The Overlooker (2 page)

‘I wouldn't hear of it! You're family. I can just imagine what Dad would say if he came round and found I'd turned you out of the house, just because he was taken poorly. Millie, another slice of cake? You look as if you could do with fattening up.'

Millie's pointed face under its cap of blonde hair broke into a smile. ‘That's the nicest thing anyone's said to me this week. And here was me, thinking I was putting on weight. Yes, please. I can't think when was the last time Mum baked a fruit cake. It's really good.'

Suzie raised her eyebrows, but Nick saw the flush of pleasure on Thelma's face.

There was a knock at the front door, but it opened immediately. A man about Thelma's age put his head round the sitting room door. A scraggy neck protruded from a checked flannel shirt. A bony chin and prominent cheekbones seemed to thrust his face forward ahead of his shoulders. Yellowish hair, streaked with grey, fell over his forehead.

‘I saw you were back. How is he?'

‘He hasn't come round yet. They sent me home. They say they'll ring me if there's any news.'

‘It's a bad do. But he's getting on a bit, isn't he? Ninety-three? I'll be glad if I'm as sprightly as that when I'm his age, or as he was till today, anyroad . . . And these'll be your cousins from down south.'

His quick and curious eyes raked over the Fewings.

Thelma seemed to come to herself with a start. ‘I'm sorry! Look at me! I'll be forgetting my own name next. This is Geoffrey, the cousin from next door I was telling you about. Not on the Fewings side. Banks was my mother's family. And this is Nick, and Suzie. And this bonny little girl is Millie.'

‘Not so little nowadays,' said Nick hastily, before fourteen-year-old Millie could protest.

‘So you've come all this way up to Lancashire, have you? Thelma tells me you're into this family history business.'

‘That's right. I'm a late convert, I'm afraid. So I'm trying to make up for lost time. Suzie here's the expert. She's looked up loads of stuff on the internet. I didn't know how much you could find out about people who lived more than a hundred years ago.'

‘Actually, more than a century is easier,' Suzie said. ‘The censuses are embargoed for a hundred years. And they're full of information about people. Where they lived, what jobs they did, where they were born.'

Geoffrey Banks shook his head slowly. ‘You want to be careful. Once you start poking your nose into all that, you never know what you're going to find. Things aren't always what they seem. Do you watch
Who Do You Think You Are
?'

‘Yes,' said Suzie.

‘Sometimes,' Nick said.

‘Well, some of them have had a shock, I can tell you. There was a fellow discovered his ancestor had three wives, all at the same time. And then he ran off with one of his slaves. And another one was responsible for massacring Indians in North America. If I was you, I'd leave well alone.'

Nick felt an inward shiver that was part apprehension, part stimulated curiosity. Did Geoffrey Banks know something about the Fewings family he wasn't telling them?

‘Actually,' Suzie said bravely, ‘it's the more disreputable bits of family history most people enjoy. I know I shouldn't, but when I found one of my forebears had three illegitimate children in a row, and was probably a prostitute, I felt a sort of one-upmanship. Something to liven up all those everyday births, marriages and deaths.'

Geoffrey Banks's bony face looked shocked. He glanced across at Thelma. ‘Well, maybe they have different morals down south, but if that was me, I'd be ashamed to tell people. We're good Methodists in this family, aren't we, Thelma?'

‘It's in the family, yes. Stoneyham Methodist Church. Our folk have been stewards and trustees for generations, so I've heard. And before that, I think it was Baptists, out at Briershaw in the Dales.'

‘
Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down and cast into the fire.
Matthew seven, verse nineteen,' Geoffrey said.

There was an awkward silence.

‘Well, I only came in to see how Martin was.'

‘We'll know more in the morning.'

‘I'll leave you to your visitors, then.' Geoffrey cast a lingering look over Nick, Suzie and Millie. ‘I hope you find what you came for, since you're set on it. And no nasty surprises . . . I'll let myself out.'

When the door had closed behind him, Thelma said, ‘Don't mind him. Geoffrey's a good sort, really. He keeps an eye out for me and Dad.'

