A Good Liar

by Ruth Sutton

  ‘Keep going, love,’ said Anne. ‘Photos are always helpful, if we can sort out who everybody is.’

  John looked a little further and picked out another photo. It was of a group, maybe thirty or so, men at the back and women nearer the front, with another man standing alone to one side. Some children sat at the very front, on the ground, legs crossed. Looked as if they were on a beach, or a ship with the sea behind them. John turned the photo over. ‘Choir trip to Blackpool, June 1914’, he read, after squinting at the tiny writing for a moment. ‘There are lists of names too, but really faded. Must’ve been in pencil. Can’t read most of them. 1914. Three years before I was born.’

  Anne peered at the photograph and then turned it over to look at the names. ‘Edna was in the choir. I wonder … Let me see.’

  ‘It’s no good,’ she said, ‘Can’t see the faces, never mind the names, even with my glasses on. It’s a terrible thing getting old. You have another look, John. No, better still, I think there’s a magnifying glass in the bureau drawer in the back room. Can you fetch it for us?’

  Anne still had tight hold of the photo when he returned a minute later with the magnifying glass in his hand.

  ‘Can I see?’ he said.

  ‘Of course, pet. Here am I, hogging the thing. You have a look. See if you can see Enid. Maybe she wasn’t there, but why should she have given me the photo if she wasn’t on it?’

  It wasn’t the people John noticed first, but the name on the lifebelt hanging on the wall behind the group.

  ‘Who’s Lady Moyra?’ he said to Anne.

  ‘The Lady Moyra,’ said Anne. ‘Well, well. It’s the name of the ship. Let me look. Give me the glass a minute … Of course.’ She looked up at John. ‘They were going to Blackpool on the Lady Moyra. It was a paddle steamer, took folk across Morecambe Bay. Barrow people loved that trip, specially in the summer. It all stopped when the war started. I think they took the ship for minesweeping. So the choir went to Blackpool.’

  She looked again. ‘There she is, ‘ she cried out, ‘there’s your mam, Enid. On the right there, can you see? Here.’

  She handed the photo and the glass back to John who turned towards the window for more light.

  ‘On the right, near the front,’ said Anne, leaning over. ‘She’s wearing a hat and a shortish jacket. Can you see?’

  John could see. The woman who called herself his mother, before she had ever seen him, before he’d been born to someone else, before she and Arthur grew so desperate that they took someone else’s baby as their own.

  ‘She looks sad,’ he said. ‘Even on the trip, she looks sad.’

  ‘She was sad a lot of the time, before you came. Even afterwards, too. Nothing was ever quite right. It’s a curse, wanting things to be perfect. Poor Arthur tried so hard to make her happy, but he didn’t really know what to do. I always thought he agreed about adopting you just to please her, and then it was him who loved you so, more than he ever expected he told me. Quite shocked him, I think. Never thought of himself as the fatherly type, but he loved you, John, he really did.’

  ‘Do you have any more photos of him, Aunty Anne? I found one of their wedding in the house, but it was awful. They both looked scared stiff.’

  ‘We’ll have a look in a minute, but let’s see what else we can find in this one first. Must have been a weekend, or a school holiday. Look how many children there are. And some older ones, too, although they could’ve been in the choir themselves. Look at this girl, just off to the side. On the other side, away from Enid. Lovely, isn’t she? About your age maybe, or younger. Hard to tell.’

  John looked, then took the glass and looked again. He saw a tall young woman, with full dark hair. No hat, and the hair blew around her face. She was wearing a white blouse, tucked into a dark skirt. Her eyes were half closed against the sun. He handed the photo back to Anne.

  ‘So we know Edna was there,’ she said, ‘and twenty or so other people. Let’s assume this was the whole choir, plus some children. I think the man at the front must have been the organizer, maybe the choirmaster. Something about the way he’s standing. Looks as if he’s in charge. I wonder who he was.’ She turned the photo over and peered at the faded markings. ‘There’s a name in the bottom left corner on this side, in the same place where the man is standing. Must be him. Mr Cram, no, Mr Crane.’

  Anne picked up her little notebook.

