The Vanished Child

by M J Lee

  The blinking cursor of the computer caught her eye. ‘Time to begin. What secrets does Vera’s family hold?’ She took the Lost Cousins form out of her bag. ‘Let’s begin with Vera’s mother.’

  She logged on to the FreeBMD site to search the Births, Marriages and Deaths indexes and typed ‘Freda Duckworth’ into the fields, adding the date, 1926, and the district, Oldham.

  Duckworth was a fairly common name in Lancashire, especially in the old mill towns, but Freda wasn’t found so often. ‘With a bit of luck, she’ll be a loner.’ Jayne pressed search and silently prayed to the gods of genealogy.

  Just one result popped up on her screen almost immediately. ‘Duckworth, Freda S. Mother’s maiden name: Burns. Registration district: Oldham.’ It was catalogued under January to March with a number of 8d, 1081.

  Jayne punched the air and took another refreshing sip of the Sauvignon Blanc. A second Lost Cousins form, this one to create a family tree, was in her folder. She took it out, filling in Freda’s maiden name and birth details into the boxes, the vermillion ink wet on the page.

  She was on a roll; now to get the certificate itself. Unfortunately, the birth was after 1916, so even if the pilot scheme for online PDFs had still been in operation, she wouldn’t have been able to get all the details.

  Never mind. If Vera wanted her mother’s birth certificate, she could order it later. At least she had the grandmother’s maiden name to work with. Now she could go a little further back in time. It was tempting to jump straight in and check the FreeBMD for Vera’s missing brother, but Jayne wanted context to the family. You never knew when the extra information might prove useful later on.

  Vera had said her mother was an only child, but Jayne thought she better check it out. She broadened the search for Oldham Duckworths to ten years either side of 1926. Thirty-five results came back. Quickly, she scanned the hits looking for the same maiden name of the mother.

  Nothing. Just the one hit in 1926.

  Jayne relaxed. ‘Great,’ she said out loud. ‘Looks like Vera’s information is accurate so far.’

  Hearing her voice, the cat sauntered over and rubbed himself once more against her leg. ‘You want to go out, don’t you, Mr Smith?’

  A loud purr in response.

  ‘Number nine on heat again? Or is it Mrs Brown’s cat who is tempting you?’

  No purr this time, just another pass across her leg, his body arching in pleasure.

  ‘Okay, okay. I’ll get no peace until I open the door.’

  She stood up and stretched, striding over to the patio doors and opening them wide. The cat followed her and shot out through her legs, into the freedom of the garden.

  ‘See you later.’ She waved goodbye, but the cat was already gone. ‘Men.’ She shrugged.

  It was a beautiful summer’s night in Manchester. A blackbird was singing from the top of the chimney pot on the house opposite. A host of swallows were swooping across the contrailed sky, hoovering up insects. A car honked impatiently two streets away. There was a wonderful stillness to the evening, with not a breath of wind.

  Jayne went back inside for her glass of wine, returning to the patio doors and sitting on the steps leading down to her small garden.

  She closed her eyes. The sound of a woman’s laughter, followed by the deeper guffaws of a man, came from the left. The faint screech of a violin note being played incorrectly on her right. Above her, the sharp squeaks of the swallows as they called to each other on the wing. Even though it was past eight o’clock, the light was perfect; a soft Manchester suburban summer’s night, when the world was at ease after a long day at work.

  She took another sip of wine. She liked being alone, not having to answer to anybody, nor worry what they wanted to do. She loved the peace of it, the stillness, never having to worry whether the other person was bored or restless. Now, there was just herself to consider. If she wanted to work, she worked. If she wanted to take five minutes off and smell the roses, she could do that too.

  She thought about Vera and her discovery of another brother, a half-brother. What about Jayne’s own family? Did her mother have secrets too? Robert was her stepfather, marrying her mother when Jayne was just three years old. Her biological father had vanished when she was a baby. She tried to remember him, his face, his eyes, his hair, but nothing came.

  She laughed to herself. ‘The big joke. You must be the only genealogical investigator who knows nothing about her own family,’ she said out loud. One day, she would look for him and find out why he went away, but not today. Today, it was Vera she had to help.

  She stood up and drained the glass. ‘Break over, time to get back to the Atkinses, the Duckworths and the Burnses.’

  She went back to the computer and pressed the ‘New Search’ button on the FreeBMD site. This time she clicked on the marriages section and entered the names of Vera’s mother and father into the fields, expanding the time to seven years before Vera’s birth.

  Again, she whispered a prayer to the gods of genealogy as the little blue circle whirred, before it returned with a single result. Francis Duckworth married a Burns some time between January and March 1926.

  Brilliant. Jayne would be able to give this information to Vera and order a certificate if she wanted. Then she stopped. The dates, they were too early. Vera said her mother’s birthday was June 10, 1926, but her parents had only married six months earlier at the most. A shotgun wedding? Probably.

  ‘Perhaps your mother wasn’t the saint she made herself out to be.’ As soon as the words came out of her mouth, Jayne regretted them. How could she so easily judge somebody and their actions of nearly one hundred years ago? What right did she have to be so high and mighty?

