To You The Stars

by Wendy Cartwright

  I began my search on a particularly heavy and humid day, as I recall. Eleanor had gone swimming with friends from Ballet so I had the whole day to myself. Arriving early in the morning, I made straight for the second floor. Happily, I already knew my way around the system, having spent much of the previous summer immured in there researching my Astrological Family Tree. As well as dates, there are Sun signs, Moon signs, aspects and elements.

  On my father’s side, there was an emphasis on Fixed Earth (coal-miners and allotment enthusiasts) as well as Fixed Air (armchair philosophers). On my mother’s side, there was more variety; with many a sea-faring uncle born under dreamy, variable Pisces; and an equal abundance of home-loving aunts clocking in under the Moon’s sign of Cancer. The women who’d left home, like my mother, tended to have Leo and Virgo strongly emphasised as, no doubt, they went off to direct operations and be of useful service in the world.

  Now, where would Dorothy fit into this picture, I wondered, if at all? More importantly, what kind of woman could inspire such an inscription? I would need her date of birth in order to find out; and in order to get that, I would have to locate the record of her death. This would reveal her age at death, as well as her marital status, and I could work backwards from there. So, heading straight for the Index for 1947, I found the slide I wanted and slipped it into the Microfiche Reader, winding it forwards and backwards again, and again – and again. She wasn’t there. A mere handful of Brownings had died during the summer of 1947, and not one of them called Dorothy.

  ‘This can’t be right, this just cannot be right. A death’s gone missing,’ I exclaimed, provoking a sharply-hissed, ‘Be quiet,’ from the woman sitting beside me. Given her bird-of-prey features, blue-black hair; and, very likely, Scorpio Ascendant, I decided against retaliating, but headed off, as she pointedly indicated, towards the main desk. Here, the librarian, a man of about my age with generous features, pale grey eyes and a soft brown beard, appeared a distinctly less formidable prospect.

  ‘Excuse me,’ I said, passing him Dorothy’s inscription. ‘I’m sorry to bother you but I appear to have lost this person and I was wondering if you could help. I can’t find the record of her death in the Index. Could it have happened that her death wasn’t registered?’

  Frowning, he stroked his beard, ‘I wouldn’t have thought so. Well, how very unusual.’

  ‘It doesn’t happen then?’

  ‘No, I meant the inscription. It’s very unusual, isn’t it? Remarkable, really. I wonder what it means.’

  ‘So do I,’ I replied. ‘But if I can’t get hold of the record, I’m not going to be able to find out. I’ve got nothing else to go on, you see.’

  ‘She isn’t a family member then?’

  ‘No, more of a family friend.’ I then gave him an account of my experience in the churchyard the day I discovered her grave. At last I had found a sympathetic audience.

  ‘It’s lovely,’ he said, nodding thoughtfully. ‘The whole thing’s intriguing. And you say you’ve checked the Index and she isn’t there?’

  ‘That’s right, no sign of her.’

  ‘Well, now, I wonder - and this is just a thought - it could be the wrong name on her headstone. Her death will have been registered, I’m sure, under her legal name; but it isn’t a legal requirement to put the correct name on the headstone.’

  ‘What? .Oh, no, surely it must be?’

  ‘I’m afraid not. It’s only a legal requirement to register a death. You can put what you like on the headstone.’

  ‘Oh, but that’s appalling,’ I protested, ‘I mean, that’s just not on, is it. I mean, my name’s Gwendolen Gaskell, but this means that when I die, any old Tom, Dick or Harry could come along and write, ‘Here lies Jemima Puddleduck,’ on my headstone and I wouldn’t be able to do the first thing about it!’

  ‘Er, no, probably not. But why would anyone in your family wish to do that?’

  ‘Why indeed! Why would Peter want to put the wrong name on Dorothy’s headstone? It’s beyond me.’

  Thankfully, it wasn’t beyond the librarian.

  ‘Well now,’ he said kindly, ‘let’s suppose they weren’t married but were living together. When did she die, forty-seven? I should think it would still have been something of a stigma, wouldn’t you say so, living in sin. She could well have called herself Browning to make it more acceptable. Or, she may have preferred his surname to her own. People do that quite often.’

