A Habit of Dying (19 page)

‘I may be able to find out something about your father, if you wanted me to.’

Dorothy hesitated and looked down at her hands for a moment or two. ‘I don’t know really, might be better off left the way it is. Some things better left buried. What do you think?’

‘I think whatever is right for you, is right, but if you change your mind, you’ll let me know?’

‘Yes, dear I’ll let you know.’

While they ate the carefully prepared sandwiches, it occurred
to Lydia that there would be no harm in letting Dorothy see the Longlands album, she was sure in her own mind that one day it would be Dorothy’s anyway, and there might be a name or a face to jog some long forgotten memory. Dorothy seemed pleased at the prospect, although not as excited as Lydia had anticipated. There was something slightly unworldly about Dorothy, something almost of innocence. Lydia had warmed to her, she was open and friendly, and they smiled a lot at each other. It took Lydia a while to recall who it was that Dorothy reminded her of, not physically, but in her ways. It was Lydia’s Aunt Sarah, not a real aunt but a close friend of her grandmother, who was by persuasion and manner a Quaker, strong on belief and short on shouting about it. When Lydia’s thoughts did turn to god and religion, which was rarely enough, it was Aunt Sarah who came to mind. With Dorothy’s firm jaw, wisp of grey hair at the sides of her mouth and complete absence of make-up, Lydia imagined she might so easily have been a nun. Even as she thought such a thing, her hand went involuntarily to her own cheek - how rarely any cream or lotion was applied there. Might the casual observer place her in a similar category? She was reminded once more of how little she could really know of another’s life however deep she delved.

Once the sandwiches and remains of fruit pie had been cleared away, Lydia fetched the album from her car, leaving the others tucked away in the boot. There would be another time for those. Together they looked through it, Lydia pointing out Joseph, who might be Dorothy’s grandfather, and of course Papa and Mama, who would be her great grandparents. Dorothy was much taken with it and lingered over each picture, but there was no hint of recognition.

‘And you got all that family worked out and sent me a letter from just looking at these pictures? I don’t know how you could do that.’

‘Well, no, not just from these pictures, there were other things too, other pictures which even now I don’t know if they’re connected or not. And a kind of diary too,’ she had been going to
say journal but changed and quickly moved on, ‘and mention of a funeral. Really the family is not all worked out yet. I think it will though, I think this is your family.’

‘Who’s funeral was that, dear?’

‘I think it was her funeral,’ Lydia turned the pages back to the summer of 1911 and pointed to the seven-year-old Phoebe. ‘If we’re right, if I’m right, then she would have been one of your mother’s cousins. She was Phoebe Marshall.’

‘Marshall? I worked for a Frank Marshall for years at Bentalls.’

‘Where was that?’

‘Right here in Worthing, they had a store here. He was one of the big bosses and his father before him. I worked for Frank Marshall just like my mother worked for his father. I forget his name. It was a big store, they had branches all over.’

‘Did you work there for long?’

‘Left school at fifteen and never worked anywhere else, nor did my mother.’

‘What did you do at Bentalls, Dorothy?’

‘I did all sorts over the years, but mainly I was in drapery.’

Lydia could not help but wonder if Fanny, just seventeen, had indeed been packed off to Worthing and given a job by one of the Marshall family. As is so often demonstrated in life, it is not what you know, but who you know. Or better still, to whom you are related. A private birth for Dorothy and a job as a shop girl for Fanny, well away from her former life and courtesy of a little family connection organised by the aunt and uncle who brought her up. Lydia ran ahead of herself, enjoying the speculation, but she chose not to share it with Dorothy.

‘You never married then?’

‘No, never married. I might’ve once, but he was all for going to Australia, and I had mother. You know how it is.’

‘No, but I can imagine. Did you stay in touch?’

‘We was at Bentalls together, that’s where we met, but he left a bit after that and I never saw him again. I think he went, someone said he did, and then not long after, mother died. Just how things turn out isn’t it, dear? What about you, are you married, got children?’

‘Once married but not now, and no children.’

‘Like I say, just how things turn out, but I’m sorry for you, dear,’ Dorothy said with complete, almost childlike, acceptance. No wistful regret of what might have been, simply that things were as they were and that was an end of it.

Lydia had exhausted all possible lines of enquiry and she was far from displeased with the results. She knew when she had the copy of Fanny’s birth registration in her hand she would see that her father and mother were Joseph Joslin and his wife Fanny, the proof that Dorothy was Papa’s great grandchild. The Longlands album would find a home, here in this house, but not before she had wrung every last secret from its pages.