‘He's right, of course,' Suzie said. ‘Once you get involved with family history, you don't know what you're going to turn up. And that's even supposing you can believe everything you're told. People didn't always tell the truth to census enumerators. Even the inscriptions on gravestones may not be true. There probably isn't a family that hasn't got something to hide.'

‘Well,' said Thelma, rallying. ‘I'd better show you where you're sleeping.'

There were two smallish bedrooms at the back of the house, facing up the hill. A double bed for Suzie and Nick took up most of one. Thelma had made up a folding bed in her own room for Millie. Nick saw the anxious glance Suzie cast at their daughter when she found Millie would be sharing a room. But Millie smiled gamely.

There was a narrow bathroom. The largest room, at the front of the house, must be Uncle Martin's. Nick wondered if he would ever come back to it.

I
t was dark when Nick drove Thelma down the steep hill towards the town centre. An autumn mist was thickening over the river, blurring the street lamps. At the foot of the hill, the road passed in quick succession over the canal bridge and then the river. A solitary mill chimney rose into the darkness, like a memorial to the industrial past.

At a crossroads, his eye briefly registered a brown-and-white tourist signpost that read
Thorncliffe Mill Museum.

‘You'll need to turn left in the town centre,' Thelma was saying. ‘The hospital's a bit up the hill on the other side.'

The centre of the town seemed quiet in the early evening. There were pub signs here and there, but no evidence on the pavements of customers. Perhaps they were all inside, enjoying the warmth and light. In the deserted streets, Nick felt they were passing through a no man's land. He thought it must be the heaviness which was lying on his spirit. He had so much looked forward to this expedition. The meeting with Great-uncle Martin, whom he had neglected for so long. And Thelma, of course. But it was the link with the past that had drawn him. The sudden awareness of what he had nearly missed. The knowledge he had failed to ask from his own grandparents.

And now Uncle Martin lay in a limbo between life and death.

‘In here,' Thelma said, startling him.

Nick had hardly noticed that they had left the streets of shops below them. He swung into the large hospital car park. Lights were on in the tall building, making it look like a liner moored alongside a dimly lit quay.

Thelma hurried over to the reception desk.

‘They've put him in Crompton ward,' she said, turning to Nick. ‘When I left, they were still doing all sorts of tests. I didn't know where they were taking him.'

A red line on the reception floor led them round corners and along a corridor. At the ward door, there was another desk, more questions.

The plump, dark-faced nurse shook her head. ‘I'm sorry. He's still not come round. I've got a note here to ring you if there was any change. I'm afraid you've had a wasted journey, pet.'

It had been in Nick's mind all the way that this was likely. But he recognized the tense anxiety in Thelma that needed to be doing something, however futile.

She hesitated. ‘Can I see him?'

The nurse looked surprised, but she got up and led the way down the ward. Blue-and-pink flowered curtains were drawn around a bed. The nurse twitched them partially aside and motioned Thelma in. The curtain fell back behind her.

Nick stood, uncertain. He had had a momentary glimpse of a lean, grey figure, connected by wires and tubes to clinical equipment. The face had been obscured by the nurse's large figure. Should he follow, or leave Thelma a few moments of privacy with her father?

He had not had time to decide before she came out. She sniffed loudly, took out a tissue and snapped her handbag shut.

‘Thank you,' she said to the nurse with forced cheerfulness. ‘I just wanted to say goodnight to him. Silly, really.'

‘No, it's not,' said the nurse. ‘Look on the bright side. He's had a setback, but he's still with us. With luck, we'll have better news for you in the morning.'

‘I hope so.'

The mist was creeping up around the edge of the car park.

‘I'm sorry to have dragged you all this way for nothing. And it's not a nice night for driving.'

‘I'll be OK. There'll be street lamps all the way.'

‘And after you've driven all that way today.'

It was beginning to hit home to Nick. That long drive up the motorway from the south-west to the other side of the Mersey. And then the blow of finding that the man he had come to see was in a coma, and might never recover. Having to care for Thelma, who was gallantly hiding her inner anguish. He suddenly wanted nothing more than to be home in bed.