  ‘Well, I wish they wouldn’t,’ I replied irritably. ‘Because names are important. Your whole destiny’s in your name. Why else would we bother with, you know: ‘Their Name Liveth Forever More?’

  ‘Ah, yes. Quite. But people still do that kind of thing.’

  I nodded. ‘You’re right, aren’t you, which means I’m stumped because there’s no way I’m going to be able to track down Peter with nothing whatsoever to go on. I don’t know whether he lived in Oxford. I don’t know whether he’s dead or alive. In fact, I’ve got no impression of him at all.’

  ‘It doesn’t sound too hopeful, I agree. But, you know, you mustn’t give up. Again, this is just a thought, but there’s a chance they put the correct name in the burial register. You said you tried the Church?’

  ‘Yes, the vicar said it wasn’t there. .Oh, but this was ages ago.’

  At this, he brightened.. ‘In that case, you could be in luck, and it’ll have been deposited in the County Archives. They don’t always remember, but parish priests are supposed to deposit the registers after fifty years.’

  Then, taking a last look at the inscription, which, by now, he must have known off by heart, he gave me a wistful smile and added, ‘It’s quite a mystery, isn’t it. I do hope you find her. She must have been quite an inspiration in her day.’

  ‘She still is,’ I replied, and he wished me luck as I left.

  As luck would have it, however, the Archives were closed when I arrived. Undeterred, I returned the next day, clutching a brand new notebook. Again, I was on familiar territory: that is, the Archives felt familiar, reminding me of the cluttered stacks and gloomy reading rooms I had visited as a none-too-diligent student of History some twenty years before. Indeed, the assembled readers could well have been the same individuals. Still dressed for silence, in corduroy trousers and soft cardigans, they padded round in shoes with rubber soles, and, in one case, carpet slippers. Only the archivist looked out of place in this dismal basement. Wearing a bright blue boiler suit, scarlet hair band, and quilted waistcoat; she looked as though she would have been far happier working in the Great Outdoors, especially since her whole demeanour suggested someone who invariably made the best of bad weather.

  ‘Oh, not to worry, I’m sure we can crack this one,’ she said breezily, upon hearing my account of missing deaths and careless clergymen – at which point I received the distinct impression that she was a reincarnated W.A.A.F.

  ‘Now, let’s have a look-see, shall we,’ she added, opening the Catalogue whereupon she broke into a delighted smile. ‘Ah, yes, we do have it. It was deposited in ’97. Well, that solves your problem.’

  ‘Thank God for that,’ I said to myself as I watched her disappear into the Stacks; and, before long, I was relaxing back into a chair and planning my next moves. I would probably have to wait a week or so for the Death Certificate to arrive. Meanwhile, equipped, as I shortly would be, with Dorothy’s correct surname, I could look in the Somerset House Index of Wills to see whether she had left anything to Peter. I could then enjoy a leisurely browse through the Newspaper Archive. With any luck a school or wedding photograph would appear: -

  With any luck the parish register would appear.

  What was she doing in there? Why was she taking so long? Had she been distracted by one of the assembled readers, or stopped for a chat with a colleague?

  Apparently not.

  She had been checking, she explained. She had checked and doubled checked. She had also asked her colleague to assist her. It wasn’t there.

  ‘I�
��m very sorry,’ she added, ‘I just don’t know what to say to you. Believe me, this has never happened before. According to the Log, we’ve definitely got it. Only, it isn’t where it should be, or anywhere else.’

  I took a deep breath, ‘Is it possible – could someone have borrowed it?’

  ‘Oh, no, this isn’t a library!’

  ‘Well then, could someone have borrowed it unofficially? I expect you get all sorts of people coming in here off the street.’

  ‘We do. But that certainly won’t have happened.’

  But I was following my own train of thought: ‘Someone with a fetish for mouldering documents, perhaps - or a grudge against the Church of England. It is just possible, isn’t it, that it’s been stolen!’

  ‘No.’ she replied. ‘It is not. We are very careful about security in here. If you remember, you had to leave your bag at the door.’

