Father Unknown

by Lesley Pearse

  ‘I’ll clear off now and find somewhere else to live,’ she added. ‘Then maybe you’ll see what a selfish little bugger Lucy really is.’

  She turned and ran out of the kitchen and up to her bedroom, tears streaming down her face. She hastily threw some things into an overnight bag and within minutes she was slamming the front door behind her and running to her car. Surprisingly, as it usually took a while to decide to go, her old VW Beetle started first time and she took off in the direction of Acton and Joel’s flat.

  Joel had been in the navy before she met him, and he’d bought this place when he came back to London. He had been very reluctant for Daisy to see it when they first met, and she understood why when he did eventually take her there. It was a poky two-bedroom flat on the second floor of a small, run-down council block. Its only attribute was that it was cheap. Joel had no furniture other than a bed, a fridge and a cooker, not even curtains at the windows.

  He had done a great deal more to the flat while he was waiting to start his police training. He’d decorated and put down carpets, and it was quite cosy inside now, but the mucky communal concrete staircases and landings made it a very depressing-looking place to live.

  Daisy let herself in with her own key, as she didn’t expect Joel to be there. To her amazement he came into the hall, wearing only his boxer shorts, just as she was closing the door behind her.

  ‘What on earth!’ he exclaimed in surprise, and at that she burst into tears.

  Joel was big, six feet two of hard-packed muscle, with brown hair cut as short as a squaddie’s and a thick neck. Yet he had a surprisingly boyish face, pinkish-toned skin, long dark eyelashes and a soft, full mouth. But then, he was a man of many opposing attributes. He looked tough, yet he could be so gentle; he played rugby, yet he liked poetry. He would drive his car with heavy-metal rock playing full blast, yet at home he liked to listen to classical music.

  Daisy told him all that had happened and he took her into the bedroom, sat her down on his unmade bed and went to make her a cup of tea.

  As always, his flat was like a tip. Every time Daisy came round here she cleaned it up and put his clothes away, but it was always a mess the next time she called. He used the ironing board for everything. Right now his boots were sitting on it, as he’d been cleaning them. Quite often she’d seen empty takeaway cartons on it, but rarely an iron. Yet strangely, Joel was very fastidious. His fingernails were always clean, he smelled of soap and water, he didn’t even have smelly feet like most men she knew.

  ‘I don’t think you should have run off like that,’ he said sternly when he came back with her tea. ‘Your dad is facing the biggest crisis he’s ever known, and he can’t cope with you and Lucy squabbling.’

  ‘It was all her,’ Daisy said indignantly. ‘I want to be friends, she doesn’t. She hates me.’

  Joel looked anxious. ‘I wish I could stay with you for a bit and talk about it, but I’ve got to go to work now,’ he said, going over to the chair where his uniform was hanging. ‘I won’t be back till six either. You are welcome to stay here, but I don’t think it’s the right thing to do.’

  ‘Well, thanks for being so understanding. I thought you’d be on my side,’ Daisy snapped at him.

  ‘Of course I’m on your side,’ he assured her. ‘Lucy’s a jealous little cow, I’ve seen that dozens of times. I suppose it’s all just surfaced because of what’s happened.’

  ‘What’s she got to be jealous of me for?’

  Joel laughed, his brown eyes twinkling. ‘Look in the mirror, Daisy. You’re lovely and she’s quite ordinary, you sparkle, she’s like a flat beer. All she’s got is her superior intellect, but I don’t suppose that gives her much comfort.’

  He kissed her lingeringly before he left, whispering that tonight they’d make up for lost time. ‘Put your feet up and relax,’ he said. ‘Part of the trouble is that you’ve been overwrought for a long time. But I have some special magic to put that right.’

  Daisy didn’t relax, she couldn’t in such a messy place. She put clean linen on the bed, washed the mountain of dirty dishes, then cleaned the flat throughout.

