“Impossible, rather. No, by the wrong sort I meant—well, it started when she gave a lift to Halifax to a girl who had missed her bus. I say girl advisedly, because I believe she was six or seven years younger than May, though she didn’t look it, and I suspect she was quite as—or more—worldly-wise than May was. When May got back to school that day—she’d had a dental appointment—she was full of what an interesting girl she’d met, how the best people didn’t always go to university or teachers’ college. And that was the beginning of it.”
“Was this girl called Jean Mannering?”
Mrs. Southwell was visibly disappointed.
“Oh, you know. Why am I wasting my time?”
“You’re not wasting your time. I know very little about her.”
Mrs. Southwell twisted her mouth.
“Bright. Talented. A bit of an actress. And a lesbian. That was the problem. May became quite erratic and unreliable. Where before she would do anything I needed done, without fuss, after she met the Mannering girl she became forgetful, or she would do what I’d asked, but in a slipshod way.”
“Was this because she was having an affair with Jean Mannering?”
“I didn’t say that.” She held up her hand, as if to deplore an impertinent question from the class. “I don’t know. Why would she? A young married woman with a talented husband and a new baby. But I think there was a lot of pressure, which left her bewildered, uncertain what she felt or what she wanted. I think she was torn apart.”
“It sounds as if she was attracted.”
“I hope not. I hope she was too sensible. Don’t get me wrong. I am not against lesbianism. But I have grave doubts about that particular woman. It was all surface with Miss Mannering. She’s done all sorts of things with her life in the years since she met your mother, and landed up in the Anglican church.”
“Nothing particularly odd or disgraceful about that, is there?”
“I mean in it. As a vicar or parson or something.”
Eve was extremely surprised, but her suspicions of Evelyn Southwell kept her from showing it.
“There are lots of female vicars now. I believe more women than men are going into the church.”
“It seems very odd to me, after her having been in the tax office, then business, and doing every part imaginable in amateur dramatics.”
“Well,” said Eve, “if it comes to that, a priest or a vicar is a sort of actor, isn’t he? What he does in front of the congregation is ritual, repeating words he’s learned off.”
“Very clever,” said Evelyn Southwell, twisting her over-pink mouth. “I would have expected May’s daughter to be clever.”
“So you don’t know that there was an affair?”
“Well, I couldn’t have asked, could I?”
“I don’t see why not.”
“Thirty-five years ago? In a primary school? The word ‘lesbianism’ was hardly known, let alone spoken. The nearest one might go was the word ‘mannish,’ and that certainly didn’t apply to May, or to Jean Mannering, come to that. Whether or not there was an affair—and I wouldn’t like to say one way or another—it was clear that the relationship was not doing any good to May’s marriage.”
“How do you know that?”
“Jean was around to their house as soon as John left to go off to Glasgow. Stayed there all hours—all night often. She and May and sometimes the baby, you, would be out to pubs, visiting tourist spots, going to the theater—as often as not leaving you with Jean’s parents to babysit. To me, May seemed quite a different person. It was very sad, very depressing.”
Eve could not analyze her reactions to Evelyn’s words, but she felt that behind the words there was a sort of relish, a lip-smacking self-satisfaction that Evelyn was now “dishing the dirt” on Jean Mannering. Probably not even realizing that for most people of a younger generation than her, lesbianism was no longer dirt.
“And this all climaxed in my father taking off, supposedly for the sun, to a warmer, drier climate for his bad chest?”
“Yes, it did. You should ask the Mannering woman about that.”
“I will. What can you tell me?”
“Not very much. It happened while both May and John were away.”
“You mean she saw him off on the plane?”
“No, I don’t. May was at a weekend conference in Birmingham about teaching history to the nine-to-eleven-year-olds. There were so many young women teachers wanting to attend that they provided a crèche, which meant you could go with her. She later told me John was in Glasgow on the Thursday, as usual, but he flew straight down to London because he was seeing a London editor on Friday—the old News Chronicle, I think, or maybe the Observer—about a job. London would have suited him for all sorts of reasons, not least because he was very English—hardly Scottish at all, except by blood.”
