Property of a Noblewoman (24 page)

“It was some woman in New York who is older than I am, and says she’s the illegitimate daughter of a man named Tommy Babcock, who died during the war at eighteen, and a young teenage girl he was in love with. She’s only just learned about them. Her mother is already dead, and she’s trying to find relatives of his. I don’t think we’re it. I promised her I’d ask Dad, but he’d have told me something like that. He’s never been one to keep secrets,” Tom said, as he put an arm around her, and she agreed.

Angie was from South Carolina, and they had been married for forty-three years, happily so. His father had settled in California, in La Jolla, after being stationed in San Diego after the war, and Tom had been born there, and lived in California all his life, although his parents were originally from New York. He and Angie had met at UC San Diego, married right after graduation, moved to Santa Barbara, and had been there ever since. And their adult children lived in Santa Barbara and L.A., and they saw a lot of them.

Tom was an architect, and still active in his field. He always said retirement wasn’t for him. And his father had run a successful business, and retired at eighty-three. Angie was an interior designer and frequently worked with Tom. They were happy, busy, and fulfilled, and still involved in their careers, and the kids were doing well. They had many friends, and they were friendly, loving people. Tom’s warmth and kindness had come across on the phone, which had given Valerie the courage to tell the story, although he didn’t appear to be the right one. And it had taken so much energy to call him that she didn’t call any of the other Thomas Babcocks after that, and went to bed.

The next morning after he helped his father shower and shave, and got him dressed and into his wheelchair, Tom told him about the call the night before.

“Some woman from New York called here last night, looking for you, Dad.” His son teased him a little – he hadn’t lost his sense of humor yet. “She said she heard you were a handsome guy.” Walter Babcock guffawed and didn’t believe a word of it, and then his son explained the reason for her call. “She said that her parents were a couple of seventeen-year-olds in New York in 1941. Her mom got pregnant with her, and was sent away to have the baby, and I think her grandparents brought her up, and they never let her see her mother. She never even knew about her till now. She said her dad was killed in an accident right after he was drafted in January 1942, before she was born, when he was just eighteen. She only just learned about all of it. She found her mother, but she’d already died, and now she’s looking for her father’s relatives, to touch base with her roots, and meet them. She sounded like a nice person, and she’s seventy-four years old, so she’s no kid. The story sounded like Uncle Tommy, except you never told me about a baby. She said her mother’s name was Margaret Pearson, something like that.” It was close enough. “Maybe you didn’t know?” Tom asked his father casually, and his father looked agitated and sounded angry.

“I would have known if he got some girl pregnant. Tommy would never have done a thing like that. Of course it’s not him. What’s wrong with that woman, at her age, throwing dirt at the reputation of people who’ve been dead for seventy-four years? She should be ashamed of herself. I hope you don’t talk to her again.” He was frowning in his wheelchair and looked fierce, and his son had started his day off on the wrong foot. He still considered his brother’s memory sacred, and was furious at what she’d said and tried to do.

“I told her I’d call her either way,” Tom said easily. “She sounded serious about it. It must be sad not to know who your parents are until you’re seventy-four years old, and never have met either one.”

“At her age, she shouldn’t care. Doesn’t she have kids?”

“I didn’t ask,” Tom said honestly. “Maybe not. But even if she does, you read stories like this all the time, or see them on TV, of eighty-year-old people looking for their hundred-year-old mothers who put them up for adoption. I think those things haunt people forever. I’m glad it wasn’t Uncle Tommy. It must be terrible for that poor woman to have never known her parents.” He hadn’t known his uncle either, but his father had talked about him all his life. He had never fully gotten over his younger brother’s death.

Tom rolled his father into the kitchen for his breakfast then, and their housekeeper and a male attendant arrived to take care of him. They never left him alone. And then he and Angie left for work together. Tom called Valerie from his architectural office, and told her about the conversation with his father.

“I’m really sorry, Mrs. Lawton. I would have loved to come up with some relatives for you. It’s a touching story, and I hope you find the right people. I’m afraid I came up dry out here.” He didn’t tell her that his father had been outraged by the story, which he himself had found heart-wrenching.

