Missing Christina

  She still smelt of freesias.

  The silence had gone on too long. We both spoke at once, stopped, gestured for other to proceed. She said, “I’ve found out quite a lot.” She bent and took a laptop out of her shoulder-bag, put it on the low table between us, fired it up. “First, I should say that I was actually rather hurt at the way you left that day. Silly of me, I know.”

  “Not silly at all. One minute I’m saying I love you, next it’s 'Great fuck, don’t call me.’”

  That made her smile, at last, although not with any great enthusiasm. “Well, men do that sort of thing. But I hadn’t thought you were like that. But of course you are a very good actor.”

  “Yes I am. But my brother says I never know how to – I don’t – I keep things to myself, I think he meant I miss out on relationships because... I don’t know. I’ve never been in love before. But I have fallen in love with you, Marian. And – I don’t know how to say it but – I think I mean that the only way I can prove it to you is by doing what I’m doing. My mother’s secret, probable secret, or you. Do you see what I mean?”

  She was staring at me as if she’d never seen me, or come to that my species, before. Then, scratching the bridge of her nose, she said, “I actually understood that, God knows how.”

  “There’s a bit in Shakespeare that puts it better. It’s –”

  “Stuff Shakespeare.”

  “Righty-ho.”

  “There, right there, is probably what your brother meant. I must meet him some day.”

  “I hope you will, you’d like him.”

  “I’m sure I would. Where did you go after you left my place the other day?”

  “To Sydney, to see my friend Rick. He was my brother in Relative Causes. He thinks I’m off my rocker, by the way. I told him the whole story and he looked at me like I was a few fries short of a Happy Meal.” She snorted with laughter. “He thinks I need therapy or something. He doesn’t believe a word of it.”

  “Did you tell him about me?” she asked sharply.

  “Well, yes. Not in detail.”

  “Huh. And they say women are the ones who gossip.”

  “He’s my best friend,” I protested.

  “Hmm. Well, anyway, speaking of Relative Causes, that’s partly how I figured it all out. After you’d gone I watched a DVD of Relative Causes, the final season when you were, what, eighteen?”

  “Nearly nineteen. About the age of, uh, Belinda in that film.”

  “Yes, let’s go on calling her Belinda for now. Yes, you were about her age. And so very like her. Same gestures, same expressions, same… lots of things. So I started to wonder. I remembered that I’d been watching you while you watched that film of her, and at one stage I thought you were going to faint. After that you changed, and you left very quickly. So I stopped thinking I’d just had the usual kiss-off that men are so good at, and, as I said, I wondered. Then I started doing some real thinking.”

  “And?”

  “First I watched everything I could find that you’ve been in. Then, well, I’m rather good at research. And I had what no one else has ever had – a couple of links between what we might call the two halves of the story. Of a story; a possible story.”

  “Adrian,” I said, “and the fact that I look like Belinda.”

  “Yes,” she said in the encouraging tone she probably used to a dim student who’s started to see the light. “Adrian Randall met Belinda Tate. Adrian was rich. He changed his name to Fyffe-Randall, dropping his first name of George in the process, and who can blame him. In July 1968 he married your mother, Christina Bryant, who looked very like Belinda – not a lot of photos of her online, are there?”

  “She didn’t like being photographed.”

  “No wonder. But I found one striking photo of her, or should I say of the Hon. Mrs Adrian Fyffe-Randall, taken in 1970, by Lord Snowdon, no less. Diamonds, hair piled up, professional make-up. Not much like little Belinda; on the other hand, not not like her, especially if rich Adrian had seen to it she’d had her teeth and nose fixed.

  “Then from 1979 I found one very sweet photo of your christening – family christening robe, was it? Lace and satin? Little cap?”

  “My last appearance in drag unless you count The Rocky Horror Show.”