  Clearly, I had upset her, so I apologised: ‘I’m a bit over-wrought at the moment. Things aren’t too brilliant on the Home Front. I’m very sorry if I was rude.’

  ‘Oh, that’s all right,’ she said, and, upon sitting down, adopted a more confidential tone, intended to reassure me, I supposed, although it had the opposite effect.

  ‘Actually, you weren’t too far off in what you implied. We do get all sorts of odd bods coming in here off the street. You wouldn’t believe some of the things they do with the registers: ripping out pages, scribbling in the margins; and leaving all sorts of things inside, from book marks to bus tickets and even more personal items.’

  ‘Personal items?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ she said, raising her eyebrows and giving me a knowing look: ‘And a lot of what they write, I’m afraid some of it’s quite obscene. But, you know, it really wouldn’t be possible to make off with an entire parish register. You can imagine how heavy they are, and how cumbersome. It’s not the sort of thing you could easily slip under your coat. No, I can promise you it hasn’t been stolen.’

  I nodded before venturing another possibility, ‘I don’t suppose the vicar could have changed his mind and come back for it later?’ But before she could respond, I anticipated her reply: ‘No, you’d have logged it out again, wouldn’t you.’

  ‘Yes. Believe me, we really are meticulous in here.’

  ‘Thought so,’ I said flatly.

  And we gazed at each other, defeated.

  ‘If you do manage to track it down,’ she asked, as I reached for my jacket, ‘I’d be very grateful if you could let me know, I’m quite upset about it myself.’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ I nodded, although I didn’t hold out a lot of hope.

  By now, I was feeling thoroughly dispirited, exhausted and close to tears, so I stopped at a kiosk on Cornmarket Street and bought several muffins which I ate while pondering the fate of the parish register on my bus journey home.

  The vicar had deposited it in 1997. Now, two years later, it was missing. It wasn’t beyond the bounds of possibility that it had been stolen, but by whom? Who, in their right mind, would want to steal a parish register? No, despite her insistence to the contrary, it seemed more likely that someone in the Archivists’ Office had slipped up. The vicar could well have returned and withdrawn it without signing it out, but why? Why would the vicar want it back? And why tell me it wasn’t in the church? Unless? Unless it contained some dire and desperate secret he wished to conceal. Had the vicar, like one of the archivist’s ‘odd bods’ been scribbling in the text?

  Once again, my imagination took a turn for the worse as it conjured up an image of the vicar - a cross between Aleister Crowley and a Second World War spiv - using a hollowed-out parish register, inscribed with all manner of reptilian runes, as his hidey-hole for casino winnings, lottery tickets and crack cocaine. Either that, or it was currently plugging a gap in the floor boards, propping up his dining table, or serving as an improvised press for his ancient aunt Euphemia’s collection of wild flowers. Well, what else would you do with a parish register? Try as I might, I couldn’t think of an alternative. Nor could I imagine the means by which it might be brought to light. Indeed, I had about as much chance of meeting Dorothy Browning herself, alive and well and working in the esoteric bookshop as of exacting a confession from the vicar. He may have lost it. He may never have had it. It could even have been stolen from the Rectory. No, I had to face the fact that it was probably gone for good, and that my search for Dorothy had ended before it had even begun.

  ‘Things couldn’t be worse,’ I muttered, descending from my bus at the wrong stop. Oh, but yes they could. Just outside Tesco, I bumped into Bill. And he, of course, was looking the very picture of health and happiness; not to mention fifteen years younger in a dark red velvet jacket, crisply laundered shirt and brand new jet black trousers. All he needed was a carnation in his buttonhole to look the perfect groom. Could I commit murder, I wondered, in the foyer of a major supermarket, and get away with it? Probably not. Besides, what would I do – stuff him with muffin wrappings?

  ‘Are you all right?’ he asked amiably. ‘Only you don’t look too good.’

  ‘Thank you, Bill, I’m fine.’

  ‘Come on. Something’s wrong. I know you. What’s up?’

  So, I told him as we walked along. Because I didn’t want to talk about, ‘us,’ or, worse, hear about, ‘them,’ I told him about my abortive search for Dorothy.

