Father Unknown

by Fay Sampson

  But she’s not, Suzie thought. Not any longer.

  Prudence spoke what Suzie already knew. ‘That’s a stunner you’ve got yourself there. Guess she’ll keep you awake a few nights, worrying about a girl with looks like that.’

  It was, Suzie supposed, a compliment. But one it was hard to thank her for.

  Nick’s intensely blue eyes laughed at Suzie over the remains of the meal.

  ‘I’ll see to the dishes. I can tell you two are itching to get to that computer and see what your detective work can turn up.’

  Suzie leaned across and kissed him. She ruffled his black hair. ‘Thanks. Prudence is only here for a few days. I want to find out as much as I can on the Internet, before we go back to the Record Office tomorrow to dig out documents – if there are any.’

  ‘Really,’ Prudence protested. ‘You’re being way too generous. You must have things of your own to do. I can’t drag you back there for a second day. Just point me in the right direction and I’ll go by myself.’

  ‘Don’t try and stop her,’ Millie said. ‘There’s nothing she’d like better than an excuse to spend even more time on her old records. She lives in the past. The present might not be happening, as far as she’s concerned.’ For all the lightness of her words, she did not lift her eyes from the table as she spoke.

  ‘That’s not fair,’ Suzie countered. ‘I spend every morning in the charity office.’ But she knew by the warmth in her cheeks that Millie’s barb was uncomfortably near the truth.

  ‘Just enjoy it.’ Nick got to his feet and shepherded them out of the kitchen.

  Suzie fetched her laptop. The two women settled themselves on the sitting room sofa.

  ‘Let’s see what we can find on Access to Archives.’ Suzie opened up her search engine and selected the National Archives website from her favourites. ‘Adam Clayson isn’t exactly a common name. Not like John Hill. If there’s anything on him, we should hit it pretty quickly.’

  ‘You’re going to have to show me how to do this. I’m pretty new to this Internet search business. I mostly leave it to my son.’

  ‘Access to Archives is great. It has summaries of vast numbers of documents from all over the country. I’ve found wonderful stuff there. You just type in the name you want, the date range, and the region. In our case, that’s the “South West”. Here we go. Search for Adam Cla*son. 1700–1800. South West Region. I put in the asterisk to cover variant spellings. Click. And . . .’

  ‘You’ve hit it.’ Prudence leaned forward in excitement.

  ‘Yes. We can rule out the entries for Clarkson. You get more than you want when you put in an asterisk. But we’ve scored three records for Clayson. Adam Clayson, lease of a property in Corley called Hole, 1716. If your Adam was born in 1739, that’s too early for him. Might be an ancestor, though. Even Johan’s father, perhaps. That would explain why she called the baby Adam. We could follow that up. The next one looks like the counterpart of the same lease. But, hey, look at this one. Corley parish, Adam Clayson, apprenticed to Thomas Sandford for Norworthy, 1747. Is Corley the parish where you found his baptism?’

  ‘Yes, it was.’

  ‘Then that’s got to be him, hasn’t it? Eight years old and put out to work on Thomas Sandford’s farm by the Overseers of the Poor. We could get the actual indenture out at the Record Office tomorrow, if you like.’

  She turned to share her enthusiasm with Prudence. The other woman was silent. Her eyes, Suzie realized, had misted over as she stared through tortoiseshell-framed glasses at the computer. She reached out a hand and touched the screen gently, almost reverently.

  ‘That’s him? Our Adam?’

  ‘Almost certainly. It’s the right name, the right parish.’

  ‘Where’s this Norworthy?’

  ‘It’ll be the name of the farm where he was put to work. Most poor children were apprenticed for farm or housework. It tended to be the better-off children who learned a craft. Thomas Sandford may not even have wanted a farm boy, but parishioners had to take their turn. It kept the children in food and lodging and clothes till they were twenty-one or – if they were a girl – got married.’

  ‘Could I go there? This Norworthy place?’