  She was just sitting down with a cup of tea, intending to watch the Friday afternoon film later, when the doorbell rang. Joel said the only callers he ever had were people selling things from catalogues, so she expected it to be one of them.

  It was a shock to open the door and find her father standing there.

  ‘May I come in?’ he asked.

  ‘How did you know where I was?’ Daisy asked.

  He smiled wryly. ‘I hardly need to be Brain of Britain to work that one out. Don’t worry, I’m not going to drag you home if you want to stay here. But I couldn’t let you go without telling you I love you and hope you’ll reconsider.’

  That took the wind right out of her sails. She had spent the morning imagining he was glad she’d gone.

  He came in and sat down in the living-room while Daisy made him some coffee. ‘It’s very neat and tidy,’ he said, looking round the room approvingly. ‘Joel’s a bit of a wonder all round.’

  ‘I just finished cleaning it,’ she admitted. ‘I’m glad you didn’t come earlier, you might not have been so impressed.’

  ‘Actually, I like people to have faults.’ He smiled faintly. ‘It makes them human. Mine is that I want everything to run smoothly, but don’t know how to arrange that myself. Lucy’s is that she’s riddled with jealousy, and Tom’s is that he tries very hard not to take sides. Yours, Daisy, is that you are far too impetuous. Now, are we going to find a way so that we can all live together without any more fights? I feel so wretched without Lorna, and I know you do too, and it’s only together that we’ll feel a bit better.’

  Daisy looked down at her hands and said nothing. There was nothing she could say. Lucy had been out of order, they both knew that.

  ‘We can’t manage without you,’ Dad went on. ‘None of us is good at cooking or housekeeping. We need time and a bit of training all round before we’ll be able to cope on our own. I know that sounds as if I only want you as a housekeeper, but I’m sure you know that isn’t the way it is.’

  Daisy had never seen herself as a Cinderella type. Long before Mum became ill she’d always helped around the house and cooked meals because she liked to. She could see the logic in what Dad had said, and in her heart of hearts she wanted to go back home. She also knew it wasn’t right to put more strain on her father now while he was grieving.

  ‘But I can’t come back unless Lucy changes a bit,’ she said. ‘I can’t live with her always sniping at me.’

  ‘She isn’t only jealous, she’s also burdened with guilt,’ he answered. ‘She knows she should have done more for her mother in the past months, she admitted it last night. The less she did, the more you had to do, and so it went on, round and round, screwing her up even more.’

  ‘Well, can’t we forget all that and start again?’ Daisy said.

  ‘That statement, my darling Dizzie, is precisely the fundamental difference between you two girls. You could do that, wipe the slate clean and start again. Lucy can’t. Her whole nature is completely opposite to yours. She sees everything in black and white, no shades of grey. She compartmentalizes her life – college work in one box, home life in another, social life in another, and so on. You throw her because you are fluid, adapting to circumstances, and you don’t just see shades of grey, you see the whole rainbow.’

  ‘Do I?’ Daisy said in surprise.

  He chuckled. ‘That wasn’t the best analogy in the world, but it’s the best I can come up with for now. Both of you have great strengths. Lucy has determination, ambition and a keen analytical mind. You have warmth, compassion and a wonderful sense of fun.’

  ‘I sometimes wish I had Lucy’s strengths,’ Daisy said sadly.

  ‘She wishes she had yours too,’ he answered, leaning towards her and taking her hand in his. ‘But the one thing she wished she had, above all else, was the easy, comfortable relationship you had
with your mother. She told me last night that she would hear you laughing and talking together and she hated that she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t tell her mother that she loved her either. I think she imagines that if she’d got back to the house before she died, she could have said it.’

  ‘I see,’ Daisy said thoughtfully, suddenly understanding why Lucy flew at her that day. ‘But she’s daft, Mum knew everything about all of us. She accepted us all as we were.’

