by Rachel Ennis
‘Mor, if she refuses to go out, she can’t complain about being lonely.’
‘That don’t stop her.’ Morwenna’s hand shook as she reached to take the mug of tea. ‘Mavis told me about you helping to clean up the blood and all. That was some kind.’
‘It’s what friends do.’ Jess sat beside her on the sofa.
Morwenna swallowed a gulp of tea and took a deep breath. ‘I want to ask you something. It’s been on my mind ever since the night of the carol concert when that dear baby was born. Truth is I’ve thought about it off and on for years. Only I didn’t know where to start. And with Mother always there I couldn’t even look. But after she went in hospital and I had the place to myself, I went searching.’
‘Mor,’ Jess said gently, ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’
‘Didn’t I say?’
Jess shook her head.
‘Oh. Well, see, what it is –’ She took a deep breath. ‘I want you to find my father.’ The words tumbled out in a rush.
Managing to hide her surprise, Jess nodded. ‘OK. What do you know about him?’
‘Nothing. All I got is this.’ She thrust the folded paper at Jess who took it. ‘Mother had it put away in a chocolate box under some scarves at the back of her wardrobe. There was her birth certificate and mine, and a large brown envelope. I could feel more papers inside. But it was sealed so I didn’t dare open it. Even if I re-stuck it she’d know and there’d be hell to pay.’
Jess unfolded the certificate. ‘Your father’s name was Steven Ludlow, and he was a merchant seaman.’
‘I asked Mother about him years ago but she went mad. She said he’d never had been part of our lives, and we didn’t need him. She went at me something awful for stirring up bad memories. I tried asking Granny and Grampy. But they didn’t know anything because they never met him. They said if Mother wouldn’t tell me it was best to leave things be. He was long gone before I was born.’ She wiped her nose again. ‘I don’t want to upset anyone, Jess. But I got a right to know who I am.’
‘Of course you do.’
‘I know you do this for a job so how to I pay?’
‘I’ll give you an invoice when I’ve finished.’ Jess held up the birth certificate. ‘This gives me a starting point. Most sites are free to search but I have to pay for photocopies of original documents. They go into a folder for you to keep and the information on them will be entered onto a family tree.’
She went to the cupboard and took out the rolled paper. Sitting beside Morwenna she carefully opened it.
‘This is mine, though it’s only my mother’s side. I showed it at my talk to the Women’s Guild.’
‘Dear life, look at that! I wanted to come but Mother don’t like me out two days in a row. And I’m not giving up choir. I don’t care what she say.’
‘I should hope not. Your voice is a gift, Mor. You never know, we might find another singer among your ancestors.’
‘I’d dearly love that.’
‘Tracing your mother’s side should be easy as your grandparents were local. Your father’s family might take a bit longer.’
‘I don’t mind.’
‘If we can find out quickly where he’s from it will save time and money. Where was your mother working when she met him?’
‘On the make-up counter at White’s the chemist in town.’
‘Perhaps you could ask one of their older assistants if she remembers the name of anyone who worked with your mother?’
As Morwenna nodded, her forehead puckered. ‘Could you do it? I’m at work all day and over the hospital each evening. I don’t want to ask for time off now because I might have to when Mother comes out.’
‘I’m happy to enquire on your behalf, Mor. But they’ll want to know why.’
Jess saw Morwenna brace herself. ‘Tell them, then. If it wasn’t for Mother’s accident I’d never have started looking. But now I have, I aren’t stopping until I’ve got answers.’
‘Is it all right for me to ask Annie, Gill, and Viv if they remember their parents saying anything? You know they can keep a secret.’
‘No, that’s OK. You ask them. I should’ve done it years ago. But I knew if it got back to Mother there’d be trouble and I couldn’t face no more.’
‘Maybe then wasn’t the right time,’ Jess said.
‘You think it is now?’
Jess patted Morwenna’s knee. ‘It must be, otherwise you wouldn’t have come. What about another cup?’
Morwenna stood up. ‘No, you got work to do and I’d better get on home.’ She smothered a yawn as she buttoned her coat over her scarf. ‘I was awake for hours in the night trying to decide if I should come and see you. I’m some glad I did.’