  ‘You certainly could. We could. I’ll get the map out. With luck, it’ll still be on the Ordnance Survey.’ She went to the bookshelf where the OS maps were shelved and ran her finger along the names. ‘Here we are.’ She spread out the map on a table. ‘There’s Corley. It’s quite a small village. A cluster of houses and farms around the church. That looks like the village green. Now, if we trawl around it . . .’

  Her eyes had caught the name she was looking for. She waited a few seconds more without saying anything and was rewarded with Prudence’s cry of delight.

  ‘Norworthy! Do you see it? Up there, between those rivers.’

  ‘Well done. So it is still there. We can go and check it out.’

  ‘I just don’t know how to thank you. I’m mortified when I think how I bawled you out.’

  ‘Don’t worry. Millie’s right. I’m really enjoying myself.’

  She copied details and reference numbers for the apprenticeship, and the older lease as well, and printed them out. She shuffled the papers together with satisfaction. ‘There. We’ve got plenty to go on now. I work in the mornings, but I can meet you tomorrow after lunch. We’ll take the bus out to the Record Office from the city centre. Unless –’ a disappointing possibility occurred to her – ‘you want to get over there first thing in the morning and follow this up yourself. They open at ten.’

  ‘No.’ Prudence eased her comfortable bulk from the sofa. ‘I feel I’m in safe hands with you. I wouldn’t know how to go about it. And I’m dying to take a tour round your cathedral. But cancel that “after lunch”. Lunch is on me. Come over to the Angel Hotel. You know it?’

  ‘On the cathedral close. Of course. I’d love to.’

  ‘My pleasure. Now, where do I get a bus into town?’

  ‘You don’t.’ Nick had appeared in the hall when he heard their voices. ‘I’ll run you back.’

  ‘You folks have been so good to me.’

  ‘Our pleasure. See you tomorrow, then,’ Suzie told her.

  An hour later, she walked upstairs with a glow of enjoyment. Normally, she allowed herself one afternoon a week to follow up her family history research in the Record Office or the Local Studies Library. Not counting, of course, the hours she spent on her computer, or the Saturday expeditions to parishes where her ancestors had lived. Prudence had given her the perfect excuse to drop other boring things, like housework, and spend more time doing what she liked best. And there was the extra satisfaction that she was genuinely able to help Prudence. In a very short time she had warmed to this plump widow, who so wanted to take back a story she could be proud to tell her children. Suzie would help her do that.

  Her children.

  Suzie paused, her hand tightening on the banister. She had a sudden picture of Millie, arrested in the kitchen doorway as she saw Prudence. Those grey eyes turned to her mother in what looked like a mute appeal, before she turned and went upstairs.

  Those words of reproach. ‘The present might not be happening, for all she’s concerned.’

  She crossed the landing swiftly to Millie’s room. She opened the door softly.

  Millie lay in bed. The blonde head looked tiny, shorn of its familiar long hair. She seemed to be sleeping.

  ‘Millie?’ Suzie whispered, just in case.

  The eyelashes, dark with mascara, did not stir. Whatever Millie might have wanted to tell her must remain unsaid.

  With a feeling of unexplained guilt, Suzie closed the door softly.

  THREE

  Millie was running a comb through her short hair. Her back view signalled haste, tension. It wasn’t a good time. She should be on her way to school by now. Suzie tried to catch her eye in the mirror, unsuccessfully.

  ‘Is everything all right, love?’

  ‘Yes. Fine.’ The words came
fast, like gunfire.

  Suzie sat down on the bed. ‘You’d tell me if there was a problem, wouldn’t you?’

  Millie whirled from the stool, grabbing jacket and school-bag. ‘Do you mind? That’s my homework you’re sitting on.’

  She was gone, like a rush of wind down the stairs.

  Suzie sighed and stood up. The house had fallen silent. Husband off to work in his architect’s office, daughter to school. Soon it would be time to catch her own bus into town, to spend the morning in the charity office. Most of all, she missed Tom. So like his father, with his waving black hair and bright-blue eyes, but with a laughter and energy that was his alone. Millie melted invisibly into corners. Tom’s presence, when he was at home, seemed to light up the whole house.

  She remembered that it was dustbin collection early tomorrow. She just had time to empty the waste-paper baskets. She retrieved Millie’s from under her desk and carried it downstairs with the others from the bedrooms.

