Father Unknown

by Lesley Pearse

  Ellen had. With those few words she knew without any doubt that this woman she’d believed to be her mother didn’t care about her at all.

  Chapter Four

  1963

  ‘What are you going to do then, Ellen?’ Josie asked.

  It was a Sunday afternoon in June and very warm. The two girls were sitting on a rock down on the beach in the little cove, and the subject under discussion was Ellen’s future education.

  ‘I dunno,’ Ellen said, wriggling her toes in a rock pool in front of her. ‘Half of me wants to go back to school in September if my “O” levels are good enough and sit some “A”s, but the other half wants to earn some money.’

  ‘You don’t want to work on the farm then?’ Josie asked.

  Ellen wondered if Josie had been ordered to ask her that by their mother.

  At sixteen and fourteen, the girls were still remarkably alike. One of their neighbours had described them as ‘two chocolate-box beauties’. Tangled hair was a thing of the past; they both took great care of their auburn curls, and protected their complexions with cream for fear they would end up with their father’s leathery skin. With their identical smouldering dark brown eyes, wide, well-shaped mouths, perfect teeth and slender but shapely figures, they were often mistaken for each other when apart. But when they were together the differences were immediately obvious.

  Josie was a giggler and a chatterbox, lacking any powers of concentration. A moody girl, she veered between sullenness and wild excitability, quick to take umbrage at any criticism and always believing she knew best about everything.

  Ellen was far more intelligent, a studious, thoughtful girl who preferred to listen rather than talk. People liked her for her genuine interest in them, her quiet yet proud demeanour. She was a girl who won trust and admiration and locals often commented on how well she’d grown up.

  Ellen’s quietness had developed after she learned the truth about her real mother. It wasn’t so much the shock of her discovery that upset her as her stepmother’s reaction to her distress. Young as Ellen was, she had recognized that the woman had no real affection for her, and so she stayed out of trouble by being quiet and obedient.

  By the time Ellen got to her teens she had come to see that her stepmother’s problem with her was jealousy. She wanted Josie to shine brightest, to be the one everyone loved and admired. So Ellen obliged her in this, pushing her younger sister forward, doing and saying nothing to antagonize their mother, keeping out of her way as much as possible and suppressing her opinions.

  It would have been far harder had she not had an ally in her father – he seemed to sense when she wanted to talk and would ask her to help him with a task. Although not a talker himself, he liked to hear her opinions and how she was doing at school. When she won a place at the grammar school in Falmouth he had beamed from ear to ear, and said that was ‘handsome’, which was enough to override her stepmother’s sarcasm. The happiest times for Ellen were when she was helping him around the farm, and if it hadn’t been for her stepmother, she would have gladly spent the rest of her life working with him. But of course she couldn’t admit that to Josie for fear of her telling Violet.

  ‘Work on the farm!’ she exclaimed, and raised her eyebrows as if the idea was too outlandish to contemplate. ‘Not on your nelly!’

  It hurt to deny her real passion. She was a true country girl at heart, happiest being outside, feeling the wind, rain or sunshine on her face and watching things grow. She loved the animals, growing vegetables, even driving the tractor and milking. She had inherited not only the Pengelly looks but also their feeling for the land. Ellen had the education they had all lacked, and she knew she could learn how to make the farm far more productive.

  She thought about enrolling at an agricultural college and coming back to work with her father, but she knew it was a pipe-dream. Violet’s hostility towards her had grown even greater when Josie failed to get a place at the grammar school. She would see Ellen deciding to work with her father as a plot to oust Josie from her share of her inheritance when Albert died. In her blackest moods Violet often made caustic remarks along those lines.

  It didn’t make any sense to Ellen. Josie hadn’t got the slightest interest in farming, all her dreams were of escaping to London and becoming a model. She hated the outdoors, unless it was hot like today and she could work on her sun-tan. Besides, Ellen was so close to her sister that even if her father did leave her the farm one day, she would see Josie got her share.