  ‘Lucy will see that in time too,’ he said soothingly. ‘So my suggestion is that you stay here with Joel over the weekend, then come home again on Monday. Tom and Lucy will be back at college, and you can look for a job again. I’ll have to try and find a cleaning lady fairly soon. It isn’t fair to expect you to do everything for evermore.’

  ‘What does Lucy say about this plan?’

  ‘Well, she was in her compartmentalization mood again this morning.’ He smiled wryly. ‘She was terrified she’d be expected to cook, clean and do her college work, so she’ll be relieved. As for Tom and me, we just want you back where you belong.’

  That was enough for Daisy. She moved over to sit beside her father and hugged him. ‘Okay, I’ll come back on Monday morning. I’d do anything to try and keep you from feeling sad.’

  ‘That comes in waves,’ he said. ‘One minute I’m glad she was released from all the pain, the next I’d sell my soul to the devil to have her back. I keep getting these images of her around the house, sometimes they are so clear I really think she’s there. Maybe I’ll feel better once I get back to work.’

  ‘What’s that?’ Daisy said, suddenly noticing he had brought a bag with him.

  He grinned. ‘Actually it’s for you. I thought it might be a good time for you to go through it. It’s a box of stuff all relating to you, from when you were a baby. Your mum made one for each of you, she religiously added stuff whenever she thought something important had happened. I daresay there’ll be a letter in there for you too, you know how organized she was.’

  Daisy unzipped the bag. Inside was an oblong tin box, like a large cash-box with a handle on the top, only it had been decorated with a montage of pictures and varnished over.

  ‘Here’s the key,’ Dad said, standing up and taking it from his pocket. ‘I’ll be off now. I’ve got to get Fred some dog food and buy some bread.’

  After Daisy had seen her father out she took the box on to her knee and studied it. She thought she knew every single thing that was in her parents’ house, they’d never been one for keeping things secret, but she’d never seen this box before, and that made it even more exciting.

  All the pictures on the outside were of her, family snaps cut up and stuck on at random. She wondered exactly when Mum had finished it. Some of the pictures were only a year old, so it must have been quite recently, and there was no room for any more so she must have finished it off knowing her end was near. Daisy opened the box gingerly, not sure what to expect. Her eyes filled with tears at what she saw.

  There were newspaper cuttings about her gymnastics wins, school reports, an essay she’d written about her family, pieces of artwork she couldn’t remember doing, a needle case she’d made for her mother one Christmas. There were her first teeth, sealed in a little plastic bag, a photograph of her with no front teeth, and a class photograph from when she left junior school. So much stuff, important to nobody but her, and she was overwhelmed by the knowledge that it had all been collected with such love and care.

  Between the pictures, cuttings and miscellaneous items were many little notes written by her mother. Some were humorous reports on incidents, like the time she fell into a pond on a school outing and had to be brought back with a teacher’s gloves on her feet, or when she starred as Dorothy in the school production of The Wizard of Oz.

  Daisy laughed at many of these, for it was an adult view on occasions she’d almost forgotten, and an insight into how Lorna viewed her daughter’s character. But some were serious, and showed her just how worried her mother had been on many occasions.

  One such note was written at the time Daisy was seeing Kevin. He was the boy who dissuaded her against hotel or catering work when she was sixteen.

  I feel so powerless and frightened for her, her mother had written. I keep asking myself am I just a snob that I can’t bear to think of my baby being with such an uncouth lout? I’m tortured with fear that she will get pregnant, and that will lead to a lifetime of misery for her. I wish I were brave enough to just lock her in her room so she can’t see him, but of course I know that will only make her keener on him. So I pretend to if not approve, at least seem resigned to it. I even try and act as if I like Kevin on the rare occasions he comes here. I’m sure every mother believes her daughter is the most beautiful, talented child in the world, and wants nothing less than a prince for her. But I’d be happy to settle for just a good man for my Daisy, one who would take care of her, treat her with love and respect. I wouldn’t mind at all if he were just an ordinary working man.

