Father Unknown (7 page)

Yet Ellen was popular with both adults and other children, for she had a sweet nature and a sort of glow from within. Her teacher, Mrs Palstow, said she was a rewarding pupil, always enthusiastic and eager to learn. Few people ever really noticed her shabby clothes – she was after all a farmer’s daughter, and there weren’t many parents in the area who could afford to deck their children out like the Trevoises could.

‘You’re the one who’s mad, Sally,’ one of the older girls called out. ‘I saw Ellen’s mum just this morning, or do you think I saw a ghost?’

Sally puffed out her chest and folded her arms defiantly. ‘Don’t any of you know?’ she asked, her eyes scanning her audience. ‘That isn’t her real mum; she only got hooked up with Mr Pengelly after Ellen’s mum killed herself. She killed her baby too.’

There was a gasp from all the children. Even the boys who had previously carried on with their games of tag and leap-frog came closer, picking up that they were missing something shattering. ‘I heard my mum and dad talking about it,’ Sally said proudly. ‘They said she was mad, and if she hadn’t thrown herself off the cliff she would have been taken to the loony bin.’

At this Josie Pengelly, Ellen’s younger sister, pushed her way through the crowd. The girls were as alike as two peas in a pod, only two and a half years between them and two inches in height.

‘You’re a liar!’ she exclaimed. ‘I’m going to tell my dad what you said and he’ll come round and knock your dad out. So there.’

‘Shut up, Nosy Josie,’ Sally said. ‘You don’t know anything about this, you weren’t even born then. Ellen isn’t even your real sister.’

‘She is,’ Josie screeched at the older girl, running forward to batter her with her fists. ‘You’re a nasty, lying, stuck-up cow.’

At that point Mrs Palstow appeared in the playground. She had observed something going on from the staff-room window, and remembering that Sally had ruined Ellen’s painting, guessed she was taking her revenge. When she saw Sally’s blue-stained plaits she decided justice had already been done, so she blew her whistle for the children to return to their classes.

All of them moved into line with the exception of Ellen. She was left standing alone, looking stunned. The rest of the children filed into school but still Ellen remained where she was.

‘Go and wash your hands please Ellen,’ Mrs Palstow said, assuming the child thought she was in trouble. ‘It wasn’t very wise to put paint in Sally’s hair, I expect her mother will be cross. But I did see what she did to your painting and I shall tell her so.’

Ellen didn’t answer but ran towards the school building and disappeared into the cloakroom. Mrs Palstow walked on back to her classroom, her mind now on the story she intended to read to her class.

Ellen stood in the cloakroom, her hands under the running tap but her mind firmly fixed on what Sally had said. She very much wanted to discount it entirely, to laugh in Sally’s face, yet she sensed that the other girl had got the story from listening to someone in her parents’ grocer’s shop. Could it possibly be true?

Her hands became numb from the cold water, but she didn’t feel it as she was picturing a woman with a baby in her arms jumping from a cliff top. It couldn’t be right; mothers protected their babies. Although she couldn’t remember back to when Josie was born, she could recall when she started walking. Mum was always shouting at her to watch her baby sister, and sometimes Ellen got blamed when Josie fell in mud. The confusion of it all made her cry, and with that she grabbed her raincoat from the peg and ran out of the school, across the playground and into the street, leaving the tap still running.

She took the short-cut home across the fields, but it was still a long way and she had a stitch from running long before she got to the stile that took her back on to the road. It was only three weeks into the autumn term, but it was already turning colder, and recently heavy rain had turned the path to mud. At the back of her mind she knew she would be in trouble for leaving school, for not putting on her Wellingtons, and especially for leaving Josie to come home alone. But that seemed far less important than to see her dad to find out if what Sally had said was true.

Beacon Farm, the Pengelly land, stretched for about a mile along the road between Mawnan Smith and Maunporth. But although this might have seemed fair acreage to a passer-by, it wasn’t good farming land, for it was a narrow strip, running down to the cliffs and the sea, with no flat fields for crops, and clumps of thick woodland and marshy areas. Only the very committed would have tried to farm it.

