A Daughter's Shame

by Audrey Reimann

  ‘I don’t want Ray to be in charge of Bobby’s inheritance.’

  He looked baffled. ‘You always had a grasp of financial matters, Isobel,’ he began, ‘I know that you and Ray don’t see eye to eye.’

  ‘It’s not just that, Pop,’ I protested.

  He waved my objection aside and said gravely, ‘I want you to look at it differently. Put your prejudices aside and ask yourself, “What if Bobby had been a Chancellor?”’

  Heat came flooding into my face. I can still blush if I think anyone has the tiniest inkling of my past. Pop didn’t notice. He said, ‘I want you to ask yourself something, my dear. Ask, “What if Sylvia had given birth to Bobby and Magnus had fathered a daughter?”’ He smiled a little sad smile and said, ‘If that had been so, the child who inherited Hammond’s Silks would be a Chancellor.’

  I had not thought of it that way. Iron-willed, I had forced it out of my mind, and it was easy to do being far away from Macclesfield. But here and now I had to ask myself whether it was right that Bobby would grow up knowing little about his Macclesfield inheritance. Bobby had relatives here: Pop and Grandma, Sylvia and her child. Mam and I had nobody left in Macclesfield – not a relative in the world. All I had was the old, unsatisfied curiosity, the question that had plagued me for half of my life. Is the father I never knew, dead? I don’t think I could bear to live here again, knowing that my real father was alive and had no interest in me. But I said to Pop, ‘I’ll talk it over with Ian.’

  Pop said, ‘There’s no immediate hurry. Come along. I’ll take you down to the vaults.’

  He took a great bunch of keys from the desk and led me through the offices to the back of the bank. He opened an iron grille and went ahead, down a wide flight of stone stairs, through another set of locked iron gates and into a big, barrel-vaulted cellar room that was brightly lit. Along one long wall were the steel boxes of the safe deposit customers. Mine, I saw, was marked ‘Stanway/Leigh’.

  I looked around while Pop tried to find the right key. On the other walls were narrow shelves with little date labels in the manner of ‘January 1910 to July 1910’ and so on. On these shelves were bundles of cheques and credit slips, wrapped round loosely with split-open brown envelopes that were sealed with red wax. And on each open-ended parcel was written the day’s date, clearly and in sequence.

  ‘What are these?’ I asked Pop.

  ‘Each one is a whole day’s work – in alphabetical order. We seal the day’s clearing, as we call it, every day, and store it down here.’

  ‘Do you keep everything?’ I asked. ‘And how long do you have to keep them? Some of the bundles are very small.’

  He laughed. ‘We keep them for ever. We never destroy them. We often have to refer to them. If a customer wants to know whether or not a cheque was cashed.’

  Suddenly it came to me. I could discover whether St Ursula’s school did cash the cheque for my last term’s fees. The school had never reimbursed me and it had rankled, over the years.

  Pop was trying key after key in my box and having no luck. He said, ‘Dash it. I’ve brought the wrong keys.’ He was getting cross. ‘Everything is changing. The new general manager wants to restrict my powers–’

  I said, ‘I’ll wait here. Would it be all right if I looked something up?’

  ‘I’m afraid not. It’s confidential. You see, you’d have access to information on other customers.’

  ‘How long does it take for a cheque to return to the drawer’s bank?’ I asked, as if I had only an idle interest.

  ‘Three days,’ he said, and left me to wander along the shelves while he, becoming more and more exasperated, tried key after key.

  It wouldn’t take a minute to slip a day’s business out of those loose paper covers. The cheque had been a large one, not the little personal cheques that individuals used. I could see that there were very few large cheques inside each parcel.

  Pop rattled the bunch of keys. ‘I think I’ve gone through the whole lot. I’m back to the first one again. Will you wait here? I‘ll go and ask one of the clerks to find the right bunch.’

  ‘That’s all right,’ I said, and watched him go up the long flight of stairs. He was old now, and much slower.

  As soon as he was out of sight, I pounced on the bundle I thought it might be – the one dated three days before I left St Ursula’s. I slipped off the brown cover and riffled through, stopping only at the large cheques. But it was not there. There were no large cheques in the next one and I put it back. Then I took down the bundle that was dated five days after I was called home to Mam’s hospital bedside.

  And the very first large cheque I came to was made out to St Ursula’s School. Blood rushed to my face. It was signed ‘Francis Chancellor’.

