The Chimney Sweeper's Boy (42 page)

“A
telephonist
?”

“The telephonist would go out with a reporter to phone in his copy. No recording devices then, no E-mail.”

“And that's what he did?”

“It was a way of getting started in journalism. But he left to join the navy. We missed him but—well, I suppose we vaguely knew where he was and we knew he'd come back. And he did. He lived at home with us and got a job on a local newspaper. I remember my mother was very proud of him. He was the first member of our family to have a—I don't know if you'd call it a profession, not to work with his hands, anyway, to have what the Americans call ‘a white-collar job.' ”

“Was it the
Walthamstow Herald
?”

Stefan shook his head. “The
Herald
was their rival paper. John worked for the
Walthamstow Independent.
He was a general reporter. He used to cover courts, local meetings, county councils, that sort of thing. His shorthand was very good, very fast.”

“Was it?” she said wonderingly, reflecting that she had very little idea what shorthand actually was. “I didn't know.”

“He used to come home and tell us his adventures. Some quite exciting things used to happen, even in Leyton and Walthamstow. Then he left home and got a room in Walthamstow.”

“Why did he do that if he was so fond of you all?”

“My brother James got married. He was only twenty-one, but his girlfriend was pregnant.”

She looked blankly at him, as one who is confused by what seems a total non sequitur. That made him laugh. It was cathartic laughter, and when it was over, he seemed freed of some burden. He even looked younger. Color had flooded his face.

“My dear Sarah, the world has changed so much. How can I explain? It was very disgraceful; it was still disgraceful in 1949. I was only twelve, but I was made to feel the disgrace of it, the shame. Joseph, not my mother, explained to me what had happened and what must happen: James and she
must be married as soon as possible. They didn't like the girl; even James didn't much like the girl, but that had nothing to do with it. They had to marry and come back and live with us. There was an acute housing shortage, and they had nowhere else to go.

“John—I suppose I should call him Gerald—said he'd move out. He was the only one who didn't make a big tragedy out of the situation. He even laughed about it. He said to me that this was something that happened all the time and I was to remember that; it wasn't some exceptional sin that every right-thinking person condemned.

“It's funny how clearly I remember our conversation, but I do. I remember him saying that there were some things that were sins, crimes that could never be forgotten, but that wasn't one of them, whatever Joseph might say. The most important factor in all this, he said, was the unborn child. A child deserved two parents and a sound family background; that was all they should be thinking of. A family was a sacred thing, he said. To break up a family and destroy it, that was a sin. I've always remembered that.”

“What did he mean, sacred?”

“I don't know, Sarah. I was only twelve. The most important factor to me was that a strange woman would be moving in and my brother, who was nearer to a father, would be moving out and I couldn't stop it.”

“But he came back often to see you?”

“Three or four times a week, and at the weekends he sometimes stayed over and slept on the settee downstairs. Even without him, we were crowded. James and Jackie and eventually the baby took over the front bedroom, which had been my mother's and Joseph's, while they had their bed down in the erstwhile dining room, Margaret and Mary were in the back bedroom, and I had the tiny box room with two bunks in it.” He looked up at her. “Would you like anything else to eat?”

“Just coffee,” she said.

“Just coffee. And shall we have another half carafe?”

“Why not?”

What she wanted to ask him wasn't relevant, but she very much wanted to know. Of course she knew that those who have had a happy childhood—and many of those who have not—see their parents as sexless beings, physical
relations between them being unimaginable. And her father, while so extremely physical, had seemed more asexual, as far as she could tell, than most. She couldn't remember seeing him kiss her mother or even touch her hand. And then there swam into her consciousness a memory from Holly Mount days, of going into his bedroom, as she always did in the very early morning, and of finding him not alone but with her mother, the two of them in the bed with their arms around each other.

“Did he have girlfriends himself?” she asked Stefan abruptly.

They were walking back from the restaurant, up the hill in the lamplight. He pursed his lips, shrugged.

“There was a girl. I think she worked on the newspaper, too. Sheila? Shirley? I was too young to know about these things, but I don't think it amounted to much. He never brought her home. I don't know now how I knew she existed. Maybe I saw them out together in the street.”

“Tell me about when he disappeared.”

Stefan unlocked the house door and let them in. It was 9:30, according to the clock in the hall, which struck a single note as they went back into the living room. He said, “Can I get you anything? A drink?”

“I mustn't. I've got to drive.” Her head was already swimming, but she thought longingly of brandy. “Well, a very small brandy, if you have it.”

“Sure I have it.”

She sat thinking about her father and his youth and his love for these brothers and sisters and knew she wouldn't be able to sleep. There was no point in hurrying home to sleeplessness. She might as well stay and hear the rest, not postpone it till another day. He came back with the brandy, an amount no one could call small, in a balloon glass.

“Thanks,” she said, and, out of character, raised the glass. “The Ryans!”

He smiled. “Well, there are some of us left. My children. James's two and Margaret's two.”

“Mary didn't have any children?”

“Mary became a nun.”

Sarah made a sound she hadn't uttered for twenty years. “Wow!”

“Wow indeed. I'm used to it, but it still seems a little strange. She had a true vocation, I suppose you could say. One could say. Joseph certainly
could and did say. He was overjoyed. She's dead now; she died five years ago. We're not really a long-lived family. But I was going to tell you about when John disappeared.”