  She laughed; giggled, in fact. “You were quite a pretty baby. No wonder – both your parents were lookers. And the photo included your godfather, Quentin Herne, your mother’s cousin. So then I had the Herne link. I researched his family, all of them. And there was no Christina Bryant of the right age in his family, although his grandmother and great-grandmother were both called Christina. He had an aunt called Penelope Herne, aged eighteen in 1949, and that was the name of Belinda’s birth mother, if my third-hand information was reliable. She died in 1964, by the way. So – if I’m right, and I think I am – Belinda got to England but not in time to find her mother.”

  Our eyes met. Hers were full of tears. Gingerly I put my arm around her, and she didn’t pull away or stiffen; in fact she leant into me, almost snuggled. “Marian?”

  “I suppose I’ve come to – no, not to identify with her, why would I, we’ve nothing in common, I was a happy kid, loved my parents and they loved me, I had everything I wanted. I suppose I feel sorry for her, with all the things I’ve found out. Of course she may not have got on with her birth mother if they’d met, it’s a tricky relationship, I’ve read up on Adopted Child Syndrome and all that sort of thing… Do you know how her mother died?”

  “Of course I don’t,” I said, kissing her forehead.

  “No, of course you don’t. She fell off a castle.”

  “… what?” Belatedly I realised we were talking about a woman who was, almost certainly it seemed, my grandmother. A castle?

  “She was a teacher, she taught history at a girls school, and she took a group of students to Wales, and they were exploring a ruined castle – something to do with Owen Glendower? And she fell. A silly accident, but nothing but an accident. In fact she was trying to save a girl who’d slipped and started to fall. She fell and broke her neck.”

  Slowly, rather shocked, I said, “But that cannot be true, Marian. That’s in one of Mum’s novels. You’ve got that out of her books.”

  Now she stiffened all right, stiffened and moved sharply away from me, and I found myself hoping she never again had occasion to look at me like that. “You idiot. How dare you. How stupid are you? Of course it’s in one of her books, you moron. She was a writer, why wouldn’t she use that? A lot of other things are in her novels, I’ve done a lot of reading in the last few days. Luckily I read quite quickly because I’ve gone through four of the Simon Slaughter novels since you walked out like that and they are full, full, of things about Belinda and her life.”

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean –”

  “Yes you did. Well, look.” She grabbed her laptop so fast she almost knocked it to the floor; spun it around again, keyed a moment, came up with a page scanned from a newspaper. The font and layout were old-fashioned, but the story was clear. 1964: SCHOOL MISTRESS TRIES TO SAVE PUPIL, LOSES OWN LIFE IN FALL FROM RUIN. It was all there, every detail. Miss Penelope Herne, 34, Junior history and English teacher at… school excursion… other accidents at this site have brought calls for greater safety measures… Miss Herne’s funeral will be held at…

  Marian keyed down a page and there was a photo of Miss Herne’s funeral – my grandmother’s funeral – Uncle Quentin leaving a church together with Miss Herne’s father and sister.

  “Are they still alive?”

  “No. No, Jaques, I’m sorry. Only Quentin Herne.”

  “Oh.” I felt so weird; didn’t know how I felt. “What – what else did you find, I mean, you said, in Mum’s books, her novels –” Furiously trying to remember details; I’d read them all, of course, more than once, I’d enjoyed them, but actual details of the kind Marian meant…

  “In the second one, where the two kids elope – they marry up in Scotland, you can, or
could, get married up there without your parents’ consent provided you were over sixteen; it’s often used in novels. I looked it up. Jaques, in January 1968 George Adrian Louis Randall, born October 1946, married Ruby Linda Tate, born in Adelaide on 2 February 1949. They were married in Aberdeen. So you see, Belinda really was your mother. She must have been, there’s no other explanation that I can see.”

  *

  I felt the shock as sharply as if it were new. You can suspect something, believe you’ve accepted it, yet the confirmation is different. Oddly or not, I found myself thinking that Mum had been three years younger than she’d pretended, the same age as Dad. I don’t know what reaction I showed, but Marian put her arms around me, held me. After a while I said, “But how did she do it? How did they – because it must have been Adrian’s doing, mustn’t it.”

