The Last Witness

by John Matthews

  He felt tired and ragged from the day’s events; after the news of Roman’s sighting, he’d been slow getting to sleep and had grabbed barely forty minutes before Azy’s call. He hoped to fall back asleep quickly. But with his mind now active, it was almost another two hours, rapid changing thoughts and images merging with the gentle thrum and hiss of the first street-sweeping trucks, before he was finally able to get to sleep.

  TEN

  Two days into her quest, and finally Elena felt she was getting somewhere.

  ‘I think we could get to the stage of seeing if there’s a match on the name you’re searching on the adoption contact register within three or four days.’ A hoarse, nasal, female voice from the other end of the phone. Obviously a heavy smoker or suffering from laryngitis from spending her day talking, she sounded like a croaky southern blues singer, except that she was Welsh: Megan Ellis. ‘But the first stage will still be tracking down the birth registration.’

  ‘Well, that’s a lot better than the four to six weeks I was quoted by the ACR* themselves.’ A faint sigh of relief muffled by a hasty sip of gin and tonic. She’d hit the bottle heavy through the first frustrating day of searching, but she was doing better today: 2.30 pm and only her first shot of the day, and this time more because of a possible breakthrough than to drown out the mounting sense of hopelessness of her quest. She’d been told about a small agency in Wales who boasted tracing adoption-seperated parties in days rather than the normal weeks; it warranted a minor celebration. Or was it just Dutch courage in case it turned out to be another let-down? ‘I’m glad, I’m ecstatic – but why the big time difference?’

  ‘First of all pure workload at the ACR. They probably wouldn’t even get to your application for four or five weeks. The match itself, if there is one, would only take days. Then they write to the child and simply make it known that contact has been made. It’s up to the adopted child to say, “Yes, I’d like to make personal contact with my natural parents.” If the child says no or simply doesn’t reply, the door’s pretty well closed, I’m afraid. The law’s very strict on protecting the rights of children given up for adoption.’

  ‘I know.’ Pretty much what she knew from her own work and heard the day before from the *(Adoption Contact Register)

  ACR and NORCAP. A hard, bitter pill – if he said at the end that he didn’t want to see her – that she’d just have to swallow. At least the first daunting obstacle of the long wait was now out of the way. ‘But if a child has listed with the register – surely there’s a high chance they would want contact.’

  ‘True.’ Heavy nasal sigh from Megan. ‘But don’t hold your breath, because that also limits the number of successful matches made. The hit rate is no more than three or four percent. It relies on both parties registering, you see.’

  Elena’s stomach sank. One thing nobody else so far had mentioned. Perhaps with her vented exasperation at a seven week wait, they’d thought that telling her the dismal success rate would pile on the disappointment too much. ‘Any chance of increasing those odds?’

  ‘Not with the ACR. It’s a fixed register, and we go through exactly the same process as them. What you save is the four or five week wait at the front end, and we tell you within days if there’s a match. But it’s still left to them to notify the child – we never get the actual name. That’s the straightforward, official way.’ Megan took a quick pull of the cigarette she’d left half forgotten in the ashtray. ‘The other way’s not so straightforward, it’ll take anything from two days to two weeks, depending how lucky we are – and it costs a bit of money. But the odds are a lot higher: fifty-six percent is our strike rate so far.’

  ‘How much would it cost?’ The money wasn’t the concern, just the worry of how to pay anything significant without Gordon finding out.

  ‘Hundred and sixty pounds a day – but he’s good, one of the best searchers in the business.’

  ‘I see.’ Her income from the aid agency was small and nearly all their main expenses ran through Gordon’s account. She could spare six or seven hundred without running short; after that she’d have to think of a crafty way of getting it from Gordon. ‘What would he do for that?’