‘I’d like to hang on to this for a while, Dorothy, if you don’t mind. I think it will be yours soon enough, but we’ll wait to prove it, if that’s all right.’

‘No dear, anyway its yours, not mine, it’s been lovely to see these people, lovely to know something about them. Thank you so much, coming all this way to talk to me like this.’

‘Just one more thing, going back to Marshalls, does the name Bee mean anything to you, someone’s nickname or pet name? I think that Phoebe Marshall was called Bee.’

‘Bee? I was at school with a Bee, that’s what everyone called her, but she was Beatrice really. Bee Worthington, yes that was her name, nothing to do with the Marshalls. You’d think Bee would be Beatrice wouldn’t you? But not now, I don’t know anyone called Bee.’

‘What about your mother, was there anything your mother might have said about Bee?’

‘Oh there might have been. One of her aunts, one of the ones who she lived with, I think she called one of them Auntie Bee. It might’ve been Bee. I know she did have some people come over once, cousins or something, came over for the day. There were some children I think too. Its going back a long way you know, dear.’

‘How long would you say, Dorothy?’

‘Oh, I don’t know, maybe I was twenty something, I never met
them, I remember mum saying she didn’t know what they came for. Hardly worth taking a day off work for, she said. Like I say, dear, that’s a long time since them days.’

‘Yes, I know. I was hoping there was a letter or something, maybe something about Bee’s death.’

‘No, but could there have been something about a goddaughter? It was a while after mother died. Probably a good while. I know what it was. It’s Oxford, you’re from Oxford aren’t you dear, and it was that what made me think, yes it was Oxford, a letter from someone’s god-daughter. Or maybe it was from someone’s daughter, I know there was some connection in there somewhere. Someone had died, but I didn’t know who they were. Could that be it?’

Lydia knew well enough that it was hard going, trying to remember things long past, remembering things without significance at the time, and Dorothy was clearly getting tired. But another small connection was made, still as tentative as so many others, but a possibility. Hadn’t she linked the journal to Oxford, wasn’t the whole box of albums purchased a few miles from her own home? And now here was Dorothy Joslin making a similar link without knowing it.

‘Dorothy, that might be something really important. It might be all part of another bit of the story, your family story. Was there anything else, might you still have the letter do you think, could it be in these papers?’

‘Well, it might be but more likely it got thrown out. It was good long while ago you know. But I do remember it being Oxford,’ she paused a moment and then added doubtfully, ‘or maybe it was Oxted. Now I’m not at all sure.’

‘If you think of anything you’ll let me know?’

‘Oh yes, dear. Its been so lovely having you here, talking about old times. And this might all be my family, I just don’t know what to think about that.’

‘I think that Oxford figures somewhere in the story, your family story, but what about other places? Does Whitehaven or Chelsea mean anything to you?’

‘I can’t say as they do.’

It was late afternoon before Lydia set off for home with her spirits high. Even so, that unexpected tinge of disappointment when she realised that she would have to part with her treasures remained with her. If the day had not run on as it had, curiosity might have taken her into the town for a stroll, then maybe a walk around Broadwater to see if the Downland Nursing Home still existed. Not that it would, sometimes Lydia knew her imagination wandered further than facts would dictate, but it was her way, and hadn’t someone said how they envied her creative thinking? A smile crossed her face as she savoured the thought that it was creative thinking which had brought her to this point, on the very brink of solving that first part of the puzzle. And with one part solved the others might fall neatly into place.

As to what she should make of Dorothy, Lydia was still not sure. She knew that she liked her, but all day she had been unsettled by the connection she had made to her Aunt Sarah, a connection that was probably just a trick of the light. But even allowing for that, Dorothy was still a little unworldly. Perhaps living alone with her mother for half her life had left her ill-equipped to deal with people and relationships when Fanny had died. If those supposedly swinging sixties had passed anyone by, it was surely Dorothy Joslin. Sat in the time warp of her back room, apparently unengaged with the world around her, everything since those far away days seemed to have gone unnoticed. It suddenly occurred to her that she had seen no television in the house, a rarity indeed. One day, Lydia thought, someone would find her dead or dying and questions would be asked as to how it could be, how someone could fall through the safety net of social security, how was it that there were no friends or relatives that took any interest. Had it been that way for Phoebe too? And of those other Joslins, what had happened to them and their bright confidence of the summer of 1911? Had it all dissolved, lost in war and misfortune?

