Father Unknown

by Fay Sampson

  Nick looked startled. ‘But think of the problems it would have caused. Not just any teenage pregnancy, but this one. She’s spared that.’

  ‘It was still a baby. Her baby,’ said Millie. ‘That’s what she told me. Can I see her now?’

  Sergeant Smithens rose. ‘I’ll need to take a statement from her when she comes round.’

  ‘Of course. Though I’m not certain how much she’ll tell you.’

  The unspoken question hung heavy over the room.

  Prudence was awake now. She straightened her crumpled summer suit and fished in her handbag for a powder compact. She touched up her make-up and patted her hair, as a soldier might check his combat-readiness.

  ‘Well, I guess this story was never going to end happily. But at least she’s safe. I just couldn’t fly back to the States and not know whether you guys had found her, and that nobody got hurt.’

  Hurt, thought Suzie. Tamara can never really get over the hurt that’s been done to her.

  As though she read her thoughts, Prudence reached out a hand and clasped Suzie’s knee. ‘It could have been a whole lot worse than it is. If you hadn’t arrived when you did . . . If this Petronella character had caught up with her . . .’

  ‘They can’t prove anything, can they?’ Tom cut in. ‘She didn’t actually do anything. They didn’t get her aboard his boat. All you’ve got is that she was carrying an offensive weapon. Nothing at all on Reynard Woodman.’

  ‘I think you may be wrong there,’ said the detective sergeant. ‘Your mother was quick-witted enough to make sure the hospital kept the evidence. If the father is who you think it is, we can prove it.’

  ‘They can do that?’ Tom asked. ‘While it’s still that small? It’s got separate DNA from its mother?’

  ‘Oh yes. From the day it’s conceived.’

  There was silence, as the implications of this sank in.

  ‘You good people really ought to go home and get some sleep. I’m the only one who’s getting paid overtime.’

  ‘It’s not exactly home,’ Nick said. ‘It’s the Bear and Staff at Burwood. And we haven’t booked a room for Tom. Still, I dare say we could smuggle him in.’

  Prudence yawned. ‘I guess I ought to be heading for Birmingham Airport. I can’t tell you how sorry I am to be leaving you folks. You’ve been so good to me.’ She patted her capacious handbag. ‘I’ve got so many memories in here. Photographs of all the places you took me to. The farms, the church, and that Dissenters’ graveyard.’ She hugged Suzie. ‘I’d never have gotten to that one without you. I didn’t tell you. I tracked it down after you left. Meeting Lane. No meeting house there now, more’s the pity. But there’s still the burial ground, with a wall around it. Someone still goes in there and cuts the grass some. Not too much. They let the wild flowers grow. It was kind of peaceful, just sitting there and knowing Johan had come to rest at last.’

  She stood up more briskly. ‘I’m going to get the folks back home together. I’ll tell them the whole story. The highs and lows. You know how shocked I was when I found our great Adam Clayson was a bastard? I guess I can make them see it differently now. What it was like if you bore a child out of wedlock in those days. How she came right out and named the father. And shamed him, I shouldn’t wonder, a married man his age. And little Adam, starting out from next to nothing, to do all he did. I only wish Johan could have lived to see it. Her son, the great timber merchant in Pennsylvania and founder of the Presbyterian chapel at Come-to-Good. But she found her own peace in Corley, God rest her soul.’

  Suzie hugged her back. She herself had warmed to Johan’s unfolding story. She envied Prudence’s ability to talk about her faith without embarrassment. She made a decision that she, too, would find the Dissenters’ burial ground and leave flowers there.

  Meanwhile, another girl lived on, without her baby.

  ‘You guys just have to come to Pennsylvania and let me show you around my place. I’ll take you to Come-to-Good. And, Tom, thanks for getting me here. I’ve given your police my statement. That accident was absolutely not your fault. Anybody else driving might have killed the girl.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  Suzie saw relief relax her son’s face and blessed Prudence for that.

  One last round of hugs. Then the warmth and enthusiasm of the American woman was gone, leaving the waiting room a thinner place.

  ‘Sergeant Smithens is right,’ Nick said. ‘We could all use a few hours’ sleep.’

