The Hobbema Prospect

by John Buxton Hilton

  ‘You’re asking me what sort of friends Mrs Cresswell made? There was nothing wrong in her looking for a father for her child, was there? And it wasn’t to her discredit if she gave them their cards when they did not come up to scratch.’

  ‘Was there anyone in particular?’ Howard asked. ‘Was there any friendship that lasted longer than the rest? Was there any that really looked as if it was going to come off? Or any that packed up more spectacularly than the rest?’

  ‘I don’t know why you are getting on to me like this.’

  And Anne intervened.

  ‘Don’t bully poor Mrs Harrington. Don’t you think we ought to tell her why we are really here? She only knew Mother as Cresswell. What about Cossey? A name you’ll perhaps have heard in the news, Mrs Harrington.’

  Mrs Harrington was slow to associate Jean Cresswell with the new identity. The revelation bewildered and distressed her. But it did not, could not, lead her on to tell them anything useful.

  ‘All I remember is a very happy mother, laughing most of the time. It’s a good thing, I always say, that we don’t know in advance what life holds for us.’

  After they had left the avenue, Howard went on to something more positive. They went the round of the Broadstairs estate agents, of whom there were few enough for this to be a feasible proposition. In eighteen years there had been many new faces, but he came across one staid old firm whose proprietor, an elderly man called Stopford, talked as if he had been deprived of an audience for years. He was the sort of man who never destroyed a file, and when Howard mentioned the house they had just pinpointed, he recognized it immediately as a property that had been through his hands more than once.

  ‘In nineteen-sixty-three, you say? That should not surpass the wit of man.’

  He established Jean Cresswell’s as a long furnished letting, twelve months from November, 1962. Rent had been paid in advance and £150 deposited for damage and contingencies. Stopford had kept every item of correspondence, including the letter of initial inquiry, in handwriting that was undoubtedly Anne’s mother’s. The address from which she had written was c/o Agnew, Waterman’s Cottage, Spurlsby Drove, Lincs.

  It was a matter of routine to ask the Lincolnshire police for a discreet fill-in on Waterman’s Cottage. In the event, discretion was superfluous, since the row of three of which the Agnews’ home had been one had been converted into a single dwelling eight years ago, and was now occupied by a professor emeritus of political economy. The Agnews, an elderly couple even in Jean Cossey’s youth, had died: it was their tenure of the cottage that had for a long time held up the sale of the place: the other two houses had been crumbling vacant for years.

  What the rural CID did not include in their report—because they knew nothing of Anne Lawson’s dreams—was that Spurlsby Drove was a grassy, sandy track lined by tall trees. As one entered it, one saw a large house framed by a proscenium arch of high branches.

  Chapter Twelve

  Anne was not fit to go to her office the morning after the Broadstairs trip. This was obvious to Howard, who was frightened by the state he saw her in today. He urged her to call in the doctor. But between ten o’clock and half past, she risked standing on her feet and came down to the kitchen to see if she could find something bland enough to try to eat.

  Mrs Lawson was in astringent mood—that was how Anne interpreted it. She seemed to be telling her daughter-in-law to pull herself together. She reminisced about her own single pregnancy, how she had carried Howard with little noticeable inconvenience or discomfort. Moreover, Mrs Lawson felt that yesterday’s gadding about in Kent—those were the words that she was so ill-advised as to use—had been, to say the least, imprudent.

  ‘That was work,’ Anne told her, hitting back vigorously. And that led to a discussion—not their first—as to whether a woman ought to go out to work when her husband was compelled to keep such irregular hours as Howard. The two women did not speak from the same standpoint.

  ‘As for earning, I don’t see the necessity for it in your case. You need have virtually no overheads while you’re living with us. Howard’s father and I—’

  Anne thought that this silly battle had already been fought and won. She had insisted on paying their share of the housekeeping. She tartly reminded her mother-in-law of that. She had found the remnants of a barley cordial that she thought she fancied, but as it tasted old and stale, she emptied her glass down the sink. Mrs Lawson took the gesture as petulance. She upbraided Anne. Anne came back in fury.

