Quest for a Father

By Cecilia Peartree

This is the 6th book in the 'Adventurous Quests' series of thriller novels set in the world of the 1950s, when people hadn't quite recovered from the war and were on the brink of being plunged into a cold war stand-off with Russia.
'Quest for a Father' takes Clemency and Andrew to Spain, at a time when recovery from a different kind of war was even slower, and there were secrets and dangers round every corner. One of those secrets has a close connection with Andrew's family.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cecilia Peartree
• Release date: Jun 16, 2018
• ISBN: 9780463829165

Cecilia Peartree

Cecilia Peartree is the pen name of a writer from Edinburgh. She has dabbled in various genres so far, including science fiction and humour, but she keeps returning to a series of 'cosy' mysteries set in a small town in Fife.The first full length novel in the series, 'Crime in the Community', and the fifth 'Frozen in Crime are 'perma-free' on all outlets.The Quest series is set in the different Britain of the 1950s. The sixth novel in this series, 'Quest for a Father' was published in March 2017..As befits a cosy mystery writer, Cecilia Peartree lives in the leafy suburbs with her cats.

Book preview

Quest for a Father

Cecilia Peartree

Copyright Cecilia Peartree 2018

Smashwords edition

All rights reserved

CONTENTS

Chapter 1 Clemency – A Bombshell

Chapter 2 Andrew – Travel Agents

Chapter 3 Clemency – Making Plans

Chapter 4 Andrew – Crossing the Border

Chapter 5 Clemency – Piecing it Together

Chapter 6 Andrew – First Foray

Chapter 7 Clemency – Don’t Panic

Chapter 8 Andrew – Tactical Withdrawal

Chapter 9 Clemency – Modelling

Chapter 10 Andrew - Vanished

Chapter 11 Clemency – Reworking Plans

Chapter 12 Andrew – Under Cover of Darkness

Chapter 13 Clemency – A Safe Place

Chapter 14 Andrew – Meeting Teresa

Chapter 15 Clemency – In the Dark

Chapter 16 Andrew – End of the Road

Chapter 17 Clemency – Travelling in Style

Chapter 18 Andrew – The Tall American

Chapter 19 Clemency – Fathers and Sons

Chapter 20 Andrew – Meeting at Montjuic

Chapter 21 Clemency – The Worst That Can Happen

Chapter 22 Andrew – Least of All Evils

Chapter 23 Clemency – Forging the Path

Chapter 24 Andrew – Last Hurdle

Chapter 25 Clemency – Easy Stages

Chapter 26 Andrew – Rough Seas

Chapter 27 Clemency - Frontiers

Chapter 28 Andrew – Surprise in Collioure

Chapter 29 Clemency - Revelations

Chapter 30 Andrew - Homecomings

End

Chapter 1 Clemency – A Bombshell

‘Why didn’t you tell me this sooner? What the hell were you thinking?’

When I had first known Andrew Neville, I had thought him grumpy and critical, but I had begun to get used to the mellower, more relaxed man he seemed to have become. Standing in his mother’s kitchen and confronting her, he had reverted to glaring at her with the forbidding expression he usually reserved for careless research students who over-taxed the valves of his precious computer to such an extent that they stopped functioning and the whole thing ground to a halt, sometimes literally.

Mrs Neville twisted her hands together in front of her as if she were the child and he the censorious parent.

‘I didn’t know myself until I got the letter... I knew I couldn’t keep it from you once that had come, love. I’m sorry. It was the wrong thing to do, but I wasn’t myself at the time.’

I saw the glimmer of tears gathering in her eyes. I jumped to my feet, scattering knitting patterns like falling leaves or, more aptly in view of the season, snowflakes.

‘I’ll just go and see to...’

‘Stay where you are, Clemency!’ Andrew snapped. ‘Let’s hear what she has to say. We’re well past the point of having any more secrets in this family.’

Ha! Fine words, coming from the man whose wartime past continued to be a closed book, no matter how many attempts I made to open it.

I resented being told so abruptly to stay, and yet I harboured the faint hope that learning this family secret would provide me with a tool with which to pry open others. I picked up the pattern leaflets and sat back down again.

‘So you’re telling me that my father didn’t die in France at the time you told me he did - he just ran off with another woman?’