  She got up and went to the fridge, pouring herself another glass of wine. Perhaps that’s why Dora had been so tough on Vera’s mother – not wanting her to be forced into an early, and perhaps unhappy, marriage, all because of a pregnancy.

  Jayne sat down at her computer and checked the dates again, noting the index reference in her legal pad. Now for a bit of a long shot. There were no ages given in the entries but, with a bit of luck, both Francis and his wife had been older than seventeen when they married.

  Jayne logged on to the Findmypast website and selected the 1911 census. People moved around a lot less in those days. Francis Duckworth had probably been born and raised in Oldham; time to check back a little further.

  She entered his details, making sure the birth covered all ten years before 1911, and pressed search. One result came back. She was on a roll today. Vera’s great-grandfather was Thomas Henry Duckworth, married to Annie Duckworth. They had four children, with Francis being the third. Thomas Henry earned his living as a coaster in a brewery. She wondered what a coaster did, but decided to check it later.

  Now for the final search – the Burns family. She entered the surname and three results came back, all with the right age range. Her roll was over. Francis’s wife could have been any of these women, and that was presuming she had been born in Oldham. With a name like Burns, she could have been Scottish or Irish and migrated south or across the Irish Sea to find work.

  No matter, she had gone back far enough. If Vera wanted to find out the surnames of her maternal grandparents, it would involve checking marriage certificates or the parish registers.

  Jayne breathed out.

  For some reason, she had been holding back from making the most important search of all. It wasn’t like her to procrastinate when she was investigating somebody’s family background, but Vera was her step mother. What if it was all just the imagination of an old lady who was dying? Did Vera really want to know if she had a mystery brother?

  ‘That’s not for you to decide, Jayne Sinclair. You’re here to do the research, nothing more, nothing less.’

  She logged back in to FreeBMD, clicking the ‘New Query’ button. In the search field she selected the year, 1944, and left the father’s name blank but entered ‘Duckworth’ into the Mother section. Unf
ortunately, there was no way she could add the Christian name, Freda, into the search. The search only allowed the father’s first name to be selected.

  ‘More bloody sexism,’ she muttered to herself. She then selected Oldham as the registration district and pressed ‘Search’.

  Nothing.

  Even though it was not an unusual name for the area, there were no Duckworth mothers. She remembered Vera saying her family had links to Saddleworth. It was the next registration district along. She clicked Saddleworth district and said another prayer to the genealogy gods as she searched.

  The result came back again.

  Nothing.

  Her lucky streak was definitely over. Now would come the hard graft of true genealogy. Perhaps Freda had moved to another area to have her baby? Jayne expanded the search to cover all districts. The site seemed to take an age to give her the result.

  After almost a minute, 112 hits popped up for the year 1944, most of them situated in a swathe of old mill towns scattered around the north of England like warts. Only two of the hits showed the same surname, Duckworth, for both the mother and the baby, suggesting an illegitimate birth.

  The small, dark print on the screen began to blur. Jayne rubbed her eyes; staring at the bright screen had made her tired. Or was it the wine? She glanced across – the glass was already empty.

  She thought about phoning Vera with the news so far but decided against it. What did she really know? The names of Vera’s grandparents and paternal great-grandparents. They were relatively easy to find from the census and existing information. But on the most important search, that of the vanished brother, she had hit a brick wall.

  Vera’s brother could be one of the 112 hits or he might be none of them. There were too many variables, too many unknowns at the moment.

  Jayne rubbed her eyes again. She was also tired from all the driving. Switching off the computer, she decided she had done enough for that evening.

  Tomorrow was another day. But without more information, this search wasn’t going to be easy.

  But they never were, that was the whole point.

  Chapter Six

  June 18, 2017

  Didsbury, Manchester, England

  Jayne was up with the larks the following morning. It seemed wrong to waste such a beautiful day. Outside, Mr Smith was sitting patiently beside the patio door, waiting to be let in. He was enjoying the freshness of a Manchester morning and desperate to find a warm windowsill to sleep off the adventures of last night.

  She switched on the Nespresso machine and walked over to open the patio doors. The cat slinked past her, not bothering to acknowledge her presence, as if embarrassed by what he had been up to during the night. He stopped for a second beside his bowl, checking to see if there was any food there, before crouching down and cautiously lapping from his water bowl.

  ‘Would his Lordship like breakfast?’

  The cat miaowed in response.

  ‘Kippers? Kedgeree? A poached egg on a freshly baked sourdough roll, covered in béarnaise?’

  The cat ignored her.

  Jayne opened the fridge. ‘How about a pouch of “fresh lamb with carrot surprise”?’ she read aloud off the label.

  Mr Smith miaowed loudly, as if to say, ‘Get a move on, woman.’

  Jayne snipped off the corner of the pouch and squeezed the food into his bowl. She searched for the tell-tale orange flecks of carrot but saw none. ‘I think the surprise is there’s no carrot.’

  The cat didn’t care; he attacked the lamb with gusto.

  Jayne selected a capsule of Nespresso – a ‘jewel’ in marketing speak – slotted it into the opening in the top and pressed the button. It wasn’t the best coffee, but as an instant hit of espresso in the morning, it served its purpose of dragging her brain kicking and screaming into the day.

