Who Was Angela Zendalic (13 page)

June 1964
Tavistock College

T
he
following Saturday, Angela and her support team followed the lodge porter around the college quadrangle, trodden in bygone times (as they'd discussed before) by Kings, and Princes, and more famous people you could shake a stick at. Especially, thought Peggy, one very special African Prince, and here is his daughter putting her slender, size twos in his footprint. At the bottom of a narrow, stone-spiral staircase a cream painted board, with black scripted letters, announced,
Dr Piers Penney
,
Music Faculty
. The porter led them up and rapped hard on a wide oak door. ‘Dr Penney, sir. Your party has arrived.'

Piers, looking nothing like the poet of before, was now wearing a dark blue linen suit of the type associated with Chinese labourers, his hair brushed hard back and restrained with an elastic band. The room was cluttered. A baby grand piano covered with scores, and an eclectic mix of shabby Victorian furniture, worn kilim rugs and wide, overfilled bookcases. Piles of sheet music on the floor and in Canterburies. Music stands both upright and on their sides.

A beautiful, heavily pregnant woman, with long blonde hair to her waist, was reclining on a velvet
chaise longue
, looking like no other woman of her time. As delicate as a fairy, wearing an ankle length gossamer-fine frock with puffed sleeves, reminiscent of the Jane Austen era. ‘May I introduce my wife, Merryn.' She smiled warmly, heaved to her feet, and greeted them with a gentle Welsh inflection.

‘And this is Angela,' she cried. ‘Oh, my dear, your performance was just wonderful. I was transported to heaven when you sang the Handel. And as for Shirley Bassey – my goodness, what power.' She sat back down, and swung up her legs to recline again.

‘Is it your first?' asked Edie, glad for something to say.

‘It is. Another three weeks to go. Timed beautifully for the summer vac.'

After tea and biscuits there followed an intense discussion concerning Angela's commitment to the choral society. As a lower junior she would be taking part in public performances once a term, and expected to attend for practice and tuition every Thursday from 5.30pm to 6.45pm.

‘Should be alright,' said Edie. ‘She does piano and violin on Tuesdays, dancing on Wednesdays, and her musical theatre classes are on Saturdays.'

‘That's settled, then,' said Piers, moving to the piano, setting up some music and patting the double stool for Angela to sit beside him. ‘I'd like to try a piece called
The Three Ravens
by John Dowland. I'll run through it and then we'll see if we can sing it together. I'd like good crisp diction please. Are you ready? She nodded, and he began.

There were three ravens sat on a tree,

Down a down, hey down, hey down,

They were as black as black might be,

With a down.

The one of them said to his mate,

Where shall we our breakfast take?

With a down, derry, derry, derry down, down.

Angela first attempt was hesitant, but the second time she reached the notes to perfection and the duet of baritone and child resonated round the room. ‘Wonderful,' he sighed. ‘The true voice of an angel. So, that's all for today. I'll look forward to seeing Angela next Thursday in the chapel on the far side of the quad. By the way we actually encourage the younger ones to be chaperoned. To be familiar with what we do, and to hear the talent develop.'

‘Might I do that, Edie', said Peggy, with the speed of a lizard's tongue. ‘I can meet her here, straight from work.'

‘'Course you can, Peg. Stan can whip her up on his cross bar when he comes out of work. Ta. That'd be lovely.'

Merryn Penney rose to say goodbye, holding her hands in a cradle beneath the weight of her baby, and screwing up her face. ‘Twinges,' she said. ‘I was told to expect them. I hope labour isn't worse than this?'

Yes, Merryn
, Peggy wanted to say.
I'm afraid it is. You will cry, and twist, and yell, and curse, and it will go on for what seems like forever, but the second the baby is born all the agony flies away and you'll have your perfect little miracle in your arms.

‘It's kicking now,' she said, blowing out her cheeks. ‘I think I've got a rugger player in there.' How much Peggy wanted to feel the blows of the little feet, but she just demurred, with what must have been seen as an old maid's polite smile of sympathy.

