22. TWO SETS OF GENES

A shadow from the past might prose a problem...

“You want to marry David, dear?” asked Chantelle’s mother, alarm showing in every line on her face and her eyes threatening to pop out of her head.

“I do!” confessed the girl, “you know how we’ve always been friends? Him and me? Before he moved away? Well, I met him today and it was just as if he’d never gone away, and I love him. I know I do. And he feels the same way about me. It’s as if we were always meant to be together. He said that as well.”

“There might be a problem,” frowned her mum.

“What? A problem? What do you mean? There can’t be!” gabbled Chantelle. “If two people want to get hitched there can’t be a problem, surely.”

“What if they were brother and sister?” suggested the older woman, “or mother and son?” she added, thoughtfully.

“You never told me, mum! To think, without me noticing it you gave birth to David and now you want to marry him!”

“Now that is silly,” protested her mother, “for starters, I don’t think you were even a twinkle in your father’s eye when David was born.”

“I’m not that much younger than him! Anyway, you’re talking nonsense.

“Maybe I am and maybe I don’t know everything. Look, rather than argue with me do you want me to tell you the little that I know?”

“Go on, but if it’s going to ruin my happiness I’d prefer not to know,” insisted Chantelle.

“If was all quite a long time ago,” sighed mother speaking slowly and thoughtfully, “I’d better explain. I’ve always known that my mother, that is your grandmother, might have had something to do with the Spendthrifts.”

“What? The old man who died and left me a key to one of his safety deposit boxes?” demanded Chantelle.

“Yes dear. It’s as if he knew there was something hidden in who you are. Why else would he have left you a small fortune? It can’t have been because he liked the sound of your voice like he suggested, trilling your way down Durnley Bottoms! But it all happened a long time ago. That solicitor bloke, Mr Penn, told me. It was war time and my grandmother, bless her, was, in her own words when she talked about herself, a flighty creature.”

“What? Great granny?” gasped Chantelle.

“Yes, the same. As I said, during the war things were different and attitudes to quite a lot of important things began to change. There was no such thing as contraceptive pills, of course, but to some girls, those who witnessed the bombs falling down like bombs did back then, life could be cut short at just about any time. They knew it and didn’t see why they should wait until after they were blown to smithereens before they did what comes natural.”

“This embarrassing, mum,” protested Chantelle, “you never talk about you-know-what normally. With you it;s usually as if there’s no such thing as reproduction.”

Her mother smiled, then shook her head. “Just you listen, young lady! Great Granny Melissa was a sweet young thing. I’ve see pictures of her when she was about your age and she looked carefree and happy and the likeness, you to her, well, it’s amazing...”

“Are you trying to suggest…?”

“I don’t know what I’m trying to suggest. Nobody knows for certain, there were no such things as paternity tests back then, but it’s likely that the old man who you met down the Bottoms, when he was younger, had a fling with my granny Melissa, and as a result she, in her turn produced my mother and my mother produced me. Oh, and don’t forget that I produced you. So there’s a chance that you are directly related to young David if his mother was the woman she claims to be and the love child of that same old man.”

“That can’t be true,” protested Chantelle, “can it?”

“I’ve no idea whether you can marry David or not, if that’s what you want to do, I’m just saying that somewhere along the line there’s a chance that you both have a common ancestor. Probably. But, and here’s the crunch, that common ancestor was well known for trying to sire a son because he had stuff he wanted to pass down the line and only a son would do. Not a daughter, he was always firm about that. He was, according to Mr Penn, a strange old fashioned and almost Victorian old cove who didn’t think women were good for anything but cooking and producing sons, and he wasn’t going to entrust his fortune to anyone other than a male descendent! In his eyes it had to be a boy or nothing, and apparently his own father was just the same.”

“But how will we know? For sure, I mean?” asked a worried Chantelle. “I never knew choosing a husband could be such a big deal!”

“It probably isn’t, darling. But just you think about it. If you both, that’s David and you, harbour a damaged gene, the same damaged gene as each other, then any child you have must inherit that bad gene, and it could cause all sorts of problems in the years to come, you know, for any babies you might have.”

“Mum, I’m not married yet let alone dropping new babies all over the place!” protested Chantelle, “we’ve only discussed it sort of as something we might want to do in the future.”

“Well, I think you should both get a DNA test done and see what comes up,” suggested her mother, “you never know, you might find out all sorts of interesting things about yourselves.”

“And if that DNA result comes back and suggests us getting married might be a bad idea? What then? Start fishing in the lake of men for one who doesn’t have Spendthrift genes?”

“It might not come to that, darling,” soothed her mother, “you might turn out to be a descendent of an Egyptian Pharaoh!”

“And it might come to that, pharaohs or no pharaohs!. No. I don’t care what you say: I love David and have for as long as I can remember even if I didn’t recognise it at the time. I don’t want any other boy, and the more you tell me about genes and genetics and DNA stuff the more I want him. So there.”

“It’s just that in life it’s best to be prepared,” sighed her mother.

“I am prepared. For whatever chance or life or the roulette wheel of eternity throw at me! Mother, I really am. I think I’ve found my tomorrows, all of them, and I want to keep them!”

“But do take a DNA test, love. For my sake,” almost begged her mother.

Chantelle sniffed. “I’ll think about it,” she said.

© Peter Rogerson 22.12.19