Missing Christina

  “I hardly ever see films. Why’s he 'helping with your research’?”

  “His father was Belinda’s pen-friend and he found some of her letters.”

  “Oh.” She relaxed a little. “Yes, her pen-friends. She had them all over the place. I remember. Which one was your father? That English boy, I suppose. I can’t remember his name.”

  “Chris Randall.”

  “Oh, yes, rings a bell. He was keen on pop music, if I’m thinking of the right one.”

  “That’s the one. His cousin was in Australia for a while and he met Belinda – late October 1967, this was.”

  “Oh, yes.” After that first reaction when she saw and recognised me, she had herself well in hand now. Rather a tough cookie, I thought, and no fool, no fool at all. I tried to picture her as a teenage girl, probably giggling with my mother over whatever girls do giggle at, perhaps exchanging confidences. She must have been quite a pretty girl, for she was still what you’d call a handsome woman – dark hair expertly tinted and styled, just the right amount of makeup, good 'smart casual’ clothes and the confidence to wear them well.

  “Yes you remember her meeting him? Adrian, his name was.”

  “Not particularly.” Abruptly she leaned forward and ashed her cigarette, took a sip of tea. “I don’t remember Belinda all that well. I mean, yes we were friends, shared a room in that dump for nearly a year, but if you see what I mean I doubt I’d remember all that much about her except for, for what happened, whatever did happen. That sort of froze her in my mind, but I can’t remember any of the other girls in that place at all, really. To be honest with you, sometimes I’m not sure how much I do actually remember about her, or whether I’ve got her confused with other people. I do remember some Pommy bloke asking her out to dinner. I remember she had a new dress and she borrowed my evening shoes. Bit stuck-up, she thought him. That’s all, though.”

  “You never met him?”

  “No.” She had those very dark brown eyes that make it hard to see any gradation of colour between pupil and iris: good eyes for lying. Why did I assume she was lying? Because of the other tiny 'tells’ that I always notice in people, that many actors notice and store away for later use: the too-quick movement, the slight hesitation before a simple answer, the tightening of fingers on a cigarette, the unnecessary stirring of a cup of sugarless tea.

  “Well, you see,” Marian said, still smooth as silk, “because of meeting Jaques, and finding about his cousin meeting Belinda – all rather a long story – I, we, have come across some evidence about what happened to Belinda.”

  “What evidence?”

  Marian told her. She listened to it all without any obvious reaction except mild surprise and the lighting of another cigarette. “I find that very hard to believe,” she said at last. “Very hard. It just doesn’t sound like Belinda.”

  “Did you know she’d used your sister’s birth certificate to get a passport? Did you perhaps lend it to her?”

  “No, I did not 'lend’ it to her.”

  “But Belinda knew about your sister, didn’t she.”

  “Of course she did,” she said with contempt. “Knew about her, and knew her. She used to come with me sometimes to visit Ally. They liked each other. And I’m afraid I don’t believe a word of your 'evidence’, I think you’ve cooked it all up so you’ll sell a lot of copies of your book. So now I think you can take your boyfriend and bugger off, young lady.”

  “OK. But it’ll be in my book – none of which I’ve 'made up’, Mrs Fielke.” As she started to stand up I said,

  “I see you’ve got some copies of my mother’s books.” She blinked in confusion. “She wrote as Chris Bryant. I see you’ve got Escape, in particular.”

  “Why shouldn’t I have? I like a good detective story. Bel used to read them all the time, she got me hooked on them. I’d never read much till I shared a room with her.”

  “But Escape isn’t a detective novel. I wonder if that’s a signed copy?”

  “Two of my uncles were prisoners of war. Now what part of bugger off didn’t you understand?”

  We stood not upon the order of our going, but at the door Marian said, “Did you really never hear from Belinda after she disappeared?”

  “I did not and if you say I did I’ll sue you. I told you before, and I told that cop, your father, wasn’t it, at the time. I don’t know anything about it. In fact if you even say in your book she used my sister’s birth certificate I’ll sue you.”