Her voice faded, as if she was uncertain what had happened next.
“And?”
“The next thing people heard was that John had taken a plane directly from London to Australia. That sounds to me like Jean Mannering having pulled off some trick or other. Otherwise, why wouldn’t he say good-bye?”
Eve thought.
“Why? Why Jean Mannering? Couldn’t my mother and father have been in contact, realized their marriage was over and he took the plane to Australia to get right away from the situation?”
Evelyn Southwell smiled, not a pleasant sight. She had the answer.
“First, your father’s going was the end of the relationship between May and Jean. If what you said was right, the relationship should have flourished. Second, why would he fly? At that time going by sea was much cheaper, and he was not a rich man. It was much healthier too. Third, if there was an agreement between your parents, why not simply announce it? Things were much more straightlaced then, especially for teachers, but public opinion had at least caught up with the necessity, sometimes, for divorce. I was divorced myself.”
“Why did you divorce?” asked Eve, genuinely curious.
“I found after six months I didn’t even like him, and certainly didn’t want him near me.”
Eve thought for a bit.
“Why do you think May didn’t simply announce their separation, and the likelihood of a future divorce?”
“I can only guess. But the guess would be that after whatever Jean had done, May didn’t want anything more to do with her, but she didn’t want to accuse her of something that could become a police matter—might even have resulted in a prison sentence.”
Eve had to admit to herself that this was possible.
“But you seem to be fixing on the most complicated solution rather than the obvious one . . . What happened next? Did May suddenly announce that John was dead? Had there been communication between them over ownership of the house? Or over the custody of me?”
“If there was, May wouldn’t have made it public. That would have made it clear she and John had parted for good. And yes, eventually May did tell people that he was dead—the weak chest, which she’d used as the reason for his flitting to Australia. If he was truly dead, she took precious little notice of his death, beyond the announcement. By then John was just a memory for most of us anyway. We’d never had much to do with him, and ‘cartoonist for the Glasgow Tribune’ didn’t cut much ice in the Halifax district.”
“And I, if I asked about him, didn’t harbor thoughts of one day getting to meet him,” said Eve thoughtfully.
“Exactly. If John wasn’t dead, he was as good as.” Her old eyes once more gained sharpness as she looked to see if her brutal directness had wounded Eve. “If he was alive, she must have been terrified, your mother, that one day he might appear on the doorstep and ask to be reacquainted with you.”
“Ye-e-es,” said Eve, calmly. “And yet I never sensed anything like that. If I asked about my father, which I hardly ever did, she just answered matter-of-factly that he was dead. I never sensed that she was reluctant or embarrassed about lying, or afraid that one day she might
be proven a liar if he turned up.”
“But you know May: always cool, decided, unutterably competent. She could certainly cope with lying to a little girl.”
“Do you think so? To my knowledge I was never lied to by my mother.”
“Really. But of course there’s one possibility we haven’t considered: that your father was or is alive, but can’t come back.”
She meant, this malicious old bitch, because of criminal matters.
“Now you are entering the realms of fantasy,” Eve said.
“Not entirely. Your father could be ‘in the frame,’ I believe the phrase is, for something Jean Mannering dobbed him in for. If ever I met her in later years—which I did now and then—I used to make veiled references to your father’s disappearance, and she always reacted rather strangely to them.”
Eve raised her eyebrows.
“Reacted? Do you mean she responded?”
“Oh no. She’s much too sharp an operator to say anything at all.”
The feeble comment was accompanied by a malevolent glance. Eve got up. She felt distinctly hostile toward this old woman, but she was not sure why. The woman was still living with the feuds and prejudices of the past, but many old people refused to give up cherished hatreds. As she made her farewells and thanks, Evelyn smirked and looked at her craftily. And when she opened the door, she said:
“Do come and see me again. I have so many other, and happier memories of your mother, in the early years of course. And more of Miss Mannering too!”
