“What, like you have an allergy to genies? You rub a lamp, out pops a genie, and you get a rash?”
“Sounds like it, doesn’t it?” said Roxy. “But the word is genealogy. It’s tracing your ancestors, basically. Like when they do it on TV for celebrities.”
I shrugged. I took her word for it. I was still thinking of a genie allergy.
“It’s what Mum does, now she can’t go out to work. She creates people’s family trees. Look.”
She opened a web page called “Ancestral Connections” and there was a picture of Precious Minto at a desk, looking friendly, and the usual tabs labeled About Us, Pricing, Contact, and so on.
“Now look at this,” Roxy said, clicking and typing as she spoke.
The web page she was indicating was headlined “England: Register of Births and Deaths.” There was another called “British Land Registry” and a “Northumberland Directory,” and as Roxy opened the pages, and zoomed in, and clicked on links, and scrolled through charts and blogs, it was as if, temporarily, she was in a little world of her own.
She hadn’t said a word for about three minutes, and I was left feeling a bit awkward. It was like reading over someone’s shoulder, except the book was in a foreign language. Then she stopped, flicked her eyes to the kitchen door, and said, “By the way, my mum doesn’t know I’ve copied all her programs and memberships. She’s not even authorized to see some of the sites, so if she asks…you know.”
I nodded.
Eventually she said, “Hang on, hang on…here it is.”
The website was called “Photographic History” and there was a grainy black-and-white photo of a lady and a boy standing in front of a stone cottage. Her long dress reached the ground, and there was an apron over it. The boy wore long trousers and a collarless shirt.
“That’s it,” said Roxy. “That’s the house that burned down. Look at the caption.”
Sure enough, the caption read Oak Cottage, near Whitley, Northumberland, around 1870.
I nodded. “So?”
“So? So look at the people in the picture.”
“It’s too blurry, Roxy. You can’t see anything apart from, well…”
“They’re wearing sunglasses?”
That was unusual, I have to admit. I couldn’t recall ever seeing pictures of Victorian people wearing sunglasses.
“Were sunglasses a Victorian thing?”
“Exactly! No, they weren’t!”
“They didn’t exist?”
“Well, they weren’t popular until the 1920s. They did exist. I’ve looked it up. People wore them for eye injuries and stuff.”
I looked again at the photo. “Sorry, Roxy. What are you getting at?”
“Can’t you see?” Her voice was rising with exasperation. “It’s them!”
She expanded the web page as large as it would go, but it didn’t really help: the details were still too indistinct. I didn’t want to upset Roxy, so I said, “Hmm. I suppose they do look a bit alike.”
“A bit? Exactly, more like.” She hit some more keys and brought up a site called “UK Census Online.” “See, the census is a record of everyone who lived in Britain in 1861.” Some of the pages were in normal print; others were scans of old documents with entries in old-fashioned, curly handwriting.
“Wow!” I said, impressed. “Everyone?”
“Yes, everyone! And if we go…here”—she clicked on the tracker pad—“you’ll see that living at Oak Cottage, Northumberland, in 1861 was…”
Monk, Hilda—widow—age 33—
occupation, seamstress—spouse, unknown
Monk, Alfred—child, male—age 11
Roxy’s enthusiasm was written all over her face as her fingers skipped across the keys. I felt guilty for not being more excited.
“And here,” she was saying, “is the census for 1911: fifty years later.” I peered at the screen.
Monk, Hilda S.—widow—age 34—
occupation, dressmaker—spouse, deceased
Monk, Alfred—child (M)—age 11
“It’s almost the same,” I remarked. “But who are these people? I mean, Alfred, Alfie—it’s a pretty common name, especially back then.”
“It gets better. Look at the Office for National Statistics site. It has the most recent census: only seven years ago.”
Monk, Hilda S.—widow—age 33—
occupation, costumier—spouse, unknown
Monk, Alfred—child (M)—age 11
“What about further back? When was the first census?” I asked.
Her fingers were a blur now, and she didn’t answer me for ages.
“Roxy?”
“The first census…hang on…the first census was in 1801, and there’s no mention of Oak Cottage, but look here.”
She had brought up another website. “This one is searchable by name as well, and the good thing is their name is not all that common.” She typed in “Monk” and a list of entries scrolled down on the screen, but before I could scan it, Roxy was typing again. “They’re not there. But look what happens if I spell the name slightly differently.”
She typed in “Munk,” and half a page of results appeared. Roxy pointed at one.
Munk, Mrs. H S widow, Hexham, N’th’berland
Munk, Mstr. A (11), Hexham, N’th’berland
“Don’t you see? ‘Monk’ with an ‘o,’ ‘Munk’ with a ‘u,’ Hilda, Alfred? It’s the same people!”
It was hard not to be caught up in Roxy’s enthusiasm, so I played along.
“So this proves, you reckon, that until last night they’d been living there—at any rate on and off—since the 1860s, so that makes her, at least, a witch?” It was hard to keep the doubt out of my voice.
Roxy’s eyes shone with wonder and she grinned. “Don’t you think that’s unbelievable?”
That was definitely the word. I didn’t believe any of it.
“Come on,” I said, getting up. “There’s a way we can test your theory. We can just ask him.”
As we made our way down her back garden, I was still curious about this genealogy thing.
“So…people pay money to find out who their ancestors were?”
“Yep.”
“Why?”
“Why? Don’t you want to know who yours are?”
I thought about it for several seconds. “Not really. What difference does it make?”
“Would you be surprised to find out you were a descendant of Charlemagne?”
We had just done the Holy Roman Empire in school. Charlemagne was an emperor who ruled Europe in the ninth century. “I guess so. How would you know?”
“Because just about everyone is! Every white European, at any rate, apart from recent immigrants.”
“But…but how?”
“I’ll tell you later. Shhh!”
I shushed. We were just the other side of the fence, and I heard the door of Roxy’s garage bang shut and footsteps heading into the woods.
“Come on,” whispered Roxy. “Let’s follow him.”