The Roots of the Tree Read online

  ‘Annie, love, you are obviously upset and you have a right to be,’ said Emily. ‘Please don’t blame me. I was too young to have any influence over what happened at the time. Yes, I am guilty of not telling you the truth, but it was never my place to tell you. Frank or Elsie could have taken the decision to tell you, but they never did. Maybe it just got harder, the longer the deception went on, to rewrite your life, your beliefs, everything you thought you knew about yourself and your family. Who could have known how you would react, how you would deal with the truth, what effect it might have on you and what you might think of them? I don’t think they could bear it.’

  They sat in silence, each preoccupied with their own thoughts and feelings, until the ringing of the doorbell roused them. Annie made no move to answer it, so Suzie went and was nearly knocked over as her five-year-old son, Daniel, tore himself away from his father’s grip and launched himself at her, shrieking, ‘Mummy!’

  ‘I’ve missed you too,’ Suzie gasped as she struggled to stay upright. ‘Did you have a lovely day at school?’ She stepped to one side to let David into the house as Daniel moved on to give an equally enthusiastic welcome to his grandma and Great Great Aunt Emily. David gave Suzie a quizzical glance and she shook her head slightly. ‘Tell you later,’ she mouthed.

  A child can always be relied on to break the tension that they are not even aware is there. Relieved to be given the distraction, Emily took Daniel into the kitchen to find some biscuits and milk for him. Annie remained motionless in her armchair, feet folded beneath her. Still unaware of the drama that had unfolded, David offered to put the kettle on to make some tea and followed Emily and Daniel into the kitchen. Suzie went over to Annie and gave her a hug. ‘It doesn’t have to change anything,’ she said, fumbling for the right words. ‘You loved him; I loved him. We loved him for who he was and the role he played in our lives. Biologically he may not have been my grandad, but in every other sense of the word he was. Nothing can change that.’

  Annie looked at her daughter with clear, unblinking eyes. ‘I’m not sure,’ she said. ‘I think everything has just changed for me and will never feel the same again. I think I’m going to have a lie down. You don’t mind do you? Get some dinner for everyone, help yourself to whatever you can find in the fridge.’

  4

  Reactions and a Plan of Action

  At what point does telling a lie draw one in to such an extent that living that lie becomes the truth and the point of no return is passed? It is not uncommon to hear of situations where people can no longer distinguish between a fictional world of their own creation and reality itself. If a person goes to great lengths to sustain a falsehood, to insist that the truth is suppressed, do they become incapable of distinguishing between the fact and the fiction? Do they start to actually believe the alternative version of reality that they have created and within which they exist? Are they ultimately capable of recognising the full extent of their deception?

  If the lie has been practised initially for the best of reasons, does that make it right to continue with it, regardless of the effect it may have on those against whom it is perpetrated should they one day discover the truth? It might be that the lie is never uncovered; in which case, what harm has been done? Or could it be in the best interests of the person on whom the deception is practised? But how can any other human being say with any confidence that they know what is in the best interests of another? Is it not simply imposing one’s will on another and dictating how other lives are to be lived for one’s own purposes? Is it not a selfish course of action to start with, and a cowardly one to continue with? Is it not fear of the reaction of those who have been deceived that makes it impossible to confront the truth? And if so, is it fear of how their feelings may change and how the love that was once given so innocently and freely may be lost? Is it not an unwillingness to risk losing what one values by admitting the truth that results in the continuing perpetration of the deception?

  Annie lay on her bed, staring at the ceiling, seeing nothing. She had not bothered to draw the curtains and moonlight flooded through the window, bathing the room in an opaque white light. Annie didn’t notice. Her gaze was firmly fixed straight ahead, but her mind was struggling to process the information Aunt Emily had provided and above all answer one simple question. Why?

  Later that evening, Suzie and David sat at their kitchen table finishing a bottle of wine after dinner.

  ‘Wow! That is quite some story. Talk about skeleton in the family cupboard. And what a girl your grandma must have been. Who would have thought it?’ David mused as Suzie finished relating the events of the afternoon and Emily’s story.

