Barbara Vine - The Chimney Sweeper's Boy

“Jason,” she said, “your grandmother would remember the sweep, wouldn’t she? She’d know his name, maybe a lot about him?”

“I’ll give it a go,” he said.

Lundy View House was empty. Never before had Sarah arrived to find it empty. It was a piece of luck she had brought her key. The central heating was off and the house was cold. She found it all rather unnerving. It had begun to rain, the wind was getting up, and a high tide pounded against the foot of the cliffs. She checked the garage, saw that her mother’s car was gone, and thought about road accidents. Then a sense of grievance overpowered mild anxiety. She had never before come home with no one to welcome her, offer her a drink, food, ask about her week. If her father had lived … Immediately, the tears threatened. She rubbed her eyes angrily and poured herself a stiff whiskey. Then she switched on the heat.

At any rate, she could now phone Jason Thague without an audience. And Ma could pay for the call, which would be a long one. She took her whiskey and the phone and sat down in “Daddy’s chair.” But it was a little while before she dialed the Ipswich number.

Since the discovery of the black moth’s common name, she had felt both closer to her father and further away. Closer because of the thought processes his connection with this small black emblem revealed, because, knowing him so well, she could imagine his researches, his perhaps grim amusement, and his response to those who asked why. “A private matter,” he might have said. “An in-joke shared only by myself with myself.” What would he have said if she had asked? If Hope had asked? This was what distanced her from him now, the secret he had hidden from her and hidden so successfully. She touched the arms of his chair. His own hands had worn the velvet almost bald. Her hands lay for a moment where his had lain, and then she picked up the phone.

It rang so long, she thought no one was there to answer it. She was on the point of putting the receiver down when his voice said, “Hello?” Absurdly, she thought he should have sounded breathless, should have exerted himself to get to the phone. But his voice was calm, almost indifferent.

“I’ve asked my nan. She remembers they had the sweep, but she can’t remember his name. It’s a bit much to expect her to remember.”

“She remembered the doctor,” Sarah said.

“Look, she’s a marvel, considering. I just hope you and me’ll have our marbles the way she has when we come to wrinkleland.”

“Okay, okay, I’m not knocking your grandmother.”

He spoke to someone in the house where he was, some fellow tenant. “Will you turn down that radio? Sorry, but I can’t hear myself speak. Sarah, she’s going to try and think. See if there’s any way she can check. If she can’t remember his name, there are a lot of things she does remember. Hang on, will you, and I’ll get my notes.”

Sarah hung on. The radio, which no one seemed to have turned down, was providing the sort of music companies play to callers awaiting attention. She half-expected a voice to say, “Our agents are aware of your call and will attend to you soon.” The music tinkled out “Für Elise.” Jason, she thought, why was it such an awful name? Jason was a hero; he captured the Golden Fleece, gained a kingdom, and married Medea. David, who was also a hero and whose name was almost an assonance of Jason, didn’t sound ridiculous, nor did Adam.…

He came back. “I was telling you what she remembers. For instance, that the day her brother died was April twentieth, a Wednesday. He was taken ill on Monday the eighteenth and died on the Wednesday. The doctor came several times, but he wasn’t taken to the hospital. He died at home.

“On Thursday, the twenty-first, the sweep came. He was booked to come. The winter fires were over and Kathleen Candless, my great-grandmother, that is, wanted to start her spring-cleaning, which she couldn’t do till the chimneys were swept. Nan says he came to the door at eight on the Thursday morning and she was sent to tell him to come back another day. Then her dad came out and told him his son had died the day before and that he should come back the following week.”

“If she doesn’t know his name, does she know whether he had children?”

“She doesn’t know much about him except that he was a man who was usually black with soot and who rode a bike. He carried his brushes with him on a bike.”

Sarah had started to say that they must find out this man’s name, that there must be ways, when Ursula walked into the room. She changed her tone to one more brisk and businesslike. “I’ve put your check in the post. I’ll phone again tomorrow or the next day.” The gentle smile on Ursula’s face made her unreasonably indignant. She said like a hectoring parent to a child, “Where have you been?”

Ursula started to laugh. She and Gerald, united for once, had made a point of never asking the girls that question. Sarah looked peevish and her compliment sounded grudging.

“You look wonderful. You look ten years younger.”

“I’ve been in London to see Robert Postle. I met a friend and decided to stay on another day.”

“Have you had something done to your face?” Sarah peered closely, decided she was close enough for a greater intimacy than interrogation afforded, and planted a kiss on her cheek. “You must have been having a great time. The house was absolutely freezing. I did phone yesterday—well, I phoned a lot of times, but you weren’t here.”

“I’ll get us something to eat, shall I?” Ursula had been disarmed by that kiss, found her spoiled child amusing, felt at once lighthearted. She looked at herself in the mirror, at her flushed face, the brightness in her eyes, the upturned corners of her mouth, and was inspired to ask, “Can you take me back with you on Sunday? To London, I mean. I have to go back.”

“Yes, if you want.” Sarah was staring. “Ma, I think Dad’s father was a chimney sweep. Does that mean anything to you?”

Ursula nearly said she didn’t know and she didn’t care. But, as always, she remembered her daughters’ great love for Gerald, and how the knowledge of that love always checked her, so that she was ever prevented from derogation of him.

“Let’s go and see what there is for supper,” she said.

He was sitting at a table with Vicky and Paul and Tyger when Sarah came in. She had dressed herself up in total black, a minimal black skirt, fishnet stockings and knee boots, and a black sweater that was too small for her and which she had found in Hope’s room. Tyger looked her up and down and said, “Going on somewhere, are you?”

“You have to be meeting someone, sweetheart,” said Vicky, “done up like that.”

“I felt like it,” Sarah said, and gulped her wine rather fast. “I felt a bit wild.”

He didn’t say a word. Alexander came in and then Rosie. They were all for going on to the club at once; they were tired of this pub. You could eat at the club and drink till forever and it was raffish and pretty. Everyone drank up and Vicky put her coat on. Sarah also put on her coat, which was a hip-length black mock marabou and also Hope’s.

“You’ll be lucky if they let her in,” Adam said suddenly. It was the first time he had spoken. “She looks as if she’s on the game.”

Vicky gasped. Sarah turned her eyes on him coldly. “What did you say?”

“You heard. I grew up in this town. Some of my family lives here. I can’t afford to be seen about with whores.”

“For God’s sake.” Alexander put out one hand, interposing it between them, as if he feared their coming to blows. “What’s with you? What have you got against Sarah? This isn’t the first time.”

“He hasn’t anything against me,” Sarah said. “He’s a shit. He talks like that because he’s too fucking stupid to make normal conversation.”