Father Unknown (35 page)

She sensed which cottage was ‘Swallow’s’ even before she got close enough to see the plaque on the gate. It was the kind of place Londoners dream of, painted white, with small lattice windows, roses growing round the door and as ancient garden wall smothered with purple aubrietia. A young man was working in the garden.

As she got right up to the cottage she hesitated for a moment, not knowing whether to walk on past or speak. But the man took matters into his own hands – he stood up, grinned at her and said hello.

Daisy grinned back. He was nice-looking, probably in his early thirties, with floppy fair hair and bright blue eyes.

‘Nice dog,’ he said, leaning over the wall to take a better look at Fred. ‘I like West Highland terriers, they are a big dog in a small suit, aren’t they?’

Fred put his paws up on the wall and woofed a greeting.

‘I think he liked that description,’ Daisy said with a smile.

‘You here on holiday?’ he asked, looking very interested. ‘Only I haven’t seen you before.’

‘Well, actually I’m here on a mission,’ she said. ‘I was looking for Mrs Peters. They told me in the post office she lived here.’

He nodded. ‘She’s my grandmother. Come on in, she’s always glad of visitors.’

‘I can’t bring Fred in,’ Daisy said, a little alarmed that now she had no chance to compose herself. ‘I was just taking him for a walk before putting him back in my car.’

‘Oh, don’t do that.’ The young man came along to the gate and opened it for her. ‘We’re both dog lovers. Fred doesn’t want to be stuck in a car.’

‘Well, if you’re sure,’ she said. ‘I’m Daisy Buchan.’

‘I’m Tim Peters,’ he said, and shook her hand. ‘Why do you want to see Gran?’

Daisy liked this friendly, rather inquisitive man. ‘That’s a tough one to answer easily. I believe your grandmother knew my mother.’

He raised his fair eyebrows and his eyes twinkled. ‘Well, this is a first. Mostly when anyone wants to talk to Gran about village history, they are about a hundred and ten. Gran!’ he yelled as he led Daisy into the cottage. ‘Someone to see you!’

As he was kicking off his shoes in the tiny hallway, Daisy stood in the doorway of the sitting-room. Like the outside of the cottage it was very pretty, with a low-beamed ceiling, a stone fireplace and cottage furniture. Through the French windows at the far end of the room she saw an old lady holding a bunch of flowers in her hand.

‘A visitor, Tim?’ Mrs Peters called out, then stopped short as she saw Daisy. ‘Oh, my goodness,’ she gasped. ‘I thought for a moment it was Ellen.’

A thrill ran through Daisy. Countless times she had heard people remark on Lucy and Tom’s similarity to their mother, and it had often hurt that she was excluded. It felt good to have someone recognize a family likeness, even if she knew very little about that family.

Daisy took a few tentative steps towards the woman. ‘I’m her daughter, Daisy,’ she said.

Mrs Peters’ eyes widened with shock. ‘My dear! How absolutely wonderful,’ she gasped incredulously. ‘Oh, I’ll have to sit down, you’ve knocked me for six. Tim, don’t stand there with your mouth hanging open, make us all some tea.’

Ellen wondered how old Mrs Peters was. She had to be at least eighty, perhaps even older, yet she didn’t look frail, her skin was lovely and she looked well.

‘Am I allowed to know who Ellen is?’ Tim asked, going over to his grandmother and taking the bunch of flowers she’d picked from her hands. ‘You know me, Gran, nosy to the last!’

‘Ellen Pengelly,’ she replied. ‘Beacon Farm.’

Daisy saw a look of shock and bewilderment on Tim’s face, and the sharp look the old woman gave him as if warning him to say nothing more. Afraid that she might really be an unwelcome visitor, however tactful Mrs Peters was being, she hastily apologized for coming in unexpectedly with Fred, and asked if it would be better if she called at another time.

‘Of course not, dear,’ Mrs Peters said. ‘I’m delighted you called, just a little taken aback, that’s all. I like dogs, I’ve kept them all my life, and do call me Mavis. Sit down and tell me how you came to find me.’

Daisy explained about her mother’s death, and the trip to Bristol to see Dr Fordham. ‘Well,’ she finished up; ‘the doctor hadn’t any idea of what had become of Ellen, but she knew about you, and said she thought you might be able to tell me more about her.’