  Suzie and Millie were back at the hospital at mid-morning.

  Frances was sitting beside Tamara’s bed. She got up when she saw them. ‘Good. I could do with some coffee. I’ll leave you to it.’

  Tamara looked at them ruefully, her head half turned away. She greeted them quietly, but seemed unwilling to talk. Some of her thick brown hair had been shaved away, and there was a large plaster where her head had hit the road.

  Millie, for once, was finding it hard to come up with the usual girlish chatter. ‘Does it hurt?’

  Tamara nodded, and winced.

  Suzie filled the awkward silence. ‘They say you haven’t got concussion. That’s good news. There’s severe bruising down the side where the car hit you, but nothing broken. You were lucky.’

  ‘Lucky.’ The girl’s voice was flat.

  ‘I’m sorry!’ Suzie put out an instinctive hand to touch her. ‘That was crass of me. I was talking about physical injury. I know you wanted that baby. In spite of everything.’

  ‘He was mine. I don’t care what anyone says.’

  ‘Yes. I know.’

  ‘The chaplain came in this morning. She was nice. I’m sick of nurses and doctors telling me it was all for the best. She didn’t. She said if I went along to the chapel this morning, after their service, I could light a candle.’

  ‘Would you like to do that? Can you walk?’

  ‘Just about.’

  ‘I can get a wheelchair for you.’ Millie sprang up.

  ‘No. I can do it.’

  Millie, somewhat nervously, helped her off the bed. Tamara was already fully dressed. Frances must have brought her fresh clothes.

  ‘We passed the chapel on our way down the corridor,’ Suzie said. ‘It’s not far. I think their service finishes at eleven.’

  ‘She asked if I’d like to come to it. But I couldn’t face all those people.’

  ‘That’s understandable.’

  They helped her walk the short distance to the chapel. The room was light and airy, lit by two tall windows on either side. An embroidered banner hung from the front wall – a white dove descending in billows of scarlet fire. Pentecost, Suzie remembered. The coming of the Holy Spirit.

  The last of the little morning congregation was drifting away. A young couple stood talking to a small, bespectacled, grey-haired woman. Her eyes went past them to Tamara and she smiled.

  Tamara limped forward and sat down on one of the chairs. The couple made their farewells and moved out.

  The chaplain did not come directly to them. She turned to face the tall golden cross in the middle of the front wall. For a time she stood before it, hands folded. Then she bowed her head and turned to greet them. ‘Tamara. I’m glad you came. And these are . . .?’

  ‘My friend Millie, and her mother Suzie.’

  ‘It’s good to know Tamara’s got friends here.’ Though her smile was welcoming enough, her concern was focused on Tamara. ‘Would you like me to say a prayer for the baby?’

  Tamara nodded.

  The woman led the way forward. To one side of the steps up to the communion table there was a bank of tea lights. Some of them had been lit. Each, Suzie realized, must represent a prayer someone had made. A thanksgiving, a memorial.

  The chaplain prayed in a clear, quiet voice. She seemed to have no doubt that this was a real child they were speaking of. Someone who, even in this tiny, unformed state, mattered to God, and to its mother. She lit a taper and handed it to Tamara.

  Suzie stole a look at Millie and was surpr
ised to see tears on her face. Millie had wanted to stop going to Springbrook Church under its old minister. Would it have made any difference if she had known Alan Taylor? But she would remember today and be moved by it.

  The little flame sprang to life. Tamara stood back.

  The chaplain handed her a white rose. ‘Go in peace, and the peace of God be with those you love.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  The police-station car park was quiet on a Sunday afternoon. The Fewings emerged into the sunshine.

  ‘Is that it?’ asked Millie. ‘No more questions? We’re free to do what we like?’

  ‘Unless there’s a court case,’ Nick said. ‘Yes, they’re finished with us.’

  ‘But there must be, mustn’t there?’ Tom protested. ‘They can’t get away with it.’

  A blue BMW slid quietly into the visitors’ car park and stopped. Reynard Woodman got out. He was alone.

  The Fewings stopped dead and stared at him.

