Whispers of Love

by Whispers of Love (retail) (epub)

  ‘That’s out of the question, I’m afraid. Dad is not well enough to have the sole responsibility of managing things any longer,’ Stuart told her. ‘I think he would be heartbroken if I sold up and moved to somewhere else. He has taken such a pride in building up a sound business, and one which is so well known in the Thames Valley area, and in being able to take me into partnership. I’m sure he expects me to go on running it at least for the rest of his lifetime,’ Stuart added gravely.

  ‘Oh dear, well, in that case, I suppose it means that this house will have to be sold,’ Christabel said sadly. ‘That’s unless you decide to rent it out for the present so that you can move here at a later date should you change your minds.’

  Kay look confused. ‘There’s no great hurry for us to decide, is there, Aunt Christabel?’

  ‘No, not really. If you want to sell it, then of course you will have to dispose of all the contents.’

  ‘If there is anything you want to take with you, Aunt Christabel, then feel free to do so,’ Kay told her, smiling.

  ‘No, I don’t think so. Mark is not moving any of his belongings into our new house and I don’t think I want to do so either.’

  ‘What are you doing with your place, Mark?’ Stuart asked. ‘Do you want me to handle the sale of it for you?’

  ‘No, that won’t be necessary. My eldest son is moving in and becoming a partner in the practice. Later on, in a year or so, my youngest son is planning to add a dental surgery to the practice.’

  ‘That sounds like an ideal arrangement,’ Stuart nodded.

  ‘There are all your father’s papers to be sorted out, Kay,’ Christabel reminded her. ‘You might like to take those back home with you and then you can do it at your leisure.’

  ‘I suppose. If you think it is necessary,’ Kay said. ‘After all this time, though, is there anything that has to be kept?’

  ‘That’s up to you, dear,’ Christabel told her. ‘It’s a very large package with a wax seal and has your name on the outside. I’m not too sure what is in it. I assume it contains Lewis’s birth certificate, marriage certificate, and so on. It may even contain documents relating to the deeds of this house. The package is in his desk, I’ll go and get it and you can have a look through it.’

  Christabel returned a few minutes later carrying a bulky brown manila envelope. Stuart moved Kay’s plate, cup and saucer out of the way so as to clear a space in front of her on the breakfast table.

  Kay took the thick brown envelope from Christabel and deciding not to wait, broke the seal, and then tipped the entire contents out on to the table. She handed the deeds of the house, which were clearly labelled and secured by a thick elastic band, over to Stuart.

  ‘I’ll leave you to check through those; they’ll make more sense to you than they will to me,’ Out of the remaining items she picked up a flimsy yellowing slip of paper and unfolded it and smoothed it out.

  ‘This is Dad’s birth certificate,’ she said, looking up and smiling across at Christabel.

  ‘Lewis Montgomery, 1890. Heaven’s, I didn’t realise that he was older than you, Aunt Christabel. That means he was only forty when he was killed; and poor Mum must have been even younger when she died.’

  She dropped the piece of paper on to the table and picked up another one. ‘Here’s their marriage certificate and it’s dated 1913. They must have married only a short time before the Great War broke out.’

  She folded it carefully and put it with his birth certificate, then picked up the remaining piece of paper and gave a little cry of surprise. ‘This is my birth certificate – February 1915.’ She studied it in silence for a moment, frowning. ‘Have you seen this, Aunt Christabel?’

  ‘No dear, of course I haven’t. The package was sealed, that’s why I didn’t open it.’

  ‘I know that, but have you looked at it before and seen the date, when it was issued, I mean?’

  ‘No, of course not.’ Christabel frowned. ‘Why ever should I?’

  Kay stared at her aunt for a long moment before she spoke. ‘The reason I’m asking, Aunt Christabel, is because this certificate has your name on it!’

  Christabel felt the colour draining from her face as she held out her hand for the slip of paper. ‘Let me see; it probably means that you are named after me?’ she said in a shaky voice.