‘I can tell you quite a lot about the past,’ she said. ‘But I haven’t heard from her since…’ She faltered. ‘Well, since the fire.’

‘Fire?’ Daisy asked. ‘What fire?’

Mavis looked at her grandson as if for support.

Tim came right over to Daisy, leaning towards her. ‘I’m sorry, Daisy. This isn’t going to be the best introduction to your family history. You see, the fire at the farm wiped them all out.’

Chapter Seventeen

Daisy looked from Tim to Mavis in horror. ‘No!’ she gasped.

‘Not Ellen,’ Mavis said quickly, giving her grandson another sharp look. ‘But your grandfather, step-grandmother and your Aunt Josie. Ellen was in Bristol when it happened.’

‘But how? When?’ Daisy stammered out.

‘It was at night, in October of ‘78,’ Tim said. ‘No one really knows for certain how it started. I was staying here with Gran at the time, just about to go up to Newcastle to university. Nobody knew about it until the next morning, and by then the farmhouse was just a smouldering pile of stones. You see, it was on a very quiet road, the one up from Maenporth beach, I expect you came that way today. Beacon Farm was in a dip, hidden from the road by woods.’

‘How terrible,’ Daisy gasped. ‘How come they all died in it though? Couldn’t they escape?’ She might not have known her relatives but it was awful to think of anyone burning to death.

Tim shrugged. ‘They could very well have been overcome by the fumes from foam filling in a couch. It was a windy night too, so that would have made the blaze even fiercer. By the time the fire brigade got out there, there wasn’t much left to pick through.’

‘We’d better have that tea now, Tim,’ Mavis said sternly. She looked back at Daisy. ‘I’m so very sorry, dear. We shouldn’t have launched into something so ghastly the minute you got here.’

After Tim had brought in the tea tray and poured them all a cup, Daisy asked about Ellen.

‘This must have been terrible for her.’

‘Yes, it was. It changed her,’ Mavis said, and her voice quavered a little. ‘We had kept in touch ever since she left the village, she wrote or phoned at least once a month, always came round when she was visiting her parents. But she was so distraught when the police called on her in Bristol to tell her the news that she couldn’t even come down for the funeral.’

‘Good God,’ Daisy exclaimed.

Tim leaned forward in his chair. ‘Would you like to see where the farm was?’ he asked. ‘I don’t want to drag you away from Gran, but it will be getting dark soon, and you ought to see it. We could walk across the fields to it with Fred.’

Mavis looked at him gratefully. ‘That’s a very good idea, Tim,’ she said. ‘But make sure you bring Daisy back for tea with us. By that time I’ll have gathered my thoughts about all the things I really must tell her about Ellen and her family.’

Daisy realized then that Mavis was very shaken, and clearly Tim wanted to give her time to compose herself again. She wasn’t sure she wanted to see where the farm was, but under the circumstances she thought it best to go with him.

‘That’s very kind of you,’ she said. ‘I must find somewhere to stay for tonight too. Do you know of any guesthouses near here that won’t mind Fred?’

‘You can stay with us,’ Mavis said immediately. ‘Now, don’t argue,’ she said as she saw Daisy’s mouth open to protest. ‘I have a spare bedroom and we’d love to have you, wouldn’t we, Tim?’

‘Of course, Daisy,’ he said with a smile. ‘Besides, you two have got a lot of catching up to do.’

‘Your grandmother is a lovely lady,’ Daisy said as she and Tim started off on a footpath that skirted round the back of the village.

‘Yes, she is, and very sentimental,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry if you didn’t really want to go to the farm right now, but I could see Gran was getting a bit wobbly. That’s mainly the shock of you turning up, but also because of Ellen. I realized I needed to warn you about certain things which might upset her further, out of her hearing.’

Daisy looked up at him in puzzlement.

‘You see, Gran adored Ellen,’ he went on. ‘As a kid I had no idea what the connection was between them, I suppose I thought she was a relation. But for some time after the fire Gran was in a very low state and my grandfather explained she was grieving over Ellen and he told me how close they had been. I was a bit mystified about the word “grieving” – after all Ellen didn’t die in the fire – but grandfather said it was because Ellen had dropped her, and she couldn’t understand why.’

‘Dropped her? She didn’t write or visit ever again?’ Daisy asked.

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.’