  ‘She was always so prim and proper,’ agreed Suzie. ‘Maybe that’s why; she had first-hand experience of the consequences your behaviour can have for the rest of your life.’

  ‘How do you feel about it?’ asked David.

  Suzie paused for a moment before replying, swirling the dark red wine around in the long-stemmed wine glass she held in her hand. She stared thoughtfully at the liquid as it seemed to dance to some uncontrollable rhythm in her hand. ‘At the moment, confused,’ she said eventually. ‘It feels strange, not knowing and wondering who my real grandfather may have been, what happened to him and if I’ve got cousins, aunts, uncles, out there who I don’t know about. But at the same time, to me, Frank will always be my grandad. That’s the role he played in my life. I loved him for that and I always will. I’ve got all those lovely memories. Nothing can change that. No one can take those memories away. But did he have the right to insist on hiding the truth like that?’ She paused and took a sip of wine. ‘I can’t begin to imagine how Mum must feel. She could have had a completely different life. What if her real father did return from the war? She might have brothers and sisters that she doesn’t even know about.’

  ‘Wait a minute, though,’ said David. ‘Even if he did come back from the war, and odds are that he didn’t, since according to Emily there had been no letters for more than a year, there’s nothing to say that he would have come back for your grandma and claimed her and your mum as his. We don’t even know she wrote to him to tell him there was a baby on the way, or that Annie had been born and we certainly don’t know how he would have felt about it. Frank gave your grandma and your mum a chance in life; he created a happy family; he looked after them both and did his best for them; he loved them, and Elsie may not have loved him at first, but she certainly grew to love him. That much is evident to anyone who knew them. They could have been just another mother and daughter with no husband, no father, and God knows the war left plenty of those behind. If, for his own pride, Frank needed the world to accept Annie as his daughter, is that so bad?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Suzie said simply.

  ‘I think it’s quite romantic,’ said Marie after Suzie had filled her in on the events of the day. She was away on business and Suzie had been unable to contact her when she had tried to call earlier. It was late in the evening before the two sisters managed to talk.

  ‘I mean, just think about it. He loved Grandma so much that he was prepared to go to such lengths to protect her, to make her respectable and provide for her daughter. I don’t care that he lied; I think it’s lovely and I don’t think any less of either of them for it. And it all worked out okay in the end, didn’t it? They were happy and stayed together for more than fifty years, ’til death do us part and all that. I hope Peter and I are as strong together as they were.’ Marie was due to marry her fiancé, Peter, later in the year.

  ‘I just hope Mum sees it like that,’ sighed Suzie. ‘You didn’t see her, Marie. She was deathly white, as though she’d seen an army of ghosts. Obviously she was in shock, but it was as if she was an empty shell. There was no life, no sparkle in her eyes. It’s difficult to explain, but she just didn’t seem like Mum any more. She was physically there, but emotionally she’d closed down.’ Suzie frowned, trying to find the words to describe Annie’s reaction to the discovery of the marriage
certificate. ‘Do you remember when we used to visit Uncle Freddie in the home and so many of those poor old people clearly didn’t know where they were or why they were there? Do you remember the vacant expressions in their eyes as if they were far away in some other place entirely? Well, that’s how Mum was.’

  ‘What do you think we should do?’ Marie asked

  Suzie didn’t hesitate. ‘I think we should try to find out who he was – or is, because he may still be alive – and after that I don’t know.’

  ‘It’s dangerous,’ said Marie. ‘What if he did come back but decided he didn’t want to be with Grandma any more? How will Mum take it?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Suzie honestly. ‘But I do feel absolutely sure that until she knows, until she has some answers, she isn’t going to be able to put all of this behind her, or accept it and move on.’

  ‘Knowing Mum, you’re probably right. Count me in. I’ll do whatever I can to help.’

  Jack’s reaction was less understanding.

  ‘He did what?’ he bellowed down the telephone at Suzie the next morning after she had finished telling her story. ‘He pretended, for nearly sixty years, to be her father and actually he wasn’t at all?’