  ‘No,’ Kay frowned as she stared at the slip of paper again. ‘No, Aunt Chrissy, it’s not that at all. What do you make of it?’ she asked as she handed it to Stuart.

  He studied it in silence then, without a word, passed it across the table to Christabel.

  Her hand was shaking so much that she could hardly take it from him. The words on it were a blur as she tried to read what was written there.

  Memories of that day long ago, when she’d been discharged from the private clinic and had left Lewis to deal with all the relevant paperwork, came flooding back.

  She’d insisted that he should be the one to sign everything and she’d never asked him for the certificate; there hadn’t seemed any point in doing so. She’d given up all rights to her baby, so there was no reason why she should check the child’s birth certificate – she was never going to need it. From now on it belonged to whoever adopted her baby, not to her.

  So who had adopted her baby? The sudden realisation that it must have been Lewis startled her. She looked across at Kay and it made her feel faint. All these years her little daughter had been within reach and she hadn’t known. How could Lewis have been so cruel as not to have told her?

  With a feeling akin to guilt she remembered Violet’s distress when she’d kept on about Kay not taking after her in any way but looking more like Lewis and the Montgomery family.

  Memories of the whispered rumours she’d overheard when her own mother had been talking to her friends about Violet’s baby surfaced in her mind; something about it being stillborn. At the time she’d not been interested because she tried to avoid all talk of babies, knowing that she had just given up her own for adoption.

  Had Lewis adopted her baby? Had Violet known all along that she was Kay’s real mother, or had she suspected that the baby was Lewis’s but by some other woman not her?

  There were so many questions seething in her mind; so many possible answers. She felt confused. She didn’t know what to say as she handed the slip of paper back to Kay.

  ‘Can I have a look at that, Kay?’ Mark asked.

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  Christabel watched with growing concern as Mark perused the certificate, frowning as he tried to reconcile the date on it. She was sure he was remembering that it was around the same time as when they had both been at Hilbury.

  Surely, even though they had known each other fairly well because they’d worked together, he wouldn’t remember that she had taken compassionate leave from Hilbury Hospital for several months around that date and, even if he did, why would he connect the two?

  Mark was a doctor, she reminded herself; he would be able to work out accurately enough to satisfy himself what the dates on the certificate implied and Christabel wondered what he would feel about it when he did.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  The tension around the breakfast table was palpable. Christabel could see from their faces that they were all bursting with curiosity, especially Kay. She took a deep breath, but when she tried to speak no sound came so she cleared her throat and, with a slightly trembling hand, reached out for her cup of tea.

  It was cold and she shuddered as she swallowed a mouthful. The silence remained unbroken, all eyes fixed expectantly on her, waiting to hear what she had to tell them. She felt uneasy and her mind went blank. She knew it had to be the truth but she wasn’t sure how to begin.

  She felt that she needed time to sort out her thoughts. Standing up, she held out a hand to little Jill who was amusing herself by making patterns on her plate with some crumbs she’d made out of the remains of her toast. ‘Shall we go out into the garden and feed those crumbs to the birds?’ she asked
.

  Excitedly, Jill clambered down from her chair and then reached for the plate.

  ‘Perhaps I’d better carry that,’ Christabel suggested.

  * * *

  She sat down on a seat at the bottom of the garden and watched as Jill scattered the bread-crumbs and then waited for the birds to swoop down for them. Each time they did so she clapped her hands excitedly and immediately the birds rose up into the air in fright and the whole procedure began all over again.

  By the time they went back into the kitchen again Kay had sorted through the contents of the envelope and everything was spread out on the table.

  Christabel noticed that there were a great many photographs of herself and Kay, which Lewis had taken when she’d arrived in Wallasey to help look after them but there wasn’t a single picture of Kay as a baby, or any taken of Kay and Violet together.

  Christabel wondered what had happened to those. She was sure there must have been some since there was several of Kay taken with Lewis. There were also school photographs and some taken of Kay with her grandparents as well as with Marlene.

