Birth Marks

by Sarah Dunant

‘Sometimes I think sleep is God’s way of saving babies’ lives,’ she said softly, her eyes still on the cot. ‘Ten minutes ago I could have murdered him. Now I just want to crawl in and curl up next to him.’

  And once again I thought about the great divide between those that have children and those that have not. And about Carolyn Hamilton, who had been so nearly there when she had made the decision not to. And more than ever it didn’t make sense.

  In his cot Benjamin snored slightly in his sleep. Horizontal again the cold was beginning to flow back into his sinuses, clogging his nose and making him snort out each breath, until for all the world, he sounded like the baby in Alice just before it turns into a pig. Kate smiled indulgently and we tiptoed out.

  On the landing she smoothed down her dress and absent mindedly rubbed a grubby nose stain off her right shoulder. The noise of the party filtered up towards us. ‘I should go down and supervise the buffet,’ she said, but it was clear she didn’t want to. ‘I don’t know. Sometimes I think I spend too much time with children. I can’t seem to remember how to talk to adults any more.’

  ‘Maybe they’re just the wrong adults.’

  She gave a small grin. ‘I knew you’d hate them.’

  I shrugged. ‘We just don’t have a lot in common.’

  ‘Like making money?’

  ‘Is that Kate Wolfe or Mrs Colin Chambers talking?’

  She wrinkled up her nose, very Kate. As a child I used to call it her bad smell look. ‘You always did lose your sense of humour when you were being teased. You know sometimes I wish you’d give him more of a chance. He’s not quite the money obsessed nerd you make him out to be.’

  I smiled. ‘Yeah. Well, you know me. I’m like Dad in such matters. Don’t like to admit that anyone could have been good enough for you.’

  ‘You mean you always had a soft spot for David.’ David, the only other man she’d brought home for family supper, a university lecturer with a sharp taste in clothes and a sassy sense of humour. A distinctly overblown ego certainly, but, it had to be said, considerably more charisma than Colin. She shook her head. ‘It would have been a disaster, take my word for it. You know what they tell you about good lovers making bad husbands and even worse fathers.’ Yeah, and Confucius he say all wisdom explodes out of a Christmas cracker. She must have seen my face. ‘I know it sounds appalling, but there’s some truth to it. Believe me I’ve met women who are still married to lovers, and it’s nothing but heartache. At least I know where I am with Colin. And he really loves the kids.’

  Gorgeous Kate, always the woman men lusted after. Maybe she needed relief from the power of sexuality, hers or anyone else’s. Maybe that’s why she picked Colin. Good husbands and loving fathers. She was right. It sounded almost as exciting as being buried alive. But then where sex is concerned I’m still a teenager at heart. Give me glamour over security any day. Kate would say it all stems from my irrational fear of domesticity, that it would somehow automatically turn me into my mother. I wondered if Carolyn Hamilton had had the same problem. Of course with two different mothers she had had a choice of nightmares. As it was she had clearly gone for the lover who, in the end, couldn’t hack it to the husband/father status. Poor Carolyn. Kate was waving a hand in front of my face. ‘Excuse me. Anyone there?’

  ‘What? Sorry, I was thinking of something else.’

  ‘It’s all right. Don’t panic, I’ve moved away from hearth and home. I was asking about work. I wondered how you were doing with your missing little dancer.’

  Like all families we don’t see enough of each other. I wondered how much to tell her. Downstairs there was the clink of cutlery and dishes. Colin would be expecting her. But blood was thicker than a couple of bottles of Saumur and I needed someone to talk to. We sat down together on the top of the steps, little sisters eavesdropping on the parents’ party down below. And hearing adult tales. She was more upset than I expected.

  ‘Oh, Hannah, what a terrible story.’ She was silent for a moment, not looking at me. ‘My God, the poor girl. What do you think happened?’

  ‘Who knows. Obviously she felt she just couldn’t go through with it.’

  ‘At thirty-five weeks? I can’t believe that. It’s just too late by then. The baby’s ready to be born. You can feel it pushing its way into place, waiting. It wouldn’t be just killing yourself, it would be destroying someone else too. I don’t see how any woman could do it.’

