are the people who came before us. Who made us what we are. Every one of us is who we are and what we are because of the way our genes were combined down the ages. Now, does anyone know what a family tree is?’
Sam Clewlow’s hand rose again. The others looked on in indifference or satisfaction that Sam was doing all the work and saving them the bother. This time, he didn’t wait to be asked. ‘Sir, it’s like a map of your family history. It’s got everybody’s birthdays, and when they got married and who to, and when they had children and when they died and everything.’
‘You’ve got it, Sam. And what we’re going to do over the next few weeks is to try to map our own families. That’ll be easier for some of you than others–those of you whose families have lived locally for generations will be able to track them from parish records. It will be harder for those of you whose families are relative newcomers to the area. But one of the things we’ll be doing during this project is exploring the many different ways we can go about mapping our past. The thing about this project is that it’s one where you’ll have to work with the other members of your family, especially the older ones such as grandparents and great-aunts and–uncles.’ Again, Matthew felt grateful that he wasn’t stuck in some inner-city sink school. A project like this would be impossible to contemplate there, with its fragmented lives and alternative views of what constituted a family. But in Fellhead, either they’d lived in extended families for generations or else they were incomers from the sort of nice middle-class family where, even when they pretended to be New Age, marriage certificates were still the order of the day more often than not.
‘To show you the kind of thing we’ll be doing, I’m going to show you my own family tree.’ He clicked the mouse button and his name came up on the screen. Underneath it was his date of birth. He clicked again and this time his name was linked to Diane Brotherton with an ‘equals’ sign. ‘Can you guess what that sign means? Jonathan?’ he asked a chunky red-haired boy, ignoring Sam’s eager hand.
Jonathan Bramley looked faintly startled. He frowned in concentration. ‘Dunno,’ he finally conceded.
Trying not to show his exasperation, Matthew said patiently, ‘It means “married to”. Mrs Gresham was Diane Brotherton until she married me.’ He clicked again and a vertical line appeared, connecting them to Gabriel Stephen Gresham.
‘That’s your baby,’ one of the girls piped up unprompted.
‘That’s right, Kylie.’ Matthew clicked again. Now little thumbnail pictures appeared beside each of the names. ‘We can even add photos. That way, we can see how family resemblances move between generations. Now, we can all start our family trees with what we know already.’ He tapped the keyboard and brought up another screen. This showed his parents and his sister, complete with photos, places of birth and occupations.
‘But we’re going to do more than that. We’re going to delve into the past and trace our family trees as far as we can.’ This time, the family tree he displayed included his grandparents–one grandfather an incomer, a refugee from the Cornish tin mines who had come to the Lakes to mine slate, the other a Cumberland shepherd–and his aunts, uncles and cousins.
‘And one of the things we are going to learn about is the way a community like ours has grown through the years. We’ll find all sorts of connections between families that you might not even have known about yourselves. You may even discover common ancestors, and you’ll start to get a sense of how people’s lives have changed over the centuries.’ Matthew’s gift for sharing his enthusiasm was working on the children now. They were hanging on his words.
‘We’re going to begin with your immediate family. Look at my family tree on the board so you know how to lay it out on the page. And tonight, when you go home, you can ask the rest of the family to help you fill in the gaps. As we continue, we’ll explore different ways of discovering more information about your history and your ancestors. Now, find a fresh page in your workbooks and make a start.’
Matthew waited till they had all got going, then he sat down behind the desk. He pulled a pile of maths workbooks towards him and started marking the children’s work. His absorption was disturbed by a muttering and sniggering that ran round the room. When he looked up, Sam Clewlow was flushed, his eyes bright with unshed tears. Jonathan Bramley looked gleeful.
‘What’s going on?’ Matthew demanded, getting to his feet. Nobody met his eye. ‘Jonathan? What’s going on?’
Jonathan’s mouth compressed in a tight line. He didn’t know it yet, but he would spend the rest of his life being caught out by his own stupidity and the concomitant inability to dissemble. ‘Nothing,’ he muttered eventually.
‘You can tell me now or you can stay after school and tell me then,’ Matthew said, his voice hard. He’d never understood the complaints of teachers who claimed they couldn’t control the kids. You just had to show them who was boss, and keep on showing them.
‘I just said…’ Jonathan’s voice trailed off as he looked around desperately for support that was not forthcoming.
‘You just said what?’
‘I said we all knew who Sam’s ancestor was,’ he mumbled.
‘I’m fascinated to hear it,’ Matthew said. ‘And who exactly did you have in mind?’
Jonathan’s ears were scarlet and his eyes were fixed on the floor. ‘The Monkey Man up on the moor,’ he said in a voice barely above a whisper.
‘You mean the body in the bog?’ Matthew guessed. The grisly discovery had been the talk of the village for the past few days.
Jonathan nodded and gulped. ‘It was just a joke, like.’
‘Jokes are meant to be funny,’ Matthew said repressively. ‘Insults aren’t a joke. And it’s not appropriate to make jokes about the dead. When that man was alive, he had friends and family who loved him, just like you. Imagine how you’d feel if someone you loved died and some thoughtless person made a joke about it.’
‘But, sir, there’s nobody alive to care about the Monkey Man,’ the irrepressible Kylie said.
Matthew groaned inwardly. It was going to be one of those conversations, he knew it. He believed in his job, but sometimes he wished he hadn’t done quite such a good job of helping them develop enquiring minds. ‘Why do you call him the Monkey Man?’ he asked.
‘Coz that’s what they look like,’ a boy piped up. ‘There was a programme on the telly about that one they found down in Cheshire. He looked like an ape.’
‘So that’s why we call him the Monkey Man,’ another chipped in.
Sam Clewlow snorted. ‘That’s stupid,’ he said.
‘Why is it stupid, Sam?’ Matthew asked.
‘Because the man they found in the peat in Cheshire died back in the Stone Age. That’s why he looks the way he does. But the one on the fell isn’t that old. So he doesn’t look like a monkey, he looks like us,’ Sam said firmly.
Snorts of derision met his words. ‘He don’t look like me,’ Jonathan blurted out. ‘Our Jason said he looked like an old leather bag with a face. And he should know, he plays darts with Paul Lister that found the body.’ Jonathan leaned back in his seat, his earlier humiliation forgotten as he basked in their attention.
‘So maybe he is one of our ancestors,’
