Father Unknown

by Lesley Pearse

  Albert thought for a second. He could lie to her, and maybe for a time she’d believe him, but he knew in his heart it would only be a stay of execution. Better she should hear the truth now, however bad, from him, who at least had no malicious intent.

  ‘Violet is your stepmother,’ he said, then, putting the child down on the ground, he took her hand and led her down the path towards the cove, well away from the house. ‘I married her after your mother died.’

  ‘So my real mummy did kill herself then?’ Ellen said in a small voice. ‘Why? Didn’t she care about me?’

  Albert had never been able to agree with the coroner’s opinion that Clare took her and her infant child’s lives when the balance of her mind was disturbed.

  ‘I reckon she just fell from the cliff,’ he said.

  ‘Why did she take her baby up there?’ Ellen asked, looking up at him with wide brown eyes so like his own. ‘Was it in a pram? Was I there too?’

  Albert sighed. He could see Ellen wasn’t going to be satisfied unless she had a more detailed explanation. But he wasn’t good with words, and he was scared he might let slip things a child should never know.

  ‘No, you were with me. Your mum just went for a walk with the babby in her arms. When she didn’t come back I went to look for her. But look here, Ellen,’ he said gruffly. ‘you got to believe what I tell you, not blather from those who don’t know.’

  ‘But you didn’t tell me Violet wasn’t my real mummy,’ she said, beginning to cry again. ‘So it’s true that Josie isn’t my real sister too?’

  ‘Josie’s your half-sister,’ he said curtly for emotional scenes acutely embarrassed him. ‘She were born after I married Violet. I couldn’t ‘ave told you afore. You was too little.’

  Ellen sensed he wasn’t going to say any more. It wasn’t anywhere near enough for her; she had a million more questions buzzing around in her head. But she knew that if she continued to question him he would only get angry.

  ‘Where’s Josie?’ he asked, confirming that he considered the matter closed.

  ‘Still at school,’ she admitted, and looked up at him fearfully. It was her job to get Josie to and from school safely, and Mum was going to be angry with her.

  They had reached the little cove now, and the tide was in, throwing the waves up against the rocks, covering the small stretch of sand that she and Josie played on at low tide. They always considered this was their own beach and resented anyone coming there, but in fact there was a footpath right along the cliffs almost from Falmouth to Mawnan Smith and then on down to the Helford estuary. In summer holidaymakers sometimes used it, even having the cheek to come up to the farmhouse and ask for a drink of water.

  Some of the other farms in the area had these people to stay with them as paying guests. The Trevoises had a caravan in the field behind their shop that they rented out, and had often suggested to Mr Pengelly that he should let people pitch tents on his land down by the cove, but he wouldn’t. He hated the holidaymakers – they left the gates open and let the animals out, left their picnic rubbish about and sometimes even started fires. He said Cornwall belonged to the Cornish, and if he had his way he wouldn’t even allow them into the county just to look, let alone stay.

  ‘Reckon you’d best go back to meet Josie,’ Albert said, putting his hand on Ellen’s shoulder. ‘I’ll go back in and square it with your mum.’

  Ellen glanced at the steep cliffs on either side of the cove and wondered where it was her real mother had met her death, what her name was, what she looked like, but she didn’t dare ask. Her father had that set to his mouth that he always got when something was wrong. If anyone pestered him when he was like that, they were asking for trouble.

  Josie was just climbing over the stile on the other side of the road as Ellen came along.

  ‘Why did you run out of school?’ she asked indignantly. ‘Mrs Palstow was very worried.’

  ‘Mind your own business,’ Ellen said. She knew if she told Josie why, she’d tell everyone at school the following day.

  ‘Mummy will be cross with you,’ Josie retorted.

  It was only then as they walked the rest of the way home together that a sudden thought struck Ellen. Mum always seemed to be cross with her, she expected her to look after Josie all the time, do chores and run messages. It had never crossed Ellen’s mind before that there might be a special reason for this, but in the light of what she’d found out today, it had to be because she didn’t like her as much as Josie.

