The Chimney Sweeper's Boy (10 page)

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.

“Didn't some of these people come to your wedding?”

“There were none of your father's relations there, only friends.”

“Well, tell me about how you and Dad first met, will you?”

“I thought I was to do that when you came down for the weekend.”

“I can't come down. I've got to go and see this Thague woman. So tell me now, will you, Ma?”

Some of it, only some of it. Ursula talked for ten minutes, censoring as she went. It was after Sarah rang off that she thought about it in detail, leaning her head back, closing her eyes, remembering.

The car was an MG, a two-seater. He called for her in it at precisely seven. She was ready; she had been ready for two hours—not a particularly good idea, as she had to keep running upstairs to comb her hair again and renew her lipstick (pale pink, so that Dad wouldn't say she'd been kissing fire engines). A run appeared in one of her stockings and she had to change them, too. Those were still the days, though they were passing, when women were supposed to look perpetually fresh and newly painted, not a hair out of place, like so many life-size Barbie dolls or Stepford Wives.
Bandbox
was the word. It had taken her days to decide what to wear before settling on the new pink shift with pink jacket.

The whole thing made her parents uneasy. Why did this man want to take their daughter out? He was old enough to be her father—well, not quite, but she knew what they meant. Why not take them all out if he wanted to make some return for the dinner at which they had entertained him and at which he had drunk far too much?

“He isn't courting you, is he?” said Herbert Wick.

“I'm just going to have dinner with him, Dad.”

“I do think it's most peculiar,” said Betty. “Don't you, Bert?”

“Writers are peculiar. Still, I suppose it's all right. He's a middle-aged man.”

As if that made him safe. You could leave your daughter alone with a middle-aged man, whereas a young one would be dangerous. Was it a matter of greater physical strength or stronger physical urges? She didn't think of this at the time.

Her parents were pleasant enough to Gerald when he arrived. Her father offered him a drink. Gerald said, “Yes, please, how kind,” and accepted a large gin and tonic. No one worried about drinking and driving in 1962. He was wearing a suit, not very clean and not pressed at all, but still a suit. His tie, he said, was in his pocket; he didn't like ties, but he would put it on when they got to the restaurant.

The restaurant was in Chelsea and quite a long way. Ursula dreaded to think how long it would take at this hour in a car. Well over an hour probably, toiling up through Streatham and Balham and Battersea, along one-way streets in heavy traffic—well, what they considered heavy then. It took Gerald about forty minutes. He talked to her all the way. He asked her questions. She had never been asked so many, never known anyone to take so much interest in her. Where had she lived as a child? Where had she been to school? Had she been good at school? Did she like working for her father? What were her interests? What did she read?

She plucked up her courage and said she had read three of his books.

“And did you like what you read?”

“I liked
The Centre of Attraction
best,” she said. She had really read it; the others she had dipped into and skimmed through.

“That's not an entirely pleasing thing for a writer to hear, you know. That his first book is preferred. It implies he isn't getting better.”

“Oh, I didn't mean …”

“I'll give you all my books and inscribe them to ‘Little Bear.' ‘To Little Bear from Gerald Candless, with admiration.' ”

She blushed. “There isn't anything to admire about me,” she managed to say. “I'm very ordinary.”

“Perhaps it is your ordinariness I admire,” he said.

Sixties food was not inspired, even in a good restaurant like that one. She ate prawn cocktail and roast chicken and peach melba and he ate smoked
mackerel and roast chicken and apple pie à la mode. She asked him why ice cream made it à la mode and he said he didn't know, that it was American. Strange that she remembered the details of that meal but that she couldn't remember what they had eaten at any other until after they were married.

He had put on his tie before they got out of the car—imagine being able to park a car right outside a restaurant in the King's Road!—and it was a red tie, a bit greasy and frayed. When he smiled, she saw that one of his molars had been crowned with gold. It made her think Mr. Rochester must have had a gold tooth.

“Have you a boyfriend?” he asked her when their coffee came.

She was a little shocked, and she reddened again. He watched the color form and fade, his head a little on one side.

“I think that blush means yes, Little Bear.”

“No,” she said. “No, it doesn't mean that. I haven't got … anyone.”

He said nothing. They left. In the car, driving back, she saw his large, long hands tighten on the wheel, the knuckles polished white, as he said without looking at her, of course without looking, “May I apply for the post?”

She had no idea what he meant. “The post?”

“The vacant position of boyfriend—or, since I am too old for such a term, suitor, swain, lover—in the life of Little Bear.”

“You?” she said. She was horrified, aghast, amazed, delighted, incredulous.

He pulled the car to the side, then stopped it. “Do you doubt me?”

She found out later that this quotation from Jane Eyre was unintended. If he had ever read the novel, he had forgotten it. It was by the merest chance that he spoke Edward Rochester's phrase when Jane is incredulous of his proposal, using a common-enough expression. And therefore he had no idea that she herself was quoting when she replied in Jane's word, “Entirely.”

But they had sorted it out. She had explained and he had laughed. They hadn't touched each other and it was to be a long time before he kissed her, but that evening they established that Gerald Candless was to be her accredited—well, boyfriend.

He took her out twice a week. He phoned her every day. Her parents thought it peculiar, but they came to accept him. He was comfortably off, if not rich, did fairly well from his books and very well from his journalism. He had a house in Hampstead, a small house, as he kept on saying. Everyone
in the family, Herbert and Betty, Ian and Helen, expected him and Ursula to get engaged, but it was six months before he asked her to marry him.

She said yes at once because she was in love with him, though she could not have said, as Jane does, that no net ensnared her, that she was a free human being with an independent will. She could not have said that her spirit addressed his spirit, just as if both had passed through the grave, and they stood at God's feet, equal—though she would have liked to.

The truth was that he had ensnared her, hypnotized her almost, had her in thrall. And she still disbelieved. She still felt she might wake up and find herself back in January, on the day before Colin Wrightson was due to come and speak to the Purley Library Users' Association. It was only a dream that he had slipped on the ice on his way to feed the birds, for two days later, he came to Purley and talked about Queen Victoria's daughters and she never met Gerald Candless at all.