Sitting up in bed I opened the jewellery box. Cheap dangly earrings and matching necklace. Diamond ear studs and ring. Gold bracelet. An antique, or possibly just old, oval locket of filigreed gold. I’d never seen that before, although the rest was familiar. It didn’t look Mum’s sort of thing. After a bit of fiddling I flicked open the tiny catch at the side, and the locket opened out bookwise. On the left was engraved, in writing so small I had to hold it to a lamp: ‘Tout comprendre c’est tout pardoner. Darling C from A, ever.’ On the right was a photo of a young, handsome, fairhaired man I’d never seen before. Or had I? He did look vaguely familiar. But who was he, and why was my mother carrying his picture around with her?
That called for another Valium. I rang down to the night porter, said take messages but hold all calls. Requested breakfast at eight. Turned my phone off. Bed. Music. Book. Sleep. The iPod was on shuffle, and I menu’d to classics. Couldn’t sleep. Phil Rickman it would have to be. But as I groped on the table for it I touched the pages of Dr Elder’s manuscript about the missing girl.
I concentrated very hard, reading it aloud, the way I learn lines.
The Belinda Tate Case: a re-investigation
by Marian Elder BA, MA, PhD.
Introduction
On Australia Day, January 1966, Adelaide, capital of the State of South Australia, was rocked to its conservative foundations by the disappearance of three young children from a suburban beach. The investigation was long drawn out, exhaustive, and inconclusive. At the date of writing this book, 2007, the Beaumont children have never been found. If they were murdered, as seems most likely, their bodies have never been located. No one has ever admitted to abducting or killing them. The case is still open.
Nearly two years later, on Sunday 10 December 1967, another girl vanished from that same Adelaide beach.
Or did she? Her name was Belinda Tate, and she was eighteen. To this day no one knows what became of her.
It was her parents who claimed she had been abducted like the Beaumont children. Later, the Tates’ testimony became subject to doubt – to put it mildly. In their house, police found bloodstains and other indications of what used to be called 'foul play’. And yet… and yet… No one was ever charged with her murder.
So what did happen to Belinda Tate? To my mind there are three possibilities:
(the least likely) she simply ran away from home, and managed to stay hidden, or was killed by someone she encountered in her escape
(a possibility) She was abducted from the same beach as the Beaumonts, and most probably murdered
(my hypothesis, and that of the police at the time) She never left her home alive.
In the discussion that fo…
Three
Either the Valium or Dr Elder’s smooth prose had knocked me out so effectively that when I woke to the sound of someone knocking on the door it was eight o’clock.
America does good breakfasts. The waiter unloaded juice, coffee, poached eggs and bacon, pancakes, syrup, those little fried spud things, toast and jam. Ravenous, I ate the lot, and soon I felt up to taking messages.
A good thing I’d fortified myself. There were eleven texts and twenty voice mails on my phone, seven on the hotel phone, a hundred and eighty-nine emails, over a hundred Facebook notifications, and two faxes waiting for me downstairs. The emails were all condolences. One had a smiley beside the header. Who would do that? Most of the calls were a mixture of condolences, media demands for interviews, and family freakouts, but one was from the hospital saying the procedures were complete and our Loved One had been Conducted to the Chapel of Rest. Another was from the undertakers: please call ASAP. The faxes were from Dad and Quentin.
Dad’s said in a manic scrawl: Answer your PHONE!!!!! You must bring Tia home for funeral here.
Quentin’s said: My deepest sympathies. I shall miss my dear cousin very much. Gail has put the necessary information on your and your mother’s websites. I have put death notices in all suitable papers. Jon insists on funeral here. Silvia and I incline towards cremation in NY (although I much regret that my arthritis prevents me from flying to be there with you) and a service here, perhaps next week. We will, however, leave this to your discretion. Herewith is Tia’s list of instructions for her funeral; she wanted cremation, but whether here or there must be up to you.
Great. Whatever I did would be wrong.
I rang Toby. “I know,” he said at once, “they’ve been calling me too. Shall I come over?”
“Please.”
“Half an hour.”