  Christabel found herself mesmerised by the panorama of the past spread out there. She marvelled at how closely interwoven her life and Kay’s had always been even though they’d both been unaware of their close relationship.

  Aunt Christabel’s relationship with Jill was like history repeating itself, Kay mused as she refilled her coffee cup and watched her aunt sitting on the other side of the table showing Jill a better way of drawing ducks and swans on a pad of white paper. She remembered her own childhood, and the way her aunt had always wanted to teach her new things and also, as she grew older, to exercise control over everything she did.

  It was one of the reasons why she had spent so much time in London with Marlene. Aunt Lilian had been so much more tolerant than Aunt Chrissy.

  She looked at the conglomeration of pictures arrayed on the table and felt she couldn’t discard any of them. Her mind made up, she gathered them together in order to put them back into the manila envelope. As she opened it she peered inside to make sure nothing had been left there and then drew out what looked like a letter of some kind.

  Kay frowned as she straightened it out. It was an invoice from a private clinic in London. It was addressed to Mr Lewis Montgomery and it was dated February 1915 and was for a confinement and medical services for his wife Christabel Montgomery.

  She studied it with interest; the month and year were correct, but what she couldn’t understand was that the mother’s name was given as Christabel Montgomery. That didn’t make sense!

  She looked across the table at Christabel. ‘That birth certificate we were looking at a little while ago, Aunt Christabel, mybirth certificate . . . you still haven’t told us why it has your name on it. You must have some idea. Surely it ought to have both my mother’s name and my father’s name on it?’

  ‘It is all so long ago, Kay, you can’t expect me to remember details like that,’ Christabel said evasively.

  ‘Perhaps this will help you to remember,’ Kay said, holding out the invoice.

  As she took it from her, Christabel felt the colour suffusing her face and she felt trapped. She knew all eyes were on her and she could think of no way of concealing the truth any longer. Taking a deep breath she decided to make a clean breast of it all.

  ‘It’s obviously the invoice from the clinic where I gave birth to the baby I had in 1915. Lewis, your father, helped me to deal with the situation I found myself in at the time and he also made the necessary arrangements to have my baby adopted. I had no idea what was entailed because I left him to see to all that side of things and to pay the clinic, as well as sign all the legal documents. That was why I knew nothing about the birth certificate.’

  ‘Surely he would hand your baby’s birth certificate over to whoever adopted the baby?’ Stuart frowned. ‘So how is it that it is still here amongst his private papers?’

  ‘I’ve already told you, I don’t know,’ Christabel protested. ‘I suppose it wasn’t collected by the people who adopted her.’

  ‘Or it could mean that your brother adopted your child and substituted it for his own child who had just died,’ Stuart said, aghast. ‘If that’s the case, then it means that Kay must be that child – which means she’s your daughter.’

  Christabel sighed, a long, drawn-out release of tension. ‘Yes, it does, doesn’t it, Stuart?’ she murmured softly. ‘It means that Kay really is my daughter.’

  ‘You used to act as if I was. Does that mean you have suspected all along?’ Kay asked in a bewildered voice. ‘If it is true and you really are my mother, then who was my father?’

  Christabel bit down on her lower lip. She was finding it increasingly difficult to talk about. What did it matter after all this time? she thought despondently. Then, as she saw the bewildered look on Kay’s face, she knew she owed it to her to tell her the truth.

  ‘Your father’s name, Kay, was Philip Henderson. He was a naval officer; we had been sweethearts for several years and we were planning to be married. My father insisted that we must wait until I was twenty-one before he would allow us to do so. A month after Philip set sail, on what was to be his last trip before our wedding day, his ship sank and all on board drowned. Afterwards, when I discovered I was expecting his baby, I was devastated.’

  Kay stretched out her hand and took Christabel’s. ‘What did you do?’ she whispered.