  ‘Let me write some of this down before I lose track,’ she said. ‘Choir trip to Blackpool, 1914. The Lady Moyra. Mr Crane. I’ll put choirmaster, question mark. Can’t be sure of anything yet. But it’s a start. If we’re right, Mr Crane was the choirmaster at St Luke’s in 1914. That’s three years before you were born, and we think that someone in your real mam’s family knew Enid through the choir. Three years. Things could have changed, of course.’ She thought for a moment and scribbled some numbers on the page of her notebook.

  ‘Have another look at Mr Crane,’ she said to John. ‘How old d’you think he looks?’

  ‘Hard to tell,’ said John, moving the magnifying glass forward and back to get the right focus. ‘Forty maybe? I can never tell ages by looking at people.’

  ‘Well if he was forty in 1914, that would make him too old for the war, and if he lived through that he would be sixty-three now, or thereabouts. Could be still around. I bet he could tell you a few things about the people in that photo.’

  ‘But if I’m wrong, and he was older, then –’

  ‘No good speculating,’ said Anne firmly. ‘It’s just a clue so far, nothing more. At least we know it was St Luke’s and the church will still be there. Churches have records don’t they? Do you know where it is? Doesn’t matter, I do, so we know you could go there if you wanted to.’

  John turned the photo over again and looked at the names written so faintly on the back. There weren’t as many as the people in the picture, so it was only some of the names. They didn’t seem to correspond to the placing of the people in the picture either, so he couldn’t connect a face with a name. He put the photo down and leaned back on the chair. His aunt leaned over and put her hand on his shoulder.

  ‘Here am I, prattling on,’ she said. ‘It must be so strange for you, not knowing.’

  ‘It is,’ he said, leaning away from her touch. ‘Can’t describe it really. Too much to take in. Can I keep this, Aunty Anne?’

  ‘Of course you can, pet. Means far more to you than to me.’

  ‘I didn’t find anything like this in the house. Maybe Enid just got rid of anything from those days. They cut themselves off, just to stop people asking questions about me. And I was a disappointment, I know that now.’

  Anne leaned forward towards him again, looking into his face.

  ‘You were never a disappointment, our John. Arthur told me that having you was the most wonderful thing in his life, truly. They were just, you know, closed up about emotional things. Never heard them say things to each other about how they felt. It was all taken for granted. When you got that job at the brewery, Enid was proud as punch, they both were.’

  ‘But they didn’t say that to me,’ said John, looking at his aunt now, tears in his eyes. ‘We never talked, not like you and I are doing now, not like I can talk to Hannah and Fred, and I’ve only known them a few weeks.’

  ‘I think that’s a difference in you, since we saw you last,’ said Anne. ‘George and I have both noticed it. Since you moved away you seem happier, somehow, despite all that’s happened.’

  ‘Happier? That’s not it. I just feel more myself, even though things have been hard. Maybe –’

  ‘Enough “maybe’s”,’ said his aunt. ‘I’ll make us a drink while you keep looking through that box. Who knows what else there is? You carry on, I won’t be long.’

  John put the choir photo to one side, and took more items out of the box. More snaps of Enid and Arthur, looking quite relaxed. He put a couple to one side. Some studio photos of young men in uniform, some with names on the back, but nobody he recog
nized. There was a programme from a concert at Barrow town hall, a booklet of Christmas carols, a newspaper clipping about an airship accident in 1911. Then there was something else about the choir, from 1916 this time. A concert programme. On the back were printed the names of all the choir members. He looked down the list of sopranos, then the altos. There she was: Mrs E. Pharaoh.

  He scoured the other women’s names: Caddy, Booth, Steele, Hardman, Gregson, Moodie, nobody called Thompson. He might have to track all these other people down, just to see what they knew, to find whoever wrote that letter. Where to start?

  When Anne returned, John showed her the programme. ‘You know, I remember that concert,’ she said, smiling at the memory. ‘George came too, and we enjoyed it. There was a tenor, what was he called?’ She looked again at the programme. ‘That’s him. Alexander Benson. He was such a good-looking fellow, George teased me about it for weeks. Isn’t it funny what you remember? Feelings more than facts.’

