The Inheritance of Solomon Farthing

by Mary Paulson-Ellis

  ‘Quite a few decorated soldiers amongst our old boys.’ Eddie Jackson smiled down at the display. ‘Something about the army, made them feel at home.’

  ‘Where did you get these from?’ Solomon asked, thinking of his own little silver cap badge, lost now in that city in the north.

  ‘Donated. For the centenary. Amazing what people come up with if they’re asked.’

  1914–2014. Another celebration of mud, blood and wire. The war would be everywhere these next few years, thought Solomon. Devastation after devastation. Death after death.

  Jackson moved further along the case to a display of photographs. Soldiers of every description – lanky and stout, dark-haired and fair. All with one similarity: none of them were smiling. As though they had known, before it happened, what would befall them all. Next to the photographs were some letters scrawled in pencil: on signal paper; on field postcards; on envelopes marked with the stamp of the censor in purple and red. Also a canvas pocketbook of some description splayed and pinned like a great Victorian moth. The pocketbook was a dirty thing, stained, one end folded back to reveal two rusty needles and something stitched in pink.

  ‘What’s that?’ Solomon asked.

  ‘Sewing kit,’ said the teacher. ‘A Housewife. All the men were issued them. What a way to fight a war, eh. With not much more than a needle and some thread.’

  A sewing kit to repair what could be repaired, to stitch what could be stitched, a whole generation of men turned into housewives while the women at home machined the bombs they used to kill. Eddie Jackson pointed towards a photograph of a young man in uniform, rigid and precise, propped next to the Housewife.

  ‘It belonged to my great-uncle. Do you recognize him?’

  Solomon studied the soldier, impossibly young, with a cowl of black hair. He shook his head.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Try this one.’

  The teacher indicated another photograph, the same man but older, wearing a master’s gown this time. At once the blood rushed in Solomon’s ears as he heard it again. That shout from across the field, a man in a black cape, its corners flapping, descending on him as though from the sky.

  ‘The Jackdaw!’

  ‘Yes.’ Eddie Jackson laughed. ‘My namesake. He taught here, too.’

  Solomon bent to peer at his old teacher, the blur of something silver attached to the master’s lapel.

  ‘I’d forgotten he fought in the war,’ he said. ‘London Scottish, lion raising its paw.’

  But Eddie Jackson shook his head. ‘No, Bedfordshires I think. Hart crossing a ford, that’s their emblem.’

  How appropriate, thought Solomon, after everything that went on when the Jackdaw was old and he was still young.

  The teacher drew the cloth back across the glass then, as though to consign the past to the past, and moved towards the blue-spined books instead.

  ‘Now, let’s look at the registers, shall we, see if we can find your old boy. What was he called again?’

  ‘Thomas Methven,’ replied Solomon, turning the walnut once more in his pocket.

  ‘My great-uncle served with a Methven,’ said Jackson. ‘An accountant. Good with figures. That was what he said.’

  Acumen and perspicacity. Sound husbandry of money. Rather like Thomas Methven, thought Solomon, if only he had not been too young.

  ‘My Methven was born in 1918, I think,’ he said. ‘Once the war was done. He would have been taken out as a baby the following year, by a Mabel Methven, if my enquiries are correct.’

  Eddie Jackson stopped searching then, as though disappointed.

  ‘There’s been a misunderstanding,’ he said. ‘We never took in babies. They went to the farm down the road first, came here at five.’

  ‘The farm?’

  ‘Belonged to a Mr and Mrs Pringle.’

  WANTED: Home for a baby boy, 6 months old. Total surrender.

  Solomon Farthing had a funny feeling then that if he attempted to trace Walter Pringle’s family tree, he might end up here, too.

  ‘Don’t suppose you know anything about the Pringles, do you?’ he asked. ‘Or their farm.’

  ‘Not really,’ said the teacher. ‘They ran it as a baby home for years. Noel and Dora Pringle. Well, he had the farm and she had the babies. Kept them warm until someone wanted to adopt. Unofficial, of course, like everything back then.’

  Of course, thought Solomon. Like everything about this case. Not generating any of the kind of paperwork that would satisfy Margaret Penny of the Office for Lost People, yet somehow the correct route.

