The Family Tree (18 page)

Kate shook her head with disbelief, and then her expression cleared as it all began to make sense. Obviously he had been too distressed. And he had deliberately chosen not to keep any reminders of her life and, especially, her death. Which, of course, had also been the death of his second child. Perhaps it had simply been easier that way. Swallowing painfully, Kate looked down at the shoebox on the floor. It was a burnt-orange colour with diagonal black stripes across the lid and the words:
Dobsons! Over 200 stores nation-wide!
The bottom four corners had all been scuffed, with the orange peeled back to reveal soft grey cardboard, and one entire side had come loose, being only held in place by the snugness of the lid. It looked so innocuous, sitting there, that Kate reasoned it couldn't possibly hold anything terribly personal. In fact the chances were that it was exactly the same as her father's, and the mystery was in the concept rather than the contents.

She lifted it onto the coffee table and continued to stare at it, waiting
while her guilt was steadily eroded by the very
ordinariness
of the box and the fact that, so far, she had found nothing of real note. Finally Kate took a deep breath and gently prised the lid off, the split side immediately opening like a drawbridge and spilling papers out across the coffee table. Without moving, Kate cast her eyes over them and was immediately and uncomfortably reminded that her extroverted, flamboyant, jovial uncle had been a very different man from her reticent, self-contained father. Because this man had kept everything. She could see tiny dog-eared photographs, and thin-papered letters, and certificates, and postcards. An entire life contained within an orange-striped shoebox.

And Kate also realised that it was too late to go back now. Her curiosity alone would not allow it. Besides, she had already stepped over the line so she might as well see what it had to offer. She reached forward and delicately plucked a letter from within the pile and held it up to read the spidery script that filled half the page.

Dear Frank
,

I hope this letter finds you well. Your father and I are both well. I must tell you that I have written to the Padre there to request he encourage you to write to us. I have sent you three letters and have not heard back
once.
We would like to hear that you are well or not. Also we need to know when you will be getting out as your father wants to look for some good land but not if you no longer wish to go into partnership with him
.

Write back soon
.

Your loving mother
.

With a shock, Kate realised that the letter was from her paternal grandmother, who had died when she was only a baby. She read through the letter again, searching for clues as to where her uncle had been when the letter had been written but there was no address or date. She put it down on her lap and peered at the other papers across the coffee table, soon finding another with the same writing.

Dear Frank
,

I hope this letter finds you well. Your father and I are both well. I received your letter yesterday and was v. pleased to hear from you after
so long.
Now I can sleep easy. First I must tell you some good news. Your father has found some v. reasonably priced land in Ferntree Gully that he says will be excellent. There is a house already there but it needs fixing. James has come down from Mt Isa and is willing to help until you get out. If all goes well, we should be living there when you return
.

Here is all the news from here: Jean Tapscott from next door has had another baby girl, which makes five girls with no boys
at all.
They called her Patricia, which I am not v. fond of. Your auntie Val visited last week and they are all well there. She tells us Thomas is now engaged to Sophie Wharton. Last week James ran over poor Bessie with the truck but fortunately little damage was done and he managed to straighten the fender himself. That is all the news from here. Please write back soon as I do not want to be forced to contact the Padre again
.

Your loving mother
.

Kate stared at the letter, hoping fervently that poor Bessie had been a dog or a cat and not one of Jean Tapscott's numerous daughters. The threatening tone of the last sentence was also slightly disturbing.
I do not want to be forced to contact the Padre again
. She tried matching it to the sepia portrait that had sat by her father's bed, with her grandmother staring balefully at the world with tight, narrow features, and found that it fitted. Perhaps it was just as well the woman had not lived long enough to pen some of these missives to either her or Angie. Therapy had not been widely available during her childhood.

Kate laid the two letters down and fanned out the other papers across the coffee table, searching for more of the same. But it seemed that her uncle had only kept these two letters from his mother. Could these possibly have been the pick of the bunch? But, more to the question, where had he been? Twice his mother mentioned him ‘getting out' from somewhere, which, if Kate didn't know her uncle better, she would have thought suggested incarceration. But that was patently ridiculous.

Leaning forward, Kate collected a handful of documents and dropped them in her lap before going through them. These were mainly certificates. Angie's birth, her baptism, various school certificates and a marriage certificate. Between Francis Vivian Painter (b. 1935) and Sophie Marie Wharton (b. 1940) on 3 March 1958. Kate's eyes flew over the bride's name one more time and then she scrabbled by her side for her grandmother's letters again. She quickly scanned through the second, pausing when she came to Thomas and his engagement – to Sophie Wharton. It
had
to be the same girl. So it seemed that Sophie had been engaged to somebody else before she had married Uncle Frank. And that someone had been well known to the family; perhaps, judging by his seeming familiarity to Auntie Val, even a relative.

Progress at last. Kate smiled with satisfaction and, putting the pile of certificates by her side, took another handful. These were odds and ends. Small white-framed photos of smiling men in shades of grey, broad-hatted women, one of a baby she thought might be Angie propped against a wooden walker and smiling broadly at the camera. Kate flipped through them and laid them aside. But the last one caught her attention. It showed her uncle as a young man, wearing some type of coveralls and standing in front of a high concreted wall, the top of which was made up of circles of barbed wire.

