Missing Christina

  Christina Fyffe-Randall

  Oh, I thought. Well, that’s that then, isn’t it. Except that she had written to the police. Said she had. Well, must have, if she put it in this formal, legal document. Which, when I re-read it, seemed rather cagey – “I discovered”; “I have been informed”; “I obtained”. Perhaps she was just being careful not to give away any information than involved anyone else, but I found I didn’t greatly like the person who had written out that document.

  Well, what next? I spread out all the papers. One was a birth certificate, the lying one that showed Ruby Tate as the child of Alfred and Winsome Tate. It was worn along its folds, its edges scuffed. In an envelope was the marriage certificate showing that Ruby Tate had married George Randall, in Aberdeen as she’d said in that affidavit. With it was a photo, a faded old colour snap, showing the newly-weds outside some granite building. The bride had very short light-brown hair under a small, formal white hat; she wore a creamy-white dress and jacket, brown shoes and gloves, and sapphire stud earrings, probably as her 'something blue’. The groom had fair hair just long enough to touch his collar, a deep tan, and the sort of overcoat, suit and shoes that murmured that expense was no object.

  I put those things aside and picked up an Australian passport brittle with age. It was in the name of Alison Ivy Lang, date of birth 6 June 1946, etc etc. The photograph, black and white, showed a young woman with hair pulled back, a lot of eye make-up and dark-framed glasses. She looked like Mum, but only a bit, and certainly did not look much like the photos I had seen of Belinda Tate. Tucked inside the passport was a boarding pass for a Qantas flight to London, dated 9 December 1967, and a telegram confirming Miss A. Lang’s reservation for three days at Brown’s Hotel in London. There was also an unused traveller’s cheque in that name, for two hundred pounds.

  Then something unexpected – the record of a deed-poll change of name from Kirsty O’Brien to Christina Bryant. Who the hell had Kirsty O’Brien been? Was it simply a name culled from a gravestone somewhere, or a death notice in a newspaper?

  So there it was. Proof.

  Feeling slightly sick I went to the kitchen for another glass of wine. My mind was blank, incapable of thought. Slowly I went back to my study, and this time took up that journal of Adrian’s.

  I re-read that opening paragraph. Over the page were a couple of postcards and some snaps – I recognised Ayers Rock, of course – it’s called Uluru now – but it took Adrian’s note of “Alice Springs” for me to make sense of the other photos. One was of Adrian, dressed in casual gear, standing by a rather small aeroplane, travel bag in hand.

  Next came:

  Adelaide. Thought of taking the train, the Ghan, from A. Springs but I’ve seen enough of the Outback, so flew. V. pretty here and after the cattle station it feels like Las Vegas. Hotel good – as everyone has told me, it’s where the Beatles stayed when they were here 3 years ago. Food good. I have found a couple of clubs ect, met some people. There are some decent shops here so I bought a lot of clothes, I’ve grown out of everything I brought with me in 1965 and am sick of N.T. work gear. I like it here but will prob. leave at end of week, head for Sydney, try to get in some surfing, that bloke Bob up on Queen Marg. Dns was mad on surfing, told me I’d love it, he works half the year at grotty jobs mostly up north so he can surf the rest of the year, he gave me an address of friends in Sydney. Have written to Mum saying I’ll be home for Xmas but meanwhile will travel a bit. Sent her some photos. Hired a car, have driven around a bit. Some nice beaches here, wonder if I could try some surfing?

  Wednesday. Bit bored. Rang up that pen-friend of Chris’s who lives here. (Must remember Chris has changed name to Jon now his grandpa’s dead and he’s at Oxford.) Belinda sounds quite nice – v. nice voice on phone, keen to hear about Chris Jon. Asked her to dine with me, arranged it for tomorrow night, but she’s got choir practice first. Hope this doesn’t mean she’s religious and goody-goody. Asked if she has a favourite restaurant and she laughed and said she has a very dull life and rarely goes to restaurants but knows there’s a good French one in North Adelaide, owned by parents of a girl she was at school with. Wonder what an Aussie version of a French restaurant will be like, but said I’d try to get a table, if not we can dine at my hotel.