Chapter Three
The following morning Jess made a large treacle tart and a Launceston cake. While they cooled on a wire tray she washed up then worked on Tom’s books until half past eleven.
Sliding tart and cake onto sheets of greaseproof then into plastic containers, she built up the fire, washed her hands, then ran upstairs to change her jeans and comfy fleece top for a smart sweater and trousers. Zipping up her jacket she picked up the plastic tubs and a clean folded apron, locked the door, and walked down to the village hall.
Opening the back door into the hall kitchen, Jess’s mouth watered at the savoury scent of beef and vegetable soup. Viv stood at the stove stirring a huge double-handled pan. Two more women were busy at the worktop.
Frances Chiddock, in heather tweed, lilac cashmere, and crisp white apron, every blue-rinsed hair lacquered into place, was slicing and buttering fresh bread rolls. Susan Haines, a thin drab figure in beige, worked alongside her, carefully lifting portions of apple pie from a tray-bake tin into individual bowls. Two large jugs of custard stood nearby.
Viv glanced round. ‘You’ve come then.’
Setting the container on the worktop, Jess hung up her jacket then put on her apron. ‘You’d never manage without me. I like the colours. You remind me of daffodils.’
Viv glanced down at her lime green trousers and lemon sweatshirt. Two glittery purple slides held her curly fair hair behind her ears. ‘Well, it’s nearly spring.’
‘You’re optimistic.’ Taking plates from one of the cupboards, Jess slid the tart off the paper onto the plate then did the same with the cake. ‘We could have snow next week.’
‘Hark at you. Proper little ray of sunshine.’ She leaned closer as Jess cut the tart into wedges and sliced the cake. ‘Any news?’
‘Tom had an email,’ Jess whispered. ‘Everyone’s fine.’
Viv nudged her. ‘I s’pose you know you got no business digging about in people’s pasts?’
Jess glanced at her. ‘Is that so?’
Viv glanced meaningfully towards Frances Chiddock. ‘Anyone with a lick of sense knows you only do it if you’re asked to. I dunno why she’s in such a knot about it.’ She grinned. ‘It makes you wonder what secrets in her past she don’t want coming out.’
Jess kept her voice low. ‘Mor called round last night. She wants me to find her father.’
Viv’s brows arched. ‘She does? Do you think you can? After all this time?’
‘I’ll do my best. She brought her birth certificate. His name is Steven Ludlow.’
Viv cocked her head. ‘If Brenda knew his name, why is Morwenna called Crocker?’
Jess shrugged. ‘Maybe she thought it would be easier for Mor.’
Viv snorted. ‘I remember my Auntie Louise telling Mother that Brenda wanted to put Mor up for adoption but her parents wouldn’t let her. Mor have paid for it ever since. Anyhow, how do you know this Steven Ludlow really is Mor’s father? ’
‘Thanks, Viv. That really helps.’
‘Just saying. Listen, she had to have met him somewhere local. You, Gill, Mor, and me were all born in 1966. Some of the old folks out in the hall would have been in their teens and twenties back then. Ask them where they used to go on Saturday nights.’
Jess gave
Viv a quick hug. ‘Not just a pretty face, are you.’ They both turned as Frances opened the serving hatch. ‘I’ll leave it until they’ve finished eating. They like to sit and chat for a while.’
Once the meal was over Jess washed bowls, plates, and cutlery, Viv dried, and Susan replaced them in the cupboards and drawers.
‘I never seen her wash a dish yet,’ Viv muttered to Jess, eyeing Frances who remained at the counter, pouring tea and coffee. ‘Still, I’d sooner work with you anyway.’
‘We’re a good team.’ Jess glanced round. ‘All done except for the cups and saucers.’ The noise level floating in through the open serving hatch had risen as, relaxed after their meal, people laughed and chatted.
‘Would you mind if I –?’
‘No, you go on. I’ll be asking questions later, mind.’
Wiping her hands, Jess took off her apron and went through into the hall where groups of three or four people sat on padded blue chairs at round tables.
She gazed round and saw Percy Spargo, sitting with his pals Eddy Mitchell and Jack Hosken. Percy’s wizened face and scraggy neck emerging from a shirt collar several sizes too large made him look like an elderly tortoise. Usually hidden beneath an ancient brown trilby hat, his thinning hair was combed over from a side parting and his green-grey suit and waistcoat dated from a time when he carried a lot more weight. But his gaze was clear and bright as Jess approached.