I showered, fast. Dried, shaved, flossed and dressed, I inspected myself in the mirror. I didn’t look too bad in a haggard way. I’ve got Dad’s features and his height, but Mum’s perfect cheekbones, her dark blonde hair and grey eyes. When I was fourteen a reviewer said I had “an insolent beauty”, and I’m pleased to report he was soon arrested for child molestation. Bastard. He didn’t attempt me, although some others did; my parents had to maintain a high level of guardian alert. I don’t suppose I ever thanked my mother for the boring hours she spent on set as the chaperone all child actors must have; day after day of it, not to mention hearing my lines, taking me to lessons, running me about, sitting in on interviews, protecting me.
Time for me to do something for her.
Toby was in mourning, i.e., he’d changed the outermost of his layers of t-shirts for a black one with the slogan YOU SAY PSYCHO LIKE IT’S A BAD THING. When I eyed it he said, “Too much?” and docilely peeled it off. He seemed much more cheerful this morning, and ludicrously I found myself reflecting on the resilience of youth. He was twenty-two; I was twenty-eight. No, not just cheerful: slightly stoned. About to tick him off, I remembered my Valium orgy of the night before, and shut up. Anyway, the dynamics of our relationship had changed in this year he’d been away. We had always loved each other like mad, but although I had always had to be the big brother, listening to his problems, beating up kids who bullied him at school, taking or tactfully not taking his side against our parents, we had been apart for this whole year – he had matured and changed. When I showed him the faxes he said in his off-and-on American accent, “Dude, we’ll decide. Where are these instructions of Mum’s?”
I gave it to him, and as he read it he started to laugh.
It was a word-processed single sheet, on Mum’s personal letterhead:
My will is held by Quentin Herne of Herne, Fraser, Simmons of Lincoln’s Inn, London, and was last updated 19 September 2001, with a codicil added on my grandson Hugo’s birth.
FUNERAL ETC
Cremation, not burial (this is also in my will). As cheap and simple as possible. My ashes to be buried in the graveyard at Williamscourt. Funeral private.
No religion at funeral service, except The Lord’s Prayer.
No flowers except from family and closest friends; instead, donations to Médécins Sans Frontières, Save the Children, the Bletchley Park Trust.
Readings
Jaques to read Shakespeare’s “Fear no more the heat o’ the sun”. That poem Leo Marks wrote for Violette Szabo, used in “Carve her name with pride” – it’s called something like “The Love that I have” and is printed in Marks’s Between Silk and Cyanide.
Music
Any of the following:
The Pachelbel Canon in D.
The Lacrimosa from Mozart’s requiem
“Imagine” by JL.
Mozart’s “Voi che sapete” from The Marriage of Figaro.
+ finish up with “Always look on the bright side” from The Life of Brian. (The version used in the film, please.)
That’s all. The rest is silence. Have a drink then get on with life. Remember I love you.
Christina Randall
19.9.01
Her large, flowing signature was as typical of her as those precise, considered, humorous instructions. 19th September 2001: soon after 9/11 made us all think of unwelcome things.
“Easy-peasy,” said Toby. “Mind you, Americans tend to
be a bit prim and proper, so we’ll go easy on Eric Idle. So. Cremation here. Right?”
“Right.”
“We’ll need to buy CDs for the music. I called that undertaker dude, and we have to go there this morning.” Some of his insouciance faded. “They said to bring clothes. For Mum.”
Fuck. I suppose I’d thought a shroud or something. But no, I did know about this, from Psycho, until this moment my favourite film of all time. You know that bit where they visit the sheriff and discover Mrs Bates died yonks back, and the sheriff’s wife says she helped Norman pick out the dress his mother was buried in…
“Well,” I said in a weird, high, stranger’s voice, “it’s cool, we can do this.”
“Dude…”
“No, look, this is so not a problem.”
Ma’s all-purpose LBD. Shoes – the Manolo Blahniks on the floor under her suitcase. Past that, the mind boggled. I grabbed a new packet of tights, wrapped it and the shoes in the dress and put them in a plastic Macy’s bag. Added her wedding ring.
“Do it?”
“Let’s.”