  ‘Howard and I will move over to our house as soon as it is fit to camp out in. I am now leaving for work, and if I don’t come home this evening, it will be because I have found somewhere temporary to live.’

  Mrs Lawson was desolate. What had she said? she later asked Howard. Anyone could see that the child was unwell—but she ought to make some effort to control herself.

  The room in which Anne worked was heavy with cigarette-smoke, but there was a limit to the addictions that a woman could ask her colleagues to abjure. Cigarette-smoke turned her stomach over; the sight of yet someone else lighting up was of itself enough to set her off again. Kenworthy came down into the office to check on something. His pipe was seldom out of his mouth. He was smoking it now. He put a match to the bowl.

  ‘I thought you weren’t coming in today.’

  She fanned the blue cloud away from her face. There were eyes in the room staring at her. One did not treat Kenworthy like that.

  ‘I felt better after the first hour. Maybe I can stick it out—if I don’t end up kippered.’

  He made no comment, turned to speak to the clerk he had come to see. There was silence at the other desks. Kenworthy had never played the martinet in this department, though a reputation had preceded him. Anne applied herself with what concentration she could muster to her stack of files.

  She had already sent up to Kenworthy the one about Stella Davidge, but he had so far not disclosed his reaction to it. He must surely consider it irrelevant. Or if he wanted it followed up, he might have delegated it to someone who had not even started on it yet. Perhaps he had not even got round to reading it himself.

  In 1959, in the heart of Metroland, in Northwood Hills, Stella Davidge, a sixteen-year-old schoolgirl, had become pregnant. Good family, good home. Her father was an assessor of fire insurance. There had been nothing specific on file about the mother, but Anne thought she could imagine her: Metroland, a senior insurance man’s wife. Nothing at all was known about the father of the baby; suspicions were always less than helpful. Stella Davidge had shown remarkable firmness in the way she had kept her lips sealed. But she had not been shrewd in her practical handling of her problem. She had kept her condition dark until well after the deadline for an abortion: fear of facing up to the brouhaha no doubt. Her parents had not had an inkling. Not an inkling? Hadn’t her mother ever seen her in the bath? Oh, she admitted that she thought that her daughter was getting plumpish, but she had put that down to puppy-fat.

  Of course, the parents had been crushingly kind, magnificently forgiving—but without any shred of real understanding. After the foundation-rocking shock came the master-plan: adoption, change of residence. For years the Davidges had talked about moving up into leafy Bucks: Missenden or Wendover. Stella could go to a new school. Her undoubted university prospects would not be in jeopardy. The trouble was, Stella somehow got the absurd notion into her hopelessly immature brain that she wanted to keep the child. How, keep it? Where? With what support? And with what prospects for either of them?

  Private nursing home. Battery of persuaders. The GP was clearly being pressurized by the parents. Yet one particular welfare officer was obtusely on the girl’s side. After ten days, Stella and child disappeared. The Met alerted all nets. Private eyes made fat fees without results. Davidge called in the Salvation Army—magnificent reputation in such cases—made a hefty donation. No trace.

  The file was left open. It had not been reviewed for years. Why should it be, keeping co
mpany as it was with thousands of others?

  So could Anne’s true maiden name have been Davidge? Of course, there were some details that would have to be made to fit. It would mean that Jean Cossey had never told the truth about her age. And hadn’t everyone said what a young mother she seemed? Had she been Stella Davidge? And if so, what sort of chromosomes did that give Anne? What sort of child had Stella Davidge been?

  Irresponsible? Precocious? Nympho? Or just damned unlucky—and stubborn?

  Come to that, how much of the nympho had always been trying to get out of Jean Cossey? There had been some stories about her mother that Anne had never told Howard—hadn’t, latterly, cared to remind herself of. In the romantic innocence of childhood, Anne had sometimes felt that her mother was besotted by men. If she hadn’t got a man-friend at any given moment, she was either looking at one or for one. Some of those she seemed to think were heroes were dead-beat grotty—even in the eyes of a fatherless child.

