Garden of Stars

by Rose Alexander

  Sarah bit her lip to avoid biting his head off. “Don’t be ridiculous, of course it’s nothing like that,” she continued, as calmly as she could. “In fact, I’m still trying to get to grips with it myself.”

  She poured herself more wine, shovelled a forkful of risotto into her mouth and tried to stave off the tears that were welling up again.

  “What she told me is that she had a baby, a long time ago. A baby called Isabel. She – the baby – died at two months old, of cot death, we assume.” Sarah held her fork suspended over her plate as she spoke.

  Hugo put down his wine glass. “Oh my God. But you didn’t know that, did you?”

  “No. No one did. No one at all, as far as I know.” Sarah told Hugo everything that Inês had revealed to her, except the part about Isabel’s father.

  “But Hugo, you know that she’s not at all well now. To find the grave, I’ll have to go to Portugal – right away, as soon as possible. There’s no time to be lost.” Sarah was rushing all the information out at breakneck speed, as if the faster she spoke the quicker she could make it all happen. “It’s OK though, I’ve got another article to write so it will cost hardly anything.”

  Hugo looked stunned. “Of course you have to do it for her, before it’s too late.”

  “I think I do, Hugo. I wouldn’t ask otherwise. I’m really worried about her and I would never forgive myself if I hadn’t done everything I could.”

  “Yes, I understand.” Hugo laid his cutlery on his plate and leant back in his chair, rubbing his face with his hand, the grey-tinged gingery brown stubble of late evening rasping against his skin.

  “I’ll only be a way for a week and mum will help. I really don’t know where I’m going to start though. I mean, there’s no one to ask.”

  Hugo was shaking his head as she spoke as if to emphasise that he didn’t know how she would do it, either. Sarah pushed the remains of her risotto around on her plate, arranging the grains in rows and then squashing them between the tines of her fork. “I’ll have to search the public record offices, I think that’s the only way. But I have to do it. I have to.”

  She was conscious of repeating herself, but Hugo had to understand how important this was.

  “Yes,” said Hugo, his tired eyes forcing themselves to brightness to encourage Sarah in achieving something that meant so much. “You have to go. I agree.”

  Even as he was saying the words, Sarah had leapt up from the table, sweeping up their plates and leaning into the dishwasher to stack them, hiding her guilt under purposeful activity, turning away her face so that Hugo could not discern the extent of her betrayal.

  Later, at her computer, Sarah opened her email. Scott was in Portugal all month, he’d told her that. She would let him know that she would be there, too.

  The irony of the fact that it was Inês’s ancient tragedy, and Hugo’s permission for her absence, that might enable her to see him again did not escape her.

  Carrie, too, was stunned by Inês’s story. She and Sarah had made up after their tiff; Carrie apologising for seeming unsympathetic and Sarah for being so edgy. Sarah had brought Carrie the last of her baby stuff – the umbrella-folding buggy, the portable high chair and some clothes. Carrie grabbed the bag containing sleepsuits, cardigans and vests.

  “It’s a bit girly!”

  Sarah laughed. “Well, yes, duh-brain… I’ve got two girls in case you hadn’t noticed. But I picked out the most unisex stuff I could find. There’s quite a lot that’s plain white.”

  “I’m a mother of three beautiful boys and I’m desperate for this one to be a girl,” groaned Carrie, screwing her face up in anguish. “I’m so obsessed that I haven’t allowed anything remotely feminine in the house up to now, in case I jinx it.”

  Sarah put her head in her hands in mock despair. “Carrie, I think the sex of the baby is determined by now. The clothes do not have the power to alter the course of destiny.”

  “You’re right, and thank you. Let’s eat and hope for the best.”

  Sarah had brought lunch, a tomato tart and salad, which she dished up on Carrie’s eclectic selection of ancient crockery, none of it without at least one chip or crack. They sat at the kitchen table in Carrie’s Georgian townhouse in Stockwell, which stood bravely in a single terrace surrounded by lowering tower blocks. Carrie liked to say that she knew the area was coming up because she no longer had to go to the next postcode to buy brown bread and The Guardian, although quails’ eggs were still impossible to find.