  ‘All gone now, of course,’ the teacher continued. ‘Phased out after the first war.’

  ‘Are there any records left from the farm?’ said Solomon. ‘I’m looking for a clue as to the child’s real parents.’

  ‘Ah, now. For that you will need our official archivist.’

  And Eddie Jackson drew a whistle that Solomon recognized from his pocket, put it to his lips.

  Up, up and up they went, then up some more, the Heir Hunter and the school’s archivist shooed away by Jackson to the highest possible floor. When they got to the top, Solomon was practically on his knees. But he knew he had been there before, a room in a turret, with four windows, east, west, north and south. It was dark outside now, but Solomon was certain that in daytime he would be able to glimpse the river from here, buttercups like sovereigns all along the bank.

  In front of the room’s wooden door, the archivist turned and held out his hand to Solomon as though some sort of formal contact was required before they could proceed.

  ‘I’m Peter,’ he said.

  Solomon hesitated, took Peter’s hand in his own.

  ‘Solomon Farthing.’

  Peter’s hand was small, soft boned. As they shook, Solomon found himself blushing, a fetching shade of rose.

  Just like it had been years before, the room was furnished with leftovers. A stuffed armchair here. A pouf in fading leather there. On the floor was a rug, patterned at the edges, worn bare at its heart. On the rug lay a dog wearing a blue kerchief, nose tucked beneath its paw. The archivist grinned when he saw the dog, scampered across to give it a stroke. Solomon grinned, too. The archivist was one of Eddie Jackson’s naughty schoolboys, eleven years old or thereabouts, hair mussed, knees scuffed, socks wrinkled at his ankles rather like the ones Solomon was wearing. Solomon bent to straighten his fuchsia socks, then looked around the room with all its treasures, understood that he was in Peter’s den now.

  The turret room was dominated by what looked like the headmaster’s old desk, heavy oak with black feet and a green inlay all scuffed and torn. The desk was covered in a neat display of ephemera. A selection of ancient coins. A tray of mismatched keys. A single pair of spectacles fashioned from gold wire. Each item had been labelled, a small tag attached. Solomon waved a hand at the display.

  ‘Is all this yours?’

  Peter looked up from where he was crouching by the dog.

  ‘It’s my museum,’ he said. ‘I like to borrow things. Eddie said if I stopped I could look after this stuff instead.’

  A row of pens with blunted nibs. An old tin containing the remains of a bird’s egg, small shards of blue. Solomon felt for the walnut in his pocket. This room was a petty thief’s paradise – all the pretty things.

  Peter left the dog and came over to the desk, opened one of the deep drawers on the left-hand side and lugged out some sort of expanding file with Pringle written on the tab.

  ‘Eddie says you want to know about the baby home.’

  ‘Yes, please,’ Solomon replied, leaned against the desk waiting to see what the boy might reveal.

  The first thing out of the file was a photograph, not a farm with pigs and a muddy yard as Solomon had expected, but a house with gables and roses around the door. Outside the front of the house was a woman with a baby in her arms, several more on a blanket at her feet. On the gravel drive behind her stood another woman wearing a white cap; beside her, three deep-bottomed prams
. At the edge of the photograph was a girl, fourteen, fifteen perhaps, flowers twisted about her wrist. Solomon flipped the photo over. On the reverse was a description:

  Mrs Pringle’s Home for Lost Souls.

  Also a list of names:

  Mrs Pringle. Elsie. Daisy Pringle.

  And a date:

  1918.

  ‘Can I keep this?’ he asked.

  ‘What’s it worth?’ said Peter.

  A boy after Solomon’s own heart. Solomon suppressed a grin as he searched in his pocket, took out the sixpence and tossed it onto the leather inlay of the desk. Peter’s hand was so quick Solomon almost didn’t see it, darting out to slide the tanner away.

  ‘Pre-decimal,’ said Solomon, raising his eyebrows before the coin disappeared for good. ‘Must be worth more than one photograph.’

  Peter tried not to smile, delved into the expanding file once more. This time he produced a scrabble of paper slips all tattered and curled at the edges. Each slip was blank but for a number written across it in neat script.

  ‘What are these?’ Solomon asked.