  ‘Well, this one did. She even left a note to prove it.’

  ‘What did it say?’

  I told her. She was silent for a moment, but I noticed a flash of tears in her eyes. ‘I’m sorry, I still don’t believe it.’

  And I thought about sweet Kate, sitting in her Habitat house with her Habitat man bringing her cups of tea and wallpapering the baby’s room, while Carolyn sat nursing an eighth-month belly, her dancers’ legs lost beneath her and nowhere and no one to go home to. ‘Maybe it was different for her. She didn’t have anyone. She was on her own.’

  ‘That’s not what I mean, Hannah, you don’t understand.’ And her voice was fierce. ‘Earlier maybe, yes, then I can imagine someone being desperate enough to let it all go. But not by then. That’s the whole point. By then it’s not up to you any more. You’re no longer the one in charge. I don’t mean you’re not scared, I’m sure everyone’s scared. But it’s not that kind of fear, and even if it is, it’s too late to do anything about it. I mean by then even the man is irrelevant. It’s just you and it. And it wouldn’t let you do it.’ She stopped, then shook her head. ‘I don’t know how to explain it, there’s a kind of lassitude that comes over in you in those last few weeks, like being in suspended animation. You’re just waiting, both of you. I can’t describe it any better than that. All I know is, however bad things were, I just don’t believe she would have done it, whatever her note said.’

  For Kate it was a long answer. I didn’t reply. I remember her telling me how, just after Amy was born, she had felt as if someone had stripped away a layer of her skin, so that now everything felt more, and hurt more, but that stories of mothers and children hurt most of all. I felt alienated by her pain. As if she had done all the feeling for me, leaving me no room to find my own thoughts. Elder sisters. Who needs them? But you listen to them all the same. And who was I to say she didn’t know more about Carolyn Hamilton than any policemen or male coroner. Or childless private eye. The great divide again.

  ‘Kate?’ Colin’s voice rose up amid the babble.

  She let out a small sigh, and the spell was broken. ‘Yes, Colin, I’m here. I’m coming.’ She turned to me apologetically. ‘Sorry, I can see that instinct probably makes for lousy detective work. But you did ask.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. Because she was right. I had.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Next morning I filed Kate’s thoughts filed away under ‘intuitive detection’ and I went back to British Telecom. This time Etienne answered the phone. Or rather Mrs Etienne. Not so much an employment agency more a private housewife who had never heard of Potential, Mrs Sanger or a personal assistant position. When I asked to speak to her husband she became positively aggressive and starting asking questions back. I began to wonder if maybe a private number didn’t mean a private affair between Etienne and a certain English Employment Agency manageress. I decided to think about that one and extracted myself from the conversation, pleading inadequate comprehension of the language, although by now a split French degree and a six-month stint translating EEC business in Brussels were positively flooding back to me.

  I went through the Employment Agencies like a knife through melted Normandy butter. I had polished my story along with my teeth: a bureaucratic little tale about how Potential’s receptionist had taken a call from Paris yesterday but had been unable to read her own writing. Had they by any chance called and, while they were on the line, could we check a few details on the personal assistant job they had sent us through last February? The answer was the same four times over. Nobody had any record
of any such jobs last year. That left one more number. Jules B. It rang seven times before a woman answered.

  ‘Hello. Mr Belmont’s phone.’

  ‘Is he there please?’

  ‘No, I’m afraid Mr Belmont is still unwell.’

  ‘I see. Could you tell me when he will be back?’ Sometimes I think a parrot could do my job.

  ‘I’m afraid I cannot.’

  ‘It is rather urgent. I wonder, is there a home number where I could reach him?’

  ‘I’m sorry, no. Who is this please?’

  So I let her have it with the Potential Employment Agency story.

  ‘I think you must have the wrong number. We are not an employment agency. This is Belmont Aviation and you have come through to Jules Belmont’s private phone.’ And there was something in the tone of her voice that made me realize Mr Belmont’s private number was not the kind you just got out of the book.