  Reynard advanced towards them, his red hair glinting in the sunlight. There was a foxy smile about his mouth. His clothes looked dapper. His maroon jacket had a velvety sheen. There was a blue-and-white spotted bow tie. ‘Suzie, you look quite shocked to see me.’

  ‘I thought . . .’

  ‘That I’d be locked up, like poor Pet? I’m afraid your slander machine isn’t quite powerful enough to touch me.’

  ‘You nearly killed Tamara,’ Millie broke out.

  His eyes widened in surprise. So did his smile. ‘Did I hear you right, Millie? My information is that Tom was driving the car that knocked her down. I was a half a mile away, on the river.’

  ‘It wasn’t my fault,’ Tom growled. ‘She ran out in front of me because your Pet was chasing her with a monkey wrench as long as my forearm. I don’t imagine she was acting entirely off her own bat.’

  ‘Oh, but she was, the sweetie. Do you really think I’d sanction anything as crass as that, even if, for some strange reason, I’d wanted to get rid of Tamara? I can assure you, I could think of a much more subtle plot than that. I haven’t won the book prizes I have for nothing.’

  ‘You were going to get her on to your boat, weren’t you?’ Suzie was finding it difficult to speak. ‘A drowning. Impossible to prove it wasn’t an accident.’

  The fiery eyebrows rose. ‘What a lively imagination you have. And not a shred of proof.’

  Nick cut in. ‘Mercifully, she’s still alive. But the police are well aware of what nearly happened. If you lay a finger on her in future . . .’

  ‘Now why would I want to do that? My own daughter.’

  ‘Because you got her up the duff, that’s why!’ Millie cried. ‘And you’re her father.’

  ‘That’s a ridiculous suggestion. And anyway, Frances informs me she’s lost the baby. It seems Tamara doesn’t want to talk about whatever schoolboy oik it was that fathered it. No case to answer. You can all go home and stop worrying.’

  Suzie’s voice was steely now. ‘Tamara doesn’t need to talk.’

  ‘How so? I should have thought she was the only witness to its paternity.’

  ‘Because, small though it was, the foetus had quite enough DNA for the hospital to send a sample for testing.’

  She watched his face turn white. For long moments nobody said anything.

  Then Reynard Woodman tugged at his bow tie, as though it were choking him. He strode past them into the police station, where Petronella was still being held.

  ‘Will they take him to court?’ Millie asked. ‘Can they get it into the newspapers, without Tamara’s name coming out? I want to see his photograph plastered all over the Internet, so that everybody knows what he’s done. I want them to sweep his horrible books off the library shelves. I hope he spends years in prison, and that he’s on the sex-offenders register for the rest of his life.’

  ‘Some of that may happen,’ Suzie said. ‘He’d be prosecuted as Kevin Gamble, though. And there probably would be restrictions on reporting, for Tamara’s sake. But the police will certainly keep tabs on him when he comes out. I doubt if they’ll let him go on living with Calliope and Persephone, if they’re still under age by then. Poor little things. I don’t know what will happen to them if they’ve got enough on Petronella to send her down. But the fact is, she didn’t actually do anything to Tamara.’

  ‘So he could get away with it? I mean, he could still be the great Reynard Woodman, and hardly anybody but us would know what he’d done? Just the police and the judge? He could even go on writing books in prison.’

  ‘If Tamara wants to keep this quiet, I’m afraid that could happen.’

  ‘I’m not so sure,’ said Nick. ‘Rumours get around. If his publishers hear a whisper of this, they’re going to think twice about investing big money in someone whose sales could crash if he turns into a hate figure. Even if that never actually happens.’

  ‘Knowing him,’ snorted Suzie, moving towards the car, ‘he’ll invent another pseudonym. Get a different publisher. And make a second fortune.’

  ‘It’s not a fair world,’ said Millie.

  ‘No one ever said it was.’

  THIRTY-TWO

  ‘I’ve taken all his beastly books off my shelves and binned them. I couldn’t bear to lie in bed and look at them.’

  Suzie looked up from her laptop. Millie stood belligerently in the doorway to the conservatory. She looked, Suzie thought with a smile, suddenly childish again, despite that sophisticated blonde haircut. ‘You could have given them to my charity shop.’