“Thank you so much for trying,” Valerie said pleasantly, grateful that he had spoken to his father and even called her back, and didn’t dismiss her as a lunatic. But stranger things had happened, it might have worked, and been the right Babcock. “I knew it was a long shot. It was really a stab in the dark. I don’t know where to go from here.” Although there were many more Thomas Babcocks she hadn’t tried.

“Maybe a detective agency, if it’s worth it to you?” he suggested.

“I’d never thought of that,” she admitted, “but this is all very new to me, the search for lost parents. I always thought I knew who mine were. It turns out I didn’t.”

“Well, good luck,” Tom said, and they hung up, and he forgot about it.

And for the next three days, the housekeeper and male nurse said Walter had been impossible. Cantankerous, difficult, in a bad mood, restless, and he had hardly eaten. And when Tom walked into his father’s room when he came home from work at the end of the three days, he found his father crying, which frightened Tom. He had never seen him that way, and his father turned to him with tears rolling down his cheeks.

“What’s up, Dad? Are you feeling sick? Do you want me to call the doctor? Joe and Carmen said you’re not eating.” And he had rejected Angie’s dinner too the night before.

“It’s that woman,” he said in a choked voice.

“What woman? Carmen?” The housekeeper had been with them since their kids were young, and she had always been kind to him. “Has she been giving you a hard time?”

“No,” he shook his head miserably, and looked like he had shrunk in the past few days. “The one who called you and told those lies about Tommy. Why would she do a thing like that? He was such a good boy.” He was genuinely frantic about it, and Tom was worried it might be an early sign of dementia, although he’d had none before. But he was desperately upset and agitated.

“Of course he was, Dad,” Tom tried to soothe him, but his father was inconsolable over what he considered the insult to his late baby brother, whom he revered as a saint. “She’s just looking for her father’s family. You can’t blame her for that. She didn’t mean any harm by it.”

“He never got anyone knocked up,” Walter insisted, and continued crying.

“She just got us off the Internet, Dad. She never knew Uncle Tommy.”

“She’s as bad as her mother was,” he suddenly said fiercely, in a tone his son had never heard him use before. “I never liked her. She just wanted to trap Tommy, and she got what she deserved. They sent her off to some prison camp for bad girls in New England somewhere. My parents never let Tommy see her again. He thought he was in love with her, he even wanted to marry her, but Dad wouldn’t let him. And then he was killed. I don’t know what happened to her. It didn’t matter after that.” He was crying harder, as Tom stared at him.

“You knew her?” His father wouldn’t answer him and looked out the window with tears streaming down his cheeks.

“He hardly talked to me once he fell in love with her. She put a spell on him. He said he was going to marry her.” It was obvious to Tom that his father had been jealous of her, and the love the two young people had shared. And it sounded like they’d paid a high price for it, separated from each other, punished by their parents, the baby taken from the young girl, by her own parents, never to be seen again, and the boy she loved killed while she was pregnant with his baby. He could only feel sorry for her, while his father was still angry and jealous of her, and had lied to his son about it, to protect his brother’s memory.

“Dad, why didn’t you tell me? These things happen, especially in those days. It must have been a terrible scandal back then,” Tom said sympathetically.

“It would have been. Our parents never let that happen. They covered it up immediately, and so did her parents. No one wanted that baby. I don’t know what happened to it, but it got what it deserved and so did its mother. Marguerite. I hated her.”

“I think that was ‘the baby’ I was talking to on the phone the other night. And I don’t agree with you about her getting what she deserved. What did she do to deserve that? Seventy-five years later, she’s still looking for her parents, and trying to figure out who they are. That doesn’t seem fair to me. Because two teenage kids fell in love with each other? Come on, Dad. You’re her uncle. And what if she’s a nice person? Is this what Tommy would want you to do to the girl he loved, or their baby? What if it were your child and you’d been killed – would he pretend he knew nothing about her, and ignore her? I’m ashamed of you, Dad. You’re bigger than that. At least we can tell her she found her father’s family. I’m sure she’s not going to ask you for money.” Tom smiled at him, trying to lighten the moment.