But the Pengellys were too committed, or at least too stubborn, to walk away from it. It had been passed down through three generations, and each one of them believed it was better to eke out an existence on their own land than to go cap in hand to anyone else for a job.

Albert, Ellen’s father, had finally come to own it when his father died back at the start of the Second World War, and Albert still farmed it in much the same way. He kept cows, chickens and a few sheep, and grew vegetables. Even if he had had the money to buy new modern machinery, it was doubtful that he’d have done so. To him, his ancient tractor and his muscle were enough. When times were hard, he would take himself off to Falmouth and join a fishing boat for a few weeks. That was the way his father, and his grandfather before that, had got by, and Albert knew no other way.

The farmhouse reflected the hand-to-mouth existence of its owners. Situated in a dip and concealed from the road by woodland, it was in a sorry state. The roof sagged, the windows were ill-fitting, and wooden outhouses and extra rooms had been added in a haphazard fashion to the original stone-built two-room cottage. Inside was no better; there were no modern amenities, and the furniture was a motley collection of hand-me-downs.

But however dilapidated the farmhouse was, its setting was idyllic. The front of the house faced the sea, there were wooded hills to either side and before it the land gradually sloped down to a small rocky cove. The view was beautiful, whatever the season. Even in the depths of winter when the sea was dark and menacing and the trees bare of leaves, it had majesty, for the waves would crash over the rocks in the cove and frost stayed glittering on bare branches. Purple and white heather sprang up in crevices, rose-hips and other berries were bright on the bushes. In spring the stream to the right of the house, swollen from snow further inland, would gush down its rocky path to the sea; wild iris, bluebells, primroses and violets grew in profusion on its banks. There were rhododendrons too, huge masses of purple and pink, and as the new lambs skipped around their mothers it became a place of enchantment. By summer the trees made a thick canopy of leaves and welcome shade, the fields were bright with buttercups and the cove was paradise for children.

Now, at the end of September, there were signs of autumn approaching. Dew-sprinkled spiders’ webs adorned every bush, Old Man’s Beard festooned the hedges, and elderberry bushes were weighed down by their purple berries.

Normally as Ellen came down the narrow footpath through the woods to the farmhouse she would linger, looking out for squirrels, squeezing elderberries between her fingers to stain them purple, and checking the horse-chestnut tree to see the progress of the conkers, but today she didn’t even notice her surroundings. She was turning over in her mind what Sally had told her, cutting out everything else. As she finally came to the clearing above the farmhouse and saw her father cutting cabbages down below, she ran towards him at full tilt, tears pouring down her face.

‘Whatever’s wrong, me handsome?’ he said in alarm, lifting her up into his arms to comfort her.

Albert looked like a gypsy, not just because of his torn checked shirt, the knotted handkerchief around his neck and his moleskin trousers. His skin had a leathery texture and deep brown colour, and his long, curly hair flowed out like a flag behind him as he strode around his fields. His hair had once been as bright as his daughter’s, for curly, red hair was the Pengelly trademark, but now that he was thirty-seven it was peppered with grey and growing thin. It wasn’t known for certain why he never cut it, but some old men in the village claimed it was intended as an insult to his father who had ill-treated him as a child and used to shave his son’s head to humiliate him.

Yet no one dared laugh at Albert’s long hair, or his tenacity in farming land that yielded so little reward. They even described him as a big man, although in reality he was just five feet eight and quite slender. But perhaps that was because his shoulders were powerful, his fists like sledgehammers, and he had a reputation as a man who was dangerous to cross.

Ellen of course did not see him that way, for he was affectionate with her and gentle with animals. But then her knowledge of other men was extremely limited for the only ones she knew were other farmers who were as strong and silent as her father.

‘Sally Trevoise said my mum was mad and jumped off a cliff,’ she blurted out. ‘She said she killed her baby too and Josie isn’t my sister.’

She felt a sense of relief once she’d got it out and she buried her face in her father’s shoulder, expecting him to chuckle and tell her it was nonsense. But instead he said nothing, just held her.

‘It’s not true, is it?’ she asked, not daring to lift her face and look at him.