  “I think so. I’ve found out some other things – things about my father’s investigation of the case, things he should’ve done.” I muttered some question, hardly caring, and she let go of me and turned back to her laptop. “I managed to get hold of lists of everyone who left and entered Australia after the seventh of December 1967 when Belinda was last seen alive. Dad should’ve done this, but I suppose he never thought she could’ve left the country. Perhaps he did check but didn’t make the connection. See, Alison Ivy Lang, born 6 June 1946, left the country on the ninth of December.”

  “So? Who’s she?”

  “The older sister of Belinda’s room-mate at that hostel. She had polio as a young child and had to live in what used to be called the Spastic Centre, she was badly handicapped. No way could she have travelled. In fact I know she didn’t.”

  I saw the point at once. “Mum used her name. Faked a passport. The sixth of June is D-Day, it’s a date that’d stick in your mind back in 1967, isn’t it. Do you think the room-mate knew?”

  “She certainly didn’t let on if she did, either to the cops at the time, or to me when I interviewed her for my book. But she and Belinda were quite close – and she’d met Mr and Mrs Tate. She would’ve helped, I think, if Belinda asked. And Adrian must’ve paid for it all, for 'Alison’ flew to England, and that was horrendously expensive in the 1960s. My parents didn’t know anyone who’d even flown interstate until well into the 1970s. Adrian must have paid for her flight. He stayed on here, well, I think in Sydney, he left from Sydney, also by plane, a week later. And I think he married her so that if she was caught, she couldn’t be made to return to her adoptive parents. She’d broken some laws by getting a passport in a fake name, and I suppose she might’ve gone to prison for that, Adrian too if it was proved he’d known and helped, but as a married woman she couldn’t have been returned to the Tates.”

  “But how the hell did they get away with it? Any of it? And where did she get the name Bryant from?”

  “They got away with it because in those days there was no computer cross-referencing. You didn’t need ID to catch a plane. All they needed to get married in Scotland was their birth certificates – and I’ve checked, and there was only one reference in the British papers to Belinda’s disappearance. By the time the British press would’ve caught up with it, it was all over, there was no story in it, the only 'story’ was the abduction claim and that had been exploded within a few days. And also, our Prime Minister vanished – drowned – a week later and that was international news all right, and you can imagine how it killed off the Belinda story. And once she was in England she must’ve dropped the Alison Lang persona and somehow become Christina Bryant. Adrian wouldn’t have married her, Christina Bryant, bigamously, yet he married her six months after he married Belinda – Ruby Tate. It’s not illegal to marry the same person twice. I’ve no idea where she got the name from – I thought you might know?”

  “No. No idea. I suppose she just found the name – oh Christ, Marian love, that’s in another of her novels. A girl fakes up an identity by finding the gravestone of a child who had the right date of birth – I mean, she would’ve had to pretend to be over twenty-one in 1967, 1968 – and who died young. It’s not that uncommon a name. Or perhaps she simply did a deed poll change of name. But why did Adrian do it all for her?”

  “Perhaps they fell in love with each other,” Marian said. “People do.”

  “He was gay. Well, bisexual.”

  “Perhaps he didn’t realise it yet. Anyway, it doesn’t mean he didn’t love her. Would you rather they just did a deal, he got her out of that horrible home and in return she was his beard?”

  No,” I said, belatedly remembering. “I’ve read his letters to her. He loved her. Everyone says they were happy together, they loved each other. – What did you say?”

  “Too much, probably.” She slammed the lid down on her laptop. “I’m going to see Kathleen Lang – Mrs Fielke she is now – again.”

  “I’ll come with you. May I? When?”

  “Now. She lives in Port Lincoln.” I daresay I looked blank, and who can blame me. “Try Google. I must go.” She started to pull on her coat, but instead of helping her I stared at her.

  “You said 'people do’. Fall in love. Marian?”

  “You’re so stupid, Jaques. Why are you so stupid?”

  “Natural talent. Marian…”

  And, well, at last I’d caught on, and finally she said it outright, that she loved me too, and there was a bed right there, and that’s all I’m going to say about it. Except that when I asked her to marry me she said no.