  The love and deep friendship the two girls shared was the buffer that protected them from the often bitter hatred that raged between their parents. Josie felt her father didn’t love her, Ellen was barely tolerated by their mother. Yet when they were alone together all this disappeared. They were equals, loving each other’s company, playmates, sisters and friends, and they did their best to ignore the shortcomings of their parents.

  ‘I don’t know how you can even think of spending another two years at school,’ Josie said, getting down into the rock pool and splashing some water at Ellen. ‘I’m going to leave as soon as I’m fifteen.’

  Ellen splashed water back at her sister. ‘And what are you going to do as a job, work in Woolworths?’ She said this lightly, not intending to hurt her sister for her lack of academic ability. Josie was after all netball captain and swimming champion at her school. ‘Why don’t you ask if you can do a secretarial course? You’d like that and you’d be able to get a good office job if you got some qualifications.’

  Josie pulled a face. ‘I’m sick of learning, I want to have some fun and some money of my own. It’s a good job we live so far away from all my friends. I’d die if they saw how I’m dressed at home.’

  On this subject they were both in full agreement. They had no nice clothes. Monday to Friday they both went off to their respective schools in their uniforms and looked much like everyone else. But at weekends and in the holidays they were too embarrassed to visit friends or have a day out in Falmouth. They looked like a couple of refugees in their home-made frocks and their sturdy, sensible shoes.

  The farm was doing better now than it had been when they were little, as their father got a great deal more money for his vegetables and the animals when he sold them at the market. But the extra cash went on improvements to the house and farm. Electricity had been put in five years ago. The barn had to have a new roof, and when the old tractor had conked out for good, that had to be replaced. The girls were delighted when just a year before, a real bathroom complete with inside lavatory was installed, but that wiped out any hope of clothes or other luxuries. Ellen accepted this better than Josie, as she rarely wanted to go anywhere in public. But for Josie it was a major issue – she thought it was all because her father was miserly.

  ‘You’re so pretty that no one notices what you wear,’ Ellen said, trying to make her feel better. ‘You look far more stunning in those shorts than in anything Sally Trevoise wears.’

  Sally was still a thorn in Ellen’s side. All through junior school she had belittled her, and then to Ellen’s horror she got a place at the grammar school too. As they were in the same class and travelled home on the same school bus, she couldn’t avoid her. Sally swanned around the village like Lady Muck in the latest fashions from London. On Sunday at church she’d been wearing a pink sheath dress with a matching jacket that both Ellen and Josie would have died for. The only consolation was that Sally had grown fat, and had bad acne, probably as the result of stuffing her face with sweets in her parents’ shop, so she didn’t look that good in the dress and jacket.

  Josie looked down at her legs, which were long, slender and brown, and although the khaki shorts were boy’s ones, handed down by a neighbour some years ago, they fitted to perfection. ‘Have you seen Sally’s legs? They’re like bottles,’ she giggled.

  They kept up a litany of things that were wrong with Sally for some minutes, until they were both giggling helplessly.

  ‘She’s got a boyfriend now,’ Ellen sa
id eventually, suddenly remembering she hadn’t told Josie this yet. ‘He works in a shoe shop in Falmouth, and he’s got as much acne as her.’

  ‘I expect they give it to each other when they’re snogging.’ Josie giggled again. ‘Imagine if they get married and have kids! What’ll they look like?’

  Josie suddenly fell silent and a shadow crossed her face. Ellen knew she was embarrassed because of what they’d overheard a few days earlier.

  ‘Are you thinking about what Mum said?’ Ellen asked. ‘Nothing she says hurts me any more.’

  They had been in bed with all the windows open because it was such a warm night, and when their parents began rowing they couldn’t help but hear. It had started about money; Mum was saying she couldn’t see what was wrong with turning the lower field into a camping site this summer. That way she could get a washing-machine and a television.

