Chapter 33
33
On the Saturday morning, I revelled – utterly revelled – in staying in bed with Fabian. No school, no longer any huge concerns about Sorrel, no having to worry about Mum, who appeared to have had a whale of a time with Kamran Sattar the previous evening. She’d texted at two in the morning to say she was safely back at home and we could all stop worrying that Kamran’s plane had gone down in the Channel and she was now swimming with the fishes. If my mum appeared to be rubbing noses with the family who was intent on knocking down St Mede’s as well as Hudson House, then really who was I to be self-righteous? The St Mede’s plan didn’t appear to be moving forwards yet but, when it did start, I’d be there with the rest of the protesters with my ‘Hands Off St Mede’s’ banner. I wanted nothing more than to get Sorrel through her audition in London in two days’ time, put on a successful production of Grease in eight weeks and never ever let go of Fabian Mansfield Carrington.
Ever again.
‘How could you doubt me?’ he’d asked once I’d got back to the cottage the previous evening. ‘Don’t you trust me? You still don’t get it that I want nobody but you? How do I get it into your obstinate head, Robyn?’ He’d shaken his own head in my direction, still cross and frustrated with me, but then had scooped me up in his arms, taken me upstairs, leaving me in no doubt of his love for me.
‘Oy,’ I said now as Fabian stood with his binoculars searching for the pair of swans that nested on the village pond, ‘you’ll be arrested if you keep standing at the window with no clothes on. They’ll think some naked pervert has moved in. And, you could try bringing toasted crumpets and a pot of coffee back to bed with you,’ I went on. ‘I think that might go a long way as compensation for my having to witness another woman wrapped round you in The Alchemist in Leeds.’
‘It wasn’t easy, Robyn,’ Fabian said, turning back to me, and not for the first time I marvelled at his bloody gorgeous body. ‘We’d been working all day on Joel’s case and I couldn’t say anything to Alex in the office – not professional at all for us to be discussing our personal relationship. I suggested a drink so that I could break it to her as gently as I could that any relationship we might be having…’
‘Relationship you might be having?’ I asked crossly, sitting up in bed.
‘…would be purely professional to help Joel. That I’d only taken on this case because of Sorrel. I’d see it through but after that, I don’t care what it takes or where it takes us, Jess and I are going into the restaurant business together?—’
He broke off as my phone rang.
‘Leave it, Robyn,’ he said, coming over, raining little kisses down my back, reaching a hand to lift my hair as his mouth moved to that little hollow above my collarbone he’d discovered was my downfall…
‘Hang on, it’s Mum,’ I breathed reluctantly. ‘Just let me take it. You do breakfast and I promise, after that I’ll give you my undivided attention… sorry, Mum, I was talking to Fabian then… sorry, you want to do what… ? Today…? Why now…? You and Jess are going over…? And Sorrel as well? Right, OK… yes… yes… I’ll come as well… don’t think you’ll get anywhere though…’
Mum carried on talking for another five minutes, one minute slightly tearful, one minute animated. I put the phone down, lying back on the pillows, but my phone rang immediately once more.
‘Hi, Jo… You OK…? Today…? Later this morning…? I don’t know where here is, Jo…’ I laughed. ‘Oh, I didn’t realise you were in Beddingfield too. For some reason I thought you lived near school… What’s up…? OK, tell me when I get there…’ I quickly wrote down the address she gave me. ‘I promised I’d take Boris for a walk… I’ll call in on my way if you’re OK with a Goldendoodle…?’
‘Who’re you talking to?’ Fabian, followed by a salivating Boris, was back with a tray piled high with breakfast goodies. ‘Hang on, let me get this dog back downstairs.’
‘Mum…’ I said, biting into a crisp crumpet, butter running down my chin. ‘God, I don’t know how you manage to get these crumpets just right, Fabian. Mine are always soft and floppy…’
‘ Never have I countenanced anything floppy.’ He grinned, leering lasciviously like a dirty old man, and I started to laugh through my mouthful of crumpet.
I took another wonderful bite. ‘Not even floppy disks, years ago?’ I mumbled.