“Yes.”

Stefan sat down opposite her. He leaned back for a moment, contemplating the ceiling, then sat up rather stiffly, as if bracing himself for an ordeal. “It was in the summer. The summer of 1951. Mary's birthday was July the second and John came over for that. He wouldn't have missed something like that. She didn't really have a party—we couldn't afford it—but she had two of her school friends to tea. She was sixteen. We were all there—well, James was working nights, but Jackie was there and their baby, Peter. John, your father, he came along at about eight, after he'd been to cover the annual general meeting of some society or other. I can't, needless to say, remember what.

“He brought Mary a present—well, two presents. A box of chocolates—chocolate was still rationed, so it was a great treat to have a whole box—and a book called
Young Pegasus.
A book of poems. It was in the house for years. We didn't have many books, so I remember that one.

“And I remember we all played a game. Even Mary and I were a bit old for it, but we always played it; I couldn't remember a time when we hadn't. And we played it to try it out on the school friends, see if they could get the point. It was a ridiculous game; it went like this.…”

“I pass the scissors crossed,” said Sarah very quietly.

“Ah.” He nodded, thought, nodded again. “So he taught you, did he?”

“Yes.”

“As I taught my children and Margaret taught hers. Somehow I have my doubts about James. By the way, Margaret is still very much alive, but James is dead. He died as your father did, of heart disease. So we're all gone now but Margaret and me. Now, where was I? Yes, the party.

“That was the last time I ever saw your father. He said good night to us all and went to get the last bus back to Walthamstow. Not many cars about then, you know. We didn't know anyone with a car. He went, and he was quite cheerful and normal. It was a Monday, and he said to Mother that he'd see us on Wednesday, that he'd come for his tea before he went to cover something
or other. Maybe a meeting of the Leyton council, I don't know. Oh, and he said he'd something to tell us but that it would keep; it would keep for a couple of days.”

“Something to tell you?”

“We never found out what it was. He didn't come. John never broke promises; he was a most reliable person. They are the ones that cause the worry, the reliable people, the ones who never let you down, because when they do … My mother was worried from the first. And when he didn't come the next day, she was desperate.”

“Didn't she phone him?”

“We didn't have a phone, Sarah. John didn't have a phone, not in his room. On the Friday, she got James to go to the
Independent
offices—well, it was a printing plant—and ask for him. They hadn't seen him, either. He had left without warning, though they weren't much surprised. He had given in his notice there weeks before, as it happened, and had only a few days left. My mother thought that must have been what he meant when he said he had something to tell us, that he was leaving, that he was perhaps going to some other newspaper and that one a long way off.”

“He was,” she said. “When did you come here to Plymouth, Stefan?”

“It must have been in 1971. Why?”

“My father worked for the
Western Morning News
in Plymouth from 1951 till 1957.”

“Not as John Ryan?”

“As Gerald Candless.”

“Ah,” he said again. For a moment, he was silent. Then he said, “Joseph reported him to the police as a missing person, but they weren't much interested. A young man, you know, not living at home, not a person in any sort of danger.”

“Did you—any of you, I mean—did you try to find him?”

He said rather dryly, “We weren't the sort of people who were equipped for finding someone. No phone, for a start. And no know-how. Joseph—I don't think I told you—Joseph was a postman. James was a motor mechanic. Margaret and Mary and I were too young to know what might be done. Besides, Margaret was preparing to go to university—another wonder for Mother and Joseph. I think, eventually, we all just accepted that he'd left
us. We were sad, and we mourned him in a way, but there was nothing to be done. I believe—well, I know—that later on Margaret wrote to several provincial newspapers to inquire if he might be working for them—that is, if John Charles Ryan might be, but she always got negative replies. No wonder, in the light of what you've told me.

“And that's all I know. I've told you everything about your father I know. It was all forty-six years ago and I never saw him again. None of us did.”

“So far as you know.”

He looked at her in surprise. “Well, yes, that's so.”

It was time for her to leave. She would come back, of course. There was a lot more to say, a lot more to know about the family after her father's departure, but it, too, would take hours to tell. She had been in Stefan's company for six hours. He was tired, his face drawn with fatigue and strain and the pain of remembering. A small hammer banged in her head. She had drunk too much and now she had to drive all those miles across the moor to Tavistock and Okehampton and Bideford. But there was one more question. She was standing up, being helped into her coat.

“You've mentioned all the family but one, the third brother, Desmond. You haven't said a word about Desmond.”

“No,” he said.

“He's dead, I gathered. You said they were all dead but you and Margaret. What happened to Desmond?”

He went to the door with her. He opened the door and took her hand. She thought he was going to kiss her, but he didn't. “I can't tell you tonight,” he said. “I'll tell you next time. We're both too tired for it. Good night.”

“Good night, Stefan,” she said.

T
HERE WAS FOG ON THE MOOR.
P
OCKETS OF FOG HUNG IN THE DIPS
of the narrow road and scarves of it drifted suddenly across her windscreen. She drove slowly and shakily, uncertain how much of her loss of control was due to drink and how much to the unleashing of emotion. It seemed that for hours now she had held a quantity of unshed tears throbbing and prickling behind her eyeballs. At the same time, she was growing very afraid of falling asleep at the wheel, skidding, involuntarily letting her foot slip off the brake, of plunging into fog and thence into some stream or pool or through a gate.