  The programme was placed carefully with the photo for future use, and they looked together at each of the other items, but found nothing else of interest. When the box was finally empty, John felt empty, too. He’d hoped for so much more: something specific, a letter maybe, with names and dates that they could fit into a jigsaw and make sense of.

  ‘Well, that’s been useful, don’t you think?’ said Anne cheerfully. Maybe she expected less, John thought to himself. He tried to feel more positive.

  ‘So what’s next?’ said Anne.

  ‘Have to go to Barrow I think, don’t you? I need to check out Furness Road, and try to find Mr Crane, the choirmaster.’

  ‘Try the church, St Luke’s. They keep good records usually, and the vicar may know something himself.’

  ‘But it was twenty years ago. We know Enid was in the choir, but who was the woman who wrote that letter?’

  Anne smiled encouragement at her nephew. ‘You’ll just have to keep going, John, follow up anything we’ve got so far. Things’ll make more sense when we know more. It’ll take a while.’

  When George came in from work that evening, Anne and John were able to report some progress. They showed him the items about the choir. George looked at the photo long and hard. ‘Just think,’ he said. ‘This might be it. One of your real mam’s relatives might be in this picture. Family likeness. Let me look again, with the glass.’

  After a few minutes he put it down. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I can see a chin here, or a mouth there, that could be related to you John, but it’s all so …’ He shrugged. ‘Sometimes it’s the voice that shows the likeness, or the way someone walks. Or the way they think. All we’ve got is this picture.’

  George looked at his nephew, then reached across and patted his arm.

  ‘This must be hard for you, lad. You alright with it?’

  ‘I’m alright Uncle George, honest. I’ve thought about it for a while. Before I got ill, before I left Ulverston actually, I was so angry with Enid and my real mam that I just wanted to disappear. But you can’t be no one. We all come from somewhere, don’t we? Lying in the hospital, I had nothing else to think about. I just wanted to find out, you know, who I am. Once you start on that, you can’t stop halfway. I have to keep going while I have the chance.’

  ‘So where next?’

  ‘Well, Barrow sounds the most promising, so I’ll go there. Maybe Carnforth after that, but I’m not sure that’ll give me anything. Post Office told me there was nowhere in Carnforth called The Oaks. Most likely the place has changed, things are a bit different now. So I’ll go to Barrow. Anne reckons I should go on Sunday and talk to the vicar at St Luke’s. More likely he’ll know about who was who twenty years ago. Things move more slowly in the church you reckon, don’t you Anne?’

  ‘That’s what I’d do, John. And it’s easy, isn’t it? Just a step from the station to St Luke’s. If you go mid-morning on Sunday you’ll find someone there.’

  They sat quietly for a few minutes, the three of them, each thinking their own thoughts about the past, and family, and attachment, and loss.

  Anne broke the silence.

  ‘What if you do find her, John love. What then?’

  John looked at her. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I’ll be happy, I know that.’

  ‘But what if she … what if she’s not happy. Have you thought about that?’

  ‘But I’m her son,’ he said. ‘Of course she’ll be glad to see me. Won’t she?’ John looked across at George, appealing to him.

  ‘Well, I’d hope so of course,’ said George. ‘I’d be happy, I know that.’ They smiled at each other.

  ‘But, it’s not that easy,’ Anne insisted. ‘Poor lass, she must’ve been in a terrible state, when she … you know. But that was twenty years ago and things are different now. Still, she might be married, might have kept this secret all this time and all of a sudden, there you are.’

  ‘But it’s 1937, Aunty Anne,’ said John. ‘You told me yourself that the war changed everything. People don’t have secrets like they used to in Victorian times.’

  ‘Well, maybe,’ Anne said, regretting she’d raised doubts in his mind. ‘But if you want to find her, love, that’s what you must do.’

  ‘What if it was you, Aunty Anne? What would you do if I turned up saying I was your son that you gave away when I was a baby?’

  ‘Yes, Anne,’ George chimed in. ‘What would you do?’

  The answer Anne gave them was not the truth, but it was what John badly wanted to hear.