Funeral home. Nice guy there, helpful and kind. Cremation? Leave it to us, sir, we have the necessary certificates and authorities. A tiny matter of some paperwork, sir… the death certificate, good, and sign here, and here… Excellent… Today? Absolutely. At, say, noon?
“Fine, because we want to go home tonight if possible.” We’d agreed on that in the cab, but what I meant was, about the ashes, can you take them at once or do they have to, well, cool? He didn’t say and I asked no more: the ashes would be delivered to us in good time for us to catch our airplane. Now – flowers? Music? And of course we could use their own celebrant, or did we have our own minister? Rabbi? Pastor? Imam?
“Whoever you usually use’ll be fine. A secular service, and brief, please. We’ve got some music.” I handed over the CDs, and he carefully noted which tracks to play. Flowers – he could arrange all that sort of thing, and we decided on violets, which Mum loved, and a wreath of white flowers from the family. As for the coffin: inexpensive, plain; one up from a pine box would do. No viewing, no make-up, no embalming, no open-casket stuff. Kind Guy looked faintly pained, but agreed.
“And the clothes.” Toby shoved the plastic bag at him.
“Thank you. And do you gentlemen wish to be alone with your Loved One for a private farewell? And, of course, for the formal identification…”
This silent flesh had nothing to do with Mum. She wasn’t there. Nor were there any horrors to see, or not if I kept my imagination well clamped down. She didn’t look as if she was merely asleep, because she was not and one can tell the difference. She looked like a corpse. Recognisably Mum, of course. Ash-blonde hair, the grey expensively hidden. Her skin showed the lines and sagging of middle age; except to re-set a broken nose, she never even thought of cosmetic surgery. Bruises like plums, and on her forehead a raw graze. I caught myself thinking, stupidly, that the black dress had short sleeves and wouldn’t be warm enough.
Holding Toby’s hand I spoke the formal words of identification. I signed things. Done.
Now for the family. In Toby’s chaotic flat, as familiar to me from Mum’s description as if I’d lived there for years, I rang Uncle Quentin first, basked in his approval, tried not to cry when he spoke of his love for Mum, who for years had been his only surviving relative. Then home. Probably luckily, PoorMatthew answered. He’s Silvia’s – well, what? Partner, part-time? Lover? Boyfriend? Other than that he’s the father of her son Hugo, definitions elude me. I’ve known Matthew Hyde-Howard since Cambridge, in fact it was through me he met Silvia. He’s a very nice, very rich, very eligible, very successful man, handsome in a pink, Martin Clunes sort of way, but when he fell in love with Silvia, a nanosecond after meeting her, he gave her his balls in a paper bag. Hopelessly he’d adored her for three years, hopelessly he proposed to her once a week. She always refused, even when Hugo was on the way. The only thing that could ever make me condone violence to women was the way Silvia treated PoorMatthew – he should’ve smacked her one in the chops, flung her across his metaphorical saddlebow, galloped off to the nearest church and married her at gunpoint. At least shoved half a grapefruit in her face. Instead he was nice, he was understanding, he was gentle, wet-eyed, patient and adoring. Also he was a very good father to Hugo, and grieved that he only saw him the three days a week Silvia let him stay. Mum used to say that Silvia’s problem was she thought she’d always be twenty-five and beautiful, and that many women would thank God fasting for PoorMatthew. Dad was more to the point – he said, cut off her allowance and forbid her the house until she saw the light. I thought that Silvia loved PoorMatthew, really, and for some reason couldn’t or wouldn’t admit it.
Despite his wimpiness with Silve, he’s smart, capable. When I told him our decision he said, “Good thinking. Much the best way.”
“Dad, though.”
PoorMatthew is too polite ever to criticise Silvia’s family. He said, carefully, “I suspect Jon will be glad to have you make the decision. Of course he needs the closure of some sort of ceremony or service, so we thought perhaps a private little, er, thing to bury the, er, ashes, then a memorial service soon?”
“Fine. Er, how is Dad?”
“Would the word 'sedated’ have resonance for you?”
