Barbara Vine - The Chimney Sweeper's Boy

Sarah opened windows and kicked off her boots. She poured herself a big glass of chardonnay. The bottle had been standing in the sun and was at a temperature she liked. She hated ice. She opened the map and spread it out on the table. Districts of Ipswich had some very strange names. Gainsborough and Halifax and—could it be?—California. How could a grid of streets in an East Anglian town be called California? Perhaps her father had actually come from there.

She referred to his birth certificate. No. He had been born in Waterloo Road, which was in an area that didn’t seem to have any specific name. Sarah had a large new loose-leaf notebook and this she opened and wrote on the first page, as if with the aim of making it part of a genealogical table: “George John Candless, b. 1890; m. Kathleen Mitchell, b. 1893.” She drew a vertical line underneath and at the tip of it wrote, “Gerald Francis Candless, b. 1926.”

Christchurch Street, where the only Candless lived, was not far from the center of the town and near a large park. She looked again at his initials, J.G. John George? No assumptions, she reminded herself, and took a swig of her wine. Her father had had no siblings, so he couldn’t be her first cousin. The son therefore (probably) of a brother of George John’s. Would that make him a second cousin or a first cousin once removed? That was something she would have to check on.

When they were teenagers, she and Hope, their grandmother Wick had tried to interest them in their ancestry. On her visits to Lundy View House, she brought with her ancient albums of sepia photographs and rather less ancient ones of black-and-white photographs, and her granddaughters were supposed to look at them and ask who this was and that was. And absorb and remember names of great-grandparents and, to a lesser extent, great-aunts and great-uncles. But they had been inclined to regard this as a dreadful bore and—since they were already hardworking and ambitious—of no possible use to them in their future lives and careers.

They might have shown more interest if their father had encouraged them, but he at once took the same attitude as they did. Sarah could still clearly remember his words.

“It’s not as if you came of some noble lineage. Your father is first-generation working class and your mother second at best. Before that, your forebears, like most people’s, were just a rabble of servants and farm laborers and factory hands. What possible point can there be in knowing who they were and putting names to their ugly faces?”

They had been ugly, Sarah thought, dimly remembering pudding-visaged women with hair like loaves and corseted bodies and glaring men whose mouths and cheeks were invisible under drooping mustaches and oddly cut beards. Now she couldn’t even have named Ursula’s grandparents, and she thought she regretted it. For if she had shown an interest in what Betty Wick called “the distaff side,” wouldn’t her father perhaps have instructed her in the helmet side? (Sarah’s students in her women’s studies course would have been horrified to know she used such sexist expressions even to herself.) He hadn’t mentioned even an uncle or an aunt of his own, so far as she could remember. Relatives bored him, he said. You didn’t choose them; they were thrust upon you, and the best thing to do was thrust them right back again.

Hope, clever and precocious, had said, “Surely the same thing must apply to your children, Daddy.”

He had been ready for her. “Ah, but I chose my children. I married. I picked a good-looking, healthy young woman. I thought, I will have two children, two years apart, both girls, both beautiful, both intellectually brilliant. And I did. Therefore, you can’t say I didn’t choose them.”

Of course they couldn’t say it after that. Sarah poured herself some more wine and thought of her father. He had been so young to die. The death of anyone else at seventy-one she would have thought a quite reasonable and appropriate time for an old man to go. But her own father might have lived another fifteen years. She had expected that; she might have had him with her till she herself was middle-aged. She sighed, looked at her watch. It was nearly six. A good or a bad time to phone J. G. Candless?

He was probably the kind of man who worked in an office, an insurance office, she thought, or a building society, from nine till five. Possibly no more than walking distance from home, or a bus ride. He would be home by now but not eating yet surely? She dialed the number. It rang four times.

A man answered. He didn’t say hello, just repeated the number, all eleven digits of it.

“Mr. Candless?”

“Yes?”

“Mr. Candless, you don’t know me, but my name is also Candless. Sarah Candless. My late father was Gerald Candless, the novelist. I expect you have heard of him.”

There was a hesitation. “No. I can’t say I have.”

She found it incredible. The man must be illiterate. A moron. She would have to be careful not to use long or difficult words. “I am researching—I mean, I am trying to find out something about my father’s family. They came from Ipswich. You are the only Candless in the phone book, so it seems likely that you are a relation and —”

“You’d better talk to my wife. My wife knows all about that side of things.”

“But, Mr. Candless, wait a minute. It’s your relatives I’m interested in—”

It was too late. He had gone. Sarah waited, feeling a mounting irritation. He reminded her of those men who, when asked if they had read her father’s books, said no, but their wives had. Absurd. The woman who picked up the receiver sounded brisk and efficient, an altogether different prospect, in spite of the ugliest accent she had ever heard.

“This is Maureen Candless. What can I do for you?”

Sarah explained all over again.

“Yes, I see.”

“I can’t believe you haven’t heard of my father. He was very famous.”

“I’ve heard of him. I read about him dying in the papers.” She didn’t say she was sorry he was dead or express any sympathy for Sarah. “I noticed,” she said, “because he had the same name as us.”

“Mrs. Candless, did your husband have an uncle George and an aunt Kathleen? Or grandparents named George and Kathleen? They lived in Ipswich, in Waterloo Road.”

“No, he didn’t,” said Maureen Candless. “My husband’s Candless grandparents were named Albert and Mary.” Here at least was someone who had paid attention to those albums and those names. “There was a cousin George, but he went to Australia, and I never heard of a Kathleen. You ought to talk to Auntie Joan.”

“Auntie Joan?”

“She’s not really an aunt, more a cousin of my husband’s, his dad’s cousin really, but we call her ‘Auntie.’ Her maiden name was Candless. She’s Mrs. Thague, Mrs. Joan Thague, and she lives out at Rushmere St. Andrew, but she’s a very old lady now and she doesn’t go out much.”

Sarah couldn’t see the significance of this. She didn’t want Mrs. Thague to go out, but to stay at home and talk to her. Did she have a phone?

“She has a phone,” said Maureen Candless, “but she’s a bit deaf and she says her hearing aid doesn’t work with the phone. The best thing for you would be to go and see her.”

Sarah thanked her and said she would like to. Maureen Candless said she would tell Auntie Joan to expect a visitor wanting to talk about the family, gave Sarah an address, and, when pressed, the phone number, adding that a call wouldn’t be answered. Nevertheless, once Mrs. Candless had put the receiver back, Sarah dialed the number. As forecast, there was no reply.

By now Sarah was in a phoning mood, so she called her mother. Ursula repeated that Gerald had never talked to her about his relatives; she had no idea if he had a first or second cousin named J. G. Candless or a cousin or aunt named Mrs. Joan Thague.