Nick woke early. He slid out of bed, dressed quietly, and let himself out of the front door. On the gravelled path in front of the house he drew lungfuls of keen air.

He could not repress a wry chuckle. Last century, this air would have been full of the smoke from a hundred mill chimneys. The same smoke that had blackened the stone of the house behind him. The streets would have been noisy with the clatter of clogs along the cobbles. Klaxons would have brayed the need for workers to hurry before their pay was docked for arriving late. Go back another century, and pale-faced children would have dragged their weary bodies to another twelve-hour day.

His thoughts flew to Uncle Martin. That had been his life. A beamer in the cotton mill, whatever that was, and then an overlooker. Had he survived the night? At his age, there was the imminent risk of another stroke that would finally sever the thread of his tenacious life.

He turned indoors. Thelma met him at the foot of the stairs. Her face bore an unexpectedly beaming smile.

‘He's awake! At least, they say he opened his eyes. He's not saying anything yet, but they think he'll come round.'

‘That's great!' Nick kissed her spontaneously. ‘I'll take you down to see him this morning, shall I?'

‘There's no need. It's kind of you, but they say it might be best if I come on my own to start with. Don't overtire him.'

Nick felt a surprising disappointment. It was years since he had seen his great-uncle. They exchanged Christmas cards, but it had always been Thelma who wrote chatty letters about the family news. He was beginning to realize what Suzie had long experienced, that his new interest in family history was making him curious about his living relatives in a way he had never been before.

He felt oddly jealous of Thelma. How long would it be before he, too, could sit at Uncle Martin's bedside? Would he ever get the chance? He knew how frail the ninety-three year old's hold on life must be. Would he even be able to speak again?

He smiled politely for Thelma, covering his feelings.

‘That's OK. We've got a list of things we want to do while we're here – as well as talking to you and Uncle Martin, of course. Top of the list is Thorncliffe Mill Museum. I know they've still got the old steam engine working, and at least some of the looms. It's the sort of place my grandparents worked at, and Uncle Martin, of course.'

‘I wish he was here now. There was so much he could tell you about the old days. D'you know, I've never been to Thorncliffe. That's life, isn't it? You have things on your doorstep, and you never think much about them. But people like you come from the other end of the country to look at them.'

‘I know what you mean. In our city, there are underground passages dating from medieval times. I'm always telling myself I must go and see them, but I never do. Just because I know they'll always be there.'

But Great-uncle Martin won't always be here, he thought.

He looked past Thelma into the front room. There was no sign of the suitcase Martin had asked her to bring down from the loft.

A figure came hurrying over from next door, hobbling slightly. Nick recognized the yellowish hair and bony chin of Geoffrey Banks.

‘How is he?' he asked eagerly of Thelma. ‘Have you had any news?'

‘He's awake. At least, he's opened his eyes. That's about as much as they're telling me. I'm going in to see him in a bit.'

‘Praise God.
The eyes of the Lord are towards the righteous. The face of the Lord is against them that do evil.
Let me know if there's anything I can do.'

‘I will. Thank you, Geoff.'

The man lingered. His watery eyes were watching Thelma, as though hoping for more. Then he turned and made his way back to his own house.

‘He's a good sort,' said Thelma. ‘Though he does have some weird ideas. As I remember it, the good book says God sends rain on the just and on the unjust. That's the way it looks in real life, anyway.'

‘What does he do? It doesn't look as if there's much happening in the town these days. I guess the recession must be hitting pretty hard.'

‘You're right there. Lucky for me, people still want fruit and vegetables. I'm pretty safe doing the accounts at Sutcliffe's, touch wood. Geoff wasn't one of the lucky ones. He was an industrial chemist at Bray and Rose. But they shut down two years ago. Not much chance of getting another job at his age. He was bitter about it at the time. Said he's served God all his life and it was the devil's work he was thrown on the scrapheap. As far as he's concerned, the whole world's going to hell in a handcart. Still, he's been kind to Dad and me.'