‘You had floppy dicks, years ago?’ Fabian started laughing. ‘No wonder you were hot on my heels in Leeds last night looking for what you knew you’d be missing…’
‘And then Jo from school on the phone – you know, who’s trying to work out Mum’s family history for us? I said I’d pop in when I’m out walking Boris. I know you’ve some work to do.’
‘Is your mum grounded?’ Fabian was slightly indignant. ‘I can’t believe you allowed her to go off with the enemy.’
‘Grounded?’ I stared as a picture of Mum, ordered to her room for daring to fly off with Kamran Sattar, flashed before me. ‘Oh, you mean, literally!’ I laughed. ‘We were hoping Mr Sattar might spill the beans about what he’s up to with both Hudson House and St Mede’s.’
‘And did he?’
‘That’s what we’re hoping to find out. But—’ I swallowed, reaching for my mug ‘—Mum says she wants to go over to the Foleys’ herself.’
Fabian swallowed his last bit of crumpet, both he and Boris – who’d crept back upstairs – looking longingly at my remaining one, and whistled. ‘Why?’
‘No idea, unless it’s because Jess and I have already tried to get things out of them and failed. She’ll feel a lot braver facing them with the three of us behind her.’
‘Jesus, I’d like to be a fly on the wall when this Foley woman opens the door on all four of you Allen women.’ Fabian pulled a scared face. ‘One of you at any one time is more than enough, but the four of you on the doorstep…?’ Fabian exhaled. ‘Good luck with that one.’
* * *
‘Whoa, he’s a big boy.’ Jo Cooper, Head of History at St Mede’s, laughed as Boris, ordered to sit, quivered excitedly, desperate to greet her. ‘Bring him in, he’s fine.’
‘Watch your ornaments,’ I cautioned. ‘He’s a bit like a bull in the proverbial.’
I followed her into a tiny kitchen and then through to a beautiful but untidy sitting room where a woman, probably in her mid-seventies, was attempting to clear the papers and books from every surface. She looked up and smiled, her arms full of back copies of The Guardian as well as piles of Family Tree and Find Your Ancestors . A large Mac computer was drowning under a deluge of school planning, papers and marking. Three piles of St Mede’s red history exercise books were open, obviously awaiting Jo’s attention.
‘Jo, how the hell do you work like this?’ The older woman tutted before smiling at me and bending to give Boris the attention he craved.
‘God, sorry,’ I said as Boris scattered two of the piles in his eagerness to greet the woman.
‘Oh, don’t worry!’ Jo laughed. ‘The Year 9 essays on the Treaty of Versailles probably make as much sense with a few paw prints on them… Mum, this is Robyn from school. Robyn, my mum, Janice. Mum used to teach at St Mede’s twenty-five years ago.’
‘Oh, really?’
‘Needlecraft, we called it when I started. The girls made their aprons, covers for their cookery baskets and even summer dresses. Did quite a bit of teaching cooking in domestic science as well. Then it all changed to CDT…’
‘CDT?’ I grinned. ‘Gosh, I remember that – craft, design and technology.’
‘…and after that it wasn’t my thing.’ Janice smiled. ‘Ended up teaching infants, for my sins.’
‘On the phone you sounded as if you’d discovered something exciting, Jo?’ I said, finally managing to rein in Boris, before sitting down on the one chair devoid of papers.
‘Well, not me. Mum here…’
‘Oh?’
‘So,’ Janice started, ‘before I decided to train as a teacher, I was a mender at Hudson’s – the huge textile mill at the far end of the village? All apartments now, of course.’
I nodded and she carried on.
‘I did my O levels at night – in those days you could do a Cert Ed at teacher training college with just five O levels, especially if you were classed a mature student.’
‘My sister, Jess, is in charge up at Hudson House now it’s a care home,’ I said. ‘You know, the fabulous great house the Hudsons built years ago? Which the Sattar brothers are about to knock down?’
‘I’d heard that. Along with St Mede’s?’ Janice sniffed crossly. ‘And yes, I know your sister – I’ve met her up there a couple of times when I’ve been visiting.’