  ‘Well, now,’ he said, as I ground to a halt, ‘that is interesting. I wonder who it is that’s buried there, if not her - not that it matters, of course.’

  ‘What do you mean, not that it matters? Of course it matters. Anyway, she is buried there. I ought to know, I found her myself.’

  ‘It shouldn’t make any difference who is buried there, since, as you tell me, this is a spiritual quest.’

  ‘It makes a difference to me,’ I snapped. ‘Without her correct surname, I can’t find the record of her death. And without her Death Certificate, I won’t be able to find out when out when she was born - which means I won’t be able to do her Horoscope.’

  ‘Ah, madness, madness,’ he exclaimed, clapping his hands over his ears and skipping a few paces ahead.

  ‘I want to compare Dorothy’s chart with mine,’ I said, running to catch up with him. ‘I want to see whether there’s any connection between us. If there isn’t, I’ll leave well alone, but if there is, I’ll pursue it. It might explain things. It might explain why I’m drawn there, why I had that strange experience in the churchyard the day I found her grave.’

  ‘Ah, but she has chosen not to reveal herself to you. She prefers to remain anonymous. Her secret died with her. And that’s how it should be.’

  ‘You can’t know that.’

  ‘I can and I do. And you need to hear this. If you could only accept things the way they are, you’d be so much happier - because you’re not happy, are you? For you, there always has to be something else. Look, you found this grave. Dorothy Browning’s? Maybe. It doesn’t matter who’s buried there because what you experienced was real. And it was real because it came from you. It was a gift; if you like, a present from self to self. But what do you do with it? You push it away ‘up there’ because you can’t accept presents. But, of course, it turns out that what you thought was there isn’t there after all. Dorothy Browning isn’t buried there. I’d say there was a message in that!’

  I turned my head away.

  ‘You’ve still got it,’ he said, softening, ‘what you found there. You haven’t lost anything.’

  Oh, but I had. And what’s more, I could now feel it. So, I quickly took my leave of him and darted into the nearest shop. I didn’t want any food. I didn’t want any flowers. I didn’t want him to see me cry. My only consolation was that I had maintained my dignity throughout.

  ‘Bill says you don’t exist,’ I told Dorothy when I got to the churchyard.

  ‘It’s a bit much, isn’t it, all these people denying your existence. First the vicar. Now Bill. And, maybe, even Peter.’

  And I moved to sc
rape my boot along the headstone, dislodging a cluster of snails.

  ‘But I believe in you,’ I whispered as it began to rain.

  That night I slept badly. Various faces, emerging in the darkness, disturbed my sleep: Bill’s face; his twin’s; my mother’s. A man I didn’t recognise; his forehead obscured under the brim of a dark brown felt hat. Like Bill around the mouth, but not Bill. Older, sadder, thinner: defeated – my father?

  No, here was my beautiful father: high, proud forehead; wide cheekbones; clear brown eyes gazing wistfully ahead. My father in his red beret: circa 1944. My father before the bullet. Before the bullet which shattered his face, and dreams of love; sending him into the lonely dark forever.

  Blinking, I opened my eyes very wide and called out his name but there was no reply. Leaving my bed, I went to the window and drew back the curtains but he wasn’t in the garden either.

  Bill’s words had gone very deep. They now resurfaced as I lay on the bed and wept. Supposing Bill was right? Supposing he had been right all along, and I had imagined everything out of the ordinary which had ever happened to me. If he was right, and I had merely invented them; then they were nothing. They were all dead and gone, and I was absolutely, fundamentally alone. Worse, I had wilfully brought this about in my desire for Something Other. In my desire for another reality, I had sacrificed the one I already had; for hadn’t Bill always said I was never there for him; never fully available? So, now, I had lost him too. And as these thoughts struck home, I felt myself falling into a very dark place. I did not go there willingly. I fought bodily against it, clinging on in the pit of my stomach. But it was no good. In the end, I had to go there.

  I can’t remember how long I remained there, although I do remember calling out to Eleanor that I was sick with ‘flu’ and that she must telephone friends for help. The help duly arrived. I could vaguely hear it busying itself downstairs while I lay on the bed; not thinking; nor praying, merely occupying space and feeling nothing.