  It was common practice in the old days to give money to someone and ask them to write a cheque for you if you had no bank account. Mam used to ask Pop – Mr Hammond – to take out cheques for her on Fridays. Pop not Mr Chancellor. And when I was sent to St Ursula’s Mam had had a bank account. She wrote cheques on her account. My face stiffened as I asked myself, Why would Frank Chancellor have paid my school fees? I must stop thinking like this. I tried to divide my mind – to resist the thought – but even as I put up objections, all the pieces were falling into place as fast as my divided mind tried to control them …

  Mam and Frank Chancellor had been at daggers drawn when Mam accepted my stepfather’s proposal. Of course, they would be! My face had started to burn, though my mouth was numb. There was that familiar dropping sensation in the very pit of my stomach. Could it be? Was I really Frank Chancellor‘s daughter?’

  I put the cheque back quickly, and as I did, I saw that underneath the cheque to St Ursula’s was another, also signed ‘Frances Chancellor’. It was made out to Mrs Lily Chancellor. Mr Chancellor’s mother was still alive when I was at school. Mr Chancellor’s ma was called Lily. And back came my earliest memory: Mam saying to one of her customers “We named her after her two grandmothers, Lily and Isobel.”

  Then why had I never once suspected? I had taken Nanna’s word, given by Mam, that the man who was my father had no children of his own. That was why I had never once suspected. Then I thought about the letter Magnus had kept – the secret that Ray was not Frank Chancellor’s son. Mam had known this. And now I knew.

  A dull red colour came into my face, as if I’d done something wrong, yet my pulse was beating fast and the metallic taste of adrenaline was in my mouth – the flight-or-fight secretion.

  Pop came slowly down the steps, a smile on his face, and with an apologetic ‘I should have known there was a master key’, he opened my box and handed me the large envelope containing all my deeds and private papers. They were sealed, just as I had left them. I put them, unopened, into my handbag, went back up the steps with Pop, and then impulsively and quickly I kissed him. ‘Thank you. I have to fly. I have to go to the council offices …’ and I went as fast and as decorously as I could, out of his office, across the tiled hall into the fresh clean air of the Market Place.

  I could hardly breathe. My heart was hammering when I reached the council offices and said to the stranger behind the reception desk, ‘I want to speak to Mr Chancellor. Please.’

  The woman lifted the telephone receiver from the little wooden switchboard, pressed down a lever and turned the handle. ‘Who shall I say?’

  ‘Give it to me.’ I took the thing out of her hand and put it to my ear at the same moment he picked up his receiver and said, ‘Who wants me?’

  My mouth was dry and my hands shook. There was a lump in my throat. ‘Your Lil,’ I managed to say. ‘Your Lil.’

  There was silence on the line. It seemed to go on for minutes. I heard a quick catching breath then his voice, my father’s voice. ‘My precious lass?’

  ‘I’m coming up.’ I thrust the receiver at the woman and went out into the hallway. He was waiting for me at the top of the grand, carved staircase as slowly I went up, my eyes fixed on his face, saying in a voic
e just like his – a voice strong with the Macclesfield accent – ‘Your Lil! Your Lil! Your Lil, Mr Chancellor!’

  He didn’t speak but his eyes were bright with tears as he took my hands and led me into the council chamber room that was all oak and polished floors and shields and rolls of honour.

  Then we sat, because there was nowhere else to sit, facing one another across a mahogany table. My throat was tight and painful but I didn’t want to cry and fall into his arms, though I sensed that he was waiting for me to do so. I said, ‘I’m right, aren’t I? You are my dad?’

  He put his hand out over the table to me as tears began to roll down his cheeks. ‘I wanted you to know, lass,’ he said. ‘Believe me. Did your mam tell you?’

  ‘No. I saw a cheque. You paid my school fees. You had no other reason on earth to do that.’

  ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Let’s get out of here. I’ll tell you all about it.’ And he took me, in his car, for a long ride out high into the hills above Lindow until we came to the Ship Inn at Wincle where Magnus and I had planned our elopement. Now my father and I were the only customers, and we too could sit and talk undisturbed.

  He took my hand in his – my own true father – and told me about the years before I was born, when he and Mam were in love. ‘We should have married when I went into the army’, he said. ‘I was a fool. I had everything a man could wish for and I let myself be enticed by Sarah, a woman who should have known better.’