  “OK,” Marian repeated, and Mrs Fielke marched behind us to the door and held it open. As I passed her I said, under my breath, “I think you were a good friend to my mother. Did you know she died last year?”

  Now, with the light on her face, I could see her pupils dilate then contract, and the skin around her eyes tighten. She hadn’t known. She said, “I’m sorry – for you, I mean. Not easy, losing a parent.”

  “No it’s not.”

  Then, just before the door shut, she said, as quietly as I had spoken to her, “Someone made an anonymous donation to the Spastic Centre in 1968. Twenty thousand dollars. A lot of money in those days. Mention that and I’ll sue. Now get out.”

  Driving away, Marian said, “She knew, didn’t she. She knew it all.”

  “Yes, I think so. Now what?”

  “I don’t know. Perhaps I’ll talk to her again when I’ve finished writing my book.”

  “Your book. Yes, I suppose you have to. You’ve solved a mystery. You’ve proved it. But what about my family? Have you thought how it’ll affect them?”

  She was silent for a quite a long time, then, not looking at me, she said, “I can’t afford to think of it like that. My book’s about Belinda Tate. I’ve found out – almost certainly – what happened to her. I can’t withhold the truth. And before you say anything, yes I do know the difference between the public interest and what interests the public. There are a lot of people who were affected by what happened, and they’ve the right to know.”

  Thinking, Well, thank you Rupert Murdoch, I said, “I suppose you could redact the names?”

  “Perhaps. And don’t forget that there’s my family to consider too – they’re not going to like my saying Dad screwed up. But I need to know if there are papers, letters, other material, in your family’s possession. You’ll have to speak to your father about it, and Quentin Herne. Otherwise the book will be incomplete. And although I’ve found out all this stuff online, I want to get originals of all the certificates and so on. I need to be sure. Sure I haven’t made a mistake somewhere along the line. I need to talk to your family.”

  I’m sorry to say that we argued about that, argued a lot, from our very different points of view. We grew so heated that sometimes we realised we were each arguing the other’s case, and backing down, and squabbling again. We ended up flying back without exchanging another word, unless you count her saying “Thanks” when I handed her the sick bags.

  All that matters is that we had a short, resigned discussion about what we’d found out, and about her book, and I agreed to find out what I could at home. She would fly to England soon, she said, to check the originals of birth and marriage certificates and so on and so forth. We’d email, we said. Yes. Or even phone. Yes. Well. See you before too long. Yes.

  After the intimacy of the last few days – I don’t mean sex, I mean the talking, the travel – it felt like a divorce, as if I were leaving a long marriage. I think both of us hesitated about what to do or say, then I blurted out, “Come with me. Come now.”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “I can’t explain. Too much too soon, too much all at once. You need to go home and be with your family.”

  “To warn them, you mean, about your book.”

  One side of her mouth puckered up. She sighed. “That, but also you need to be home again. And I have a book to write.”

  “Not if we are wrong about what we think we’ve found out. What if there is some other explanation?” She hesitated, thi
nking it over again. “Isn’t it better to be quite sure? Prove it to yourself?”

  “I can’t go straight away. Not without... There’s my mum...No, I can’t.”

  “Soon, then?”

  “Soon.” A quick kiss on the cheek and she was gone.

  Nineteen

  Home again. Toby met me, looking bronzed and fit from three weeks in the Greek islands with a very pretty waiter from the wedding – turned out he was actually a music student and only a waiter on the side, for spare cash. We stopped at my London house, then to Williamscourt, where my cats ignored me to teach me a lesson for going away. Orlando was touchingly pleased to see me, not least because, I discovered, he had little concept of time and hadn’t quite grasped that I was only on holiday for a few weeks, and had thought I might never return. My photos and presents went down well, but I wasn’t quite happy to note that Granny seemed rather vaguer than usual, and that Silvia didn’t look well, despite the suntan from her Barbados honeymoon. But that night she confided that she was pretty sure she was pregnant again, a wedding-night job as she charmingly put it. She was fine, she said, hardly sick at all so far and just a bit seedy. Granny seemed fine to her.

