Talking to the Dead

by Helen Dunmore

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Big drops splash us as we run. Everyone’s running, across the car park into their cars, or into the covered bus stop. We reach the café door, but we hang back in the shelter of the awning. Richard grasps my wrist. ‘You wait here, Nina. I’ll go in first.’ But I won’t let him. Whatever there is to know, I’ve got to know it too. I look at the grey in his hair and his rain-streaked face and his body in its rumpled summer clothes that look wrong now, with rain whipping down and the light as purple as three-day-old bruising. I want to hide myself in him, to hide him in me. We are so close I hear the catch of breath as he starts to say something, and then decides not to.

  ‘What do you think’s happened?’ I ask him. ‘Where is she?’

  ‘I’m going to report her missing,’ Richard answers, and he reaches out and lifts a wet strand of hair away from my mouth. His hands are cold.

  ‘There,’ he says, like a mother. He digs in his pocket and pulls out a big cotton handkerchief, and wipes my face with it. ‘That’s better. Are you all right to go in now?’

  The police-car has parked behind us, in the car park. We hear the double clunk of its doors, and then two pairs of feet, almost in rhythm but not quite. They don’t run through the rain like everyone else. They walk with their heads down, and the policewoman puts up one hand as a gust of wind tugs at her hat.

  Richard pushes open the door and we go in. There’s a woman in the café, sitting with her back to us. She’s wearing a blue dress, and she has a little boy with her, perched on a chair which is too big for him. He turns to look as we open the café door and his face is pinched and solemn. The woman has a baby in her arms, wrapped in a yellow shawl. I look at the shawl, which I bought in Forever Baby two months before Antony was born. It’s a soft yellow, like egg-yolk, and I liked it better than the pastels of the other shawls on display.

  ‘Whatever you do don’t get anything pink or blue, Nina. I don’t mind yellow.’

  Another woman in a flowery pinafore bends over the back of the chair, talking to the woman with the baby. She puts a white cup of tea down on the table in front of her, as if this is a hospital. The café door opens again, and there behind us, like a bad dream in their dark uniforms, are the police. The policewoman has too much make-up on. Her tan looks yellow in this light. The thunder crackles, and a squall of rain hits the window.

  ‘That woman,’ I whisper to Richard. ‘Look at the baby she’s holding.’

  The woman with the baby is the important one. The police are with her now, the policewoman crouching down so that her eyes are level with the baby’s. She pulls back a corner of the shawl to see his face. All at once the scene is bleached, stopped as if a huge flashlight has gone off. All the faces are rimmed with light as if God has pointed a finger at us.

  But it’s lightning, only lightning. The air hums with waiting. I count as I always count, and then the thunder slams. It is three miles off, coming closer fast. Richard hasn’t seen what I’ve seen. He’s looking at the policeman, not the baby.

  I push my way through the people and get to the table, beside the woman, looking down at the baby. The policewoman frowns at me. I put out my hand and pull the fold of shawl right back from Antony’s face. He is deep, deep, asleep. I put out my finger and touch his warm forehead. The blood beats in his fontanelle. The policewoman is saying something, but I don’t listen. ‘The baby,’ I ask. ‘Where did you get the baby?’

  I look from one to another, at the baby, the woman, the baby again. I can’t see what these things mean. There is the yellow shawl with its satin fringe, the shawl I bought and posted to Isabel. This woman must have stolen it with the baby, and that’s why the policewoman is here, to search her. There are women like this who steal babies in seaside places, when the mothers are relaxed, sunbathing with their eyes shut.

  ‘She’s taken my sister’s baby,’ I say out loud. Richard touches the policeman’s arm and the circle opens like a mouth and takes us in. Faces fall back from us as Richard talks and the policeman listens, writing things down. I lift Antony out of the woman’s arms. There’s a patch of damp on his shawl.

  ‘He needs changing,’ I say.

  ‘I didn’t want to wake him,’ says the woman. The café owner lifts the counter flap and we all file through. There’s a door marked Private and a little room on the other side. Richard and I go first with the baby, then the police and the woman with her little boy.

  ‘Where’s Isabel? Where’s my wife?’ asks Richard.

