The Roots of the Tree

by Amanda Roberts

  While Suzie struggled to decide what, if anything, to do next, there was at least some good news. Annie was definitely getting better. She had been to a few sessions with the help group that Dr Scott had put her in touch with and listening to the stories of others and talking about her own experience was helping her to come to terms with the actions of her parents – all three of them – and to accept that they would have had their own, probably very good reasons for acting as they did. She no longer felt as though she wanted to fight the world and had realised that there was nothing she could do to change the past, but she had to live with its consequences for the rest of her future. The best way to do that, she decided, was to accept it, keep an open mind, and move on. Above all, it didn’t make her any different as a person. She had thought, at first, that it did, that it changed everything, including her. But it didn’t. The life she had led and the choices she had made were still hers and if she occasionally questioned whether she would have made the same decisions and gone in the same direction if her childhood had been different, which it inevitably would have been if she had grown up with Edward Johnson, a POW survivor as a father, instead of Frank Barratt, a coal miner who had never been outside of the British Isles, she refused to torment herself with thoughts of ‘what if’.

  Jack and Emily kept a close eye on Annie as she slowly regained her strength, both physically and mentally. Jack was a frequent visitor and Annie welcomed him warmly, enjoying his company, especially after Emily went back home. The two of them would often share a bottle of wine in an evening and play cards or watch old sitcoms on DVD.

  Two months after Annie had gone back to work, Suzie arrived in the office to find Tom waiting for her. She had accepted his offer of the deputy editor position on the Barminster Chronicle and had just started her new role. Already she was certain she had made the right decision. It was a little harder to juggle work and domestic life and she didn’t have as much time with Daniel as she used to, but she felt the time she did spend with him was quality time. She hated that expression. She used to feel it was a trite way for a parent to attempt to justify not spending enough time with their children, but now she was starting to understand its value. She made more effort to spend the time she did have with Daniel having fun instead of managing daily chores around him.

  On this particular morning, the expression on Tom’s face was gleeful. He looked like a child full of mischief himself.

  ‘Let me guess,’ she said. ‘You’ve had a tip-off that the Beckhams are fed up of the jet-set lifestyle and have decided to buy a perfectly respectable country pile near to Barminster and they want us to do a country house-style feature on it?’

  Chuckling, Tom shook his head.

  ‘Okay, how about former President Bill Clinton has decided he needs to stay out of the headlines for a while and lay low here in Barminster and he’s asked you to ghost his memoirs of the White House years for him?’

  ‘Your imagination is on fire today, I see,’ said Tom. ‘But, sadly, neither of those is the correct answer. In fact, this is something you’re likely to get more excited about than I am. Although I must confess to more than simply a passing interest.’

  ‘You’re infuriating sometimes, you know,’ replied Suzie. ‘Come on then. I give up. Tell me what the big news is.’

  ‘The Barminster Historical Society, of which you know I’m a member, has announced they will be holding a series of talks this autumn,’ he said slowly.

  Suzie raised her eyebrow. This hardly sounded like such a big deal. ‘So?’ she questioned.

  ‘Soooo,’ Tom replied, stretching the vowel as far as he could to draw out the suspense. ‘The first one on the schedule is to be about the history of Chaddington Manor and the guest speaker is to be none other than Miss Sylvia de Lacey, the oldest surviving member of the de Lacey clan, who, now aged sixty-nine, apparently has some very clear and fond memories of her early childhood living in the manor.’

  ‘You’re kidding me,’ Suzie blurted out. ‘No, you’re not. You wouldn’t do that. I’m stunned. After all these weeks, months even, of hunting down information and, more recently, wondering whether I should go and knock on their door and ask if they know where he went, the one person that might be able to help is delivered to my own back door. Well, almost.’

  Tom nodded. ‘It seems that way.’

  ‘It’s fate,’ said Suzie later as she and David enjoyed their customary glass of wine over dinner. ‘We’re obviously meant to find out what happened after all.’

  ‘Slow down,’ replied David, once again finding himself with the task of curbing his wife’s more impetuous nature. ‘I’ll concede that it’s an interesting coincidence, but you don’t know that this Sylvia de Lacey is going to have any information that can help you further.’

  ‘I’ve just got a feeling that she will,’ said Suzie stubbornly.

  Not surprisingly, Marie was equally enthusiastic and even Annie felt that there was more than a glimmer of hope. They agreed that all three of them would go to the talk. Tom bribed the chairperson of the Barminster Historical Society – a spinster who had long harboured a crush on the editor of the Barminster Chronicle – with a box of chocolates, a nice bottle of champagne and the promise of lunch in one of the city’s trendier bistros to introduce Annie, Suzie and Marie to Sylvia de Lacey after her talk. Suzie was surprised with the ease at which Tom had slipped into ‘man about town’; it didn’t fit with her perception of him at all, but he simply winked at her and reminded her he was considerably older than she was and had once led an interesting and colourful life.

  Sylvia de Lacey was an elegant lady, extremely well dressed and perfectly made-up to befit her mature years. Her hair was silvery white, which suited her pale complexion, her fingernails were painted a delicate rose-pink to match her lipstick and she wore a simple string of pearls with matching earrings, which Annie suspected were probably real and deceptively expensive.

