by Nicola Ford
Though she’d promised not to bother the wife, she hadn’t said anything about not talking to the son. Which was why she found herself sitting in the lounge of Peter’s first floor Marlborough flat. From the building’s Georgian façade, she’d expected an interior of tastefully decorated eighteenth-century elegance. But the reality was light, bright and distinctly post-modern. Looking around the room, Clare found herself wondering if he ever read. There wasn’t a book in sight. Maybe he wasn’t the reading sort. It struck her that he was more likely to download his e-books to a reader than have a secret library hidden away somewhere.
Judging from the unblemished cream carpets, he had no children or pets. Function and style were all. Did he have a wife? David hadn’t mentioned one.
Peter relaxed into the black leather sofa opposite the chair in which she was sitting. ‘Sure you won’t?’ She shook her head and he filled his own glass from the bottle of Sancerre and replaced it on the coffee table that lay between them. ‘So you want to know about the excavations.’
‘I’m just trying to get a feel for the background to the dig – the set-up.’ She’d decided on the drive over to Marlborough that she wouldn’t share her suspicions about his father’s involvement in the theft of the sun disc with Peter. After all, that was exactly what they were – suspicions. And she didn’t want to get off on the wrong foot.
‘I’m afraid my knowledge is probably a bit limited for what you’re after. I was only a teenager at the time of the dig so I didn’t know much about the technical side of things. And to be honest, fiddling around with bits of old pot was never really my thing. I’ve always been more interested in the future than the past.’
‘You didn’t take part in the excavations?’
‘No. Mother tried to press-gang me into helping out when they were short-handed. But I managed to avoid it. I think at one time she harboured hopes I’d follow in Uncle Gerald’s footsteps.’ He smiled. ‘It didn’t take her long to realise my interests lay elsewhere.’
‘But your mother was involved in the excavations.’
He nodded. ‘She loved it – spent all her free time helping Gerald. When he wasn’t digging, she helped him with his preparation and his publications. She did quite a lot of his artefact drawings. That’s where I get my creative gene from.’ Clare looked at him quizzically. ‘I’m an architect.’
He stood up and plucked a black-and-white photograph in a silver frame from the wall unit behind Clare’s chair. ‘Gerald was a good man. Good company, too. He had a wicked sense of humour. Right up until the last few months. He went downhill a bit then – especially after the fire.’ He handed the photograph to Clare. ‘That was taken a few years before the Hungerbourne dig.’
The photograph showed a gangly young Peter sitting cross-legged beside Gerald at the centre of a clearing in a small stand of hazel trees. A beaming Gerald was wearing a Davy Crockett hat several sizes too small for him while Peter was sporting a pair of fringed buckskin trousers and jacket, and sawing industriously at a small piece of wood with a knife. ‘Mother took that on my fourteenth birthday. People who never met Gerald would have you believe he was a curmudgeonly old so-and-so. But they’re wrong. He’d have done anything to make Mother and me happy. He bought me that whole outfit: the bowie knife, the buckskin jacket, the lot.’ Peter’s blue eyes lit up at the memory. ‘I don’t imagine you’re old enough to remember King of the Wild Frontier or The Alamo?’
She shook her head. ‘I was more of a Bagpuss girl.’
Smiling up at him, she handed back the photograph and he put it back in its appointed position. Relaxing here, she could see he’d inherited the Hart family charm.
‘Your father was in the photo of the dig team. He worked on the excavation, too, didn’t he?’
Peter’s face froze.
Clare pressed on. ‘Did he help with the recording side of things?’
‘As I said, I didn’t get involved with the dig.’
‘But your father did.’
‘If you want to know about my father, I suggest you find someone who gives a damn.’
She looked at the man in front of her. Despite his harsh words, his face seemed to betray the hurt of a young boy rather than hatred. As if aware of her ability to read his emotions, he looked down, unwilling or unable to reveal any more.
When she spoke, her reply was gentle. ‘And that doesn’t include you?’
His expression changed. ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have taken it out on you. But I really don’t see why I should have any reason to care about a man who abandoned his wife and child without a second thought.’
‘You haven’t had much contact with him since.’
‘In forty years I haven’t had so much as a birthday card. He never gave Mother a penny. Not a penny. If it hadn’t been for Gerald, we would have been destitute. It’s not everyone who would look after another man’s wife and child without a murmur.’
It seemed Jim had been cut from the same mould as her own father. ‘They’re overrated, you know – fathers.’
‘You sound like you’re speaking from experience.’
‘I have the advantage of not remembering mine. If he didn’t want anything to do with us, I figured I was better off without him. Mum was enough for me.’
‘How old were you when he left?’
‘Just a baby.’
There was a long pause before Peter said, ‘You know, sometimes I wish Father had left when I was a baby.’
‘You think you would have missed him less.’
‘Missed him! Jesus, I didn’t miss him. I hated him – for what he did to our family.’
‘You mean his philandering?’
