The Fleethaven Trilogy (136 page)

Peggy looked uncomfortable for a moment. ‘Maybe
that’s my – well, our – fault. I came to talk it over with
your grandfather and he said he thought it would be for
the best if you stayed there. You’d only recently lost the
most important person in your world. He thought it best
that you stayed with people who loved you rather than go
to complete strangers.’

Vaguely, she remembered Peggy coming to Brumbys’
Farm and talking in secretive whispers to her grandfather.
It had not been about Ella going back to Lincoln, as she
had hoped at the time, but something even more important.

Ella leaned forward, ‘But that was my
father
, for
heaven’s sake!’

Peggy wriggled. ‘Well, I’m sorry, if you think we were
wrong. I wanted to tell you when you got older, but whenever
I mentioned it to Jonathan – and I did, Ella, believe
me, I did – he kept saying, “Wait till she asks. Time enough
when she asks.” But I can’t allow you to blame Jonathan
entirely because I agreed with his decision, at least when
you were young. I was very tempted to tell you everything
when you were here just before Christmas, but then with
Janice here . . .’ Peggy’s voice faltered. Her face creased
with guilt, she whispered, ‘I’m sorry if you’re angry.’

Swiftly Ella smiled, reached out and patted the older
woman’s hands. Peggy Godfrey had always been so
important in her life; whatever she had done, or not done,
Ella knew, would have been with the best of intentions.
‘Of course I’m not angry with you – or Grandpa, for that
matter.’ Ella’s lips tightened as she added, ‘Did
she
know?’

‘I presume Jonathan told your grannie, but I don’t know
for sure.’

‘Huh! If she did know, I’m surprised she didn’t pack me
off to him on the first train.’

Peggy sighed. ‘You’re incredibly hard on her, you know.
I’ve always been a bit in awe of her, but she’s not as bad
as you make out, surely?’

Ella snorted wryly. ‘Don’t you believe it!’

They were silent for a few moments, both busy with
their own thoughts.

‘So, have you got a name – an address – anything?’ Ella
persisted.

Peggy nodded and rose to go into the front parlour.
‘Wait a minute.’

She came back with a folded paper in her hand. ‘He left
this and said that if the right time ever came . . .’

Ella unfolded the paper with shaking fingers. The words
danced and blurred before her eyes. There was a name, an
address in York and even a phone number. She looked up
again at Peggy. ‘But who is he?’

‘The man she drove for in the war, the Station Commander
at Suddaby.’ Peggy nodded towards the piece of
paper trembling in Ella’s fingers. ‘He’s your father. Group
Captain Philip Trent.’

‘I’ve got some photos!’

Ella bounced up, dragged open the door and rushed up
the narrow stairs, returning moments later with a handful of
letters and photographs she had found in her mother’s box.

‘There,’ she demanded, holding one out towards Peggy.
‘Is that him? The tall man standing beside Mum near the
car?’

Peggy bent over the picture and then nodded. ‘Yes,
dear. That’s him.’ She raised her eyes and said, ‘That’s
your father.’

Almost reverently, Ella took the photograph back into
her own hands and stared down at it, drinking in the sight
of the man, trying to imagine what his voice sounded like,
wanting, desperately, to know all about him.

‘I tell you who you ought to go and talk to. Mavis.’

‘Oh, yes,’ Ella murmured, her concentration still on the
face in the photograph. ‘Uncle Danny said Mavis, or Isobel,
might be able to help.’

‘She and Isobel were with your mum all the time at
Suddaby. I think Isobel’s abroad at the moment. But of the
two, I would say Mavis was your best bet anyway.’ Peggy
smiled. ‘If anyone knows about him, Mavis will!’

‘Oh, Ella, he was a lovely man!’ Mavis clapped her fat
hands together and beamed delightedly when she had
listened to all that Ella had to tell her, about everything
that had happened to bring her to this point. ‘Are you
going to get in touch with him, to see him?’

‘Oh, yes,’ Ella answered promptly.

‘I’m sure he’ll be thrilled. Such a kind man, he was.
Only . . .’ Her face clouded.

‘What, Aunty Mave?’

‘At the time – in the war, I mean – he was married.’

Ella nodded. ‘Well, I’d guessed as much. There had to
be more than just the fact that he was a high-ranking
officer and she a lowly corporal to stop them getting
married. Unless, of course,’ she added bitterly, ‘it was just
a fling and she meant nothing to him.’