“How do you know? The Pearsons were pretty fancy, although they lost most of their money in the Depression. They thought they were better than everyone, and then look what happened. Their precious daughter got knocked up. Our mother was ready to kill her. She forbade Tommy to ever see her again. He cried all night over it, and then her parents sent her away the next day. I think he went to see her once, at the home, and then he got sent to California, and died right after that.” Tom had never heard his father so harsh, and the whole story sounded like a nightmare, especially for both young people, who had been treated like criminals by their parents. Tom felt sorry for both of them. But clearly Valerie had touched a nerve with the story. His father hadn’t recovered from it yet. “I don’t want anything to do with her,” Walter barked at him, and Tom quietly left the room a few minutes later, to let him calm down. And he went to tell Angie what had happened. She was stunned too. Walter had lied to protect the memory of his brother, and had no regrets about it.

“What are you going to do?” Angie asked him as they shared a quiet dinner in the kitchen that night, after his father went to sleep. He had finally calmed down a little after he’d vented about it. And Tom didn’t bring it up again.

“I’m going to find her number and call her tomorrow when I get to the office. I hope I didn’t throw it away. And I’m going to tell her Dad lied to me. He’s never done that before.”

“You know how sensitive he is about his brother,” Angie said gently, but Tom looked shocked, and disappointed.

“Can you imagine what a nightmare that must have been for those two kids, especially in those days? And look at it, she never saw her mother or even knew who she was, or her father. And who knows, maybe if he’d lived, Uncle Tommy might have married her and she’d be our aunt Marguerite,” remembering his father had corrected him about the name. “Instead she was an outcast, and their child was a lost soul. It’s a terrible story,” he said, profoundly upset by it. And as he said he would, he called Valerie first thing the next morning, when he found the paper still on his desk with her number on it.

She was painting when he called, squinting at the portrait of Marguerite. It was noon in New York on a blustery March day. And she didn’t recognize the voice when she answered.

“Mrs. Lawton?” he asked cautiously.

“Yes.”

“Tom Babcock. We spoke the other night, about my uncle, and my father.” She knew who he was the moment he said the name.

“Of course. I didn’t recognize your voice at first.” She smiled as she said it. “You’re so nice to call me back. I’m really sorry I troubled you, I was just hoping you were the right one.” She sounded faintly embarrassed in the clear light of day, since his father hadn’t known anything about it and hadn’t known her mother.

“I owe you an apology,” Tom said bluntly, with sincere regret in his voice. “My father lied to me. He’s never done that before. I don’t know what to say, except how sorry I am. I didn’t mean to mislead you. My father did know your mother, and he knew the story. He just didn’t know what happened to the baby, and I guess no one ever talked about it in those days. It must have been a terrible time for your mother and my uncle.”

“Oh my God.” She sounded like she had just won the lottery. “Your father is Tommy Babcock’s brother? He’s my uncle?” There were tears in her eyes and in Tom Babcock’s. She was clearly so moved that it touched him too.

“And I’m your cousin. I don’t know if it’s a blessing for you or not, or something to celebrate, but you found the family you were looking for. And I’m so sorry my father misled me,” he said again. “He revered his brother, and I don’t think he ever got over losing him. The idea of besmirching his memory, over an unwanted pregnancy, was just too much for him.”

“I understand. It was a big deal then. The poor kids must have been desperate. It’s hard to imagine, and then your uncle died, and my mom must have been even more lost. Her parents banished her forever after I was born, and pretended she was dead. They sent her to Europe during the war, at eighteen, and never saw her again. And my grandparents pretended I was their child. That’s pretty heavy stuff.”

“It certainly is. I’m sorry you never knew her.”

“So am I,” Valerie said sadly. “I have some photographs of her now. I just got them recently, and know more about her life. She never had other children. Just me.”

“Do you have children?” Tom asked, curious about her, now that they were related.

“One, a son named Phillip. He’s wonderful. He’s thirty-four and works at the auction house Christie’s, in the jewelry department. He has a master’s in art history. His father was an art history professor, and I’m an artist, a painter.”