  ‘Admission dockets,’ said Peter. ‘Every baby got one when it arrived. They match the numbers in the book.’

  Another register, with marbled endpapers this time, the name of the baby home inscribed on the front, inside lists and lists of the abandoned going back to well before the Great War. Peter slid the book across the desk so that Solomon could flick through the thick, woven pages. The entries began in the 1880s, each child’s name prefaced by a number to match their admissions slip, followed by the name of whoever had adopted them, if they were lucky enough. It was a very thorough record, an Heir Hunter’s dream.

  Solomon turned the pages towards the end of the register, looking for the babies first signed for in 1918, left for a new life in 1919, the name of the clerk who had kept the record in those years inscribed alongside each:

  Miss Evelyn Penny, Secretary.

  Counting the babies in and counting them out again one by one. Solomon wondered for a moment if this Miss Penny was somehow connected to Margaret Penny of the Office for Lost People in Edinburgh, a woman who did her own sort of reckoning on behalf of the abandoned, albeit the deceased. But that was a whole other story and like all good Heir Hunters, Solomon knew not to get distracted. One wrong branch of the wrong tree, and his pursuit of Thomas Methven would be lost.

  He checked all the names for 1918. And all those for 1919, too. But despite looking twice through Evelyn Penny’s meticulous list, there was no record of a foundling boy handed over to a Mabel Methven née Kerr. Solomon was disappointed: another dead end, it seemed. But then he saw the spark in Peter’s eyes, as though the boy archivist knew something that Solomon did not.

  ‘Is there more?’ he asked, closing the book and sliding it back across the desk.

  Peter’s grin almost split his face this time as he lifted a shoebox from the depths of another drawer, removed the lid and tipped its contents all over the old headmaster’s desk.

  Bits of ribbon. Bits of lace. Buttons and coins etched with crude lettering. Cheap jewellery and cut swabs of cloth.

  The real treasure that was left.

  ‘They came with the babies,’ Peter declared. ‘Aren’t they pretty?’

  Tokens, thought Solomon, heart skipping. All the things a mother left behind to prove a child was hers; just in case she ever wanted that child back.

  The tokens were forlorn little things, each one a scrap of hope never realized, long since separated from its relevant admissions slip, nothing to identify the child to whom it had once belonged. Solomon picked through them. A sixpence with a hole in it. A single glass earring. A tinny medal inscribed with a heart. Each one waiting for a mother to return, with its matching pair. Solomon knew all about how a pawnshop operated. But he had never seen it applied to a child before.

  ‘Did all the babies have tokens when they arrived?’ he asked.

  Peter shrugged. ‘Don’t know. But I’ve got one. Do you want to see?’

  He reached into his trouser pocket and dug out a plastic figure, handed it to Solomon, a soldier shouldering his gun.

  ‘My dad gave it to me,’ the boy said.

  Solomon didn’t have anything left that had belonged to his father – nothing but a snatch of song hummed as he shaved of a morning. He felt suddenly bereft.

  ‘My dad’s dead,’ said Peter. ‘What about yours?’

  ‘Mine too,’ said Solomon. ‘A long time ago now.’

  ‘So do you have one, then?’ Peter asked, sliding the plastic soldier back into his pocket. ‘A token?’

  Solomon was confused for a moment. What had his father left him but that fragment of singing in his head?

  ‘Oh, no, I don’t . . .’

  But, of course, he did.

  It took them several goes to find their match, a man in grubby corduroys and a boy with unbrushed hair, hands deep in the detritus of babies long since vanished into the mire. A patch stitched with a heart, here. A button from an army greatcoat, there. In the end it was Peter who saw it first, snatched it from amongst the jumble to hold it to the lamp. An admissions billet with a number scrawled in faded ink. 103. And above that, two rusty holes where something had been held on by a pin once, long ago. Solomon could tell from the giddy one two of his heart that he had followed the right branch of the tree after all. He held up his token in reply. Thomas Methven’s pawn ticket, no.125, two tiny holes matching two pinholes punctured through the admissions billet, to make a perfect four.