  Thurs. Oh God I can’t believe this. Feels strange to write it. I have fallen in love with Belinda Tate. Love at first sight. Her choir practice was in the Town Hall. Finished at 7. She’d told me she had long fair hair and would be wearing a grey dress and I’d said I’d be waiting right opposite the front door of T. Hall. Got there a bit early, inspected foyer of T. Hall, listened to choir inside bashing through what I was pretty sure was The Messia – Uncle L. took me to it once in London. Saw a little statue of a woman – plaque said it was Queen Adelaide, wife of King William IV. Felt so stupid that it’d never occurred to me that’s why this city’s called Adelaide, and the main street is King William St. The place was settled in 1836, I did know that much; wondered how first settlers felt when wrote home proudly re name of new city, streets ect, only to get letters back saying Sorry, it’s Queen Victoria now. Then heard choir finishing up, (bit late) so went to wait outside. Lots of people came out. Saw a fair girl in grey, bit of a chubster, hoped it wasn’t Belinda, then heard voice beside me saying “Excuse me, but are you Adrian Randall?” Said I was and how do you do, she said she was Belinda, and we shook hands. And I can’t believe it but just like that I felt as if we’d known each other before and had been apart for ages and had found each other again. But why her, she’s quite pretty but no film star, medium height, lovely hair, slim, gorgeous voice and stunning legs – but why her? Remembered Uncle Louis saying love always comes unexpectedly and in mysterious ways sometimes; it had for him and his wife. And it was the same for me and Belinda. We were standing there smiling at each other, hands still clasped. Couldn’t think of what to say, except that my car was just around the corner. Wished I’d been able to hire something better than a last year’s Holden. She threw her music folder on the dashboard and I asked if it was the Messia. Yes. Asked (tactfully) if she’s religious and she said God no (then laughed because that’s almost a pun), said she’s had religion shoved down her throat since she started Sunday School when she was 3 and doesn’t believe a word of it. Why the Messia, then? Because she likes singing, is in a city choir, and 3 choirs are joining together to do the Messia at Xmas, they had to start rehearsals early because it’s tricky to get so many people together enough times, let alone with full orchestra. Like I cared, but I would’ve listened to her reading the phone book aloud. We kept catching each other’s eye, and smiling, both knowing this was special. When we got to the restaurant and I stopped the car, instead of rushing to get out and open her door I kissed her, just the once and very lightly, and she sort of lit up and said, “Yes.” Restaurant turned out v good. Lovely old room, fire, all v trad. We had one of the private booths down the side wall. Asked her what she wanted to drink and she said, (I’ll always remember), “I had better tell you that I was brought up in a teetotal family and had never had an alcoholic drink till I escaped at the start of this year and went to live in that hostel with normal people. I’ve still only had about 6 drinks, but may I have a Martini, please, because of James Bond? Except that I don’t like olives.” I loved the way she said that, sort of matter-of-fact yet laughing at herself. I ordered 2 Martinis with a twist instead of olives, and offered her a cigarette. She told me that smoking had been as verboten as drinking (and, it seems, anything else normal) at home but she’d come to like it very much indeed, although she still expected Mr and Mrs Tate to spring up behind her every time she had one. I said, “Would they really mind that much?” and she said “You’ve got no idea.” Waiters brought menus and wine list. Menus were in French, I wondered if she could cope with it; turned out she can, and in fact has a very good accent – several French girls at her school, she said, including the one whose family owns the restaurant. She wanted the cheese soufflé, so I said I’d ha
