Barbara Vine - The Chimney Sweeper's Boy

The following week, when Gerald set off alone in the Morris, Dickie took a gamble and stationed himself on the corner of Goodwin Road, Leyton, to wait for him. It was as he had thought. The house could be the better observed from a car. Gerald soon arrived. He parked the car and watched. Or so Dickie supposed. He couldn’t really see. But he saw and moved fast when Gerald got out of the car and approached the house, knocked at the front door, and finally let himself in with his own key.

Dickie Parfitt took a photograph, but the door had shut before he got much of a shot.

It was late on Friday evening that Sarah and Hope arrived in Sarah’s car. This was unusual, for they seldom came together, but they did so this time, perhaps as a mark of solidarity, as a closing of ranks, when confronted by something as upsetting as the loss of a father’s identity. Throughout the long drive, which they shared, they discussed Ken Applestone and their combined failure to find him.

“Or, rather, Jason Thague’s failure to find him,” said Sarah.

“Right. What steps did he take?”

“Some pal of his is Canadian. He got his father in Toronto to search through all the phone directories in the country. The man’s retired; he’s nothing else to do. Apparently, he loved it, made him feel useful.”

“I wish this Thague didn’t have to be involved,” Hope said fretfully, taking off her large black hat and throwing it onto the backseat. “I hate the idea of strangers knowing about Daddy. You could have done all that—what he did, I mean. You’ve probably got a Canadian student, and you wouldn’t have to tell her who Ken Applestone might be.”

“No, I couldn’t, Hope. I’m too busy. Term’s started. I might as well say you could have done it.”

“It’s your book, though, isn’t it? Have you thought what you’re going to do if it turns out Daddy did something dreadful? Poor Daddy, I know he wouldn’t have meant to, but he could unintentionally have done something against the law. Imagine the tabloids getting hold of it. What are you going to do then?”

“I don’t know,” Sarah said, and she was silent for a while. Then she said, as the lights of Bristol began to appear below them, “The pal’s father couldn’t find Ken Applestone.”

“You told me. But he found a John Applestone, didn’t he?”

“He found a number. In Winnipeg. There wasn’t any answer and no answering machine.”

They stopped at a service station and bought two pork pies, two packets of tandoori-flavored chips, and two cans of Coke. Then Hope took over the driving.

“I don’t know why you don’t have an automatic car,” she said. “This manual shift is prelapsarian. We should have brought mine. I did tell you, but you wouldn’t listen.”

“Eat your pie,” said Sarah.

All conversation ceased while they ate. Outside Tiverton, Hope said, “You think Daddy was the son of someone connected with the Candlesses in Ipswich, don’t you? Someone who was possibly in the house when the little boy died or was told about the little boy dying and told his own son, who was the same sort of age as Daddy?”

“Something like that. I don’t think he was a complete stranger.”

“It could be a tradesman, a caller at the house. The grocer making a delivery, the milkman—that’s an idea; why not the milkman? The postman, the baker, the knife grinder, a washerwoman.”

“Hopie,” said Sarah, “it wasn’t Victorian England. It was the thirties.”

Hope signaled left, pulled into a lay-by, and parked. She turned to her sister and said, “The doctor.”

“You mean the doctor who would have come to the house to attend the little boy?”

“Exactly.”

“There must have been one,” Sarah said thoughtfully. “They weren’t rich, but they weren’t really poor, either. Would the child have been taken to a hospital in those days? Yes, maybe. But a doctor … Joan Thague would remember, surely.”

“Ask the grandson.”

“You can imagine the doctor going home and saying to his wife and children that he’d lost a patient, a little boy, that he’d died of meningitis.… The boy the same age as the dead boy. It would have made a great impression on him.”

“Oh, yes, it would. Poor Daddy.”

“Child mortality was quite low by that time; the doctor would seldom have had a child patient die. The doctor’s own son would never have forgotten it. It might even have haunted him throughout his childhood. You can imagine him thinking, If that could happen to that boy, why not to me? He would have remembered the name—Gerald Candless. And then when the time came nineteen years later … You’re quite brilliant sometimes, Hope.”

It was after ten when they reached Lundy View House. Pauline, in a red afternoon dress with pearls, looked at Hope and said brightly, “Your hat is exactly the same shape as a coal scuttle we once had at home.”

In the manner of a reclusive judge, the kind she sometimes had to listen to, Hope said, “What’s a coal scuttle?”

Ursula might have said truthfully that they had never had coal fires either in Hampstead or in this house while the girls were growing up. But she said nothing. Sarah was already pouring a large whiskey for herself, and Hope had gone into the other room to answer the phone. The two of them, while loving Pauline when she was in her teens and they were little children, had later come to regard her with a kind of contemptuous tolerance. It was exactly the same feeling as she had for them. They thought she had never lived and she thought they had never grown up.

“Wrong number,” said Hope, coming back and getting herself a whiskey. “A peculiar man with a very secretive manner.”

Sarah wondered if it might have been Adam Foley. Next morning, she got up first. She usually did. She found her mother in the garden, deadheading the dahlias. Ursula asked her if she wanted another installment of life with Father—that was the phrase she used, trying to sound casual and cheerful at the same time—but Sarah said no, thanks, not this time, not this weekend, for there was something else she wanted to discuss. Then, to Ursula’s extreme astonishment, Sarah kissed her cheek. She stood there with one hand up to her cheek and the other clutching the pruning shears for some moments before she felt the wind and realized she was getting chilled to the bone, out there without a coat.

The girls had been much nicer to her lately; they had been nicer, in fact, than they had ever been. It all dated from when she had cried in the taxi after the memorial service. Now she couldn’t remember why she had cried, only that it wasn’t because Gerald was dead. The girls thought it was, though, and perhaps that was why their attitude toward her had changed.

The phone was ringing as Sarah came into the kitchen. She glanced at the clock and saw it was just after 9:30, which she thought ridiculously early to phone anyone, so she lifted the receiver grudgingly. A man’s voice said that he was Sam Fleming and asked if he could speak to Ursula.

Just at that moment, Pauline walked in and said that if she could take a car, any car, Ursula’s or Sarah’s, she’d like to go shopping in Gaunton. Yes, of course she could, Sarah said, covering up the mouthpiece, then uncovering it, looking out of the window to where her mother should be but wasn’t.

“I don’t know where she is,” she said. “Can I get her to call you back?”

This Fleming man said yes and gave her a number, which Sarah tried to memorize, as there was no paper at hand. Pauline left and Hope walked in. They looked at each other and nodded, Sarah cocking a thumb toward the garden. Sarah said she was going to make French toast and asked if Hope wanted some, and while she was making it, Ursula appeared.