  ‘Sally was talking rubbish, wasn’t she?’ Josie said suddenly, interrupting Ellen’s thoughts. ‘I am your sister, aren’t I?’

  Once again Ellen was thrown into confusion. She couldn’t repeat what her father had told her, he wouldn’t like it. ‘Ask Mummy if you want to know anything,’ she said sharply. ‘She knows everything and I don’t.’

  Violet Pengelly watched the girls coming down the path through the woods from the small kitchen window at the back of the house. But instead of feeling anxious about Ellen, she was furious with her.

  Anger seethed inside Violet constantly, a result of being overlooked and used too often, yet she rarely had any convenient outlet for this anger. She had now; she was convinced her stepchild had wilfully stirred up the events of seven years ago, and in doing so would bring down shame on her and her own daughter’s characters.

  Reason wasn’t in Violet’s nature. She was a bovine, unimaginative type, who never thought things through logically. It didn’t occur to her that it would be distressing for an eight-year-old to be told in a playground that the woman she called Mummy was not her true mother, and that her own mother had killed both herself and her baby. Violet felt that Ellen’s only reaction to hearing she had a stepmother should be gratitude.

  It wasn’t often that she dared voice what she thought to Albert, but the long-suppressed anger had spilt over when he told her what had happened at the school that day. To her shock and further hurt, he slapped her round the face and said she was inhuman. Was it inhuman to expect a child to be grateful to the woman who had stepped in to feed and care for her when there was no one else? And what had Violet herself got out of it? She was treated like a servant, slighted continually, and worst of all, she saw daily that Albert cared far more for Ellen than Josie.

  Josie was the only light in Violet’s life. Through her pretty child she had a small ray of hope that one day she might be released from digging potatoes, feeding chickens and milking cows. Had it not been for this hope, Violet might have been tempted to follow Clare Pengelly’s example and throw herself off a cliff too, and with greater reason. Clare had had everything that had been denied to Violet. She had been beautiful, from a rich family, well educated and on top of that loved and adored by Albert. Violet hated the woman, even though she had never met her, for if she had been given one-tenth of what Clare had, she certainly wouldn’t be living in a tumbledown cottage, working herself into an early grave for such a cold-hearted man as Albert.

  Violet was born in Helston, the eldest of six children. Their father had been a tin miner, but the mine closed soon after Violet’s birth and he was never in regular work again. Life in Cornwall was bleak for all working-class people during the Twenties and Thirties, but for the tin miners it was especially bad, with many families being forced into the workhouse. Violet’s father managed to keep them from that, but her mother was a weak, humourless woman who whined continually, and each time a new baby was born she found even more to grumble about. Violet was a plain child with lank, mousy hair, crooked teeth and a slight cast in one eye, and it was she who took the brunt of her mother’s misery, unable even to go to school regularly as she was kept at home to help with the younger children. As a result she was labelled ‘slow’ because she could barely read or write.

  At fourteen she was packed off to Plymouth to work as a live-in kitchen maid in a hotel. The work was hard, but she was well fed for the first time in her life, didn’t have to share a bed with anyone and no longer had to listen to h
er mother’s complaints. Plymouth, with its naval dockyard, big shops and cinemas, was a great deal more exciting than Helston, so despite feeling she’d been cast off from her family, overall she felt she’d got a good deal.

  For three years, however, she could only view the city’s attractions from a distance, like a child looking into a toy-shop window, for she had no friends to explore it with. The other girls she worked with were all older, quicker, prettier, and had more personality than she did, and she was too timid even to try to make friends with any of them.

  Everything changed though when she was seventeen and war broke out. The more sophisticated older girls left the hotel for more promising war work, and other young country girls more like Violet took their places. Emboldened by suddenly finding herself one or two rungs ahead of them up the ladder of experience, she was able to overcome her timidity and before long she was joining them in going to dances on her evenings off.

