Barbara Vine - The Chimney Sweeper's Boy

Hope, therefore, had no more idea of what the thing found in the paper drawer was than her sister had. It seemed to be made of some fibrous vegetable substance, leaf or stem perhaps. A strip of this had been folded double, to which, two-thirds of the way up, a crosspiece, also folded double, was attached with a neat binding to conceal the join.

“It’s a palm cross,” said Fabian.

“A what?”

“There’s atheism and there’s ignorance,” he said, “and you two are just plain ignorant. You don’t have to believe in God to know something about religion. I mean a smidgen. If I asked you what is: a, a pyx; b, a creed; and c, Pentecost, you wouldn’t have a clue, would you?”

“I know what a creed is,” said Hope impatiently. “Anyway, never mind that. What’s this thing? What’s a palm cross?”

“It’s palm leaf or reed or even a branch from a fir tree made into the shape of a cross and given to people who attend matins or Mass, I expect, on Palm Sunday, which is the Sunday before Easter.”

“I thought you were Jewish,” said Sarah.

“I don’t think you can be right, Fab,” said Hope, “because Daddy would never have had anything like that in the house. Daddy hated religion. He said he didn’t agree with anything Marx said except about religion being the opium of the people. And he used to mock religion, I mean make jokes about it. Jonathan Arthur was staying once and he was talking about Resurrection—he’s religious—and Daddy upset him frightfully by saying that what went up must come down.”

“I can’t help that. It’s a palm cross, known as a palm. Ask anyone if you don’t believe me. Ask that fellow Postle, the one with the streaming nose; he’s a Catholic.”

“If I ask him, he’ll want to know how the book’s coming on,” said Sarah, “and it isn’t coming on. I don’t know what to do next.”

Fabian said, “Your dad had a London accent. I’m a latter-day Professor Higgins, I am; I know about accents. His was London, and I’d say with a faint undertone somewhere of East Anglia. So he’s a Londoner, living alone, working on this newspaper, and something terrible happens. Discount something criminal; your dad wouldn’t have done that, or so you say, so it’s something that happened to him. Wife or lover died? Children died? Made some momentous discovery about his family—his real family, I mean? Some hereditary disease, murderer for a father—how about that?”

“I don’t see why having your lover die would be all that terrible,” said Hope.

“Thanks very much.”

“I don’t mean that, Fab. You know I don’t. But why would it make you change your identity? A murderer for a father’s more likely.”

“I’m remembering something from long ago,” Sarah said. “I once heard that funny old woman Adela Churchouse saying something to Dad about that. Oh, not about having a murderer for a father—I don’t believe that—but about his accent. She said, ‘You know, Gerald, sometimes when you get animated, the way you were just then, I can hear Silly Suffolk in your voice.’ And Dad said there was nothing more likely, because he’d lived in Ipswich till he was ten.”

If she had thought of that conversation at all since Joan Thague’s revelations, it was to assume that everything he had said was a lie, just as she had assumed all references he had made to his origins were untrue. But suppose it hadn’t been a lie? Suppose that, though not the Gerald Candless born to George and Kathleen Candless in Waterloo Road, he also had come from Ipswich and lived there long enough as a child to acquire an ineradicable accent?

The palm cross lay on the table, where Fabian had put it down on top of a copy of the Spectator. There was something about it that Sarah very much disliked and which she found deeply disconcerting. She didn’t want to think about it too much, didn’t want to confront its implications, yet to throw it away, to put it out with the rubbish to be collected by Camden waste disposal in the morning, seemed an extreme step, and one she might regret.

After Hope and Fabian had gone, she took out of the bookcase her copy of the Shorter Oxford Dictionary , put the palm inside it between dynamicity and Earl Marshal , and replaced the dictionary on the shelf.

11

Times change and views do an about-face. Oliver’s grandfather would have been ashamed if his wife had gone out to work, but Oliver was embarrassed because his wife stayed at home.

—HAND TO MOUTH

MR. AND MRS. JOHN GEORGE CANDLESS, PUT IN POSSESSION of the facts, looked upon the whole thing with suspicion. J.G. passed through three phases of doubt: disbelief at first, then speculation, finally extreme wariness. “Have nothing more to do with it, keep away, ignore the girl’s letter, or send back a sharp negative response.”

But Maureen said, “Suppose she puts it in the paper or this book she’s writing? Better be there and find out what she’s up to.”

“All right,” said J.G., “and tell her I shall be consulting my solicitor if you like.”

Neither of them had ever previously heard of Auntie Joan having a little brother who died. A little brother called Gerald Candless. Why should they? Auntie Joan wasn’t really John George’s auntie, but something like his first cousin once removed, and it had all happened so long ago.

“It’s upset Auntie Joan a lot,” Maureen had said. “I’ve never seen her tearful before. And now this girl’s written and wants to see her again.”

“There’s bound to be some ulterior motive. She could be after Auntie Joan’s money.”

“She hasn’t got any money, J.G.”

“You never want to say that about anyone. The ones you say that about are the ones who are rolling in it.”

So because Joan didn’t feel like writing and didn’t know what to say, Maureen phoned Sarah Candless and was careful to be offhand. She could come if she liked, but Mr. and Mrs. J. G. Candless would appreciate it if Sarah remembered Joan was an old lady and shouldn’t be upset. She, Maureen, would make a point of being there just to keep an eye on things.

That made Sarah feel as if they suspected her of planning to steal the silver. She hardly knew what she was going to ask Joan Thague. If she asked about friends and neighbors at the time of the little boy’s death, would that upset Joan? Would any reference to that time upset her? Suppose she asked for a photograph of the child? But how would that help? She remembered the fat photograph albums laid out, ready for scrutiny, but which had never been scrutinized. Did they take group photographs in those days? Of some university class or team, yes, but of the pupils at an Ipswich primary school?

She drove to Ipswich on the appointed day but lost her way and found herself in the center of the town. The place was full of churches and streets named for churches, so that once again she thought of the palm cross. She would have liked to imagine her father as a child in this town, walking with his mother and holding her hand, but it was impossible because so much must have changed, because the little shops of that time had been replaced by precincts and malls. But he had lived here—she was sure of that; she hung on to that, remembering the trace of a Suffolk accent Adela Churchouse and Fabian had detected.

When she eventually found her way to Rushmere St. Andrew, the front door of the bungalow was opened to her by Maureen Candless. She introduced herself brusquely as Mrs. Candless. She was a big woman, fat and heavy, somehow frightening in her charmlessness. Her face in repose was sullen and in animation a conflict of big jarring features—thick lips, overlarge teeth, a pointed nose with a tip that twitched independently of the rest of it.