  ‘We don’t know quite what’s happened yet, sir,’ says the policewoman. ‘Can you confirm that this is your baby?’

  Richard looks down. He touches the satin edge of the shawl, then the baby’s sleeping cheek. ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘Tell me what’s happened.’

  ‘We don’t know.’

  We’re in a small room with overalls hanging on the wall. There’s a white plastic table, and a chair with a wonky leg. I sit down on the chair. ‘I’ll get you some tea,’ says the café owner.

  The baby looks as if he belongs in my arms. ‘Right,’ says the policeman, and he brings out his notebook, ‘so this is your baby, sir. But your wife’s not with you. And this is…?’

  ‘Of course my wife’s not with me. That’s why we’re looking for her. This is my sister-in-law, my wife’s sister.’ It sounds so respectable.

  ‘We have to ask,’ says the policewoman. ‘She might have gone home. Women get funny when they’ve just had a baby. Forgetful. We had a woman left her baby behind in the supermarket. It turned out she’d driven all the way home before she remembered she’d got a baby.’

  ‘My sister’s not like that,’ I say.

  ‘You wouldn’t believe the things that happen,’ says the policewoman.

  I never stare at accidents. If I’m travelling somewhere and an ambulance pulls on to the station concourse and two men with a stretcher run towards a train, I don’t look. My mother taught me that. You don’t watch people when they’re being hauled out of one life into another. My mother saw how greedy we were, me and Isabel, how curious, because we thought nothing had happened to us yet. But I’m twenty-nine now and Isabel’s thirty-two, and it’s a long time since we broke through the wall of backs that hide circles of chaos and sorrow. No one else comes into the little room behind the café. Everyone is standing, except me, and then the café owner brings in more plastic chairs and they clash against each other as everyone else sits round the table. There’s no window, so we can’t see the storm, but we hear the thunder overhead, and the drive of rain on the roof. For long periods, I forget the storm altogether as the woman who was holding Antony talks to us and to the police.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  What began then, in the back-room of the café, is still going on. Bits of the story fit together one way, and then another. From time to time a new piece is brought in and we have to move everything around.

  At around 1.30 p.m. Isabel spread out her green striped towel over her new beach mat and sat down on the beach within a few yards of Mrs Patricia Newsome, who was spending the day at the Gap with her son Lewis, aged four. There was plenty of space on the beach and Pat Newsome remembers thinking that she’d chosen to sit rather close, and that perhaps it was because of being alone with what was obviously a very new baby. Before that Isabel had paid off Mickey Nye outside the Oasis Café, had bought a tube of Factor 25 sun-cream and a Japanese beach mat, and crossed the road to the beach. The driver of a Volkswagen Estate remembers braking because she seemed to be having difficulty in crossing the road, with the baby seat in one hand, the changing bag, beach mat and handbag in the other. She walked very slowly.

  The baby started to cry and Isabel gave him his bottle. While she was doing this she got talking to Pat. They exchanged first names.

  ‘I’m Pat, and this is Lewis. Say hello to the lady, Lewis. He’s a bit shy.’

  ‘Hello, Lewis, I’m Nina.’

  Pat is quite clear on this point. She remembers mentally adding Nina to her list of
possible names for a girl: Pat is six months pregnant with her second child, and she wants a girl. She thought Nina might be nice for a second name. I know almost every word Pat and Isabel said during the afternoon: at least, I think I do. Sometimes it occurs to me that Pat is keeping back or has forgotten something which might sound just like any other detail, but will be the key to everything. But the more I look at Pat’s clear, pale, pregnant face the less I can believe that she’d deliberately hide anything.

  ‘I’m Nina,’ I say as I sit with the baby in my arms. ‘It was Isabel you were talking to.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘My name’s Nina. Hers is Isabel. She gave you my name instead of hers.’

  ‘What would she want to do that for?’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe she was thinking about me.’

  ‘You’re close,’ says Pat, ‘I can tell. This must be terrible for you.’ Her grey eyes stare at me and I know that Nina has been crossed off the mental list of names for her child. But Pat can’t give me back those hours she shared with Isabel.

  ‘How did she seem when you were talking to her?’