  ‘First of all he’d sit himself in the family records centre, trawling birth certificates and then adoption records. If we’re lucky, he’ll find something in only a few days. If not, for instance if he finds the placement agency but they’ve no longer got records, or the final adopted family he traces have since moved from the address on record, which is often the case, his trawling starts to get more involved and time consuming: electoral rolls and telephone directories, deed-pole registrations and death certificates. The time can add up, and the money. But the compensation with this method is that if he finds a name and contact address, we put it straight in your hand. You don’t have to wait on the child approving contact. You can phone straightaway and say hello.’

  A chill ran through Elena at the thought of a voice at the other end of the phone suddenly saying ‘hello’ after twenty-nine years. But in her mind’s eye it wasn’t the adult voice that she knew it must now be, it was that of a small child, and tears welled with the sharp pang of all those lost years. ‘Well… I suppose it’ll have to be your search man.’ Her voice was tremulous and close to breaking, and she cleared her throat, forcing a nervous chuckle. ‘Until I run out of money.’

  ‘The other thing you should be aware of is that the large time gap, tracing back to the late sixties, will make things more difficult. The law changed dramatically in 1975. Until then, all records relating to a child’s placement for adoption were closed by the Courts once the adoption order was made. Then too, we’ve got the problem that pre ’75, a placement agency wasn’t necessarily required, and adoption could have been arranged by third parties such as doctors, clergymen or even family members.’

  ‘I understand.’ Her stomach sank a bit. Something else to worry about: her father could easily have arranged everything without a placement agency or anywhere she might now find a record.

  ‘So… the first stage would be tracking down the birth registration.’ Faint rustle of papers from the other end. ‘Now you say that you don’t know the actual registration place, you only have the surname and likely Christian name and, of course, the date of birth. So if you can give those to me…’

  ‘Yes, of course, the…’ Elena was distracted. Faint sound of footsteps straining through the door of her studio. When she’d last checked on Gordon, he’d been deep into a chain of business calls. Now it sounded like he was starting up the stairs towards her. She’d felt uneasy from the outset doing all this from home, but where else could she have gone? She couldn’t realistically have done it either from the London agency office; Shelley too knew nothing – nobody knew anything except her mother and Uncle Christos – and someone who’d given up their own child wasn’t exactly the best qualified to deal with orphaned children. The footsteps receded, Gordon was heading across the downstairs hallway towards the kitchen rather than up the stairs, and her breathing relaxed. ‘Sorry… just someone I thought wanted me. The surname’s Georgallis, or possibly the anglicised version of our family name: George. And the original Christian name chosen was Christos – though as I say I don’t know if that’s what was finally put on the birth certificate. And he was born April fifteenth, nineteen-sixty-nine.’

  ‘In which area?’

  ‘The actual birthplace was Kilburn, North London, though the family was living at the time in Hampstead.’

  ‘… And do you know if it was a hospital or mid-wife birth?’

  ‘No… neither of those, I’m afraid. It was a back-street clinic.’ Elena started trembling as she remembered the pale grey walls, the stark implements and enamel kidney dishes. A frightened schoolgirl being led in by the hand by her father. ‘Birth registration wouldn’t have been made there, or possibly anywhere in the area. And maybe not until some time later.’

  ‘I see.’ Brief pause, and then the sound of pen on paper continue
d. ‘Now you said at the start that the child’s mother was a close relative. Who exactly is that, and what would this child be to you? If it’s a sister for instance, we would still need her approval to search, unless she’s since died.’

  Elena had kept it at arm’s length with every call so far. Having to say it straight out repeatedly would have been too painful. Now crossing that final barrier of admittance, a barrier she’d avoided coming even close to the past almost thirty years, made her trembling run deeper and seem to drain every ounce of spirit and energy. She closed her eyes, her voice barely a whisper. ‘It’s my son I’m looking for. The son that I gave up twenty-nine years ago.’

  Over the next few days, Elena’s emotions see-sawed wildly.

  She cooked for the family that night after instructing Megan, a simple Beef Bourgignon, but with Katine’s seperated before she put in the red wine for the rest of them; the taste was too rich for Katine. Maybe in a few years.