Albert Pengelly was thunderstruck. A quiet man by nature, only partially educated and scraping a meagre living from his land, he felt he had little to offer anyone. Over the years, the hard life and the bitterness that went with it had made him withdraw into himself even more. He had always known that a day would come when he would have to tell Ellen about her real mother, but he hadn’t expected it to come this soon. He silently vowed to get even with Meg Trevoise for her vicious, loose tongue. How could he explain something as complex as his wife’s death to an eight-year-old?

‘It isn’t true, is it, Daddy?’ Ellen asked again, this time looking him right in the face, her slender body tense with anxiety. ‘That is my mummy indoors, isn’t it?’ she added, pointing towards the house.

Albert thought for a second. He could lie to her, and maybe for a time she’d believe him, but he knew in his heart it would only be a stay of execution. Better she should hear the truth now, however bad, from him, who at least had no malicious intent.

‘Violet is your stepmother,’ he said, then, putting the child down on the ground, he took her hand and led her down the path towards the cove, well away from the house. ‘I married her after your mother died.’

‘So my real mummy did kill herself then?’ Ellen said in a small voice. ‘Why? Didn’t she care about me?’

Albert had never been able to agree with the coroner’s opinion that Clare took her and her infant child’s lives when the balance of her mind was disturbed.

‘I reckon she just fell from the cliff,’ he said.

‘Why did she take her baby up there?’ Ellen asked, looking up at him with wide brown eyes so like his own. ‘Was it in a pram? Was I there too?’

Albert sighed. He could see Ellen wasn’t going to be satisfied unless she had a more detailed explanation. But he wasn’t good with words, and he was scared he might let slip things a child should never know.

‘No, you were with me. Your mum just went for a walk with the babby in her arms. When she didn’t come back I went to look for her. But look here, Ellen,’ he said gruffly. ‘you got to believe what I tell you, not blather from those who don’t know.’

‘But you didn’t tell me Violet wasn’t my real mummy,’ she said, beginning to cry again. ‘So it’s true that Josie isn’t my real sister too?’

‘Josie’s your half-sister,’ he said curtly for emotional scenes acutely embarrassed him. ‘She were born after I married Violet. I couldn’t ‘ave told you afore. You was too little.’

Ellen sensed he wasn’t going to say any more. It wasn’t anywhere near enough for her; she had a million more questions buzzing around in her head. But she knew that if she continued to question him he would only get angry.

‘Where’s Josie?’ he asked, confirming that he considered the matter closed.

‘Still at school,’ she admitted, and looked up at him fearfully. It was her job to get Josie to and from school safely, and Mum was going to be angry with her.

They had reached the little cove now, and the tide was in, throwing the waves up against the rocks, covering the small stretch of sand that she and Josie played on at low tide. They always considered this was their own beach and resented anyone coming there, but in fact there was a footpath right along the cliffs almost from Falmouth to Mawnan Smith and then on down to the Helford estuary. In summer holidaymakers sometimes used it, even having the cheek to come up to the farmhouse and ask for a drink of water.

Some of the other farms in the area had these people to stay with them as paying guests. The Trevoises had a caravan in the field behind their shop that they rented out, and had often suggested to Mr Pengelly that he should let people pitch tents on his land down by the cove, but he wouldn’t. He hated the holidaymakers – they left the gates open and let the animals out, left their picnic rubbish about and sometimes even started fires. He said Cornwall belonged to the Cornish, and if he had his way he wouldn’t even allow them into the county just to look, let alone stay.

‘Reckon you’d best go back to meet Josie,’ Albert said, putting his hand on Ellen’s shoulder. ‘I’ll go back in and square it with your mum.’

Ellen glanced at the steep cliffs on either side of the cove and wondered where it was her real mother had met her death, what her name was, what she looked like, but she didn’t dare ask. Her father had that set to his mouth that he always got when something was wrong. If anyone pestered him when he was like that, they were asking for trouble.

Josie was just climbing over the stile on the other side of the road as Ellen came along.

‘Why did you run out of school?’ she asked indignantly. ‘Mrs Palstow was very worried.’

‘Mind your own business,’ Ellen said. She knew if she told Josie why, she’d tell everyone at school the following day.