  ‘Oh well, you know, a bit tired. As soon as she sat down I didn’t think she looked well, but then she’d just had a baby. She told me it was the first time she’d been out with him. We talked about learning to drive so she could get out more. She was very nice to Lewis.’

  When we were little Isabel and I would turn to look at accidents. We wanted to force our way inside that circle of things happening. We thought that nothing important had ever happened to us. Or perhaps I was the only one who thought that, and Isabel knew better.

  ‘It must have been about half-past one,’ says Pat. ‘No, it’d have been a bit later than that, because we’d had our picnic, hadn’t we, Lewis? She was giving the baby his bottle and we got talking. You do, don’t you, when you’ve got children. Lewis couldn’t believe how tiny the baby was. He kept asking, could the baby make a sandcastle, could he go swimming. She hadn’t brought a flask so she asked me if I’d keep an eye on the baby while she went and got a coffee. She brought a lolly back for Lewis as well.’

  The little boy’s eyes flick from face to face, uncomprehending. ‘Lady give me a lolly,’ he says.

  ‘That’s right, she was a nice lady, wasn’t she? So we got talking. She told me it was the first time she’d taken the baby out. I told her how frightened I’d been of taking Lewis out when I first had him. I was always afraid I’d be stuck somewhere and have to breast-feed him with people looking.’

  ‘I’m not breast-feeding Colin,’ she said.

  Richard’s face doesn’t change. He’s leaning forward, a bit blank, as if he can’t quite hear what she’s saying. Perhaps he’s forgotten who Colin is again. The policewoman keeps on writing things down. I look at the little boy’s face and realize that he has seen Isabel, maybe even touched her. He’s part of those hours we’re trying to piece together. Isabel smiled at him and said hello. She gave him a lolly, and she sunbathed for a while before it clouded over. She said she ought to change the baby’s nappy, but she didn’t, although Pat saw she’d brought everything with her. The baby was only wet, not dirty. ‘We were just chatting. Nothing special. Just about babies. She was very pale and I asked her if she’d be all right getting home, because I could give her a lift if she wanted. I knew she’d come in a taxi but they’re not always easy to get down at the Gap, not in the season. But she said her husband was coming to pick her up.’

  My sister was wearing a black swimsuit, and a yellow sarong tied round her waist. She rubbed Factor 25 sun-cream into the baby’s face and arms, even though it was quite cloudy by then. Pat noticed that she was extremely careful over everything she did for the baby, and she didn’t seem sure she was doing the right things. She was very anxious about him. She asked Pat if she thought she’d put enough cream on.

  ‘He’ll be fine if he’s got your skin,’ said Pat, looking at Isabel’s smooth, golden shoulders. But Isabel glanced up from rubbing in cream and said, ‘Oh no, he won’t look like me.’

  Pat thought that was a strange thing. Isabel seemed so sure, as if she’d looked into the baby’s future. And you’d think that a woman who looked like Isabel would hope to pass it on to her children, even if she wasn’t vain, which Isabel obviously wasn’t.

  ‘I can’t stand those women who get themselves up like models, everything perfect,’ says six-months-pregnant Patricia Newsome. But she liked Isabel.

  ‘Look at him,’ said Isabel, and she held out the baby flat on her forearms, as if she was offering him on a tray to Pat. Pat said the baby was gorgeous.

  ‘Do you think so?’ Isabel asked. She looked at the baby for a long time, then she put him down to sleep.

  At about three o’clock, or a bit later, Isabel stood up suddenly, then picked up the baby. Pat wondered if she’d caught sight of her husband, who was coming down to fetch her. Already Pat felt a bit curious about what the husband of this woman might be like. She says this, and then flushes faintly, looking at Richard. ‘Only because she was different,’ she says.

  ‘How do you mean, different?’ asks the policeman, but Pat only repeats, quietly and surely, ‘She was different.’

  Isabel said that she was going to go for a walk. She wanted to stretch her legs.

  ‘Don’t go too far,’ Pat said. She still doesn’t know why she said it, except that Isabel looked so pale.

  ‘Oh no, I shan’t. I’ll just take the baby along the beach and show him the sea, then I’ll get something to eat from the café. I’m starving.’

