The Partridge and the Pelican

by Rachel Crowther

  “Tracing family trees is easy these days,” Mary said. “There are dozens of websites dedicated to genealogy.”

  “But what more is there to know, if the child died years ago?”

  Mary chewed her lip. “Adoptive mothers often had other children. Birth children, after the adoption. Even if they’d had trouble conceiving before. Something to do with hormones.”

  “So there might be siblings? Nephews or nieces of Georgie’s?” Olivia thought for a moment: born in the late 30’s, she calculated, or the 1940’s. In their sixties; quite likely still alive.

  Mary stood up, opened a drawer to replace the file. “I can’t tell you any more,” she said.

  “Why didn’t your colleague tell Georgie all this when her daughter was traced?” Olivia asked. “If there were relatives left alive, couldn’t she have put her in touch?”

  Mary turned, her hand still resting on the filing cabinet, and looked at Olivia. A long, compassionate look. “It’s hard to imagine what sort of state people like Georgie were in when they first came out of those places. Especially Georgie. There’d been so much trauma already. The risk of another rejection by the family …”

  “Surely by then – “

  “If Georgie had wanted to find her brother or sister she could have asked us to help,” Mary said, more firmly. “No one had the right to make that decision for her. And if the family had wanted to see her, ever, they’d have found her. Some families did, when the institutions closed. Or before.”

  “And others?”

  Mary shrugged. “Guilt. Whitewashing. A secret never told to the next generation. Georgie’s nieces and nephews were most likely told she’d died young.”

  There was silence for a moment.

  “I should be going,” Olivia said. “You’ve been very generous with your time, satisfying my curiosity.”

  Mary looked surprised. “Not just that, surely,” she said. “Georgie’s been different since she was in hospital. You’re right, it might be the moment to look into it again, see whether there’s anything else we can give her. Closure of some kind.”

  Nothing is yours. There is nothing left to remind you, not a trace or a hint of who you were. They took your clothes, your books, your home. Sometimes, if you try too hard to hold on to it, they even take away your name.

  You have a bed and a cupboard with no lock; no place to keep things safe, even if there is nothing to keep. When you make, in this space, a place where you can begin to live, they move you. You are not safe with yourself, they say. The poison, the illness, is inside you, and they must stop you from finding anything there to comfort you. The outside world has been stripped to bare walls and silence and they will strip the inside too: they will not let you be at peace with yourself or your wickedness. They are certain of this, zealous in their quest to reduce you to a hollow shell.

  You know what they are doing – that is your salvation and your downfall, that you know what they are doing, despite the pills they feed you, the wires they use to probe and cleanse your head. You don’t know how long it has been but you know it will go on and on, that they will never give up.

  Others escape, leaving their bodies shrouded by drawn curtains, but your body is too stubborn. Your body resists the plagues and the agues, the rashes and fevers that claim the weak here. Your body carries you out, when it is permitted, into the air that no longer smells of freedom but of acrid nothingness. It forces its way through the mud and the roots and the nettles that surround the walls. It sustains itself on so little that you would marvel, if you were able to, at its resilience.

  Chapter 16

  Guy’s head was framed by the wings of his chair and the fireplace behind. Sarah gazed at him for a moment: his pose reminded her of a portrait they’d seen the week before in the Ashmolean. The man of action lately returned home, she thought, ready to be portrayed with the accoutrements of his existence spread about him. The Blackberry, The Economist, the world atlas tellingly at his elbow. His face was partly hidden by the newspaper. She judged that he was only half-occupied by its contents, but even so she hesitated before speaking to him.

  “The modern words do have a sort of freshness, don’t you think?” she said.

  Guy looked up from the business section with an indulgently noncommittal expression. “You’re leaning towards the revised service, then?”

  “I think it might sound more meaningful. As though you’re saying something that’s not completely taken for granted.”