As Eve got into her car and began the drive home, she felt quite bothered and upset. Evelyn’s last remark (addressed to Eve, like the early ones, as if she were a child at the back of assembly) was no doubt true to the facts of her relationship with May McNabb: they had got on well in the early years, but the closeness ended when her mother took up with Jean Mannering. That was perhaps natural, but the way Evelyn Southwell had said it implied . . . what? Something like: that she, Eve, was muckraking in her mother’s life, and ignoring all the good and positive aspects of it. Eve was quite sure this was not true. All she wanted to get at was the truth. That last remark about her having more to reveal about Miss Mannering suggested, if anything, that it was Mrs. Southwell who was the muckraker.
That evening she rang the number of Jean Mannering, unsure why exactly, or what she wanted to ask her.
“Halifax 342951.”
“Er—My name is Eve McNabb. Could I speak to Jean Mannering?”
“She’s in the kitchen. Nothing that can’t be put on hold. I’ll go and fetch her for you.”
The voice was full and penetrating. Another actress possibly. And a lover possibly. After a second or two came a familiar voice.
“Thank you, Dougie. Hello?”
“Oh, Miss Mannering. It’s Eve McNabb.”
“Hello again.”
“There was something I wanted to ask you. I’ve just been talking to Mrs. Southwell. She was my mother’s head—”
“I know Mrs. Southwell. Though mainly by reputation. It’s years since I saw her last. I’m surprised she’s still alive.”
“Very much so. And in pretty full control of her marbles—and of her long-cherished prejudices. I was told about you being in the church—actually ordained. I didn’t realize that.”
“I never tell people I meet casually. Why should I? A plumber doesn’t feel he has to proclaim his vocation. But it’s not something I’m ashamed or embarrassed about. It’s a cause of great joy.”
“I’m sure it is. Mrs. Southwell was telling me about the time my father took off—effectively ending the marriage, though that may not have been the intention at the time.”
“I don’t think it was. I do remember very little about it. I don’t even remember where he took off to, though thinking it over I got the idea it could have been Australia.”
“It was,” said Eve. She had wondered since their conversation whether her mother’s closest friend could really have forgotten such an important fact, even if, perhaps especially when, she and May had split up, for whatever reason, immediately after it had happened. “It was a weekend when both he and my mother were away from Yorkshire, apparently. He’d been up in Glasgow as usual, then flew down to London. My mother was at a conference in Birmingham.”
“Yes, I seem to remember that—dimly.”
“Do you remember what actually happened on those days?”
There was a moment’s pause.
“Well no, I don’t. I’m not sure I ever knew.”
“But how did you hear about his being no longer around?”
“May told me when she got back from Birmingham. Said—let me see—that his old doctor in Glasgow had diagnosed a chest infection that was really serious, and recommended a warmer climate.”
“Permanently, or as a cure?”
“As a cure, I think. And I should think May must have mentioned Australia then, though it went out of my mind.”
“I suppose you weren’t too upset?”
“No, I wasn’t. His departure gave me the playing field to myself. But I want to emphasize that May and I had not then had a sexual relationship and we never did have a sexual relationship. Never. Whatever old Mrs. Southwell may have told you.”
“Oh, I can take what she says with a pinch of salt. She’s a performer still, and will probably get back to me with further stuff to prolong the attention. That’s what she promised—or threatened. I won’t necessarily believe whatever she says, especially if it’s about you. She did seem to have her knife into you, to enjoy the thought of embarrassing you. But you don’t remember any more details, like where in Australia he went, do you?”
“No.”
“Thank you very much for your help.”