  *

  I’m not afraid of flying, but I’m not keen on those small planes they use for short local flights. But at least I wasn’t sick all the way as Marian was. The flight was only about forty minutes, but she went through every sick-bag within reach, and finally the stewardess brought a plastic basin and a handful of Wet Wipes. In between throwing up Marian kept apologising, and I kept telling her not to, and holding her hair out of the way. The moment we landed she stopped being sick and started clamouring for lemonade or ginger ale, and after a visit to the ladies’ loo she was, by the time we got into the taxi, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. It was only small planes, she said firmly; sorry she hadn’t warned me. Oh and she’d pay for my dry-cleaning, she added when she saw the state of my coat, which had caught most of the first bout. I said not to worry, I’d burn it. (Actually I binned it then and there, and bought another as soon as we found some shops.)

  Well, Port Lincoln. I’d expected a tiny country town with a decrepit pub, the sort of thing that = “Australia” to people who don’t know it, the sort of place where a dead dog draws a crowd. Instead, it was quite modern and pretty and with stunning views over the sea, and the hotel we stayed in was world class. Marian explained that Port Lincoln is, or was, a fishing town, tuna the big thing, but that was of no interest to me, fish give me the creeps and I’m allergic to seafood.

  We’d arrived in the evening, in time to enjoy sunset over the sea – I did like the views – and an excellent dinner washed down with champagne, which Marian said always settled her tummy after flying. That led to certain delightful goings-on that are no one else’s business, and a really good, sound sleep. In the morning, Marian having made sure Mrs Fielke was at home, off we set to see her. She lived only just out of town, in one of the richest suburbs, the local Nob Hill, Marian called it. Tuna-fishing family, loadsamoney, big house built to take advantage of those sea views. A 4×4 parked in the driveway, outside the door of a four-car garage. Garden and stuff. No expense spared.

  No very warm welcome, either. “Dr Elder,” said the woman who opened the front door; said it coolly, only just on this side of rudeness. “I thought I’d told you everything you could possibly need.”

  “One or two things have come up that I need to check,” Marian said smoothly, and with a fairly good grace Mrs Fielke gestured us inside, into a large, very well decorated hall and through to a big room, one wall mostly glass to make the most of those views. The sun had been behind us as we’d gone in, so it wasn’t until we were into that drawing room that Mrs Fielke saw me proper
ly. She made an odd little choking noise down in her throat, and under the makeup she went pale. I’m all too used to people recognising me, as me, if you see what I mean, as someone famous, someone they’ve seen on TV or a cinema screen, but this was a different reaction.

  “Mrs Fielke, Jaques Randall,” said Marian, and we shook hands. Her hand was trembling, and she dropped mine as fast as she could, and turned to gaze bewildered at Marian, who said smoothly, “Jaques has been helping me with my research.”

  “Oh – oh, I see. Well, come in, the – the kettle’s on, I’m making tea. Or coffee if you’d rather.”

  “Tea,” we both said, and she hurried out of the room. She didn’t want us there, but she was of the generation taught to be polite, to offer refreshment to visitors. We sat down on one of the tan leather sofas. It was rather a nicely furnished room, slightly dated because everything in it was too good to replace just for fashion’s sake. It pleased me on some trivial level that this woman who had been my mother’s friend had good taste, had books on her shelves and attractive paintings on her walls. As I looked around Marian caught my eye and glanced towards the bookshelves: yes, several of Mum’s novels, including the hardback of Escape; it looked like a first edition. I wanted to take it down and see if it was signed, but Mrs Fielke came back in with a tray of tea things. I took it from her, politely, and put it on the coffee table, remembering as I did so that piece of film of Mum carrying a too-heavy tray. There was the usual little fluster of pouring the tea and do you take milk, sugar, have a biscuit, then when we all had our tea Mrs Fielke lit a cigarette and leaned back in her armchair.

  “I’m not going to ask if you mind if I smoke, not in my own house. And certainly not when there’s something going on. Who are you?” she demanded of me.

  “Jaques is an actor,” Marian said. “You’ve probably seen him on TV, and he’s done a lot of films.”