  On the list in front of me I put a question mark next to Belmont, him and Etienne: still hardly enough to waste a plane ticket to Paris on. I was beginning to feel somewhat bruised from all the brick walls I was running into. I sat for a while pushing mental needles into a wax effigy of Mrs Sanger, then I went back into labour. When I finally gave birth it was a mewling puking thing, not worthy to be called an idea, but it was all I had and better than nothing. According to Mrs Sanger there had been a considerable response to the advertisement. Now what ‘considerable response’ meant in employment agency jargon was beyond me, but somewhere out there there must be, what—ten, twenty, who knows even fifty attractive, healthy, intelligent caring young women who would have answered an ad, filled in a questionnaire, and in a few cases might even have gone to Paris for an interview. Maybe some of them were still looking for the right job, still checking the employment columns. I phoned through a box advert in the Evening Standard for the next week appealing to anyone who had answered the ad last February to contact me. Then I had another idea. Not quite so original but cheaper. When you need help, ask a policeman.

  He sounded quite businesslike until he realized it was me. ‘Wait a minute, will you?’ In the background I heard the clink of glass and the glug of liquid from a bottle.

  ‘A bit early, isn’t it, Frank?’

  ‘And how do you know it’s not one of your poncy bottles of mineral water?’

  ‘Let me see? No fizzing sound when you unscrewed the top?’

  ‘Veerry good. Uncle Frank’s training is having some effect at last. So, what can I do for you?’

  He keeps the bottle of Glenfiddich in the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet. He says it’s because it’s cheaper than the pub, but I like to see it as a gesture in homage to old heroes. Usually he drinks alone, but occasionally I get an invite. The stories are as good as the booze: tales of metropolitan CID, the busts, the frame-ups, the classy detective work, the ones that got away. Sometimes I think he misses it more than he lets on, but then he keeps in touch. As fraternities go it’s probably tighter than Eton. Us girls have nothing like it. Which is why I needed him.

  ‘So you think it was a French bun in the oven. Poor kid. I still don’t see what difference it makes. Why don’t you let it go, Hannah? Listen, I’ve got a business woman who needs a smart girl to drive her around London—I daresay you could learn a lot from her dress sense—and a warehouse of shredding to be supervised. You’re a pain in the ass but you’re the best I’ve got. Why don’t you come back to Comfort? He’ll even give you luncheon vouchers.’

  ‘Because I’ve got a feeling about this one.’

  ‘That’s my line.’

  ‘Yeah, aren’t you flattered I’ve stolen it? Seriously, Frank, I just don’t think it’s as simple as it looks.’

  ‘Don’t tell, you think it was a political death. The old “bridge at midnight” routine. “It’s the rich what get the money, it’s the poor what get the blame.” Is that it? She was a modern-day Marxist heroine and you’ve got to avenge her.’

  ‘Frank,’ I said impatiently. ‘Do me a favour.’

  ‘Not a chance.’

  ‘I didn’t mean it like that.’

  ‘Oh yes you did.’

  ‘All right, I did. But you don’t know what it is yet.’

  ‘Yes I do, and the answer is still no.’

  ‘They must have done some work on it. No big deal, all right? I just need to know if anyone else checked out a French connection, that’s all.’

  ‘Oh well, if that’s all—’

  ‘Come on, Frank. It’ll only take one phone call. The old boys’ network.’

  ‘Yeah, and you’re a girl.’

  ‘Woman.’

  ‘And a bloody nuisance.’ There was a sigh, then a pause, then a grunt. ‘I tell you, Hannah, it’s not so easy any more. A lot of the old firm have gone. And this isn’t just a quick dip into the computer to track down a couple of ex-cons and commies.’

  I let it pass. He only does it to annoy because he knows it teases. Him and every other ex-copper turned security. They all do it: get their pals to break the law by running a few names through the computer and fishing out the odd record or financial data. It’s what those in the know call the freedom of information act. Frank and I had had our rows about it in the past. But even I could see the seduction of it, for friends as well as clients.

  ‘All right. But I can’t promise anything. They didn’t like you, you know, thought you were too smart for your own good.’