  The cat ignored the whirr of the machine, wolfing down his lamb breakfast.

  ‘My, we are hungry. Busy night at number nine, was it?’

  The espresso cup was full. She took it, inhaled the aroma and took a fresh sip of hot liquid. Immediately, the caffeine surged from her tongue to her brain.

  ‘Better,’ she said aloud, booting up her computer. The cat slinked off to find a windowsill that had already been warmed by the rays of the sun, and to dream of nights gone and nights to come.

  Jayne finished her coffee. ‘Now, where was I?’ She checked her notes and clicked on the saved hits in FreeBMD.

  Last night’s 112 results stared back at her. All she really knew was that she was looking for a boy, since Vera was sure her mother had given birth to a male child.

  Jayne thought of having another coffee, but decided against it. Too much caffeine gave her a headache. Her search would have been far easier if the mother’s Christian name had ever been included in the original files, but it never was. The mother was always just a surname.

  ‘Get on with it, Jayne, stop faffing around.’ She scrolled down the page. There were two hits where the mother’s surname and the child’s were the same, suggesting an illegitimate birth. She checked them first. Both children were girls. She crossed them off her list.

  Now came the grunt work. She would have to individually check all 110 remaining Duckworth births in 1944, looking for clues. However, there was one thing she could do immediately to reduce the numbers. She cancelled out all the female births, which gave her forty-eight male births to look at.

  ‘Makes life a little bit easier.’ Next, she checked each name to see if there were subsequent births for the same father and mother. If the family had stayed together, it couldn’t be Vera’s mother.

  Two hours later, Jayne had researched all forty-eight mothers with the surname Duckworth on the FreeBMD list of births for 1944. Forty-one had subsequent births, so they were eliminated. Three had births prior to 1944, so they were crossed off too, leaving just five women who could have been Vera’s mother.

  Year/Quarter Name Mother’s Maiden Name RegDist Vol Page

  1944/March Smith, John Duckworth Bradford 8e 456

  Year/Quarter Name Mother's Maiden Name Reg Dist Vol Page

  1944/June East, Alan Duckworth Haslingden 3b 235

  Year/Quarter Name Mother's Maiden Name Reg Dist Vol Page

  1944/June Bryan, George Duckworth Nelson 7a 127

  Year/Quarter Name Mother's Maiden Name Reg Dist Vol Page

  1944/Sep Brown, Fred Duckworth Chelmsford 4c 221

  Year/Quarter Name Mother's Maiden Name Reg Dist Vol Page

  1944/Dec Tyler, Walter Duckworth Preston 9d 189

  Jayne discounted Chelmsford in Essex, as she doubted Vera’s mother would have given birth so far away from home. Hadn’t Vera said her mother had never travelled much in her life? So that left just four possibilities.

  She checked the places and dates again, looking for clues. The four remaining towns were in the north of England, just a short drive or train journey from Oldham. Freda could have easily travelled to any of them to give birth.

  In normal times, the father would have to attend the registration of the birth. But this was wartime. All Vera’s mother had to say was her husband was serving overseas and register the child in his name. Generally, the registrar wouldn’t ask for a marriage certificate, and particularly not back then, when so many men were serving in the Army.

  Jayne quickly went online to check her facts.

  The child of a married woman is, by law, always the child of her husband, and his name will appear on the certificate of any of her children – unless she, or her husband, tells the Registrar any different. It is, in fact, quite difficult for a wronged husband to get his name removed from a child’s birth certificate – the Registrar will take some convincing, such as absence overseas for ten months or more!

  The child of an unmarried woman – that is, a woman who admits to being unmarried – will have no father’s name on the certificate, unless he attends registration with her, or swears an affidavit.

  The words ‘wronged husband’ made Jayne sno
rt. Why was the law so bloody male?

  Had Freda convinced the Registrar her husband was overseas? Possibly. Only two of the births had no father’s name, but both those children were girls.

  ‘Sod it,’ she said out loud. Before she did any more work she would need another shot of caffeine; this search was giving her a headache anyway. Selecting another espresso capsule, she slotted it into the machine and pressed the button. When it had finished whirring and clunking, she took the coffee back to her computer.

  The child could be one of the four on her list, or it might not. She ordered the certificates anyway to make sure. At least the certificates would give the Christian name of the mother as well as her maiden name. There couldn’t be many Freda Duckworths giving birth in 1944. She would now have to wait at least four days for the certificates to be delivered.

  And then a new problem struck her with all the force of a double decker bus. What if Freda Duckworth hadn’t used her real name when she registered the birth?

  ‘Oh, shit,’ Jayne said out loud.

  Chapter Seven

  September 27, 1951

  St Michael’s Home, Oldham, England

  She wasn’t a bad sort, Sister Morris – one of the better ones. Even when she used the strap hanging from her waist, it was more in disappointment than in anger. Now Sister Tomasina, everybody knew you had to careful of that one. Her face would curdle cream and she went about the home with the permanent air of somebody looking for a bad smell yet unable to find it.