  ‘Dad, calm down,’ said Suzie.

  ‘I won’t calm down. This is unbelievable. It’s despicable. It’s outrageously selfish and they were all in on it. I can’t believe this of Frank. I can’t believe they all agreed to go along with it and I can’t believe Frank and Elsie got away with it. I mean, just from a practical point of view, what did they do about the birth certificate?’

  ‘I don’t know, Dad, but I’m going back over to see Mum now to check she’s okay before I go to work. What good is going to come of making a big fuss about how selfish he was? We now know something that he had intended we would never find out and we have to accept it, and somehow learn to live with it. I can’t see how you ranting is going to help anyone. Let me see how Mum feels about it all this morning.’

  Annie had called work to say she wouldn’t be in and was curled up in her favourite armchair when Suzie arrived at the house. One hand was going through the familiar motions of stroking Marmaduke who was enjoying the unexpected opportunity to curl up on a comfortable lap on a weekday morning. In the other hand she was holding a yellowed, much-creased piece of paper covered with very faded, spidery handwriting. Suzie crossed the room and gave her a hug.

  ‘How are you this morning?’ she asked, noting the dark rings under Annie’s eyes.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Annie replied, a tense edge to her voice. ‘I feel numb, angry, confused, betrayed.’

  ‘I’ll make us some tea,’ said Suzie.

  Returning with a tray containing a fresh pot of tea, two mugs and a saucer of biscuits, Suzie sat down on the sofa facing her mother. She poured tea into the two mugs, added milk and placed one on the table by Annie’s side.

  ‘I don’t know what to think,’ Annie said. ‘My whole life has been based on a lie of unbelievable proportions and the only people who can tell me why they did it are no longer here to ask.’ She took a deep breath and said, ‘I found this,’ then handed the crumpled piece of paper to Suzie. ‘It’s my birth certificate.’

  Suzie took it. Although the ink had faded over the years, the certificate clearly detailed the birth of Annie Barratt on the 6th of August 1940, listing her parents as Frank Barratt and Elsie Barratt, maiden name Williams.

  ‘What do you want to do?’ asked Suzie.

  ‘I want to know the truth, however much it might hurt. Surely I have a right to know?’ Annie’s reply was clear and firm.

  ‘Okay,’ said Suzie. ‘Look, I’ve got to work today and I have no idea where to start, but I will talk to David later and I’m sure between us we can come up with something. I’ll call round tomorrow morning.’

  Suzie finished her tea and noticed that Annie had not even started on hers.

  Outside the house, Suzie climbed back into her car, reversed carefully off the gravel drive and drove to the offices of the Barminster Chronicle where she worked part-time as an office administrator within the editorial department. She loved her job, which was at once varied, demanding and entertaining, and frequently told herself she had no desire to move beyond the role of clerical support into reporting or editing herself. In any case, the job gave her the freedom that she needed to be there for Daniel after school hours and she was wise enough to see that the pressures of deadlines would often interfere with that if she was a full-time member of the editorial team. She had once been as ambitious as Marie still was, but when she married David and subsequently had Daniel those ambitions that had once seemed to be important suddenly seemed less so and she found herself content to spend more time at home. She had consequently given up her career as a copywriter, which often took her away from home for days at a time and inflicted a punishing work schedule and happily accepted the reduced pressure and working hours of her current job. Nevertheless, she occasionally recognised a pang of regret, which she quickly suppressed, about the career she might have had.

  The editor of the Barminster Chronicle and Suzie’s ultimate boss was an experienced newspaper man who had long since accepted that he lacked the combination of flair and ruthlessness that would see him progress in national newspapers. Tom Watson had an unfortunate quality for anyone holding a senior editorial position in the media of the early twenty-first century, in that he cared about people and their feelings – too much, some of his previous employers would have said. Whilst the media magnates proved on a daily basis that to sell newspapers it was necessary to trample all over the feelings of people – be they famous or not – combined with an invasion of privacy that was barely within the law and a willingness to present the ‘true facts’ of a story in such a way guaranteed to provoke the most outrage and interest amongst the masses, Tom was genuinely interested in getting to the bottom of a story and handled his material with sensitivity and care. Suzie had every respect for his integrity and professionalism, both qualities which contributed to her daily enjoyment of her work.

