“And it didn’t help that Tia had to have a hysterectomy. Dawn had just joined the local practice here, and she was very good about home visits and so on. Tia approved of her as much as she could of any doctor. And then Toby got pneumonia, and again Dawn was very useful, always ready to come here. And… well…your mother started writing again, and I was a bit jealous. I’d always wanted to write, still do, and I know I can’t. Music, yes, books, no. And when the first Slaughter novels did so well I got a bit childish and petty. And while I was in that state I met Dawn in the city one day and we had a drink… and so on….
“We had a very part-time affair for a while. I always made it clear it was nothing more than a fling and I’d never leave Tia. Then suddenly the haze cleared and Tia and I were fine again, I was genuinely proud when her book won that prize, we’d got all the other shit out of the way, we were back together. We celebrated with a week in Paris. And of course I told Dawn our affair was over.”
“And?” I prompted. “Or but?”
“She took it worse than I expected. Said she was in love with me. And so on. Awful scenes. I couldn’t cope. I was used to your mother and when we had scenes it was – was different. So finally Dawn said we had to part properly. One last time. I had to take her out to dinner. Bed, one last time. And – Orlando.”
“But Christ on crutches, you fuckwit, didn’t you use a condom?”
He choked on a laugh. “I don’t think you should call your father a fuckwit.”
“If the condom fits…”
“Yes, well, Clever Clogs, I’m not of the condom generation. When I was young all the girls were on the Pill. You only used a frenchie with a real slag, a groupie. The worst you could get in those days was a dose of the clap or a paternity suit. So with slags I was careful, yeah. But all the others were on the Pill. I’d had umpteen years of your mother being on the Pill. I thought Dawn was.
“And then I didn’t hear from her for nearly a year, she’d moved away, to live with her mother up in Cheshire as it turned out, and then I got a letter, with a photo of a baby. And of course I went to see her. And as you’ll learn one day, you love your children. Orlando was the last thing I wanted, but he was clearly mine, and I loved him. Of course I gave her money for him, maintenance, paid for everything. After a while she came back to the practice here and Orlando lived with her mother during the week. No one knew about him. But somehow your mother did. And I got the shock of my life when Quentin read us her will. She’d known all the time and said nothing. How very much I must have hurt her. And you know what I’m like when I feel guilty. I’d once told Dawn that although I’d never leave Tia, if ever I were free I’d marry her for Orlando’s sake. So I rushed off and did it. For Orlando’s sake. And because I was guilty and upset because Tia had known all along.”
“You really are a fuckwit,” I said, but quite mildly, and in return he gave my ear the painful tweak that had been a childhood way of telling me off for being cheeky. Leaning more comfortably back against the fallen tree he said with genuine casualness, “When you went through Tia’s writing house, was there much of Ade’s stuff there?”
Taken by surprise I stammered, “Uh – a few things. Old photos. A portrait.”
“Oh, that. Never a huge success, I thought. Can’t remember who did it, some pal of Ade’s. Same chap did your mother’s and that was much better.”
“And two red sofas like mouths?”
He laughed. “Oh God, I remember those! Fashionable for about six weeks. Comfy, though. Why are you looking like that? I always knew she’d kept a few of Ade’s things.”
“Were you ever jealous of him?”
“Oh God no. No. Oh, they were happy, Tia and Ade, but I often wonder if, had he lived, they would have stayed together. They were so young when they married, and it was more a sort of – of adoration than rough-and-tumble everyday love and marriage. Perhaps if they’d had children it would have been different.”
“Children…. But they tried to. I found some newspaper clippings… a doctor being sued for malpractice? Mum had a stillborn baby?”
“Oh Christ yes,” he said bitterly. “Bloody drunken fool – ʻsociety’ doctor, very fashionable, very very incompetent.” For the first time since we’d sat down he turned to face me fully. It made me notice how tired his eyes were, and how much grey there was now in his hair. “If I tell you a secret, will you promise never to tell anyone else?”
Everyone was asking me that these days. Who’d be next, Orlando? “I promise.”
“Well, after that happened, a lot of other patients got together and a nurse gave evidence and they were all going to sue that quack, but he committed suicide. Gassed himself. And good riddance. Except that once Ade and I got very, very stoned on Acapulco Gold and he told me he’d murdered that doctor.”