  She paused at the kitchen door. Since the council had got into its recycling stride, it was necessary to sort the contents. The foil from pills and cellophane packaging into the black bin for landfill; paper into the green one.

  It wasn’t really prying, was it? She had to check what was in Millie’s basket.

  Crumpled sheets. She smoothed them out. They seemed to be history notes. Tom would just have tossed his in the basket, for anyone to read. Millie’s tightly-balled pages had a more secretive look. Silly, really. What would she have to hide? Suzie scolded herself for being unnecessarily suspicious.

  A crisp packet. The wrapper from a CD. All normal.

  She was tempted to empty the contents of the bathroom bin straight into landfill. But there were the odd bits of paper and cardboard her conscience told her she ought to remove.

  A till receipt. Crumpled, like the sheets from Millie’s bedroom. Suzie always dropped her own receipts in just as they were.

  She teased it open. From the chemist’s, of course. The next words burned themselves on to her brain.

  Pregnancy Testing Kit.

  She searched frantically through the rest of the bin. There was nothing there. No packaging. No used equipment. She hurried back to Millie’s bedroom. If she hadn’t used it yet, where would it be? Her flustered fingers fumbled through the contents of drawers. She peered under the bed. Stood on a chair to check the top of the wardrobe.

  Nothing.

  She searched the dustbins outside.

  Millie had bought a pregnancy testing kit, but there was no sign that she had used it, or of the result.

  Suzie did not enjoy her fillet of sole in the Angel’s restaurant overlooking the cathedral as much as she should have done. It was far superior to the sandwich she would normally have had before setting off to the Record Office. Her mind was still racing, but it was three hours yet before Millie would be home.

  She came back to the present to find Prudence ordering two cokes.

  ‘Not for me,’ she said hastily. ‘I’ll just have water.’

  What she really wanted was a glass of dry white wine, to still the waves of panic which were washing over her. But she didn’t know Prudence well enough yet to judge whether ordering wine would be a faux pas.

  ‘Make that one coke, one mineral water.’

  ‘Just tap water for me, please.’ Better not to get into what she thought of the bottled water industry. She forced a smile for her generous host. ‘How was your morning in the cathedral?’

  She let Prudence’s enthusiasm wash over her.

  It was a relief to enter the hushed atmosphere of the Record Office’s search room. There was a twinge of guilt as she felt the tension of the present begin to slip from her. There was nothing she could do about Millie yet. She could allow herself to sink into the comforting arms of the eighteenth century and the search for Prudence’s family.

  In the panic of this morning, she had forgotten to bring with her the reference numbers of the documents they needed. Her mind was beginning to steady as she located them on the catalogue. She took the file number of the apprenticeship to the help desk.

  The archivist who took it was unfamiliar to her. He didn’t give her the helpful smile she was expecting.

  ‘This is an apprenticeship indenture.’

  ‘Yes. I found it on A2A.’

  ‘You do know that all the relevant details are on the catalogue? You won’t find anything more in the original.’

  She felt the coldness of rejection. ‘I just thought . . . My friend here is over from the States. She won’t have seen one before. And there’s nothing quite like seeing the actual document, the signatures . . .’

  ‘Where are you sitting?’ Still no smile.

  ‘Table twenty.’

  He turned away without a word.

  Prudence’s lipsticked mouth made a comic parody of reprimand. ‘Guess I’m making a nuisance of myself.’

  ‘Don’t mind him. They try to avoid getting out the originals as much as they can. With so many of us doing family history now, the documents would fall apart if they didn’t digitize things. But you ought to see the real thing at least once.’

  She couldn’t deny the thrill when the document arrived and they unrolled the long scroll.

  Prudence began to read it aloud, her voice shaking slightly. ‘This Indenture made the Twelfth Day of April in the Twentieth Year of the Reign of our Sovereign Lord George the Second by the Grace of God, of Great Britain, France, and Ireland King, Defender of the Faith, and so forth. My, doesn’t that sound grand!’

  ‘And here’s the names of the churchwardens and the Overseers of the Poor.’