  Chapter 22

  Rain blew in from the Irish Sea, whipped across the fractured surface of the dock and swirled into the town. The side door of St Luke’s church on Roose Road faced away from the wind and the dozen or so people who emerged from it around eleven-thirty that Sunday morning waited in the doorway to turn up their collars and pull down their hats before stepping out into the misery of the morning. John was standing in the shelter of a doorway across the street, watching. He’d been waiting there a while, not wanting to interrupt whatever was going on inside. He didn’t belong there.

  A few more minutes passed, and a lone figure appeared at the door. A man, young and slight, with a loose grey coat over the long black robe that marked him out as the vicar. He put on a black hat and turned around to lock the door behind him. John took his chance and crossed the street. Not wanting to stand too close, he waited in the middle of the pavement, where the rain caught him full in the face. The young man turned and faced him, startled for a moment. John struggled to find words.

  ‘Can I help you?’ said the vicar. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ said John. ‘I’m fine. I just … I want a word. Can we talk a minute?’

  The vicar turned back to the church door and unlocked it.

  ‘Come in, do. Far too wet to stand out there.’

  Inside the church it was quite dark and surprisingly warm.

  ‘Don’t want to turn all the lights back on. We’ll go in the vestry. Just follow me. Can you see?’

  ‘Yes, thanks,’ said John, following the man down the side aisle towards the far end of the church. The man found a door and opened it. ‘In here,’ he said, reaching for a light switch that snapped on, flooding them both with harsh white light. John blinked.

  ‘Sorry about the mess. We had to find the crib, needs a good clean before Christmas, and it was right at the back of the cupboard. Haven’t had the chance to put everything away. There’s a chair behind you, just move that stuff onto the floor.’

  John placed a pile of sheet music on the floor and pulled the small chair towards him. The vicar sat on the larger chair by the cluttered desk and gave John his best pastoral expression.

  ‘That’s better.’ The vicar’s voice and face had both softened. ‘Now, what can I do for you? Are you sure you’re all right? You look very pale. Nothing to offer I’m afraid. Communion wine not quite apropos.’ He smiled, friendly but concerned. John liked his anxious face.

  ‘No, really,’ said John. ‘I’m
fine, really. Been ill, that’s all, getting better now. But, I –’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I’m not sure you can help. You look too young – no, I don’t mean – it’s just that I’m looking for someone, from a long time ago, twenty years ago.’

  ‘A bit before my time, true,’ said the vicar. ‘I’m Peter Blount, by the way, vicar of St Luke’s. Welcome.’

  ‘And I’m John Pharaoh,’ said John, holding out his hand. The two men shook hands and laughed. ‘Seems to be coming out backwards somehow,’ said John. ‘Can I start again?’

  ‘Start wherever you like,’ said Peter.

  John took a breath, to collect himself and to remember how best to tell his story.

  ‘Well,’ he began, ‘Twenty years ago, before I was born, the lady who adopted me came to this church. The sister of my real mam’s mam was in the choir, at least we think she was, but we don’t know her name.’

  Peter Blount looked blankly at him. He didn’t seem to have heard. ‘Twenty years ago I was still at school,’ he said, holding his hand four feet off the ground, ready to pat his younger self on the head. ‘I can tell you who the vicar was here then, twenty years ago you said?’ He stood and turned to a row of books on a shelf, peering at them and then pulling one towards him. ‘Hang on a minute.’ He opened the book with care and turned pages, glancing at each one. ‘Here it is, 1910 to 1919, Reverend Arthur Hutchinson. Oh dear.’

  ‘What is it?’ said John.

  ‘He died, in the ’flu outbreak after the war. December 1919. What a shame. It was a dreadful time. I lost an aunt …’ The vicar shut the book and put it back on the shelf. So I can’t help you there. But it was the choir, you said, right?’

  ‘Yes. Look –’ John reached into the inside pocket of his wet coat and took out a brown envelope. While the vicar watched he opened the envelope, took out the contents and laid them gingerly on the corner of the desk. With the tips of his fingers he prised the damp papers apart until he found what he was looking for.