‘Hello, my lover. How ’e doing then? ’Ere, that was some kind of you and Mavis.’
Of course Morwenna would have told Ben and Ben had told his father.
‘Would you mind if I sit with you for a moment?’ Jess glanced round all three. Eddy wore an ancient tweed sports coat over a check shirt. His tobacco-coloured corduroy trousers were belted at chest level over his paunch. Jack’s navy blazer and grey flannels were shiny with age and wear. Thin as a rail, he felt the cold and today he wore a mustard V-neck pullover over his shirt and tie.
‘Mind? Make our day that would.’ Percy’s grin revealed gaps between stained peg-like teeth. He pulled out a chair and patted it.
‘When you were young,’ Jess said as she sat, ‘where did you used to go on Saturday nights?’
The three old men looked at each other. ‘Dear life, that’s going back a bit,’ Eddy said. ‘Well, let’s think a minute. The girls liked coffee bars. So if you liked a girl that’s where you’d take her.’
‘That’s right,’ Percy nodded. ‘There was the Cresta Café opposite the Chinese restaurant, and the Tavern in the Arcade. They had jukeboxes playing they little records.’
‘Forty-fives,’ Jack said. ‘Buddy Holly, Bill Haley and the Comets –’
‘Johnnie Ray,’ Eddy put in. ‘Deaf as a post he was, used to cry? The girls loved him and Pat Boone. That Connie Francis was some pretty maid.’
‘There was two kinds of girl,’ Percy said. ‘The daring ones that liked Elvis Presley –’
Jack roared with laughter. ‘Remember the hours we spent trying to get our hair in a quiff like his?’
‘And they that liked Cliff Richard or Tommy Steele,’ Percy finished. ‘You wouldn’t get far with they. Good girls they was.’
Jess held back a smile.
Eddy pushed his cup and saucer away. ‘Saturday nights you got smartened up. If you had a girl, she expected it.’
‘And if you didn’t have a girl but wanted one, you had to make an effort. Then you’d have a quick drink with your mates.’ Jack grinned at Jess. ‘There wasn’t a lad born willing to walk into a dancehall without a couple of pints under his belt. Remember the Central Café, Perce? Great place for dancing that was.’
Percy nodded, looking back at memories. ‘Louise Hambley,’ he said softly. ‘Thought the world of her, I did.’ He sighed and shrugged. ‘She went off with Jimmy Keast just because he had a motorbike.’
‘Some of the lads used to go down to the Flamingo.’ Eddy sucked air through his teeth. ‘Some rough place that was. Fights every Saturday night and police called in from all over Cornwall. Hotheads was given a thrashing and chased off home. If you was too drunk to drive, your keys was taken away, you was thrown in the police van and took to the police station for a night in the cells then let out in the morning when you’d sobered up.’
‘That’s some memory you got, Eddy,’ Jack grinned. ‘Like living in the past do you?’
Percy leaned towards Jess. ‘See they three over there? June, Carol, and Barbara? You go and ask them. They could tell you some stories.’
‘Thank you.’ Jess stood up.
Percy caught her hand, his eyes bright with mischief. ‘We didn’t always look like this, girl. We was young and handsome once. Well, I was. Jack wasn’t up to much.’
‘Get on,’ Jack retorted. ‘I didn’t do so bad. Pamela Martin turned you down, but she went out with me.’
‘That’s ’cos I scared her and she thought you was sweet.’
Leaving them to relive past conquests, Jess crossed to the table of three smartly dressed ladies. All three had the stout figures her gran would have called ‘pasty-built’.
‘Hello, dear,’ June said. ‘We heard what you and Mavis did. You won’t get no thanks from Brenda, mind.’
‘We did it for Morwenna. Could I ask what you remember about Saturday nights in the sixties? Percy mentioned a couple of coffee bars and dancing at the Central Café in town.’
‘That brings back memories,’ June said. ‘We used to catch the seven o’clock bus in from the village. They ran every hour back then. The last one home left town at twenty past ten and you didn’t dare miss it.’