“What?”
“Yep. He said he’d checked out the guy’s routine and knew his wife and kids went to their country place every Friday and he went down on Saturday. Ade said he went round to the guy’s house on Friday night and said he’d thought better of suing him, blah blah, could they talk. And the quack took him into his study, gave him a whisky. Ade said he was crying with relief. And Ade put some crushed-up sleeping pills, barbiturates, in the guy’s whisky and when he was out to it, he arranged him on the hearthrug nice and close to the gas fire, locked all the windows and put rolled-up towels along the bottoms of them, turned the fire off then the gas on, and washed his own whisky glass and put it away – he’d worn gloves all the time, he said; it was winter – and then shut the study door and pulled another rolled-up towel up to the bottom of the door with a straightened-out paperclip, by sliding it under the door. Ade used to read a lot of crime novels. And no one found the guy till his wife came home on Sunday night. It was called suicide and never investigated.”
I took a long overdue breath and said, “Did you believe him? Believe Adrian? That he really did it?”
Dad thought for a moment. “Yes, actually I did. Ade had a… a sort of amoral streak. Kind, generous and loyal to anyone he loved or who dealt fairly with him, but vengeful to anyone who made trouble for him. No, he wouldn’t have turned a hair at killing that doctor, once he’d decided he deserved it. We were very stoned that night, but yes, I believed him. Tia never knew, of course. Thing I remember most is, Ade said he’d done it before – killed someone. I remember him laughing, really laughing, and then we got the munchies, and went out for kebabs.
“I asked him about it once later on, when we were straight, and he just grinned at me and asked where I’d got the hash. But yes, I believed him.”
He stood up then as Silvia and PoorMatthew came over to us, Hugo wearing a daisy-chain crown, and because they so clearly wanted to talk to Dad I went to help Toby and Orlando and the dogs play footer.
After that the dogs were allowed in the house again.
*
I’d grown unused to the once-familiar night sounds of Williamscourt. I’d forgotten the Hammer Horror sound of the loo nearest my room, and the noise of the dogs’ claws on the wooden floors. I missed the cats. I could hardly blame Dr McCoy for not opening up the bedrooms we’d so insultingly locked when we left, and had only myself to blame for the room’s smell of chilly disuse and the fact that the sheets weren’t aired and there were no flowers in the room or water in the bedside carafe. My mattress felt like a dead horse.
But really these were only the reasons I invented for not being able to sleep. It was the memory of what Dad had told me that kept me tossing and turning. Adrian had confessed to two murders. Dad never lied about that sort of thing, he hadn’t that sort of imagination. He had loved Adrian, and had understood him well enough to believe him. If Adrian really had killed that quack, good luck to him. But the other...
Adrian had met Belinda Tate. Not much later she had disappeared for good.
No, it had to be nonsense. Why, how, where, when, and mostly why again should he have killed a not very interesting teenage girl? An accident? Or – I was fai
rly sure that homosexuality was still a crime in Australia until at least the 1970s. I quickly googled it, and found I was right. Perhaps she had somehow witnessed something of that kind? Perhaps she’d fallen in love with Adrian and he’d told her the truth about himself and… say she in all innocence had told someone else… Or perhaps she’d somehow followed Adrian to Sydney, in love, and… No, surely it would have been an accident. Dad had said Adrian could be vengeful to anyone who betrayed him, but he had also called him kind, generous and loyal. Mum wouldn’t have loved and stayed married to someone capable of killing a teenager, little more than a schoolgirl. So probably it’d been the hash talking, that night with Dad.
Yet I knew that the moment I got home to London I’d be downloading Marian Elder’s partial manuscript and looking for any hint of Adrian.
*
The next day, at Granny’s birthday lunch, Silvia and PoorMatthew announced they were getting married. Silvia flashed an enormous emerald-cut solitaire diamond, and asked if June would be too soon for the wedding.