  They were in Guy’s house this evening, a tall, narrow townhouse near the city centre. Guy had lived alone here – when he wasn’t away climbing mountains – for fifteen years, and it sometimes felt to Sarah almost as though there was someone else in the house. Not a ghost, exactly, but perhaps another version of Guy, the confirmed bachelor people might have thought he was. She could feel a sense of regret, even of disapproval, emanating from the rows of Folio Society volumes in the bookshelves (not a novel among them, she’d realised, when she went looking for something to read). She felt too loud here, too definite, too female. It was as if every move she made disturbed things that had been just as they were for years.

  Guy was watching her with an expression of mild consternation, as though he wasn’t sure whether anything more was expected of him. She couldn’t explain it to him, Sarah thought. She’d said, once, how unfussy the décor was, but that wasn’t what she meant. Fussy was exactly what it did seem, all those books and papers, the filed correspondence and neatly clipped reviews. What she meant was that it was masculine, solitary, self-sufficient; that there was no room for her in his house, even if he planned to admit her to his life.

  “Your judgment about these things is so much better than mine,” Guy said, with a smile that lingered for a moment on Sarah’s face before his eyes flicked back to the newspaper. “Did you read about this débâcle at Prime Minister’s Question Time?”

  Sarah shook her head, and returned to her perusal of orders of service. But she couldn’t absorb the words any more; they floated through her head and out again without leaving an impression.

  She suspected that Guy had similar reservations about her flat in the landscaped development where everything was bright and new. She could see through his eyes the too-green lawns and the recessed ceiling lights, the pale veneer doors and paper lampshades. She could see him watching his step, as though he’d found himself on a stage-set where things might slide out from under him at the end of a sentence.

  Sarah sighed. Houses were only houses, she told herself, and they both knew marriage meant compromise. It was a good time to be upgrading, with the market depressed, looking for somewhere with enough space for both of them. A family house.

  Opposite her, Guy was deep in the newspaper again. She watched the small movements of his face as his eyes scanned the leader page, the infinitesimal register of amusement and surprise and dissent, and she felt a rush of emotion so powerful, so unexpected that for a moment she couldn’t tell what it contained. She shut her eyes, heat suffusing her cheeks, grateful now that Guy wasn’t paying attention. She knew where it came from, that flood of feeling. She knew it was an aftershock, a consequence of what had happened this morning. She’d hoped the marriage service would distract her, that concentrating on the words which would join the two of them inextricably together would keep all that at bay.

  She sat very still for a moment, then shut the books on her lap and levered herself out of the deep armchair.

  When they were at her house Guy cooked, and vice versa. It had been her idea: a good way to get to know someone, she’d said, to find your way around their kitchen. A good idea tonight, anyway, to have something to occupy herself with.

  Jane had looked up when Sarah came through the door of the clinic that morning, her face revealing something that might almost be curiosity.

  “Phyllis Matthews’ son’s here,” she’d said.

  “Her son?”

  “Instead of her. Martin took him up to your room.”

&
nbsp; Sarah had felt a flash of conscience: she’d meant to ring, after Mrs Matthews’ non-appearance the previous week. Running into Olivia had distracted her. She’d almost been late for her next patient by the time she’d dragged herself away from that cosy conversation in the coffee shop. She ran up the stairs now, pausing only for a second to compose herself before pushing open the door of her consulting room.

  Harry Matthews had huge hands that rested awkwardly in his lap as though they weren’t used to being idle. He stood up when Sarah came in, and thrust out a hand – both hands – to greet her.

  “I’m sorry I’m late,” she said, although she knew she was precisely on time, and the appointment hadn’t been for him, anyway.

  He shook his head. “I was early. I wasn’t sure of the traffic.”

  Sarah sat, not in her usual chair, but in another one at right angles to his. She was conscious of a restlessness, an edginess about him which puzzled her. If his mother wanted to stop coming, all she had to do was ring up. Could it be a complaint, a question about her treatment?

  “Your mother,” she began.

  Harry Matthews nodded slowly. “I’m afraid she’s dead,” he said. “I wanted to tell you myself, because I know how much you meant to her.”

  Sarah stared at him. Several thoughts fired at once in her head, not quite forming into questions.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said. “That must have been a shock.”