But when she put the phone down, Eve was more convinced than ever that Jean Mannering’s story did not, as it stood, hold water. She, more than anyone, must have been intent on finding out whether the marriage was interrupted, or really over. It must have been a topic of conversation between Jean and May, and whatever was said must have been unforgettable.
Yet Jean Mannering implied that a blanket was pulled down on the whole matter—or that her memory had wiped clean the slate. It didn’t make sense at all. Even if as soon as she got back from her weekend in Birmingham, May put an end to their relationship, something must have been said about the marriage.
Jean Mannering, more and more, did not seem to add up.
CHAPTER 10
Antipodean
Three days later Eve sat in the main reading room of Sydney University Library, sunshine streaming through the windows, with only a few students and jet lag for company, and surrounded by the files of those newspapers that had not been put on microfilm and the reels of those that had. It was going to be very difficult to concentrate, she decided.
The jet lag, like the journey, was horrendous. Somehow she was still living with the mixture of boredom and anger: the awfulness of the food, the puerility of the films, the nursery-school-like organization of the passengers’ time, where you half-expected the stewards and stewardesses to come around offering furry toys. Oh, and The Four Seasons on the music channel, the fear that the person in the next seat was going to start up a conversation, the humiliating gratitude when after fifteen hours of excruciating boredom he did.
She took up a weighty file, identified the pages of the newspaper where cartoons were usually printed, then flicked through a few editions from 1973. Nothing that remotely resembled her father’s work for the Glasgow Tribune. She flicked to the end of the file: still the same cartoonist. There was nothing in the Adelaide Observer. She took up the Newcastle Herald. Same result.
She was six newspapers in before she struck gold, but then it was the real thing, not the fools’ variety. The paper was the Canberra News—not a national paper, in fact, but a regional one, though one that naturally had a special interest in all the main political stories. By chance the file she had ordered was for 1975. On the leader page there was a large cartoon, in th
e familiar mixture of wash and sharp lines. It depicted a stern lady, labeled AUSTRALIA, showing the door to a servant girl carrying a baby labeled NATIONAL PRIDE. Eve flicked to the front page. It was the week that Gough Whitlam had been dismissed as prime minister of Australia by the governor-general. Eve knew from her spasmodic reading on the plane that this was an event generally regarded as a turning point in postwar Australian history: the moment when the traditional ruling class showed they would use any means to keep control. The dismissal was seen as the work of the Anglophiles, the CIA, the royalists, the bigmoney people, anyone who was the bogeyman grouping of some sections of the country’s population. But whatever the face behind the backstabbing dagger, there was no doubt that Australia was divided down the middle.
Eve turned back to the cartoon. This was the sort of situation where the political cartoonist came into his own. The more she looked at it, the better she liked it. It was probably, she decided, a tad old-fashioned even for its time, and deliberately so. Though at first sight the picture seemed to present a stereotypical cartoon situation, of the “Never darken my doors again” type, the closer one looked the more subtle it seemed. From the photograph in her Australian history book, Eve knew that there could be no doubt that the servant-girl was Whitlam. Far from being the tearful penitent of the popular situation, this mannish girl was proud, carrying a priceless bundle away with an air that was almost stroppy. The figure representing Australia had some resemblance to the then-still-living and long-lasting former prime minister of Australia, Robert Menzies, whose period of office had seemed more like a reign than the usual spell in the driving seat. The closer one looked at the caricature, the more cunning and greedy were the eyes, the more ruthless and sadistic the twist in the mouth.
The cartoon was signed Pete Pomeroz. The surname foxed Eve for a moment. Then she remembered the popular word of abuse for British migrants, Poms, and the affectionate abbreviation for Australia itself, Oz. Was the onetime John McNabb advertising himself as a citizen of two countries, or as someone caught between these two countries? He seemed to have been affected by Australia’s famed hatred of “tall poppies,” the ones who thought themselves natural rulers, above the common herd. Remaining from the Glasgow cartoons, though, was the British fondness for indirection, for leaving meanings latent rather than spelling them out.
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