‘Oh? You know it? My mum’s always up there too at the moment,’ I said. ‘Loves the garden.’
‘I know. I’ve met Lisa there as well.’ Janice was obviously trying to get on with her story.
‘Really? Gosh, small world.’
Janice was silent for a few seconds. ‘The thing is, love,’ she began, ‘and, you know, Eloise made me promise not to tell anyone…’
‘Eloise?’
‘Eloise Hudson. Who I go to visit up at Hudson House. She’s the daughter of Ralph Hudson who was in charge at Hudson’s until Eloise’s brothers Brian, and then Michael, took over when he ran off.’
‘ Who ran off?’ I shook my head, trying to work out who was who.
‘Mr Ralph, Eloise’s father. Bit of a scandal. He’d been having an affair with Mr Brian’s secretary for a year or so – what was she called?’ Janice paused, closing her eyes to think. ‘Linda, Linda Munro, that was it. She was a right dolly bird! We menders and weavers all had a good idea although we never let on to Eloise. Linda was pregnant and they both just upped and left. Went off to South Africa where Ralph had contacts – started another textile business, I believe.’
‘Mum, get on to Eloise; tell Robyn what you told me.’ Jo, obviously listening from the kitchen, was back with mugs of coffee.
‘Once I heard Eloise was back in Beddingfield – she and that husband of hers, Christopher Howard, lived out towards north Leeds, so I’m not sure why he brought her back here – mind you, not easy finding a spot for someone with early-onset dementia… anyway, Bex, who also works up there, lives next door to me and she happened to mention that Eloise was a resident. So, I started to visit her just before Christmas.’
I shrugged, smiling. ‘OK?’
‘I blame myself, really.’ Janice pulled a face.
‘For what?’
‘For encouraging her to come out on the town with us when we were seventeen and eighteen. She used to come down to my house – we lived near St Mede’s when I was a kid – and borrow my clothes…’
‘Nana Norma was a whizz with a needle,’ Jo put in.
‘…and I’d do her hair and her make-up,’ Janice continued. ‘Hang on, I’ve been up in the loft this morning when I knew you were coming. I’ve some photos. And letters she sent me.’ Janice reached for a brown envelope, passing over several photographs of a beautiful blonde in a short dress. ‘That’s Eloise Hudson. So, the thing is, I’m wondering if Eloise could be your grandmother.’
‘Sorry?’ My head shot up in shock.
‘Eloise fell in love with one of the mill workers; his family was from the Mirpur area of Pakistan. Junayd Sattar came to work at Hudson’s when he was just fifteen and he’d been there four or five years when Eloise started temping at the mill. Educated himself at night school like me. He was very bright. And exceptionally handsome into the bargain. They were both brilliant photographers… they got together.’
I shook my head, trying to make sense of what Janice was saying. ‘Sattar? Any relation of the Sattar brothers?’
Janice shook her head. ‘I hadn’t thought of that. I’ve no idea. Anyway, Eloise got pregnant…’
‘To one of her father’s Pakistani mill workers?’ I exhaled. ‘Blimey, I bet that went down well?’
‘Eloise came straight down to tell me. She was distraught. Mainly because Junayd’s family, thinking he was spending too much time with – how shall we say? Not one of them ? – were intent on sending him back to Mirpur. An arranged marriage to get him out of the way…’
‘But, honestly, Janice, I don’t see where you’re going with all this?’
‘Just listen, Robyn,’ Jo encouraged, her eyes wide with excitement.
‘Eloise didn’t know what to do. My mum and I didn’t know how to help. Getting pregnant when you weren’t married, in the late 1960s, was bad enough, but when the father is a… you know… and one of the mill workers to boot…?’ Janice pulled an imaginary knife across her throat. ‘Out of the blue, Junayd was sent back to Mirpur to get married; the plan was to bring his new wife back here to Yorkshire, I suppose. That’s what happened in those days.’
‘Still does, to some extent,’ Jo added, sagely.