  Having broken the news, Sarah tried not to dwell on the subject of Inês’s baby. She knew how paranoid pregnancy makes you feel, how quickly and easily fear can grow and become obsessive – even though Carrie was well past the miscarriage stage now, there were always so many things that could go wrong. She told Carrie about Inês’s request to find the baby’s burial place and moved the conversation on, asking questions about Carrie’s business, her boys, their house renovation plans. All talk of Scott was studiously avoided but Sarah’s hope that Carrie had enough other things on her mind with the impending birth to have forgotten about him was soon shattered.

  “Guess what I did the other day?” Carrie announced, filling a brief lull in the conversation.

  “Knowing you as I do, I don’t think I can possibly answer a question like that without some sort of a clue,” responded Sarah. “It could be anything.”

  “I Googled Celina!” Carrie sounded ridiculously triumphant.

  Sarah was floored. “As I said, literally anything,” she muttered, once she’d regained the power of speech. And then, looking Carrie in the eye, “Are you taking the piss?”

  “Do I look like I’m taking the piss?” Carrie rolled her eyes in exaggerated retaliation.

  “I don’t know, what do you look like when you’re taking the piss?”

  “Not like this.”

  “So why did you do it? What were you trying to achieve?” Sarah asked, insistently.

  Carrie’s online detective work struck Sarah as a kind of trespassing, not into Scott and Celina’s world. Into her own. But of course that was ridiculous; Google was open to everyone, Carrie was free to look up anyone she wanted, as was anyone else.

  “Just wanted to see what she looks like these days. You don’t need to worry, basically, she’s frumpy and middle-aged. She’s certainly hasn’t got anything you haven’t got.” Carrie put her knife and fork together on her plate. “That was delicious, thank you. Apart from big boobs, that is.”

  Sarah could not stop herself from smiling at Carrie’s incorrigible nosiness and her biting tongue. But underneath the humour, her mind was in turmoil. Carrie still had no idea how much it mattered to her, how the very mention of Celina’s name sent white-hot bolts of envy shooting through her body.

  “I’m joking, Sarah, as you well know,” Carrie said, perhaps sensing Sarah’s vulnerability. She got a bar of chocolate out of the fridge and peeled the silver wrapper open. “You always were ten times more gorgeous than her, and now you can make that about 100 times.”

  Sarah took a deep breath. “Thanks.”

  Later that day, back at home, Sarah could not stop herself from also Googling Celina Calvin. Sitting in her attic, where she spent so much of her time alone, she examined photos of a woman in her late forties, on the heavy side and with greying hair, who at best could be described as plain. She tried to recall the only picture she had ever seen of this person, all those years ago, but could not reconcile what she remembered of her as slim, deeply tanned and dark-haired with what she saw now. She realised what a shallow person she must be when she wondered what Scott could find attractive about such an unprepossessing woman.

  On Celina’s blog, entitled Home Time Life of a Hockey Mom, she wrote of her perfect life, reestablished so quickly after returning to her home country, shored up by the church and the community, by bake sales and barbecues. She eulogised about her twins, a boy and girl, brilliant scholars, linguists, sportspeople, friends both, and about her amazing husband, w
hom she adored beyond measure.

  Sarah read and scrutinised for a long time. Of course Celina wouldn’t broadcast to the world, not to mention her own children, that her husband was on the cusp of having an affair and her marriage was falling apart. Even if she knew.

  Would she?

  26

  Porto, 2010

  In Porto, the heat of high summer had abated, but the river Douro was low and the streets tired and dusty after weeks with no rain. Sarah had found the register office for the area that John and Inês had been living in when Isabel was born, and hoped that the death might also be recorded there, even though it had happened elsewhere. The office building was old and the stone walls dirty with traffic pollution, but the door handle and bell push shone with polish and elbow grease. She had explained what she was looking for as best she could on the phone, and made an appointment to come in. At the reception desk, a smartly dressed woman in her mid-fifties smiled solicitously and welcomed her to the city archives.