  Dad said he wasn’t going to have people tramping all over his land just so she could sit on her fat arse in a chair all night watching TV. Then it got even worse, with Mum screeching that he was mean and selfish and surely after all she did during the day she warranted some entertainment in the evenings when he went off to the pub?

  Dad retorted that she didn’t help on the farm at all and she was too lazy even to clean the house properly, and of course Mum retaliated.

  ‘Being lazy is better than being mad,’ she screamed at him. ‘God help that brat upstairs, she’s got a double dose of it from both you and her mother. She’ll end up in the loony bin.’

  It sounded as if their father must have struck Violet, because she screamed, and he went out slamming the door behind him. The girls had just lain silently in their beds, neither of them daring to speak, for to have done so would have forced them to take sides and very likely fall out.

  ‘They are always on at each other,’ Josie said sadly. ‘She says evil things about him, and he’s just as bad. That’s the real reason I want to leave school. To get enough money so I can get right away. The only thing I’d miss is you.’

  Ellen felt a surge of sympathy for her sister, for she could see that in some ways her situation was very much worse than her own. Ellen knew that her father would never oppose any decision she made. He would be pleased if she stayed on at school, delighted if she went to college after that. But even if she said she wanted to leave school now and take off for London, he wouldn’t try to stop her.

  But Violet clung to Josie like a blood-sucking leech. She grilled her daily about school and her friends and she expected far more of her daughter than Josie could ever hope to attain. Sometimes Ellen could almost see her sister sagging under the weight of her mother’s ambitions for her. Yet the worst of it was that Josie knew what was behind it. Violet didn’t want her to be successful just so she’d have a better life. The woman was banking on her daughter rescuing her from the farm and her unhappy marriage and giving her a life of ease.

  ‘We’ll stick together no matter what,’ Ellen assured her. ‘Don’t rush into leaving school next year and take a dead-end job, Josie. You’ll be sorry later.’

  Josie gave her a long and thoughtful look. ‘I wish I had your patience,’ she said wistfully. ‘I want pretty clothes, a boyfriend, and freedom to do what I like and go where I like. And I want it all now!’

  Ellen smiled. ‘Do you remember when you wanted a doll’s pram so badly?’

  Josie grinned. It was when she was five, she had talked about nothing else, kept on and on about it. ‘What’s that got to do with what I want now?’ she asked.

  ‘You got the doll’s pram in the end,’ Ellen reminded her. ‘But you only played with it a few times and then you lost interest. Sometimes dreaming about something is better than really having it. Just dream for now and wait and see what happens.’

  ‘You’re weird sometimes,’ Josie giggled. ‘What do you dream about?’

  ‘Much the same as you,’ Ellen replied. She couldn’t admit that her only dream was that one day her stepmother would find she’d had enough of her husband and the farm and leave for good, so that Ellen would be free to run it with her father.

  A yell from the farmhouse prevented any further speculation about their future.

  ‘That’s Mum,’ Josie said gloomily. ‘We’d better go and see what she wants.’

  As they walked up the steep path through the lower field they could see their mother standing hands on hips by the garden fence. Even from a distance they could see she was het-up about something.

  Violet was forty-one now, but she looked far older. She had put on several stones in weight in the last two or three years, and her bitterness showed in the deep scowl lines around her mouth. The girls were used to her bad teeth and the cast in her eye, but it was her slatternly appearance that embarrassed them most. Violet wore the same shabby, shapeless dress day after day regardless of how dirty it was, rarely washed her hair, and she always smelled of sweat. She had slept alone now for over a year. Dad had moved into the tiny spare bedroom when she was ill once, and he’d never moved back. Josie was always trying to encourage her to smarten herself up, but her suggestions fell on deaf ears.

  As far as Ellen at least could see, the only good thing about the woman was that she was an excellent cook. But then food was the only thing aside from Josie that interested Violet, and she ate constantly. Josie would often defend her, reminding Ellen that as a child she had very little to eat, and that she was sad because she hadn’t had any more children.