  There had been an incident that Anne had succeeded in forgetting, but that jack-in-the-boxed disgustingly into memory from time to time. It had been in Slodden, just before they had mercifully pulled out of Lancashire. She was seven. Their old landlady had gone into hospital for a few days for tests: something said in whispers about her bowels. Jean Carter’s friend of the moment was a salesman called Arthur, who came from the other side of Bolton and had an estate car with women’s dresses crowded on hangers in the back. Anne knew, with the indeceivable sagacity of childhood, that a lot of complicated pretence was going on to hide the fact that Arthur was going to stay the night. The sounds of doors and of feet on stairs had to be elaborately concealed from the neighbours.

  During the night, Anne heard disconcerting noises through the wall. It was as if her mother were tossing and turning sleepless on the ancient springs of her bed. And she seemed to be groaning with pain at every exhalation from her lungs. Thinking her mother ill, the child pattered along the cold linoleum, out on to the landing, to tap on the door. After a delay, with an upheaving creak from the bed, her mother opened up to her.

  ‘What is it? Why are you out of bed?’

  After she had been tucked up again, Anne heard a giggle in the next room. It was that giggle that she resented most of all—resented it all the more later, when she knew beyond doubt what it had all been about. It was all so furtive, so unclean. Well: hadn’t she and Howard had to be furtive, too, once or twice, in their early days? No—not furtive: just careful. They hadn’t had a child lying awake in the next room. And the culminating moment, in that bedroom in Spain, had been the epitome of all that was clean and natural.

  There had been another thing, which had seemed irrational at the time. When Anne had come home with news that she had got the post in the records office at Scotland Yard, Jean Cossey had been anything but wildly enthusiastic. Later, she had tried to make a weak joke out of it.

  ‘Well—we shall have to look out, shan’t we? God knows what you’ll be able to find out about some of us.’

  A very weak joke indeed. And it wasn’t that Anne’s mother had ever shown any sympathy with law-breakers. But she had certainly shown no pleasure when Anne had launched herself on that career.

  ‘Are you doing anything special this lunch-time, Anne?’

  That was Jane Dewhurst calling across the office.

  ‘Nothing—except avoiding the sight and smell of food.’

  ‘Poor you! Do a swap with me? I need to catch William—and I’ve only just remembered he’s on early turn.’

  ‘Gladly.’

  It was a stroke of luck, to be left holding the fort while the others went out. Anne opened every window that would open, rejoiced in the cool draughts, emptied into the waste-paper basket a couple of ashtrays that revolted her. And she took her time over the next few files.

  She had always enjoyed lone-wolf duty. This was how she had been working the day she had first met Howard. Shiner had sent him down to try to find some hook-up between one of their cases and something that had happened ages ago. Had it been love at first sight? If not that, at least fascination at first sight—for both of them.

  She lifted a file-cover: ELTERSLEY: Allison Elizabeth, Arnos Grove, April 1960.

  Then the door opened with a token rap, and Howard came in. And the scene was not exactly as before. She hadn’t been glorying in open windows then. Papers hadn’t been fluttering about on other people’s desks. Howard came in and put a sketchy kiss on her cheek.

  ‘I saw Jane in the lift. She said you were standing in for her. Are you fit to be here?’

  ‘I’m as well here as anywhere.’

  ‘It’s all very well saying that—’

  ‘It comes and goes, Howard. At the moment it’s tolerable.’

  ‘Hadn’t you better ask the doctor to give you something?’

  ‘After thalidomide? All I can do is soldier on.’

  She tried the right kind of smile, but he did not come back with anything convincing.

  ‘Darling—what have you been saying to my mother?’

  Mrs Lawson must have rung him at work. Typical. Didn’t she know how men hated that?

  ‘I’m sorry, Howard—but she really did go too far this morning.’

  ‘Mightn’t you have misunderstood?’

  ‘Howard—which of us are you going to believe?’

  Nausea again—brought on by this, she supposed. But she was objective enough to ask herself whether she was sheltering behind it. She tried to be fair; but sheer physical misery prevailed.