  “Yes,” he said. “We had no idea how much it got her down. I don’t think anyone knew except you.”

  Sarah could make even less sense of this. On her desk she could see Mrs Matthews’ thick brown folder. Martin must have got it out, perhaps left it for the son to read, if he wanted to. Sarah knew exactly what he would find in there. Unexplained back pain in a patient who insisted on returning week after week; five years without progress. She’d felt guilty about Mrs Matthews as well as exasperated by her: the two were related, in fact, guilt leading to exasperation and back again. A vicious circle she’d often longed to escape from. She felt another tweak of disbelief and – almost – fear.

  “I didn’t do her any good,” she said. Her heart was beating fast, but she felt she had to say this; she couldn’t have the son thinking better of her than she deserved.

  He shook his head vigorously. He had the kind of complexion that flushes easily; a mottling of crimson spread like a cloud over his cheekbones. “It was the only thing that helped,” he said. “She wanted me to tell you that.” He hesitated. “It was in her letter. Her note.”

  Now Sarah’s heart jumped and recoiled.

  “Her note?”

  The son nodded, an unexpected compassion in his face, as though he understood more than he possibly could. “She took her own life,” he said. “She couldn’t bear the pain any more.”

  Sarah shut her eyes. Not that, she thought. Not that. Her encounters with Phyllis Matthews rolled through her mind on fast-forward: her own barely-contained frustration; her suggestion that pain killers were part of the problem, not the solution; her progressive loss of interest. Shame surged through her, the heart-sink acceptance of responsibility.

  “She wanted you to know she was grateful,” the son was saying. “She asked me to give you this.”

  Sarah opened her eyes again and saw a small parcel in the hand he held out to her. Her hands faltered, but she took it and unwrapped the old-fashioned brown paper with as much composure as she could muster. She couldn’t let herself speak, but she met Harry Matthews’ eyes briefly and saw in them his own distress, the difficulty all this had caused him. He must blame himself too, she thought. Of course he must blame himself.

  Inside the wrapping was a tiny Bible, leather-bound, with an embossed silver cover. Sarah’s heart tumbled again.

  “I understand you’re getting married,” Harry said. “My mother was given this for her wedding.”

  “I can’t take it,” Sarah said. She shook her head, as much to shake away the tears welling in her eyes as to emphasise her meaning. Phyllis Matthews hadn’t been a vindictive person; she couldn’t have meant to cause this terrible tidal wave of guilt. But even so, it was more than Sarah could bear. “Whatever she said, I did nothing to help. Whatever she thought. It was the idea of the treatment, that’s all.”

  Harry Matthews looked at her blankly. “But isn’t that what it means, therapy?” he said. His voice was gentle, for such a big man. “Treating a person? Making them feel better?” He smiled. “I know it wasn’t easy for you,” he said.

  Sarah kept shaking her head. She didn’t deserve his sympathy, or his thanks. For a moment she saw her professional life, the career she took such pride in, with devastating clarity. She saw a series of encounters in the white-walled cleanliness of the clinic; the half-hour slots allocated to each patient; the notes filed in identical brown folders. She saw her attempt to bury herself in work, efficiency, achievement. Mrs Matthews’ face loomed in her mind, then dissolved and reformed in the shape of her mother. Just when she’d thought she was home safe, she thought; that things might at last work out all right.

  As the tears welled out of her eyes, Harry Matthews reached across to take her hand.

  “Please,” he said. “Don’t be upset.”

  Sarah didn’t take her hand away, but she brushed the other one across her face in an attempt to staunch her tears. Harry picked it up gently when she let it drop. There was something wonderfully soothing about the contact between them, the way they made a closed circle, both her hands clasped in his.

  “I let her down,” Sarah said, but the words didn’t sound as she’d expected. Instead of slowing, her tears flowed faster. She was conscious of Harry Matthews looking aghast and earnest and intent, of time spinning out and away as he pulled her forwards, lifted her upwards until they were both standing and he had his arms around her. And even then a part of Sarah – a wisp of conscience, or consciousness – was surprised more by the consolation she felt than by the fact that she was in the embrace of a stranger.