  ‘Are you sure Isabel said that?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘ “I’m starving.” ’

  ‘Oh yes, she said she hadn’t had anything to eat since breakfast. I offered her a sandwich but she said she wanted something hot. But she really didn’t look well and I didn’t think she ought to carry the baby all that way. She’d left the baby with me while she got her coffee, so I thought I’d ask if she wanted me to watch him for her again. He was fast asleep, he’d be no problem. I said to her, “I’ll mind the baby if you like. I expect you could do with half an hour’s peace and quiet.” But she didn’t want to. She said, “No, he’s got to come with me.” I knew how she felt, because I was funny about leaving Lewis with anyone at first, even my mum. And she didn’t really know me. So I said, “It’d be lovely for Lewis. I’m trying to get him used to the idea of babies. You’d be doing me a favour, really.” Then she said, “Would I? Are you sure?”

  “Course I’m sure. You pop him back in his car-seat and we’ll both keep our eye on him, won’t we, Lewis?”

  ‘She put him in, and did up the safety-straps. Then she put the blanket over his feet, though it wasn’t really cold. She knelt down there for a minute, then she said, “Are you sure I shouldn’t take him with me?” “I’m not going to run off with him,” I said, “I couldn’t run far like this, anyway.” She smiled and then she got up, took her purse out of the changing-bag and went away up the beach.’

  She smiled and got up, then she took her purse out of the changing-bag and went away up the beach.

  ‘Did you watch her?’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Did you watch her go away – up the beach?’

  ‘Well, no, I didn’t. I had Lewis, you see, and the baby.’

  ‘Of course.’

  I’d have watched if I’d been there. Even if Isabel hadn’t looked back, I’d have seen her bare feet picking carefully over the stones, her long, fine brown legs, the yellow sarong, her bare back in the scooped black swimsuit.

  ‘When did you start to get worried?’

  Pat flushes. ‘As soon as she’d gone. I really did, I’m not just saying it. There was something about her. You felt she needed looking after. To tell the truth I was surprised anyone’d thought she was well enough to come out on her own. She didn’t look as if she knew what to do.’ Pat looks at me and Richard. ‘I don’t know why I’m saying all this to you. You know her much better th
an I do.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘There was something wrong, wasn’t there?’

  ‘Yes, sir, it would help if you could let us have some background,’ says the policeman. But just then the café owner comes to the door. A man has come into the café with a woman’s purse. It’s got a name in it.

  He found Isabel’s purse farther along the beach, where the red flag flies all the time. It wasn’t down near the water nor up by the road, but about halfway between, lying on the shingle. That was when the policeman got up quietly and went out to make some phone calls.

  There was nothing missing from Isabel’s purse. In it there was £18.42 in cash, a credit card, a cheque card, four receipts in a zip compartment, a scrap of paper with a telephone number on it, and a tiny black-and-white photograph which I hadn’t seen for years. The photograph showed a little girl holding a doll. Her eyes squinted against the sun and her fringe was blown back by the wind off the sea. It was me, standing outside our house in St Ives. I must have been about four. Nina Close, 6 Channel Terrace, St Ives, Cornwall, Great Britain, the World. The doll was Rosina, not Mandy. Isabel must have let me hold her for the photograph. I am smiling at the camera and my arms are a proud, exaggerated cradle.

  A long time later I tried the telephone number Isabel had written on the scrap of paper, but all I got was an electronic voice repeating: The number you have dialled has not been recognised.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  The sky looks like a junkyard. Searchlights and car headlights and flashing torches crisscross in ugly patterns as they bounce off nothing. My eyes sting from looking at them. It’s ten o’clock now and the search for Isabel has been going on for so long that it’s grown into me, a new way of life that will never end. People come in with cups of coffee and whispered messages. Tyres churn on the shingle. Most of the time I hold the baby, except when I hear something and I have to find out what’s going on. I heard a siren and I went out and an ambulance was bouncing down the road, its big suspended backside rocking slowly. There was a blue light revolving on the top. I started running but the policewoman called me back. It wasn’t Isabel, it was one of the searchers who’d fallen from a breakwater. He’d broken a leg but he was all right.