ve that too, then she decided on steak but I’ve eaten nothing but cow up at Queen Marg. station for 2 years, except a couple of times when they killed a chook or someone gave them a sheep, they never had fish so I’ve eaten almost nothing else since I got here. Told her this and she said, Other way round with her, Mr Tate has a sheep and wheat farm so she’d grown up seldom eating anything but mutton and lamb; roast chook occasionally and a bit of stewing steak was considered exotic. Never ate pork or fish or, it seems, anything interesting – v. like on the cattle station. I ordered chicken chasseur. Salad, because I never got enough of that either up on the Station. Thinking about pudding I said I might have the Iles Flottantes, and she said, very quietly and so deadpan that I almost fell for it, “But the eels might be tinned, they’re not indigenous to Australia.” OK, now I write it down it’s not all that funny, it was the way she said it. But no, it is rather clever, a bilingual pun. If I hadn’t already fallen in love with her I would’ve there and then. Wine – she said she didn’t know anything about it, Mr and Mrs Tate believing it is the Devil’s Device. I ordered what I hoped was decent stuff, then asked why she always called her parents Mr and Mrs Tate, not “Mum and Dad” ect. She gave me a long, very steady look across the table and said, “I hope this doesn’t shock you, but I call them that because I am adopted, so they are not my parents, that’s been made very clear, and also because I loathe them.” I suppose I was a bit taken aback, the way she said it, but I told her I felt the same way about my father, altho he is my father, but I’m v. fond of Mum although she’s a bit of a drip. (But that’s because of Ld Randall.) Meal and wine were excellent but the best thing is that we talked all the time, about everything, anything and nothing, about books and films and music and England and Australia, I’ve never found it so easy to talk to anyone in my life. We like most of the same things although she’s read much more than I have, serious stuff, except for Dickens, rather a shame because Uncle Louis and I used to read him together, but you can’t have everything. She loves books, loves history and Shakespeare and so on, not my sort of thing, but then, as she was quick to admit, she’s not much good at maths or economics. At least we like the same music, classical as well as pop and rock and roll. I’ve missed an awful lot of new music, and films of course, in the time I was up in the N.T. Well, finally, when we’d had coffee, it was time to go, but because we’d got there early-ish it was still well before 10. She didn’t have to be back at that hostel till 12. I suggested going for a walk – and I said it, I said, “Because we can’t be apart, can we.” And she said “No, we can’t.” But it was raining when we got outdoors so we settled on a drive down to the beach. Turned the car radio on, and we held hands all the way. At the beach we found a place to park where we could watch the sea. With another girl, I might have tried to kiss her, or more, but it’s not like that with us, it’s serious and she’s not the fast type or a moll. It’s not that I don’t fancy her, I do, she’s quite sexy in a very quiet sort of way that I don’t think she knows about, but after all I don’t know all that much about girls, do I, this was as new to me as to her. I held her, and she snuggled against me, and we did kiss a couple of times but mostly we talked, had a cigarette or two, and it was enough to be together. I’ve never understood that before, that it can be like that. I love her, that’s all. Finally I had to take her back to her hostel (which is in the city and not v. far from my hotel) and we arranged to have lunch together tomorrow, and dinner, and then we can spend most of the weekend together. So here I am in bed, at 4 in the a.m., wide awake, writing a diary like someone out of Jane Austen or something, in love and wondering (perhaps you always do?) if it’s real and will last. Of course I’m not going to Sydney or anywhere else now, I’m staying here to be with her.