Thirteen
From then on my life became so ghastly that I took to crying, “What fresh hell is this?”, as Dorothy Parker is said to have done, every time the phone or the doorbell rang. Why oh why did everyone insist on bringing their arguments to me or unloading on me? It was one endless barrage of phone calls, texts, emails, letters; Silvia sobbing half the night in my spare room; Aunt Ursula waking me at seven in the morning to ask why one of her daughters couldn’t make the wedding dress…
Thing was, of course, we needed Mum. I mean that Silvia was upset that Mum wouldn’t see her married, we were all upset about that – but it was more that Mum could organise things, she could’ve organised D-Day without breaking into a sweat, she would’ve had this bloody wedding under control in jig time. Most of all, she could manage PoorMatthew’s mother.
Don’t get me wrong: I like Lady Hyde-Howard, who’s one of those red-faced tweedy huntin’ women like Bertie Wooster’s Aunt Dahlia, but tact is not her strong suit, and her mind runs on narrow, old-fashioned lines. She’d never approved of Silvia having Matthew’s baby out of wedlock, and I think she mildly disliked Silve because of it. Now she was determined that everything about the wedding should be 'proper’, and to do her justice she was prepared to go to any amount of trouble over it. Too much bloody trouble.
The morning after Silvia had wept half the night in my spare bed, I woke her with a nice breakfast and told her I was sick of the whole damn wedding thing, and it was time she and Matthew agreed on their plans then put their foot down.
“If we do,” she said damply, “will you back us up?”
“Yes.”
“About everything?”
“About anything except folk singers and reciting bits from The Prophet at the service.”
“Oh yes, we’re likely to do that. But I mean about things like Aunt Ursula hassling me to let Fat Fleur design my wedding dress.”
This was mere babble from the sick-bed. Our cousin Fat Fleur was the nicest of Aunt Ursula’s lot, but as far as I knew she was still at school.
“No, you idiot, Flavia’s still at school. Fleur’s twenty-two and she’s done some fashion course, and Aunt U thinks that qualifies her to make my wedding dress. I mean, it’s a real toss-up, isn’t it – Alexander McQueen or my cousin Fleur, gee, how do I decide?”
“Keep Aunt U calm by telling Fat Fleur that you’d love to see any sketches she wants to do but you’ve almost promised someone else they can do the dress.”
“See?” said Silvia with a witless grin, “that’s why we all bring our troubles to you.”
“Because I’ve got the family brain cell, you mean?” Then I shoved her out the door with the toast still in her mouth.
Result: next day, an email, CC’d to what seemed like everyone I’d ever met. It read:
Dear Family,
Anyone with particular suggestions for our wedding should be at Williamscourt next Saturday by noon, in time for lunch at 12.30. Wedding plans will be completed by 5 p.m. at the latest and all decisions will be final.
Please note the following:
The wedding will be at the Church of St Michael and All Angels, Williamscourt, at noon on Saturday 28th June.
The reception will be held at Williamscourt.
The guest list will be limited to 100.
No children under 14 at the wedding or reception.
Bridesmaids will be Silvia’s cousin Flavia and Matt’s sister Lucinda. Best man will be Silvia’s brother Jaques, the grooms-man Matt’s brother Peter. There will be no other attendants.
Regards,
Silvia and Matt.
I was in the middle of texting 'well done’ to Silvia when a text came from Dad: Re S’s email: All well and good, but what about Orlando, who is under 14? He will be very disappointed to be excluded, and Dawn is offended; as am I, I am afraid.
Typical of Dad to use that pedantic punctuation in a text. But oh fuck fuck fuckety fuck, just when I thought it was all over… I forwarded Dad’s text to Silvia, then sent my own to everyone saying, more or less, don’t bother me with wedding stuff. In answer came one from Matthew: shit we forgot abt Orlando, am telling Jon of crs we dn’t mean 2 exclude him.
That did it. I turned off all the phones, bolted the windows, raised the drawbridge and lowered the portcullis. I’d get stuck into the scripts I’d to learn, really get them down. But of course I couldn’t concentrate. No book on my shelves could’ve held my attention, there was no film I wanted to see, music was all just noise. I couldn’t go for a brisk walk, my usual cure for these bored, despairing moods, because it was raining, pissing down; and anyway, I’d had my daily 5 k run that morning. I couldn’t cut my wrists in the bath because it’d be so unpleasant for the char.