  But Prudence was running ahead of her. ‘Do put and place Adam Clayson, a poor Child of the said Parish, Apprentice to Thomas Sandford of Norworthy in the same Parish to dwell and serve from the Day of the Date of these Presents, until the said Apprentice shall accomplish his full Age of Twenty four Years. You said twenty-one.’

  ‘I thought it was. But listen to this: During all which term, the said Apprentice his said Master faithfully shall serve in all lawful Business according to his Power, Wit, and Ability; and honestly, orderly, and obediently in all Things demean and behave himself towards his said Master and all his during the said Term.’

  ‘And what does old Thomas Sandford get to do in return?’ Prudence was warming to the search. ‘Find, provide and allow unto the said Apprentice, meet, competent, and sufficient Meat, Drink, and Apparel, Lodging, Washing, and all other Things necessary and fit for an Apprentice. And also shall and will so provide for the said Apprentice, that he be not any way a Charge to the said Parish.’

  ‘And at the end of his time he gets: double Apparel of all sorts, good and new, (that is to say) a good new Suit for the Holy-days, and another for the Working-days.’

  The two women looked at each other. Tears were glistening in Prudence’s eyes again. Suzie felt the sudden bond between them. In the formal words of the indenture, little Adam Clayson came alive.

  ‘Eight years old,’ Prudence said wonderingly. ‘And Adam was twenty-four when he finished. I’m going to have to do some math to work out how old he was when he took the ship for Pennsylvania.’

  The links in the chain, both sides of the Atlantic, were coming together.

  ‘That guy was sure wrong, telling us we wouldn’t learn anything more from the original. It’s all coming to life. Poor little soul. I hope this Thomas Sandford was good to him.’

  ‘Maybe it was there he learned about trees and timber,’ Suzie said. ‘Wasn’t that his trade in Come-to-Good?’

  ‘It certainly was. And a fine success he made of it.’

  Suzie forbore to remind her how far he had come from his origins as a ‘base child’. Instead, she followed up the lease for that older Adam Clayson. ‘We need to find where Hole was. It wasn’t on my modern Ordnance Survey map. Let’s see if they have older ones.’

  ‘That’s a strange name, Hole.’

  ‘It’s quite a common name in these parts. It mea
ns a hollow.’

  They tracked the farm down on a nineteenth-century map, and Suzie photographed it for Prudence.

  They checked the catalogue numbers for the documents on Hole.

  ‘Look. The lease was for that older Adam’s life, and then the life of a Robert Clayson; I suppose that would be his son.’

  ‘Nothing about our Johan?’

  ‘No. It’s a bit unusual. Leases were usually for three lives. But we can look up her baptism in the parish register. I’m sure she must be related to them.’

  After a run of success, they drew their first blank. The register only went back ten years before the younger Adam’s baptism. Too late for Johan’s.

  ‘Does that mean we’ll never know?’

  ‘Not necessarily. She could have been born in another parish. And there may be something else on her. We didn’t run her name through A2A, did we? Only Adam’s.’

  ‘Can we go back to your place and do that?’

  ‘No need. They’ve got computers here.’

  She booked a machine and typed in the search criteria. ‘Jo*n* Cla*son’ and the date range. ‘I’ve put in the asterisks again to allow for all the possible spellings of Johan as well as Clayson.’

  There were sixteen catalogue entries. Most of them were for John Clarkson, or from places unlikely to be related to Prudence’s family. There was nothing about Johan Clayson.

  ‘Women don’t show up as often as men. But somebody else is lucky.’ Suzie pointed to the twelfth entry.

  Prudence followed her pointing finger and read aloud from the screen. ‘Maintenance of Joane Clarkson’s male bastard. What does that mean?’

  ‘It’s a bastardy bond. Joane Clarkson swore before a magistrate who her baby’s father was. What a pity we haven’t got one for your . . .’

  Her voice trailed away into silence as the memory of Millie rushed back to her.

  FOUR

  ‘That’s too bad. Hey, is something wrong?’

  Suzie checked her watch in alarm. She was already rising to her feet. ‘I’m sorry. I hadn’t noticed the time. I need to get home.’