  ‘It gives me the shudders to think of little kids reading them and thinking what a wonderful person he is.’

  ‘You don’t think it’s possible that someone could be a bad person and still write good books?’

  ‘Are you trying to make excuses for him? I saw the way he smiled at you. He thinks he can magic anyone into doing what he wants.’

  ‘He magicked you once.’

  Millie kicked at a chair. ‘I know. And I keep thinking what might have happened if he hadn’t left Tamara’s mum. Imagine if he’d stayed here, and I’d kept going to their house. I hate him for making me feel like that.’

  ‘Don’t!’ Suzie found the thought unbearable.

  ‘And there’s something else,’ Millie muttered. ‘That Dan Curtis at the club. He gives me the creeps now.’

  The doorbell rang.

  ‘Get it, will you?’ she asked Millie.

  Next moment, Alan Taylor walked into the conservatory. He was wearing an open-necked shirt, instead of his dog collar. He gave her a broad grin. ‘Can I sit down?’

  ‘Of course. Would you like a cup of coffee?’

  ‘No thanks. I can’t stop. But I’ve got some good news to report. At least, I hope you’ll think it’s good.’

  ‘About the Dawsons? That was quick.’

  Suzie had rung him the day before, after they got back from Burwood. They had left Tamara with her aunt, her future still uncertain.

  ‘No time like the present. I told him what had happened. And I didn’t mince words. What Tamara went through, and what could have happened to her, were a direct consequence of the way he treated her. It nearly led to her death. That shocked him. But he understands straight talking, I’ll say that for him.’

  ‘You were braver than we were.’

  ‘He’s not fundamentally a bad guy. It’s just that his moral code is different from ours. I wish I could get him to see that the light of the Gospel shows up those punitive bits in the Old Testament he’s so fond of in a whole new way. We’re living in a new era. Christ moves us on, from law and punishment to grace and mercy. He thinks I’m a dangerous liberal. But it’s scared him. I’ve warned him what will happen if he uses violence on Tamara again. Or Lisa. I’m not putting either of them in danger, even if it means the end of his career.’

  ‘He has other ways of bullying, besides hitting her,’ Millie said.

  Alan turned his face to her, thoughtfully. ‘You’re right. The three of them are going to need help. And frie
nds.’

  ‘I shouldn’t have just left Lisa to him,’ Suzie said quietly. ‘She only lives round the corner. What worries me more is that it was us who told Reynard about Tamara’s pregnancy. Without us, he wouldn’t have known she was carrying his child.’

  Tom stepped in from the patio. ‘You should worry? I was driving the car.’ His deep-blue eyes were still troubled.

  Alan looked at them steadily. ‘We can’t all have the wisdom of Solomon. Everything you did was because you cared for her. She knows that.’

  ‘She’s coming home to her mum, then?’ Millie asked.

  ‘At the end of the week.’

  ‘Terrific!’ Millie sparkled with delight.

  ‘And you’ll tell me straight away if you’re worried about her?’

  ‘You bet I will.’

  He rose to go. ‘It won’t be easy. For any of them. They’ll need people like you around.’

  When he had gone, Suzie turned back to her laptop, where she had been checking an overflowing in-box. ‘Look at this,’ she cried. ‘It’s just come in. It’s from Pru.’

  The others gathered round her. Nick came in from the garden to look over her shoulder.

  ‘She must have written this almost as soon as she got home. Look, she’s attached a picture.’ She clicked on the download.

  They were looking at a long, low, white building. The clap-board walls had a distinctively American look. On one end of the roof was a small structure with a bell. The photograph might have been taken a century ago. Men in their Sunday best, with bowler hats. Women in blouses with leg-of-mutton sleeves, whose dark skirts reached the ground. Girls in white starched pinafores. Boys in tight jackets. At the bottom of the picture was written: Come-to-Good.

  ‘Adam’s chapel,’ breathed Suzie. ‘The one he founded, right back in the eighteenth century, after he’d started to make his way in the timber business. Johan could never have imagined that, when she had to stand barefoot in a white sheet and confess her sins before the whole village. Not bad for a “base child”.’