I could understand his shock. But he had to give his mother a chance to explain. I willed him to moderate the accusation in his tone.

Mrs Neville blinked. ‘I didn’t know about the other woman until now.’

‘But you knew he was in Spain,’ said Andrew.

‘Yes,’ she admitted, swallowing nervously. ‘I thought he had been killed in the fighting there. That was what they told me.’

I got up again, clumsily and patted her hand, which was gripping the back of a kitchen chair so hard that the knuckles had gone almost white.

She smiled at me gratefully. ‘It’s all right, Clemency love. He has a right to be a bit cross.’

‘I didn’t know any of this,’ said Andrew in a low voice.

‘I didn’t want to worry you,’ said his mother.

I wished I had left the room when I first thought of it. The idea of learning family secrets had been quite alluring, but the reality was awkward and somehow too intimate.

‘I need to think,’ he said suddenly. He took his coat off the back of the chair near the kitchen fire where he had left it to dry after an expedition in the snow, flung it on without doing it up properly, and went out through the back door before either of us could say anything.

‘I wonder if I should go after him,’ I said thoughtfully. On balance I thought not, but it would be useful to know what his mother made of this.

She was shaking her head. ‘He’ll be back soon enough. It’s freezing again out there. That’ll cool his temper, don’t you worry.’

I pictured Andrew storming along the street outside, stumbling now and then as his foot slipped on the icy cobblestones.

‘I don’t suppose you usually see this side of him,’ Mrs Neville continued. ‘It’s probably all calm and serene while he’s at work.’

‘I wouldn’t say that exactly. He does get a bit cross when the valves overheat in the lab. And when he can’t get his subroutine to work.’

‘Ah, but it isn’t the same,’ she said. ‘He used to get like this sometimes when he was a boy. As if his feelings were too big for his body. Sometimes he’d run down to the river and along the bank for miles. I worried about him at first, but then when he was hungry he’d come home, and he’d be all sweetness and light.’

‘So he’s reverted to childhood.’

She nodded. ‘Because he’s home. It’s understandable, I suppose. He was a spoiled only child, after all... You’re lucky to have a brother.’

‘It doesn’t always seem like that,’ I said with feeling. ‘He can be over-protective. You’d think he’d never done anything the slightest bit dangerous himself.’

‘They’ve got twins now, haven’t they?’

I guessed Mrs Neville needed to be distracted for a while from worrying about the letter, and Andrew, and his father, so while the going was good I got out the snapshots of the twins from my bag and we chatted about them for twenty minutes or so.

Then we heard the front door opening, and Andrew’s head appeared round the kitchen door.

‘Sorry,’ he said to both of us equally. ‘I didn’t mean to shout. None of it is your fault.’

He advanced into the kitchen. His face was pink with cold, but his eyes at least showed no trace of ice in their blue depths.

We had both jumped up when we heard the door.

Andrew drew in a breath. He glanced from his mother to me and back, and suddenly the shadow of a smile crossed his face fleetingly.

‘The two of you – you look so alike, standing there.’

Mrs Neville turned to me with a smile of her own. ‘There now, Clemency, do you hear him? I don’t suppose you’ll be all that flattered.’

‘I certainly am flattered,’ I said, almost weak with relief over his changed frame of mind..

‘Come along then, mother,’ said Andrew, pulling out a chair for himself. ‘We’d better have a look at this letter of yours.’

She took an envelope out of the pocket of her apron and handed it to him without a word. We all sat down, and the two of us watched while he drew out the scrappy piece of paper and scanned it. I wondered if it might turn out to be written in code like some of our previous correspondence.

He took his time. Seeing the way his hand trembled, I guessed he was trying to compose himself, using the excuse of reading the letter to buy some time.

‘I’m sorry I lost my temper,’ he said to his mother at last, putting it to one side. ‘This must have been a terrible shock.’

‘Knowing he’s still alive after all this time? Yes, of course it was a shock. I don’t know which side is up any more... Only I’m sorry that I didn’t tell you all I knew in the first place.’

‘I should have asked more questions,’ said Andrew. ‘I was too wrapped up in – other things.’

‘You were only a boy,’ said Mrs Neville. ‘You believed what I told you.’