Mavis shook her head vehemently until her chin wobbled.
‘No, no, he wasn’t like that. I mean, he wasn’t that
sort of man. Very honest, very honourable.’

‘It wasn’t very honourable to have an affair with a
WAAF if he was already married, was it?’

Mavis’s eyes were troubled. ‘We could never get anything
out of your mum. She was incredibly loyal to him.
She never actually told us who it was, we just guessed.’

Ella stared at her. ‘Then you mean, you don’t really
know that it was Philip Trent? Not for sure?’

Mavis wriggled her shoulders in embarrassment. ‘For a
time – we – we thought it was someone else . . .’

‘Who?’

‘I’d rather not say.’

‘Aunty Mave . . .’ Ella began warningly.

‘Oh, very well,’ Mavis said, capitulating at once. ‘We
thought it was Danny Eland. She was always talking about
him, always writing to him, and when he married someone
else – I forget her name – well, your mum nearly went
berserk.’

‘Rosie,’ Ella said, almost absently. ‘He married Rosie.
So you don’t know then,’ she said slowly, ‘just why Danny
and my mum didn’t marry?’

Mavis shook her head.

Quietly, Ella said, ‘They were half-brother and -sister.’

Mavis’s face was a picture. ‘Brother and sister!’ Her
huge frame collapsed into a chair, conveniently close.

‘
Half
-brother and -sister,’ Ella corrected her and then
went on to give her the full story.

‘Why didn’t she ever tell us?’

Ella shrugged. ‘Perhaps she thought you wouldn’t
understand. That it would all sound a bit, well, not quite
nice.’

Mavis stared at her. ‘Mmm, you could be right. Can’t
say I blame her, now I think about it. Old Iso could be a
bit tart with some of her judgements about people,’ Mavis
pulled a wry face, ‘though by that time we were all pretty
good friends.’ She was quiet for a moment, perhaps
recalling the time the three of them – Kate, Isobel Cartwright
and herself – had all been together during the war.

There was the sound of a door opening, a voice and a
dog barking. Mavis, levering her bulk up from the low
chair, said, ‘That’ll be my Dave with our Benji. Come into
the kitchen and meet them.’

Without waiting for a reply, Mavis went through to
greet her husband with a rapturous hug as if he had been
gone for a week rather than just to walk the dog. More
slowly, Ella followed, fishing in her bag for her handkerchief
in readiness.

‘Ella’s come to see us. This is Dave. We met in the war,
too. He was in charge of the control room where I was an
R/T operator.’

A grey-haired man with a warm smile was holding out
his hand to her and the dog, a long-haired Old English
Sheepdog, shook itself and peered up at her through
woolly-covered eyes.

Ella pressed her handkerchief to her nose and, between
sneezes, managed to gasp. ‘Hello – so pleased – to meet
you. I’m so – sorry. I’m allergic to dogs.’

Mavis was standing quite still, staring, open-mouthed,
at Ella. ‘Well, that settles it, then!’

Ella blinked and dabbed at her streaming eyes.

‘You’re Philip Trent’s daughter all right, Ella, and no
mistake. He had an allergy to dogs and horses too!’

‘Do you think I should phone or write?’

Back in the terraced house in Lincoln after her trip to
Grantham to see Mavis, Ella stood in the middle of the
living room biting the side of her thumb in indecision.

‘Well, if I were you, I wouldn’t phone,’ Peggy said,
placing a steaming plate of tripe and onions on the table.
‘Come and eat and we’ll talk about it.’ Sitting down, Peggy
went on, ‘I should write, or you could go to see him. It’s
half-term next week, isn’t it?’

Ella nodded, suddenly nervous. ‘He might not be at that
address any more. I mean, it is about six years ago . . .’

‘But it would be a starting point. You’ve nothing else to
go on, have you? You could stay in a small hotel or a guest
house.’

‘I haven’t any money, Aunty Peg.’

Peggy flapped her hand. ‘Don’t worry about that.’

‘I can’t let you do any more,’ Ella protested. ‘I’m living
here free as it is and I feel guilty enough about that
already.’