  Violet felt as though she’d come out of a cocoon to find herself putting on a pretty frock and makeup and being swirled around in a man’s arms under glittering lights. Even though she hadn’t metamorphosed into anything approaching a beauty, she appeared to have something special because she was always in demand with the sailors. It never occurred to her that this popularity was purely due to the shortage of available girls, or that the men might be telling her they loved her in order to get her into bed. She believed it when they said they’d write and come back for her, and when no letter arrived she comforted herself with a new man, always convinced that this time it would end in marriage.

  By the time the war ended in 1945 she was twenty-three and disillusioned. Dozens of girls she’d worked with over the years had left to get married, or were engaged. The few that weren’t had moved on to better jobs, but Violet still worked in the kitchen, and she was growing fat now as well as being plain. Yet the real horror was finally to realize she had spent the war being used by men. She had a reputation for being easy, and they laughed at her behind her back.

  Times had been hard during the war with the bombing, the food rationing and the shortages of everything, though the hotel had always been bustling with the service wives, officers and businessmen who came to stay there. But by the New Year of ‘46 it was growing alarmingly quiet – it was apparent that few people had any desire to stay in a city-centre hotel, especially one which had grown very shabby.

  Violet was one of the first of the staff to be given notice, despite her being one of the most long-standing and reliable girls. Hurt and unable to go home to Helston, she took a series of badly paid jobs in cafés and restaurants. After six months of utter misery, working like a slave by day and going home to a lonely room at night, she decided Plymouth had nothing to offer her, and took the train to Falmouth to try her luck there.

  She felt better back in Cornwall. There weren’t the flocks of attractive and lively single girls there had been in Plymouth to remind her of her shortcomings, and her easy reputation had been left behind there too. After the madness of war, families wanted holidays somewhere pretty and quaint, so the hotels and pubs were thriving and Violet found a job in a harbour pub with guest-rooms above. She did all the donkeywork from cleaning, laundry and cooking, to serving behind the bar, and while not exactly happy, she was resigned to it.

  In 1948, after being in Falmouth for over two years, she heard the shocking news of Clare Pengelly’s suicide. Violet had been interested in Albert Pengelly right from the first time she met him in the pub. He stood out with his long curly red hair and his lean, muscular body, and like many women she found him very attractive and sexy. Although they did no more than pass the time of day, she was curious about him, and eager to listen to the story of the scandal that had rocked Falmouth in 1944.

  Clare’s father was a leading London barrister by the name of Rupert Soames. He had five children, Clare being the only daughter. Although their permanent home was in London, they had a second palatial one in Swanpool, just outside Falmouth, which they used for holidays. At the outset of war the London house was closed, and Mrs Soames, with the children and the governess, moved down to Cornwall for safety.

  The locals said that the mother and governess were unable to control the three oldest children, of whom Clare, then aged fourteen, was one. They roamed around the countryside and Falmouth harbour getting into mischief, until eventually their father clamped down and sent the two boys to a boarding school. But Clare was never curbed, and from being a tomboy she became an equally wild young lady who was over-indulged and full of silly, romantic ideas about Cornwall, particularly the fishermen and farmers. Violet had heard that she wrote poetry and painted water-colours and would often be seen sitting on a stool in the harbour painting picturesque scenes.

  It was the Soameses’ gardener who brought the news of Clare announcing her love affair with Albert to her parents. A terrible row ensued. Mr Soames said he would disown Clare if she continued with this folly, and Mrs Soames had hysterics. But Clare wouldn’t back down and told them that if they didn’t agree to the marriage she would go and live in sin with Albert anyway.

  Everyone in Falmouth was agog. Albert was ten years older than Clare, his farmhouse was falling down, and it seemed unbelievable that a gently brought-up girl destined for a society marriage could possibly fall for such a brutish working-class man.

  When the wedding went ahead at Mawnan Smith church it was assumed Clare must be pregnant – certainly her family showed their disapproval by not being there. But if she was pregnant, she must have lost the child later, because Ellen wasn’t born until early 1947, some two and half years after the much talked about wedding. Violet could remember her birth well, for it was the first time Albert actually spoke to her. He enthused rapturously about his little daughter and said he was the happiest man in Cornwall.

