hospital. In fact, the three of them had only gone to bed four hours ago and even then Morton hadn’t slept a wink. He’d left the hospital in a state of shock: every fragment of his childhood had been pulverised and mashed up beyond all recognition by that one, short conversation with his father; as far as he was concerned, he had no past. That small box in his brain where he stored painful memories or parts of his life that he’d rather forget had exploded with more force than had his own house. Only this time, there were no salvageable trinkets or trophies.

  Morton had left his father's bedside with the intention of driving straight home to clear his head but when he saw that The Harrow pub was open, he parked up and went inside. He felt like a walking cliché as he downed two double whiskeys. But what he really sought from the pub was to be a faceless blur in the corner, giving the news and the alcohol time to sink in. It had been many years since he’d last drunk in there and so he sat, incognito, stewing over what he had just been told. ‘Your biological mother was raped at the age of sixteen,’ his father had said, matter-of-factly. ‘And in those days you didn’t just pop a pill and the baby was gone, you put it up for adoption, which is exactly what she did. And that’s how your mother and I came to have you.’ The way that his father emphasised the word that’s had made it sound as though it were the end of a long, self-explanatory speech that required no further questioning. And, as if to underline the point, his father closed his eyes and emitted a deep satisfying sigh, a crushing weight evidently having been lifted from his reconditioned heart. Over the years, Morton had convinced himself that nature was indeed stronger than nurture and that no part of his character attributes, or what had made him the person he was today, stemmed from his adoptive parents, which now left him with the stark and numbing realisation that fifty percent of his biological make-up came from a rapist. And to think that he was embarrassed at school to say that his father worked in B&Q. He imagined the reaction of standing up and telling his class that his father was a man who liked to force schoolgirls to have sex with him.

  ‘So, you knew my mother then?’ Morton ventured.

  ‘Of course I knew her, I married her, didn’t I?’

  ‘My biological mother,’ Morton clarified.

  For a brief moment it appeared as though someone had pressed a pause button on his father, for he lay frozen without so much as a flicker of movement. Even his glassy eyes were devoid of animation. As Morton was assimilating the possibility that his father had just pegged out in front of him, right at the critical revelatory moment, which would have been just the kind of thing likely to happen to him, he turned and met Morton’s anxious eyes. ‘Yes, we knew her.’ Another lengthy pause. God, this was like pulling teeth, Morton thought. ‘Who was she?’ he asked, his whole body physically aching to know the answer that he’d waited almost twenty years to hear.

  ‘She was just a girl, a sixteen-year-old girl.’

  Morton suffered another pause. ‘But what was her name?’

  ‘Her name’s irrelevant,’ he said, now barely audible. His eyes closed again and turned his head. ‘All long ago in the past.’

  ‘Please,’ Morton pleaded gently.

  ‘I need to rest.’

  ‘Please,’ he repeated, alarmed to discover that he was on the verge of tears. He couldn’t say anything else; he was emotionally parched.

  His father was unresponsive and Morton stood to leave. And then the answer came. Without fanfare and even without his father opening his eyes or moving a muscle – just five simple words.

  ‘Her name was Margaret Farrier.’

  Morton ordered a pint of beer and tried to imagine his Aunty Margaret aged sixteen. He was sure that he’d seen photographs of her beaming brigh
tly in her school uniform, a moment captured on camera before her innocence was barbarically stolen by Morton’s natural father. It was odd but he felt a strange level of responsibility for his biological father’s actions. The flip side to that, however, was the simple truth that if his father hadn’t raped Aunty Margaret then he wouldn’t be here now. It was a sickening and horrifying feeling to know that he owed his entire existence to a rapist.

  It took a second pint for Morton to go home and muster the courage to go back to break the news to Juliette and Jeremy. The irony of finally discovering a latent fraternal bond with Jeremy, to now discover that he was actually his cousin, was not lost on Morton as he neared the house.

  Morton tried his hardest to put on something resembling a brave face. Even just an ordinary face would have done. He wanted to stride into the kitchen confidently and say, ‘Hi, everything okay? You’ll never guess what I’ve just found out!’ Wasn’t that how his family did things? Dropped emotional bombshells and then ran away? He was sure that his father would have walked away if it were at all possible as soon as he’d uttered the words, ‘And that’s how your mother and I came to have you.’ Job done. Cheerio. But Morton couldn’t appear any other way than totally shell-shocked and mildly drunk. Of course, they had both spotted it as soon as he walked through the front door. ‘What’s happened?’ Juliette had asked. ‘It’s Dad, isn’t it?’ Jeremy had said, the pair of them haranguing him before he’d even drawn breath. He’d just managed to keep his composure while he relayed what his father had told him and had just finished telling them everything, when Guy arrived. Suddenly, the world fell silent and a raft of questions from Juliette and Jeremy were left unspoken.