  But Ellen couldn’t feel any real sympathy for her stepmother. A great many of their neighbours had been brought up in terrible poverty, yet they didn’t stuff themselves all the time. She thought that if Violet made herself more attractive to her husband, she might have had more children too.

  ‘Where have you two been?’ Violet shouted as the girls came nearer.

  ‘Only down at the beach, Mum,’ Josie shouted back cheerfully. ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘I’ve had a telegram,’ she said. ‘My mother’s very ill and I have to go to Helston immediately. You, Ellen, go up to the village and ask Mr Peters if he can take me, tell him it’s an emergency. Josie, you’d better come inside with me and help me pack some things.’

  The girls looked at each other in surprise. They had been taken to Helston to see this grandmother only once, around six years ago. She was very old, nasty to everyone, and her house was smelly and dark. They had both been convinced she was a witch. To their knowledge their mother hadn’t had any contact with her since that day.

  ‘Don’t just stand there,’ Violet roared at Ellen. ‘Go now, and quickly.’

  Ellen didn’t ask why she didn’t get Dad to take her in the old truck, or even where he was, because the thought of a couple of days without her stepmother was too wonderful to delay her. She sped up the track on to the road, ran the half-mile without stopping once, then climbed over the stile to the footpath that led across the fields to Mawnan Smith.

  Mr Peters lived in a pretty little cottage right in the centre of the village. He had moved down here from Exeter when he retired as a schoolmaster. He wasn’t a real taxi driver, but he supplemented his pension by ferrying local people about at a much lower cost than the taxi firms in Falmouth charged.

  He was weeding his front garden as Ellen ran up the road. She liked him, as he was one of the few adults in the village who was really interesting. He was tall and thin, and wore his customary summer outfit of baggy knee-length shorts, a rather loud-patterned shirt and a battered straw hat.

  ‘Could you possibly take Mum to Helston? Our grandmother’s very ill,’ Ellen blurted out breathlessly for she had a stitch in her side.

  He dropped his gardening fork and smiled. ‘Now, which one are you? Ellen or Josie?’ he asked.

  ‘Ellen of course,’ she said, grinning at him because he always teased her with the same thing. Josie never bothered to speak to Mr Peters, whereas Ellen went out of her way to talk to him.

  ‘Of course,’ he said, tipping his hat back and smiling broadly. ‘You are
the one with brains as well as beauty. How did the exams go?’

  ‘Pretty good,’ she admitted. ‘But I won’t get the results for a while. Can you take Mum?’

  ‘Of course I will,’ he said, though he didn’t look exactly pleased at the prospect, and Ellen hoped Josie might persuade Violet to have a wash and change her dress before they went. ‘Come on in and have a cold drink, my dear, while I wash my hands and explain to Mrs Peters. You look very hot and bothered.’

  Ellen followed him into the cottage and looked about her eagerly. She loved it when Mr Peters invited her in, for it was the prettiest little house she’d ever seen. So many books and pictures, lovely rugs on the floor, and beautiful shiny old furniture. She wished she could wave a magic wand and make Beacon farmhouse like it.

  Mr Peters went out through the French windows to speak to his wife who was sitting in the garden in a deckchair doing some embroidery. She turned her head as he spoke to her and called out for Ellen to join her.

  Ellen admired Mrs Peters almost as much as she admired her husband, even though she didn’t know her as well. She was younger than him, and had the kind of style Ellen saw as ‘knitting-pattern models’. She went in for neat costumes, with pearls at her neck, and her greying hair was fixed up in a bun. Ellen had been very impressed when she had run into her out walking in the fields. She had been wearing pale blue slacks and a checked coat that matched perfectly. Ellen had decided that day that when she was over fifty she would make sure she didn’t slop about in nasty old dark clothes, but be as well groomed as Mrs Peters.

  ‘So your grandmother’s very ill,’ Mrs Peters said, her soft voice full of sympathy. ‘Is she very old?’

  Mr Peters brought Ellen a glass of lemonade, then disappeared again.