  ‘I don’t want to go into all the things that she actually said. It’s all so trivial.’

  ‘Trivial it is indeed—little things looming large.’

  ‘I have something large looming inside me at this moment.’

  ‘I know that. And all of us want to do everything for you we can.’

  ‘There’s nothing any of you can do until this stage passes.’

  ‘I know that too. But I do want to help. And you must help yourself, too.’

  ‘Is that what your mother says? Well, go on, don’t shirk it: what has she sent you to say to me? To pull myself together?’

  ‘Look, Anne—don’t get this wrong. Nobody’s criticizing. Everybody understands. You’ve come through a terrible time. But you’ve got to hold firm—’

  ‘I was under the impression that I was holding firm. I haven’t had a miscarriage yet. Is that what your mother wants?’

  She knew she was being unreasonable. But it was less trouble than being reasonable—and less answerable. Howard was lost. It was not the sort of situation he had bargained for—either from marriage or from her. She told herself he was inadequate. He would stay a sergeant all his life. He could not cope. He was inept. This twist in their relationship invited brutal counter-tactics.

  ‘I’m not asking you to choose between us, Howard. It hasn’t quite come to that yet.’

  ‘Anne—it’s not like you to talk like this. The two women I think most of in the world—and you can’t get on together—’

  ‘You’ll have to decide which side you’re on, won’t you?’

  ‘Why should it come to that? It takes two—’

  ‘No—it takes one. I’m not what was hoped for you. That is made plain every time I open my mouth in that house.’

  ‘Only if that’s the way you see and hear things.’

  ‘Well, let me tell you this: I don’t know how much longer I can take this. I am trying, and I will try. But I can’t guarantee myself against the sort of attack that I had to face this morning. And if I don’t come home one of these evenings, you’ll know it’s because I can’t face any more of it.’

  ‘Darling—’

  ‘That word is becoming a debased currency.’

  The phone rang. She had to take it. It was someone from West Sussex, progress-chasing a report he’d asked Jane for earlier in the day. Anne found the papers on Jane’s desk and took a long time reading from them aloud at dictation speed. By the time she had hung up, three of the oth
ers were back. Howard could do no more than plant another dry peck on her cheek and make sheepishly for the door.

  ‘See you this evening.’

  ‘I dare say.’

  She did not go to eat when she was relieved. She walked down to the Abbey, put her nose into the Dean’s Yard, a setting which had had a sedative effect on her before now but which failed to move her today. Her eyes smarted when she thought of the things that she and Howard had said to each other. She was back at her grindstone by three o’clock.

  ELTERSLEY: Allison Elizabeth, Arnos Grove, 1960—

  It was a story familiar in recent years—a pram-theft from outside a supermarket. The baby had vanished and one of the things that raised hopes of early retrieval had been that it was no ordinary pram. Almost brand new, with prominent springs and high wheels, it could well be unique within a five-mile radius. But it did not show up. Questionnaires produced shoppers who had seen it being pushed both by the mother and the presumed thief. A description of the latter was assembled from a number of sources, and there was convincing agreement: a young woman, certainly not more than twenty, in waist-length nylon fur and light tan plastic boots. That led to interviews with various women—but not to the one that mattered. The media helped. An identical pram was paraded by a policewoman of the right build in the right mufti. Nothing led to the discovery of the Eltersley baby.

  So could it have been Jean Cossey who had taken her? And if so, for God’s sake why? Insatiable maternal longing after a stillbirth? Jean Cossey had had well-rounded maternal instincts: Anne recognized that now. Had Mr Camel-Leopard been someone who knew about that callous theft? Was it possible—every memory and sentiment in Anne wanted to reject it—that her mother could do so barbarous a thing? And if she had, in some moment of aberration, in which case it was wrong to think in terms of barbarity, what did that make Anne? According to these papers, she’d be the daughter of a man who maintained machinery in a sweet factory. How did Ronald Eltersley compare with Peter Burne Pennyman, Shipping Clerk? It was nevertheless another dossier to bring forward for Kenworthy.