  ‘Hi Suze,’ Tom greeted her as she entered the office, his eyes not leaving his computer screen as his fingers moved rapidly over the keyboard. ‘It’s going to be a busy day. I need everything we have on file for the Barminster Playhouse and can you get me the leader of the Council’s Planning Committee on the phone, please? I have a lead that they may be planning to demolish this iconic feature of our local community to make way for a new multi-storey car park.’

  ‘Will do, Tom,’ Suzie replied thoughtfully.

  She had spoken only a few words, but Tom had a keen awareness of the feelings of others. Realising that Suzie was more withdrawn than usual this morning he looked up from his computer screen, an expression of concern on his face. ‘What’s wrong?’ he asked.

  ‘Tom, if you had to find someone who went missing in the war but you don’t know his name or anything about him, other than where he probably worked before going to war, where would you start?’ Suzie asked.

  ‘Hmmm! Not asking for much, are you?’ Tom mused. His curiosity piqued, he resisted the temptation to ask questions and thought about it. ‘Well, this newspaper has been published since before the war and we have loads of archives here, so you could start there. You could check for the names of the local men and boys who went off to war and also those who were listed as missing or confirmed dead. You could also research where he worked and see if you can find any names to cross reference. Ultimately, though, it would be much easier if you could confirm a name.’

  ‘Thanks, Tom,’ replied Suzie. ‘So, Barminster Playhouse archives coming up.’

  Tom watched her leave the office for the filing room next door, wondering just who she was suddenly so keen to find.

  *

  Several hours after Suzie had left, Annie sat, still curled up in the armchair where Suzie had left her, staring in front of her, the now-cold cup of tea by her side. Shivering involuntarily, she started as the telephone rang. She was cra
mped and uncomfortable from remaining in one position for so long. Stretching out her legs, Marmaduke mewed in complaint as she knocked him to the floor.

  ‘Right, Annie, get yourself together,’ she told herself firmly as she got to her feet, but the phone rang out as she found herself in front of the door to the annex. She opened it and stepped into the gloomy hall which was increasingly taking on the slightly fusty smell of an empty and uncared-for property. This time it was Annie who stopped in front of the fiftieth wedding anniversary photograph on the mantelpiece. She picked it up and examined the photograph, registering the date – November 1989. ‘And that was a lie as well,’ she said to herself, remembering the actual date of their marriage – the 5th of February 1943, as recorded on the marriage certificate. She deliberately turned the photograph frame around to face the wall and replaced it on the mantelpiece.

  Annie then began to look around her, wondering, as she did, what she was looking for. She started feeling down the sides of the armchairs and the sofa, delving into the back of the kitchen cupboards, searching for anything that may have been long hidden or forgotten. Finding nothing, she stopped and forced herself to think logically. What had happened to the letters? Had Elsie kept them or disposed of them? If her mother had kept anything at all as a memento of that relationship, where would she have been likely to hide it? Given everything that Emily had said about Frank’s determination that Annie never find out and thereby deducing he felt passionately about protecting his family from that former relationship, she couldn’t help feeling it was unlikely that her mother had kept anything. Surely, she would have been fearful of Frank’s reaction if he had discovered any sentimental keepsakes. At the same time, if the relationship had meant so much to her, would she have been able to throw away or destroy every memento? Annie knew if she had been in Elsie’s position the answer to that question would have been a definite no. Annie decided that if she had kept anything, it would be well hidden, in a place that Frank would not normally go to and not under a floorboard or anything corny like that because they had of course moved out of their home several years ago as an elderly and increasingly infirm couple into this annex. Crawling around prising up floorboards without Frank noticing is not something she could imagine her mother having achieved.