  ‘Frank—I was femininity personified. I even made them a cup of tea.’

  ‘Yeah…Well, it’ll take time.’

  ‘How long?’

  ‘I don’t know. Three, maybe four days.’

  ‘Great. If you can guarantee it’s not state secrets I’ll take the shredding.’

  The advert worked before the insider information. Two days after it went in I came home to a message from a girl with an accent which sounded as if it had just fallen off a polo pony. She said she had replied to the ad and been seen by a woman at the agency. When I called her back she told me she remembered a lot of questions about health and family background, personality, even stuff about boyfriends and moral attitudes. And there had been a kind of aptitude test, the sort of thing she always flunked when she was at school. After that she had heard nothing more.

  The next day washed up a girl who thought she might have seen the original ad but it turned out hadn’t, and a couple of dirty phone calls from men eager to meet attractive healthy young girls. Then Thursday hit the jackpot. First Frank, then Marianne Marshall.

  ‘Come on, Frank. You’re telling me it took four days to find out nothing.’

  ‘Listen, Sherlock, if there had been any real suggestion of hanky panky it would never have got an “accidental death” verdict. It was an open-and-shut case. They had a suicide note, a body with no sign of foul play and a depressed young girl, having trouble with her career and with a bun in the oven that she couldn’t tell anyone about.’

  ‘It still doesn’t explain where she’d been for the last seven months.’

  ‘So she covered her tracks well. She wouldn’t be the first to disappear so she could have the kid in secret. The boys looked. There was no forwarding address, her flat was clean as a whistle, no contact with friends or relatives and no medical trace. Her London GP didn’t treat her, and there was nothing at the local hospitals. Which means either she didn’t see anyone or she went private. The clinics they checked had no record of her, but then that’s hardly conclusive. She could have used another name.’

  ‘So much for the record, Frank. What do they really think happened?’

  ‘Same as you probably. That the father set her up somewhere and paid the bills for a while.’

  ‘In England?’

  ‘No reason why it should be anywhere else. Unless, of course, you have reliable information that should have been given to the police.’

  I decided to ignore that one. ‘So if there was a guy how come he didn’t come forward after her death?’

  ‘Maybe h
e didn’t want trouble. Perhaps he already had a wife and was just paying guilt money to get her off his chest.’

  ‘Yeah, and perhaps he pushed her in the river so his wife would never find out.’

  ‘Hannah, my petal, that’s not even circumstantial.’

  ‘Neither are his hand-outs.’

  ‘Ah, sorry, I knew there was something I’d forgotten to mention.’ God damn it, Frank. He does it every time. ‘Apparently she left a lot of debts behind her.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘But she paid them all off.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Three cash deposits into her building society account in May, June and July. And from there cheques to all her creditors.’

  ‘Cash?’

  ‘You heard it.’

  ‘Who made the deposits.’

  ‘No one knows. They were made at different branches by someone with an unreadable signature. Could have been her, could have been someone else, the tellers couldn’t remember.’

  ‘And you’re telling me that no one found that suspicious?’

  ‘So, she got banged up by someone with money and wanted to keep it a secret. You said yourself she was a good-looking girl. We’re living in an enterprise culture. Everyone’s got something to sell. Maybe hers was silence.’

  ‘God, Frank, sometimes you sound just like a policeman.’

  ‘Yeah, but is it any worse than sounding like a hippie? How many times do I have to tell you, Hannah, you’re twenty years out of date. Money is OK now. It’s the rich guys who are the heroes. Anyway, in this particular case it makes sense. If he had bought her off it was because he wanted the anonymity. Which would explain why it was cash rather than a cheque and why he didn’t come forward when she died. Course, a good feminist like yourself would probably have him lynched, but luckily we still live under a brutal paternalistic legal system, so he can’t be brought to justice on purely moral grounds.’

  Normally I would have risen to it, just to please Frank, but I was too busy thinking of something else. ‘Wait a minute. It doesn’t make sense. If someone cleared all her debts, then what’s with that bit in the suicide note about all the money she couldn’t repay?’