‘Come. I'll see you out', said Piers, and they followed his escort onto Holywell, each having been transported to another world of lutes, and harps, and ancient English music, and the true voice of angel, lifting high over the mediaeval stones of privilege.

April 2014
Monks Bottom

A
t
last. With Lawrence Crowley gone I stared down at the computer screen and typed in a general search for
Angela Zendalic.
With breath-holding anticipation I waited for a list of relevant entries to spring before my eyes...but nothing appeared. Absolutely nothing. I tried again, but it seemed that no-one of that name had been born, married or died in England and Wales in the history of public records. With a sink of disappointment I had to conclude that the exotically named Angela must have come from abroad after all, and had not settled in the UK. But Zendalic was such a rare name and there might be some others on record, possibly relatives.

I was thrilled to see that two entries came up, but they were both men; Stanley, born in Whitechapel in 1906, mother's maiden name Pfeiffer, and Arthur, born in Bermondsey in 1920, mother's maiden name Juggins. Both had the same father, Rudolph, confirming they were half-brothers. A further search showed Arthur married in 1946, with no records of any children born, but Stanley's marriage in Oxford, to an Edith Piper in 1926, showed the birth of one daughter, Brenda, in 1927. This Oxford family
must
have been connected to Angela. It was just too much of a co-incidence.

I ploughed on, but soon found I was stuck in mud. Brenda became Mrs Brown in her late teens, but there were no records of any children born, and Stanley and Edith had died many years ago. I was stumped again and beginning to feel bamboozled nearly blind by it all, anyway.

Where to go now? If Angela still lived in the UK as a single woman surely she'd be on some electoral roles. I looked her up on every public list available, but not one single Zendalic, male, female, young, or old, came up. She really
was
the invisible woman. I closed down and sat hugging a cushion, considering the computations. Could she be a foreign cousin of the Oxford family who'd come over as a student or an au pair girl, had an affair with Pa, given birth to me and gone back to her own country to disappear forever. I swallowed with the heart sink of failure. The process had taken me less than half an hour, but I felt as tired as if I'd walked twenty miles.

I woke with a start as my head flopped heavily onto my shoulder, realising I'd slipped into a state of depression. With Pa's sudden death my life wasn't exactly a riot of joy and now I had yet another sorrow to cope with. The key turned on closure.

But if I thought I could indulge myself with miserable isolation I had another think coming. An estate agent was on the phone asking if he could meet me up at The Hall to discuss evaluating the property.

P
ART
F
OUR

September 1966
Marston, Oxford

A
year
after Angela had joined the choir, Piers Penney suggested that her current piano and violin teachers might be rather limited in their expertise. His recommendation was that she take tuition from the Critchlows, a married couple recently retired from professional performance. But the fees were very much higher, and with Peggy continuing to pay for everything Stan and Edie consulted her, offering to ‘go halves.' She wouldn't hear of it. ‘I'm in full agreement and I'm sure it'll be worth every penny.' At that they all laughed at her pun, but she would have agreed to anything the esteemed choirmaster suggested, being seen as something of an icon. And with the Critchlows house being situated in the lovely tree-lined Polstead Road, a bare mile from Nelson Street, Angela, now twelve years old, could easily cycle there straight after school. But on the first occasion, with professional concern, Piers had insisted that he accompany her and had happily volunteered to pick her up from school. Angela was thrilled. How many pupils were picked up in a vintage Bristol 400, by a cool man with film star looks?

Piers sat in his parked car watching a vivacious gaggle of girls appear, all wearing the distinctive uniform of bright blue check dresses and straw ‘basher' hats, but there was no sign of Angela. A group of older, more serious girls came a little later, followed by slow stragglers in ones and twos.