‘Not unless you had a boyfriend with a motorbike,’ Barbara said with a nostalgic smile. ‘Remember the circular skirts we used to wear? And petticoats with all they layers of net at the bottom? After you washed them you had to dip them in sugar water to make the net stiff again.’
‘I tell you what I remember,’ June said, ‘my arms aching from hours putting my hair in rollers then backcombing it.’
‘That’s right,’ Carol giggled. ‘Remember Noel who used to deliver the bread to the shop? Camp as a row of tents he was. ’Course, we didn’t know what it meant then. But if you wanted to know what shade of lipstick and nail varnish would suit you, you asked Noel. Better than a magazine he was. What he didn’t know about fashion and colours wasn’t worth knowing.’
‘Remember those long coats and drainpipe trousers the teddy boys used to wear?’ asked Barbara.
‘Roger Hughes had a lovely blue suit with a black velvet collar,’ said Carol. ‘He was a wonderful dancer. Me and him won a rock and roll competition once.’
June gripped her arm. ‘I remember that!’
‘We used to drink bitter lemon.’
‘Or frothy coffee.’ Carol nodded. ‘And you never let a boy do more’n kiss you or you got a reputation for being fast.’
June sighed. ‘Back then, before the pill, a girl could say no. No boy wanted her father after him with a shotgun.’
‘Every Saturday night, reg’lar as clockwork before I went out, my mother would warn me not to bring any trouble home,’ Barbara told Jess.
Jess nodded. ‘I remember my gran saying the same thing. I expect you’re wondering why I asked. The thing is, Morwenna wants me to trace her family tree.’
The three women exchanged a glance. It was June who spoke. ‘You’re looking for her father?’
‘According to Mor’s birth certificate his name is Steven Ludlow. Does the name mean anything to you? Do you remember Brenda maybe bringing him to a dance?’
All three shook their heads.
‘What about Brenda’s parents?’
‘Now you’re going back a bit,’ Carol said. ‘Her father – Harry his name was – he was a wages clerk at the docks. Loved his garden.’
‘I remember her mother, Gladys’ Barbara said. ‘Fussy, lived on her nerves. Always worrying about what other people thought. That’s how everyone was so surprised when they kept the baby.’
‘Why did the
y?’ Jess asked.
‘They were chapel,’ Barbara said. ‘They said what had happened wasn’t the baby’s fault. It was family.’
‘This village have had its share of babies born the wrong side of the blanket,’ June said. ‘But you got to wonder if Morwenna might have had a happier life if she’d been adopted. Brenda have treated that dear girl awful, blaming her for being born.’
‘Well, Mor’s singing voice must have come from her father’s side,’ Barbara said. ‘Brenda couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket, and nor could her mother.’
‘Do you know what struck me?’ Jess asked, sitting beside Viv in her battered little Peugeot as they headed into town. ‘How fond everyone is of Morwenna.’
‘’Tis a miracle really,’ Viv said, swinging the little car into the shopper’s car park then into a space so tight, Jess wondered how they were going to open the doors.
‘What, that people like Morwenna?’
‘No! That she’s not bitter. I don’t think I’ve ever heard her bad-mouth anyone. You’ll have to climb over and get out my side.’
While Viv went to the supermarket, Jess walked along the main street to White’s. She approached the senior assistant wearing a name badge that read Trish Morcomb.
‘Brenda Crocker? Goodness, that’s going back a few years. Angie Curtis worked on the cosmetics counter with her so she probably knew her best. Why do you want to know?’
Jess took a business card from her pocket and offered it. She had hesitated over having them printed. Now she was glad she had. Clients expected her to be businesslike, and it was much more professional than rummaging in her bag to find a pen and paper.
‘I research family trees. Brenda’s daughter, Morwenna, wants to trace her father and asked me to help. We know his name and that he was a merchant seaman. Anything Brenda told Angie, like where he was from, would be really useful. Would you be willing to phone Angie, tell her who I am, and ask if she could spare me ten minutes next time she’s in town?’
‘She comes in every Saturday morning.’
‘I’ll treat her to a coffee and won’t keep her long.’
After another look at the card, Trish nodded. ‘All right, I’ll ask. She might want me to come with her, seeing she don’t know you.’