  Solomon’s heart was thrumming as Peter turned once more to the book with the marbled endpapers, ran his soft little finger down the lists of numbers and names. All those children deposited as one thing, ended as something else, just as Eddie Jackson had said. But when the boy came to it, the record was not for a child born in 1918, handed over six months later to a Mabel Methven née Kerr. It was for someone much older than that.

  Child No.103.

  Arrived with nothing but a pawn ticket. Also a name:

  Sutherland, Alec.

  Deposited as a foundling in 1902. Left to be a soldier in 1918.

  1918

  One

  The game would be played in the barn. Ten men arranged in a circle, the ground between them swept clean. Captain Godfrey Farthing the only one who would not join. Godfrey did not believe in gambles, but this was a bet he was prepared to take if it meant his men stayed safe.

  7 November and the section ate breakfast in a thrum of excitement once Godfrey announced the news. He watched from the doorway of the farmhouse as they hurried to scrape egg from their mess tins, tossing the empty cans into the huge earthenware sink with a clatter as they rushed to complete their chores. Not much more than twelve hours before the attack was due and Godfrey had found another way to occupy his men’s time. One more roll of the dice, until the bells pealed.

  Mid-morning, washing sorted, barn swept clean and Percy Flint waited for the men to settle so that they could begin. Hair newly slicked with water, neat cuffs given an extra turn on his arm, Flint sifted the pack of cards from one impatient hand to the next. Alfred Walker sat beside him, pockets filled with whatever treasure he had previously purloined. George Stone had brought a handful of walnuts from the kitchen to throw into the fray. He chose a block of wood on the far side of the circle to perch on, stretched his feet in heavy boots, had taken off his apron for the day.

  Next to Stone, Jackdaw and Promise, the A4 boys, huddled close, heads bent together in concentration as they pooled their resources. Buttons and pennies. A bird nest taken from a hedge. Bertie Fortune, the lucky man, was seated by the new recruit, Alec, so that he could help explain the rules. Everybody trusted Fortune to play fair even though he always came out on top one way or another, win or lose. Alec’s dog nestled by the boy’s feet, nose resting on its paws, as though it had belonged here all along. Then there was Second Lieutenant Ralph Svenson, sitting amongst the men as though he was nothing more than an ordinary soldier, rather than t
he officer who liked to win.

  Godfrey had even persuaded James Hawes to play, summoning his temporary sergeant to the parlour earlier that morning once breakfast was done, all the men scattered to prepare for the day.

  ‘Heard you lost a tanner to Promise on a game of chicken,’ he said.

  Hawes flushed, dirty freckles splashed on his neck, didn’t deny it. ‘Aye, sir.’

  ‘Not like you to gamble, Hawes.’

  ‘Needs must, sir.’

  ‘Thought you might want to win it back.’

  Godfrey fished inside the wooden box set on the parlour table, took out the leather pouch that contained the men’s tobacco ration, pushed it across to Hawes. Both men stared at the little bag.

  ‘What about the ration, sir?’ Hawes mumbled.

  Godfrey leaned back in his chair. ‘It’s not all of it, you fool. I’m not that stupid. Take it, I’ll not offer twice.’

  They both knew it wasn’t a question so much as an order. Hawes reached for the pouch, plucked it from the table and held it in his fist. How solid his hands were, Godfrey thought. Beefy. Like the meat he used to saw for a living. He watched as his temporary sergeant left, dodging the muddy pools in the yard, and disappeared into the grain store. It wasn’t like Godfrey Farthing to offer a bribe. But needs must, he thought. Both men understood that.

  Now Hawes lay propped on a ground sheet on the edge of the circle, face and neck given a rough wash for the occasion, freckles bright once more. Just behind him Archie Methven sat on a chair brought in from the parlour, where he could see them all. Godfrey had only set one condition before they began – that Methven must be the bank. Just like Godfrey, the accountant never played, but unlike Godfrey, no game could go on without him. Despite the presence of an officer, it was always the accountant who had the final say.

  As the men settled, Godfrey watched Archie Methven open his notebook in which all their names were listed. Godfrey had bought Methven the notebook out of his officer’s allowance a year ago or so, a proper accountant’s profit-and-loss account with its horizontal lines in blue and its verticals in red. He always had relied on Archie Methven to settle things for the men – whether they were alive, or whether they were dead.