  Settling down in their seats in the fourth row, Suzie was expecting to spend forty-five minutes trying to stifle her boredom and was initially correct as Sylvia de Lacey gave every impression of being what, essentially, she was – an upper-class youngest daughter of a once-wealthy (and probably still wealthy), land-owning family who had never had to work in her life and had never trained to do anything other than flower arranging and needlework. But she turned out to be a very interesting speaker with surprising humour with which she injected her memories of growing up at Chaddington Manor and its privileges. She also revealed her obvious sadness when she talked of how her parents struggled to cope with Matthew’s death and the steady decline of the house, estate and quality of life; how, in essence, they may have been privileged and monied, but as a family they also paid the ultimate price during the war – the loss of a beloved child. War is not concerned with class and wealth. It will take its victims from wherever it chooses and by taking Matthew, it removed the primary raison d’être for Mr de Lacey, who was no longer motivated to maintain the manor, which by rights should have passed to Matthew. Faced with mounting bills and a home out of which the soul seemed to have flown, the family agreed to hand the manor over to the National Trust and Sylvia de Lacey herself handled most of the administration necessary on behalf of her parents and made the arrangements to leave her childhood home and move to London.

  At the end of her speech and after a respectable session of questions from members of the Barminster Historical Society, refreshments were served. Annie, Suzie and Marie followed Tom to a corner of the room where a trestle table had been set up to serve tea, coffee, biscuits and cake. Tom served them each with tea and biscuits and led them over to where Sylvia de Lacey was talking to a not unattractive, slender, middle-aged lady wearing a dark-green trouser suit and with eyes such a brilliant green that Suzie felt sure she must be wearing tinted lenses. Her hair was short and curly and still a deep chestnut brown. Tom introduced her as Miss Winters, the chairperson of the society. Suzie glanced at Tom and raised her eyebrows.When he had describ
ed Miss Winters as a spinster, this was not quite the image she had in mind. He simply shrugged.

  ‘Mrs Yates, pleased to meet you,’ said Miss Winters, shaking Annie’s hand.

  ‘Please, call me Annie. And these are my daughters, Suzie and Marie.’

  ‘Miss de Lacey, Mrs Yates and her daughters have particularly requested to meet you this evening,’ Miss Winters continued. ‘I hope you don’t mind. I believe they have a distant family connection to Chaddington Manor that you may find interesting.’ She turned to Tom and took his arm. ‘We will leave you to chat. I must mingle.’

  ‘Your talk was very interesting,’ said Annie, seizing the initiative and turning to Sylvia de Lacey.

  ‘Thank you,’ she smiled with a genuine, warm smile. ‘I don’t very often do these sort of things. It’s a bit like the Women’s Institute. Never really been my cup of tea. But I have such fond memories of my childhood at Chaddington Manor – some terribly sad ones too – that when they contacted me and asked me would I come, I couldn’t say no. Shall we sit down?’

  Suzie wondered momentarily how the historical society had managed to find Miss de Lacey when her own efforts had failed, then the pieces clicked into place and she realised that Tom had probably had more than a small hand in it. She smiled to herself and resolved to invite him to dinner to thank him for everything he had done for her these last few months. Perhaps he would even bring the intriguing Miss Winters with him.

  The four ladies took seats at an unoccupied table with their tea and biscuits. Marie could not resist an old childhood habit of dunking her biscuits in the hot tea. Suzie frowned at her but Sylvia de Lacey didn’t seem to have noticed.

  ‘So, what is this family connection that you have to my old home?’ asked Sylvia de Lacey.

  ‘I’m sorry to have to try to speak to you at an event like this, but it seemed too good an opportunity to miss,’ Annie replied. ‘My daughter did try to write to you via your family solicitors, but has had no reply.’

  Sylvia de Lacey frowned. ‘I don’t remember having a letter about an old connection to Chaddington Manor recently, but then it may not have reached me. Our estate manager deals with most correspondence as I do get very tired having to deal with business matters. He probably would have “filed” the letter in a “pending” tray and forgotten all about it.’ The way Sylvia de Lacey emphasised the words ‘filed’ and ‘pending’ implied that she did not always approve of her estate manager’s decisions.

  Annie reached into her handbag and withdrew the old photograph of Edward Johnson she had found with the letters to Elsie. She handed it to Miss de Lacey.

  ‘I found this with some old letters that belonged to my mother. Unfortunately, I found it after she had died and I couldn’t ask her about him. The letters to her were love letters from a man called Ted who had fathered her unborn child before going off to fight in World War Two. That child was me, but I never knew about him. My mother married someone else when his letters stopped arriving in 1942 and I was brought up believing he was my father. But he wasn’t. This man was, and before joining his regiment, he worked at Chaddington Manor. We believe he was a driver for your family.’

  Calmly, Miss de Lacey took the photograph. ‘He was a handsome young man,’ she observed. ‘But in 1942 I was only seven years old and he would have left us earlier than that, presumably, as 1942 was the last letter your mother had from him, so I am sorry, but I don’t recognise him.’