  But Elena found herself uncoordinated throughout. She let the meat boil down and catch at one point, then she added too much red wine and overcooked the rice. It wasn’t her normal effort.

  She’d opened the red wine at the start of cooking and poured glasses for herself liberally. Too liberally by the look of silent reproach fired her by Gordon as she shrieked and turned down the over-boiling rice pot, a bit of wine slopping out of her glass as she lunged.

  She almost collided with Christos while he was getting a drink from the fridge when she swivelled sharply to drain the pot, then seconds later she was at screaming pitch when Katine walked in with the latest Mopatop doll to show her.

  Then it was a complete about turn, hugging them both. ‘Christos… Katine. Sorry… so sorry.’ Her eyes welled as she straightened, ruffling Christos’s hair. New Christos… old Christos. Replacements that had filled the void in her life – but so quickly had become much more than that.

  Talk was light over dinner. Christos mentioned his school trying to arrange exchange trips to France for the coming Easter and that he’d like to go, and Gordon talked about a local client bitterly upset at the drop in his Far-Eastern linked pep, though Gordon had recommended more of a spread at the outset. Elena said little, and Gordon could tell that she was caught up with her own thoughts, at one point missing what Christos had said and having to get him to repeat it. Though Gordon waited until they’d finished dinner before he asked, ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. I think this whole thing with Lorena has hit me harder than I realized.’ Only a half lie, since that had been the main catalyst. They were in the kitchen and with the light hum of the dishwasher and the TV on for the kids in the lounge beyond, they couldn’t be overheard.

  Gordon shook his head and looked down. ‘Bad business. I know how you must feel. But you did everything you could.’

  ‘Did I?’ She wiped a counter-top brusquely with a cloth. ‘Looks to me like thanks to my over-eagerness, Lorena is now trapped there without us ever being able to help her again. Fine help.’

  ‘You tried, that’s the important thing.’ Gordon came up and hugged her from behind, kissing her cheek. ‘You weren’t to know he was so Machiavellian, that he’d go to the lengths of taping your conversation.’

  ‘I know. Perhaps you’re right.’ She shivered and shrank under his touch. With the duplicitous game she was playing, the secret she’d harboured all these years, she could hardly bear him to touch her. It brought it all too close.

  Gordon pulled away with a half-pained expression, half smile, and leant over to peck her cheek again. She could tell that he’d picked up on her discomfort, but perhaps he put it down to her abhorrence with Ryall.

  ‘Out of all the children you’ve seen successfully placed – what, fifty or more – you can’t punish yourself so because just one gets lost on the way. It doesn’t make it any easier, I know – but you’d almost expect those sort of odds.’

  Her shivering ran through more intensely. She closed her eyes. Just one lost. ‘You’re right… you’re right.’ She bit at her lip, fighting back the tears. For God’s sake just go, before I break down completely.

  The next day was even harder with her starting to become expectant of a call back, and she quickly became restless. She tried to do some painting to occupy her mind, but it was useless. She found she couldn’t focus on anything else for any length of time. Back once more to agitated pacing, wondering whether Megan’s search man would find anything or not. God, even if he did, she could wait days or even weeks, and the way she felt now was that she could hardly bare to wait minutes more. Another coffee, her fifth of the morning, and finally the build up of restfulness, staring intermittently at the dormant phone, made her feel trapped, claustrophobic. She put on her coat and headed out the house towards the chine.

  The air was crisp, heavy clouds moving rapidly on a stiff breeze with only brief breaks of sunshine bursting through. Their garden stretched for almost a hundred yards from the back of the house, mostly gently sloping lawn with a steeper slope for the last ten yards as the descent towards the chine started. The slope angled progressively sharper, but foliage and trees also became denser; there were regular hand-holds as Elena wended her way down the worn path she knew so well. The co-ordination of her steps and hand-grips were automatic, could have been done blindfold. The trees became thicker, taller, spires reaching hungrily up towards the light at the top of the ridge that hit her in intermittent weak dapples through gaps in the foliage, becoming less frequent as she went deeper.