‘That he had died in a train accident in the south of France? Yes, I suppose I believed that. I did find it a bit puzzling, though... I couldn’t work out what he was supposed to be doing there anyway.’

‘Um,’ I said, hesitant about butting in, but eager to know the whole story. ‘Why was he in the south of France?’

‘He told me at first he was going there on a story,’ said Mrs Neville ruefully. ‘It was only after a year or so that he wrote and told me he’d crossed into Spain and he was covering the fighting for his paper. I didn’t want to worry you with that. You were studying for your exams at the time.’

‘Here,’ said Andrew, picking up the letter again and passing it across to me. He glanced at his mother. ‘Is it all right if Clemency reads this?’

‘Of course,’ said Mrs Neville. ‘She’s practically one of the family, after all.’

I felt myself blushing. Of course I had hopes of being part of Andrew’s family at some unspecified future time, but we had never actually discussed that possibility in so many words.

I picked up the letter.

It was written in bold, black ink on a crinkled piece of paper with an uneven top edge, as if it had been torn out of a notebook or even a printed book. The English wasn’t perfect, but it was certainly comprehensible... I stopped noticing the style after the first sentence. The content was far more interesting.

I re-read it twice in order to take it in. Then I laid it carefully on the table in front of me, and stared at Andrew.

‘So this girl – Teresa – claims to be your sister?’

He nodded grimly, glancing across at his mother.

‘I would’ve liked a girl, too,’ she said. ‘Not that you weren’t enough of a handful, young Andrew.’

She tried for a light tone, but it wasn’t very convincing.

‘We’d better stay on here for a bit,’ said Andrew.

‘There’s no need for that,’ said Mrs Neville. ‘I can cope all right. I don’t need any mollycoddling. How do you think I managed in the war, with you away? And your father – gone.’

‘You didn’t know about this in the war,’ said Andrew, reaching for the letter and picking it up to read again. He frowned. ‘I can’t make up my mind whether it’s genuine or not. What do you think?’

He was looking at me now.

I shrugged helplessly. ‘Why shouldn’t it be?’

‘Why haven’t they been in touch with Mum before?’

‘She explains all that,’ I said. ‘He’s lost his memory. She found the address among his things while he was ill in bed. This Teresa’s mother has died so it’s just the two of them.’

‘But if he had the address on him all along...’

Mrs Neville got up from the table. ‘I’d better make a pot of tea. That might help us all think.’

I wished I had her faith in the power of tea. I felt disoriented and my brain was fuzzy. And I wasn’t even directly involved in this muddle. I must have been picking up confused thought waves from Andrew or something.

He winked at me. ‘You’re right. That’s just what we need.’

‘I think there are a few biscuits left over,’ she said, fussing about at the sink. ‘Or would you pop out to the corner shop for a packet, love?’

‘We won’t starve,’ said Andrew.

Indeed, there was no chance of starvation in the Neville household. I didn’t know how I was going to force down another cup of tea, never mind the biscuits.

My mind drifted back to Spain and Andrew’s father, and to the woman who claimed to be his sister. The mention of Teresa’s mother must surely have upset Mrs Neville and even angered her. I admired her calm resilience.

I spoke tentatively, because I still didn’t think this was my business. Under some circumstances that wouldn’t have stopped me from sticking my oar in, but I knew this must be a very sensitive subject all round. ‘How do you know this man is really Mr Neville? Mightn’t his things have got into the possession of some other man? In all the confusion, I mean?’

Andrew stared down at the letter that was still in his hand.

‘That’s a good point,’ he said after a moment.

I glanced down at the pictures of the twins that still lay in front of me on the table.

‘Perhaps she could send a snapshot of him,’ I suggested. ‘If she’s got a camera... But I suppose they could be hard to come by.’

‘It isn’t the back of beyond,’ said Andrew. ‘There must be some photographers left in Barcelona.’

There was a rattle as Mrs Neville put biscuits on a plate. ‘That’s a good idea, Clemency love. She’s got a good head on her shoulders, Andrew.’

I blushed, while Andrew frowned. ‘You don’t know the half of it, Mum.’

‘I know she managed to follow you all the way to Berlin and bring you back safely,’ said his mother, bringing the plate to the table and going back for the teapot.

I got up to help her with the cups and saucers.