Aha! Idea. I loped up to my study, roused Sylvester from a refreshing nap on my laptop, and found the bits of her book Marian Elder had sent me. Each page had DRAFT ONLY backgrounded across it, but that didn’t matter.
To understand the Belinda Tate case you have to understand the times. “The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.”, and the 1960s are perhaps more alien to us today than the period between the wars, or the 19th century.
Try to imagine, if you are under about forty, a world in many superficial ways like ours, but in deeper ways so very different. A world without colour TV, satellites, computers, ATMs, mobile phones, feminism, political correctness, deregulation, privatisation. A world where many people still did not have the telephone connected to their houses and, if they did, still regarded a long-distance call as something to be kept for emergencies. If you wanted to withdraw cash from your bank account or put money into it, you went into your bank, presented your passbook and withdrawal or deposit slip with cash or a cheque, and had the transaction recorded in the passbook. Banks were open from 10 a.m. until 3 pm and closed of course on weekends, but they existed and were still regulated; every country town, every suburb, had at least one bank. Domestic violence was a private matter, there were no such things as women’s refuges, and sexual abuse was something most people never heard of. Priests, nuns, teachers and policemen were still respected and their word taken as gospel. Only the wildest cranks used, or indeed had heard of, alternative and Eastern medicines or therapies. Antibiotics were still prescribed for almost any illness. Daylight Saving lay in the future. Decimal currency was not yet two years old and people still mentally converted dollar amounts to pounds, shillings and pence.
Clothes were relatively expensive, and it was cheaper to make your own in those days before chain stores. It wasn’t until 1971 that a Target store was to open in Adelaide. Before that people did their shopping 'in town’, i.e., in the main shopping strip, Rundle Street (now Rundle Mall), or at small suburban supermarkets and the corner shop. Bakers and some butchers and greengrocers still delivered their goods to your house, as did milkmen. Post was delivered every day except Sunday and public holidays.
Television news depended on film
being flown from Britain or the United States or, for local news, from interstate. TV was still black and white; cable or satellite TV was unimaginable.
Men had not yet walked on the moon. The Vietnam War was still in progress and Australian men were being conscripted and sent to fight in a war to which the right-wing Federal government had committed Australia at the request of the United States. Lyndon B Johnson was President of the USA.
In December 1967 Australia’s Prime Minister, Harold Holt, drowned off a Victorian beach, and was replaced by John McEwan. The Liberal Government had been in power nationally since the 1940s, and in South Australia from 1938 to 1965. In 1967 the progressive Labor premier Don Dunstan was elected for the first time. [Insert f’note]
Homosexual acts between consenting adults were still illegal, not to be decriminalized – first in South Australia – until 1975. The age of majority was still 21, the age of consent 17. Capital punishment had been in force until 1976 in South Australia, although the last execution was in Victoria in 1967. Corporal punishment was still permitted in schools. Aboriginal land rights were unheard of. There were no Asian immigrants to Australia; the White Australia Policy was still in force. Most immigrants were British, or, increasingly, from Greece or Italy.
Adelaide had something of an 'arty’ reputation – its internationally renowned Festival of Arts had been running biennially since 1960 – but in 1967 the city had not yet become the arts haven, the “Athens of the South”, it would become under Don Dunstan.
Crime was rare and people still felt safe enough in their homes to leave doors unlocked and windows open, and to sleep on the lawn on a hot night. Children could travel safely on public transport, or could play in the streets, without adult supervision. Non-prescription drugs were almost unknown. Women were not allowed to drink in the front bars or public bars of hotels. The majority of people smoked. The Hippy movement and lifestyle was only just beginning to be imported from America, and most people still looked to England for fashion and music. The Beatles had not yet broken up, and people were listening to the new Sergeant Pepper album. Also in 1967 a referendum had been passed allowing Aboriginal people to be counted for census purposes, for the first time. Australia and Adelaide were moving not quite easily into a new world – unfortunately a world in which three small children, the Beaumont children, could disappear from a busy and popular suburban beach. And now, with the disappearance of Belinda Tate, so, it seemed could anyone.
Missing Christina Page 12