‘Well, you shouldn’t. I’ve worked all my life and had no
one else to spend it on except myself. Besides,’ she smiled
to assuage Ella’s prickly pride, ‘when you get this marvellous
job as somebody’s secretary, I’ll know where to come
if I’m short.’

Ella laughed, but touched Peggy’s hand as it lay on the
table. ‘Oh, Aunty Peggy, you are good.’

The older woman blushed, patted Ella’s hand and said,
‘There’s a letter for you behind the clock.’

Ella jumped up and covered the space between the table
and the hearth and fished out the letter. ‘Is it from . . .?’
she began, but her face fell when she recognized Janice
Souter’s girlish scribble.

She returned to the table more slowly. ‘I thought
perhaps Grandpa might have written.’

‘He will,’ Peggy said confidently. ‘Don’t let your tea go
cold.’

Janice’s letter covered three pages, the first of which
was full of grumbles at Ella:

Fancy going off without me and to live in Lincoln as
well. Don’t you remember? I said to you if you ever
left home, I’d go with you. We could take a flat
together and have some great fun. What do you say?
Have you got a job yet? I expect your Aunty Peg
could get you fixed up in that posh store where she
works. Do you think she could find me a job too?

Ella smiled and shook her head. Same old Janice!

She’d write back and explain why she left and tell her
that she wasn’t working but was still a student. She’d have
to be careful how she worded her letter though: she had
visions of Janice turning up on Aunty Peggy’s doorstep
ready to move in too.

*

‘Now have you got everything?’

‘I think so.’

‘Don’t forget. Book into a nice small hotel and mind it’s
clean.’

Ella grinned. ‘Yes, Aunty Peg.’

‘And ring Rita next door when you get there. You’ve
got their number, haven’t you?’

‘Yes, Aunty Peg.’ Far from being irritated by the older
woman’s fussing, Ella found it very comforting to feel
someone cared enough to worry over her.

‘I hope everything goes all right.’

And then the train was pulling out of the station, and in
a flurry of ‘goodbye’ and ‘take care’, she was on her way
to York.

She found a guest house on the long road overlooking
the racecourse. The view from her window stretched out
over a field dotted with trees to the course itself, the oval
white-painted fence of the track and, beyond it, the grandstand
in the far distance. To her left as she leant out of the
window were the square towers of the Minster, rising
proudly above the clustering city.

Ella smiled to herself. It’s like having the best of both
worlds here, she thought, an open stretch of green before
me and, close by, a city.

The food was excellent, the bed comfortable and the
room clean, but Ella could not sleep for excitement. What
if he’d changed his mind after all this time? What if he
didn’t believe she was his daughter? A million anxieties
crowded her restless mind until she slept uneasily at last,
but only to dream of a man standing beneath the trees and
weeping over a grave; only the man looked more like Uncle
Danny than the face in the wartime snapshot.

After lunch, dressed in an open-necked check shirt,
trousers and with a sweater round her shoulders, Ella set
off, the precious scrap of paper in her pocket. Armed with
a street map she soon found the tree-lined avenue, with
detached houses set back a little from the road. She pulled
a comical face to herself; just the sort of exclusive houses
she would imagine a group captain inhabiting.

She found the number given on the paper and stood
staring up at the house for a long time: a double-fronted,
white-painted red-brick house with a polished mahogany
door and a gleaming brass knocker.

‘Oh, heck!’ she muttered to herself. ‘Now what do I
do?’

Her heart was thudding in her chest and her palms were
sweaty with excitement. Should she just walk boldly up to
the door and knock? But what if his wife answered? How
could she ask for Mr Trent? And should she say ‘Mister’?
Was he still in the RAF or what? Oh dear, this wasn’t
going to be as easy as she’d thought. She turned and
walked a little way down the road and leant against a low
wall, watching the house.

She’d better move again, she thought, else someone in
this select neighbourhood would begin to think she was
‘loitering with intent’.

She was about to wander further down the road again
when she had an idea. Could she pretend she was a student
from a local college doing research about the last war?
About the RAF perhaps? It was worth a try.

She walked back towards the house and hesitated once
again at the gate. Then, taking a deep breath, she walked
up the driveway and, before her courage could flee,
knocked at the door. She waited, balancing on the balls of
her feet, ready for flight.

The door opened and an elderly woman stood there.
She was at least seventy. Ella’s heart sank. She was far too
old to be the wife of Philip Trent.