However it would all turn out, whatever she might find, Lydia resolved that she would stay in touch with Dorothy. Not simply to
present her with the album, which she knew for sure would prove to be Dorothy’s family, and not because there might yet be more to be gleaned from some snippet in her mother’s papers. More because she did not want to hear one day from one of Dorothy’s neighbours that Dorothy was dead and that a police constable had notified the registrar.

Tired from her travels, Lydia indulged herself in a long lie in bed on the Sunday morning. Half awake and half asleep she dreamily considered the pleasures yet to come and those already taken from her box of albums. The trip she had taken to Longlands persisted in her mind, as did the delights and surprises of her stay in The Lakes. Underneath it though, was the gnawing angst of the journal, its secret story still undeciphered. Glad that she had kept the journal and its contents from Dorothy, she was still a little uncertain of its meaning herself, not really daring to trust her ideas, still hoping that in some obscure way it might be a fiction. Had Dorothy seen it or known the detail, Lydia was not sure how she would have responded. Perhaps she would have thought it best to leave well alone, let the past remain undisturbed, as was her attitude to her father. When Lydia started her day she would write at once to Dorothy to thank her, knowing well it would bring her pleasure to receive such a letter. That done, she would track down Fanny’s marriage to a Joslin and fit those pieces into the jigsaw. On second thoughts it would be better to wait to write to Dorothy until she had something more than a simple ‘thank you’ to say. But then again it might be better to wait until a certificate had been obtained. The sequences swam round her head until they were a blur and she sank back into a deep sleep until late in the morning.

Once she had her wits about her and a coffee or two inside her, Lydia set about the day’s jobs without hesitation. First, the little
note to Dorothy, thanking her for the visit and all the information and the trouble she had taken, together with a promise to write again as soon as she had any new discovery. Then immediately she set about confirming the marriage for Joseph Joslin to Dorothy’s grandmother Fanny. If Dorothy’s mother had been born in 1915, and there was no reason to doubt what the abbreviated certificate stated, then she should find her answer easily enough. With the aid of her previous notes she found the entry right away in the September quarter of 1914.
‘Joslin, Joseph married Holland, Colchester’
followed by the reference in the register, which Lydia carefully noted. She would order the certificate later, with any others she might need, once the day’s investigations were done. The next step was to cross-reference the entry by checking the other side of the marriage under Holland. As she was about to start the search it occurred to her that she’d arrived at one of those vital moments, a critical confirmation of her theories. Or, dread the thought, the first indication she was completely wrong. As the image of the index page formed on the screen, she fervently hoped that there would be an entry for Holland, Fanny, marrying a Joslin in Colchester in the summer of 1914. Anxiously she scrolled down the Hollands to F. The poor image and the smudged typeface made it hard to read. She clicked to enlarge the page.
‘Holland, Fanny, married Joslin, Cochester’.
It was there, right there in front of her, with the identical reference. Lydia realised that she had been holding her breath for too long.

Next in Lydia’s mental list was confirmation of Dorothy’s mother’s parents, though she hadn’t the slightest doubt that they would be Joseph and Fanny. It was a matter of moments to switch her searches from marriages to births and look for Joslins in the June quarter of 1915. There was baby Fanny Joslin’s entry. Again she noted the reference details. That was another certificate to be ordered. Now, on to finding the truth about ‘having no parents’, as Dorothy had put it. It was no great leap of imagination to think that Joseph might have died in the war. And if not in the war then perhaps of wounds shortly afterwards. If he had been pensioned out of the services then she might find such a record, and if he was
one of the casualties then he would be recorded somewhere for sure. It was at moments such as this that Lydia remembered to be grateful for all the work that had gone in to providing the millions of pieces of information that she relied on, trawled through, sorted and sifted to throw a little light on past lives. The Commonwealth War Graves search was instant and enlightening.
‘Joseph Joslin, Serjeant, Essex Regiment, 09/05/1915, Ypres. Memorial at the Menin Gate.’
Other Joslins too, but no other Josephs, and no other match more likely than the first that she found. For a few moments Lydia’s vision switched to that memorial, and to the figure of Dorothy, supported by her stick, reading her grandfather’s name amongst the thousands of others. If Dorothy would like to go one day, then she would go with her.