Wise Child

by Audrey Reimann

  Mam and Frank Chancellor had been at daggers drawn when Mam accepted my stepfather's proposal. Of course, she 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…Lily. His Ma's name was Lily. And back came my earliest memory: Mam saying to one of her customers "We named her after her two grandmothers, Lily and lsobel."

  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 suspected 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 masterkey ...' 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, then impulsively and quickly I kissed him. 'Thank you. I have to fly. I want to get to the council offices...' and I went asfast asIdecorously could, out of his office, across the tileking 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 voice 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 you Mam tell you?'

  'No. I saw a cheque. You paid my school fees. You had no 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 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 blinked 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 to tell me. 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 my 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 had 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 of my own. I tore open the envelope and took out the letter that Magnus had found - and silently I handed it to him. He frowned, seeing 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.' Then 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.'

  The end.