  And suddenly she was there. Her own private place, her cocoon from the world outside. As the path flattened out, the darkness was almost total and she could hear the babble of the stream running through. She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply, enjoying the richly laden smell of damp moss and tree bark mingled with the salt breeze drifting from the sea beyond. Here, everything remained timeless, unchanged; it was exactly as she remembered it when she’d first ventured in at the age of eight.

  Eight, fourteen… now in his late twenties. All those lost years. She tried to picture what he’d look like now, but again it was the image of small boy in her mind, running along the beach at the end of the chine, the wind lightly ruffling his hair… then as she focused, tried to see him clearer, she realized it was the Christos she had now, a chink of recall from a Cyprus beach holiday when he was five. She opened her eyes again, her breath showing on the cool air with her heavy exhalation. There was nothing there. No image she could cling to.

  He’d been christened, blown out his first birthday candle, grazed his knee, had his first day at school, college, had girlfriends, maybe now was even married and had a family of his own. And she hadn’t been there for any of it. Even if the call came through with something and she could find him, all of that would still be lost to her. All she could do was try and fill in the gaps in her mind – but even that small consolation seemed desperately out of reach. There was nothing there. Nothing. Just an empty, aching void.

  Her eyes filled, and the tears flooded rapidly over. She dabbed at them, thinking she had it under control, but suddenly her body was convulsed with racking sobs, competing with the trickling of the nearby stream. The tears felt cool against her skin with the breeze, and she rocked gently, muttering, ‘Christos… Christos. I’m sorry… so sorry.’

  The wind in the treetops drowned out her voice, which made her plea seem all the more lost, insignificant. She was alone; alone with her secret in the one place that since childhood she felt she could be alone and secretive. But for one of the first times she no longer felt cocooned and protected, but adrift, vulnerable. The magic was fading. She’d kidded herself all along that she’d chosen it as a sanctuary from the craziness of the world outside, when in reality she’d merely used it to bury the memories of what she’d done; and now she could almost feel them seeping back out of the trees and damp earth to haunt her. Your only son… and you let him go. How could you?

  She shook her head, bit hard at her lip, trying to shake away the silent whis
pers of recrimination. Maybe as she searched she might get a clearer image of Christos in her mind, something to cling to that would help fill the crushing void inside, and the magic would start to return. She wiped at her tears and started her way slowly back up the steep slope of the chine. Her step was heavy, her legs starting to ache only halfway up, and she couldn’t help dwelling on the task ahead. Making her way from a place of such long-buried secrets into the open. It wouldn’t be easy.

  ELEVEN

  ‘Look, Jean-Paul. I’ve got to speak with you.’

  ‘I know, you mentioned. But can’t it wait till later. You can see how crazy everything is now.’ Jean-Paul turned away, pointing over to the far side of the conference room. ‘No…no! The main flower arrangement should go in that corner.’ Then he addressed two men laying white cloths on long trestle tables to the side. ‘The gravlax should go in the centre, with the canapé’s around. Then on the next table the side of lamb and the suckling pig…’

  ‘I can see… I can see.’ Roman felt awkward enough with the subject he had to broach, but this army of flower-arrangers and caterers hovering around made it all the worse: so many men in one room with female mannerisms and affectations; it wasn’t natural. It made him feel uncomfortable, out of place, like a gorilla surrounded by a flock of dancing flamingos.

  He’d hoped to speak to Jean-Paul directly upon his return from seeing Art Giacomelli in Chicago. There was a full day spare before preparations started for their mother’s birthday party that evening. But Jean-Paul had at the last minute delayed a day, so in the end the only opportunity was now, in the midst of preparations. Once the party started, there wouldn’t be an opportunity; and even if there was, Jean-Paul wouldn’t thank him for taking the edge off the celebrations.