Kate stared at it, her smile now gone. It had to be an institution of some type, most likely a jail. Which, together with the letters, meant that her uncle most probably
had
been incarcerated.
This
was what he needed to ‘get out' from, and this was where his mother had written, receiving no answers. Until she had been forced to write to the padre. And this was why Kate's own father, James, had returned from Mt Isa to help out. It was almost unbelievable. Uncle Frank just didn't seem the type. Certainly he had been a bit of a reprobate at times, but
jail
?

Angie was going to be devastated. Still holding the small, incriminating photo, Kate leant back and stared up at the ceiling, imagining how it must have been for Frank's parents, and for his brother James. A son, a brother, a criminal. But maybe the crime had been relatively minor. Like running over poor Bessie, or one of her sisters. Maybe he
had even been innocent. People were wrongfully convicted, after all. Sometimes. Whatever it was, it can't have been
too
bad because soon afterwards Sophie Wharton had thrown over her fiancé and married Francis Painter instead.

Kate sat up again and, after one last look, dropped the photo and then pushed everything off her lap onto the couch. Then she set to the remainder of the papers with a vengeance. Somewhere there had to be an explanation, maybe even a summary of charges or a sentencing report. But after twenty minutes of searching Kate was forced to admit defeat. There were other photos and letters, some scribbled notes, a couple of postcards, even a valentine's card from someone called Margie – but there was nothing else that referred to Frank's sojourn inside, or even to Sophie Wharton.

Carefully, Kate replaced all of the papers into the shoebox and, pressing the split edge in, fitted the lid back on tightly. It looked like it had never been touched. But she reasoned that it was even more important to continue the research now, for Angie's sake. Find some answers. Kate got up and crossed over to the armchair, picking up the dull-gold envelope containing her father's certificates and then sliding them out. As expected there was her own birth certificate and her mother's death certificate, together with a certificate registering the business name of
Painter Bros. Fruit & Vegetables
, a roadworthy certificate for a long-deceased Bedford truck, and her parents' marriage certificate. This document was considerably less decorative than her uncle's, but Kate read the names with even greater fondness: James Edward Painter (b. 1934) and Rose Anne Kimber (b. 1938), joined together in matrimony on 21 January 1960.

It took Kate a few moments of staring at the certificate with the niggling feeling that something wasn't quite right before the penny dropped. Her parents were married on 21 January 1960, and she was born on 30 April the same year. Three months, one week and two days later. It was a shotgun wedding, and a rather sluggish shotgun at that.

Kate sat down on the armrest of the chair slowly. She had been brought up on stories of love at first sight at a local dance, and a joyful
white wedding, and how they had hoped for a baby as soon as possible. Well, it seemed that the latter had certainly come true. No wonder they had married at the courthouse. After procrastinating for several months, there had clearly been no time for anything else. And no wonder her mother was clutching those enormous lilies, they hid the swelling evidence of their inability to contain themselves. Kate read the certificate through again, but the date remained the same.

She slid all the certificates back into the envelope while she tried to work out why she was so upset. It wasn't like she and Sam hadn't jumped the gun with their own premarital activities. Or even that those particular premarital activities were the first she had ever indulged in. But the issue wasn't really about her parents having hit third base prior to their marriage, or even a reluctance to marry at all, it was more about the wondrous tales her father had told her while she was growing up. Where her mother was like a beautiful princess whom Kate had always imagined in Cinderella-at-the-ball type clothes: silver-edged, snow-white chiffon floating as she danced. And then there was her father, young and handsome, and determined to woo her and win her despite the odds.

How did one reconcile that with the image of the two of them, huffing and panting in the back seat of some old car, with the chiffon dress hiked up and the windows cloudy with the rapidity of their breathing? It was probably that Bedford truck, which wouldn't even have
had
a back seat. Just an ancient suspension being put to the test.

So if he was able to turn
that
story into something that sounded wonderfully romantic, then what else might have received similar treatment? What else wasn't quite what it seemed? What else, of him, had she never known? And, worst of all, how was she ever to find the answers now that he wasn't even around to ask?

‘I
'm off now.' Angie picked up her handbag from the dining room table. ‘Any ideas what you'd like for dinner tonight?'

Kate shrugged. ‘Whatever. I'm not fussed.'

‘Okay then. How about Indian? I
love
pappadams!' Angie put up a hand. ‘And before you start going on about my diet, it's under control. See, it's not so much
what
you eat, as the portion sizes. That's the key.'

‘Sounds fair.'

Angie looked at her cousin searchingly. ‘Are you okay? You were very quiet last night and you don't seem much better this morning.'

‘I'm fine.' Kate wrapped her hands around her coffee mug and tried to appear relatively normal. ‘I'm just a bit frustrated, that's all.'

‘And here was I thinking Friday night put paid to that little problem.'

‘Ha, ha. I meant with the writing.'

Angie grinned. ‘I know. Just trying to inject a little levity. Tell you what, I'll bring heaps of Indian food home with me and we'll talk about your writer's block all evening. Come up with some solutions. How does that sound?'

‘That's fine,' said Kate quickly. ‘I'm sure I'll think of something today.'

‘Okay, I'll keep my fingers crossed.' Angie held up two crossed fingers as a demonstration. ‘But I'll still bring lots of Indian home just in case.'