‘Sounds rather charming and old-fashioned when you put it like that. My father wasn’t a philanderer, he was a wrecker – a wrecker of lives.’ He replenished his glass. ‘Do you have any idea what it’s like to have a father whom you know everyone despises? Everyone from the village postman to the Lord Lieutenant knew my father was a shit. But no one was allowed to mention it. We couldn’t have the family publicly embarrassed. The seventies weren’t all about peace and love in the Hart household.’
‘Didn’t Gerald do anything about him?’
‘He tried. He bailed him out more times than I can remember. But he didn’t know about the worst of it.’
Clare looked at him quizzically.
Peter took a sip of his wine. ‘He’d always been a drinker. Gerald knew that. But what he didn’t know was that he’d started to threaten Mother.’
‘Physically?’
Peter nodded. ‘He was a bully and a coward.’
‘Did you ever try to do anything about it?’
‘I was just a kid. But I did screw up the courage to stand up to him once.’ He fell silent.
‘What happened?’
‘Let’s just say it wasn’t only me that paid for it.’
She didn’t want to push him any further. ‘Do you ever wonder where he is now?’
‘Truthfully, no.’ He held her gaze. ‘We’ve been better off without him.’ He broke into an unexpected smile. ‘You sound more interested in finding out where he is than I am.’
Clare chose her words with care. ‘David and I are trying to sort out some confusion with the excavation records. Professor Bockford said your father had worked on them.’
‘Professor Bockford?’
‘Margaret Bockford. You would have known her as Peggy Grafton.’
‘I remember Peggy. Ed Jevons had a bit of a thing for her.’ A nostalgic smile spread across his face. ‘She worked on the dig with Mother and Gerald. She was really keen. But Gerald more or less dragooned Father into working up there. Although I’m not sure exactly what he did. He was never one for manual labour, and I can’t imagine Uncle trusting him with the record-keeping side of things.’
Clare hesitated. ‘I don’t quite know how to ask this.’
‘Just ask.’ When he smiled, he looked uncannily like the tall, handsome man in the Brew Crew photogr
aph.
‘Do you have any idea how we could get in touch with your father?’
‘I haven’t seen or heard from him in forty years. And I’m more than happy with that arrangement.’ He paused for a moment. ‘This really matters to you, doesn’t it?’
Clare nodded. He got up and, without a word of explanation, left the room. She made her way over to the window. On the pavements below, shoppers bustled their way along the busy high street. For all she knew, Jim might be down there now. She probably wouldn’t recognise him if he was. But if he had been responsible for the disappearance of the sun disc, he was likely to be a very long way from Wiltshire.
Peter returned, carrying a battered lever arch file which he placed on the coffee table. ‘This might be of interest.’
She joined him on the sofa. He opened the file, revealing a collection of old bank statements. ‘As well as leaving me the manor, Uncle named me as executor of his will. He made a number of minor bequests to charities and his favourite causes, but there was one rather more unusual stipulation. My inheritance of the manor and the residue of his estate was conditional on me continuing to make regular payments to a bank account. Uncle had set aside separate funds for the purpose.’
He pointed to a line on the uppermost of the fading bank statements that lay in front of them. Under the column headed ‘Payment type and details’ was printed: Standing Order J. Clifford.
Clare said, ‘Joyce Clifford.’
‘I see you’re familiar with Mrs Clifford.’
‘I came across her photograph in the excavation archives.’ Peter looked straight at her. She tried to look him in the eye, but found she couldn’t. She shifted uncomfortably in her seat. ‘And Margaret Bockford mentioned her.’
‘I imagine she also mentioned that Mrs Clifford was the cause of my father’s exit from our lives. There’s no reason for you to be embarrassed. It’s my father who should be ashamed of himself.’
‘She did mention it.’
Peter smiled, and Clare felt the tension between them dissipate.
‘When the solicitor told me about the condition that Uncle had stipulated, I wanted to find out how long he’d been making the payments for. As David discovered when he sifted through Uncle’s study, he was something of a fanatical record keeper. This file and a shelf full of others like it contain his bank statements going right back to the 1950s.’
‘When did the payments start?’
‘The first one I can find is September 1973.’
‘He’s been making payments to Joyce Clifford all that time.’
Peter nodded. ‘Regular as clockwork.’
‘That means the first one was made straight after the dig ended.’
‘The only explanation that I can come up with that makes any sense is that Joyce was pregnant. Gerald would have wanted to make sure any child was provided for.’
‘But why pay the money to Joyce?’
‘He’d never have trusted my father with the money.’
‘If you have to continue to make the payments, do you have any idea where they’re being made to? If we’re going to set the record straight and publish your uncle’s work, we need to find your father.’ And, though she wasn’t going to say as much to Peter, finding Jim Hart was her best hope of tracking down the missing disc.
‘You’re welcome to all of the information I have, on two conditions.’
‘Which are?’
‘First, I don’t want to be told anything about my father or his other family.’
‘If you’re sure that’s what you want.’
‘Quite sure.’
‘And …’
‘And you’ll stay for dinner.’
Clare thought for a second of the chilled vegetable moussaka for one and the salad in a plastic bag sitting in the fridge of her flat in Salisbury.
‘It’s a deal.’