  Love at first sight. It must run in the family. “Wondering if it it’s real and will last.” Well, it did for these two, didn’t it. But of course they had been linked by their extraordinary circumstances. Or was that too easy an explanation?

  Then I noticed a small “1” with a circle around it, in that turquoise ink. It was a sort of footnote, for as I turned the page I found a half-sheet of writing paper, headed “1”. On it, in Mum’s writing, was:

  I never knew until after his death that Adrian had kept this journal; it seemed unlike him, I’d thought he was not introspective or much interested in the past. But what he has written here is exactly right. That is how it happened, for both of us. I can’t explain it any more than Adrian could, but from the moment we met we knew we suited each other and had to be together. (How interesting, though, to read about how I appeared to A. I was so afraid of doing or saying the wrong thing, making a fool of myself; to me he was the most sophisticated person I’d ever met.)

  I was feeling seriously voyeuristic, now. Again I reminded myself that these papers had been kept in the knowledge that someone, some day, would probably read them. And anyway, now I’d started, I couldn’t stop.

  Saturday. More than a week now. Moved out of hotel into short-lease flat on edge of city. Difficult to be with C. – forgot to say: the Tates christened her Ruby Linda, which is worse than “Belinda”, but she said her first mother, her biological mother, had her christened Christina, she’s seen the baptism cert. She won’t forgive the Tates for not letting her keep what she considers her “real” name. So I said I’ll always call her Christina. That pleases her as long as I never call her “Tina” for short. So she’s Christina – might call her Tia for short, if she likes it. It’s hard to be with her as much as we both want because she says everyone in that bloody Dothegirls Hall she lives in gossips like mad and there’s one girl who knows the Tates and blabs to them every chance she gets. Also the inmates have to be in by 10 p.m. unless they get a “late key” so they can stay out till midnight, when the doors are bolted, the portcullis raised, ect etc etc and God help you if you stay out after that. I’ve found out that the Tates own a big house down at Glenelg, at the seaside beach, it was C.’s grandmother’s but when she died, when C. was 13, Mr Tate split the house into 3 flats. C. and Mrs T. lived in one of the flats while C. was at high school; Mr T. apparently stayed down on his farm, which is near Naracoorte down south. (Dixieland, C. calls it.) Then when C. finished school last year and got a job Mr T. put his foot down, apparently for the first time in his life because according to C. he is shit-scared of his wife (not that she used quite that word) and lets her get away with murder, but now he made Mrs T. move back to the farm, which she hates. (So does C. I said, But my home, Williamscourt, in England is in the country – she said rather grimly, “That’s different.” I suppose you could say that cattle station I was on is “in the country”; v. v. different.) But Mrs T. wouldn’t let C. live in the Glenelg flat, even sharing it with other girls, and instead dumped her in this hostel, which is a church-run place. It sounds as if Mrs T.’s one aim in life is to control C. and know what she’s doing all the time. So, what with C. only getting an hour for lunch, and choir practice on Thurs. nights and having to go to church on Sun. nights or the Tates will get to hear about it (she sings in the local church choir, the only way, she says, she can bear to sit through an hour of god-bothering), and the fact that she can’t stay out late v. often, we don’t get nearly as much time together as we want. Dinner at the hostel is 5.30-6.30, so sometimes she can get out between then and a bit after 9.30. She limits her “late key” nights so people won’t gossip – apparently she never used to go out all that much, except in a group on Sat. nights with her room-mate Kathleen and some friends. So people would notice, and talk, if she was out late too often. Bloody nuisance. At least we can lunch together fairly often, and last weekend we managed all day Sat. (late key again) and we drove south along the coast and C. showed me all the beaches, and taught me to body-surf, then we found a place where you can hire surf boards and there’s a bloke who’ll teach you, so I had a go. C. said she tried it once and never again, thanks very much, quite happy to sit on sand and read while I did my best not to drown. Sunday we went up into the h
ills (pretty, almost English-looking in places) and on to the wine making areas – hadn’t realised so much wine is made here, some of it pretty good; Aussie wine is a joke at home. Had to have her home in time for church on Sun. night, and just to be with her I went to church for the first time in donkeys years (Presbiterian church so I didn’t know the ritual). Anyway, nothing has changed, except to get better – I still love her and she loves me. I am going to ask her to marry me.

  Later. Proposed to C. She said she wants to marry me but can’t. Why not? Because the Tates will never let her, and it’s more than two years till she’s 21. I said, why wouldn’t they let her marry me, most people would be happy to see their daughter marry a rather well-off, well connected bloke. (One day I’ll have to tell C. how much dosh Uncle L. left me; it’s hard to drop into the conversation that you’re loaded, and I’ve got a funny feeling that so much money would frighten her.) Not so – Mr T. might agree, though he’d hate her to be so far away, in England, but Mrs T. will never agree. Why? – because, C. says, Mrs T. hates and resents her as much as she does Mrs T., and wouldn’t want her to be happy, and certainly would never lose control of her; despite hating C. she is very possessive, etc. Sounds an utter bitch. Perhaps C. is exaggerating? But when I hinted this she said to think of what I’ve said about my father, treble it, add a lot of malice, a vicious temper, and (C. has come to believe) barking insanity, and I’ll start to have some faint idea of what Mrs T. is like. Asked why Mrs T. hates her – she said, because Mrs T. had no kids in about 10 year of marriage and believed women who adopt always get pregnant, adopted C., didn’t get pregnant, therefore resents C. and has let her know it all her life. C. remembers one family Xmas when she was about 4, when Mrs T. went into one of her tantrums and said C. no use to her, was sick of her, wanted to send her back to orphanage. (!!!) After that C.’s grandmother lived with them for about 6 months, probably to protect C. or because Mr T. could no longer cope with the Mrs. But can they really be as bad as C. says?