  “I’ll take you to where the records are kept, and show you the books for the dates you have, but you’ll have to look through them page by page, I’m afraid,” Senhora da Conceicão told her. “We haven’t had them all put onto film yet. However, as you know the exact dates for both the birth and death, it shouldn’t be too hard to find.”

  “That’s fine,” said Sarah. “No problem at all. I’ve got all day.”

  In fact, I’ve got more than that, she thought to herself. I’ve got twenty-four hours to fill until Scott arrives.

  It was headache-inducing work, turning page after dusty page, deciphering the unfamiliar style of handwriting, and despite her close perusal of every entry in March, April and May 1938 she found nothing relating to Isabel. She asked Senhora da Conceicão for her advice.

  “The problem is that if the baby did not die here, and was not buried here, the death may never have been registered here,” she shook her head, sympathetic but unable to help.

  “Is there any way I can find out where it would be listed?” asked Sarah. “All I know is that she died somewhere near Lisbon, probably Cascais or Carcavelos, but my aunt doesn’t know the address of the place they were staying and she’s very vague about the details.”

  “You could try looking for the baptism certificate,” suggested the Senhora. “Sometimes they are cross-referenced with information about the death, but that would only happen if there were some kind of mistake, such as the death not having been entered properly.” She shrugged, as if a mistake of this magnitude was hard to imagine.

  “Unfortunately the baby was not baptised. Would it help if I found a record of the birth, do you think?” Sarah was starting to feel desperate. This was not going well.

  “It might be useful, I suppose.” Senhora da Conceicão did not look at all convinced. Sarah looked at her perfectly made-up face, smart clothes and petite hands. She had the same European elegance and poise that she so admired in Inês; a gracefulness that defied age.

  “Can I have a look through those records, if it’s not too much trouble?” she ventured, conscious of being a pain but knowing she could leave no stone unturned in this quest.

  The Senhora brought the books from the archive and again Sarah began to slowly leaf through thick, yellowing pages that smelt of age and dust and a bygone era of handwritten ledgers and fountain pens. And then suddenly, there it was. A record of the birth of Isabel Rosa Morton. So she was real. Of course she was. Sarah had seen the photo, the old and faded picture of a tiny newborn and a tired but glowing mother. But now it was in front of her, in black and white, and she was no longer hunting a shadow or a figment of an elderly lady’s imagination, but searching for an actual baby.

  She ran her finger over the faded black ink and the slightly bumpy surface of the paper, and imagined Isabel now. She would be an old lady herself, in her seventies. But Sarah pictured her small and sprightly, with Inês’s dancing eyes and radiant smile. She would surely have had children of her own, and grandchildren by now, who might be a similar age to Honor and Ruby, and they would all have played together, as Inês had done with her cousins in the cork forest and on the Alentejan beaches throughout her childhood.

  Her thoughts were disturbed by a discreet cough from her right-hand side. She looked up to see Senhora da Conceicão, now wearing a smart short-sleeved red linen jacket and carrying her handbag.

  “I’m so sorry, but it’s our lunch break now, and we are shut until 3pm. You’re welcome to come back later.”

  “Thank you. I think I’ve probably found all I can here. I’ll have to resume the search in Lisbon.” Sarah shut the record book and handed it to the Senhora, who took it carefully in two hands and placed it on a shelf for return to the archive.

  “Do you have any ideas as to how I could go about it there, when I have so little information?”

  Senhora da Conceicão pursed her lips together thoughtfully. “There is something you could try. It’s a long shot – but it’s a possibility.”

  Sarah looked at her, eyebrows raised questioningly.

  The Senhora reached for a piece of paper and a pen. “I’m thinking of the English cemetery. It might be worth investigating.”

  She bent down to write on the paper, and so missed the sight of Sarah’s jaw dropping open in astonishment.

  “What did you say? English cemetery? Oh my goodness, that might be it. Where is it? Do you have the address?”