  ‘War had been declared by this time and I managed to convince my family that I ought to do something to help and so I became a trainee nurse at Hilbury Hospital.’

  Nervously she glanced across at Mark. So far he hadn’t said a word but now he nodded as if corroborating her story.

  ‘By the time I was qualified I realised that I was pregnant. Abortion was out of the question, so I persuaded Lewis to help me and to agree that once I’d had the baby he would arrange for it to be adopted to save both me and our family from disgrace.

  ‘His own wife was pregnant at the same time, so probably because he understood the plight I was in, he agreed to book me into a private clinic as Mrs Montgomery for the birth and then afterwards, unknown to them, arrange for the baby to be adopted.

  ‘Before the baby was born I took several months off from Hilbury and lived in a squalid little room in Wilcock Court off Scotland Road. It was drab and I had only the money Lewis could spare me to live on. Immediately after I’d had my baby, I went back to Hilbury Hospital and carried on as if nothing had happened.’

  ‘And my father never discussed with you any of the details about what happened – not even after my mother died, even though, obviously, he must have known the truth about what happened to your baby?’ Kay asked.

  ‘Surely Kay’s mother must have known,’ Stuart said in a puzzled voice, looking enquiringly at Christabel.

  Christabel shook her head. ‘Possibly not! You see, Violet’s baby was born within hours of mine, only her baby must have been stillborn. She was desperately ill afterwards and Lewis must have thought that the kindest thing to do was to substitute my baby for hers and save her any heartache over losing her baby.’

  ‘Would it have been possible without telling her?’ Stuart persisted. ‘Surely he would have had to persuade the doctor to swap the babies over and that would be illegal, wouldn’t it, Mark?’

  ‘Lewis probably didn’t ask anyone, merely acted on his own initiative, which meant that he was the only person who knew the truth about what had happened,’ Christabel said thoughtfully.

  ‘I see. So where does this leave everything now?’ Stuart asked worriedly.

  ‘I don’t suppose it really makes any difference, does it?’ Mark questioned. ‘It was highly irregular, but then so were a lot of things in wartime. As I see it now, it’s a family matter, and even though Christabel has told us everything she can, we don’t know for certain what happened, now do we?’

  Kay was in shock but she shook herself and, partly to disguise the torrent of emotions raging insi
de her, she quipped, ‘Well, if I am Aunt Christabel’s daughter, then it will make you my stepfather when you two get married,’ Kay pointed out. ‘You won’t be expecting me to call you “Daddy”, will you?’

  Mark smiled and shook his head but Christabel could see he was still as flabbergasted as Kay by what had gone on. She wished she’d looked through the papers before handing them to Kay so that she could have at least had the opportunity to explain to Mark about everything that had happened in her past instead of it all being disclosed so blatantly.

  Stuart seemed to be worried about the legal implications but surely, after all this time, there was nothing to worry about. Lewis hadn’t been trying to break the law only to do what he thought was best for all concerned. It had meant that Violet had been appeased over the loss of her baby and at the same time Christabel’s child remained in the Montgomery family.

  It did answer a great many other questions, of course, Christabel reflected. It accounted for the very strong resemblance between her and Kay. Looking back, she wondered how much Violet had known about what had happened. Had Lewis ever told her that the baby was his sister’s child, and was this why she and Violet had never really got on with each other? Or had there been some other reason why Violet had committed suicide? Was Violet so desperately unhappy because she really believed that Kay was Lewis’s daughter by another woman?

  There were so many questions to which none of them would ever know the answer that Christabel felt bewildered. She wished the matter had never arisen because it was causing such an unpleasant atmosphere. She had looked forward to Kay and her family staying on for a few days, but now she sensed that all Kay wanted to do was to go home.

  When a phone call came from Marlene who wanted to talk to Kay and apologise for not letting her know before she made the journey to Wallasey, Christabel felt a sense of relief.

  She gathered from what she could hear of their conversation that Kay intended to go home and then they would return to Liverpool for Lilian’s funeral.