  It was just a year later that the second child, a boy, was born, but that time Albert didn’t come into the bar to celebrate. There was gossip though; other neighbouring farmers said Clare was acting strangely, that they thought she regretted giving up her family and all the luxury she’d been used to, for Albert. Then came the appalling news that she’d jumped off the cliff with her baby son in her arms, leaving Ellen who was only about fourteen months old.

  Violet took the bus out to Mawnan Smith to see Albert. She told other people she was worried about how he was coping with a baby and the farm to look after, but it wasn’t really a compassionate urge. Albert intrigued her, he had a farm, which to her meant money, and she knew he was unlikely to turn her away when he was grief-stricken.

  He was grief-stricken too, confused, frightened and finding it impossible to cope with his loss, the farm and little Ellen too. So Violet offered to stay and help him, and within a week she was sharing his bed.

  When she looked back, Violet often wondered why she didn’t see how it would turn out right from the start. Albert was always indifferent to her, the farmhouse was even more primitive than the one she’d lived in as a child, there was no money, and farming wasn’t the easy life she’d imagined.

  But she did grow fond of Ellen, for she was a happy baby and easy to take care of. Then, when she discovered that she too was expecting a child, her first feelings were ones of utter amazement, for after all those men she’d been with in Plymouth, without once missing, she’d begun to believe she was infertile.

  Albert agreed to marry her, but he made it quite clear that he considered it only a marriage of convenience, and she knew he compared her unfavourably with Clare. All Violet could hope for was that this would change when their own child was born, and that he would grow to love her.

  But Clare’s ghost would not go away. Violet felt her presence constantly. Albert took her paintings off the parlour wall and burned them, tore up her poetry and gave away her clothes, but she was still there, if only in Albert’s heart. It was as if she even entered the room at the moment of Josie’s birth too, and prevented Violet’s baby from having any of her mother’s characteristics, for even at a few
days old it was plain that she was going to look exactly like Ellen.

  Violet was glad enough that her child was so obviously a Pengelly, with the trademark curly red hair. It made life simpler; newcomers to the area had no reason to guess she wasn’t the first and only Mrs Pengelly. Gradually the gossip about them faded and died. Maybe this was only because people knew Albert was not a man to upset, but Violet liked to think it was because they approved of her. Yet as the two girls grew older and their characters began to form, Violet often felt a sharp stab of jealousy towards Ellen because she was clever. Josie might not have inherited her mother’s lank hair, or the cast in her eye, but she seemed far slower than her half-sister. It was also Ellen that people were drawn to, not Josie.

  Violet could put up with playing second fiddle to a dead woman, but she was not going to let Ellen overshadow her daughter.

  As the two girls walked into the farmhouse, Violet flew at Ellen and slapped her hard across the face. ‘How dare you leave Josie to come home alone?’ she shouted at her. ‘Anything could have happened to her.’

  Ellen burst into tears. Dad wasn’t there, but she knew he must have told her mum what had happened today, otherwise she wouldn’t have known Josie had had to come most of the way home on her own. So why wasn’t she being kind?

  ‘I couldn’t help it,’ Ellen sobbed. ‘I had to leave school to ask Daddy if it was true. I didn’t think about Josie.’

  ‘I didn’t mind coming home on my own,’ Josie piped up. She didn’t understand what was going on at all, and she didn’t like seeing her sister slapped. ‘Don’t be cross with her, Mummy!’

  But instead of calming her mother down Josie’s words seemed to rile her even more. ‘Get upstairs,’ she yelled at Josie, flapping at her with a towel as though she was a chicken that had run into the kitchen.

  As Josie ran upstairs, Violet rounded on Ellen again. ‘Now, look here, madam,’ she said, her pale fat face contorted with spite, ‘I took care of you when no one else would. I’ve dearly suffered for you and your damned mother. But one more word of this business again to anyone, especially your father, and I’ll skin you alive. You got that?’