  On the whole that was a dismal summer and autumn in England, but there was the occasional good day, and one nice warm afternoon when Gran’s lovely garden was at its best Dad and I walked the dogs then took drinks out to the sheltered terrace overlooking the river. Out of the blue Dad said, “Is something bothering you, dear? You seem a bit… I don’t know. You’re different. Certainly you’ve grown up a lot this year, it’s been a rough time for you, but there’s something else. Is there something you want to talk about?”

  I began to answer, tried to work out whether this was the chance I needed, changed my mind, and to my great surprise burst into tears. At once his arms were around me, he was rocking me and clasping me tight in the way he used to do when I had nightmares as a child or something bad had happened. I’d forgotten how often he’d done that, how good he was at comforting me. I’d fixated too much on Mum and pushed him into a supporting role only, in memory. He hugged me, saying nothing but the soothing nonsense childhood words, there there, it’s all right, sh-sh-sh, all the monsters have gone, Daddy’s here, and at the right time he made me sit up, and he wiped away my tears with his handkerchief. I said, “Not here. Too many people always around. Can’t tell them. It’s about Mum. Or perhaps I am going mad. I’m not sure I can tell you.”

  “If it’s any help,” he said quietly, “Rick rang me to say you’d heard some wild story from a journalist or something and he thought you might need professional help.”

  “Did he just!” I was shaking with rage. “I’m fine! Rick should mind his own business!”

  “He’s so very fond of you, you see. Too fond, I thought once, back before that Kraut came along. Is he still a pompous ass?”

  “The Kraut?” I couldn’t help laughing. “Yes. Too fond?”

  “Forget it. So – talk? You know you can tell me anything. But not here?”

  “Not here.”

  “Tomorrow, then. At my office?”

  “Fine.”

  “And, Jaques, there is nothing you can tell me about your mother that I didn’t already know.”

  We stared at each other for a long time, but before either of could decide to speak Orlando came thundering around the corner of the house, Dawn pattering along behind him and Granny after them wanting volunteers to help her in the garden.

  “Tomorrow. Your office,” I said quickly, and hurried off inside to wash away any signs that I’d been crying.

  *

  Randall Fyffe Randall Publishing plc has warehouses and so on in various places, and a few floors in a new building in Docklands, but HQ is still the 18th century building near Fleet Street. It had been a small private bank which for some reason went bust in the 1840s, and Mr Fyffe and Mr Randall bought the freehold for some derisory amount and set up their publishing house. There’s always been enough money from various sources for the company to remain in private hands, despite many take-over bids from the multinationals. After I’d signed in at the front desk and was very slowly ascending in the ancient, clanking lift I remembered Dad saying once that the company had been way behind the times and thus not doing very well, when Adrian inherited a large share of it and enough money to restructure and modernise it. Mum had worked there, I recalled.

  On the top floor I wrestled the lift door open and went through the little reception area. Gail, who’d started working for Dad after Mum died, smiled and said I was to go straight into Dad’s office. This is a large room with big windows looking towards the river. One wall is teal, one acid yellow, one red – and I know it sounds like a dog’s dinner but it works, it looks good. On the wall behind Dad’s desk hang his beloved Rickenbacker bass and the gold record his band somehow achieved in 1972. The yellow wall behind the conference table is the company’s Wall of Shame, opportunities missed – framed letters along the lines of “Dear Ms Rowling, Although we have read your material with interest we do not feel it suits our list.” All right, not actually J K Rowling, but that sort of thing. There are also copies of letters enthusiastically accepting books that turned out to be absolute stinkers, huge financial losses. It amuses Dad no end, just as it amuses him to call his dogs, whom he adores, after Amis père et fils, whom he very much does not adore, although the dog Kingsley does very much resemble KA in his later years.

  Although all the windows were open the room smelt of cigarette smoke, because Dad had got around the workplace smoking ban by having this top floor declared a private residence on the grounds that aside from his office (“my private office, or study if you prefer”) the only rooms up here are two bedrooms, a bathroom, a tiny living room and a kitchenette; a small flat, in fact.