“Gotcha. But he’s been ringing me…”
“A bit of a bad night, I believe.” Then, less our-man-from-the-Diplomatic, he said, “He was shattered and that quack doped him up, then he got pissed. He’s sleeping it off as we speak. But just go ahead and do it, Jaques, he’d rather not have to make decisions. I’ll look after things here. In fact –”
“Yes?”
“If you’re happy to leave it to me and Silvia, we can start the arrangements for a service, we’ll take care of it all. We can do most of it for you, I’ll get my best people onto it, then you can make the final decisions later.”
PoorMatthew was partner in a PR/advertising business, he handled all my PR, and I knew his best people would do everything perfectly. “Do it,” I said, grateful. “And make it next week. Please. How’s Granny?”
“Gardening like mad.” So that was all right. “I’ve got Silvia to sleep, and Hugo’s fine, so everything’s under control. Jaques – all my sympathy about your mother, she was a lovely lady. The best. Mummy and Daddy send their sympathy too. Take care.”
Listening, Toby said when PoorMatthew hung up, “I can sorta see Silve’s point about not marrying a grown man who calls his mother Mummy. But he’s right about Dad.”
His tone warned me to be cautious. “Right in what way?”
“Well, he’s a bit… dunno… irresponsible. He always passes the buck.”
“No argument there. Tobe, why’d you say ‘fuck him’ like that yesterday?”
He stared at me, his teeth closing on his lower lip. It was Dad’s mannerism. Toby’s got Mum’s face but Dad’s bright blue Randall eyes and black silky hair, and in that moment he looked confusingly like both of them. “Do you know why I moved over here last year?”
“You and Dad were fighting a lot…”
“Nothing new there, he doesn’t like me much.”
“Toby, he loves you!”
He shrugged, eyeing me beadily. “I spose he does. I mean, I know I love him, he’s just such a… I dunno. But, um, look, Jaques…” His voice trailing off, he muttered something: “since I’ve been away”, perhaps.
“I know you’ve been away, but –”
“I said I’m gay!” he shouted.
“And your point is?”
"…you knew?”
“Well, guessed.”
“You mean Mum told you.”
“No I don’t mean that. Did she know?”
We stared at each other. “Didn’t she tell you?”
“No. Tobe, she wouldn’t. You know that. She’d think it was private, for you to tell me if you wanted to.”
“Oh. Yeah. Well, she sort of knew. I mean, she did. Th
at’s why I came over here. Cos Dad made a big deal of it. Said things. He was a cunt about it. Not cool. Not like Mum. She didn’t care. I mean, give him his due, he said the usual: 'You’re my son and I love you whatever’ but he didn’t really, he doesn’t, not now he knows.”
Woh. All this time and I’d had no idea. Well, I’d suspected about Toby, but I had not really known. He’d said nothing to me. So much for our great relationship. Had he thought I knew and disapproved, or had he not dared tell me?
He was trying not to cry. “Toby,” I said, “look, I didn’t really know but I guessed. It doesn’t matter, not to me.”
“What,” he said bitterly, “some of your best friends are gay?”
“Matter of fact, yes. I’m an actor, what d’you think? And it’s a bit, been there, done that; didn’t buy the t-shirt, though.”
That made him goggle. “You?”
“Well, a bit, when I was younger. Decided it wasn’t really me, though.”
“But you were always the good one, the perfect son, the oldest, the smart one. You had all those girls…”
“Tobe, I was the oldest, that’s all. None of that other crap you said. As for gay or straight or in-between, it couldn’t matter less. If you’re not sure, or hassled, or unhappy, talk to me, tell me. If you’re madly in love, divinely happy, tell me. Anything’s OK. It’s cool. As for Dad, well, he’s just got a bee in his bonnet.”
“Yeah,” said Toby, “no one’s ever homophobic, they’ve just got a bee in their bonnet.”
I had no answer to that. I asked Toby why he hadn’t told me about himself before.
“I guess I thought you knew and cos you never said anything I thought you didn’t want to talk about it.”
“You’re a dickhead. When’ve we not talked?”
“Mmm. But you don’t talk about things, Jacques.”
“Yes I do.”
Missing Christina Page 3