  I said, ‘You let me be born out of wedlock – with a history of lies and no father’s name on my birth certificate!’ I was hot with embarrassment and cold with hurt and anger, both at the same time. And the old need for retaliation was building up inside me.

  ‘No. It wasn’t like that,’ he said. ‘My precious lass – I mean you – you were born when I was in Germany. That’s why my name wasn’t on your birth certificate.’

  ‘You ought to have told me. But when your wife died, you could have put it right. You didn’t marry Mam. And she was faithful to you all those years.’

  He blew his nose and tried to blink away his tears. ‘I wanted to tell you. Your Mam wouldn’t.’

  ‘When she found out you’d had another child?’ I said. ‘Mam wouldn’t forgive that.’

  He gave a weak smile. ‘Nellie Plant’s child isn’t mine, lass. I looked after them but she’s married to her child’s real father now.’

  The wanting to get my own back was still strong, burning inside me. I said, ‘You wanted me told. But you didn’t want to marry my mother?’

  ‘Listen, lass. When Sarah died, if I’d married your Mam I’d have had to tell you; I’d have had to tell Ray too …’

  I started to cry, but they were soft, held-back tears that would not spill. ‘What were you afraid of, Mr Chancellor? That Ray and I might have an incestuous …’ My voice was choking as I looked into his eyes; eyes that I now saw were very like my own. ‘… when that is exactly what did happen.’

  He took hold of my hand and slipped an arm about my shoulder. ‘Your son was fathered by Magnus, lass. I know that. So do you.’

  ‘But don’t you see? It could have been avoided. I would never …’

  ‘Never married Magnus?’

  ‘No. Not that. I’m married now to the man I love.’

  ‘Then think, lass.’ He held my shoulder tighter. ‘It all turned out for the best. I was a proper father to Ray. I looked after your mam and you. And I’ll live with regrets for the rest of my life. I lost the only woman I ever loved. And I lost the chance to be a father to my second child.’

  I shook his hand away. I opened my handbag and grabbed a handkerchief for my eyes, and the big sealed envelope. Then, with an almighty effort, I checked my tears and said, ‘You lost the chance to be my father. You only have one child, Mr Chancellor.’

  The tears would not be checked. I’d said my piece. And I knew it was right that I had. He had to know. I’d had to brazen it out when I was a child without a father. My father had to know the truth of those years when I needed the love of a father. I tore open the envelope and took out the letter that Magnus had found – and silently I handed it to him. He frowned, seeing the envelope addressed to Miss Sarah Pilkington. Then he took out the pages cautiously and read. And I held my breath and held back my tears as I saw first puzzlement, then shock and finally realisation come dawning in his eyes.

  He put down the letter, looked at me and now his tears were falling. He said, ‘What can I do? How can I make it up to you? I’m sorry. So sorry.’ He grabbed my hands and held them fast, and said in a pleading voice, ‘I’ll do anything to make it up. I need you. I’ve missed you. Please come back to me.’

  I couldn’t hold back. Tears splashed onto to my hands and I fumbled with the letter, trying to stuff it back into the envelope and put it amongst the deeds and papers and all the official business of the life that had been Lil’s. I said, ‘If I come back then it’s under my terms.’

  ‘What can I do?’

  I said, ‘You can put everything right. If you’ll marry my mam it will be a good start. You will make up for everything.’

  He took out his handkerchief and wiped his eyes before he looked at me so tenderly I wanted to weep. He said, ‘She won’t have me, lass. I wrote to her. I proposed to her when your stepfather died. She turned me down.’

  ‘Because she didn’t want to leave me,’ I said. ‘She didn’t want to leave me and my happy home. But if I tell her that I’m coming back …’

  ‘Will she come?’

  ‘Oh, yes. And if you are waiting on the station to meet her … and if you and I stand together, arm in arm, she will know, as soon as she sees us, that the reason I am coming home is because now, at last, I have found my own, true father.’

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  Epub ISBN: 9781473550513

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  Ebury Press, an imprint of Ebury Publishing

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  Ebury Press is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com

  Copyright © Audrey Reimann, 1997

  Cover photography by Head Design

  Background © Getty Images

  Cover: Cover: www.headdesign.co.uk

  Audrey Reimann has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental

  This edition published by Ebury Press in 2019

  First published as Wise Child by Piatkus Books in 1997

  www.penguin.co.uk

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN 9781785034886