‘I didn’t exactly bring him back,’ I said.

‘Yes, you did,’ said Andrew and his mother, almost at the same time. I looked round and saw that they were both glaring at me, the expressions in their blue eyes lending them a resemblance I hadn’t noticed before.

I put the cups and saucers on the table.

‘I don’t think this is the right time to argue about that,’ I said.

Mrs Neville said no more and began to pour out the tea.

Once we had all taken a biscuit, she said thoughtfully, ‘I suppose I could write back to the girl. Teresa. That wouldn’t do any harm, would it?’

‘I don’t suppose so,’ said Andrew.

‘I could ask her to send a picture. And maybe a bit more information. She can’t really complain about that. After all, I never heard anything official at the time. It was just one of his mates from the Miners’ Club who told me Harry had died. A man who’d been in Spain with him... I knew some of them had gone off to Spain, of course... But I didn’t know my Harry had been in the fighting. Not until then.’

I wondered if her feelings would spill over into tears, but Andrew’s mother was made of stern stuff. She took a gulp of tea and fell silent again.

‘We could have asked the Foreign Office to check up on it at the time,’ said Andrew gently. ‘But they might not have had the chance anyway. It was just before Munich, after all.’

‘I suppose it’s too late for that now,’ said Mrs Neville, sounding wistful.

‘Let’s try and get more information first,’ said Andrew. ‘To give them more to go on.’

Later, Andrew and I stood at the front window of his mother’s house and stared out at the fresh snow falling on the already slippery street. Mrs Neville had gone to bed early, saying she was tired out. I wondered if she would spend the silent, dark hours with her thoughts circling round and round the mystery of why her husband had never come home.

‘Do you think there’s any chance?’ I said to him.

‘Any chance that this man in Spain is my father?’ he said. ‘I don’t know. As for the Foreign Office looking into it, I can’t really imagine they’ll be interested.’

‘We could go and look for him ourselves,’ I said.

He gave a short laugh. ‘And draw attention to a man the secret police have quite likely been after for years? I don’t think that would do anyone any good.’

‘Secret police? Why should they be after your father?’

‘It’s a Fascist state, Clemency. Ten to one he was fighting for the anarchists. The people in charge nowadays will shoot first and ask questions afterwards, or not at all. They don’t forgive or forget.’

‘It’s a Fascist state where the weather’s lovely and warm for most of the year – and didn’t I hear your friend Bernard say when we had those snow flurries before Christmas that he wished he were in Spain? He claimed you could stay in one of the little fishing villages along the coast and eat and drink well at local inns and restaurants for about tuppence a night.’ I stared out at the snow again. I hated winter, and I’d had enough of it.

‘I didn’t know Bernard was running a holiday booking business on the side,’ said Andrew. He took my hand and squeezed it. ‘Promise you won’t dash off to Spain and make me come after you. The risks are too great.’

‘Of course I won’t!’ I said. If I had thought there was anything to be gained by flouncing out of the room, I would have done just that. Instead I said, ‘I’m not the one who dashes off round Europe at the drop of a hat – remember?’

To tell the truth, I knew so little about Spain that I was doubtful I could even find the way there on my own.

But I cast another glance at the snowflakes doing their danse macabre outside the window. Dashing to Spain did seem rather tempting at this particular moment, no matter what the risks.

Chapter 2 Andrew – Travel Agents

Clemency must have started her campaign to persuade me to go to Spain as soon as we got back to Cambridge, for two nights after our return Joan and Bernard cornered me in the computer laboratory.

‘Sitges,’ said Joan.

‘What?’

‘Sitges,’ said Bernard. ‘It’s a little place just outside Barcelona. We were there once years ago, before all the trouble started.’

‘It was a lovely little place,’ said Joan, her eyes glazing as if she were transported back to these halcyon days. ‘Just a fishing village really. There isn’t much to it at all. But deep blue skies, and the sea warm enough to swim in every day, and excellent food... I wish Bernard would agree to go back there.’

‘Never go back, that’s my motto,’ said Bernard. ‘I keep telling her the place will have changed beyond recognition. The fighting, and so on. The secret police. Everybody ground down by oppression, and war, and shortages. I can’t think why young Clemency’s so set on going.’

‘Anyway, we know