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Authors: Nathan Dylan Goodwin

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The pavement
rose and eventually veered to the right, terminating at St John’s Church, a
typical sandstone-coloured building with a chancel, nave and tower. 
Without any serious attempt at studying the architecture, he guessed the
earliest parts dated back to the fourteenth-century with other additions being
added in the latter centuries.  He cast his eyes across the churchyard at
the range of memorials in front of him.  Very recent, polished marble
graves stood adjacent to ancient, lichen-covered headstones, the names of the
deceased occupants having been weathered into obscurity.

Three pristine
white graves stood side by side in commemoration of the village’s fallen war
heroes.  Three brothers taken within weeks of each other in 1943.  He
thought of his own brother fighting in a war-zone and a feeling of dread dragged
inside him as he remembered that tonight was his leaving party.  He turned
his head from the graves and tried to shake his despondency.
 

Morton
refocused his attention to the task in hand: he needed to find James and Mary
Coldrick’s grave.  When told by Peter where his parents were buried,
Morton found it very curious that a man with such unsettled beginnings in the
village should want to be forever entombed within its parish boundaries. 
Given all that he had discovered since Tuesday, he now thought it absolutely
inexplicable that they were here.
 

Ordinarily, he
would have conducted a meticulous, thorough search of the churchyard, using a
range of techniques to decipher even the most worn inscriptions.  Today,
however, he knew exactly where he was headed.  Peter had told him that his
parents’ grave was to be found in the shadow of a yew tree in the south-west
corner of the churchyard.  Morton spotted the ancient yew, with its
gnarled and contorted trunk pushing into a thick green canopy above, and made
his way towards it.  The Coldrick headstone - polished black granite with
gold, engraved lettering - stood innocuously among other modern graves under
the protective shade of the yew. 
In Loving Memory of Mary Coldrick
1946-1987.  A much loved mother and wife.  Also, James Coldrick
1944-2012.  A much loved father.
 

‘Forever
trapped in the place of your unhappy childhood,’ Morton remarked to himself, as
he took a couple of shots of the grave on his iPhone.

‘Pardon?’ a
sprightly voice piped up, startling him.  Morton was jarred from his
daydream and turned to see an old-timer with a grey handle-bar moustache,
expensive olive-green suit and maroon neckerchief limping towards him.  He
looked to Morton like a retired colonel.

‘Sorry, just
talking to myself,’ Morton replied.
 

‘Lovely day.’

‘It is rather,’
Morton said.

‘I’m just going
to open the church if you wanted to have a peek around.’
 

‘That would be
lovely, thank you.’
 

Morton followed
the old man inside the church.  The temperature suddenly plunged to the
same arctic conditions as at East Sussex Archives.  In the vestibule he
noticed a burial plan of the churchyard.  It was a crude, hand-drawn piece
of paper that someone had helpfully laminated.  Morton quickly verified
that there were no other Coldricks buried in the church then wandered along the
nave, stepping on worn marble tombstones dedicated to ancient clergy.
 

 
‘I haven’t
seen you around here before, are you on holiday?’ the man asked, tidying a
stack of dishevelled hymn books.

‘Well, I’m
actually researching a family tree - Coldrick – do you know the name at all?’
Morton asked.
 

The old man
frowned, his preposterously lengthy eyebrows eclipsing his vision, as if he
were trying to recall a private members' club in Islington.  ‘Doesn’t ring
any bells.  How do you spell it?’

Morton took
care to enunciate each letter carefully.

‘No, I don’t
think so, old boy,’ he replied eventually.  ‘Queer sort of name, wouldn’t
you say?  Doesn’t sound very Sussex to me.’

‘No, I don’t suppose
it does,’ Morton replied, not really sure what a ‘Sussex’ name was.

‘When did they
live in the village?’

‘Around 1944 –
possibly earlier.’

‘Sorry, I can’t
help you there – I was on active service in Egypt at the time.  There aren’t
many of us left who can recall much from that period with any clarity.  It
certainly isn’t a name I’ve seen in the parish records in my time as church
warden.’

‘Not to worry –
thank you anyway,’ Morton said.  He took one last look around the church and
made his way out into the stark heat, where he was convinced that the
temperature had risen by at least five degrees.  Morton slowly walked back
to his car, allowing his mind to mull over the case.  As he fired up the
car, Morton took one last look at the quiet, unassuming village.  It
looked so normal, so harmless.  But that indefinable gut reaction, upon
which he so heavily relied, told him that for James Coldrick, this village
hadn’t always been as normal and harmless as it now seemed.

 

Morton was lying prone on the bed, telling
Juliette about his day whilst she transformed herself from Police Community
Support Officer 8084 to Miss Juliette Meade, social butterfly.  He was
happy with either incarnation but, as she stood straightening her hair in a curvaceous,
low-cut black dress, subtle make-up and killer heels, he was forced to admit
that she looked more stunningly beautiful than the drab black, monochromatic
uniform of the police force would ever allow.  He’d not bothered getting
dressed up for the occasion and was content in jeans and t-shirt.  Sending
your adopted brother off to his death hardly seemed an occasion that required
one's best clothes.

‘It’s certainly
an intriguing one, isn’t it,’ Juliette said in response to his discoveries with
the
Coldrick Case
.

‘That’s an
understatement.’

 
‘Doesn’t it
make you wonder about your own family?’

Morton’s
insides tightly recoiled at the prospect of having a conversation about his own
veiled past, a subject which he categorically avoided at the best of times. 
He sauntered over to the bedroom window and caught her reflection.  Her
eyes were narrowed and one hand rested defiantly on her hip.  She wasn’t
about to let this one go.
 