  Guy’s kitchen was sleek and well-equipped, but it seemed to Sarah that its contents had been chosen with a view to appearance rather than practicality. There was a whole battery of stainless steel saucepans, but she had no idea how he managed without a non-stick frying pan or a decent sharp knife. She was often tempted to laspe into bachelor fare here: cheese on toast; sausages cooked under the grill with much spitting and smoke.

  Reaching up to the top shelf, she took down a packet of pasta and a jar of pesto she’d left there the previous week, then she filled the kettle under the unwieldy retro-design tap. Someone’s idea of chic, she guessed, but presumably not Guy’s.

  While she chopped tomatoes for a salad she forced her mind back to the order of service she’d left behind in the sitting room. Although she wasn’t really a churchgoer, she’d turned out most Sundays recently, because it seemed only fair, when they were going to have their banns read there, and the organist and the choir and the vicar participating in their wedding. She was a rationalist, Sarah thought; anyone who knew her would agree with that assessment. Not one to allow the Holy Ghost much truck. But when she was in church – especially at Evensong, which always evoked the school chapel, the fervency of adolescence – she felt it wasn’t so much at odds with the rest of life to repose her trust in the Lord and affirm her faith through the creed she knew by heart. It was a good basis for marriage, she thought. A help, when things were difficult, to feel that you weren’t going it alone.

  She stopped for a moment, resting against the kitchen worktop. Oh God. The thought, for once, was entirely genuine. Please God, pay attention for a moment.

  She hadn’t expected that her encounter with Harry Matthews would take root like this. It had been an aberration, surely; just a chance occurrence, a congruence of circumstances. She’d thought her attention to the wedding service, nestled in its reassuring safety net of moral certainty, would smother this unexpected obstacle rather than throwing it into stronger relief.

  If only Guy w
ould fold away his newspaper, she thought; if some instinct would only prompt him to come through to the kitchen and find her standing here. If he put his arms around her, held her tight and told her all was well, then surely it would be. There was time to quash this hitch, this glitch, to banish it like a playground jinx that could be undone with the right form of words.

  Sarah let a saucepan drop heavily onto the stove, then she filled it with boiling water and turned on the gas. She knew, of course she knew, that one moment could determine the future as powerfully as the accumulated actions and decisions of months and years. She knew the course of life could be altered in an instant. But surely she wouldn’t stake her marriage, like a gambler, on the flip of a coin: heads he comes through now and everything goes on as it was; tails he doesn’t. How could she judge Guy, their future, her happiness, on an action whose importance he had no inkling of? She was cooking pasta in his kitchen: how could he know what was at stake?

  Chapter 17

  Suffolk, August 1983

  “We should tell James about Torhousekie,” said Eve.

  It was the night of the big storm: the night the grumbling rainclouds flared into a full-blown display of thunder and lightning that drew the evening in early and drove the remaining holidaymakers inside to huddle around unseasonal fires. The curtains were drawn in the kitchen at Shearwater House, but the noise of the wind and the sea roared and shushed beyond them.

  Eve had got up from her sick bed for the first time that morning, looking fragile after three days of illness, and the three of them were making supper together.

  “Mmm.” Olivia was occupied by a pile of onions, her eyes stinging as she sliced them into half-moons and threw them into a chipped enamel pan.

  “It was an amazing place, wasn’t it?” Eve turned to James. “It’s one of the best preserved stone circles in the country.”

  She’d read up about Torhousekie after their visit and had fed Olivia facts as they drove north through Scotland, weaving the dramatic events of that night into a story that stretched back through centuries of myth and legend. The three stones in the centre were known locally as King Galdus’s Tomb, she’d reported, Galdus being a Scottish king who was supposed to have fought off the Romans in AD 80. But Eve preferred the story that the Druids had built it. A temple or a court of justice, she’d said. Just imagine being tried there: the elders in their robes, banging their staves on the ground as they passed sentence. The cows watching, Olivia had added.