‘Eloise was utterly distraught and ended up telling her granny she was pregnant. What was her granny called…? Maude, I think. Or was that her mother? No, her mother was Muriel. Muriel Hudson, that’s it. She’d been having an affair with the local MP but that’s neither here nor there. Anyway, Eloise thought her granny was the one person she could trust when my mum and me didn’t know what to do to help.’
‘And?’
‘Well,’ Janice went on, ‘obviously her granny wasn’t to be trusted. Together, Muriel and Maude Hudson cooked up some story, saying Eloise was going to work as an au pair in Canada. Maude’s sister, apparently the black sheep of the family, had settled in Quebec, falling in love and living in the wilds with some lumberjack just after the First World War. You know what it’s like, the one member of the family who’s always been persona non grata! No one talks about?’
I nodded.
‘Quebec was the least… shall we say socially accepting… of all the Canadian states in the 1960s?’ Jo had her history teacher head on. ‘You know how awful it was for young, pregnant and unmarried girls in Ireland at the time?’
‘Not so good here, either.’ Janice frowned.
‘Well, just as bad in Canada, if not worse.’
‘Maude and Eloise stayed with this sister of Maude’s until she had the baby…’ Janice interrupted. ‘Eloise wrote to tell me what was happening. She was beside herself about Junayd.’
‘I was up until late last night, Robyn.’ Jo got the conversation back to herself. ‘Researching what it was like for an unmarried mother in Canada. They were often bound to a hospital bed, over-medicated and told to forget their “illegitimate” child, or to pretend the baby had never been born at all. I didn’t realise, but societal norms and religious organisations played a profoundly controlling role in the lives of Canadians right up to the seventies. I was looking at statistics last night and, apparently, 600,000 babies – over half a million, can you imagine? – were born to unmarried mothers, and most of these girls were coerced into surrendering their babies to married couples wanting to adopt…’
‘Right, I’m going to stop you right there.’ I actually put up my hand. ‘Mum wasn’t born in Canada. She was born in Surrey. Her adoptive parents moved up to Yorkshire when Mum was nine, but there’s absolutely no connection apart from that. She and my father – Jayden – happened to break down in Beddingfield on their way back to Leeds when Mum was in her early twenties. Mum loved the village and decided it was where she wanted to have her baby – my sister Jess…’
‘But your mum’s birth date is exactly the same as the one Eloise has engraved on her bracelet. You said so, Robyn.’ Both Jo and Janice were looking crestfallen, obviously disappointed that I’d burst their bubble. ‘And—’ Jo gave it one last shot ‘—your mum’s dual heritage. It would fit perfectly.’
‘Well, it would, but there must have been many babies born in Quebec on that particular date.’
‘Well, I’m still looking,’ Jo said. ‘I’m doing it for Eloise now. I want to know what happened to her baby.’
‘Do you even know if she had a daughter, Janice?’
Janice looked slightly embarrassed. ‘When she wrote to me – you know after she came back from Canada – she just said she’d had the baby and it had been immediately taken away for adoption. She married Christopher Howard fairly soon after that and we lost touch. In her last letter to me, she said her husband had no idea why she’d been away in Canada; assumed she’d been visiting her great-aunt as well as working as an au pair in Montreal. When I was up at Hudson House, last week, she told me she’d had a son called Adam, but she was very confused and her being quite deaf doesn’t help. I’m not convinced she really knew who I was.’ Janice gave a little laugh. ‘Aw, I’m sorry, love, I think our Jo and I’ve got a bit carried away with all this.’
‘That’s the big problem with ancestry,’ Jo said, equally embarrassed. ‘You go down one track, convincing yourself it’s the right one, because you want it to be?—’
She broke off as my phone rang.
‘Sorry, Jess… I’ll be back at the cottage in fifteen… Just need to bring Boris back and then we can get off.’
I turned to the other two. ‘Thank you so much, for all your help. Sorry, it turned out to be a bit of a wild goose trail.’
Jo was cheerful once more. ‘Oh, don’t worry. I’ll keep on, but now I’m going to concentrate on tracking down Eloise’s baby in Canada. This ancestry lark is more bloody addictive than heroin…’ She laughed. ‘See you at school next week.’