The drive up to North Yorkshire had been a long one, but a good night’s sleep in a comfortable hotel in Malton and the journey through the purple and green mosaic of the North York Moors had gone a long way to reinvigorating Clare’s spirits.
She parked near the marina in Whitby and set off on foot towards the harbour. The sky was overcast and the herring gulls and kittiwakes wheeling above her struggled to hold their course in the gusting wind. Crossing the bridge that connected the two halves of the town, she could taste the salt air tang on her lips. She still had no clear plan of action. But, on her approach from the car, she’d seen the great Gothic bulk of Whitby Abbey anchored to the cliffs above the spot where she now stood. Turning into Church Street, she began the climb uphill.
The building frontages on either side comprised a mixture of tearooms, guest houses and purveyors of seaside trinkets. A smattering of more upmarket shops was dotted among them. It was outside of one of these that she stopped to admire a display of antique jewellery. In the centre of the window was a large Victorian cameo brooch depicting the silhouetted head of a young woman carved from Whitby jet. The Victorians had a passion for jet, a passion matched by their desire to publicly mark the remembrance of their loved ones long after their death. It was a desire fuelled by the example set by their monarch. Strange that one woman’s devastation at the loss of her husband should result in a mini industrial boom in a small Yorkshire town.
Until a few months ago, Clare would have thought Queen Victoria’s reaction to Albert’s demise self-indulgent. But in the weeks immediately after Stephen’s death she’d tried to shut herself up and avoid the world. Her mother, on the other hand, had other ideas. She was an adherent of the bootstraps philosophy on life. And it had been her chivvying that had finally resulted in Clare deciding to return to the University of Salisbury to try to find some focus in her life. The brooch wasn’t the sort of thing Clare would wear herself, but her mother would love it.
Her purchase pouched safely in a small package in her coat pocket, she resumed her climb, making her way up the steep steps signposted to the abbey. To her surprise, when she reached the top she found immediately in front of her not the Abbey but a low-slung, stout little church, with a sturdy tower and crenulations that seemed more fitted to a test of endurance than fulfilling heavenly aspirations. She turned and surveyed the full extent of her exertions and immediately regretted the impulse. Looking down the steps she’d just climbed made her feel a bit dizzy.
Turning back towards the church, she caught sight of a wooden bench on the seaward side of the building. Pulling her overcoat tight around her, she tucked herself onto one end of the bench. She watched, absorbed, as the little fishing boats in the harbour were buffeted by the increasing swell and enjoyed the sensation of feeling unencumbered by the need to behave as others might expect. She could choose to do exactly as she wished. So absorbed was she in her new-found freedom that she failed to notice the tank-grey clouds darkening overhead until she felt large cold spots of rain against her face. Her light overcoat was no match for the vigour of the elements and it was a long walk back to the car, so she decided to seek shelter in the church.
By the time she reached the little porch on the south side of the building, her hair was drenched. She removed her coat, gave it a good shake and hung it over her arm. A semblance of decorum restored, she pushed open the heavy wooden door and let out a gasp.
The interior of the church was crammed with a mishmash of architectural forms and features entirely at odds with its plain exterior. The rounded chancel arch leading to the sturdy Norman tower she’d seen outside was only just visible. It was masked by a wooden gallery, in the centre of which was a pulpit. The gallery, supported on a confection of barley twist legs, ran right across the middle of the arch and around all four sides of the building. Between the pillars, the body of the church was crammed with row after row of high box-pews. But most remarkable of all was a series of huge metal pillars supporting what looked like ship’s girders, forming a roof structure more at home on an ocean-going vessel than in a house of God. The windows set into the sides and roof of the nave pic
ked up the nautical theme. Everything here reeked of the sea.
She dropped a couple of pound coins into the donations box by the door. The leaflet she took in recompense told her that a thousand years ago this place had been built by the monks of the abbey for the labourers that worked for them. But it was obvious to Clare that it had been the descendants of those labourers, shipwrights and fisherman, who’d made it their own. Here they’d found common cause and consolation. Every nook and cranny was stuffed with memorials and plaques to sailors and their families. Unlike the great abbey that had given birth to it, and whose jagged outline still dominated the clifftop skyline, the church had tenaciously clung to the spot where it had been planted.
Clare made her way up the nave. A sign on one of the pews read For Strangers Only. She sat down on the comfortable cushioned seat. This wasn’t her place. She wasn’t sure where was any more. She’d never understood how people found comfort in institutionalised religion. The whole concept was alien to her. After Stephen’s death, she’d politely accepted the vicar’s consoling words, grateful for his concern. If she was being honest she’d only agreed to a church funeral to make her mother and Stephen’s parents feel better. The whole thing had left her cold. But this place was different. It was comforting in a practical way, right down to the wood-burning stove that stood slap-bang in the middle of it.
‘Archaeology gets in your blood. Once it’s running through your veins, you can’t escape.’ That was what Gerald had told Margaret Bockford.
Margaret had made no attempt to hide the fact that she felt personally betrayed by Gerald. But Clare knew that sometimes you had to make a choice between your career and the people you loved. Which was why she was certain that Gerald must have had a powerful reason for burying himself and the archive in the manor for the best part of half a century.