Angela finally appeared alone, some ten minutes behind time, and it was obvious she'd been crying. Leaping from the car he rushed towards her. ‘Angela. Whatever's wrong?' She didn't answer. He guided her to the car and tentatively asked, ‘Are you ill?' She shook her head, and once in the car turned her head to the window. This was so unlike the happy-faced girl who was usually laughing and talking as if she was wound up by clockwork.

By the time they reached the end of the Marston Road she'd remained silent, so he turned up the steep hill of Morrell Avenue, and drew into the South Park. ‘Come on, Angela. Let's go in the park and have a little chat.'

With a skyline view over ‘the dreaming spires' of ancient Oxford the park was a wide, downward sweep of bright verdant grass where people were walking dogs, and young children were running or playing with balls. He guided her to a bench, and put his arm around her shoulders. Through blubbering tears Angela told her story.

‘We're doing Africa in geography and Miss Johnson put on a slide show of a street market, with people selling vegetables on stalls and ladies with stuff on their heads. And then someone shouted out, “Look, there's a girl who looks just like Angela”, and when the lights went up everyone asked me if I'd ever been to Africa. Miss Johnson didn't join in but when the bell went she asked me to stay behind. She said she knew I was adopted, because she'd met mum and dad at the Open Day, and asked me if my real father
was
African. I said yes, and I thought he was a Prince, but I didn't really know anything about him. And then she got all sweet and sugary, like some people do with me, and said that maybe he was, and maybe he wasn't, but it was a fine country and I should be proud of my ancestors. But when I got out of the room I started to cry, because I
don't
know anything about him, or my real mother either. When I was little Auntie Peggy told me a story that I was a very special brown Princess. I was only five but I remember the day ever so well. She said my father was an African Prince, and my mother was a white lady, who gave me to mum and dad to look after because the Prince went away and she was too poor to keep me. I'm sure mum and dad asked her to make it up as their way of telling me. It was enough for me to understand when I was little but it's not now.'

‘Darling, why don't you just explain to your mum and dad how you feel?'

‘I just couldn't. Mum's so excitable she'd pass out. No, I can't bear to upset them. They're old and I'm their life, aren't I.'

From what Piers knew of Angela's parents he had to conclude, with sweet sympathy for Angela, that she was right. Edie Zendalic really would collapse. He took her hand. ‘All I know is that when a baby is adopted the new parents are told very little of the background, but if they
do
know anything, even a tiny bit of information, maybe it's time they told you. Why don't I ask your Auntie Peggy what she thinks should be done? She's very level-headed and she knows your mum inside out, so I'm sure she'll know how to handle the situation. The only thing I can say for certain is that everyone knows you'll ask questions one day.'

Angela nodded. ‘OK. Will you do that?' She then drew her beautiful bird-in-flight lips together, seeming to choose her words carefully. ‘Dr Penney, what upsets me the most is that my real parents, my birth parents, didn't keep me. My mother might have wanted to, but she probably wasn't married, and having a coloured baby is a scandal, isn't it. I must have been her dirty secret. Parcelled off out of sight and mind because of what everyone would think of her. No-one seems to mind that mum and dad took me, because they're good, kind people. It's OK for
them
to have me, but not OK for my
real
mother. It's not fair, is it?'

Piers shook his head. ‘No, my dear. Life is far from fair, but when the big man in the sky was handing out gifts he stopped at your bedside with a huge sack. You're beautiful, you're talented, and your voice can only be described as one in a million. Now dry those tears. Let's go and meet the Critchlows and have a happy afternoon making music.'

He then kissed her brow, slowly and tenderly. He knew it was the wrong thing to do, but it was the only thing he wanted to do.

Sick with terror, Peggy relayed Piers' story to Ted. ‘He took me to one side after choir last Thursday. Said he'd had a very sad little chat with Angie when he picked her up from school last week. She wants to know where she comes from, and he seems to think I should pave the way with Stan and Edie. Oh, Ted. I've always known this day would come and I haven't slept since.'