  I found the publishing supremo at his desk, cleaning one of his Churchills. I don’t mean he was dusting The History of the English-Speaking Peoples; Churchills are guns, shotguns. Dad had inherited his pair from his father. He had given up blood sports in the 1970s, but heredity exerted itself and he’d taken to slinking off for the odd day’s shooting in a friend’s syndicate up north. Mum had disapproved, but her only comment had been to name her series detective Slaughter.

  “You can take that look off your face,” he greeted me. “I like shooting and I’m a damn good shot. Quentin’s keen to get in a bit of shooting, so we might have a weekend away. He’s rather a bore, but I know he’s having a hard time getting over Tia, so it’s something to do. I feel a bit obligated, because she was his cousin and fond of him and he’s got no one else now, and he mopes.”

  “Fair enough.” I sat down in front of his desk. “I’ve been sort of offered a part in some telly series, all pre-war upper-classes sort of thing. They want someone who sounds posh and can ride and shoot. If I get it, you can coach me on the shooting part.”

  “Are you likely to get it?”

  “If I want it. I’ve a good chance of an American series that sounds promising.”

  “But if you took that it would mean you living in America? At least half the time?” He sounded alarmed.

  “Probably. I’m not at all sure about it.”

  “Well, of course you must do what’s best for your career. And after all you’re often away, filming. But I’d thought the Old Vic...”

  “I’m talking about next year,” I said gently.

  “Ah. I see. By the way, do you know anything about e-books?”

  “Only the principle,” I said, puzzled. “Why?”

  “Because that’s the way publishing is going to have to go. We must start a program now. We’ll publish paperbacks still, but everything also as an e-book. I don’t know enough about it to manage the change. Would Toby know? – because downloads and iTunes and all of that mean the record industry’s almost done for, Awopbopaloola must change, and I don’t know how.”

  “I’m sure Toby knows all about it, anything starting with i or e is right up his ally. Dad, who came up wit
h the name Awopbopaloola?”

  Surprised, he said, “Adrian, of course. He thought it hilarious. Mind you, I don’t think he ever thought it’d be a success, he really only started to help out me and my band.”

  The door opened and Gail came in with a tray of coffee. At our nods she filled two cups, then said, “Still hold all calls and visitors?”

  “Please.”

  Right. Opening manoevres finished. The moment Gail closed the door behind her he said, “Tell me what the matter is. It’s about your mother, isn’t it.”

  “Yes. I’ve found out – I think I’ve found out – something – about her – her past – her childhood – I don’t know if you know –” I stuttered to a halt. He looked at me very gravely, his eyes dark, then suddenly he sprang up from the desk-chair, came and took my arm, and led me over to one of the sofas.

  “I told you there’s nothing I don’t know about your mother.”

  “Belinda Tate?”

  “Jesus.” His hand tightened on my arm, then his grip turned into a reassuring caress. “Bugger coffee, we need a drink. Whisky?”

  “Please.”

  He made the drinks, curled my hand around one of the glasses, and said, “Start. Tell me.”

  I went through the whole thing as I’d done with Rick, from first finding that letter from Marion in New York, right to the end. All I left out was falling in love. I wasn’t sure why I left that out.

  Dad and I had watched each other as I spoke. When I finished he simply nodded. “You knew,” I said, stupidly. “You knew all about it.”

  “Of course I did! Do you think Tia would’ve married me without telling me?”

  “Why didn’t she ever tell me?” I cried. “Tell any of us? I’ve found all this out and everything’s different now.”

  “Not it’s not,” he said at once. “And why should she tell anyone? It was nobody else’s business, once she’d told me. Of course if it had come out before, she would have had to reveal it all, but Jesus wept, do you think she wanted to talk about it? It took her years of psychotherapy to get over it, or past it, or whatever term you want to use. It was in her past. She wasn’t that girl any more. She was Tia, she was the wife I loved, the mother you loved and who loved you, partly because of that past, but that’s all.” Then with a sort of delayed double-take he said, “This Australian woman is writing a book about it?”