  She should have known such a place existed, but the trip had been planned at such short notice, just a couple of days and she’d had time to do only a fraction of the research she normally would have.

  The Senhora smiled and waved her arm at Sarah in a ‘calm down’ gesture. “I’m just writing it down for you now. I think it’s open every day but you might have to phone them to find out.”

  She handed the scrap of paper to Sarah.

  “I believe that it’s fairly easy to find. There’s a park opposite, the Jardim da Estrela, and a tram stop nearby that’s probably the most convenient way to get there. Or you could always take a taxi – maybe that would be better as the matter is so urgent to you.” She replaced the lid of her pen, deftly. “And now we really do have to leave as my colleague will be waiting to lock up.”

  Sarah got up, hastily grabbing her cardigan and bag and almost knocking over the chair as she did so. “I’m so sorry to have kept you,” she apologised, as she followed the Senhora to the door. “But thank you so much for your help. I really appreciate it.”

  They were on the front steps now, where a young man was waiting, a bunch of keys dangling from the fingers of his right hand. Senhora da Conceicão turned to Sarah and smiled warmly. “You are most welcome. Good luck with your search.”

  The door slammed shut, the keys turned in the locks and she and the young man were gone. Sarah sat down on the steps in the full glare of the sun and shut her eyes. She still had the paper the Senhora had given her in her hand. A few moments later she opened her eyes, folded it carefully and put it into her handbag. She would deal with it when she got to Lisbon. For tomorrow, Scott would be here and they had four whole days and nights to spend together.

  She went back to the hotel, lay on the bed trying to rest. She felt as though she had sleepwalked into this situation; had followed a pre-designated path that she was powerless to alter or deviate from. This was really it. By this time tomorrow, she and Scott would be driving to the hotel in the Douro together, and when they got there, they would be sharing a room, a bed, and without doubt they would have sex. So she would be an adulteress, a mother who was shamelessly betraying her husband, her children, and by extension, her friends and family, all of whom thought she had a perfect marriage, lived a perfect life.

  And yet I have no intention of stopping it, no intention of calling him and telling him not to come.

  The sight of Scott in the car the next day, sweeping up to the hotel entrance with the roof down, turned Sarah’s stomach inside out. She hesitated for a few moments before stepping out from the
shadows, savouring the anticipation of their greeting.

  “Shall we go?” he asked, as she did up her seatbelt and pulled her sunglasses over her eyes.

  She nodded, incapable of speech, not caring where they were headed because in that moment it didn’t matter where they went or how long it took. All that mattered was being together, her and Scott.

  The car ate up the miles, the engine quiet, tyres smooth on tarmac. There was hardly any traffic. Sarah had expected to be nervous, but instead she felt nothing but a deep sense that to be sitting by Scott’s side was right, was where she was meant to be. So much had happened since their chance encounter. All their emails, and chats, and phone calls and video calls. All had cemented both their knowledge of, and desire for, each other. Right now, London and everything it contained seemed to belong to some different Sarah, who existed in a parallel universe, two lives lived side-by-side but with no connection. She wandered if that was how she had allowed it all to happen; because it wasn’t really her but a phantom Sarah trying out a different role, an alternative life.

  Wisps of cloud drifted in the sky above a landscape parched and brown from the long, hot summer. Banks of eucalyptus and pine trees flashed past, interspersed by tenacious wild honeysuckles and brooms. Sarah saw a sign for Amarante and pointed it out to Scott. She had, of course, explained about Isabel’s death and the search that she must undertake for her grave, but she did not want the sadness of that story to taint their time together. The few days they had were the ones when she would be working on the article, not looking for the baby, and the article was essential because it was funding the search. Spotting the name of the town that seemed to be so intrinsically linked to the unfolding of the heartbreaking tale made her temporarily forget that resolve.

  Scott glanced over to her. “Poor Inês. I can’t imagine what she must have been through.”

  “Yes.” Sarah nodded, worry about her great-aunt causing her to bite the inside of her lip. “I must go there – to Amarante – some day. I’d like to see the place where Inês spent time…before.”