‘It must make
you wonder, though,’ she persisted.  ‘Your real parents could be walking
past our house right now for all we know.’  Morton glanced out of the
window at the passersby.  He felt sure that he would recognise someone in
whom he had once lived.  ‘I mean, doesn’t it strike you as odd that you
know more about Norman Lamont’s family or any of the other celebrities on
Celebri-Trees,
than you do your own family?’

‘Hadn’t thought
about it and don’t care,’ he said, quickly regretting the virulence of his
response.  Of course he’d thought about it; the question of his parentage
was like a plastic bottle forever bobbing on the open seas, occasionally far
enough away so as not to warrant attention but always having the possibility of
being washed back to the forefront of his mind.  And, yes, it
was
absurd that he knew more of the former Tory Chancellor of the Exchequer’s
family history than he did of his own because of his employment two years ago
as resident genealogist for a television company
. 
It just wasn’t
as simple as that.

‘Why don’t you
just go for the counselling, then see how you feel?  You don’t even have
to find out who they are if you don’t want to.’
 

‘I don’t see
why I should,’ Morton answered indignantly.  It was the seemingly random
quirk of law that anyone born before 12 November 1975 must seek counselling
before discovering their birth parents that most irked Morton.
 

Counselling. 
It all sounded so American and unnecessary.

Juliette
sighed, checked herself in the full-length mirror and waltzed from the bedroom,
the transformation complete, leaving Morton with an unpleasant burning
inside.  Just how he needed to feel moments before seeing his father and
brother again.

 

Morton and Juliette arrived at his
father’s smart 1930s semi in Hastings; the same respectable house and
neighbourhood in which Morton had spent his first eighteen years of life, apart
from those first few memory-less hours as a new-born baby in the arms of his
real mother (presuming, of course, that she had even held him at birth). 
Seeing the house again filled his heart with the familiar yet uncomfortable
fusion of emotions he had always felt coming back: nostalgia, disappointment
and hopelessness.  It was the same on each and every occasion that he
returned home, the feelings only swelling and deepening with time.  His
hopes of a last-minute cancellation were quashed by the din spilling out from
the open windows.

Juliette sensed
his apprehension and grasped his hand in hers as they neared the front door,
giving it a tender, reassuring squeeze.

Morton pressed
the doorbell and waited.  He had his own key in his pocket but the last
time he’d used it – more than two years ago now - his father had reacted with
such shock that he had just tottered in off the streets without prior warning
that Morton had never dared to use it ever since.

A figure moved
behind the obscure glass.

Morton returned
Juliette’s squeeze as the door opened, revealing Jeremy with a large grin on
his face.  In full military uniform.  He looked like Action Man’s
child, Action Boy; all dressed up and ready to play.  Morton wondered if
Jeremy really knew the difference between a weekend in the New Forest
paint-balling with his mates and live warfare.  Probably not.  But
then again, did half the teenagers serving out there really understand or care
about anything beyond the fact that they’d been given a real gun with real
bullets and
carte blanche
to kill real people?

‘Hi, Jeremy,’
Juliette said, leaning in to kiss him on the cheek.

‘Hi, guys, so
glad you could make it,’ Jeremy said cheerfully, irking Morton. 
How
could anyone be so happy about going to Afghanistan?
  Morton extended
his hand to his brother but Jeremy pulled him into a bear hug, squashing
Morton’s right hand between them.  As far as Morton could recall, it was
the first time he had ever embraced his brother.  He wondered if that was
normal for two thirty-something-year-old brothers.  Finally Jeremy pulled
away and stepped back to allow them into the busy house.

‘All set then,
Jeremy?’ Morton asked.

‘Think so,
yeah,’ Jeremy answered, leading them through the crowded hallway.  Morton
hardly recognised the place.  The house was teeming with macho men
throwing Stellas down their thick tattooed necks and laughing raucously. 
Morton couldn’t imagine for a single second what his dad thought about his
house being turned into an army barracks’ outpost.  He’d probably gone
next door to David and Sandra’s for wine, cheese and a few games of Scrabble.
 

Apparently not.

His father
appeared from the crowd clutching a cup of tea in his favourite mug emblazoned
with a watercolour kingfisher.  ‘Morton, Juliette,’ he said, as if he was
taking a register and simply confirming their presence, rather than welcoming
them into his home.  He looked so much older to Morton than the last time
he’d seen him.  He noticed that the last flecks of his naturally
coal-black hair had been completely drowned by a solid sea of dove-grey. 
He greeted Juliette with a smile when she leant in to peck him on the
cheek.  Morton shook his hand.  None of that namby-pamby hugging
business with Mr Farrier, thank you very much.

‘So, how’s work
these days?’ his father asked him.  Morton felt that he had to physically
prevent his eyes from rolling and his lungs from exhaling dramatically. 
His father always opened conversation with questions about his work, seeming to
never believe Morton could actually make money from researching people’s family
trees.

Juliette
stepped in.  ‘Oh my goodness, the work’s been flooding in for him,’ she
said.  ‘It took a lot to drag him away from it tonight, I can tell
you.’  She laughed.  She was a good liar.  It must have been the
rigorous police training.  If Morton hadn’t known the truth, he might have
believed it himself.  ‘Just this week he landed a really good deal, didn’t
you, babe?’

Babe
?  When had he suddenly become a
babe
? 
It wasn’t a name he particularly felt comfortable with.  Morton Farrier:
babe.

‘Yeah, a real
killer, this one,’ he said sardonically.

‘Good show,
that’s what I like to hear.  Doesn’t do a chap good to be out of work
these days.’

‘Indeed,’
Morton agreed.

‘Here you go,’
Jeremy said, thrusting a can of beer into Morton’s hand.  Morton took a
large gulp.  He was going to need something strong to help him get through
this evening.  ‘What did you want to drink, Juliette?’

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