  Suzie felt the disappointment start to rise within her, but Annie wasn’t going to give up that easily.

  ‘I understand,’ she said. ‘But we have reason to believe that he did return from the war after being a prisoner of war in Singapore and we believe he went back to work for your family in London sometime after his return to the UK, so probably in the late 1940s, early 1950s. His full name was Edward Johnson.’

  Sylvia de Lacey smiled. ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Silly me – Edward may be shortened to Ted. Forgive me; I’m not thinking as clearly as usual these days.’

  She pulled a spectacles case out of her handbag and, positioning a pair of tortoiseshell-framed glasses on her nose, peered closely at the old photograph. Annie, Suzie and Marie waited patiently for her to finish inspecting the photograph.

  ‘I do believe it is him,’ she finally said, removing her glasses and handing the photograph back to Annie. ‘Edward Johnson was our driver before the war. You are quite correct in that assumption. He felt he had to do his duty and join the army. My father was very sad to lose him. Not only was he a very good driver, but he was trustworthy, honest and reliable. We didn’t replace him. All able-bodied people were busy helping the war effort in some way, especially those with useful skills. We probably couldn’t have recruited another driver if we had tried.

  ‘I must admit, I didn’t give him another thought. It was much later, after the war was over and we had sold Chaddington Manor, moved to London, that he turned up at our London house one day. I remember it clearly. My father welcomed him like a member of the family. When I look back on it now, I think he was glad to see one young man who had been given up for dead return to us. He offered Edward a job immediately – general handyman, a bit of driving, a bit of maintenance, gardening, anything that needed doing.

  ‘I think my father also wanted to help. Edward looked terrible. I’m sure anyone who had endured those years as a prisoner of war would. But he didn’t look happy to be back, to have survived. He looked defeated.’

  ‘Do you remember what happened to him?’ asked Suzie, seizing the opportunity presented as Sylvia de Lacey paused in her narrative to sip her tea.

  ‘He retired, about ten years ago, maybe more. He went to live with his daughter. His wife had died some years before and he only had one daughter.’

  Annie opened her mouth to speak, but found the words would not come out. Why shouldn’t he have found someone else and had another family? There was no reason at all, but she was honest enough to admit that deep down she had hoped that would not prove to be the case. Not only that, but the revelation that he had another daughter meant she also had a sister whom she knew nothing about. Dimly, she realised Sylvia de Lacey was still talking.

  ‘So tragic,’ she was saying. ‘Amy was only thirteen when her mother died. She had a cancer. By the time it was diagnosed there was nothing that could be done for her. Edward did his best for Amy. She had a good education, met a nice young man who had a farm in Scotland and they settled there. Edward hardly saw them until he retired and went to live with them – I think they had some cottages on the farm and he moved into one of them. She would be about thirty now. I wonder how she is.’

  ‘Thirty?’ asked Suzie, quick to pick up on the relevance of what Sylvia de Lacey had just said. ‘That means Edward must have been quite old when he had her.’

  ‘Indeed,’ Sylvia replied. ‘He had been back from the war for many years before he met Julia, Amy’s mother. It surprised us all when he said he was going to marry her and move into a small house nearby. We had given him a couple of rooms in our house – it was more convenient for my father to have him always on-hand – but it worked out well because Edward was very attached to my father and was always there when he was needed. He must have been well into his fifties when Amy was born. Julia was much younger than him, which is why it was so tragic when she was taken.’

  Suzie turned to Annie who smiled reassuringly at her daughter.

  ‘Miss de Lacey, I don’t suppose you have an address for Amy, do you?’ asked Suzie.

  Sylvia de Lacey studied the three ladies looking anxiously at her: the impeccably well-groomed Marie, whose biscuit-dunking habit she had noticed and felt was completely at odds with the sleek, business-like image she otherwise exuded; Suzie, who looked as though she had simply thrown on whatever clothes her wardrobe first offered up in the morning with little care or regard for the overall effect; and Annie, who had an understated elegance, although she was too thin and appeared somehow ill at ease with herself.

  �
��I probably do, somewhere, but she might not like it if I give you her details and you just contacted her out of the blue. It sounds as though it might be quite a bombshell that you have to drop on her and her father…if he’s still alive,’ she added mentally to herself.

  ‘If you would give me your contact details, I will write to her and tell her I have met some people who were enquiring after her father. I will give her your names and contact details and if she wants to get in touch, she can. Would that suit you?’

  Suzie would have far preferred to have the contact details themselves – if Amy decided not to contact them they would still be left ultimately in the dark – but she couldn’t think of any reason to disagree with Sylvia de Lacey’s logic so they agreed.

  ‘Ask her to contact Annie Yates please, maiden name Barratt, daughter of Elsie Williams,’ she said, writing down the address.

  ‘So you see, he obviously was true to Elsie, Grandma that is. He didn’t marry until years after he returned from the war, so he clearly didn’t have someone else to come back to.’ Suzie was explaining her theory to a still doubtful David later that evening.

  ‘Suzie, he had been a prisoner of war for three years. Even if he did have another relationship, the chances of her waiting all that time for him would be slim. This still does not explain why he stayed away from Elsie and Annie.’