  Daisy felt choked up as she read this, for she had never realized her mother felt so strongly. She remembered how understanding she had been when Kevin finally ditched her, she had listened to Daisy raging about him, yet not once had she ever said that she was well rid of him.

  Daisy shuddered herself now when she thought about Kevin, but how wise Mum had been to keep her own counsel. Daisy might very well have gone out and found an identical replacement for him if she had known how much her mother had despised him. Girls are like that at sixteen.

  There were notes about Harry, the married man, too. Her mother had suspected he was married all along, and she spoke of her fear that Daisy’s heart would be broken. Again, when it was over, the only thing Mum had said on the subject that stood out in Daisy’s mind was that no woman should take happiness at another’s expense.

  There was no real order in the box, it seemed as if her mother had often gone through it, read things and put them back. Sometimes there was a note on an event when Daisy was five or six, then one right next to it from her twenties. There was a great deal about her early days, problems with feeding, trips to the clinic to get her weighed and vaccinated, even a very funny report on the trials of potty training. But as Daisy got right down to the bottom of the box, she found two sealed envelopes.

  Daisy opened the fatter one first, to find it contained her adoption papers, her original birth certificate, two faded black and white photographs and a note from Lorna. She recalled Mum trying to show her this bundle when she was about thirteen. Daisy had refused point-blank to look at the contents. In subsequent years it became something of a joke: Lorna would ask if she was ready to look at them now, and Daisy continued to refuse. She had really wanted to look, at least she had once she was around sixteen, but she had always been afraid her mother would be hurt by her change of heart.

  She looked at the birth certificate now and saw that her real name was Catherine Pengelly, her mother’s name was Ellen Dorothy and her birth was registered in Bristol. Yet the saddest thing of all was in the space for her father’s name – the word UNKNOWN, in spidery writing.

  Daisy sat looking at it for some time. Unknown was such a bleak, chilling word. Did it mean her mother didn’t know who the father was? Or had she refused to name him for some reason known only to herself?

  Daisy knew that nowadays when a couple weren’t married the child could be registered in the father’s or the mother’s name, and in either case the father had to attend the registration. But perhaps it was different back in the Sixties.

  Daisy had always known she was illegitimate, that didn’t bother her. Lots of girls she’d grown up with were as well, and besides, her mother would hardly have given her up for adoption if she’d been in a stable relationship. Yet ‘Father unknown’ had a desolate ring to it, almost a Dickensian workhouse image.

  She turned to the photographs and found one of two young girls. They were very alike, both with curly hair just like her own, and probably no more than two years
between them. On the back it said, ‘Ellen and Josie, 1955. On the farm at Mawnan Smith’.

  The other photograph was of herself as a very young baby. She felt it must have been taken while still in hospital as she couldn’t have been more than a couple of days old. Bald, as Mum had said, hands waving like two little starfish.

  She read the note from Lorna then. It was a series of facts, as if she had hastily written down everything at the time of the adoption, for fear she would forget it, then added a postscript at a much later date.

  Ellen Dorothy Pengelly, born 1947. Left parents’ farm in Cornwall during pregnancy. Unable to tell parents of her predicament. Refused to give any information about baby’s father, other than that he was white, fair-haired, blue-eyed, slim build, athletic and of above-average intelligence.

  The adoption society were of the opinion he was a married man.

  Worked as a mother’s help in Bristol during her pregnancy. Arrangements had been made for her to enter a mother-and-baby home later, but did not go there. Adoption arranged privately, through doctor. Daisy put with foster-mother from hospital while health checks were made. Ellen returned to job in Bristol.

  Family history.

  Ellen Pengelly showed great promise at school. She was in the sixth form intending to sit ‘A’ levels, having achieved eight GCEs in the summer of 1963.

  Father Albert Pengelly, farmer. Clare, Ellen’s mother, died in 1948 when Ellen was fourteen months old. Albert remarried soon after. Another daughter, Josie May, born 1949.

  It was reported that Ellen and Josie were very close, but Ellen had problems with her stepmother.